tagged w/ Drought
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Please, your child's life is more important than any practice or sports event.
This excessive heatwave is dangerous.Please, your child's life is more important than any practice or sports event.... more
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It is always the children who are the victims of the world adults create and it is the greatest injustice. War ravages this region as it has for years it's affects now exacerbated by a drought the likes of which has been unseen for decades exacerbated as is the war by human behavior which was totally preventable. I know it is a place where terrorism thrives. I know it is a place where corruption and lawlessness thrive. And it is a poor area of the world seen as expendable as noted by the many hateful comments I have read from people on other news sites, some of which absolutely stunned me. However, it is also a place where humanity must thrive in order to spare a worse catastrophe.
As 12 million people most of them children face certain death if they get no help, we on this side of the world will throw out tons of uneaten wasted food without a thought. We will continue to be absorbed in our diversions that give us pleasure with little thought to what may be going on outside of our own worlds. And we will find some reason, any reason at all to dismiss the urgency of this drought war and ensuing famine to not have to do something no matter how small it may be to at least save one life.
These children did nothing to anyone. They are products of a world not of their creation. And they are also human beings like all of us who deserve to live life with hope. We must strip away all of the political, religious and ideological obstacles that prevent us from being human now. This is a humanitarian catastrophe of untold proportions and I simply cannot believe that the world willl sit by and allow these people to die. It is truly outrageous that geopolitics and foreign policy must always become more important than simply saving a human life.
Of course, the problems here go much deeper and will not be solved with just a 10 dollar donation to MSF to give them plumpy nut. This however is part of a greater war we now fight. A war against ignorance, hatred and intolerance. If we could only grasp how opening our hearts could release so many from the fear that grips our world and just look at the human beings in front of us we could solve anything. Right now however, these children need our help. Please do so if you haven't already. Humanity won't stand a chance if we can't be human, at least this once.It is always the children who are the victims of the world adults create and it is the... more
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Somalis Waste Away as Insurgents Block Escape From Famine
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Published: August 1, 2011
PHOTO: A malnourished child at Banadir Hospital in Mogadishu, Somalia. More than 500,000 Somali children are verging on starvation.
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Amid Famine, Dangers Hinder Aid to Somalia
MOGADISHU, Somalia — The Shabab Islamist insurgent group, which controls much of southern Somalia, is blocking starving people from fleeing the country and setting up a cantonment camp where it is imprisoning displaced people who were trying to escape Shabab territory.
Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
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The group is widely blamed for causing a famine in Somalia by forcing out many Western aid organizations, depriving drought victims of desperately needed food. The situation is growing bleaker by the day, with tens of thousands of Somalis already dead and more than 500,000 children on the brink of starvation.
Every morning, emaciated parents with emaciated children stagger into Banadir Hospital, a shell of a building with floors that stink of diesel fuel because that is all the nurses have to fight off the flies. Babies are dying because of the lack of equipment and medicine. Some get hooked up to adult-size intravenous drips — pediatric versions are hard to find — and their compromised bodies cannot handle the volume of fluid.
Most parents do not have money for medicine, so entire families sit on old-fashioned cholera beds, with basketball-size holes cut out of the middle, taking turns going to the bathroom as diarrhea streams out of them.
“This is worse than 1992,” said Dr. Lul Mohamed, Banadir’s head of pediatrics, referring to Somalia’s last famine. “Back then, at least we had some help.”
Aid groups are trying to scale up their operations, and the United Nations has begun airlifting emergency food. But many seasoned aid officials are speaking in grim tones because one of Africa’s worst humanitarian disasters in decades has struck one of the most inaccessible countries on earth. Somalia, especially the southern third where the famine is, has been considered a no-go zone for years, a lawless caldron that has claimed the lives of dozens of aid workers, peacekeepers and American soldiers, going back to the “Black Hawk Down” battle in 1993, spelling a legacy that has scared off many international organizations.
“If this were Haiti, we would have dozens of people on the ground by now,” said Eric James, an official with the American Refugee Committee, a private aid organization.
But Somalia is considered more dangerous and anarchic than Haiti, Iraq or even Afghanistan, and the American Refugee Committee, like other aid groups, is struggling to get trained personnel here.
“It is safe to say that many people are going to die as a result of little or no access,” Mr. James said.
This leaves millions of famished Somalis with two choices, aside from fleeing the country to neighboring Kenya or Ethiopia, where there is more assistance. They can beg for help from a weak and divided transitional government in Mogadishu, the capital. Just the other day there was a shootout between government forces at the gates of the presidential palace. “Things happen,” was the response of Abdiweli Mohamed Ali, Somalia’s new prime minister.
Or they can remain in territory controlled by the Shabab, who have pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda and have tried to rid their areas of anything Western — Western music, Western dress, even Western aid groups during a time of famine.
CONTINUED...
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http://current.com/shows/upstream/93350473_famine-in-somalia.htm
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http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/08/02/world/africa/SOMALIA/SOMALIA-articleInline.jpg
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Somalis Waste Away as Insurgents Block Escape From Famine
By JEFFREY... more
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The prolonged drought in Texas has revealed what NASA says is a tank from the space shuttle Columbia, which broke apart over east Texas as it re-entered the atmosphere in 2003.
Greg Sowell, a police sergeant in the city of Nacogdoches, which is located about 160 miles (250 kilometers) northeast of Houston, said the waters of Lake Nacogdoches, which are falling due to the record drought which has gripped the state, revealed an unexpected object.
"We found a large, about four-foot-diameter, round, what appears to be a tank of some sort," Sowell said Tuesday. "We have reason to believe this may be a part of the Columbia space shuttle."
The police department sent photos of the object to NASA for review, and experts at the space agency confirmed that the object was a power reactant storage and distribution tank. Such tanks are used aboard the shuttle to store cryogenic fuel for electrical power during flight.
Lisa Malone, a spokeswoman at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, told msnbc.com that Columbia carried 18 of the tanks for its 16-day mission.
Columbia broke apart upon re-entry into the atmosphere on Feb. 1, 2003, killing the seven crew members on board. Debris from the spacecraft, which disintegrated over a wide area of east Texas, has been found in about 2,000 locations across eastern Texas and western Louisiana, including in Nacogdoches.
"Due to the drought, Lake Nacogdoches is at an approximately 9-foot low," Sowell said. "There has been an unusually large area of the lake which is normally underwater which has been exposed."
More at the linkThe prolonged drought in Texas has revealed what NASA says is a tank from the space... more
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Fueled by hundreds of billions of tons of greenhouse pollution, much of it produced from the oilfields of Texas, a drought and heat wave of biblical proportions is devastating the state. The drought “has left the OC Fisher Reservoir in San Angelo State Park in West Texas almost entirely dry. The water that is left is stagnant, full of dead fish — and a deep, opaque red.” The “bloody look” is the result of Chromatiaceae bacteria, which thrive in oxygen-deprived water. “It’s just heartbreaking,” Charles Cruz, a fish and wildlife technician with Texas Parks and Wildlife in San Angelo, told LiveScience.com.
By Brad Johnson on Aug 2, 2011 at 2:20 pmFueled by hundreds of billions of tons of greenhouse pollution, much of it produced... more
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In his village, Kiliwehiri in northeastern Kenya, Abdullah Mohamed is known as "that mentally disturbed man".
"It is difficult to be normal after you have watched your entire life's savings get wiped out before your eyes," said Ibrahim Abdi, assistant chief of the village. "We are Somalis, we look after each other," explained Abdi, so the village shares their rations with Mohamed's family.
A month ago, Mohamed was just another pastoralist battling soaring temperatures and drought in the arid Mandera district - identified by the UN, with other parts of the Horn of Africa, as just one step away from famine on a five-point scale. It has not rained in his village for more than a year.
Over 10 days, Mohamed watched 40 of his cattle collapse and die - one by one - as they waited their turn at a water-point along the border between southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya, a few kilometres from his village.
For the people of Mandera and neighbouring Wajir district, their animals are not just an investment but part of the family.
"These carcasses meant the world to someone," said Kennedy Agoi Lumadede, an official with Vétérinaires Sans Frontières-Suisse (VSF-Suisse) as he pointed out heaps of bones along the dirt tracks linking the two districts..
"They [the animals] are like our family members," said an emotional Abdille Muhamed of Garse Koftu village in Wajir district as he knelt beside the carcass of the last of his cows. "I spent 20 years building this herd [of 40 cattle and 270 goats] - you nurture them like your children."
"We were sharing with this cow whatever relief food we were receiving," he said. They did not have enough aid to begin with. Muhamed, his two wives and 12 children, had moved back to his village when he was down to his last cow.
The village has been living off relief food for almost a year. "But we have at least five or six families moving back to the village every day now as their animals die," says a resident. "Each family's portion of aid is getting smaller by the day - the food only lasts a week [from the day it is distributed]."
Muhamed, like many others, had walked about four to five hours every day to raid bird nests in the few remaining trees to feed his cow. "It is the only bit of grass left in this desert. My animals worked with me and walked with me for long distances - it was my duty."
Famine looming
Wajir is also a step away from famine. Two remaining calves in the Garse Koftu village tug at a bit of cloth and an empty food sack. "We have heard of instances where the cows are even trying to eat sand," said Muna Ahmed of Arid Lands Development Focus Kenya, an NGO based in Wajir.
Muhamed said: "Today [when he lost his last cow] is a very sad day but I knew it was coming - the worst day was when I lost 17 goats in one day."
"With these members of my family gone, now I worry about my other children." His 12 children are, unsurprisingly, not healthy either. They have not had any milk for almost a year and have been living on a single meal for most of 2011.
All the money he had saved from selling milk and his goats was re-invested in buying more animals. This year, the value of a cow has plummeted from almost KSh8,000 (about US$88.50) to about Ksh5,800 ($64). His emaciated cow would not have even made that much.
But if Muhamed had had access to a destocking programme such as the one run by VSF, he could have ended the life of his animals in a more humane way, and been paid some money.
VSF-Suisse uses the Livestock Emergency Guidelines and Standards (LEGS) for interventions such as destocking. "But unfortunately we only cover a small part of Mandera district - everyone is working with limited resources," said Lumadede.
Even so, convincing the pastoralists to part with their animals is extremely difficult "because of their relationship with the animals and the pastoralists are eternal optimists - they always think it might just rain the next day or the day after and the situation will change", Lumadede added.
With pasture land completely depleted in Mandera and Wajir, pastoralists have taken their herds to Ethiopia hoping to find some grazing land and water.
"But their animals are too weak - they will all probably die before they can even get there," said Muhamed.
As Mohamed told his story in Mandera, a newsreader over somebody's radio was talking about budgetary constraints on public pensions in Italy.
"Everyone is suffering in the world," remarked a Kenyan in our entourage. But Muhamed's and Mohamed's animals meant a lot more than mere savings.In his village, Kiliwehiri in northeastern Kenya, Abdullah Mohamed is known as... more
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Randy McGee spent $28,000 in one month pumping water onto about 500 acres in West Texas before he decided to give up irrigating 75 acres of corn and focus on other crops that stood a better chance in the drought.
He thought rain might come and save those 75 acres, but it didn't and days of triple-digit heat sucked the remaining moisture from the soil. McGee walked recently through rows of sunbaked and stunted stalks, one of thousands of farmers counting his losses amid record heat and drought this year.
The drought has spread over much of the southern U.S., leaving Oklahoma the driest it has been since the 1930s and setting records from Louisiana to New Mexico. But the situation is especially severe in Texas, which trails only California in agricultural productivity.
McGee is still watering another variety of corn, cotton and sorghum but the loss of nearly one-sixth of his acres after spending so much on irrigation weighs on him.
"Kind of depressing," the 34-year-old farmer said. "You use that much of a resource and nothing to show for it. This year, no matter what you do, it's not quite enough."
About 70 percent of Texas rangeland and pastures are classified as in very poor condition, which means there has been complete or near complete crop failure or there's no food for grazing livestock. The crop and livestock losses could be the worst the state has seen — perhaps twice the previous single-year record of $4.1 billion set in 2006, said David Anderson, an economist with Texas AgriLife Extension Service.
Part of the reason for the high dollar figure is that while farmers have lost a lot, the corn and other products they are losing are worth more this year. Strong global demand and tight supplies have helped push up prices for commodities like corn, cotton, wheat and beef.
Cotton supplies are low worldwide, and U.S. cattle numbers are the lowest since the 1950s. Livestock farmers and ethanol producers are competing for corn, driving up those prices, and wheat is costing more in part because Russia banned exports after a drought there last summer.
Cotton and corn are selling for more than two-and-a-half times what they did five years ago, and the price of wheat is more than one-and-a-half times what it was in 2006.
"This was a year farmers might have done well," Anderson said.
Consumers will eventually see the cost of the drought passed on to them, although it's hard to say by how much since processing, marketing, transportation and other costs also play a big role in retail prices, he said.
Texas' economy will take a more direct hit. Agriculture accounted for $99.1 billion of Texas' $1.1 trillion economy, or 8.6 percent, in 2007, the most recent year data on food and fiber was available from the extension service. Losses in that sector have a ripple effect that's about twice the amount of the actual agricultural loss.
"That's a fairly substantial portion of the Texas economy that's going through this hardship," Anderson said.
More at the link.Randy McGee spent $28,000 in one month pumping water onto about 500 acres in West... more
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Higher temperatures and water stress are expected to diminish rice yields by 15% in the coming years. But scientists hope to fight back with a tiny fungus that helps increase rice harvests with less water. Host Bruce Gellerman asks University of Washington biology and forestry researcher Dr. Regina Redman about the hearty rice plant that can grow more with less water.
Transcript
GELLERMAN: Here’s a potential recipe for feeding a planet stressed by climate change: Take some rice plants, add some potato sugar, a bit of antibiotics and – here’s the secret ingredient – a tiny fungus and voila! You get a new experimental strategy for growing food crops that can survive and thrive in a world growing warmer. It’s called symbiogenics: the study of fungi bonding with plants to create a mutually beneficial relationship. Scientists at the University of Washington, where the work is being done, are calling it: “a breakthrough”. Biologist and forests researcher Regina Redman is a member of the team.
REDMAN: The approach we're taking is actually quite a very simple one. Plants and natural ecosystems have associations with various microbes. And, the class of microbes that we’re interested in we call Class Two fungal endophytes. So it’s a microscopic fungus. It resides within the native plants that are able to, because of the presence of that fungus, thrive in very high stress habitats. And, we’re able to confer salt tolerance, temperature tolerance, drought resistance, simply by colonizing plants that are of interest.
GELLERMAN: So, you take these fungi and stick them on the rice or the plant and voila?
REDMAN: Yes. They get colonized and then you start seeing the positive benefits immediately. In rice, for instance, you get the growth response where you get roots and shoots coming out much larger and longer than the non-symbiotic counterpart.
GELLERMAN: So what is it in the fungus that is helping the rice plant survive and thrive?
REDMAN: Well, we don’t know the exact mechanism, but we do know that when plants are symbiotic, they seem to be much more metabolically efficient. That is they seem to grow larger, use less water.
GELLERMAN: How much faster can rice with fungi grow?
REDMAN: Well, in the seedling stage, within 24 hours, you’re looking at a three-fold increase in size. Applying this into a field situation would really be beneficial, because if a rice seed can put down its roots very quickly, and then it puts up a shoot, it is able to, under that paddy condition, anchor itself in the soil where it can photosynthesize and, you know, really get going and take off.
GELLERMAN: And so, does it affect the food value of the plant? Do you get rice that is as rich and nutritious?
REDMAN: Well, the unique property also of this class of endophytes is it only colonizes the vegetative tissue, so it’s not in the embryo, it’s not in the seed. So it doesn’t impact the crop.
GELLERMAN: It’s just regular rice.
REDMAN: It’s regular rice. We’ve been able to repeat the process in other agricultural plants as well - wheat, tomatoes and turf grass.
GELLERMAN: Well, the plant is benefiting, so what does the fungus get out of this relationship?
REDMAN: Well, this type of fungus is rather sensitive - it really cannot survive outside of the plant. You’ll find that the fungal endophyte is almost non-existent in the surrounding soil.
GELLERMAN: So somehow the plant is getting a benefit from the fungus, but it’s not genetic, it’s not altering the plant’s structure.
REDMAN: What’s happening if you’re really thinking about it is you’re taking two separate genomes and putting them together, doing their communication back and forth that it allows for this type of beneficial effects that we see. We know that on a molecular level, symbiotic plants turn on a lot of different genes, and turn off a lot of different genes, if it’s under stress or not, compared to the non-symbiotic counterparts.
GELLERMAN: How long has this symbiosis, this symbiotic relationship, been going on between fungus and plants?
REDMAN: Well, we think this communication is quite old. Plants have been symbiotic for around 400 million years, and may have been important for the movement of plants onto land.
GELLERMAN: Wow! You know, we’re seeing this awful, disastrous drought in East Africa; millions of people are starving. Could your research help them?
REDMAN: Yes, I think our research would do exactly that. This is a very simple technology. It doesn’t require a bunch of chemicals. There’s no GMO component of it, and really we can see the results within a growing season.
GELLERMAN: Well, how far off are we from taking this out of a greenhouse and into a field are you?
REDMAN: Well, we’re right there, we’re good to go. We worked for several years, generating the technology to be able to effectively colonize, in this case, rice, on an industrial level.
More at the linkHigher temperatures and water stress are expected to diminish rice yields by 15% in... more
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U.N. declares famine in southern Somalia
By Robyn Dixon | 2:19 p.m.
To declare a famine, child malnutrition must be at 30% or higher, daily deaths at two per 10,000 people and people are not able to access food and other basic necessities.
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U.N. declares famine in southern Somalia
Famine, a highly technical term, means that the rate of child malnutrition and deaths in two areas of southern Somalia, a country riven by fighting and drought, has risen. Agencies appeal for aid.
PHOTO: Eleven-month-old Abdifatah Hassan, suffering from severe malnutrition, is cared for at a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders at a camp housing Somali refugees in Dadaab, Kenya. The United Nations officially declared famine in two regions of southern Somalia, saying child malnutrition rates exceed 30% and as many as six children age 5 or younger are dying daily. The region is suffering its worst drought in 60 years and tens of thousands are feared dead.
(Roberto Schmidt / AFP/Getty Images / July 4, 2011)
By Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times
July 20, 2011, 2:19 p.m.
Reporting from Johannesburg, South Africa—
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For months, people have been trudging out of the desert, leaving their dead children behind and carrying those who have managed to survive. On Wednesday, the horror of hunger and death unfolding in the Horn of Africa officially got a name: famine.
It's actually a very technical term — unless you're one of those walking for weeks in a last-ditch hope to save your family.
For the United Nations to declare a famine, as it did at a news conference in Nairobi, child malnutrition must be at 30% or higher, daily deaths at two per 10,000 people and people are not able to access food and other basic necessities.
According to Unicef, the U.N. agency that focuses on children, the rate of child malnutrition rate in southern Somalia has doubled in a single month; in some places it has reached 55% and infant deaths have increased to six per day.
Yet the global response has been dismal. An appeal late last year for $535 million to address the need is still more than $250 million short. Officials hope the famine declaration will help focus global attention on the Horn of Africa.
Across the country, about 3.7 million people, half the population, are facing starvation, with an estimated 2.8 million of them in the south. The agency says another 6.3 million in other countries in the Horn of Africa affected by hunger.
It's the worst African hunger crisis in 20 years, according the Rozanne Chorlton, Unicef's representative on Somalia. The last time things were this dire in Africa was 1991. Then, as now, it was in Somalia.
The U.N. famine declaration Wednesday formally covered two regions of southern Somalia, Bakool and Lower Shabelle, where farmers' crops failed and their livestock died. Malnutrition rates exceed 30% and more than six children age 5 or younger are dying daily in some areas. But in coming months, neighboring regions will inevitably fall into famine too, said Mark Bowden, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Somalia.
U.N. and non-governmental agencies are appealing for $300 million in the next two months to increase their operations in the worst-hit areas.
If it seems extraordinary that millions of Africans can be facing starvation in 2011, despite the focus of a raft of humanitarian agencies and their early-warning networks, it is, Bowden said.
Part of the problem is that many donors had written off Somalia as too hard, he said in a telephone interview. Aid agencies must grapple with a long-running civil conflict and Somalia's extremist Shabab militia, which controls much of the south, where the worst hunger is.
"We have good warning systems, but we don't always listen to them, particularly if we put some countries in the too-difficult-to-deal-with basket," Bowden said.
Two decades with no government and the failure of successive efforts to restore peace have left donors cynical. The country's global reputation for piracy and mayhem have done it no favors.
The 1991 Somalia famine occurred after civil war destroyed agriculture and clan warlords hijacked humanitarian aid, leading to the U.S.-led Operation Restore Hope. That resulted in bloody fighting with militias in Mogadishu portrayed in the book and film "Black Hawk Down."
But Bowden, who recently met Somali refugees walking to Ethiopia, said the problem today was mainly one of successive drought, compounded by global warming.
"They are victims of drought. They are also victims of climate change. They're people who have lost everything after years of successive drought."
The situation is complicated by the Shabab, which in the past has imposed informal taxes on humanitarian agencies, limited their access, and demanded they send female staff home. The World Food Program withdrew early last year from areas controlled by the Shabab because of security threats and unacceptable working conditions. It recently announced it would resume it work there if conditions allowed.
Aid agencies have been negotiating access with local leaders, but security remains uncertain.
"We need predictability," Unicef's Chorlton said in a telephone interview. "The important thing is that those who are there [in Somalia] should be able to act unhindered to deliver the services to children and families that are so desperately needed."
Unicef has doubled its food, health and water programs in Somalia, she said.
"Somalis have always helped each other to cope in times of crisis, and they have been incredibly resilient over the years. I think what has not been quantified is that people's resistance has been so undermined over the last year, it's no longer adequate to the task," she said. "The issue is now we need donors to massively increase their contribution."
.U.N. declares famine in southern Somalia
By Robyn Dixon | 2:19 p.m.
To declare... more
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An oppressive and potentially deadly summertime mix of sizzling temperatures and high humidity baked a large swath of the country again on Sunday, pushing afternoon heat indexes in dozens of cities to dangerous levels.
Forecasters warned the heatwave would persist through much of the coming week and cautioned residents in more than three dozen states to take extra precautions.
The National Weather Service posted excessive heat warnings for much of the country's midsection, including Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, as well as South and North Dakota, where forecasters predicted heat indexes could hit 115 degrees.
"This will likely be the most significant heat wave the region has experienced in at least the last five years," the weather service said.
Cities especially hard hit by the heat included Rapid City, South Dakota, Springfield, Illinois, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, where AccuWeather.com meteorologists were predicting long-standing high-temperature records would fall this week.
Kristina Pydynowski, a senior meteorologist at AccuWeather, predicted the heatwave will affect more than 40 states.
All the states will see temperatures of 90 degrees Fahrenheit or higher, she said, and "a large number of them will bake above 100 degrees for days on end."
The scorching weather is the latest in a series of meteorological problems to best the Midwest in recent months.
The list includes the devastating tornado that ripped through Joplin, Missouri in late May, killing nearly 160 people and destroying more than 8,000 homes and other structures, as well as the ongoing flooding along the Missouri River, which has triggered weeks of evacuations and other emergency measures from Montana through Missouri.
While the heat wave is currently focused on the High Plains and Mississippi Valley, it is expected to press east by the middle of the week, the weather service said.
In Chicago, where high heat and humidity warnings were twinned with an alert for poor air quality, temperatures were expected to hit 95 degrees in the afternoon, creating heat indexes as high as 105.
In Minnesota, the heat wave was expected to continue through Wednesday with possible thunderstorms in some parts. Highs in the Twin Cities area could reach 94 degrees on Sunday, and 97 degrees from Monday through Wednesday.
The weather service is projecting possibly six consecutive days of temperatures at 90 degrees or higher in the Twin Cities, the longest stretch to far this year, but short of records, meteorologist Jim Richardson said.
http://img.news.weatherbug.com/images/bugtoday/metsetup_heat_071611_3th.jpg
More at the linkAn oppressive and potentially deadly summertime mix of sizzling temperatures and high... more
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I keep trying to have hope that the right thing will be done here and in all places where such harsh conditions exist. For this is a primer to a world of climate change/biodistress and it is one in which what we see now is exactly what has been predicted by climate scientists for years. Should these lands be rendered uninhabitable where would these millions of people go? How would they be provided for? We already know the answer to this and it is a totally inhumane, unconscienable and unacceptable answer.
And I know I have posted about this several times in the last week. And that's because it's that important.
And let me also add that we alll know droughts happen in Africa. The difference now is the scope, pace, severity and patterns which can be seen now, especially by those who live in these areas and know the land.
http://water-is-life.blogspot.com/2011/07/climate-changebiodistress-test-of.html
All information posted so far on this drought can be found here.I keep trying to have hope that the right thing will be done here and in all places... more
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In 1984, a Kenyan photographer and cameraman named Mohamed Amin shocked the world into action with his images of famine victims in Ethiopia.
Africa battles worst drought in 60 years, aid agencies warn
Today, 15 years after he was tragically killed in the crash of a hijacked Ethiopian Airlines flight off the Comoros Islands, famine once again stalks the Horn of Africa, threatening the lives of 10 million people in what the USAid-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network (Fews Net) describes as one of the world’s most severe food security emergencies.
Perhaps no country in the region is as badly affected as Somalia. The Somalia Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit (FSNAU) estimates that 2.85 million people — a third of the population — are now in humanitarian crisis and in need of urgent assistance, an increase of 42.5 per cent over the figure in December 2010. “We are no longer on the verge of a humanitarian disaster; we are in the middle of it now,” Isaq Ahmed, the chairman of the Mubarak Relief and Development Organisation, a local NGO working in the south of the country, told IRIN on June 28. “It is happening and no one is helping.”
Indeed, the numbers coming out of Somalia paint a terrible picture of a population caught in a perfect storm of calamities: A two-decade long brutal conflict that has seen the country play host to one of the largest displaced populations in the world; the worst drought in a generation has precipitated a sharp decline in food production; rising food prices mean that even the little available is out of reach of the impoverished population; and funding shortfalls for relief agencies resulting from a faltering global economy.
The prevalence of acute malnutrition among children under five years is an objective crisis indicator, reflecting the wider situation of emergency affected populations, including their food security, livelihoods, public health and social environment, say Helen Young and Susanne Jaspars in their paper The Meaning and Measurement of Acute Malnutrition in Emergencies: A Primer For Decision-makers.
According to the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, at least 75 per cent of the estimated 241,000 malnourished children in Somalia reside in the volatile southern regions where the country’s internationally recognised Transitional Federal Government is battling a brutal insurgency in the latest iteration of the country’s 20-year civil war. In some of these areas, 1 in 3 children is malnourished, more than double the emergency threshold of 15 per cent.
In August 2010, the national level of acute malnutrition was 15.2 per cent with 16.6 per cent in the south. Five months later the situation had deteriorated in most parts of the country and a national rate of 16 per cent was reported, with 25 per cent in the south. Assessments conducted in April 2011 confirmed a sustained crisis. Complicating the situation in the south even further, Al Qaeda-linked extremist insurgents continue to bar international humanitarian agencies from access to the needy populations, accusing them of promulgating Christianity and Western ideology.
The conflict has also created huge numbers of internally displaced persons. Since January, the UN estimates the drought has added a further 55,000. These are most often the poorest of the poor and it is no coincidence, therefore, that they are suffering disproportionately. While a third of the general population is in crisis, the ratio among IDPs is twice that. In February, 910,000, or 62 per cent of the country’s 146,000 IDPs, were identified by FSNAU as being in crisis. The situation is now driving more people to flee the country altogether, many of them having to walk for up to a month to reach refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia.
At the Daadab refugee camp in Kenya, the largest in the world, about 1,300 Somalis are arriving every day, nearly two-thirds of them children. “Nearly every child or parent we have spoken to says they are not just fleeing fighting in Somalia — the drought and food crisis are equally perilous to them now,” Catherine Fitzgibbon, Save the Children’s Kenya programme director, told the BBC.
more at the linkIn 1984, a Kenyan photographer and cameraman named Mohamed Amin shocked the world into... more
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Welcome to my first installment of Biorhythms on Current Earth Care. I hope to do more to bring conversation, awareness and news on the environment that we don't see on MSM and items that help us see our connection to Earth. There is much more to come so don't be fooled by my mild manner this time. I'm just getting started.;-)
Thanks to everyone for their support. It most certainly is a labor of love.
Also, credit goes to my wonderful son Justin who is my cameraman ;-) and Mother Nature who provided the scenery.Welcome to my first installment of Biorhythms on Current Earth Care. I hope to do more... more
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The persistent and severe drought in Somalia and Kenya has led to people walking for almost two weeks in search of food and water and a place to stay. Refugee camps are full and the situation is serious. Only now is the international community seeing the humanitarian disaster unfolding here due not only to the severe drought caused by successive yearly failures of the rains, but a war raging on that has used religious intolerance as an excuse for Al Shabaab to turn away their own people. It is unconscienable to do this, especially to children. My hope is that aid can reach them in time to save more lives as we are now seeing more graves being dug on the outskirts of the camps. As climate change and its effects worsen in these areas of the world, we as a species will have to reassess our priorities from placing religious intolerance and politics above humanity in order for us to survive.The persistent and severe drought in Somalia and Kenya has led to people walking for... more
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The levels of malnutrition among children fleeing Somalia's drought could lead to a "human tragedy of unimaginable proportions", the UN refugee head Antonio Guterres has said.
Young children are dying on their way to or within a day of arrival at camps in Ethiopia and Kenya, the UNHCR says.
It estimates that a quarter of Somalis are either displaced within the country or living outside as refugees.
The worst drought in 60 years has been compounded by the violence in Somalia.
"It's so extreme," said UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa Fleming. "Our people are saying they've never seen anything like it."
The warning comes as the UK aid agencies Oxfam, Save the Children, and the Red Cross launch emergency appeals in response to the food crisis which is affecting more than 12 million people in the Horn of Africa.
The agencies are collectively asking for nearly $150m (£93m).
The UNHCR says the need for food, shelter, health services and other life saving aid is urgent and massive.
Life-long impact
The agency says more than 50% of Somali children arriving in Ethiopia are seriously malnourished. In Kenya, that figure is between 30% and 40%.
"What is the most tragic for us to witness, is that there are children who do arrive in such a weakened state that despite our emergency care and therapeutic feeding, they're dying within 24 hours," Ms Fleming told a press briefing in Geneva.
"We estimate that one quarter of Somalia's 7.5 million people are now either internally displaced or are living outside the country as refugees," she said.
The UNHCR recently opened a third camp in south-eastern Ethiopia, which is quickly reaching its capacity of 20,000, and is now planning further camps.
A relief plane chartered by the agency is flying to Addis Ababa on Tuesday and a convoy of 20 trucks carrying tents and other aid is on its way as well.
In north-east Kenya's Dadaab refugee camp, some 1,400 refugees are arriving every day. Aid agencies fear numbers could rise to half a million.
Badu Katelo, Kenya's Commissioner for Refugee Affairs, said food and water distribution, shelter and space were all over stretched and that the security situation was getting worse.
"We would like to see a vibrant, committed intervention from the international community," he said.
More at the linkThe levels of malnutrition among children fleeing Somalia's drought could lead to... more
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UN says that more than 10 million people are affected in areas of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Uganda
The worst drought in 60 years in the Horn of Africa has sparked a severe food crisis and high malnutrition rates, with parts of Kenya and Somalia experiencing pre-famine conditions, the United Nations has said.
More than 10 million people are now affected in drought-stricken areas of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Uganda and the situation is deteriorating, it said.
"Two consecutive poor rainy seasons have resulted in one of the driest years since 1950/51 in many pastoral zones," the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs told a media briefing. "There is no likelihood of improvement until 2012".
Food prices have risen substantially in the region, pushing many moderately poor households over the edge.
A UN map of food security in the eastern Horn of Africa shows large swathes of central Kenya and Somalia in the emergency category, one phase before what the UN classifies as catastrophe/famine – the fifth and worst category.
Child malnutrition rates in the worst affected areas are more than double the emergency threshold of 15 per cent and are expected to rise further. High mortality rates among children are also reported.
Drought and fighting are driving ever greater numbers of Somalis from their homeland, with more than 20,000 arriving in Kenya in just the past two weeks, the UN refuge agency UNHCR said on Friday. It voiced alarm at the dramatic rise, noting the average monthly outflow had been about 10,000 so far this year.
Almost half the Somali children arriving in refugee camps in Ethiopia are malnourished, and those arriving in Kenya are little better, Byrs said.
UN humanitarian appeals for Somalia and Kenya, each about $525m, are barely 50 per cent funded, while a $30m appeal for Djibouti is just 30 per cent funded, she said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jun/28/africa-drought-kenya-somalia-famineUN says that more than 10 million people are affected in areas of Djibouti, Ethiopia,... more
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The worst drought in 60 years in the Horn of Africa has sparked a severe food crisis and high malnutrition rates, with parts of Kenya and Somalia experiencing pre-famine conditions, the United Nations said on Tuesday.
More than 10 million people are now affected in drought-stricken areas of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Uganda and the situation is deteriorating, it said.
"Two consecutive poor rainy seasons have resulted in one of the driest years since 1950/51 in many pastoral zones," Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told a media briefing.
"There is no likelihood of improvement (in the situation)until 2012," she said.
Food prices have risen substantially in the region, pushing many moderately poor households over the edge, she said.
A U.N. map of food security in the eastern Horn of Africa shows large swathes of central Kenya and Somalia in the "emergency" category, one phase before what the U.N. classifies as catastrophe/famine -- the fifth and worst category.
Child malnutrition rates in the worst affected areas are more than double the emergency threshold of 15 percent and are expected to rise further, Byrs said.
High mortality rates among children are reported, but she had no figures for the toll.
Drought and fighting are driving ever greater numbers of Somalis from their homeland, with more than 20,000 arriving in Kenya in just the past two weeks, the U.N. refuge agency UNHCR said on Friday. It voiced alarm at the dramatic rise, noting the average monthly outflow had been about 10,000 so far this year.
Almost half the Somali children arriving in refugee camps in Ethiopia are malnourished, and those arriving in Kenya are little better, Byrs said.
U.N. humanitarian appeals for Somalia and Kenya, each about $525 million, are barely 50 percent funded, while a $30 million appeal for Djibouti is just 30 percent funded, she said.The worst drought in 60 years in the Horn of Africa has sparked a severe food crisis... more
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With nearly 65 percent of Texas experiencing exceptional drought, water is becoming increasingly precious—and scarce—in a state that has to divide the resource between the growing appetites of farmers, city residents, and energy corporations.
A severe drought continues to wreak havoc in Texas and shows no sign of letting up, pitting stakeholders against each other as the dry spell threatens reservoirs and rivers.
The dry period began in October 2010, and, since then, only 2 inches of rain have fallen in southeastern Texas, Businessweek reported. Now, 65 percent of the state is categorized as having exceptional drought, and 88 percent is experiencing extreme drought conditions or worse, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
Though Texas is no stranger to dry spells, this is the driest 7-month period in Texas history since record keeping began in the late 1800s. The worst drought is still considered to be the 10-year period from 1947-1957, with lake levels hitting an all time low in 1952. However, falling water levels could surpass even that record if no rains come. Currently, some lakes are dropping 35,000 acre-feet a week, The Texas Tribune reported.
City Residents vs. Farmers and Ranchers
With supplies running so low, city residents and businesses that depend on reservoir lakes for both their drinking water and livelihoods are worried that lakes will run dry if the agricultural industry downstream continues to consume large amounts, despite the drought. In Central Texas, Lake Buchanan and Lake Travis—which supply the city of Austin with water and support a thriving tourist industry—are only 59 percent full and continuing to drop, The Texas Tribune reported. Much of the water from the lakes is being used downstream by farmers who are trying to protect their rice, a water-intensive crop, from the effects of the drought.
The Lower Colorado River Authority, which manages the lakes and sells the water to both Austin and the rice farmers, allows farmers to buy the water at a cheaper price than the city because it retains the right to shut off supply in times of drought. However, while farmers have not had supplies cut, or even reduced, this year, Austin residents have been asked to conserve water, creating tensions between the two groups, according toThe Texas Tribune.
The drought is also dealing a heavy blow to cattle ranchers, who are sending large portions of their herds to slaughter because vegetation is so scarce.
“Because we’re not raising the amount of grass that we usually do, we’re having to destock these ranches,” rancher Pete Bonds told Reuters. “We are having to cut the numbers down and sell cows that we don’t want to. And since it is dry in a huge area, most of these cows are going to go to slaughter.” These include young female cows, called heifers, that are used to breed—putting a difficult barrier between the herd and its future.
Even if rains alleviate the current drought, the impacts will be lasting. Bonds told Reuters that it will take years for ranchers to recoup their losses, so many are giving up and selling their land to developers.
Farmers vs. Energy Executives
Texas energy corporations have resorted to buying water from farmers so they can support booming shale gas operations. The water is needed for hydraulic fracturing or “fracking,” the process of injecting water, chemicals, and sand at high pressure into sedimentary rock formations to free up the oil and natural gas trapped inside.
In 2009, there were 358 natural gas drilling rigs in Texas alone, and that number had increased to 709 rigs by 2010, according to the Natural Gas Supply Association. Each rig can drill multiple wells in a year and each well typically uses upwards of 19,000 cubic meters (5 million gallons) of water for “fracking.”
The Eagle Ford Shale formation, however, which angles across the state from the southwest to the northeast and is the location of many new shale gas wells, has an unusual geology that requires more water per well than in other locations. A single well in the Eagle Ford Shale can require up to 49,000 cubic meters (13 million gallons), Businessweek reported. To obtain this amount during the drought, companies have offered farmers as much as $US 0.70 per barrel of water—equivalent to 164 liters (42 gallons).
So far, farmers have been reluctant to sell too much water, especially when they are running low on supplies to quench their own thirsty fields.
Additionally, because of the severe drought in Texas, water supplies have become a big issue for opponents of a coal-fired power plant proposed for Matagorda County. On June 16, the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) delayed a vote to decide whether to sell more than 30 million cubic meters (8 billion gallons) of water per year to the owners of the planned White Stallion generating station.
More at the link.With nearly 65 percent of Texas experiencing exceptional drought, water is becoming... more
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Climate change is causing devastating droughts across East Africa - leading to an end of the pastoral way of life.
Many tribes across East Africa are having to leave their pastoral way of life for urban poverty because of severe droughts [Andrew Wander/Save the Children]
Whether you ask about the carcasses of livestock baked white in the sun, the gaggle of people crowding around the district commissioner's door, or the wards of malnourished children lying listlessly in hospital beds, the explanation given is always the same.
"It's because of the drought", they say.
The failure of rains across arid parts of East Africa has brought misery to millions of people, affecting almost every aspect of life.
In this dry, dusty part of the world, every drop that falls helps people scrape a living from the land. If the rains don't come for a season people go hungry. If they fail twice in a row, as they have in Kenya's impoverished north eastern province, they begin to starve.
At the hospital in Wajir town, the paediatric ward is full of young mothers clutching the tiny, wasted forms of their children.
Doctors estimate admissions for severe malnutrition in children have risen by at least 25 per cent in recent months, and fear that the dozens of referrals they have seen could be the tip of a large and deadly iceberg.
"Some parents are reluctant to bring their children to the hospital because it is such a long journey, or they don't recognise the symptoms of malnutrition. Some think they can cure the problem by praying - they don't realise the children need treatment. Children could be dying because of this and we wouldn't know about it," says Dr Moses Menza, the chief medical officer at the hospital.
He is talking at the bedside of two-year old Bashara, the daughter of nomadic cattle grazers who wander the desert four hours to the west of Wajir town. There is no need for Menza to explain what is wrong with her; her sunken features and twig-like limbs tell their own desperate tale.
Bashara is here with her grandmother, Amina Mohamed; her parents left her in the village and drove their animals to more fertile ground as the drought began to bite. She should have been safer there than out on the plains, but when the livestock began to die, the villagers found themselves with nothing to feed their families.
As always, it was growing children like Bashara who were hit hardest.
"The animals are the way we earn money and how we get food," Amina says, as she waves the flies off the starving child's tiny face. "Now they have died we have nothing to eat and nothing to sell. We have no milk any more, so we cannot feed the children."
Save the Children has treated thousands of drought-affected children for malnutrition in Kenya alone, and believes that across the region, in neighbouring Somalia and Ethiopia, more than millions of children could be at risk over the next three months.
"When these people lose their livestock, they lose their source of food, their livelihood and their savings in a single stroke," said Matt Croucher, Save the Children's regional emergency manager for East Africa.
"We can only imagine the desperation such families feel at not being able to give their children enough to eat and drink to stay healthy. They need help now, before this crisis turns into a catastrophe."
Changing climate
East Africans are no strangers to drought conditions. Traditionally, the rains here have failed around once a decade, giving communities time to build up emergency stocks and to restore the condition of their livestock on the good years. But for the past decade, droughts have been coming more regularly.
The people here reckon the rains fail one year in every two now; consecutive failings, like this one, have the potential to totally destroy the herds upon which they rely.
With their prime assets gone, they lose both their source of food, and their sole source of income. Their nomadic lifestyle prevents them from growing crops; the animals they graze are their only means to survive. Now it appears that climate change is robbing them of that livelihood.
A study by the US Geological Survey, published earlier this year, linked the increased frequency of drought in East Africa with global warming, suggesting that there is more than bad luck behind the latest wave of hunger sweeping the region.
Faced with a changing climate increasing numbers of pastoralists are leaving the land, settling in permanent communities on the edge of towns like Wajir. A way of life that has persisted for thousands of years is slowly dying out.
Those who leave will find little in the way of work in the towns. That pastoralists are willing to opt for grinding urban poverty over the only work they have ever known is a testament to how bad the situation has become.
For those who remain, the next few months will be critical.
More at the link.Climate change is causing devastating droughts across East Africa - leading to an end... more
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In Zhejiang province, China, the worst drought in 50 years has been followed by deadly floods.
China has evacuated more than 500,000 people from deadly floods that are devastating areas in the south of the country following the worst drought in 50 years.
At least 105 people have been swept to their deaths or killed in landslides and another 65 are missing after rivers burst their banks. The authorities have issued the highest level of alarm about dykes and dams under dangerous pressure.
Television channels that were only recently broadcasting images of dried-up lake beds are now carrying footage of flooded homes and boats plying their way through inundated streets. China Daily said 550,000 people have been forced to leave their homes.
The dramatic shift is in line with weather trends identified by the Beijing Climate Centre, which says rain is coming in shorter, fiercer bursts, interspersed by protracted periods of drought.
The worst affected province is Zhejiang, where some stretches of the Qiantang river have risen to their highest level since 1955, according to the Flood Control and Drought Relief Office.
In the Zhuji district, which has had 40.5cm of rain since the start of the month, the Puyang river inundated 88 villages and 13,000 hectares of crops.
In neighbouring Jiangxi province, troops have helped 122,400 residents evacuate from vulnerable lowlands, according to the China News Service. Roads have been closed and bridges have collapsed in the floods, which have also affected Hubei, Hunan, Sichuan and Guizhou provinces.
Monitoring stations on 40 rivers have recorded water levels above the safety limit, including Asia's biggest waterway – the Yangtze – which is simultaneously suffering a flood downstream and a drought closer to its source.
Meteorologists warned that the torrential downpours are forecast to move southwards or inland. Li Xiaoquan was quoted on China's weather news website as saying that the rains were expected to affect Sichuan, Chongqing and Guangdong provinces before easing on Sunday.
_________________________________In Zhejiang province, China, the worst drought in 50 years has been followed by deadly... more
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