A Soil Fungus That Causes Lung Infections Is Spreading Across the U.S.
Nikki Main – November 21, 2022
The fungus histoplasma, which causes lung infections, was concentrated in the Midwest in the 1950s and 60s (top map), but now causes significant disease throughout much of the country (bottom).
An illness-causing fungus known as hisoplasma is in the soil of nearly all U.S. states, a new study suggests. The researchers behind the work say doctors may be relying on outdated risk maps and therefore missing diagnoses of the infections, which can sometimes be deadly.
According to the CDC, histoplasma, or histo, is found in the soil of central and eastern U.S. states, primarily in Ohio and the Mississippi River valleys. But that assumption is based on research from the 1950s and 1960s, says the team behind a new paper published in Clinical Infectious Diseases. When a person breathes in spores of the fungus, they can contract an infection called histoplasmosis.
“Every few weeks I get a call from a doctor in the Boston area – a different doctor every time – about a case they can’t solve,” said study author Andrej Spec, an associate professor of medicine at Washington University in St. Louis, in a press release. “They always start by saying, ‘We don’t have histo here, but it really kind of looks like histo.’ I say, ‘You guys call me all the time about this. You do have histo.’”
Lead author Patrick B. Mazi, a clinical fellow in infectious diseases also at Washington University in St. Louis, and his colleagues analyzed more than 45 million Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries extending from 2007 through 2016. They looked at diagnoses across the country of three fungal diseases: histoplasmosis, coccidioidomycosis, and blastomycosis. Histo, the most common, was causing clinically relevant rates of illness in at least one county in 48 of 50 states, as well as Washington, D.C. The other two infections were each found in more than half of states.
“Fungal infections are much more common than people realize, and they’re spreading,” Spec said in the release. “The scientific community has underinvested in studying and developing treatments for fungal infections. I think that’s beginning to change, but slowly.” Climate change may be driving this spread as warming temperatures make more habitats suitable for the fungi.
While histo can be easily combatted in healthy adults, and many people who are exposed never develop symptoms, those who are immunocompromised as well as infants and people 55 years and older may develop more serious illness, including a cough, fever, chest, pain, body aches, and fatigue, according to the CDC. Symptoms appear within three to 17 days after exposure; most symptoms will go away within a month, but if it spreads from a person’s lungs, the illness can become severe and require months of treatment.
People can be exposed to histo and other fungal pathogens through activities that disrupt soil, like farming, landscaping, and construction. They can also be exposed inside caves and while working in basements and attics. Spec noted: “It’s important for the medical community to realize these fungi are essentially everywhere these days and that we need to take them seriously and include them in considering diagnoses.”
Finding safe haven in the climate change future: The Great Plains
David Knowles, Senior Editor – November 19, 2022
This Yahoo News series analyzes different regions around the country in terms of climate change risks that they face now and will experience in the years to come.
As the negative consequences of rising global temperatures due to humankind’s relentless burning of fossil fuels become more and more apparent in communities across the United States, anxiety over finding a place to live safe from the ravages of climate change has also been on the rise.
“Millions and likely tens of millions of Americans” will move because of climate through the end of the century, Jesse Keenan, an associate professor of real estate at Tulane University’s School of Architecture, told Yahoo News.“People move because of school districts, affordability, job opportunities. There are a lot of drivers, and I think it’s probably best to think about this as ‘climate is now one of those drivers.’”
The Buffalo Bayou in Houston. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
In late October, a report by the United Nations concluded that average global temperatures are on track to warm by 2.1°C to 2.9°C by the year 2100. As a result, the world can expect a dramatic rise in chaotic, extreme weather events. In fact, that increase is already happening. In the 1980s, the U.S. was hit with a weather disaster totaling $1 billion in damages once every four months on average. Thanks to steadily rising temperatures, they now occur every three weeks, according to a draft report of the latest National Climate Assessment, and they aren’t limited to any particular geographical region.
To be sure, calculating climate risk depends on a dizzying number of factors, including luck, latitude, elevation, the upkeep of infrastructure, long-term climate patterns, the predictable behavior of the jet stream and how warming ocean waters will impact the frequency of El Niño-La Niña cycles.
“No place is immune from climate change impacts, certainly in the continental United States, and throughout the U.S. those impacts will be quite severe,” Keenan said. “They will be more severe in some places and less severe in other places. Certain places will be more moderate in terms of temperature and some places will be more extreme, but we all share the risk of the increase of extreme events.”
In this installment, we look at the low-lying, expansive, north-south strip of states in the center of the country.
The Great Plains
A vast, predominantly flat stretch in the center of the country that extends from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico, the Great Plains includesMontana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.
While the large overall area of the Great Plains translates into markedly different weather — with North Dakota enduring frigid winters and states like Oklahoma and Texas baking in the summer months — the region has been warming quickly in recent years.
North Dakota, where the average annual temperature is 41.1°F, has warmed by an average of 2.6°F since the turn of the 20th century, according to data provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Texas, where the average temperature is 65.8°F, has warmed by 1.5°F on average over that same period.
The bulk of that warming, we know, has occurred in recent decades because higher concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have further amplified the greenhouse effect, speeding up the rate of temperature rise. Short of a technological breakthrough, unless concerted action is taken to stop burning fossil fuels to slow emissions, scientists say, the world will keep getting hotter.
Tumbleweed rolls across a dried-out landscape in central California’s Kern County. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images)
“The average annual Texas surface temperature in 2036 is expected to be 3.0°F warmer than the 1950-1999 average and 1.8°F warmer than the 1991-2020 average,” a 2021 report from the Texas state climatologist found. “The number of 100-degree days at typical stations is expected to nearly double by 2036 compared to 2001-2020, with a higher frequency of 100-degree days in urban areas.”
Texas, in fact, is home to all of the Great Plains’ top 10 worst-rated counties — Cameron, Galveston, Willacy, Kleberg, Refugio, Nueces, Pecos, Starr, Webb and Harris — in terms of overall climate change risks, according to information provided by data analytics firm the Rhodium Group and a 2020 analysis of counties in the lower 48 states published by ProPublica and the New York Times. And dozens of other Texas counties aren’t far behind on that list.
In no small part that’s because of two factors, the state’s latitude and its proximity to the Gulf of Mexico. The Rhodium rankings were based on six categories related to climate change: heat stress, the combination of heat and humidity (wet bulb), crop loss, sea level rise, very large fires and overall likely economic damages.
North Dakota’s Ward, Renville, Mountrail and Bottineau counties took the top four spots when it came to safest locations in the Great Plains for climate change risk, with the state also placing two more in the top 10 — Williams and Walsh counties. Montana’s Silver Bow, Glacier and Deer Lodge counties rated No. 5-No. 7 on that list, with Wyoming’s Uinta County ranking eighth-safest in the region.
Colter Bay Marina in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming was closed for the summer due to the low water levels of Jackson Lake, seen here in August. (Amber Baesler/AP)
Summertime temperatures this year proved brutal for many states in the southern Great Plains, and drought conditions continued to worsen across the entire region.
On July 19, Oklahoma City set a new temperature record for that day, hitting 110°F during a heat wave that locked in triple-digit heat for more than a week. Yet all-time records, many of which were set in 1936 during the Dust Bowl years, were not surpassed.
Many climate deniers point to record high temperatures during the Dust Bowl years, which were amplified by poor farming practices, to try to show that global warming isn’t happening. If the records were set in the 1930s, the reasoning goes, then, by definition, the world is not warming.
That leaves out the fact that climate anomalies have continued to occur since humankind began pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, that the incidence of heat waves is increasing and that the country on average continues to experience fewer days of extreme cold. In Houston, for example, five of the six hottest Julys on record have occurred since 2009, while the city’s top 10 coolest Julys all happened before 1980, according to data from the National Weather Service.
Skeptics who argue that humankind cannot influence something as large as the Earth’s climate also fail to address the impact that discarding harmful farming practices has had in preventing the return of Dust Bowl conditions. Yet rising temperatures and the continued depletion of the aquifers that help irrigate the Great Plains threaten that progress.
A sprinkler near Dodge City, Kan., in 2012. (Kevin Murphy/Reuters)
“Right now we are seeing more dust storms as this drought worsens in what was formerly the Dust Bowl region,” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain, who also consults for ClimateCheck, a company that provides climate change risk assessments on real estate nationwide, told Yahoo News. “Certainly nothing on the order of what we saw in the 1930s, but there is a severe, worsening drought there and there are some self-fulfilling feedback mechanisms whereby things start to get warm and dry, they dry out the soil, which begets more warmth and more dryness.”
As in other parts of the country, rising average temperatures in the Great Plains are wreaking havoc on the water cycle, specifically when it comes to sustaining water levels in the High Plains Aquifer. In the years to come, that could pose significant issues in the delivery of water for agriculture.
“In the northern portion of the Great Plains, rain can recharge the aquifer quickly. However, with climate change, precipitation in the winter and spring is projected to increasingly fall in the form of very heavy precipitation events, which can increase flooding and runoff that reduce water quality and cause soil erosion,” the EPA says on its website. “In the southern portion of the region, little recharge occurs, so declines in the aquifer’s water level are much greater. Climate change will worsen this situation by causing drier conditions and increasing the need for irrigation.”
While it is not entirely clear how climate change will impact precipitation trends across all of the Great Plains in the coming decades, there are warning signs in states like Montana, where the melting winter snowpack helps supply the region with water.
A serious drought has made it difficult to tell the difference between the prairie and the dirt road on the Cheyenne River Reservation near Dupree, S.D. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
“Higher spring temperatures will also result in earlier melting of the snowpack, further decreasing water availability during the summer months,” the EPA says on its website.
More and more often, when it does rain across the Great Plains, it pours. Soil erosion, in turn, can set back the progress made to avert future Dust Bowls, and as evaporation rates rise in tandem with warmer temperatures, the threat of wildfires is also growing. Former Kansas State climatologist Mary Knapp has long warned that while agricultural advances have kept a 1930s disaster from recurring, climate change could yet plunge the Great Plains back into the danger zone.
“I’ve been saying that for years,” Knapp told the Mercury newspaper in Manhattan, Kan., in 2021. “The thought is, with modern agricultural and conservation techniques, that we would preclude the scenario that plagued the Dust Bowl, but there are other factors that can remove vegetation.”
Perhaps the surest climate change bet for the Great Plains is that warmer average temperatures will play out differently across a large region already accustomed to dramatic weather fluctuations. Some parts will have to deal with an uptick in what is known as the “wet bulb” effect, the potentially fatal combination of hot temperatures and high humidity that conspire to prevent the body from being able to cool itself down through the evaporation of sweat. That metric was one of the factors that explains why a place like Galveston County in Texas rated so poorly on the Rhodium analysis.
A heat advisory was issued in Dallas in July due to scorching weather. (Shelby Tauber/Reuters)
But climate change has also already disrupted the water cycle in other dangerous ways.
“In late August 2017, Hurricane Harvey ravaged the Houston area with 1 trillion gallons of rain, enough to run Niagara Falls for 15 days. No other big American city has withstood such a natural disaster in modern times,” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner wrote in the introduction to the city’s 2020 plan on how to use billions in taxpayer funds to harden the city against the changing climate.
Harvey, which racked up $125 billion in damages and killed 107 people, and 2019’s Tropical Storm Imelda, which resulted in another $5 billion in damages and killed six, were both slow-moving systems that unloaded massive amounts of rain from an oversaturated atmosphere. In close succession, they shined a light on Houston’s vulnerability to flooding, but that’s not the only risk the city faces from rising global temperatures.
“Hurricanes, tropical storms, and flooding are not the only threats that we face. Houston is hot — and our heat is increasing due to climate change and the urban heat island effect,” Turner wrote.
Even though studies have shown that climate change is making tropical cyclones wetter, windier, slower and able to ramp up quicker than in a pre-climate-change world, persuading residents and elected officials to prepare for those risks is easier after they’ve witnessed the impacts firsthand.
People make their way down flooded Telephone Road in Houston in August 2017 in the wake of Tropical Storm Harvey. (Thomas Shea/AFP via Getty Images)
“If, for a location, the policy becomes [investing in] sea walls and sewage and drainage and stronger construction, better infrastructure and so forth, then places may be forecast to retain value and people may stay,” Parag Khanna, the founder and CEO of Climate Alpha, a company that helps investors quantify climate change risks to real estate, told Yahoo News.
“You can’t on the one hand continue to have the American dream rest on your property values going up, and on the other hand have people increasingly in survival society, being forced to rebuild time and again after disasters. Those two things are not compatible,” he added.
To be sure, hardening infrastructure from the daunting number of threats posed by climate change is quite expensive, but a reluctance to prepare can prove to be even more so.
In February 2021, a polar vortex descended on Texas, a state that years earlier had moved to deregulate its energy sector. The surging demand for electricity left more than 4.5 million homes and businesses without power. The storm essentially brought North Dakota-like winter conditions to the Lone Star State for days on end, resulting in the deaths of more than 170 people and more than $20 billion in damages, costing the state’s economy between $80 billion and $130 billion, according to the Dallas Federal Reserve.
As counterintuitive as it may sound, studies have since linked the severe winter outbreak to climate change. Thanks to the fact that the Arctic is warming faster than any other region on Earth, those higher temperatures have been shown to disrupt the behavior of polar vortexes, weakening them so that they wander south over the continental U.S.
That’s exactly what happened this week, when another high pressure ridge in Alaska sent another wave of cold arctic air over much of the country.
While the big picture is that the last eight years have been the warmest in recorded history, that warming will usher in an era of what scientists call “climate chaos,” in which a variety of new risks will present themselves. So, while states like Oklahoma and Texas have begun rolling out plans to help them endure hotter temperatures born of climate change, they also face a choice about how much to spend to winterize the electrical grid. Estimates for upgrading it so as to withstand a future polar vortex are anywhere between $5 billion and $20 billion, Texas Monthly reported.
West Texas earthquake causes damage hundreds of miles away
November 18, 2022
This May 24, 2021 photo shows the Robert B. Green hospital building, Bexar county’s original hospital that has been standing for more than 100 years, in San Antonio. A strong earthquake that struck a remote area of the West Texas desert on Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2022, caused damage in San Antonio, hundreds of miles from the epicenter, officials said. University Health said Thursday, Nov. 17, that the historical building was deemed unsafe because of damage sustained from the quake. (Kin Man Hui/The San Antonio Express-News via AP)This May 24, 2021 photo shows a historical marker on the corner of the old Robert B. Green Hospital building, Bexar county’s original hospital that has been standing for more than 100 years, in San Antonio. A strong earthquake that struck a remote area of the West Texas desert on Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2022, caused damage in San Antonio, hundreds of miles from the epicenter, officials said. University Health said Thursday, Nov. 17, that the historical building was deemed unsafe because of damage sustained from the quake. (Kin Man Hui/The San Antonio Express-News via AP) ASSOCIATED PRESS
University Health said Thursday that its Robert B. Green historical building was deemed unsafe because of damage sustained from the quake, which hit Wednesday in a remote area near the New Mexico border. The historical building is more than 100 years old and has been closed off for safety reasons, University Health said.
The quake initially had a 5.3 magnitude but that was revised upward to 5.4. The earthquake’s epicenter was about 23 miles (37 kilometers) south of Mentone, a tiny community about 350 miles (560 kilometers) northwest of San Antonio.
It was one of the strongest earthquakes on record in Texas and hit in an area known for oil and gas production. On Thursday, the state’s Railroad Commission — which regulates Texas’ oil and gas industry — sent inspectors to the site to determine whether any actions were needed.
Earthquakes in the south-central United States have been linked to oil and gas production, particularly the underground injection of wastewater. The U.S. Geological Survey said research suggests that a 5.0 magnitude quake that struck the same West Texas area in 2020 was the result of a large increase of wastewater injection in the region.
In neighboring Oklahoma, thousands of earthquakes of varying magnitudes have been recorded in the past decade, leading state regulators to direct producers to close some injection wells.
Red tide update: State report shows toxic algae levels from Sarasota south to Marco Island
Chad Gillis, Fort Myers News-Press – November 17, 2022
Scientists are saying a red tide bloom that’s lingered along the coast for a few weeks is now being fed by nutrients running off the landscape in the wake of Hurricane Ian.
Red tide (Karenia brevis) is a naturally occurring organism in the Gulf of Mexico that sometimes blooms to toxic levels.
But research shows that nutrients from farm fields, lawns and septic tanks fuel red tide blooms close to shore — making them more frequent, longer-lasting and more intense.
“I don’t see any good evidence that hurricanes initiate a red tide, but once you have a red tide started, runoff will make it worse,” said Larry Brand, a water quality expert, scientist and professor at the University of Miami.
Ian didn’t create the conditions for the original bloom; but rain water and storm surge has helped fuel the bloom, which now stretches from the Sarasota area south to Marco Island.
Counts of 1 million cells per liter and higher have been reported at multiple locations along the Southwest Florida coast.
Dead fish litter many beaches in the region, and the Florida Department of Health in Collier County issued an exposure advisory Wednesday.
DOH agrees with Brand, that nutrients flowing off the landscape contribute to the intensity and duration of the bloom.
Thousands of dead fish line the high tide line at Cayo Costa State Park on Nov. 14, 2022. Red tide has moved into Lee County waters in recent weeks.
“Once inshore, these opportunistic organisms can use nearshore nutrient sources to fuel their growth,” a Wednesday DOH press release reads. “Blooms typically last into winter or spring, but in some cases, can endure for more than one year.”
What should Southwest Florida residents do?
DOH says people who live along the coast should even check their air conditioning filters.
“Residents living in beach areas are advised to close windows and run the air conditioner, making sure that the A/C filter is maintained according to manufacturer’s specifications,” DOH says. “If outdoors near an affected location, residents may choose to wear masks, especially if onshore winds are blowing.”
Carly Jones, spokeswoman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission — the state agency charged with monitoring red tide, said offshore winds can help push the contaminated waters and the microscopic algae away from the coast.
The latest FWC report show the strongest red tide counts have been found in northern Lee and Sarasota counties.
“Some people experience respiratory irritation (coughing, sneezing, tearing and an itchy throat) when the red tide organism is present and winds blow onshore,” Jones wrote in an email to The News-Press. “Offshore winds usually keep respiratory effects experienced by those on the shore to a minimum. The Florida Department of Health advises people with severe or chronic respiratory conditions, such as emphysema or asthma, to avoid red tide areas.”
Red tide can contaminate shellfish, and the DOH recommends against collecting and eating shellfish from this region at this time.
Locally caught, properly cleaned and cooked fish can be eaten, the press release says.
DOH recommends washing yourself and all clothing if you make contact with waters containing the toxic algae.
Hurricane Irma also stirred nutrients in toxic algae bloom in 2017
Calusa Waterkeeper John Cassani has been monitoring the bloom online.
“I’m hearing people aren’t seeing as many gamefish species as compared to (Hurricane) Irma (2017),” Cassani said. “It’s mostly foraging fish but most are decayed to the point you can’t determine the species.”
Hurricane Irma stirred up nutrients in the Lake Okeechobee/Caloosahatchee River system five years ago, and the following summer was virtually lost to a massive red tide and blue-green algae bloom in the river.
Lee County was part of a state of emergency for both blooms.
Some scientists have speculated that Hurricane Ian’s aftermath will cause similar conditions between now and the spring of 2024.
The Hurricane Irma-fed red tide lasted from the fall of 2017 until the spring of 2019.
“It’s a neurotoxin,” Cassani said. “There are neurological symptoms that have been defined in response for red tide. And people with asthma are showing up in emergency rooms. There’s an influx often during a bloom. It’s an unregulated contaminant.”
Red tide worsens and spreads to Tampa Bay. Dead fish found on Anna Maria Island
Ryan Ballogg – November 16, 2022
A red tide bloom has worsened in Southwest Florida waters this week, the latest samples from the state show.
The algae that causes red tide, Karenia brevis, was observed at elevated levels in Tampa Bay, around Anna Maria Island, Longboat Key and in Sarasota Bay. Dead fish and breathing irritation have been reported on local beaches.
The bloom remains most intense further south offshore of Sarasota, Charlotte and Lee counties, according to samples from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation commission.
On Monday, a very low concentration of red tide algae was detected in a water sample near the Rod and Reel Pier in Anna Maria —down from medium levels last week— and a medium concentration was again found in waters near Longboat Pass in Bradenton Beach.
University of South Florida’s red tide for predicts that very low levels of the algae will continue to circulate around Anna Maria Island through this weekend. At very low levels, respiratory irritation is possible.
USF predicts that low to medium levels of the algae will circulate around Longboat Key, with high levels persisting farther south in Sarasota Bay.
At levels of medium and above, which are considered “bloom concentrations” of the algae, respiratory irritation and fish kills are likely.
Slight breathing irritation and a few dead fish were reported on Anna Maria Island beaches this week, Mote Marine Laboratory’s red tide beach conditions report said. To the south, moderate breathing irritation and numerous dead fish were observed on several Sarasota County beaches.
Red tide’s patchy nature means that even beaches in close proximity can have very different conditions. Respiratory irritation and dead fish can also become more or less present as wind directions and tides change.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecasts the respiratory threat from red tide. On Wednesday, NOAA warned that beachgoers in Manatee, Sarasota, Charlotte, Lee and Collier counties could experience moderate to high levels of respiratory irritation over the next 36 hours.
On Monday, the Florida Department of Health Manatee County issued a red tide health alert for the following beaches:
Bayfront Park
Coquina Beach South
Longboat Pass/Coquina Boat Ramp
Rod and Reel Pier (City of Anna Maria Island)
FDOH-Manatee offers the following red tide safety tips:
Look for informational signage posted at most beaches.
Stay away from the water.
Do not swim in waters with dead fish.
Those with chronic respiratory problems should be especially cautious and stay away from these locations as red tide can affect your breathing.
Do not harvest or eat molluscan shellfish or distressed or dead fish from these locations. If caught live and healthy, finfish are safe to eat as long as they are filleted and the guts are discarded. Rinse fillets with tap or bottled water.
Wash your skin and clothing with soap and fresh water if you have had recent contact with red tide.
Keep pets and livestock away and out of the water, sea foam and dead sea life. If your pet swims in waters with red tide, wash your pet as soon as possible.
Residents living in beach areas are advised to close windows and run the air conditioner, making sure that the A/C filter is maintained according to manufacturer’s specifications.
If outdoors near an affected location, residents may choose to wear masks, especially if onshore winds are blowing.
Global population passes 8 billion, says UN amid concerns of impact on climate crisis
Sravasti Dasgupta – November 15, 2022
The world population has crossed eight billion, the United Nations said on Tuesday as it warned of the impact of climate change and resource scarcity.
John Wilmoth, director of the UN’s population division said that reaching eight billion people is “a sign of human success, but it’s also a great risk for our future”.
According to a statement by the UN, the global population is growing at its slowest rate since 1950.
UN projections suggest that the global population could grow to around 8.5 billion in 2030 and 9.7 billion in 2050.
It is projected to reach a peak of around 10.4 billion people during the 2080s and to remain at that level until 2100.
The figures were earlier released by the UN in a report ahead of World Population Day in July.
“China and India, with more than 1.4 billion each, accounted for most of the population in these two regions,” the report said.
“India is projected to surpass China as the world’s most populous country in 2023,” it added.
Despite the global population increasing, experts say that the growth rate has fallen steadily to less than 1 per cent per year.
“A big part of this story is that this era of rapid population growth that the world has known for centuries is coming to an end,” Mr Wilmoth said.
Experts have warned that the rising population combined with the impact of climate change will adversely affect vulnerable nations and people.
Deborah Balk, a demographic researcher at the City University of New York, said: “African cities will, on average, grow.”
Ms Balk said that this will leave millions more urban dwellers exposed to climate threats such as rising seas.
Analysts warn that there will also be resource scarcity with the population rise.
“Every single person needs fuel, wood, water, and a place to call home,” said Stephanie Feldstein, population and sustainability director at Center for Biological Diversity.
UN officials have also said that rising population is likely to impact achieving sustainable development goals.
“The relationship between population growth and sustainable development is complex and multidimensional” said Liu Zhenmin, UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs in a statement.
“Rapid population growth makes eradicating poverty, combatting hunger and malnutrition, and increasing the coverage of health and education systems more difficult.
“Conversely, achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, especially those related to health, education and gender equality, will contribute to reducing fertility levels and slowing global population growth.”
Will Florida’s red tide get worse because of Hurricane Nicole? Here’s what experts say
Max Chesnes – November 15, 2022
Red tide was found this week in the waters off Anna Maria Island, and now experts fear Hurricane Nicole could possibly make conditions worse for Tampa Bay.
Extra runoff from rainfall could mean more algal-bloom-fueling nutrients dump into the bay. That may — or may not ― spark more Red Tide.
“Of course our eyes are on any additional rainfall and runoff that might occur in response to . . . Nicole’s passage,” said Ed Sherwood, executive director of the Tampa Bay Estuary Program. “With red tide now present in lower Tampa Bay, additional nutrient loads may exacerbate the bloom if salinities remain high.”
It’s a big if, with plenty of variables. The organism that causes red tide, karenia brevis, prefers salty marine environments. Rainwater is fresh, but brings pollution along with it as it flows into the bay. That pollution, in turn, can fuel red tide blooms.
“Any additional nutrient loads to our coast — especially when a red tide is already present in the estuary — is a concern,” Sherwood wrote in an email. “As the red tide bloom that formed further south is carried by winds and currents into our estuary, any additional stormwater nutrient loads caused by (Nicole) may promote water quality declines this winter.”
State water samplers detected medium concentrations of red tide-causing karenia brevis, between 100,000 and 1,000,000 cells per liter, on the northern tip of Anna Maria Island Monday, according to the latest Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission data. Scientists consider that level a “bloom,” meaning breathing problems are possible and fish kills are probable.
On Nov. 2, small amounts were measured 11 miles offshore of Tampa Bay, data show.
There’s cause for concern for residents in the Tampa Bay area, “because it is likely that a red tide bloom will evolve here,” according to Bob Weisberg, a physical oceanographer at the University of South Florida. Once Red Tide is measured at the mouth of Tampa Bay, tidal currents could easily bring it into the estuary. Now, add the winds from Nicole into the mix.
Medium concentration levels of Karenia brevis, the algae that causes red tide, were detected in water samples taken Monday by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission near Longboat Pass.
The storm is currently pushing northerly winds, which makes conditions more favorable for the spread of red tide here, according to Weisberg. “Such winds will result in red tide cells located offshore along the bottom being transported toward the shore and hence an increase in what may be observed here in subsequent days.”
Still, the mixing of wind and water during storm events are speculated to hurt red tide, so there may also be a die-off of some karenia brevis cells, Weisberg wrote in an email. Nicole isn’t nearly as strong as the recent Hurricane Ian, though, so there’s a chance that more Red Tide organism feeds on runoff entering the bay versus being killed off in turbulent water.
“Red tide ecology is the whole shebang,” Weisberg wrote.
The most recent models from the University of South Florida’s Ocean Circulation Lab show traces of the red tide organism — resembling green strands of spaghetti on the chart — in small amounts entering into Tampa Bay over the next few days, beginning from where it was first measured on Anna Maria Island.
The takeaway is that there’s no immediate threat of dangerous red tide exposure through the weekend, but it’s definitely something to watch, according to Yonggang Liu, the lab’s director.
The latest Red Tide models from the University of South Florida, which run through Nov. 12, show small concentrations of the Red Tide-causing organism flowing into Tampa Bay over the next few days.
“It may still be OK for Tampa Bay area in the next three days,” Liu wrote in an email. “You may go to a beach and enjoy water activities without issues of red tide.”
With Nicole expected to drop as much as four inches of rain in the area, it’s still to be determined just how much runoff the bay will receive. But storm surge shouldn’t be a major issue for the estuary, according to tide models provided by Liu. Sea level will first recede, but not nearly as much as what was documented with Hurricane Ian earlier this year and Hurricane Irma in 2017.
Once Nicole passes, the bay should hopefully start to see a reprieve, according to Sherwood.
“We’re coming to the tail-end of our rainy season, so with the exception of the recent tropical storms that are impacting our region, we should start to see a decline in storm-water nutrient loads from our coast,” Sherwood said. “That in combination with cooling temperatures will hopefully lead to some water quality improvements over the next several months.”
Mexico releases ‘ambitious’ renewable energy targets to fight climate change
Ben Adler, Senior Editor – November 14, 2022
U.S. climate envoy John Kerry and Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard hold a press conference at the COP27 climate conference in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. (Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty Images)
Mexico announced Monday that it plans to dramatically increase the amount of power it generates from renewable sources of energy, deploying more than 30 additional gigawatts of annual electricity generation from wind, solar, geothermal and hydropower by 2030.
The new clean energy targets were made public at a news conference at the United Nations climate change conference, known as COP27, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. By the end of the decade, Mexico aims to generate more than 40 gigawatts of power from wind and solar alone.
As of 2019, Mexico had 80 gigawatts of installed electricity generation capacity, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The majority of that comes from natural gas, while renewables account for 10% and hydropower 7%, so the new target would represent a major shift toward a largely renewable energy portfolio if the country succeeds in meeting its new target.
John Kerry, the U.S. special presidential envoy for climate change, joined Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard at Monday’s news conference.
U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry speaks at the COP27 climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
“Secretary Kerry indicated his support for Mexico’s new renewable goal, and the United States intends to work closely with Mexico to achieve these ambitious goals, including through U.S. efforts to mobilize financial support and joint efforts to catalyze and incentivize investments into new Mexican renewable energy deployment and transmission,” the U.S. Embassy in Mexico reported.
Mexico is the 13th-largest global emitter of greenhouse gases. It is one of the few countries that updated its plan to reduce emissions at COP27, pledging to reduce emissions by 35% from business-as-usual levels by 2030. The renewable energy targets are intended to help it meet that goal. Mexico also said it plans to double its spending on clean energy by 2030, protect more of its forests, increase electric vehicle usage and cut down on methane emissions from its oil and gas drilling sectors.
“This is a huge, significant shift from where Mexico was last year in Glasgow,” Kerry told reporters on Saturday, in response to Mexico’s new emissions reduction promise and in reference to the last climate change conference, COP26, in Glasgow, Scotland. Kerry added that he had negotiated extensively with his Mexican counterparts and said Mexico has “extraordinary availability of sun, extraordinary availability of wind power.”
Earlier on Monday the U.S. and China achieved a diplomatic breakthrough when President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to restart stalled climate change negotiations.
The sun sets behind the sign showing the logo of the COP27 climate conference at the Sharm el-Sheikh resort. (Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty Images)
Kerry has been working to persuade large developing countries to take new actions to decarbonize their economies and offering assistance to do so. Last week, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union countries committed to jointly mobilizing $8.5 billion to finance South Africa’s deployment of electric vehicles and clean energy and a new low-carbon source of energy called ‘green hydrogen.'” On Monday, Indonesia announced the planned retirement of a coal-fired power plant with assistance from the Asian Development Bank, and it is expected to announce on Tuesday a similar plan to South Africa’s.
Still, COP27 is not expected to produce significant changes in the global emissions trajectory, as the biggest emitters, such as the United States and China, have not lowered their planned emissions in this decade. But on Monday, in what climate change activists consider a sign of potential progress, President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that the two countries will put aside their differences over tense issues such as the fate of Taiwan and try to work together on climate change.
Farmland Values Hit Record Highs, Pricing Out Farmers
Linda Qiu – November 13, 2022
Farmland outside of Clark, S.D., on Oct. 26, 2022. (Tim Gruber/The New York Times)
Joel Gindo thought he could finally own and operate the farm of his dreams when a neighbor put up 160 acres of cropland for sale in Brookings County, South Dakota, two years ago. Five thousand or six thousand dollars an acre should do the trick, Gindo estimated.
But at auction, Gindo watched helplessly as the price continued to climb until it hit $11,000 an acre, double what he had budgeted for.
“I just couldn’t compete with how much people are paying, with people paying 10 grand,” he said. “And for someone like me who doesn’t have an inheritance somewhere sitting around, a lump sum of money sitting around, everything has to be financed.”
What is happening in South Dakota is playing out in farming communities across the nation as the value of farmland soars, hitting record highs this year and often pricing out small or beginning farmers. In the state, farmland values surged by 18.7% from 2021 to 2022, one of the highest increases in the country, according to the most recent figures from the Agriculture Department. Nationwide, values increased by 12.4% and reached $3,800 an acre, the highest on record since 1970, with cropland at $5,050 an acre and pastureland at $1,650 an acre.
A series of economic forces — high prices for commodity crops like corn, soybeans and wheat; a robust housing market; low interest rates until recently; and a slew of government subsidies — have converged to create a “perfect storm” for farmland values, said Jason Henderson, a dean at the College of Agriculture at Purdue University and a former official at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Missouri.
As a result, small farmers like Gindo are now going up against deep-pocketed investors, including private equity firms and real estate developers, prompting some experts to warn of far-reaching consequences for the farming sector.
Young farmers named finding affordable land for purchase the top challenge in 2022 in a September survey by the National Young Farmers Coalition, a nonprofit group.
Already, the supply of land is limited. About 40% of farmland in the United States is rented, most of it owned by landlords who are not actively involved in farming. And the amount of land available for purchase is extremely scant, with less than 1% of farmland sold on the open market annually.
The booming housing market, among a number of factors, has bolstered the value of farmland, particularly in areas close to growing city centers.
“What we have seen over the past year or two was, when housing starts to go up with new building construction, that puts pressure on farmland, especially on those urban fringes,” Henderson said. “And that leads to a cascading ripple effect into land values even farther and farther away.”
Government subsidies to farmers have also soared in recent years, amounting to nearly 39% of net farm income in 2020. On top of traditional programs like crop insurance payments, the Agriculture Department distributed $23 billion to farmers hurt by President Donald Trump’s trade war from 2018 to 2020 and $45.3 billion in pandemic-related assistance in 2020 and 2021. (The government’s contribution to farm income decreased to 20% in 2021 and is forecast to be about 8% in 2022.)
Those payments, or even the very promise of additional assistance, increase farmland values as they create a safety net and signal that agricultural land is a safe bet, research shows.
“There’s an expectation in the market that the government’s going to play a role when farm incomes drop, so that definitely affects investment behavior,” said Jennifer Ifft, a professor of agricultural economics at Kansas State University.
Eager investors are increasingly turning to farmland in the face of volatility in the stock and real estate markets. Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder and billionaire, is the biggest private farmland owner in the country and recently won approval to buy 2,100 acres in North Dakota for $13.5 million.
The number of private equity funds seeking to buy stakes in farmland has ticked higher, said Tim Koch, a vice president at an agricultural financial cooperative in the Midwest, Farm Credit Services of America. Pension funds also consider farmland a stable investment, Ifft said.
Farmers, too, have witnessed an influx of outside interest. Nathaniel Bankhead, who runs a farm and garden consulting business in Chattanooga, Tennessee, has banded with a group of other agricultural workers to save up to $500,000 to buy about 60 acres of land. For months, the collective has been repeatedly outbid by real estate developers, investors looking to diversify their portfolios and urban transplants with “delusional agrarian dreams,” he said.
“Places that I have looked at as potential farmland are being bought up in cash before I can even go through the process that a working-class person has to do to access land,” he said. “And the ironic thing is, those are my clients — like I get hired by them to do as a hobby what I’m trying to do as a livelihood. So it’s tough to watch.”
Bankhead characterized the current landscape as a form of “digital feudalism” for aspiring working farmers. Wealthy landowners drive up land prices, contract with agricultural designers like himself to enact their vision and then hire a caretaker to work the land — pricing out those very employees from becoming owners themselves.
“They kind of lock that person to this new flavor of serfdom where it’s, you might be decently paid, you’ve got access to it, but it will never be yours,” he said.
Unable to afford land in her native Florida, Tasha Trujillo recently moved her flower farm to South Carolina. Trujillo had grown cut flowers and kept bees on a parcel of her brother-in-law’s 5-acre plant nursery in Redland, a historically agricultural region in the Miami area, about 20 miles south of downtown.
When she sought to expand her farm and buy her own land, she quickly found that prices were out of reach, with real estate developers driving up land values and pushing out agriculture producers.
A 5-acre property in the Redlands now costs $500,000 to $700,000, Trujillo said. “So I essentially didn’t have a choice but to leave Miami and Florida as a whole.”
“Farming is a very stressful profession,” she added. “When you throw in land insecurity, it makes it 20 times worse. So there were many, many times where I thought, oh, my God, I’m not going to be able to do this. This isn’t feasible.”
As small and beginning farmers are shut out — the latest agricultural census said that the average age of farmers inched up to 57.5 — the prohibitively high land values may have ripple effects on the sector at large.
Brian Philpot, CEO of AgAmerica, an agricultural lending institution, said his firm’s average loan size had increased as farms consolidated, squeezing out family farms. This, he argued, could lead to a farm crisis.
“Do we have the skills and the next generation of people to farm it? And two, if the answer is going to be, we’re going to have passive owners own this land and lease it out, is that very sustainable?” he said.
Henderson also warned that current farmers may face increased financial risk as they seek to leverage their high farmland values, essentially betting the farm to expand it.
“They’ll buy more land, but they’ll use debt to do it,” he said. “They’ll stretch themselves out.”
Economists and lenders said farmland values appear to have plateaued in recent months, as the Federal Reserve raised interest rates and the cost of fertilizer and diesel soared. But with high commodity prices forecast for next year, some believe values will remain high.
A native of Tanzania who moved to South Dakota about a decade ago, Gindo bought 7 acres of land to raise livestock in 2019 and currently rents an additional 40 acres to grow corn and soybeans — all the while working full time as a comptroller to make ends meet.
For now, he has cooled off his search for a farm of his own even as he dreams of passing on that land to his son. The more immediate concern, he said, was whether his landlord would raise his rent. So far, the landlord has refrained because Gindo helps him out around the farm.
“He really doesn’t have to lend me his land,” Gindo said. “He can make double that with someone else.”
In Florida, Trujillo said, the owner of the land where her brother-in-law’s nursery sits has spoken of selling the plot while prices remain high, so he too has begun looking for his own property.
“That’s a big fear for a lot of these farmers and nursery owners who are renting land, because you just never know when the owner’s just going to say, ‘You know what, this year, I’m selling, and you’ve got to go,’” she said.
In Tennessee, Bankhead said he considered giving up on owning a farm “multiple times a day” as friends who have been longtime farmers leave the profession.
But so far, he remains committed to staying in the field and doing “the work of trying to keep land in families’ hands and showing there’s more to do with this land than to sell it to real estate developers,” he said. “But the pain of not having my own garden and not being able to have my animals where I live, it never stings any less.”
As world population hits 8 billion, China frets over too few babies
November 13, 2022
FILE PHOTO: People walk and ride vehicles along a street, amid the coronavirus disease pandemic, in Shanghai
BEIJING/HONG KONG (Reuters) – Chinese software developer Tang Huajun loves playing with his two-year-old in their apartment on the outskirts of Beijing but he said he is unlikely to have another child.
Such decisions by countless people like Tang will determine the course not only of China’s population but that of the world, which the United Nations says is projected to reach 8 billion on Tuesday.
Tang, 39, said many of his married friends have only one child and, like him, they are not planning any more. Younger people aren’t even interested in getting married let alone having babies, he said.
The high cost of childcare is a major deterrent to having children in China, with many families in an increasingly mobile society unable to rely for help on grandparents who might live far away.
“Another reason is that many of us get married very late and its hard to get pregnant,” Tang said. “I think getting married late will definitely have an impact on births.”
China was for decades preoccupied with the prospect of runaway population growth and imposed a strict one-child policy from 1980 to 2015 to keep numbers in check.
But now the United Nations expects China’s population will start shrinking from next year, when India will likely become the world’s most populous country.
China’s fertility rate of 1.16 in 2021 was below the 2.1 OECD standard for a stable population and among the lowest in the world.
The anguish of the coronavirus pandemic and China’s strict measures to stamp it out may also have had a profound impact on the desire of many people to have children, demographers say.
New births in China are set to fall to record lows this year, demographers say, dropping below 10 million from last year’s 10.6 million – which was already 11.5% lower than in 2020.
Beijing last year began allowing couples to have up to three children and the government has said it is working towards achieving an “appropriate” birth rate.
OLD PEOPLE, NEW PROBLEMS
For planners, a shrinking population poses a whole new set of problems.
“We expect the aging population to increase very rapidly. This is a very important situation facing China, different to 20 years ago,” said Shen Jianfa, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
The proportion of the population over the age of 65 is now about 13% but is set to rise sharply. A declining labour force faces an increasing burden of looking after the rising numbers of old folk.
“It will be very high for some years,” Shen said of the proportion of elderly in the population. “That’s why the country has to prepare for the coming aging.”
Alarmed by the prospect of an ageing society, China has been trying to encourage couples to have more children with tax breaks and cash handouts, as well as more generous maternity leave, medical insurance and housing subsidies.
But demographers say the measures are not enough. They cite high education costs, low wages and notoriously long working hours, along with frustration over COVID curbs and the overall state of the economy.
A key factor is job prospects for young people, said Stuart Gietel Basten, professor at Hong Kong’s University of Science and Technology.
“Why would you have more babies when the people you have cannot even get jobs?”
(Reporting by Thomas Suen and Farah Master; Editing by Robert Birsel)
