Fears of grain crops failing, exacerbating food crisis.

"In a year when global harvests need to be excellent to ease the threat of pervasive food shortages, evidence is mounting that they will be average at best. Some farmers are starting to fear disaster.

American corn and soybean farmers are suffering from too much rain, while Australian wheat farmers have been plagued by drought.

“The planting has gotten off to a poor start,” said Bill Nelson, a Wachovia grains analyst. “The anxiety level is increasing.” LINK

Eucalyptus, heading out? And taking koalas with it?

"The future of the koala, perhaps Australia's best-loved animal, is under threat because greenhouse gas emissions are making eucalyptus leaves – their sole food source – inedible.
Scientists warned yesterday that increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were reducing nutrient levels in the leaves, and also boosting their toxic tannin content....

"What we're seeing, essentially, is that the staple diet of these animals is being turned to leather," said Bill Foley, a science professor at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra. "This is potentially a very significant development for the future of some marsupial populations. Life is set to become extremely difficult for these animals."

"This suggests that in areas where nutrient levels are inadequate, animals will not be able to reproduce successfully," she said. "What follows are extinctions of wildlife populations. It's pretty scary stuff." LINK

Actual headline: Coal cost soars in supply 'apocalypse'

Eeeeeeeep.

"FLOODING in Queensland's Bowen Basin has resulted in a "supply apocalypse'' for coking coal, with contract prices likely to hit $US300 per tonne - three times the price in 2007 - as steel mills scramble for the key ingredient...
Tight supply has been exacerbated by China withdrawing from coking coal exports, as internal demand soars and coke stockpiles decline to historically low levels,'' Merril Lynch said....
Brokerage Goldman Sachs JBWere said the supply squeeze has prompted one Asian steel mill to acquire coking coal on the spot market at $US400 per tonne..."
LINK

Australia's rivers becoming as acidic as sulphuric acid in car batteries. Yikes.

Drought, obviously, is a nightmare. Some of the less obvious consequences can be the worst though- check this out.

"Scientists are warning that acid sulphate soils are turning river banks and billabongs into death traps for fish and birds and hazards for humans.

It is impossible for animals to survive NSW's Bottle Bend lagoon, which now has a pH -- or acidity -- level dropping as low as 1.8 -- equivalent to the sulphuric acid found in car batteries. And it is corrosive to the touch.

The waterway is just one of dozens of sites throughout South Australia, NSW and Victoria which falling water levels have turned into aquatic graveyards.

Paula D'Santos, project officer for the NSW Murray Wetlands Working Group, says the alarm was raised at Bottle Bend, upstream from Mildura, when the lagoon's pH fell from a healthy seven to a deadly three after it became cut off from the river's main flow. Fish died in their thousands, the banks were lined with toxic aluminium and manganese salts and the gnarled red gums on its banks began to die. "It is like a scene from the apocalypse. It's just incredible," Ms D'Santos says.

NSW's Tareena Billabong -- where acid-sulphate soils have also been found -- recently suffered a fish kill that left nine tonnes of fish rotting in the mud. The acid-sulphate problem -- caused by nutrient-rich submerged banks being exposed to air for the first time in decades -- is already rivalling salinity, overextraction and blue-green algae as threats to the river. "
LINK

Too late.

Great Barrier reef, headed out.

""There is a terrible future in front of us for the reefs," said Canada-based United Nations University professor Peter Sale, one of 17 authors from seven nations of the Science paper...

(carbon emissions)...if they rise above 500ppm, the minimum emission level forecast by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climage Change by 2050, reefs will become "rapidly eroding rubble banks". "These changes will reduce coral reef ecosystems to crumbling frameworks with few calcareous corals," the paper says.

"It is clear that coral reefs as we know them today would be extremely rare."

LINK

No more Aussie wines? We're doomed. No, seriously, this is scary stuff. Australian agriculture- heading out?

This is unbelievable. Where the hell are they going to buy food, China? yeah, sad joke, I know, but seriously.... probably, yeah. American farmers are going nuts planting corn to burn up in our cars. Christ what a world we've made. And me too- I should have thought about it, I should have wondered why the 'sunburnt country' was making such good inexpensive wine. Unsustainable irrigation, that's why. Add a major major drought, maybe some general temperature rise, and, well, it's out.

"The Murray-Darling basin in south-eastern Australia yields 40 per cent of the country's agricultural produce. But the two rivers that feed the region are so pitifully low that there will soon be only enough water for drinking supplies. Australia is in the grip of its worst drought on record, the victim of changing weather patterns attributed to global warming and a government that is only just starting to wake up to the severity of the position.

The Prime Minister, John Howard, a hardened climate-change sceptic, delivered dire tidings to the nation's farmers yesterday. Unless there is significant rainfall in the next six to eight weeks, irrigation will be banned in the principal agricultural area. Crops such as rice, cotton and wine grapes will fail, citrus, olive and almond trees will die, along with livestock.

A ban on irrigation, which would remain in place until May next year, spells possible ruin for thousands of farmers, already debt-laden and in despair after six straight years of drought."
LINK

Great Barrier Reef being polluted, too.

"The Great Barrier Reef, already under threat from global warming, is also being affected by pollutants and pesticides from the land carried into the sea by flooded rivers, satellite images show.
Pictures taken this month by Nasa and US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellites indicate that coral is being affected by the run-off at a greater rate than previously thought.
According to Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), they show sediment creating a hazy cloud in the water over the reef, blocking out sunlight and preventing photosynthesis, the process which keeps coral alive.
Arnold Dekker of the CSIRO said: "The run-off from torrential rainfall goes into the Great Barrier Reef lagoon and straight into the ocean at speeds which were not thought to occur before we saw the images."LINK

Brilliant!

Great story out of Australia-

"SYDNEY, Australia - Australia will be the world’s first country to ban incandescent lightbulbs in a bid to curb greenhouse gas emissions, with the government saying on Tuesday they would be phased out within three years and replaced by compact fluorescent lighting." LINK

Thanks to the tip from the Amazing B!

Australia. Crikey, mate.

Queensland "BENDIGO residents should embrace the use of treated sewage in their drinking water taps or risk their city becoming a desert, a leading academic has warned.." LINK

Sydney "...severe droughts nine out of every 10 years, a dramatic rise in the number of bush fires, and freak storm surges which could devastate the coastline... rainfall will fall by 40% by 2070, not only creating a massive water crisis, but producing double the number of bush fires." LINK

Great Barrier Reef "...it's fairly clear that this century we would lose the Great Barrier Reef as an ecosystem, I don't think there is too much doubt about that." LINK

Great Barrier Reef- headed out. 20 years, maybe. We live in sad times, dude.

"Australia's Great Barrier Reef could be "functionally extinct" within decades, warns a leaked portion of a major United Nations report on climate change.
It warns warmer, more acidic seas could severely bleach coral in the world-famous reef as early as 2030. " LINK

This warming and acidifying is covered wonderfully in the LA Times MUST READ series, Altered Oceans. Part 5 of the series covers acidification and the impact of that, but the entire series is wonderfully done. Read this if you read nothing else ever.

"A chapter on Australia in the report on global impacts warns that coral bleaching in the Barrier Reef is likely to become an annual occurrence by as early as 2030 due to warmer, more acidic seas.
Bleaching occurs when the plant-like organisms that make up coral die and leave behind the white limestone skeleton of the reef.
The World Heritage site, stretching over more than 345,000 square kilometers (133,000 sq miles) off Australia's northeast coast, will become "functionally extinct", the scientists are quoted as saying. " LINK
additional LINK to another article

Wow, a new kind of frog! Oh, heck, its habitat has been destroyed by climate change. Bye frog!

"NO sooner had Australia's newest frog species been identified than its discoverer warned that the amphibian's existence was threatened by climate change." LINK

Dead birds from Austin to Australia- what the heck?

"AUSTIN, Texas — Police shut down 10 blocks in downtown Austin for several hours Monday after 63 birds were found dead in the street, but officials said preliminary tests found no threat to people." LINK

"Mystery as thousands of dead birds fall from sky
Is it an illness, toxins or a natural phenomenon? A string of autopsies in Perth have shed no light on the mystery.
All the residents of flood-devastated Esperance know is that their "dawn chorus" of singing birds is missing.
...She told The Australian she normally had hundreds of birds in her yard, but that she and a neighbour counted 80 dead birds in one day.
"It went to the point where we had nothing, not a bird," she said.
"It was like a moonscape, just horrible. But the frightening thing for us, we didn't find any more birds after that. We literally didn't have any birds left to die."
LINK