The UN food agency – the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), is warning of a looming food crisis in Africa. The reason – global increase in food and fuel prices. The reason – increase production in bio-fuel at the expense of food production. The reason – climate change.

Kenyan agriculture assistant minister said, “that in as much as bio-fuel continues to draw attention due to the increasing prices of fossil fuels, there is need to focus on providing access to sustainable sources of energy.”

The assistant minister also said “thousands of bags of food are lying at the National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB) stores and blamed the ministry of special programs for delaying its distribution to the hungry.”

“Hundreds of thousands of people are reported to be starving in a number of districts especially those in arid and semi arid regions.”

So, what should we do when we try to decrease our dependence on fossil fuels by increasing the use of bio-fuels so that we can save our environment but in the process people die for lack of food? Does anybody have an answer? – via Cri.cn

Image courtesy of martapigs

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Hurricane season this year is expected to be longer, stormier and arrive earlier. Climate scientists are saying that this centuries storms are bigger than last century’s because the area of warm water that can support hurricanes is growing larger. The Atlantic Ocean is more hurricane friendly.

 ”There has been an increase in the seasonal length over the last century,” Jay Gulledge, a senior scientist with the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

The estimated increase if 5 days longer than it was in 1915. The first named storm of this year arrived one day before the official hurricane season was to begin on June 1st. (I wonder, do hurricanes know they are not supposed to arrive before June 1st?)

There is no definitive link to global warming. (Give people time and they’ll find a way.) Climate models aren’t able to reproduce individual storms but the founder of the study above thinks out loud, “it’s likely that the warming caused by manmade greenhouse gases is a major factor in the seasonal shift based on observations of changes in recent decades and the predictions models are making for the changing conditions in the Atlantic basin.”

Let’s see, models can’t produce storms but they can predict. Hmm…something wrong here. The guy went on to say, “The length of the hurricane season is ‘one of the potentially big signals’ that could change in response to global warming.”

And he knows this because of why?