Can China deal with climate change without the U.S.?.
U.S. drops the climate effort Donald Trump’s “Energy Independence” order creates severe turbulences in the Paris climate change agreement.
U.S. President’s intention to quit the agreement and promote energy independence and economic growth seems to be working.
Therefore, Trump’s climate policy is about to cause serious problems backsliding the attempts of all UN member states which have pledged to reduce their national gas emissions and keep the temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
China targets green growth The Chinese government has stated that the climate change policy it’s upon its main targets.
Furthermore, the Chinese President Xi Jinping, attending the World Economic Forum 2017, pointed out that the Paris Agreement is a “hard-won achievement which is in keeping with the underlying trend of global development and indicated his support for clean energy stating that China’s efforts to pursue green growth were paying off”.
In general, China has been showing strong support to the climate change battle and implements strong measures against air and water pollution.
EU supports China The need of a strong China in the climate change fight, the moment that the U.S. is stepping off, is imperative and EU shares this opinion and points out that both should show joint leadership.
The latter shows that the EU is determined to keep on struggling against environmental pollution but definitely more aid is needed in order to produce remarkable results.
However, the initiative of China to lead the way in this fierce battle is promising taking into consideration that China accounts for almost 30% of the world’s CO2 emissions.

Researchers use a pair of robotics platforms in hopes of developing drought-resistant crops.
A team of researchers at the University of Missouri are using a pair of robotics platforms and a $20 million grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a system for identifying crop strains resistant to heat, drought and flood.
The system developed by the team is comprised of two primary robots — a mobile tower that stands watch at the edge of the crop and a roaming ‘bot deployed by the system to take a closer look.
The resulting data includes 3D scans of the plants (corn and sorghum at present), along with temperature, humidity and light intensity readings taken at different heights — each of which tend to vary greatly, due to an increasing tendency to plant crops closer together.
“A flying UAV is a little cumbersome,” he said.
“You have to have a pilot to fly it, you have to have a flight plan that has to be filed.
Each is equipped with a trio of cameras offering up 3D models of the plant along with biomass volume and thermal readings.
At present, the Vinobot has to be piloted, but DeSouza says the team is working on an autonomous version that can automatically gather data in tandem with the tower.
“The idea is to correlate how the plant is developing with the family, so we understand which family is tolerating the stress better than the others and ultimately to identify the gene that makes those families more or less resistant to those stresses,” says DeSouza.
That information can then be used to cross-breed the most resilient plants, in order to create crops that are more resistant to the changing climate.

Analysis: Heineken brews up a better report.
Sustainability pervades the Dutch brewer’s first integrated report from cover to cover but it could use its global presence to be a greater advocate for action to tackle climate change, says Peter Statham Fierce competition among brewers has transformed the global beer market.
And it’s serious about sustainability.
For the first time, Heineken has integrated sustainability information in its annual report and no longer publishes a separate sustainability report.
In contrast to some attempts to integrate reporting, Heineken does a good job, including sustainability references almost from cover to cover.
And the brewer has saved €13.5m (£11.5m) through water efficiency projects since 2009, a clear business benefit.
‘Without water Heineken wouldn’t exist’ The Sustainability Review, a section within the report, provides an overview of progress against Brewing a Better World, Heineken’s sustainability strategy, consisting of six areas: water, CO2, sourcing, responsible consumption, health and safety, and communities.
Perhaps it’s time for absolute water targets, or, even better, science-based water targets that will contribute to avoiding a global water crisis.
Heineken ‘should raise its voice’ Considering the potential impact of climate change and water scarcity on Heineken’s business, I’d like to see more about how it’s using its influence, and presence in 190 countries, to advocate for climate action while it is “brewing a better world”.
pete.statham@contexteurope.com See also: Heineken shows its bottle on climate Heineken sustainability report beer Integrated reporting SDGs water management

Maya and Ancestral Puebloans Providing Clues on World Water Crisis.
Reservoirs and aquifers are drying up, a consequence of overuse, and climate change triggering periods of drought around the planet.
Using water the way we have in the past simply will not sustain humanity in future.” Researchers from University of Cincinnati’s anthropology, geography and geology departments have been exploring rainforests and deserts around the globe in an attempt to find out how ancient humans changed their environment to manage the water supply.
“We begin by asking, ‘What is water to humans, how do we engage with it and how does the environment engage us?” explained Vernon Scarborough, professor and department head in UC’s Department of Anthropology, in a press release.
Other tests provided insight into how the Puebloans supplied themselves with water.
“During the rainy season when floodwaters hit, the Puebloans would capture runoff water from small canyons known as the rincons and local periodic streams such as Chaco Wash and Escavada Wash.” Researchers in the UC team also explored the Guatemalan rainforests around Tikal, a Maya site that was inhabited around the same time as Chaco Canyon.
“Similar to Chaco Canyon, we found geochemical evidence for corn fields situated in specific environmental niches at Tikal”, said Nicholas Dunning, a UC professor of Geography.
“Essentially, they may have affected a change in their own climate”, said Scarborough.
However, their research also highlighted how the Puebloans and Maya affected their environment and landscape.
Such investments in building massive dam projects today is a costly expenditure of money and time that might well benefit from views of the past.

‘Weather whiplash’ triggered by changing climate will degrade Midwest’s drinking water.
Now, researchers at the University of Kansas have published findings in the journal Biogeochemistry showing weather whiplash in the American Midwest’s agricultural regions will drive the deterioration of water quality, forcing municipalities to seek costly remedies to provide safe drinking water to residents.
"As rainfall patterns change with climate change, it’s predicted there will be more times of drought, and more times of excessive rainfall — really big storms," said Terry Loecke, assistant professor of environmental studies at the University of Kansas and lead author of the new investigation.
"Farmers put on their normal amount of fertilizer, but when we have a drought, plants don’t grow as big and don’t take up as much nitrogen," Loecke said.
But when floods occur, nitrogen is washed into surface waters such as tributaries that feed into rivers.
"But as soon as you wet it, like when you wring a sponge, the nitrogen can flood into the rivers."
"The drinking water is a real problem, especially in Des Moines," Burgin said.
"The average person will pay more to have clean drinking water, like in the city of Des Moines," Loecke said.
"A city can’t predict how many days they’ll have to run a nitrate-removal facility.
According to analysis by the Des Moines Register, 30 percent of them will have this problem — and most don’t have the tax bases to support huge nitrate-removal facilities."

Melting polar ice, rising sea levels not only climate change dangers.
Climate change from political and ecological standpoints is a constant in the media and with good reason, said a Texas A&M AgriLife Research scientist, but proof of its impact is sometimes found in unlikely places.
"Discussions of climate change usually are focused on changes occurring in polar and temperate zones, but tropical regions also are expected to experience changes in regional precipitation," said Dr. Kirk Winemiller, AgriLife Research fisheries scientist and Regents Professor in the department of wildlife and fisheries sciences at College Station.
Winemiller and his Brazilian colleagues analyzed a long-term database, 1999-2014, of fish survey statistics and hydrology in the central Amazon and discovered a direct correlation between water quantity and quality with the types and number of fish species found.
"The change occurred following the severe drought in that region in 2005, and the hydrologic regime and fish assemblage have not returned to their previous states since," Winemiller said.
The research report, "Simultaneous abrupt shifts in hydrology and fish assemblage structure in a floodplain lake in the central Amazon," was published recently in Scientific Reports, the online publication of Nature.
"Since the drought, many fish species are less abundant within the study area, while others have increased.
Winemiller said the changes within the fish species appeared to be associated with how the fish species respond differently to changes in habitat quality and the connectivity of the river channel with aquatic habitats in the floodplain at various water levels and times of the year.
"It shows that future fisheries management in tropical regions will need to account for how changes in precipitation and hydrology influence ecological factors affecting fish stocks."
Original written by Steve Byrns.

Researchers at the German Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) found the Amazon rainforest could be exposed to higher risks of dieback if dry seasons intensify and rainfall decreases. This could lead to a vicious dieback circle, they said in a study published in Nature Communications. “The Amazon rainforest is one of the tipping elements in the Earth system,” said lead-author Delphine Clara Zemp, who conducted the study at PIK. “We already know that on the one hand, reduced rainfall increases the risk of forest dieback, and on the other hand, forest loss can intensify regional droughts,” she said. “So, more droughts can lead to less forest leading to more droughts and so on. Yet the consequences of this feedback between the plants on the ground and the atmosphere above them so far was not clear.” The researchers found the close relationship between deforestation and drought could put the Amazon further at risk. When it rains, trees absorb water through their roots and then release it back into the atmosphere. Tropical forests produce most of the water they need themselves: they pump moisture which then rains back to them. Yet logging and warmer air – due to greenhouse gas emissions – reduce precipitation and hinder the moisture transport from one forest area to the other, affecting even remote areas. ‘Vicious circle’ “Then happens what we call the ‘cascading forest loss,'” said co-author Anja Rammig from the Technical University of Munich, who is currently working as a guest scientist at Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact…

A new University of Illinois study puts climate change predictions in terms that farmers are used to: field working days.
In the new study, they coupled those models with climate change scenarios to forecast field working days into the future.
The models suggest that the typical planting window for corn will no longer be workable; April and May will be far too wet to work the fields in most parts of Illinois.
But we’ve already seen the trend for early planting.
Those drier, hotter summers are likely to change farming practices too, particularly in southern Illinois.
If farmers bet on the early planting window and get hit with a frost or more March precipitation than expected, are they out of luck?
Or farmers could choose shorter-season cultivars, planting early and then harvesting before the drought, possibly sacrificing yield.
That’s good, but I think we’ve fallen behind in the cropping system management side.
Given the weather in Illinois this late winter/early spring, this work seems particularly timely.
Changes in field workability and drought risk from projected climate change drive spatially variable risks in Illinois cropping systems.

As East Africa struggles through a drought, scientists say climate change may be making the situation worse as a warming planet may be altering the weather patterns that bring rain to the region. In Somalia, the rains failed late last year. And the rains before that were meager. Livestock have died. Crops have failed. Famine threatens Somalia for the second time this decade. While drought is not uncommon in this dry region, it has gotten worse, Chris Funk, a climate scientist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, said. “What we’ve seen over, say, the last 35 years is that the rainfall during what’s called the long rains in East Africa has declined substantially,” Funk said. He added the explanation may lie in an atmospheric cycle that links East Africa and the Pacific Ocean. WATCH: Experts: Climate change may…

About 300 students at a Long Beach high school are exploring ways to make their community environmentally sustainable and preparing to share what they learned at a youth summit later this month. On their own, students ranging from freshmen to seniors at Cabrillo High School approached teachers a while back about researching ways to stretch water supplies in drought-prone Southern California and to combat climate change locally. “The project is basically student driven,” said Karen Shoop, an English teacher at Cabrillo High who has helped with the project. “Instead of it being a top-down from the district to the teachers to the students, ‘Hey, guess what, we’re assigning this,’ it was a, ‘We’re interested in doing this research. How do we make this happen?’” she…