Solar Grand Solar Minimum part deux

[TxGal]

Four South African Towns just set their Coldest Temperatures EVER (electroverse.net)

Extreme Weather GSM

GRAND SOLAR MINIMUM: FOUR SOUTH AFRICAN TOWNS JUST SET THEIR COLDEST TEMPERATURES EVER RECORDED
JULY 23, 2021 CAP ALLON

A severe freeze is currently gripping much of the Southern Hemisphere as low solar activity continues to weaken the jet streams.

A lackluster sun is decreasing the energy of the streams, reverting their usual straight ‘zonal’ flow to a wavy ‘meridional’ one, which, in the case of South Africa this week, is sending masses of frigid polar air unusually-far north.

This isn’t merely a theory (unlike AGW) — this is the reality we’re all living.

And just as easily as this wavy jet stream flow can divert polar cold to usually low latitudes, it can also ship tropical warmth to anomalously high latitudes (with the Pacific Northwest in the U.S. being the latest example).

This is the setup currently driving our planet’s weather. There is no mythical component here (aka CO2). The changes we’re witnessing are completely natural, and are caused by the sun–they are the direct result of historically low solar activity.

"New Little ICE Age Instead of Global Warming?" by Dr Theodor Landscheidt - Electroverse

Researchers who track the multimillennial plays of the cosmosroutinely land on the year 2030 as being the date of 'climate deterioration'.

electroverse.net

FOUR SOUTH AFRICAN TOWNS JUST SET THEIR COLDEST TEMPERATURES EVER RECORDED

To quote alarmist MSM speak, ‘this isn’t normal South Africa’.

According to the South African Weather Service (SAWS), several “significant” locations have just seen their thermometers plunge to the lowest levels in recorded history.
At least four locales suffered their coldest ever temperatures on Thursday (July 22).
Below I’ve compiled a list (data courtesy of SAWS and thesouthafrican.com):

Estcourt, KwaZulu-Natal: –4.8C (23.3F)
The town of Estcourt busted its all-time low temperature record on Thursday.
The old record had stood for almost 50 years (since the solar minimum of cycle 20), but Thursday’s reading pipped it by 0.2C.

Postmasburg, Northern Cape: -7.5C (18.5F)
The remote town Postmasburg –located about 170km to the east of Upington– is no stranger to chilly conditions, but when the mercury dipped to -7.5C (18.5F) Thursday night, a new lowest ever temperature was established, busting the old record by 0.3C.

Mossel Bay, Western Cape: 5.2C (41.3F)
Compared to others on this list, a positive reading of 5.2C (41.3F) may not seem all that; however, cold is relative, and yesterday’s low in Mossel Bay wiped 0.5C off of the town’s previous record holder — the 5.7C (42.2F) from 2008 (solar minimum of cycle 24–the weakest solar cycle and deepest solar minimum of the last 100+ years).

Lydenburg, Mpumalanga: -3.8C (25.1F)
And lastly, we have the small town of Lydenburg which comfortably usurped its previous all-time low of -3.2C (26.2F).

SA’s cold was widespread, too.

The four record-breakers listed above occurred in four different provinces.


[SAWS]

And as you’d expect, unusually-frosty lows were suffered elsewhere — this latest Antarctic blast was all-encompassing.
Johannesburg experienced its coldest day for almost 10 years.

Whereas other parts of Gauteng, the Eastern Cape, and Free State continue to battle persistent cold.

Antarctic Air Engulfs Southern Africa: Heavy Snow hits SA, as Nations Log their Coldest July Temperatures Ever Recorded

All-time lows are falling. Looking ahead, even harsher polar cold is due next week, with rare snow forecast for Table Mountain.

electroverse.net

A multitude of weather warnings remain in place across South Africa for Friday.

Snow has also started falling across the nation’s higher elevations:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1418111923263098880

View: https://twitter.com/ReggieReporter/status/1418111923263098880

Welcome, South Africa, to the next Grand Solar Minimum.

BONUS–and staying in the Southern Hemisphere…

“HISTORIC CROP LOSS” EXPECTED IN BRAZIL AS “FREAK FROSTS” CONTINUE

The week began with Brazil’s already-shattered corn market enduring yet another blast of polar cold — one which delivered frosts to corn-producing states and raising fresh concerns about export volumes and contract breaches.

On Monday, record cold swept the states of Paraná and Mato Grosso do Sul, with late planted corn areas worst affected.
The cold wave reached its peak mid-week, and brought benchmark-busting frosts to the region.

“It is going to be a historic crop loss,” Daniele Siqueira from local consultancy Agrural told Agricensus.

Brazil’s second corn crop was initially impacted by drought-conditions during the early development stage, but now round after round of heavy frosts are sweeping much of the South American continent, and have been since June.

As a result, Agrural has again lowered its estimates of Brazil’s corn crop output to 59.1 million mt in early-July –down a whopping 22 million mt from the initial crop potential– with the latest round of frost expected to peg these estimates back even further.

“Output losses will be extremely large across all producing states … Paraná and Mato Grosso do Sul will have no export capacity whatsoever,” said Siqueira.

Besides volume losses, grain quality is a major concern among farmers, traders and exporters.

“Exporters seem to be cornered, having to pay a quality premium to lift corn standards to fulfill agreements and to outbid the domestic market,” said Victor Martins from Hedgepoint Global Markets.

In many cases, producers will need to blend lower quality product with high quality corn to meet export standards.
Contract breaches are another major concern.

“With this week’s frosts, odds are increasing of even more contracts being breached,” added Martins.

“This is affecting both exports and domestic deliveries … many producers had committed up to 80% of their crop in forward sales but are harvesting 30-50% less than expected and cannot purchase volumes from other producers to honor contracts.”

The lack of good quality products to meet contract standards increases contract breach risks even further.

According to Martins, the situation is so dramatic that “there will not be any corn left in the market in September and the country will need to import much more from Argentina.”

However, there is a big problem with with that plan. Argentina, along Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia, are all suffering their own growing woes: as is the case in SA, these Antarctic blasts are all-encompassing, and harvest-wrecking frosts are routinely gripping growing regions ACROSS the South American continent:

South American Crops Headed for Catastrophe as Antarctic Blasts Persist

As it stands, 88% of Brazil's corn is already in "poor or average condition" ... with a further "significant reduction expected".

electroverse.net

Historic Snowfall Hits Argentina - Electroverse

Previous reports of snow in the city of Córdoba occurred in 2007, 1975, 1955, 1920, 1918, & 1912 (all during solar minimums).

electroverse.net

The Tropics just logged its Second-Coldest Temperature in History, as ALL-TIME Record Cold sweeps South America - Electroverse

MSM refuses to report the record negative anomalies sweeping the planet as it continues to push its AGW propaganda on an ill-informed public.

electroverse.net

With crops failing around the world –including across the U.S.— any hopes of South America ‘picking up the slack’ have long-gone out the window. This is a serious situation. Watch for skyrocketing supermarket food prices before the end of the year as historically low solar activity continues to play havoc with our planet’s weather patterns.

My advice, as always — learn to grow your own.

The MSM are not your friends in all this.

Their job isn’t to inform you, and they will not hold your hand and lead you through what’s coming.

Case in point, just look at the obfuscating headline they attach to the latest FOA global food price index:



The COLD TIMES are returning, the mid-latitudes are REFREEZING, in line with the great conjunction, historically low solar activity, cloud-nucleating Cosmic Rays, and a meridional jet stream flow (among other forcings).

Both NOAA and NASA appear to agree, if you read between the lines, with NOAA saying we’re entering a ‘full-blown’ Grand Solar Minimum in the late-2020s, and NASA seeing this upcoming solar cycle (25) as “the weakest of the past 200 years”, with the agency correlating previous solar shutdowns to prolonged periods of global cooling here.

Furthermore, we can’t ignore the slew of new scientific papers stating the immense impact The Beaufort Gyre could have on the Gulf Stream, and therefore the climate overall.





Prepare accordingly— learn the facts, relocate if need be, and grow your

 

[TxGal]

I had an OMG moment reading this article:

"Snowstorm in Africa!" -- SA Smashes 19 All-Time Low Temperature Records (electroverse.net)

Extreme Weather GSM

“SNOWSTORM IN AFRICA!” — SOUTH AFRICA SMASHES *AN ADDITIONAL* 19 ALL-TIME LOW TEMPERATURE RECORDS OVER THE PAST 24 HOURS
JULY 24, 2021 CAP ALLON

Following on from the record-smashing cold that infected Southern Africa on Thursday, the SA Weather Service (SAWS) has confirmed that a further 19 low temperature records were broken in the past 24 hours alone.

The service had warned that the country to brace for the coldest night of the year; however, it turned out to be the coldest night in recorded history for many locales, with records set 20, 40 and even 60+ years ago falling by the wayside.

Below I’ve compiled a few of the fallen records:

Kroonstad logged a bone-chilling -8C (17.6F), toppling the city’s previous record of -7.7C (18.1F) set in 1990.

Warden’s all-time low from 1989 was beaten by 0.4C, and now stands at -6.7C (19.9F).

In Kimberly, a historic -9.9C (14.2F) was recorded.

Warmbad Towoomba’s –5.6C (21.9F) busted the previous low of -5.5C (22.1F) from 1964 (solar minimum of cycle 19).

While in Johannesburg, a reading of -7C (19.4F) smashed the old record of -6.3C (20.7F) set in 1995 (solar minimum of cycle 23).

You can see the full list from SAWS below:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1418555972155547648

View: https://twitter.com/SAWeatherServic/status/1418555972155547648

Towns in the Eastern Cape also experienced their coldest day in decades yesterday.

Grahamstown, for example, saw a daily maximum of just 6.8C (44.2F) — also a new all-time benchmark.


Icicles formed in Underberg as South Africa experienced its coldest temperatures in recorded history [Madie Botha]

Heavy snow accompanied the record cold.

In the Western Cape region, residents queued up at the Matroosberg Nature Reserve –located about two hours west of Cape Town– to catch a glimpse of the snowcapped mountain peaks:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1418492664815751172

View: https://twitter.com/dev_za/status/1418492664815751172

“Snowstorm in Africa!” reads the below tweet from @sapeople, during the “#ColdestDayEver!”.

The video was shot on Uniondale road. The driver of the vehicle is heard calling the conditions “absolutely bizarre”. And he continues, saying: “I have never had to drive through a snowstorm in Africa before.”

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1418633511876145154

View: https://twitter.com/sapeople/status/1418633511876145154
Run time is 0:20

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1418480794809610240

View: https://twitter.com/ILaesecke/status/1418480794809610240
Run time is 0:23

These are truly unprecedented conditions for this part of the world.

And anthropogenic global warming (i.e. carbon dioxide emissions) has zip-all to do with it; no, the mechanism behind these polar outbreaks (and indeed the recent punishing heatwave in the Pacific Northwest) is the historically low solar activity we’re receiving–namely its impact on the jet streams:

RECAP: The Changing Jet Stream and Global Cooling - Electroverse

This forcing explains why northern latitudes have been experiencing heat while the lower-latitudes have been dealing with record cold.

electroverse.net

Enjoy your weekend.

I’m off out to plant a second corn crop, intended to feed my chickens and goats.

Here’s hoping it doesn’t suffer the same fate as that grown in South America:

South American Crops Headed for Catastrophe as Antarctic Blasts Persist

As it stands, 88% of Brazil's corn is already in "poor or average condition" ... with a further "significant reduction expected".

electroverse.net

The COLD TIMES are returning, the mid-latitudes are REFREEZING, in line with the great conjunction, historically low solar activity, cloud-nucleating Cosmic Rays, and a meridional jet stream flow (among other forcings).

Both NOAA and NASA appear to agree, if you read between the lines, with NOAA saying we’re entering a ‘full-blown’ Grand Solar Minimum in the late-2020s, and NASA seeing this upcoming solar cycle (25) as “the weakest of the past 200 years”, with the agency correlating previous solar shutdowns to prolonged periods of global cooling here.

Furthermore, we can’t ignore the slew of new scientific papers stating the immense impact The Beaufort Gyre could have on the Gulf Stream, and therefore the climate overall.





Prepare accordingly— learn the facts, relocate if need be, and grow your own.

 

[Digger]

We were watching the Farm Market Report yesterday. They said the Dakotas have lost 60% of the small grain harvest to drought. Those grains will be bailed for hay, but contain little food value. Corn is a little better because of a few rains. But the corn, including tassels, is only 5 feet tall in the best fields.

 

[northern watch]

Heat, Floods, Fires: Jet Stream Is Key Link in Climate Disasters

Deadly weather as far apart as China, Germany and the U.S. reveal the devastating impact of a swinging jet stream.

By Laura Millan Lombrana,
Hayley Warren and Brian K Sullivan
Bloomberg
July 22, 2021, 3:31 AM PDT

Devastating floods destroyed towns in Germany and Belgium. A ruthless heat wave broiled the Western U.S. and Canada. Heavy rains paralyzed a Chinese industrial hub home to 10 million people. These recent weather phenomena are being intensified by the changing climate.

But the link between these far-flung extremes goes beyond warming global temperatures. All of these events are touched by jet streams, strong and narrow bands of westerly winds blowing above the Earth’s surface. The currents are generated when cold air from the poles clashes against hot air from the tropics, creating storms and other phenomena such as rain and drought.

“Jet streams are the weather—they create it and they steer it,” said Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center. “Sometimes the jet stream takes on a very convoluted pattern. When we see it taking big swings north and big dips southward we know we’re going to see some unusual weather conditions.”



Meteorologists worry whenever those swings and dips form omega-shaped curves that look like waves. When that happens, warm air travels further north and cold air penetrates further south. The result is a succession of unusually hot and cold weather systems along the same latitude. Under these conditions, winds often weaken and dangerous weather can remain stuck in the same place for days or weeks at a time—rather than just a few hours or a day—leading to prolonged rains and heat waves.

“It’s just like when waves in the ocean get to a beach, overturn and break,” said Tess Parker, a research fellow at the ARC Centre for Excellence for Climate Extremes at Monash University in Melbourne. “That can happen in the atmosphere as well, and if that happens you tend to catch a high- or low-pressure system that will become stationary.”

That’s what sunk parts of Germany into floods earlier this month, as a low pressure system became pinned above the country’s western region. Heavy rains soaked the terrain for the first two days, followed by a few hours of even more intense precipitation that caused rivers to overflow. Water and mudslides overran houses and roads, killing more than 170 people and leaving hundreds missing. Heavy rains also swamped parts of Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands.



“Of course the events in Germany had to do with the position of the jet stream,” said Johannes Quaas, a meteorologist and a professor at Leipzig University. At the same time, he said, there’s evidence that the atmosphere can hold 7% more moisture for every degree of Earth’s warming. Global average temperatures are already about 1.2º Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

“We were immensely shocked,” said Stefan Heydt, a spokesperson for the German armed forces in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, which suffered severe damage in the recent floods. His home state, Rhineland-Palatinate, was also badly affected. Heydt said a cousin still lives there and now has to drive 60 kilometers for electricity.

“Whole existences were destroyed from one moment to the next,” Heydt said.

The economic fallout from the floods in Europe is still unfolding, and it’s already clear that a wide range of sectors will feel the blow. Germany halted operations at an open-cast lignite mine run by RWE AG, curbing output at the connected Weisweiler power station. Most of the company’s hydroelectric dams in the west of the country and one power station in the Netherlands also stopped operating.

When movements in the jet stream, which was first documented by U.S. bombers flying to missions to Japan in World War II, coincide with climate-driven extremes—heat, drought, intense rainfall—the consequences can be catastrophic.

That may be what happened in China this week. A record rainstorm brought a year’s worth of precipitation in three days to Zhengzhou, the world’s biggest manufacturing base for iPhones and a major hub in central China for food production. At least 33 people died and as many as 380,000 had to be evacuated.

Scientists at the China Meteorological Administration attributed the storm to strong and sustained high-pressure blocks that, along with Typhoon In-fa approaching from the southeast, pushed water vapor in from the sea. That dense air hit the mountains surrounding Henan, the province where Zhengzhou lies, converged and then shot upwards, where it cooled to form the destructive rains.

The situation in the atmosphere may have been brought on by jet stream weakening, “but it will require additional analysis to confirm,'' said Michael Mann, an atmospheric science professor at Pennsylvania State University. “What is certainly true is that a slower summer jet stream, which is a robust prediction of a warming climate, allows these systems to persist in the same location for longer periods of time, contributing to many of these record rainfall totals we’re seeing in Europe and Eurasia,'' he said.

The question for scientists is to what extent climate change affected those disturbances in the jet stream. It takes time to do that kind of analysis. A rapid attribution study of the Europe floods has already begun, led by the German weather service, with results expected by mid-August.

The heat waves that struck western U.S. and Canada in late June were so unprecedented that researchers were able to conclude by early July that climate change had made them at least 150 times more likely. A high-pressure system, typically linked to hot and dry weather, was made worse by the fact that the land below it was extremely dry.

Heat Dome



Usually moisture on the ground absorbs much of the sun's heat and cools the air when it evaporates. But the extreme drought over the northwestern part of North America meant temperatures could only go up, building a bubble of warm air in the atmosphere. Since then, a second heat wave has hit the region, with wildfires now burning across the U.S. West and parts of Canada.

The extreme heat has helped propel natural gas futures and power prices as millions of people crank up air conditioners. Droughts are forcing almond growers to pull out trees in California. On the High Plains of North America, grasshoppers are thriving and chomping on already diminished fields of grass and wheat. With food inflation soaring amid disruptions from the Covid-19 outbreak, the weather could keep prices for crops and meat elevated in the months ahead.



Meanwhile western and central Russia were cold, even as heat and wildfires hit eastern Siberia. And as Germany and Belgium experienced heavy rains, high temperatures prompted the U.K. Met Office to issue its first-ever extreme heat warning. “The jet is sneaking around these weather systems that come one after another, linking weather in different regions,” said Tim Woollings, a professor of physical climate science at the University of Oxford.

Most scientists agree that climate change is making events driven by the jet stream worse, but there’s debate over how much global warming is directly impacting the currents. Researchers have already connected the jet stream to several natural disasters over the last two years.

Scientists have determined, for example, that a high-pressure system stuck over eastern Siberia caused heat that would have been almost impossible without climate change. In Australia, a two-year drought coupled with a high-pressure system over the state of New South Wales led to multi-decade temperature records in 2020 and fueled the country’s worst-ever fire season.



Francis, from the Woodwell Climate Research Center, studies how warming in the Arctic is influencing weather elsewhere on the planet. She thinks one consequence is a weakening of the jet stream. As the Arctic warms faster than areas farther south, the temperature difference gets smaller, weakening the winds, making its path curvier and extreme events over one area more persistent.

“We’re somewhere between hypothesis and theory at this point,” Francis said. “There’s a lot of supporting evidence, because it’s such a complicated atmosphere, it’s really hard to determine very clearly what’s making any one weather event more extreme.”

Other researchers don’t draw such a clear connection, but see signs of other climate-driven changes. There’s good evidence that the jet streams are getting closer to the poles, according to Woollings. That shift is displacing storms further to the north in the Northern hemisphere and to the south in the Southern hemisphere, and helps explain the multi-year drought that southern Australia and central Chile are currently experiencing.

Today, researchers are focusing their efforts on predicting swings in the jet stream. It’s a complex task, and much of the research has focused on the Northern Hemisphere. Impacts in the south, particularly in South America and the southern tip of Africa, are less well understood because there’s less research and raw data from that part of the world.

Some extreme weather may have nothing to do with the jet stream at all. Temperatures in Brazil’s coffee-growing regions fell below 0°C for hours on Tuesday, damaging bean crops and orange groves. The frost is dealing growers a second blow after a severe drought driven by La Nina weather patterns left fields parched and depleted water reservoirs needed for irrigation.

Still, understanding the jet stream is becoming more pressing as warming temperatures drive more frequent extreme weather events. “We need to think more about the way weather systems will change with the changing climate, rather than just how the climate will change,” said Parker from Monash University. “This division between climate and the weather is, to a large extent, an artificial one.”

— With assistance by Vanessa Dezem, Josyana Joshua, Michael Hirtzer, Josefine Fokuhl, Jeremy Diamond, Isis Almeida, Karoline Kan, Alfred Cang, Akshat Rathi, and Joe Ryan



How Climate Change Impacts the Jet Stream and Your Weather - Bloomberg

 

[northern watch]

Earthweek.pdf

 

[northern watch]

 

[northern watch]

 

[northern watch]

 

[Publius]

Odd how the mid section of the country is getting a heat wave and darth of rain and here in West Virginia we are getting summer heat in the upper 70s and 80s but we are also getting some rather cool night time temps like two nights ago we had an over night low of 58F. On top of that we are getting regular rain once or twice a week and local crops like corn is doing very well. All this is subject to change and we have the whole month of August yet to come.

 

[TxGal]

Still nothing new today from the usual GSM websites. I'll check again in the morning.

 

[TxGal]

Update from Ice Age Now:

Sunday Update
July 25, 2021 by Dan Hammer

Just wanted to post an update before I went to bed. I spent the weekend moving Robert’s sites over to my server. There were a few frustrations, but all seems well currently. If you experience any issues out of the ordinary, please let me know. I am experimenting with a higher performance version of the software that powers this site. There may be a few compatibility issues. I will be working on adding more to the site during the week. I will post updates as changes are made. Once everything is done, I will delete all these update posts, so they aren’t clogging/dominating the front page.

More soon

 

[TxGal]

Heavy Snows and Freezing Lows Sweep Australia, + Step-up your Preparedness (electroverse.net)

Articles Extreme Weather GSM

HEAVY SNOWS AND FREEZING LOWS SWEEP AUSTRALIA, + STEP-UP YOUR PREPAREDNESS
JULY 26, 2021 CAP ALLON

Heavy snowfall was recorded across the higher elevations of Australia over the weekend as some of the coldest temperatures ever recorded in the country tore through southeastern states.

Hotham Alpine Resort in Victoria posted photos and videos showing a healthy dumping of global warming goodness on Sunday.

“Mother Nature has been hard at work bringing our base to 133cm (4.4ft),” the resort wrote in the post:

Watch this reel by hothamalpineresort on Instagram
Run time is unknown (I don't do instagram)

http://instagr.am/p/CRvYtNhDZMa/ View: https://www.instagram.com/p/CRvYtNhDZMa/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link


Heavy snow struck the island state of Tasmania, too:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1419463132246724615

View: https://twitter.com/luketscharke/status/1419463132246724615


Flakes were even noted in South Australia — “a very unusual occurrence,” according to @burme5e on Twitter.

Snow has been falling steadily across the Aussie mountains for the past week, with the heaviest flurries still yet to come.

As reported by j2ski.com, heavy snow is forecast to fall in Australia over the next 48-72 hours across at least 9 Ski Resorts, including in Falls Creek, Hotham, Mount Buller, Perisher and Thredbo, with the worst expected Wednesday night (July 28).
The latest GFS runs (shown below) appears to back this forecast up.

It sees well-over a meter (3.3+ft) accumulating across the southeast by early August:


GFS Total Snowfall (cm) July 26-Aug 5 [tropicaltidbits.com].

Looking even further ahead, after a brief warm-up for central and northern regions, another round of continent-spanning cold is set to engulf Australia as the calendar flips to August:


GFS 2m Temperature Anomalies for Aug 3 [tropicaltidbits.com].

Rug-up Aussies…

STEP-UP YOUR PREPAREDNESS

With every new crop report, the breadbaskets of the world –from South America, to China, and from Russia to the United States— are lowering production estimates, and many are now warning of “imminent” and “catastrophic” failures.

That ‘prepping window’ appears to be closing, fast — food shortages are now being felt across the majority of nations.

Even the MSM is telling us this.

From poultry stocks, to fresh veg; from beef to corn — the global food supply is creaking, and emergency stocks are waning.

COVID can be blamed, in part, for some of the supply chain issues we’re seeing (a lack of workers); however, the crux of the problem stems from lower production numbers as the historically low solar activity we’ve been experiencing in recent years (and the ‘wavy’ jet stream flow such activity delivers) continues to play ‘weather havoc’ across our planet’s growing regions.

Without meaning to sound too alarmist here, I see food rationing on the horizon.

This is just my opinion, of course, and feel free to ‘argue’ with me in the comments below if you see a different play; but I see no alternative — it is an inevitability.

Shortages first lead to skyrocketing prices.

Then comes rationing.

And finally are empty shelves, and closed supermarkets.

Then what do you do…?

I implore you to grow your own — now.

Prepare yourself and your loved ones for “the Great Reset”.

Brace for the ‘controlled demolition’ of our food systems, and therefore our society overall.

The faceless ‘they’ appear to be letting this happen.

Make connections with growers in your region, with likeminded folks, and with homesteaders.

And, practicing what I preach, I’m headed out to a local market as soon as I hit publish on this article.

Here in rural Portugal, a large portion of the population still grow their own food, and raise their own livestock — I’m tapping into that today, and plan to purchase a ‘backup’ chicken flock in case disease (or an Egyptian Mongoose) tears through my main one.

The system is about to fail.

The empire is crumbling.

Don’t go down with it…

Grand Solar Minimums and the Fall of Empires: A Great Crash Looms - Electroverse

"It's a 60 to 90% [crash] in stocks ... it's going to hurt more than anybody thinks it ever could." -- Harry Dent

electroverse.net

The COLD TIMES are returning, the mid-latitudes are REFREEZING, in line with the great conjunction, historically low solar activity, cloud-nucleating Cosmic Rays, and a meridional jet stream flow (among other forcings).

Both NOAA and NASA appear to agree, if you read between the lines, with NOAA saying we’re entering a ‘full-blown’ Grand Solar Minimum in the late-2020s, and NASA seeing this upcoming solar cycle (25) as “the weakest of the past 200 years”, with the agency correlating previous solar shutdowns to prolonged periods of global cooling here.

Furthermore, we can’t ignore the slew of new scientific papers stating the immense impact The Beaufort Gyre could have on the Gulf Stream, and therefore the climate overall.





Prepare accordingly— learn the facts, relocate if need be, and grow your own.

 

[northern watch]

Dry and disorderly
The countries of the Middle East and north Africa are parched
Governments are making things worse

The Economist
July 24th 2021

In the neighbourhood of Algiers where the presidential palace and foreign embassies are located, some think the water pressure has increased of late. But don’t tell those living in the suburbs of Algeria’s capital, where the taps have been dry for days, as temperatures and tempers rise. Protesters have blocked main roads and railways. “If the water stops flowing, so will everything else,” says a local journalist, conveying the protesters’ mindset.

Algeria is not alone. In the past few months protests over water shortages have erupted in Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Yemen. Two protesters were shot dead in Iran on July 16th. And a lack of water is contributing to unrest elsewhere in the Middle East and north Africa.

Drought has been a feature of the region since biblical times. But now climate change is causing longer dry seasons, as well as hotter heatwaves and record-setting temperature spikes. Rainfall is expected to decline, precipitously in some places, leaving farmers to dig more wells, draining aquifers and causing potentially irreversible environmental damage. For most of the region the trend is towards a drier, hotter, more miserable future.

Some governments are dealing with the problem. Israel and the Gulf states rely on desalination plants, which can run on solar power and produce a cubic metre of freshwater (enough for 3,000 small water bottles) for as little as 50 cents. But many governments are making things worse. Protesters blame mismanagement and corruption for much of the misery. “The water sector is disintegrating,” says Hassan al-Janabi, a former water minister in Iraq. “There will be an explosion.”

Agriculture accounts for the overwhelming share of freshwater taken from ground or surface water sources globally (about 70%), says the World Bank. The proportion is even higher in the Middle East and north Africa (about 80%). Crops depend entirely on irrigation in the arid region and officials say that supporting agriculture stems rural migration and reduces the need to use hard currency for food imports. So Egypt, for example, allows its farmers to take water from the Nile for nothing but the cost of pumping it.

Such subsidies have long encouraged farmers in the region to waste water on a massive scale. Still, leaders like to use cheap water as a way to buy support or further their own interests. The regime in Jordan, one of the world’s driest countries, uses it to mollify farmers from powerful tribes in the Jordan valley. In Iran the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps rerouted a river to cool its steel mills in Isfahan. A former president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, is even said to have built a dam to water his pistachio crop.

The protests in Iran have occurred in Khuzestan, home to most of the country’s Arabs. Much of Iran’s fresh water used to flow through the province. Old-timers remember when ships bound for America sailed up the Karun river. But dozens of dams have dried up Khuzestan’s rivers and marshes. Angry residents accuse the clerical regime of diverting water to Persian cities and seeking to drive Arabs off the land in order to drill for more oil. “No to forced migration,” chant protesters.

Those in Algeria often blame corruption for their water woes. The government has spent more than $50bn on water projects over the past two decades, but much of it has evaporated. One former minister of water resources has been sentenced to jail for pilfering funds and in recent weeks two more have been arrested. Ten of the 11 desalination plants built by a state subsidiary are in disrepair. The story is much the same in Iraq, where the construction of a large desalination plant has been delayed for years as the country’s ruling factions bicker over who gets the contract.

War has made it hard for some countries to maintain water infrastructure. And water is sometimes used as a weapon. The jihadists of Islamic State tried to dam the Euphrates in order to starve their opponents in Iraq. Turkish-backed rebels in northern Syria have stopped operating a water plant that supplies the bread basket of their rivals, the Kurds. A report by the University of Sana’a estimated that 70% of the rural skirmishes in Yemen, before the civil war, began as disputes over water.

Water could even become the main cause of future conflicts. Egypt and Sudan are feuding with Ethiopia over its filling of a giant dam on the Nile. “All options are open,” says Egypt’s president, Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, menacingly. Turkey and Iran are also building dams that will deplete the water flowing to Arab countries. Israel’s blockade of Gaza ensures that the territory does not have the means to produce enough potable water.

Other observers, though, are more sanguine. It’s cheaper to desalinate water than to fight over it, says Eran Feitelson of Israel’s Hebrew University. Still, unrest related to water could have global consequences. Yemenis, for example, are already abandoning parched villages. Without better sharing, management and investment, millions of the region’s residents risk becoming climate refugees. ■

The countries of the Middle East and north Africa are parched | The Economist Frequently asked questions

 

[TxGal]

A Catalog of Crop Failures - Electroverse

Articles Crop Loss Extreme Weather GSM

A CATALOG OF CROP FAILURES
JULY 27, 2021 CAP ALLON

Extreme weather is slamming crops across the globe, bringing with it the threat of further food inflation at a time when costs are already hovering near the highest in a decade and when hunger is on the rise…

Bloomberg provides the below ‘Emerging Market Food Vulnerability Scorecard’ graphic:



No other industry is more at the mercy of sun, rain, heat and cold than agriculture, where changes in the weather can upend a farmer’s fortunes overnight.

It’s also an industry that’s become extremely globalized and concentrated, creating a precarious situation where an extreme weather event in one place is bound to have ripples everywhere.

This year though, as the Grand Solar Minimum fully kicks into gear, extreme weather events are hitting multiple regions simultaneously — from ravaging frosts in South America, to a ‘year without a spring’ in Europe, to historic flooding across China; one result of which has been the Food Price Index from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization rising 34% year on year.

Nothing good comes from large-scale shortages, only struggles, famines, and wars…

People need to end their dependence on this failing system.

Food rationing is already being proposed (even across developed western nations, such as the UK).

Growing your own is the best insurance policy.
Start today.


BRAZIL’S SECOND CORN CROP RATED A “DISASTER”

Brazil’s second-corn crop was hit hard by frost during the final days of June and into of July.

Dr. Michael Cordonnier, President of Soybean and Corn Advisor Inc., said Brazil hadn’t been that cold in decades, as the coldest conditions on record swept some growing regions.

“Depending on where you’re at, it either really hurt the corn bad or killed it completely,” continued Dr. Cordonnier.

“In fact, I was just watching some farm shows from Brazil on TV, and they showed cornfields in northern Parana, and they were completely brown like they’re ready for harvest, but it was because they were killed by frost.

“And the crop was about five feet tall, short and stunted, because they had a drought, and the ears were short and stubby, and the kernels were like milk stage, or early dough stage.”

He says the second-corn crop got planted later than it ever had before, was hurt by a historic drought in south-central Brazil, and by an early frost, including another round of frost this week.

Dr. Cordonnier said this would be comparable to a mid-summer frost for U.S. corn farmers.

“It’s just devastating for the crop. I have the crop now at 88 million tons. My numbers are going to go lower next week, for sure, because of the most recent frost.”

Brazil has gone from a corn exporter to importing a lot of corn, said Cordonnier.

“They’ve imported about a million tons of corn, and they are importing a lot more, saying we’re gonna be out of corn. There just won’t be any corn for the livestock industry.”

Brazil usually picks up the slack if U.S. crops struggle; this year though, the U.S. has no fallback.


COFFEE PRICES SURGE

Staying in Brazil, the record cold is also threatening the nation’s coffee production.

Arabica coffee prices rose 10% more on Monday, after jumping nearly 20% last week, to their highest in nearly seven years:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1419617126885769216

View: https://twitter.com/jsblokland/status/1419617126885769216

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1419422953268260873

View: https://twitter.com/Theimmigrant84/status/1419422953268260873

Coffee prices ‘on the ground’ in Brazil have jumped from 400 reais ($77.30) per 60-kg bag in December to around 800 reais this month, but there are estimates for further increases ahead to around 1.000 reais, and beyond.

The historic freezes have destroyed field upon field along the main Brazilian coffee belt.

Coffee trees are extremely sensitive to frost, which can cause severe damage and even kill trees completely.

If a farm needs to replant trees, it would take around three years to get production back up and running.

“This marks the first time since 1994 that the country has experienced such a weather event,” coffee trader I & M Smith said in a market update, referring to the record frosts on July 20 (1994 was during the descent into solar minimum of cycle 22).

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1419821300617523204

View: https://twitter.com/SpillingTheBean/status/1419821300617523204

Looking ahead, another mass of polar air is forecast to move up and over the same areas later this week — the third strong cold front to hit South American crops in the past month-or so.


GFS 2m Temperature Anomalies (C) July 28 – 31 [tropicaltidbits.com].

This could be the final nail in the coffin for the continent’s corn, coffee and citrus crops.

It gives no opportunity (time) for recovery.
“There’s no other country in the world that has that kind of influence on the world market conditions — what happens in Brazil affects everyone,” said Michael Sheridan, director of sourcing and shared value at Intelligentsia Coffee, a Chicago-based roaster and retailer.


FRENCH WHEAT CROP RATINGS FALL FURTHER

Many are quick to forget, but Europe went through something of a ‘year without a spring‘ in 2021; the impacts from which are now being felt across the continent’s growing regions.

The historically low solar activity earth has been receiving prolonged winter this year, exactly as forecast by a Grand Solar Minimum.

Our cooling planet is delaying planting and lowering yields — it is making life all-round miserable for growers; but more than that, it is disrupting global food supplies, which is a worry for all of us.

The condition of French soft wheat worsened again last week, while wet weather prevented any acceleration of the harvest, keeping it well behind the same stage of last season, farm office FranceAgriMer has said.

France, the European Union’s largest grain grower, was expecting to register a rebound in wheat production following a woeful 2020 crop; however, a frosty start to summer combined with heavy rainfall has raised concern about late losses to yields and a deterioration in grain quality (which determines wheat’s suitability for milling).

Consultancy Strategie Grains cut its estimate for France’s 2021 soft wheat harvest last week after a crop tour showed lower than expected yields in the northeastern grain basket. It said the overall quality of the harvest was also disappointing, and expected the wheat to show poor milling criteria this year, reports nasdaq.com.

This could be because of a cold snap earlier in the season, said Strategie Grains crop analyst Vincent Braak.


‘THE SKY HAS FALLEN’: CHINESE FARMERS SEE LIVELIHOODS WASHED AWAY BY FLOODS

This was the headline run by channelnewsasia.com.

Henan province, famous for agriculture, and pork production in particular, was struck by heavy rains last week that sparked the worst flash flooding in centuries.

“In an instant, we now have no way of surviving. We have no other skills. We have no more money to raise pigs again,” one small-time Henan pig farmer told Reuters on Sunday. “This is as if the sky has fallen.”

Across Henan, rains have deluged 1,678 larger scale farms, too, killing more than a million animals in total.

Cloud cover is increasing across the planet as the Sun’s magnetic field continues to weaken.

This weakening decreases the outward pressure of the solar wind and allows more cosmic rays to penetrate Earth’s atmosphere.

Very briefly, Galactic Cosmic Rays are a mixture of high-energy photons and sub-atomic particles accelerated toward Earth by supernova explosions and other violent events in the cosmos. Solar Cosmic Rays are the same, though their source is the sun.

Both Galactic and Solar Cosmic rays hitting Earth’s atmosphere create aerosols which in turn seed clouds (Svensmark et al) — this makes them a key component in our weather and climate.

Cosmic rays increase during times of low solar activity:



Many scientists, across a multitude of disciplines, have concluded that clouds play the most crucial role in Earth’s climate.

These include Kauppinen & Malmi, Ueno et al, and Nikolov, to name just three.

Also, that quote from Dr. Roy Spencer again springs to mind:

“Clouds are the Earth’s sunshade, and if cloud cover changes for any reason, you have global warming — or global cooling.”
But more clouds bring more than just cooling, of course, localized precipitation also increases.


PRICES FOR YOUNG CATTLE ARE SOARING, SIGNALING EXPENSIVE BEEF

The young cattle market is signaling that pricey beef could be here to stay, reports bloomberg.com.

Feeder cattle are animals that have not yet been fattened on corn for slaughter in feedlots — futures for September delivery of these rose as high as the 3-cent exchange limit to $1.65525 a pound in Chicago, the highest since early 2016, with a climb higher-still a guarantee.



Harsh weather and high feed prices have helped the trend, with abnormal cold killing calves earlier this year, continues the bloomberg.com article. The recent drought and heatwave in the west have also forced cattlemen to send animals to slaughter earlier than usual.

The upshot is higher beef prices for consumers, who have already seen increases on burgers and steaks in the past year after supply chains chaos caused by COVID.


SUPPLY-CHAIN WOES COME TO SCHOOL CAFETERIAS

As recently reported by the WSJ, ahead of fall reopening, school districts are shrinking menu options as they face shortages of juice boxes, canned fruit, chicken tenders, and more…

Schools are struggling to secure food for student breakfasts and lunches ahead of classrooms’ planned reopening in the fall.

Some cafeterias are cutting menu choices as food suppliers face labor shortages and transportation challenges that are adding costs and limiting supplies, says he MSM outlet which fails to cite lower production numbers as a cause (intentionally or otherwise).

Food distributors and school officials say they expect to run low on everything from canned fruit to chicken.


US SUPERMARKETS STOCKPILE UP TO 25% MORE SUPPLIES AS INFLATION IS PROJECTED TO WORSEN.

Another key ingredient in all this is inflation.

Supermarkets have begun stockpiling food as inflation is projected to rise to its highest level in 13 years, and worsen.

Retailers are now buying up to 25 percent more supplies than usual, ahead of the expected rise.

From May 2020 to May 2021, the price of bacon climbed 14% higher, while milk and oranges were up 8%, affecting the staple foods of many households.

Here’s a simple graphic provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics:



The recent rise in prices, from farm to store, and the need for stockpiles are due to several factors.

Supply chain problems are pushing up prices, while labor shortages are putting wage pressure on the food sector.

Transportation costs are also on the rise, with gas prices in May up 56% from a year ago.

Also, recent stimulus injections/packages are also, obviously, going to impact inflation.

And then you have the physical food production failures that I’ve documented above–which is by no means a comprehensive list btw, but one that still shows how extreme weather seems to be pounding EVERY key growing region of the globe.

This is a unique development, yet it was one fully expected by those who study the sun.

The historically low solar activity we’ve been receiving over the past 10-or-so years is impacting the jets streams, and the planet overall is cooling: the COLD TIMES are returning, the mid-latitudes are REFREEZING, in line with the great conjunction, historically low solar activity, cloud-nucleating Cosmic Rays, and a meridional jet stream flow (among other forcings).

Both NOAA and NASA appear to agree, if you read between the lines, with NOAA saying we’re entering a ‘full-blown’ Grand Solar Minimum in the late-2020s, and NASA seeing this upcoming solar cycle (25) as “the weakest of the past 200 years”, with the agency correlating previous solar shutdowns to prolonged periods of global cooling here.

Furthermore, we can’t ignore the slew of new scientific papers stating the immense impact The Beaufort Gyre could have on the Gulf Stream, and therefore the climate overall.





Prepare accordingly— learn the facts, relocate if need be, and grow your own.

 

[TxGal]

'The sky has fallen': Chinese farmers see livelihoods washed away by floods - Over a million animals killed -- Earth Changes -- Sott.net

'The sky has fallen': Chinese farmers see livelihoods washed away by floods - Over a million animals killed

Emily Chow
Reuters
Mon, 26 Jul 2021 10:13 UTC


© REUTERS/Aly Song
Pig carcasses tied to trees are seen in floodwaters next to a farmland following heavy rainfall in Wangfan village of Xinxiang, Henan province, China July 25, 2021.

Chinese farmer Cheng wades through knee-deep water, pulling dead pigs behind him one-by-one by a rope tied around their ankles as he lines up the bloated carcasses for disposal. More than 100 of Cheng's pigs drowned in floods that paralyzed China's central Henan province last week, and the outlook for those left alive is bleak.

"I'm waiting for the water levels to go down to see what to do with the remaining pigs," said the 47-year-old farmer from Wangfan village, about 90 kilometers (55 miles) north of provincial capital Zhengzhou.

"They've been in the water for a few days now and can't eat at all. I don't think even one pig will be left."

Cheng's farm is one of thousands in Henan, famous for agriculture, and pork production in particular. The province was struck by heavy rains last week that sparked the worst flash flooding in centuries, catching many by surprise.

"In an instant, we now have no way of surviving. We have no other skills. We have no more money to raise pigs again," Cheng, who has raised pigs all his life, told Reuters at his farm on Sunday.

"This is as if the sky has fallen."

View: https://youtu.be/_4HwRne-0EY
Run time is 1:51

Across the village, where most of the 3,000 other residents also raise pigs or chickens or grow grain, people were clearing debris left by the receding floodwaters.

Some carted out wheelbarrows and crates of lifeless chickens. Dead pigs lay bloated in the water, tied to trees to stop them floating away. Parts of the village smelled strongly of mud and rotting carcasses.

At least 200,000 chickens and up to 6,000 pigs were lost in the flood, half of the village's herd, farmers told Reuters. Across Henan, rains have deluged 1,678 larger scale farms, killing more than a million animals.

Though Chinese pig production has become increasingly intensive in recent years, millions of small farmers still play a major role in producing the country's favorite meat.

Even after a devastating epidemic of the deadly pig disease African swine fever swept the country during 2018 and 2019, many farmers returned to pig raising and expanded their herds to capitalize on high prices.

Cheng said he's facing losses of about 30,000 yuan ($4,627.13), and worries he won't receive any government compensation.

Livelihoods aside, the flooding also has many worried about fresh disease outbreaks.

Last summer, heavy rain and flooding across southern China was blamed for dozens of outbreaks of African swine fever, a disease that usually kills pigs though is not harmful to people.

"The disease issue is a much more severe issue than the direct losses," said Pan Chenjun, senior analyst at Rabobank.

The swine fever virus lives for about 10 days in pig feces and water, and can survive for up to 100 days in manure pits.

"Whatever's in the manure pits will be washed out and spread around," said Wayne Johnson, a veterinarian and consultant at Beijing-based Enable Ag-Tech Consulting.

Last week, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs issued guidelines to local governments on how to prevent animal disease after flooding, including measures on disposal of carcasses and disinfection of farms.

For now though, Wangfan farmers are not even sure they'll return to farming.

"After doing this for so many years, in a flash, everything is gone," said 53-year-old Zhang Guangsi, who lost about half his herd. "I don't feel like raising pigs anymore."

(Reporting by Emily Chow in Xinxiang; Additional reporting by Dominique Patton in Beijing; editing by Jane Wardell)

 

[packyderms_wife]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZHKmgaDavo

Suspicious Observers
RT 5:27
6000 Year Disaster Cycle

This video updates the hypothesis that the known Heinrich events are correlated with the sun's 6000-year cycle. This is a critical piece of the big picture, solar-climate forcing, and the disaster upcoming soon - the 12,000-year version.

 

[northern watch]

Milking it
As food prices soar, big agriculture is having a field day

How long will it last?

The Economist
July 25 2021

TROUBLE IS BREWING in America. The reopening economy’s hunger for goods from China, and for the containers that carry them, has left importers of coffee, of which the average American guzzles two cups a day, struggling to ship the stuff from Brazil. They are using whatever they can get, says Janine Mansour of Port of New Orleans, where much of America’s raw coffee lands. That includes much bigger boxes, which reach maximum allowed weight before they are full. Importing part-empty containers adds extra costs, Ms Mansour says, and these will ultimately be swallowed by consumers.

It isn’t just coffee prices in America that are rising. Transport logjams and paltry harvests in producing regions have conspired with surging demand to stoke food inflation across the smorgasbord. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) expects the value of global food imports to reach nearly $1.9trn this year, up from $1.6trn in 2019 (see chart). In May its index of main soft commodities hit its highest value since 2011, after rising for 12 straight months. Another benchmark index, by S&P Global, a research firm, has risen by 40% since July 2020. On July 22nd the boss of Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch maker of everything from Ben & Jerry’s ice cream to Hellmann’s mayonnaise, said that pricier raw materials have caused his firm’s costs to swell at their fastest pace in a decade.

Some economists warn that the price spikes could feed broader inflation, which is already on the rise in many countries. That would be bad for consumers. But their loss is a gain for the giant firms that source, store and ship foodstuffs on behalf of state buyers and multinational companies. These opaque traders, which possess the networks of silos, railways and vessels, as well as the data and relationships, necessary to redraw supply routes, thrive on volatility. The four biggest—ADM, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus, collectively known as the ABCDs—have been adding to their total workforce of 240,000 and ploughing billions of dollars into new businesses that rely less on cycles of feast and famine. Their prospects offer a foretaste of global food markets in decades to come.

The ABCDs have been matching buyers and sellers of foodstuffs for more than a century. The youngest of the four, ADM, was founded in 1902. The oldest, Bunge, dates back 84 years before that. In the decades to the early 2010s they thrived on the back of population growth, rising prosperity and accelerating globalisation.

Down on the farm

Then they began to wilt. A prolonged glut of crops kept prices low and stable, squeezing margins. Smartphones and other technology put real-time data on local conditions and global prices at farmers’ fingertips, reducing the middlemen’s market power. Producers bought storage to ride out price swings, which decreased arbitrage opportunities. Challengers emerged, including Viterra, the agricultural arm of Glencore, a large commodity-trader-turned-miner, and COFCO International (CIL), the overseas trading arm of China’s state-owned food giant. Between 2013 and 2016 the ABCDs’ combined sales plummeted from $351bn to $250bn.

The revenues have stayed flat since. But last year was nevertheless a bumper one for the ABCDs, whose combined net profits doubled, to $4.5bn. Analysts expect ADM and Bunge, which are publicly traded and report second-quarter results this week, to do even better in 2021. All four benefit from abruptly changing patterns of demand for crops and of their supply.

Start with demand. For one thing, the pandemic has altered diets. When covid-19 began to spread in early 2020, lockdowns and crimped incomes meant that people stopped eating out and started cooking at home. Meat, fish and dairy (for all those lattes) gave way to more vegetables and cheaper packaged foods. As restaurants, canteens and cafés reopen, and wages rise thanks to the economic rebound, the reverse is happening. “A year ago we were trying to get rid of milk,” says Alain Goubau, a farmer in Ontario. “Now we are adding as many cows as we can.” China has been rebuilding its vast hog herd, which an epidemic of swine flu in 2018 had halved in size.

This has had a multiplier effect on demand for crops, since more grain is needed to produce an animal calorie than if the plant were consumed directly, says Sebastian Popik of Aqua Capital, an agribusiness buyout firm in Brazil. Alfonso Romero of CIL expects China to buy a record 30m tonnes of corn (maize), one of the world’s most-traded crops, this year, in large part to feed all its new pigs. That is up from 11m tonnes in 2020, which was itself an all-time high.

Another boost to demand comes from high oil prices, which make energy crops look like an attractive alternative. The more crops are turned into fuel, the less is left in the food system. The volume of American soyabean oil used to produce energy could rise by 39% between 2020 and 2022, according to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). Brazil’s production of ethanol from corn shot up by more than half last year and is forecast to increase by another quarter in 2021.

Even as demand for crops has surged, a confluence of factors has conspired to squeeze global supply. Droughts in North and South America have curtailed output. Brazil’s winter-wheat harvest is down by a fifth—and that fifth was meant for export. Besides the container shortage that affects specialty crops such as coffee, the grounding of commercial flights is stranding fresh fruit and vegetables. Rising bulk-shipping rates, up by 150% this year, are adding to the squeeze. Part of that is the result of rising oil prices, which also increase the cost of petroleum-derived fertiliser and other chemicals, and of running farm equipment (which is itself more expensive to buy as farmers take advantage of high crop prices and cheap credit to invest in new tractors and other kit).

This cocktail of forces is buoying global wholesale prices. Soyabeans and corn are, respectively, 56% and 68% more expensive than a year ago. This has filtered through to consumer prices: the cost of a home-grilled cheeseburger is up by 11 cents from 2019, says the USDA. The uncertainty and shrinking stockpiles are creating volatility. IFPRI, a think-tank in Washington, DC, has had corn on high “excess price variability” alert for nearly four months. Wheat and coffee prices have been volatile, too.

Big traders are enjoying the ride. Higher prices give the ABCDs more margin to play with. Bigger volumes, as farmers sell more to lock in the high rates, let them recoup fixed costs more quickly. And more volatility makes it possible to exploit price discrepancies across time and space. Despite a recent dip, the share prices of ADM and Bunge are still up by a third since 2019. Rumours of Bunge’s takeover by rivals, which swirled in 2018 as it embarked on a painful restructuring, have quietened. Dreyfus, the most troubled of the four, has been steadied by market conditions (and a cash injection by Abu Dhabi’s sovereign-wealth fund, which bought a 45% stake in the family-owned business). Cargill has not reported its annual profit for last year but was headed for record earnings after the first three quarters of 2020.

In the short run conditions for the traders look clement. Demand is likely to stay strong. Analysis by Josef Schmidhuber and Bing Qiao of the FAO suggests global agricultural-import volumes will grow by 4-5% in the next two quarters, year on year. Although prices have softened a bit in the past two months, thanks to better-than-expected planting forecasts in big regions and the near-completion of China’s hog splurge, they are much higher than before the pandemic.

They will probably stay that way until at least next year, reckons Carlos Mera of Rabobank, a Dutch lender. Mr Popik says that the food businesses in Aqua Capital’s portfolio, which export to 45 countries, must now finance two months of stock instead of the usual one. This implies that it will take time to iron out supply-chain wrinkles. And meteorologists place a high probability on another La Niña—a weather event of the sort that caused droughts in late 2020 and early 2021—before the end the year.

Crop rotation

To deal with their longer-term structural challenges, the ABCDs are diversifying. All of ADM’s recent capital spending has gone into less cyclical and more lucrative businesses such as flavouring, colouring and other ingredients for fast food, fizzy drinks or vitamin supplements, says Seth Goldstein of Morningstar, a research firm. In the first quarter of this year its nutrition-ingredients units generated $154m in operating profit on revenues of $1.6bn. That is about 8% of its total, and growing fast. ADM expects this business to expand twice as fast as its core business, which tends to track global GDP.

Bunge has sold dozens of mills, elevators and other assets to invest in plant-protein and edible-oil factories. Cargill now derives most of its profits from animal feed and animal protein. Its food-production facilities include a fish farm in Norway, a poultry farm in the Philippines and cultured-protein factories in America and Israel. It has become one of America’s largest meat processors, as well as a big investor in venture-capital funds focused on food and life sciences. Dreyfus has invested in Leong Hup International, one of South-East Asia’s biggest integrated producers of poultry, eggs and livestock feed.

As the traders become ever larger producers of foodstuffs and consumers of crops in their own right, they may come to prize stability a bit more. But probably not too much. They are not about to stop trading. As the populations of Asia and Africa grow bigger and richer, the middlemen will be called upon to supply them with crops from surplus countries, says Jos Boeren, a former Bunge executive now at Stafford Capital, an investment firm. The policies of big hoarders such as China, India and Russia look ever more unpredictable and their stocks less transparent. Climate change will ensure mismatches between supply and demand of foodstuffs. With six centuries of experience between them, the ABCDs will be evening out soft-commodity cycles well into the future.

Clarification (July 26th 2021): This article was amended to clarify the FAO's analysis.


As food prices soar, big agriculture is having a field day | The Economist

 

[jed turtle]

[QUOTE="TxGal, post: 8605083, member:]
The system is about to fail.
The empire is crumbling.
Don’t go down with it.
[QUOTE="TxGal, post: 8605083, member: 7729"/QUOTE]
focus on that.

 

[Laur]

Theodore White posted this yesterday regarding extreme weather all over the world.

Theodore White

Theodore White. 1,618 likes · 7 talking about this. Polymath, writer & mundane astrologer Theodore White forecasts on natal, climate, weather and future

www.facebook.com

Drought, Wildfires, Historic Rainfall, Floods & Crop Killing Frost. 'Too Dry, Too Hot, Too Wet, Too Cold At The Same Time'
by Theodore White, astromet.sci

As forecast, extreme weather is attacking urban and rural regions with a vengeance - across the globe - bringing with it damaged and ruined crops with the threat of further food inflation at a time when costs are already hovering near the highest in a decade and hunger is on the rise. Be not misled: This IS the weather and climate of global cooling. It is here, and in the years and decades to come, it will deepen and worsen under an emerging powerful quiescent Sun that governs the Earth's climate.

In my previous warning on the month of July 2021, the 'extremes of weather' that I've long predicted will become a regular feature of our climate into the 2050s. So get used to it. It is the Sun's minimum and its effect on the contraction of the Earth's atmosphere that plays a prime role in what is happening. It is global cooling that is causing tens of billions of damage as weather havoc races around the world.

Brazil’s worst frost in two decades brought a deadly blow to young coffee trees in the world’s biggest grower. This, as flooding in China’s key pork region inundated farms and raised the threat of animal disease. Meanwhile, scorching heat and drought have crushed crops on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border.

In Europe, torrential rains sparked the risk of fungal diseases for grains and stalled tractors in soaked fields. Coffee is the biggest recent mover, with prices surging 17% last week and topping $2 a pound for the first time since 2014.

But the recent frost in Brazil is just the latest example of woes that have struck farmers there this year. Brazil’s also experiencing a crippling drought that depleted reservoirs needed for irrigation.

The series of misfortunes underscores what this Astromet have been warning about for years: Global cooling under the Sun's entry into grand minimum and its weather volatility will make it increasingly harder to produce enough food for the world, with the poorest nations typically feeling the hardest blow.

As I warned years ago in predicting this weather of global cooling, in some cases, social and political unrest follows powerful climate events.

“Things that are happening in one part of the world end up impacting all of us,” said Agnes Kalibata, a United Nations special envoy for the 2021 Food Systems Summit and Rwanda’s former agriculture minister. “We’ve underestimated as a world just how frequently” weather would start to have serious impacts.

“Some communities are already living through the nightmares of climate change,” Kalibata said.

The Food Price Index from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization rose for 12 consecutive months through May before easing in June to 124.6 points, still up 34% from a year earlier. The index measures international prices of a basket of food commodities.

No other industry is more at the mercy of sun, rain and heat than agriculture, where changes in the weather can upend a farmer’s fortunes overnight. It’s also an industry that’s become extremely globalized and concentrated, creating a precarious situation where an extreme weather event in one place is bound to have ripples everywhere.

Brazil, for example, is the world’s biggest shipper of sugar and orange juice and a key producer of corn and soybeans. It accounts for about 40% of the world’s harvest for arabica coffee, the smooth variety that shows up in your Starbucks cup.
“There’s no other country in the world that has that kind of influence on the world market conditions - what happens in Brazil affects everyone,” said Michael Sheridan, director of sourcing and shared value at Intelligentsia Coffee, a Chicago-based roaster and retailer.

What’s unique right now is that extreme weather seems to be pounding almost every region of the globe.

'STORMY & SCORCHING NORTH AMERICA'
Dry conditions in western U.S. and Canada, coupled with record-breaking heat triggered hundreds of wildfires, with blazes spanning east across five provinces and nearly as far north as the Arctic Ocean in the Yukon and Northwest Territories.
Wildfires in the western U.S. have scorched over one million acres across 12-13 states.

The fires have been so treacherous in westernmost British Columbia that thousands of rail cars carrying grain for export have been idled for weeks.

The drought is also withering crops in Canada’s breadbasket Prairie provinces and in the northern U.S., forcing farmers to take the rare step of baling up their low-yielding wheat and barley stems to sell as livestock feed.

Prices for the region’s spring wheat, the variety used to make flour for bagels and pizza crusts, recently touched the highest in more than eight years.

Even fresh shellfish in the Pacific Northwest has fallen victim to the extreme heat and its impact on marine life.

Soon, the dry climate and wildfires will give way to moisture, gusting winds and excessive rain, leading to landslides and floods across the affected drought regions of the American West and Canadian Northwest.

Meanwhile, on Sunday, July 25, 2021, shocking news emerged saying that at least seven people are dead in the state of Utah after a blinding sandstorm caused a series of car crashes, according to Utah Highway Patrol.

The crash happened around 4:30 p.m. local time on Interstate 15 in Millard County and involved at least 20 vehicles.

Several other people have been transported to local hospitals in critical condition following the pileup, authorities said.
Officials said winds caused a sand or dust storm and severely impaired visibility on the roadway, which led to the crash.
“It’s very tragic, it’s very hard to see the loss of life, and the families and the people affected,” Utah Highway Patrol Sgt. Cameron Roden told ABC News Salt Lake City affiliate KTVX.

Meanwhile, further east, the city of Detroit, Michigan was once again left reeling from damage done by heavy rains causing flood that left 140,000+ people without power.

The southeast Michigan area, still recovering from flooding just eight days ago, accumulated another 1-2 inches of rain during a wave of storms on July 24, 2021, leading to flooding on southbound M-10 and other areas, plus power outages and at least one confirmed tornado.

'FREAK CROP-KILLING FROST STRIKES BRAZIL'
An unusual cold snap, with temperatures dropping to freezing levels in a matter of minutes, delivered a blow to the heart of Brazil's coffee belt - damaging trees and harming prospects for next year's crop, farmers reported.

Agricultural products across the western hemisphere have been beset by unusually bad weather - be it floods or extreme drought - all season.

Brazil is the world's largest coffee producer, as its climate is most conducive for production of the beans. Coffee prices surged nearly 13 percent in response to the frosts to a 6-1/2-year high.

The sudden frost happened on the morning of July 20, 2021.
According to Brazil's National Meteorology Institute (Inmet) the minimum temperature in Minas Gerais was -1.2 Celsius (29 Fahrenheit.)

Farmers, brokers and analysts were assessing their situations after reports that the cold snap was much stronger than first reported.

"I've never seen something like that. We knew it would be cold, we were monitoring, but temperatures suddenly went several degrees down when it was already early morning," said Mario Alvarenga, a coffee producer with two farms in Minas Gerais, Brazil's largest producing state.

Farmers shared photos of their crops, where large black areas were visible in places where they should see dark green spots marking coffee trees.

"I will probably have to take out some 80,000 trees, they are burned all the way to the bottom," said Airton Gonçalves, who farms 100 hectares (247.11 acres) of coffee in Patrocinio, in the Cerrado region of Minas Gerais.

"I was going to the farm yesterday and a sensor in the truck started to alert me about ice on the road. I thought the system had gone crazy. But when I got to the farm, it was covered in ice, the roofs, the crops!"

Gonçalves estimates his production in 2022 will fall to around 1,500 bags from the usual 5,500 bags.

Ana Carolina Alves Gomes, a coffee analyst at Minas Gerais agriculture federation Faemg, said frosts were reported also in the South of Minas Gerais and in the Mogiana area in Sao Paulo state. "Only time will tell how much will be lost. We already had a small crop this year," she said.

Cooxupe, the world's largest coffee co-op and Brazil's largest exporter, said its agronomists were visiting farms all week to better assess potential damages. It plans to release a report in coming days.

Broker Thiago Cazarini, who operates in Varginha, South Minas, said that preliminary estimates from exporters and agronomists point to a potential reduction of 1 to 2 million bags in next year's crop.

The severe frost that ravaged major arabica-coffee areas in Brazil is especially deadly for young trees, which could create greater losses for farmers and hurt production for years to come.

The death of young trees increases the likelihood that the crops even two years from now will be compromised, said Judy Ganes, a consultant who’s covered commodities markets for more than three decades. Farmers will have to trim off damage, destroying yields, or replant their fields.

Brazil’s second-corn crop was hit hard by frost during the final two days of June and the first day of July. Dr. Michael Cordonnier, President of Soybean and Corn Advisor Incorporated, says Brazil hadn’t been that cold in decades.

“It was the coldest air in 20 years, and it was pretty bad. Depending on where you’re at, it either really hurt the corn bad or killed it completely.

In fact, I was just watching some farm shows from Brazil on TV, and they showed cornfields in northern Parana, and they were completely brown like they’re ready for harvest, but it was because they were killed by frost.

And the crop was about five feet tall, short and stunted, because they had a drought, and the ears were short and stubby, and the kernels were like milk stage, or early dough stage.” He says the second-corn crop got planted later than it ever had before, was hurt by a historic drought in south-central Brazil, and by an early frost, including another round of frost this week.

Cordonnier says this would be comparable to a mid-summer frost for U.S. corn farmers.

“For the late-planted corn in Brazil, this is the equivalent if we here in the United States had three nights of frost in mid-July, and then three nights of more frost during the first week of August.

So, it’s just devastating for the crop. I have the crop now at 88 million tons. My numbers are going to go lower next week, for sure, because of the recent frost. We just don’t know how bad it’s going to be yet because they haven’t started to harvest the worst fields."

His yield estimates range from 115 bushels an acre for the best cornfields to zero bushels in the hardest-hit areas.

Overall, Cordonnier says the frost this week only added to the level of disaster for Brazilian farmers.

“This was a complete disaster. The frost for the last three nights also got about 20% of the sugar cane in San Paulo, and it hit the coffee as well.

So, just the headline yesterday morning, one of the farm websites that I watch said this is a catastrophe, you hurt coffee, sugarcane, and safrina corn. The corn is very bad.
Now, this has big implications in the United States: Brazil was supposed to export about 30 to 35 million tons of corn.

Now I think we’ll be lucky to do 20 million tons, and it might be less than that, "he said.

Brazil’s domestic price for corn is $8.50 a bushel, which means exporters will pay the penalty to break their contracts and sell that corn on the domestic market for more money.

He says Brazil will go from a corn exporter to importing a lot of corn, which means an opportunity is ahead for U.S. farmers. “They’ve imported about a million tons of corn, and they are importing a lot more, saying we’re gonna be out of corn. There just won’t be any corn for the livestock industry. So, it’s good for U.S. farmers because it keeps our corn exports going stronger than anticipated, because everybody’s expecting a bigger and bigger corn crop out of Brazil, which is usually the case, except for this year, and maybe next year too, we don’t know.”

'THOUSAND-YEAR FLOOD IN CHINA?'
Reports of the ungodly amount of torrential rain that fell last week - from the skies (not sea-level rise) - shocked central China and stunned the world.

According to National Public Radio, the events out of Xinxiang China stretched the imagination and no one would have believed it but if it were real.

And it was real indeed: "First the sky darkened. Then came the rain - for three straight days, nothing but rain and more and more rain - non-stop.

Inside her restaurant, Wang Ana barricaded the doors in an effort to stop water from seeping in.

When that didn't work, she grabbed her young son and a broom handle, using it to steady the two of them as they waded through the chin-high floodwaters back home.

"We could only hold on to each other," said Wang, a resident of Zhengzhou, the capital city of central Henan province and home to approximately 12 million people.

Starting Tuesday, July 20, 2021, the storms dropped the equivalent of one year's worth of water on the city over a 72-hour period before moving northward, flooding large swathes of Henan province in China.

Authorities say the rains have displaced more than a million people and at least 63 people dead in what should have been – in theory – once-in-a-thousand-year floods.

Much like certain parts of Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium, Henan has been deluged by unusually slow-moving rain storms this past week, making painfully clear how climate change can exacerbate seasonal rains.

The extreme weather could also force city planners to adapt urban infrastructure which, once designed for convenience, become deadly underwater traps during the storms.

Only a few hundred feet north of Wang's restaurant is the Jingguang traffic tunnel, built in low-lying, formerly swampy land.

Water began rushing into the mile-long tunnel last Tuesday, creating a strong current against which Wang and her son fought to stay upright.

"Around 20 or so people – male, female, old, and young – were also trying to get home in the storm, so we linked arms, with the front pulling the back row forward, and the back pushing the front onwards," said Wang.

She made it home, a few hundred feet away, in just over an hour.
Those inside the tunnel were less lucky. Nearly 200 cars inside became stuck in several feet of water, then began floating.
Several drivers behind them stayed in their cars, believing the pause to be traffic.

At least two passengers never made it out.

"In that moment, I felt incredibly hopeless," Wu Qiang, a driver who was briefly stuck in the tunnel, told Chinese media after his ordeal.

He and two other passengers survived by climbing through their vehicles' sunroofs, grabbing onto pipes fixed to the ceiling of the tunnel: "I could not help but shake when I got out of the water," he said.

As of Sunday, July 25, 2021, rescue teams were still draining water from two of three sections of the tunnel. When NPR reporters finally reached the tunnel three days after the flood, hundreds of police hovered around the site, shooing away curious onlookers while several mud-caked cars sat nearby, having been dredged from the waters.

Thirteen people also drowned in a rain-filled Zhengzhou subway route. Some passengers filmed desperate goodbye videos for loved ones while they stood in chest-high water.

"For the first time in my life, I touched a dead body," said a 15-year-old survivor in a self-recorded video after the tragedy.
Fellow riders gasped for air inside the sealed subway car as the hours wore on before rescuers arrived.

"For some reason, I was calm throughout the ordeal, because I refused to believe that this was my time to die," she said.

As storms pounded Zhengzhou last Tuesday, Wu Chao watched the news with horror from his home in Xi'an, a city about 300 miles away. Wu, a short, jovial businessman with a no-nonsense buzz cut, immediately sprang into action. He loaded his car with food, water and rescue gear, and by the next morning, he and dozens of other volunteer members of the private rescue organization, Dawn Emergency Rescue Team, were on their way to Zhengzhou. To get to the city, rescuers had to overcome waterlogged roads and paralyzed infrastructure.

Some trains were stuck for days after tracks were flooded, and Zhengzhou briefly cancelled all flights into the region.
By Thursday, July 22nd Wu was helping organize rafts of inflatable boats to rescue patients stranded inside Zhengzhou's Fuwai Cardiovascular Hospital.

"The water was high in some places and low in others, making it impossible for machinery to reach trapped residents, so some members of my team jumped into the flood water without a second thought," he said. "I am really moved by the resilience of the Chinese people in the face of disaster."

Wu is part of an extensive relief and rescue mission deployed by both the Chinese military as well as private groups to inject much-needed food and water into submerged communities and bring flooded residents to temporary evacuation centers.

Over the weekend, rescue teams shifted their focus to northern Henan, where a tributary of the Yellow River had overflowed after a dam upstream was opened to release the floodwaters behind it.

"I have been doing rescue work for six years, but until arriving in Henan, I had never seen a flood as big as this one, that's damaged so much and affected so many," said Xiang Nanmin, the captain of another private team called Blue Skies that brought about 600 people to higher ground over the last three days

Scientists say rains like this haven't fallen on Henan province in 60 years. But I continue to predict that the climate of global cooling under the Sun's Grand Minimum will make the torrential rain more common as cities like Zhengzhou and Xinxiang will need to brace for more floods.

Even as the clouds cleared over Zhengzhou, to the north, in the nearby city of Xinxiang, many streets remained at hip-height water level, leaving elderly residents and children stranded in high-rise apartment buildings as they waited for the water to recede.

Meteorological data indicated that the rainfall in Xinxiang is on par with the record-breaking storm in Zhengzhou.

To get around the city of nearly 6 million people, volunteers drove around tractors and bulldozers capable of plowing through the flood, scooping up residents who worked quickly to save their belongings.

 

[Laur]

Continued part 2

One of those residents is Hu Songsong, who was maniacally energetic as she floats her remaining possessions inside a large red washbasin. "Few people have been able to make it out of our block," said Hu. "They cannot bear to leave their property behind. Those who have left can only carry their children out with them." She says her first-floor home was flooded as water crept in a few hours after midnight. She and neighbors began waking up the elderly residents in their compound. Dozens of them took shelter that dawn in a nearby hotel which was built on higher ground.

Much of the villages north of Xinxiang remained inaccessible as flood water flowed back into the city through the drainage system and the newly un-dammed river.

Throughout the weekend, Xinxiang volunteers waded around on foot, pushing inflatable rafts to deliver hot food to apartment complexes. One volunteer hauled an inflatable unicorn pool floaty around, offering rides in the flooded streets to older residents struggling to carry supplies back home. He had bought the unicorn on a beach vacation five years ago, he said. He didn't imagine he would be using it on the streets of his hometown.

Flooding in the central Chinese province of Henan, a hub for agricultural and food production, appears contained for now but is being closely watched for any sign of more serious disruption.

While some hog farms and corn crops were battered by recent heavy rains, most production is located away from the hardest-hit regions.

A bigger worry is the potential spread of animal diseases including African swine fever, which China has been recovering from after a devastating outbreak in 2018 that wiped out almost half of its hog herd. China's agriculture ministry warned on Friday, July 23rd about the growing risks of animal epidemics after the Henan disaster, saying diseases could spread from dead animals as well as via contaminated soil and water. Local authorities were urged to retrieve carcasses from lakes and rivers, disinfect breeding pens more frequently, and strictly prohibit the sale and processing of dead animals. And if that wasn't enough, a huge sandstorm hit Dunhuang City in northwest China's Gansu on Sunday, July 25, 2021.

See ->>

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1419540596687998976

View: https://twitter.com/XHNews/status/1419540596687998976


'FLOODS SWAMP WESTERN EUROPE'
Torrential rain caused flooding across parts of London, England - leaving motorists and shoppers stranded.
London Fire Brigade said that they have taken more than 300 calls from those areas concerning flooding on roads and in basements.

As many as eight tube stations were closed due to flooding and hospitals in Newham have asked people seeking emergency treatment to go to other medical facilities if possible.

The worst affected areas were initially Clapham and Camberwell in the south of the city, but flooding has also been reported across the east and north-east of the capital.
Social media users have posted alarming images of rising water, abandoned cars, and apparent monsoon conditions.

See ->>

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1419334492498628609

View: https://twitter.com/Howardr.../status/1419334492498628609
...

Saturday-Sunday, July 24-25, 2021 events:
* Hospital emergency department floods
* Roads across the city of London inundated
*Yellow and amber warnings issued by Met Office
* Shoppers and motorists stranded
300+ calls to London Fire Brigade

Homes roads and Tube stations flooded while two London, hospitals asked patients to stay away after thunderstorms battered the south of England on Sunday, July 25, 2021.
The Environment Agency has six flood warnings in place across the country’s southeast, while there are 19 alerts for potential flooding active throughout England and Wales.

The wettest part of the country on Sunday was St James’s Park in London, where 41.6 mm of rain fell.

Residents in northeast London used buckets, brooms and wooden boards to create makeshift flood defenses for their homes, while water gushing from an subway station was caught on video. Restaurant manager Mariya Peeva, who lives in Woodford, said her neighbor’s bedroom was flooded, and her son worked with other residents to prevent the rising rainwater from deluging their home.

Ms. Peeva, 46, said: “My son went to buy some food from the local shop – by the time he came back the whole street and the pavement were already flooded and the water was coming into our front door.”

Londoner Eddie Elliott, 28, said the flooding was the worst he had ever seen it, after he cycled past Queenstown Road station where the road had been “totally shut down”.

He said: "Having been born and raised in London - I have never seen anything quite like it.

“It stands out as the worst I’ve experienced personally … totally shut down the whole road with buses stood broken down in the water.”

Whipps Cross and Newham Hospitals in east London both urged patients to find alternative treatment centers after they were affected by the downpours.

Whipps Cross Hospital said it was “experiencing operational issues” and asked patients to use an alternative A&E “if possible.'

'FLOODS SHOCK GERMANS & BELGIANS'
Dramatic images of inundated towns in Germany and Belgium this month of July 2021 are adding to a wetter-than-usual summer across much of Europe, as I had forecast.

The recent floods in Germany and western Europe weren’t just severe, they were unprecedented. In a continent with a long legacy of weather records - we’re talking centuries - nothing like this had happened before as far back as modern records have been kept. The flooding from heavy rains and swollen rivers destroyed whole sections of some towns - and in some cases, virtually the town itself. Many train lines and roads were simply swept away.

The historic heavy Rain has taken its toll on grains, leading to harvest delays. That follows a spring of frosts which damaged crops from sugar beets to fruit trees, and devastated some vineyards in France and elsewhere.

While European wheat output is actually expected to increase this year, a share of the harvest may end up switching from milling for bread products to feeding farm animals instead.

That threatens shipments to North Africa, which relies on imports of high-quality grain.

The severity of the floods in Europe could also be measured in the death toll - at least 180 known fatalities and possibly more than 200 when the final count is taken. Again, natural disasters just don’t claim large numbers of lives as these floods did in that in Europe. These are countries with advanced weather warning systems, well-run emergency services and tech-savvy residents. Yet these waters overwhelmed them.

Again, in places that have been settled for centuries, local residents knew pretty well which areas were vulnerable to flooding and which areas were - or should have been - safer.

It seemed inconceivable that so many people could be caught off guard and forced to flee hastily for their lives but as an astrometeorologist I have seen in many times.

What I have been warning about with the weather of global cooling is exactly what happened when the heavy rains came - and kept coming.

Consider, this: some regions received more than a month’s worth of rain in 24 hours, and of course their drainage systems couldn’t handle it.

Even more than a week later, tens of thousands of residents are still unable to return to their homes and many are left without access to power and drinking water. “It is shocking - I can almost say that the German language does not have words for such devastation,” one woman said.

'FLOODS IN BELGIUM'
Parts of Belgium have been hit by some of the heaviest floods in years – marking the second time in just over a week that downpours have affected the EU country.

The Namur and Walloon Brabant provinces, southeast of capital city Brussels, were among the worst hit on Saturday, July 24, 2021, after thunderstorms and heavy rain battered various communities.

In Dinant, within Belgium’s Walloon region, a two-hour thunderstorm turned streets into torrential rivers. Viral footage on social media showed cars and pavements being swept away by a powerful stream of rainwater.

Parts of Belgium have been hit by some of the heaviest floods in years – marking the second time in just over a week that downpours have affected the EU country.

The Namur and Walloon Brabant provinces, southeast of capital city Brussels, were among the worst hit on Saturday, after thunderstorms and heavy rain battered various communities.

In Dinant, within Belgium’s Walloon region, a two-hour thunderstorm turned streets into torrential rivers. Footage on social media showed cars and pavements being swept away by a powerful stream of rainwater.

“I have been living in Dinant for 57 years and I’ve never seen anything like this,” Richard Fournaux, the town’s former mayor, told the AP news agency.

Dinant, which sits on the banks of the Meuse River, was spared the deadly floods 10 days ago, which killed 37 people in southeast Belgium and many more in Germany, but Saturday was a different story entirely.

Rainwater gushing down steep streets swept away dozens of cars, piling them in a heap at a crossing, and washed away cobblestones, pavements and whole sections of tarmac as residents watched in horror from their windows.

No deaths were reported in the area, according to officials.
Similarly in the small town of Anhee, only a few kilometres north of Dinant, no one is thought to have been killed – though there is a lot of damage in both areas.

There was no precise estimate of the harm done but town authorities have warned it will likely be “significant”, according to local media, while Sky News reported the government could be looking at “billions of euros” worth of repairs.
More than 210 people died in the floods across western Europe last week, with most of the casualties coming from Germany and Belgium.

Dozens are still missing in the former, though officials have said they are not hopeful all will be found.

Over the past week, there have been reports of adverse flooding not just in Europe but South Asia as well, which I warned about.

'DISASTEROUS FLOODS IN INDIA'
A landslide kills 9 People and destroys a bridge in India. According to reports, a vehicle carrying 11 people was struck after a landslide caused boulders to tumble down a mountain in the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh, officials said.
Many of those killed were believed to be tourists.

Days of landslides and flooding triggered by heavy monsoon rains in western India’s Maharashtra state killed at least 113 people and injured 50, officials said Sunday, July 25, 2021 as rescuers scrambled to find at least 100 missing.

Many were stranded on rooftops or atop buses on highways.
India’s navy also said it deployed helicopters to evacuate stranded people and sent rescue teams with boats to the region.
Officials said one of the worst-hit villages was Talai, 270 kilometers (168 miles) south of Mumbai, the capital of Maharashtra state and also India’s financial and entertainment hub.

The village of 59 households was buried by a massive landslide on Thursday, state official Sagar Pathak said.
Rescuers recovered two more bodies on Sunday, bringing the number of villagers killed to 42, with around the same number still missing.

Pathak said inclement weather, difficult terrain and large debris were hampering rescue efforts.

A government spokesperson, Sandhya Garware, said over 130,000 people were rescued from nearly 900 affected villages across the state. Many were stranded on rooftops or atop buses on highways.
Authorities deployed hundreds of rescuers to the affected areas to locate missing people and take the stranded to safety, with scores of soldiers assisting.

Disasters caused by landslides and flooding are common in India during the June-September monsoon season, when heavy rains weaken the foundations of structures that are often poorly built.

The monsoon is crucial for rain-fed crops planted during the season, but the rain often causes extensive damage and kills scores of people each year.

Last weekend, more than 30 people were killed in landslides triggered by heavy monsoon rain in and around Mumbai.

'EVACUATIONS AS FLOODS STRIKE BATAAN'
At least 45 families or more than 85 individuals were rescued as deep floods caused by intermittent moderate to heavy rains submerged two villages in the province on Sunday, July 25, 2021.
A report from the Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (PDRRMO) on Monday showed Barangay San Juan here was inundated by five to six feet of floodwater while Barangay Almacen in Hermosa town went under more than four-foot-deep water.

No evacuation was conducted in Almacen where residents are accustomed to floods and used boats in going in and out of the village.

However, some 45 families residing in Sunshine Village in Barangay San Juan were rescued and temporarily housed in several classrooms at the Samal North Elementary School.

“We evacuated because of the high level of floodwater. Up to neck deep while to others, the water level was beyond a person’s height),” Danilo Esconde, one of the evacuees, said in an interview.

He said floodwaters started to rise at 9 a.m. and they were evacuated at 2 p.m.

"We had always been affected by flood but not as deep as this one," he added.

The evacuees said they have resided in the village for 16 to 28 years.

Esconde and the others said they need food and blankets, especially for the children.

Another resident, Brenda Rabago, said they also need bread, beddings, drinking water and diaper and milk for toddlers.
San Juan barangay chairman Francisco Valenzuela said the flood that hit the village was five to six-foot deep.

He said Sunshine Village, which is a relocation site for informal settlers, is near a creek, the reason it easily gets flooded during high tide and heavy rains.

Valenzuela said members of the Samal police, Bureau of Fire Protection and the Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office along with barangay councilors and watchmen conducted the rescue operation, in coordination with Mayor Aida Macalinao.

“With the help of Mayor Macalinao, we will give food to those evacuees aside from temporary shelter," he said.

'EXTREME WEATHER OVER NEW ZEALAND'
Wild weather in Auckland halted some ferry services as heavy rain and wind hit the region early on Monday, while drenched South Island areas were due to get more rain.

MetService issued heavy rain warnings for Northland and Auckland, the Coromandel Peninsula and Bay of Plenty west of Opotiki in the North Island, and Nelson northwest of Motueka and Westland south of Otira in the south.

Auckland Emergency Management and NZTA warned motorists to take it easy on the roads and drive to the conditions.
Gulf Harbour and Pine Harbour ferry services are being replaced by bus services until further notice.

Hawke's Bay and Gisborne between Wairoa and Muriwai, including Mahia Peninsula, and Banks Peninsula are warned to expect north west gales with gusts reaching 120km/h.

Meteorologist Ashley Parks said the worst of the weather was set to pass by midday.

West Coast
Buller was also due to get more rain but MetService said it would not be as much as in recent flooding.

The flooding left more than 100 homes in Westport unliveable, with another 400 needing repairs or cleaning before they can be reoccupied.

MetService forecast Westland south of Otira could expect 120mm-150mm of rain to accumulate in the ranges and 70mm- 100mm nearer the coast.

Westport North School, Westport South School and Buller High School - the area's only secondary school - reopen for staff only on Monday and pupils return on Tuesday.

Buller High School principal Andrew Basher said teachers had been affected by the flood themselves, so had been clearing their own properties or supporting other members of the community during the holidays.

A lot of work has gone in to cleaning up and setting up alternative spaces for flooded parts of the school like the art room and gym changing rooms.

He said students would receive ongoing support at school.
"It's really important for our students and their families that we do get our students back in school and try to have some semblance of normality."

Up to 70 mm of rain is forecast for Marlborough where roads are still affected by the recent floods.

Marlborough Emergency Management controller Dean Heiford urged people to avoid non-essential travel, with the roading network still fragile.

Heiford said contractors were out checking roads.
He said there were slips on roads in the Sounds and the area's infrastructure was still compromised.

Under planetary transits as modulated by the quiescent Sun and planets, the heavy rainfall along India’s western coast is in line with how rainfall patterns have changed in the region in past years.

This is the weather of global cooling as the altered patterns over the Arabian Sea is driving more cyclones and frequent intense rainfall over shorter periods of time.

This is just the start of the extremes of weather in the climate of global cooling under a quiescent Sun.

As conventional meteorologists and scientists argue and debate over 'man-made climate change,' I continue to state - and prove with forecasts - that what everyone is witnessing is the weather of global cooling. And it is just the beginning.

The increase in freak weather incidents such as flooding will become more frequent and severe as the Sun enters deeper and deeper into it Grand Minimum, causing the the cold of space to creep closer to the Earth's atmosphere as it contracts. This means - as I have been saying for many years - that countries must learn to adapt.It is too early to draw any detailed conclusions from the recent events, but previous research points to several challenges we are now seeing repeatedly in regard to catastrophic flash floods: Intense rainstorms dropping the amount of rainfall usually expected over several weeks or months over smaller catchment areas means that flooding reaches areas that the public is either not aware are at risk or where people are not prepared for the speed and intensity of flash floods.
Urban drainage systems become overwhelmed, turning streets into torrents, flooding low-lying structures such as underpasses or tunnels, frequently catching people by surprise, turning cars and basements into deadly traps.

The high amount of rainfall cannot infiltrate quickly enough in narrow valleys – such as the heavily affected Ahr valley in Germany.

As a result, it leads to direct surface water runoff which turns small creeks into raging rivers within a few hours, ripping through settlements in valley bottoms and overwhelming dams.
Local flood risk managers and emergency responders are overwhelmed by the speed and intensity - being trained to respond to and warn against slow onset floods with several days lead time.

One reader of my Astromet forecasts commented on heavy rain and floods affecting regions of the world at the same time:
He asked, 'Did you see the footage of flood waters carrying people houses, and cars down the road?

I answered: Which one? England? India or China? Germany? Belgium?

As I have long predicted, the weather of global cooling under the Sun's Grand Minimum is coming to a neighborhood near you.

 

[TxGal]

Denver missed snowiest March on record by a little more than an inch - Ice Age Now

Denver missed snowiest March on record by a little more than an inch
July 27, 2021 by Robert

**** Previously unpublished draft by Robert. ****

Video – Thundersnow nearly pushes Denver to snowiest March ever.

In fact, the mile-high city missed having the snowiest March on record by a little more than an inch.

Watch this video of the snowstorm for a few seconds and you will see the lightning and then hear the thunder. This what is known as thundersnow.

Thundersnow nearly pushes Denver to snowiest March in recorded history

Denver missed having the snowiest March on record by a little more than an inch.

kdvr.com

A final blast of snow fell on Tuesday night, bringing the total for March to 34 inches.

Having fallen short of the record of 35.2 inches set in 2003, March 2021 will go down in the record books as Denver’s second snowiest March in recorded history.

https://kdvr.com/news/local/thundersnow-nearly-pushes-denver-to-snowiest-march-in-recorded -history/
Thanks to Bill Sellers for this link

 

[TxGal]

There´s hope for the great barrier reef! - Ice Age Now

There´s hope for the great barrier reef!
July 28, 2021 by Visitor Submission

As we see our world coming to an end, at least there is hope the great barrier reef will be left behind and thriving.

Long-Term Monitoring Program - Annual Summary Report of Coral Reef Condition 2020/21 | AIMS

www.aims.gov.au

Fortunately, this comes to the rescue of alarmist expectations:

Unesco: Great Barrier Reef should be listed as 'in danger'

Canberra lashes out as the UN says the reef should join a list of World Heritage Sites "in danger".

www.bbc.com

 

[TxGal]

Here's a new one from Oppenheimer:

Overhyped Heat Wave Is Faking the U.S. - Oregon's Bootleg Fire Snuffed By Rain - Record Ice/Snow - YouTube

Overhyped Heat Wave Is Faking the U.S. - Oregon's Bootleg Fire Snuffed By Rain - Record Ice/Snow
4,856 views
Premiered 9 hours ago

View: https://youtu.be/9BRk3SVfshY
Run time is 14:19

Synopsis provided:

A Stifling New Heat Wave Is Baking the U.S. https://bit.ly/3x9AUCj
GFS Model Temperature Anomaly https://bit.ly/3rDIS5v
Oregon's Bootleg Fire has devoured 400 buildings, 342 vehicles https://cnn.it/3y95VYB
GFS Model Total Precipitated Water US https://bit.ly/2TF2Sbz
Area Smoke Forecast https://bit.ly/3xaAOun Heat Wave from Montana to the South https://www.weather.gov/
*BRAZIL UPDATE: Coffee frost damage continues to WORSEN https://bit.ly/379BiWM
HEAVY SNOWS AND FREEZING LOWS SWEEP AUSTRALIA, + STEP-UP YOUR PREPAREDNESS https://bit.ly/3rLCVUo
The rare phenomenon of thundersnow struck Australia https://bit.ly/2VkooD2
Greenland Ice Mass Balance https://bit.ly/377iOpY
White Island volcano (New Zealand): Volcanic Alert Level raised to Yellow https://bit.ly/3i5kXce
Continued heat flow and changes in gas composition indicate increased unrest at Whakaari/White Island https://bit.ly/3zWCOs3
Worldwide Volcano News https://bit.ly/3y58XgJ
Scientists warn they have no accurate way to predict when an apocalyptic supervolcano explosion could occur https://bit.ly/3x9gMjG
WHAT WILL HAPPEN AFTER EARTH IS DESTROYED BY THE SUN? A POSSIBILITY FOR NEW LIFE https://bit.ly/3iNGAwA
and more

 

[TxGal]

"The next 30 years will be Cold," says Climate Scientist Dr. Willie Soon (electroverse.net)

Articles GSM
“THE NEXT 30 YEARS WILL BE COLD,” SAYS CLIMATE SCIENTIST DR. WILLIE SOON
JULY 28, 2021 CAP ALLON

Alex Newman, of the New American, interviewed Dr. Willie Soon after his most recent Camp Constitution talk.
Below are some of the highlights of their discussion:

NEW PAPER
Dr. Willie Soon has produced a new paper that attempts to work out the behavior of the sun over the next 100 years.

He has done this by first studying how the sun behaved over the last 400 years, and then by extrapolating this cyclic behavior out a century-or-so into the future.

“We are already in a very weak activity state,” said Dr. Soon, “weaker than the active state of the 1980s/90s.”

This reduced spell of activity we’re in now started in 2008 and is expected to last until 2050, continues Dr. Soon.

The next 3 decades will be a “a very interesting time to be living, because we have another 30-years of the possibility of cooling.”

Soon hopes the IPCC will be honest and won’t be tempted to manipulate their data–as Soon has personally caught and demonstrated them doing in the past. The IPCC charts show only linear warming, explains Soon, whereas the raw thermometer data reveals a clear ebb and flow of cooling and warming in a cyclical fashion.

“This shows you that they manipulated the data,” says Dr. Soon.

“Ultimately it’s about the truth, it’s not about whether my predictions comes true or not.”
We have to keep a close eye on the thermometer data used by the IPCC, stresses Soon, but also the data from the sun.

PREDICTIONS AND IPCC FOLLIES
“What we predict is that the next 20-30 years will be cold,” says Dr. Willie Soon.
“It will be a very interesting thing for the IPCC to confront.”

Dr. Soon is a firm believer that the demonizing of CO2 is all hype — a scare tactic.

He says sunlight is the key factor when it comes to Earth’s climate, and that’s why he studies it, intensely.

“This infrared radiation (CO2 infrared) is purely a reaction of the system to achieve energy balance. When there is a imbalance within the system, the system tries to look for some equilibrium.

“Infrared is just a reaction.

“This is why we say the entire climate system is powered (99+%) by the sun’s energy.”

Rising sea level is another folly.

“If you really study this carefully, sea level has risen by about 4 inches over the past 100 years,” says Soon.

“And these people are saying it’s going to rise by 300-400 inches — that’s what they’re proposing as a way to scare people.”

Dr. Soon admits he struggles with the purpose of all these lies.

Fear & control is my humble assumption. They could also be one cog in “the Great Reset” machine.

A COOLING PLANET POSES FAR MORE PROBLEMS THAN A WARMING ONE
Dr. Willie Soon concludes the interview with one crucial implication.

“We’ll have a lot more problems if the planet were to cool than were it to warm,” he says.

It’s easier to cool ourselves in times of warmth, explains Dr. Soon –Bill Gates’ atmospheric chalk dust experiment being one rather dangerous option– but the energy simply isn’t there to heat ourselves if it were to get cold, at least not on a global scale.

The sun is our source of energy, and if this energy level drops then it will be nigh-on impossible for us human’s to replicate it.

An ice age, even a little one –such as the Maunder Minimum (1645-1715– produces problems that are much harder to solve than those posed by a warming climate, explains Soon.

Throughout ecological time, life and biodiversity has thrived during times of warmth, and has struggled during prolonged bouts of cooling.

For us humans, Soon sees the only solution as being nuclear energy.

We better start building the nuclear plants now, implies Soon, before the materials required are covered in ice.
“In that sense there is a race. Humanity is always in a race of some kind.”

But for some inexplicable reason, nuclear isn’t an option within climate alarmist circles — this is an illogical stance that again nods to an agenda being at play here, and not to an honest force in search of a fix to a genuine real-world issue.

Nuclear has the potential to ‘solve’ both AGW as well as stave off many of the issues associated with a Little Ice Age.

Yet it is discarded.

The ruse is clearer than ever.

And finally, in a direct message to the propagandized among us, Dr. Soon has this to say: “If you want to face a serious problem, worry about an ice age, never worry about global warming.”

Camp Constitution is an all volunteer association of Americanists.

It held its 13th Annual Family Camp from July 18-23, 2021 at the Singing Hills Christian Camp in Plainfield, NH.

Dr. Willie Soon was one of the guest speakers.

According to the association’s website, it runs a week-long family camp, has manned information tables at various venues, a book publishing arm, and posts videos from the camp that they feel are of importance to the general public.

You can view the interview will Dr. Willie Soon here.

New Paper uses AI to Predict the Sunspot Cycles: Low Solar Activity until 2050 - Electroverse

"Our predictions show that the sunspot cycles will be in a weak state starting from Cycle 24 (2008-2019) till Cycle 27 (or 2050 or so)."

electroverse.net

The COLD TIMES are returning, the mid-latitudes are REFREEZING, in line with the great conjunction, historically low solar activity, cloud-nucleating Cosmic Rays, and a meridional jet stream flow (among other forcings).

Both NOAA and NASA appear to agree, if you read between the lines, with NOAA saying we’re entering a ‘full-blown’ Grand Solar Minimum in the late-2020s, and NASA seeing this upcoming solar cycle (25) as “the weakest of the past 200 years”, with the agency correlating previous solar shutdowns to prolonged periods of global cooling here.

Furthermore, we can’t ignore the slew of new scientific papers stating the immense impact The Beaufort Gyre could have on the Gulf Stream, and therefore the climate overall.





Prepare accordingly— learn the facts, relocate if need be, and grow your own.

 

[Slydersan]

Adapt 2030 has a couple new videos out there. I haven't listened to them yet to see if they should go here.

 

[TxGal]

Adapt 2030 has a couple new videos out there. I haven't listened to them yet to see if they should go here.

Thanks, Slydersan. Of late I've had a hard time trying to decide which of DuByne's to post here. Some are way heavy in politics, and I'm soooo trying to not post that stuff here.

But, anyone can post anything they'd like to, I just struggle personally with some of these 'borderline' issues.

 

[Martinhouse]

Much of the several most recent Adapt 2030 videos focus on establishing survival communities and learning to grow food, including permanent things like fruit and nut trees, building good soil, etc. They do refer to the changing growing conditions which are from the GSM, but the actual information is not centered on it.

I did think they were worth listening to, but not to learn anything new or even ongoing about the GSM.

 

[Publius]

Much of the several most recent Adapt 2030 videos focus on establishing survival communities and learning to grow food, including permanent things like fruit and nut trees, building good soil, etc. They do refer to the changing growing conditions which are from the GSM, but the actual information is not centered on it.

I did think they were worth listening to, but not to learn anything new or even ongoing about the GSM.

A few here were beginning to wonder if some thing happened to you as you had not posted anything in a while.

 

[Digger]

Good to see you Martinhouse!

 

[TxGal]

Corn Belt At Risk For 'Damaging Derecho' Storms | ZeroHedge

Corn Belt At Risk For 'Damaging Derecho' Storms
BY TYLER DURDEN
WEDNESDAY, JUL 28, 2021 - 11:40 AM

A derecho, otherwise known as a widespread, long-lived, straight-line wind storm, is expected to traverse parts of the Midwest Wednesday night and early Thursday, according to The Weather Channel.

Derechos can cause hurricane-force winds, tornadoes, torrential rains, and flash floods. This one could wreak havoc in the areas shaded in purple below.



What's important to note is that this derecho is sweeping across the corn belt.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1420388749406576640

View: https://twitter.com/NWSSPC/status/1420388749406576640

Last year, a derecho rolled through Iowa and damaged about 14 million crop acres, or about 57% of the state's farms.

Across the corn belt, crops have already been damaged by sweltering heat and a persisting megadrought. This could weaken the root system and make corn more susceptible to snap under wind pressure.

 

[Martinhouse]

Publius and Digger,

My computer had problems and it took a week to get it fixed and then to go pick it up. In the meantime, I tackled some long-neglected chores and stayed super-busy in order to not go into computer withdrawal. Since I was on a roll, I just kept on working and it took a couple of weeks before I was ready to tackle the pile of spaghetti that I have to wrestle with to get things all hooked up again.

Now I'm trying to balance both things and after a few days of loafing through a burnout period, I am back online plus still getting lots of chores caught up on or even finished. It's hard, because I don't do "moderation" very well.

It IS nice to be back on the forum!

 

[Cacheman]

Corn Belt At Risk For 'Damaging Derecho' Storms | ZeroHedge

Corn Belt At Risk For 'Damaging Derecho' Storms
BY TYLER DURDEN
WEDNESDAY, JUL 28, 2021 - 11:40 AM

A derecho, otherwise known as a widespread, long-lived, straight-line wind storm, is expected to traverse parts of the Midwest Wednesday night and early Thursday, according to The Weather Channel.

Derechos can cause hurricane-force winds, tornadoes, torrential rains, and flash floods. This one could wreak havoc in the areas shaded in purple below.



What's important to note is that this derecho is sweeping across the corn belt.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1420388749406576640

View: https://twitter.com/NWSSPC/status/1420388749406576640

Last year, a derecho rolled through Iowa and damaged about 14 million crop acres, or about 57% of the state's farms.

Across the corn belt, crops have already been damaged by sweltering heat and a persisting megadrought. This could weaken the root system and make corn more susceptible to snap under wind pressure.

This week is Airventure at the OshKosh airport, there's thousands of small airplanes on the ground and they are directly in line of the forecasted most dangerous area.

 

[TxGal]

Top Climate Scientist, Dr. Willie Soon Predicts Global Cooling for next 20-30 years - Ice Age Now

Top Climate Scientist, Dr. Willie Soon Predicts Global Cooling for next 20-30 years
July 28, 2021 by Visitor Submission

Alex Newman of the New American interviews Dr. Willie Soon, who says among other things that it was the sun that melted 2-miles thick of NH ice and not anything man did.

Top Climate Scientist, Dr. Willie Soon Predicts Global Cooling for next 20-30 years

 

[TxGal]

Alaska is Rocking - 8.2 Magnitude Earthquake Strikes near Perryville - Electroverse

GSM Volcanic & Seismic Activity

ALASKA IS ROCKING — 8.2 MAGNITUDE EARTHQUAKE STRIKES NEAR PERRYVILLE
JULY 29, 2021 CAP ALLON

Parts of Alaska are under tsunami warnings after a 8.2 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast, according to preliminary data from the USGS.

The powerful quake was located approx. 65 miles (104 km) east southeast of Perryville, Alaska, and occurred around 10:15 p.m. Wednesday night local time.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1420643728012636163

View: https://twitter.com/CheikabaH/status/1420643728012636163
Run time is 0:16

At 20 miles deep (32.2 km), the earthquake is considered shallow.

It was likely a thrust quake of the Pacific tectonic plate sliding north under the North American plate at the Aleutian Trench, according to volcanodiscovery.com.

At the time of writing, there have been four strong aftershocks, including a preliminary M6.2 and M5.9:


[USGS]

A tsunami warning has been issued for parts of the state, according to the U.S. National Tsunami Warning Center.

These include South Alaska and the Alaska Peninsula, from Hinchinbrook Entrance, (90 miles east of Seward) to Unimak Pass, and for the Aleutian Islands, from Unimak Pass (80 miles northeast of Unalaska), to Samalga Pass, Alaska.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1420655808631644160

View: https://twitter.com/NWS_NTWC/status/1420655808631644160

Police in Kodiak, the largest town on the island of Kodiak, advised residents to move to high ground, adding that the high school was open as an evacuation location.

A tsunami watch was also issued for Hawaii, according to the NWS Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.

The waves for Hawaii are forecast to be less than 0.3 meters (0.98 feet) above tide level, Hawaii Gov. David Ige said on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1420650923316039685

View: https://twitter.com/GovHawaii/status/1420650923316039685

The level of tsunami danger is being evaluated for other US and Canadian Pacific coasts in North America, according to the NWS.

Seismic and Volcanic activity has been correlated to changes in our sun.

The recent global uptick in earthquakes and volcanic eruptions is likely attributed to the drop-off in solar activity, the increase in coronal holes, a waning magnetosphere, and the influx of Cosmic Rays penetrating silica-rich magma.

 

[TxGal]

Historic Cold continues to batter Brazil - Electroverse

Extreme Weather GSM

HISTORIC COLD CONTINUES TO BATTER BRAZIL, WITH AN UNPRECEDENTED 33+ RIO GRANDE DO SUL MUNICIPALITIES SEEING SNOW ON WEDNESDAY
JULY 29, 2021 CAP ALLON

South America has been buffeted by extreme polar chills in recent months.

Historic snowfall hit Argentina in mid-June, while a host of new all-time low temperature records have been set across the South American continent throughout July–including the second coldest temperature ever logged in the tropics.

A new wicked freeze tore through southern Brazil this week, further damaging the nation’s coffee and corn crops–among others.

Rare and heavy snowfall also swept the country –on Wednesday (July 28)– leaving at least 13 cities across the state of Rio Grande do Sul blanketed in snow — an unprecedented feat.

Meteorologists began warning of this latest round of polar cold last week, saying it was set to be the coldest since 1955.
“The cold air mass has the potential to be one of the most intense of this century,” warned MetSul.

The weather agency saw a large mass of Antarctic air threatening to ride unusually-far north on the back of a weak and wavy ‘meridional’ jet stream flow (a phenomenon associated with the historically low solar activity Earth is currently receiving).

As result of the warning, health authorities met on Monday to prepare for the polar outbreak.

This was just in time, as on Tuesday the cold wave hit, and soon engulfed the majority of the South American continent:


GFS 2m Temperature Anomalies (C) July 28 – 31 [tropicaltidbits.com].

This extreme cold is forecast to persist throughout the weekend, with readings some 20C below the seasonal norms expected.

Such exceptional lows will further ravage the continent’s already decimated coffee and corn harvests, particularly in Brazil; but Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Argentina are also suffering substantial losses.

This will result in serious ramifications on already skyrocketing global food indexes.

A Catalog of Crop Failures - Electroverse

What’s unique right now is that extreme weather seems to be pounding every key growing region of the globe, simultaneously. #GSM

electroverse.net

The mercury reached an all-time low -7.8C (18F) in the state of Santa Catarina on Wednesday.

While rare snowfall has been reported in at least 13 cities across the state of Rio Grande do Sul.

According to MetSul’s website, a record 33+ municipalities in Rio Grande do Sul saw snow on Wednesday.

Brazilians took to the streets to “celebrate” the arrival of the global warming goodness.

They shared photos and footage of the historic event on social media:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1420669828684259330

View: https://twitter.com/terror_alarm/status/1420669828684259330
Run time is 0:12

“In more than 30 years of weather forecasting in Rio Grande do Sul, we have never seen horizontal snow with such strong winds and greatly reduced visibility. It’s what North Americans call a snowstorm,” said MetSul.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1420501836088451078

View: https://twitter.com/metsul/status/1420501836088451078
Run time is 0:22

I shouldn’t need to tell you, but these are incredibly rare scenes for Brazil:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1420515795814293507

View: https://twitter.com/UrbanNathalia/status/1420515795814293507
Run time is 0:45

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1420505815157510145

View: https://twitter.com/OMarcusBruno/status/1420505815157510145
Run time is 0:15

The MSM may be obsessed with their heat-driving agenda, but they’re exclusions of ‘negative’ anomalies are telling.

As is their sidestepping of the inconvenient fact that Earth’s average temperature is currently holding below the 30-year average:

Earth's Temperature Fell BELOW the 30-Year Baseline in June

The "bigger picture" is what the climate alarmists tell us to look at, and the bigger picture reveals GLOBAL COOLING.

electroverse.net

The AGW theory is collapsing like a flan in cupboard.

And if a crippling bout of global cooling wasn’t on the horizon, the collapse would be comical (saying that, watching the likes of Michael Mann and Gavin Schmidt see their years of fear-mongering and data-tampering exposed will still bring a smile to my face).

"The next 30 years will be Cold," says Climate Scientist Dr. Willie Soon

"If you want to face a serious problem, worry about an ice age, never worry about global warming." #GrandSolarMinimum

electroverse.net

SPOTLESS SUN

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1420687330319425543

View: https://twitter.com/Electroversenet/status/1420687330319425543

The COLD TIMES are returning, the mid-latitudes are REFREEZING, in line with the great conjunction, historically low solar activity, cloud-nucleating Cosmic Rays, and a meridional jet stream flow (among other forcings).

Both NOAA and NASA appear to agree, if you read between the lines, with NOAA saying we’re entering a ‘full-blown’ Grand Solar Minimum in the late-2020s, and NASA seeing this upcoming solar cycle (25) as “the weakest of the past 200 years”, with the agency correlating previous solar shutdowns to prolonged periods of global cooling here.

Furthermore, we can’t ignore the slew of new scientific papers stating the immense impact The Beaufort Gyre could have on the Gulf Stream, and therefore the climate overall.





Prepare accordingly— learn the facts, relocate if need be, and grow your own.

 

[TxGal]

Major magnitude 8.2 earthquake - 104 Km SE of Perryville, Alaska, on Thursday, 29 July 2021 at 06:15 (GMT) - Ice Age Now

Major magnitude 8.2 earthquake – 104 Km SE of Perryville, Alaska, on Thursday, 29 July 2021 at 06:15 (GMT)
July 29, 2021 by Visitor Submission

Major magnitude 8.2 earthquake at 32 km depth
29 Jul 06:20 UTC: First to report: USGS after 5 minutes.
29 Jul 06:22: Magnitude recalculated from 7.2 to 7.3. Hypocenter depth recalculated from 35.0 to 3.4 km (from 22 to 2.1 mi). Epicenter location corrected by 0.9 km (0.6 mi) towards S.
… [show all] …
29 Jul 07:40: Hypocenter depth recalculated from 46.7 to 32.2 km (from 29 to 20 mi). Epicenter location corrected by 17 km (10.7 mi) towards SSE.

Update Thu, 29 Jul 2021, 17:31

Largest quake in the U.S. in 50 years sends seismic waves across the globe

Major magnitude 8.2 earthquake - Chignik Earthquake, Gulf of Alaska, on 28 Jul 10:15 pm (GMT -8) - 315 user experience reports
Magnitude 8.2 Earthquake in Alaska

 

[TxGal]

So it is if it seems to you - Robert Felix Article - Ice Age Now

So it is if it seems to you – Robert Felix Article
July 29, 2021 by Visitor Submission

Here are two links to an article in Portuguese, published in several blogs in Brazil. A tribute to Robert Felix.

Assim é se lhe parece
Assim é se lhe parece

Marcio Accioly

 

[TxGal]

The Oppenheimer Ranch Project has two new podcasts out, here's the first:

Alaskan Coast 8.2 Magnitude Earthquake Was The Strongest One In Decades: Here Is What We Know So Far - YouTube

Alaskan Coast 8.2 Magnitude Earthquake Was The Strongest One In Decades: Here Is What We Know So Far
8,475 views
Premiered 20 hours ago

View: https://youtu.be/Fl4fWP9tLJI
Run time is 4:03

Synopsis provided:

Alaskan 8.2 magnitude earthquake was the strongest one in decades https://cnn.it/3x6MT3L
USGS Live Earthquake Map https://on.doi.gov/3fc0wID
LARGEST EARTHQUAKE IN 50 YEARS: WHAT WE KNOW SO FAR https://bit.ly/3zPKuMo
Tsunami warning canceled after 8.2 offshore earthquake sent people in many Alaska coastal communities to higher ground https://bit.ly/3xbGCne

 

[TxGal]

Here's the 2nd from Oppenheimer:

“THE NEXT 30 YEARS WILL BE COLD,” SAYS CLIMATE SCIENTIST DR. WILLIE SOON - WORRY ABOUT AN ICE AGE! - YouTube

“THE NEXT 30 YEARS WILL BE COLD,” SAYS CLIMATE SCIENTIST DR. WILLIE SOON - WORRY ABOUT AN ICE AGE!
3,291 views
Premiered 9 hours ago

View: https://youtu.be/g_rnHOukz8E
Run time is 9:16

Synopsis provided:

“THE NEXT 30 YEARS WILL BE COLD,” SAYS DR. WILLIE SOON https://bit.ly/3lfCy31
Does Machine Learning reconstruct missing sunspots and forecast a new solar minimum? https://bit.ly/3zQcBex
Reconstruction and prediction of the total solar irradiance: From the Medieval Warm Period to the 21st century https://bit.ly/3j2r0gP
Top Climate Scientist, Dr. Willie Soon Predicts Global Cooling for next 20-30 years (Entire Interview) https://bit.ly/3lbbPVl

 

[TxGal]

Igloos in South Africa, Frogs Dying from the Cold in Australia, + Arctic Air to Sweep Europe (electroverse.net)

Extreme Weather GSM

IGLOOS IN SOUTH AFRICA, FROGS DYING FROM THE COLD IN AUSTRALIA, + ARCTIC AIR TO SWEEP EUROPE
JULY 30, 2021 CAP ALLON

Across both hemispheres, unprecedented COLD is the prevailing weather event as Earth’s average temperature continues to fall — ignore those MSM ‘heat-chasers’.

IGLOOS IN SOUTH AFRICA

South Africa has been in the grips of a severe cold spell of late, and recently saw 19 all-time low temperature records broken. And making the most of the rare winter freeze, many South Africans went in search of snow.

Social media was soon awash with photos and videos of snowball fights and snowmen.

SA resident’s Wilroux Ackermann and his sister Lenchen-Marié took things one step further though.

The pair, while walking in the Mont Rochelle Nature Reserve, encountered so much snow that they decided to construct an igloo atop the Perdekop hiking trail, located in the Western Cape.

Speaking to Snow Report SA, the sibling’s used a tin lunchbox to make the blocks:

https://electroverse.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/VID-20210727-WA0032-1.mp4

Run time is 0:41


[Wilroux Ackermann]

“It was snowing all over, so we decided to head to the Mont Rochelle Nature reserve,” said Wilroux.

Snow Report SA wrote on their Facebook page: “Using a lunch tin to make the blocks, the whole trip took them about 10 hours, including building the igloo, which they couldn’t quite complete because they didn’t want to come back down the hiking trail in the dark.”

Record cold and snow has swept South Africa in recent days.

The Eastern Cape was hit hardest, where blizzard-like conditions were reported.

And as a result, the passes of Penhoek on the N6, Lootsberg on the N9, and Wapadsberg on the R61 were all closed.

In other news, Johannesburg’s historic chills have seen a sharp increase in demand for electric blankets, with retailers reportedly out of stock and unlikely to be able resupply.

Last week, Johannesburg suffered -7C — the city’s coldest low in decades, and one that busted the previous record of -6.3C registered on July 19, 1995 (solar minimum of cycle 23).

“We are sold out of electric blankets,” said marketing director of Mr Price Home.

“There may be one or two here and there in remote locations, but technically speaking, we have sold all the stock brought into the business for Winter 21.”

FROGS DYING FROM THE COLD IN AUSTRALIA

A large number of sick and dead frogs are being reported across eastern Victoria, NSW and Queensland.

“We previously had a very healthy population of green tree frogs, and a couple of months ago I noticed a frog that had turned brown. I then noticed more of them and have found numerous dead frogs around our property,” wrote one local in an email to news.com.au.


A browned, shriveled green tree frog [Suzanne Mcgovern/The Conversation].

It’s rare to see a dead frog.

The creatures are usually secretive in nature and, when they die, they decompose rapidly.

This amphibian mass mortality event is highly unusual, and has taken local ecologists by surprise.

The deaths remain something of a mystery; however, the record cold that swept southeastern Australia in recent weeks is the leading culprit — the timing fits, and so do the symptoms.

With the first cold snap of each year comes a few localized frog deaths, but this year’s die-off has been off the scale and has occurred over a greater range than previously encountered; coincidentally though, so has the cold:

Historic Cold Sweeps Eastern Australia - Electroverse

On what was forecast to be Australia's coldest July day in history, the coldest spot in Australia is missing from the observations.

electroverse.net

Globally, frogs have been battling a potentially deadly fungus often called ‘amphibian chytrid fungus’ for decades.

This fungus attacks the skin, which frogs use to breathe, drink, and control electrolytes important for the heart to function — the disease is responsible for causing population declines in more than 500 amphibian species around the world, and 50 extinctions.

But if frogs have had this fungus affecting them for decades, why is Australia seeing so many dead frogs now?

Well, disease is the outcome of a battle between a pathogen (in this case a fungus), a host (in this case the frog) and the environment, explains the news.com.au article — the fungus doesn’t do well in warm, dry conditions, but thrives in the cold.

The frogs have the upper hand in the summer, but come the harshness of winter the tables turn. Basically, the lower the temperature the more the animals suffer — the more the frog’s immune system slows, the easier it is for the fungus to take hold.

Heavy Snows and Freezing Lows Sweep Australia, + Step-up your Preparedness

That 'prepping window' appears to be closing, fast. The empire is crumbling. Don't down with it. Prepare. GSM.

electroverse.net

WINE PRICES ON THE RISE

Wine prices are set to skyrocket this autumn as stocks run short following poor harvests across BOTH hemispheres.

The growing troubles in Europe have been well-documented, with record spring frosts ravaging key French and Italian growing regions; however, problems have been just as rife in the Southern Hemisphere, too.

New Zealand’s sauvignon blanc yield is down 30% on last year due to poor flowering, meaning there will “continue to be limited supply and high pricing,” according to Ciatti, the world’s largest broker of bulk wine.

A similar pattern is seen across New Zealand’s pinot noir and pinot gris, too.

In Chile, 2020 whites are sold out completely, and some wineries already report a host o f2021 vintages have already run dry — this is in part due to buyers seeking new sources of sauvignon blanc in light of New Zealand’s shortfall, but the empty shelves can also be tied to the historic freezes sweeping South America.

For wine buyers, a global shortage of shipping containers continues to cause havoc, too.

An acute shortage of space is driving transport prices to record highs, and for many simply finding a carrier is a challenge.

This is posing a serious problem for global trade in general, and one that is expected to worsen as 2021 rolls on. We should all expect skyrocketing prices across the board moving forward, and shortages, including food.

Prepare.

ARCTIC AIR TO SWEEP EUROPE

Despite fleeting bursts of summer warmth in recent weeks, it has been a historically cold 2021 across Europe.

And beginning this weekend, the continent is forecast another round of descending Arctic air — one set to bring mid-summer chills to a host of nations, from the UK and Portugal in the west, to Poland, the Ukraine, and transcontinental Russia in the east:


GFS 2m Temperature Anomalies (C) July 31 – Aug 4 [tropicaltidbits.com].

In fact, vast pockets of Asia –most notably Russia’s Siberia— will see temperature anomalies some 20C below the average:


GFS 2m Temperature Anomalies (C) July 31 [tropicaltidbits.com].

Such departures from the norm threaten frosts and even rare summer snow–and in the very same regions the MSM were having a heat-induced tizzy about in 2020.

Remember the small Russian town of Verkhoyansk reaching 38+C last summer?

Never reported by the MSM is the fact that this region of the planet regularly experiences drastic swings in temperature — the mercury often lingers below -50C in winter and then above 30C in summer.

Verkhoyansk has actually long held the record for having the greatest temperature range on Earth.

However, the town resides within the Arctic circle, and so MSM headlines such as “The Arctic Is On Fire, and We Should all Be Terrified” successfully prey on the ‘climate fears’ of a criminally ill-informed public.

"The Arctic is on Fire, and we should all be terrified" - Fact Check: It's currently Snowing in Verkhoyansk - Electroverse

A video is circulating showing Verkhoyansk residents warmly dressed stood around a fire asking "Where is our plus 38C?" GSM

electroverse.net

And where is the media this summer, during Siberia’s recent freeze?

Well, they’re ‘heat-chasing’ in the Pacific Northwest; busy obfuscating away and ignoring the overall picture of a cooling Earth:

Five Major Datasets show Global Cooling, as Carbon Brief is Caught Lying to the Public - Electroverse

Climate headlines are built around narratives, not facts. Most sheeple are easily fooled by illogically-linear charts and phony correlations.

electroverse.net

Moreover, where were the likes of CNN and the BBC during Russia’s historically frigid winter just gone?

Back in December, 2020 an immense mass of Polar cold gripped 80+ percent of the 17.1 million km² transcontinental nation, cold that then only expanded and intensified as the winter season progressed.

Siberia wound-up suffering one its coldest starts to the year on record.

Temperatures across the vast Asian area held more than 20C below the seasonal average as Arctic air rode anomalously-far south on the back of a weak and wavy meridional jet stream flow — lows of -50C (-58F) and even -60C (-76F) swept the region for long periods–readings among the lowest-ever recorded in the Northern Hemisphere.

Asia’s prolonged winter chills led to both food and energy prices soaring to record highs.

The cold also resulted in thousands of reindeer starving to death on Russia’s Yamal Peninsular — a tragedy caused by the animals’ forage being locked under unusually thick ice this year (and where were the MSM when a scientific expedition to the area called for “new urgent ideas to rescue herding in the region due to an increase in periodic glaciation”?).

Thousands of Reindeer Starve to Death on the Frozen Yamal Peninsula, Russia - Electroverse

Possibly *tens of thousands* perished as months of extreme cold persisted across ALL of transcontinental Russia.

electroverse.net

"The next 30 years will be Cold," says Climate Scientist Dr. Willie Soon

"If you want to face a serious problem, worry about an ice age, never worry about global warming." #GrandSolarMinimum

electroverse.net

The COLD TIMES are returning, the mid-latitudes are REFREEZING, in line with the great conjunction, historically low solar activity, cloud-nucleating Cosmic Rays, and a meridional jet stream flow (among other forcings).

Both NOAA and NASA appear to agree, if you read between the lines, with NOAA saying we’re entering a ‘full-blown’ Grand Solar Minimum in the late-2020s, and NASA seeing this upcoming solar cycle (25) as “the weakest of the past 200 years”, with the agency correlating previous solar shutdowns to prolonged periods of global cooling here.

Furthermore, we can’t ignore the slew of new scientific papers stating the immense impact The Beaufort Gyre could have on the Gulf Stream, and therefore the climate overall.





Prepare accordingly— learn the facts, relocate if need be, and grow your own.