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GliderGuider

(21,088 posts)
Sat Apr 30, 2016, 10:13 PM Apr 2016

A look at the world-wide drought (now with recent news links)

Last edited Sat Apr 30, 2016, 11:59 PM - Edit history (2)

Here is a list of countries in the midst of historic, deadly droughts.
All of the quotes are from the past 2 weeks.

Cambodia - "47 degrees Celsius (117 degrees Fahrenheit), killing about 60 tons of fish since April 22
Thailand - "Worst drought in 100 years"
Vietnam - "Worst drought in 100 years"
India - "330,000,000 people"
Somalia -"Starving women are being attacked by packs of hyenas"
Ethiopia - UN "Millions are starving. 10 million in need of food."
Zimbabwe - "Victoria Fall about to dry up. Hydro power stopped."
Marshall Islands - "Worst drought in history"
Venezuela - Blackout. Food shortages. Food riots. Nothing left.
Colombia - "Colombia worst drought and forest fires in the history"
El Salvador - "Worst drought in decades"
Northern part of Brazil
French Guiana, Suriname and Guyana, drought conditions will worsen
Northern Kenya
Madagascar -"Millions at risk. Children dying daily."
Tanzania - "shutting down hydroelectric plants amidst ongoing drought"
Mozambique - "rivers dry up, the hopes of a harvest evaporate"
North Korea - "Food Supply Imperiled by Drought, UN Says"
South Philippines -"We have experienced drought in the past, but what is happening now is the worst."
South Africa
Namibia - "wells, rivers and boreholes are all dry"
Cuba -"70,000 receive water by water trucks."
Laos - "set its own national all-time high temperature of 108.14 "
Puerto Rico - "has run out of water and money"
Haiti - "UN to help with rising hunger in drought-ravaged Haiti"
Guatemala - UN "Nearly 1 million people in Guatemala are struggling to feed themselves"

Edited to add links:

http://www.thedailystar.net/frontpage/heatwave-sears-southeast-asia-1217155
http://www.rfa.org/english/news/cambodia/severe-drought-in-cambodia-kills-fish-animals-puts-villagers-at-risk-04292016131709.html
http://www.nbcnews.com/slideshow/worst-drought-decades-disrupts-life-southeast-asia-s-mekong-region-n562166
http://www.businessinsider.com/vietnam-drought-economic-slowdown-2016-4
http://time.com/4312086/india-heatwave-drought-death-orissa-telangana/
http://www.latimes.com/world/global-development/la-fg-global-somaliland-drought-irin-story.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-29/drought-ravaged-ethiopia-now-faces-a-seed-shortage
http://phys.org/news/2016-04-hunger-power-zimbabwe-zambia-lake.html
http://thediplomat.com/2016/02/drought-in-the-marshall-islands/
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Drought-Affects-Energy-Across-Latin-America-Not-Just-Venezuela-20160430-0015.html
http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/world/drought-parches-el-salvador/article/463689
http://www.agweb.com/article/brazils-drought-opens-up-hot-market-for-american-farmers-naa-debra-beachy/
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Guyana-establishes-new-task-force-to-tackle-drought
http://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2016/04/14/parched-wajir-prays-for-rain-to-end-drought_c1331139
http://allafrica.com/stories/201604280985.html
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-36037414
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-27/north-korea-s-food-supply-imperiled-by-water-shortages-un-says
https://www.icrc.org/en/document/philippines-29000-people-affected-drought-north-cotabato-receive-food-aid
http://allafrica.com/stories/201604270369.html
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article73840167.html
http://mashable.com/2016/04/29/asia-heat-wave-india/#PaelPuPX4mq4
http://thinkprogress.org/world/2016/04/15/3769857/haiti-farmers/

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GliderGuider

(21,088 posts)
2. They promised that the future would be shinier than this.
Sat Apr 30, 2016, 10:58 PM
Apr 2016

They promised that we would defeat hunger and poverty.
They promised that a rising tide would lift all boats.

The only thing we're floating on now is a sea of delusional lies.

 

GliderGuider

(21,088 posts)
10. So now that you've had some time to read the news reports, what's your opinion?
Sun May 1, 2016, 12:56 PM
May 2016

Was I being sensationalistic? Is it just fear-mongering? Or is something real and concerning underway?

lordsummerisle

(4,649 posts)
11. I never doubted the veracity of these stories
Sun May 1, 2016, 07:51 PM
May 2016

I just like to see sources. Drought is a serious threat. It's temporarily taken my mind off of how we're gradually killing off our oceans...

glinda

(14,807 posts)
4. And some want to frack....
Sat Apr 30, 2016, 11:16 PM
Apr 2016

or put more Monsanto into the scarce resources we have left. Totally insane.

NNadir

(33,368 posts)
7. Without GMO drought resistance soybeans being available a few years back in this country...
Sun May 1, 2016, 08:28 AM
May 2016

...cooking oil in this country would have hit $15 for a small bottle.

As it is, about 95% of the soybeans in the United States are GMO, the inserted genes being those for drought resistance.

It's not the rich bourgeois types with the leisure to avoid opening science books while cursing Monsanto who would have suffered the most; it would be the poor.

In times like this, the most serious threat to humanity is surely glib ignorance. Attacks on GMO crops by the unenlightened are a real tragedy, and mostly a tragedy for the poor. It is not rich westerners who go blind because of attacks on crops like [link:http://www.goldenrice.org/|], they can drive in their stupid SUV's to vitamin shops to get vitamin A. It is the poor living in the third world who go blind.

Crop scientists around the world are doing their very best, working at very challenging jobs, to help save humanity from itself. Comments from the peanut gallery are neither helpful or, on a deeper level, moral.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend.

 

GliderGuider

(21,088 posts)
15. Thank you, glinda.
Mon May 2, 2016, 05:46 AM
May 2016

That article says what I feel about GMOs in much more measured terms than I can usually muster. In my experience the advocates for GMOs tend to believe that all significant solutions to human problems flow from science and technology. This can give them a blinkered view of the world when it comes to acknowledging the potential flaws in technological approaches and the benefits of pursuing more traditional avenues.

NNadir

(33,368 posts)
16. Feel free to insult me, if you wish, but I don't give much credibility to non-scientist activist...
Mon May 2, 2016, 02:49 PM
May 2016

...websites with or without insults.

Some ersatz "information" is inherently insulting, and in any case, whenever I am insulted, I consider the source.

I'm a scientist, not an activist.

Some scientists are activists, but generally they advocate intelligently, and not based on a vast circle of uniformed people misinforming each other and claiming that the misinformation is thus validated.

This goes for all types; anti-vacciners, anti-GMO, anti-nukes, etc.

What underlies the rhetoric of these people is that they cannot define, least of all, intelligently, what they are for so much as what they are against.

This means that in general, they do not provide solutions to problems, but simply object to the results that others obtain, irrespective of the hard work, careful analysis, and good will that the people producing those results have employed.

Genetic modification has been a feature of life since the first organism started metabolism. It has been a feature of human culture since preliterate times, albeit not utilizing molecular biology.

I strongly object to ignorance displayed as truth, and am unafraid to address it accordingly.

Have a nice day.

NNadir

(33,368 posts)
18. Well, I don't find any of this funny at all. I'm distinctly not amused.
Tue May 3, 2016, 12:35 AM
May 2016

Last edited Wed May 4, 2016, 06:40 AM - Edit history (1)

I have a low tolerance for people who cite insipid nonsense put forth by a set of loud mouthed know nothings who are marginally or completely unqualified to hold forth on a subject that they know little about.

As for confusion, I may disagree as to whether anything I have said qualifies as accurate description or an insult. Whether it is "insulting" to accurately describe a position is of little matter. It's not like the anti-GMO crowd is ever going to bother to become educated, and so, insulting or not, it is accurate to state that their position is insidious.

And insidious it is. You see this boy?



He didn't have to be blind, but he is.

Here's a page of, and about, these children.

There certainly are a subset of people sitting on their lazy asses in the first world smugly claiming that uncritically repeating ignorant statements and posting them on the internet is of no consequence, but there are consequences, very real consequences.





The Golden Rice Project has a page beginning with these words:

According to UNICEF, the estimated number of children deaths precipitated worldwide by vitamin A deficiency (VAD) every year lies at 1.15 million. Many more show VAD-related syndromes, among them loss of sight and increased susceptibility to a number of diseases.


Maybe, just maybe, you think you're being cute, but I assure you from the depth of my very real human anger at what ignorance does, there's nothing cute about any of this.

Inserting a gene from a carrot into rice is not going to end life on this planet. In fact, if any of the mindless bourgeois automatons in the anti-GMO movement would bother to open a scientific paper - not likely given that they are scientifically illiterate for the most part - they might discover that one of the more amazing discoveries in the sequencing of the human genome is that human beings contain a considerable amount of viral DNA inserted into their genome during the entire process of human evolution, and, indeed, vertebrate evolution.

Endogenous viruses: insights into viral evolution and impact on host biology Nature Reviews Genetics 13, 283-296 (April 2012)

Now you say you will not stoop low, but excuse me if I consider that stooping would be very hard to do in the present case, given that one is already on the lowest spot possible.

It's rather perverse what some people think is "funny." It's not "funny" at all, not in the least.

Here, have another blind child:

?h=188&w=250

Have a nice day tomorrow.
 

GliderGuider

(21,088 posts)
6. A current world drought map
Sat Apr 30, 2016, 11:47 PM
Apr 2016


Current Conditions

At the end of March 2016, El Nino is weakening and the odds of near-normal or La Nina conditions later in the year are increasing. The global monthly high temperature record has been broken for the eleventh consecutive month. According to NOAA, March 2016 was 2.20 degree Celsius warmer than the average March temperature and was the highest departure of any month in the record which begins in January 1880. In Europe, drought conditions remain intense around the Mediterranean Sea while interior and northern Europe is wetter than last month. In Asia, drought expanded in and around the central and western Indian sub-continent, as well as intensifying in the West. In India, sugar production is expected to fall 5-7% while in Thailand, rice production is expected to rise 11% in the coming year with the easing of the drought there. In Africa, short-term drought remains strong in the North and the South and has intensified around the equator. In Somalia, 40% of the population of the North is suffering from drought and need emergency aid. In South Africa, an anticipated reduction in the 2016 fruit crop may have an impact on global shipping companies. In North America, drought remains entrenched in the higher latitudes, and is expanding in Mexico. Western US snowpack is near-average, the best conditions since 2011. In South America, drought remains in the northern part of the continent, despite some slight easing, while the South saw much-needed rain again this month. Venezuela, the capital of Caracas could soon begin to experience rolling blackouts as the Guri Dam, which supplies much of its’ power, is approaching critically low water levels. In Oceania, drought eased slightly in Southern Australia while remaining firmly entrenched in the islands to the north. Australian is anticipating a rebound in wheat, cotton, and milk production with the waning of El Nino.

FBaggins

(26,697 posts)
13. Which disproves the assumption of the OP
Sun May 1, 2016, 08:50 PM
May 2016

There is no global drought. Nor should we expect one in an era of climate change. Some areas will also be wetter - in roughly the proportions that others get drier.

http://www.nature.com/articles/srep18018

yourpaljoey

(2,166 posts)
8. Wow. Famine, disease and Death coming to a theatre near you.
Sun May 1, 2016, 08:28 AM
May 2016

Where do we go from here?
When will this finally affect the US
directly in such a way that it becomes 'real'
to the citizens? By 2020 perhaps?

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