By Jeremy Lovell
...France has pledged hundreds of millions of euros in aid to its drought-stricken livestock farmers, who have watched feed supplies dwindle and prices rise. Water restrictions are in place in more than half of the country's administrative regions or departments.
"The situation is serious for French farmers. We wanted to act swiftly and on a large scale," Le Maire told reporters last week.
And the French government has set up a committee to keep an eye on the country's electricity supply situation and monitor river levels, as 44 of the 58 nuclear reactors that supply 80 percent of France's electricity are cooled by river water....
March 21, 2018
By Bob Berwyn
Flooding like Carlisle, England, experienced during Storm Desmond in 2015, is becoming more common as the planet warms, research shows.
Europeans (click here) are facing more frequent extreme weather as the planet warms. Floods and big landslides have quadrupled and extreme heat waves and crop-damaging droughts have doubled since 1980, with a sharp spike in the last five years, according to the European Academies' Science Advisory Council's latest extreme weather update.
The increase in the frequency of extreme weather events should spur European countries to boost adaptation and resiliency efforts, said EASAC Environment Program Director Michael Norton.
"Policy makers and lay people think climate change is something gradual and linear, but we need to keep explaining that the gradual change is increasing the chance for dangerous extremes, and that's what we have to prepare for," Norton said.
"The increasing frequency and magnitude of extreme weather events makes climate-proofing all the more urgent. Unfortunately, there's a disconnect between the political time scale of taking action, and the time scale on which climate change happens," he said. "And by the time a lot of these more serious problems are widely recognized, the changes will be irreversible."
Earth's fever is nearing the climate change benchmark of 1.5 degrees Celsius warming, and new research shows how global warming is affecting key climate drivers like ocean currents and temperature-controlling winds....
22 March 2018
