Coffee crops require pretty specific conditions to thrive, and warmer temperatures are endangering the plants in major growing regions. Increased temperatures are also helping a troublesome coffee pest thrive.
We’ve talked about responsible coffee consumption and toxins lurking in that cup of joe, but all that is moot if growers can’t produce the beans that make our favorite morning beverage.

Hotter Temperatures Threaten Production
Ethiopia and Latin America have traditionally grown the Arabica beans that are common in coffee. According to Yale Environment 360:

It requires just the right amount of rain and an average annual temperature between 64 degrees Fahrenheit and 70 degrees Fahrenheit to prosper. As temperatures rise — Ethiopia’s average low temperature has increased by about .66 degrees F every decade since 1951, according to the country’s National Meteorological Agency — and rains become more variable, Ethiopian coffee farmers have suffered increasingly poor yields. Last year was especially bad, with exports dropping by 33 percent.

In a complete reversal of the usual pattern, where water temperatures are generally cooler than land temperatures, for the second year running, the ocean was actually hotter than land in some regions, marking another ominous sign of the strange and unpredictable effects of continued global warming.

After last years records, Deke Arndt, head of climate monitoring at the climate data center said that the pattern is so unusual that meteorologists may want to study that pattern to see what’s behind it.

Sea temperatures are much harder to change than air temperatures, as anyone trying to warm a swimming pool can attest. It takes five times the heat energy to warm water than air.

The petroleum-based adhesives used to make plywood and many other wood products have a nasty habit of leaching toxic formaldehyde fumes, but all that is on the way out. Scientists from the USDA Forest Products Laboratory are working on a new class of soy-based wood adhesive that uses a substance found in soy milk and tofu.

Soy-based wood adhesives that perform as well as their petroleum-based cousins are already inching their way into the market, but the USDA scientists have a more ambitious goal: to develop soy-based glues that are even stronger than conventional glues.

The End of Toxic Adhesives

Morgan Motor Company celebrated its 100th anniversary last year. Though the world is much different from when the company was first founded in 1909, Morgan still hand assembles every car it builds. It makes just a few hundred vehicles a year, but they are of the highest quality and are some of the most sought after cars ever built.

Despite the exclusive nature of the Morgan automobile though, the company must be admired for its ability to look forward. Hybrids, hydrogen-power, and electric cars are the future, and Morgan doesn’t plan on being left behind. They have announced that they will be building a diesel-electric hybrid car with a 1,000 mile range.

Antibiotics are frequently abused on factory farms. Animals receive doses of human antibiotics aimed at increasing their growth and preventing (rather than treating) disease. This practice is a public health danger, because over time it’s helping breed antibiotic resistant bacteria.

This Friday is the last day for public comment on the new FDA guideline limiting antibiotic use on farms. Several food and health advocacy groups have teamed up to make it easy for you to get heard. You can leave a comment through the form on their website.

That’s not a headline you’ll see. No journalist hounded scientists in the cancer research fields to give a yes or no answer to the question: “Did Mr Smith’s death from  lung cancer come from his smoking habit?” to which the correct scientific answer is: “No one smoker’s cancer death is proof that cancer causes smoking.”

As a result, no headlines blare “Mr Smith’s cancer not due to smoking, say scientists!” – and so most people do understand that the science shows the clear risk of cancer from smoking, heart attacks from high-cholesterol diet, diabetes from sweet junk food and so on, because journalists covered the science scientifically.

We know that the more scientific question is: “Is this cancer projected to occur more often in those with smoking habits like Mr. Smith’s?” This is how we understand risk – in other fields.

“Sir, have you been drinking tonight?”

“No officer, that’s just my biofuel.”

Researchers have found a way to make biofuel from whiskey by-products that could serve as an alternative to ethanol.  The biofuel is made only from waste, so no new plants need to be grown, which is a big step toward making fuel sustainable.

The short on how whiskey is made
Malting– getting the barley to sprout, then quickly stopping the germination.

As Russia reels under broiling temperatures completely outside the range of its experience, a widely quoted Russian political scientist is voicing the suspicion that the regional climate change is the deliberate work of the US, according to Radio Free Europe.

His idea is that the US is secretly trying to kill Russians and wipe out their crops with “climate-change weapons.”

Faced with soaring temperatures and the resulting droughts, crop failures, heat stroke deaths and wildfires, the deputy director of the Strategic Culture Foundation is suggesting that it had to have been deliberate. This had to have been an act of war, perpetrated by an enemy.

It is rather well-known now that transportation is one of the leading causes of global warming pollution in the world, and especially in the United States. NASA actually reported in February that motor vehicles are the largest net contributor to global warming pollution.

Now, a new scientific finding in the journal Environmental Science & Technology shows that, counter to what most of us believe, driving a car causes more global warming pollution than flying the same distance in a plane.

The study, “Specific Climate Impact of Passenger and Freight Transport,” finds that, in the short run, planes cause more global warming because they create more short-lived warming processes at high altitudes.

Natural gas gets a lot of buzz these days as a clean alternative to oil. Unfortunately, while it may be a clean-burning fuel, a popular new extraction method is causing horrible water pollution in areas near drill sites. Residents in areas near fracking sites have been able to set their tap water on fire.

The method is called hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” for short, and it involves all sorts of toxic chemicals that contaminate ground water in the surrounding areas.

While New York State is making some progress on putting a stop to fracking there, other areas aren’t so progressive. Here is Democracy Now talking about fracking and how it can contaminate our drinking water:

Dr. Devra Davis

In a book to be released next month, epidemiologist Dr. Devra Davis argues that cell phone use is a major factor in an increase in brain cancer and other diseases.  The founding director of the Board on Toxicology and Environmental Studies at the National Academy of Sciences, Davis calls cell phone radiation “a national emergency.”The book, Disconnect, and Davis’ previous statements on health risks from cell phones have raised hackles among some academics and cell phone companies, but Davis has been steadfast in her conclusions. “The most popular gadget of our age has been shown to damage DNA, break down the brain’s defenses, and reduce sperm count while increasing memory loss and the risks of Alzheimer’s disease and even cancer,” says publishers’ materail accompanying the book. “And half the world’s four billion cell phones are used by people under twenty.”

A forty acre, six megawatt solar power plant is providing the energy to run a water treatment operation at a Superfund site in California, and the U.S. EPA is so pleased with the results that they’ve produced a detailed case study to help promote similar projects across the country.

The case study details how solar power came to resolve groundwater contamination at the Aeroject General Corporation site (pdf) through a partnership that involved the company, the local utility, and the solar installer – and it also describes how the installation is producing benefits beyond its initial goals.