If your family is anything like ours, the kitchen is easily the most used room…

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Elephants are some of the most intelligent, compassionate and social creatures on Earth, forming tight-knit family groups, social networks and an extended “clan structure,” the members of which not only care for each other, but, as new research shows, call each other by name.

A new study by researchers from Save the Elephants — a conservation and research organization based in Kenya — ElephantVoices and Colorado State University (CSU) has found that when wild African elephants are called by their names, they answer back. They also address one another with name-like calls — a rarity among nonhuman animals.

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“Personal names are a universal feature of human language, yet few analogues exist in other species. While dolphins and parrots address conspecifics by imitating the calls of the addressee, human names are not imitations of the sounds typically made by the named individual,” the authors wrote in the study. “Here we present evidence that wild African elephants address one another with individually specific calls, probably without relying on imitation of the receiver.… Moreover, elephants differentially responded to playbacks of calls originally addressed to them relative to calls addressed to a different individual.”

Using machine learning, the research team confirmed that elephants’ calls had a name-like feature that identified the intended recipient, which they had suspected based on earlier observations, a press release from CSU said.

When recorded calls were played back, elephants responded to those addressed to them with response calls or by approaching the speaker. Calls intended for other elephants did not receive as much of a reaction.

“[O]ur data suggest that elephants do not rely on imitation of the receiver’s calls to address one another, which is more similar to the way in which human names work,” said lead author of the study Michael Pardo, who was a postdoctoral researcher for the National Science Foundation at Save the Elephants and CSU during the study, in the press release.

Learning to produce novel sounds is rare among animals, but a necessary feature of identifying individuals by name. A sound that represents an idea without imitating it is called “arbitrary communication” and is seen as a “next-level cognitive skill” that vastly augments the ability to communicate.

“If all we could do was make noises that sounded like what we were talking about, it would vastly limit our ability to communicate,” said co-author of the study George Wittemyer, a CSU professor at the Warner College of Natural Resources, as well as chairperson of Save the Elephants’ scientific board, in the press release. 

Wittemyer added that elephants’ use of arbitrary vocal labels means they may also be capable of abstract thinking.

Their complex social systems, similar to those of humans, likely led to the evolution of arbitrary vocal labeling of individuals using abstract sounds, the researchers said.

“It’s probably a case where we have similar pressures, largely from complex social interactions. That’s one of the exciting things about this study, it gives us some insight into possible drivers of why we evolved these abilities,” said Wittemyer.

Elephant calls communicate not just their identity, but their sex, age, emotional state and context of their behavior.

Their vocalizations include low rumbles and trumpeting across a wide spectrum of frequencies, including infrasonic sounds too low for humans to hear. Group movements can be coordinated by using these calls over long distances.

“Our finding that elephants are not simply mimicking the sound associated with the individual they are calling was the most intriguing,” said Kurt Fristrup, a CSU research scientist with the Walter Scott, Jr. College of Engineering, in the press release. “The capacity to utilize arbitrary sonic labels for other individuals suggests that other kinds of labels or descriptors may exist in elephant calls.”

The four-year study included 14 months of fieldwork in Kenya where the team recorded elephant vocalizations while following them in a vehicle. They captured approximately 470 distinct calls from 101 individual callers to 117 receivers in Amboseli National Park and Samburu National Reserve.

The study, “African elephants address one another with individually specific name-like calls,” was published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Wittemyer noted that elephants are expressive and those who are familiar with them can easily read their reactions. Samples played back resulted in elephants responding positively and “energetically” to recordings of family members and friends calling to them, while calls directed to others did not garner an enthusiastic response or movement toward the caller, indicating they recognized their own names.

The researchers also discovered that, like humans, elephants don’t always use each other’s names in conversation. Addressing an individual by their name was more often seen when adult elephants were talking to calves or addressing others over long distances.

The research team said they would need much more data to be able to distinguish names within calls to determine if elephants give labels to things such as food, water and specific locations.

Elephants are listed as endangered, primarily due to habitat loss and poaching. The researchers said new insights into their communication and cognition as revealed in the study further bolster the case for conserving these magnificent animals.

Pachyderms need a lot of space because of their size. Wittemyer explained that, while humans conversing with elephants is still far off, the ability to communicate with them could enhance their protection.

“It’s tough to live with elephants, when you’re trying to share a landscape and they’re eating crops. I’d like to be able to warn them, ‘Do not come here. You’re going to be killed if you come here,’” said Wittemyer.

The post Elephants Call Each Other by Name, Like Humans Do, Study Finds appeared first on EcoWatch.

The United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) has tightened fuel mileage standards for vehicles in an effort to transform the country’s auto market into one dominated by more climate-friendly electric vehicles.

The new standards set by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) will lower fuel costs by more than $23 billion while reducing pollution, a press release from USDOT said.

“Not only will these new standards save Americans money at the pump every time they fill up, they will also decrease harmful pollution and make America less reliant on foreign oil. These standards will save car owners more than $600 in gasoline costs over the lifetime of their vehicle,” said U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg in the press release.

The new standards will save nearly 70 billion gallons of gas through 2050 and prevent more than 782.6 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions by mid-century.

“When Congress established the Corporate Average Fuel Economy program in the 1970s, the average vehicle got about 13 miles to the gallon. Under these new standards, the average light-duty vehicle will achieve nearly four times that at 50 miles per gallon,” said Sophie Shulman, NHTSA deputy administrator, in the press release.

The final rule will increase fuel economy by two percent annually for passenger cars with model years 2027 to 2031 and light trucks with model years 2029 to 2031. This will mean that by model year 2031, the average light-duty vehicle will get roughly 50.4 miles per gallon.

The new rules are not as strict as last year’s USDOT draft rules, which would have required that automakers make passenger cars with an average 66.4 miles per gallon and light trucks with a standard 54.4 miles per gallon before 2032, reported The New York Times. The proposal was weakened following lobbying from automakers.

Under the new final rule, van and heavy-duty pickup truck fuel efficiency will go up by 10 percent each year for vehicles with model years 2030 to 2032, while model years 2033 to 2035 will increase by eight percent annually. This will mean an average of roughly 35 miles per gallon fleetwide by model year 2035, resulting in a savings of more than $700 in gasoline costs for van and heavy-duty pickup owners.

“President Biden’s economic and climate agenda has catalyzed an American clean energy and manufacturing boom,” said national climate advisor Ali Zaidi in the press release. “On factory floors across the nation, our autoworkers are making cars and trucks that give American drivers more choices today than ever before. These fuel economy standards, rigorously aligned with our investments and standards across the federal government, deliver on the Biden-Harris Administration’s promise to build on this momentum and continue to spur job creation, and move faster and faster to tackle the climate crisis.”

NHTSA consulted with unions, consumers, environmental advocates, states, automakers and other stakeholders in the process of crafting the final rule.

The new rule sets standards consistent with the direction of Congress regarding the conservation of fuel and promotion of the country’s automotive manufacturing and energy independence, while at the same time giving the automotive industry flexibility on how to reach those goals.

“Though NHTSA does not consider electric and other alternative fuels when setting standards, manufacturers may use all available technologies – including advanced internal combustion engines, hybrid technologies and electric vehicles – for compliance,” the press release said.

The updated fuel economy standards set by NHTSA complement similar vehicle fleet emissions standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). NHTSA worked with the EPA to improve its standards while minimizing the costs of compliance, consistent with relevant statutory factors.

“These new fuel economy standards will save our nation billions of dollars, help reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, and make our air cleaner for everyone. Americans will enjoy the benefits of this rule for decades to come,” Shulman said.

The post Biden Admin Tightens Vehicle Mileage Standards in Effort to Bolster EVs and Fight Climate Change appeared first on EcoWatch.

For the first time, the amount of aquatic life — such as fish, clams and shrimp — that was farmed outpaced wild-caught aquatic life in 2022, according to the United Nations’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

In the UN’s latest The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture report, it found that aquaculture, or farmed aquatic life, produced 130.9 million metric tons in 2022. By comparison, the same year saw 92.3 million metric tons of aquatic life products from global capture fisheries. Inland fisheries generated 11.3 million metric tons, while marine capture produced 81 million metric tons.

According to the UN, this is the first time that aquaculture production has outpaced capture fisheries, although it said that both are essential for feeding the global population.

In total, fisheries and aquaculture production produced 223.2 million metric tons of aquatic life, most of which (185.4 million metric tons) was animals. About 37.8 million metric tons produced were algae, which is expected to be an important food source for the growing human population by 2050.

“FAO welcomes the significant achievements thus far, but further transformative and adaptive actions are needed to strengthen the efficiency, inclusiveness, resilience and sustainability of aquatic food systems and consolidate their role in addressing food insecurity, poverty alleviation and sustainable governance,” FAO Director-General QU Dongyu said in a press release. “That’s why FAO advocates Blue Transformation, to meet the overall requirements of better production, better nutrition, a better environment and a better life, leaving no one behind.”

The UN has noted that the rise in farmed fishing is a way to reduce food insecurity, as well as a way to minimize overfishing and unsustainable practices in the capture fishing industry, especially as the report predicted a 10% increase in aquatic animal production by 2032 to meet an estimated 12% increase in demand for consumption.

Overfishing is a major threat to aquatic life, contributing to the greatest rate of removing wildlife from their habitat than any other industry. According to the report, the amount of marine aquatic life that were fished within biologically sustainable levels declined in 2021 by 2.3% compared to 2019 levels.

But aquaculture is not without its environmental concerns. As KQED reported, aquaculture can pollute waterways from the excess nutrients and fecal waste generated in aquatic farms. For larger fish, smaller fish may still be wild-caught to feed the farmed fish. Farmed fish can also be vulnerable to disease transmission, and they may pass those illnesses on to wild fish, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported.

As The Associated Press reported, some of the most farmed aquatic life include freshwater carp, oysters, shrimp, clams, tilapia and prawns. Some of the most common captured aquatic life include skipjack tuna, Alaska pollock and Peruvian anchovies. 

The post Aquatic Farming Surpasses Fishing for First Time: UN Report appeared first on EcoWatch.

Join the Earth911 podcast community for a special World Ocean Day conversation,  Blueprints for Coastal…

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Last month, Oscar Hernández couldn’t sleep. The cook, who worked at a restaurant located inside of a Las Vegas casino, had found that after coming home from his shifts, his body would not properly cool down. 

The air conditioning at work had been broken for about four months. Hernández worked eight-hour shifts during the restaurant’s brunch service, whipping up eggs, waffles, and fried chicken. He spent hours in front of a scaldingly hot grill — an older model that only ran at extremely high temperatures. Most often, his station on the line was in a corner, and it seemed as if all of the other heat sources in the kitchen — the gas burners, the four deep-fryers, the waffle iron — converged right there. Summer had not officially started, but Las Vegas was already seeing above-normal temperatures in May, sometimes reaching triple digits. The fans that the owners put in the kitchen were not strong enough to cool down the space.  

Extreme heat is nothing new to Hernández, who lives in Nevada and has worked in the restaurant industry for 22 years. But the situation at this non-union restaurant, a rarity on the Las Vegas strip, was becoming untenable. Sometimes it got so hot in the kitchen that Hernández preferred the heat outside, where at least there was a breeze. He had a headache that would not go away, and at home he sometimes found himself getting irritated with his children over small things. 

“The heat inside a restaurant is different — it gets into your body,” Hernández said in an interview in Spanish. He knew doctors recommend getting adequate rest to help recover from overheating, but now he could not do even that. So he quit. 

“I’m the only one who works in my family,” he said. “So I decided that I’d rather look for another job, one where I can work comfortably and then hopefully, I’ll be able to get some sleep.” He has since found a job at a different restaurant.

Stories of working under heat stress are common in the restaurant and food service industry, where back-of-house workers stationed “on the line” must stay on their feet for hours, cooking and prepping next to hot stoves, ovens, fryers, and more. But increasingly, this workforce must contend with an additional source of heat exposure: the record-breaking summer temperatures and heat waves taking place outside the kitchen. The confluence of indoor and outdoor heat has inspired some workers to unionize and fight for stronger safeguards at work. Employees at a Seattle-based sandwich chain recently secured historic protections against extreme heat in their first union contract. Labor organizers say they expect more food service workers to organize and bargain around heat in the years to come. 

Of all the climate issues that workers are facing on the job, “heat, I would say, is one of the most common right now,” said Yana Kalmyka, a volunteer organizer for the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, a grassroots effort started out of the pandemic to support worker organizing. 

Scientists now largely agree that all heat waves are made more likely or stronger because of climate change. That’s thanks to a relatively new but growing field called attribution science, which allows researchers to determine how much more likely extreme weather events are made by global warming. A report published last month found that in the last year, human-caused climate change led to a global average of 26 additional days of extreme heat. 

Food workers have long been on the front line of worsening global temperatures. Farmworkers in the U.S. are necessarily exposed to the elements, but lack federal regulations around heat exposure and safety. Delivery workers must also travel through extreme heat (and other weather events) to earn a living, and may not have adequate places of rest throughout the day. 

Similarly, restaurant cooks and servers can often be subject to extremely high indoor temperatures — and depending on their workplace setup, outdoor temperatures can exacerbate that heat stress. The nature of restaurant work — where quick service is key and kitchens stay open even during global pandemics — means that workers are expected to show up for shifts even during historic heat, when their safety and that of their customers might be compromised.

Jason Flynn, a Chicago line cook who has worked in restaurants for many years, said that the fast-paced, high-pressure nature of commercial kitchens, where workplace injuries are often simply toughed out, means workers may feel as if working through excessive heat exposure is their only option. The result of that, he said, is that “people are going to pass out, have strokes, or other kinds of long-term heat-related issues, like blood pressure and heart problems.” 

Women and people of color are disproportionately represented in certain restaurant roles. For example, Hispanic people are more likely to be staffed as dishwashers or cooks, according to an Economic Policy Institute report. Many are immigrants or undocumented, and may fear retaliation or losing work for speaking out about working conditions. These are “populations who already experienced heightened impacts of climate injustice at home in their community,” said Kalmyka. “And their growing exposure to extreme heat at work is just another dimension of how inequitable the impacts of the climate crisis are.” 

There are a few ways that outdoor heat exacerbates indoor heat for restaurant workers. Tall windows in restaurants and cafes can let in a lot of heat on sunny days — as is the case at multiple locations of Homegrown, the Seattle-based sandwich chain that recently won heat protections after unionizing.

Some Homegrown locations, according to workers, are in older buildings that lack adequate climate control. Most are set up for counter service, meaning the workers take orders in the same area where they toast and prepare sandwiches. “We’re in this big old brick building,” said Zane Smith, a worker-organizer at Homegrown. “And we don’t have very good air conditioning, and we have an oven. So the whole building becomes this big brick oven.”

Smith, a Seattle native, said heat was one of the main issues workers were rallying around when they first started talking about forming a union. Despite working indoors, Homegrown workers say they have been feeling the impact of Seattle’s record-topping summer heat. The city, which has historically lacked air conditioning, faced record-shattering heat in 2021, with temperatures as high as 108 degrees F sending many to the hospital with heat-related illnesses. Attribution scientists said the unprecedented heat wave was made at least 150 times more likely by human-induced climate change. 

“It’s always hotter inside than it is outside,” said Smith. “Every time it’s 80 degrees outside, it’s 85 in the store; when it’s 90, it’s 95 in the store.”

In what is likely an industry first, the workers at Homegrown won language in their union contract in March that could help with that. The workers fought for a clause that allows them to receive time-and-a-half pay when temperatures in the store reach 82 degrees Fahrenheit and double pay when store temperatures reach 86 degrees F. (According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, when a workplace reaches 77 degrees F, it becomes potentially unsafe for workers to engage in “strenuous work.”) 

Emily Minkus, who has worked for Homegrown for nearly six years, said her colleagues shared stories about working through heat stress and illness during bargaining sessions with management. 

“We have people who have passed out. We have people who have had asthma attacks,” said Minkus. “We have locations where people were taking breaks in walk-in” freezers. 

She credits these testimonials with convincing management that workers were asking for heat pay not because “ideologically, it’s good for the world. We’re doing it because we need it.”

Homegrown workers unionized with Unite Here Local 8, which represents about ​​4,000 hospitality workers in Oregon and Washington state. Anita Seth, the president of Unite Here Local 8, said the goal of the Homegrown heat pay language is to “really incentivize the employer to update and improve their heat mitigation systems,” which could include repairing and maintaining AC but also installing shade coverings for windows. It seems to be working — Minkus reported that when the AC broke down at her store this spring, she and her colleagues received heat pay for three days straight. The following week, a technician arrived to repair the equipment.

Homegrown’s management didn’t reply to Grist’s request for comment.

Homegrown isn’t the only food chain where heat and faulty cooling systems have become a labor issue. Last summer, workers at a Starbucks located in Houston, Texas, went on strike over extreme heat in their store. 

“We did not have a functioning air conditioner last summer, and we were forced to work in temperatures between 80 and 85 degrees,” Madelyne Austin, a Starbucks barista organizing with Starbucks Workers United, said in a statement. “Our managers had known the air conditioner wasn’t working correctly for months, but refused to listen to us when we begged them to fix it.” 

The Starbucks union is currently bargaining with the coffee chain over a “foundational framework” that will help shape contracts at the store level. Austin said that workers are fighting for “universal safety standards” to mitigate extreme heat. 

In response to a request for comment, Starbucks said the company is committed to ensuring worker and customer safety and routined review conditions in stores. “Where issues in store jeopardize the well-being of our partners,” the company said in a statement, “we have been working with deep care and urgency to take action.” (Starbucks refers to all employees as “partners.”)

The Starbucks story demonstrates how sometimes the quickest way restaurant workers can secure their own safety during a climate emergency is to shut down. Starbucks Workers United confirmed that after the Houston store employees walked out, their AC was repaired. 

Homegrown workers also understand this well. In addition to their heat pay language, they won a clause in their contract that allows them to clock out due to extreme heat in their store without facing disciplinary action. Minkus and Smith say workers have already been taking advantage of this provision, and that staff members are prepared to simply close up for the day if it ever gets too hot.

Minkus called working in 88-degree heat next to a 600-degree oven “miserable.” “And so a lot of workers are leaving early. We had one location shut down early because everybody was just so, so hot.” 

Smith says that when Homegrown workers first approached the bargaining table, they were fighting for better air conditioning. “That’s still what we want,” he added. “Heat pay is great, but we would actually like the workplace to be a reasonable, safe temperature year round.” Until then, workers at Homegrown know they’ll be paid extra for working through the heat; Smith says that since the contract went into effect in March, his store has received 10 or 15 days of heat pay.

Seth notes that extreme heat is increasingly impacting workers across industries, most immediately outdoor workers, and that heat has come up in other food service contract negotiations. For Kalmyka, the connection between climate change and labor organizing takes on even greater urgency when considering productivity demands on workers. “Across the service industry and many other industries, we see employers continually trying to squeeze their workers to produce more for less,” she said, adding that “as a result, workers are often forced to work more and faster under pretty dire levels of short staffing,” which can exacerbate the effects of heat stress.

As the labor movement continues to be impacted by the climate crisis, organizers like Kalmyka are hoping to help workers draw connections between their struggle and the planetary one. To her, the connection between worker exploitation and human-induced climate change is clear. “Both have the same root cause, which is putting profits ahead of people and the planet.”

This story has been updated.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Heat waves are making restaurant kitchens unsafe. Workers are fighting back. on Jun 10, 2024.

It’s no secret that a warming world will drive food prices higher, a phenomenon increasingly known as “heatflation.” What’s less known, but a growing area of interest among economists and scientists alike, is the role individual extreme weather events — blistering temperatures in Texas, a destructive tornado in Iowa — may have on what U.S. consumers pay at the supermarket.

At first glance, the answer might seem logical: A drought or flood that impacts agricultural production will, eventually, drive up prices. But it’s not that simple, because what consumers pay for groceries isn’t only reflective of crop yields or herd sizes, but the whole supply chain. That’s where it gets interesting: Economists are beginning to see a growing trend that suggests weather forecasts play a part in sticker shock. Sometimes the mere prediction of an extreme event — like the record-breaking temperatures, hurricanes, and wildfires forecasters are bracing for this summer — can prompt a spike in prices. 

It isn’t the forecast itself to blame, but concerns about what the weather to come might mean for the entire supply chain, as food manufacturers manage their risks and the expected future value of their goods, said Seungki Lee, an agricultural economist at Ohio State University. 

“When it comes to the climate risk on food prices, people typically look at the production side. But over the last two years, we learned that extreme weather can raise food prices, [cause] transportation disruptions, as well as production disruptions,” said Lee.

How much we pay for the food we buy is determined by retailers, who consider the producer’s price, labor costs, and other factors. Any increases in what producers charge is typically passed on to consumers because grocery stores operate on thin profit margins. And if manufacturers expect to pay more for commodities like beef or specialty crops like avocados in the future, they may boost prices now to cover those anticipated increases.

“The whole discussion about the climate risks on the food supply chain is based on probabilities,” Lee said. “It is possible that we do not see extreme temperatures this summer, or even later this year. We may realize there was no significant weather shock hitting the supply chain, but unfortunately that will not be the end of the story.”

Supply chain disruptions and labor shortages are among the reasons food prices have climbed 25 percent since 2020. Climate change may be contributing as well. A study published earlier this year found “heatflation” could push them up by as much as 3 percentage points per year worldwide in just over a decade and by about 2 percentage points in North America. Simultaneous disasters in major crop and cattle producing regions around the world — known as multi-breadbasket failure — are among the primary forces driving these costs. Crop shortages in these regions may also squeeze prices, which can create volatility in the global market and bump up consumer costs.

Historically, a single, localized heat wave or storm typically wouldn’t disrupt the supply chain enough to prompt price hikes. But a warming world might be changing that dynamic as extreme weather events intensify and simultaneous occurrences of them become the norm. How much this adds to consumers’ grocery bills will vary, and depends upon whether these climate-fueled disasters hit what Lee calls “supply chain chokepoints” like vital shipping channels during harvest seasons.

“As the weather is getting more and more volatile because of climate change, we are seeing this issue more frequently,” he said. “So what that means is the supply chain is getting more likely to be jeopardized by these types of risks that we have never seen before.”

An ongoing drought that plagued the Mississippi River system from the fall of 2022 until February provides an excellent example of this. The Mississippi River basin, which covers 31 states, is a linchpin of America’s agricultural supply chain. It produces 92 percent of the nation’s agricultural exports, 78 percent of the world’s feed grains and soybeans, and most of the country’s livestock. Vessels navigating its roughly 2,350 miles of channels carry 589 million tons of cargo annually. 

Transportation barriers created by low water hampered the ability of crop-producing states in the Corn Belt to send commodities like corn and soybeans, primarily used for cattle feed, to livestock producers in the South. Thus emerged a high demand, low supply situation as shipping and commodity prices shot up, with economists expecting consumers to absorb those costs. 

Past research showing that retail prices increase alongside commodity prices suggests that the drought probably contributed to higher overall food costs last year — and because droughts have a lingering impact on production even after they end, it may be fueling stubbornly high grocery prices today.  

But although it seems clear that the drought contributed to higher prices, particularly for meat and dairy products, just how much remains to be gauged. One reason for that is a lack of research analyzing the relationship between this particular weather event and the consumer market. Another is it’s often difficult to tease out which of several possible factors, including global trade, war, and export bans, influence specific examples of sticker shock.  

While droughts definitely prompt decreases in agricultural production, Metin Çakır, an economist at the University of Minnesota, says whether that is felt by consumers depends on myriad factors. “This would mean higher raw ingredient costs for foods sold in groceries, and part of those higher costs will be passed onto consumers via higher prices. However, will consumer prices actually increase? The answer depends on many other supply and demand factors that might be happening at the same time as the impact of the drought,” said Çakır. 

In a forthcoming analysis previewed by Grist, Çakır examined the relationship between an enduring drought in California, which produces a third of the nation’s vegetables and nearly two-thirds of its fruits and nuts, and costs of produce purchased at large grocery retailers nationwide. While the event raised consumer vegetable prices to a statistically significant degree, they didn’t increase as much as Çakır expected. 

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This capricious consumer cost effect is due largely to the resiliency of America’s food system. Public safety nets like crop insurance and other federal programs have played a large part in mitigating the impacts of adverse weather and bolstering the food supply chain against climate change and other shocks. By ensuring farmers and producers don’t bear the brunt of those losses, these programs reduce the costs passed on to consumers. Advanced agricultural technology, modern infrastructure, substantial storage, and efficient transport links also help ensure retail price stability. 

A 2024 study of the role climate change played on the U.S. wheat market from 1950 to 2018 found that although the impact of weather shocks on price variability has increased with the frequency of extreme weather, adaptive mechanisms, like a well-developed production and distribution infrastructure with sufficient storage capacity, have minimized the impact on consumers. Still, the paper warns that such systems may collapse when faced with “unprecedented levels of weather variability.” 

Last year was the world’s warmest on record, creating an onslaught of challenges for crop and livestock producers nationwide. And this year is primed to be even more brutal, with the transition from El Niño — an atmospheric phenomenon that warms ocean temperatures — to La Niña, its counterpart that cools them. This cyclical change in global weather patterns is another potential threat for crop yields and source of supply chain pressures that economists and scientists are keeping an eye on. 

They will be particularly focused on the Midwest and stretches of the Corn Belt, two regions prone to drought as an El Niño cycle gives way to a La Niña, according to Weston Anderson, an assistant research scientist at the University of Maryland and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Those growing regions for corn and soybeans are what he’ll be watching closely as La Niña develops. 

It’s something Jennifer Ifft, an agricultural economist at Kansas State University, is also thinking about. “If you have a very severe drought in the Corn Belt … that’s going to be the biggest deal, because that’s gonna raise the cost of production for cattle, hogs, poultry,” said Ifft. “So that would probably have the largest inflationary impacts.”

As of January, U.S. beef herd inventory was at its lowest in 73 years, which multiple reports noted is due to persisting drought that began in 2020. Americans, the majority of whom are already spending more on groceries than last year, are poised to soon see “record” beef prices at the supermarket. Food prices are also expected to rise another 2.2 percent in 2024, according to the USDA’s Economic Research Service.  

In a world enmeshed in extremes, our already-fragile food supply chain could be the next system teetering on the edge of collapse because of human-caused climate change. And costlier groceries linked to impending risk is the first of many warning signs that it is already splintering.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How forecasts of bad weather can drive up your grocery bill on Jun 10, 2024.

While short-lived, the denial came as a surprise. 

This March, Loudoun County, a suburb of Washington, D.C. in northern Virginia that is home to the greatest concentration of data centers in the world, made an unexpected move: It rejected a proposal to let a company build a bigger data center than existing zoning automatically allowed. 

“At some point we have to say stop,” said Loudoun Supervisor Michael Turner during the meeting, as reported by news site LoudounNow. “We do not have enough power to power the data centers we have.”

County supervisors would later reverse the decision, approving a smaller version of the project. But the initial denial sent ripples throughout Virginia, where concern over the rapid growth of data centers and what that means for the state’s ambitious decarbonization goals is growing. 

“It is really a salient issue for climate right now,” said Tim Cywinski, a spokesperson for the Virginia chapter of the Sierra Club, which has been vocal about its desire to slow down data center development in the state. “The data center industry is about 2 percent of global carbon emissions. … In about two years, I think it will surpass the airline industry.”

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Dominion Energy, Virginia’s largest electric utility, has forecast that data centers will be the most significant driver of rising energy demand in the state over the next 15 years. And while the utility has pledged it will decarbonize its Virginia grid by 2045, in line with the Virginia Clean Economy Act passed by the state legislature in 2020, it has also indicated in its most recent long-range plan for utility regulators that new natural gas plants will be needed to meet demand. 

“We are 100 percent committed to achieving the goals of the VCEA. We are not taking our foot off the accelerator with renewables,” said Aaron Ruby, a spokesperson for Dominion. But, he added, “the clean energy transition is more challenging than it was a few years ago. The inescapable reality is we are experiencing unprecedented growth in electric demand.” 

While some environmentalists say the skyrocketing data center growth threatens Virginia’s ability to go zero-carbon, others say it can be done — but it will require new ways of managing the grid. 

“To me it’s not a question of data centers or clean energy,” said Nate Benforado, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center. “I think there is a path forward if we make some improvements.” 

‘They just continue to come’

Data centers and Virginia have been hand in glove for almost three decades, since companies like MAE-East, Equinix, and AOL built some of the earliest modern facilities in the Washington, D.C. suburbs. With close proximity to the federal government and the defense firms ringing it, Northern Virginia — and especially Ashburn in Loudoun County, known as “Data Center Alley” — quickly became the beating heart of the U.S. data center industry. 

“There are data centers located in other areas of Virginia, but roughly 80 percent of the industry is located in Loudoun County,” Dominion wrote in a recent long-term plan submitted to state regulators. “To put this in perspective, the aggregate of the next six largest data center markets in the U.S. is not as big as Loudoun County’s market.” 

Lawmakers have embraced the business. Beginning in 2010, Virginia exempted data centers from sales and use tax for many of the key components of their business as long as they met certain criteria: They had to invest at least $150 million in their facility, create 50 new jobs in the locality where it was sited and pay at least 150 percent of the prevailing annual average wage. The exemption remains Virginia’s largest economic development incentive. 

The gambit worked. A 2019 report by Virginia’s legislative watchdog, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, found the exemption “has a sizable influence” in attracting data centers to the state. It also has a “moderate economic benefit” for the state, generating about $27 million in Virginia gross domestic product for every $1 million in foregone tax revenue, JLARC concluded.

But as data centers have continued to flock to Virginia, concerns have increased. In Loudoun and neighboring Prince William County, residents complain the facilities’ 24/7 operations produce a constant humming that never stops. Conservationists fear the centers’ expanding footprint is consuming too much land, while their heavy water use could strain local supplies. 

How to deal with the facilities’ power use is also an increasingly urgent question. Data centers are highly electricity-intensive, requiring a steady stream of power to operate around the clock. As the industry expands, more electricity is needed to meet their demand, triggering the construction of not only new sources of power but transmission lines to carry that power from where it’s generated to where it’s used. 

Data center representatives have pointed out many companies in the space have been active drivers of renewables development across the nation. In a statement, Data Center Coalition President Josh Levi noted two-thirds of the renewable power bought by U.S. corporations has been wind and solar contracted to data centers and their customers. Companies have also set their own goals: Google aims to operate its data centers on carbon-free energy by 2030, while Amazon is pushing for net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. 

“Data centers are highly efficient facilities that enable energy savings and efficiencies for homes, businesses, utilities, and other end users,” said Levi. Many, he added, are “on pace to achieve voluntary clean energy targets that predate and outpace many state mandates and targets.”  

‘Absolutely phenomenal’

Even with those commitments, the sheer magnitude of the facilities’ growth in Virginia poses a challenge for utilities, and particularly Dominion. While data centers’ peak energy usage in 2022 was almost 2.8 gigawatts — roughly one and a half times the power produced at Dominion’s largest Virginia plant, the North Anna nuclear facility in Louisa County — the company forecasts they will require roughly 13.3 gigawatts by 2038. Much of that may be due to Amazon Web Services, which Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin last year announced intends to invest $35 billion in data center campuses in the state by 2040, although Dominion does not disclose information about specific customers. 

“The amount of data center load growth we’re dealing with is absolutely phenomenal,” said Devi Glick, a principal at consultancy Synapse Energy Economics, who testified for the Sierra Club at hearings in Richmond this September on the utility’s Integrated Resource Plan, a nonbinding roadmap for how it intends to meet customer demand over the next 15 years. “Everything we’re dealing with is massive and kind of, like, novel.” 

Some environmental groups have challenged the accuracy of Dominion’s forecasts, arguing the utility is overestimating future growth as a way to justify keeping existing natural gas plants running and build new ones, including a proposed peaker plant in Chesterfield County. 

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Others, including the nonprofit Appalachian Voices, say the forecast is shakier than it appears because so much of the expected demand comes from a very small number of companies. According to figures from Dominion, two firms account for 62 percent of the demand the utility expects to see from data centers in 2030. Five account for 80 percent. 

“If even one of those five companies changes its growth plans, or if one or more counties in northern Virginia takes an aggressively hostile turn against data center expansion, the actual growth in Virginia could be radically different from what Dominion estimates now,” wrote Rachel James, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center representing Appalachian Voices, this October. 

Despite those disagreements, there’s little debate that in the near term, data centers’ electricity demand is skyrocketing. Dominion Vice President of Strategic Partnerships Alan Bradshaw told regulators this September that data centers have signed electric service agreements with Dominion that call for the utility to provide over 5.8 gigawatts to various new facilities by 2032. Bradshaw said he wasn’t aware of any data center customer in Dominion territory abandoning a project after such an agreement had been signed. Over 10 additional gigawatts are in earlier stages of development by companies working with Dominion to obtain power for future projects.

“This week we’ve had an executive meeting with a new entrant on the market, and they want to add two campuses that have 1.2 gigawatts of load,” Bradshaw said at the September 21 hearing. “Literally on the way to the courthouse today, we had another customer call us about a half-gigawatt campus they want to meet with us on. So they just continue to come.” 

Zero-carbon or the cloud? 

But while economic development boosters see the uptick in investment as a boon for state and local coffers, environmental groups say if left unchecked, the growth threatens Virginia’s ability to decarbonize its electric grid by 2050. 

“We have to make the hard choice about what data centers look like in Virginia now and if it’s worth the cost,” said Cywinski of the Sierra Club. “And right now, we think it’s not.” 

All of the long-range plans Dominion presented to regulators last year included new natural gas capacity, ranging anywhere from 970 to 2,900 megawatts of the fuel, an approach the company has defended as necessary to ensure reliability. 

“There is no realistic way that we can serve all this growth, keep our customers’ power on around the clock, and only do it with renewables,” said Ruby, the Dominion spokesman. “That is just not realistically possible.” 

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Ruby said the utility’s calculus isn’t just based on available megawatts. It’s also a matter, he said, of how quickly units can be brought online to meet demand in a crisis. Solar and wind can’t produce electricity around the clock, and while nuclear will remain a mainstay of Virginia power supply — it currently accounts for about a third of Dominion’s Virginia capacity — both the North Anna and Surry plants require hours to ramp up. 

In contrast, he said, with a natural gas plant like the new Chesterfield facility the utility has proposed, “we can ramp that up and dispatch 1,000 megawatts to the grid in 10 to 20 minutes.” 

Environmental groups, however, say Dominion shouldn’t be planning to expand its carbon resources in the long term given state law requiring the utility to stop emitting carbon by the middle of the century. 

“The transition to clean energy, that is the commonwealth’s policy. It is in the law. That is what we are working toward,” said Benforado, who along with James represented Appalachian Voices in the September case.

How data centers’ rising power demands may impact Virginia’s ability to transition from fossil fuels to renewables is one of the issues the state’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission is tasked with assessing this year. And although lawmakers put forward more than a dozen proposals related to data centers during the last legislative session, the General Assembly delayed consideration of most until the next session, after the state study’s release. Among the bills put forward were proposals to require data centers to meet certain energy efficiency targets to qualify for state tax incentives and have local governments study the regional grid impacts of potential facilities.

“The JLARC study really sucked the wind out of a lot of these,” said Benforado. 

In regulatory proceedings, Appalachian Voices and the Sierra Club have argued that rather than building new gas plants, Dominion should explore other ways to meet data centers’ power needs. Proposals include demand response programs that let energy consumers shift or reduce their power usage during times of high demand, such as extremely cold or hot weather. The environmental groups also argued for long-duration battery storage, an emerging but limited technology, and transmission upgrades.

“I think we need much more sophisticated planning that looks at lots of options, lots of tools,” said Benforado. “I do not accept this idea that we have to build gas. … To me, that’s not backed up by analysis.” 

With as many as 11 gigawatts of power needed over the next 15 years to supply data centers, he said, “I think this is the time we need to refocus our efforts.” 

“Clean energy aside, if you don’t have smart planning, optimized solutions, it’s going to be really expensive to supply 11 gigawatts,” he said. 

Levi of the Data Center Coalition noted that “grid planning and management is ultimately the role of utilities and grid operators.” However, he said the industry “is committed to leaning in as an engaged partner.” 

Rising tensions could complicate the search for solutions. Local conflicts over the industry have led to the ousting of at least one official in Prince William County, and in December 2023, 25 nonprofits and other groups, including the Virginia chapter of the Sierra Club, announced they were forming the Virginia Data Center Reform Coalition to seek more regulation of data centers. 

Still, Benforado said he believed “win-win solutions” could be found in partnership with the industry. 

“I think they’re motivated,” he said. “I hope they’re motivated.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Virginia has the biggest data center market in the world. Can it also decarbonize its grid? on Jun 9, 2024.

Limu kohu is most traditionally destined for poke bowls, but the distinctive-tasting seaweed is now increasingly in demand for cattle to reduce the amount of methane they burp into the atmosphere. 

Parker Ranch cattle are among the first of Hawai’i’s livestock to be fed farmed red algae. In previous trials, the seaweed has been found to reduce the amount of methane the animals belch by an average of 77 percent, according to Kona-based business Symbrosia. 

The algae’s ability to mitigate cattle’s greenhouse gas emissions has elevated Symbrosia and Blue Ocean Barns, another limu kohu farm based in Kona, in the growing international seaweed farming industry.

Fueled by its litany of potential applications and climate change-mitigating properties, the World Bank predicts the industry could be worth almost $12 billion by 2030. And that is attracting immense public and private investment interest across the globe, including in Hawai’i. 

The federal government awarded Symbrosia more than $2.2 million in grant funding this year, including a U.S. Department of Agriculture organic market development grant for $1.2 million late last month. 

That catalytic funding will increase the five-year-old operation’s production by 1,600 percent, Symbrosia CEO Alexia Akbay said. That means just over 6,000 cattle could be eating Seagraze, the red algae product, as part of their diet. The cap is currently 250 cattle. 

With a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation, awarded in January, it plans to streamline its currently labor-intensive production process, one that involves three stages of finicky cultivation and drying.

Blue Ocean Barns signed on with two major mainland dairies, as well as ice cream producer Ben & Jerry’s, raising $20 million. Symbrosia last year signed on with Organic Valley, the nation’s largest farmers cooperative, and Danone, the country’s largest yogurt producer. 

The recent injection is “really the next step for us to start expanding commercially for our products, for both local producers like Parker Ranch and then some larger companies like Organic Valley,” Akbay said.

But the company does not appear to be leaving any time soon, given the growing conditions and Hawai’i’s unique climate. Symbrosia is expanding its footprint from a quarter of an acre to 15 acres and looking to increase its staff by 70 positions, Akbay said.

That’s partly because of the year-round growing climate for the seaweed farm.

“We probably harvest a little bit more frequently, ship out product more frequently, just because the seaweed grows so quickly,” Akbay said.

But now the race is on to commercialize and scale the product across the world, given how high demand might be in the future, says Jim Wyban, who developed pathogen-free shrimp which underpins the global shrimp industry.

Going global

Major dairy and beef producers worldwide have started expressing serious interest in methane-reducing seaweed since researchers in Australia discovered its potential. The country’s first commercial harvest was in 2022. 

Meanwhile, the Global Methane Pledge, with 155 signatory nations, specifically targets livestock because they contribute the bulk of agriculture’s emissions. And agriculture accounts for 37 percent of the world’s total methane discharged by humans.

A single cow produces between 154 to 264 pounds of methane per year. The U.S., which commands a 20 percent share of the international beef industry, has a cattle population of more than 87 million.

“They’re going after a really big problem,” Wyban, a leader in Hawai’i’s aquaculture industry, said of the seaweed companies. 

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The global market for seaweed-based animal feed supplements could be worth $1.1 billion by 2030, according to the World Bank. 

There has been local interest beyond Parker Ranch, Hawai’i Cattlemen’s Council managing director Nicole Galase said. But many ranchers want to see results first, Galase said.

Symbrosia’s research with Parker Ranch is slated to last nine more months. The red seaweed has been associated with faster weight gain in cattle, more milk production, and even faster wool production in sheep. 

“We want this research and ingenuity coming up because we do want options. Ranchers are always looking for a way to improve,” Galase said. “That takes research, that takes people trying things.” 

But having a locally-grown and produced product is not going to keep more livestock in Hawai’i, where a large proportion of cattle are shipped to the mainland. The number of cattle shipped to the continental U.S. is mainly determined by how much grass Hawai’i has at any given time, a factor largely dictated by drought, Galase said. 

A valuable crop

There are several other algae-based markets, including construction materials, fertilizers, and other agricultural inputs, bioplastics, biofuels, and fabric.

Each represents an opportunity for greater environmental and economic sustainability, said Todd Low of the state Department of Agriculture.

“There’s three kinds of value to seaweed: There’s the ecosystem services, the filtering of water and benefits to the environment. There’s carbon sequestration, … then there’s this value-added processing,” Low said.

Algae already sits just behind cattle as Hawai’i’s fifth most valuable agricultural crop. It was worth $45 million in 2022. Hawai’i’s entire aquaculture sector is anticipated to reach $600 million by 2034, according to the Department of Agriculture. 

“There’s a whole world of different value-added things,” Low said. “For us, the focus on macroalgae or seaweed is the vehicle into that world.”

State lawmakers have expressed interest in aquaculture recently, though Hawaii has largely ignored fish and algae farming in the past, instead favoring land-based farming. Little has materialized from legislation introduced in recent years.

But algae has still grown as an industry, with little help.

What Symbrosia and Blue Ocean Barns have shown is that Hawai’i can compete in the aquaculture space, Low said. 

“Hawaii Grown” is funded in part by grants from the Stupski Foundation, Ulupono Fund at the Hawaii Community Foundation, and the Frost Family Foundation.

Civil Beat’s coverage of climate change is supported by the Environmental Funders Group of the Hawaii Community Foundation, Marisla Fund of the Hawaii Community Foundation, and the Frost Family Foundation.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Cattle are a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Hawaiian seaweed could change that. on Jun 8, 2024.

Schools of fish can resemble a single organism as they speed through the ocean in search of food or gather to defend their territory.

A new study has found that it is also easier for fish to swim through turbulent water if they are in a group compared with swimming alone.

“The ecological and evolutionary benefits of energy-saving in collective behaviors are rooted in the physical principles and physiological mechanisms underpinning animal locomotion,” the researchers wrote in the study. “We discovered that, when swimming at high speeds and high turbulence levels, fish schools reduced their total energy expenditure (TEE, both aerobic and anaerobic energy) by 63% to 79% compared to solitary fish.”

Many facets of animal behavior are linked with locomotion — from migration to feeding and reproduction — so many animals have adapted to improve their efficiency of movement.

The researchers proposed a “turbulent sheltering hypothesis,” which asserted that fish moving in schools are able to shield one another from rough water currents, making it easier to travel.

“Moving in turbulence is particularly challenging and energetically expensive for solitary fish. Solitary creek chub (Semotilus atromaculatus) swimming in turbulence reduced maximum sustained swimming speed (by 22%) because large turbulent eddies (approximately 76% of body length) disrupt the movement trajectories of fish,” the authors wrote. “Also, the cost of locomotion by solitary Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) can increase by approximately 150% in turbulence.”

To test their hypothesis, the researchers conducted trials with giant danios (Devario aeqipinnatus). They observed the fish swimming in groups of eight or alone in smooth and turbulent water. High-speed cameras were used to observe the fishes’ movements as they swam, while a respirometer measured their energy expenditure and respiration rates.

The experiments showed that fish traveling in schools gathered together more closely in turbulent water as compared with steady water. Solitary fish, however, had to more vigorously beat their tails to keep up the same speed in rougher currents.

“What is the function of schooling behavior in fishes? We show that being in a school substantially reduces the energetic cost for fish swimming in a turbulent environment, compared to swimming alone, providing support for the hypothesis that schooling behavior protects individual fish from the increased energetic cost associated with swimming in turbulence,” the authors wrote in the study, as Phys.org reported.

The results indicated that efficiency of locomotion may be a major component behind the evolution of fish schools. This is useful information for understanding the fundamentals of hydrodynamics, fish ecology and could also be applied to habitat maintenance and design in harboring protected species or hindering invasive ones.

Studies like this one have broader implications as well.

“Moreover, studies on animal locomotion and turbulence have profound implications for a better understanding of the planetary ecosystem, e.g., turbulence generated by groups of fish can contribute to vertical mixing of the ocean,” the authors wrote.

The researchers noted that the study could also inform future research into the group movement energy dynamics of other aquatic or aerial animals.

The study, “Collective movement of schooling fish reduces the costs of locomotion in turbulent conditions,” was published in the journal PLOS Biology.

The post Why Do Fish School? One Reason Is to Help Each Other Through Turbulent Waters appeared first on EcoWatch.