STARVATION DUE TO CROPS BURNING UP & FLOODING! THE 3RD GLOBAL GENOCIDE KILLER! A BRUTAL WAY TO GO! WET BULB TEMPS, NO FRESH WATER OR FOOD! THE BIG THREE KILLERS! MONOPOLIST NAZI SLAVE OWNER'S DARK MONEY'S $1.6 BILLION SUPREME INJUSTICE POLITICAL BUYOFF!

"THE LOOMING GLOBAL FOOD CRISIS!" . . CLICK LINK, VIDEO NOT ALLOWED TO BE
LINKED LIKE OTHERS BELOW! REALLY! . . THE ECONOMIST! . . YOU RAGING LIBERALS!

REALLY THINK ABOUT THE ARTICLES AND VIDEOS BELOW! IN MANY PLACES!
. . THIS YEAR'S CROP YIELDS ARE 50% TO 70% DOWN! . . JUST WAIT UNTIL . . 
. . "THE ARCTIC GOES . . COMPLETELY . . ICE FREE!" . . IT WILL BE . . 

"FIREY WAVES OF DEATH!" . . "HOT STUFF!" . . "THE SIBERIAN METHANE MONSTER!"
. . WILL BURN UP . . BILLIONS OF PEOPLE! . . WHILE BURNING UP . . FRESH WATER!
. . WHILE BURNING UP & FLOODING! . . THE WORLD'S FOOD GROWING REGIONS!

​PLEASE SEE THE PRIOR POSTS: THE BAD NEWS ABOUT THE LACK OF DECLINE IN ARCTIC SEA ICE AND THE HORRIFIC NEWS ABOUT TOO MUCH BAD & TOO LITTLE CLEAN WATER! SECOND GLOBAL KILLER OF CROPS & PEOPLE! ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE LOCATIONS TO LIVE NEAR CLEAN FRESH WATER LOW RISKS TOP PICKS!

2025-7 "THE FIREY WAVES OF DEATH!" "WET BULB" TEMPS DRIVEN BY "HOT STUFF" INSURES 3-4 BILLION DEATHS 2 YEARS FROM "ICE FREE ARCTIC!" THE POOR DIE QUICKLY! THE REST EXIT PEACEFULLY OR NOT! RICH & WHORES FRY IN HELL! SATAN'S ANTI-CHRISTIANS! EVIL NOT GOD!

Labor Day Heat Wave: These Are The Key Record-Breaking Temperatures For Summer 2022

Darreonna Davis and Brian Bushard
Sep 6, 2022,10:49am EDT

Summer 2022 continues to burn through the record books—with nearly 1,500 places breaking daily high temperatures in the past 30 days—here’s a real-time tracker of the most noteworthy, daily record-breaking high temperatures in major U.S. cities so far, according to data from the National Weather Service. 

Summer 2022 has brought record-breaking temperatures to the U.S.

GETTYTIMELINE

June 10 . . Phoenix reaches 113 degrees Fahrenheit.
June 14 . .Chicago hits 100 degrees, breaking a daily record set on the same day in 1987.
June 15 . . Atlanta hits 99 degrees.
June 21 . . Oakland hits 98 degrees (breaks 1954 daily record high by seven degrees).
June 21 . . San Francisco hits 98 degrees.
June 22 . . Louisville reached 100 degrees.
July 8 . . Memphis records 103 degrees.
July 9 . . Dallas breaks the almost 70-year-old record when it reaches 107 degrees. 
July 9 . . Salt Lake City breaks an almost 30-year-old record at 104 degrees.
July 16 . . St. Louis breaks its 1988 record when temperatures rise to 103 degrees.
July 19 . . Oklahoma City breaks a 1966 record at 110 degrees.
July 24 . . Philadelphia records 99 degrees.
July 24 . . Boston breaks a 35-year-old record at 100 degrees.
July 24 . . Newark, New Jersey reaches 102 degrees.
July 26 . . Portland, Oregon reaches 102 degrees.
July 26 . . Seattle hits 94 degrees as the city recorded six straight days with temperatures above 90 degrees, its longest streak recorded.
Aug. 4 . . Boston breaks its 1928 record this afternoon at 97 degrees, according to multiple reports.
Aug. 4 . . Manchester, New Hampshire hits 98 degrees, breaking a daily record set in 1935, while in Albany and Poughkeepsie, New York, the temperature reaches daily records of 99 degrees.
Aug. 5 . . Denver reaches 101 degrees, setting a daily record high.
Aug. 6 . . Providence, Rhode Island reaches 95 degrees.
Aug. 7 . . Toledo, Ohio hits 95 degrees.
Aug. 7 . . Anaheim, California breaks a daily record with the high temperature reaching 98 degrees.
Aug. 8 . . New Haven, Connecticut hits 93 degrees.
Aug. 10 . . Missoula, Montana sets a daily record high at 103 degrees, breaking a record that stood for 31 years.
Aug. 11 . . Casper, Wyoming hits 101 degrees, breaking a record daily high.
Aug. 17 . . Boise reaches 103 degrees.
Aug. 19 . . Fort Lauderdale, Florida hits 95 degrees.
Aug. 20 . . Stockton, California hits 105 degrees.
Aug. 20 . . Worcester, Massachusetts reaches 90 degrees.
Aug. 23 . . Lancaster, California sets a daily record high with the temperature climbing to 109 degrees, before breaking another record one week later when the temperature hit 112 degrees, shattering a daily record that stood for more than 70 years.
Aug. 30 . . Portland, Oregon hits 97 degrees.
Aug. 30 . . Seattle, Washington reaches 90 degrees.
Aug. 30 . . Salt Lake City, Utah reaches 101 degrees.
Aug. 31 . . Anaheim, California hits 106 degrees, breaking a previous high of 102 degrees set in 2007, and setting a new monthly record in the city for the month of August, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Aug. 31 . . Boise, Idaho reaches 106 degrees.
Sept. 1 . . Reno, Nevada hits 100 degrees, breaking a record that had been in place for 85 years.
Sept. 1 . . Palmade, California hits 109 degrees, breaking a recordset in 1947.
Sept. 2 . . Reno, Nevada breaks another 85-year record when the temperature hit 102 degrees.

KEY BACKGROUND

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations organization that researches and publishes on human-induced climate change, reported in its 2022 assessment report that many of the climate extremes of today—extreme heat, droughts, wildfires and heavy precipitation—are products of humans’ impact on climate change.

Last year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that 2021 tied with 1936 for the warmest summer on record. IPCC reports that climate hazards will only increase and limiting global warming would only reduce losses, not eliminate them. 

WHAT TO WATCH FOR

​An excessive heat warning remains in effect in parts of California until Thursday. Forecasters at the National Weather Service predict the sweltering temperatures could continue set new daily records in Los Angeles County and San Luis Obispo County, not only posing a threat to humans and pets, but potentially accelerating wildfires currently ragingacross the state.

FURTHER READING

Boston breaks temperature record set back in 1928 (Boston 25 News)

These U.S. Cities Could See Record-Breaking Temperatures As A Heat Wave Hits The Northeast (Forbes)

Oak Fire Threatens Yosemite: Here Are The National Parks At Risk Of Burning As Climate Change Drives Wildfires (Forbes)

Thousands Of Cattle Reportedly Dumped Into Kansas Landfill After Dying From Extreme Heat (Forbes)

U.S. TEMPERATURE Records Summary

The summaries below list the number of records broken for several recent periods is summarized in this table and updated daily. Due to late-arriving data, the number of recent records is likely underrepresented in all categories, but the ratio of records (warm to cold, for example) should be a fairly strong estimate of a final outcome. There are many more precipitation stations than temperature stations, so the raw number of precipitation records will likely exceed the number of temperature records in most climatic situations.

U.S. Daily TEMPERATURE Records Summary

​PERIOD                    HIGH MAX           HIGH MIN
Last 7 Days                   604                       434            
Last 30 Days.              1905                    2,814
Last 365 Days          35,902                  40,552
Month to Date               604                        434
Year to Date.             21,350                   27,066

U.S. Monthly TEMPERATURE Records Summary

​PERIOD                   HIGH MAX             HIGH MIN
Last 7 Days                     150                         74
Last 30 Days                   165                       168
Last 365 Days             1,832                     2,118
Month to Date               150                           74
Year to Date                   806                      1,526

U.S. All Time TEMPERATURE Records Summary

PERIOD.                   HIGH MAX              HIGH MIN
​Last 7 Days                   0                              1
Last 30 Days                1                               9
Last 365 Days           65                            244
Month to Date.            0                                1
Year to Date               65                           244

PLEASE SEE THE PRIOR POST: 2025-7 "THE FIREY WAVES OF DEATH!" "WET BULB" TEMPS DRIVEN BY "HOT STUFF" INSURES 3-4 BILLION DEATHS 2 YEARS FROM "ICE FREE ARCTIC!" THE POOR DIE QUICKLY! THE REST EXIT PEACEFULLY OR NOT! RICH & WHORES FRY IN HELL! SATAN'S ANTI-CHRISTIANS! EVIL NOT GOD!

THE BAD NEWS ABOUT THE LACK OF DECLINE IN ARCTIC SEA ICE AND THE HORRIFIC NEWS ABOUT TOO MUCH BAD & TOO LITTLE CLEAN WATER! SECOND GLOBAL KILLER OF CROPS & PEOPLE! ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE LOCATIONS TO LIVE NEAR CLEAN FRESH WATER LOW RISKS TOP PICKS!

Europe was once green and water-rich. Now, it’s more and more like California

BY JAWEED KALEEM, 
SCOTT JOHNSON
SEPT. 4, 2022 4 AM PT 
MANE, France —  

Each spring and summer, Frederic Esniol plants millions of seeds for lettuce sold at big grocery chains, making his family farm a jewel of this historically bountiful region of France.

But this year, a menacing combination of dry skies and record-setting heat has ruined about half of his water-hungry crop, threatening the 270-acre business about 70 miles northeast of the Mediterranean port city of Marseille.

“We’ve never seen a drought like this before,” said Esniol, 55, a fourth-generation farmer.

It’s not only France. A withered Europe faces what scientists say could be its worst water shortage in the hundreds of years on record.

WORLD & NATION
Drought isn’t just a Western U.S. problem. A severe shortage has hit the Northeast, too, Aug. 15, 2022​
​
Farms are going fallow, and vineyards are seared. Reservoirs and aquifers have been depleted. Rivers have dried up to reveal Roman-era artifacts and unexploded war munitions. Wildfires have raged across a dozen countries. Scores of small cities and towns are trucking in water because the taps have run dry.

Sunflower fields are withered in the Kochersberg region of eastern France, as Europe weathers a drought that has fueled forest fires, dried up rivers and devastated crops. (Jean-Francois Badias / Associated Press)

Altogether, 64% of the continent — 13 of the 27 nations in the European Union, as well as Britain, Serbia, Moldova and Ukraine — is either facing drought or in imminent danger of it, according to a recent report by EU scientists that predicted at least three more months of “warmer and drier” days.

The United Kingdom “has reminded me this summer of the times I have visited California: hot, dry and little to no rain,” said James Cheshire, a professor at University College London who studies weather patterns. “I imagine it’s not too different in many parts of Europe. It’s a very unusual time.”

Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, the region that’s home to Esniol’s farm, is accustomed to warm, arid summers. This year, triple-digit heat waves in southern France shattered records, while rainfall has been half the usual amount.

Esniol’s lettuce is prized for its crisp, leafy heads with delicate white cores, sold across France in Leclerc and Carrefour, the nation’s biggest grocery chains.

WORLD & NATION
‘Britain is melting’: The U.K. records its hottest day ever as a heat wave scorches EuropeJuly 19, 2022
​
But in July, the government ordered the region to drastically reduce water consumption, and the next month, the dam that supplied his farm ran dry.

Sun-burnt grass spreads in London’s Greenwich Park, with the backdrop of Queen’s House and the high-rises of Canary Wharf. (Frank Augstein / Associated Press)

​Officials earmarked reserves for drinking water, firefighting and emergencies — and for limited watering on farms that produce critical food staples. Even that could not stop Esniol’s lettuce from withering in the relentless sun.

To make up for some of the loss, he has upped his wholesale price by 26% to 63 cents a head.

Nearby ranchers suffered even more.

Lily Goletto, a friend of Esniol who raises 850 sheep, said she paid $22,000 this year to buy extra feed after everything on her grazing land — sunflowers, sorghum, grass and alfalfa — died. Still, it won’t be enough.

“We’re going to have a sad autumn,” said Goletto, who plans to sell 150 ewes. “We’ll still lose money, but we don’t have any other option. Everyone is in the same boat. They’re also in a drought, which means they’re not harvesting anything either. It’s a vicious cycle, and it gets worse and worse.”
​
Drought isn’t new to Europe — which has a wide variety of climates and rainfall patterns — and the current one started in 2018. But scientists say human-induced climate change is transforming the continent, raising the likelihood that it will experience more frequent and persistent drought, like the American West.

The dried-up river Tille in Lux, France. (Nicholas Garriga / Associated Press)

“We always think Europe is a water-rich region, especially the central and northern parts,” said Rohini Kumar, a hydrologist at the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research in Leipzig, Germany. “No longer. We are not water-rich. Over a couple of years, we have undergone dryness. We have to start rethinking what kind of crops we grow and how we manage our water.”

The shift may be linked to a high-pressure system in the North Atlantic known as the Azores High, which has expanded as the planet has warmed, researchers say. The system pushes rainfall north, causing drier conditions in Portugal, Spain and the western Mediterranean.

Politicians and activists have seized on the crisis as a reminder that the world is failing to meet its goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and is on course for even worse effects of climate change, including more fires, more severe storms and rising sea levels.

“Climate change kills,” Pedro Sánchez, the prime minister of Spain, said recently as he surveyed trees charred in a massive wildfire in Extremadura, a region bordering Portugal. “It kills people, kills our ecosystem, the biodiversity.”

The European Commission estimates that the current drought has cost the EU $9 billion a year — a figure it said could rise to $45 billion by the end of the century as the climate continues to warm.

The most immediate concern is agriculture.

In Italy, rice paddy farmers who rely on the severely depleted river Po warn of risotto shortages. In Spain, the world’s biggest producer of olive oil, reduced rainfall has cut production by a third.

The dried riverbed of the Po on Aug. 11 in Sermide, Italy. (Luigi Navarra / Associated Press)

In Germany, the drought struck as farmers were still hurting economically from another climate-linked disaster — flooding — that decimated crops in 2021. Yields improved this year but still lag behind averages for the last decade. Agriculture groups say the potato and sugar beet harvests, which come later in the year, could be especially disappointing if the drought persists.

“The prolonged drought in many regions of the country shows once again that farmers are feeling the effects of climate change very directly,” said Joachim Rukwied, president of the German Farmers Assn.

WORLD & NATION
A 20-year-old death was just solved at disappearing Lake Mead, Aug. 26, 2022
​
Perhaps the most worrisome effect of the drought in Germany has been the depletion of the Rhine. As the river receded this summer near the city of Emmerich, close to the border with the Netherlands, the hull of a ship slowly appeared in the muck. It turned out to be De Hoop, which sank in 1895 after catching fire when a dynamite-laden freighter docked next to it exploded.

The wreckage of a German ship from World War II in the Danube River near Prahovo, Serbia. (Darko Vojinovic / Associated Press)

In Bonn, Germany, authorities have warned residents not to walk around dried-up riverbanks because resurfaced unexploded munitions from World War II could detonate.

The river, which traverses Germany, is a lifeline of the economy, its importance akin to that of the Mississippi in the United States.

At one point last month, an already shallow portion fell to a depth of 15 inches, making it impassible for cargo ships. Even in deeper spots, shippers have been forced to slash cargo loads so boats sit higher in the water.

“Climate change is making the situation on the Rhine worse and worse all the time,” said Marco Speksnijder, who oversees 25 ships that ply the river for the Contargo shipping company.

“There’s less snow in the Alps, and that means less water in Lake Constance and less water in the Rhine,” he said, referring to the lake that borders Germany, Austria and Switzerland. “It’s making it more difficult to plan ahead, because the water levels are so low more often.”

Of course, water levels will eventually rise again — which could present other problems in the Netherlands. The drought is threatening the 19th century network of dikes that the lowland country relies on to prevent flooding. Often built from peat, the dikes absorb water like sponges and, without enough rain, become prone to holes and cracks.
​
Even Britain, known for its year-round rains and plentiful greenery, has been forced to contend with the prospect of a drier future. Rainfall in July was just over a third of normal in London, and much of the rest of southern England received about one-fifth of an inch — the lowest total for the month since the government started keeping records in 1836.

Parks in London were crunchy and brown until recent scattered rains offered some reprieve. Now, trees are showing signs of what scientists have dubbed a “false autumn” as leaves change color and fall earlier than usual under the stress of a changed climate.

“I came here for the last bit of summer vacation, but it feels more like a dry L.A. park mixed with the New York fall,” said Janice Tran, a 30-year-old tourist from San Francisco who picnicked with friends late last month in the London Fields park in east-central London.

Ian Holman, a professor who leads the Center for Water, Environment and Development at Britain’s Cranfield University, said the drought had broken the image of “the U.K. as a green and pleasant land.”

“We typically don’t have a dry season and have as much rainfall in the summer as the winter,” he said.

There was light rain Aug. 16 in London, the first shower after an unusually long dry period. (Frank Augstein / Associated Press)​

In August, authorities declared all nine regions of England to be in drought as utility companies banned the watering of gardens.

Lidl, a discount grocery chain, said it would sell “stunted” produce to make up for expected shortages. Another chain, Waitrose, said it would expand its “a little less than perfect” range of items, including apples, carrots and strawberries.

“As long as my food bill does not increase and everything is safe and edible, I have no problem with my fruits and vegetables looking a little wonky,” Jessica Steiner, a 42-year-old web designer, said as she browsed the produce aisle at a Lidl in East London.

Back in France, Esniol is pondering his future. Rather than throw away his unsellable lettuce, he let Goletto bring her sheep to his fields to gobble it up.
“It was the old lettuce, the broken lettuce, the heads that got left behind,” Esniol said. “But at least it was fresh, and that’s what the animals need.

Still, he knows that the survival of the farm founded by his great-grandparents might depend on forces beyond his control.

“If we have a good autumn with lots of rain, that will help. It could even turn out well,” Esniol said, “But if we don’t, we’re cooked.”
​
Times staff writer Kaleem reported from London and special correspondent Johnson from Mane. Special correspondent Erik Kirschbaum in Berlin contributed to this report.

Food Crisis in Africa Reaches Terrifying Levels
26 Aug 2022 
 
The impending food crisis in Africa is a continental problem. The Horn of Africa's 2022 rainy season was the driest on record in the last 70 years, and early forecasts are expecting autumn's rainy season to fail, too.

"It's been a rough year," said Convoy of Hope's Regional Disaster & Stabilization Specialist, Bryan Burr. "Drought after drought. Animals are dying. Crops aren't growing. What food they do get is imported grain, and that's not coming in now."

But the food crisis in africa isn't only caused by the weather. Internal conflicts and international influences, such as the war in Ukraine, are exacerbating drought-related emergencies in several African nations.

In Eastern Africa, over 50 million to face acute food insecurity in 2022

The latest IGAD Regional Focus on Food Crises report sounds the alarm on escalating food insecurity and malnutrition in the region.

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 22 July 2022: Over 50 million people are expected to face high levels of acute food insecurity (IPC Phase 3 or above*) this year across seven IGAD countries (Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Uganda) according to the 2022 edition of the IGAD Regional Focus on Food Crises released today.

Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan are facing the largest food crises in the region. About 300,000 people are projected to face Catastrophe (IPC Phase 5*) in Somalia and South Sudan in 2022, with a Risk of Famine occurring in eight areas of Somalia through September in the event of widespread crop and livestock production failures, spiraling food costs, and in the absence of scaled-up humanitarian assistance.

The situation in 2022, with 50 – 51 million people expected to face Crisis or worse (IPC Phase 3 or above*), marks a dramatic increase from 2021 when 42 million people suffered from high levels of acute food insecurity. Last year, the IGAD region accounted for nearly 22 per cent of the global number of people in Crisis or worse (IPC Phase 3 or above*), with an estimated 10 million children under the age of 5 suffering from acute malnutrition. In addition, 24 per cent of the world’s 51 million internally displaced people were also in IGAD countries, mainly Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan.

“Our region has been hit like never before”, says Workneh Gebeyehu, Executive Secretary of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD). “The combination of climate extremes, conflict, and macroeconomic challenges makes it almost impossible for our otherwise very resilient communities to sustain multiple shocks. The figures we are releasing today are heartbreaking, and I’m very worried they could increase even more as the outlook for the October to December rainy season is bleak.”

“The current food security situation across the Horn of Africa (Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia) is dire after four consecutive rainy seasons have failed, a climatic event not seen in at least 40 years, or since the beginning of the satellite era”, notes Dr. Chimimba David Phiri, FAO Subregional Coordinator for Eastern Africa and FAO Representative to the African Union and UNECA. “Now more than ever, we must implement short-term livelihood-saving responses with long-term resilience building aimed at addressing the root causes of food crises in our region”.

Climate change and La Niña have caused an unprecedented multi-season drought, punctuated by one of the worst March-to-May rains in 70 years. The latest forecast by IGAD’s Climate Prediction and Applications Centre (ICPAC) is for a fifth consecutive failed rainy season across the region, with the latest long-term forecasts for the 2022 October–December rainfall season indicating an increased chance of below-average rains.

“Conflict, climate extremes, economic shocks, rising costs and now the impact of the conflict in Ukraine on food and energy prices are pushing millions towards starvation in Eastern Africa,” says Michael Dunford, the World Food Programme’s Regional Director for Eastern Africa. “Sadly, there is a very real risk of famine in the region, and we must do everything possible to prevent this from happening. At the same time, together we must start building the capacity to prepare and respond to future shocks which are increasingly inevitable because of a changing climate.”

The fourth edition of the IGAD Regional Focus on Food Crises continues to provide essential information, analyses, and insights to collectively address the causes and consequences of escalating acute food insecurity and malnutrition in Eastern Africa.

It is a by-product of the annual Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC 2022), which is the result of a complex, multi-partner, consensus-based process involving commitment and contributions from a multitude of agencies and individuals. It is facilitated by the Food Security Information Network (FSIN) in the framework of the Global Network Against Food Crises.

End Notes to editors:
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) is a set of standardized tools used to classify the severity of food insecurity using a widely accepted five-phase scale: Minimal (IPC Phase 1), Stressed (IPC Phase 2), Crisis (IPC Phase 3), Emergency (IPC Phase 4) and Catastrophe/Famine (IPC Phase 5).

ICPAC provides climate services to IGAD member states (Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Uganda), plus Burundi, Rwanda, and Tanzania.
​
Key resources:
IGAD Regional Focus on Food Crises 2022
Global Report on Food Crises 2022​

Disasters

• Djibouti: Drought - Mar 2022
• Ethiopia: Drought - 2015-2022
• Kenya: Drought - 2014-2022
• Somalia: Drought - 2015-2022

​Mongabay Series: Agroecology
Bad weather knocks down Brazil’s grain production as ‘exhaustively forewarned’
by Shanna Hanbury on 17 August 2022

• Brazil’s agricultural GDP declined by 8% in the first quarter of 2022 due to a severe drought in the country’s south caused by a rare triple-dip La Niña.
• In Rio Grande do Sul, the nation’s southernmost state, 56% of last year’s total soy harvest was lost, harming thousands of farmers.
• Scientists warn that climate change will make Brazil’s southern region, an agribusiness stronghold, widespread crop losses more common.
• Despite warnings, climate denial in the agriculture sector is getting in the way of mitigation efforts as the government of President Jair Bolsonaro and the agribusiness lobby push an anti-environmental agenda.

When Brazilian farmer Hamilton Guterres Jardim realized the latest drought had wiped out two-thirds of his soy crop, he felt emotionally and financially shaken up, he told Mongabay. As a resident of Palmeira das Missões, a rural town in Brazil’s southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul, and a director of the state agricultural federation, Farsul, Jardim also witnessed the upheaval of hundreds of other lives due to the lack of rain.

Smallholder dairy farmers’ pastures dried up, he said, forcing them to switch to the suddenly exorbitantly priced soybean meal to survive; many sold their land and livestock and moved to impoverished urban peripheries. As supply dwindled, milk prices soared — a 66.5% increase in the past 12 months, according to the official price index. Medium-sized producers without insurance were forced to take onerous loans to fund the next harvest, and many of them haven’t been able to pay off past debts. The value of unpaid farm loans rose by 103% in the year to February 2022, according to Brazil’s central bank.
​
Brazil’s agribusiness GDP declined by 8% in the first quarter of the year, according to federal government data. Over the last two harvests, soy and corn, which together account for 88% of Brazil’s national grain production, came in 47 million metric tons below expected production due to adverse weather conditions, according to ministry of agriculture data. Soy production dropped by 14% this year.

Grain farmer Hamilton Guterres Jardim irrigated his fields to try to keep his soy crop alive, but still lost two thirds of it. Image courtesy of Hamilton Guterres Jardim.

​With an election slated for October, unrest over inflation and food prices may have dramatic political consequences for the incumbent, President Jair Bolsonaro. In office since 2019, his administration doubled down on an agenda that’s unabashedly pro-monoculture for the past four years, in the process cutting funding for, and undermining, environmental policies. Deforestation under Bolsonaro has soared. But with climate instability wiping out key crops, the administration’s strategy may prove to be a long-term shot in the foot, experts say.
Jardim’s state, an agriculture stronghold that saw record-high temperatures last year, was hit the hardest: the latest estimate from the National Supply Company, a unit of the agriculture ministry, is that Rio Grande do Sul lost 56% of its soy harvest in 2021.

“This was exhaustively forewarned,” Eduardo Assad, from the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), another government agency affiliated with the agriculture ministry, told Mongabay by phone. Assad first raised the alarm 15 years ago after running a series of climate change models, and has warned the agribusiness sector about increasing crop risk ever since.
​
Eight of the last 10 soy harvests in Rio Grande do Sul produced lower-than-expected yields due to bad weather, according to Embrapa data. “The recommended adaptation measures, especially soil management, were not done. The only outcome is crop losses. We can’t make miracles,” Assad said.

Soy production in Brazil’s southernmost state is declining due to adverse weather. Climate models predict the trend will only worsen in the coming decades. Image courtesy of Embrapa.

​Climatologists point to a rare three-year-long La Niña, which sees cooler ocean temperatures and global shifts in rain patterns, as the leading cause for last year’s poor harvest. El Niño and La Niña events have become more frequent and more severe over the past 70 years, according to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.

Brazil’s economy is still grappling with the economic consequences of this climate turmoil. Despite losses, the country managed to export record-breaking volumes of soybean oil in the first quarter of 2022, driving up domestic prices for other industries, including beef and milk.

But crop failures on this scale are likely to become more frequent as a future with even higher climate risks for soy hangs over Brazil’s farmers, experts say. Scientists say the continued loss of forest could slow the formation of the Amazon’s “flying rivers” — masses of vapor from the forest’s transpiration that form much of the rain in the southern part of the continent. Rainfall has been below historical averages in recent years.

According to Jonas Jägermeyr, a climate scientist and crop modeler at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Sciences, none of the climate scenarios works out well for Brazil.
​
“The U.S. and Brazil are the hotspots of soybean declines,” Jägermeyr told Mongabay by phone, citing his 2021 modeling research published in Nature Food. “There will be adaptation — farmers will change their behavior, use more fertilizer, or even switch to different crops — but this is a warning that the climate signal does not look very good.”

Hamilton Jardim’s soy plantation. Despite using irrigation, which may further stress water shortage during a drought, he lost 66% of his yield. Image courtesy of Hamilton Guterres Jardim.

​Embrapa’s Assad said large plantations need trees to create a buffer for the heat, protecting crops and livestock from the harsh sun while counteracting climate change. “Integrated systems allow farmers to rotate between soy, corn and pasture while keeping water in the soil. It deepens roots and minimizes problems for farmers,” he said. But federal investment in this kind of low-carbon agriculture has been minimal.

Deforestation associated with soy cultivation and cattle ranching contributes to almost half of Brazil’s total greenhouse gas emissions, according to 2020 data by the Greenhouse Gas Emission Estimation System run by the Climate Observatory, a network of Brazilian civil society organizations advocating for climate action. Tree cover loss in the Amazon Rainforest could also trigger runaway climate consequences that the agriculture sector would be the first to feel.

Despite this, the agribusiness lobby in Congress serves as Bolsonaro’s support base to push his anti-environmental policies, and climate change denial remains widespread. “It has been like talking to a wall,” Assad said.

Jardim, the soy farmer, said he’s resting his hopes on wheat for the next harvest, taking advantage of the supply shortage caused by the war between Ukraine and Russia, the two biggest producers of the grain. Meanwhile, Assad and other scientists are pushing for Brazil’s agriculture sector to invest in nature-friendly practices to prevent further losses: “We have solutions available to us, so let’s solve this.”

Banner image: Soy and corn make up 88% of Brazil’s grain production, but climate models show that climate risk will increase for both crops in the coming decades. Image courtesy of the Brazilian Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock.

Citation:
Jägermeyr, J., Müller, C., Ruane, A. C., Elliott, J., Balkovic, J., Castillo, O., … Rosenzweig, C. (2021). Climate impacts on global agriculture emerge earlier in new generation of climate and crop models. Nature Food, 2(11), 873-885. doi:10.1038/s43016-021-00400-y
​
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IMF SAYS THAT THE WORLD WILL "VERY LIKELY" EXPERIENCE THE WORST RECESSION SINCE THE 1930'S. EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, DAVID BEASLEY, STATED OUR ANALYSIS SHOWS

"IF WE CAN'T REACH THESE PEOPLE WITH THE LIFE-SAVING ASSISTANCE THAT THEY NEED, OUR ANALYSIS SHOWS THAT . . 300,000 PEOPLE COULD STARVE TO DEATH! 
. . "EVERY SINGLE-DAY OVER A THREE MONTH PERIOD!"  . . I WILL GO ONE FURTHER!

"WHEN THE ARCTIC IS . . COMPLETELY ICE FREE!" "HOT STUFF!" "THE SIBERIAN METHANE MONSTER!" . . WILL COVER THE WORLD WITH . . "FIREY WAVES OF DEATH!" KILLNG BILLIONS AND BILLIONS . . BY 20230 KILLING EVERYONE! . . DUE TO

1. TEMPS "10-30 F ABOVE WET BULB TEMPS!" . . THE BIGGEST & FASTEST KILLER! 
To measure the effects of heat plus humidity, scientists use wet bulb temperatures—the lowest temperature to which air can be cooled via evaporation. At wet bulb temperatures above 35°C, researchers estimate that even fit people will overheat and potentially die within 6 hours.

2. THE LACK OF . . FRESH WATER! How Long Can a Normal Person Survive Without Water. The body requires a lot of water to maintain an internal temperature balance and keep cells alive. In general, a person can survive for about three days without water. AND TOO MUCH BAD WATER! HORRIFIC FLOODING!

3. THE LACK OF FOOD . . IS LIKELY THE THIRD MAJOR CAUSE OF GLOBAL OMNICIDE!
According to one study, you cannot survive for more than 8 to 21 days without food and water. Individuals on their deathbeds who use little energy may only last a few days or weeks without food or water. Water is far more important to the human body than food.

4. PESTILENCE . . "GLOBAL COVID AND OTHER PANDEMICS!" The global excess mortality associated with COVID-19 was 14.91 million in the 24 months between 1 January 2020 and 31 December 2021, representing 9.49 million more deaths than those globally reported as directly attributable to COVID-19.

5. ACID AND RADIOACTIVE RAINS! . . "THE NAIL IN THE RICH FUCKS COFFINS!" AS "HOT STUFF" . . RELEASES TENS TO HUNDREDS OF GIGATONS OF SIBERIAN AND ARCTIC METHANE WHEN . . THE ARCTIC IS COMPLETELY ICE FREE! THIS WILL CAUSE . . "HYPER-EXPONENTIAL RISE IN GLOBAL TEMPS (GMAT)" . . WHILE CAUSING . . "HYPER-EXPONENTIAL MELTING OF ANTARCTICA!" RESULTING IN "HYPER-EXPONENTIAL SEA LEVEL RISE!" CAUSING THE INUNDATION EXPLOSION AND IMPLOSION OF MOST OF THE WORLD'S 440 NUCLEAR REACTORS! INSURING . . "THANK GOD!" . . "It Is THE END!"

PLEASE SEE THE PRIOR POST: THE BAD NEWS ABOUT THE LACK OF DECLINE IN ARCTIC SEA ICE AND THE HORRIFIC NEWS ABOUT TOO MUCH BAD & TOO LITTLE CLEAN WATER! SECOND GLOBAL KILLER OF CROPS & PEOPLE! ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE LOCATIONS TO LIVE NEAR CLEAN FRESH WATER LOW RISKS TOP PICKS!

​2025-7 "THE FIREY WAVES OF DEATH!" "WET BULB" TEMPS DRIVEN BY "HOT STUFF" INSURES 3-4 BILLION DEATHS 2 YEARS FROM "ICE FREE ARCTIC!" THE POOR DIE QUICKLY! THE REST EXIT PEACEFULLY OR NOT! RICH & WHORES FRY IN HELL! SATAN'S ANTI-CHRISTIANS! EVIL NOT GOD!

MOVE TO CANADA NOW! THE MOST “CRITICAL HISTORICAL EVENT” “ALMOST NO ONE” - IS TELLING YOU ABOUT! “BLUE OCEAN ARCTIC!” WILL “UNLEASH” - “HOT STUFF!” SEPTEMBER 2021! SUPPORT “THE NORDIC MODEL” - OR ENJOY HELL! . . . RBG! LOVE U!

"GET YOUR SUCK BAGS NOW!" EVIL TRUMP PENCE - RIGHT WING - INSURE - "THE MOST HORRIFIC CASE" - 10 MILLION PLUS US DEATHS! EVIL IDIOTS! "THE HAMMER AND THE DANCE!" MARKET OR GOVERNMENT PRICING AND ALLOCATION?! "THANK GOD!" - - "It Is THE END!"

THIS IS "SATAN'S MAFIA GLOBAL DEPOPULATION & POLICE STATE AGENDA!" "THEY ARE KILLING US!" THE NORDIC COUNTRIES - THE ONLY REAL DEMOCRACIES - SWEDEN VS DENMARK - VS THE TOTALITARIAN EMPIRES: SATAN'S EMPIRE - XI JINPING'S & VLAD'S EMPIRES! "THANK GOD!" "It Is THE END!"

​EVIL TRUMP PENCE FLORIDA - RIGHT WING - INSURE - "THE MOST HORRIFIC CASE" - 10 MILLION PLUS US DEATHS - "THE HAMMER AND THE DANCE!" CRITICAL PAPER! MARKET OR GOVERNMENT PRICING AND ALLOCATION?! "THANK GOD!" - - "It Is THE END!"

The summer drought’s hefty toll on American crops
Corn, wheat and other agricultural products withered in a year of glaring climate change impacts

SEPTEMBER 5 AT 6:00 AM
BY LAURA REILEY

It was a bad year for corn. And for tomatoes. And for many other American crops.
Farmers, agricultural economists and others taking stock of this summer’s growing season say drought conditions and extreme weather have wreaked havoc on many row crops, fruits and vegetables, with the American Farm Bureau Federation suggesting yields could be down by as much as a third compared with last year.

American corn is on track to produce its lowest yield since the drought of 2012, according to analysts at Rabobank, which collects data about commodity markets. This year’s hard red winter wheat crop was the smallest since 1963, the bank’s analysts said. In Texas, cotton farmers have walked away from nearly 70 percent of their crop because the harvest is so paltry, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The California rice harvest is half what it would be in a normal year, an industry group said.

The poor yields are likely more than a one-year blip, as climate change alters weather patterns in agriculturally important parts of the country, contributing to higher food prices that experts don’t see ebbing any time soon.

Drought has consumed 40 percent of the country for the past 101 weeks, USDA meteorologist Brad Rippey said. But precisely where that 40 percent is has shifted over time, meaning different swaths of the country’s agricultural land have been affected at different times, spreading pain and difficult choices geographically and by crop.

“Spring wheat, durum wheat, barley [in the Northeast] — those were just hammered in 2021. For some of those crops it was the lowest yields we’ve seen since the 1980s,” Rippey said. “The biggest impacts this year have been the Central and Southern Great Plains — Nebraska southward through Texas — and the two big crops hit this year are grain sorghum [primarily used for animal feed] and cotton.”

Based on last month’s numbers, he said, it looks like abandonment of the Texas cotton crop will be the highest on record, around 69 percent: “That’s when farmers just walk away.”

In California, farmers are making tough choices to give up on their strawberries and tomatoes, lettuces and melons, so that whatever water they get goes to crops like almonds, grapes and olives, where they’ve sunk multiyear investments and the payoff is better, Rippey said.

Even with recent rains, a lot of the western United States is still looking at a long-term drought, said Curtis Riganti, a climatologist at the National Drought Mitigation Center. “We’re seeing widespread extreme and exceptional drought in California’s Central Valley, parts of Nevada, central and southern Oregon, the central High Plains, southern Oklahoma and Texas,” he said. “And while we’ve seen a pretty active monsoon season this year over New Mexico, Arizona and southern Colorado, in terms of refilling reservoirs it doesn’t do a ton of good.”

Every August for the past 30 years, a group of agricultural experts and volunteer farmers in the Midwest hop in their cars and convoy across seven states, a boots-on-the-ground backstop for the USDA’s ongoing predictions about annual crop yields.

The USDA had reduced its corn forecast last month because of this summer’s drought. But the Pro Farmer Crop Tour, which concluded Aug. 25, found the corn yield was even worse than that lowered expectation. The on-the-ground inspectors also found the corn quality had suffered as a result of heat and dry conditions, with cobs carrying small grains and many suffering from “tipback,” when kernels are missing from the outer edge.​

Wheat has taken a walloping this year, with rains impeding spring planting after a protracted La Niña weather pattern meant several years of hotter and drier weather over key production areas.

Drought is also having a dramatic effect on California rice, which is grown mostly in the Sacramento Valley. The state, which grows medium grain rice like sushi rice, is at about half of a normal year’s production, said Katie Cahill, spokeswoman for the California Rice Commission. Many growers decided to fallow their fields and sell their water to perennial crops like almonds to defray their losses.

The federal government operates a system of dams, reservoirs and canals in California that the state relies on for agriculture and drinking water. Water agencies contract with the federal government for certain amounts of water each year. The federal government fulfills the contracts based on how much water is available. This year, as the state’s megadrought dragged into its third year, the government said it had no water to give farmers.

Last summer was a disappointment for tomato growers, said Aaron Barcellos, partner at A-Bar Ag Enterprises in Firebaugh, in Fresno County, Calif., “and we’re still in a worse water situation than last summer.”

“Even the river water has been cut back. Other crops are competing for that same water, other crops that have better returns,” he said. On his own farm, he has cut back from 2,000 acres of tomatoes in 2020 to 900 last year. This year he has only 530 acres of canning tomatoes.

“Some of that land has gone to garlic and Pima cotton, the rest of it has gone fallow,” he said. Contracts with canners are negotiated before the season starts, so an exceptionally tough year leaves growers in a hole financially. “We have contracts and those prices aren’t viable now. A lot of growers are leaving the tomato industry because of the past several years,” Barcellos said.

The USDA recently estimated that the tomato harvest this year will be 10.5 million tons, more than a million tons shy of a normal season, which will be reflected in the next year’s pizza, spaghetti sauce and ketchup prices.

Harvest of the new potato crop is underway and Rabobank analysts say the harvested area is projected to drop 4 percent from last year (and last year’s crop was a decade’s low). Its analysts also said year-to-date shipments of carrots are down 45 percent, sweet corn down 20 percent, sweet potatoes down 13 percent, and celery down 11 percent, all an indication of short supply. And according to the USDA, total peach production was down 15 percent from 2021, mostly because of California’s small crop.

One bright spot is soybeans. Gro Intelligence’s modeling put a total soybean forecast at 4.30 billion bushels, lower than the USDA’s 4.53 billion bushels but slightly higher than last year.

But the bad news extends to cattle, portending bad news for next year’s beef prices. When weather is dry and hot, there’s not enough natural feed to go around. To sustain a herd, ranchers must bring in hay, and feed prices soar, prompting ranchers to sell their animals a little early, and often to sell heifers, the young females, rather than keep them as breeding stock, said Sarah Little, spokeswoman for the North American Meat Institute, a trade association. This has resulted in lower beef prices to consumers in the short term, but signals that there will likely be a tighter supply next year.

A recent Farm Bureau survey found that the largest herd decline is in Texas (reported down 50 percent), followed by New Mexico (down 43 percent) and Oregon (down 41 percent), largely due to scarce forage and water, which cuts into operational income for ranchers.

“Producers are especially hard hit because food, fuel and fertilizer costs have been rising, so although they are getting record prices for cattle, inflation has hurt their income,” Little said.

Laura Reiley is the business of food reporter. She was previously a food critic at the Tampa Bay Times, San Francisco Chronicle and Baltimore Sun. She has authored four books, has cooked professionally and is a graduate of the California Culinary Academy. She is a two-time James Beard finalist and in 2017 was a Pulitzer finalist.
​
Democracy Dies in Darkness
© 1996-2022 The Washington Post

'Starve or freeze to death': Millions of elderly Brits fear a grim choice this winter as costs spiral

Updated 9:42 AM EDT August 31, 2022

When she first started to shed some weight, Yvonne DeBurgo quipped that she could afford to lose it.

But over the past three months, the 77-year-old widow from the southern English county of Oxfordshire has lost nearly 25 pounds, a result of eating just one cooked meal a day -- with just a piece of fruit or a sandwich for dinner. 

DeBurgo lost the weight while trying to save money -- a sobering manifestation of the country's cataclysmic cost-of-living crisis, one that appears to have no end in sight.

In July, inflation rose above 10% for the first time in 40 years, driven by the skyrocketing cost of energy, food and fuel. The Bank of England forecasts inflation will soar to 13% by the end of the year. Analysts say it could go even higher early next year.

DeBurgo, who relies on her state pension and a supplementary Pension Credit benefit, says her grocery bills have already nearly doubled over the course of about a month, with the rising cost of fuel even more worrying for her winter energy bills.

"I don't want to end up, like, skeletal... eventually it's gonna have to stop. But whether I'll be able to afford to eat by then, I don't know," she told CNN in a phone interview.

The average British household will see its annual energy bill rise to £3,549 (approximately $4,180) from October -- a rise of £1,578 ($1,765), an 80% increase -- after the country's energy regulator raised the price cap last week. The price cap sets the maximum amount that energy suppliers can charge for each unit of energy and gas. 

It's a crisis that should be at the forefront of government action. But instead, outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been all but absent, taking two vacations in less than a month. His critics have accused him of washing his hands of the energy crisis and deflecting the blame onto Russia's war in Ukraine. "We also know that if we're paying in our energy bills for the evils of Vladimir Putin, the people of Ukraine are paying in their blood," Johnson said in a visit to Kyiv on August 24.

Meanwhile, Downing Street has said it is up to the next prime minister to introduce any major new spending plans to support those suffering hardship. Two candidates, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, are currently battling to become the next Conservative Party leader, and so prime minister, with results expected on September 5. Only grassroots Conservative Party members, who represent less than 0.3% of the electorate, can vote in the contest. Demographic data suggest they are more likely to be White, male and middle class than the general British population. 

And while research shows older people are more likely to vote Conservative, neither candidate has outlined a clear plan on how to tackle a cost-of-living crisis that's already being felt acutely by many in that age group. 

Around 2 million pensioners were already living in poverty prior to the crisis, according to data from the Center for Ageing Better, a charity focused on improving the lives of older people, whose 2022 annual report found that there were more than 200,000 more poor pensioners in 2021 than in the previous year.

Around 44% of people who have reached the current UK state pension age of 66 say it is their main source of income, according to figures from the Money and Pension Service, which is sponsored by the Department for Work and Pensions. Most pensioners are on the basic state pension at £141.85 a week (around $170), or about £7,400 ($8,770) a year, with a newer pension introduced in 2016 equal to about £9,600 ($11,376) a year. The state pension rose by 3.1% in April, a figure far below the inflation rate at the time, at 9%. The next increase in state pension will be next April.

"So those people were already struggling, and now we're in a situation where they will be having an even worse time and many more will have fallen into poverty because of what's happening," said Morgan Vine, head of policy and influencing at the charity Independent Age.

People who responded to a survey conducted by Independent Age in June and July painted a dismal picture of their daily life. "I have turned my heating off, I don't mop my floor as often. I do not vacuum as often, I only wash up if I really have to, I can no longer bake with my grandchildren which breaks my heart," said one, whose name was not given. 

"Holiday a thing of the past, social life a thing of the past, if the costs continue to rise I have no answers, wouldn't mind work but am 88 no one wants me," said another respondent, also unnamed.

Such poverty is exacerbating health conditions, with life expectancy also dropping, according to the Center for Ageing Better report, which noted that the number of years older people are spending in good health is also on the decline. 

The NHS Confederation, a body representing leaders in the UK's National Health Service (NHS) said this month that fuel poverty in particular is creating a "vicious cycle of healthcare need," explaining that doctors can treat a patient's illness but that if the ailment -- for example, a chest infection -- is caused by cold, damp housing, the cycle of infection will continue when the patient returns home. 

It's a concern that's on DeBurgo's mind. She's not sure how she'll afford to keep the heat on this winter to manage the symptoms connected to her fibromyalgia and arthritis.

"I think the government thinks that we should just either starve to death or freeze to death," said DeBurgo, who noted that she has never voted for the Conservatives and does not identify with a political party. 

Vine echoes such concerns. "Obviously we're incredibly worried as the colder months come in because we do think it's going to lead to more older people dying," she said.

Almost 10,000 people died in England and Wales in 2021 because their homes were too cold, according to the NHS. 

In a statement last week, NHS leaders warned of an impending "humanitarian crisis" if the government doesn't address energy costs, saying that fuel poverty "will inevitably lead to significant extra demand on what are already very fragile services," and could increase the number of annual deaths associated with cold homes. 

Hospitals in Britain are already close to buckling under the pressure, with older people especially vulnerable to gaps in service that include hospital waiting lists at a record high and a shortage of workers.

In August, the country saw two examples of such failings. A 90-year-old woman reportedly waited 40 hours for an ambulance after falling at home in Cornwall, southwest England. Her son, Stephen Syms, posted on Facebook that she fell on a Sunday evening and that the ambulance arrived on Tuesday afternoon, and that his mother then waited another 20 hours to be seen by a doctor in the hospital. "The system is totally broken," he told BBC Cornwall. CNN has reached out to the Cornwall NHS Trust for comment.

And in another incident in Cornwall, an 87-year-old man waited in a makeshift shelter for 15 hours for an ambulance after breaking seven ribs and fracturing his pelvis, his daughter told the BBC.

Meanwhile, the Conservative leadership contest has largely been devoid of a robust debate around the full scale of the crisis facing the health service. However, Truss pledged last week she would divert £13 billion (around $15.4 billion) in funding to cover an NHS backlog of nearly 7 million people to the adult social care sector if elected. Sunak has vowed to tackle NHS waiting lists and said last month he would introduce fines for patients who missed doctors' appointments, a proposal rejected by health leaders as unfair and costly to administer. 

Truss' proposal to add more funding to social care has been welcomed by many; however experts warn it's a false dichotomy, as that investment is very much needed in the NHS as well.

And while the energy crisis has garnered more attention from the Conservative candidates, besides ruling out a price freeze on energy costs, Truss and Sunak's plans are still unclear.

Truss has said that tax cuts should be the main response to soaring bills and hinted last week that if chosen, she'd swiftly help pensioners with an emergency cost of living package, without providing specifics. Sunak has said he would find up to £10 billion ($11.8 bn) to help people facing rising energy bills.

Meanwhile, the government has announced that eligible households in England, Scotland and Wales will receive £400 (about $473) spread over the course of six payments to help with rising fuel bills from October.

But many campaigners say it's not enough.

Dennis Reed, director of the senior citizens group Silver Voices, told CNN that some of his organization's Conservative Party members have left the party, noting a series of broken promises.

In April, the Conservative government broke an election pledge by suspending the so-called "triple lock" formula for a year -- a measure to ensure that basic state pensions rise by either 2.5%, the rate of inflation or by the average earnings growth, based on whichever is largest. 

"People are furious about that," Reed said, adding that after working for 50 or 60 years and paying taxes, people expect to be able to live their twilight years in dignity. "But that's not what is happening now."

The government has pledged to reinstate the triple lock guarantee by next April, but many pensioners say the damage is already done.

"We may have short (-term) memory problems but our long-term memories are strong and I think that will rebound on the Conservatives -- whenever that is," Reed said.

​© 2022 Cable News Network, Inc. A WarnerMedia Company. All Rights Reserved.

Aug 22, 2022•Andrew Perez,Andy Kroll&Justin Elliott
​
Inside The Right’s Historic Billion-Dollar Dark Money Transfer

​Industrialist Barre Seid funded a new dark money group run by Trump judicial adviser Leonard Leo, who helped eliminate federal abortion rights.

Leonard Leo speaks to media at Trump Tower, Nov. 16, 2016. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Editor’s note: This story was co-published with ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. 

An elderly, ultra-secretive Chicago businessman has given the largest known donation to a political advocacy group in U.S. history — worth $1.6 billion — and the recipient is one of the prime architects of conservatives’ efforts to reshape the American judicial system, including the Supreme Court.

Through a series of opaque transactions over the past two years, Barre Seid, a 90-year-old manufacturing magnate, gave the massive sum to a nonprofit run by Leonard Leo, who co-chairs the conservative legal group the Federalist Society.

The donation was first reported by The New York Times on Monday. The Lever and ProPublica confirmed the information from documents received independently by the news organizations.

Our reporting sheds additional light on how the two men, one a judicial kingmaker and the other a mysterious but prolific donor to conservative causes, came together to create a political war chest that will likely supercharge efforts to further shift American politics to the right.

As President Donald Trump’s adviser on judicial nominations, Leo helped build the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority, which recently eliminated constitutional protections for abortion rights and has made a series of sweeping pro-business decisions. Leo, a conservative Catholic, has both helped select judges to nominate to the Supreme Court and directed multimillion dollar media campaigns to confirm them.

Leo derives immense political power through his ability to raise huge sums of money and distribute those funds throughout the conservative movement to influence elections, judicial appointments and policy battles. Yet the biggest funders of Leo’s operation have long been a mystery.

Seid, who led the surge protector and data-center equipment maker Tripp Lite for more than half a century, has been almost unknown outside a small circle of political and cultural recipients. The gift immediately vaults him into the ranks of major funders like the Koch brothers and George Soros.

In practical terms, there are few limitations on how Leo’s new group, the Marble Freedom Trust, can spend the enormous donation. The structure of the donation allowed Seid to avoid as much as $400 million in taxes. Thus, he maximized the amount of money at Leo’s disposal.

Now, Leo, 56, is positioned to finance his already sprawling network with one of the largest pools of political capital in American history. Seid has left his legacy to Leo.
​
“To my knowledge, it is entirely without precedent for a political operative to be given control of such an astonishing amount of money,” said Brendan Fischer, a campaign finance lawyer at the nonpartisan watchdog group Documented. “Leonard Leo is already incredibly powerful, and now he is going to have over a billion dollars at his disposal to continue upending our country’s institutions.”

In a statement to the Times, Leo said it was “high time for the conservative movement to be among the ranks of George Soros, Hansjörg Wyss, Arabella Advisors and other left-wing philanthropists, going toe-to-toe in the fight to defend our constitution and its ideals.” Leo and representatives for Seid did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
​
The Marble Freedom Trust is a so-called dark money group that is not required to publicly disclose its donors. It has wide latitude to spend directly on elections as well as on ideological projects such as funding issue-advocacy groups, think tanks, universities, religious institutions and organizing efforts.

In an unusual maneuver, Leonard Leo was added as an officer to Barre Seid’s company. Seid left the company’s board, and his name was crossed out in state corporate disclosure filings.Source: Illinois Office of the Secretary of State.
​
The creators of the Marble Freedom Trust shrouded their project in secrecy for more than two years.

The group’s name does not appear in any public database of business, tax or securities records. The Marble Freedom Trust is organized for legal purposes as a trust, rather than as a corporation. That means it did not have to publicly disclose basic details like its name, directors and address.

The trust was formed in Utah. Its address is a house in North Salt Lake owned by Tyler Green, a lawyer who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Green is listed in the trust’s tax return as an administrative trustee. The donation does not appear to violate any laws.

Seid’s $1.6 billion donation is a landmark in the era of deregulated political spending ushered in by the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision. That case, along with subsequent changes and weak federal oversight, empowered a tiny group of the super rich in both parties to fund groups that can spend unlimited sums to support candidates and political causes. In the last decade, donations in the millions and sometimes tens of millions of dollars have become common.

Individuals could give unlimited amounts of money to nonprofit groups prior to Citizens United, but the decision allowed those nonprofits to more directly influence elections. A handful of billionaires such as the Koch family and Soros have spent billions to achieve epochal political influence by bankrolling networks of nonprofits.

Even in this money-drenched world, Seid’s $1.6 billion gift exceeds all publicly known one-time donations to a politically oriented group.

The Silent Donor
​
One day in November 2015, the employees of Tripp Lite, a manufacturer of power strips and other electrical equipment, gathered for a celebration at the company’s headquarters on the South Side of Chicago. Cupcakes frosted in blue and white spelled out the numbers “56.” An easel held up a sign hailing Tripp Lite’s longtime leader: “Congratulations Barre!”

A small, balding man with a white goatee and a ruddy complexion took the microphone. Barre Seid was known as someone who preferred to keep a low profile, but on the 56th anniversary of his leadership of Tripp Lite, he couldn’t resist the chance to address his employees. Later, as he bit into a cupcake, Seid posed for a company photographer, who later uploaded the photo to the company’s Facebook page.

Even this semi-public glimpse of Seid was rare.

For several decades, a select group of political activists, academics and fundraisers was ushered to Tripp Lite headquarters to pitch Seid at his office. Despite his status as one of the country’s most prolific funders of conservative causes, and despite his decades as the president and sole owner of one of the country’s most successful electronics makers, Seid has spent most of his 90 years painstakingly guarding his privacy.

There are no art galleries, opera companies, or theaters or university buildings emblazoned with his name in his hometown of Chicago. There’s even some confusion over how to pronounce his last name. (People who’ve dealt with him say it’s “side.”)

The Lever and ProPublica pieced together the details of his life and his motivations for his extensive donations through interviews, court records and other documents obtained through public-records requests.

One of the only photos of Seid that The Lever and ProPublica could find shows him as a 14-year-old walking in a small group across a college campus. Born in 1932 to Russian Jewish immigrants, Seid grew up on the South Side of Chicago, the oldest of two brothers, according to Census records. A precocious child, he was chosen for a special bachelor’s degree program at the University of Chicago, not far from his childhood home.

Seid attended the University of Chicago in the early years of the “Chicago school,” a group of professors and researchers who would reimagine the field of economics, assailing massive government interventions in the economy and emphasizing the importance of human liberty and free markets. After college, Seid served two years in the Army and eventually returned home to Chicago, according to testimony given decades later in a court case. He took a job as an assistant to an investor and businessman named Graham Trippe, whose company made headlights and would produce the rotating warning lights used by police cars, tow trucks and other emergency response vehicles.

By the mid-1960s, Seid had taken over as Trippe Manufacturing’s president. In the decades to come, the company, now called Tripp Lite, became a pick-and-shovel business of the digital gold rush. The company sells the power strips that supply electricity to computers and the server racks, cooling equipment and network switches that make data centers run. Business surged with the shift to cloud computing and the proliferation of vast data centers.

That boom vaulted him from the ranks of merely rich to the superrich. Seid was making around $30 million per year by the mid-1990s, tax records obtained by ProPublica show. His annual income, the vast majority of which came from Tripp Lite’s profits, took off in the mid-2000s and steadily rose, hitting around $157 million in 2018. Tripp Lite, which was 100% owned by Seid, contributed $136 million to his total income that year.

Even as Seid built a billion-plus dollar business, he drew scant public attention; Forbes never put him on its list of the wealthiest Americans, and business and political press rarely mentioned him.

Yet he was becoming a major donor. He gave at least $775 million in charitable donations between 1996 and 2018, a period in which he reported $1.7 billion in income, according to his tax records. Seid parceled out a small portion of those donations to Chicago-area universities, religious organizations, medical research and dozens of civic-focused groups.

While Seid has never spoken to the press about his ideology, evidence of his worldview has emerged here and there. His family foundation has supported the University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute for Economics, named after two of the Chicago school’s intellectual leaders, Gary Becker and Milton Friedman. He has also donated to the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based nonprofit that has a history of using inflammatory rhetoricand misleading tactics to undermine climate science.

Seid appeared to be the donor (listed as “Barry Seid”) who gave $17 million to fund the distribution during the 2008 presidential campaign of millions of copies of a DVD of the film “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War With the West.” The DVDs, which were sent specifically to households in presidential election battleground states, were criticized as virulently anti-Muslim.

Seid’s personality can be glimpsed in exchanges with George Mason University officials from the late 2000s to mid-2010s that came out in response to a public-records request by the activist group UnKoch My Campus. In the emails, Seid comes across as an intellectually probing figure, asking the dean of the law school to respond to news stories about the value of a law-school degree or the workings of higher education’s accreditation system. Seid drily addressed several administrators for the university, whose law school and economics department are known for their alignment with conservative, free-market principles, as “Fellow Members of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.”

Seid appears to have continually sought new vehicles for dispensing his money and maintaining as much anonymity as possible. The GMU emails also show a redacted donor — who activists believed to be Seid based on other unredacted materials — routing donations to the school through DonorsTrust or the Donors Capital Fund, two donor-advised funds that provide an additional level of anonymity.

While the roots of Seid and Leo’s professional relationship aren’t clear, the two worked together at a small foundation Seid formed in 2009 called the Chicago Freedom Trust, a charity that gave out small grants to nonpolitical groups. Leo later joined the foundation’s board.

The GMU emails provide an inkling of the relationship between the two men. In early 2016, Seid emailed the dean of GMU’s law school and the head of a prominent American Jewish organization to urge them to work together. The dean, Henry Butler, forwarded Seid’s message to Leo seeking to better understand Seid’s intentions.

“Do you have any insight?” Butler wrote.

“I do not, but will find out,” Leo replied.

The Money

​Billionaires tend to craft intricate estate plans to pass the family business to the next generation, fortified from taxation and protective of their vision. The apparently childless Seid didn’t have that option, but starting in April 2020, he set in motion a plan to make sure his fortune would go toward his favored causes.

That month, the Marble Freedom Trust was created, and Seid subsequently transferred his 100% ownership stake in Tripp Lite to the trust, according to the documents reviewed by The Lever and ProPublica.

In February 2021, Tripp Lite filed its annual reports with the state of Illinois as it had done for decades. But this time, Seid’s typewritten name had been crossed out as an officer of the company. Added as an officer, written in by hand, was Leonard Leo.

A Tripp Lite subsidiary in Nova Scotia, Canada, similarly removed Seid as a director and added Leo as a director in March 2021, according to disclosure filings.

Then, later that same month, Eaton Corporation, a large publicly traded company, acquired Tripp Lite for $1.65 billion.

The transactions appear to have been carefully sequenced to reap massive tax savings. Selling a company that has grown in value after decades of ownership is treated the same way for tax purposes as a person selling a share of stock. If the property has grown in value, capital gains taxes are due when it is sold.

But Seid transferred Tripp Lite to the Marble Freedom Trust, a nonprofit that is exempt from income tax, before the electronics company was sold. As a result, lawyers say, Seid avoided up to $400 million in state and federal income tax, preserving those funds for Leo’s operation.

“If the person who had owned the stock had sold the stock himself, he would’ve been taxed on the appreciation in the stock,” said Ellen Aprill, a tax law professor at Loyola Marymount University. “Whereas if you give it to the 501(c)(4), there’s no charitable deduction for giving the money, but you avoid the tax on all of that appreciation.”

Political advocacy nonprofits like the Marble Freedom Trust are formally called 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations, after the section of the tax code. Informally, they are known as dark-money groups because donors can remain secret, in contrast to the public disclosures required of gifts to political campaigns or super PACs. While they can spend money directly advocating for or against candidates in political campaigns, such spending cannot be their primary purpose.

In giving to such a dark money group, Seid also avoided another federal levy, the gift tax, thanks to a change signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2015.

There’s a reason why giving money specifically to a trust might have been attractive for an older and ideological donor such as Seid. The founding documents that lay out how the trust will spend money can be harder to change than the governing documents of a corporation, according to Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer, a professor at Notre Dame Law School.

Mayer added that while corporations usually have at least three directors, trusts can have just a single trustee in charge of the organization’s activities.

Leo is the trustee and chairman of the Marble Freedom Trust. In other words, Leo is now in charge of the massive sum of money.

The Rainmaker

​For decades, Leo had served as a top executive at the Federalist Society, helping lead the influential Washington-based conservative lawyers group that serves as a launching pad for careers on the right.

But in early 2020, Leo made an announcement that suggested he was taking his successful model for reshaping the courts to remake American politics at every level: local, state and federal. In an interview with Axios, Leo said he was stepping away from his day-to-day role with the Federalist Society to take a more active role steering a network of conservative dark money groups.

The plan was to expand the network’s scope to “funnel tens of millions of dollars into conservative fights around the country,” according to Axios. What Leo did not mention in the interview was the imminent creation of the Marble Freedom Trust, his biggest-ever war chest.

Leo’s long career as both a legal activist and a prodigious fundraiser for conservative causes shows a steady march toward becoming a central figure in the Republican Party’s successful strategy to fill as many judicial vacancies as possible with young, conservative judges skeptical of the federal government’s power. He served as an adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign, helping the candidate take a step no other major presidential candidate had ever taken: releasing a list of names he would draw on to nominate to the Supreme Court.

Coming at a moment when conservatives were wary of Trump’s past leanings, the move bolstered his support among social conservatives. Leo stayed on as a judicial adviser during Trump’s four years in office. During that time, Leo helped the president appoint and confirm more than 200 nominees to the federal bench, most famously Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

Leo’s efforts to reshape the country’s judicial system began long before Trump’s political ascent. In 1991, he joined the Federalist Society, which was then in its early years and only beginning to build a pipeline for conservative jurists.

In the view of Leo and his allies, the U.S. legal system had drifted dangerously far from its roots, establishing privileged classes and doctrines that were not enumerated in the Constitution and would be unrecognizable to the Founders. Those same courts had also empowered a class of unelected bureaucrats dubbed the “administrative state” to impose needless regulations and to endow the federal government with too much power. Like his close friend Justice Antonin Scalia, Leo argued for an originalist view of the Constitution — namely, that the country’s founding document should be interpreted strictly based on how its 18th century authors understood its words at the time.

In 2005, Leo and his allies formed a dark money network to rally support for George W. Bush’s Supreme Court nominees, John Roberts and Samuel Alito. But if Leo wanted to turn back the tide of what he saw as unchecked judicial activism, he needed to build something bigger, more lasting.

Leo set out to create a network of interlocking groups that could each play a part in returning the country to what he saw as its roots, whether by training future generations of Scalias, funding scholarship that made the case for originalism or bankrolling efforts to install conservative judges on the bench.

Between 2005 and mid-2021, Leo and his associates raised at least $460 million (not including the Marble Freedom Trust’s funds).

According to tax records, Leo’s network has funneled those hundreds of millions into ad campaigns and right-leaning groups. The Judicial Crisis Network — which is now called the Concord Fund and is headed by a former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas and Leo associate named Carrie Severino — has spent tens of millions airing ads during Supreme Court confirmation fights.

The group’s fundraising took off in 2016, when it led a campaign to block Obama Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland’s confirmation. That year, Leo’s network received a $28 million infusion from a single anonymous donor. Leo and his network long refused to say who is paying for their advocacy campaigns.

Leo’s network has worked closely with Senate Republicans and has showered them with cash as well, recently donating $9 million to a dark money group affiliated with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

While Leo is best known for his influence on the Supreme Court, he and his network have also worked to shift the balance of power throughout the judiciary — in federal district and appellate courts, and state supreme courts, too.

At the state level, the network funds groups supporting conservative gubernatorial and legislative candidates. Leo’s nonprofits and their subsidiaries have recently pushed states to tighten voting laws, opposed the teaching of critical race theory in schools and financed organizations pressing states to remove millions of Americans from the Medicaid rolls.

But now, with Seid’s largesse, Leo has nearly four times the amount he raised over 16 years at his disposal and ambitions to match.

“I have a very simple rule, which is, I’m engaged in the battle of ideas, and I care very deeply about our Constitution and the role of courts in our society,” Leo told The Washington Post in 2019 when asked about his donors. “And I don’t waste my time on stories that involve money and politics because what I care about is ideas.”

Doris Burke and Andrea Suozzo contributed reporting.