Give us this day our daily bread

The Coming Famine: The global food crisis and what we can do to avoid it by Julian Cribb. The world has consumed more food than it has produced in nine of the past 10 years and food crises are likely to become more common.

FT: Water in the desert, some Gulf cities are quickly running out. Globally, groundwater depletion rates are accelerating.

NYT: Bleaching is back in fashion, coral bleaching that is, with disastrous effects on already stressed fish populations.

Climate central: Arctic sea ice loss, why does it matter? (though fortunately, there is good news on that front). Rolling Stone also has a good article on the future of ice, including this quote: "If you look at all these dramatic changes, water is doing it all. The vulnerability the ice sheets have to heat from the ocean is the key to all of this. And there's orders of magnitude more than enough heat in the ocean to kill the ice sheet, on whatever time scale the ocean and atmosphere conspire to deliver that heat. It's not at all about subsequent warming or future warming of the oceans. We don't have to warm up the ocean any more at all. The vulnerability is really from climate change altering the atmospheric circulation and how much that's going to alter the ocean circulation. The ice sheets have no defense against warm water. They don't really stand a chance."

Science Daily: Beetle populations responsible for massive pine forest die-off likely to keep rising.

US Clean Air Act has benefits forty times greater than costs of regulation. This Act has some impressive credentials under its belt after forty years, and it inspired a number of other similar bills elsewhere.

Guardian: Good thing the UK has the greenest government in history.

Hot Topic: Have the climate wars begun?

Scared of the dangers of massive untested geoengineering projects? We've been doing them for some time.

SMH: And in Sydney, we've decided to start fracking next to Warragamba Dam. Seriously.