Environmental News For The Week 01Sept. 2019

Written by rjs, MarketWatch 666

This is a collection of interesting news articles about the environment and related topics published last week. This is usually a Tuesday evening regular post at GEI (but can be posted at other times).

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Measles epidemic: parents reluctant to vaccinate their children need to hear of the horrors of forgotten diseases – There’s been a surge in measles cases across Europe, putting people’s lives at risk according to new findings from the World Health Organization.The official figures show that approximately 90,000 cases have been reported for the first half of 2019. This is already more than the number of cases recorded for the whole of 2018 (84,462).This has in part been put down to disinformation about the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine on social media putting parents off vaccinating their children. Recent outbreaks of measles, which is much more infectious than mumps and rubella, have been widely reported. But what is less well known is that there have been a few babies born with congenital rubella syndrome in the UK in the past few years. This is an illness resulting from an infection of the rubella virus during pregnancy. People under the age of 50 are unlikely to have heard about “Rubella babies”, but in the 1940s, the Australian paediatric ophthalmologist, Norman Gregg, made the connectionbetween women being infected with German measles (rubella) during pregnancy and their children being born deaf and blind and sometimes with other disabilities. Many babies infected with the virus while in the womb do not survive, but in the 1960s in the UK about 300 children each year were born with “congenital rubella syndrome” and needed care. By 1970, a safe effective Rubella vaccine was available and the UK began vaccinating school girls. A screening programme, which involved testing blood samples from women of childbearing age to see whether they had previous immunity to the virus, also began. Those who did not did not have protection were offered the vaccine. Although women starting in particular jobs – such as health care and teaching – were screened, most of the tests were done on pregnant women as part of their 12 week check. In 1988, the Rubella vaccine become the R in the MMR and the strategy changed to vaccinating all pre-school children.The idea was that if all young children were protected, then these infections would eventually not be circulating at all. But the recent outbreaks of measles across the world have illustrated the problems with MMR uptake.

Medications Can Raise Heat Stroke Risk. Are Doctors Prepared to Respond as the Planet Warms? — “It is not a part of our culture to think of heat as risky,” said Bernstein, a pediatrician at Boston Children’s Hospital and co-director of the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at Harvard’s School of Public Health. As global temperatures rise and extreme heat waves become more common, so does heat illness. But while doctors have known for decades about the adverse effects of some medications on how the body regulates temperature, little is being done in the U.S. to better warn patients or physicians of the growing risks associated with climate change, doctors, researchers and community health experts said. Medications that are widely used to treat conditions from high blood pressure to mental health disorders can affect the ability to regulate heat. They can alter the body’s ability to sweat, change how it regulates temperature or cause dehydration, all impairing people’s capacity to deal with rising temperatures and heat waves. Doctors may be aware of the risks of some medications in extreme heat, but health experts say many stop short of linking the risk to the increasing heat and humidity resulting from climate change. “The message that needs to be made clear to everyone is that climate change is making it harder for me to do my job as a doctor,” Bernstein said. It’s not unusual for someone to be taking five medications that each change the body’s ability to deal with heat, and doctors and patients both need to be aware of the risks, said Amy Collins, an emergency medicine doctor at MetroWest Medical Center in Massachusetts and senior clinical adviser for Health Care Without Harm.

Nestlé Plans to Plunder 1.1M Gallons a Day from Florida Natural Springs – Nestlé Waters’ proposal to take 1.1 million gallons per day from Ginnie Springs has drawn a backlash from conservationists who say the food giant wants to take publicly owned water and sell it back to the public, as the Guardianreported.Conservationists fear that if Nestlé’s plans go through, there will be considerably less water in Ginnie Springs, which sits in the Santa Fe River and serves as a home for several species of turtles that nest on the river’s banks. Environmental groups say the river is too fragile to serve Nestlé’s interests since it is already labeled as “in recovery” by the Suwannee River water management district after years of over pumping, as theGuardian reported. Residents have also criticized the business practice that allows for taxpayer money to restore the spring, while allowing Nestlé to take water out. The Florida Water Resources Act declared that all the water in springs, rivers and lakes is the property of the state, not the landowners, but it never set a price on water. That means, Nestlé will be able to take the state’s water, but not pay the state for it, according to theGainesville Sun.”[W]e have an ethical issue with our state putting large sums of money into conservation practices and recharge projects on the Santa Fe River and then, at the same time, counteracting this action by fomenting the free extraction of a publicly owned natural resource by a for-profit company,” wrote Merrillee Malwitz-Jipson and Jim Tatum, from the conservation group Our Santa Fe River, in a column for the Gainesville Sun. “Essentially, taxpayers are funding replenishment of the aquifer and then allowing Nestlé to take it out and sell it back to us.” That bizarre marketplace has residents teaming up with conservationists to ask the Suwannee River Water Management District to deny renewing Nestlé’s permit. “Ginnie Springs is one of Florida’s treasures. It’s loved by locals and travelers alike,” Julienne Wallace wrote in creating a change.org petition, as the Gainesville Sun reported. “Nestlé is known for destroying places like Ginnie Springs and its breaking our hearts!

Newark water crisis: The latest chapter in the capitalist poisoning of America – Newark, the largest city in New Jersey, is facing a water crisis of historic proportions, caused by a water delivery system that has been leaching lead into the drinking water of both residences and businesses. Blood tests have confirmed that a significant percentage of children in Newark have been exposed to lead, a strong neurotoxin that can cause lasting damage in even small amounts. The exposure of Newark’s water crisis comes more than five years after officials in Flint, Michigan disconnected the city from its reliable source of treated drinking water and began drawing water from the polluted Flint River, which surged through the city’s lead-lined pipes. On April 25, 2014, the city of Flint officially switched its water supply to the Flint River, hosting a “changeover ceremony” in which Emergency Manger Darnell Earley, Flint Mayor Dayne Walling, both Democrats, cheered and toasted the switch. It would not be until 18 months after the switch that official lies about the safety of the water would be exposed. But the damage had already been done to Flint’s 100,000 residents, including 9,000 children. As in Flint, Newark’s population is facing the horrifying reality that they have been unwittingly subjected to lead poisoning that cannot be reversed. Lead is a highly dangerous neurotoxin that can attack any system in the body when ingested and the damage is permanent. It can stunt growth and cause neurological damage, leading to emotional and behavioral issues and cognitive deficits, particularly among young children whose brains and bodies are developing rapidly.

Newark’s Water Crisis is One of Thousands That Are Worse Than Flint’s — Jerri-Lynn here. This Real News Network interview with Charles Jackson from the Greater Baltimore Urban League addresses lead poisoning: a public health emergency in poor working class communities across the United States, one which is raising crime rates, causing school dropouts, filling our prisons, and creating human tragedy.

Lead Found in Drinking Fountains at 17% of California Public Schools –Two years ago Assembly Bill 746 required all California K-12 public schools built before 2010 to test for lead in drinking fountains and faucets by July 1, 2019. So far, 1,256 of 7,188 schools tested by the California State Water Resources Control Board (17 percent) have reported levels of lead that exceed five parts per billion (ppb). The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that lead in school drinking fountains not exceed 1 ppb, whereas the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says there is no blood lead level for children that can be considered safe. The state, however, only requires schools to take action – including notifying parents, shutting down dangerous fountains and conducting more testing – if lead levels exceed 15 ppb. Schools that do detect levels of lead above 15 ppb must take follow-up samples from the place at which the school’s plumbing connects to the community water supply to identify whether tainted water is reaching the school from the outside. As of mid June, 268 California schools reported lead levels above 15 ppb, according to the Water Resources Control Board. AB 746 builds upon 2017 permit amendments, issued by the state’s Division of Drinking Water, that give all California schools (public, private and charter) the right to request testing from their local water systems of up to five samples, and to receive repeat tests to confirm the effectiveness of any steps taken to lower lead levels. The presence of lead at so many schools is particularly alarming because lead is especially toxic to children, even at low levels. “Lower levels of lead have the potential to cause significant effects on children’s brain development, on their attention levels, on behavior and on their ability to learn,” said Susan Little of the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy organization focused on health and the environment. According to Little, “The older the school, the more apt it is to have leaded fixtures and possibly leaded plumbing.” Little also pointed out that levels of lead exposure once thought to be safe are now considered dangerous. That is why schools built after 2010 are exempt from recent rounds of testing. “In California in 2010, we changed the lead content standard for faucets and fixtures,” Little told Capital & Main. “Prior to 2010 faucets and fixtures could have as much as eight percent lead.”

Flesh-eating bacteria is infecting more people and spreading to new areas. Scientists blame climate change. — Vibrio are a group of bacteria naturally found in warm, brackish, and ocean waters all over the world. People can become infected by eating contaminated seafood, particularly raw oysters, or exposing cuts or breaks in the skin to water containing the bacteria – which can lead to what’s commonly referred to as flesh-eating disease. In the US, the number of reported cases of Vibrio illness has more than tripled since 1997, from 386 to 1,256 in 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Now experts say climate change is helping drive the increase, allowing the bacteria to thrive in areas that were previously too cold, and illustrating one of the many unforeseen threats rising temperatures and sea levels pose to human health. This summer, hundreds of cases of Vibrio have been reported up and down the Atlantic Coast, across the Gulf states, and in the Pacific Northwest, according to CDC data. Several people have died from the infections in Texas and Florida. The increase in illnesses comes as climate change and coastal urbanization create a perfect storm for waterborne bacteria, said Geoff Scott, clinical professor and chair of the department of environmental health sciences in the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina. “You get increased runoff of nutrients, increased levels of other things in the water, plus the rise of sea level, the change in temperature and salinity – those are all factors that can make these Vibrio bacteria have a very unique opportunity,” Scott told BuzzFeed News. The CDC estimates that the bacteria cause 80,000 illnesses and 100 deaths each year, with the majority occurring between May and October when water temperatures are warmer.

Toxic Algae That Kills Dogs Found in NYC Parks – The New York Department of Environmental Conservation, which routinely tests the waters in New York City’s parks, found dangerously high levels of toxins in the Harlem Meer at the north end of Central Park, the Turtle Pond next to the Great Lawn in Central Park, the pond in Prospect Park and the pond in Morning Side Park, as the New York Times reported. “When enjoying fresh water features in city parks, it is important to try to avoid contact with any algae and keep pets on leashes and do not allow them to enter or drink from lakes and ponds unless in areas specifically designated for such activities,” a spokeswoman with NYC Parks said in a statement sent toFox News.”Many factors influence algae blooms, including high nutrients, stagnant water, high temperatures, and low oxygen,” she continued.Urban areas are particularly susceptible since a variety of nutrients found on nearby roads, sidewalks and sewage pipes, pour into the lakes and ponds. Plus, the waters are shallow, which allows nutrients to mix easily, according to the New York Times. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation website publishes a map of locationswhere a harmful algal bloom (HAB) has been detected. However, it warns that the map may be incomplete as HABs often develop and spread quickly, particularly in August and September. “HABs may be present in all or parts of a waterbody. Avoid recreating in discolored water, or water that has visible scums,” the website warns.Cyanobacteria releases toxins that can cause skin rashes, gastrointestinal distress and neurological problems. The toxins can also trigger liver damage and respiratory paralysis in animals, as the New York Times reported.The New York Post tracked down dog walkers near the algae-covered Harlem Meer. “There are a bunch of fish and turtles that die on a regular basis, so you don’t know what’s in there. You see a lot of floating turtles. It’s pretty awful,” said Sunday Humphrey, 53, who doesn’t allow her pitbull-rottweiler mix near the water. The Parks Department has put up yellow signs near the Harlem Meer and in Prospect Park warning park goers about the Harmful Algal Bloom, saying not to fish in the water, not to drink the water, not to let animals or children near the water, and to rinse any skin exposed to the cyanobacteria.

No surprises here: Iowa’s factory farms are causing a water crisis –Iowa is in the midst of a water quality crisis. With more than 750 polluted waterways, increasing factory farm runoff, and weekly water advisories, Iowans must take action to demand clean water. More than 10,000 factory farms in Iowa create 22 billion gallons of liquid manure each year. This manure is applied to cropland as fertilizer, but excess amounts run off into our lakes and streams. Corporate Ag has long claimed that the gallons of liquid manure produced by factory farms is negligible because it can be used to replace traditional chemical fertilizers. However, while we’ve seen an average of 500 additional factory farms built each year (creating that much more manure), we have not seen the sales of chemical fertilizers drop. Factory farm waste is a top contributor to increasing nutrient levels in our water, fueling toxic blue-green algae blooms like those we have seen across the state. Algal blooms have made national news this summer, and for good reason: they can be highly toxic. Exposure can cause illness or even death. Last week, Donnelle Eller reported for the Des Moines Register that blue-green algal blooms have sickened at least 29 Iowans since 2000. Pets and livestock can also become ill and even die from contact with water contaminated with blue-green algae. In North Carolina, three dogs recently died within hours of playing in a contaminated pond. Blue-green algae thrive in lakes and slow-moving, nutrient-rich water during the warmer months of the year; this summer, at least half a dozen lakes in Iowa have had advisories each week, warning of the presence of e. Coli or toxic blue-green algae. Last fall, high levels of precipitation caused dozens of manure storage structures to overflow and reach nearby creeks and streams. Farmers were also unable to get into their wet fields to inject the liquid manure, leading the Iowa Department of Natural Resources to permit more than 100 exemptions allowing manure to be applied to frozen and snow-covered ground, in order to stop manure storage structures from overflowing during the winter months. That dangerous practice leads to runoff. This situation will become more frequent as climate change continues to impact weather patterns.

‘It smells like a decomposing body’: North Carolina’s polluting pig farms – In September 2016, with Hurricane Hermine bearing down on North Carolina, Kemp Burdette rented a single-engine plane and flew over Duplin county. Burdette, a riverkeeper with the environmental group Cape Fear River Watch, was worried that some of the local pig farmers might try to drain their manure lagoons before the rains hit, to prevent them from overflowing. Spraying waste is illegal just before storms because of the risk that runoff from saturated fields will contaminate waterways. As he flew, Burdette estimated that he saw at least 35 farms spraying their fields. He took high-resolution, GPS-stamped photographs and videosdocumenting the apparent violations, and then filed a complaint with the state Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), hoping the evidence would move the agency to act. He and his colleagues did the same a month later, just before the devastating Hurricane Matthew. “This isn’t just one bad actor,” he said. “This was widespread – complete disregard for the rules.” But, according to Burdette, DEQ told him that the images were inadequate proof. “They were basically saying, ‘There’s nothing we can do,’” he said. “They can’t stand behind evidence collected by somebody else.” Nor did they have funds to do their own aerial surveys. For evidence, DEQ said it could only review the farms’ self-reported spray logs. And in November 2016, when Burdette and his colleagues followed up, they say all public traces of their complaints had disappeared. For years, residents say, North Carolina regulators shielded the identities of polluting farms, burying public complaints against them and leaving those who lived nearby with few avenues for redress. Neighbours said their complaints were going unheard. A joint investigation by the Guardian, the Food & Environment Reporting Network, and the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting backs up residents’ assessments. In response to a public records request, DEQ released only 33 public complaints against livestock operations in North Carolina from January 2008 to April 2018. Over the same period, other hog states have registered thousands. Abruptly, in April 2019 the DEQ said it had validated 62 complaints against animal operations over a six-month period and posted them online. The offenders included 11 industrial hog farms, some of which had let their waste discharge into ditches and streams. State regulators had publicly documented nearly twice as many violations in the six months prior to April 2019 than in an entire decade.

China’s Sichuan province to remove restrictions on pig farming (Reuters) – China’s southwestern province of Sichuan, the country’s top pig-farming province, is removing some restrictions on hog production to stabilize supply after an epidemic of African swine fever reduced herds. Sichuan produced more than 65 million pigs in 2017, according to official data, or more than 9% of the country’s total, making it China’s leading producer. But many farms have been hit by African swine fever, an incurable disease that kills almost all pigs infected, which is still spreading through the world’s leading pork market. Sichuan’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said in a notice on Monday it was setting ‘red lines’ for pig output in the province, with city mayors responsible for ensuring self-sufficiency of pork. To achieve a provincial target of 40 million hogs a year, local authorities should promote standardized and modern farming, and support farms that produce 2 million hogs or more each year with integrated feed plants and slaughtering facilities, said the notice published on the department’s website.

Scientists Fertilize Eggs From Last Northern White Rhinos — Seven eggs from the world’s last northern white rhinoceroces have been successfully fertilized in a lab, scientists announced on Monday. Ten eggs were extracted from two females, Najin and Fatu, last week in Kenya, but only seven of them were fit to be artificially inseminated. “We expect some of them will develop into an embryo,” Cesare Galli, a founder of the Italian assisted-breeding company Avantea. The team used frozen sperm that had been harvested from two male northern white rhinos before they died.”This is the next critical step in hopefully creating viable embryos that can be frozen and then later on transferred to southern white rhino surrogate mothers,” the scientists said in a statement. Veterinarians and wildlife experts are hoping to use a surrogate mother rhino, as Najin and Fatu are unable to carry a pregnancy. Sudan, the world’s last male northern white rhinoceros, was euthanized last year after age-related health issues began to worsen. He left behind his daughter Najin and his granddaughter Fatu as the last remaining members of their species. The ultimate goal is to create a herd of at least five northern white rhinos that could be released in their natural habitat in Africa, although that process could take decades.Other species of rhino, including the southern white rhino and the black rhino, are frequently targeted bypoachers who kill the animals for their horns to sell in illegal markets in Asia.

42 Wild Burros Found Shot Dead in Mojave Desert, $58,000 Offered to Identify the Killer – Someone is shooting the Mojave Desert’s iconic wild burros, in what officials say is one of the largest killings of its kind on land managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in Southern California, The Los Angeles Times reported.The bodies of 42 burros have been found shot dead since May in San Bernardino County, The Washington Post reported. As of Wednesday, the BLM and animal rights organizations had assembled nearly $60,000 in reward money for any information leading to the arrest of the killer or killers. “The cruelty involved in shooting these burros and leaving them to die warrants prosecution to the fullest extent of the law,” BLM’s Deputy Director for Policy and Programs William Perry Pendley said in a statement Wednesday. “We thank the animal welfare groups for adding their voices to those organizations who value these iconic symbols of the West.” The animals targeted are part of a population of 120 that lives in the Clark Mountain Herd Area, BLM spokeswoman Sarah Webster told The Washington Post, meaning one third of that group has been massacred this spring and summer. Many of the killings appear to have been made at a distance with a rifle aimed at the burros’ necks, Webster said. In one incident, both foals and adults were killed as they drank from a watering hole. “I’ve been told that at least one of the burros was still alive when it was discovered by a passerby. But it succumbed to its injuries by the time BLM investigators arrived on the scene,” Neda DeMayo, president of the nonprofit Return To Freedom, which has put $5,000 towards the reward, told The Los Angeles Times. “It’s all so unbelievable. Crazy. Hostile. Cruel.”

Some animals can adapt to climate change – just not fast enough — WHEN ANNE CHARMANTIER set out to check her great tits – a songbird native to Europe – on June 28, she expected to find healthy, spry chicks. As she slowly opened the doors to the wooden nest boxes – a trick to study these birds – the quiet at the nest disturbed her. Peering in, she encountered a grim scene: All chicks lay dead in their nests. An evolutionary ecologist at the Center of National Scientific Research in France, Charmantier has studied great tits for 15 years – long enough to know that this was not normal. The culprit was a heat wave that had swept through Europe in late June. In Montpelier, where she checked the nest boxes, temperatures exceeded 110 degrees Fahrenheit, a record by more than 10 degrees. “The heat was so much over anything we’ve ever experienced,” Charmantier says. “It was creepy.” Though this is just one anecdote, scientists predict that extreme heat waves will become more common with climate change, carrying huge consequences for the survival of some populations. Get more of the inspiring photos and stories we’re known for, plus special offers. By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to receive news, offers, and information from National Geographic Partners, LLC and our partners. Click here to visit our Privacy Policy. Easy unsubscribe links are provided in every email. The question plaguing scientists is this: Is climate change happening too fast for animals to save themselves – and their future offspring – by adapting quickly?

Australia Downgrades Great Barrier Reef Outlook to ‘Very Poor’ – The government agency that manages Australia’s Great Barrier Reef on Friday downgraded its outlook for the condition of the coral system from “poor” to “very poor.” The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority’s (GBRMPA) report blamed climate change for coral bleaching, which occurs as a result of rising sea temperatures.”Significant global action to address climate change is critical to slowing the deterioration of the reef’s ecosystem and heritage values and supporting recovery,” said the five-year review of the world’s largest coral reef system. But the agency added that the threats to the 2,300-kilometer (1,400-mile) reef were “multiple, cumulative and increasing.”Agricultural runoff, coastal land clearing and coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish were also to blame for its woes, the report said.GBRMPA’s Chief Scientist David Wachenfeld told reporters in Sydney that despite the threat, “with the right mix of local actions to improve the resilience of the system and global actions to tackle climate change … we can turn that around.”Located off the northeast Australian coast, the Great Barrier Reef is home to 400 types of coral, 1,500 species of fish and 4,000 types of mollusks.Scientists have been concerned about the health of the coral network for decades. In 2012, a study found the reef has lost more than half its coral cover since 1985.A 2017 study published in the journal Nature found that 91 percent of the reef had been bleached at least once during three bleaching events of the past two decades. A fourth significant bleaching struck later in 2017 after the report was published.

Manhattan-Sized Pumice Raft Could Bring New Life to Great Barrier Reef – Could an undersea volcanic eruption help the Great Barrier Reef recover from coral bleaching? A Manhattan-size raft of pumice stones ― believed to be the result of an undersea eruption near Tonga ― is floating on the Pacific Ocean towards Australia, CNN reported Monday. The pumice carries with it marine organisms like crabs and corals that experts say could bring new life to the iconic reef, which lost about half its corals to back-to-back bleaching events in 2016 and 2017.”Based on past pumice raft events we have studied over the last 20 years, it’s going to bring new healthy corals and other reef dwellers to the Great Barrier Reef,” Queensland University of Technology geologist Scott Bryan told The Guardian. Pumice is formed by lava sent up from underwater volcanoes, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Earth Observatory explained. Because it is lighter than water and full of holes, it floats.In a 2012 study reported by CNN, Bryan and others found that pumice rafts are one way that the ocean redistributes marine life.This particular raft was first spotted by NASA satellites and sailors Aug. 9. On Aug. 15, Australian couple Michael Hoult and Larissa Brill encountered the raft while sailing to Fiji on the catamaran ROAM and posted a detailed account on Facebook, as NPR reported. “We entered a total rock rubble slick made up of pumice stones from marble to basketball size. The waves were knocked back to almost calm and the boat was slowed to 1kt. The rubble slick went as far as we could see in the moonlight and with our spotlight,” the pair wrote.

Flash Flooding, Hail Cause Chaos in Madrid – A massive storm brought flash flooding and golf-ball-sized hail to parts of Madrid Monday, The New York Times reported. The storm closed roads and subway tunnels that emergency services were still working to clear Tuesday morning. The two major highways that circle the city were closed temporarily, and flights had to be diverted from Madrid’s Barajas airport. Piles of hail, flash floods and a tornado hits Spain – YouTube Rain and hail struck hardest in the municipality of Arganda del Rey, southeast of Madrid, El Pa’s reported. Flood waters swept parked cars and furniture down the streets of the city, which is located in a valley.”Trying to stabilize the situation and give an account of urgent requirements. The flash flood has been terrible. All services are working at full capacity to normalize [the situation]. Be alert to instructions,” Pedro Guillermo Hita Téllez, the Socialist Party mayor of Arganda del Rey, tweeted, as El Pa’s reported.While emergency services received more than 1,100 calls Monday and firefighters responded to more than 200, no one was injured in the storm, The New York Times reported. The spectacle was dramatic, though. Spain’s meteorological agency AEMET reported more than 9,300 lightning strikes in a six-hour period, according to El Pa’s.

900,000 Forced to Evacuate Deadly Flooding in Japan – Floods and landslides triggered by record-setting rainfall in southern Japan have forced authorities to order more than 900,000 people to leave their homes and another one million were advised to move to safety on Wednesday, according to Reuters. In just 48 hours, Kyushu Island received more than twice its average rainfall for the entire month of August. By Thursday morning, three people were dead and one was missing on Kyushu Island, while the Japan Meteorological Agency said the torrential rains were finally expected to diminish in the south today, according to the Kyodo News, but heavy rains and lightning would hit large swaths of northern and western Japan. The rains soaked Kyushu Island with alarming speed, soaking some areas with over 4 inches of rain in just one hour. The downpours caused rivers to swell in Fukuoka, Saga and Nagasaki prefectures, asCNNreported. Dramatic images showed residents in knee deep water and cars half-submerged after several rivers breached their banks on Wednesday, according to the Evening Standard. An elderly man was found dead after his car was washed away by floodwaters in Takeo city, Saga Prefecture, said the Fire and Disaster Management Agency. Two more people were seriously injured, according to CNN. Meanwhile, Kyodo News reported that a 96-year-old woman was found dead in a flooded home in Takeo city. One man died after being swept away when he stepped out of his car. Another woman was found unconscious after her car fell into a waterway, the Evening Standardreported.

Flood the Market – Amanda and Drew Heyen spent 16 years in their small ranch home on Chantilly Lane in Houston’s Central Northwest neighborhood. In that period, their house flooded nine times – more than once every two years. At first, they tried to live with the frequent inundations. They raised their furniture on cinder blocks and installed an industrial kitchen sink with no cabinetry. After the eighth flood, in early August 2017, they decided to make plans to move. But they couldn’t get out before flood nine, Hurricane Harvey, arrived two weeks later. The Heyens bounced between motel rooms and friends’ houses for weeks. They returned home more than a month later to find that mold was growing on parts of the walls and that sections of the roof had caved in. Floods cause more deaths and property damage in the United States than any other type of natural disaster. As climate change accelerates, they are getting worse and a growing number of Americans are signing up to have local governments “buy out” their disaster-prone houses, often with money from grants awarded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.Among cities with populations over 500,000, Houston leads the pack on buyouts made possible with FEMA funds. Harris County, home to the Houston metro area, has bought nearly 2,400 homes as of this past June. Next on the list were Nashville, Charlotte, and Louisville – but Houston has bought thousands more houses than each of the runners up. FEMA calls these transactions a “win-win” because they rescue distressed homeowners and allow oft-waterlogged residences to be knocked down and converted into wetlands, prairies, and other rain-absorbing infrastructure. But buyouts come with problems. Local officials are primarily reliant on FEMA disaster payouts that arrive after events like big storms. However, to get federal funding, buyout programs need to be 100-percent voluntary, meaning homeowners must want out. But not everyone is so eager to sell as the Heyens, which means counties often acquire a patchwork of homes, as opposed to blocks at a time. Critics, including real-estate agents, accuse local officials of doling out cash haphazardly. And a study released earlier this this year by The Nature Conservancy and Texas A&M University zeroed in on Houston’s buyouts, pointing out risks inherent in Harris County’s uncoordinated pattern of home acquisitions. The Heyens’ story captures many of the problems with Houston’s current system. The family first considered signing up for the voluntary home buyout program administered by Harris County Flood Control District after their house flooded for the fourth time in 2007. But for years, the money just wasn’t there; there were too many other Houstonians with homes in deep floodplains who faced more dangerous risks from inundations.

Rising seas threaten Egypt’s fabled port city of Alexandria – Egypt’s coastal city of Alexandria, which has survived invasions, fires and earthquakes since it was founded by Alexander the Great more than 2,000 years ago, now faces a new menace in the form of climate change. Rising sea levels threaten to inundate poorer neighborhoods and archaeological sites, prompting authorities to erect concrete barriers out at sea to break the tide. A severe storm in 2015 flooded large parts of the city, causing at least six deaths and the collapse of some two dozen homes, exposing weaknesses in the local infrastructure. Alexandria, the country’s second city, is surrounded on three sides by the Mediterranean Sea and backs up to a lake, making it uniquely susceptible to the rise in sea levels caused by global warming and the melting of the polar ice caps.The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that global sea levels could rise by 0.28 to 0.98 meters (1-3 feet) by 2100, with “serious implications for coastal cities, deltas and low-lying states.” Experts acknowledge that regional variations in sea level rise and its effects are still not well understood. But in Alexandria, a port city home to more than 5 million people and 40% of Egypt’s industrial capacity, there are already signs of change. Egypt’s Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation says the sea level rose by an average of 1.8 millimeters annually until 1993. Over the following two decades that rose to 2.1 millimeters a year, and since 2012 it has reached as high as 3.2 millimeters per year, enough to threaten building foundations.

Indonesia To Erect New Capital City In Borneo As Jakarta Sinks Into Java Sea — A jungle-covered area on the east of Borneo island has been named as site of Indonesia’s next capital city. With Jakarta suffering from a combination of an exploding population, dramatically lowered standards of sanitation, and overcrowding leading to a near-constant state of traffic gridlock, government leaders were forced to look elsewhere to establish a new political and economic hub for the country. But crucially, apart from all of the above ills afflicting the country’s current capital, it remains that Jakarta’s buildings are slowly sinking into the marshlands upon which they were built. Already among the world’s most overpopulated urban regions (over 10 million in the city limits with an estimated 30 million people in the greater metropolitan area), it’s long been known as among the fastest-sinking cities on Earth – given scientists recently estimated that at the current rate 95% of North Jakarta will be underwater by 2050, displacing nearly 2 million people, as the city sinks into a bog. For this reason the government wants the new capital to be located outside of Java and its swampy flood-prone environs – the largest island in the Indonesian archipelago – before Jakarta sinks into the Java Sea. Reports cite not merely natural phenomena making the city sink at an alarming rate, but rampant over-extraction of groundwater to meet the needs of the massive and densely packed population. The relocation is the culmination of a months-long search project and was announced Monday by President Joko Widodo. CNN described the new proposed location as follows: The proposed location, near the relatively underdeveloped cities of Balikpapan and Samarinda, is a far cry from the crowded powerhouse which has served as Indonesia’s financial heart since 1949 – and Widodo acknowledged that moving the country’s capital to the island will be a mammoth and expensive undertaking. “As a large nation that has been independent for 74 years, Indonesia has never chosen its own capital,” Widodo said in a televised speech. “The burden Jakarta is holding right now is too heavy as the center of governance, business, finance, trade and services.”

Any More Proof Needed That Global Warming Is A Scam? — August 27, 2019 –Martha’s Vineyard to be underwater in less than ten years due to rising seas / global warming. President Obama to buy oceanfront property for $15 million on Martha’s Vineyard. I assume his daughters are aghast.

Hurricane Dorian swirls toward anxious Florida, packing 140-mph winds – (Reuters) – Hurricane Dorian spun across the Atlantic ocean toward Florida on Friday, becoming an even stronger Category 4 storm as residents and tourists alike hunkered down in one of America’s biggest vacation destinations. Dorian has the potential to put millions of people at risk, along with holiday attractions such as Walt Disney World, the NASA launchpads along the Space Coast, and even President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach. The Miami-based National Hurricane Center said Dorian was packing maximum sustained winds of 140 mph (225 kph) as it churned an unpredictable path toward Florida. “Although fluctuations in intensity are possible early next week, Dorian is expected to remain a powerful hurricane during the next few days,” the NHC said in a statement on Friday. On Florida’s east coast, where Dorian’s winds are expected to quickly gather speed on Monday morning, residents snapped up bottled water, plywood and other supplies as fast as they could be restocked. Some gas stations had run out of fuel. “They’re buying everything and anything that applies to a hurricane, flashlights, batteries, generators,” said Amber Hunter, 30, assistant manager at Cape Canaveral’s ACE Handiman hardware store. In the Bahamas, evacuations were already underway, two days before Dorian is expected to bring a life-threatening storm surge forecast at up to 10 to 15 feet (3 to 4.5 meters) to the northwest of the islands. NHC Director Ken Graham saw a worrying, unpredictable situation for Florida, with the hurricane set to hit land somewhere up its east coast and potentially linger over the state, spinning slowly. “Slow is not our friend, the longer you keep this around the more rain we get,” Graham said in a Facebook Live video.

Hurricane Dorian Could Hit Trump’s Florida Mar-a-Lago Resort – President Donald Trump’s prized Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida could be directly in the path of Hurricane Dorian, which is forecast to become an extremely destructive storm. The National Hurricane Center’s most recent track for Dorian places Mar-a-Lago in the crosshairs of a possible Category 4 storm with winds of almost 140 mph (225 kph).The resort, currently closed for the summer, is on the wealthy barrier island of Palm Beach. No activity could be seen there Friday afternoon and the Trump Organization did not return a call seeking comment.Mar-a-Lago, which dates from the 1920s, was built by cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post, with the main mansion containing 126 rooms. Trump bought the place in 1985, after efforts to make it into a national park didn’t work out.During the cooler months, Trump visits the property frequently and has held several high-level meetings there with world leaders, such as Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe and China’s Xi Jinping. Hurricanes have often been a threat to Mar-a-Lago. In 2005, Trump said he received a $17 million insurance payment for hurricane damage to the resort, but an Associated Press investigation found little evidence of such large-scale damage. At the time, Trump said he didn’t know how much had been spent on repairs, but acknowledged he pocketed some of the money. He transferred funds into his personal accounts, saying that under the terms of his policy “you didn’t have to reinvest it.”

Trump suggests ‘nuking hurricanes’ to stop them hitting America – report – Donald Trump has reportedly suggested on more than one occasion that the US military should bomb hurricanes in order to disrupt them before they make landfall. According to US news website Axios, the president said in a meeting with top national security and homeland security officials about the threat of hurricanes: “I got it. I got it. Why don’t we nuke them?” “They start forming off the coast of Africa, as they’re moving across the Atlantic, we drop a bomb inside the eye of the hurricane and it disrupts it. Why can’t we do that?” Quoting unnamed sources who were present at the meeting, Axios report that the response from one official was “We’ll look into this.” On Sunday, the White House declined to comment on the Axios report. “We don’t comment on private discussions that the president may or may not have had with his national security team,” it said.

Hillary Clinton: ‘We should not nuke hurricanes’ – Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday took a swipe at President Trump following a report that he floated the idea of dropping nuclear bombs into hurricanes to prevent them from reaching the United States. “We should not nuke hurricanes,” Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, tweeted. Her comments came just a day after Axios reported that Trump had floated the idea in meetings with Homeland Security and national security officials.The news outlet, citing sources who have heard the president’s private remarks and have been briefed on a National Security Council memorandum, noted that the president made the suggestions while receiving briefings about hurricanes. “Why don’t we nuke them?” Trump reportedly said at a White House briefing, asserting that a bomb “inside the eye of the hurricane” could disrupt it. Trump earlier Monday pushed back against the report, saying that the story was “fake news.” The idea of utilizing nuclear weapons to thwart hurricanes has been floated before. A fact sheet from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration notes that the idea gains attention every hurricane season. But the organization said that the action could cause substantial harm to the environment. “Apart from the fact that this might not even alter the storm, this approach neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems,” the sheet reads. “Needless to say, this is not a good idea.”

Trump Moves to Open 16.7 Million Acre Alaskan Rainforest to Corporate Exploitation — President Donald Trump has reportedly ordered the U.S. Department of Agriculture to open Alaska’s 16.7 million-acre Tongass National Forest – the planet’s largest intact temperate rainforest – to logging and other corporate development projects, a move that comes as thousands of fires are ripping through the Amazon rainforest and putting the “lungs of the world” in grave danger. The Washington Post, citing anonymous officials briefed on the president’s instructions, reported late Tuesday that Trump’s policy change would lift 20-year-old logging restrictions that “barred the construction of roads in 58.5 million acres of undeveloped national forest across the country.”The move, according to the Post, would affect more than half of the Tongass National Forest, “opening it up to potential logging, energy, and mining projects.”The logging restrictions have been under near-constant assault by Republicans since they were implemented, but federal courts have allowed them to stand. As the Post reported: Trump’s decision to weigh in, at a time when Forest Service officials had planned much more modest changes to managing the agency’s single largest holding, revives a battle that the previous administration had aimed to settle. In 2016, the agency finalized a plan to phase out old-growth logging in the Tongass within a decade. Congress has designated more than 5.7 million acres of the forest as wilderness, which must remain undeveloped under any circumstances. If Trump’s plan succeeds, it could affect 9.5 million acres …

Trump pushes to allow new logging in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest – The Washington Post – President Trump has instructed Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to exempt Alaska’s 16.7-million-acre Tongass National Forest from logging restrictions imposed nearly 20 years ago, according to three people briefed on the issue, after privately discussing the matter with the state’s governor aboard Air Force One. The move would affect more than half of the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest, opening it to potential logging, energy and mining projects. It would undercut a sweeping Clinton administration policy known as the “roadless rule,” which has survived a decades-long legal assault. Trump has taken a personal interest in “forest management,” a term he told a group of lawmakers last year he has “redefined” since taking office. Politicians have tussled for years over the fate of the Tongass, a massive stretch of southeastern Alaska replete with old-growth spruce, hemlock and cedar, rivers running with salmon, and dramatic fjords. President Bill Clinton put more than half of it off limits to logging just days before leaving office in 2001, when he barred the construction of roads in 58.5 million acres of undeveloped national forest across the country. President George W. Bush sought to reverse that policy, holding a handful of timber sales in the Tongass before a federal judge reinstated the Clinton rule. Timber provides a small fraction of southeastern Alaska’s jobs – just under 1 percent, according to the regional development organization Southeast Conference, compared with seafood processing’s 8 percent and tourism’s 17 percent. But Alaskans, including Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R) and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R), have pressed Trump to exempt their state from the rule, which does not allow roads except when the Forest Service approves specific projects. Trump has frequently talked with his advisers about how to manage the nation’s forests and signed an executive order last year aimed at increasing logging by streamlining federal environmental reviews of these projects. The president was widely ridiculed after suggesting during a visit to Paradise, the California community devastated by a 2018 wildfire, that the United States could curb such disasters by following Finland’s model, claiming that nation spends “a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things, and they don’t have any problem.”

Alaska Reels During Summer of Fire, Heat and Floods – “Welcome aboard Alaska Airlines Flight 109 to smoky Anchorage,” a voice said over the loudspeaker as travelers boarded a plane in Fairbanks. The skies turned from blue to dark gray halfway through the 260-mile flight, shrouding the stunning vistas below. Then they disappeared altogether. In the final two minutes, as the wheels reached for the runway at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, the smell of smoke filled the pressurized cabin of the Boeing 737 and an eerie orange colored the Alaskan landscape. Welcome to the Last Frontier, where record-breaking heat is shattering temperature records. Alaska’s average temperature in July was 58.1 degrees Fahrenheit – 5.4 degrees above the average and nearly 1 degree higher than the previous high set in July 2004 (Climatewire, Aug. 19). Scientists say that’s contributing to the wildfires that are burning around Anchorage and on the Kenai Peninsula to the south. The blazes, fed by an unusually dry summer and high winds, have closed highways and stranded tourists in their cars.”This is extreme for Anchorage to have fires to the south and fires to the north,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski told E&E News yesterday at an event featuring EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler. In his own remarks, Wheeler noted that several people who were scheduled to participate at the event were stranded by the wildfires. The hazy skies colored Wheeler’s remarks about improvements to air quality since the enactment of the Clean Air Act. Aside from the immediate dangers of people being stranded on roads by wildfire, Murkowski said she also feared the health impacts of heavy smoke that choked the state’s largest metropolitan area earlier in the week. In Fairbanks – interior Alaska’s largest city – the traditionally dry summers that often spark massive wildfires have trended wetter in recent years. On Monday, the Tanana River partially submerged a picnic table and a fire pit. In the Inupiat village of Wales on the Seward Peninsula, residents said the lack of sea ice has disrupted their subsistence way of life. Their culture is eons old. They pleaded for federal support for a sea wall to slow down erosion on their beach. It’s normally buffered by sea ice, but now it’s increasingly washing into the seawater that edges closer to their village of 150 people.

Disastrous Wildfires Sweeping Through Alaska Could Permanently Alter Forest Composition – From the Amazon to the last frontier of Alaska, fire season is raging on both sides of the equator and bringing with the flames long-term effects that could permanently alter the diverse ecosystems of both regions. As of Tuesday, the Alaska Interagency Coordination Center reports that more than 200 individual wildfires are burning across the state and threatening more than a thousand structures and forcing hundreds of Alaskans from their homes, reports CNN. In response, Governor Michael Dunleavy issued a disaster declaration for two regions due to three fires – the McKinley, Deshka Landing and Swan Lake wildfires, according to The Hill. In all, TIME reports around 2.5 million acres burned across the state with at least 84 homes and businesses destroyed, according to ABC News.Now, a new study from the Berkeley Lab finds that future summers characterized by similar record high temperatures and extreme wildfires fueled by climate change could cause the irreparable changes within the forest, pushing cold-preferring iconic evergreen conifer trees out as broadleaf deciduous trees move in. “Expansion of the deciduous broadleaf forests in a warmer climate may result in several ecological and climatic feedbacks that affect the carbon cycle of northern ecosystems,” said study author and Berkeley Lab postdoctoral fellow Zelalem Mekonnen. Publishing their work in Nature Plants, a team of researchers from universities across North America used predictive modeling of climate conditions and systems to determine how a warming climate will affect forestsystems in higher latitudes. They found that by the end of the century, evergreen conifer trees like the black spruce will drop by up to 25 percent while herbaceous plants like moss and lichen will decline up to 66 percent. Deciduous trees like aspens will almost double in population, dominating the transformed landscape.

Burger King Linked to a Whopping Million-Plus Acres of Deforestation – Three-quarters of the world’s soy is used for animal feed, and about half of it is exported from South America – grown on deforested land that has been cleared away for massive soy fields. “The soybeans connected to deforestation are making their way to the feed of the chickens, pigs, and cows that people all around the world eat,” . “Almost every international company that sells meat has some connection to deforestation in their supply chain.” Enter Burger King. Using satellite and supply-chain mapping tools, Mighty Earth connected the fast-food giant to a whopping million-plus acres of forest-clearing. In its new report, “The Ultimate Mystery Meat,” the global campaign organization identified two of Burger King’s biggest soy suppliers as the culprits: Cargill, the largest privately owned company in the United States, and Bunge, one of the biggest players in South America. “The destruction of tropical forests causes something around one-fifth of the world’s total climate pollution, and deforestation also threatens some of the most endangered species in the world,” says Hurowitz. Ground zero for deforested land is the Cerrado, a 500-million-acre savanna in Brazil. Home to 5 percent of the world’s biodiversity, including threatened species like the jaguar and the giant anteater, half of it has been destroyed – mostly for soy production. In contrast, the Amazon – the Cerrado’s more-famous neighbor to the north and the focus of decades of conservation efforts – has seen a quarter of its ecosystem chopped down.

The Amazon is Burning at a Record Rate – Real News Network interview with Amazon Watch’s Christian Poirier, with transcript – The Amazon Rainforest is burning at a record rate. The fires are so big that you can see the smoke from NASA space satellites. On Monday, the sky turned black over the city of Sao Paolo, Brazil and meteorologists found that the smoke filling the sky there was from fires thousands of kilometers away. Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research has documented almost 73,000 forest fires this year already. That’s an 84% uptick from what they saw in the same period last year. This comes amid a spike in deforestation in Brazil under right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro. He took office in January. But on Wednesday, Bolsonaro said that NGO’s are to blame for this uptake in fires. Now joining me to talk about this is Christian Poirier, who directs Amazon Watch’s Brazil program. Thank you so much for being here today, Christian.

The Amazon Cannot Be Recovered Once It’s Gone – The Amazon is burning. There have been more than 74,000 fires across Brazil this year, and nearly 40,000 fires across the Amazon, according to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research. That’s the fastest rate of burning since record-keeping began, in 2013. Toxic smoke from the fires is so intense that darkness now falls hours before the sun sets in São Paulo, Brazil’s financial capital and the largest city in the Western Hemisphere. The fires have captured the planet’s attention as little else does. The Amazon is the world’s largest and most diverse tract of rainforest, with millions of species and billions of trees. It stores vast amounts of planet-warming carbon dioxide and produces 6 percent of the planet’s oxygen. So the Amazonian fires – which have been blazing for weeks and notoriously received less coverage than Notre Dame’s burning roof – seem like a potent symbol of humanity’s indifference to environmental disorder, including climate change. But climate change is not the primary cause of the wildfires. Unlike, say, most California blazes – which are sparked by accident and then intensified by climate change – the Amazonian fires are not wildfires at all. These fires did not start by lightning strike or power line: They were ignited. And while they largely affect land already cleared for ranching and farming, they can and do spread into old-growth forest.

Amazon’s indigenous warriors take on invading loggers and ranchers – Threatened by fire, deforestation and invasion, the Xikrin people of the northern Amazon are fighting back. While the authorities stand idle and the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, tries to undermine their territorial rights, the indigenous community have taken matters into their own hands by expelling the loggers and ranchers who illegally occupied their land and set fire to the forest. Armed with rifles and wooden batons, groups of Xikrin warriors have swept through their extensive territory in the state of Parfl over the past week. Whenever they encountered fire-scarred land, illegal clearances and habitations, they went from hut to hut, ejecting the invaders and confiscating chainsaws and other tools. At the end of the 40km expedition, the warriors felt empowered. In a war ritual, they marched back to their homes in Rapkô village. As their families gathered round, they showed mobile phone clips of the raid they had conducted on the intruders’ huts. “Why are we protecting our land? So we can hunt. So our sons and grandsons can live well on this land,” said Tikiri Xikrin, one of the oldest warriors, during a ceremony to mark the group’s safe return. “Only if I die will the kuben [white people] occupy the land.” By law, this ought to be the task of the federal police. The 1,651,000-hectare Trincheira Bacajfl indigenous territory was officially recognised by the government in 2000. Nobody but the 1,100 members of the Xikrin community has the right to live on it. But the elders know there is scant hope that the government will enforce their rights. The land-grabbers first started to creep into the area in June last year, using a rough road that had been cut into the forest by illegal loggers. The Xikrin filed complaints to official agencies several times, but to no avail.

Leaked documents show Brazil’s Bolsonaro has grave plans for Amazon rainforest – Leaked documents show that Jair Bolsonaro’s government intends to use the Brazilian president’s hate speech to isolate minorities living in the Amazon region. The PowerPoint slides, which democraciaAbierta has seen, also reveal plans to implement predatory projects that could have a devastating environmental impact. The Bolsonaro government has as one of its priorities to strategically occupy the Amazon region to prevent the implementation of multilateral conservation projects for the rainforest, specifically the so-called “Triple A” project. “Development projects must be implemented on the Amazon basin to integrate it into the rest of the national territory in order to fight off international pressure for the implementation of the so-called ‘Triple A’ project. To do this, it is necessary to build the Trombetas River hydroelectric plant, the Óbidos bridge over the Amazon River, and the implementation of the BR-163 highway to the border with Suriname,” one of slides read. One of the tactics cited in the document is to redefine the paradigms of indigenism, quilombolism and environmentalism through the lenses of liberalism and conservatism. A meeting among government officials in February used a PowerPoint presentation that details the projects announced by the Bolsonaro government for the region. The presentation, which was leaked to democraciaAbierta, argues that a strong government presence in the Amazon region is important to prevent any conservation projects from taking roots.

G7 can’t turn a blind eye to ecocide in the Amazon – When G7 leaders sit in judgment on Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro this weekend, the question they should ask themselves is whether the rape of the natural world should finally be treated as a crime. The language of sexual violence will be familiar to the former army captain, who publicly admires the sadistic torturers of the dictatorship era and once said to a congresswoman, “I would never rape you because you are not worth it.” Last month, after Pope Francis and European leaders expressed concern about the Amazon, Bolsonaro lashed back by claiming: “Brazil is a virgin that every foreign pervert desires.”As a nationalist, the president sees the Amazon in terms of ownership and sovereignty. As a chauvinist, he sees the region as a possession to be exploited and opened up, rather than cherished and nurtured.Since taking power eight months ago, Bolsonaro has, layer by layer, stripped the rainforest of protections. First, he weakened the environment ministry and put it in the hands of a minister convicted of environmental fraud. Second, he undermined the agency responsible for monitoring the forest, Ibama. Third, he alienated Norway and Germany, the main donors to forest-protection causes. Fourth, he tried to hide what was happening by sacking the head of the space agency responsible for satellite data on destruction. Fifth, he accused environmental charities of starting fires and working for foreign interests. And sixth, he verbally attacked Amazon dwellers – the indigenous and Quilombola communities who depend on a healthy forest.With these defences down, the president has encouraged outsiders from the mining, logging and farming industries to take advantage of economic opportunities. The results have been brutal. Last month, deforestation surged by 278%. This month is almost certain to be a record for August under the current monitoring system. The wounds are impossible to cover up. The Amazon’s fires are now burning on front pages, news broadcasts and social networks across the world.

Thousands of people marched in São Paulo to pressure the Brazilian government to do something about the burning Amazon Rainforest. Here’s what it looked like on the ground. – Thousands of people filled the streets on Friday to pressure the the Brazilian government to fight the forest fires that are ravaging the Amazon Rainforest, often called the “lungs of the planet.” Friday night, following pressure from his own people and the international community, and after weeks of spreading misinformation about the fires, President Jair Bolsonaro said he would send the army to fight them and prevent deforestation. See what the demonstration in São Paulo looked like on the ground, with thousands calling to protect the precious Amazônia.

Brazil’s Bolsonaro reverses on Amazon, announces plans to send armed forces to fight wildfires – Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro reversed course Saturday, saying he plans to send the country’s military to fight raging wildfires in the Amazon. Bolsonaro authorized the troop deployment Saturday morning for the next month in a presidential decree obtained by CNN. Brazil’s environmental agency, IBAMA, also announced Friday it is bringing on hundreds of temporary firefighters to help combat the fires. “The Amazon rainforest is an essential part of our history, our territory and everything that makes us feel,” Bolsonaro said. “Being Brazilian, our wealth is invaluable both in terms of biodiversity and natural resources.” The move marked a reversal for Bolsonaro, who has dismissed claims that his government’s policies contributed to the fires and fought back against international pressure to take further action, saying other nations were running a “fake news” campaign and attempting to meddle in Brazil’s sovereignty. “These countries that send money here, they don’t send it out of charity,” the right-wing president said in a live broadcast on Thursday. “They send it with the aim of interfering with our sovereignty.” Bolsonaro, who rode a populist wave to victory in 2018, vowed to open up the Amazon rainforest to business development, saying Brazil’s environmental policies were “suffocating” its economy. Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research released data earlier this year showing that deforestation increased by 88 percent in June compared to the same month last year. Fires in Brazil are also up 85 percent this year compared to 2018, with a majority occurring in the Amazon, the institute said. The Brazilian president this week tried to shift the blame to nongovernmental organizations for the wildfires, claiming that some groups were setting the blazes to harm his image. The wildfires have since evolved into a worldwide topic of conversation, with Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) calling on the U.S. to cut all funding to Brazil until the fires are put out and French President Emmanuel Macron, who is hosting and setting the agenda for the Group of Seven summit this weekend, calling the blazes an “international crisis.”

Brazilian Military Planes Douse Flames as Amazon Fires Reach Bolivia – Heavy smoke blanketed the city of Porto Velho in the northwestern state of Rondonia as military planes struggled to douse the fires raging in the Amazon that have raised an international outcry. A video posted by Brazil’s Ministry of Defense showed a C-130 Hercules plane, one of two sent to the region, dumping water out of its jets while flying over the smoke-covered rainforest canopy near Porto Velho. A @portalfab emprega, a partir de hoje (24/08), duas aeronaves C-130 Hércules no combate aos focos de incêndio na #Amazônia, partindo de Porto Velho (RO). Confira a ação:pic.twitter.com/Fq4fGddL0O – Ministério da Defesa (@DefesaGovBr) August 24, 2019 After facing international criticism that Brazil was not doing enough to fight the fires, President Jair Bolsonaro announced earlier in the week that he would send in the military to fight the fires. As of Sunday, Bolsonaro had authorized military operations in seven of Brazil’s 26 states in response to requests for help from local governments. On Sunday, the Ministry of Defense said in a briefing that 44,000 troops were available in the northern Amazon region but did not provide further operational details as to where they would be deployed and what they would do.

Brazil’s Bolsonaro ‘Angrily’ Rejects $22M in Aid From G7 – Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro angrily rejected $22 million international aid offered by the G7 this week as fires burning in the Amazon continue to wreak havoc in the rainforest. Bolsonaro, who has accused other countries of trying to take Brazil’s sovereignty through investments and aid in the Amazon, seemed to walk back some of his sentiments on Tuesday, accepting an offer of $12 million in aid from Britain and saying he would consider taking the G7 money if French President Emmanuel Macron withdrew “insults” made against him. Norway, which in August suspended donations to a fund to protect the Amazon in protest over Bolsonaro’sdeforestation policies, warned its companies based in the Amazon Tuesday to be careful to not contribute to deforestation. “The Amazon fires are a test case of sorts for how the climate crisis will strain the usefulness of seemingly simple concepts – like national sovereignty,” Quinta Jurecic writes in an op-ed for the New York Times. For a deeper dive: New York Times, CNN, Reuters,Washington Post, Bloomberg, Bloomberg, Reuters, New York Times, Quinta Jurecic op-ed, New York Times, Roberto Mangabeira Unger op-ed, Washington Post, Kathleen Parker column, Washington Post, Greg Sargent column

Brazil to reject G7 Amazon aid unless Macron withdraws ‘insults’ – Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said on Tuesday that Brazil will only accept an offer of international aid to fight thousands of fires raging in the Amazon if French leader Emmanuel Macronretracts comments that he finds offensive.The two leaders have become embroiled in a deeply personal and public war of words in recent days, with Bolsonaro mocking Macron’s wife on Facebook and accusing the French president of disrespecting Brazil’s sovereignty.Bolsonaro’s Chief of Staff Onyx Lorenzoni also saidBrazil would reject the G7 offer of millions of dollars in aid, according to news website G1, although his office said that was his personal view.Speaking to reporters in Brasilia on Tuesday, Bolsonaro appeared to adopt a slightly more conciliatory stance. “Did I say that? Did I?” Bolsonaro said when questioned about Lorenzoni’s comments.”First of all, Macron has to withdraw his insults. He called me a liar. Before we talk or accept anything from France … he must withdraw these words then we can talk,” Bolsonaro said. “First he withdraws, then offers [aid], then I will answer.” Macron has questioned Bolsonaro’s trustworthiness and commitment to protecting biodiversity. The French president earlier on Tuesday said the Amazon, while mostly Brazilian, was a world issue. “We respect your sovereignty. It’s your country,” Macron said. “But we cannot allow you to destroy everything.”

Finland urges EU to consider banning Brazilian beef over Amazon fires (Reuters) – Finland, which holds the European Union’s rotating chairmanship, called on Friday for the EU to look into the possibility of banning Brazilian beef from its markets due to devastation caused by fires in the Amazon rainforest. “Finance Minister Mika Lintila condemns the destruction of Amazon rainforests and suggests that the EU and Finland should urgently review the possibility of banning Brazilian beef imports,” Finland’s finance ministry said in a statement.

‘Worst of wildfires still to come’ despite Brazil claiming crisis is under control – The fires raging in the Brazilian Amazon are likely to intensify over the coming weeks, a leading environmental expert has warned, despite government claims the situation had been controlled. About 80,000 blazes have been detected in Brazil this year – more than half in the Amazon region – although on Saturday the far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, claimed the situation was “returning to normal”.On Monday Brazil’s defense minister, Fernando Azevedo e Silva, told reporters: “The situation is not straightforward but it’s under control and already cooling down nicely.”But in an article for Brazil’s O Globo newspaper on Wednesday, one prominent forestry expert warned that the country’s annual burning season had yet to fully play out and called for urgent steps to reduce the potential damage.“The worst of the fire is still to come,” wrote Tasso Azevedo, a forest engineer and environmentalist who coordinates the deforestation monitoring groupMapBiomas. Azevedo said many of the areas currently being consumed by flames were stretches of Amazon rainforest that had been torn down in the months of April, May and June. But areas deforested in July and August – when government monitoring systems detected a major surge in destruction – had yet to be torched.The Brazilian Amazon lost 1,114.8 sq km (430 sq miles) – an area equivalent to Hong Kong – in the first 26 days of August, according to preliminary data from the government’s satellite monitoring agency. An area half the size of Philadelphia was reportedly lost in July, with Brazilian media denouncing an “explosion” of devastation in the Amazon. Azevedo wrote: “What we are experiencing is a genuine crisis which could become a tragedy foretold with much larger fires than the ones we are now seeing if they are not immediately halted.”

Brazil Announces 60-Day Ban on Clearing Land With Fire – Brazil’s right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro signed a decree Wednesday banning the use of fire to clear land in the Amazon rainforest for 60 days, CNN reported. The ban was announced Thursday morning but went into effect the day it was signed. It follows an international outcry over the record number of fires burning in the world’s largest tropical rainforest. Bolsonaro has been blamed for encouraging deforestation with his promises to open the Amazon to mining and farming. The ban was signed the same day that a forestry expert issued a dire warning in Brazil’s O Globo newspaper, as The Guardian reported.”The worst of the fire is still to come,” Tasso Azevedo, an environmental expert and advocate who coordinates the deforestation monitoring group MapBiomas, wrote.Azevedo explained that much of the area burned in July and August had first been cleared in April, May and June. Forest cut down in the summer has not yet burned. He recommended increasing protection for indigenous territories and conservation areas, and for a burn ban lasting until the end of the dry season in late October.”What we are experiencing is a genuine crisis which could become a tragedy foretold with much larger fires than the ones we are now seeing if they are not immediately halted,” he wrote.The ban announced Thursday roughly follows the timeline Azevedo recommended, but environmentalists expressed doubts that it would be effective, BBC News reported. They pointed out that many fires are already started illegally, and the problem is a lack of enforcement. The ban does allow for burning to preserve plant health, prevent wildfires and for subsistence agricultural techniques used by indigenous people.

Burning issue: how fashion’s love of leather is fuelling the fires in the Amazon — The level of destruction is almost impossible to fathom. About 41,000 fires have been recorded by scientists in the Brazilian Amazon since January, with more than half of those in the past three weeks – hence the apocalyptic headlines. Every minute, the equivalent of a football field and a half of the so-called lungs of the Earth is incinerated. The rainforest isn’t just totemic, we know that the future stability of the climate rests on preserving it. To be an onlooker to this burning triggers the type of overwhelming anxiety that probably won’t be soothed by wearing a “save the rainforest” T-shirt like we did in the 1980s. In fact, that’s the last thing we should be doing, because the Amazon burn is very much a fashion crisis, connected to the leather your shoes are made from and the bag on your shoulder. We need action. This has been evident for a decade. In 2009, Greenpeace published Slaughtering the Amazon, a report that should have – and nearly did – change everything. The report concluded that the demand for leather was fuelling the destruction of the Amazon in its own right, not just accidentally as a by-product of beef. Researchers found cattle ranchers were clearing rainforest illegally despite laws protecting it, including Brazil’s “forest code“. One hectare of rainforest was being lost to ranches every 18 seconds. Through a murky supply chain, Brazilian beef companies were supplying leather to leading global fashion brands and retailers, across price points and across retail markets. In 2012, I travelled to cattle-producing states with agro-forestry researchers to meet ranchers. The researchers were trying to persuade them that there was greater economic value in saving the rainforest biome than in destroying it. Two things were stunningly clear to me from the outset. While the Amazon is more closely connected to iconic species of megafauna – including jaguars, tapirs and all manner of large, wildly coloured birds – the whole country is really about the cow, specifically the Nelore, an Indian import with folds of skin collecting around its neck. From 1993 to 2013, the Brazilian herd grew 200% to more than 60m cows. Everywhere you looked as evening fell across treeless ranches, you’d see their forms silhouetted against the dusty backdrop. The second was how deeply ingrained the slash and burn model of agriculture was in ranchers. This was a hangover from the 1970s when across the country government posters urged prospectors to head to the Amazon and settle the land. The quickest way to gain land rights? Chop the trees, burn them, put cattle on the land. Never stop. Keep pushing forwards into the rainforest. This is the deeply held ethos that Bolsonaro has been able to tap into.

It’s not just Brazil’s Amazon rainforest that’s ablaze – Bolivian fires are threatening people and wildlife –Up to 800,000 hectares of the unique Chiquitano forest were burned to the ground in Bolivia between August 18 and August 23. That’s more forest than is usually destroyed across the country in two years. Experts say that it will take at least two centuries to repair the ecological damage done by the fires, while at least 500 species are said to be at risk from the flames.The Chiquitano dry forest in Bolivia was the largest healthy tropical dry forest in the world. It’s now unclear whether it will retain that status. The forest is home to Indigenous peoples as well as iconic wildlife such as jaguars, giant armadillos, and tapirs. Some species in the Chiquitano are found nowhere else on Earth. Distressing photographs and videos from the area show many animals have burned to death in the recent fires. The burnt region also encompasses farmland and towns, with thousands of people evacuated and many more affected by the smoke. Food and water are being sent to the region, while children are being kept home from school in many districts where the air pollution is double what is considered extreme. Many families are still without drinking water. While the media has focused on Brazil, Bolivians are asking the world to notice their unfolding tragedy – and to send help in combating the flames.It’s thought that the fires were started deliberately to clear the land for farming, but quickly got out of control. The perpetrators aren’t known, but Bolivian President Evo Morales has justified people starting fires, saying: “If small families don’t set fires, what are they going to live on?”The disaster comes just a month after Morales announced a new “supreme decree” aimed at increasing beef p roduction for export. Twenty-one civil society organisations are calling for the repeal of this decree, arguing that it has helped cause the fires and violates Bolivia’s environmental laws. Government officials say that fire setting is a normal activity at this time of year and isn’t linked to the decree.

How the Amazon’s fires, deforestation affect the U.S. Midwest — The Amazon’s lush greenery and network of waterways are at risk in the face of this summer’s record fires, but another force of nature brewing high above the landscape is also deserving of attention, scientists and researchers say. An invisible atmospheric river that carries water vapor from the rainforest’s billions of trees helps to hydrate the land, as well as provide moisture across the South American continent. However, the continued loss of vegetation in the Amazon could have a cumulative effect, not only in contributing to climate change but also affecting rainfall patterns around the globe, including the U.S. Midwest, threatening food production and destabilizing ecosystems, according to the experts.”The Amazon is definitely a weather engine,” said Meg Symington, the World Wildlife Fund’s senior director for the Amazon in the United States.”It’s well-known that the weather patterns affect rainfall in the breadbasket of South America,” she added, “but there’s also evidence that it affects the breadbasket that is the middle of the U.S.” The Iriri River at the Arara indigenous land, in the Amazonian Rainforest, Para State, Brazil on March 15, 2019.Mauro Pimentel / AFP – Getty Images file A 2014 study in the journal Nature Climate Change found that “complete Amazon deforestation would reduce rainfall in the U.S. Midwest, Northwest and parts of the south during the agricultural season.” Similarly, deforestation in Central Africa would also have an effect on different areas of the U.S., the report found. That’s because by cutting down trees, moisture that would cool the air is lost and the warmer air rises to the upper atmosphere, creating ripples that flow outward and can alter the climate of other regions. While some areas could see a decline in rainfall, such as the U.S. Midwest and southern France, an opposite effect of more precipitation might be seen in Hawaii and the United Kingdom, according to the study, although the exact scale is still unclear. A 2018 report published through the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies noted that as humans “shave the planet of trees, we risk drying up these aerial rivers and the lands that depend on them for rain.

More fires burning across central Africa than Amazon as global deforestation rates approach record high – While focus has slowly grown on the fires ravaging the Amazon rainforest in Brazil, it has emerged an even greater number of fires are currently burning in central Africa. Data from Nasa’s Fire Information for Resource Management System, showed at least 6,902 fires in Angola and 3,395 burning in theDemocratic Republic of the Congo.The same data put Brazil’s fires at 2,127.The huge surge in fires in the Amazon this year has caused global concern. The rainforest stores enormous amounts of carbon in the complex ecosystem, it is the most biodiverse land area on earth, and its conservation is essential if we are to limit the impacts of global heating.In Africa however, the extent of the fires affecting forested areas is unclear. In agricultural areas purpose-lit fires have been a common part of farming techniques for thousands of years. Farmers set crop fields alight to burn off the leftover grasses and scrub plants. This burning helps maintain rich soils good for farming. But lack of traditional grasslands is driving increased slash and burn clearing of forests in parts of Africa, and therefore concerns are growing.In the Amazon scientists have warned the rapid rate of deforestation means the forest is increasingly at risk of reaching a tipping point at which huge swathes of the rainforest will degrade into areas of dry savannah.“You’d have extensive parts of the southern and eastern Amazon and parts of the central converting to savannah, and maybe to even drier conditions,” Professor Thomas Lovejoy of George Mason University told The Independent. The forest fires in Brazil have also largely been caused by agricultural activity, as landowners burn stubble after harvest, use illegal slash and burn clearing techniques to create land for crops or rearing beef, or have carried out logging to raise the value of the land.Despite increasing global awareness of the problem of illegal deforestation, greater areas of tropical rainforest are being lost than ever. More tree cover was lost across the world in 2016 and 2017 than in any other year this century. In the Brazilian Amazon, the rate of deforestation in July hit 870 square miles, or about five football pitches every minute of the entire month.

NASA Images Show Africa Has Five Times More Wildfires Burning Than The Amazon – Here’s Why They’re Different – There are now approximately five times as many wildfires burning in Africa than in the Amazon, according to images captured by NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) technology last week. The affected countries include the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Cameroon and Angola in the heart of Central Africa. The individual blazes are confined primarily to the Savanna, drawing concern because of their close proximity to forests in the Congo Basin, an area made especially vulnerable by deforestation caused by industrial activity in the region.The Savanna wildfires pose a threat to the world’s second-largest tropical forest, which spans 500 million acres and provides a home to more than 2,000 species of animals and roughly 10,000 species of plants. The MODIS images documented more than 6,902 fires in Angola and 3,395 fires in the DRC, while picking up on just over 2,000 in Brazil.French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted about the devastation in the Savanna during the G7 summit, prompting many on social media to ask why the African wildfires are not getting the same amount of attention as those in the Amazon. This came after Brazil’s President JairBolsonaro rejected $22 million in proposed funding on Monday to help put out the blazes in Amazon, saying the money would be better spent elsewhere.However, as both government leaders and environmental advocates point out, there are no clear comparisons to be made between the two regions. The longstanding practice of slash-and-burn agriculture, as well as a seasonal rise in temperature across the area, are primarily to blame for the flames in Central Africa – while the Amazon has been experiencing periods of drought that are uncharacteristic of the region, DRC Ambassador Tosi Mpanu Mpanu told theAFPon Monday.While the Amazon rainforest has often been referred to as the Earth’s “lungs,” the areas of undergrowth in the Congo Basin has shared similar s tatus for trailing marginally behind it as the world’s second-largest tropical forest. It spans 500 million acres and provides a home to more than 2,000 species of animals and roughly 10,000 species of plants – 30 percent of which grow only in that region, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

Hotter, larger fires turning boreal forest into carbon source: research — Bigger, hotter wildfires are turning Canada’s vast boreal forest into a significant new source of climate-changing greenhouse gases, scientists say. The shift, which may have already happened, could force firefighters to change how they battle northern blazes, said Merritt Turetsky, an ecologist at the University of Guelph and co-author of a paper that appeared in the science journal Nature on Wednesday. “It’s making it much more difficult for us to target those reductions in human emissions because, all of a sudden, we have all these unaccounted-for sources.” The boreal forest, a band of green that stretches over six provinces and two territories, has long been a storehouse of carbon. Although fires sweep through as often as every 70 years, much carbon remains in the soil and slowly builds up – up to 75 kilograms of carbon per cubic metre, some of it thousands of years old. But with climate change, fires are becoming more frequent, larger and more intense. Researchers found that even after the fires, older forests continued to preserve carbon where it was protected by a thick layer of organic soil. But the old carbon burned in nearly half of the younger stands where the soil wasn’t as thick. And what didn’t burn rapidly decomposed into the atmosphere. “There are areas where there’s no organic soil left and it’s just exposed mineral soil,” Walker said. Turetsky said the boreal forest is gradually becoming younger as fires increase in size and frequency. “Now those old forests are young forests, so when the next forest fire hits that area, those are going to be systems that are vulnerable to legacy carbon release.

Africa’s tropical land emitted more CO2 than the US in 2016, satellite data shows –Africa’s tropical land released close to 6bn tonnes of CO2 in 2016, according to data taken by satellites. This means that, if Africa’s tropical regions were a country, it would be the second largest emitter of CO2 in the world – ahead of the US, which currently emits 5.3bn tonnes of CO2 a year. The region’s 2016 emissions were “unexpectedly large”, the authors write in Nature Communications. This is because the land surface is covered by tropical forests and peatlands, environments which typically absorb large amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere. The high rate of CO2 loss in 2016 could be associated with a “strong” El Niño, scientists tell Carbon Brief. El Niño is a natural phenomenon that periodically affects weather in many parts of the world. In the African tropics, it can cause unusually high temperatures and drought. Other causes of CO2 emissions could include “substantial land-use change”, including deforestation and fires associated with agriculture, the study says. Africa is home to one third of the world’s tropical rainforests. Tropical forests are capable of storing large amounts of CO2. This is because trees absorb carbon from the atmosphere during photosynthesis and then use it to grow new leaves, shoots and roots. The continent is also home to around 3% of the world’s peatlands, including the world’s most extensive tropical peatland. Peatlands are water-logged environments that can hold huge stores of soil carbon. Though the African tropics are a globally important carbon store, there have been few studies looking into the extent of year-to-year CO2 emissions from the land in this region. The new study analyses data taken by two satellites that recorded CO2 emissions stemming from the Africa’s tropical land from 2014-17. These satellites include Japan’s greenhouse gases observing satellite (GOSAT) and NASA’s orbiting carbon observatory (OCO-2). Data taken from both satellites shows that some parts of tropical Africa’s land are now releasing more CO2 into the atmosphere than they are able to absorb through their trees and soils, says study lead author Prof Paul Palmer, a researcher of geosciences from the University of Edinburgh.

Earth Stopped Getting Greener 20 Years Ago — The world is gradually becoming less green, scientists have found. Plant growth is declining all over the planet, and new research links the phenomenon to decreasing moisture in the air – a consequence of climate change. The study published yesterday in Science Advances points to satellite observations that revealed expanding vegetation worldwide during much of the 1980s and 1990s. But then, about 20 years ago, the trend stopped. Since then, more than half of the world’s vegetated landscapes have been experiencing a “browning” trend, or decrease in plant growth, according to the authors. Climate records suggest the declines are associated with a metric known as vapor pressure deficit – that’s the difference between the amount of moisture the air actually holds versus the maximum amount of moisture it could be holding. A high deficit is sometimes referred to as an atmospheric drought. Since the late 1990s, more than half of the world’s vegetated landscapes have experienced a growing deficit, or drying pattern. Climate models indicate that vapor pressure deficit is likely to continue increasing as the world warms – a pattern that “might have a substantially negative impact on vegetation,” the authors write. It’s not the first study to document the global decline in vegetation. A 2010 study in Science was among the first to demonstrate that the greening increases of the 1990s had stalled or reversed. That study also suggested that the declines were probably water-related.

China heat wave to affect 100 million – China is the latest country to be enveloped in exceptional warmth, joining a growing list of nations worldwide to be sizzling during one of the top four warmest years on record. The China Meteorological Administration has issued a Yellow Warning of Heatwave for regions south of the Yangtze River in southeastern and southern China. As many as 100 million people are at risk of temperatures flirting with the 100-degree mark.“During the daytime of August 23, most portions of the … Jianghan Region, eastern Southwest China, and western Jianghuai Region will be exposed to [a] heat wave of over [95 degrees],” read the bulletin. Temperatures of 98-102 degrees “will grip Hunan, Jiangxi, [the] eastern Sichuan Basin, northwestern Fujian, and northern Guangdong and Guangxi.” Hunan province alone has a population of 67 million.That would be the equivalent of all of the West Coast and New England baking in triple-digit heat. Factoring in widespread tropical dew points in China between 70 and 74 degrees, that yields a “feels like” temperature of 109 degrees. According to the International Energy Agency, 60 percent of Chinese households have air conditioning – primarily only in urban areas. That’s about a third less than in the United States. Changsha, the capital of Hunan province, is expected to hit 99 degrees on Saturday and Sunday; their average this time of year is in the upper 80s. To the west in Sichuan province, Chongqing could hit the century mark Saturday, Sunday and Monday. For an episode to technically be classified as a heat wave, it must feature three consecutive days of 90-degree temperatures or greater. Some cities in China could see three consecutive hundred-degree days instead. The heat extends west toward Chengdu, its periphery banked against the eastern foothills of the Tibetan Plateau. Chengdu, a city known for its world-famous “hot pot,” will be pretty hot itself this weekend. They’re set to peak at 95 on Sunday, 14 degrees above average. Laos, Cambodia and northern Vietnam will also feel the heat dome’s effects.

‘Disturbing’: Europe Is Warming Much Faster Than Science Predicted – Summers in Europe are much hotter than they used to be and winters aren’t nearly as cold as they once were. And, the continent is warming much faster than climate models had once projected. That is the disturbing takeaway from a new studypublished in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. This summer saw two unbearable heat waves blanket Europe. The second set new records for high temperature when the mercury hit 114.8 degrees Fahrenheit in Southern France. As the climate crisis worsens, Europe can expect extreme heat more frequently and with increased intensity, the researchers said in a press release put out by the American Geophysical Union. The European summer and winter are seeing hotter days. Extremely hot days have gotten 4.14 degrees Fahrenheit hotter on average, the study found. In the winter, extremely cold days warmed up by an average of 5.4 degrees F. The research analyzed nearly 70 years of temperatures from weather stations across Europe, dating back to 1950. The researchers found that more than 90 percent of stations showed a trend of global heating, as Environment 360 at Yale reported. When such a large number of weather stations report the same data, it’s too high a percentage to be from natural variability. “Even at this regional scale over Europe, we can see that these trends are much larger than what we would expect from natural variability,” said Ruth Lorenz, a climate scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland, and lead author of the study, in a statement. “That’s really a signal from climate change.” While most Europeans are abundantly aware of the climate changing before their eyes, the disturbing finding is that the rate of heating is beyond what any climate models had predicted, as Gizmodo reported.

What happens when permafrost melts? Russia has more than enough permafrost: two-thirds of the country, from Taimyr to Chukotka, is frozen ground. Life in those areas is not easy: winters are cold, not much grows on that land, and any construction is very expensive. Yet, despite all this, local residents are doing their utmost to preserve the permafrost, while permafrost scientists are closely monitoring any climate changes that could affect those areas. Nothing is permanent, not even in nature Strictly speaking, the term ‘permafrost’ is not very accurate from a scientific point of view. The Russian term “permanent frost” originated in the 1920s, but already in the 1950s, scientists decided that there was nothing permanent in nature and began to refer to it as “perennial frost”, explains Nikita Tananaev, a hydrologist at the Permafrost Institute in Yakutsk. “Their definition of it was simple: ground that remains frozen for two or more years.” In fact, its upper layer melts a little in the summer, creating very interesting landscapes. The following photos were taken near the village of Syrdakh in Yakutia. The “summer” permafrost earth looks like melted chocolate that flows directly into a lake. This phenomenon is pretty common for Yakutia. In summer, temperatures here rise to above 30C and permafrost thaws two to three meters deep. In winter, it will freeze again. There are areas where there is clear ice underground, says Tananaev. “From above, they resemble a giant net. For thousands of years, the soil would freeze, shrink in volume and crack, and in summer, it would fill with water, gradually sprouting narrow ice streaks tens of meters deep into the ground. This is how the polygonal tundra is formed.” These polygons are quite small, under 40 square meters. There are hundreds of them in Yakutia, Taimyr, and Chukotka.

Germany seeks more active role in Arctic amid climate change (AP) – Germany says it plans to take a more active role in Arctic affairs, citing the far north’s growing ecological, political and economic significance as a result of climate change.Cabinet passed a resolution Wednesday declaring its intention to send German experts to advise the Arctic Council. It also plans to campaign for an expansion of environmental protection areas in the Arctic and explore the potential that the increasingly ice-free Northwest and Northern Passages have for shipping during the summer.German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Tuesday after a meeting with Nordic leaders that her country, which is an observer in the Arctic Council, will “keep an eye on the strategic role of the Arctic.” Merkel said Germany would seek to prevent the Arctic from becoming “an object of ruthless exploitation and natural destruction.”

Teen activist sails across Atlantic to go to climate meeting – The Washington Post – Swedish teen climate activist Greta Thunberg arrived in New York City to chants and cheers Wednesday after a trans-Atlantic trip on a sailboat to attend a global warming conference. Thunberg, 16, and her crew were escorted into a lower Manhattan marina at about 4 p.m., concluding a two-week crossing from Plymouth, England. Hundreds of activists gathered on a Hudson River promenade to cheer her arrival. Thunberg waved, was lifted onto a dock, then took her first wobbly steps on dry land. “All of this is very overwhelming,” she said of the reception, looking slightly embarrassed. The teenager refused to fly because of the carbon cost of plane travel. A 2018 study said that because of cloud and ozone formation, air travel may trap two to four times more heat than that caused by just emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Thunberg has become a symbol of a growing movement of young climate activists, leading weekly school strikes in Sweden that inspired similar actions in about 100 cities. She’s in New York to speak at the United Nations Climate Action Summit next month. There, she’ll join world leaders who will present plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Speaking to reporters after she landed, Thunberg said the trip wasn’t as uncomfortable as she expected. She didn’t get seasick once, she said. But she stressed that “this is not something I want everyone to do.” “It is insane that a 16-year-old would have to cross the Atlantic Ocean to make a stand,” she said. “The climate and ecological crisis is a global crisis, the biggest crisis that humanity has ever faced, and if we don’t manage to work together and to cooperate and to work together despite our differences, then we will fail.” This was no pleasure cruise. The Malizia is built for high-speed, offshore racing, and weight is kept to a minimum. There is no toilet – just a bucket – or fixed shower aboard, no windows below deck and only a small gas cooker to heat up freeze-dried food.The boat was accompanied into New York by a flotilla of 17 sailboats the United Nations organized – one for each of the 17 U.N. goals to end poverty and preserve the environment by 2030, including action to prevent climate change.

What Does ’12 Years to Act on Climate Change’ (Now 11 Years) Really Mean? – We’ve been hearing variations of the phrase “the world only has 12 years to deal with climate change” a lot lately. Sen. Bernie Sanders put a version of it front and center of his presidentialcampaign last week, saying we now have “less than 11 years left to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and sustainable energy, if we are going to leave this planet healthy and habitable.” But where does the idea of having 11 or 12 years come from, and what does it actually mean? The number began drawing attention in 2018, when the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report describing what it would take to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, a goal of the Paris climate agreement. The report explained that countries would have to cut their anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions, such as from power plants and vehicles, to net zero by around 2050. To reach that goal, it said, CO2 emissions would have to start dropping “well before 2030” and be on a path to fall by about 45 percent by around 2030 (12 years away at that time). Mid-century is actually the more significant target date in the report, but acting now is crucial to being able to meet that goal, said Duke University climate researcher Drew Shindell, a lead author on the mitigation chapter of the IPCC report. Basics physics and climate science allow scientists to calculate how much CO2 it takes to raise the global temperature – and how much CO2 can still be emitted before global warming exceeds 1.5°C (2.7°F) compared to pre-industrial times. Scientists worked backward from that basic knowledge to come up with timelines for what would have to happen to stay under 1.5°C warming, said Scott Denning, who studies the warming atmosphere at Colorado State University. “They figured out how much extra heat we can stand. They calculated how much CO2 would produce that much heat, then how much total fuel would produce that much CO2. Then they considered ‘glide paths’ for getting emissions to zero before we burn too much carbon to avoid catastrophe,” he said. “All this work gets summarized as ‘in order to avoid really bad outcomes, we have to be on a realistic glide path toward a carbon-free global economy by 2030.’ And that gets translated to something like ’emissions have to fall by half in a decade,’ and that gets oversimplified to ’12 years left.’

The case for strategic and managed climate retreat – Science – Faced with global warming, rising sea levels, and the climate-related extremes they intensify, the question is no longer whether some communities will retreat – moving people and assets out of harm’s way – but why, where, when, and how they will retreat. To the extent that retreat is already happening, it is typically ad hoc and focused on risk reduction in isolation from broader societal goals. It is also frequently inequitable and often ignores the communities left behind or those receiving people who retreat. Retreat has been seen largely as a last resort, a failure to adapt, or a one-time emergency action; thus, little research has focused on retreat, leaving practitioners with little guidance. Such a narrow conception of retreat has limited decision-makers’ perception of the tools available and stilted innovation. We propose a reconceptualization of retreat as a suite of adaptation options that are both strategic and managed. Strategy integrates retreat into long-term development goals and identifies why retreat should occur and, in doing so, influences where and when. Management addresses how retreat is executed. By reconceptualizing retreat as a set of tools used to achieve societal goals, communities and nations gain additional adaptation options and a better chance of choosing the actions most likely to help their communities thrive. We argue for strategy that incorporates socioeconomic development and for management that is innovative, evidence-based, and context-specific. These are not radical alterations to adaptation practice – adaptation planning often starts with identifying the goals people have, and context-specific implementation has long been a central tenet of adaptation – but they have been underapplied to retreat. Retreat is hard to do and even harder to do well, for many reasons: short-term economic gains of coastal development; subsidized insurance rates and disaster recovery costs; misaligned incentives between residents, local officials, and national governments; imperfect risk perceptions; place attachment; and preference for the status quo (1 – 6). A reconceptualization could make strategic, managed retreat an efficient and equitable adaptation option.

Trump administration to roll back regulation on methane, a major climate change contributor – The Trump administration will announce on Thursday plans to weaken regulation on climate-changing methane emissions, CNBC has confirmed. The Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed rule would lessen restrictions on oil and gas sites to monitor and repair methane leaks from pipelines and storage facilities. The rule would be the latest move by the Trump administration to roll back Obama-era emission regulations on major oil and gas industries, which are the main source of methane emissions in the U.S.Carbon dioxide is the most substantial greenhouse gas, and methane is the second. However, methane has 80 times the heating-trapping capability of carbon dioxide during the first 20 years in the atmosphere, and comprises nearly 10% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.Some major oil, gas and auto companies have actually opposed the Trump administration’s rollback proposals.Four of the world’s biggest automakers opposed Trump’s plan to let vehicles pollute more by striking a deal in California to curb their own emissions. And some electric utility companies have opposed the EPA’s weakened regulations on toxic mercury emissions by coal-burning power plants. Fossil fuel companies including Shell, Exxon and BP have opposed the methane rule rollback and urged the EPA to continue to regulate those emissions. Some have noted their own pledges to reduce methane leaks from their operations.

Sanders Unveils $16 Trillion Green New Deal Plan, and Ideas to Pay for It – Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders unveiled a $16.3 trillion plan for a Green New Deal on Thursday, giving shape to a massive program to overhaul the nation’s economy and eliminate fossil fuel use by mid-century.The plan setssome of the most ambitious goals announced by any candidate yet, including setting a 2030 deadline for both electricity and transportation to be run entirely on renewable energy.The idea of launching a Green New Deal, on par with the New Deal of the 1930s, has captured the attention of young activists who see it as a social and economic revolution to combat climate change. The version discussed so far publicly and in Congress has been mostly aspirational. Sanders’ plan starts to layer in detail and answer key questions about cost and how to pay for it.The price tag for the Vermont senator’s plan is far higher than the climate plans announced by any of his rivals, but it’s also more wide-reaching. It describes how the money would be spent across the economy, from grants for new electric vehicles, to funds to help farms capture carbon in the soil, to job training, including $1.3 trillion in support for workers in the fossil fuel industry. True to the Green New Deal‘s core concepts, the proposal laces environmental and economic justice throughout, promising to help lift people from poverty while protecting minority communities that are harmed disproportionately by pollution and the effects of a warming atmosphere. Sanders’ proposal claims it will pay for itself over 15 years through a combination of new taxes, fees and litigation against fossil fuels companies, new taxes on corporations and wealthy people, together with cuts in military spending related to U.S. reliance on oil and savings across the economy.

Bernie Sanders’ GND Plan Will Nationalize Power Generation in the U.S. – Bernie Sanders recently released his plan for implementing the Green New Deal. These include such comprehensive goals as transitioning to 100% renewable energy for electricity and transportation by 2030 and decarbonizing the entire economy by 2050 (full details here). To get there, Sanders plans a number of ambitious projects, including massive and job-creating infrastucture spending and “declaring climate change a national emergency.” The implications of the latter are not entirely spelled out. A number of candidates have proposals that “declare a national emergency” regarding climate change, but not in the same sense that George W. Bush, for example, may have meant had he declared the 9/11 attacks a national emergency (he didn’t, but he could have). That kind of national emergency, a Bush-Cheney kind, implies an exercise of presidential power that approaches martial law, something that most pro-climate Democrats don’t contemplate. Does the Sanders plan contemplate a stronger-than-rhetorical response to climate change? It’s not clear yet from Sanders camp messaging. The subject of emergency federal power does comes up though because of the breadth of the Sanders plan, and in particular, because of one key component:

• Build enough renewable energy generation capacity for the nation’s growing needs. Currently, four federal Power Marketing Administrations (PMAs) and the Tennessee Valley Authority generate and transmit power to distribution utilities in 33 states.We will create one more PMA to cover the remaining states and territories and expand the existing PMAs to build more than enough wind, solar, energy storage and geothermal power plants. We will spend $1.52 trillion on renewable energy and $852 billion to build energy storage capacity. Together, with an EPA federal renewable energy standard, this will fully drive out non-sustainable generation sources.
• We will end greed in our energy system. The renewable energy generated by the Green New Deal will be publicly owned, managed by the Federal Power Marketing Administrations, the Bureau of Reclamation and the Tennessee Valley Authority and sold to distribution utilities with a preference for public power districts, municipally- and cooperatively-owned utilities with democratic, public ownership, and other existing utilities that demonstrate a commitment to the public interest..

The whole plan (again, I urge everyone to read it) has been called by some a “new Manhattan Project” and likened to FDR’s reshaping of U.S. industrial policy and capacity during World War II. As Juan Cole writes, “Sanders intends to push [fossil fuel] corporations aside and institute a Federal industrial policy that can make things happen. The analogy is what Franklin Delano Roosevelt accomplished during World War II, when US industrial capacity vastly expanded and 16 million men were mobilized and Social Security was implemented.”

Trump skips G7 climate summit with aides claiming scheduling conflict – As other leaders were taking their seats around a large round table, the chair reserved for Trump sat empty. The summit’s host, French President Emmanuel Macron, gaveled the meeting to order anyway and launched into an explanation of a wrist watch made from recycled plastic. Later, the White House said Trump’s schedule prevented his attendance. “The President had scheduled meetings and bilaterals with Germany and India, so a senior member of the Administration attended in his stead,” press secretary Stephanie Grisham said. But the leaders of both those countries — German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi — were both seen attending, at least for the start of the session. An official said the staffer who replaced Trump worked for the National Security Council. Speaking afterward, Macron seemed to shrug off Trump’s absence. “He wasn’t in the room, but his team was,” Macron said at a news conference. He urged reporters not to read too much into Trump’s decision to skip the session, insisting the US is aligned with the rest of the G7 on issues of biodiversity and combating fires in the Amazon rainforest. Still, Macron acknowledged Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord — a move that angered European nations, who remain part of the pact. Macron said it was no longer his goal to convince Trump to return to the agreement.

Trump Will Not Risk US Energy Wealth for Windmill Dreams— President Donald Trump said he was not willing to sacrifice the abundant fossil energy wealth of the U.S. on “dreams” such as renewable power. “We’re the No. 1 energy producer in the world,” Trump said Monday in France. “I’m not going to lose that wealth on dreams, on windmills, which, frankly are not working all that well.” Trump made the comments when asked about climate change at the end of a summit of Group of Seven leaders in Biarritz, France, and as fires devastating the Amazon rainforest draw renewed attention to the issue. Trump addressed the issue of climate change by citing surging exports of both crude oil and natural gas — a frequent refrain for the president, who has celebrated what he calls American “energy dominance.” He also has frequently disparaged wind power, previously suggesting that turbines drive down real estate values, kill birds and, without citing evidence, cause cancer. Energy development has enriched the U.S., Trump said. “We have to maintain this incredible place that we’ve all built,” Trump said Monday. “We’ve become a much richer country, and that’s a good thing, not a bad thing, because that great wealth allows us to take care of people.” He ignored a shouted question about whether he believes in climate change. However, under Trump, the U.S. has balked at sending climate aid to other nations, as part of the Paris agreement, a global pact inked in 2015 to slash greenhouse gas emissions that drive the phenomenon. Trump announced during his first year in office that the U.S. would abandon the accord, negotiated during the administration of Barack Obama.

Trump says windmill power isn’t working. His Energy secretary disagrees –President Trump scoffed yet again at a source of electricity championed by his own energy secretary, saying wind power doesn’t work “all that well.”“We’re the No. 1 energy producer in the world,” Trump said at the end of a summit of the Group of 7 in Biarritz, France. “I’m not going to lose that wealth on dreams, on windmills, which, frankly are not working all that well.”The comment, in response to a question about climate change, is the latest in a line of statements from the president disparaging wind power. And yet, the U.S. has added more than 15 gigawatts since he took office in 2017, enough to power half of New York state. The industry, meanwhile, now employs more than 110,000 people.Even Energy Secretary Rick Perry touts the benefits of wind, which supplies about 20% of electricity in his home state of Texas. “America’s wind industry supports more than 100,000 American jobs at over 500 facilities across the country,” Perrytweeted on Aug. 6. “Wind energy is an important part of America’s all-of-the-above energy future.” Trump has said turbines are “monstrous,” are “killing all the eagles” and cause cancer. His comment Monday came after the Energy Department released a reportfinding employment in the industry has risen to a record 114,000 full-time jobs. It’s also the cheapest new source of electricity in many regions of the U.S. “We think the president is making a political miscalculation in his comments on wind energy,” Tom Kiernan, chief executive of the American Wind Energy Assn., said in a statement.

Sioux Falls landfill tightens rules after Minnesota dumps dozens of wind turbine blades – A wind farm near Albert Lea, Minn., brought dozens of their old turbine blades to the Sioux Falls dump this summer. But City Hall says it won’t take anymore unless owners take more steps to make the massive fiberglass pieces less space consuming. The wind energy industry isn’t immune to cyclical replacement, with turbine blades needing to be replaced after a decade or two in use. That has wind energy producers looking for places to accept the blades on their turbines that need to be replaced. For at least one wind-farm in south central Minnesota, its found the Sioux Falls Regional Sanitary Landfill to be a suitable facility to take its aged-out turbine blades. This year, 101 turbine blades have been trucked to the city dump. But with each one spanning 120 feet long, that’s caused officials with the landfill and the Sioux Falls Public Works Department to study the long-term effect that type of refuse could have on the dump. Public Works Director Mark Cotter couldn’t say why a Minnesota wind farm is choosing to truck its blades to Sioux Falls, whether it’s rates or regulatory climate. But he told the Argus Leader Tuesday the blades accepted to date have come in three pieces, but they still require a lot of labor to get them ready to be placed in the ground. The out-of-region rate is $64 a ton, and a typical blade weighs between 14 and 19 tons. That’s because a portion of each blade is hollow on the inside, requiring landfill crews to compact them by crushing them beneath the weight of 120,000-pound trucks. Still, it’s a process that hasn’t proven cost effective, even though the out-of-region price for bringing waste to the landfill is nearly double what locals pay. “We can’t take any more unless they process them before bringing them to us,” Cotter said. “We’re using too many resources unloading them, driving over them a couple times and working them into the ground.”

Dow to Deploy Plastics-to-Oil Process— Dow Inc. is partnering with the Dutch developer of a method for turning plastic trash back into oil as the global chemical powerhouse seeks to expand recycling amid rising alarm over pollution. Fuenix Ecogy Group has created a method for breaking down plastic into a form that can be used in a fresh round of manufacturing. Dow plans to implement the process at its plant in Terneuzen, the Netherlands, and make it a recycling mainstay, the companies said Thursday. Chemical companies are under pressure to address plastic waste that clogs oceans, damaging wildlife and ecosystems around the world. Manufacturers and consumer brands are trying to head off a backlash that’s already eroding demand. Retail and consumer giants including Unilever NV and Walmart Inc. have committed to increase use of recycled plastics, creating an estimated $120 billion market in Canada and the U.S. alone. A lack of cost-effective technology has been one of the biggest obstacles. Transformational TechnologiesAt least 60 companies are working on solutions and need investment to scale up more quickly, according to a report by Closed Loop Partners, an investment firm focused on cutting waste in the economy. The vast majority of the plastic sent out into the world is never recovered, and nearly 90% of such waste ends up in landfills, incinerators, rivers and oceans. Only about 6% of plastics used in the U.S. and Canada are available for recycling, according to the report.

A New Generation of Students Is Teaching Us How to Reduce E-Waste – For a decade, the right to repair movement has been quietly fomenting in technical writing classes at universities around the world.At 80 participating colleges and universities, teachers work with iFixit – a company that provides repair toolkits for many consumer electronics – to train students to repair electronics and help others do the same at a time when device manufacturers are making it more difficult to do just that.In the course of the class, students take electronics apart and put them back together in order to build repair manuals so that people can fix their devices instead of throwing them out. iFixit puts these manuals on their website – tens of thousands, so far – and their advice reaches millions of people.“The education program was born out of a need to give students more hands-on tech education,” said Marty Rippens, who helps run the iFixit Technical Writing Project. “Getting engineering students to think about the longevity of products is a sea change.”Then, iFixit posts the repair manuals on its website for the public to use. The repair guides they produce get traction – 1.5 million users a month engage with the guides, Brittany McCrigler, who also helps run the program, said. Students have created more than 30,000 guides on 6,000 consumer products, helping over 60 million people repair their devices. Before they make these guides, students have to understand why so many consumer electronics end up in landfills or burning in incinerators around the world. Why on earth are we wasting so much stuff? The answer to that question largely comes down to the companies making the devices we use everyday. Consumer electronics giants like Apple or Samsung churn out new phones and updates on a monthly basis. However, there’s one thing you’ll seldom find on their websites: a repair manual for your old device. In fact, many device manufacturers go to great lengths to ensure that repairing devices yourself or through a third party is incredibly difficult, and sometimes illegal. AirPods, for example, can’t be repaired because they are glued together; their lithium-ion batteries makes throwing them in the trash a non-starter; they can’t be easily recycled, either.

Maryland denies permit, blocking Georgetown-sponsored solar farm that would clear Charles County forest – Maryland environmental officials have denied a permit application for a solar project proposed on hundreds of acres of forest in Charles County, blocking construction of a controversial Georgetown University-sponsored solar farm. State Environment Secretary Ben Grumbles said the more than 500-acre project could harm water quality and set back progress in improving the health of the Chesapeake Bay. More than 200 acres of trees would have been cleared to make way for the project. “This is an unacceptable trade-off for the environmental benefits of clean energy,” Grumbles said in a statement. Representatives for Origis Energy USA, the company developing the project on behalf of Georgetown, could not immediately be reached for comment. State environmental regulators gave the project close scrutiny, holding a public hearing amid community concern over forest loss. [More news] Man suspected of shooting at officer is fatally shot by Baltimore police; officer, woman injured » Miami-based Origis said it planned the 100,000-panel solar farm in an area of Charles County known as the Nanjemoy peninsula to avoid controversies that have developed in other parts of the state when solar farms have been proposed on top of active farmland. It said much of the forest was immature and of poor quality, something opponents to the project contested. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation applauded the decision, saying forests are invaluable filters for water pollution and are needed to combat climate change. It suggested the project should instead be built on retired farmland, brownfields with a history of environmental contamination, rooftops or parking lots.

Trump Orders Biofuel Boost in Bid to Temper Farm State Anger — President Donald Trump, seeking to tamp down political fallout in U.S. farm states essential to his re-election, has ordered federal agencies to shift course on relieving some oil refineries of requirements to use biofuel such as corn-based ethanol. Trump and top cabinet leaders decided late Thursday they wouldn’t make changes to just-issued waivers that allow small refineries to ignore the mandates, but agreed to start boosting biofuel-blending quotas to make up for expected exemptions beginning in 2021. The outcome was described by four people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named before a formal announcement could be made. The decision was reached after a flurry of White House meetings this week on the issue, which divides two of Trump’s top political constituencies: rural Americans and the oil industry. With the move, Trump is largely siding with farmers, ethanol producers and political leaders in Iowa that have accused the president of turning his back on the industry. But the administration’s shift risks blowback in Pennsylvania and other battleground states, where blue-collar refinery workers have held rallies to push for relief from U.S. biofuel quotas they say are too expensive. The largest coalition of U.S. building trades unions on Thursday warned Trump that changing course on exemptions would betray the president’s “campaign promise to protect every manufacturing job.”

Trump promises ethanol-related ‘giant package’ to please farmers – (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said on Thursday his administration is planning a “giant package” related to ethanol that would please U.S. farmers angry that many more oil refiners have been freed from obligations to use the corn-based fuel. Clashes between farmers and the oil industry over biofuel policy have posed a challenge for Trump, who is counting on the support of both constituencies in next year’s presidential election. U.S. farmers and ethanol producers have ramped up pressure on Trump over the past few weeks to quickly take steps to boost ethanol demand. The oil industry has struck back, saying such moves would increase costs for refiners and could cost manufacturing jobs. “The Farmers are going to be so happy when they see what we are doing for Ethanol, not even including the E-15, year around, which is already done,” Trump said on Twitter. “It will be a giant package, get ready! At the same time I was able to save the small refineries from certain closing. Great for all!” Trump did not offer details on what the “giant package” would contain. The E15 mentioned by Trump is a higher-ethanol blend of gasoline. The U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard requires refiners to blend biofuels like ethanol into their fuel, but allows the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to grant waivers to financially troubled small facilities.

Palm oil: Indonesia and Malaysia push back as EU clamps down— Asia’s two dominant palm oil producers, Indonesia and Malaysia, may be heading for a clash with the European Union in international court over an EU clampdown on the fuel. Indonesian President Joko Widodo, however, is not waiting around for someone else to decide the fate of the industry.On Aug. 12, the president led a cabinet meeting on an urgent topic: biodiesel.Widodo told his ministers that he wants all diesel sold in Indonesia to contain 30% palm oil by next January, versus the current ratio of 20%. “And then later, at the end of 2020, I want it to jump to B50,” he said, meaning 50%. In a speech to parliament that week, the president said the ultimate goal is 100%.Raising domestic consumption is more crucial than ever. The European Commission decided last year to completely phase out imports of palm oil for transport fuels by 2030, citing widespread deforestation. Not only is the EU one of the top export markets for both Indonesia and Malaysia, but officials in Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur fear relentless campaigning against palm oil could trigger a broader global backlash that would threaten the industry’s survival. With global trade upheaval also throwing the market into flux, producers are scurrying to adjust and attempting to rehabilitate palm oil’s image.Palm oil is used in everything from margarine, chips, peanut butter and chocolate to shampoo, cosmetics, cleaning products and biofuels. For decades, critics have claimed it is hazardous to health, while conservationists blame expanding plantations and slash-and-burn farming for endangering orangutan populations and the climate. Greenpeace says over 74 million hectares of Indonesian rainforest have been “logged, burned or degraded” in the last half century. Yet Indonesia, which accounted for 56% of global palm oil supply in 2018, and Malaysia, which contributed 28%, claim the EU’s real concern is protecting its own rapeseed and sunflower oils.

Indonesia threatens to halt Airbus jet orders over palm oil feud — Indonesia is pushing its domestic airlines to halt purchase of Airbus SE planes in retaliation for curbs imposed by the European Union on use of palm biodiesel.Indonesia’s Trade Minister Enggartiasto Lukita is also asking carriers including PT Lion Mentari Airlines to consider switching their outstanding aircraft to Boeing Co. Lukita has spoken to Lion’s co-founder Rusdi Kirana about dumping Airbus and the country’s largest low-cost carrier supports the government move, the minister said in a text message on Thursday.“We are exploring all options,” Lukita said, when asked if the government would order all carriers to switch to Boeing from Airbus. “I have contacted Rusdi, and he said the airline will follow whatever the government decides.”Siva Govindasamy, a Singapore-based spokesman for Airbus, didn’t immediately respond to request for comments.The Indonesian threat to turn its back on Airbus is the fallout of European Union’s decision earlier this year to place stricter limits on palm oil’s use in biofuels on concerns over deforestation. Indonesia, the world’s largest producer of the tropical vegetable oil, last week also threatened to slap retaliatory tariffs on import of dairy products from EU after the bloc imposed anti-subsidy duties on its palm oil biodiesel. The escalation of trade feud may complicate Lion’s plan to turn to the European manufacturer following a dispute with Boeing after the crash of its 737 Max 8 jet last year, which killed 189 people. Flag carrier PT Garuda Indonesia has also said that it may cancel its Boeing Max orders for other models.

Why climate change is so hard to tackle: Our stubborn energy system –To adequately address climate change on the level scientists say we must, the world would need to slash its use of oil, natural gas and coal within 30 years, a Herculean task given our deep dependence. In 1987, 81% of our world’s energy consumption came from oil, natural gas and coal. Thirty years later, it is still 81% – despite the incredible increase in wind and solar energy, according to the International Energy Agency. Global fossil-fuel companies have built powerful political operations to lobby governments to maintain subsidies and oppose big climate policy. This is starting to change among some oil companies, but it’s an uneven shift, and it’s not (yet) fundamentally changing the system they helped build. But a lot more is driving fossil fuels’ dominance than just corporate influence on government. Oil, natural gas and coal provide immense benefits to society – even though they also have immense environmental costs.

• The chemical makeup of the fuels make them especially good at a lot of things, including industrial processes like making plastics. Renewables or other resources cannot easily replace that (even though big brands, like Legos, are trying).
• “Some sectors, such as transportation and petrochemicals [plastics], almost completely rely on one single fuel, in this case oil,” said Fatih Birol, IEA executive director. Nonetheless, Birol said fossil-fuel consumption subsidies that totaled $400 billion in 2018 are providing an “unfair advantage” to those fuels.

In the world of energy and climate change, people talk about the “energy transition,” the concept that we are moving from fossil fuels to renewable energy. But for now and the next few decades, it’s more of an energy addition.

• Renewable electricity (which is the primary use for wind and solar) is often being added on top of instead of in lieu of fossil fuels, particularly in Asia’s rapidly growing economies.
• Our energy system, particularly electricity, is built on multi-billion dollar infrastructure investments designed to last decades. Replacing them is like changing direction on a jetliner, not a jet ski.
• Because of this dynamic and because our global energy demand keeps rising, our emissions keep growing despite the skyrocketing use of wind and solar energy.
• History shows that energy transitions take many decades and overlap, as Reuters analyst John Kemp wrote in a must-read column late last year. “The United States was still using more fuel wood in the 1910s than it had in the 1840s – even though wood had been clearly overtaken by coal and to a lesser extent petroleum as an energy source.”

IEA: New coal plants are a “blind spot” in climate change debate -The International Energy Agency (IEA) will analyze the climate change and economic costs of the world’s coal plants in its 2019 world energy outlook, set for release in November, the agency’s top official told Axios in a recent interview. “There is an important problem here,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol. “The existing infrastructure provides a lifeline to people in developing countries, but at the same time, it’s the single most important driver of global carbon dioxide emissions.”

• Today’s coal plants emit more than 10 gigatons of carbon dioxide, which amounts to 1/3 of all energy-related CO2 emissions, Birol said.
• Coal plants in Europe and the United States are around 40 years old, but ones in Asia are far newer – closer to 11 years old – and still produce profits for the companies that operate them.
• Those plants in particular are what Birol calls a “blind spot” in our climate and energy debate, given they are likely to be emitting for decades longer.

IEA’s analysis will include a detailed, plant-level analysis of all the world’s coal plants, looking at what their “continued operation would mean for global emissions, energy security and costs,” an IEA spokesman said. IEA is an intergovernmental organization funded partly by its 30 member countries.

“New cities need to be built…” — Here’s a piece of idiocy from a thread at another blog, all too typical of one strain of fake “alternative” types: There will be a lot more building in China….. new cities need to be built…..China will grow well for another 20 years no matter what. Yes, because fossil fuels are infinite, and the biodiversity of the Earth is infinite and can be exterminated forever, and the ecology’s capacity to be devastated is infinite, and the Earth can be murdered forever. And all for the sake of the cancerous “growth” of the lowest vermin ever, materialistic Homo necropolis. By now in the West there’s almost nothing left of humanity but psychopaths like this scribbler. Gaia will not mourn this species, soon to become the apex victim of its own mass extinction campaign. It’s not me saying that destruction, or what psychopaths call “development”, has gone way too far. It’s the Earth saying it. And Gaia will insist on payment of all bills. All their “infrastructure” was raped from the Earth and from peoples who never wanted any part of their vile Christian-scientistic “Dominion”. Including most people in the West itself. And the most open, obvious secret is that it was all for nothing. Modern civilized grinders are the least happy, healthy, whole people who ever have existed. Including and especially the rich. Otherwise why are they such psychopaths who never can reach a point of relaxation and enjoyment of their wealth, but on the contrary must obsess ever more frantically on getting more, and especially on making sure that most people get less and less and less? And the same dynamic goes for all Western grinders, at any level of the hierarchy. And the same goes for all who ape Western civilization, including all who want drive globalization, and all who drive infinite cancer, aka “growth”. And that’s the Hell they call “heaven” which they wish on everyone. Thank Gaia that Earth can’t and won’t tolerate this abomination much longer.

Are coal exports to India an opportunity or lost cause? – Clyde Russell (Reuters) – The Australian government thinks there are opportunities to boost coal exports to India. The Indian government wants to cut imports by half by boosting domestic output. Funny thing is, both could turn out to be correct. India is already the world’s third-biggest energy consumer and with plans to grow the economy rapidly, it’s likely to move up the ranking in coming years. However, how the world’s second-most populous nation increases its energy demand is not set in stone, and the country looks to be the petri dish of whether renewable energies such as solar and wind can genuinely replace fossil fuel generation. No matter what happens with renewable energy in India, coal is going to stay a major part of the generation mix, given the country has added 123 gigawatts (GW) of coal capacity in the past decade, taking the total to more than 200 GW. The rapid build-out of coal generation has led to efforts to boost domestic output, led by state-controlled producer Coal India. While much of the commentary on Coal India focuses on the company’s routine failure to meet ambitious production targets, this clouds the fact that it has actually been quite successful in boosting its output. The world’s largest coal mining company has gone from producing 462 million tonnes in the 2009/10 fiscal year to 607 million tonnes in 2018/19. Coal India only just missed its 610 million tonne target in the last financial year, and its aim for the current 2019/20 year is to reach 660 million tonnes. This seems like too much of a stretch for one year, but the relevant metric isn’t whether Coal India meets its targets, it’s how close it comes. The company’s chairman, A.K. Jha, said last week the aim is to ramp up output by 50-55 million tonnes annually for the next three years, which would allow for imports to decline. Jha told a conference that India’s total domestic output last fiscal year was 730 million tonnes, but consumption was 965 million, with imports of 235 million filling the gap, the Economic Tomes reported on Aug. 26. “Out of this 115 million tonnes of imports is inevitable since it is coking coal not abundantly available in the country. The rest, around 120 million tonnes, can be replaced by Coal India’s production,” the newspaper quoted Jha as saying. Jha’s comments dovetail with the Indian government’s aim to reduce coal imports by at least a third by the fiscal year ending March 2024.

TVA finds route for power line from Mississippi to Tennessee (AP) – The Tennessee Valley Authority says it has identified a route for a new transmission line that would send power from Mississippi to Tennessee.TVA said Monday that the proposed power line would begin at the existing Allen Fossil Plant in Horn Lake, near the Tennessee and Mississippi line. The line would extend to a substation in Memphis.The utility said the line will increase power reliability in the Memphis area.TVA says it will take public input and evaluate environmental effects of the project. TVA will deal with property owners for access to their property for the line’s construction and maintenance.

The toxic waste threat that climate change is making worse – More than 100 storage sites for coal-burning power plants’ toxic leftovers lie in areas that federal emergency managers have labeled a high risk for flooding, according to POLITICO’s examination of government and industry data. That finding comes as scientists and pollution experts warn that coal ash – a multibillion-dollar liability problem for communities across the country – may become an even greater danger because of heavier rains triggered by climate change. Already, federal agencies warn that the government’s flood maps most likely understate the risks of deluges in much of the country, including the Southeast, where at least 42 storage sites in POLITICO’s analysis are located. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is moving to weaken an Obama-era regulation meant to prevent a repeat of past coal ash disasters. The ash, left behind when coal is burned for power generation, contains arsenic, selenium, lead, mercury, boron and other contaminants known to cause cancer, neurological damage or heart ailments. Electric utilities usually store it in massive landfills or unlined ponds that are at a risk of spilling when nearby lakes and rivers flood – as happened in a $1.2 billion disaster that damaged dozens of homes in Tennessee in 2008, as well as two breaches that fouled a river and lake in North Carolina last year after Hurricane Florence. In addition to the increased risk of spills, scientists say the heavier rains expected to come from a warming planet also threaten to bring a more hidden peril – rising water tables that seep into the ash impoundments, contaminating groundwater used for agriculture and drinking. The dangers make it urgent for power companies to move faster to remove the coal ash deposits from harm’s way, pollution experts say. “If they don’t clean them up, they’re going to be there forever,” said Peter Goode, a former chief engineer for the Missouri Department of Natural Resources water pollution control program. “Thirty years from now, who knows what the flooding events are going to look like and what the rainfall events are going to look like?”

Sick and dying workers demand help after cleaning coal ash (AP) – The Tennessee Valley Authority, long respected for providing good jobs and cheap electricity, is facing a growing backlash over its handling of a massive coal ash spill a decade ago, with potentially serious consequences for an industry often opposed to environmental regulation. A jury in Knoxville decided within hours that the TVA’s contractor, Jacobs Engineering, breached its safety duties, exposing hundreds of cleanup workers to airborne “fly ash” with known carcinogens. The jurors said Jacobs’ actions were capable of making the workers sick. The key question of whether they caused each worker’s injuries was left for a different jury in a second phase of the civil trial. More than 200 workers blame the contractor for exposing them to ash they say caused a slew of illnesses, some fatal, including cancers of the lung, brain, blood and skin. Despite last November’s favorable verdict for the first 72 plaintiffs, they won’t get monetary damages unless they can prove exactly what caused their specific illnesses. The judge, alluding to their urgent need for medical care, ordered mediation. More than a hundred other plaintiffs await the outcome. “To have the burden put on you, that you have to prove what caused these horrific things — that’s an atrocity,” said Janie Clark, whose husband, Ansol, has a rare blood cancer after driving a fuel truck at the site. “I guess that’s just the law.”

Attorney for 9/11 first responders Marc Bern joins TVA coal ash suit – The New York attorney who helped win money for first responders who were exposed to toxic dust from the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center is now targeting the Tennessee Valley Authority and one of its contractors over coal ash exposure. Marc Bern, a kingpin among lawyers specializing in mass injury litigation, has signed onto a lawsuit filed against TVA and contractor Jacobs Engineering Inc. earlier this year. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of leaders in Roane County and two cities within its borders, Kingston and Harriman. The lawsuit, initially filed by Knoxville attorneys Jim Scott, Keith Stewart and J. Tyler Roper, accuses TVA and Jacobs of misleading government leaders and Roane County residents about the toxicity of the 7.3 million tons of coal ash that spilled from a busted dike at TVA’s Kingston coal-fired power plant in 2008. TVA and Jacobs insisted in repeated public statements after the spill – the nation’s largest human-created environmental disaster ever – that coal ash was no more dangerous than dirt. “Unfortunately, because the defendants, TVA and Jacobs, have not stepped up to do the right thing, the cases could go on for years,” Bern said. “You’re going to have more people die or get debilitating illnesses.” Roane County leaders already had taken a financial handout from TVA, to the tune of $43 million, for “economic development” in the wake of the spill. And TVA shelled out $27.8 million to settle spill-related property damage claims by residents living near the spill site. But with the ink still wet on TVA’s checks and its cleanup operation, headed by Jacobs, still underway, workers at the Kingston disaster site began complaining of sicknesses and asking questions about the coal ash they were being exposed to without respiratory protection for their lungs and coveralls for their bodies. A handful of those workers filed suit in U.S. District Court in 2013 against Jacobs, alleging the firm’s safety managers falsely told them coal ash was safe enough to eat, denied them adequate protective gear, threatened to fire them if they insisted on respiratory masks, destroyed dust masks to keep workers from wearing them and tampered with threat level testing.

Bankrupt coal operator gets OK to end 401(k) plan — Sponsors of the Blackjewel LLC 401(k) Plan, Milton, W.Va., received permission from a bankruptcy court to terminate the plan, which has an estimated $26 million in assets.Participants were notified Aug. 9 by Blackjewel that they can choose to receive a cash distribution or roll over the balance to a qualified plan. The plan custodian is American Funds and the third-party administrator is Benefits Plans Services Inc. Choices must be made by Sept. 13.Coal operator Blackjewel filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on July 1. On Aug. 6, U.S. District Judge Frank Volk for the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of West Virginia in Charleston, who also cleared the plan termination, approved the sale of three Blackjewel mines to Contura Energy Inc. The sale must be approved by the federal government.Contura Energy is the stalking horse purchaser of Blackjewel LLC and Blackjewel Holdings LLC assets, including the Belle Ayr and Eagle Butte thermal coal mines in the Powder River Basin in Campbell County, Wyo., and the Pax Surface mine in Fayette County, W.Va.In a July 25 statement about the proposed purchase, Contura said it will try to hire the majority of the displaced Wyoming employees and resume normal mining operations but employment decisions about the West Virginia mine “will be determined based on development plans if and once the mine is acquired.”

Blackjewel seeks court order to move disputed coal train -As angry coal miners continued to block a set of railroad tracks in Harlan County Friday, the miners’ former employer, Blackjewel LLC., sought a court order to let a disputed coal train pass through the blockade.Frank Volk, a judge in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, did not make a final ruling on that request, but asked for another hearing within 10 to 14 days to continue the discussion.Upset over not being paid for more than three weeks of work, a small group of miners stood on the tracks and blocked the train last month as it hauled coal from a Blackjewel mine. The company failed to pay hundreds of Kentucky miners as it declared bankruptcy more than a month ago. Some former Blackjewel miners have said they’re owed thousands of dollars and have struggled to make ends meet in the weeks following the bankruptcy.

Blackjewel, federal government at odds over halting coal – A federal district court judge issued a temporary restraining order Friday afternoon to prevent bankrupt coal producer Blackjewel LLC and a marketing company from moving thousands of tons of coal in Southwest Virginia that U.S. Department of Labor officials say were produced by unpaid employees in violation of the law.The federal government and Blackjewel are at odds over whether an existing halt can be lifted on coal at sites in Raven, Honaker and Appalachia, Virginia. The order, issued by James Jones, a U.S. District Court judge in Abingdon, comes as Blackjewel’s bankruptcy proceedings play out in a separate federal court in West Virginia.The halted coal was the focus of a hearing in a Charleston, West Virginia, courtroom Friday morning, before Jones issued his order. Bankruptcy judge Frank Volk ordered the scheduling of an evidentiary hearing related to questions surrounding the halted coal within the next 10-14 days. Jones took that into account for his district court ruling later in the day, setting the temporary restraining order to expire at the conclusion of the bankruptcy court’s evidentiary hearing, the date of which was not immediately available . Blackjewel attorneys argue that the company that purchased the coal should be able to take ownership of it before it degrades from oxidation, while the Department of Labor asked the district court in Virginia this week for a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction to prevent any movement of the coal.

Evidentiary hearing ordered in case of Blackjewel mining labor dispute — A judge has ordered an evidentiary hearing in the case of the striking Eastern Kentucky coal miners within two weeks.Lawyers for Blackjewel and the U.S. Labor Department were in court in Charleston, West Virginia, Friday.Miners for the Blackjewel mining company have not been paid for weeks-worth of work after the company filed for bankruptcy on July 1. Miners in Harlan County are sitting on train tracks to block the coal they mined from going anywhere until they are paid. Wages totaling $2.6 million are owed.

No KY coal company has posted bond to protect miner wages — Not a single coal company formed in Kentucky within the past five years has posted a bond required by state law to protect miners’ wages if the company suddenly shuts down, according to records obtained by the Lexington Herald-Leader. In addition, officials in Gov. Mat Bevin’s administration urged lawmakers last year to pass a bill that would have eliminated the requirement.The bill did not get a vote in the House of Representatives, but critics say the Kentucky Labor Cabinet’s support of the measure raises questions about its failure to ensure a bond was posted by Blackjewel LLC, which left hundreds of Kentucky miners with cold checks last month when it declared bankruptcy with no advance notice. In the weeks after Blackjewel filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the Herald-Leader reported the company appeared to be in violation of a law requiring it to post a performance bond to protect wages. The violation allowed the company to close its mines without paying employees for three weeks of work.KRS 337.200 requires “every employer engaged in construction work, or the severance, preparation, or transportation of minerals” that has continuously operated in Kentucky for less than five years to post a performance bond with the Labor Cabinet to cover its payroll for four weeks. If the company suddenly shuts down, the money could be used to pay employees. Many Kentucky coal companies are exempt from the law because they’ve continuously operated in Kentucky longer than five years, but the Herald-Leader identified a handful that appear to meet the requirements for posting a bond. On Thursday afternoon, Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear released a report identifying 30 companies that may be in violation of the law. Altogether, the 30 companies employ 932 people.

Blackjewel left coal miners without pay. Now it might leave Appalachia thousands of acres of land to clean up. The Revelation and Blackjewel bankruptcies put nearly 1,700 miners out of work across Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming. The companies owe $11.8 million in back pay and benefits to miners in central Appalachia, according to Ohio Valley ReSource. But those costs pale in comparison to the more than half a billion dollars Blackjewel owes for other debts, according to its bankruptcy filing, including significant environmental and employee obligations. Surface mining, a type of mining that Blackjewel and other coal companies use, has degraded land and water in Appalachia, causing erosion and landslides, floods, and water contamination. Without reclamation, sites are more of an environmental and economic risk. The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) of 1977 set rules for restoring surface-mined land through a process called reclamation, which consists of rebuilding ridges destroyed by explosives, remediating soil, planting new trees and vegetation, and ensuring that land can be used for other purposes. As the coal industry has declined over the last decade, companies have used loopholes in SMCRA to avoid reclamation obligations, and some state agencies have not adequately enforced the law. Alpha and other companies dumped unproductive mines and responsibilities on companies that bought them after bankruptcy, postponing cleanup for months, years, or even decades. Many of the mines at stake in Blackjewel’s bankruptcy produce little coal, are lying idle, or are in various stages of reclamation. Advocates, industry experts, and former regulators say this cycle – mine, declare bankruptcy, and sell – threatens the system designed to ensure mines are reclaimed, and that central Appalachia could see a new round of mine abandonment that could cause more environmental, economic, and health problems. “There are parts of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky – the state with the most abandoned mine lands in the country – that were mined 50, 100, 150 years ago, and still have not been reclaimed,” said Joe Pizarchik, director of the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE) under former President Barack Obama. “Those areas have still not recovered. The coal’s gone, there’s no jobs, there’s nothing.”

Navajo Company, Now Big Coal Player, Must Prep Cleanup Bond Plan –Coal industry watchers and environmentalists are asking questions about Navajo Transitional Energy Company’s purchase of bankrupt Cloud Peak Energy Inc.’s coal mines in Wyoming and Montana, particularly how it will pay for eventual mine cleanup. NTEC, a stand-alone business authorized by the Navajo Nation to negotiate on its behalf, bought the Antelope, Spring Creek, and Cordero Rojo mines, which occupy some 90,000 acres. The Aug. 19 purchase would make NTEC the nation’s third-biggest coal producer, trailing Peabody Energy and Arch Coal. NTEC now needs to meet state bonding requirements for cleanup when the mines are no longer operational. Bonding is designed to have companies arrange to cover those costs so taxpayers aren’t on the hook if a mine site is abandoned. Shannon Anderson, staff attorney with the Powder River Basin Resource Council in Sheridan, Wyo., said the group will be watching to make sure the state’s reclamation bonding requirements are met. “They’re a tribal entity, so there are special rules and regulations, and even loopholes, that apply to them,” she said. Tribes have used sovereign immunity to avoid certain requirements, she said.NTEC had sovereign immunity in a case decided July 29 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit over challenges to the company’s plans to reauthorize coal mining activity at a 33,000-acre strip mine on Navajo Nation land in New Mexico.Because of the tribe’s sovereignty, the court tossed out a lawsuit by environmental groups alleging violations of the Endangered Species Act and National Environmental Policy Act.

Western Coal Takes Another Hit as Appeals Court Rules Against Export Terminal – A Washington state appeals court has ruled against a company that wants to build the largest coal export terminal in the country on the Columbia River. The decision could be a fatal blow for a controversial project that could have increased global greenhouse gas emissions.Western states with coal mining operations have been pushing for an export terminal that would allow them to send their coal by rail to the coast and then ship it to China.A coal terminal was proposed on the banks of the Columbia River in Longview, Washington, but the state opposed it on several grounds. State officials rejected a water quality permit under the Clean Water Act, pointing to a long list of environmental harms, including air pollution from the coal trains. They also rejected a plan to sublease state-owned land for the coal terminal, citing concerns about the company’s finances and reputation, including that it had misrepresented just how much coal it planned to ship. The appeals court ruled on the state’s rejection of the sublease on Tuesday, saying the Department of Natural Resources had acted reasonably given the circumstances. “It’s yet another nail in the coffin of a project that faces legal, market and financial challenges,” said Clark Williams-Derry, director of energy finance for the Sightline Institute, an environmental think tank based in Seattle. “If this were built, it would be a massive increase in the emissions attributable to economic activity in Washington state. We are closing our own coal fired power plant within six years, the notion that at the same time we would be enabling the construction of others around the globe doesn’t make climate sense.” Kristin Gaines, Senior Vice President of Regulatory Affairs for Millennium Bulk Terminals-Longview, the company behind the proposed project, said the company would continue to fight for the project.

Misguided nuclear bailout has cost the Valley dearly – The disheartening news last week that Clean Energy Future has put the kabosh on plans to construct a third $900 million natural-gas power plant in the Mahoning Valley should come as no great surprise to any informed citizen. If fact, Bill Siderewicz, president of Massachusetts-based CEF, warned as much before last month’s misguided passage of Ohio House Bill 6 in the state’s General Assembly. The hotly controversial bill will now funnel about $1 billion to bail out two aging nuclear power plants at Perry near Cleveland and Davis Besse near Toledo. Siderewicz, this newspaper and many other consumer and environmental organizations in the state recognized the short-term folly and long-term harm of HB6 and fervently advocated its rejection this spring and summer. But unfortunately, the regulation-despising Republican-controlled state Legislature cozied up to financially struggling First Energy Solutions, the power-plant subsidiary of First Energy Corp. of Akron, by voting for the bailout. (In the Mahoning Valley delegation, only state Rep. Don Manning, R-New Middletown, supported it). That relationship, consummated in final passage of the shortsighted bailout bill on July 23, comes with exorbitant and unwarranted costs to the Mahoning Valley and to the entire Buckeye State. The most tangible and immediate cost to the Valley, of course, is the loss of the progressive clean-energy plant in Lordstown that would have included hundreds of well-paid construction and skilled-trade jobs and millions of long-term tax dollars to schools and local governments. All tolled, Siderewicz had estimated a $29 billion loss of economic benefits to the Valley over the next five decades.

FirstEnergy Solutions behind argument against Ohio nuclear subsidy referendum – A public records request confirms that FirstEnergy’s bankrupt generation subsidiary, FirstEnergy Solutions, is behind a tax argument being advanced to block a referendum on an Ohio bill granting subsidies to nuclear and coal plants. Ohio lawmakers passed the nuclear and coal subsidy bill on July 23 despite widespread opposition from environmental groups, consumer advocates, renewable energy industry interests, petroleum industry interests, free market advocates and others. Six days later, a coalition of some of those interests filed its first proposed referendum against the bill, with an eye toward getting it on the ballot for November 2020. Two days later, attorney John Zeiger of Columbus sent a letter and legal memorandum to the Ohio secretary of state’s office, arguing that House Bill 6 is a “law providing for a tax levy” that would be exempt from the state constitution’s referendum procedures. Neither that Aug. 1 letter nor the accompanying memorandum identified any client on whose behalf Zeiger and his firm were working. However, a July 17 filingin FirstEnergy Solutions’ bankruptcy case confirms that the company engaged Zeiger’s firm “in the ordinary course of their business since approximately June 26.” Zeiger’s declaration said the firm had agreed to provide “litigation services and, if necessary, litigation services regarding pending legislation.” After the Ohio attorney general’s Aug. 12 rejection of the proposed referendum’s summary of the bill, the Energy News Network submitted a public records request to that office. The response included an Aug. 2 letter from Zeiger to Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, repeating the tax levy claim, outlining alleged problems with the coalition’s summary of HB 6, and this time identifying FirstEnergy Solutions as his client. House Bill 6 will impose fees on all electricity customers to support subsidies to FirstEnergy Solutions’ Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear stations, as well as two 1950s-era coal-fired power plants. At the same time, it effectively guts Ohio’s renewable energy and energy efficiency standards, which together have been shown to save customers money while adding jobs and attracting investment to the state.

Ad invokes spurious Chinese invasion of Ohio to try to head off HB 6 referendum: editorial – cleveland.com –What can nearly $1 million buy? For one, the sleaziest scare ad in recent memory in Ohio, seeking to keep a referendum off the November 2020 ballot on whether to overturn House Bill 6, the recently passed bailout bill for FirstEnergy’s two nuclear plants.The one-minute ad, populated by alarming pictures of the Chinese military, warns, “The Chinese government is quietly invading our American electrical grid” and “coming for our energy jobs” via “a special interest group” about to start collecting signatures for the referendum — a special interest group the ad warns is “boosting Chinese financial interests” and “risking our national security.” The ad then urges Ohioans, if they’re asked to sign the referendum petitions, to, “Tell them no. … Don’t sign the petition allowing China to control Ohio’s power.” No matter that Ohioans Against Corporate Bailouts — the anti-HB 6 group seeking to force a referendum — still hasn’t gotten its petition language approved. As cleveland.com’s Jeremy Pelzer reports, this could be just the opening salvo in a likely spending spree to protect the nuclear bailout, should the issue get on the ballot. But what is the evidence to support the ad’s alarmist rhetoric about a Chinese invasion? Not much.Ohioans for Energy Security, the group behind the ads, cites the fact that Ohio natural gas plants built or being built by entrepreneur Bill Siderewicz — one of those behind the anti-HB-6 referendum effort — have Chinese investment money (yes, along with private U.S., British, and French money and equity from Australian and Germany firms, as well).That’s not exactly the same as an invasion.

Scant evidence for Chinese threat claimed in nuke bailout backers’ ad – An ominous ad suggesting that China is trying to take over Ohio power generation and meddle in Ohio elections is hitting the airwaves across the state. But the group behind the commercial offered no evidence that such a plot exists.“Ohio Power” is a minute-long spot decrying the effort to repeal House Bill 6 – a $150-million-a-year ratepayer bailout of FirstEnergy Solutions’ Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear power plants in northern Ohio. It’s goal is to persuade Ohio voters to avoid signing petition forms required to get a proposed repeal on the ballot. The ad is part of a $724,000 buy on broadcast television, $316,000 on cable and $117,000 on radio, according to Columbus-based Medium Buying. It opens with a car on an assembly line, then an empty warehouse and then a row of fluorescent lights being turned off. That’s followed by a long shot of a Chinese government building, a shot of Chinese President Xi Jinping holding up a triumphal fist, ranks of Chinese officials applauding him and then close shots of Ohioans with somber faces as a narrator says that the Chinese are taking Ohio money and jobs and risking America’s national security. Then more shots of Xi, Chinese flags and officials followed by black-and-white photos of faceless petition circulators. The ad closes with color video of more somber Ohioans and then an empty warehouse. SCRIPT: “They took our manufacturing jobs. They shuttered our factories. Now, they’re coming for our energy jobs. The Chinese government is quietly invading our American electric grid… intertwining themselves financially in our energy infrastructure. Now, a special interest group… boosting Chinese financial interest… is targeting Ohio’s energy… taking Ohio money… exporting Ohio jobs… even risking our national security. They’re meddling in our elections. “In the coming weeks, you may be approached on the street or at your door to sign a petition to defund U.S. jobs and energy. They will ask for your name… your address… your signature. Tell them ‘no.’ Don’t sign your name to a plan that kills Ohio jobs, harms Ohio communities, and endangers our energy independence. China turned off the power on Ohio manufacturing… don’t let them do it to you. Don’t sign the petition allowing China to control Ohio’s power.” The over-the-top spot is an opening salvo in the next phase of the war over a bailout worth almost $1.2 billion over six years.

Who’s behind Ohioans for Energy Security’s ad campaign to scare voters? – Ohioans for Energy Security, a new entity blanketing Ohio with a wave of television ads defending the bailout of FirstEnergy Solutions, is brought to you by the same people who campaigned for the controversial bailout plan. The group formed last month in Ohio as a for-profit Limited Liability Corporation. It just launched a$1 million ad campaign designed to scare voters away from signing petitions to place a referendum on House Bill 6 on the 2020 ballot. The bill in question, passed by the Ohio General Assembly and signed by Governor Mike DeWine in July, will force Ohio consumers to pay to bail out uncompetitive nuclear and coal plants in Ohio. It also rolls back Ohio’s life-and-money savingclean energy standards, which helped to support 112,000 jobs in the Buckeye State.Ohioans for Energy Security points to several reports that the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China has been among the banks that financed several new gas projects in Ohio developed by Clean Energy Future, a company that opposed HB 6. The Columbus Dispatch reviewed those reports and concluded that “the group behind the commercial offered no evidence that such a plot exists.” It didn’t find “any evidence that the Chinese government intends to play a role in the possible repeal of House Bill 6.”The Cleveland Scene writes that the group’s “bonkers” first ad “continues with even less tenuous grasps on the issues surrounding HB 6.” Ohioans for Energy Security doesn’t mention that the broad-based opposition to HB 6 includes consumer advocates, environmentalists, free market groups, health experts, and manufacturers, as a quick review of opponent testimony on the bill will show. The pro-bailout group also doesn’t mention Securities and Exchange Commission filings that show the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China has committed many millions of dollars to FirstEnergy Corp., the parent company that spawned FES.

Proposed anti-House Bill 6 referendum clears initial hurdle – cleveland.com – Efforts to hold a statewide referendum to overturn Ohio’s newly passed nuclear power plant bailout law moved a step closer to reality Thursday, as Attorney General Dave Yost announced he has approved supporters’ ballot summary language. According to usual practice, Yost, a Columbus-area Republican, didn’t weigh in on whether he supports or opposes the measure. If Secretary of State Frank LaRose certifies an initial batch of 1,000 signatures collected from registered voters favoring the referendum, that means backers of the effort will have the green light to start collecting the 265,774 petition signatures by Oct. 21 needed for the referendum on House Bill 6 to appear on the November 2020 ballot. Earlier this month, Yost rejected proposed ballot summary language – a succinct explanation of the proposal provided to voters asked to sign a petition supporting the measure – submitted by Ohioans Against Corporate Bailouts, the group seeking the referendum. The AG cited 21 errors he found in the proposed language, including inaccurate definitions of terms and misstating the size of energy projects that are eligible for a property tax exemption. HB6, signed by Gov. Mike DeWine last month, offers a $150 million-per-year bailout to Ohio’s Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear power plants, both of which are owned by FirstEnergy Solutions. The bill also eviscerates the state’s renewable-energy and energy-efficiency standards for utilities (which ratepayers currently pay a surcharge to fund), creates publicly funded subsidies to the Ohio Valley Electric Corporation to shore up its coal-fired power plants in Ohio and Indiana, and gives $20 million per year to six solar plant projects.

How Oyster Creek ‘super predator’ changed climate all by itself– For five decades the Oyster Creek Generating Station acted as a “super predator” on the sandy, pine tree shores of Barnegat Bay. That’s at least Rutgers research professor Tom Grothues’ nickname for the nuclear power plant, which opened in 1969 and was shut down last September. Grothues theorizes the plant altered the area’s climate and food chain by sucking in billions of gallons of bay water and spewing out hot water. In the process, it cooked untold numbers of fish and crab larvae.Its shutdown offers a startling, but unique opportunity to understand the effects of climate change, he said. “We’ve already noticed pronounced physical changes,” Grothues said. “The water is much cooler. The water is not flowing as fast. That also is potentially changing the salinity.” Grothues and a small team of Rutgers technicians spent a recent humid morning doing trawl surveys in the shadow of the plant, sampling the fish life in hopes of gauging the nuclear plant’s impact on the creek. People who live by Oyster Creek said the creek did something last winter it hasn’t done in 50 years. It froze. Oyster Creek was the nation’s oldest nuclear power plant. It used a once-through cooling system, where it pumped water from Forked River through a heat exchange and then discharged warmer water back into Oyster Creek. The two waterways are tributaries on the western shore of the bay and circle the plant like a horseshoe. While the plant operated, it drew 1.4 billion gallons of water a day from Forked River to cool down its reactors. In that water were countless amounts of fish and crab larvae that got “cooked all the way through,” said Grothues.”We know larvae die naturally at a high rate but even a very, very tiny percentage increase in the survivors could lead to a doubling” of a fish a population, Grothues said. About 99 percent of larvae die naturally. He said the plant killed 99.9 percent of the larvae with which it interacted. The plant also discharged water that was 10 degrees Celsius warmer than bay water into Oyster Creek, creating a hot plume that attracted fish, especially in the winter, which Grothues said would have migrated out.

Entergy Completes Sale of Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station to Holtec – – Entergy Corporation today completed the sale of the subsidiary that owns the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station to a Holtec International subsidiary, which plans to complete major decommissioning activities at the site decades sooner than if Entergy had continued to own the facility. Pilgrim was shut down permanently by Entergy on May 31, 2019, after providing electricity safely to the region for more than 46 years. Entergy and Holtec announced the Pilgrim sale agreement in August 2018, and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the transfer of Pilgrim’s licenses to Holtec on Aug. 22, 2019. In its order, the NRC found that Holtec possesses the required technical and financial qualifications to own and decommission Pilgrim safely and in accordance with all NRC requirements. “The successful Pilgrim transaction demonstrates continued progress on Entergy’s exit from merchant power markets,” said Entergy Chairman and CEO Leo Denault. “With our previously-announced signed agreements for the post-shutdown sales of Indian Point and Palisades nuclear power plants in 2021 and 2022, respectively, we remain on track to accomplish our exit plan.”

Russia launches floating nuclear power plant amid new “scramble for the Arctic” – Last Friday, Russia launched a floating nuclear power plant, the Akademik Lomonosov, in the Arctic Sea from its port in Murmansk. The vessel is supposed to bring electric power to settlements and companies that are extracting hydrocarbons and precious stones in the Chukotka area. The 144-meter (472-feet)-long platform is equipped with two KLT-40 nuclear reactors that are designed to generate power for up to 100,000 people living in the Chukotka region and companies operating there to extract raw material resources. It will first cross some 5,000 kilometers along the Arctic coast to Chukotka, where it will begin pumping out electricity offshore. The launching of the Akademik Lomonosov platform is part of efforts by the Kremlin to significantly bolster its infrastructure in the region, including by electrifying it, building ports, and further expanding its icebreaker fleet. It is the first time a floating nuclear power plant has been deployed since the US maintained one in the Panama Canal in the 1960s. Two Chinese state-backed companies are now also pursuing plans for at least 20 floating nuclear plants. American scientists are also reported to be working on similar projects. The Akademik Lomonosov has been criticized as a “floating Chernobyl” by the environmental group Greenpeace – referring to the 1987 nuclear disaster at Chernobyl – and a “nuclear Titanic.” Fears about a nuclear accident are also running high because the launching of the Akademik Lomonosov comes just weeks after two significant military accidents in the region. In July, a fire on the nuclear submarine Losharik in the Arctic Barents Sea claimed the lives of 14 high-ranking Russian navy officers. A leading navy officer ominously stated at their funeral that they had averted a “planetary catastrophe.” Then, in August, an accident occurred at a nuclear facility near the northern Russian town of Nyonoksa. Seven people, among them five nuclear scientists, were killed, and radiation that was up to 16 times higher than average was released. The cause for the accident is widely believed to have been a nuclear-powered missile test gone awry. In both cases, the Kremlin was engaged in an attempt to cover up the scale of the accidents.

The Media’s Russian Radiation Story Implodes Upon Scrutiny – On August 8, a joint team from the Ministry of Defense and the All-Russian Research Institute of Experimental Physics, subordinated to the State Atomic Energy Corporation (ROSATOM), conducted a test of a liquid-fueled rocket engine, in which electric power from Cesium-137 “nuclear batteries” maintained its equilibrium state. The test was conducted at the Nenoksa State Central Marine Test Site (GTsMP), a secret Russian naval facility known as Military Unit 09703. It took place in the waters of the White Sea, off the coast of the Nenoksa facility, onboard a pair of pontoon platforms. Vyasheslav Yanovsky, considered to be one of Russia’s most senior nuclear scientists, monitored events onboard the off-shore platform. Joining Yanovsky were seven other specialists from the institute, including Vyacheslav Lipshev, the head of the research and development team. They accompanied representatives from the Ministry of Defense, along with specialists from the design bureau responsible for the liquid-fuel engine. When the actual testing finished, something went very wrong. According to a sailor from the nearby Severdvinsk naval base, the hypergolic fuels contained in the liquid engine (their presence suggests that temperature control was one of the functions being tested) somehow combined. This created an explosion that destroyed the liquid engine, sending an unknown amount of fuel and oxidizer into the water. At least one, and perhaps more, of the Cesium-137 RTGs burst open, contaminating equipment and personnel alike. Four men – two Ministry of Defense personnel and two ROSATOM scientists – were killed immediately. Those who remained on the damaged platform were taken to the Nenoksa base and decontaminated, before being transported to a local military clinic that specializes in nuclear-related emergencies. Here, doctors in full protective gear oversaw their treatment and additional decontamination. All of them survived. Three of the ROSATOM scientists were thrown by the explosion into the waters of the White Sea and were rescued only after a lengthy search. These men were transported to the Arkhangelsk hospital. Neither the paramedics who attended to the injured scientists, nor the hospital staff who received them, were informed that the victims had been exposed to Cesium-137, leading to the cross-contamination of the hospital staff and its premises. The next day, all the personnel injured during the test were transported to Moscow for treatment at a facility that specializes in radiation exposure; two of the victims pulled from the water died en route. Medical personnel involved in treating the victims were likewise dispatched to Moscow for evaluation; one doctor was found to be contaminated with Cesium-137. The reality of what happened at Nenoksa is tragic. Seven men lost their lives and scores of others were injured. But there was no explosion of a “nuclear cruise missile,” and it wasn’t the second coming of Chernobyl. America’s intelligence community and the so-called experts got it wrong – again. The root cause of their error is their institutional bias against Russia, which leads them to view that country in the worst possible light, regardless of the facts.

Nuclear winter would threaten nearly everyone on Earth -If the United States and Russia waged an all-out nuclear war, much of the land in the Northern Hemisphere would be below freezing in the summertime, with the growing season slashed by nearly 90 percent in some areas, according to a Rutgers-led study.Indeed, death by famine would threaten nearly all of the Earth’s 7.7 billion people, said co-author Alan Robock, a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. The study in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres provides more evidence to support The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons passed by the United Nations two years ago, Robock said. Twenty-five nations have ratified the treaty so far, not including the United States, and it would take effect when the number hits 50.

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