Environmental News For The Week 03June 2018

Written by rjs, MarketWatch 666

This is a collection of interesting news articles about the environment and related topics over the last week.

Please share this article – Go to very top of page, right hand side, for social media buttons.

Women retain and carry living DNA from every man with whom they’ve made love with — Women retain and carry living DNA from every man with whom they have sexual intercourse, according to a new study by the University of Seattle and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. The study, which discovered the startling information by accident, was originally trying to determine if women who have been pregnant with a son might be more predisposed to certain neurological diseases that occur more frequently in males.But as the scientists picked apart the female brain, the study began to veer wildly off course. As it turns out, the female brain is even more mysterious than we previously thought. The study found that female brains often harbor “male microchimerism“, or in other words, the presence of male DNA that originated from another individual, and are genetically distinct from the cells that make up the rest of the woman. According to the study: “63% of the females (37 of 59) tested harbored male microchimerism in the brain. Male microchimerism was present in multiple brain regions.” This has very important ramifications for women. Every male you absorb spermatazoa from becomes a living part of you for life. The women autopsied in this study were elderly. Some had been carrying the living male DNA inside them for well over 50 years.Sperm is alive. It is living cells. When it is injected into you it swims and swims until it crashes headlong into a wall, and then it attaches and burrows into your flesh. If it’s in your mouth it swims and climbs into your nasal passages, inner ear, and behind your eyes. Then it digs in. It enters your blood stream and collects in your brain and spine.Like something out of a scifi movie, it becomes a part of you and you can’t get rid of it. We are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourse.

Hepatitis A is usually not a problem to recover from. But in Michigan, 27 people died since this outbreak began – Michigan is in the throes of the largest hepatitis A outbreak in the USA, a flareup that began in August 2016 and has killed 27 people, state health officials say. The hepatitis A virus, which attacks the liver, is highly contagious. Just ask Christopher Larime ,46, of Grosse Pointe Park, The father of three said he ate in March at the Buffalo Wild Wings across the road from his office. It’s the same restaurant where a food worker later was found to have hepatitis A. Though he only suspects the source of his infection, Larime now is one of 837 people who have been sickened with the virus in the state. Last month, Indiana’s Department of Health issued a travel alert warning Hoosiers planning to visit Michigan to get vaccinated before they come. The virus can be spread through food or water contaminated with the feces of an infected person, close contact or sex with a person who has hepatitis A or touching a surface contaminated by the virus and then touching your mouth. It causes liver inflammation – and liver failure in extreme cases.It’s also easily preventable through vaccination and hand washing. As of Wednesday before Memorial Day, the hardest hit areas are Macomb County, north of Detroit, with 220 cases; Detroit itself with 170; elsewhere in Wayne County, where Detroit is located, with 144; and Oakland County, to the west of Macomb County where Pontiac is located, with 114 cases, according to the Michigan Department of Health & Human Services. Part of the problem: As many as 35 restaurant workers in the Detroit area were found to have the virus and may have spread it unknowingly to diners. The virus is contagious weeks before a person begins to exhibit symptoms, which makes it extremely challenging for public health officials to manage.

Bid to thwart second wave of Nipah – Efforts to thwart the advance of a second wave of Nipah virus infection are on in Kerala even as one more death was reported from Kozhikode district on Thursday. This is the third death in two days, taking the total death toll in the State to 17. Rasin, 25, son of Bhaskaran of Kottoor grama panchayat in the district, succumbed to the infection at the Government Medical College Hospital (MCH). R.L. Saritha, Director, Health Services, told the media that he was admitted to the hospital on May 26. He was on the contact list of persons who were suspected to have contracted infection from those who died earlier. Rasin is believed to have got the infection from Ismail when both of them were undergoing treatment at the Balussery taluk hospital.Ismail was later referred to the MCH, where he died due to Nipah infection on May 20. However, the authorities are yet to figure out the source of infection of Akhil, who died on Wednesday.

Five people die in US romaine lettuce E. coli outbreak – BBC – Five people have now died in a major E. coli outbreak in the US involving romaine lettuce, with 197 cases reported across 35 states. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said 25 more people had been affected since its last report on 16 May. Two of the victims were from Minnesota, with the other three from Arkansas, California and New York. It is the largest US outbreak of E. coli since 200 people fell ill in 2006. According to the latest statement from the CDC, many of the people affected fell ill two to three weeks ago, when the contaminated lettuce was still on shop shelves. Romaine lettuce from the Yuma growing region in Arizona is thought to be the source of the latest outbreak, although the Food and Drug Administration says no single grower, distributor or region can account for the spread. An investigation is ongoing. The CDC said that some of the affected people had not eaten lettuce, but had contact with others who had fallen ill. When eaten, it can cause diarrhoea, vomiting and even kidney failure in severe cases. Of the infected people, 89 have been hospitalised, and 26 have developed a kidney failure type known as hemolytic uremic syndrome.Canada’s Public Health Agency has also recorded six cases of E. coli “with a similar genetic fingerprint” to the US infections. The E. coli outbreak began in April and has spread across the US. California and Pennsylvania are recording the most cases. See also Effects of E.coli Outbreak in Lettuce Ripple Through U.S. Food-Supply Chain – WSJ.

Antibiotics in Meat Could Be Damaging Our Guts – NYT — Are pig, cattle and poultry farmers misusing antibiotics, allowing too much of the drug to get into our food? It has long been common knowledge in farming that antibiotics can help cause animals to grow fatter faster. Time is money, particularly in the food industry, and for many years ranchers used antibiotics not just for treating diseases but also for promoting growth so that animals would be ready for the slaughterhouse sooner. (Mr. Lewis says his grass-fed steers require 27 months to get to market without antibiotics, more than twice as long as it takes cows pumped full of antibiotics.) In early 2017, the Food and Drug Administration enacted rules banning the use of human antibiotics purely for growth promotion in animals and requiring ranchers to get a prescription from a veterinarian for antibiotics that once could be purchased over the counter. .A. rules have a “giant loophole” that allows farmers to continue to use antibiotics to prevent diseases even if animals aren’t showing symptoms. “You don’t even need a sick animal in the herd to use antibiotics in the feed and water as long as the justification is ‘disease prevention’ not ‘growth promotion,’ ” Avinash Kar, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told me. Veterinarians working for certain feedlots – industrial-style farms where chickens, pigs and cattle are fattened – seem more than happy to continue writing prescriptions for antibiotics that end up in livestock feed. “They’ve got their veterinarians on retainer,” Mike Callicrate, a cattle rancher in Kansas and Colorado, told me. “They tell them what they want, and the veterinarian darn well provides what they want.”

Mussels in Washington’s Puget Sound test positive for opioids, other drugs — Shellfish in the Puget Sound, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean along the northwest coast of Washington, tested positive for the prescription opioid oxycodone. But that wasn’t all, according to Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist Jennifer Lanksbury. In the midst of a national opioid crisis, the opioid may be the most attention-grabbing contaminant found, but it could be the least worrisome. The mussels also contained four kinds of synthetic surfactants — the chemicals found in detergents and cleaning products — seven kinds of antibiotics, five types of antidepressants, more than one antidiabetic drug and one chemotherapy agent. Surfactants, in particular, are “known to have estrogenic effect on organisms, so they affect the hormone system of some animals in an estrogenic way, such as feminizing male fish and making female fish reproductive before they’re ready,” Lanksbury explained.Scientists have not studied whether mussels are harmed by oxycodone. However, the presence of this drug in the mollusk speaks to the high number of people in the urban areas surrounding the Puget Sound who take this medication, said Lanksbury. “A lot of the pharmaceuticals are probably coming out of our wastewater treatment plants. They receive the water that comes from our toilets and our houses and our hospitals, and so these drugs, we’re taking them, and then we’re excreting them in our urine so it gets to the wastewater treatment plant in that way,” Lanksbury said. “Some people, unfortunately, flush their drugs down the toilet, and that’s a huge source of these pharmaceuticals.””The doses of oxycodone that we found in mussels are like 100 to 500 times lower than you would need for an adult male therapeutic dose,” she said. “So you would have to eat 150 pounds of mussels from these contaminated areas to even get a small dose. But just the fact that it’s present tells us it is getting into our waters, at least in urban areas.”

Common Antimicrobial in Toothpaste and Household Products Linked to Inflammation and Cancer — The antimicrobial chemical triclosan is in thousands of products that we use daily: hand soaps, toothpastes, body wash, kitchenware and even some toys. Work in our lab suggests that this compound may have widespread health risks, including aggravating inflammation in the gut and promoting the development of colon cancer by altering the gut microbiota , the community of microbes found in our intestines.Our results, as far as we know, are the first to demonstrate that triclosan can promote the colonic inflammation and associated colon cancer in mice. This study suggests that health authorities must reassess regulation of triclosan for its effect on human health. That’s key because it is impossible to avoid contact with this chemical.Triclosan is one of the most widely used antimicrobials and is incorporated in more than 2,000 consumer products. Millions of pounds of the chemical are used in the U.S. each year. The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey showed that triclosan was detected in about 75 percent of the urine samples of individuals tested in the U.S. and that it is among the top 10 pollutants found in U.S. rivers .

Dangerous Chemicals From E-Waste Found in Black Plastics From Toys to Drink Stirrers — Recycling is often touted as a universal environmental good, but a new study from the University of Plymouth found that improper recycling of electronic waste means that dangerous chemicals are finding their way into black plastics used in consumer goods, with potentially negative consequences for human health and marine life .The study, published in Environment International , found bromine and lead in some of 600 consumer black plastic products tested, ranging from cocktail stirrers to children’s toys.”There are environmental and health impacts arising from the production and use of plastics in general, but black plastics pose greater risks and hazards,” study author Dr. Andrew Turner said in a University of Plymouth press release .Those risks come because, while black plastics make up 15 percent of domestic plastic waste, they are difficult to recycle effectively.

Widely used PVC plastic chemical spurs obesity, diabetes – Mice exposed in the womb to a chemical used in PVC plastic, door and window frames, blinds, water pipes, and medical devices were more likely to suffer from prediabetes and obesity, according to a study released this week. The chemical also increased fat accumulation in human stem cells. The research suggests that the widely used chemical – organotin dibutyltin (DBT) – could be spurring obesity and diabetes and scientists say we should monitor people’s exposure since we know so little about the compound. “We don’t really know how exposed we are [to DBT],” lead author of the new study, Raquel Chamorro-Garc’a told EHN. Garc’a is a postdoctoral researcher at University of California Irvine’s Department of Developmental and Cell Biology. “But it’s in so many materials in our houses and we believe most people are exposed and the chemical could be impacting our current diabetes problem,” she added. There have been dramatic increases in both obesity and diabetes rates over the past few decades. About 38 percent of adults in the US – and about 17 percent of children – are now considered obese. More than 30 million people in the US now suffer from diabetes – if you include prediabetes that number jumps to more than 100 million people.

Lawsuit Against EPA Seeks Protection From Dangerous Pesticide Malathion – Conservation and public health groups sued the Trump administration and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ( EPA ) chief Scott Pruitt on Wednesday for failing to protect endangered wildlife and the environment from the dangerous pesticide malathion.The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges that the EPA and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have failed to complete the legally required steps to fully assess and limit the dangers of the neurotoxin.Malathion is linked to developmental disorders in children and has been found by the World Health Organization to be ” probably carcinogenic to humans .” Last year EPA scientists determined that the pesticide, manufactured by Dow Chemical, poses widespread risks to protected plants and animals . “It’s deplorable that the Trump administration is putting human health and endangered wildlife at risk to please Dow,” said Jonathan Evans, environmental health legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity . “Trump and Pruitt aren’t above the law and they have to take reasonable steps to limit the harms of this dangerous pesticide.”

Is Your Pet Exposed to Glyphosate? New Study to Offer Tests and Investigate Risks — We know that humans increasingly test positive for residues of glyphosate , the active ingredient in Monsanto‘s Roundup weedkiller. For example, in tests conducted by a University of California San Francisco lab, 93 percent of the participants tested positive for glyphosate residues.In the European Union, when 48 members of Parliament volunteered for glyphosate testing, every one of them tested positive.In October 2017, Time magazine reported on a study involving 50 Californians who were tested between 1993-1996 and again between 2014-2016. Scientists found that not only did the number of people who tested positive for glyphosate residues increase, but so did the amounts of the residues detected.

‘Merger From Hell’ Wins Approval From Trump DOJ – Green groups and opponents of the powerful corporate interests that dominate the global food system expressed dismay on Tuesday after the U.S. Department of Justice announced tentative approval of a merger between the U.S.-based agro-chemical company Monsanto and the German pharmaceutical giant Bayer.Dubbed the “merger from hell” by critics, Trump’s DOJ reportedly mediated and approved a deal in which the two companies agreed to shed portions of their businesses as a way to alleviate monopoly concerns.”The settlement,” reported Bloomberg, “came together after Justice Department antitrust officials pressed for significant divestitures to remedy the competition problems from combining the two companies. The companies have received antitrust approval from most jurisdictions around the world. Bayer has said it’s confident the deal will close by the June 14 deadline.”

39 Arrested in Effort to Save Chickens From ‘Horrific Cruelty’ at Industrial Egg Farm – Thirty-nine people were arrested in California on Tuesday after approximately 500 animal rights activists organized by the Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) network staged a non-violent vigil and attempted a rescue operation at an industrial egg facility in the town of Petaluma. Marching outside the farm entrance carrying flowers and denouncing the “horrific cruelty” they say takes place within the facility, the group was confronted by local police who barred them from entering and later arrested those who tried. The group cited this video footage as evidence that Sunrise Farms – one of the region’s largest egg farms and which provides eggs to Amazon-owned Whole Foods grocery chain – is keeping the birds in cruel and unhealthy confinement.

Residents raise a stink over pig farms in North Carolina – The linchpin of 500 legal complaints against Chinese-owned pork giant Smithfield Foods Inc. headed to federal court Tuesday, part of a historic challenge to North Carolina’s $2.9 billion hog industry. A Raleigh-based jury will determine whether a 4,700-hog farm run by a Smithfield contractor, with open pools of manure, emits enough odor and sprayed liquid waste to be considered a nuisance to a neighboring couple. Lawyers representing Beulaville residents Elvis and Vonnie Williams said in court filings that Smithfield is “a large enterprise with the ability to reduce and end the nuisance.” They said the smell has hurt the couple’s “ability to enjoy family gatherings, barbecues, outdoor chores, playing with children outside, and doing yardwork.”

The Silence of the Bugs – NYT – Fifty-six years after Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” warned of bird die-offs from pesticides, a new biocrisis may be emerging. A study published last fall documented a 76 percent decline in the total seasonal biomass of flying insects netted at 63 locations in Germany over the last three decades. Losses in midsummer, when these insects are most numerous, exceeded 80 percent. This alarming discovery, made by mostly amateur naturalists who make up the volunteer-run Entomological Society Krefeld, raised an obvious question: Was this happening elsewhere? Unfortunately, that question is hard to answer because of another problem: a global decline of field naturalists who study these phenomena. Are we in the midst of a global insect Armageddon that most of us have failed to notice?

New effort to minimize impact of lead poisoning in Flint — At an annual meeting of doctors at Hurley Medical Center in Flint, Michigan, a resolution was reportedly adopted declaring that henceforth Hurley doctors would collectively stop using the term “lead poisoned,” instead would use “lead-exposed” when referring to the water crisis in the city. This was announced on the Hurley Medical Center Facebook page and reported by local media.According to the post on Facebook, “As advocates for their patients they collectively resolved for a more proper communication so as to reduce the further stigmatization of a generation of children growing up in the City of Flint.”Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha was not in attendance at the meeting. The next day, she expressed her opposition to the resolution: “FYI, I completely disagree with this resolution (which I understand did NOT pass) and with these ongoing and misguided efforts to minimize the crisis.” She also was cited in the local media, “Our water was poisoned. That is scientifically proven.” Hanna-Attisha is the Hurley pediatrician who conducted the September 2015 study of the spike in Flint children’s blood-lead levels during the state-mandated water source switch to corrosive Flint River water. Her findings eventually forced the governor to return the city to its original water source.The doctors’ meeting took place on Wednesday, May 16 and was reported in the press on May 18. Dr. Hernan Gomez from the University of Michigan, Flint presented a report based on a paper published in the June Journal of Pediatrics. This paper, titled, “Blood Lead Levels of Children in Flint, Michigan: 2006-2016,” claimed among other things, that “…changes in GM BLLs [geometric mean blood lead levels] in young children in Flint, Michigan, during the Flint River water exposure did not meet the level of an environmental emergency.”

Your Recycling Gets Recycled, Right? Maybe, or Maybe Not – Oregon is serious about recycling. Its residents are accustomed to dutifully separating milk cartons, yogurt containers, cereal boxes and kombucha bottles from their trash to divert them from the landfill. But this year, because of a far-reaching rule change in China, some of the recyclables are ending up in the local dump anyway.In recent months, in fact, thousands of tons of material left curbside for recycling in dozens of American cities and towns – including several in Oregon – have gone to landfills.In the past, the municipalities would have shipped much of their used paper, plastics and other scrap materials to China for processing. But as part of a broad antipollution campaign, China announced last summer that it no longer wanted to import “foreign garbage.” Since Jan. 1 it has banned imports of various types of plastic and paper, and tightened standards for materials it does accept.While some waste managers already send their recyclable materials to be processed domestically, or are shipping more to other countries, others have been unable to find a substitute for the Chinese market. “All of a sudden, material being collected on the street doesn’t have a place to go,” said Pete Keller, vice president of recycling and sustainability at Republic Services, one of the largest waste managers in the country.China’s stricter requirements also mean that loads of recycling are more likely to be considered contaminated if they contain materials that are not recyclable. That has compounded a problem that waste managers call wishful or aspirational recycling: people setting aside items for recycling because they believe or hope they are recyclable, even when they aren’t.

“Guardians of the Amazon” seize illegal loggers to protect uncontacted tribe (videos) Members of an Amazon tribe patrolling their rainforest reserve to protect uncontacted relatives from illegal loggers have seized a notorious logging gang, burned their truck, and expelled them from the jungle. The Guardians of the Amazon are from the Guajajara tribe: “We patrol, we find the loggers, we destroy their equipment and we send them away. We’ve stopped many loggers. It’s working.”The area they are defending, Arariboia, is in the most threatened region in the entire Amazon. It is home to an uncontacted group of Awfl Indians, a tribe well known for their affinity with animals and understanding of the forest, who face total annihilation if they come into contact with the loggers.The Guardians have recently found abandoned Awfl shelters close to where the loggers operate. Although the area should be protected under Brazilian law, the lack of enforcement by the Brazilian government and the extreme danger posed to the uncontacted Awfl has forced the Guardians to take matters into their own hands. They now fear violent retaliation. Three of the Guardians were murdered by loggers in 2016, and they have experienced arson attacks and regular death threats. The Guardians sent footage of the burning truck loaded with illegally cut timber to Survival International, along with the message: “Please show the world the reality we face. We know it’s risky and we have enemies but now’s no time for hiding. We want you to release this to the world so we can continue to protect our forest.” Survival International has written urgently to the Brazilian government calling for the immediate and long term protection of both the Guardians themselves and of the area they fight to protect. Survival are also asking members of the public to send emails in support of the Guardians to government ministers via this page on their website.

Japan Kills More Than 120 Pregnant Whales – video- More than 120 pregnant female minke whales were killed this year in the Antarctic Ocean as part of Japan’s controversial ” scientific whaling ” program.The numbers were revealed in a newly released report presented earlier this month at the International Whaling Commission (IWC) Scientific Committee meeting in Bled, Slovenia.According to the report, Japanese whaling vessels returned to port from the annual hunt with 333 Antarctic minke whales, of which 181 were females. Of those, 122 or 67 percent were pregnant. The whalers also took 61 immature males and 53 immature females. The Japanese government plans to hunt about 4,000 whales over the next decade despite the IWC’s 1986 moratorium on commercial hunting. The country launched its scientific whaling program in 1987 as a loophole to the moratorium and insists that the marine mammals are killed in the name of research. However, Reuters noted that Japan’s ultimate goal is the resumption of commercial whaling. The government insists that most whale species are not endangered and that eating whale is part of its culture, even though most Japanese people no longer eat it. The Australian chapter of Humane Society International expressed outrage over the new figures and called on the Australian government to intervene. “The killing of 122 pregnant whales is a shocking statistic and sad indictment on the cruelty of Japan’s whale hunt,” said Alexia Wellbelove, senior program manager at Humane Society International, in a statement. “It is further demonstration, if needed, of the truly gruesome and unnecessary nature of whaling operations, especially when non-lethal surveys have been shown to be sufficient for scientific needs.”

Climate change ‘will make rice less nutritious’ – Rice will become less nutritious as carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere rise, potentially jeopardising the health of the billions of people who rely on the crop as their main source of food, new research suggests. Scientists have found that exposing rice to the levels of carbon dioxide that are expected in the atmosphere before the end of the century results in the grain containing lower levels of protein, iron and zinc, as well as reduced levels of a number of B vitamins. Writing in the journal Science Advances, researchers report how they explored the impact of increasing carbon dioxide levels on rice by conducting experiments on 18 different types of the crop at sites in China and Japan between 2010 and 2014. The rice was grown in paddy fields, with large octagonal ring-structures installed above the crops. These rings were either supplied with carbon dioxide, or not. The concentration of carbon dioxide the plants were exposed to was monitored at the centre of each ring, and the rice produced by each crop was collected and analysed. The results reveal that crops that were exposed to higher levels of carbon dioxide were on average less nutritious, regardless of the country they were grown in, containing about 10% less protein, 8% less iron and 5% less zinc than rice grown under current levels of carbon dioxide. What’s more, levels of vitamins B1, B2, B5 and B9 also fell, with the latter dropping on average by more than 30%. By contrast, levels of vitamin E rose. Ziska said these differences might be linked to whether the various vitamins and nutrients contain nitrogen, with those that do typically seeing a drop in levels as carbon dioxide rises and those without seeing a rise.

Millions could avoid deadly fever if world limits warming (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – More than three million cases of dengue fever, the world’s fastest-spreading tropical disease, could be avoided annually if global warming is capped at 1.5C, said a study that purports to be the first to show the health benefits of a cooler planet. The mosquito-borne viral infection causes flu-like symptoms and can be fatal if it develops into severe hemorrhagic form. The annual number of cases has increased 30-fold in the last 50 years, says the World Health Organization (WHO). Using computer models, researchers from the University of East Anglia in Britain found that capping warming at 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) could cut annual dengue cases in Latin America and the Caribbean by up to 2.8 million by the end of the century. A further half a million cases could be prevented if the rise in global temperatures is kept down to 1.5C, the report said, with parts of South America most likely to benefit. “There is growing concern about the potential impacts of climate change on human health,” said lead author Felipe Colón-Gonzfllez. “This is the first study to show that reductions in warming from 2C to 1.5C could have important health benefits.” Since the year 2000, climate change has caused severe harm to human health by stoking more heatwaves, the spread of some mosquito-borne diseases and under-nutrition as crops fail, according to a Lancet report last October. Current national pledges to curb emissions put the world on track for a warming of about 3C above pre-industrial times, far above the goal of “well below” 2C set at a 2015 summit in Paris. The WHO has previously estimated there could be 250,000 extra deaths a year between 2030 and 2050 because of climate change. “Understanding and quantifying the impacts of warming on human health is crucial for public health preparedness and response,”

Humans are causing massive changes in the location of water around the world, NASA says – A 14-year NASA mission has confirmed that a massive redistribution of freshwater is occurring across Earth, with middle-latitude belts drying and the tropics and higher latitudes gaining water supplies. The results, which are probably a combination of the effects of climate change, vast human withdrawals of groundwater and simple natural changes, could have profound consequences if they continue, pointing to a situation in which some highly populous regions could struggle to find enough water in the future. “The fact that we can see this very strong fingerprint of human activities on the global water redistribution, should be a cause for alarm,” The results emerge from the 2002-2016 GRACE mission, which is short for Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, supplemented with additional data sources. The GRACE mission, which recently ended but will soon be replaced by a “Follow-On” endeavor, consisted of twin satellites in orbit that detected the tug of Earth’s gravity below them – and monitored mass changes based on slight differences in measurements by the two satellites.Among the massive features on Earth, water and ice are the ones that change most regularly. Thus, the GRACE data has been used to detect the vast losses of ice in Greenland, Antarctica and Alaska, as well as changes in ocean currents and the scale of the California drought. The new research, led by NASA’s Matthew Rodell, pulls together these and other findings to identify 34 global regions that gained or lost more than 32 billion tons of water between 2002 and 2016. As the study notes, 32 billion tons is about the amount of water contained in Lake Mead, which is in Nevada and Arizona. So all 34 areas saw very large changes.The resulting map of the findings shows an overall pattern, in which ice sheets and glaciers lose by far the most mass at the poles, but at the same time, middle latitudes show multiple areas of growing dryness even as higher latitudes and the tropical belt tend to see increases in water.

Wicked Weather: Midwest Jumps From Coldest April To Hottest May On Record — “After an incredibly chilly April, May rebounded significantly, featuring record heat late in the month across the Midwest and while not official yet, May could go down as the warmest May on record nationally thanks to this late-month heat surge.A plethora or heat records were broken this past weekend, including Minneapolis, MN soaring to 100°F. This broke the record daily record for May 28 and reaching 100°F for only the second time in recorded history. This intense heat has since abated, but more above normal temperatures are expected into early June across a majority of the Plains and Midwest,” explained Ed Vallee, head meteorologist at Vallee Weather Consulting. “April featured record-breaking cold, particularly across the Upper Midwest, compared to normal. May has rebounded significantly with record heat this past weekend in the Midwest, and above normal temperatures across a majority of the country,” Vallee added. According to the weather desk of Radiant Solutions, “Memorial Day weekend felt more like the peak of summer for many in the Central US.” Here are some peak highs from earlier this week:

• Chicago set record highs of 97 and 95 degrees Sunday and Monday, only the second time it has endured back-to-back 95 degree days in May on record.
• Milwaukee and Toledo established record highs for May of 95 degrees (Sunday) and 98 degrees (Monday), respectively.
• Omaha and Green Bay, Wis., set record highs on four straight days Friday to Monday.
• Des Moines set record highs on three straight days Saturday to Monday, including its earliest 99-degree reading on record Sunday.
• Muskegon, Mich., hit 96 degrees Tuesday, a monthly record.
• Memorial Day weekend felt more like the peak of summer for many in the Central US! Here’s the peak highs of the last three days and some of the most notable stats: pic.twitter.com/1iIljMrJZX
• Jonathan Erdman, a Weather Channel Meteorologist, said over 1,900 daily heat records were tied or broken across the United States in late May.

A building El Niño in 2018 signals more extreme weather for 2019 — In case you couldn’t get enough extreme weather, the next 12 months or so could bring even more scorching temps, punishing droughts, and unstoppable wildfires. It’s still early, but odds are quickly rising that another El Niño – the periodic warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean – could be forming. The latest official outlook from NOAA and Columbia University gives better-than-even odds of El Niño materializing by the end of this year, which could lead to a cascade of dangerous weather around the globe in 2019. That’s a troubling development, especially when people worldwide are still suffering from the last El Niño, which ended two years ago. These early warnings come with a caveat: Predictions of El Niño at this time of year are notoriously fickle. If one comes, it’s impossible to know how strong it would be. When it’s active, El Niño is often a catch-all that’s blamed for all sorts of wild weather, so it’s worth a quick science-based refresher of what we’re talking about here: El Niño has amazingly far-reaching effects, spurring droughts in Africa and typhoons swirling toward China and Japan. It’s a normal, natural ocean phenomenon, but there’s emerging evidence that climate change is spurring more extreme El Niño-related events. On average though, El Niño boosts global temperatures and redistributes weather patterns worldwide in a pretty predictable way. In fact, the Red Cross is starting to use its predictability to prevent humanitarian weather catastrophes before they happen. All told, the the U.N.estimates the 2016 El Niño directly affected nearly 100 million people worldwide, not to mention causing permanent damage to the world’s coral reefs, a surge in carbon dioxide emissions from a global outbreak of forest fires, and the warmest year in recorded history.

Climate change may lead to bigger atmospheric rivers — A new NASA-led study shows that climate change is likely to intensify extreme weather events known as atmospheric rivers across most of the globe by the end of this century, while slightly reducing their number.The new study projects atmospheric rivers will be significantly longer and wider than the ones we observe today, leading to more frequent atmospheric river conditions in affected areas.”The results project that in a scenario where greenhouse gas emissions continue at the current rate, there will be about 10 percent fewer atmospheric rivers globally by the end of the 21st century,” said the study’s lead author, Duane Waliser, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “However, because the findings project that the atmospheric rivers will be, on average, about 25 percent wider and longer, the global frequency of atmospheric river conditions – like heavy rain and strong winds – will actually increase by about 50 percent.”The results also show that the frequency of the most intense atmospheric river storms is projected to nearly double.Atmospheric rivers are long, narrow jets of air that carry huge amounts of water vapor from the tropics to Earth’s continents and polar regions. These “rivers in the sky” typically range from 250 to 375 miles (400 to 600 kilometers) wide and carry as much water – in the form of water vapor – as about 25 Mississippi Rivers. When an atmospheric river makes landfall, particularly against mountainous terrain (such as the Sierra Nevada and the Andes), it releases much of that water vapor in the form of rain or snow. These storm systems are common – on average, there are about 11 present on Earth at any time. In many areas of the globe, they bring much-needed precipitation and are an important contribution to annual freshwater supplies. However, stronger atmospheric rivers – especially those that stall at landfall or that produce rain on top of snowpack – can cause disastrous flooding.

Video Shows Flash Flood Wiping Out Historic City In Maryland – For the second time in two years, the main street in historic Ellicott City, Maryland, has been rocked by a massive flash flood due to heavy rains that quickly rolled into the area late Sunday afternoon. CBS Baltimore reports that the city, which is still recovering from a devastating flood from July 2016, has seen its commercial district completely submerged underwater. The National Weather Service (NWS) issued a flash flood emergency for Ellicott City in Howard County at 4:40 p.m.

Florida Cities Are Most at Risk From Climate Change, Report Says — Miami Beach and Sarasota carry high investment-grade credit ratings and are popular travel destinations. They’re also two of the most exposed U.S cities to climate change in the country, according to a new analysis by advisory firm Four Twenty Seven. The Berkeley, California-based firm has developed an index surveying 761 cities’ and 3,143 counties’ exposure to sea level rise, water stress, heat stress, cyclones and extreme rainfall based on analysis of changes between current and future conditions. It found that communities in Florida are the most susceptible to climate change risks, with Miami Beach being the most exposed city and Manatee County being the most-exposed county. Communities in the Southeast and Midwest were ranked as being most vulnerable to heat stress. The data will help investors, ratings companies and local governments better evaluate the issue, said Frank Freitas, chief development officer at Four Twenty Seven. “We’re hoping that municipalities and investors can engage in conversations that see market support for initiatives that foster resilience going forward, just like we’ve seen investors engage with companies in equity markets on ESG and climate risk,” Freitas said. The $3.9 trillion municipal-bond market has been slow to take climate change risks seriously, said Nicholas Erickson, assistant vice president of portfolio management at Sage Advisory Services. But the hurricanes that battered Florida, Texas and Puerto Rico last year show how significant weather-related events could be for local economies, he said. Investors have pushed credit-ratings companies to give them more of a warning about environmental risks. Moody’s Investors Service and S&P Global Ratings say they incorporate environmental risks in their ratings through their analysis of factors such as leaders’ preparedness for weather events. Even so, rating methodologies for states, local governments and utilities don’t “explicitly” address climate change as a credit risk, Moody’s said in a report last year.

Tropical Cyclone Mekunu Making Historic Category 3 Landfall Near Salalah, Oman With Life-Threatening Flooding, Destructive Winds, Storm Surge — Tropical Cyclone Mekunu made an historic landfall in southwest Oman, unleashing its fury on the city of Salalah the likes of which haven’t been seen in decades in that part of the Arabian Peninsula. Torrential rain and high winds lashed western Oman and eastern Yemen as the center of Mekunu drew near, then moved ashore. Salalah, the third-largest city in Oman with a population of more than 300,000, picked up 278.2 millimeters (10.95 inches) of rain in just 24 hours ending around 10:30 a.m. on May 26, according to Oman’s Public Authority for Civil Aviation (PACA).This was over double the city’s average yearly rainfall of about five inches in just 24 hours. In addition, Salalah reported 617 millimeters (24.29 inches) of rainfall in just four days, which is an incredible amount of rainfall in a short period of time. Low-lying areas became inundated with water, and wadis, the normally dry valley, ravines or channels, overflowed in Dhofar Governorate. Some roads in Salalah remained flooded the following day, according to the Times of Oman. Storm surge flooding of low-lying coastal areas was expected just ahead of and during the arrival of the center ashore. Wave heights of 8 to 12 meters (26 to 39 feet) were expected off the coasts of Dhofar and Al-Wusta Governorates, according to PACA. At least 40 people were reported missing after two ships capsized in the storm and three vehicles washed away, according to the Associated Press. The Yemen government has already declared Socotra a disaster zone. Although the Arabian Peninsula is affected by a tropical cyclone every one to two years, a tropical cyclone landfall at the equivalent strength of a hurricane is rare in western Oman or eastern Yemen. The last tropical cyclone with a hurricane-equivalent intensity to track near southwestern Oman’s Dhofar Governorate was in May 1959, according to NOAA’s historical database; there is no record of a landfall stronger than Category 1 in this part of Oman in NOAA’s database.

New estimates put real death toll from Hurricane Mar’a in Puerto Rico near 5,000 – A new Harvard University study published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicineestimates that the real death toll from Hurricane Mar’a in Puerto Rico could be over 4,600 people. This estimate is 70 times the official government count of 64 recognized deaths, the absurdly low number upheld by officials in San Juan and the Trump administration.The leading cause of death according to the study was from disruptions to medical services. This finding was consistent across all categories irrespective of the remoteness of the location, with 31 percent of households reporting a medical issue. The study found that “the most frequently reported problems were an inability to access medications (14.4 percent of households) and the need for respiratory equipment requiring electricity (9.5 percent), but many households also reported problems with closed medical facilities (8.6 percent) or absent doctors (6.1 percent). In the most remote category, 8.8 percent of households reported that they had been unable to reach 911 services by telephone.” In the end researchers calculated that 4,645 more people died in the final months of 2017 than in the same time frame a year prior, an increase of 62 percent. The study concluded, “the official death count of 64 is a substantial underestimate of the true burden of mortality after Hurricane Maria.” As harrowing as the results of the study are, the researchers note that their estimate is likely too conservative. They explain that “subsequent adjustments for survivor bias and household-size distributions increase this estimate to more than 5,000.” The statistical data from the report provides important scientific backing to what everyone on the island and around the world already knows: that the true scale of fatalities is far beyond the number claimed by government officials. It also underscores the fact that the Trump administration and both the Republicans and Democrats have been engaged in a cover-up to justify their criminal response to the ongoing public health catastrophe. Hurricane Maria’s death toll was 70 times higher than Puerto Rican officials have reported, study says and also How Puerto Rico’s Death Toll Was Ignored, and Could Have Been Avoided – (Real News Network, video & transcript).

FEMA spent $75 million to dock a half-empty cruise ship off Puerto Rico for 4 months – The company behind Carnival cruises got more money from the federal government in connection with hurricanes that leveled much of Puerto Rico than the amount given to Puerto Ricans to rebuild their homes over the first four months of relief efforts. When the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) needs to house support staffers providing relief to storm-torn islands, it seeks floating shelter for them to avoid exacerbating crowding on land. But in its rush to secure private-sector boat housing for relief workers, FEMA funneled $75 million to the Panama-based cruise line on a contract that billed the government more than twice as much per head as the company charges paying customers, contracts obtained by Miami-based radio station WLRN show.FEMA paid Carnival $75 million to rent the vessel Fascination from mid-October to early February. At that point, FEMA had disbursed less than $70 million in direct rebuilding funds to survivors of the storms on Puerto Rico, the station reports. “Only later in March – about a month and a half after the Carnival agreement expired – did FEMA dollars disbursed to residents catch up with the contract,” WLRN wrote. The ugly optics of the Carnival boondoggle are exacerbated by news that FEMA used less than half of the onboard housing capacity it paid the company to secure. It is not the first time the agency has spent millions of dollars on half-empty cruise ships docked alongside still-devastated communities primarily home to people of color. After Hurricane Katrina, then-President George W. Bush’s FEMA head Michael Brown signed off on a $236 million contract with Carnival for a trio of ships that were never more than half full. The Carnival scheme is only the latest example of what Naomi Klein calls “disaster capitalism” in the wake of the storms that rocked the massive U.S. island 3.4 million Americans call home. The leaders of the island’s electrical utility initially inked a $300 million deal with Whitefish Energy to repair storm damage to the grid there, before pulling out after reporters noted that the firm has close ties to President Donald Trump’s donors and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

Puerto Rico grid ‘teetering’ despite $3.8 billion repair job (AP) – After months of darkness and stifling heat, Noe Pagan was overjoyed when power-line workers arrived to restore electricity to his home deep in the lush green mountains of western Puerto Rico. But to his dismay, instead of raising a power pole toppled by Hurricane Maria, the federal contractors bolted the new 220-volt line to the narrow trunk of a breadfruit tree – a safety code violation virtually guaranteed to leave Pagan and his neighbors blacked out in a future hurricane. After an eight-month, $3.8 billion federal effort to try to end the longest blackout in United States history, officials say Puerto Rico’s public electrical authority, the nation’s largest, is almost certain to collapse again when the next hurricane hits this island of 3.3 million people. “It’s a highly fragile and vulnerable system that really could suffer worse damage than it suffered with Maria in the face of another natural catastrophe,” Another weather disaster is increasingly likely as warmer seas turbocharge the strongest hurricanes into even more powerful and wetter storms. Federal forecasters say there’s a 75 percent likelihood that the 2018 Atlantic hurricane season, which begins Friday, will produce between five and nine hurricanes. And there’s a 70 percent chance that as many as four of those could be major Category 3, 4, or 5 hurricanes, with winds of 111 mph (179 kph) or higher. “It’s inevitable that Puerto Rico will get hit again,” Despite the billions plowed into the grid since Maria hit on Sept. 20, 2017, Puerto Rican officials warn that it could take far less than a Category 4 storm like Maria to cause a blackout like the one that persists today, with some 11,820 homes and businesses still without power.

‘People just give up’: Low-income hurricane victims slam federal relief programs – Nine months after Hurricane Harvey dumped more than 50 inches of rain on the Gulf Coast, Kashmere Gardens has not recovered. Nearly every street of the 10,000-person neighborhood has homes that are gutted. Empty window panes reveal sparse interiors without walls, doors or carpets. Doors hang ajar and mold consumes living rooms and kitchens. Signs dot the lawns, promising homeowners that they can quickly sell out and avoid the messy process of rebuilding. One family lives in a tent in their driveway where mangy dogs circle around, shedding fur and leaving a rotten stench hanging in the air. Inside their wrecked home, two 4-year-old children sleep just feet away from open electric wires. The challenges in Kashmere Gardens – where two-thirds of the residents are black and the median income is $23,000 per year – are not the result of any one policy or agency. They’re the consequence of a complicated, bureaucratic disaster-response system built up over decades that experts nearly universally agree is failing to provide critical support to low-income, minority communities when catastrophe strikes.“People just give up,” said Keith Downey, president of a local organization called Kashmere Gardens Super Neighborhood, which has been helping local residents recover. A POLITICO investigation found that numerous low-income families were denied funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency because much of Kashmere Gardens was in a flood zone, and homeowners were thus required to carry flood insurance – a law that many of them were unaware of. Other families, struggling with language issues and inexperienced with the federal bureaucracy, simply couldn’t cope with a system that even FEMA officials agree is too complicated. Still others fell victim to shoddy contractors who took their money and failed to make repairs.

Lava From Kilauea Volcano Reaches Well at Geothermal Power Plant –Lava from Hawaii’s erupting Kilauea volcano has reached the Puna Geothermal Venture plant, covering a well and threatening another. At the same time, fast-moving lava flows are now threatening nearby communities, prompting new evacuations.“Lava flow from Fissures 7 and 21 crossed into PGV [Puna Geothermal Venture] property overnight and has now covered one well that was successfully plugged,” declared the Hawaii Civil Defense Agency in a statement released on Sunday, May 27 at 6:00 pm local time. “That well, along with a second well 100 feet [30 meters] away, are stable and secured, and are being monitored. Also due to preventative measures, neither well is expected to release any hydrogen sulfide.”

Those preventive measures included a complete shutdown of the geothermal plant, the capping of all 11 wells, and the removal of some 60,000 gallons of flammable liquid. Those precautions aside, this is the first time in history – as far as we know – that lava has ever engulfed a geothermal power plant, so it’s all uncharted territory. There’s fear that a rupture of the wells could set off an explosion, releasing hydrogen sulfide and other dangerous gasses into the environment. As of this posting, the lava flows on the PGV grounds have stopped moving. Residents have been worrying about such a scenario since the plant went online nearly three decades ago. Over the years, PGV owners have faced lawsuits questioning its decision to place the plant so close to one of the world’s most active volcanoes, as Reuters reports. Meanwhile, sections of the nearby Leilani Estates community had to be evacuated owing to fast-moving lava from Fissure 7, one of 24 cracks that have opened up since the eruptions began on May 3. See also Hawaii volcano: Lava takes 71 homes, and New evacuations ordered on Hawaii’s Big Island as lava flows from volcano threaten roads, destroy homes, and Hottest, Fastest Lava Yet Prompts Further Evacuations in Hawaii.

What Is Kilauea’s Impact on the Climate? – Kilauea’s spectacular explosions won’t set off earthquakes on America’s West Coast. They won’t cause a tsunami, either. They won’t trigger a bigger, more catastrophic eruption like the one of Mount Pinatubo, in the Philippines, in 1991. “Not gonna happen,” Maarten de Moor, a volcanologist, said. And even though Kilauea is emitting lots of carbon dioxide, it won’t worsen global warming to any meaningful degree. “That one,” he said, “is just not based on any facts at all.” Each of these myths about Kilauea have spread on the internet in one form or another since the volcano began spewing lava on May 3. They’ve been largely debunked thanks to scientists like de Moor, who monitors volcanic emissions for the Deep Carbon Observatory and the Volcanological and Seismological Observatory of Costa Rica. The Associated Press, for example, corrected its May 13 story that wrongly stated that Kilauea was part of the “Ring of Fire,” a belt of severe seismic activity that surrounds the Pacific Ocean. The popular-science publications Earther and National Geographic have also published extensive articles refuting most of these claims. But one of these myths has been especially persistent. “I would say they are all equally egregious, because in all cases we have scientific data and observations that refutes them,” said volcanologist Simon Carn, as associate professor at Michigan Tech. “However, the climate change myth is most persistent as it comes up after every significant eruption.” Carn was among the first to draw attention to an NBC News video, “What the Mount Kilauea eruptions mean for climate change,” featuring just one scientist: Peter Ward, a volcanologist who has long argued that global warming is caused by ozone depletion. In the NBC piece, Ward said that basaltic volcanoes – black-rock volcanoes with low silica content – like Kilauea “can contribute to significant changes in the climate” through large emissions of chlorine and bromine. Ward described these elements as chlorofluorocarbons, which deplete ozone. Ward and the narrator then asserted that ozone depletion causes global warming. Carn said on Twitter that NBC should be “ashamed” of publishing the piece without consulting other scientists. “It is B.S. of the highest order,” he wrote.

Where in the United States is nature most likely to kill you? – The United States is an enormous country, spanning mountains, deserts, forests, prairie, tundra, and more. This varied terrain is also home to many natural hazards spawned by air, water, fire, and forces beneath the Earth’s surface. Some of these threats are dramatic; the United States and its territories have the greatest number of active volcanoes of any country except Indonesia, as well as the most tornadoes. Other hazards, like heat waves, are less flashy but can still kill you. Different regions of the country face very different hazards. But which part of the United States is the most dangerous? It turns out there’s no simple answer, although the south does have a particularly generous share of hazards. The weather and geology of the United States allow for many natural perils and disasters. Earthquakes, volcanoes, blizzards, tornados, intense storms, wildfires, landslides, avalanches, sinkholes, flooding, droughts, heat waves, and more are all on the table. Here’s how the country’s natural menaces differ by geography.

China’s carbon emissions set for fastest growth in 7 years – China’s carbon emissions are on track to rise at their fastest pace in more than seven years during 2018, casting further doubt on the ability of the Paris climate change agreement to curb dangerous greenhouse gas increases, according to a Greenpeace analysis based on Beijing’s own data. Carbon emissions in the country, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, rose 4 per cent in the first quarter of this year, according to calculations by the environmental group based on Chinese government statistics covering coal, cement, oil and gas. If that pace continues it would be the fastest increase since 2011. The latest finding comes as climate researchers express concern over rising emissions in China, which accounts for more than a quarter of global carbon dioxide output. Global emissions were flat from 2014-16 but began rising again in 2017 as the Chinese economy recovered and as emission grew in the EU and the rest of Asia. Scientists are concerned the trend in China will continue this year. “China is fundamentally critical for what happened to global emissions,” said Niklas Höhne, a partner at the New Climate Institute and one of the scientists who contributes to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports. “The outlook for 2018 is actually bad,” he said, pointing to Chinese planning data that indicated the country’s consumption of coal, oil and gas would grow this year. “One major goal of the Paris agreement is that global emissions peak as soon as possible, and China is the one that determines in the end whether global emissions will peak soon or not. That is why all eyes are on China.”

World Needs to Set Rules for Geoengineering Experiments, Experts Say — Interest in governing experiments to alter Earth’s climate is growing as scientists increasingly look at geoengineering to slow global warming. From cooling the atmosphere with special aerosols to sucking carbon dioxide out of the air, scientists have proposed a number of technologies that could potentially alter the climate system and reverse temperature increases. For now, they’re mostly theoretical. But with scientific interest quickly growing, and some high-profile experiments planned in the near future, some experts say the possibility of large-scale geoengineering projects is no longer a fantasy. Because of their potential global impact – and the risks if something should go wrong – world leaders may be long overdue for a talk about how the international community should regulate geoengineering.Some organizations are trying to get the ball rolling immediately. Yesterday, the Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance Initiative (C2G2) – a project of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs – presented a briefing to the U.N. Environment Programme’s Committee of Permanent Representatives. It outlined the need for international agreements on geoengineering technology. Then, this morning, the group hosted an extra workshop exploring different ways that geoengineering projects might be governed, and the factors that should be taken into account when considering them.

Emails Show EPA’s Cozy Alliance With Major Climate Denial Group – Newly released emails show that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ( EPA ) under Scott Pruitt has routinely been in contact with one of the most prominent climate denier groups, the AP reported this weekend.The emails, obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request by the Environmental Defense Fund and the Southern Environmental Law Center , show that John Konkus, a deputy public affairs official, routinely reached out to senior staffers at the Heartland Institute to collaborate on denier invitee lists for a proposed public hearing on climate science last May. Konkus and EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman also regularly commiserated with Heartland officials on negative press coverage of the agency, and collaborated on ways to amplify positive messages. Then-Heartland president Joseph Bast celebrated the retirement of New York Times climate reporter Justin Gillis in an email shared with EPA staffers last fall, writing that he is “still waiting for Chris Mooney and Juliet Eilperin at the WaPo and Seth Borenstein at AP to flame out.”As reported by the Associated Press : “The emails underscore how Pruitt and senior agency officials have sought to surround themselves with people who share their vision of curbing environmental regulation and enforcement, leading to complaints from environmentalists that he is ignoring the conclusions of the majority of scientists in and out of his agency especially when it comes to climate -changing carbon emissions.”

NASA full of ‘fear and anxiety’ since Trump took office, ex-employee says – Nasa’s output of climate change information aimed at the public has dwindled under the Trump administration, with a former employee claiming “fear and anxiety” within the agency has led to an online retreat from the issue.Laura Tenenbaum, a former science communicator for Nasa, said she was warned off using the term “global warming” on social media and restricted in speaking to the media due to her focus on climate change.“Nasa’s talking point is that it’s business as usual, but that’s not true,” said Tenenbaum, who departed Nasa in October after a decade at the space agency. “They have stopped promoting or emphasizing climate science communication, they have minimized it. People inside the agency are concerned Trump will cut climate science funding. There is a fear and anxiety there and the outcome has been chaos.”Tenenbaum said that around a month after Trump’s inauguration last year an “arduous review process” was put in place over every blog post, Facebook post and tweet that she put out from Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.“I was told verbally by media relations it was because with Trump as president, climate change is now a sensitive subject,” she said. “There was confusion about what to do now we have a president who doesn’t believe in climate change. Everyone was scrambling. It was chaos.” Planned blogposts on coal plants being turned into solar plants, “reasons to be positive about Nasa” and an interview with Gavin Schmidt, a senior Nasa climate scientist, were all either halted or scrapped due to interference from career staff nervous about provoking the new administration, according to Tenenbaum. Figures show there has been a notable decline in Nasa’s output of climate information since the election of the Trump administration.

Netherlands Works to Overturn Landmark Urgenda Climate Ruling — A landmark climate case in the Netherlands, the first to rule that a government has a constitutional duty to protect its citizens from the impacts of climate change, is heading back to court on Monday for a hearing on the Dutch government’s appeal.The Dutch court’s ruling in Urgenda Foundation v. The State of Netherlands in 2015 ordered the government to take more aggressive action to cut carbon emissions. It inspired similar lawsuits around the world from activist groups and citizens trying to compel governments to act more decisively on the climate crisis.The lawsuit was filed by the Urgenda Foundation and 886 citizens in 2013, seeking to hold the government accountable for its promises to aggressively cut emissions at a time when the country was falling behind in reaching its renewable energy goals. “The case completely changed the political debate on climate policy. Now it is the top topic in Dutch politics,” said Dennis van Berkel, legal counsel of Urgenda Foundation in Amsterdam. “The case created an enormous amount of hope around the world for people who lost faith in the political process.”

Germany Faces Gigawatt-Scale Loss of Onshore Wind Power – Under Germany’s Renewable Energy Act (EEG), which took effect in 2000, renewable energy sources, including onshore wind turbines, secured priority grid access and guaranteed above-market payment for each kilowatt-hour delivered to the grid. In 2020, the first of those feed-in tariff contracts expire. The Institute for Integrated Production Hannover (IPH) estimates that 2.4 gigawatts of installed onshore wind capacity will lose eligibility for guaranteed payments each year. In 2020, up to 4,500 turbines could come down because they will have been rendered uneconomical without the guaranteed payments. Asked about the chances Germany will see gigawatt-scale onshore wind capacity go offline after 2020 and not be replaced, Andrea Scassola, Europe wind market analyst at MAKE Consulting, said they’re “high, given the ownership structure, which is typically very fragmented across a broad range of individuals (farmers, cooperatives, etc.).”

After a decade of dithering, the US east coast went all in on offshore wind power this week – Three northeastern US states this week signed up for a cumulative 1,200 megawatts (MW) of offshore wind power, and hinted at even more ambitious goals in the future. It’s been a long time coming.The US east coast’s premier project, Cape Wind, finally died in 2017 after a decade of protests from residents who objected to obstructed views and risks to wildlife (including the Kennedypolitical dynasty and billionaire William Koch). The three commitments made this week take up the mantle from that failed project. On May 23, Massachusetts’s awarded its first offshore-wind contract to Vineyard Wind for a 800 MW, 100-turbine farm to be built further offshore then previous projects were planned for, in order to avoid local opposition. It will fulfill the first half of a legal commitment, made in a 2016 energy law, by the state to purchase 1,600 megawatts of offshore wind.Massachusetts’s neighbor Rhode Island followed suit, contracting its own 400 MW, 50-turbine project with Deepwater Wind, the company behind the 30-MW Block Island Wind Project, the US’s first offshore wind farm, completed in 2016. That will help Rhode Island reach its goal of increasing the state’s renewable-energy capacity 10-fold (to 1,000 MW) by 2020. Both wind farms will be built in the Wind Energy Area, 164,750 acres of federal waters between Block Island and Martha’s Vineyard designated for wind development.Finally, New Jersey passed a new law that set a 3,500 MW offshore-wind goal for the state. The state had already begun to embrace offshore wind since the new governor Phil Murphy ordered state agencies in January to procure 1,100 MW of offshore wind. All together, the Union of Concerned Scientists estimates the new contracted wind farms will offset emission equivalent to removing about 270,000 cars from the road while powering more than 600,000 households.

A review of underwater compressed air storage – Compressed air energy storage (CAES) is one of the few storage options that this blog has not looked into, and here I review how this technology might contribute to an all-renewables world. A brief review of land-based CAES storage indicates limited potential (only two plants with a total capacity of 400MW/4GWh – one of which is 40 years old – are presently in commercial operation, and both require “in-ground natural gas combustion” to work). A new approach that involves storing compressed air in balloons or concrete spheres on the sea bed reportedly offers superior potential, but on closer inspection we find that this technology is costly and far from simple, that the potential is probably not as high as claimed and that large-scale commercialization, if it ever happens, is still years away. My attention was first drawn to the question of underwater energy storage by an article in which the Fraunhofer Institute made the following claim: The Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy Systems Engineering envisions spheres with inner diameters of 30m, placed 700m (or about 2,300 ft) underwater. Assuming the spheres would be fitted with existing 5 MW turbines that could function at that depth, the researchers estimate that each sphere would offer 20 MWh of storage with four hours discharge time. I had always assumed that a 30m diameter sphere, which holds 14,000 cu m of air (at standard temperature and pressure) at a depth of 700m below the sea surface, would have the same storage potential as 14,000 cu m of sea water in a reservoir 700m above sea level, i.e. about 20MWh, and calculations confirm that this is indeed the case. But air is compressible while water is not, with heat being generated during compression and lost during decompression, and how to handle these heat gains and losses complicates an underwater compressed-air storage operation. A more detailed explanation of the complexities involved is provided in this 2016 paper by Pimm and Garvey of the University of Nottingham. Additional information is also available from Wikipedia.

Global electric car sales up over 50 per cent in 2017: IEA –Electric car sales around the world rose by 54 per cent in 2017, taking global stock across the three-million threshold, the International Energy Agency said in a report Wednesday.In China, the world’s biggest market for electric vehicles, sales also grew by about half — but their market share remained small at 2.2 per cent.In Norway electric vehicles have by far the world’s highest market share, but even there it is still only 6.4 per cent, according to the IEA. Nonetheless, the Paris-based agency was optimistic about the sector’s prospects.”Supportive policies and cost reductions are likely to lead to significant growth in the market uptake of (electric vehicles) in the outlook period to 2030,” the report said.Should policymakers honour their current commitments to the environment, “the number of electric light-duty vehicles on the road (would reach) 125 million by 2030,” it added.And should policy ambitions develop further, that number could become as high as 220 million in 2030, it said.But the IEA said that in order for the cars of the future to overtake their petrol and diesel-powered competitors, governments will have to take the lead. “The main markets by volume (China) and sales share (Norway) have the strongest policy push,” the IEA said.

Electric vehicles will grow from 3 million to 125 million by 2030, International Energy Agency forecasts – There will be enough electric cars on the road for roughly every person in Japan – the world’s 11th most populous country – in just more than two decades, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Electric vehicle (EV) ownership will balloon to about 125 million by 2030, spurred by policies that encourage drivers, fleets and municipalities to purchase clean-running cars, the policy advisor to energy-consuming nations forecast on Wednesday. That marks a big jump from 2017, when the IEA estimated there were 3.1 million electric vehicles in use, up 54 percent from the previous year.IEA’s outlook still leaves plenty of room for fossil fuel-powered vehicles. Forecasts put the world’s total car count at roughly 2 billion somewhere in the 2035 to 2040 window.However, the IEA also sees a pathway to 220 million electric vehicles by 2030, provided the world takes a more aggressive approach to fighting climate change and cutting emissions than currently planned.While battery costs are falling, the IEA acknowledges that government policy remains critical to making EVs attractive to drivers, spurring investment and helping carmakers achieve economies of scale.”The uptake of electric vehicles is still largely driven by the policy environment,” the IEA said in the report. “The 10 leading countries in electric vehicle adoption all have a range of policies in place to promote the uptake of electric cars.”Policies in place today will make China and Europe the biggest adopters, in the IEA’s view. In China, credits and subsidies will help EVs grow to account for more than a quarter of the car market by 2030. Meanwhile, tightening emissions standards and high fuel taxes in Europe will boost the vehicles to 23 percent of the market. As for the United States, the IEA sees electric vehicle deployment growing at two speeds. While it sees “rapid market penetration” in places like California and other states with zero emissions plans, relatively low taxes on fuels and the Trump administration’s intentions to scale back vehicle emissions standards could hold back growth.

EPA’s internal advisory board recommends investigating science behind auto emission rollback | TheHill: The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Science Advisory Board (SAB) is recommending a review of the agency’s decision to roll back a prominent Obama-era policy on auto emissions. The independent group made up of researchers and scientists wrote in a May 18 memorandum first obtained by Bloomberg that the department’s justification for changing the rule should be reviewed. as should a number of other EPA policy rollbacks. EPA announced in April that it will be changing the current federal standards for auto emissions, saying that levels determined under Obama are too stringent and unachievable, a move hailed by the fossil fuel industry and certain automakers but heavily criticized by environmentalists. “The SAB should consider this action for review with regard to the adequacy of the supporting science,” advisory group members wrote in the memo. The board noted that their recommendations would be taken into consideration by EPA as it determines the new emissions standards. Questions the group posed to EPA included asking what the repercussions to deploying the new fuel standard may be and how they could best be mitigated, and what the current barriers to consumer acceptance of “redesigned or advanced technology vehicles” are and how those could be overcome. Additionally, the SAB would like to look into the agency’s change in emissions requirements for certain older tractor-trailers known as glider vehicles. EPA in November announced that it was seeking to remove so-called glider trucks from a major regulation written in 2016 that restricted emissions from heavy-duty trucks. Glider trucks are newly-built truck bodies in which manufacturers install old engines that are not subject to stringent emissions regulations.

EPA’s Own Science Advisers to Rebuke Agency Over Auto Rollback – Some of the EPA’s science advisers say the agency is ignoring its own research in moving to relax vehicle emission requirements, a signature element of the Trump administration’s campaign to roll back environmental regulations. A working group of the Science Advisory Board has recommended reviewing the EPA’s justifications for the several planned rollbacks, including the agency’s conclusion that Obama-era auto efficiency requirements must be changed because they are too stringent. The group wants the full, 44-member board to scrutinize the science behind the decision to reassess the standards, a move supported by automakers that put the EPA on a collision course with California and its pollution mandates. The board could vote to take up the issue Thursday. “If the SAB takes this on and does their job fairly, it’s not a trivial event,” said Chet France, a former director of assessment and standards at the EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality. The Science Advisory Board is a panel of outside researchers and experts who review the quality of the technical information the EPA relies on, gives advice on broad scientific matters and examines agency research programs. It has sought similar rule reviews before — eight times from Fall 2012 through Fall 2016. But this time, the SAB working group has singled out five major actions planned under President Donald Trump it wants the board to examine, and the panel adopted unusually pointed language to highlight problems with the EPA’s handling of the issues. The EPA didn’t identify or account for the potential effect on greenhouse gas emissions, climate change and public health and safety when it reopened the review, the working group said in a memo. “These would seem to be logical and necessary areas for scientific and technical assessment.

Trump Regulators and California on Collision Course on Rolling Back Fuel Efficiency Standards — Jerri-lynn Scofield – The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) yesterday sent a proposal to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) yesterday to roll back fuel efficiency standards due to come into effect after 2021. As reported by the The Washington Post: The OMB did not release the contents of the document but is expected to publish it by the end of June, prompting a 60-day public-comment period. The draft of the overhauled standard, as reported last month, would eliminate automakers’ obligation to boost fuel efficiency after 2021 and would set up a clash with California by challenging its ability to set its own stricter standards, a power granted to the state by the [1970 Clean Air Act]. Mary D. Nichols, head of the California Air Resources Board, met in Washington with officials from the Transportation Department and the Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] in an effort to alter the Trump administration’s position. The EPA and Transportation issued a news release afterward calling the conversations “productive” and saying that they were “fully supportive of an open dialogue that proceeds in an expedited manner.” The Trump administration has fixated on rolling back the its predecessor’s legacy – and no more so than in the area of climate change. As in so many areas – e.g. Obamacare, Iran nuclear deal, there is far less to these signature climate change policies, than was touted (see this previous Real News Network interview cross post, Road to Trump’s Climate Change Hell Paved by Obama and Clinton and Obama Again Sounds Climate Change Alarm But Continues To Support Fossil Fuel Industry). But no one would deny the Trump climate change policy is a disaster – taken by itself, or even in comparison to previous inadequate policies (as discussed further here: in a nutshell, “the Trump administration is ground zero for a certain brand of climate denialism and is especially close to the fossil fuels industry.” California on May 1 filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia seeking to thwart the latest Trump regulatory efforts to scupper the new fuel efficiency standards. Forbes reported California was joined by sixteen other states, New York, Illinois, Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts, Iowa, Virginia, Minnesota, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, Maine and Maryland: As litigation proceeds, however, the NYT reports that the standards conflict could hurt automakers, who will likely be forced to bifurcate their product offerings, to comply on the one hand with the higher California standards (which twelve other states would also follow), compared to whatever revised standards the Trump administration ultimately enacts.

US scraps rule requiring states to measure tailpipe gases (Reuters) – The U.S. Transportation Department is repealing a rule, finalized in the closing days of the Obama administration as part of the fight against global warming, requiring states to track greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles on the nation’s highways. In a notice posted Wednesday in the Federal Register, the Federal Highway Administration, which is part of the Transportation Department, said it was repealing the rule. The repeal becomes effective at the end of June. A coalition of states in 2017, including California, Massachusetts, Iowa and Washington, had sued to force the Trump administration to continue to enforce the rule, which they agreed to do, pending a formal process to rescind it. The administration said it was reversing the Obama rule because it “imposed costs with no predictable level of benefits.” The Natural Resources Defense Council had said the rule was a “common-sense tool to curb carbon pollution from transportation.” The group said the administration should work with “planners nationwide to clean up the air, protect our health and provide smarter transportation options for Americans such as more public transit, bikeways and pedestrian walkways.” Under the Obama rule, roughly 400 state transportation departments and metropolitan planning organizations were required to track the annual number of tons of carbon dioxide emitted from on-road vehicles traveling on the national highway system and assess traffic congestion – with initial reports due by October 2018. The move was aimed at states considering greenhouse gas emissions as it used federal funds for highway improvements.

Bitcoin backlash as ‘miners’ suck up electricity, stress power grids in Central Washington — Public hearings for rural electric utilities are rarely sellout events. But the crowd that showed up in Wenatchee two weeks ago for a hearing about Bitcoin mining in Chelan County was so large that utility staff had to open a second room with a video feed for the overflow.The turnout wasn’t surprising. Chelan County, along with neighboring Douglas and Grant counties, has been at the center of the U.S. Bitcoin boom since 2012, when the region’s ultracheap hydropower began attracting cryptocurrency “miners.”These entrepreneurs earn Bitcoin by solving increasingly complicated mathematical problems established by the shadowy creators of the digital currency. The process, which the industry calls mining, involves trillions of computer calculations and sucks up huge amounts of power.As a result, an area famous for apples, wheat and conservative politics has been transformed into a kind of cyber-boomtown, with Bitcoin mining operations that range from large-scale, state-of-the-art warehouses to repurposed cargo containers to backyard sheds. By the end of this year, according to some estimates, the Mid-Columbia Basin could account for as much as 30 percent of the global output of new Bitcoin and large shares of other digital currencies, such as Litecoin and Ethereum. But as in any boomtown, success has come at a cost. As the cryptocurrency industry morphs into larger, more energy-intensive operations, the Basin’s three public utilities districts (PUDs) are reassessing how they deal with it, and whether they can – or should even try to – keep up.

How Many Deaths Does It Cost To Power The World? – When flipping a switch at home, one usually does not think of how many people it kills by leaving the light on longer than necessary. Nevertheless, as Statista’s Patrick Wagner notes, as with almost everything in our industrialized world, not much comes without the cost of human life. Most means of energy production come with a considerably high amount of environmental pollution as a by-product and even allegedly clean and safe energy sources, like wind and water plants, still carry the risk of killing people through malfunction and accidents while setting them up. You will find more infographics at StatistaAs this estimation shows, energy costs some 500,000 lives per year. The cleanest source of energy might surprise you: nuclear power is currently the safest option we have – well, at least if we cut out the fact that the active waste will accompany us for the next few centuries.

Latin American land owners are fighting to keep power lines out – Gilson Denardin always hated the towering transmission lines crisscrossing his farm in northeastern Brazil. So when he caught wind of plans to put up two more sets of wires, he decided to put up a fight. Denardin is leading a local movement to force power companies to pay farmers more for their trouble, and he’s not alone in raising a stink. At the end of the last century, before the commodities boom brought a wave of development to Latin America, opposition to the blight of new electricity infrastructure was rare. People just wanted the energy. Now that 100 percent of the region’s biggest economies have access to power, the “Not in my backyard” movement – or Nimby’ism – that has long been the norm from Europe to the U.S. is creeping in here, too. More and more, land owners from the countryside of Brazil to resort towns in Mexico are protesting further development of energy infrastructure. Separated by thousands of miles, their complaints are usually the same: power plants and transmission lines disturb the skyline, reduce the value of properties and make it harder to harvest land. “Brazil is a country under construction – it’s not like in Europe,” said Mario Miranda, president of the association of power transmission companies. “For our GDP to grow 1 percentage point, our power generation must grow 20 percent.” That’s the major impetus behind major government efforts to bolster both energy output and transmission lines. Brazil last year auctioned off the rights to build 12,400 kilometers (7,700 miles) of cables and is planning two more sales this year. Mexico, which only opened up its energy and electricity markets to private investment in 2014, has plans to boost wind-generation capacity on the Yucatan Peninsula, a favorite destination for tourists, by 15-fold through 2020. And Argentina is also ramping up renewable-energy production with 10 gigawatts of new wind farms – equal to about 10 nuclear power plants – by 2025.

Electric power sector consumption of fossil fuels at lowest level since 1994 – Fossil fuel consumption in the electric power sector declined to 22.5 quadrillion British thermal units (quads) in 2017, the lowest level since 1994. The declining trend in fossil fuel consumption by the power sector has been driven by a decrease in the use of coal and petroleum with a slightly offsetting increase in the use of natural gas. Changes in the fuel mix and improvements in electricity generating technology have also led the power sector to produce electricity while consuming fewer fossil fuels. In 2017, coal consumption by the electric power sector reached its lowest level since 1982, and petroleum consumption in the power sector was the lowest on record, based on data since 1949. Recent natural gas consumption in the power sector has generally been increasing, but 2017 consumption was slightly lower than the record-high 2016 level. In energy-equivalent terms, more coal was consumed in the power sector than natural gas in 2017, at 12.7 quads and 9.5 quads, respectively. However, in terms of electricity generation, natural gas-fired power plants in the electric power sector produced more electricity than coal-fired plants, at 31% and 30% of the U.S. total, respectively, in 2017. Natural gas-fired units tend to be more energy efficient, requiring less energy content to produce a unit of electricity. As recently as 2000, natural gas-fired power plants were on average about as efficient as coal-fired plants. Since then, new natural gas-fired power plants have tended to use combined-cycle generators, which are more efficient because the waste heat from the gas turbine is routed to a nearby steam turbine that generates additional power. Combined-cycle units now make up most of the natural gas-fired electricity generation capacity. By the end of 2018, natural gas combined-cycle units may surpass conventional coal-fired power plants to become the most prevalent technology for generating electricity in the United States. As the natural gas-fired generation fleet has grown and become more efficient, the generation-weighted average efficiency of fossil fuel-fired electricity generation has improved. In 1994, fossil fuel power plants required 10,400 British thermal units (Btu) of primary energy to produce each kilowatthour (kWh); by 2017 that rate had fallen to 9,400 Btu/kWh.

Agency: Natural gas could soon surpass coal as U.S. electricity generator- By the end of 2018, natural gas could surpass coal to become the most prevalent technology for generating electricity in the United States, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration . The agency said fossil fuel consumption in the electric power sector declined in 2017 to its the lowest level since 1994. “The declining trend in fossil fuel consumption by the power sector has been driven by a decrease in the use of coal and petroleum, with a slightly offsetting increase in the use of natural gas,” the EIA said. In 2017, coal consumption by the electric power sector reached its lowest level since 1982, and petroleum consumption was the lowest on record, based on data since 1949, the EIA said. Recent natural gas consumption in the power sector has generally been increasing.

Are Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaigns Working? A Conversation With Economist Robert Pollin -Is fossil fuels divestment an effective strategy in tackling climate change? A newly released study by the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst suggests that this strategy is not sufficient on its own in affecting the global battle against climate change and that new approaches are needed. Robert Pollin, a distinguished professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, co-director of PERI and co-author of the study spoke to C.J. Polychroniou about the limits of the movement to divest from fossil fuels and the need for fresh approaches and a more holistic type of action for combatting climate change.

Groups Sue Utility Company for Leaking Coal Ash Into National Scenic River – Illinois environmental groups filed a lawsuit Wednesday alleging that a utility company is violating the Clean Water Act by letting coal ash leak into a protected river.The groups allege that Texas-based Dynegy Inc. is tempting a dangerous spill by not dealing with unlined pits of coal ash at the shuttered Vermilion Power Station, which sits along a tributary of the Vermilion River. “Over the years the utilities have used the floodplain as essentially a dumping ground,” activist Lan Richart told the Chicago Tribune.

Big coal is using this small Oklahoma town as a toxic waste dump – On the edge of Bokoshe, population less than 500, sits a hill about 60 feet high, covered partly with soil. From a distance, it could be a natural part of eastern Oklahoma’s rolling hills. But this mound isn’t like the others: It’s made of toxic fly ash, a coal byproduct from electricity production, generated by power company AES. The fly ash fills in an unlined, abandoned strip mine at a site also used to dump wastewater from fracking. When it rains, the waste runs into nearby lakes and tributaries of the Arkansas River. According to Physicians for Social Responsibility, fly ash contains a range of heavy metals, from arsenic to lead to mercury, some of which are linked to cancer. Residents of Bokoshe have been trying to stop the pollution for years, only to meet with denial at the corporate and state levels. No one in power, it seems, will admit it’s a problem.

Indiana county to pay for removal of toxic coal ash (AP) – A southern Indiana county that set aside 15,000 tons of coal ash for road projects must pay $50,000 to clean up ash contaminated with heavy metals and chemicals.The Courier Journal reports that coal ash must be cleaned up at Floyd County’s Georgetown work yards and at a Harrison County farm. Floyd County was told to get rid of a coal ash stockpile because black residue washed off the pile and into a creek during rains, said former highway superintendent Ron Quakenbush. Federal regulators imposed stricter safety rules in recent years for ash ponds at coal-fired power plants and at landfills, which must be lined to accept the waste. Regulators recommend that communities use rock salt to melt roads covered in ice or snow.

Industries Try to Strip Power from Ohio River’s Water Quality Commission — More than two dozen coal-fired power plants that line the Ohio River stand to get a break from regional oversight that has helped to dramatically improve water quality in the river, the drinking water source for 5 million people. Electric utilities and other industries are pressing a regional commission to end its role in restricting the dumping of toxic wastewater into the river, arguing there’s too much bureaucracy already. Instead, they want the commission to stick to research, and leave anything related to regulation to individual states. At the same time, the Trump administration has put on hold the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s first Clean Water Act rules in a generation to curb toxic wastewater discharges from power plants while the agency reconsiders them. The eight-state regional commission, known as ORSANCO, has a long history of setting water standards for hazardous chemicals and heavy metals from coal-burning and other industries, often at more stringent levels than state or federal standards. But decades of progress toward cleaning up one of America’s hardest-working rivers could be slowed if a proposal that follows the industries’ request to reduce ORSANCO’s authority is approved by the commission, environmental advocates warn.

China considers more US coal imports to cut deficit – China is considering a plan to buy more American coal as part of an effort to narrow its trade deficit with the U.S., according to people with knowledge of the matter.Chinese officials are currently looking at boosting purchases from West Virginia in particular, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they’re not authorized to speak publicly. They didn’t say whether Beijing is looking at buying more supplies from other states. A final decision hasn’t been made, they said. The country’s top economic planner, the National Development and Reform Commission, referred questions to the National Energy Administration; officials there didn’t reply to an email seeking comment.

Trump Administration Plans Costly Taxpayer Bailout of Unprofitable Energy Industries — The Trump administration is planning to bail out unprofitable coal and nuclear plants by mandating grid operators buy electricity from them in the name of national security, Bloomberg reported late Thursday. A draft Department of Energy memo circulated before a National Security Council meeting Friday proposes invoking rarely-used emergency authorities under the Defense Production Act and Federal Power Act to force grid operators to purchase power from struggling plants. Per the memo, the move is meant as a “stop-gap measure” while the administration conducts a two-year study on “grid security challenges” facing the country. The proposal is the latest overture by the Trump administration as it struggles to make good on a campaign promise to help the coal and nuclear industry – as well as some of the president’s biggest donors.

Illinois can subsidize nuclear power if it wants: US FERC brief (Reuters) – U.S. energy regulators said federal rules do not preempt Illinois’ program to provide money to nuclear reactors that provide carbon-free energy to help prevent the units from shutting early, according to a filing with a federal appeals court. The U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) made their comments in a brief on Tuesday in an appeal of a case brought by power generators opposed to Illinois’ Zero Emission Credit (ZEC) program. Several nuclear reactors in the United States are in danger of shutting for economic reasons because cheap and abundant natural gas from shale formations and subsidies paid to renewable energy projects have reduced power prices to their lowest levels on record in several parts of the country. Illinois adopted the ZEC program in 2016 to keep some nuclear power plants in service to help meet the state’s greenhouse gas reduction goals after Illinois power company Exelon Corp said it would shut its Clinton and Quad Cities nuclear plants because they were losing money.

Another Nuclear Bailout? – Last week, New Jersey joined the list of states seemingly eager to bail out politically well-connected nuclear power plant operators. Governor Phil Murphy signed a bill that would grant subsidies of up to $300 million per year to the owners of the Salem and Hope Creek nuclear power stations, two plants in southern New Jersey approaching the end of their useful lives. PSEG Nuclear, an affiliate of the state’s largest utility, owns 100% of Hope Creek and 57% of Salem. It made clear that it would not put any new investment into these large, aging power stations without a subsidy, threatening a full closure within a brief period.