Written by rjs, MarketWatch 666
This is a collection of interesting news articles about the environment and related topics over the last week. This is normally a Tuesday evening regular post at GEI.
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WHO Carcinogens: Asbestos, Arsenic, Cigarettes, Alcohol,… & Bacon!? – The World Health Organization has now officially declared bacon to be just as dangerous to human health as tobacco cigarette smoking. WHO has made the decision to declare all processed meats “carcinogenic to humans,” and that’s not a good thing. The World Health Organization officially classified processed meats as carcinogenic in October 2015. The decision managed to be made by something called the International Agency of Research into Cancer (IARC), based on a review done on 800 studies globally. They claimed that the report found “sufficient evidence in humans that the consumption of processed meat causes colorectal cancer.”
Emerging sex disease MG ‘could become next superbug’ – BBC News – A little known sexually transmitted infection could become the next superbug unless people become more vigilant, experts are warning. Mycoplasma genitalium (MG) often has no symptoms but can cause pelvic inflammatory disease, which can leave some women infertile. MG can be missed – and if it is not treated correctly, it can develop resistance to antibiotics. Mycoplasma genitalium is a bacterium that can cause inflammation of the urethra in men, causing discharge from the penis and making it painful to urinate. In women, it can cause inflammation of the reproductive organs (womb and fallopian tubes) too, causing pain and possibly a fever and some bleeding. You can get it by having unprotected sex with someone who has it.
The Strange And Curious Case of the Deadly Superbug Yeast – A PATHOGEN THAT resists almost all of the drugs developed to treat or kill it is moving rapidly across the world, and public health experts are stymied how to stop it.By now, that’s a familiar scenario, the central narrative in the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. But this particular pathogen isn’t a bacterium. It’s a yeast, a new variety of an organism so common that it’s used as one of the basic tools of lab science, transformed into an infection so disturbing that one lead researcher called it “more infectious than Ebola” at an international conference last week. The name of the yeast is Candida auris.
Lake surfers say polluted waves are making them sick – but they love it too much to stop – A group of dedicated Great Lakes surfers is always chasing the next big wave, even if it means surfing in dangerous water alongside grimy landscapes home to some of the area’s largest polluters. The surfers say some of the best waves in the midwest are near Whiting and Portage in northern Indiana, an area of Lake Michigan they refer to as “Southend.” But the surf scene is unlike the coastal ocean paradises where most surfers flock. The local spots are directly next to towering industrial complexes, including those of British Petroleum (BP) and U.S. Steel.
A Toxic Algal Bloom Is Spreading in Florida’s Waterways – In June, sludgy, toxic blue-green algae began to creep across Lake Okeechobee in Florida. The foul bloom has since spread to the St. Lucie River on the east coast and to the Caloosahatchee River near Fort Myers, prompting Governor Rick Scott to declare a state of emergency for seven Florida counties, as Victoria Ballard of the Sun-Sentinel reports. The governor’s office says that the bloom has spread to both of Florida’s coasts because the Army Corps of Engineers has been discharging algae-containing water from Lake Okeechobee to various rivers and estuaries. Heavy rainfalls prompted the Corps to release millions of gallons of water from the lake in order to relieve pressure on an old dam, according to Manuel Bojorquez of CBS News. But Okeechobee is rife with chemicals and nutrients from agricultural and development runoff – and the combination of nutrient-rich waters and warm temperatures create ideal conditions for algal blooms. The emergency order allows the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the South Florida Water Management District to bypass various restrictions and store excess water in additional areas south of the lake. Scott has also ordered the DEP to spend more time on water testing, and to establish a grant program that will help with cleaning up algae-clogged waters. Most blue-green algae blooms are not toxic, according to the Washington State Department of Health. But some blooms, like the ones in Florida, produce toxins that can cause a range of adverse symptoms, from skin irritation, to respiratory issues, to nerve and liver poisoning. Animals that come into contact with algae-filled water can die. Signs have been posted at various Florida waterways, warning people not to swim in or eat fish from the affected bodies of water.
Notice of boil-water order came too late, many D.C. residents say – WaPo — Tens of thousands of people in the nation’s capital were warned against drinking their water Friday, prompting anger and confusion among D.C. residents who said they weren’t notified promptly of a potential contamination of the city’s water supply.D.C. Water continued to advise those in a wide swath of Northwest and Northeast Washington to boil their water until further notice. John Lisle, a spokesman for the agency, said the warning would probably not be lifted until Saturday at the earliest.Lisle said there have been no reports of sickened customers or other evidence that a temporary drop in water pressure in parts of the system had put District residents at risk.
Elon Musk goaded into promising to fix Flint water problems – Elon Musk has been goaded into using his vast amount of wealth to fix Flint’s water problems.The SpaceX and Tesla boss has been criticised in recent days for the nature of his attempts to help with the rescue of the Thai boys from a cave, during which he built a submarine that was rejected by the leaders of the rescue operation. Many people that argued that the billionaire could use his huge wealth more effectively, by paying for civil or charitable projects. And one of those people has now successfully called out Mr Musk and made him commit to helping out with problems at home.
GMO Labeling: Public Interest Advocacy Group Sues Trump Over Secrecy — Last week, Center for Food Safety (CFS) sued the Trump Administration for refusing to make public documents surrounding its decision on how to label genetically engineered (GE or GMO) foods. On May 3, 2018, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released long-awaited proposed regulations for the first-ever U.S. mandatory disclosure of foods produced using genetic engineering. Earlier this year, CFS sought the public data and documents about the rulemaking under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), but the administration failed to make public any information, leading to this CFS lawsuit to force that disclosure.This unfulfilled FOIA request can’t help but bring to mind other transparency failings of the administration. From Michael Cohen’s hush money payment of $130,000 to Stormy Daniels to Jared Kushner’s failure to disclose his 2016 meetings in Russia to Congress, secrecy has defined Trump’s time in office.
Black farmers were intentionally sold fake seeds in Memphis, lawsuit says – Mid-South farmers filed a lawsuit against a company that they said sold them fake soybean seeds at a convention. A group of African-American farmers from Louisiana and the Mid-South, say that Stine Seed Company purposefully switched seeds in order to sell black farmers a subpar product at the Mid-South Farm & Gin Show in March 2017. Despite above average rainfall, experienced black farmers saw limited soybean yield from the Stine seeds during the 2017 harvest. “Mother nature doesn’t discriminate,” President of Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association Thomas Burrell said:
“It doesn’t rain on white farms but not black farms. Insects don’t [only] attack black farmers’ land…why is it then that white farmers are buying Stine seed and their yield is 60, 70, 80, and 100 bushels of soybeans and black farmers who are using the exact same equipment with the exact same land, all of a sudden, your seeds are coming up 5, 6, and 7 bushels?”
Low Doses of Pesticides Make It Harder for Bees to Find Flowers – A review of a decade of research of the impact of pesticides on bees found that even low doses commonly used in agriculture hurt the bees’ learning and memory, a Royal Holloway, University of London press release reported. The study, published Tuesday in the Journal of Applied Ecology, found the bees’ ability to remember floral scents was harmed even by pesticides not covered by Europe’s recent ban on neonicotinoids.
Agrarian Crisis and Climate Catastrophe: Forged in India, Made in Washington – India is under siege from international capital. It is on course not only to be permanently beholden to US state-corporate interests but is heading towards environmental catastrophe much faster than many may think.According to the World Bank’s lending report, based on data compiled up to 2015, India was easily the largest recipient of its loans in the history of the institution. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the World Bank exerts a certain hold over India. In the 1990s, the IMF and World Bank wanted India to shift hundreds of millions out of agriculture. In return for up to £90 billion in loans, India was directed to dismantle its state-owned seed supply system, reduce subsidies, run down public agriculture institutions and offer incentives for the growing of cash crops to earn foreign exchange.The plan for India involves the mass displacement of people to restructure agriculture for the benefit of powerful corporations. This involves shifting at least 400 million from the countryside into cities.
Trash piles up in US as China closes door to recycling – For months, a major recycling facility for the greater Baltimore-Washington area has been facing a big problem: it has to pay to get rid of huge amounts of paper and plastic it would normally sell to China. Beijing is no longer buying, claiming the recycled materials are “contaminated.” For sure, the 900 tons of trash dumped at all hours of the day and night, five days a week, on the conveyor belts at the plant in Elkridge, Maryland — an hour’s drive from the US capital — are not clean. Amid the nerve-shattering din and clouds of brown dust, dozens of workers in gloves and masks — most of them women — nimbly pluck a diverse array of objects from the piles that could count as “contaminants.”
Which Would Be Harder to Ban, Single-Use Plastic or Money-Bought Government? – Gaius Publius – From the Dept. of What We’re Up Against: Texas Supreme Court Rules Cities Cannot Ban Plastic Bags
The Texas Supreme Court struck down the city of Laredo’s plastic bag ban – a decision that will likely overturn similar bans in about a dozen other cities, including Austin, Fort Stockton and Port Aransas.The court ruled Friday that only the state has the authority to regulate solid waste disposal in Texas. In the 19-page opinion, Chief Justice Nathan Hecht wrote that the Texas Constitution prohibits city ordinances from conflicting with state law.“Both sides of the debate … assert public-policy arguments raising economic, environmental and uniformity concerns,” Hecht said. “We must take statutes as they are written, and the one before us is written quite clearly. Its limitation on local control encompasses the ordinance.”
How the EPA and the Pentagon downplayed a growing toxic threat – The chemicals once seemed near magical, able to repel water, oil and stains. By the 1970s, DuPont and 3M had used them to develop Teflon and Scotchgard, and they slipped into an array of everyday products, from gum wrappers to sofas to frying pans to carpets. Known as perfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, they were a boon to the military, too, which used them in foam that snuffed out explosive oil and fuel fires. It’s long been known that, in certain concentrations, the compounds could be dangerous if they got into water or if people breathed dust or ate food that contained them. Tests showed they accumulated in the blood of chemical factory workers and residents living nearby, and studies linked some of the chemicals to cancers and birth defects. Now two new analyses of drinking water data and the science used to analyze it make clear the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Defense have downplayed the public threat posed by these chemicals. Far more people have likely been exposed to dangerous levels of them than has previously been reported because contamination from them is more widespread than has ever been officially acknowledged.
Air pollution linked to spikes in hospital and GP visits – Air pollution leads to spikes in health problems and drives up hospital admissions and visits to the GP, according to a new study. The report proves an “absolutely clear” link between poor air quality and health problems and researchers said it should serve as a warning to politicians about the serious impacts of toxic air on public health. “The patients we looked at, who all suffer from lung conditions, are to my mind the canary in the coalmine on this issue,” said one of the report’s authors, Prof James Chalmers, from the respiratory research in the school of medicine at Dundee. “They are the first and most seriously affected by air pollution but it can affect us all.” The findings come amid growing concern about the illegal levels of air pollution in the UK and the impact on people’s health – particularly children.
Greens win court case seeking stronger air pollution rules for brick makers |- A federal appeals court on Friday ruled that parts of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) latest air pollution rule for brick makers don’t go far enough. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit accepted arguments from environmental groups, saying that the EPA acted improperly when it downplayed cancer risks from certain pollutants and set low pollutant thresholds for hydrogen chloride and hydrogen fluoride emissions. The three-judge panel also completely rejected arguments from the brick and tile industries that the 2015 rule was too strong. Although the Obama administration wrote the rule and denied petitions in 2016 to rewrite it, the Trump administration defended it in court and has so far resisted pressure from the brick and tile industries to change it. Central to the judges’ decision is their conclusion that while the EPA’s final rule might have set acceptable standards, the agency did not properly justify them. “The EPA has not provided a sufficient record to determine that there is no cancer risk,” Judge David Sentelle, named to the bench by President Reagan, wrote for the unanimous court.
Russian Asbestos Company Makes Trump Its Poster Boy– Asbestos killed at least 45,221 Americans between 1999 and 2015, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention found. But President Donald Trump has long expressed his support for the dangerous mineral currently banned by 65 countries.”If we didn’t remove incredibly powerful fire retardant asbestos & replace it with junk that doesn’t work, the World Trade Center would never have burned down,” he tweeted in 2012.Now, Uralasbest, a Russian asbestos producer supported by President Vladimir Putin, is thanking Trump for his support.In a June 25 Facebook post reported by The Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO) and the Environmental Working Group (EWG) Wednesday, the company displayed an image of its product in plastic wrap stamped with Trump’s face.The image was surrounded by a seal reading “APPROVED BY DONALD TRUMP, 45TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES,” according to a translation by ADAO and EWG. “Donald is on our side!” the post accompanying the image began.
Cement producers are developing a plan to reduce CO2 emissions – The World Cement Association recently held its first-ever global climate change forum, where industry leaders and scientists discussed strategies to reduce the industry’s carbon footprint. It will help inform the development of a climate action plan, which the WCA intends to release in September, aimed at outlining pathways for low-carbon cement production. Cement is the most widely used man-made material in existence – it forms concrete when mixed with water, and is used in the construction of everything from buildings and bridges to roads and sidewalks and all kinds of other infrastructure. But while cement has largely shaped the modern built environment, it’s also a massive source of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. It single-handedly accounts for about 7 percent of all global carbon emissions, according to estimates from the International Energy Agency.
Cosmic Rays Penetrate Airplanes Over The South Pacific – Last month, flight attendants got some bad news. According to a new study from researchers at Harvard University, the crews of commercial airlines face an elevated risk of cancer compared to members of the general population. A likely reason: cosmic rays. High energy particles from space hitting the top of Earth’s atmosphere create a spray of secondary radiation that penetrates the walls of airplanes flying above ~20,000 feet. On June 19th, Spaceweather.com and students of Earth to Sky Calculus flew from California to New Zealand to launch a series of space weather balloons–part of our ongoing program to map cosmic rays around the globe. Naturally, we took our radiation sensors onboard the airplane. Here is what we measured: Within minutes after takeoff from Los Angeles, radiation in the passenger compartment increased 25-fold and remained high until we landed again in Brisbane 13 hours later. Peak dose rates were almost 40 times greater than on the ground below. In total, we absorbed a whole body dose approximately equal to a panoramic dental X-ray.
Trump Pardons Oregon Ranchers Whose Imprisonment Sparked Deadly 41-Day Standoff – President Trump pardoned a father and son from Oregon on Tuesday who were imprisoned after setting fire to federal land during what were intended to be controlled burns. The imprisonment – which followed a multi-decade feud with the federal government, resulted in approximately 100-150 armed militia members taking control of a closed wildlife park headquarters in a 41-day standoff led by three brothers from the Cliven Bundy family. Read more about the case here.76-year-old Dwight Hammond and his son Steven Hammond, 49, were convicted of arson in 2012 for fires burned on federal land in 2001 and 2006 and originally sentenced to three months and one year respectively. In October 2015, however, an appellate judge ruled that the sentences were too short based on federal minimum sentencing laws of five years, and re-sentenced to serve out the longer terms.The resentencing sparked protests led by the cattle ranching Bundy family and others, who took up arms and occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near the Southeastern Oregon ranch owned by the Hammonds from Jan 2 to Febn 11, 2016. During the standoff, FBI agent W. Joseph Astarita reportedly began firing off shots during the arrest of Robert “LaVoy” Finicum. The agent was later accused of falsely denying he fired the shots at Finicum or his truck, and pleaded not guilty to two counts of obstruction of justice and three counts of making a false statement. Finicum was killed in the incident.
Wyoming Expands Controversial Wolf Hunting Season – The Wyoming Game and Fish Commission approved an expanded wolf hunting season Wednesday, with a goal of reducing the population to the bare minimum required to keep it off the endangered species list, Defenders of Wildlife reported. The 2018 season expands on 2017’s season, which was the first in Wyoming since a 2017 appeals court removed Wyoming wolves from protections under the Endangered Species Act and allowed the state to take control of the population, The Associated Press (AP) reported.”The Wyoming Game and Fish Department and Commission continue to focus on reducing the wolf population toward the bare minimum. Wolves are an important component of Wyoming’s natural heritage, and should be managed toward achieving healthy and abundant populations across large landscapes so that they may perform their important natural role,” Rockies & Plains Director at Defenders of Wildlife Jonathan Proctor said in a statement.The 2018 season will allow hunters to kill a total of 58 wolves, a 14 wolf increase from the 2017 allowance of 44. It will also start one month earlier, in September, and allow individual hunters to kill up to two wolves, AP reported. There are currently around 350 wolves in Wyoming, 210 of which live in areas of the state where hunting is permitted. The remaining wolves live in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, the National Elk Refuge and the Wind River Indian Reservation, where hunting is prohibited.State officials want to reduce the 210 wolves in their jurisdiction down to 160, citing concerns about wolves preying on livestock.
House Republicans Launch Extinction Bills to Cripple Endangered Species Act – Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives announced on Thursday a series of bills aimed at profoundly gutting the Endangered Species Act, including provisions making it almost impossible for imperiled species to gain protection and giving states that often oppose endangered species protection veto power over those decisions.In addition, the bills would turn over recovery efforts to states that often lack the funding or regulatory structure to ensure species’ survival, let alone recovery.”These bills will absolutely push wildlife over the edge and into extinction,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Republicans are turning their back on the most vulnerable species in the country just to please polluters and other powerful interests. It’s disgusting and repugnant.”More than 75 legislative attacks have been launched against the Endangered Species Act since Trump took office – and more than 300 since 2011, when Republicans took over the U.S. House of Representatives.Today’s attacks are being led by Utah Rep. Rob Bishop, Arkansas Rep. Bruce Westerman, Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar, New Mexico Rep. Steve Pearce and other House Republicans beholden to oil and gas and other extractive industries.Among the bills, Rep. Westerman’s “Petition Act” would require the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to declare a petition backlog if it is presented with too many species in need of protection and then suspend any deadlines responding to those petitions and prohibit consideration of any subsequently filed.”The problem isn’t a backlog of petitions, it’s a backlog of species that desperately need help and a government that hasn’t moved fast enough t o prevent their extinction,” Greenwald said. “If Representative Westerman and his patrons in the oil and gas industry truly wanted to see the backlog addressed and extinction avoided, they would provide the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service more money to help the many species waiting for protection, species like American wolverines and lesser prairie chickens.”
Wildfires, Record Highs Scorch California – Wildfires continued to burn across California this weekend, abetted by record high temperatures that caused power outages affecting thousands of customers in Los Angeles, CNN reported Sunday. “Friday’s record-setting heat led to unprecedented peak electricity demand,” the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power said, according to CNN. 34,500 customers lost power, about 2.5 percent of Los Angeles customers. That 2.5 percent was forced to endure the record-breaking heat wave without air conditioning or fans. Downtown Los Angeles hit 108 degrees Fahrenheit Friday, breaking its daytime temperature record of 94 degrees, set in 1992. University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) thermometers also recorded a record-breaking high of 111 degrees, according to CNN. The National Weather Service (NWS) also reported record highs on Friday of 114 at the Hollywood Burbank Airport, 117 at the Van Nuys Airport, 117 in Ramona and 114 in Santa Ana, The New York Times reported. Further south, the San Diego NWS said Friday’s temperature of 120 degrees in Chino might be the highest temperature ever recorded temperature by the Automated Surface Observing Systems (ASOS) in the valley or coastal areas of Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino or San Diego counties. The record temperatures were a break from historical patterns that usually see Southern California reach its highest temperatures in September and October, according to The New York Times.
State of California reeling from record high temperatures, early wildfire season – An extreme high-pressure region led to record setting high temperatures last weekend across the state of California. The high temperatures led to mass power outages along with a series of devastating wildfires. All-time record temperatures were recorded in the Los Angeles area in particular. Van Nuys regional airport recorded a temperature of 117 degrees Fahrenheit (47.2 degrees Celsius), while the University of California Los Angeles recorded a temperature of 111 degrees Fahrenheit (43.9 degrees Celsius). The record high temperatures led to peak electrical usage as well. According to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP), energy demand in Los Angeles reached an all-time July high of 6,256 megawatts on Friday, breaking the previous record set in 2006 of 6,165 megawatts. According to DWP, more than 32,800 households were without power on Friday, while 20,000 of those remained without power into Saturday. Southern California Edison reported that 18,000 of their customers were without power due to the heat wave. Most significantly, the hot temperatures led to a series of wildfires across the state. In the area of San Bernardino, a two-hour drive east of Los Angeles, the Valley Fire has burned through more than 1,000 acres after it started on Friday afternoon. The fire forced the evacuation of more than 1,000 residents in the small community of Forest Falls and is only about 5 percent contained as of Sunday. The West Fire burning in the Cuyamaca Mountains near San Diego tore through 504 acres and destroyed several homes; 2,400 residents were forced to evacuate the area. The largest of the weekend fires was the Klamathon Fire near the border of Oregon. That fire is now responsible for at least one death, and as of Saturday had burned through 22,000 acres. The fire is now 20 percent contained. The Holiday Fire in the Santa Barbara community of Goleta was nearly impossible for firefighters to contain Friday night, prompting thousands to evacuate. In addition to high temperatures, the high-pressure front brought hot, dry, gale force winds, a regional weather phenomenon known as “sundowner” winds. These winds were so strong that helicopters and planes were unable to fly over and deliver water and fire retardant chemicals to the blazes.
Record Heat-Wave Sends SoCal Electricity Prices Soaring — The second day of a dangerous heat wave brought record-high temperatures across Southern California, and sent spot electricity prices soaring to two-year highs. As Bloomberg reports, electricity prices in Southern California averaged $552.19 a megawatt-hour in the hour ended 3 p.m. local time, the highest since August 31, 2016, as people blasted their air conditioners to keep cool.The National Weather Service declared an excessive heat warning for the region, and California’s grid operator asked transmission operators to restrict maintenance in anticipation of high demand. As The LA Times reports, among the places that hit record-high temperatures were Van Nuys Airport (117 degrees), Burbank Airport (114), UCLA (111) and Santa Ana (114). Peak energy demand climbed to 6,256 megawatts Friday, knocking down the previous July record of 6,165 megawatts set in 2006 and making it the fifth-highest peak demand recorded in the city’s history. Consumers were urged to reduce their electricity usage from 2 p.m. to 9 p.m., the hours when high use is typical.The National Weather Service predicted another hot day Sunday, though slightly less oppressive than Saturday, but power outages continue…
Record heat put thousands of Californians in the dark Friday. Scientists predicted this from climate change. — Temperatures shot up over 110 degrees in Southern California on Friday, obliterating all kinds of long-standing heat records, and the lights went out for tens of thousands of customers. Californians were powerless, without air conditioning, in the hottest weather many had ever experienced. Climate scientists have known this was coming, and it may only be the beginning.“We studied this a long time ago . . . now our projections are becoming reality,” tweeted Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University.In 2006, Hayhoe and colleagues published the study “Climate, Extreme Heat, and Electricity Demand in California” in the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology.“Over the twenty-first century, the frequency of extreme-heat events for major cities in heavily air-conditioned California is projected to increase rapidly,” the study said. It warned that as temperatures soared, electricity demand would exceed supply.Friday’s weather and the resulting blackouts illustrated their point.“Skyrocketing electricity demand due to Friday’s triple-digit temperatures triggered power outages around Los Angeles that are still affecting about 34,500 residences and businesses,” the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday afternoon. “Peak energy demand climbed to 6,256 megawatts on Friday, knocking down the previous July record of 6,165 megawatts set in 2006,” which happened to be the same year the Hayhoe study was published.
Hundreds of customers are still without power as hot and angry Angelenos fume at the DWP — LA Times – Before the scorching heat descended on Los Angeles last week, the Department of Water and Power assured residents it had “adequate resources” to meet the electrical demands of their air conditioners and refrigerators as temperatures rose. It did, in fact, have enough power to go around, utility officials said Monday, after tens of thousands of people had suffered outages. But officials said that in many neighborhoods, its aging infrastructure could not handle the surging demand for electricity as Angelenos ran their air conditioning day and night. Tens of thousands of people lost electricity as Los Angeles baked in sizzling heat this weekend, leaving many residents fuming as they went days without power. Some complained that the utility gave them scant information as they debated whether to bunk with friends or family, board their dogs or spring for a hotel room to avoid the overbearing heat. “It’s not so much that power has been out for 36 hours, which is horrible, it’s the lack of communication,” Miracle Mile resident Evan Wolf said Sunday. More than 80,000 people were affected at some time by the power outages, which had left 46,000 customers without electricity at their worst point, said DWP spokesman Joseph Ramallo. Peak electricity use reached 6,256 megawatts Friday – a record for a July day – and exceeded 5,700 megawatts Saturday, making it the second-highest weekend day in Los Angeles history, according to the utility.
Harvard study finds that during heat waves, people can’t think straight – Ever feel during one of these recent sweltering days that it’s just so hot you can’t think straight?Well, maybe you can’t.Harvard researchers say that they studied students in dorms with and without air conditioning and during a heat wave. They found that the students suffering through the heat performed worse on a series of cognitive tests. The researchers from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health published their results Tuesday in the journal PLOS Medicine. Most research on the health effects of heat has focused on vulnerable groups such as the elderly. That may have created the perception that most people aren’t affected by heat waves, Jose Guillermo Cedeño-Laurent, research fellow at Harvard Chan School and lead author of the study, said in a statement from the university. Researchers studied 44 students in Boston in their late teens and early 20s. Twenty-four lived in air-conditioned buildings. The other 20 lived in buildings that did not have air conditioning.Knowing how the heat affects other groups is critical, he said, “considering that in many cities, such as Boston, the number of heat waves is projected to increase due to climate change.” Extreme heat is the leading cause of death of all meteorological phenomena in the United States, the researchers said. Global temperatures are on the rise. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says 2017 was the third-warmest year ever recorded globally, while 2016 was the warmest, and 2015 was the second-warmest.
Phoenix Tries To Reverse Its ‘Silent Storm’ Of Heat Deaths – There is a moment as heatstroke sets in when the body, no longer able to cool itself, stops sweating. Joey Azuela remembers it well. Azuela collapsed in the parking lot. By the time the ambulance arrived, the asphalt had singed his arms and legs, causing second-degree burns. His mother, Alicia Andazola, arrived at the emergency room to find her son covered in ice. His body temperature was approaching 108 degrees. Doctors removed Azuela’s blood with a machine to cool it. “His organs started failing,” she says. “We weren’t sure for the first couple of days if he was going to make it.” More than 155 people died from heat-related causes in the Phoenix area last year, a new record in a place where the number of such deaths has been on the rise. Former Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton deemed it a public health crisis, and the city has launched an overhaul of how it prepares for and deals with extreme heat. Just as other places prepare for hurricanes, Phoenix aims to create a model program for coping with the temperature spikes and heat waves that scientists say are becoming more common across the country as the climate warms. That effort includes trying to actually lower the temperature of the city.Already, more people die from heat-related causes in the U.S. than from all other extreme weather events. And as with other disasters, the most vulnerable are the elderly, the sick and the poor. Extreme heat is certainly not new for Phoenix, and many cities are taking steps to cope with higher temperatures. But Phoenix has the distinction of having more than 100 days a year that are above 100 degrees. Headlines of people succumbing to heat – on trails and streets, in cars and homes – are a tragic staple of summer. And the problem is getting worse. Already, the city has six more days above 110 degrees than it did in 1970, although the all-time record of 122 degrees has held since 1990. And, as elsewhere, nights are warming even faster than days. Hartman says nighttime low temperatures in the Phoenix area have gone up an average 9 degrees in recent decades.
Extreme Heat Wave in Quebec May Have Killed 70 – The death toll in Quebec’s heat wave last week may have reached as many as 70, officials said Tuesday, as temperatures exceeded 100 degrees F.Thirty-four of those deaths were in Montreal, where temperatures soared 20 degrees above normal and CBC reports that the morgue became so overcrowded it had to partner with a local funeral home for extra storage. Officials say most of the deaths were women and men over the age of 50 living alone in apartments with no air conditioning, and over 60 percent had an underlying medical condition. The increasing frequency and intensity of heat waves is among the most obvious and well-documented effects of climate change.As reported by Canada’s National Observer:Bouts of extreme heat are expected to become more frequent, notes a 2018 report from Canada’s federal and provincial auditors general, with their evaluation concluding that governments had under-delivered on commitments to deal with climate change. The report states that “by 2100, the number of days above 30 degrees Celsius in Canadian cities is expected to double and a one-in-20-year hottest day may become a one-in-two-year event.”
An Arctic heatwave pushed temperatures in Siberia anomalously high – Following 2016 and 2017, 2018 is likely going to set another heat record in many parts of the world. Already, the first six months have set high-temperature records for the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported yesterday (July 9). The extreme weather in the US, however, pales in comparison to the abnormalities along the Arctic coast. Last week, Nick Humphrey, a meteorologist living in Nebraska, wrote on his blog that temperatures rose to 90°F (32°C) in northern Siberia – some 40°F warmer than average for this time of year.Other parts of the extreme north are hot, too – cities in Scotland and Northern Ireland are also hitting records of almost 90°F, the Washington Post reports. In Quebec, Canada, excessive heat reaching similar temperatures killed 70 people last week, and thousands were left without electricity due to overheating power wires.“It is absolutely incredible and really one of the most intense heat events I’ve ever seen for so far north,” Humphrey writes.What’s even more alarming, though, are the long-term effects of these high temperatures in this particular region that eventually extend down into lower latitudes. As temperatures remain above average, Arctic sea ice – already thin from weeks of abnormally high temperatures – melts, Humphrey explains. Instead of the sun shining on light white ice, it reflects down onto dark ocean water, which absorbs some of the heat that the ice would normally reflect. Collectively, this process speeds up the warming of the Arctic, called the Arctic Amplification, and ends up weakening the polar jet stream, which usually protects lower latitudes from the cold temperatures up north. The result? More extreme weather in both directions – which could mean more repeats of the extreme cold North American faced this winter as a result of an “arctic outbreak” of freezing air.
Africa’s Hottest Reliably Measured Temperature on Record: 124.3°F on Thursday in Algeria — A historic heat wave in northern Africa on Thursday, July 5, brought Africa its hottest reliably measured temperature on record: 124.3°F (51.3°C), at Ouargla, Algeria. Ouargla (population 190,000) is the capital city of Ouargla Province in the Algerian Sahara Desert, at an elevation of 719 feet (219 meters). The key word here is ‘reliably’. Many hotter temperatures have been reported in Africa during the colonial period – including the official African record of 131°F (55.0°C) at Kebili, Tunisia on July 7, 1931 – but all of these hotter temperatures have serious credibility issues, as explained by wunderground weather historian Christopher C. Burt below. According to weather records researcher Maximiliano Herrera, the previous all-time African record for reliably measured maximum temperature was 123.3°F (50.7°C) on July 13, 1961 at Semara, Western Sahara. His research shows that the hottest temperature reliably measured in Kebili, Tunisia was 119.3°F (48.5°C) in July 2005, with the second highest reliably measured temperature coming this Thursday, at 118.8°F (48.2°C)–a far cry from the official record of 131°F (55.0°C)!
We’ve entered the era of ‘fire tsunamis’ — On Thursday, one observer described a “tsunami” of flames overnight at the Spring Creek fire near La Veta in the south-central part of the state. And you can’t stop tsunamis. “It was a perfect firestorm,” Ben Brack, incident commander for the Spring Creek fire, told the Denver Post. “You can imagine standing in front of a tsunami or tornado and trying to stop it from destroying homes. A human response is ineffective.” Pyrocumulus clouds, a sure indicator of intense heat release from wildfire, were clearly visible from 100 miles away. The fire is just five percent contained and covers more than 100,000 acres – larger than the city limits of Denver – making it the third-largest wildfire in state history. A 300-foot tower of flames wiped out an entire subdivision, according to the Post. Officials aren’t yet sure how many homes were torched overnight (they’re too busy fighting the fire to count), but the latest available number is in the hundreds. No one has been injured or killed so far. The official term for the hellish meteorological event that hit La Veta is a “firestorm,” a self-propelling explosion of flame generated by strong and gusty winds from a particularly intense fire over extremely dry terrain. When a fire gets hot enough, it can generate its own weather conditions and wind speeds can approach hurricane force, drying out the surrounding land. In just a few hours on Wednesday night, the Spring Creek fire swelled by nearly 20,000 acres, with airborne sparks igniting new fires nearly one mile downwind. Months of unusually dry and warm weather have combined to push Colorado’s fire risk to “historic levels,” leading the state to close millions of acres of public lands. Two-thirds of the state is in drought. It’s part of a pattern of intense fire danger currently plaguing most of the western United States, which is unlikely to fade anytime soon. Over the past two decades, more than 800 million of Colorado’s trees have been consumed by bugs – a phenomenon more common worldwide as warmer temperatures are helping plant-eating pests flourish in previously cool places. To top it off, this past winter was one of the warmest and driest ever recorded, “the stuff of nightmares,” according to local experts. Rivers are running at about half their normal levels, and the summer monsoon rains still haven’t arrived. It’s clear that the state’s steady and transformative slide into a drier future has already begun. This week’s firestorm is terrifying proof.
Japan floods: At least 60 killed in deluges and landslides – Flooding and landslides have killed at least 60 people and left dozens missing in western areas of Japan. Most of the deaths have occurred in Hiroshima prefecture, which has been hit by torrential rain since Thursday. Hundreds of homes have been damaged. About 1.5 million people have been ordered to leave their homes and three million more advised to do so. Authorities say it could potentially be the worst weather disaster Japan has seen in decades. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the authorities were facing a “race against time” to save and evacuate people. Thousands of police, firefighters and soldiers are taking part in search-and-rescue operations. Some of the victims have been buried alive by landslides, Japan’s Kyodo news agency reports. In the town of Motoyama, about 600km (370 miles) west of the capital Tokyo, 583mm (23in) of rain fell between Friday morning and Saturday morning, Japan’s meteorological agency said. More rain is expected over the next few days. Kyoto, about 300km to the east of Hiroshima, has also been hit by downpours. Local resident Manabu Takeshita told the Japan Times website: “Anybody living near the river has got to be nervous because typhoon season is just really starting.”
Japan floods: At least 100 dead after heavy rain and landslides – The rain may have stopped in Japan, but the country is facing a long recovery process after floods and landslides killed at least 90 people in the southwest. An additional 13 people have since died from cardiac arrests, raising the total death toll to 103, according to Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga. With emergency rain warnings lifted, the country is now turning its focus to search and rescue efforts. Police, fire departments and the military are scouring affected areas for the dozens of people still missing or unaccounted for.While authorities search for the missing, residents begin the cleanup, wading through flooded houses and streets. Thousands of houses have been damaged, and even the ones that stand intact have been impacted. Nearly 17,000 households are still without power, and phone lines are down across multiple prefectures.Further complicating repair efforts is the fact that many railroads and highways are closed, too flooded to operate, placing many affected areas out of reach.Rains began late last week and intensified over the weekend. Rivers overflowed, landslides crushed buildings, and cars were swept away by floodwater. “The record rainfalls in various parts of the country have caused rivers to burst their banks, and triggered large scale floods and landslides in several areas,” Cabinet Secretary Suga said Sunday.
Japan floods: 155 killed after torrential rain and landslides — At least 155 people have died in floods and landslides triggered by torrential rain in western Japan, says the government. It is the highest death toll caused by rainfall that Japan has seen in more than three decades. Rescuers are now digging through mud and rubble in a race to find survivors, as dozens are still missing. About two million people have been evacuated from the region after rivers burst their banks. Authorities have opened up school halls and gymnasiums to those who have been displaced by the rainfall. There remains a risk of landslides, with rain-sodden hilltops liable to collapse. “I have asked my family to prepare for the worst,” 38-year-old Kosuke Kiyohara, who has not heard from his sister and her two sons, told AFP. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has cancelled an overseas trip to deal with the flood crisis. More than 70,000 rescue workers, including the fire service and the army, are involved in the relief effort. Flood warnings are still in effect for some of the worst hit areas, including the Okayama prefecture in the southern part of Japan.
Dozens Still Missing In Japan Floods As Death Toll Reaches 176 – The death toll from record-breaking floods in western Japan has reached at least 176 as rescue workers searched for dozens missing in hardest-hit Hiroshima and Okayama prefectures.Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga announced the death toll Wednesday, The Japan Times reported. As of Tuesday afternoon, more than 50 people were still listed as unaccounted for, the newspaper said.A new evacuation was ordered Tuesday for the town of Fuchu, after the Enoki River overflowed the previous day, the newspaper said. According to the Times, “About 1,000 rescuers continued to search in flooded areas of the city of Kurashiki, Okayama Prefecture, for people trapped in their homes. More than 20 people died in the city after river dikes collapsed, inundating around 4,600 homes.”Tens of thousands of rescue and recovery workers were digging through the debris as the search entered its fifth day, The Associated Press reports. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited the flood-ravaged region, promising that his government would do whatever it could to bring a return to normalcy. “We’re still cleaning up. But I’d guess that in order to recover, it’s going to take at least a year, and cost hundreds of millions of yen or more,” Kyodo reports:“Although the government has yet to fully establish the extent of the damage, some 347 homes were totally or partially destroyed and 9,868 homes were flooded as of Tuesday morning, according to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency. “The figures are expected to rise substantially, since municipal authorities have yet to finish their own damage assessments.”
Deadly Heat Wave Threatens Japan in Aftermath of Torrential Rains – Severe heat poses another health risk for survivors still trapped inside their homes after deadly torrential rains flooded parts of Japan this week. After one of the worst natural disasters in the nation’s recent history, rescue workers on Friday are still trying to locate missing people in parts of western Japan as temperatures soar. At least nine people have already been reported dead during a heat wave with temperatures as high as 106 degrees Fahrenheit, which hit just as authorities began to assess the damage from flooding that poured muddy water into the streets and spurred dangerous mudslides throughout the western part of the country. As of Friday, there are still 7,000 people living in shelters, and 250,000 others who are at home without running water, The Guardian reported. Sanitation is increasingly becoming a concern for those residents who are without running water, unable to wash their hands or flush their toilets. Garbage has piled up in the streets, and the Environment Ministry announced that it has started dispatching trucks to collect the some of the wreckage, Japan News reported. The financial toll of the disaster is still uncertain, but the agriculture ministry said Friday it anticipates the damages will amount to at least $207 million. As the cleanup progresses, the total cost will likely increase.
Climate change is real — For those skeptical of climate change, we offer last year and this year as evidence that there is something strange going on. Sheets of rain followed by deep spates of heat and drought are the characteristics going back actually far more than two years – in fact, at least to the early 1980s. We are having 100-year floods in Des Moines every five years, and 500-year floods every decade. The century references become almost meaningless.Flooding swept away the voice of the Drake Bulldogs, Larry Cotlar, as he stepped out of his van last weekend. This after rains of one to two inches in the northern reaches of the Des Moines Lobe, but rains that just keep on coming and are whisked through evermore efficient drainage systems that dump into the Raccoon and the Des Moines and turn them turbulent.Where an inch of rain fell on Buena Vista County, about two-tenths of a ton of soil per acre was washed into the Raccoon. That from just one rain. Near Denison the loss from a two-inch rain was 6.5 tons per acre, flowing to the Missouri on its way to St. Louis and ultimately the Gulf of Mexico. To every soil particle phosphorous attaches that overloads the reservoirs and allows toxic algae to bloom. Consider the cumulative effects from that one-inch rain recurring through the season: two-tenths of a ton lost at a time. Just three such rains can displace more soil than can be regenerated in a year. Ten one-inch rains mean we have lost two tons of soil per year, when the soil can only regenerate at half a ton a year. Our wealth and our children’s wealth is eroding with that soil loss. It is affecting crop quality already, and will cause yields to decline over time even with great advances in crop science. That, in turn, will affect livestock production and the cost of food. Climate change in Iowa is destroying property, polluting our water and even causing loss of life. This is the reality of climate change in Iowa. It is in the here and now. The longer we ignore it, the more dearly we pay.
When the ground opened: horizontal landslides empty Kenyan villages (Reuters) – The heavy rain that pounded Kenya earlier this year brought more than just flooding to the village of Gitugu: it has torn apart the very ground beneath people’s homes and fields, making the village unliveable. Mary Muthoni, who was forced to abandon her home, said she had seen nothing like it in her 65 years. “You wake up in the morning only to find that part of your land has literally moved to a neighbor’s homestead,” she said. “Before you know it, a crack starts developing right in the middle of the house, and in two days the house breaks into two parts, and suddenly some of the cracks turn into water springs.” When the Thomson Reuters Foundation visited Gitugu in June, some of the cracks inside homes were 15 centimeters (6 inches) wide. In the fields, particularly those on a slight incline, slippages of several meters were visible. As a result, the children have been taken to neighboring villages, and many residents have abandoned their homes and land, taking their livestock with them. In a matter of months, Gitugu, a tea-growing village about 75 kilometers (47 miles) north of the capital Nairobi, has become a ghost town. The same has happened in other villages in the area. After viewing images of the phenomenon in Murang’a county, Daniel Olago, a geology professor at the University of Nairobi, said it was likely a “translational slide” – a type of landslide in which the land mass moves along a near-flat surface. Heavy rain that saturates the soil – an increasing worry as climate change brings more extreme rainfall – is often to blame, he said, and in this case looks to be the likely cause. Earthquakes and volcanoes can also trigger such events. And although deluges have in the past caused landslides on steep slopes in the area, he said, translational slides here are unusual.
Great Barrier Reef may be dying: Scientists send urgent warning -Scientists are sending up flares, once again, to warn the world that the Great Barrier Reef could face a tragic end sooner rather than later. Indeed, a new report published by the Climate Council adds to the mounting research suggesting that the world’s largest reef system – one that is even visible from outer space – is likely to reach an irreparable state in the next few decades if greenhouse gas pollution levels are not curbed.The biggest concern, according to the report, is the pace at which the reef’s coral is bleaching. Coral bleaching is what happens when water temperatures rise, or coral is exposed to runoff and pollution. When this happens, coral proceeds to eject algae which causes the coral to turn white – hence the name “bleaching.” According to the National Ocean Service, bleaching does not always lead to the death of coral. It can recover, but only if it is no longer exposed to the stressful state that caused it to bleach in the first place. When bleached, the coral is vulnerable, and can eventually die if it stays in such a stressful environment.Experts predict bleaching could occur every two years if greenhouse gas pollution rates remain the same as today.“By 2034, the extreme ocean temperatures that led to the 2016 and 2017 bleaching events may occur every two years under current greenhouse gas pollution rates, effectively destroying the Great Barrier Reef,” the report explains. To put the alarming rate into perspective, in the late 20th century – according to the report – large-scale bleaching occurred on average every 27 years. Today, the average rate is around once every six years. An increase to every two years could be catastrophic.
Orcas of the Pacific Northwest Are Starving and Disappearing – NYT – For the last three years, not one calf has been born to the dwindling pods of black-and-white killer whales spouting geysers of mist off the coast in the Pacific Northwest.Normally four or five calves would be born each year among this fairly unique urban population of whales – pods named J, K and L. But most recently, the number of orcas here has dwindled to just 75, a 30-year-low in what seems to be an inexorable, perplexing decline.Listed as endangered since 2005, the orcas are essentially starving, as their primary prey, the Chinook, or king salmon, are dying off. Just last month, another one of the Southern Resident killer whales – one nicknamed “Crewser” that hadn’t been seen since last November – was presumed dead by the Center for Whale Research. In March, Gov. Jay Inslee issued an executive order directing state agencies to do more to protect the whales, and in May he convened the Southern Resident Orca Task Force, a group of state, tribal, provincial and federal officials, to devise ways to stem the loss of the beloved regional creature. “I believe we have orcas in our soul in this state,” he said. At another point, he wrote of the whales and Chinook salmon that “the impacts of letting these two species disappear would be felt for generations.” The orcas are also facing a new threat. The recent agreement between the Canadian government and Kinder Morgan to expand the Trans Mountain Pipeline would multiply oil tanker traffic through the orcas’ habitat by seven times, according to some estimates, and expose them to excessive noise and potential spills. Construction is set to begin in August, despite opposition from Governor Inslee and many environmentalists. Following the salmon, they migrate in the Salish Sea to the northern coast of British Columbia and often surface in the south at Puget Sound within sight of downtown Seattle, especially during the spring and summer months. The males, which can weigh up to 22,000 pounds, typically live about 30 years, and females, up to 16,000 pounds, survive longer – up to 50 or 60 years, although one J-pod member, Granny, lived to be 105 years old.
Some Experts Say Icelandic Whaling Company Killed an Endangered Blue Whale – Anti-whaling group Hard to Port posted photos on their Facebook page Tuesday that activist group Sea Shepherd claims show an endangered blue whale recently killed by an Icelandic whaling company, theAustralian ABC News reported Thursday.Kristjan Loftsson, the CEO of the Hvalur hf whaling company that killed the whale, told ABC News Friday that it was in fact a hybrid of a blue and fin whale, which is not protected by the International Whaling Commission.If the whale is a blue whale, it would be the first of its kind intentionally killed since 1978, according to BBC News.”I know a blue whale when I see one and this whale slaughtered by Kristjan Loftsson is a blue whale,” Sea Shepherd Founder Paul Watson said in a statement reported by ABC News.Some scientists agreed with Watson’s assessment.”From the photos, it has all the characteristics of a blue whale,” U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Alaska Fisheries Science Center scientist Dr. Phillip Clapham said in a statement reported by BBC News. “Given that, notably the coloration pattern, there is almost no possibility that an experienced observer would have misidentified it as anything else at sea,” Clapham said.”If this is a blue whale, it would be illegal and a breach and there could be fines and perhaps the company might lose their licence to hunt whales,” Feuerhahn told BBC News.But while a hybrid catch would be better news for the whalers, it isn’t much better for hybrid whales, which Astrid Fuchs from the charity Whale and Dolphin Conservation told BBC News are also extremely rare. “Since 1983, they’ve only recorded five of them,” Fuchs said. Blue whales were decimated by 90 percent during the 20th century, according to ABC News. Iceland and Norway are the only two countries who persist in open, commercial whaling, though Japan also slaughters whales for what it claims are scientific reasons, according to the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
UN Reports One-Third of Fish Caught Wasted — Jerri-lynn Scofield – The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Monday released its biannual report, The State of the World’s Fisheries, this week, reporting that more than one-third of fish caught ever gets eaten and is instead either tossed overboard or rots before it can reach a dinner plate: Despite the technical advances and innovations, many countries, especially less developed economies, still lack adequate infrastructure and services for ensuring fish quality, such as hygienic landing centres, electric power supply, potable water, roads, ice, ice plants, cold rooms, refrigerated transport and appropriate processing and storage facilities. This shortcoming, especially when associated with tropical temperatures, can result in high post-harvest losses, as fish can spoil in the boat, at landing, during storage or processing, on the way to market and while awaiting sale….Throughout the world, post-harvest fish losses are a major concern and occur in most fish distribution chains; an estimated 27 percent of landed fish is lost or wasted between landing and consumption….[W]hen discards prior to landing are included, 35 percent of global catches are lost or wasted and therefore not utilized (FAO report, p. 50, citations omitted.) According to the Guardian: Lasse Gustavsson, executive director of Oceana in Europe, said huge improvements were needed across the fishing industry. “Food waste on a hungry planet is outrageous,” he said. “The fact that one-third of all fish caught goes to waste is a huge cause for concern for global food security.”
An iceberg the size of lower Manhattan just broke off Greenland — Iceberg calving events are among the more epic spectacles on the planet. But rarely have humans been lucky enough to see them happen in real time, much less capture one on camera.A team of New York University (NYU) researchers has now done just that, capturing video footage of a four-mile long iceberg snapping off east Greenland’s Helheim Glacier. The footage is a stark illustration of one of the most important processes reshaping Earth’s coastlines today and in the future. Greenland’s outlet glaciers are like frozen rivers, flowing to sea from the island’s interior. As ice enters the ocean, it raises sea levels, a process that is expected to quicken as Greenland warms. In recent decades, the ice island’s “big three” outlet glaciers – Helheim, Jakobshavn, and Kangerdlussuaq – have sped up substantially, a phenomenon scientists believe is linked to climate change.The new iceberg broke off Helheim over the course of 90 minutes near midnight on June 22. The research team was lucky to bear witness to it while they were out in the field doing routine equipment maintenance. Denise Holland the logistics coordinator for NYU’s Environmental Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, told Earther the scientists were just getting ready to go to sleep when the glacier started making a loud, sustained rumbling noise. She immediately got up and set up her video camera. “It just happened right in front of our eyes,” Holland told Earther. “The amount of ice was astonishing, the noise was astonishing. Nobody was speaking because we were all too hypnotized by this event unfolding.” An animation created for Earther by Delft University of Technology’s Stef Lhermitte (who called the new NYU video “very spectacular”) uses Sentinel-1 satellite data to offer a different perspective. The breakup of Helheim glacier’s front along an existing weakness in late June is visible about halfway up the image:
Watch 10 billion tons of ice fall into the ocean – An enormous, four-mile-long iceberg break, or “calving” event, swept across Greenland’s massive Helheim Glacier last month, a new video has revealed.The event, in which roughly half-mile-high columns of ice break free and tip onto their backs – and later collide downstream and shatter further – was filmed by Denise Holland, the field and logistics manager for New York University’s Environmental Fluid Dynamics Laboratory and NYU Abu Dhabi’s Center for Global Sea Level Change. The event took about 30 minutes. The video above has been sped up to capture the entire event in under two minutes.During the summer in Greenland, breaks from glaciers are common but rarely so large. According to NYU, the area of floating ice created here “would stretch from Lower Manhattan up to Midtown in New York City.”The total amount of ice that fell into the ocean was about 10 billion tons, as the break rippled across the entirety of the glacier’s ice face in half-mile-deep water, said David Holland, a glaciologist at NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematics and NYU Abu Dhabi, and head of the research team.“It’s a complete scene of chaos from berg formation,” David Holland said. “Everything possible to happen happened.”The video captures two types of iceberg creation. First, already-floating parts of the glacier detach and drift away. Next, thicker sections of the glacier that are resting on the seafloor detach, lift up and tip backward as they float to the surface. Helheim Glacier, one of the largest ice streams flowing from the Greenland ice sheet into the ocean, extends almost 100 yards above sea level at its front. But that’s just a tiny fraction of the glacier’s full vertical extent. The large majority of the glacier front is submerged. The fjord in which the glacier rests is about 2,000 to 3,000 feet deep, and the deeper water is warmer than the water at the surface. This undermines the glacier at its lowest point, driving fast retreat. The current break, at about 10 billion tons, represents just over 3 percent of Greenland’s annual ice loss of 286 billion tons, the cumulative result of many losses like this one across many glaciers (as well as large volumes of meltwater spilling directly into the ocean). Each break of 1 billion tons or more is such a massive event that it can create “icequakes” that can be detected far away, as the tipping ice crashes back against the still-attached parts of the glacier.
PIOMAS July 2018 – Arctic Sea Ice by Neven – (map, graphics) What a coincidence. Just like last month, I will have to precede the PIOMAS update with a short news flash that a very strong cyclone is barreling through the Arctic. But this time too, the cyclone will be short-lived, and so it’s not entirely clear whether, on the whole, it will be damaging or beneficial. It has gone further into the Arctic this time.Either way, the cyclone’ has bottomed out at 968 hPa according to Environment Canada, which is just 2 millibar more than last month’s cyclone: With their sub-970 hPa pressures these cyclones come close to the Great Arctic Cyclone of 2012 (963 hPa), but I think they lack in other parameters such as longevity to really deserve the GAC epithet. Nevertheless, to see two of these monsters in June and July in what hasn’t otherwise been a very noteworthy melting season so far, is quite noteworthy. Let’s look at the updated PIOMAS volume numbers. Another month has passed and so here is the updated Arctic sea ice volume graph as calculated by the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS) at the Polar Science Center. After a slightly below average June volume decrease (6199 km3 vs 6217 km3 for the 2007-2017 period), 2018 has dropped to 6th place. The difference with 2017 – lowest on record as of June 30th – has been reduced from 1916 to 1659 km3, but the gap with record-breaker 2012 has grown by a whopping 1097 km3. That’s how much of a difference June can make, which shows how crucial this month is for the melting season. Here’s how the differences with previous years have evolved from last month: Wipneus’ version of the PIOMAS graph shows the 2018 trend line right in the middle of the post-2010 pack, already hinting at which trajectory it may take until September: Even though 2018 isn’t among the very lowest years, the trend line has shot down below the linear trend on the PIOMAS volume anomaly graph:
The Sinister Underbelly of Climate Change Denial — All of the recent weather patterns we’ve been experiencing – locally, as well as globally – are precisely what climate scientists have predicted will accompany climate warming. Extremes will amplify, especially of heat, storms, seasonal precipitation, and drought. But these extremes will be – and have been – piggy-backed on a steady increase in average annual and seasonal temperatures going back to the 1980s, with increases greatest for minimum daily temperatures [3]. Contrary to the claims of conservative demagogues, there is near unanimity about the reality of human-driven climate warming among scientists who have studied climate and climate change. In fact, more than 95% of such scientists agree on this fact [4]. And to claim that such consensus is the result of a conspiracy requires either mind-boggling ignorance about the nature of scientific inquiry or highly disturbing and deeply sinister motives. Yet roughly 30% of Americans don’t believe that climate warming is happening and/or that recent warming is largely caused by human activities [5].People who are more scientifically literate tend to be more trusting of science, put more credence in a scientific consensus, and, as a result, believe that human-driven climate warming is happening [e.g., 6]. So we humans are not completely irrational or craven.But then things get interesting – even disquieting. Even when considering all sorts of psychological and social factors, it turns out that political ideology and affiliation is, at least proximally, a dominant determinant of belief in anthropogenic climate warming [7]. Not religiosity nor as much other worldviews, attitudes, and orientations. In other words, everything else aside, self-identified political conservatives cum Republicans are the most committed disbelievers and, among those, the best educated (paradoxically) the most strident of all [8].
Global warming may be twice what climate models predict – Future global warming may eventually be twice as warm as projected by climate models and sea levels may rise six metres or more even if the world meets the 2°C target, according to an international team of researchers from 17 countries.The findings published last week in Nature Geoscience are based on observational evidence from three warm periods over the past 3.5 million years when the world was 0.5°C-2°C warmer than the pre-industrial temperatures of the 19th Century.The research also revealed how large areas of the polar ice caps could collapse and significant changes to ecosystems could see the Sahara Desert become green and the edges of tropical forests turn into fire dominated savanna.“Observations of past warming periods suggest that a number of amplifying mechanisms, which are poorly represented in climate models, increase long-term warming beyond climate model projections,” said lead author, Prof Hubertus Fischer of the University of Bern. “This suggests the carbon budget to avoid 2°C of global warming may be far smaller than estimated, leaving very little margin for error to meet the Paris targets.”
Climate change will get a whole lot worse before it gets better, according to game theory – It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets any better. According to new research published in Nature, humanity will witness marked sea level rises and frequent killer heatwaves before governments take decisive action against climate change. And to predict the future, mathematicians have turned to game theory. The paper, published by a team of mathematicians, uses game theory to explain why it is so hard to protect the environment, updating it so they could model the effects of climate change, overuse of precious resources and pollution of pristine environments. The bad news is that the model suggests that, when it comes to climate change, things might have to get demonstrably worse before they can get better. The good news, on the other hand, is that game theory could help policymakers to craft new and better incentives to help nations cooperate in international agreements. The researchers used one of the best known social dilemmas in game theory – called the tragedy of the commons – to reach their predictions. The tragedy of the commons was first described in the 19th century by William Forster Lloyd, who analysed the overuse of common land (also known as a “common”) by people who had rights to use it – to graze their sheep, for example – to air the idea that resources that do not clearly belong to an individual or a group are likely to be overexploited, since conserving them isn’t in the interest of the individual. The tragedy of the commons has become one of the most used metaphors among experts to illustrate our chronic inability to sustain a resource that everybody is free to use and, alas, just as free to abuse.
Trump’s cuts in climate-change research spark a global scramble for funds –During Barack Obama’s final year in office, his Administration launched an ambitious, twenty-five-million-dollar partnership with a little-known research organization in Belize called the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre. The goal of the program was to study climate change in the Caribbean and develop strategies to minimize its impact. Scientists consider the region one of the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change; rising sea levels, coral-reef bleaching, and drought threaten the infrastructure and economic health of the Caribbean’s forty-four million people, many of whom depend on tourism and agriculture for their well-being. .After the 2016 Presidential election, the Trump Administration and the Republican-controlled Congress reduced U.S. support for climate-change-related research, causing the Centre’s program and similar initiatives around the world to scramble for funding. A U.S.A.I.D. official told me that American funding for the Centre’s project will end in 2019, instead of in 2020, because of a change in “the Administration’s foreign-policy and national-security priorities.” Under Obama, the United States was the world’s largest donor to the Green Climate Fund – a global reserve fund created to, among other things, help developing countries invest in renewable and low-emission technologies. Obama pledged three billion dollars, a third of which was contributed before he left office. Trump, who has dismissed climate change as a hoax spread by China, has pledged no money to the fund. Earlier this week, the fund’s directorresigned, and some began to question its viability after no new projects were approved at its most recent board meeting.
Trump replacement for Obama climate plan moves forward (AP) – The Trump administration is advancing a proposal that would replace President Barack Obama’s principal attempt to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions with a new rule expected to go easier on the ailing coal industry. The Environmental Protection Agency disclosed Tuesday that it sent the new rule to the White House for review. The document itself was not released, but President Donald Trump has been outspoken in his desire to prop up coal by rolling back what he considers burdensome regulations. Burning coal to generate electricity is one of the primary sources of greenhouse gases blamed for climate change.The submission of the rule to the White House coincided with former coal industry lobbyist Andrew Wheeler taking the helm of the EPA, following last week’s resignation of Administrator Scott Pruitt amid multiple ethics scandals. The new rule is expected to shift the focus on reducing climate emissions, dropping the industrywide mandates of the Obama era and instead encouraging improvements in efficiency at individual power plants, said Jeff Holmstead, former EPA assistant administrator and now an attorney for the energy industry.Holmstead acknowledged such an approach would result in fewer emission reductions and said the benefits to the struggling coal industry would be limited.”At the margin it may be helpful, but I don’t think this was intended to be, nor will it be, a big shot in the arm for coal,” he said. EPA spokeswoman Molly Block said in a statement that the agency intends to move expeditiously on the replacement rule. She did not provide a timeline.
CO2 Emissions Hit 67-Year Low In Trump’s America, As Rest-Of-World Rises – We suspect you won’t hear too much about this from the liberal mainstream media, or the environmental movement, or even Al Gore – but, according to the latest energy report from The Energy Information Administration (EIA), under President Trump, per-capita carbon dioxide emissions are now the lowest they’ve been in nearly seven decades. Even more interesting is the fact that US carbon emissions dropped while emissions from energy consumption for the rest of the world increased by 1.6%, after little or no growth for the three years from 2014 to 2016. The U.S. emitted 15.6 metric tons of CO2 per person in 1950. After rising for decades, it’s declined in recent years to 15.8 metric tons per person in 2017, the lowest measured levels in 67 years. And as The Daily Caller reports, in the last year, U.S. emissions fell more than 0.5% while European emissions rose 2.5% (and Chinese emissions rose 1.6% along with Hong Kong’s 7.0% surge), according to BP world energy data – an ironic turn of events given Europe’s shaming of Trump for leaving the Paris climate accord.
Chart of the day: In 2017, US had largest decline in CO2 emissions in the world for 9th time this century – Publications – AEI — From the June 2018 BP Statistical Review of Global Energy (67th edition) here are some details on C02 emissions in 2017:
- 1. Global CO2 emissions from energy in 2017 grew by 1.6% (and 426.4 million tons, see data here), rebounding from the stagnant volumes during 2014-2016, and faster than the 10-year average of 1.3%.
- 2. Declines in CO2 emissions in 2017 were led by the US (-0.5% and 42 million tons, see chart above). This is the ninth time in this century that the US has had the largest decline in emissions in the world. This also was the third consecutive year that emissions in the US declined, though the fall was the smallest over the last three years.
- 3. Carbon emissions from energy use from the US are the lowest since 1992, the year that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) came into existence. The next largest decline was in Ukraine (-10.1% and 28.1 tons).
- 4. The largest increase in carbon emissions in 2017 came from China (1.6% and 119 tons), a reversal from the past three years when the largest increases in emissions came from India. China’s emissions in 2017 were 0.3% higher than the previous peak in 2014. China has had the world’s largest increments in carbon emission every year this century except in four years – 2000 and between 2014-16. The next highest increment came from India where emissions rose by 4.4% (93.2 million tons, see chart), though lower than its 10-year average (6% p.a.).
- 5. Together, China and India accounted for nearly half (212.2 million tons) of the increase in global carbon emissions (426.4 million tons). EU emissions were also up (1.5% and 42.4 million tons, see chart) with just Spain accounting for 44% of the increase in EU emissions. Among other EU members, UK and Denmark reported the lowest carbon emissions in their history.
Natural gas production releases more methane than estimated: Why that matters – Natural gas is displacing coal, which could help fight climate change because burning it produces fewer carbon emissions. But producing and transporting natural gas releases methane, a greenhouse gas that also contributes to climate change. How big is the methane problem? For the past five years, our research teams at Colorado State University have made thousands of methane emissions measurements at more than 700 facilities in the production, gathering, processing, transmission and storage segments of the natural gas supply chain. Our work, along with numerous other research projects, was recently folded into a new study published in the journal Science. This comprehensive snapshot suggests that methane emissions from oil and gas operations are much higher than current EPA estimates. One way to quantify the magnitude of the methane leakage is to divide the amount of methane emitted each year by the total amount of methane pumped out of the ground each year from natural gas and oil wells. The EPA currently estimates this methane leak rate to be 1.4 percent. That is, for every cubic foot of natural gas drawn from underground reservoirs, 1.4 percent of it is lost into the atmosphere. This study synthesized the results from a five-year series of 16 studies coordinated by environmental advocacy group Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), which involved more than 140 researchers from over 40 institutions and 50 natural gas companies. The effort brought together scholars based at universities, think tanks and the industry itself to make the most accurate estimate possible of the total amount of methane emitted from all U.S. oil and gas operations. It integrated data from a multitude of recent studies with measurements made on the ground and from the air. All told, based on the results of the new study, the U.S. oil and gas industry is leaking 13 million metric tons of methane each year, which means the methane leak rate is 2.3 percent. This 60 percent difference between our new estimate and the EPA’s current one can have profound climate consequences. Methane is a highly potent greenhouse gas, with more than 80 times the climate warming impact of carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after it is released.
Sources of banned CFCs found through their advertising – A couple months ago, an atmospheric study revealed that someone had started producing an ozone-depleting pollutant that had been banned under an international agreement to protect the ozone layer. The new source was preventing the chemical from dissipating on schedule. Although the researchers were careful about what they could conclude from regional measurements, they found that eastern Asia was likely the source. Now, a UK-based NGO called the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) says that it has uncovered a number of Chinese companies that are responsible. If you’re expecting an elaborate infiltration and undercover sting… adjust your expectations. The investigation seems to have been shockingly easy, with the culprits’ representatives strangely amenable to detailing their illegal operations. The EIA started with a simple Internet search, which turned up a few companies that were apparently advertising sales of the banned chemical, known as CFC-11. Like other CFCs, 11 can be used as a refrigerant or a propellant in aerosol spray cans. But it was also widely use to “inflate” foam insulation, and that seems to be the market where at least some of its illicit use has continued. The EIA team contacted 25 companies that manufacture foam insulation or the chemical mixtures used in the process. Of those, 21 responded, and 18 said they use CFC-11. (It’s not clear how the EIA team represented its inquiries.) In fact, the companies indicated that they thought just about everyone in their industry was using it except for the largest and most accountable companies that might handle about 10 percent of total production. Some companies were unwilling to name their suppliers – though they said the suppliers moved frequently to avoid scrutiny. But eight sellers or producers of CFC-11 are identified in the EIA report. These companies, too, seemed almost eager to spill the beans and explain that they made very little of the legal alternative to CFC-11. One company described its habit of shutting down production whenever government inspectors came around thanks to a heads-up.
Pruitt’s Parting Attack on America’s Air Could Cost 1,600 Lives — In his last day at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Friday, ousted Administrator Scott Pruitt left a parting gift for polluters, and took a parting shot at America’s lungs. Pruitt acted to remove a cap on the number of glider trucks – new truck bodies built without engines or transmission that produce 55 times the air pollution of trucks with new engines using up-to-date pollution controls – through December 2019, the New York Times reported.The Obama administration had worked to limit the number of gliders produced each year to 300, Vox reported. Glider trucks were introduced as a way to recycle older truck parts like engines from trucks damaged in accidents, but, as pollution controls on newer engines improved, some truck buyers saw them as a way to save on more expensive pollution controls that can reduce fuel economy.Glider production had increased from 1,000 in 2010 to 10,000 in 2015, and Obama’s EPA estimated that if those trends continued, the trucks would account for half of all truck-caused nitrogen oxide pollution by 2030. It further found that forcing gliders to use up-to-date engines could save 350 to 1,600 lives over the life of the vehicles, according to Vox.Pruitt’s move reverses the 300 truck cap imposed in January of this year, the New York Times reported.The move was roundly opposed by environmental and conventional trucking groups, including the American Lung Association, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), United Parcel Service and the Volvo Group. EDF general counsel Vickie Patton blamed both Pruitt and his second-in-command Andrew Wheeler, who will take over as acting administrator, for the decision.”Pruitt and Wheeler are creating a loophole for super polluting freight trucks that will fill our children’s lungs with toxic diesel pollution, ignoring public comments from moms and leading businesses across the country,” she told The New York Times.
Incoming EPA administrator promises ‘overall agenda’ at the agency won’t change much | TheHill – Acting Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Andrew Wheeler says that his takeover as head of the agency will not see the EPA shift from its core mission under President Trump. In an interview with The Washington Post, Wheeler said that his first communication to agency staff upon taking over was meant to reassure officials that business will continue as normal. “I sent out an all-hands statement to all the employees yesterday evening. One, thanking the administrator for his service, and then telling everybody that it’s work as usual – we’re all working together – and that I share the core mission of the agency, which is to protect public health and the environment,” Wheeler told the Post. Wheeler went on to stress that the EPA under his tenure would act only under the terms of its congressional directive, and would not seek to expand its boundaries as he says the agency did under the Obama administration. “I know that there’s a number of senators that would like us to go much further, but of course environmental organizations would love us to go much further,” he said. “But you’re not going to see the EPA, at least under my direction, make up a lot as we go along. We’re going to follow the law that Congress has given us.”One of his main goals, Wheeler told The Wall Street Journal, is to “depoliticize” the conversation around many environmental topics.“You might see a shift in terms of how I talk about some things,” Wheeler told the Journal. “I have thought for years environmental issues need to be depoliticized. In 1991 when I came to town they were not as politicized as they are today. And I would love to return to that.”
Coal baron Robert Murray speaks out on leadership change at U.S. EPA – Cleveland Plain-Dealer – Coal company head Robert Murray was among the loudest foes of Obama-era environmental regulations and among the loudest backers of Republican presidential candidates – including Donald Trump – who vowed to overturn them. With Trump in the White House and embattled Scott Pruitt gone from his job as Environmental Protection Agency Administrator, a lobbyist that Ohio-based Murray Energy paid millions of dollars to fight those regulations – Andrew Wheeler – is now the agency’s acting director. Wheeler formerly worked for Ohio GOP Sen. George Voinovich and Oklahoma GOP Sen. James Inhofe, as well as at the EPA’s Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics. He is expected to take the same deregulatory tack as Pruitt. Lobbying records show Murray paid Wheeler’s lobbying firm more than $2.5 million between 2009 and 2017. Wheeler lobbied on energy and environmental issues for the firm, including climate change policies and on the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. The last Murray Energy lobbying report that showed payments to Wheeler was filed August 11, 2017. Trump nominated Wheeler for EPA’s number two job on October 5, 2017. On Friday, Murray Energy CEO Robert Murray released the following statement about Wheeler’s elevation. He said he hadn’t had any contact with Wheeler since he took the EPA job, and called Pruitt’s departure “unfortunate for America.” “It is very unfortunate for America to lose Mr. Scott Pruitt as Administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (“U.S. EPA”). Mr. Pruitt was very qualified and worked diligently to protect our environment, while concomitantly providing regulatory certainty for our Nation’s economy. He also recognized the need for reliable, low cost electricity in our Country, overturning many illegal actions by the Obama Administration. As for Mr. Andrew Wheeler, I have not had any contact with Mr. Wheeler since he became Deputy Administrator of the U.S. EPA and, as such, we are unable to provide any further comment.” About. Damn. Time.
Days after Scott Pruitt resigned, several top aides are also calling it quits at EPA – WaPo — Several top aides to former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt are leaving the agency, less than a week after Pruitt resigned his post amid a slew of inquiries into his spending and management practices. The departures include Jahan Wilcox, who as Pruitt’s combative spokesman fiercely defended the embattled Cabinet member and found himself facing criticism for his sometimes antagonistic approach to reporters covering the EPA; Lincoln Ferguson, a longtime aide and confidant who worked for Pruitt in Oklahoma and was nearly always by his side during his travels; Hayley Ford, deputy White House liaison, and Kelsi Daniell, an EPA spokeswoman. With the exception of Daniell, who had served notice before Pruitt resigned on Thursday, all of the appointees were close allies of the former administrator. Several of the aides had been seeking other work, according to several current EPA officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters, given the upheaval the agency had been undergoing during Pruitt’s tenure. Daniell is joining the staff of Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa). One of Pruitt’s top spokeswomen, Liz Bowman, joined Ernst’s office a few months ago. Most of Pruitt’s top confidants had stepped down earlier this year. Among them were the EPA’s director of scheduling and advance, Millan Hupp; the associate administrator for the Office of Policy, Samantha Dravis; Pruitt’s senior adviser, Sarah Greenwalt, and the head of his Superfund task force, Albert ‘Kell’ Kelly. According to three administration officials, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the matter, White House and EPA staffers have engaged in discussions this week about what staffing changes might be appropriate after Pruitt’s resignation. But one official emphasized the White House had not specifically asked anyone to step down.
Shaken, Not Stirred: FERC’s Political Laundry Aired in Staff Interview on Breitbart News — In a break with precedent, FERC Chief of Staff Anthony Pugliese took to the airwaves July 8 to talk politics and promote the Trump administration’s positions on controversial energy policies. Appearing on Breitbart News Sunday, Pugliese defended Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s notice of proposed rulemaking (NOPR), which appeared to support mainly the coal and nuclear industries and was presented to FERC last September, as a necessary bulwark to maintaining grid resiliency and U.S. national security. In January the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission unanimously rejected the NOPR. But “it couldn’t be farther from the truth” that Perry is seeking to subsidize coal and nuclear, according to Pugliese, formerly a senior White House advisor at the Department of Transportation. “Those two resources…have a lot of resilience attributes that, from a national security perspective, are hard to deny. I think that as we talk about cybersecurity, or electromagnetic pulse, or geomagnetical disturbances, all of these sorts of things that we as the federal government need to take into account, there are certain attributes that these two generation sorts or types have that others do not. And I think having more tools in the tool belt is better than having less.” Perry recently said the Trump administration does not yet have an estimate of how much a controversial proposal to extend a lifeline to struggling coal and nuclear power producers would ultimately cost. A portion of the 20-minute interview with Breitbart was devoted to criticizing Democrats for what Pugliese and the show’s host characterized as anti-energy politics.
Ontario cuts 758 renewable energy projects – The Ontario government has ordered the winding down of 758 renewable energy contracts. The new Energy minister Greg Rickford made the announcement in a media release Friday afternoon. Rickford claimed in the release that the move would save Ontario $790 million. “We clearly promised we would cancel these unnecessary and wasteful energy projects as part of our plan to cut hydro rates by 12 per cent for families, farmers and small businesses,” Rickford is quoted as saying. Rickford also said that the PC government would introduce a legislative amendment to protect hydro consumers from any costs incurred by the cancellations. “For 15 years, Ontario families and businesses have been forced to pay inflated hydro prices, so the government could spend on unnecessary and expensive energy schemes,” said Rickford. “Those days are over.” Earlier this week, the Tory government said it would introduce legislation next week to cancel a wind project in eastern Ontario that is just weeks away from completion.
Australia’s biggest storage reservoir falls to its lowest in eight years – Australia’s biggest hydro-electric power dam is now less than a quarter full after a major drought. Levels at Lake Eucumbene near Canberra have plummeted to their lowest in eight years after operators decided to generate more electricity following the closure of Victoria’s Hazlewood power station. The lake drying up is worrying locals who fear there will soon be no water left – but bosses insist 1.1million customers’ power supply won’t be cut off. ‘We haven’t had any rain for a long time but it’s going down like mad because they are generating electricity – they are generating all the time and using water like it is going out of style.’
Quadrupling of cooling appliances could see staggering increase in world’s energy consumption – Soaring global need for cooling by 2050 could see world energy consumption for cooling increase five times as the number of cooling appliances quadruples to 14 billion – according to a new report by the University of Birmingham, UK. This new report sets out to provide, for the first time, an indication of the scale of the energy implications of ‘Cooling for All’. There are currently 3.6 billion cooling appliances around the world today and the University of Birmingham report authors forecast that the 14 billion devices needed by 2050 will consume five times the amount of energy currently predicted for cooling usage. The report states that, by 2050, if we are to meet our Paris Climate targets to hold temperature increases to 2’C, total energy consumption for cooling must be limited to 6,300 TWh.
Munich Re sticks with coal underwriting despite investor pressure (Reuters) – Munich Re, the world’s biggest reinsurer, said it would keep underwriting coal-related businesses, defying investors keen for it to follow a partial ban by its rival Swiss Re. It, however, said it looked at the issue “repeatedly”. Policymakers are pushing companies to do more to help meet a target, agreed in Paris in 2015, to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius. Investors are increasingly using their financial muscle to reward those at the forefront of that transition. Swiss Re, world number two by share value, said this week it would not reinsure any company for which thermal coal represents more than 30 percent of its business. It follows French peer Scor, which last year said it would stop underwriting new thermal coal mines.
Coal Execs Indicted for Lying on Safety Tests – Eight former coal company officials were indicted in a Kentucky court Wednesday on charges that they lied to federal regulators about the levels of breathable dust in their mines, increasing their miners’ risk of exposure to the conditions that can cause black lung disease. The indictment includes charges that the former supervisors and safety officials of Armstrong Coal moved dust monitors to cleaner areas of their mines to obtain more desirable readings and forced workers without monitors to mine in dirtier areas where monitors were required. The problems at Armstrong’s mines were first revealed in a 2014 Huffington Post exposé. The indictment comes as the nation’s miners face a resurgence in black lung disease: a study published in February showed that cases of black lung in communities in Appalachia have spiked to some of the highest levels ever reported.
North Carolina consumers could see $5B coal-ash cleanup bill – (AP) – A string of decisions by North Carolina regulators means electricity consumers could be seeing a multibillion-dollar bill to clean up mountains of waste Duke Energy created by spending decades burning coal to produce power. State utilities regulators late last month decided that both North Carolina divisions of the country’s No. 2 power company could charge ratepayers the first $778 million chunk of a cleanup projected to cost about $5 billion. Cleanup became a priority after a major leak from a Duke Energy site in 2014 left coal ash coating 70 miles (110 kilometers) of the Dan River on the North Carolina-Virginia border. The waste byproduct contains toxic metals like lead, mercury and arsenic. The company pleaded guilty to federal environmental crimes in 2015 for its coal ash handling, and thus admitted “pervasive, system-wide shortcomings,” the North Carolina Utilities Commission said in its ruling last month. North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein said he’s going to court to try stopping Duke Energy from passing along its costs to excavate some ash pits and cover others. Corporate mismanagement increased costs that shareholders should also be forced to bear, he said in an interview.
Duke Energy Betting on Pig Power – One of the largest utility companies in the United States is turning to pig power.Duke Energy Corp. started generating power in March for its North Carolina customers using “renewable” natural gas created by capturing methane from the waste produced by 62,000 hogs. National Grid Plc, meanwhile, is set to open a plant that will process gas from wastewater to serve New York customers. Overall in 2018, 26 renewable natural gas plants will open in the U.S., bringing the total to 92.Though RNG now represents just a tiny portion of U.S. gas output, it’s gaining traction given the easy availability of its source material and its promise to cut how much methane — a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon dioxide — slips into the air from pigs, cows and chickens.
US “Asleep At The Wheel” – As Nuclear Industry Faces Collapse – A new, shocking report by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Engineering and Public Policy (EPP), Harvard University, and the University of California San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy discovered that the US nuclear power industry could be on the verge of a collapse – a reality that many have yet to realize.Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), “US nuclear power: The vanishing low-carbon wedge” examined 99 nuclear power reactors in 30 states, operated by 30 different power companies. As of 2017, there are two new reactors under construction, but 34 reactors have been permanently shut down as many plants reach the end of their lifespan. “We’re asleep at the wheel on a very dangerous highway,” said Ahmed Abdulla, co-author and fellow at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at UC San Diego. “We really need to open our eyes and study the situation.” For more than three decades, approximately 20 percent of U.S. power generation has come from light water nuclear reactors (LWRs). These plants are now aging, and the cost to service or upgrade them along with fierce competition from Trump’s economic order to prop up failing coal and heavily indebted shale oil/gas companies make nuclear power less competitive in today’s power markets.In return, the American shale boom could trigger a significant number of US nuclear power plant closures in the years ahead, the researchers warned. The country is now at a critical crossroad that it must abandon nuclear power altogether or embrace the next generation of miniature, more cost-effective reactors. Given the impending collapse of the nuclear industry, the researchers questioned whether renewable energy would be enough to offset losses from retiring nuclear power plants.Given the impending collapse of the nuclear industry, the researchers questioned whether renewable energy would be enough to offset losses from retiring nuclear power plants.
Operation Teapot, Sunbeam, & Dominic – US Declassifies 100s Of Nuclear Test Videos To YouTube – In a (now) rare moment of transparency – or perhaps in an odd way, a show of bravado to the rest of the world – more than 250 videos of previously classified US nuclear bomb tests have been uploaded to YouTube this week, providing a fascinating but terrifying glimpse into the United States’ nuclear program. Digitized and uploaded by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, RT reports that the videos document secret atomic bomb tests between 1945 and 1962. The organization says that it hopes that the videos will help dissuade humanity from further use of nuclear weapons in the future.“I think that if we capture the history of this and show what the force of these weapons are and how much devastation they can wreak, then maybe people will be reluctant to use them,” a physicist working for the lab said after a similar batch of videos was released last year. The videos feature dozens of tests from once-classified chapters in US nuclear history, including Operation Dominic, which consisted of 31 nuclear tests in 1962… (4 embedded videos)