Environmental News For The Week Ending 19November 2018

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 a Tuesday evening regular post at GEI.

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

Ebola Outbreak “Worst In Congo’s History” As Hundreds Dead; Risk Of Spread To Uganda “Very High” – The most recent Ebola outbreak spreading through the Democratic Republic of Congo is now the worst in the country’s history, with 209 dead and 333 confirmed or probable cases, according to the DRC’s health ministry. According to The Express, efforts to contain the disease have been hampered by localized armed conflict and community resistance to health officials. The outbreak, the second this year, began in North Kivu before spreading east to Ituri. Oly Ilunga Kalenga, the DRC’s minister of public health, said efforts to contain the deadly outbreak have been thwarted by violence against health officials and civilians as militant groups battle for control in the affected region. –Express Two health workers were killed during the militant attack according to the minister, while 11 civilians and a soldier were killed last month in the city of Beni – the outbreak’s epicenter. And on Thursday, the United Nations announced that at least seven UN peacekeepers were killed by militants in at the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak. “Our peacekeeping colleagues tell us that six peacekeepers from Malawi and one from Tanzania who are part of the U.N. peacekeeping operation in the DRC … were killed yesterday, in Beni territory, in North Kivu,” said UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric. Meanwhile, a USAID worker speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity said “We are absolutely concerned about the ongoing outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is occurring in an area of active conflict, so physical insecurity is a persistent challenge and complication to the ongoing response efforts.” As the rate of new cases has accelerated in recent weeks, neighboring Uganda began vaccinating at-risk health workers on Wednesday in case the virus crosses the border. Now neighboring Uganda is bracing for the virus to cross the 545-mile boundary it shares with DRC. The border is porous and heavily trafficked, with large numbers of local farmers, merchants, traders, and refugees constantly moving through the area. A checkpoint in the region receives 5,000 people on an average day, with the busiest ones swelling to 20,000 twice a week on market days. – Wired

How NTP Controlled Coverage of Cell Phone Cancer Story – Much of the press coverage of the final NTP cell phone/cancer report was lousy. This time, the NTP seems to have wanted it that way. Reporters were given very little notice to join the NTP teleconference on the release of the report. Nor was there much time to prepare a story for publication. I received an email at 10:45 am on October 31 for a teleconference at 2 pm that same day. Many reporters missed the advisory and the call. Editors had little time to assign the story. Most of the major media outlets were missing.The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, ABC News, CBS News, Bloomberg, Associated Press and Science were all absent. The news that the NTP now believes the cancer link is “real” was under embargo until the next day, November 1. That gave the news media less than 24 hours to prepare their stories, an unusually short time for a technically complex subject.There was one exception among major media outlets: The New York Times. It had two reporters, William Broad and Roni Caryn Rabin, on the call. As it happened, Broad, a long-time member of the science desk, was already working on the story. He was making background calls a week earlier; he even called me a couple of times. When I wrote Broad asking if he had had the benefit of a “hot tip,” he did not reply. There’s a long history of New York Times science reporters – Broad included – downplaying, if not outright dismissing, news of electromagnetic health effects. Anyone wanting to conceal the fact that NTP had found “clear evidence” that cell phone radiation could lead to cancer would likely leak the story to the Times.And the Times delivered. Here’s the headlinefrom its Web site. You almost don’t have to read the story to dismiss the NTP’s ten-year, $30 million project as a waste of time and money. The gratuitous modifier “at least in male rats” could make you wonder why the NTP exists at all. Lost to the reader is the fact that animal studies are widely used by drug and chemical companies to determine toxicity. All agents that cause cancer in humans also do so in animals. And chemicals frequently affect one sex more than another; gender differences in cancer rates also exist in humans.

EPA Finds Replacements for Toxic ‘Teflon’ Chemicals Toxic – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released draft toxicity assessments for GenX chemicals and PFBS, both members of a larger group of chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). GenX and PFBS are being used as replacement chemicals for PFOA and PFOS, the original Teflon chemicals that were forced off the market due to their decades-long persistence in the environment and their link to serious health harms in exposed people and wildlife. EPA’s assessment confirms what many have feared – taking PFOA and PFOS off the market and out of products has only led to industry replacing them with related PFAS chemicals that pose similar risks – a “regrettable substitution.”PFAS chemicals have been used for decades to provide non-stick, stain- and water-resistant properties to products such as carpet, furniture, cookware and food packaging. They are also used in fire-fighting foams and industrially as surfactants, emulsifiers, and coatings. PFAS are lab-made, meaning they don’t occur naturally. And they are extremely resistant to degradation in our environment. Some PFAS have been shown to build up in our bodies for years. PFAS chemicals have been linked to many different health effects including; kidney and testicular cancer, immune system dysfunction, developmental and reproductive harm, thyroid disease, high cholesterol, and liver damage.After decades of use, PFAS chemicals have poisoned our air, water, soil, and food. As a result, the blood of virtually all Americans is contaminated with these toxic chemicals. Some communities are struggling with drinking water tainted with PFAS levels hundreds to thousands of times higher than EPA’s ‘do not exceed’ health advisory limit for PFOA and PFOS. And EPA’s advisory does not even reflect the most recent science on PFAS. A recent CDC report generated health thresholds approximately 10 times stricter than the EPA’s.In response to public pressure due to growing concerns about the health effects of PFOA and PFOS, industry voluntarily phased them out but unfortunately replaced them with alternative, often shorter chain versions of PFAS chemicals such as GenX and PFBS. Because short-chain PFAS are thought to be eliminated from our bodies faster than legacy PFAS, it was argued that they were safe. But the more these alternative PFAS chemicals are studied, the more evident it becomes that this is not the case.

Turkey Is Bad on Antibiotics – Pork and Beef, Even Worse – Just a week before Thanksgiving, there’s news that an outbreak of antibiotic-resistant Salmonella, linked to raw turkey, is still spreading; it has sickened 164 people thus far, killing one. Each year, at least 2 million Americans suffer infections caused by drug-resistant bacteria, resulting in more than 23,000 deaths. Those numbers are rising according to experts. While turkeys are given antibiotics more intensively than other livestock in the U.S., the size of the industry is much smaller than beef and pork – making those two the most problematic in terms of antibiotic consumption. The conventional U.S. livestock industry – in particular its beef, pork and turkey sectors – raises animals with very intensive use of antibiotics that are also important to human medicine (“medically important”). Most of these precious medicines are fed to groups of animals that aren’t sick, a practice commonly although inappropriately used to compensate for stressful and unsanitary living conditions. This is unnecessary – several European countries ended uses in healthy animals years ago, and the European Parliament voted last month to ban them. And it is an important driver of the worsening antibiotic resistance crisis. The World Health Organization warns that if we want antibiotics to remain useful for treating people when they get sick, we simply must use them better and more responsibly. But our new analysis finds that the conventional U.S. meat industry remains a stubbornly high user of antibiotics. Specifically, we find:

• Livestock consumption of medically important antibiotics in the U.S. has increased in intensity since 2009 – meaning we’re still using more of these drugs per kilogram of meat than we did then. That’s in contrast to human medicine, where we saw a decline and then plateau in the same time period, suggesting the medical community is taking expert warnings of the looming resistance crisismore seriously than the meat industry.
• It’s also a striking contrast to Europe, as the U.S. livestock industry is using medically important drugs almost twice as intensively (95 percent more) than the industries in 30 European countries, collectively. And, in the case of pig and cattle production, the U.S. industries are using these precious antibiotics far more intensively than their counterparts in France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Denmark, all of which are major livestock producers – comparable in size to major livestock-producing states in the U.S..

Monsanto Owner Bayer Hit With Surge In Lawsuits After Losing California Cancer Case – German pharmaceutical and chemical giant Bayer has disclosed that 9,300 plaintiffs are suing them as of the end of October, alleging that that Roundup weed killers cause cancer. Bayer acquired the product in their $63 billion purchase of Monsanto. The plaintiffs claim that weed-killing products containing glyphosate have made them ill, and that the company knew or should have known the health risks, yet failed to adequately warn consumers of them. Monsanto claims that the compound is safe to use. “We continue to believe that we have meritorious defenses and intend to defend ourselves vigorously in all of these lawsuit,” said Bayer CEO Werner Baumann – however he added that “more lawsuits are to be expected.” “Glyphosate is an indispensable chemical for modern agriculture that is safe to use, very effective and saves resources,” said Baumann. “When used appropriately, glyphosate is a completely safe and good product … completely safe.” In August, a San Francisco jury disagreed – awarding $289 million in damages to former school groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson, however he walked away with $78 million after the judge reduced his award. Bayer said there were 8,700 lawsuits pending against the company as of the end of August – which could cost the company billions in damages in the coming years. In September, 2017 the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) concluded that glyphosates were not likely carcinogenic to humans, based on a decades-long assessment. In 2015, the World Health Organization (WHO)’s cancer arm issued an opposite statement – warning that glyphosate was “probably carcinogenic to humans.”

Hormone-Disrupting Weed Killer Taints Tap Water for Millions in Corn Belt – Seasonal spikes of atrazine – a weed killer that can disrupt hormones and harm developing fetuses – contaminate drinking water in corn-growing areas of the Midwest and beyond, according to an analysis of federal records by the Environmental Working Group (EWG).U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data show that in some Corn Belt communities, atrazine levels can spike three to seven times above the legal limit in late spring and early summer. But by avoiding water testing during peak periods, some water utilities stay in compliance with drinking water regulations – and don’t have to tell customers they were exposed to a hazardous chemical in their tap water. “Our investigation found that nearly 30 million Americans have atrazine in their tap water,” said Olga Naidenko, Ph.D., EWG senior science advisor for children’s environmental health. “But many may never know, because outdated federal policies allow utilities to test for atrazine before or after the spike.” EWG’s investigation is the most comprehensive analysis to date of national data on the pervasive contamination of drinking water by this chemical. EWG found that last year, utilities in Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky and Ohio had atrazine spikes much higher than the federal legal limit of three parts per billion, or ppb. The two highest spikes were reported in Evansville, Ill., at 22 ppb, and Piqua, Ohio, at 16 ppb.But the Safe Drinking Water Act, last updated in 1996, only requires the reporting of annual averages of testing for the chemical. That means the utilities don’t have to tell the EPA or their customers they exceeded the legal limit for multiple days or weeks during the growing season.Atrazine is the second-most heavily used herbicide in the U.S., with more than 70 million pounds sprayed in 2016. It is used mostly to control weeds in cornfields, but it is also applied to sorghum, sugarcane and other crops.Studies show that atrazine and similar chemicals harm the reproductive system and disrupt the nerve and hormone systems, affecting the brain, behavior and hormones such as estrogen, testosterone and dopamine. Even short-term exposure to elevated levels of atrazine can pose health risks to expectant mothers and their babies, including an increase in the risk of preterm delivery and lower birth weight.

Leading researchers call for a ban on widely used insecticides –Public health experts have found there is sufficient evidence that prenatal exposure to widely used insecticides known as organophosphates puts children at risk for neurodevelopmental disorders. Public health experts have found there is sufficient evidence that prenatal exposure to widely used insecticides known as organophosphates puts children at risk for neurodevelopmental disorders. In a scientific review and call to action published in PLOS Medicine, the researchers call for immediate government intervention to phase out all organophosphates. “There is compelling evidence that exposure of pregnant women to very low levels of organophosphate pesticides is associated with lower IQs and difficulties with learning, memory or attention in their children,” said lead author Irva Hertz-Picciotto, professor of public health sciences, director of the UC Davis Environmental Health Sciences Center and researcher with the UC Davis MIND Institute. “Although a single organophosphate — chlorpyrifos — has been in the national spotlight, our review implicates the entire class of these compounds,” Hertz-Picciotto added. People can come into contact with these chemicals through the food they eat, the water they drink and the air they breathe. As a result, organophosphate pesticides are detected in the vast majority of U.S. residents, according to Hertz-Picciotto. While existing limits on organophosphates have reduced exposures, the review authors said this isn’t enough. Based on more than 30 epidemiologic studies and scores of experimental studies in animals and cell cultures, they believe the evidence is clear: Exposure to organophosphates before birth, even at levels currently considered safe, is associated with poorer cognitive, behavioral and social development. “It should be no surprise that studies confirm that these chemicals alter brain development, since they were originally designed to adversely affect the central nervous system,” Hertz-Picciotto said.

Dieldrin dilemma: How dated science and fish-eating advisories may be putting brains at risk – Six years ago, I worked at the Illinois Natural History Survey testing roadkill otter carcasses for contaminants that build up in the bodies of animals that eat fish. One of the contaminants we found was dieldrin – a banned pesticide formerly used on corn crops. Since otters and people share a habit of eating self-caught fish, I wondered about the science used to protect people from the potential dangers of dieldrin. I collected pieces of information from the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, state agencies, and scientific studies. It became apparent that some states, including Illinois, still rely on an antiquated FDA standard for dieldrin that allows for people to be exposed to hundreds of times more dieldrin in fish than the EPA recommends. Other state agencies rely on EPA science that’s half a century old – from a time when scientists were still in the dark about all of dieldrin’s health effects. In the 1950s, corn farmers, mostly those in the Midwest, began treating crops with the pesticide aldrin, which morphs into dieldrin in the environment. At the same time, people started using dieldrin to control termites and Japanese Beetles. In 1962, Silent Spring highlighted the use of dieldrin in Illinois. Environmental and potential human health concerns including cancer led the EPA to limit the use of aldrin and dieldrin in 1974; all uses were banned in 1987. In the decades since then, studies uncovered dieldrin’s toxicity to the brain, including links between dieldrin and Parkinson’s Disease. But just how much dieldrin may be “too much” for the brain remained unknown. That changed this year when a study used cell cultures from newborn rats to determine the amount of dieldrin that permanently changed the developing brain networks. This new information may be the key to finally incorporating dieldrin’s effects on the brain into fish consumption advice. But will state agencies be able to use it?

Florida’s monarch butterfly population takes a tumble – A 37-year survey of monarch populations in North Central Florida shows that caterpillars and butterflies have been declining since 1985 and have dropped by 80 percent since 2005. This decrease parallels monarchs’ dwindling numbers in their overwintering grounds in Mexico. While the drivers of the decline are not clear, the researchers said shrinking native milkweed populations and a boost in glyphosate use in the Midwest are part of the problem. Monarch caterpillars hang in the shape of a “j” just before beginning metamorphosis. Only about 2 percent of monarch eggs survive to this stage of growth.

A giant insect ecosystem is collapsing due to humans. It’s a catastrophe – American biologist Terry Erwin calculated that there would be more than eight million species, just of beetles, in the tropical rainforest canopy; and as beetles make up about 40% of all the arthropods, the grouping that contains the insects and the other creepy-crawlies from spiders to millipedes, the total number of such species in the canopy might be 20 million; and as he estimated the canopy fauna to be separate from, and twice as rich as, the forest floor, for the tropical forest as a whole the number of species might be 30 million. Erwin’s findings make two things indisputably clear. One is that there are many, many more types than the million or so hitherto described by science, and probably many more than the 10m species sometimes postulated as an uppermost figure; and the second is that this is far and away the most successful group of creatures the Earth has ever seen. And it is their success – staggering, unparalleled and seemingly endless – which makes all the more alarming the great truth now dawning upon us: insects as a group are in terrible trouble and the remorselessly expanding human enterprise has become too much, even for them. The astonishing report highlighted in the Guardian, that the biomass of flying insects in Germany has dropped by three quarters since 1989, threatening an “ecological Armageddon”, is the starkest warning yet; but it is only the latest in a series of studies which in the last five years have finally brought to public attention the real scale of the problem. Insects are vital plant-pollinators and although most of our grain crops are pollinated by the wind, most of our fruit crops are insect-pollinated, as are the vast majority of our wild plants, Furthermore, insects form the base of thousands upon thousands of food chains, and their disappearance is a principal reason why Britain’s farmland birds have more than halved in number since 1970. Some declines have been catastrophic: the grey partridge, whose chicks fed on the insects once abundant in cornfields, and the charming spotted flycatcher, a specialist predator of aerial insects, have both declined by more than 95%, while the red-backed shrike, which feeds on big beetles, became extinct in Britain in the 1990s. Ecologically, catastrophe is the word for it.

Heatwaves can ‘wipe out’ male insect fertility – Heatwaves severely damage the fertility of male beetles and consecutive hot spells leave them virtually sterilised, according to research. Global warming is making heatwaves more common and wildlife is being annihilated, and the study may reveal a way in which these two trends are linked. The scientists behind the findings said there could also be some relevance for humans: the sperm counts of western men have halved in the last 40 years. Researchers studied beetles because their 400,000 species represent about a quarter of all known species. Insect populations are plunging worldwide as temperatures rise, falling by about 80% in 30 years in Puerto Rico’s rainforest and by 75% in German nature reserves. Insects are such an integral part of life, as pollinators and prey, that scientists say their decline could lead to “ecological Armageddon”. Little is known about the precise causes of the decline, though climate change, habitat destruction and global use of pesticides are considered probable factors. The research, published in the Nature Communications journal, found that exposing beetles to a five-day heatwave in the laboratory reduced sperm production by three-quarters; females were unaffected.“Beetles are thought to constitute a quarter of biodiversity, so these results are very important for understanding how species react to climate change,” said Kris Sales, at the University of East Anglia, who led the work.Other research has shown that heat can damage male reproduction in humans as well as cows, sheep and other mammals. “There could be relevance for human fertility,”

Tickborne diseases such as Lyme hit record highs in the U.S., CDC says The number of infections carried by ticks has hit a record high in the United States, according to a new report. Nearly 60,000 people were diagnosed with a tickborne infection, mostly Lyme disease, in 2017, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. And that’s almost certainly just a fraction of the true count. “The true number of cases is probably 10 times that,” said Dr. John Aucott, director of the Johns Hopkins Lyme Disease Research Center and chair of the federal Tick-Borne Disease Working Group. The working group issued a report Wednesday saying states and the federal government need to spend more to track, prevent and treat these infections as they affect more and more people.“There are more cases. Every year, the geographic distribution expands,” Aucott told NBC News. Congress told the Health and Human Services Department to set up the working group as part of the 2016 21st Century Cures Act. This is the group’s first report. It’s clear that ticks are infecting more people as the bugs themselves spread, Aucott said. It’s also clear that much more work is needed to keep track of these infections and to help people suffering from them. “We heard comments from hundreds and hundreds of patients. It is obvious that this is a real problem, that people are really suffering.”

Lyme Disease Expected to Surge – Lyme disease is caused by a bacterium, Borrelia burgdorferi, and it is transmitted to humans by blacklegged ticks, and it can cause untold misery for those infected. Untreated, it can spread to the joints, the heart and nervous system producing long-lasting, debilitating symptoms. About 300,000 Americans are diagnosed annually with Lyme, with cases concentrated in the Northeast and upper Midwest, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The incidence of the disease has doubled in the U.S. since 1991, according to the EPA. And it’s about to get much worse, thanks to climate change. “Warmer temperatures are making cold places suitable habitats for ticks, so new places are having Lyme disease cases, and endemic areas are having more cases than the average,” said Edson Severnini, co-author of a new study that predicts the incidence Lyme disease will rise around 21 percent by mid-century. “Tick-borne diseases are an important public health concern and the incidence of these infections is increasing in the Unites States and worldwide,” “Lyme disease is a classic example of the link between environmental factors and the occurrence and spread of disease.”Ticks spend most of their lives in environments where temperature and humidity directly affect their survival. For this reason, the EPA uses Lyme disease as an indicator of climate change. Higher temperatures spur ticks to venture farther in search of hosts, such as deer, which are more plentiful after warmer winters. “The Lyme disease vector tick needs deer to complete its life cycle, so this means that more ticks will be completing their life cycle, and consequently the tick population will increase,” Severnini said. “Also, as temperature rises, people may engage in more outdoor activities, increasing exposure to ticks.”

France Looks to Curb Palm Oil and Beef Imports to Halt Deforestation – In a significant move to combat worldwide deforestation, the French government unveiled a national strategyon Wednesday that looks to curb imports of soybean, palm oil, beef and beef products, cocoa, rubber, as well as wood and its derivatives.The new plan, a joint effort from five French ministries, identifies these items as contributing the most to “imported deforestation” – meaning these products are directly or indirectly tied to forest degradation. For instance, the production of palm oil – a common vegetable oil found in chocolate, baked goods, soaps, biofuel and much more – has cleared much of Malaysia’s and Indonesia’s tropical rainforests and is a driver of wildlife habitat degradation, human rights violations and climate change.Between 1990 and 2015, the world’s forested area has shrunk by a staggering 129 million hectares – an area almost equivalent in size to South Africa, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.What’s more, clearing so much forested area has led “to an 11 percent increase in greenhouse gas emissionsand significant consequences in terms of preserving biodiversity and natural habitats,” the French ministries noted in a joint statement.”European countries bear an important responsibility, since a third of this deforestation is due to the consumption of agricultural products by the countries of the European Union,” the statement added.They proposed 17 measures aimed at ending deforestation caused by the import of unsustainable products by 2030.Such measures, according to Reuters, include financial aid to encourage exporting countries or regions to respect non-deforestation criteria; the launch of a “zero deforestation” label for consumers by 2020; and a 2019 push for a European policy on imports posing a risk for forests. “The objective of this strategy is to bring each actor (producers, companies, investors, consumers) to change their practices to reduce deforestation,” the ministers explained.

Half of the world’s annual precipitation falls in just 12 days, new study finds – Currently, half of the world’s measured precipitation that falls in a year falls in just 12 days, according to a new analysis of data collected at weather stations across the globe. By century’s end, climate models project that this lopsided distribution of rain and snow is likely to become even more skewed, with half of annual precipitation falling in 11 days.These results are published in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.Previous studies have shown that we can expect both an increase in extreme weather events and a smaller increase in average annual precipitation in the future as the climate warms, but researchers are still exploring the relationship between those two trends.”This study shows how those two pieces fit together,” said Angeline Pendergrass, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the lead author of the new study. “What we found is that the expected increases happen when it’s already the wettest – the rainiest days get rainier.”The findings, which suggest that flooding and the damage associated with it could also increase, have implications for water managers, urban planners, and emergency responders. The research results are also a concern for agriculture, which is more productive when rainfall is spread more evenly over the growing season.

How the Farm Bureau’s Climate Agenda Is Failing Its Farmers – The Farm Bureau is among the most potent political forces in Washington, skillfully parlaying the American farmer into an enduring influence machine. Its agenda encompasses taxes and trade, health insurance and school lunches. The group’s lobbying also touches many environmental issues: water pollution, fracking, biofuels and biodiversity. Conservative to the core, it mirrors the Trump administration’s ideology almost perfectly.Nowhere do their agendas align more completely – and with more profound consequences – than on the challenge of climate change.Both oppose any binding international, federal or local action that would regulate the emissions of greenhouse gases, or impose a market price or tax on them. Both refuse to embrace the core tenets of climate science.And on those points, the Farm Bureau rarely compromises.”They’re like the NRA,” said Andrew Holland, who worked for former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. Like the gun lobby, the Farm Bureau derives its clout from member activism. “They get their members ginned up about something and then they call the Hill.”For decades, the Farm Bureau has derailed climate action, deploying its political apparatus and 6 million members in a forceful alliance with conservative groups and the fossil fuel industry.It calls itself the “voice” of American agriculture, but the Farm Bureau has left its own members ill-prepared to cope with intensifying droughts, rain, heat and storms that threaten their livelihoods. The group’s agenda has blocked farmers’ opportunity to benefit from the agricultural transformation the climate crisis demands. In this series of articles, InsideClimate News explores how the farm lobby has wielded its influence to undermine climate treaties and regulations. In tandem with fossil fuel allies, it sowed uncertainty and denial about the causes of global warming and the urgency to bring it under control. Embracing taxpayer-funded subsidies to insure farmers against the mounting risks, it has nurtured an unsustainable consolidation of agriculture that discourages climate-friendly farming.

Ohio’s watershed moment: How to fix Lake Erie algae – The western tail of Lake Erie brims with life. Warm, shallow waters along the Ohio-Michigan border teem with bass, bluegill, and walleye, sustaining a billion-dollar fishing industry. Millions of people from Cleveland to Detroit draw their drinking water from this nook of the lake. Yet every summer, nasty blooms of toxic algae put the entire system at risk.Scummy blankets of blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria, have appeared at alarming scales since the early 2000s, killing plants and fish and straining water treatment facilities. Four years ago, algal blooms were so bad that residents of Toledo were told not to drink or use tap water for three days. Scientists say they know theprimary source of the blooms: phosphorus and nitrogen that wash off farms in northwest Ohio and flow into the lake. What’s less clear is how policymakers and farmers will act to stem the nutrient pollution.A high-profile effort by the state’s Republican governor, John Kasich, to tackle toxic algae is in limbo after months of contentious meetings, political infighting, and strong resistance from the state’s agricultural interests. The delays mean that his successor, Mike DeWine, another Republican, will be responsible for carrying out or discarding Kasich’s vision.Kasich is pushing to declare eight watersheds in northwest Ohio as “distressed,” a maneuver that would enable regulators to adopt rules for curtailing agricultural runoff across some 7,000 farms. This summer, he issued an executive order that tasks a state commission with approving the “distressed” designations. But that commission recently decided to put off a decision until February – after Kasich leaves office.If upheld, the order would start by requiring farmers to lay out detailed strategies for applying chemical fertilizers and spreading manure. Water quality experts say these “nutrient management plans” are a practical first step toward jumpstarting conservation efforts across all of the region’s farms and replacing today’s scattered patchwork of initiatives. “All of the large-scale watershed models suggest that you’re going to have to have everyone in the watershed changing something about their (fertilizer) management,” The problem, Johnson says, is not that a few renegade soybean growers or dairy farmers are dumping lots of fertilizer and manure into watersheds. It’s that small amounts of nutrients – less than 1 percent of the fertilizer applied each year – wash off some 4 million acres of land. These trickles combine to make a river of phosphorus that feeds the harmful algal blooms in Lake Erie every year.

Why won’t red tide go away? After Hurricane Michael, toxic algae has again spread- Just before Hurricane Michael made landfall last month, a ferocious red tide that had scoured Florida’s Gulf Coast for a year, depositing countless dead sea turtles, dolphin and other marine life on beaches before spreading to the Atlantic coast, had finally started to wane. In most places, with the wet season winding down and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers easing up on releasing polluted water from Lake Okeechobee, the toxic algae that had become a key election year campaign issue had dropped to relatively low levels. Fish kills were down and so were the coughing fits among beach-goers. But in the weeks following the storm, red tide that is already considered the worst in a decade has roared back. On Monday, state wildlife officials logged high to medium levels along beaches from Clearwater to waters off Everglades City and in the Panhandle. Fish kills were reported in nine counties from the Panhandle around the tip of the state to the Space Coast. Along the Atlantic coast, levels capable of killing fish and causing respiratory distress remained along Cocoa Beach and in Martin County, but had dropped from Friday to Monday along other stretches of the Treasure Coast. Why that is remains a little bit of mystery. Red tides have many factors at play, and remain tricky to predict. But it’s likely a combination of wind, pollution and the tiny algae that cause the blooms, one of the few with the ability to swim, conspired to revive the tide.

Cape Cod’s Gray Seal and White Shark Problem Is Anything but Black-and-White — On a sunny Saturday in mid-September, 26-year-old Arthur Medici was boogie-boarding in the waves off Wellfleet, Massachusetts, when a great white shark bit his leg. Despite the efforts of a friend who pulled him ashore and the paramedics who rushed him to the hospital, Medici died from his injuries. Medici is the first person to die from a shark bite on Cape Cod in 82 years. (Another incident, which occurred in nearby Truro in August, was not fatal.) Medici’s death is also this year’s only shark-bite fatality in the U.S. and one of just five reported worldwide in 2018. All of which is to say, it’s still extremely unlikely for a human to be killed by a shark. Statistically speaking, you are much, much more likely to be killed by bees, lightning or government execution. Still, in the wake of Medici’s death, some local officials are calling for a cull – but not of sharks. They want to go after gray seals, the sharks’ prey. Seals have inhabited Cape Cod for some 4,000 years, but for the past century or so, they’ve been scarce in this part of the world. New England fishermen in the 19th century saw the animals as competition for their cod harvest and killed as many as 135,000 of them between 1888 and 1962. Hard to believe, but the Massachusetts government offered a $5 bounty for every seal nose produced as recently as the 1960s. Not so surprisingly, gray seals nearly disappeared from the area around that time. In 1972, the Marine Mammal Protection Act made killing gray seals and other marine mammals illegal, and since then, the Cape’s seal population has rebounded to as many as 50,000. In addition to the seals being part of the Cape’s food web, evidence suggests that the animals play a role in transporting nitrogen and other nutrients out of the sea and onto shore via their excrement. The thing is, now that the seals are back, so are the sharks.

The plastic backlash: what’s behind our sudden rage – and will it make a difference? Plastic is everywhere, and suddenly we have decided that is a very bad thing. Until recently, plastic enjoyed a sort of anonymity in ubiquity: we were so thoroughly surrounded that we hardly noticed it. You might be surprised to learn, for instance, that today’s cars and planes are, by volume, about 50% plastic. More clothing is made out of polyester and nylon, both plastics, than cotton or wool. Plastic is also used in minute quantities as an adhesive to seal the vast majority of the 60bn teabags used in Britain each year. Add this to the more obvious expanse of toys, household bric-a-brac and consumer packaging, and the extent of plastic’s empire becomes clear. It is the colourful yet banal background material of modern life. Each year, the world produces around 340m tonnes of the stuff, enough to fill every skyscraper in New York City. But for some reason it is only very recently that people have really begun to care. The result is a worldwide revolt against plastic, one that crosses both borders and traditional political divides. In 2016, a Greenpeace petition for a UK-wide plastic microbead ban hit 365,000 signatures in just four months, eventually becoming the largest environmental petition ever presented to government. Protest groups from the US to South Korea have dumped piles of what they say is unwanted and excessive plastic packaging at supermarkets. Earlier this year, angry customers in the UK posted so many crisp packets back to their manufacturers, in protest at the fact they weren’t recyclable, that the postal service was overwhelmed. Prince Charles has given speeches about the dangers of plastic, while Kim Kardashian has posted on Instagram about the “plastic crisis”, and claims to have given up straws. At the highest levels of government the plastic panic can resemble a scrambled response to a natural disaster, or a public health crisis. The United Nations has declared a “war” on single-use plastic. In Britain, Theresa May has called it a “scourge”, and committed the government to a 25-year plan that would phase out disposable packaging by 2042. India claimed it would do the same, but by 2022. Julian Kirby, a campaigner at Friends of the Earth, told me he had “never seen anything like it in nearly two decades of campaigning”. Friends of the Earth only started a plastic programme in 2016; Greenpeace didn’t have a dedicated plastic team until 2015.

The world’s plastic problem is bigger than the ocean – There are an estimated five trillion pieces of plastic floating on and in the world’s oceans. The massive pool noodle will move through the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, driven by the wind and currents and picking up the plastic it encounters along the way. Ocean Cleanup, the organization that developed the device, promises “the largest cleanup in history.” If it works, the device – blandly named System 001 – could make a dent in the enormous amount of ocean-borne plastic. But once that plastic is collected the options are not good. Recycling plastic is only possible if it can be meticulously separated into its various chemical types. What people generally describe with the single word “plastic” encompasses seven main types of materials – the ones used to make soda bottles, trash bags, cling wrap, shopping bags, yogurt containers, fishing nets, foam insulation and non-metal parts of many household appliances. Recycling each of these types, which you might know by their acronyms – such as PETE, LDPE, PVC, PP and HDPE – requires a different chemical process.That’s why many household recycling programs ask residents to sort their plastics – and why communities that let people put recyclables of all types into one big bin employ people and machines to sort it after it’s collected. Sorting won’t be easy with the plastic in the ocean. All the different kinds of plastic are mixed up together, and some of it has been chemically and physically broken down by sunlight and wave action. Much of it is now in tiny pieces called microplastics, suspended just below the surface. The first difficulty, but by no means the last, will be sorting all that plastic – plus seaweed, barnacles and other sea life that may have attached itself to the floating debris.

Ecocide Equals Genocide — The economic civilization fights for the wholesale poisoning of the ecology and destruction of biodiversity. The attack is most aggressive on the front which is the original battlefront of civilization itself, agriculture. Modern poison-based agriculture long has been proven an agronomic failure, and it’s long been proven to increase hunger rather than alleviate it. Socially, agronomically, ecologically it’s purely destructive. We know the corporations, regulators, academia and corporate media don’t advocate poisonism for agronomic reasons. We know they’re willfully, intentionally committing ecocide and giving people cancer for the sake of nothing but power, profit, and destruction of biodiversity for the very sake of this destruction, since monoculture in itself (political, cultural, biological) is a totalitarian goal of the system. In 2017 the Monsanto Tribunal condemned Monsanto for these crimes, including ecocide. The proposition that ecosystems have the same rights as humans follows rationally from any coherent concept of human rights, such as that upon which the Nuremburg tribunal based its jurisprudence. This is because humanity is inextricably part of the overall ecology. Therefore it’s both rationally and morally meaningless to conceive any human right, on a community or individual level, other than as part of a combined human-ecological right. At the same time “the individual” is a false construction in itself, a vestige of classical liberal/bourgeois ideology. In reality the individual can exist only within ecological and community contexts. Therefore individual rights can exist only within the context of ecological rights. Most important of all, if genocide is a crime against humanity, then any broad-based destruction of the ecology is equally such a crime against humanity since humanity is inextricably part of and dependent upon the ecology. Ecocide, in addition to being evil in itself, is equal to genocide.

Entire cities evacuate as hellish wildfires whip through California – A trio of rapidly expanding wildfires are burning in California, marking the latest in a string of harrowing climate-related disasters in America.As of Sunday night, the Camp Fire has killed at least 29 people and destroyed 6,713 buildings in and around the Northern California city of Paradise, but those numbers could still increase as officials continue their surveys. More than 200 people remain missing, warned the local sheriff’s office. It’s now the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in state history.In Southern California, low humidity combined with strong offshore Santa Ana winds prompted the National Weather Service to issue an “extremely critical” fire weather alert, its highest warning for wildfire risk. Two fires there are rapidly expanding towards the coast causing the city of Malibu to evacuate. Meteorologists warn of another round of intense, dry winds beginning Sunday that could fan the flames even further.These are firestorms – towering, fast-moving walls of flames hundreds of feet high – the kind of fires that are not only uncontrolled by firefighters, but uncontrollable. In Southern California, fire burning through wind-whipped palm trees on Thursday resembled a hurricane.“This is the new normal,” Los Angeles County Fire Captain Erik Scott told a local television station. “When we have conditions like this, when it’s such incredible wind, that brings us into a different caliber.” Acting California Governor Gavin Newsom has requested an emergency presidential disaster declaration from Trump to speed the flow of federal aid to victims. Meteorologists marveled at the “gut-wrenching” rate of spread Thursday’s fires exhibited. At one point, the Camp Fire was consuming 80 football fields worth of land per minute, fueled by winds of up to 50 mph. That fire grew more than 20-fold in about six hours just before it overtook the town of Paradise, home to about 27,000 people. By nightfall, the fire had expanded in size to 70,000 acres, and was just 5 percent contained. A reporter’s video caught a fire tornado on camera, an exclamation mark on a truly hellish scene:By all accounts, the scrambled evacuation of Paradise was harrowing. There were reports of people abandoning their vehicles trapped in heavy traffic, clutching children and running for safety under blackened skies. At least one cluster of about 70 people were airlifted from a Walgreens. Video from the exodus is nightmare-inducing, and is difficult to watch. During the height of the blaze, firefighters completely surrendered firefighting duties in order to focus on rescuing people.

Dead in cars and homes: Northern California fire toll at 29 – The dead were found in burned-out cars, in the smoldering ruins of their homes, or next to their vehicles, apparently overcome by smoke and flames before they could jump in behind the wheel and escape. In some cases, there were only charred fragments of bone, so small that coroner’s investigators used a wire basket to sift and sort them. At least 29 people were confirmed dead in the wildfire that turned the Northern California town of Paradise and outlying areas into hell on earth, equaling the deadliest blaze in state history, and the search for bodies continued Monday. Nearly 230 people were unaccounted for by the sheriff’s reckoning, four days after the fire swept over the town of 27,000 and practically wiped it off the map with flames so fierce that authorities brought in a mobile DNA lab and forensic anthropologists to help identify the dead. Meanwhile, a landowner near where the blaze began, Betsy Ann Cowley, said she got an email from Pacific Gas & Electric Co. the day before the fire last week telling her that crews needed to come onto her property because the utility’s power lines were causing sparks. PG&E had no comment on the email, and state officials said the cause of the inferno was under investigation. As the search for victims dragged on, friends and relatives of the missing called hospitals, police, shelters and the coroner’s office in hopes of learning what became of their loved ones. Paradise was a popular retirement community, and about a quarter of the population was over 65. Tad Teays awaited word on his 90-year-old dementia-stricken mother. Darlina Duarte was desperate for information about her half-brother, a diabetic who was largely housebound because he had lost his legs. And Barbara Hall tried in vain to find out whether her aunt and the woman’s husband, who are in their 80s and 90s, made it out alive from their retirement community. Megan James, of Newfoundland, Canada, searched via Twitter from the other side of the continent for information about her aunt and uncle, whose house in Paradise burned down and whose vehicles were still there. The blaze was part of an outbreak of wildfires on both ends of the state. Together, they were blamed for 31 deaths, including two in celebrity-studded Malibu in Southern California, where firefighters appeared to be gaining ground against a roughly 143-square-mile (370-square-kilometer) blaze that destroyed at least 370 structures, with hundreds more feared lost.

Shares of California utilities plunge as wildfires rage –Shares of California utility companies plunged Monday as deadly wildfires scorched thousands of acres and continued to threaten life and property, and as state regulators opened investigations.Pacific Gas & Electric shares tumbled as much as 27 percent. They climbed partly back in the afternoon, closing down 17 percent but trading up more than 2 percent in the aftermarket. Edison International shares closed down 12 percent.Both utilities are grappling with power outages affecting tens of thousands of customers, and said they have submitted initial incident reports to state regulators. Hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated or forced to flee the affected regions.The Mercury News reported that state regulators were looking at the utilities’ facilities in the affected areas “to asses the compliance” with applicable rules and regulations. PG&E and Edison have reported that their electrical infrastructure malfunctioned near the heart of the two fire-ravaged areas in the state, the paper said. There are the Woolsey and Hill fires, which have burned through areas near Los Angeles, including Malibu, Westlake Village and Thousand Oaks. And the Camp Fire in Northern California has killed 29 people, now the most destructive in state history, according to the Los Angeles Times. The parent company of public utility Southern California Edison said wildfires left more than 23,000 customers without power in Ventura and Los Angeles counties. Over the weekend, Southern California Edison said it has submitted “an initial safety incident report on the Woolsey Fire.” The Mercury News said PG&E had reported an outage on a transmission line near the area where Cal Fire officials believe the Camp fire originated shortly before it was first detected. And Edison reported an issue on a substation circuit shortly before Cal Fire estimates the Woolsey fire began.

California wildfire deadliest and most destructive in state history – The death toll from wildfires ravaging Northern and Southern California has risen to 31. Thousands of homes and structures have been destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to flee from the spreading inferno.The most destructive fire is in the north – the Camp Fire, which started under the power lines at Poe Dam in Butte County. Fueled by high winds and dry weather, the blaze quickly engulfed the nearby communities of Pulga and Concow, before reaching Paradise, a town of 26,000, shortly after students were beginning their school day. The entire city was forced into a panicked and unprepared evacuation. By Friday morning, Paradise had burned to the ground. Harrowing pictures and video have been posted on social media of cars racing to escape as walls of flame bear down on all sides. Others had to abandon their cars and try to escape the flames on foot, while some did not make it.With the death toll at 29, it is the deadliest wildfire in state history, the number of fatalities greater than the Griffith Park blaze in Los Angeles in 1933. At least two hundred more are missing.The Camp Fire is also the most destructive in state history. At least 6,453 houses have been destroyed, along with Paradise’s hospital and retirement home. Both the destruction and the death toll are expected to rise as the fire continues to burn and officials begin to sort through the wreckage.The Camp Fire erupted on the same day as the Hill and Woolsey fires in southern California, which together have forced the evacuation of over 260,000 people. Two deaths have been attributed to the fires in the south. President Donald Trump responded to the fires by threatening to cut off federal funding. “Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests,” he declared in a tweet on Saturday. “Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!”

Hurricane-force gusts will fuel one California fire while another blaze leaves 42 people dead – As one wildfire keeps inflicting more tragedy in Northern California, millions of people in Southern California will face treacherous fire conditions Tuesday. About 21 million people are under red flag warnings in Southern California, including in Los Angeles and San Diego, CNN meteorologist Dave Hennen said. The area has been ravaged by the Woolsey Fire, which has charred more than 93,000 acres and destroyed 435 structures. But on Tuesday, hurricane-force gusts — meaning 74 mph or greater — will hit canyons and ridgetops, fueling an already catastrophic blaze, Hennen said.”Single-digit humidity along with very dry vegetation will lead to the potential of explosive fire growth,” he said.So far, two people have died from the Woolsey Fire — both in Malibu. But the tragedy is even worse in Northern California, where the Camp Fire has left 42 people dead. It’s now the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in the state’s recorded histor

44 dead in California fires as the Camp Fire becomes the deadliest in state history -An additional 13 sets of human remains were discovered Monday in Northern California, bringing the death toll from the Camp Fire to 42, making it the deadliest wildfire in the state’s history, the sheriff of Butte County said. The increased death toll comes as first responders battle blazes on both ends of the state, and brings the statewide death toll to 44. Fierce winds continue to threaten lives and homes in Southern California’s Woolsey Fire, which has killed two people so far. The strongest Santa Ana winds in the south may bring gusts near hurricane force on Tuesday, CNN meteorologist Dave Hennen said. Meanwhile, firefighters made progress Monday in containing the Camp Fire, which razed the town of Paradise, where most of the dead have been found. Harrowing stories of escapes and close calls are trickling out of the region. In some areas of the state, rescue efforts have turned into cleanup and recovery as residents return to what’s left of their gutted homes in neighborhoods littered with charred remains of cars, trees and buildings. President Trump on Monday approved a request for a Major Disaster Declaration that will provide the state with federal resources.A Malibu resident who has lived through many wildfires said she has never seen one touch so many parts of the city at once. “Every community neighborhood has been devastated,” the woman told CNN affiliate KCAL/KCBS.

‘The whole town is gone:’ drone video reveals the scale of fire destruction in Paradise – YouTube

‘No fresh air’: wildfire smoke sets apocalyptic haze over San Francisco Hundreds of miles from the wildfires that have torn through swaths of California and killed dozens, a thick cloud of smoke has enveloped the normally picturesque Bay Area in a dystopian haze. As the Camp Fire in northern California claims its place as the most destructive blaze in the state’s history, the heavy smoke billowing in from the fire has created a ghost town in its own right, casting an eerie glow over a region typically celebrated for its clear air quality. Experts warned residents on Monday that as the Camp Fire rages on, the smoke is expected to continue its onslaught through the end of the week, making it difficult to breathe and unhealthy to remain outdoors for long periods of time. “What we’re telling people is the best thing you can do is to be indoors,” said Walter Wallace, a spokesman for the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. Many have heeded this advice since the smoke began making its way into the area early on Friday, adding to the apocalyptic feel brought on by the haze. Playgrounds and parks usually bustling with activity were left abandoned under sunlight filtered through a smog that tinged the light in odd sepia tones. Some of those who did wander outside walked around with air masks on their faces, like extras in a horror film about a deadly virus. Altwarg, the general manager of Markus Supply Hardware in Oakland, had spent the weekend dealing with a sudden high demand for face masks at his store. “We sold everything we had on Saturday,” he said. One team purchasing the masks in bulk was Mask Oakland, an impromptu group of volunteers that had come together to pass out N95-particle grade masks to the homeless in the East Bay. With public health experts warning people to stay indoors, J Redwoods, one of the founders of the group, said more needed to be concerned about those who don’t have that option.

Woolsey fire is among largest on record in Los Angeles County – Los Angeles County Fire Chief Daryl Osby said the Woolsey fire is among the largest blazes on record in the county dating back 100 years. The fire has torn through almost 150 square miles of the county land, from Bell Canyon to the Pacific Ocean in Malibu. The devastation in Malibu Creek State Park is extensive. Much of the landscape is charred black, although the campground and parking lots remain intact. The fire swept through the area at tremendous speed, turning much in its path into ash. On Tuesday, fire crews continued to battle the burn area just southwest of the park. Smoke billowed over the hills southwest of the junction at Malibu Canyon Road and Piuma Road.

In stunning loss, 83% of Santa Monica Mountains federal parkland burned in Woolsey fire – The Woolsey fire burned about 83% of national park land in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, a stunning loss of a cherished open space area for Southern California. The Santa Monica Mountains, which stretch from Hollywood Hills to Point Mugu in Ventura County, have long offered Southern Californians a respite from the city below with the range’s array of hiking trails, waterfalls and rock pools. And its sprawling ranch land has given Hollywood real-world ties to the frontier life it exhaustively depicted on screen. The Woolsey fire destroyed more than 400 structures but also took a deep toll on landmark areas of the mountain areas. Wildfires decimated the historic park tucked inside the Santa Monica Mountains a day earlier – taking with it markers of its proud past as a backdrop for television shows and movies such as “Planet of the Apes.” Flames consumed the set of the long-running TV series “MASH.” The same went for the Reagan Ranch, named after the former president and actor who used to own one of three parcels that comprise the 44-year-old park’s footprint along with Bob Hope and 20th Century Fox. About two miles west saw the destruction of the Peter Strauss Ranch,named after an Emmy Award-winning actor. The ranch featured a swimming pool and amphitheater and was the site of art exhibits and performances by country stars Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson. All that remained of the ranch house was a few stone walls and a chimney. Public access to the mountain range has been hard fought. It was propelled by the establishment of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy in 1980 by the state. Funded with bond measures and led by an ambitious executive director, Joe Edmiston, the agency has preserved tens of thousands of acres of land along the range. The powerful group has also advocated against too much residential development. Last year, Edmiston called for the limiting of recovery funds for rebuilding homes in fire-prone areas.

California Fire Experts To Trump: Malibu Is Not a Forest – Donald Trump was slammed over the weekend for criticizing California’s “forest management” while firefighters and residents were battling three major wildfires. But experts also pointed out to the president that places like Thousand Oaks, Malibu and Paradise were not “forests.” On Saturday, Trump wrote: There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor. Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments! – Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) The Hill and Woolsey fires in Ventura and Los Angeles County have destroyed thousands of structures in southern California, one of the most highly populated areas of the United States.“There are no forests to manage here,” UCLA geography professor Martin MacDonald, who was forced to evacuate from his Southern California home, told The Daily Beast on Sunday.MacDonald called Trump’s tweet an “insult and so uninformed. It was a statement made with insensitivity and ignorance.”Pasadena fire officials had a similar message for Trump:Mr. President, with all due respect, you are wrong. The fires in So. Cal are urban interface fires and have NOTHING to do with forest management. Come to SoCal and learn the facts & help the victims. . @IAFFNewsDeskhttps://t.co/d3jY0SeosF – Pasadena Fire Assn. (@PFA809) November 10, 2018 Gov. Jerry Brown’s office said the president’s comments were “inane and uniformed.”“Our focus is on the Californians impacted by these fires and the first responders and firefighters working around the clock to save lives and property – not on the president’s inane and uninformed tweets,” Brown’s Press Secretary Evan Westrup said in a statement Sunday. Also, the federal government manages close to 60 percent of the forests in the state, and most of the rest are privately owned by families, companies and Native American tribes.

Forced out by deadly California fires, then trapped in traffic – Thousands of residents in the wooded town of Paradise did what they were told to do when the morning skies turned dark and an inferno raged across the hills: They got in their cars and fled. What happened next was the vehicular equivalent of a stampede, packing the roads to a standstill. In the hours after the devastating wildfire broke out around Paradise on Thursday morning, tree-lined streets in the town swiftly became tunnels of fire, blocked by fallen power lines and burning timber. Frantic residents, encircled by choking dense smoke and swirling embers, ran out of gas and ditched their cars. Fire crews struggling to reach the town used giant earthmovers to plow abandoned vehicles off the road as if they were snowdrifts after a blizzard. By Sunday night, the Camp Fire had matched the deadliest in California history, the Griffith Park Fire of 1933, with 29 fatalities. Seven of the victims in Paradise died in their vehicles. Farther south near Los Angeles, where another vast fire continued its destruction, a mass evacuation was also all but halted at times by snarled roads. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said that two bodies had been found severely burned inside a stopped vehicle on a long, narrow driveway in Malibu.At a news conference late Sunday, Sheriff Kory L. Honea of Butte County said that 228 people were still unaccounted for in Northern California; state officials said they were not aware of anyone missing in connection to fires in the south. Statewide, about 149,000 were still under orders to leave their homes. Again and again in California’s battle with wildfires, roads have emerged as a major vulnerability for those escaping. There was only one way out of Paradise for residents fleeing the fire, the four-lane road known as Skyway, which quickly became paralyzed by traffic, a situation similar to what residents of Malibu endured along the Pacific Coast Highway, another choke point.

42 Dead in California’s Camp Fire, Deadliest in State History – The Camp Fire in Northern California is not only the most destructive in state’s modern history, it’s also the deadliest.The death toll climbed to 42 as of Monday, according to Cal Fire.Sadly, the total number of deaths could grow. Butte County sheriff Kory L. Honea said more 228 people remain missing in the area, Reuters reported.”My sincere hope is that I don’t have to come here each night and report a higher and higher number,” Honea said at a press conference Monday night.The inferno has burned 117,000 acres of land, destroyed 6,453 residences, 260 commercial buildings and is only 30 percent contained. Three firefighters have been injured.The Camp Fire, which destroyed the town of Paradise on Thursday, surpasses the death toll of the 1933 Griffith Park fire in Los Angeles that killed 29 people.”Forecasted low relative humidity and dry fuel moistures combined with steep rugged terrain will continue to impede control operations,” Cal Fire said about the Camp Fire on Monday.California has been terrorized by a string of devastating wildfires. Last year’s Tubbs Fire, which burned parts of Napa, Sonoma and Lake counties, killed 22 people (the third deadliest in the state) and burned 5,636 structures (the second highest number of structures), the San Francisco Chronicle tallied.The ongoing wildfires in both Northern and Southern California have been whipped by strong winds, years of prolonged drought that have dried vegetation, and climate change, experts have said.Nearly 9,000 firefighters are battling the fires throughout the state, Reuters reported.The Woolsey Fire in Southern California’s Ventura County has killed two people, burned 93,662 acres and is 30 percent contained, Cal Fire reported Monday evening. President Trump – who threatened to withdraw federal funding and criticized California officials for “gross mismanagement” of forests in an ill-informed and widely criticized tweet – has approved a disaster declaration in the state. This will unlock federal funding and other resources.

Yet Another Trillion-Dollar Unfunded Liability, California Wildfires Edition – Yesterday an entire California town burned down. Paridise, CA has (had) 27,000 residents and over 1,000 buildings, and now it’s pretty much gone. A fire started nearby on a windy day and within hours everything was ash and cinders. That fire and several others are still expanding across the state, threatening tens of thousands of homes. The sets of the TV show WestWorld are gone. Malibu has been evacuated. And dry, windy conditions persist, so the story is nowhere near over. If this sounds familiar, it’s because massive, sometimes uncontrollable California wildfires are now an annual occurrence, due in part to gradual warming and persistent drought which combine to suck the moisture out of vegetation and turn the landscape into a tinderbox. Here’s a chart showing the recent take-off in the number of fires reported in the state (2013 was most recent year I could find, but the trend is clear – and since then the number of fires has apparently soared). The reason this rates coverage in a financial blog is population. We’ve been moving millions of people into a place that has always had and always will have wildfires. California’s population is now about four times what it was in 1950, and the influx continues. Fire is a crucial part of that and many other ecosystems, clearing out dead plants to make room for living. But add 40 million humans along with their buildings and vehicles, and a healthy, resilient semi-desert becomes a hellscape. A very expensive hellscape. What does it cost to rebuild a town of 27,000 people from scratch? A back-of-the-envelope calculation (1,000 buildings at $100,000 a pop, 15,000 cars at $25,000 per, $10,000 per person for roads, sewers, landscaping, etc) yields several hundred million dollars. For one little town. Is California budgeting for this? Are the insurance companies? Is Washington? All probably say they are, but only the insurance companies actually are – and even they are probably under-reserved for the past few years’ natural disasters.

2 Electric Utilities Reported Problems Minutes Before Deadly Wildfires Began – Minutes before the deadly Camp and Woolsey fires started in Northern and Southern California on Thursday, utilities reported problems with electricity lines in the same areas where the blazes sprang up, according to filings with the state regulatory commission. Together, the two fires have been blamed for 44 deaths and have consumed more than 200,000 acres of land, as of around midday Tuesday. The Camp fire is now the deadliest wildfire in state history, responsible for at least 42 deaths. The cause of the two fires is still under investigation – and likely will be for months, given the complexity of the cases and the devastation at the scenes. A spokeswoman for the California Public Utilities Commission says it is investigating the blazes in coordination with the state Cal Fire agency, and that it will be taking the two Electric Safety Incident Reports from Thursday into account. California requires utilities to report equipment malfunctions with 24 hours. The first report came from Pacific Gas & Electric, which sent an official notice to the California Public Utilities Commission describing an outage on one of its transmission lines at Pulga Road in Butte County, at 6:15 a.m. local time. For comparison, Cal Fire says the Camp fire began at 6:33 a.m. on Pulga Road. The next report came from Southern California Edison, which said a 16 kV circuit at its Chatsworth substation had relayed at 2:22 p.m., two minutes before Cal Fire says the Woolsey fire started. The utility said the substation is near E Street and Alfa Road in Ventura County – which is also where Cal Fire says the fire began

Investigations point to energy corporation’s negligence in California wildfire –An investigation is now underway that will assess the culpability of Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) in starting the Camp Fire, now the deadliest wildfire in the history of California.The company acknowledged Tuesday that it had submitted an “electric incident report” to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) on November 8, moments before the wildfire broke out. The report detailed a power failure on a transmission line in Butte County at 6:15 a.m., 15 minutes before the fire was reported as starting in the same area.More than 100 people are still listed as missing by the Butte County Sheriff’s Office after the fire destroyed the town of Paradise, California Thursday morning. The official death toll stands at 56, while Butte County officials have said they expect more bodies will be found. One quarter of the population of Paradise, a town of 27,000, are senior citizens, and 73 of the missing persons are 65 years or older.In a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday, PG&E stated that if its equipment was found responsible for starting the fire, the cost of the damage would exceed its insurance coverage and hurt its financial standing. The company’s shares fell 21 percent on the following day. Its stock has fallen by 53 percent in total since the fire broke out.Affected residents have filed a lawsuit against PG&E at the San Francisco Superior Court, accusing the company of negligence. “Rather than spend the money it obtains from customers for infrastructure maintenance and safety,” states the official complaint, “PG&E funnels this funding to boost its own corporate profits and compensation.” Oakland attorney Michael Danko, representing the plaintiffs, claims to have “overwhelming” evidence that PG&E is to blame. In addition to the incident report the company filed to the CPUC, Danko cites “witnesses who saw the fire start on a transmission line” as well as a resident who received an email from the utility a day before the fire broke out notifying her of sparking lines.

California fires update- Death toll in Camp Fire rises to 63 – CNN – The number of missing in Californian wildfires has soared to 634, as authorities added hundreds of names to the lists of the unaccounted for Thursday, in what has become thedeadliest and most destructive wildfire in the state’s history. Butte County Sheriff and Coroner Kory Honea said Thursday evening the death toll from the Camp Fire in northern California had grown to 63 people. Seven sets of remains were discovered Thursday, he said. At least two other people have been killed in another, separate wildfire in Southern California, putting the state’s death toll at 65 since the two blazes began last week. On Friday hundreds of rescue personnel — deputies, National Guard troops and coroners — dressed in white overalls sifted through smoldering rubble and checked mangled cars, searching for human remains.Honea said the number of names on the missing list soared after investigators added information from callers who rang the dispatch center on the day the fire erupted and reported people who were missing in the chaos.Some of the names on the Butte County list appear more than once and it’s not clear if any are duplicates. Officials have said it’s hard to determine the number of missing, because some people may have evacuated and can’t be reached with cell phone service unreliable due to the fire.”There are a lot of people displaced and we’re finding a lot of people don’t know we are looking for them,” Honea said.The fire turned the hard-hit town of Paradise into ash and debris and also devastated the nearby communities of Magalia and Concow. Honea said three sets of remains were found Thursday in Paradise, three in Magalia and one in Concow.Honea has invited relatives of the missing to visit the sheriff’s office in Oroville so authorities can collect DNA samples from them. The DNA will be used to help identify fire victims, Honea said.

Smoke Is a Big Health Risk as California Wildfires Rage On – Dozens of people are dead, hundreds more missing and entire communities have been destroyed. But even hundreds of miles from the fires, much of the state is blanketed in dangerous smoke. For more than a week, the air quality in San Francisco, Los Angeles and other major cities has been classified as “unhealthy” or “very unhealthy.”The wildfires are releasing tons of pollutants into the air that will linger long after the fires are put out. Hazardous chemicals that may be present in building structures or products – such as asbestos insulation, vinyl materials, plastics, electronics casings and flame retardants – are released into the air as these things burn, creating airborne carcinogens.The extremely fine particles in soot and smoke harm our lungs. The particulates can trigger symptoms like difficulty breathing, coughing and headaches, or worsen respiratory diseases, like asthma. They also can damage the heart, circulatory system and brain.Health experts agree that the best defense is to stay indoors. Although the poor air quality puts everyone at risk, children, the elderly and people with asthma, cardiovascular or respiratory diseases are particularly vulnerable. People in these groups should take extra precautions. Exposure to air pollution during pregnancy can affect thyroid hormone levels in the developing fetus, and may contribute to reduced birth weight, preterm birth and a greater risk of chronic health conditions later in life.

Air-Fouling Smoke Continues across California; 2009 Report Warned of Potential Fire Disaster – Smoke from the catastrophic Camp Fire continues to plague much of central and northern California, bringing dangerously high levels of fine particulate pollution (PM2.5, particles less than 2.5 microns or 0.0001 inch in diameter). Hourly levels of PM2.5 were in the red “Unhealthy” range at more than 30 official EPA monitors across the region Thursday morning, with seven stations reporting purple “Very Unhealthy” conditions.Two stations near the Camp Fire recorded PM2.5 levels on Thursday morning well into the maroon “hazardous” range – the highest level of danger on EPA’s Air Quality Index (AQI) scale. At this level, EPA warns that “this would trigger a health warnings of emergency conditions.” Chico had PM2.5 levels at a suffocating 333 μg/m3 for several hours on Thursday morning, which is nearly ten times higher than the 24-hour PM2.5 standard of 35 μg/m3. Cal Fire announced on Thursday evening that the Camp Fire has taken at least 63 lives and destroyed at least 11,862 structures. There are now 631 people unaccounted for, a major leap from previous numbers. One of the biggest problems in evacuating the Paradise region is sheer geography. As NPR reporter Paige St. John put it, “The problem in Paradise is that you can’t get out….Once they needed to move and you had an entire town that needed to get out all at once, the roads quickly turned into parking lots.” A route called the Skyway connects the Upper Ridge to Paradise, then continues toward the Central Valley as a broad, four-lane divided highway. Many people used the Skyway as an escape route from the Camp Fire. The multi-pronged wildfire risks of Paradise and surrounding areas were studied in 2009 by one of the grand juries that are routinely impaneled each year to investigate civil and criminal matters for Butte County. In 2008-09, the county’s grand jury looked into wildfire and safety considerations in response to devastating firesin June 2008 across the Sierra foothills that make up the northeast half of the county. The 2008 blazes, including the Humboldt Fire, burned more than 93 square miles (59,500 acres) in Butte County and destroyed at least 74 homes in the Paradise area. In contrast to the Camp Fire, which moved into Paradise from the northeast, the Humboldt Fire approached town from the southwest. “By some miracle, the Humboldt Fire Incident did not cross the West Branch of the Feather River,” the jury noted in its report. “Had this occurred, property damage could have been huge and thousands of lives could have been threatened in Paradise and the Upper Ridge.”

California’s Deadliest Fire Now Blocking Sun; Temps Drop By 10 Degrees As “Hazardous” Air Chokes Residents – California’s deadliest fire in state history has generated so much smoke that it’s blotting out the sun – which has caused surface temperatures to drop by as much as 10 degrees Farenheit, according to the US National Weather Service. The smoke from the Camp Fire, which has burned 140,000 acres, claimed at least 56 lives, and is 40% contained, is so bad that anyone in the cities of Chico or Gridley who venture outdoors without a surgical-grade respirator are putting themselves in danger, according to Bloomberg. Current air quality across much of the region is very poor. Check with https://t.co/XYTBpMFjzh and your local air quality board for more information. #CAwx pic.twitter.com/Rao8t4gvwD The air in the immediate vicinity of the fire is considered “hazardous” — the worst it can be — and the poorest in the U.S. AirNow has an “unhealthy” rating for the air from Sacramento to Livermore, and it’s only a little better for San Francisco. The smoke is so thick “it prevents the sunlight from reaching the surface,” said Hannah Chandler-Cooley, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Sacramento. “It prevents surface heating.” – Bloomberg Will a surgical mask help protect you from #wildfire smoke? How about a bandana? Nope. You’ll need a special #N95 respirator mask – and you’ll need to wear it correctly: https://t.co/C8LJ7kqfCD @KHNews #Sacramento #CampFire pic.twitter.com/2D7zXQGb5g The poor air quality is expected to stick around through next week before the weather patterns shift – which will potentially blow smoke to the East, Chandler-Cooley told Bloomberg by telephone

California wildfires- Air quality rated ‘world’s worst’— Northern California’s air quality has become the worst in the world, according to monitoring groups, as the state battles devastating fires. Air quality network Purple Air said on Thursday the air is now worse than smoggy cities in India and China. Schools have cancelled classes, flights have been delayed, and internet searches for smoke masks are soaring. At least 63 people have died in the Camp Fire – the state’s deadliest and most destructive blaze. The number of missing people has jumped to more than 600, local authorities said, doubling the size of the list in a day. Three more people have also died in the Woolsey Fire, further south. President Donald Trump will travel to California on Saturday to survey the damage and meet those affected. The Camp Fire – which broke out eight days ago – swept through a swathe of the north at high speed, leaving residents little time to escape. The AirNow website ranks the air around San Francisco and Oakland as “very unhealthy”, meaning everyone in the area could experience more serious health effects. Around Elk Grove and Sacramento, it is classed as “hazardous” – the whole population is likely to be affected, their website states. A San Francisco Chronicle reporter tweeted that breathing in San Francisco was equivalent to smoking nearly a dozen cigarettes. In Paradise, which was destroyed by the wildfire, it is closer to smoking 22 cigarettes.

California fire: Death toll rises in Camp fire as survivors look for their way forward –As the death toll from the Camp fire rose to 71 on Friday and the number of missing jumped to more than 1,000, an army of searchers scoured the rubble in the ongoing effort to locate more victims. Eight more bodies were found Friday, and the number of people unaccounted for jumped from 631 to 1,011 as authorities continued to comb through 911 calls, emails and other reports of missing people. Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said, however, that the list of the missing is dynamic and may include people who were counted twice, whose names were misspelled or who may not know they were reported missing. The Camp fire, already the state’s worst fire on record, has burned 146,000 acres and destroyed 12,263 structures. Officials said it could take weeks to complete the search for victims and identify them. Thousands of residents are without homes and living in shelters and tent cities. The relentless rise in the number of dead and missing comes as President Trump plans to visit both Northern and Southern California on Saturday to tour the burn areas. Although the president and Gov. Jerry Brown have clashed on numerous policies – and Trump was roundly criticized last week for erroneously blaming the fires on poor forest management and threatening to cut off funding to California – the two have pledged to work together after the devastating wildfires. As the fire’s massive toll continued to come into focus Friday, many Paradise residents struggled to complete day-to-day tasks. The question of how to rebuild their lives in Paradise – if they decided to do so at all – was never far from their thoughts. They’re not even sure when they’ll be able to go back to sift through the ashes to look for any belongings that may have survived.

Camp Fire’s Missing Person List Climbs To 1011, Statewide Death Toll At 74 – The number of names on the missing person’s list for Northern California’s Camp fire grew to 1,011 Friday night, nearly doubling the number reported Thursday, though fire officials warned that the list may include duplicate names. Search-and-rescue officials also discovered eight more bodies in the Camp fire’s aftermath, bringing the death total to 71. Three bodies have been recovered in the Woosley fire in Southern California, making the state’s death toll now 74. “I want you to understand that this is a dynamic list. It will fluctuate both up and down every day,” Butte County Sheriff-Coroner Kory L. Honea said of the missing person’s list Friday night. The wildfire has scorched 146,000 acres, destroyed over 15,000 structures and is now 50% contained. Honea said the number of people grew significantly Friday because law enforcement now has more resources to address missing person reports, including a newly established call center and more time to review reports that were emailed to law enforcement. Honea also noted that the list may include misspelled names and names of people who are not actually missing. “In the initial hours of this extraordinarily chaotic event, as people were calling in, talking about people that they couldn’t find … that information was being entered in as rapidly as possible by public safety dispatchers,” he said. The Camp fire is considered the most deadly and destructive wildfire in the state of California. Investigators continue to scour the town of Paradise and the surrounding areas, searching for additional remains and assessing the damage.

California fire survivor says he saw friend die – A Northern California man who led a caravan of vehicles that was overcome by flames from a wildfire says he saw his friend die. Greg Woodcox told The Associated Press Monday that he heard his friend scream as the heat blew out windows. Four other people in the vehicles died. They were among at least 29 people who have lost their lives in a wildfire that decimated the town of Paradise. Woodcox said he was too exhausted to talk more by phone. In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, the 58-year-old Woodcox said he was in a Jeep ahead of the other vehicles and ran when the flames overtook them. He said he followed a fox to a path down a steep embankment, and he survived by submerging himself in a stream for nearly an hour. A newspaper says firefighters and state employees are clearing brush and spreading water to prevent damage to a Northern California reservoir and dam if a wildfire passes through. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the work was underway Monday at Lake Oroville while the fire is still about 10 miles from the reservoir’s power plants and water-supply facilities. State Department of Water Resources spokeswoman Erin Mellon said officials were closely monitoring the blaze. The fire has killed at least 29 people and destroyed the town of Paradise. Spillways at the 770-foot Oroville Dam crumbled and fell away during heavy rains in early 2017, prompting thousands to flee over fears of a possible catastrophic release of water. A $1.1 billion reconstruction project was completed last month.

What We Do And Don’t Know About Santa Susana Nuclear Site After The Woolsey Fire – The Woolsey Fire, now one of the largest recorded fires in L.A. County’s history, has burned a good portion of the former Santa Susana Field Lab, which was once home to a nuclear reactor and numerous rocket tests. The site is still riddled with radioactive waste and other toxic compounds. Many of our audience members want to know if there’s a risk of those hazardous materials being spread by the fire. Here’s what we know. Public health officials say they found “no evidence of discernible radiation” in areas they tested. Still, experts who have studied the site say there are many unanswered questions. The Santa Susana Field Lab was a research facility on a 2,850-acre site in the hills above the San Fernando and Simi valleys. Built in 1947, it was used to test experimental rocket systems and was home to 10 nuclear reactors. In July 1959, one of those reactors suffered a partial meltdown. Workers tried to repair it. When they couldn’t, they were ordered to open the reactor’s large door, releasing radiation into the air that likely spread to nearby communities such as Simi Valley, Chatsworth and Canoga Park. Six weeks after the meltdown, the Atomic Energy Commission issued a statement saying that there had been a minor “fuel element failure” but there had been “no release of radioactive materials” into the environment. In 2017, reporter Joel Grover of NBC4, our media partner, documented all of this in “L.A.’s Nuclear Secret,” an eight-part series exposing the reactor incident and subsequent cover-up. Boeing bought most of the site in 1996 and soon closed the Santa Susana Field Laboratory. The company says it’s turning the area into an “open space habitat” although the site is still a toxic mess. A 2012 EPA report didn’t paint a pretty picture. Approximately one out of every seven samples contained “concentrations of radioactive materials exceeding background levels.” More than 80% of these were man-made radionuclides. This echoed a 1989 Department of Energy report that found there were contaminants in both the soil and the plants. Dan Hirsch, who retired last year as the director of UC Santa Cruz’s program on environmental and nuclear policy, says Santa Susana has maybe 100 different toxic chemicals in the soil. They include “a mix of radioactive materials like plutonium, strontium-90 and cesium-137 and a witch’s brew of toxic chemicals such as PCBs, dioxins, heavy metals like mercury and chromium-6 and volatile organic compounds like PCE.”

Kim Kardashian’s Private Firefighters Expose America’s Fault Lines – As multiple devastating wildfires raged across California, a private firefighting crew reportedly helped save Kanye West and Kim Kardashian’s home in Calabasas, TMZ reported this week. The successful defense of the $50 million mansion is the most prominent example of a trend that’s begun to receive national attention: for-hire firefighters protecting homes, usually on the payroll of an insurance company with a lot at risk. The insurance companies AIG and Chubb have publicly talked about their private wildfire teams. AIG has its own “Wildfire Protection Unit,” while Chubb – and up to a dozen other insurers – contract with Wildfire Defense Systems, a Montana company that claims to have made 550 “wildfire responses on behalf of insurers,” including 255 in just the past two years. Right now in California, the company has 53 engines working to protect close to 1,000 homes.The TMZ story feels uniquely 2018 – financial capitalism, inequality, KimYe, the fires of Armageddon – and it is, for Americans at least. “If the idea of private firefighting strikes us as an oddity nowadays, it should,”Benjamin Carp, a historian at Brooklyn College CUNY, told me. “While other societies throughout history have relied on private firefighting companies to protect the property of the upper classes … for the most part, we … have accepted the idea that fighting fire ought to be a public good.”

Hurricane Michael is looking even more violent on closer scrutiny – Gage Wilson and David Segal, technicians for the U.S. Geological Survey, were roaming the obliterated city of Mexico Beach when they spotted the missing sensor. It was a barometer that USGS employees had deployed in advance of Hurricane Michael, a pressure gauge housed inside a two-inch-diameter aluminum tube. The USGS desperately needed that sensor to make an accurate estimate of the storm surge that barreled through Mexico Beach. Eleven days after Michael hit, demolishing most buildings in this seaside town, Wilson and Segal found the shiny cylinder, propped up vertically in front of the splintered ruins of a house as if hoping someone would find it. Using data from that instrument and another sensor that had been nailed to a pier piling, the USGS on Oct. 25 concluded the storm surge at Mexico Beach had reached 15.55 feet, half a foot higher than the previous estimate. If you add the waves on top of the surge, the water level here reached 20.6 feet, or close to the height of a two-story building. “It might be the severest hurricane to hit the U.S. for as long as I’m still alive,” Mike Brennan, chief of the hurricane specialist unit at the National Hurricane Center, said Hurricane Michael was violent in two really different ways. “You had the violence of the winds, the Category 4 winds in the eyewall there, but then you had the violent storm surge that was obviously powerful enough to wipe buildings off their foundation,” Brennan said. In a storm as intense as Michael, the eyewall’s winds are equivalent to an EF3 tornado, strong enough to destroy solidly constructed homes and lift cars off the ground. The extreme wind damage in Panama City, on the left side of the eyewall, raises the possibility that Michael generated hurricane “mini-swirls,” which are like tiny tornadoes, roughly the diameter of a couple of houses, and can create momentary wind speeds in excess of 200 mph. Although Michael was officially a Category 4 hurricane, with 155 mph sustained winds when it made landfall, that could potentially be revised upward, to Category 5 – 157 mph and higher – in the ongoing National Hurricane Center analysis. To the untrained eye, the damage along this coastline looks like it came from a Category 13, what some observers likened to the effect of a nuclear bomb.

El Niño has an 80 percent chance of forming this winter, scientists predict – Climate troublemaker El Niño has an 80 percent chance of developing this winter, federal scientists announced Thursday. “The official forecast favors the formation of a weak El Niño,” NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center said in its monthly forecast.. The center gives it an 80 percent chance of continuing through the winter. The chances have increased since early October, when climate scientists gave it a 70 to 75 percent chance of forming. El Niño is a natural climate pattern that’s defined as unusually warm seawater in the central Pacific Ocean. It affects weather patterns in the USA and around the world. Although forecast to be on the weak side, El Niño “may still influence the winter season by bringing wetter conditions across the southern United States and warmer, drier conditions to parts of the North,” Mike Halpert, deputy director of the prediction center, said in a statement last month. This episode has a 55 to 60 percent chance of lasting into the spring, the CPC said. The entire natural climate cycle is officially known as El Niño – Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which swings between warmer and cooler seawater in the tropical Pacific. The cycle is the primary factor government scientists consider when announcing their winter weather forecast. The cooler pattern, known as La Niña, was dominant the past two winters. The most recent El Niño occurred during the winter of 2015-16. That was a particularly strong episode, which led to weather-related crop damage, fires and flash floods, Reuters said. The forecast released Thursday said the government’s ENSO alert system remains as an “El Niño Watch.” Once El Niño develops, the alert level will rise to “El Niño Advisory,”

India is suffering the ‘worst water crisis in its history’ World Economic Forum – India is suffering “the worst water crisis in its history”, according to a June report by government policy think tank NITI Aayog. Worsening water shortages – for farmers, households and industry – threaten the lives and incomes of hundreds of millions of Indians, and the economic growth of the country, the report said. An estimated 163 million people out of India’s population of 1.3 billion – or more than one in 10 – lack access to clean water close to their home, according to a 2018 report by WaterAid, an international water charity. The port city of Chennai needs 800 million litres of water a day to meet demand for water, according to official data. At the moment, the government can provide only 675 million litres, according to the Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board. Like many Indian cities, Chennai and its suburbs plug that gap by buying water, encouraging residents to dig backyard borewells, or using private wells. In particular, Chennai depends on more than 4,000 private water tankers for its everyday water needs. The government also runs a “dial a tanker” service to meet demand. According to the Chennai Private Water Tanker Lorry Association, which has more than 1,000 members, each tanker makes up to five trips a day, ferrying water from the outskirts of the city to apartments, hotels, malls and offices. Altogether, the tankers deliver 200 million litres of water a day to Chennai, according to the association. “There are neighbourhoods that depend on tankers throughout the year with no access to government water pipelines,” said Shekhar Raghavan, director of the charity Rain Centre, which encourages rainwater harvesting and water conservation in urban areas. That, he said, has “given rise to the water mafia, which has total control over who will get how much water in the city”.

The Seafloor Is Disappearing – Much of the deep sea has never been explored close-up by humans. Some submarines have plumbed its depths, but reaching the ocean bottom is a complicated and expensive journey, challenging because the seabed lies under more than three miles of water, which exerts huge amounts of pressure. “We know more about space than about the bottom of the oceans in our own planet, even though more than two-thirds of the surface of the Earth is covered by marine sediments,” Olivier Sulpis, a researcher and doctoral student at McGill University’s department of earth and planetary sciences and his colleagues found a way to study it without actually going there. They recreated its environment in the lab, building little boxes filled with sediments overlain by sea water, keeping them in the dark. They duplicated sea water temperature and chemistry, as well as the composition of the sediment. By mimicking seabed conditions, Normally, the seafloor is chalky white, largely made up of calcite formed from the skeletons and shells of planktonic organisms and corals. Calcite neutralizes carbon dioxide acidity, keeping seawater from becoming too acidic. But these days, at least in certain hotspots such as the North Atlantic and the southern oceans, the ocean’s chalky bed is turning murky brown, the result of human activities that are causing carbon dioxide levels in the water to become too high and the water too acidic, according to new research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Eventually, the researchers predicted, the calcite won’t be able to keep pace with acidification, dissolving before it can do its job. “The calcite at the bottom of the ocean is like a big anti-acid pill,” Sulpis said. “It dissolves when there is too much CO2 and this neutralizes excess CO­2 in the process. If the seafloor runs out of calcite, the ocean loses its anti-acid pill, and we could go towards a scary state of runaway ocean acidification.”

Ice Sheets in Greenland, Antarctica Could Reach Catastrophic ‘Tipping Points’ if We Don’t Limit Warming – Scientists just gave us another terrifying reason to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels: If temperatures push much beyond that point, both Greenland and Antarctica‘s ice sheets could reach a point where nothing can stop them from melting.An international team of researchers published this chilling finding in Nature Climate Change Monday. The researchers set out to study how the ice sheets would fare in a warming world, and the results were urgent.”A big take-away is that the ice sheets, like many components of the climate system, likely have tipping points. Once they reach a certain amount of warming (~1.5 – 2.0°C), positive feedbacks kick in and commit us to long-term ice sheet mass loss and sea level rise,” study author and Rowan University School of Earth and Environment Assistant Professor Luke Trusel explained on Twitter.If these tipping points are tipped, it would be catastrophic for coastal communities and low-lying islands. The ice sheets combined contain enough water to raise sea levels by 65 meters (approximately 213 feet), according to a press release from the Netherlands Earth System Science Center (NESSC), one of the groups involved with the research. To put that in perspective, this animation shows what the world would look like after just six meters (around 20 feet) of sea level rise.

‘Mini Ice Age’ Looms As NASA Scientist Warns Lack Of Sunspots Could Bring Record Cold – “The sun is entering one of the deepest Solar Minima of the Space Age,” wrote Dr. Tony Phillips just six weeks ago, on September 27, 2018. The lack of sunspots on our sun could bring about record cold temperatures, and perhaps even a mini ice age. Our sun was not expected to head into a solar minimum until around 2020, but it appears to be heading in that direction a little early which could prove to be bad news for warm weather lovers. But a prolonged solar minimum could mean a “mini ice age.” The last time there was a prolonged solar minimum, it did, in fact, lead to a mini ice-age which was scientifically known as the Maunder minimum. SHTFplan.com’s Mac Slavo writes that sunspots have been absent for most of 2018 and Earth’s upper atmosphere is responding, says Phillips, the editor of spaceweather.com. “The bad news,” according to Phillips, is: “It also delays the natural decay of space junk, resulting in a more cluttered environment around Earth.”“It could happen in a matter of months,” says Martin Mlynczak of NASA’s Langley Research Center on the cold snap that may be coming. “If current trends continue, it could soon set a Space Age record for cold,” says Mlynczak. “We’re not there quite yet,” he said. However, “months” is not all that far away. Data from NASA’s TIMED (Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics) satellite shows that the thermosphere (the uppermost layer of air around our planet) is cooling and shrinking, literally decreasing the radius of the atmosphere. This reduction of solar activity could result in a global cooling phase. “The thermosphere always cools off during Solar Minimum. It’s one of the most important ways the solar cycle affects our planet,” said Mlynczak, according to The New American. The new NASA findings are in line with studies released by UC-San Diego and Northumbria University in Great Britain last year, both of which predict aGrand Solar Minimum in coming decades due to low sunspot activity.

Every president since JFK was warned about climate change – John F. Kennedy was warned about “climate control” in February 1961, becoming perhaps the first American president to learn about people’s impact on planetary temperatures. The warnings never stopped. Every president since then has been exposed to similar scientific findings. Sometimes it was called “climatic change,” other times it was “air pollution.” The history of cautionary messages with the West Wing is documented in hundreds of records submitted in Juliana v. United States, a court case against the federal government. The files show an arc of steadily improving climate science and a clearer picture of damages, even as presidents diverged on how to address the problem.

A lot of House Republicans who said they believe in climate change lost reelection – There are a handful of House Republican lawmakers who say they are serious about confronting climate change, despite President Trump’s dismissive stance toward the science that humans are permanently warming the planet.Or at least, there were. Many of the most prominent Republicans with ideas about how to address climate change – or even acknowledging the world is warming at all – lost their reelection bids on Tuesday.At the top of that list is Rep. Carlos Curbelo. Over the summer, the South Florida Republican, who represents a coastal district vulnerable to sea-level rise, introduced legislation designed to discourage the burning of fossil fuels – coal in particular – by making it more expensive to rely on them through a tax on carbon dioxide emissions. The bulk of the revenue would be funneled to fund new infrastructure. That effort wasn’t enough to save him from Tuesday evening’s blue wave, which put Democrats in control of the House for the first time since 2010. Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell eked out victory in a district that Hillary Clinton won by 16 points. “He’s a good friend,” said GOP Rep. Francis Rooney, who represents another coastal Florida district. “I’m just so sorry that he lost. I think we’ve lost a really important voice, for both parties quite frankly.” Curbelo was among more than a dozen members of a bipartisan climate group to lose reelection. Another seven members of the House Climate Solutions Caucus are retiring from Congress at the end of the year. The losses Tuesday revived a debate among environmental activists about whether the caucus – which has been dogged by critics for lacking solutions – should cease to exist. The 2018 election is a moment of reckoning for those within the GOP who want, unlike the party writ large, to address what many scientists and Democrats say is the the world’s most pressing environmental crisis. Many of the House members to lose their seats were moderates representing swing districts where climate change is important to the independent voters they represent.

Trump Regional EPA Pick Indicted on Ethics Charges – When it comes to the people he chooses to protect the nation’s environment, President Donald Trump sure knows how to pick’em. In his brief stint at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Scott Pruitt wracked up an impressive amount of truly bizarre scandals, including blowing thousands of taxpayer dollars on “tactical pants.” Ryan Zinke, the man he put in charge of public lands,, might also be on his way out over shady dealings. Now, it emerges that the man he put in charge of the EPA’s Southeastern regional office has been indicted on ethics charges in Alabama. A grand jury in Alabama’s Jefferson County indicted the regional administrator Trey Glenn, along with his business partner Scott Phillips, for ethics violations related to their attempt to prevent the EPA from cleaning up polluted sites in North Birmingham, Al.com reported Tuesday. Specifically, they worked to stop the EPA from listing the city’s 35th Avenue site on its Superfund National Priorities List, Al.com further explained. Glenn and Phillips worked with the law firm Balch & Bingham and its client Drummond Company, which the EPA had eyed as a responsible party that might have to pay for cleanup, to stop the listing. This happened while Phillips was serving as Alabama Environmental Management Commissioner. At the same time, the pair co-owned and worked together at a company called Southeast Engineering & Consulting. Alabama ethics law prohibits a lobbyist or a lobbyist’s client from giving gifts to a public official, including a job. So the two are rightly in big trouble.

High Stakes, Entrenched Interests And The Trump Rollback Of Environmental Regulations –Since his days on the campaign trail, President Donald Trump has promised to roll back environmental regulations, boost the use of coal and pull out of the Paris climate agreement – and he’s moving toward doing all those things.He has pushed ahead with such action even as a report by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released in October concluded that without much stronger measures to reduce the use of fossil fuels, a warming planet will witness the spread of tropical diseases, water shortages and crop die-offs affecting millions of people.Supporters of the administration’s changes – some of whom are skeptical of accepted science – say the administration’s moves will save money, produce jobs and give more power to states.But critics say new strictures on scientific research and efforts to overturn standards for protecting air, water and worker safety could have long-term, widespread effects that would upend hard-won gains in environmental and public health.The Trump administration’s many environmental proposals vary widely in target and reach. Among such efforts:

• The Environmental Protection Agency recently argued it needs until 2020 to decide on a controversial Obama-era directive expanding to smaller streams and waterways the types of wetlands protected by the federal Clean Water Act. That directive might mean fewer pollutants released into tributaries of larger waterways, from which millions of people get their drinking water. But the controversial rule has been fought by farming, mining and other industry groups that say it is too restrictive.
• The EPA also sought to delay by nearly two years standards to protect workers and emergency responders at chemical plants, part of an Obama-era rule in response to a 2013 fire at a Texas fertilizer plant that killed 15 people. Industry says that the rule is costly and that providing information about chemical storage at plants could raise security concerns.
• In March 2017, then-EPA chief Scott Pruitt rejected a petition filed in 2007 by environmental groups seeking to ban a commonly used pesticide, chlorpyrifos, which the groups say harms health, particularly citing developmental damage to children and fetuses. The agency said it needed more time to study the chemical.

All three of those delays were blocked by federal court judges, although the administration may decide to appeal, so final outcomes are unclear. But one thing is clear: Everyone is likely to spend a lot of time in court.

Trump administration to cut air pollution from heavy-duty trucks – Donald Trump’s administration plans to cut air pollution from heavy-duty trucks, marking one of its first moves to regulate US industry rather than roll back environmental standards. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will start writing a rule to require new trucks produce less nitrogen oxide, which contributes to smog and particulate matter pollution that causes breathing problems, asthma attacks and early deaths. The standards were last updated nearly two decades ago, and environmental advocates lauded the effort but said the details will matter. EPA acting administrator, Andrew Wheeler, told reporters in a call ahead of the formal announcement on Tuesday that the agency will also “cut unnecessary red tape” for truck makers. And the agency is weighing a separate proposal to nix air pollution limits for trucks with rebuilt engines, which critics say is a massive loophole that will lead to dirtier air. “All the other rules I’m aware of appear to cause increases in air pollution,” said Paul Billings, senior vice-president for public policy at the American Lung Association. “This one does appear to be designed to reduce air pollution … but it’s really important to understand the specifics of what deregulatory action the acting administrator is talking about and what the air quality and public health impacts of those actions would be.” Billings said with available technology, trucks could reduce their nitrogen oxide pollution by about 90%, although it’s not clear what standard the EPA would propose. Any rule could take years to finalize and nearly half a decade to go into effect. It would only apply to new trucks, so the pollution improvements would only happen as old trucks are taken off the roads. Wheeler said his agency is not required by law to regulate heavy-duty trucks but is doing so “because it’s good for the environment”. He said the trucks would otherwise account for a third of nitrogen oxide pollution from transportation by 2025. The EPA has meanwhile slashed regulations for other sources of pollution. Wheeler noted his agency has initiated 28 deregulatory actions and is developing an additional 49 more. That includes rescinding a rule to shift away from coal-fired power, which will could be replaced by a proposal that EPA acknowledges could cause 1,400 more early deaths a year. Among other efforts, the agency is also working to roll back limits on methane pollutionfrom the oil and gas industry and mercury emissions from coal plants, as well as fuel economy standards for cars.

Spain bans petrol cars, fracking, fossil fuel subsidies – aims for 100% renewables – Spain is proposing to ban fossil fuel subsidies, dump investments that encourage dirty energy use and will also drive lighter diesel and petrol vehicles off the road. And it has dusted off its renewable energy targets and is now aiming for 100 per cent renewables by 2050. It marks a significant turnaround for one of Europe’s larger coal-mining, gas-importing and auto-manufacturing countries. Fracking would also be banned nationwide. In a draft of country’s Law on Climate Change and Energy Transition, published on Tuesday, the five-month-old socialist government proposes to reduce Spain’s greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20% by 2030 and 90% by 2050, compared to 1990 levels. The 2030 goal would amount to a 37% reduction from current levels, which Madrid called more ambitious than any other EU country. This is Spain’s first national law on emissions reduction and clean energy goals. “Our proposal is to reduce Spain’s current greenhouse gas emissions by a third in just a decade, which we consider an international milestone and a sign of our firm commitment to the fight against climate change,” said Spain’s ecological transition minister Teresa Ribera, who took office in June as a member of prime minister Pedro Sanchez’s Socialist and Workers’ Party government. The draft will now be negotiated with other parliamentary parties. The government aims to present a bill to parliament before the end of the year. Under the plan, all new fossil fuel subsidies would be frozen and a phase out begun on a timetable yet to be agreed. The same freeze and phase out would occur for fossil fuel investments held by the government. The proposal would give investors and other economic players the “clear and predictable signals” needed to reduce Spain’s emissions, Ribera added. The transition “will generate progress and stable, quality employment, and presents great economic opportunities that Spain must take advantage of”, she said.

Israel Aims To Ban Gasoline, Diesel Vehicles By 2030 -2030 seems like a long way off, but it’s really just around the corner. And when the bell tolls at midnight on December 31, 2030, you may not be able to buy a gasoline- or diesel-powered vehicle in Israel. After that date, all passenger cars will be electric and all trucks will be powered by electricity or compressed natural gas, if a proposal currently under consideration gets approved by the government. A final decision is expected by the end of this year. Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz tells Reuters the biggest challenge will be creating a “critical mass” of electric and CNG powered vehicles before the deadline arrives. “We are already encouraging [the transition] by funding…more than 2,000 new charging stations around the country,” he says. The plan was set in motion one day after the United Nations issued its latest climate assessment that finds nations must do far more than they are currently doing in order to stave off warmer global average temperatures that will put the environment at risk. Israel has recently discovered large reserves of natural gas within its borders. It intends to shut down all its coal-fired generating stations and convert them to natural gas as soon as possible. Natural gas may not be as clean as renewables like wind and solar, but its emissions are lower than those from burning coal.

The Real Influence Of IMO 2020 – If ship owners, oil refiners and traders had been hoping for a stay of execution concerning the International Maritime Organisation’s (IMO) impending rule on sulphur limits in bunker fuel, they will have been sadly disappointed October 26. Rather than accept proposals designed to ease the shift from 3.5% to 0.5% sulphur in marine fuel from January 1, 2020, the IMO instead tightened compliance by adopting a ban on the carriage of non-compliant fuels in ships without exhaust scrubbers. It means that the huge oil market shake up that is ‘IMO 2020’ is going full steam ahead on schedule, and that compliance – a factor with significant bearing on its impact – will be at the higher end of expectations. But is a seemingly small regulatory change in an industry far from the public view really such a big deal? Yes. Various estimates suggest IMO 2020 will involve a transfer in value of over $1 trillion between 2020-25. On the winning side: refiners, low sulphur crude producers, oil-fired power generators and some industrials; on the losing side, freight carriers, high sulphur crude producers and consumers. The change in specifications is global. Bunker fuel usage is around 5-6 million b/d, roughly 6-7% of the world oil market. Not only that but 0.5% sulphur fuel oil is a new product. Refiners have to reconfigure their kit to produce it, while ship owners will be running it through engines unused to the new specifications.

20,000+ Students to UN: Publicize Key Facts to Prevent Global Collapse — 24,500 students representing every country in the EU have added their names to the list of young people fighting for a future for themselves and the earth.The students, who organize under the banner of Our Future Uncompromised and attend the prestigiousSchola Europaea network of international schools, are calling on the United Nations (UN) to “stop withholding” crucial scientific information that they say could help avert the duel catastrophes of resources depletion and climate change, the students announced Thursday in an email sent to EcoWatch.”If this science isn’t known by the public, governments won’t act at the scale required and global collapse is certain,” student representative Carolina Teixeira wrote in the email.The students’ demands come in the form of a letter to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and other key UN and EU leaders. The students want the UN to publicize four key facts that are currently deeply buried within UN data:

1. The goals of the Sustainable Development Objective and Climate Stabilization Objective agreed to in 1987 and 1992 respectively.
2. The fact that nothing meaningful has been done to achieve either objective.
3. The per capita responsibility by nation for these failures.
4. The actions that need to be taken for the objectives to succeed.

The students have asked the UN to “prominently publish” the facts in their letter, but the UN has so far refused their request. “The UN has failed to reveal to the public the undisputed scientific realities that nothing meaningful has been, is, or is intended to be done to prevent unsustainable development including climate change from inevitably resulting in global social and economic collapse,” the students wrote in their email.

UK’s backup power subsidies are illegal, European court rules – The UK’s scheme for ensuring power supplies during the winter months has been suspended after a ruling by the European court of justice that it constitutes illegal state aid.Payments to energy firms under the £1bn capacity market scheme will be halted until the government can win permission from the European commission to restart it.The scheme subsidises owners of coal, gas and other power stations so the plants are ready to ensure that electricity for businesses and homes is available at peak times in winter.The UK has also been blocked from holding any capacity market auctions for energy firms to bid for new contracts to supply backup power in the future. National Grid said ministers had instructed it to indefinitely postpone auctions that had been planned for early 2019.The government said it was disappointed by the judgment but insisted that power supplies were not at risk.On Thursday, the ECJ ruled that the European commission had failed to launch a proper investigation into the UK’s capacity market when it cleared the scheme for state aid approval in 2014. The ruling renders the capacity market unlawful for a “standstill period” while ministers seek state aid approval from the European commission. It is not clear how long that will take, but it could be many months.

France has enough power supply for the winter, but with no margin – RTE said in its winter and medium-term outlook that up to 2020, electricity demand and supply is expected to be balanced but without any margin, due to the expected shutdown of some thermal power generation units. RTE’s director of operations Jean-Paul Roubin said analysis showed that under normal weather conditions, demand was expected to remain stable with peak demand seen at around 85 gigawatts (GW), the same level as last winter. Roubin said French nuclear power supply was expected to increase this winter compared with last year due to fewer outages, while hydro power supply was also expected to be stable. But between mid-January and the end of February supply could be tight if there is a prolonged cold spell because EDF has planned maintenance outages at five nuclear reactors. Two reactors could be halted for several weeks. This situation could lead to after market measures including calls to industrial users and consumers to curb consumption, increased imports from neighbours and lowering voltage on the network.

Coal Demand Bounces Back in 2017 After Two Years of Decline – Demand for coal rose for the first time in two years in 2017 with China and India burning more than anyone else, a blow for environmental groups hoping to limit use of the dirtiest fossil fuel. The International Energy Agency’s annual World Energy Outlook published on Tuesday indicates coal will remain a key fuel to provide heat and light through 2040. Key Takeaways

• Global coal demand will begin to flatten by 2040, according to the IEA’s central scenario which tracks energy use on the assumption that governments will implement current and announced policies. In its most environmentally friendly outlook, the Paris-based institution says demand will ease to 2.28 billion tons in 2040 from 5.36 billion tons last year.
• Coal’s share of global energy demand would have to fall to 12 percent by 2040 to make a substantial dent in global warming, down from about 27 percent currently and the 22 percent under the IEA’s central forecast.
• Asia is driving demand, especially India and the nations in the southeast of the continent. That’s helping make up for industrial nations such as Canada, Germany and the U.K. that are working to phase out the fuel.
• Investment in new coal-fired power plants was at its lowest in a decade in 2017. Large investors and insurers are moving away from coal in growing numbers as public pressure to meet global climate targets gets ever stronger. Assicurazioni Generali SpA, Allianz SE and AXA SAandStandard Chartered Plc are among those to have made public their ambitions to exit coal.

Water withdrawals by U.S. power plants have been declining – Water withdrawals by U.S. thermoelectric power plants reached 52.8 trillion gallons in 2017, continuing a decline in withdrawal volumes since 2014. The water intensity of total U.S power generation – the average amount of water withdrawn per unit of total net electricity generated – fell from 15.1 gallons per kilowatthour in 2014 to 13.0 gallons per kilowatthour in 2017. Thermoelectric power plants withdraw water from sources such as rivers or lakes to cool equipment used during the process of generating electricity. After withdrawal, the water is either consumed, meaning it is lost to evaporation or blowdown during generation, or the water is diverted or discharged back into a body of water. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, electric power generators are the largest source of U.S. water withdrawals and account for about 40% of total water withdrawals in the United States. Thermoelectric power plants require cooling water to cool and condense steam that is used to drive steam turbines. In 2017, the total volume of water withdrawn by thermoelectric power plants in the United States was more than twice the amount that flows over the Niagara Falls each year. The decline in water withdrawals by thermoelectric generators has mainly been driven by changes in the electricity generation mix. Between 2014 and 2017, the coal share of U.S. electricity generation fell from 39% to 30%, while the natural gas share increased from 27% to 32%, and nonhydro renewables increased from 7% to 10%. Electricity generation from renewable resources such as wind and solar requires almost no water, and combined-cycle natural gas power plants, which account for much of the natural gas-fired generating capacity added in the past two decades, require less water on average than a coal-fired power plant.

IEA says gas to overtake coal in energy mix by 2030 – The Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) said natural gas is set to overtake coal as the second-largest fuel in the global energy mix by 2030. In its World Energy Outlook 2018, IEA said the industrial consumers will make the largest contribution to a 45 percent increase in worldwide gas use. Trade in LNG is set to more than doubles in response to rising demand from developing economies, led by China. Russia will remain the world’s largest gas exporter as it opens new routes to Asian markets, but an increasingly integrated European energy market will give buyers more gas-supply options, IEA said. Higher shares of wind and solar PV in power systems are expected to push down the utilization of gas-fired capacity in Europe, and retrofits of existing buildings are expected to help bring down gas consumption for heating. However, gas infrastructure will continue to play a vital role, especially in winter, in providing heat and ensuring uninterrupted electricity supply. Oil and gas environmental footprint IEA noted in its World Energy Outlook 2018 that natural gas and oil continue to meet a major share of global energy demand in 2040. “Our first comprehensive global estimate of the indirect emissions involved in producing, processing and transporting oil and gas to consumers suggests that, overall, they account for around 15 percent of energy sector greenhouse gas emissions (including CO2 and methane),” IEA said.

Connected and vulnerable: Climate change, trade wars and the networked world –The increasing connectedness of the global economic system has long been touted as the path to greater prosperity and peaceful relations among nations and their peoples. There’s just one hitch: Complex systems have more points of failure and also hidden risks that only surface when something goes wrong.For example, our dependence on cheap shipping to move commodities and finished goods has resulted in a system vulnerable to environmental disruption, particularly climate change, and to rising political and military tensions.The extreme drought in Germany last summer, the warmest ever recorded in the country, has resulted in such low water in the Rhine River that shipping has been greatly curtailed. Ships can only be loaded lightly so as to avoid running aground. Consequently, many more barges and other vessels have been pressed into service to carry the lighter but more numerous loads along the river. This has driven up the cost of shipping considerably. In addition, fuel tankers have not been able to reach some river ports resulting in scattered fuel shortages. Some industrial installations along the river have had to reduce operations.The natural inhabitants of the river have also suffered as die-offs of fish and other marine life have spread along the river.A world away trade tensions between China and the United States are resulting in an unexpected threat to the preparedness of the U.S. military. The neoliberal program of free trade embraced by one U.S. president after another regardless of party has resulted in curious vulnerabilities for the military.Because of the hollowing out of American manufacturing – as much of it migrated to China’s low-cost labor market – the military can no longer fulfill certain needs from U.S. or even European manufacturers. Instead, the only place to source certain supplies is China, a country many now consider a potential military adversary of the United States. Complicating the issue are recent U.S. trade sanctions against the Chinese. This could lead the Chinese to retaliate by withholding crucial goods such as rare earth metals over which it currently has a virtual monopoly and which are essential for modern electronics. This is a political and military problem. But it illustrates the fact that complexities can trip us up because of both human-created and natural events. Back in the United States the connectivity offered by the electric grid has become a huge liability for California utilities whose power lines have been implicated in past wildfires and who paid dearly for starting them. The combination of dry trees coming in contact with power lines and high winds which can down lines has forced utilities currently dealing with huge wildfires in their service areas to turn off gas and electric service in some places as a precaution. So frightened were investors about the potential liability facing California utility PG&E Corp. that the company’s shares lost 16.5 percent of their value on Friday.

IAEA urges quick plan on Fukushima radioactive water cleanup – Experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency urged the operator of Japan’s tsunami-wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant on Tuesday to urgently decide on a plan to dispose of massive amounts of treated but still radioactive water stored in tanks on the compound. A 13-member IAEA team told reporters in Tokyo after a weeklong review that managing nearly 1 million tons of radioactive water is critical to the plant’s safe and sustainable decommissioning. The IAEA team said in a preliminary report that hundreds of tanks currently used to store the water over large areas of the plant’s compound can only be a temporary solution and must be removed “urgently.” The cores of three reactors at the plant suffered meltdowns following a massive 2011 earthquake and tsunami that devastated parts of northeastern Japan. Radioactive water has leaked from the damaged reactors and mixed with groundwater and rainwater at the plant. The water is treated and stored in large tanks. More than 7 ½ years since the accident, officials have yet to agree on what to do with the radioactive water. A government-commissioned panel has picked five alternatives, including the controlled release of the water into the Pacific Ocean, which nuclear experts say is the only realistic option. Fishermen and residents, however, strongly oppose the proposal. That option faced a major setback this summer when the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., acknowledged that the water, which it said had been carefully treated, was not clean enough. It said the water contains cancer-causing cesium and other elements in excess of allowable limits for release into the environment.

Estimating India’s nuclear weapons-producing capacity – Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists – How many nuclear weapons India can make is an important question in South Asia, determining the foreign and military policies of a number of countries in the greater region, and a concern for the world at large. But coming up with a reliable answer is tricky. Most estimates, such as those of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, get the raw material for their reports on a given country – such as the endowment’s study, “A Normal Nuclear Pakistan” – by relying on a relative handful of sources, such as the yearbooks of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, the International Panel on Fissile Materials, and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, to name some common examples. Bearing in mind the relative paucity of original source material, a 2015 estimate by the Institute for Science and International Security concluded that India’s stockpile of fissile material was only sufficient to make approximately 75-to-125 nuclear weapons. But two recent analyses have produced much larger estimates. In 2016, Syed Muhammad Ali estimated in his book Indian Unsafeguarded Nuclear Program: An Assessment that India has sufficient material and technical capacity to produce between 356 and 492 plutonium-based nuclear weapons. A year later, in a discussion paper for Harvard University’s Belfer Center, Mansoor Ahmed concluded that India has the capacity to produce up to 2,686 nuclear weapons. What accounts for most of these dramatic differences, from the low double-digits to a high in the thousands? It is the possibility, all-too-easily discounted, that India could use civilian reactor-grade fissile materials in its nuclear weapons, and how efficient such an approach could be. Experts claim there are good reasons to assume it is extremely unlikely for India to draw upon its civilian reactors to make fissile materials for its nuclear weapons. For one thing, it is difficult and expensive to reprocess the plutonium in the spent fuel from a civilian nuclear reactor for use as the vitals of a nuclear weapon. And “India in particular has historically had trouble achieving consistent operations in its reprocessing facilities,” And don’t forget that these are unsafeguarded reactors, which by definition means that IAEA inspections are not allowed – so the outside world cannot rule out the possibility that these reactors could be used for military purposes.

.