Environmental News For The Week 31March 2019

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.

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New York county declares measles outbreak emergency – A county in New York state has declared a state of emergency following a severe outbreak of measles. Rockland County, on the Hudson river north of New York City, has barred unvaccinated children from public spaces after 153 cases were confirmed. Violating the order will be punishable by a fine of $500 (£378) and up to six months in prison. The announcement follows other outbreaks of the disease in Washington, California, Texas and Illinois. Vaccination rates have dropped steadily in the US with many parents objecting for philosophical or religious reasons, or because they believe discredited information that vaccines cause autism in children. “We will not sit idly by while children in our community are at risk,” Rockland County Executive Ed Day said. “This is a public health crisis and it is time to sound the alarm.” The outbreak in Rockland County is largely concentrated in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, the New York Times reported. It is believed it could have spread from other predominantly ultra-Orthodox areas around New York which have already seen outbreaks of measles.Mr Day said health inspectors had encountered “resistance” from some local residents, which he branded “unacceptable and irresponsible”.”They’ve been told ‘We’re not discussing this, do not come back’ when visiting the homes of infected individuals as part of their investigations,” he said.According to the CDC, there are 314 cases of measles currently reported in the US, with nearly half of those coming from Rockland County.Dylan Skriloff, the editor of local newspaper the Rockland County Times, told the BBC the number of measles cases in the county had been increasing steadily in recent weeks. “The first reports came six months ago, and each week we’ve had a new report with increased numbers,” he said.

BEWARE: McDonald’s touchscreens had enough fecal matter to ‘put people in the hospital,’ study finds – McDonald’s customers could be picking up more than just their meals if they use touchscreens to place their orders. According to a recent study, researchers found fecal matter on every touchscreen they tested at eight different McDonald’s restaurants. The amount of fecal matter found on each screen was “enough to put people in the hospital,” according to Metro. Researchers swabbed the screens at various McDonald’s restaurants in both Birmingham, England and London, England, some of which included newer touchscreens that had just been installed. The study indicated that numerous customers placed their orders using the touchscreens, then ate their meals without washing their hands after touching the screens. “We were all surprised how much gut and faecal bacteria there was on the touchscreen machines. These cause the kind of infections that people pick up in hospitals,” Dr. Paul Matewele of London Metropolitan University said. NBC 25 reports that one of the touchscreens “tested positive for staphylococcus,” a group of contagious bacteria that can cause people to develop skin infections, toxic shock syndrome, as well as blood poisoning. “Seeing Staphylococcus on these machines is worrying because it is so contagious,” Dr. Matewale said. Further, listeria bacteria was found on touchscreens in one of the restaurants. Listeria bacteria, also contagious, can cause women to have miscarriages and stillbirth, according to Matewale.

California avocado recall 2019- Everything you need to know – Over the weekend, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced a new food recall involving avocados out of California. This is a voluntary recall impacting a large number of people in multiple US states where the produce must be destroyed to prevent risk of illness. At the heart of the matter is an organism called Listeria that can, in some cases, be deadly. On March 23, the FDA announced that Henry Avocado Corportation had initiated a voluntary recall of avocados grown in California that were sold whole in bulk at various retail stores. The recall was initiated after a routine test on samples at the company’s California packing facility. The company said in a statement that it is ‘taking every action possible’ to alert and protect consumers. The recall covers both conventional and organic avocados that were distributed to stores in Wisconsin, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Florida, Arizona, and California. According to the company, covered conventional avocados can be identified by the ‘Bravocado’ stickers on the products. The recalled organic Henry Avocado products don’t feature this label, instead featuring stickers that say ‘California.’ Stores are being alerted about the recall in order to pull the products from shelves. During a routine government inspection of Henry Avocado Corp’s California packing facility, a test on environmental samples revealed the presence of Listeria monocytogenes, an organism that can cause serious, potentially fatal, illnesses in people who contract it. The elderly, health-compromised, and very young are particularly vulnerable to serious outcomes. The FDA states that individuals who contract this organism may experience nausea, high fever, severe headaches, stomach pain, diarrhea, and stiffness. Pregnant women are at risk of experiencing stillbirths or miscarriages. Anyone experiencing these symptoms should seek medical assistance.

EBOLA CRISIS- Outbreaks hit 1,000 cases as 600 killed – medical centres ATTACKED — THE EBOLA epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo has surpassed 1,000 cases, the Health Ministry has confirmed, adding the outbreak had already killed more than 600 people. Ebola spreads among people through contact with bodily fluids. It causes haemorrhagic fever with severe vomiting, diarrhoea and bleeding – more than half of cases are fatal. The current outbreak is the second-deadliest ever recorded, behind the 2013-2016 crisis in West Africa that killed more than 11,000 people, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). The total is now 1,009 new cases,” Congolese health officials said in a statement. “But the response, led by the Health Ministry in collaboration with its partners, has limited the geographical spread.” Out of the 1,009 cases, 944 are confirmed as Ebola and 65 are probable; while out of the 629 deaths 564 are confirmed as Ebola and 65 are probable. Ebola is one of the most deadly known viruses, killing more than half of those infected by it. Last week, the WHO warned of an increase in the weekly rate of confirmed Ebola cases after several weeks of decline, citing “increased security challenges, including the recent direct attacks on treatment centres, and pockets of community mistrust” as causes for the spike. “The communities affected by this outbreak are already traumatised by conflict. Their fear of violence is now compounded by fear of Ebola. Community engagement takes time. There are no quick fixes. But we are learning and adapting to the evolving context every day. “Despite the increased frequency of attacks by armed groups, WHO will stay the course and will work with communities to end this outbreak together with the Ministry of Health and partners,” he continued.

Bacteria can travel thousands of miles through the air on its own – A new study is providing evidence that bacteria can fly thousands of miles through the air without depending on people and animals for transport. According to the experts, their new “air bridge” theory may explain how harmful bacteria have the same antibiotic resistance genes in common. Study senior author Konstantin Severinov is a principal investigator at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology and a professor of Molecular Biology at Rutgers University. “Our research suggests that there must be a planet-wide mechanism that ensures the exchange of bacteria between faraway places,” said Professor Severinov. “Because the bacteria we study live in very hot water – about 160 degrees Fahrenheit – in remote places, it is not feasible to imagine that animals, birds or humans transport them. They must be transported by air and this movement must be very extensive so bacteria in isolated places share common characteristics.” The investigation was focused on “molecular memories” that are stored in bacterial DNA, providing a record of when the bacteria encountered viruses. Bacteriophages, which are viruses that infect bacteria, can be found everywhere on the planet that bacteria exist and have a profound influence on microbial populations. The scientists collected Thermus thermophilus bacteria in hot gravel on Mount Vesuvius and from hot springs in Italy, Chile, and Russia. After bacterial cells are infected by viruses, they store molecular memories in special regions of bacterial DNA called CRISPR arrays. Cells that survive infections pass the memories as small pieces of viral DNA to their offspring. Scientists can trace the history of the bacterial interaction with viruses by looking at the chronological order of the memories.

Study Links Air Pollution and Teenage Psychotic Experiences – Air pollution has long been known to have a potentially deadly impact on the heart and lungs, but increasing evidence is showing it might be bad for the brain as well. Studies have linked it to dementia, and now, researchers at King’s College London have found the first evidence of an association between exposure to polluted air and experiences of psychosis in teens. The study, published Wednesday in JAMA Psychiatry, looked at more than 2,000 17-year-olds born in England and Wales and found that those who lived in polluted areas were 27 to 72 percent more likely than those who did not to have psychotic experiences like hearing voices or feeling intensely paranoid, The New York Times reported. Nitrogen dioxide and nitrogen oxides, the pollutants released by diesel vehicles, were the most associated with psychotic symptoms. In the areas most polluted with nitrogen oxides, 12 teens reported experiencing symptoms for every 20 who did not; in less polluted areas, seven teens reported symptoms compared to 20 who did not, The Guardian reported. “There seems to be some link between exposure to air pollution and effects in the brain and this [new research] is perhaps another example of this,” study author and King’s College London professor Frank Kelly told The Guardian. “Children and young people are most vulnerable to the health impacts of air pollution owing to the juvenility of the brain and respiratory system.” The researchers took into account other factors such as smoking, alcohol and marijuana use, psychiatric history and income level and found that exposure to nitrogen oxides explained 60 percent of the association between living in polluted areas and psychosis symptoms. However, the researchers noted that this was a preliminary, observational study and could not prove that pollution caused the symptoms.

Second Roundup Verdict: Jury Finds Weedkiller a “Substantial Cause” of Plantiff’s Cancer -Jerri-lynn Scofield – A San Francisco jury found last Tuesday that Roundup – the glyphosate-based weedkiller – was “a substantial cause “ of the plaintiff Edwin Hardeman’s non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, in the first of a three-phrase process, which focused only on scientific evidence.Roundup is the largest selling herbicide in the world, originally developed and marketed by US agricultural company Monsanto. Following a $63 billion acquisition last June, Bayer, the German pharmaceuticals company better known for its aspirin, also assumed the Roundup legal liability.On Wednesday, the same jury began the second trial phase, during which it will decide whether Bayer is liable. If the jury decides yes, the third and final phase would determine damages.This is the second time since last August that a jury has found in favour of a Roundup plaintiff, according to the Wall Street Journal’s account, Monsanto Hit by $289 Million Verdict in Cancer Case. A judge scaled back the jury damages award to $78 million from $289 million; that earlier verdict is under appeal. At least 11,200 further legal claims are pending – more than 760 in the same San Francisco federal district court that heard Hardeman’s case, as reported in U.S. Jury Hears More Evidence as Second Phase of Roundup Cancer Trial Begins by the New York Times.The Grey Lady’s coverage warns that this second verdict is a serious setback to the new trial strategy Bayer had adopted for the second proceeding in Jury Finding Upends Bayer’s Roundup Defense Strategy: Experts: The jury decision was a blow to Bayer after the judge in the Hardeman case, at the company’s request, had split the trial, severely limiting evidence plaintiffs could present in the first phase. Tuesday’s defeat on terms considered advantageous to Bayer sets up the second phase to be even tougher and limits the grounds on which the company could appeal any final verdict, the experts said.

Monsanto Ordered to Pay $80 Million in Roundup Cancer Case – A federal jury on Wednesday ordered Monsanto to pay more than $80 million in damages to a California man whose cancer it determined was partly caused by his use of the popular weedkiller Roundup. The six-member jury found that Monsanto should be held liable for the man’s illness because it failed to include a label on its product warning of the weedkiller’s risk of causing cancer. The verdict, delivered in United States District Court in San Francisco, is a milestone in the continuing public debate over the health effects of Roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, the world’s most widely used weedkiller. Monsanto is currently defending itself against thousands of similar claims. The plaintiff, Edwin Hardeman, 70, used Roundup to control weeds and poison oak on his property for 26 years. In 2015, he learned that he had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The next year, after the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer declared glyphosate a probable carcinogen, Mr. Hardeman sued Monsanto. Wednesday’s verdict ended the second of two phases in the trial. Last week, the jury issued an initial verdict saying that the weedkiller was a “substantial factor” in causing Mr. Hardeman’s cancer. The jury then started deliberating on Tuesday afternoon about whether Monsanto demonstrated negligence and should be held liable. In determining that Monsanto was responsible, the jury awarded Mr. Hardeman $75 million in punitive damages, Jennifer Moore, one of his lawyers, said in a phone interview. About $5 million was also awarded for Mr. Hardeman’s past and future suffering, as well as more than $200,000 for medical bills, Ms. Moore said. Ms. Moore said that Monsanto had continually ignored scientific studies showing the harmful health effects of Roundup.

Monsanto Found Liable for Man’s Cancer, Ordered to Pay $80 Million in Damages – In a victory for consumers and yet another massive blow to Monsanto, a federal jury on Wednesday found the company liable for causing a California man’s cancer and ordered it to pay $80 million in damages. “The jury resoundingly held Monsanto accountable for its 40 years of corporate malfeasance and sent a message to Monsanto that it needs to change the way it does business,” said the legal team of 70-year-old Edwin Hardeman, who was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) in 2015 after using Roundup on his property for more than two decades. “It is clear from Monsanto’s actions that it does not care whether Roundup causes cancer, focusing instead on manipulating public opinion and undermining anyone who raises genuine and legitimate concerns about Roundup,” Hardeman’s lawyers added. Earlier this month, the San Francisco jury ruled that Roundup was a “substantial factor” in the development of Hardeman’s cancer. In its Wednesday ruling, the jury said Monsanto – which was acquiredby German pharmaceutical giant Bayer last year – should be held liable for failing to give sufficient warnings about Roundup’s cancer risks. “Clearly, the testimony that informed the jury’s decision was Bayer-Monsanto hiding Roundup’s carcinogenic properties, manipulating the science, and cozying up with EPA so it would not have to warn consumers of its dangerous product,” Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, said in a statement.

More Than 90 Percent of Americans Have Pesticides or Their Byproducts in Their Bodies – Every year US farmers use about a billion pounds of chemicals on crops, including the fruits, nuts, and vegetables many parents beg their kids to eat. The Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration are charged with ensuring that these chemicals don’t endanger consumers, and both agencies test the food supply for pesticide residues each year. They focus on foods eaten by babies and children, whose developing bodies are particularly sensitive to toxic chemicals, and typically report that pesticide residues in these products rarely exceed safety standards. Yet, experts say, the agencies’ pesticide-monitoring approach suffers from several limitations that make it difficult to draw meaningful conclusions about pesticide risks to the nation’s food supply. What’s more, government agencies don’t monitor risks to farmworkers who labor among those chemicals, or to pregnant women and children who live near agricultural fields. Since pesticide monitoring began about three decades ago, scientists have learned that even low doses of pesticides and other synthetic chemicals can harm children and that exposure to chemical mixtures, particularly during critical windows of neurodevelopment, may carry serious health risks that take years to emerge. And though crops are often sprayed with multiple chemicals over the growing season, both agencies track pesticide residues one chemical at a time, to determine whether a specific chemical exceeds safety standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency. That’s why, several years ago, scientists at the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit consumer-advocacy group, started doing their own analysis of pesticides on produce. About 70 percent of US produce harbors traces of pesticides, the EWG reports in its latest shoppers’ guide to the “ dirty dozen,” those fruits and vegetables with the highest pesticide load. More than 90 percent of Americans have pesticides or their byproducts in their bodies, mostly from eating conventionally grown fruits and vegetables. Health experts worry that the EPA’s pesticide-residue safety levels are too high to protect young children. Olga Naidenko, the EWG’s senior science adviser for children’s environmental health, says she was surprised to see kale contaminated with a chemical called dacthal, which the EPA classifies as a possible human carcinogen and European regulators banned in 2009. Among the more troubling pesticides found on spinach is permethrin, a neurotoxic insecticide that’s been linked to ADHD.

Rising Temperatures Will Help Mosquitos Infect a Billion More People – Mosquitoes are unrelenting killers. In fact, they are among the most lethal animals in the world. When they carry dangerous viruses or other organisms, a bite can be unforgiving. They cause millions of deaths every year from such infectious diseases as malaria, dengue, Zika, chikungunya, yellow fever and at least a dozen more.But here’s the really bad news: climate change is expected to make them even deadlier. As the planet heats up, these insects will survive winter and proliferate, causing an estimated billion or more new infections by the end of the century, according to new research.”Plain and simple, climate change is going to kill a lot of people,” said biologist Colin J. Carlson, a postdoctoral fellow in Georgetown University’s biology department, and co-author of the study, published in the journal PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. “Mosquito-borne diseases are going to be a big way that happens, especially as they spread from the tropics to temperate countries.” The study predicted an amenable climate could prompt some of these new cases within regions not previously regarded as vulnerable, including the U.S. These viruses can result in volatile outbreaks when conditions are right, as was the case with Zika. “We’ve known about Zika since 1947, and we watched it slowly spread around the world until 2015, when it arrived in Brazil and suddenly we had an explosive epidemic on our hands,” Carlson said.”Chikungunya has done something not too different from that,” he added. “These viruses proliferate quickly in populations that don’t have any immunity – and we’re very scared about that. If you only have one month that’s warm enough for outbreaks, the question is: ‘how much damage you can do…?’ For viruses like these, it’s a lot.”The study underscores the growing evidence that climate change is having – and will continue to have – a deleterious impact on global health, not only from the direct effects of extreme weather events like heat waves and flooding, but also because mosquitoes thrive in warm temperatures and carbon dioxide, encouraging them to flourish and spread disease. Rising temperatures also are causing many to migrate to new locations.

Stanford researchers explore the effects of climate change on disease — Wild creatures seek out weather that suits them. But a changing climate is moving that comfort zone for many animals, including disease-carrying mosquitoes that kill about 1 million people a year. Stanford biologist Erin Mordecai and her colleagues have made startling forecasts of how climate change will alter where mosquito species are most comfortable and how quickly they spread disease, shifting the burden of disease around the world. A major takeaway: wealthy, developed countries such as the United States are not immune. “It’s coming for you,” Mordecai said. “If the climate is becoming more optimal for transmission, it’s going to become harder and harder to do mosquito control.”Mosquitoes and other biting insects transmit many of the most important, devastating and neglected human infectious diseases, including malaria, dengue fever, chikungunya and West Nile virus. Economic development and cooler temperatures have largely kept mosquito-borne diseases out of wealthier Northern Hemisphere countries, but climate change promises to tip the scales in the other direction.“As the planet warms, we need to be able to predict what populations will be at risk for infectious diseases because prevention is always superior to reaction,” said Desiree LaBeaud, an associate professor of pediatrics in the Stanford Medical School who collaborates on research with Mordecai. Mordecai’s research has found that warmer temperatures increase transmission of vector-borne disease up to an optimum temperature or “turn-over point,” above which transmission slows. Just as they carry different diseases, different mosquitoes are adapted to a range of temperatures. For example, malaria is most likely to spread at 25 degrees Celsius (78 degrees Fahrenheit) while the risk of Zika is highest at 29 degrees Celsius (84 degrees Fahrenheit). Mordecai’s lab is working to predict thermal responses for 13 such diseases and to map future changes in their distribution accordingly. Among the findings so far: carriers of dengue are among the warmest adapted, so will likely continue to plague hot regions such as sub-Saharan Africa. Mosquitoes that carry West Nile virus, however, prefer a more temperate climate, so likely will migrate to historically cooler regions such as the U.S. as the climate warms.

Thyroid cancers near Lake Norman baffle researchers. But they might have clues. Investigations into a baffling number of thyroid cancers in southern Iredell County are picking up momentum, even as answers so far elude researchers. Some of the state’s top health and environment officials, legislators and scientists from Duke University and UNC Chapel Hill met Thursday night with local physicians to brief them on ongoing research. s.Duke researchers said they will dig deeper into two potential sources of ionizing radiation, the only environmental source clearly linked to thyroid cancer: radon, a naturally-occurring radioactive gas, and coal ash, which can contain radioactive elements and is stored nearby. Occurrences of papillary thyroid cancer, the most common form, are rising globally and in North Carolina since the mid-1990s, said a N.C. Department of Health and Human Services report released in January. But between 2005 and 2009, the rate in Iredell County rose significantly higher than in the state as a whole. Two southern Iredell zip codes – 28115 and 28117 – had still higher cancer rates. While 11.6 cancer cases were diagnosed for every 100,000 people statewide between 2012 and 2016, Iredell’s rate was 21.8 cases. Southeastern and southwestern Iredell, in turn, had higher rates than the overall county rate. Eleven other counties also reported thyroid cancers above the state rate, including Rowan and Cabarrus near Iredell County. Another apparent hot spot is in the Cape Fear region near Wilmington. Scientists are rarely able to pinpoint environmental sources of cancer. The disease may appear only years after an exposure, and people have often moved from place to place in that time. Specific forms may afflict relatively few people, complicating the work. Radiation is the only known environmental source clearly linked to thyroid cancer, DHHS said, but some research suggests that chemicals in flame retardants, benzene, nitrates and some pesticides might also be associated with the disease.

Cancer Cluster At California Elementary School Results In Removal Of Sprint Cell Phone Tower – A Sprint cell phone tower will be removed from a California elementary school after four students and three teachers were diagnosed with cancer. Weston Elementary School in Ripon, CA went on high alert after the controversy erupted two years ago – with some parents even pulling their children from school over the tower which Sprint has been paying the school $2,000 per month to place on its property. The Ripon Unified School District initially defended the cell phone tower earlier this month, with board president Kit Oase saying tests done on the tower had found it was operating within safety standards. Monica Ferrulli, whose son was treated for brain cancer in 2017, said RUSD has cited an obsolete American Cancer Society study in keeping the tower in place since the controversy erupted two years ago. “It is just denial,” Ferrulli told the board. She vowed that parents will continue to fight and keep their children out of the school. –Modesto Bee Around 200 parents attended a meeting after a fourth student was diagnosed with cancer on March 8. Richard Rex, whose family lives across the street from Weston School, said a bump appeared on his 11-year-old son’s abdomen a month ago. He said his son’s classroom is near the tower. The parents first thought it was a skating injury. Instead of going to science camp, 11-year-old Brad was taken to doctors for examinations and tests that found a tumor wrapped around his liver. The boy now has a portal for starting cancer treatment, the parents said. Richard Rex said he’s hearing different options for treating the cancer. “They said they can shrink it and cut it out. They’re also talking liver transplant. It is very scary,” Rex said. –Modesto Bee Sprint representative Adrienne Norton said that the company has been “working with the community in Ripon to address their concerns.” The potential negative health effects from electromagnetic fields (EMFs) emitted by cell towers or transmission lines have been long debated. While the National Cancer Institute cites studies which conclude that EMFs are a possiblehuman carcinogen based on research which focused on childhood leukemia, The institute’s website says there are no increased risks from brain tumors or other cancers based on European epidemiological studies.

Clean Water: UNICEF Shows More Children Die from Diarrhea than Direct Violence in Conflict Zones -Jerri-lynn Scofield – Friday was World Water Day and the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) produced a report, Water Under Fire, documenting how deadly tainted water can be to children in war zones.Lack of access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) is far more dangerous to children in conflict zones than direct violence. From the report: In protracted conflicts, children younger than 15 are, on average, nearly three times more likely to die from diarrhoeal disease linked to unsafe water and sanitation than violence directly linked to conflict and war. For younger children, the impact of unsafe water, sanitation and hygiene is greater: Children under 5 are more than 20 times more likely to die from diarrhoeal disease linked to unsafe water and sanitation than violence in conflict (report, p. 3)The report isn’t based on anecdote and examined World Health Organization (WHO) mortality estimates in 16 countries undergoing protracted conflict: Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Myanmar, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic and Yemen. World Health Organization (WHO) mortality estimates were used for ‘collective violence’ and ‘diarrhoeal disease’.Using HO data covering 2014-2016 and published in 2018, the report concluded that 85,700 children under the age of fifteen died from WASH-related diarrhea, compared to 31,000 deaths due to direct violence. Most deaths were of children under the age of five, 72,000 of whom died due to diarrhoea, compared to 3,400 from direct violence (report, p. 5). The report didn’t offer much by way of solutions, other than a call to combatants to stop targeting water infrastructure during such conflicts. The problem of WASH fatalities isn’t limited to war zones, and it is expected to get worse, due to increased water scarcity, some of which may be exacerbated by climate change. As the Guardian reports in Diarrhoea kills more children in war zones than war itself – Unicef more than 4 billion people and 844 million lack access to water close to home. WaterAid, a non-profit set up in 1981, estimates diarrhea caused by dirty water and a lack of sanitation kills nearly 800 children a day.

Clean drinking water a bigger global threat than climate change, EPA’s Wheeler says – Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler says that unsafe drinking water — not climate change — poses the greatest and most immediate global threat to the environment. “We have 1,000 children die everyday worldwide because they don’t have safe drinking water,” Wheeler told Garrett. “That’s a crisis that I think we can solve. We know what goes into solving a crisis like that. It takes resources, it takes infrastructure and and the United States is working on that. But I really would like to see maybe the United Nations, the World Bank focus more on those problems today to try to save those children. Those thousand children each day, they have names, we know who they are.” The World Health Organization estimates that at least 2 billion people globally use a drinking water source contaminated with feces. It’s unclear what, if any, new funding the Trump administration might be providing for the clean water push. Climate change, Wheeler said, “is an important change we have to be addressing and we are addressing.” But he added that “most of the threats from climate change are 50 to 75 years out,” while unsafe drinking water is killing people right now. Wheeler noted that the U.S. has already cut CO2 emissions, which are thought to be the primary driver of climate change, by “14 percent since 2005.” He argued that the U.S. is “doing much better than most westernized countries on reducing their CO2 emissions, but what we need to do is make sure that the whole world is focused on the people who are dying today, the thousand children that die everyday from lack of drinking water. That is something where we have the technology, we know what it will take to save those children. And internationally, we need to step up and do something there.”

Your mama’s so fat she can drink WV water – Bil Lepp: “Your mama is so fat she can drink West Virginia water and not get cancer.” The West Virginia Manufacturers Association, according to reports, just busted hard on your mama. They are arguing that, because West Virginians are heavier than people in other states – and they don’t mean larger, they mean fatter – our bodies can tolerate higher levels of cancer-causing chemicals. Your mother is a circus sideshow performer to the West Virginia Manufacturers Association. “Step right up and see The Amazing Fat Lady from Big Ugly drink poison from her faucet! She can drink 10 times as much poison as little ladies from other states!” And the reason they want your mama to drink poison is so they can make money. This claim didn’t happen by accident. There wasn’t a fluke and this report just magically spewed forth from a printer. This report was created by human beings. The West Virginia Manufacturers Association presumably had a meeting in which someone theoretically asked, “How can we convince the government to let us put more chemicals in the water?” Then, hypothetically, somebody said, “West Virginians are fat. Write that down. Write down West Virginians can tolerate more toxins ‘cause they are fat.” Maybe someone in the group said, “Gosh, that seems harsh,” but, in the end, the folks at the top apparently signed off on the report with a wink and a backslap while saying, and I’m just conjecturing here, “Way to think outside the box, fellas!” I don’t know who wrote the report, or whose idea it was, but the West Virginia Manufacturers Association – actual living, breathing human beings – agreed that the best way to pump more chemicals into our streams and rivers was to capitalize on your mother’s weight problem. Probably, they innocently forgot that there are babies and small children in West Virginia, too.

Devon’s largest ever fatberg successfully removed – A 64m-long (210ft) mass of congealed fat oil and grease, wet-wipes and cotton buds found in the sewers of Sidmouth has been cleared. For seven weeks, a team of workers removed the huge mass found by Charlie Ewart, who was inspecting the sewers. Mr Ewart and his colleagues “braved exceptionally challenging conditions to break up the beast”, South West Water (SWW) said. It added: “The 64m fatberg is the biggest ever discovered in Devon or Cornwall and is thought to be one of the largest found so close to the sea.” The team had to be winched into the sewer and for the first few days needed to wear full breathing apparatus because of dangerous gases in the pipe. Occasionally, water levels in the sewer made it too dangerous to enter. Specialist equipment and manual labour were used to break up the fatberg before it was loaded on to tankers.

Who keeps buying California’s scarce water? Saudi Arabia – Four hours east of Los Angeles, in a drought-stricken area of a drought-afflicted state, is a small town called Blythe where alfalfa is king. More than half of the town’s 94,000 acres are bushy blue-green fields growing the crop. Massive industrial storehouses line the southern end of town, packed with thousands upon thousands of stacks of alfalfa bales ready to be fed to dairy cows – but not cows in California’s Central Valley or Montana’s rangelands. Instead, the alfalfa will be fed to cows in Saudi Arabia. The storehouses belong to Fondomonte Farms, a subsidiary of the Saudi Arabia-based company Almarai – one of the largest food production companies in the world. The company sells milk, powdered milk and packaged items such as croissants, strudels and cupcakes in supermarkets and corner stores throughout the Middle East and North Africa, and in specialty grocers throughout the US. Each month, Fondomonte Farms loads the alfalfa on to hulking metal shipping containers destined to arrive 24 days later at a massive port stationed on the Red Sea, just outside King Abdullah City in Saudi Arabia. With the Saudi Arabian landscape there being mostly desert and alfalfa being a water-intensive crop, growing it there has always been expensive and draining on scarce water resources, to the point that the Saudi government finally outlawed the practice in 2016. In the wake of the ban, Almarai decided to purchase land wherever it is cheap and has favorable water conditions to produce enough feed for its 93,000 cows. In 2012, they acquired 30,000 acres of land in Argentina, and in 2014, they bought their first swath of land in Arizona. Then, in 2015, they bought 1,700 acres in Blythe – a vast, loamy, agricultural metropolis abutting the Colorado river, where everything but the alfalfa seems cast in the hue of sand. Four years later, the company owns 15,000 acres – 16% of the entire irrigated valley. But what business does a foreign company have drawing precious resources from a US desert to offset a lack of resources halfway around the globe? What Fondomonte Farms is doing is merely a chapter in the long story of water management in the west, one that pierces the veil on the inanities of the global supply chain – how easy it is to move a commodity like alfalfa, or for that matter lettuce or clementines or iPhones, across more than 13,000 miles of land and sea, how much we rely on these crisscrossing supply lines, and at what cost to our own natural resources.

‘We Fear Drought More Than War,’ Say Border Villagers in Gujarat – Mota is among the last villages before the international border in western Kutch. Jaloya is about 35 km from the international border in north Gujarat’s Banaskantha district. Both districts are going through one of the worst droughts in recent history. Kutch has received only 26% of its 30-year annual average rainfall, while Banaskantha has received 33%. The talukas – administrative subdivisions – within which the two villages are located have fared even worse. Mota is located in Bhuj taluka, which has received 22% of its 30-year average rainfall. Suigam taluka, which contains Jaloya, has received only 10% of its average. Both villages were visited by TV crews in recent days during the India-Pakistan military standoff after the attack on a CRPF convoy in Pulwama, which led to the deaths of 40 security personnel. “Nobody comes here. So we were happy that they had come. But they only asked us about the war,” said Bahema Rabari, a 38-year-old farmer and cattle herder in Jaloya. “We have had no water for the last 12 months. But they only asked us if we were scared of the war.” Rabari told the TV crew that he wasn’t. “We fear drought more than war. War has to be fought by the army, not us. The drought has to be fought by us,” he told The Wire, standing in his parched field which resembled a desert.Mota, too, played host to TV crews. “They asked us if any bombs were dropped on us,” said Mukim Hussain Jat, a 40-year-old cattle herder, laughing. According to residents, Mota received rainfall only on one day in July 2018. “We saw dark clouds gather and it began to rain. The atmosphere turned festive,” Mukim told The Wire. It stopped less than a minute later, recounted Mukim. “It came and went like a dream. And it never rained again the entire season,” Mukim said.

It Was 70 Degrees in Alaska Last Week – Forget Cancun. Spring break in Alaska is where it’s at. Bizarre March warmth has engulfed the Frontier State, setting an all-time temperature record in the latest manifestation of a new climate gripping the Arctic. On Tuesday, Klawock, Alaska topped out at 70 degrees Fahrenheit. That marks the earliest 70-degree Fahrenheit day ever recorded in Alaska. The previous record was set just three years ago when Klawock reached 71 degrees Fahrenheit on March 31. In comparison, many cities in the Northeast have yet to crack that mark.Now Klawock is pretty far south in Alaska, sitting about equidistant between Anchorage and Seattle. But the rest of the state, while not quite as sizzling, has been in the grips of a serious warm wave. In addition to Klawock, at least five other locations set monthly high temperature records according to an analysis by Alaska weather watcher Rick Thoman.The warm weather led organizers to cancel the Tok Race of Champions dog sled race, which takes place about 250 miles northeast of Anchorage.Organizers said that the “unprecedented warm weather” had made “trails unsafe for Mushers and their dogs by this weekend.” This marks only the second time the event has been called off. The heat didn’t stop at the border, either. Record-setting warmth spread over western Canada and the Pacific Northwest as monthly records fell across British Columbia, Alberta, the Northwest Territories, and the Yukon. And not to be outdone by the 70s in Alaska, temperatures topped 81 degrees Fahrenheit in Quillayute on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula and 79 degrees Fahrenheit in Seattle. Both are all-time March records.

‘A punch in the gut’: Farmers hit by tariffs see crops swept away by flood – His farm is still cut off by floodwaters, so Iowa soybean farmer Pat Sheldon had to view the damage from the air. On a helicopter ride over what seemed like an endless stretch of water, he came to a place he recognized as his own land – and saw that one of the grain silos had burst open, spilling yellow soybeans into the dingy, toxic water. “It was like a punch in the gut,” Sheldon said. “You work hard planting, taking care of these beans and harvesting them. Then, to have that happen makes you almost physically ill,” he said. Although the water has yet to recede enough for a true examination, Sheldon says more than $350,000 of his corn and soybeans is in jeopardy, and he worries he may lose the farm that’s been in his family for generations. Before the terrible “bomb cyclone” sent warm rain down on frozen ground, resulting in catastrophic flooding throughout the Midwest and displacing thousands, American farmers were already struggling after several seasons of low commodity prices and the continuing trade war with China. In towns along the overflowing Mississippi and Missouri rivers, farmers are seeing their crops – and their futures – swept away by floodwaters. In Nebraska, Gov. Pete Ricketts (R) has called the flooding “the most widespread destruction we have ever seen in our state’s history.” Iowa has more than 100,000 acres of farmland still underwater. Officials from both states say the damage estimates are more than $1 billion and counting. “Essentially, it’s two years of negative; these farmers lost what was stored in the bins and won’t be able to plant next year’s crop. So it’s going to be really tough for a lot of people.” Some farmers had more soybeans in storage this year than normal, according to Frayne Olson, a crop economist and marketing specialist with North Dakota State University. The government estimates there are more than 3.7 billion bushels of soybeans still in storage – a record – partly because Chinese purchases of the grain have plummeted in recent months during the ongoing tariff war. “A lot of farmers have not been selling, hoping for better prices and some kind of trade agreement,” Olson said.

“As Many As A Million Calves Lost In Nebraska” – Beef Prices To Escalate Dramatically In Coming Months – According to Agriculture Secretary Sunny Purdue, there “may be as many as a million calves lost in Nebraska” due to the catastrophic flooding that has hit the state. This number comes to us directly from the top agriculture official in the entire country, and it means that the economic toll from the recent floods is far greater than most of us had anticipated. You can watch Purdue make this quote on Fox Business right here, and it is important to remember that this number is just for one state. It is hard to imagine what the final numbers will look like when the livestock losses for all of the states affected by the flooding are tallied up. This is already the worst agricultural disaster in modern American history, and the National Weather Service is telling us that there will be more catastrophic flooding throughout the middle portion of the nation for the next two months. Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts says that this is the worst flooding that his state has ever experienced. Ricketts originally told us that 65 out of the 93 counties in his state have declared a state of emergency, but that number has now risen to 74. Hundreds of millions of dollars of damage has been done in his state alone, and that is just an initial estimate. It deeply offends me that the big mainstream news channels have spent so little time covering this disaster. This is the biggest news story of 2019 so far by a very wide margin, but because it happened in the middle of the country they are not giving it the attention that it deserves. In the short-term, food prices will not rise too dramatically because the stores are selling the food that has already been produced. But as the months roll along, you will start to notice food prices steadily increase. Millions of bushels of wheat, corn and soybeans have been destroyed by the flooding so far, and thousands of farmers will not be able to plant crops at all this year. And the livestock losses that we have already experienced will be felt for many years to come.

Farmers in the Midwest Face Decades of Recovery as Flooding Strips Away Crucial Soil – The Midwest floods continue to be a slow-moving disaster. Towns, farms, and infrastructure are still underwater in Nebraska, and water will take months to work through the vast network of rivers, creeks, and streams that drain the Upper Midwest into the Gulf of Mexico. The damage to the region could last much longer than that, though. It could require years to rebuild infrastructure, but the real challenge will be restoring the region’s greatest resource, the reason there are so many farms there in the first place: its soil.Early estimates indicate the floods could be responsible for $440 million in crop losses in Nebraska, which sits at the epicenter of the floods. That number could easily rise the longer floodwaters cut farmers off from fields and prevent spring plantings. That’s bad news for a state where one in four jobs are tied to or supported by farming, according to the state’s Department of Agriculture. States next door are dealing with their own varying levels of crisis from rivers overtopping their banks. Even after the floodwater recedes, the region’s farms and the soil they’re built on could face a long road to recovery, spanning years or decades. Soaked soils couldn’t absorb the sudden influx of water, and so it began to run off into rivers and streams, scraping the earth away with it. Add in dam and levee failures, and the torrent truly clawed away at the Midwest’s most bountiful resource.“Basically what it’s going to do is going to erode the most productive topsoil,” Mahdi Al-Kaisi, a soil and water specialist with Iowa State’s extension program, told Earther. “This is why we need to think about climate change more seriously. That’s become very destructive to this whole system and put a lot of stress on these surfaces.”It’s not even just the top layer of soil that’s being ripped up and washed away. Where the floodwaters have receded, huge blocks of soil have been gouged away. The weight of the water has also compacted soil in some locations, while others are covered in sand and silt that’s been swept up by engorged rivers, neither of which is as nutrient-rich or structured as the soil that supports the wheat, soybean, and corn crops.

U.S. Military Knew Flood Risks at Offutt Air Force Base, But Didn’t Act in Time – For several years, the U.S. military and federal and local officials knew that Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska lay exposed to the threat of catastrophic flooding. But a key federal agency moved too slowly to approve plans to protect the base from last weekend’s deluge, a top local official said. The flooding submerged part of the runway and inundated dozens of buildings at one of the nation’s most important air bases. The calamity likely will cost many times more to repair than it would have cost to prevent, said John Winkler, district general manager of the Papio-Missouri River Natural Resources District, the local government agency responsible for managing the section of the river nearest Offutt and Omaha. The damage has crippled capabilities at an Air Force base considered essential to national security. Among its many roles, Offutt is home to the U.S. Strategic Command that oversees the Pentagon’s nuclear strategic deterrence and global strike capabilities.The risks to Offutt, long known, were laid bare back in 2011 when floodwaters crept to within 50 feet of the runway. But even as military officials in Washington and across the country increasingly realized that their defense infrastructure was vulnerable to the effects of climate change, the response to protect Offutt was agonizingly slow, Winkler said. Crucially, construction never began to reinforce an earthwork levee system to protect the vital base from the Missouri River the next time it raged over its banks. Winkler said approval for the levee construction was complicated by myriad requirements from the Army Corps of Engineers that took six years to navigate. Approval from the Corps finally came last year. The district approved construction bids earlier this year for work that will begin as soon as the floodwaters recede and the ground dries, probably in May or June.

The Midwest floods are going to get much, much worse – A massive deluge of rain and melting snow from a “bomb cyclone” and other recent storms continues to inundate several Midwestern states including Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, South Dakota, Minnesota, and Nebraska.The flooding has killed at least three people and caused at least $3 billion in damages so far. Rising water levels have breached levees along the Missouri River and forced several towns to evacuate. In southern Minnesota, flood impacts spread over the weekend, according toMPR News.Some residents in South Dakota have been stranded for two weeks as already poor roads were blocked by floodwaters. In Nebraska alone, the flooding has already caused more than$1 billion in damages, with more than 2,000 homes and 340 businesses lost.More rainfall is expected in the region later this week.And on Thursday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s spring outlook reported that the situation for the central US is soon going to get much, much worse. “The extensive flooding we’ve seen in the past two weeks will continue through May and become more dire and may be exacerbated in the coming weeks as the water flows downstream,” said Ed Clark, director of NOAA’s National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in a statement. “This is shaping up to be a potentially unprecedented flood season, with more than 200 million people at risk for flooding in their communities.”

Terrifying map shows all the parts of America that might soon flood –The record-breaking flooding disaster in the Midwest is just beginning. On Thursday, the National Weather Service issued its annual spring flood outlook, and it is downright biblical. By the end of May, parts of 25 states – nearly two-thirds of the country – could see flooding severe enough to cause damage. Pretty much every major body of water east of the Rockies is at elevated risk of flooding in the coming months, including the Mississippi, the Red River of the North, the Great Lakes, the eastern Missouri River, the lower Ohio, the lower Cumberland, and the Tennessee River basins. “This is shaping up to be a potentially unprecedented flood season, with more than 200 million people at risk for flooding in their communities,” said Ed Clark, director of NOAA’s National Water Center, in a press release. That represents about 60 percent of all Americans.Across the Midwest, the recent floods have already caused an estimated $3 billion in damages – a total that will surely rise. Extremely heavy snowfall in the upper Midwest this winter, combined with a forecast for a wetter-than-normal spring, set the stage for this calamity. With the exception of Florida and New England, soil moisture in much of the eastern United States is above the 99th percentile – literally off the charts. When the ground is this saturated, there’s nowhere for water to go but into streams and rivers, taking precious topsoil with it and carving lasting changes into the land.And that’s exactly what’s been happening in Nebraska, where flood-protection infrastructure has been utterly overwhelmed by record-setting water levels. Virtually every levee on the Missouri River between Omaha and Kansas City has been breached in the last week. “I don’t think there’s ever been a disaster this widespread in Nebraska,” said Governor Pete Ricketts. Several states and tribal nations throughout the region have declared a state of emergency. President Trump has approved a federal disaster declaration for Nebraska, and one is pending for Iowa. In a tweet showing an aerial video of the flooding, the Nebraska State Patrol wrote: “The Missouri looks like an ocean.” None of this is supposed to be under water.

When a river swells, are levees the best way to deal with it? – The flooding along the Mississippi River in 1927, which left a million people homeless and drowned half the region’s livestock, launched the Army Corps of Engineers on a mission – to tame the nation’s central arteries by building bigger levees and creating spillways to control flooding. In the decades that followed, that approach has both protected numerous heartland communities from high waters and created a false sense of security for people who have increasingly populated flood plains. It also has led to agonizing decisions whenever monumental floods have come. Now, as the rivers fed by a massive late-winter “bomb cyclone” churn south, the nation’s patchwork flood protection system is once again revealing its strengths, its vulnerabilities and the constantly competing interests of farmers, city dwellers, wildlife and industry. The ongoing disaster unfolding in the Midwest also has revitalized the long-running debate over whether to continue to try to control rivers or to make more room for them to swell. “We expect the flooding to get worse and become more widespread,” Mary Erikson, deputy director of NOAA’s National Weather Service, told reporters. “The stage is set for record flooding now through May.” Because of river levels that are already high, hefty snowpack in the Northern Plains and above-normal soil moisture, “conditions are primed” for more flooding, said Edward Clark, director of NOAA’s National Weather Center. “This is potentially an unprecedented flood season,” he said. And the levee system is not centralized under one governing body. According to the National Committee on Levee Safety, approximately 85 percent of the 14,685 miles of levees in the National Levee Database are operated by local sponsors, not the Corps of Engineers. And that database accounts for only a portion of the estimated 100,000 miles of levees across the United States, most of which are not part of any federal program. Moore said that levees traditionally have been built to withstand certain thresholds, such as a 100-year or 500-year flood event. But parts of the country have seen epic floods more often in recent years, and scientists predict that climate change could fuel more frequent and intense flooding. “But if the 500-year flood happens twice in 30 years, have you really provided the protection that’s promised? Absolutely not.” There are no easy answers, he said, because of the development that has taken place in many flood plains.

Seven Midwestern Superfund Sites Have Dealt With Flooding Since the Bomb Cyclone, But EPA Says Everything’s Fine – The tragic situation in the Midwest continues to unfold more than two weeks after a bomb cyclone brought in snow that eventually melted, triggering floods that destroyed farms and threatened tribal communities. The latest areas under scrutiny are Superfund sites, whose toxic pollutants can be spread far and wide by floodwaters. Currently on the radar for federal and state officials are seven Superfund sites and a landfill across Iowa, Nebraska, and Missouri, states that are still experiencing some minor to major flooding as of Thursday. These are some of the most contaminated sites in the U.S., and when floodwaters hit them, they can become major threats to human and environmental health if their pollutants travel off site, as was seen in Houston after Hurricane Harvey. “Superfund sites contain some of the most dangerous chemicals known to humankind,” Jacob Carter, a research scientist for the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Center for Science and Democracy, told Earther. That’s why the Environmental Protection Agency is now monitoring a bunch of Superfund sites closely, although so far, it seems to think all of them are doing okay. The EPA has taken action on two Superfunds in particular, it announced Tuesday: Nebraska Ordnance Plant, a former munitions production plant in Mead, Nebraska, and Conservation Chemical Corporation in Kansas City, Missouri, which used to store chemicals. The agency hasn’t spotted any contaminant releases at either, but floodwaters did hit them hard. The Nebraska Ordnance Plant, which sits in the state’s still slightly-flooded southeast corner, has its soil and groundwater contaminated with potentially carcinogenic substances like trichloroethene (or TCE), as well as explosives.

Senate Urged to Reject ‘Walking, Talking Conflict of Interest’ David Bernhardt to Run Interior – Environmental activists are calling on senators to reject the nomination of former fossil fuel lobbyist David Bernhardt to lead the U.S. Department of the Interior.The calls come ahead of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee’s Thursday morning hearing to consider his nomination. “David Bernhardt is a walking, talking conflict of interest,” said Alissa Weinman, a senior organizer for the nonprofit Corporate Accountability. “Between his Big Polluter ties and corporate lobbying connections, it’s clear Bernhardt will continue to serve the corporate interests to whom he owes his career, not the people or our public lands.”Bernhardt has been under fire for his fossil fuel past since the Senate confirmed him as the agency’s deputy administrator in July of 2017. He currently serves as the department’s acting administrator, a position he has held since scandal-ridden Ryan Zinke resigned in December. President Donald Trump nominated Bernhardt to the permanent post last month.”David Bernhardt heading the Interior Department would be a dream come true for fossil fuel companies, but a nightmare for the American people,” warned Greenpeace USA climate and energy campaign director Janet Redman.Noting that “people who care about clean air, safe water, and a healthy climate have been sounding the alarm about Bernhardt’s history” for the past two years, Redman charged that “he’s done nothing since but prove he’s not fit for this job.”A coalition of more than 160 conservation groups, including Greenpeace USA, sent a letter to the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), on Tuesday imploring them to oppose Bernhardt’s nomination:In his 18 months serving as the Interior Department’s deputy secretary, Mr. Bernhardt has been at the center of a culture of corruption that has been the Interior Department’s hallmark under the Trump administration. He consistently puts private profit above the public interest, crafting policies to benefit past clients and rolling back longstanding rules to protect habitat, imperiled species, and public health. These actions come straight from the fossil fuel and mining industry’s wishlist, including some corporations for which Bernhardt used to work as a lobbyist and lawyer. The letter outlines the ways in which Bernhardt has helped facilitate a siege on science, put fossil fuels first, imperil wildlife, promote development in the Arctic Refuge, harm national parks and monuments, and block transparency and oversight by Congress and the public. Campaigners at various groups that signed on to the letter spoke out about Bernhardt’s record and urged senators to reject him.

Harrowing scenes after Cyclone Idai with inland ocean visible from outer space — As many as “300 to 400” bodies line the banks of a road out of the city of Beira in Mozambique, according to an eyewitness account, and flood waters have formed an inland ocean that is visible from outer space.The harrowing scene, described by Zimbabwean Graham Taylor, suggests that the human toll of Cyclone Idai is likely to far exceed official estimates. It follows reports from aid agencies on the ground detailing how entire villages and towns have been completely flooded in the wake of last Thursday’s high-end Category 2 storm.Taylor said the bodies were located on a 6-kilometer (3.7-mile) track of highway, where flood waters had created an inland ocean, submerging entire villages around a “densely populated” sugar cane plantation. The area is a mere fraction of the land in the southeast African nation left flooded after two major rivers burst their banks in the days following the storm.The International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said that the destruction left by the cyclone is “worse than we imagined” and warned that the humanitarian needs “will tragically only deepen in the coming weeks.”In a statement, IFRC said that flooding creates ideal conditions for disease outbreaks.”Already, some cholera cases have been reported in Beira along with an increasing number of malaria infections among people trapped by the flooding,” read the statement. Flooding is so extreme in Buzi, central Mozambique, that the water can be seen in satellite images from outer space.

Cyclone Idai- Death toll rises to 750 as Mozambique city of Beira begins long road to recovery – As the death toll for Cyclone Idai rises to 750 people across southern Africa, the storm hit city of Beira is slowly beginning the long road to recovery. The Category 2 storm made landfall shortly after midnight on March 15 in Beira, a port city on the coast of Mozambique, with 175 kph (109 mph) winds that brought huge rains and submerged villages as it moved inland towards Zimbabwe and Malawi. Mozambique’s Minister of Land and Environment, Celso Correia, said on Sunday that 446 people have now been reported dead in Mozambique. More than half a million have been affected in the country and 110,000 were safe in camps. Nearly two weeks later, the city is starting to recover. Cyclone debris, such as uprooted trees, toppled street lights and aluminum roofs, are being cleared from the streets as the rain eases. Much of the city’s telecommunication infrastructure was destroyed in the storm, but at least two telephone networks are operating again, albeit with intermittent service. Yesterday, the main road that brings supplies into the city reopened. Smaller shops have been selling items in rations. But in more remote areas of Mozambique, efforts to reach those trapped in stagnant waters remain ongoing. On the road to the village of Tica, 80 kilometers (49 miles) from Beira’s beaches, drone footage shows massive tracts of submerged land and huge trees snapped like twigs. An eye witness has described seeing 300 to 400 bodies wash up on a flooded stretch of road just north of Tica. Cholera cases have already been reported in Beira, and there is an increasing number of malaria infections among those trapped by the flooding, according to the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. The government is setting up cholera treatment centers in affected areas.The high commissioner for Mozambique in the UK, Filipe Chidumo, last week called Cyclone Idai “a big tragedy of biblical proportions.”Chidumo added the restoration of electricity, water and sanitation facilities would be needed to prevent the spread of waterborne diseases.

Confirmed cholera cases jump to 138 in Mozambique’s Beira after Cyclone Idai – The number of confirmed cases of cholera in the cyclone-hit Mozambican port city of Beira jumped from five to 138 on Friday, as government and aid agencies battled to contain the spread of disease among the tens of thousands of victims of the storm. Cyclone Idai smashed into Beira on March 14, causing catastrophic flooding and killing more than 700 people across three countries in southeast Africa. Many badly affected areas in Mozambique and Zimbabwe are still inaccessible by road, complicating relief efforts and exacerbating the threat of infection. Story continues below advertisement Although there have been no confirmed cholera deaths in medical centres in Mozambique yet, at least two people died outside hospitals with symptoms including dehydration and diarrhea, the country’s environment minister Celso Correia said. A Reuters reporter saw the body of a dead child being brought out of an emergency clinic in Beira on Wednesday. The child had suffered acute diarrhoea, which can be a symptom of cholera. “We expected this, we were prepared for this, we’ve doctors in place,” Correia told reporters. The government said for the first time that there had been confirmed cholera cases on Wednesday. Mozambique’s National Disaster Management Institute said the local death toll from the tropical storm had increased to 493 people, from 468 previously. That takes the total death toll across Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi to 738 people, with many more still missing. “Stranded communities are relying on heavily polluted water. This, combined with widespread flooding and poor sanitation, creates fertile grounds for disease outbreaks, including cholera,” the International Committee of the Red Cross said in a statement.

Climate Change: Hurricanes to Deliver a Bigger Punch to Coasts – When tropical cyclone Idai made landfall near Beira, Mozambique on March 14, a spokesperson for the UN World Meteorological Organization called it possibly the the worst weather-related disaster to hit the southern hemisphere. This massive and horrifying storm caused catastrophic flooding and widespread destruction of buildings and roads in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi. Mozambique’s President Filipe Nyusi feared the death toll might rise to more than 1,000 people. Cyclones, also known as hurricanes or typhoons, generate large ocean waves and raise water levels by creating a storm surge. The combined effects cause coastal erosion, flooding and damage to anything in its path. Although other storms have hit this African coast in the past, the storm track for cyclone Idai is fairly rare. Warmer-than-usual sea-surface temperatures were directly linked to the unusually high number of five storms near Madagascar and Mozambique in 2000, including tropical cyclone Eline. Warmer ocean temperatures could also be behind the intensity of cyclone Idai, as the temperature of the Indian Ocean is 2 C to 3 C above the long-term average. Climate change and ocean warming may be linked to the increasing intensity of storms making landfall and to the development of strong hurricanes reaching places not affected in recent history. These regions may not be prepared with the coastal infrastructure to withstand the extreme forces of these storms.. The intensity of storms could also increase so that there are more major hurricanes (categories 4 and 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale) with winds reaching speeds greater than 209 km/h. Since these storms are fuelled by ocean heat, warmer ocean conditions will influence their intensity and longevity. This may enable them to travel farther over ocean water at higher latitudes, and farther across the continent after they make landfall. With global sea level rise expected to continue to accelerate through the 21st century, the impacts of coastal flooding from tropical cyclones is also expected to worsen.

Many sharks closer to extinction than feared- Red List – Human appetites are pushing makos and other iconic sharks to the brink of extinction, scientists warned in a new assessment of the apex predator’s conservation status. Seventeen of 58 species evaluated were classified as facing extinction, the Shark Specialist Group of the International Union for the Conservation (IUCN) said late Thursday in an update of the Red List of threatened animals and plants. “Our results are alarming,” said Nicholas Dulvy, who chairs the grouping of 174 experts from 55 countries. “The sharks that are especially slow-growing, sought-after and unprotected from overfishing tend to be the most threatened.” That category includes the shortfin mako, whose cruising speed of 40 km/h (25 mph) – punctuated by bursts of more than 70 km/h – makes it the fastest of all sharks. Along with its longfin cousin, the two makos are highly prized for their flesh and fins, considered a delicacy in Chinese and other Asian culinary traditions. “Today, one of the biggest shark fisheries on the high seas is the mako,” Dulvy told AFP. “It is also one of the least protected.”

Amphibian ‘apocalypse’ caused by most destructive pathogen ever -FOR DECADES, A silent killer has slaughtered frogs and salamanders around the world by eating their skins alive. Now, a global team of 41 scientists has announced that the pathogen – which humans unwittingly spread around the world – has damaged global biodiversity more than any other disease ever recorded. The new study, published in Science on Thursday, is the first comprehensive tally of the damage done by the chytrid fungi Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) and Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal). In all, the fungi have driven the declines of at least 501 amphibian species, or about one out of every 16 known to science.Of the chytrid-stricken species, 90 have gone extinct or are presumed extinct in the wild. Another 124 species have declined in number by more than 90 percent. All but one of the 501 declines was caused by Bd.“We’ve known that’s chytrid’s really bad, but we didn’t know how bad it was, and it’s much worse than the previous early estimates,” says study leader Ben Scheele, an ecologist at Australian National University. “Our new results put it on the same scale, in terms of damage to biodiversity, as rats, cats, and [other] invasive species.”Scheele has seen the fungus’s carnage firsthand. At one of his field sites in Australia, an extended El Niño fueled mass frog breeding and dispersal – letting Bd spread as never before. Before the fungus, populations of the alpine tree frog were so abundant there, he had to watch his step when he went out at night. Now, the species is nearly impossible to find. “Chytrid fungus is the most destructive pathogen ever described by science – that’s a pretty shocking realization,” adds Wendy Palen, a biologist at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia who wrote about the study for Science.

“Most Destructive Pathogen Ever” Has Created Zombie-Like Apocalypse for World’s Amphibians – A terrifying new study details the havoc being wrought by what scientists call “the most destructive pathogen ever” recorded on earth, finding that with help from unwitting humans a “silent killer” has caused major declines of frogs, salamanders, and hundreds of other amphibian species. Chytridiomycosis, or chytrid fungus, has killed off 90 species over the past 50 years while leading to huge losses of 501 kinds of frogs, toads, salamanders, and other amphibians, according to researchers from a number of worldwide universities. Nearly 125 of those species have declined by at least 90 percent due to the rapid spread of the pathogen.The report, published in Science on Thursday, offers disturbing new information about a disease which scientists first detected in 1998 – but whose power they didn’t grasp until now. “We’ve known that chytrid’s really bad, but we didn’t know how bad it was, and it’s much worse than the previous early estimates,” Ben Scheele, an ecologist at Australian National University and lead author of the study, told National Geographic.Chytrid fungus kills amphibians by eating away the skin of its hosts, leaving amphibians unable to breathe and quickly going into cardiac arrest. The pathogen is easily spread and rapidly destructive to the 695 species it infects. “If it were a human pathogen, it’d be in a zombie film,” biologist Dan Greenberg told National Geographic.

Government Study Confirms Endangered Red Wolves Are a Separate Species Worthy of Protection – One of the most endangered wolves in the world is indeed its own species. That’s the important finding of aNational Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine report released Thursday, which determined that red wolves are genetically distinct from gray wolves and coyotes. The finding is a boon to conservationists, who have been arguing for continued protections for the approximately 35 red wolves left in the wild. After being nearly wiped out from their historic range in the eastern U.S., the endangered species was reintroduced to an area in eastern North Carolina in 1987, but last spring the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) proposed to limit their territories to public lands and allow landowners to shoot or trap them if they entered private property. “The USFWS decision to reverse course on a successful recovery program and facilitate the red wolf’s slide toward extinction in the wild is a travesty and a clear violation of federal law,” Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) Wildlife Biologist D.J. Schubert said in a statement emailed to EcoWatch. “With today’s finding, there is no more excuse for not immediately restoring full protections and urgently enacting management measures to rebuild North Carolina’s wild red wolf population and to restore the species to other areas within its historic range.”The study, which was mandated by Congress in 2018, also confirmed that Mexican gray wolves are a valid taxonomic subspecies of gray wolf. There are only 114 of this subspecies left in northern Mexico and the southeastern U.S. They are one of 93 endangered species threatened by President Donald Trump‘s proposed border wall, and their movement and survival is already threatened by razor wire placed along the border.

Full-Boar Onslaught- Nearly 1000 wild boar complaints in 2018, up 26 percent from 2017 – Last year the government received more than 900 wild boar-related complaints and reports, more than they received in the last three years put together.The Environment Bureau revealed the figures in response to a question raised at the Legislative Council, saying that the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD) received 929 reports of wild boar sightings and complaints in 2018, more than ever recorded before, and a 26 percent increase over 2017, on.cc reports. There were also seven recorded instances of boar-related injuries.In January, the AFCD revealed that there had been 679 boar sightings in Hong Kong in the first 10 months of 2018, meaning there were a whopping 250 reports of wild boar sightings in November and December alone.The ongoing war on boars has been a source of much controversy of late, with politicians offering unorthodox suggestions for how best to beat back the boar menace. Authorities used to control the wild boar population through a hunting program – which some advocate bringing back – but that initiative was replaced with the pilot “Capture, Contraception and Relocation/Release Programme” last February.Under the scheme, boars are captured, sterilized, fitted with a GPS tracking device, then relocated or released into the wild. The AFCD said it expects to complete an evaluation of the program by the end of 2019.The authorities revealed today that, as of last month, the AFCD has surgically sterilized 15 wild boars, and administered contraceptive vaccines to 55. They’ve also relocated 111 wild boars to remote areas within the territory. They added that they’ve increased the number of employees on the pilot scheme from six to 14, and have also increased its funding from HK$3.8 million (about US$484,000) to HK$6.4 million (about US$815,000) for this year, a 64 percent increase.

Forests scramble to absorb carbon as emissions continue to increase – Forests around the world are absorbing more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but they still can’t keep up with the sheer volume of the global-warming gas being emitted through human activity, a new study has found.“Intact forests are playing a large role in absorbing the CO2 we’re emitting,” said Benjamin Gaubert, the lead author of the study and a scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), in an interview. “This means that global forest are helping to mitigate climate change or at least helping to mitigate the impacts of carbon emissions in the atmosphere.”The study, published in the journal Biogeosciences, suggests forest growth is becoming more robust as atmospheric carbon concentrations increase, and therefore taking more CO2 out of the air. Nevertheless, the concentration of heat-trapping carbon in the atmosphere continues to intensify as the forests can only capture a fraction of total human-caused emissions, which in 2018 totaled 37.1 billion tonnes. The study looked at models of atmospheric inversion from research institutions across the world. It combined these with surface observations to estimate carbon fluctuations over northern and southern forests and verified using aircraft observations. The study relied on supercomputers to run simulations of the climate models. The scientists started with data on atmospheric CO2 levels measured all over the world since 1985. From there, they implemented the models to predict how much CO2 had been sourced and sunk in different regions of the world to make sure they matched the measurements. While northern forests, which cover a greater landmass, account for the majority of the CO2 absorption, the study suggests that tropical forests in the global south are most effective, per given area, at trapping carbon. Gaubert said forests in the tropics were likely more effective at capturing carbon than northern forests because of favorable growing conditions, such as year-long sunlight and more rainfall. According to Gaubert, around 30 percent of annual carbon emissions are captured by global net forest growth.

Why the US – China trade war spells disaster for the Amazon – Last year, the United States introduced tariffs of up to 25% on Chinese imported goods worth US$250 billion. In retaliation, the Chinese government imposed tariffs of 25% on $110-billion worth of US goods – including soya beans, a crop mainly used for animal feed. As a result, exports of US soya beans to China dropped by 50% in 2018, even though the trade war began only midway through the year. We forecast that a surge of tropical deforestation could occur as a result of the fresh demand being placed on China’s other major suppliers to provide up to 37.6 million tonnes of the crop (that is how much China imported from the United States in 2016). Already, two decades of growth in the global market for soya has led to large-scale deforestation in the Amazon rainforest1.As of 2016, Brazil supplied almost half of China’s soya-bean imports, and it has the infrastructure and land area to rapidly increase production. We estimate that the area dedicated to soya-bean production in Brazil could increase by up to 39%, to 13 million hectares, extrapolating from the most recent (2016) data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). For comparison, almost 3 million hectares of rainforest were cleared in 1995 and in 2004, the country’s two peak deforestation years (see go.nature.com/2xtkkrd).We urge the United States and China to adjust their trading arrangements immediately to avoid this catastrophe. We also lay out some of the broader changes needed – globally and within nations – to shield tropical forests from shifting trade patterns. China depends heavily on soya-bean imports from three trading partners. Brazil is the largest, followed by the United States and Argentina2. Ninety-four other countries, including China itself, together produce little more soya than Brazil alone (see ‘Soya swings’, panel B; and Supplementary Information).

India’s Ban on Imports of Recyclables Generates A Global Crisis – The March 6 decision by the Indian government to ban imports of plastic and mixed paper – like the decision a year earlier by China – has thrown the global recycling industry into a level of chaos that it is unlikely to recover from, demanding a new approach to the disposal of waste, including attempting to not produce it at all, or to design in recyclability. As has been widely reported, the price of recyclables has fallen through the floor, with mountains of paper, plastic and other materials piling up in western countries, with no place to sell the scrap. It is increasingly clear that collection, sorting and reuse is no longer viable, if it ever was. The world generates about 1.3 billion tonnes of trash per year. Germany, arguably the most advanced country on the planet when it comes to recycling, produces 3 million tonnes of plastic packaging waste annually. According to official statistics, less than half of that was recycle – 48.8 percent. It has been famously estimated that by 2050 the combined volume of waste in the world’s oceans will be bigger than the world’s fish. As other countries have reacted to the China ban, the recyclers have turned to countries like India, which during the first 11 months of 2018 took in 120,000 tonnes of plastic imports from the US worth US$46 million, according to India’s Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries. Shipments from the EU to India reached close to 160,000 tonnes in 2018, up from 110,000 tonnes in 2017. That is dwarfed by India’s own waste generation, an estimated 62 million tonnes annually, of which less than 60 percent is collected and only around 15 percent is processed. Landfills oozing methane rank third in terms of greenhouse gas emissions in the country. Malaysia and Vietnam have implemented their own import restrictions, citing environmental concerns over becoming the world’s dumping grounds. Thailand says it will ban all scrap plastics by 2021. India has said it will allow imports that already are on their way to the country’s free trade zones, then close them off. This is starting to lead to the inability to sell recyclables at any price. Clearly the decades of shipping trash overseas are over. The west is learning that there is no longer an “away.”

EU Parliament Bans Plastics Responsible for 70% of Ocean Trash – The European Parliament approved a ban on single-use plastics Wednesday, meaning that common plastic items that make up 70 percent of marine litter will be banned in the EU by 2021, the parliament announced in a press release.The law also sets targets for the collection of plastic bottles, includes new labeling laws and strengthens provisions to ensure companies pay to clean up the pollution they cause.”Today we have taken an important step to reduce littering and plastic pollution in our oceans and seas,” European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans said, as The Guardian reported. “We got this, we can do this. Europe is setting new and ambitious standards, paving the way for the rest of the world.” The details of the new rule are as follows:

1. Banned Items: The following items will be banned in the EU by 2021:
   • Single-use plastic cutlery
   • Single-use plastic plates
   • Plastic straws
   • Cotton swabs with plastic sticks
   • Plastic balloon sticks
   • Oxo-degradable plastics and food containers and expanded polystyrene cups
2. Plastic Bottles: Plastic bottles will need to be made with 25 percent recycled material by 2025 and 30 percent by 2030. EU states will need to collect 90 percent of plastic bottles by 2029.
3. The Polluter Pays: The law will strengthen provisions requiring companies to pay for cleaning up pollution. This will mean requiring cigarette companies to pay for removing cigarette butts and fishing gear manufacturers to pay for removing nets from the sea, CNN explained.
4. Clearer Labeling: Items like cigarette filters, plastic cups, wet wipes and sanitary napkins will be labeled if they contain plastic and the labels will include instructions for disposing of them in an environmentally responsible manner.

Are natural fibres really better for the environment than microplastic fibres? Researchers from the University of Nottingham have found a much higher percentage of ‘natural’ fibres than microplastic fibres in freshwater and atmospheric samples in the UK. The findings, which are released ahead of World Water Day, raise the question of whether we know enough about the environmental threat of some of the plastic-alternatives we are turning to, to help save the planet. Over a 12-month period, experts from the University’s School of Geography and the Faculty of Engineering Food, Water, Waste Research Group, collected 223 samples from 10 sites from the River Trent, the River Leen and the River Soar. Microplastic textile fibres, such as polyester and nylon, were absent from 82.8% of samples, whereas ‘natural’ textile fibres were absent from just 9.7% of samples. The results of the project are published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, titled “Freshwater and airbourne textile fibre populations are dominated by ‘natural,’ not microplastic, fibres.” Microplastic pollution has garnered a great deal of scientific, political and media attention in recent years, leading to widespread concern. As the impact of plastic and microplastic pollution has grown, many people and companies have made a considerable effort to minimise the amount of plastic they use in their day-to-day lives. The potential role of natural textile fibres like cotton and wool, as an environmental pollutant, has been speculated on by some environmental scientists, but there has been a general consensus that their biodegradability reduces their environmental threat (in comparison to that of plastic). However, ‘natural’ textile fibres are the product of multiple potentially hazardous processes, and are inherently ‘unnatural.” For example, the commercial production of cotton fibres requires large quantities of water, pesticides and herbicides and the wastewaters of the textile industry have also been long recognised as sources of chemical pollutants. Whilst these risks remain poorly understood, this new research from the University of Nottingham has found high concentrations of so-called ‘natural’ fibres in samples of river water and atmospheric deposition.

Dead bodies are emerging from Mount Everest’s melting glaciers – Some 300 mountaineers have perished on the peak in the last century, and it is estimated that two-thirds of the bodies remain, buried in the ice and snow. But as Sandra Laville writes in the The Guardian, “bodies previously entombed in ice have been made accessible due to global warming.””Because of global warming, the ice sheet and glaciers are fast melting and the dead bodies that remained buried all these years are now becoming exposed,” Ang Tshering Sherpa, former president of Nepal Mountaineering Association, told the BBC. “We have brought down dead bodies of some mountaineers who died in recent years, but the old ones that remained buried are now coming out.”It appears that most of the dead bodies have been emerging from the Khumbu icefall, a spot noted for being particularly dangerous, as well as in the final camp area. Officials say that they have been gathering the ropes left behind from the climbing season, but the bodies are a bit trickier. Professional climbers from the Sherpa community are on the job, but as one might imagine, they say it’s not easy. Nor is it cheap; removing a dead body can cost up to $80,000.As morbid as it sounds, however, some dead bodies serve a purpose: They act as landmarks. “One such waypoint had been the ‘green boots’ near the summit,” writes the BBC. “They were a reference to a climber who died under an overhanging rock. His green boots, still on his feet, faced the climbing route.” Much like the WWII-era anthrax-laden reindeer that were unleashed from the ice after a Siberian heatwave a few years ago, who knows what other gory surprises a warming planet may have in store for us. Suffice to say that as Earth’s ice melts, we can expect more strange things to emerge – unlucky mountaineers may be just the tip of the iceberg.

‘It’s Getting Worse’: Melting Ice Is Exposing More and More Bodies as Mount Everest Warms — Climate change is having a grizzly effect on Mount Everest as melting snow and glaciers reveal some of the bodies of climbers who died trying to scale the world’s highest peak. “Due to the impact of climate change and global warming, snow and glaciers are fast melting and dead bodies are increasingly being exposed and discovered by climbers,” former Nepal Mountaineering Association President Ang Tshering Sherpa told CNN in a March 21 report.More than 200 people have died on Mount Everest since the first climbing death was recorded in 1922. Most of those bodies are believed to be buried beneath glaciers and snow, but now warmer temperatures are melting glaciers throughout the Himalayas, studies have shown. A 2015 study found that ponds on Everest’s Khumbu glacier, where the majority of bodies have been discovered recently, were growing larger and joining together. In 2017, a research team drilled the glacier, took its temperature and found it was warmer than they expected, BBC News reported. Bodies have also been found near the Camp 4 area. In 2017, a hand emerged above the ground near Camp 1, and the body was removed. “It’s a very serious issue because it’s increasingly common and affects our operations,” Nepal National Mountain Guides Association official Sobit Kunwar told CNN. “We are really concerned about this because it’s getting worse. We are trying to spread information about it so that there can be a coordinated way to deal with it.” Ang Tshering Sherpa said that his organization had brought down seven bodies since 2008. It can cost between $40,000 to $80,000 to bring down dead bodies, experts told BBC News. It can also be dangerous. Ang Tshering Sherpa told CNN of one found at 8,700 meters (approximately 28,543 feet), near the peak. “The body weighed 150 kilograms (approximately 330.7 pounds) and it had to be recovered from a difficult place at that altitude. It was a Herculean task,” he said.

‘We Can’t Trust the Permafrost Anymore’: Doomsday Vault at Risk in Norway – Just over a decade after it first opened, the world’s “doomsday vault” of seeds is imperiled by climate change as the polar region where it’s located warms faster than any other area on the planet. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which opened in late February 2008, was built by the organization Crop Trust and the Norwegian government on the island of Svalbard next to the northernmost town in the world with more than 1,000 residents, Longyearbyen. “Svalbard is the ultimate failsafe for biodiversity of crops,” said Crop Trust executive director Marie Haga. Northern temperatures and environment on the island were a major reason for the construction. According to in-depth reporting from CNN, the project planners hoped that the permafrost around the construction of the underground vault would, in time, refreeze. But the planet has other plans. Longyearbyen and, by extension, the vault, is warming more rapidly than the rest of the planet. That’s because the polar regions of Earth – the coldest areas on the planet – are less able to reflect sunlight away from the polar seas due to disappearing ice and snow cover.It’s an ironic turn of events for the creators of the vault, who chose the location for the vault “because the area is not prone to volcanoes or earthquakes, while the Norwegian political system is also extremely stable,'” said CNN.Because of the warming, the permafrost around the underground vault’s tunnel entrance has not refrozen. That led to leaking water in the tunnel in October 2016, which then froze into ice.In response, CNN reported, “Statsbygg [the Norwegian state agency in charge of real estate] undertook 100 million Norwegian krone ($11.7 million) of reconstruction work, more than double the original cost of the structure.”But the warming now may become unsustainable for the structure. It’s already forcing changes to Longyearbyen’s population of 2,144 as the people in the town find themselves scrambling to avoid avalanches and deal with a changing climate that’s more often dumping rain rather than snow. “We can’t trust the permafrost anymore,” said Statsbygg communications manager Hege Njaa Aschim.

Key Greenland glacier growing again after shrinking for years, NASA study shows – A major Greenland glacier that was one of the fastest shrinking ice and snow masses on Earth is growing again, a new NASA study finds. The Jakobshavn glacier around 2012 was retreating about 1.8 miles and thinning nearly 130 feet annually. But it started growing again at about the same rate in the past two years, according to a study in Monday’s Nature Geoscience. Study authors and outside scientists think this is temporary. “That was kind of a surprise. We kind of got used to a runaway system,” said Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland ice and climate scientist Jason Box. “The good news is that it’s a reminder that it’s not necessarily going that fast. But it is going.” Box, who wasn’t part of the study, said Jakobshavn is “arguably the most important Greenland glacier because it discharges the most ice in the northern hemisphere.”A natural cyclical cooling of North Atlantic waters likely caused the glacier to reverse course, said study lead author Ala Khazendar, a NASA glaciologist on the Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) project. Khazendar and colleagues say this coincides with a flip of the North Atlantic Oscillation – a natural and temporary cooling and warming of parts of the ocean that is like a distant cousin to El Nino in the Pacific. The water in Disko Bay, where Jakobshavn hits the ocean, is about 3.6 degrees cooler than a few years ago, study authors said. While this is “good news” on a temporary basis, this is bad news on the long term because it tells scientists that ocean temperature is a bigger player in glacier retreats and advances than previously thought, said NASA climate scientist Josh Willis, a study co-author. Over the decades the water has been and will be warming from man-made climate change, he said, noting that about 90 percent of the heat trapped by greenhouse gases goes into the oceans. “In the long run we’ll probably have to raise our predictions of sea level rise again,” Willis said.

Australian researchers find huge lakes beneath largest east Antarctic glacier – Australian researchers have discovered huge underwater lakes beneath the largest glacier in east Antarctica. The lakes were detected by scientists setting off small explosives 2m below the surface of the Totten glacier and listening to the reflected sound. The Australian Antarctic Division glaciologist Dr Ben Galton-Fenzi said the research was critical to helping scientists predict how the melting of Antarctic glaciers would change the world’s oceans. The Totten glacier is 30km wide and up to two kilometres thick, and has the potential to raise sea levels by seven metres. “The explosives were a sound source for us … and it would then echo off different layers in the ice,” Galton-Fenzi told the Guardian. “We placed geophones [a series of microphones] along the surface of the glacier to listen to the reflected sound, giving us a picture of what lies beneath the ice.” He said the speed glaciers travel at is determined by what they move across. “If there’s bedrock under the glacier, it’s sticky and will move more slowly, but if there’s water or soft sediments, the glacier will move faster,” he said. Galton-Fenzi said the next step for researchers would be to drill down to take a sample of the lakes but he lamented there was no funding certainty for future research. “I’m not just a scientist saying ‘I need more money’ … I’ve got kids who are six and eight and [climate change] is a real threat for them.”

Global carbon emissions hit record high in 2018: IEA (Reuters) – Global energy-related carbon emissions rose to a record high last year as energy demand and coal use increased, mainly in Asia, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Tuesday. Energy-related CO2 emissions rose by 1.7 percent to 33.1 billion tonnes from the previous year, the highest rate of growth since 2013, with the power sector accounting for almost two-thirds of this growth, according to IEA estimates. The United States’ CO2 emissions grew by 3.1 percent in 2018, reversing a decline a year earlier, while China’s emissions rose by 2.5 percent and India’s by 4.5 percent. Europe’s emissions fell by 1.3 percent and Japan’s fell for the fifth year running. Carbon dioxide emissions are the primary cause of global average temperature rise which countries are seeking to curb to avoid the most devastating effects of climate change. For the first time, the IEA assessed the impact of fossil fuel use on the increase in global temperature and found that CO2 emitted from coal consumption was responsible for over 0.3 degrees Celsius of the 1 degree rise in global average temperature since pre-industrial times. Global energy demand grew by 2.3 percent in 2018, nearly twice the average rate of growth since 2010, driven by a strong global economy and higher heating and cooling demand in some parts of the world, the IEA said. “We have seen an extraordinary increase in global energy demand in 2018, growing at its fastest pace this decade,” said Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director. By country, China, the United States, and India together accounted for nearly 70 percent of the rise in energy demand. Global gas demand increased at its fastest rate since 2010, up 4.6 percent from a year earlier, driven by higher demand as switching from gas to coal increased. Demand for energy from renewable sources rose by 4 percent but the use of renewables needs to expand much more quickly to meet long-term climate goals, the report said. Oil demand grew by 1.3 percent in 2018, while coal consumption was up 0.7 percent as higher demand in Asia outpaced declines everywhere else. “Coal-to-gas switching avoided almost 60 million tonnes of coal demand, with the transition to less carbon-intensive natural gas helping to avert 95 million tonnes of CO2 emissions,” the IEA said. “Without this coal-to-gas switch, the increase in emissions would have been more than 15 percent greater,” it added.

“We Are in Deep Trouble”- Carbon Emissions Break Record in Devastating Global Setback – Global energy experts released grim findings Monday, saying that not only are planet-warming carbon-dioxide emissions still increasing, but the world’s growing thirst for energy has led to higher emissions from coal-fired power plants than ever before. Energy demand around the world grew by 2.3 percent over the past year, marking the most rapid increase in a decade, according to the report from the International Energy Agency. To meet that demand, largely fueled by a booming economy, countries turned to an array of sources, including renewables. But nothing filled the void quite like fossil fuels, which satisfied nearly 70 percent of the skyrocketing electricity demand, according to the agency, which analyzes energy trends on behalf of 30 member countries, including the United States. In particular, a fleet of relatively young coal plants located in Asia, with decades to go on their lifetimes, led the way toward a record for emissions from coal fired power plants – exceeding 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide “for the first time,” the agency said. In Asia, “average plants are only 12 years old, decades younger than their average economic lifetime of around 40 years,” the agency found. As a result, greenhouse-gas emissions from the use of energy – by far their largest source – surged in 2018, reaching an record high of 33.1 billion tons. Emissions showed 1.7 percent growth, well above the average since 2010. The growth in global emissions in 2018 alone was “equivalent to the total emissions from international aviation,” the body found. Monday’s report underscores an unnerving truth about the world’s collective efforts to combat climate change: Even as renewable energy rapidly expands, many countries – including the United States and China – are nevertheless still turning to fossil fuels to satisfy ever-growing energy demand.

The two key reasons the world can’t reverse climate emissions – Global energy demand and related carbon emissions both rose again in 2018, according to new figures out this week. This comes as no surprise. The analysis from the International Energy Agency is in line with other preliminary reports from other organizations. But it raises an awkward question: if renewables are growing and the prices of solar, wind, and batteries are falling, why is the world’s climate pollution still going up? The first answer is the growing global economy, which pushed energy demand up by 2.3% last year, the IEA says. A contributing factor was that more energy was needed for extra heating and cooling in regions hit by unusually severe cold snaps and heatwaves. These were at least partly driven by our shifting climate. All of that drove increases in generation from coal and natural gas, both of which spew greenhouse gases that warm the planet. Ultimately, those fossil fuel increases outpaced sharp improvements in solar and wind generation, both of which climbed by double digits in 2018. Even nuclear generation grew at modest levels, rising 3.3%, mainly due to new turbines in China and four reactors that went back online in Japan, according to the IEA. But figures deeper in the report highlight a systemic issue that’s making it harder to drive down emissions in a consistent way. From 2000 to 2018, while the portion of global electricity generation from solar and wind grew by 7%, nuclear declined by the same percentage. Meanwhile, coal only dipped by 1% over that time, while natural gas, which emits just more than half as much carbon dioxide, climbed from 18% to 23%. In other words, renewables mainly picked up market share forfeited by another source of carbon-free power, rather than seizing it from fossil fuels. Once you add that to the increasing use of natural gas and coal use to fuel economic growth, it’s no surprise that the world still isn’t making a real dent in energy emissions,decades after the threat of climate change became clear.

Harvard scientists want to limit how much sunlight reaches Earth’s surface in order to curb global warming – Climate change is one of the greatest challenges mankind has faced up until now. How we’ll be able to curtail global warming and its devastating consequences is still very much a hot potato among politicians and scientists alike – and so far, the outcome of all these debates hasn’t been particularly fruitful. However, researchers at Harvard may have come up with a solution that sounds just a little too good to be true. In conjunction with researchers from MIT and Princeton, the group has suggested slowing down global warming by diminishing the amount of sunlight that reaches Earth’s surface. According to a study published in Nature Climate Change, the researchers are considering what might happen if they were to introduce sunlight-reflecting particles into Earth’s atmosphere. The most important thing to note is that the researchers aren’t suggesting the method is a solution to rising global warming trends; it isn’t designed to bring temperatures back to pre-industrial levels nor does it address the real crux of the problem – the amount of carbon dioxide we’re producing. In fact, too high a dose of “dimming” could even worsen the situation.

Big Banks Can Block Shareholder Climate Proposals, SEC Rules The Securities and Exchange Commission recently allowed two large banks to block a shareholder proposal addressing the climate impact of the banks’ investment portfolios. The proposal requested that Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo reduce the carbon footprint of their loan and investment portfolios to align with the Paris Climate Agreement’s goal of holding global warming below 2 degrees Celsius. The SEC’s decision means that it will be excluded from proxy materials that the companies’ shareholders will consider at the annual meetings. “We’re very disappointed that [the SEC] won’t even allow this on the ballot,” said Danielle Fugere, president of As You Sow, a shareholder advocacy group involved with this resolution and other climate-related proposals. She said the proposal, if passed by the company’s shareholders, would not have mandated action but would have raised the issue with the banks’ boards and management. “This issue will not go away by ignoring it,” Fugere added. The SEC, however, interpreted the proposal as a mandate. “In our view, the Proposal would require the Company to manage its lending and investment activities in alignment with the goals of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement of maintaining global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius,” the Office of Chief Counsel wrote in a letter to the banks. “By imposing this overarching requirement, the Proposal would micromanage the Company by seeking to impose specific methods for implementing complex policies in place of the ongoing judgments of management as overseen by its board of directors.”

The Problem With the ‘Warm’ in Global Warming: Most Like it Hot – With every incongruous 50-degree F day in Boston this winter, I noticed the same transformations in the people around me: Revelers shed their layers of clothing, smiled more, and made polite small talk about what a great, beautiful, or perfect day it was. I’m always on the outside looking in on these interactions. Whereas my fellow Bostonians take delight in the warm, snowless days, I find them inescapably grim this time of year. In light of what we know about climate change, I feel as though I’m clutching onto a season that is systematically disappearing from my part of the world – and that few others care. In a report called “Most Like It Hot,” the Pew Research Center found that 57 percent of Americans prefer to live in a city with a hot climate, and only 29 percent prefer cold locales. (The rest don’t have a preference.) Even human psychoses reflect this preference for warmth. Almost always, the symptoms of seasonal affective disorder are triggered during the cold, dark winter months. Only 10 percent of people with seasonal affective disorder suffer symptoms during the summer. And if you track growth in American cities since the early 1900s, a clear pattern emerges: The biggest upward trends are in places known for warmth. I have always known that my disdain for warm weather makes me an outlier, but lately I’ve been wondering if it also has something to do with the inertia I’ve witnessed when it comes to addressing global warming – a term, by the way, that has always evoked hell to me, though maybe not to others. Although most of us are now well aware that the potential dangers of global warming go beyond weather – devastating natural disasters, famine, the reemergence of centuries-old diseases from melting permafrost – perhaps a collective preference for warmth has dulled our response to these larger threats that come with climate change. Would there be more urgency and better compliance with initiatives like the Paris Climate Agreement if we were facing the threat of an ice age instead?

OK, I’ll bite. What the hell is my carbon footprint? Grist — The carbon footprint is the building block of climate understanding: If you begin to quantify your own contribution to the massive cloud of emissions trapping heat in the atmosphere, you can wrap your head around the importance of shrinking your little piece of it. But that doesn’t mean it’s exactly intuitive. Basically, a carbon footprint measures the amount of carbon dioxide released throughout an object’s manufacturing process and existence. So, say we’re measuring the carbon impact of a pencil – you might measure CO2 emitted by the timber operation that felled and processed the wood for the pencil, the machinery that mined graphite, the trucks that brought those raw materials to the pencil factory, the pencil factory itself, the generators powering the pencil factory, and finally, by the truck that shipped the pencil to the Staples or wherever. Understanding the energy that feeds the multiple supply chains that touch a product’s life cycle is difficult, but Barnhart says calculating a product’s environmental impact could be a lot more complicated. You have to truncate the history at some point, or, theoretically, you could go all the way back to the invention of the wheel. “We count all the big components [which make up an estimated 90 percent of the carbon mass of a product] and ignore the rest.” Calculating the carbon impact of a person’s lifestyle takes a similar approach – you look at the big CO2 contributors, which are home, transportation, diet, and purchasing habits. The only peer-reviewed personal carbon footprint calculator is made by the CoolClimate Network, a project at UC Berkeley, and I have to say I’m a big fan: It’s easy to use, kind of fun, comprehensive, and gives you a sense of how your household’s footprint compares to others’. I played around with it to see what makes up my household’s biggest contribution:

Trump Administration Dims Rule On Energy Efficient Lightbulbs – If it’s been a few years since you shopped for a lightbulb, you might find yourself confused. Those controversial curly-cue ones that were cutting edge not that long ago? Gone. (Or harder to find.) Thanks to a 2007 law signed by President George W. Bush, shelves these days are largely stocked with LED bulbs that look more like the traditional pear-shaped incandescent version but use just one-fifth the energy.A second wave of lightbulb changes was set to happen. But now the Trump administration wants to undo an Obama-era regulation designed to make a wide array of specialty lightbulbs more energy efficient.At issue here are bulbs such as decorative globes used in bathrooms, reflectors in recessed lighting, candle-shaped lights and three-way lightbulbs. The Natural Resources Defense Council says that, collectively, these account for about 2.7 billion light sockets, nearly half the conventional sockets in use in the U.S. At the very end of the Obama administration, the Department of Energy decided these specialty bulbs should also be subject to efficiency requirements under the 2007 law. The lighting industry objected and sued to overturn the decision.”DOE, in our view, exceeded its authority,” says Clark Silcox, general counsel for the National Electrical Manufacturers Association. NEMA argued that Congress never intended for the law to apply to all these other lightbulbs. After President Trump took office the Energy Department agreed and proposed to reverse the agency’s previous decision.

Green New Deal fizzles out in the Senate as Dems accuse GOP of putting on a ‘stunt’ vote — A Green New Deal proposal backed by numerous Democrats failed to advance in the Senate on Tuesday as Democrats protested what they called a political show vote orchestrated by majority Republicans. The nonbinding resolution, which calls on the United States to make an ambitious effort to slash its use of fossil fuels to fight climate change, fell short in a procedural vote. The Senate did not proceed to debating the measure, as 57 senators voted against it and 43 Democrats and independents who caucus with them – nearly all of the Democratic caucus – voted “present.” Four senators who vote with Democrats – Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, Doug Jones and Alabama and independent Angus King of Maine – voted against the resolution. By voting “present,” Democrats hoped not to go on the record on a bill that had no realistic chance of passing, even if they support the concept of a Green New Deal. The six Democratic senators running for president next year – who co-sponsored the original resolution introduced by Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass. – did not take a position on the measure Tuesday. Democrats have pushed for drastic action to combat climate change as the planet warms and severe weather events such as recent Midwestern flooding have devastated U.S. communities. They say the U.S. has only a limited window to combat climate change and address an existential threat. Republicans have gleefully criticized the Green New Deal, warning about Democratic efforts to take away anything from cars to hamburgers. They accuse Democrats of a drift toward socialism spurred in part by freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., a champion of the measure in the House.

Green New Deal Voted Down by Senate, but Activists Aren’t Deterred – Real News Network, video & transcript – The Senate rejected the proposal in what Democrats called a “sham vote,” but 18-year-old Jeremy Ornstein of the Sunrise Movement says that won’t stop the movement for climate action

The Green New Deal and the case against incremental climate policy – The public debate over the Green New Deal has taken on a surreal quality. The non-binding resolution introduced to Congress last month, meant to address the dual crises of climate change and growing inequality, is just 14 pages long. It only takes a minute to read it. Yet the debate has been dominated by phantasms and lurid projections, all sorts of things imagined to be in the GND, or imagined to be prohibited by it (e.g. cars and airplanes). The reality of what’s on those pages has made only glancing appearances.The most puzzling critiques have come not from Republicans, but from the center left, broadly speaking. They urge policies to reduce greenhouse gases that are perfectly commensurate with the GND framework … but present them as alternatives to the GND framework. (We’ll look at some examples later.)The connecting theme, the message, sometimes implicit and sometimes explicit, is this: move more slowly. Accept piecemeal progress rather than a big thing. Don’t push beyond strict carbon policy into social or economic policy. A chorus of voices is telling GND proponents, in short, to ask for less.If the choice these critiques presented – ask for everything and get nothing versus ask for and get incremental progress – were in fact the choice on the table, the critiques would make sense. I think it’s long past time to admit that it isn’t possible. Republicans will block any federal Democratic climate initiative that they have the power to block. Period. Big stuff. Small stuff. Anything. And under the current alignment of forces, they can block everything.

Big problem facing the Green New Deal: A lack of power lines to deliver wind and solar – The Green New Deal would require an overhaul of the transmission lines that deliver wind and solar power, a major logistical obstacle to the progressive plan for radically revamping the economy to address climate change. The Green New Deal’s plan to ramp up federal funding for wind and solar to reach 100 percent renewable or clean electricity won’t be sufficient without addressing transmission lines, which often meet political opposition at the local, not federal, level. “It’s not getting enough attention from policymakers,” “People often want to believe the myth you can get to high renewable energy without transmission networks. Unfortunately, that is not going to work.” Transmission lines are critical to transporting electricity from places, typically rural areas, that have an abundance of wind or solar to consumers in population centers that don’t generate significant renewable electricity. “There are major areas of the country where we have significant wind and solar resources that cannot reach market,” Economists from the Brattle Group said in a report this month that policymakers risk overbuilding the electricity system with surplus wind and solar if they don’t appreciate the need for expanding the U.S. transmission system. The Brattle Group projects $30 billion to $90 billion would have to be spent on transmission by 2030 to “cost-effectively” serve “the coming electrification of the American economy,” meaning more use of wind and solar for electricity, and more drivers using transportation powered by electricity. That investment would represent a 20 to 50 percent increase in average annual transmission spending compared to the past 10 years. But building transmission is hard. Major long-distance transmission projects require 10 or more years to be approved and developed, because of a diffuse permitting process that is subject to delay because of local opposition from people living near the planned power lines – a problem known as not-in-my-backyard-ism, or NIMBYism. Unlike with natural gas pipelines, which have also been plagued by NIMBYism mostly because of environmental reasons, the federal government has little power to approve transmission lines, with the authorities mostly delegated to states. And the places where power lines would need to be built don’t necessarily benefit from using or generating the power, making it harder to get their approval to build.

Company receives key approval for wind turbines on Lake Erie near downtown Cleveland – A wind energy project proposed off the coast of downtown Cleveland has received a key approval on the way to getting turbines installed The Icebreaker Wind project received approval of a construction permit from the Army Corps of Engineers. The Army Corps oversees the Rivers and Harbors and the Clean Water Act. “The issuance of the permit represents a big step forward for this thoroughly reviewed project,” said Lorry Wagner, President of the Cleveland-based Lake Erie Energy Development Corporation, which is developing Icebreaker Wind. “It would put Cleveland on the international map as being a progressive leader in clean energy and it would lead to Ohio becoming a participant in the booming $50 billion U.S. Offshore Wind industry.” This project represents the first step toward realizing the substantial potential of making our region a national hub for wind energy.” Some state approval is still needed.The wind farm would go up eight miles off the coast of downtown Cleveland, off the Port of Cleveland. (Map of the location included in photo gallery below.)The wind farm would consist of 6 turbines. Construction could start as early as 2021.The company reports the project would have a minimal visual impact. (Photos of their renderings in the photo gallery below.) The company says the 6-turbine wind farm would create a minimum of 500 jobs and power 7,000 homes.

New Wind and Solar Power Is Cheaper Than Existing Coal in Much of the U.S., Analysis Finds – Not a single coal-fired power plant along the Ohio River will be able to compete on price with new wind and solar power by 2025, according to a new report by energy analysts.The same is true for every coal plant in a swath of the South that includes the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. They’re part of the 86 percent of coal plants nationwide that are projected to be on the losing end of this cost comparison, the analysis found.The findings are part of a report issued Monday by Energy Innovation and Vibrant Clean Energy that shows where the shifting economics of electricity generation may force utilities and regulators to ask difficult questions about what to do with assets that are losing their value.The report takes a point that has been well-established by other studies – that coal power, in addition to contributing to air pollution andclimate change, is often a money-loser – and shows how it applies at the state level and plant level when compared with local wind and solar power capacity. “My big takeaway is the breadth and universality of this trend across the continental U.S. and the speed with which things are changing,” said Mike O’Boyle, a co-author of the report and director of energy policy for Energy Innovation, a research firm focused on clean energy.The report is not saying that all of those coal plants could or should be immediately replaced by renewable sources. That kind of transition requires careful planning to make sure that the electricity system has the resources it needs. It also doesn’t consider the role of competition from natural gas.The key point is a simpler one: Building new wind and solar power capacity locally, defined as within 35 miles for the report, is often less expensive than people in those markets realize, and this is indicative of a price trend that is making coal less competitive. This shift shows how market forces are helping the country move away from fossil fuels. At the same time, coal interests have been trying to obscure or cast doubt on this trend, while seeking more government subsidies to slow their industry’s decline.

Shutting Down Almost Every Coal Plant and Swapping For Renewables Would Save Money, Report Finds – An analysis released Monday from Energy Innovation, a energy policy shop focused on developing policies for a clean energy transition, finds that right now, its cheaper to tear down three-quarters of American coal plants and replace them with renewables than to let them continue operating. That number will only continue to rise into the future as renewables continue on their way to becoming among the cheapest sources of energy. The research has dubbed this inflection point the “coal cost crossover.” And many aging coal plants in the U.S. are on the wrong side of it. To reach that conclusion, analysts at Energy Innovation and Vibrant Clean Energy, another energy research group, took a look at public data on power plant operating costs and weather modeling about when the sun shines and wind blows. They then compared continuing to run existing coal plants with what it would cost to replace them locally with wind or solar. The findings show that retiring 74 percent of American coal power plants and replacing them with wind or solar plants would provide an immediate saving to utilities. About 44 percent of that coal power is substantially at-risk, that is it could be replaced by renewables that are at least 25 percent cheaper. The biggest chunk of at-risk coal plants is in the Southeast where solar power, in particular, would provide a substantial cost savings. The analysis includes projections to 2025 and finds that number of at-risk coal plants increases to 86 percent. That rise reflects the addition of a number of coal plants in the Midwest, places where wind is already cheap but where solar will become even more attractive as prices drop. Even the percentage of at-risk coal plants is likely conservative, because the analysis required any replacement renewables to be sited within 35 miles of the coal plant they would replace. Nor does the analysis include anything about the societal toll coal from contaminated groundwater to health issues tied with mercury and other heavy metals it emits.

74% of US Coal Plants Threatened by Renewables, But Emissions Continue To Rise – The International Energy Agency (IEA) released a report on Monday saying that in 2018, “global energy-related CO2 emissions rose by 1.7 percent to 33 Gigatonnes.” That’s the most growth in emissions that the world has seen since 2013. Coal use contributed to a third of the total increase, mostly from new coal-fired power plants in China and India. This is worrisome because new coal plants have a lifespan of roughly 50 years. But the consequences of climate change are already upon us, and coal’s hefty emissions profile compared to other energy sources means that, globally, carbon mitigation is going to be a lot more difficult to tackle than it may look from here in the US.Even in the US, carbon emissions grew by 3.1 percent in 2018, according to the IEA. (This closely tracks estimates by the Rhodium Group, which released a preliminary report in January saying that US carbon emissions increased by 3.4 percent in 2018.)”By country, China, the United States, and India together accounted for nearly 70 percent of the rise in energy demand,” Reuters wrote. The numbers remind us that economics alone is likely not enough to rein in carbon emissions in the United States. Last week, the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) said that barring some significant and unforeseeable changes, carbon emissions from the US are likely to stay about the same through 2050. This estimate takes into account big carbon-cutting measures that were already on the books in many states at the end of 2018, including California’s pledge to meet 100 percent of its energy needs with carbon-free electricity. (It doesn’t, however, take very recent policy decisions into account, like New Mexico’s similar pledge that was signed in March.)

On its way to carbon-free power, Xcel wants to buy a natural gas plant — Opponents of Xcel Energy’s proposed purchase of a Mankato natural gas plant say the sale would be a bad deal for ratepayers and runs counter to the company’s own pledge of achieving 100 percent carbon-free power by 2050. The utility announced in November that it had agreed to purchase the 760-megawatt Mankato Energy Center from Atlanta-based Southern Company. The Public Utilities Commission still must approve the $650 million sale. In comments to regulators, a wide range of critics contend the utility would be overpaying by around $100 million for a power plant that may not be needed as the company continues to make progress on wind and solar generation. They point out that even Xcel’s filings concede ratepayers will not see a price benefit for more than a decade, and perhaps two decades. Xcel already buys electricity from the plant. In regulatory filings, Xcel said that owning the plant “provides long-term cost benefits for our customers” by mitigating risks associated with two power purchase contracts set to expire in 2026 and 2039. Owning the plant would also allow for greater flexibility in meeting electricity demands while incorporating more renewable energy, the company said. The company also has plans to build a natural gas plant in Becker, Minnesota, to replace two coal units.

China bucking global shift from coal-fired power: environmental study (Reuters) – China restarted construction on more than 50 gigawatts (GW) of suspended coal-fired power plants last year, bucking a global shift away from fossil fuels, a new study showed on Thursday. China has repeatedly pledged to reduce its reliance on coal, a major source of smog and climate-warming greenhouse gases, and it has already cut coal’s share of its total energy mix to 59 percent, down from 68.5 percent in 2012. But satellite images show China “quietly resumed” construction in 2018 on dozens of previously shelved plants, making it a “glaring exception to the global decline”, said a joint report by environmental groups Global Energy Monitor, Greenpeace and the Sierra Club. The report warned that China could build an additional 290 GW of capacity – more than the whole of the United States’ coal capacity – and still remain within the 1,300-GW cap for national coal-fired power generation proposed by the China Electricity Council, an influential industry group. China’s National Development and Reform Commission and its National Energy Administration did not immediately respond to faxed requests to comment on the conclusions of the report. Lauri Myllyvirta, analyst with Greenpeace’s Global Air Pollution Unit, said Chinese firms are now “pushing for hundreds of additional coal-fired power plants”. “Another coal power construction spree would be near impossible to reconcile with emission reductions needed to avoid the worst impacts of global warming,” he said. Worldwide, the number of newly completed coal projects fell 20 percent in 2018 and plant retirements continued at a record pace, the study said. But China’s relationship with the dirtiest of fossil fuels remains ambivalent. The domestic coal power capacity under construction rose 12 percent in 2018, though it was still a third lower than what was being built in 2015. Beijing has also cut back dramatically on new project permits. While China has vowed to cap consumption nationally and even make cuts in regions like Beijing, Hebei and Henan, overall coal-fired generation has increased, particularly from new “coal bases” in the nation’s northwest. And though it has promoted alternative fuels at home and built hundreds of solar and wind farms, China is still financing more than a quarter of the new coal-fired plants abroad. China is also keen to prop up coal prices and ensure a “soft landing” for a commodity responsible for millions of domestic jobs in struggling industrial districts.

In 2018, U.S. coal exports were the highest in five years – While U.S. coal consumption has generally declined since its 2008 peak, EIA expects that U.S. coal exports reached 116 million short tons (MMst) in 2018, the highest level in five years, based on foreign trade data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau. Exports of coal from the United States have increased since 2016 as international prices have made it more economic for U.S. producers to sell coal overseas. In 2018, the United States exported 15% of its coal, and the remaining 85% was sold to end-use markets, primarily power sector and industrial customers. Coal exports have increased during the past two years, driven by increasing international coal demand, and in 2018 accounted for the largest share of total U.S. coal disposition on record. The United States exported 54 MMst of steam coal and 62 MMst of metallurgical coal in 2018, based on export data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau. Strong international demand has led to export prices increasing in recent years; coal export prices have increased in each of the past two years to average $59 per ton for steam coal and $138 per ton for metallurgical coal in 2018. Metallurgical coal, which is used in the steel-making process, has greater value than steam coal, which is used to create heat for industrial processes, commercial use, and utility-scale electricity generation. Asian countries account for about 75% of metallurgical coal trade in the world, and increased demand in China and India in 2017 and 2018 has helped to push metallurgical coal prices up throughout Asia. U.S. steam coal exports to Asia have also increased during the past two years, from 5 MMst in 2016 to 20 MMst in 2018, or nearly 40% of total U.S. steam coal exports. India, Japan, and South Korea were the primary Asian destinations for U.S. steam coal. U.S. steam coal exports have also increased to some new markets such as Egypt, Thailand, and Ukraine in recent years, providing some potential for market growth. Price data from EIA’s Annual Coal Report show that foreign coal trade appears to drive the market for U.S. metallurgical coal. The volume of metallurgical exports has grown to triple the level of domestic coke producer demand for metallurgical coal. Steam coal export prices also respond to international price movement, but they have a more limited impact on domestic coal prices because steam coal exports account for less than 10% of steam coal demand.

Dominion makes final decision to close 10 coal and gas-fired units in Virginia – Dominion Energy has made a final decision to permanently shutter 10 older and less-efficient generating units that can no longer compete profitably. The utility had previously put the units into cold storage,taking a wait-and-see approach on whether to bring them back online. The units include a mixture of coal and gas-fired resources, along with one biomass unit. There are no job losses associated with the decision,the company said. Dominion has almost 2,000 MW of renewables generation across its utility territories and is working to grow emissions-free generation, but maintained the option to restart the 10 units for more than a year. Company officials say there is little chance energy market conditions will change, prompting the permanent closures. The economics have not changed since Dominion put the 10 units in cold storage, as cleaner and more-efficient generation continues to dominate the market. Ultimately, the utility determined there was no reason to wait longer.”These are smaller, older, less-efficient units that could not compete in the current energy market, and we did not see that changing,” Dominion spokesman Dan Genest told Utility Dive. The recent decision to close them permanently was made “for the same reason they were put into cold reserve in the first place,” said Genest. All of the units are in Virginia, and are located at Dominion’s Chesterfield, Bremo, Bellemeade, Pittsylvania and Possum Point power plants.EPA says Missouri’s plan to regulate coal ash ponds and landfills is too weak – The Environmental Protection Agency notified Missouri environmental regulators this month that the state’s plan for overseeing the disposal of toxic waste from coal-fired power plants is not strong enough to protect human health and the environment.In a recent letter to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, EPA officials noted several provisions in the state’s plan that are weaker than the 2015 federal coal ash rule. Some allow the Missouri Department of Natural Resources to waive requirements for utility companies to clean up groundwater contamination or even monitor groundwater for toxic chemicals if they can show that it doesn’t affect drinking-water supplies or harm the environment.Environmentalists and utility companies have disagreed over whether the MDNR’s proposed coal ash regulations will be strong enough to address contamination that’s been detected near many coal ash ponds and landfills in Missouri. The number of comments EPA has made about the state’s plan is unusual, said Andy Knott, a representative for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. “I think that this is astonishing and that it’s just further evidence that the DNR cares more about the demands of the coal utilities than the needs of Missourians for clean water,” Knott said at a public hearing MDNR hosted in Jefferson City on Thursday afternoon.

Creditors of PG&E, owner of the biggest US power utility, reportedly propose a $35B exit plan – Creditors of PG&E, including Elliott Management and Pacific Investment Management Co. (Pimco), are proposing a $35 billion plan for the California power utility to emerge from bankruptcy within a year, Bloomberg reported late on Wednesday.Pimco, Elliott and David Kempner Capital Management have discussed the proposal with California lawmakers and other stakeholders, Bloomberg reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.The plan would form a $14 billion cash trust to pay for the claims linked to the wildfires in 2017 and 2018, it said, citing the proposal seen by the news outlet. Neither of the parties responded to requests for comment outside regular U.S. business hours.

Who Pays When Polluting Companies Shut Down? — Operating a hazardous waste facility can be a messy business that often leaves soils, groundwater and drinking water aquifers polluted with some of the most dangerous substances used in industry. To shield the public from possible health risks and financial liabilities, battery recyclers, landfill owners and others are required to provide financial assurance, a sum of money similar to an insurance policy for cleaning these facilities up when it’s time to close them down. If the contamination is especially difficult to remediate, operators must put up enough money to pay for cleanup costs long after a hazardous waste facility stops operating – decades, potentially. California, however, has a long history of failing to make hazardous waste operators provide adequate financial assurances, leaving taxpayers to pick up a tab that can bloat into millions of dollars. Over the last 15 years alone, multiple oversight agencies and panels have criticized this aspect of the state’s approach to financial assurance. A Capital & Main review of California’s 106 permitted hazardous waste facilities listed on the state website has found that the Department of Toxic Substance Control (DTSC) – the state agency responsible for overseeing hazardous waste facilities – still repeatedly fails to require adequate financial assurances from operators of hazardous waste facilities, leaving taxpayers potentially liable for massive clean-up costs.

Geothermal plant ‘triggered earthquake’ in S. Korea – A rare earthquake in South Korea was triggered by the country’s first experimental geothermal power plant, a team of government-commissioned experts said Wednesday. The southeastern port city of Pohang was rattled by a 5.4-magnitude earthquake in November 2017 – the second-most powerful tremor ever in the normally seismically stable South. Dozens of people were injured and more than 1,500 left homeless – while a nationwide college entrance exam was postponed in an unprecedented move as authorities scrambled with recovery efforts. A year-long government-commissioned study pointed to the geothermal power plant as the cause. The plant works by injecting high-pressure water deep underground to tap heat from the Earth’s crust, but the process had produced micro-sized seismic activity as a result, said Lee Kang-kun, who led the research. “And as time passed, this triggered the earthquake in Pohang,” he added. “We concluded that the Pohang earthquake was a ‘triggered quake’. It wasn’t a natural earthquake.” Pohang residents filed a lawsuit against the government after the quake, and following the assessment Seoul expressed its “deep regret”. The geothermal plant – which was temporarily suspended during the study – will be “permanently shuttered”, the trade, industry and energy ministry said in a statement.

Trump signs executive order to protect the US from a ‘debilitating’ EMP attack – President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday to protect the US from electromagnetic pulses (EMPs) that could have a “debilitating” effect on critical US infrastructure.Trump instructed federal agencies to identify EMP threats to vital US systems and determine ways to guard against them, Bloomberg first reported. A potentially harmful EMP event can be caused by a natural occurrence or the detonation of a nuclear weapon in the atmosphere.The threat of an EMP attack against the US reportedly drove the president to issue Tuesday’s order. Multiple federal agencies, as well as the White House National Security Council, have been instructed to make this a priority.”Today’s executive order – the first ever to establish a comprehensive policy to improve resilience to EMPs – is one more example of how the administration is keeping its promise to always be vigilant against present dangers and future threats,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement,according to The Hill.With the release of the White House National Security Strategy in 2017, Trump became the first president to highlight the need to protect to the US electrical grid.”Critical infrastructure keeps our food fresh, our houses warm, our trade flowing, and our citizens productive and safe,” the document said.”The vulnerability of U.S. critical infrastructure to cyber, physical, and electromagnetic attacks means that adversaries could disrupt military command and control, banking and financial operations, the electrical grid, and means of communication.”

Public will never know truth behind Three Mile Island, anti-nuclear energy advocates say – The public will never know the truth behind some of the most basic facts about the nation’s worst nuclear disaster nor the actual amount of radiation that was released. Those were some of the messages underscored on Monday by the head of Three Mile Island Alert, an anti-nuclear advocacy group, and other advocates at a press conference in the Main Rotunda of the state Capitol. Just days shy of the 40th anniversary of the partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Londonderry Township, TMI Alert’s Eric Epstein excoriated the nuclear industry for misrepresenting the facts of the accident, and in the process misleading and misinforming the public. “Three Mile Island is an accident without an ending,” Epstein said. “There’s no bookends to it. If you look at the holy trinity of nuclear accidents, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, we can probably pretty much tell you when they started. The reality is there is no ending. This is a funeral where the pallbearers need to stand in place for 500 years. That’s tough for a society that has the memory of a fruitfly.” Epstein was joined by Tim Judson, executive director of Nuclear Information and Resource Service, and Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer, who over the years converted from a proponent to an ardent critic. Judson and Gundersen outlined the chain of events that took place on March 28, 1979, the start of the partial meltdown, as well as the levels of radiation released and subsequent impact on the health of the region. Repeated studies find no conclusive link between the TMI accident and public health. But those conclusions don’t satisfy those who live around the plant and know people who became sick and died at young ages. Judson said the Three Mile Island story amounted to a “mistelling of history” of what could have been a preventable accident. He said that as a result of inconsistencies provided by the nuclear industry, the public was not given – nor will never have – a clear picture of the facts and the risks surrounding the meltdown. Gundersen explained that because inadequate radiation monitors were in place at the time, officials were never able to get an accurate reading of radiation levels. All analysis of radiation releases were based on mathematical corrections to estimates derived from off-site dose readings, he said.

Radioactive material released from Fukushima plant doubled up since last year – The released amount of Cs-137 and Cs-134 from the crippled reactors in Fukushima plant reached over the double compared to the previous year. Tepco released their monthly report about the additional atmospheric contamination on 25th February 2019. According to the report, from January 2018 to January 2019, 933,000,000 Bq of Cs-137 and Cs-134 were release from the buildings of reactor 1, 2, 3 and 4 in total. It was 471,000,000 Bq during the corresponding period of the previous year. Tepco commented it is likely to be affected by debris removal task around reactor 1 etc.. They avoided mentioning the further details.

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