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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WHO Warns Ebola Outbreak Critical As Armed Militants Target Healthcare Workers – Armed attacks by militants, distrust of western medicine and a growing funding gap has been crippling the response to the ongoing Ebola outbreak in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), which warned that the situation risks spiraling out of control. As of May 7, there have been 1,600 confirmed and probable cases of EVD (Ebola Virus Disease), of which 1,069 have died – a mortality rate of 67%. Seriously complicating matters have been conflict between local militants in the region – who, in addition to longstanding disputes – have been targeting healthcare workers and burial teams. This month alone has brought setbacks such as a violent assault on a burial team in the town of Katwa and a gunfight between at least 50 armed militia and security forces in the city of Butembo, WHO reported. Mourners also buried Richard Valery Mouzoko Kiboung, a 41-year-old Cameroonian doctor killed April 19 while working for WHO and meeting with other front-line workers at Butembo University Hospital. –VOA News “On Thursday, a VOA correspondent in Butembo spotted copies of a letter – anchored with pebbles on streets and posted on buildings in that city and other North Kivu communities. Handwritten in Swahili and attributed to Mai-Mai fighters, the letter warned police, soldiers and the general public against showing any support for Ebola responders or treatment centers,” added VOA.
Revealed: air pollution may be damaging ‘every organ in the body’ – Air pollution may be damaging every organ and virtually every cell in the human body, according to a comprehensive new global review. The research shows head-to-toe harm, from heart and lung disease to diabetes and dementia, and from liver problems and bladder cancer to brittle bones and damaged skin. Fertility, foetuses and children are also affected by toxic air, the review found. The systemic damage is the result of pollutants causing inflammation that then floods through the body and ultrafine particles being carried around the body by the bloodstream. Air pollution is a “public health emergency“, according to the World Health Organization, with more than 90% of the global population enduring toxic outdoor air. New analysis indicates 8.8m early deaths each year – double earlier estimates – making air pollution a bigger killer than tobacco smoking. But the impact of different pollutants on many ailments remains to be established, suggesting well-known heart and lung damage is only “the tip of the iceberg“. “Air pollution can harm acutely, as well as chronically, potentially affecting every organ in the body,” conclude the scientists from the Forum of International Respiratory Societies in the two review papers, published in the journal Chest. “Ultrafine particles pass through the [lungs], are readily picked up by cells, and carried via the bloodstream to expose virtually all cells in the body.” Prof Dean Schraufnagel, at the University of Illinois at Chicago and who led the reviews, said: “I wouldn’t be surprised if almost every organ was affected. If something is missing [from the review] it is probably because there was no research yet.” The review represents “very strong science”, said Dr Maria Neira, WHO director of public and environmental health: “It adds to the very heavy evidence we have already. There are more than 70,000 scientific papers to demonstrate that air pollution is affecting our health.”
Air pollution in many national parks is as bad as in Los Angeles –A whopping 96 percent of national parks in the U.S. are plagued by “significant air pollution,” according to a new study by the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA). In fact, 33 of America’s most-visited national parks are as polluted as our 20 largest cities, the report said. “The poor air quality in our national parks is both disturbing and unacceptable,” said Theresa Pierno, president and CEO for National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), in a statement. “Nearly every single one of our more than 400 national parks is plagued by air pollution. If we don’t take immediate action to combat this, the results will be devastating and irreversible.” The culprits? Extracting and burning fossil fuels (specifically coal – surprising, we know), car exhaust, and side effects of climate change like wildfire smoke. The report notes that the large majority of polluted air doesn’t originate in the parks, but gets blown in from elsewhere. Last year, the most popular parks – like Sequoia, Mojave, and Joshua Tree – recorded up to two months of dangerous ozone levels, mostly in the summer when the parks are always busiest. While bad air quality causes some people to stop visiting national parks, according to the NPCA’s report, there has still been an overall impact on visitors’ health: People are getting allergy and asthma attacks in the parks more often. Air pollution is actively damaging sensitive species and habitats in 88 percent of national parks – like alpine flowers in Rocky Mountain National Park which, apart from being pretty, provide essential habitat for some of the animals there, like elk. In 89 percent of all parks, particulate matter in the air creates a visible haze, clouding views as well as lungs. Great Smoky Mountains National Park, for example, is even smokier than its name suggests. The name is supposed to refer to the bluish mist that naturally hangs over the mountains, not the white or yellowish haze of pollution that is now often seen at the park.
Mexico City Declares Environmental Emergency as Wildfire Smoke Chokes the Air – Authorities in Mexico City declared an environmental emergency Tuesday as smoke from wildfires caused air pollution to reach levels well above what the World Health Organization (WHO) considers safe. The Nezahualcoyotl measuring station recorded particulate matter (PM2.5) levels of 158 micrograms per cubic meter of air at 5 a.m. Tuesday morning, Reuters reported. That’s more than six times the WHO recommended level of below 25. While the emergency was declared Tuesday, the air had been thick with smoke since Saturday, NBC News reported.”You can’t escape it,” a tour bus operator told Bloomberg News. Government agency the Megalópolis Environmental Commission (CAME) advised residents to stay inside, place wet towels under their doors and avoid activities that could make air quality worse, like cooking with wood or coal, smoking and lighting candles, NBC News reported The local government also said it would restrict vehicle traffic Wednesday, according to Reuters. Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said she was considering closing schools, and a local soccer league, Liga MX, decided to delay its semifinals. Mexico City’s once famously dangerous air quality has improved in recent decades, partly through a policy of restricting traffic on days when pollution reaches elevated levels, Bloomberg reported. But the current pollution comes mostly from wildfires outside the city, not exhaust. There were 23 fires burning on Sunday, Mexico City’s Fire Department said, as NBC News reported. The fires have prompted authorities to declare emergencies in 11 municipalities in the southern state of Oaxaca. Blazes have also been reported in Valle de Bravo, Tepoztlfln and Jalisco. The fires around the city have been fueled partly by hot, dry weather. Mexico City temperatures have been above average on 73 days this year.
China’s efforts to cut pollution in Beijing may make it worse overall — Many rich countries that appear to have cleaned up their act environmentally have actually outsourced manufacturing to countries with laxer standards – resulting in more pollution overall. Now the same thing is happening within China itself.The country is trying to reduce the dire air pollution in the capital region that includes Beijing. In this megalopolis of 110 million people, average particulate levels are 10 times higher than the safe limit according to the World Health Organization. Chinese officials are moving highly polluting industries to other regions, but Bin Chen of Beijing Normal University and colleagues found this will actually lead to more air pollution overall because of lower environmental standards and less efficient technologies in these regions. The calculated that the increase in harmful particulate emissions outside the capital region will be 1.6 times the emissions reduction in the capital region. What’s more, overall carbon dioxide emissions will be 3.6 times higher, and water consumption will be 2.9 times higher. “These environmental problems are linked together,” says Chen.In theory having more particulates spread more thinly over less densely populated areas might lessen the over health impact, but the team did not assess this. What they did show is that prevailing winds will often blow some of the extra particulate pollution in neighbouring provinces back into the capital region, partially or completely countering the reductions from moving factories elsewhere.
California jury links RoundUp to cancer, awards couple $2 billion – A jury ruled against chemical giant Monsanto on Monday, awarding a California couple $2 billion in damages after determining their cancer was caused by the weedkiller RoundUp. The decision in Alameda County Superior Court comes on the heels of a recent Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) statement that said there were no serious public health risks associated with glyphosate, the active ingredient in RoundUp. But a growing number of juries disagree with the EPA’s position. Monday’s ruling marks the third case since August in which a jury found that glyphosate caused cancer. More than 13,000 similar lawsuits have been filed against Monsanto or its parent company Bayer. Many of those suits were spurred by a 2015 World Health Organization analysis that said glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic in humans.” Alva and Alberta Pilliod, the plaintiffs in the California case, argued they developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma following decades of using the weedkiller. Bayer relied heavily on EPA’s assessment of glyphosate’s safety in responding to the verdict, arguing the Pilliods had existing risk factors for that type of cancer. “Bayer is disappointed with the jury’s decision and will appeal the verdict in this case, which conflicts directly with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s interim registration review decision released just last month,” the company said in a statement.
Monsanto Ordered to Pay Record $2 Billion After Jury Finds Roundup Caused Cancer – – A California jury ruled Monday that Monsanto must pay a record $2 billion in damages to a couple that was diagnosed with cancer after using the company’s weedkiller Roundup.“We were finally allowed to show a jury the mountain of evidence showing Monsanto’s manipulation of science, the media, and regulatory agencies to forward their own agenda despite Roundup’s severe harm to the animal kingdom and humankind,” saidMichael Miller, an attorney for Alva and Alberta Pilliod.The jury ruled that Monsanto – which was acquired by the German pharmaceutical giant Bayer last year – is liable for the Pilliods’ non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL), the third such ruling in less than a year. “We’ve been fighting cancer for nine years. It was caused by Roundup. We can’t do the things we used to do and we really resent Monsanto for that,” Alberta Pilliod said at a press conference following the verdict. As The Guardian reported, the “latest verdict is the largest by far and will increase pressure on Bayer, which has suffered share price drops in the wake of the verdicts and is now facing similar lawsuits from thousands of cancer patients, survivors and families who lost loved ones to NHL.” Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, said in a statement that the California jury’s decision “shows that there’s more than enough evidence that Roundup is an environmental and public health nightmare.”“But rather than act on this body of evidence,” Hauter said, “the EPA continues to side with the chemical industry and recently announced it will continue to allow glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, to be sold. It’s time to ban this dangerous herbicide.”
Bayer says Monsanto likely kept files on influential people across Europe (Reuters) – Bayer said on Monday its Monsanto unit, which is being investigated by French prosecutors for compiling files of influential people such as journalists in France, likely did the same across Europe, suggesting a potentially wider problem. French prosecutors said on Friday they had opened an inquiry after newspaper Le Monde filed a complaint alleging that Monsanto – acquired by Bayer for $63 billion last year – had kept a file of 200 names, including journalists and lawmakers in hopes of influencing positions on pesticides. On Sunday, Bayer acknowledged the existence of the files, saying it does not believe any laws were broken but that it will ask an external law firm to investigate. “It’s safe to say that other countries in Europe were affected by lists … I assume that all EU member states could potentially be affected,” Matthias Berninger, Bayer’s head of public affairs and sustainability, told journalists on Monday. While he did not say there had any illegal activity and added it was up to the external law firm to evaluate the conduct, Berninger said there were signs Monsanto had not played fairly in the use of private data. “There have been a number of cases where – as they would say in football – not the ball was played but the man, or woman, was tackled,” Berninger, who joined Bayer in January, said on a conference call. “When you collect non-publicly available data about individuals a Rubicon is clearly crossed,” regardless of whether data privacy laws were actually violated, he added. He repeated an apology issued by Bayer over the weekend.
Ticks expected to be a big problem this year — Doctors are warning that because of the wet spring we have had so far, the conditions are perfect for them to be out. “I have no doubt we are going to have a heavy tick season,” said Dr. Thomas Rushton, an Infectious Diseases Specialist with St. Mary’s Medical Center. “It is perfect for that. We know that eggs that we laid over the winter are really going to start hatching whenever we get those first rains, so right where we are right now.” Dr. Rushton says the weather is also helping the grass to grow and leaves are on the trees, which gives ticks something to hang onto. Because this is going to be a bad tick season, doctors are urging you to check yourself, your kids and your pets anytime you come inside from being outdoors. “You want to look at the nape of the hair, so wherever there is a hairline,” Dr. Rushton said. “You want to look very closely because it may look like it’s a little skin abrasion or a mole, but if it’s a tick and you touch it. those legs are going to move. You may need a magnifying glass. You want to look at crevasses, so skin folds are also places where ticks would like to be. It does take some time for that tick to actually find a spot that she likes, bite and embed, so we want to remove all ticks within 24 hours.”
Ear to Ear: China’s Farming Authority Warns of Corn-Eating Pest – An invasive pest that feeds mainly on corn has devoured 720 million square meters of crops in 13 Chinese provincial-level regions, mostly in the south and southwest, and is moving northward at an alarming pace, the National Agro-Tech Extension and Service Center warned Tuesday. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the fall armyworm is native to tropical and subtropical areas of the Americas but was observed in central and western Africa in early 2016. In addition to corn, the worms feed on over 80 other crops, including rice and millet. “In the absence of natural controls or good management, it can cause significant damage to crops,” said the organization. The fall armyworm was first detected in China on Jan. 11 in Pu’er – a city in the southwestern Yunnan province that’s famous for its eponymous variety of tea. “The insects have been expanding rapidly across the country and will (soon) establish their breeding grounds, which would pose a serious risk,” said the agro-tech center, adding that, in addition to the fall armyworms proliferating domestically, more and more insects have been entering China from neighboring countries including Myanmar, Vietnam, and Thailand. Zhai Baoping, an entomology professor at Nanjing Agricultural University, told state-run newspaper Science and Technology Daily on Tuesday that fall armyworms are particularly good at breeding, flying, and eating. “One female moth can lay up to 200 eggs at a time and up to 1,000 eggs in a lifetime. To go from an egg to a mature fall armyworm only takes two or three weeks,” Zhai said. “They’re extremely good at flying long distances. Before laying eggs, female moths might travel 500 kilometers. The insects move in a swarm and eat voraciously: They can consume an entire corn field within one day.”
African swine fever keeps spreading in Asia, threatening food security The spread of African swine fever (ASF) in Asia is taking a worrisome turn. First reported in northeastern China in August 2018, the highly contagious, often fatal pig disease quickly swept through the country, causing the death or culling of more than 1 million pigs. In recent weeks, it has jumped borders to Vietnam, Cambodia, Mongolia, Hong Kong, and possibly North Korea. Animal health experts agree that the disease will inevitably spread farther. And many of the newly hit countries are even less prepared to deal with ASF than China, they say, which has so far failed to end its outbreaks. Vietnam and Cambodia “probably do not have the technical abilities to be able to control ASF,” says François Roger, an animal epidemiologist at the French Agricultural Research Center for International Development in Montpellier. He believes the virus will soon surface in Myanmar and Laos, which have “weak veterinary infrastructures and surveillance systems,” and it may become endemic in Southeast Asia. If so, it would pose a continuing threat of reintroduction into China, even if that country succeeds in controlling its own outbreaks. A reservoir of endemic disease could also pose a wider threat: ASF-contaminated pork products have already been confiscated from air travelers in South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Australia. The crisis is not only causing economic hardship, but also threatens food security in the region. In Vietnam, where pork accounts for three-quarters of the meat consumption, more than 1.2 million pigs across the country – 4% of the national herd – have now died or been killed, the Vietnamese government announced on 13 May. “This is probably the most serious animal health disease [the world has] had for a long time, if not ever,” says Dirk Pfeiffer, a veterinary epidemiologist at City University of Hong Kong.
Southern Ohio health officials warn of intestinal parasite from infected farm animals – Health officials believe some people may be sick with an intestinal parasite contracted from infected cattle and other animals, the Portsmouth City Health Department said Wednesday. It says “a number” of Scioto County and Lawrence County residents may have become ill in connection with animals brought to the Lucasville Trade Days event from April 27-28. Health officials say Cryptosporidiosis, also known as Crypto, is a diarrheal disease caused by a single-celled parasite. It can be spread by humans, animals or contaminated food and water. The most common symptom is watery diarrhea and abdominal cramping. According to health officials, Crypto is resistant to many common disinfectants. Hand sanitizer is not effective to avoid it. Washing hands with soap and water is the most effective way to keep the disease from spreading. Symptoms usually happen a week after exposure. The infection tends to be more severe in pregnant women, young children and people with compromised immune systems. Infected people can be contagious for several weeks after exposure.
The Battle for Rights of Nature Heats Up in the Great Lakes – In February, the voters of Toledo, Ohio, passed a ballot initiative that gives Lake Erie and those who rely on the lake’s ecosystem a bill of rights. The idea is to protect and preserve the ecosystem so that the life that depends on it – humans included – can have access to safe, fresh drinking water.On the surface, it seems pretty logical: Humans need water to survive, and if an ecosystem that is relied on for water – in this case, Lake Erie – is polluted (in this case, with algae), then the Lake Erie Bill of Rights (or LEBOR) would ensure the rights of humans would come before the polluters (in this case, big agriculture). Except, that’s not what’s happening.Rather, in a perhaps unsurprising move, the state of Ohio has at once both acknowledged rights of nature to exist, and taken them away, with a line written in, of all things, the state budget: “Nature or any ecosystemdoes not have standing to participate in or bring an action in any court of common pleas.””It’s not surprising that the Ohio legislature has the shameful distinction of being the first in the country to specifically name ecosystem rights – trying to quash them rather than taking the lead in recognizing them,” the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), which was involved in the initiative and is experienced with rights of nature laws and actions, said in a press release. The Lake Erie Bill of Rights has received international acclaim.Last week, a judge ruled Toledoans for Safe Water, the local group behind the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, cannot defend the voter-passed initiative in a lawsuit brought by a factory farm against the city over the initiative. Yet, the state of Ohio is being permitted to support the farm in the lawsuit against the city. Big agriculture, of course, is the primary source of nutrient pollution that has caused algae blooms that have denied half a million people access to clean, safe drinking water, sometimes for days at a time.
Internal documents show 3M hid PFAS dangers for decades – A 3M environmental specialist, in a scathing resignation letter, accused company officials of being “unethical” and more “concerned with markets, legal defensibility and image over environmental safety” when it came to PFAS, the emerging contaminant causing a potential crisis throughout Michigan and the country. PFOS, one of 3M’s chief PFAS products, “is the most insidious pollutant since PCB,” Richard Purdy stated in his March 28, 1999, resignation letter, referring to a compound used in 3M’s ScotchGard stain-protection product line, among other uses. “It is probably more damaging than PCB because it does not degrade, whereas PCB does; it is more toxic to wildlife,” he stated, adding that PFOS’s end point in the environment appeared to be plants and animals, not soil and sediment like PCB. Purdy’s explosive resignation letter is just one of a large cache of internal 3M memos and documents obtained by the Free Press through public records law from the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances – PFAS – is the biggest emerging contaminant problem in Michigan. The nonstick compounds were used for decades, from the 1950s to the 2000s, in aqueous firefighting foam, industrial processes and a host of popular consumer products: Teflon nonstick pots and pans, ScotchGard stain protectants on carpets and upholstery; Gore-Tex water-resistant shoes and clothing, and more. Two of the most common and most studied PFAS compounds, known as PFOS and PFOA, have been linked to cancer; conditions affecting the liver, thyroid and pancreas; ulcerative colitis; hormone and immune system interference; high cholesterol; pre-eclampsia in pregnant women, and negative effects on growth, learning and behavior in infants and children. PFAS can now be found in the blood of nearly 99% of Americans. It has even beenfound in polar bears in the Arctic Circle, as the chemicals have worked their way up the food chain from fish and seals. Some 46 sites in Michigan are known to have groundwater with PFAS levels above the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s lifetime health advisory guideline of 70 parts per trillion, a level above which a person consuming the water for a lifetime might expect health problems. And state officials have identified more than 11,000 sites in Michigan where PFAS was used and contamination may be an issue. And it’s not just the Great Lakes State’s problem. In a new study, citing updated federal government data, the Washington-based nonprofit Environmental Working Group identified 610 sites in 43 U.S. states or territories known contaminated with PFAS, including drinking water systems serving 19 million people.
Deepest ever dive finds plastic bag at bottom of Mariana Trench CNN – An American undersea explorer has completed what is claimed to be the deepest manned sea dive ever recorded — returning to the surface with the depressing news that there’s plastic trash down there. Victor Vescovo journeyed 10,927 meters (35,853 feet) to the bottom of the Challenger Deep , the southern end of the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench, as part of a mission to chart the world’s deepest underwater places. Making multiple trips nearly 11 kilometers, or seven miles, to the ocean floor — one of them four hours in duration — Vescovo set a record for the deepest solo dive in history, his team said. The previous record was held by “Titanic” director James Cameron in 2012.
977,000 Shoes and 373,000 Toothbrushes Found Among 262 Tons of Plastic Debris on Remote Cocos Islands – There are only around 600 people living on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands in the Indian Ocean. But their beaches are littered with 414 million pieces of plastic. That’s the calculation of a paper published in Scientific Reports Thursday. Its findings suggest the world has “drastically underestimated” the plastic pollution problem, lead author from the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS) at the University of Tasmania Dr. Jennifer Lavers told BBC News.”Islands such as these are like canaries in a coal mine and it’s increasingly urgent that we act on the warnings they are giving us,” Dr. Lavers said in an IMAS press release. Australian islands home to 414 million pieces of plastic pollution – YouTube The plastic found by Lavers and her team weighed 238 tonnes (approximately 262 U.S. tons) and included 977,000 shoes, mostly flip-flops, and 373,000 toothbrushes. Lavers explained to NPR that remote islands like the Cocos are valuable places to study the circulation of ocean plastics, since their small population means the plastic that washes up on beaches comes from elsewhere and is not immediately cleaned up. Lavers has studied plastic on other isolated islands. In 2017 she found that Henderson Island in the Pacific had the highest density of plastic waste of anywhere on earth, the press release explained. “You get to the point where you’re feeling that not much is going to surprise you anymore,” Lavers told NPR, “and then something does … and that something [on the Cocos Keeling Islands] was actually the amount of debris that was buried.” In fact, 93 percent of the plastic Lavers’ team found was buried up to 10 centimeters (approximately four inches) in the sand, and 60 percent of the buried plastic were microplastics measuring two to five millimeters, the paper said. “It’s the little stuff that’s perfectly bite-sized,” Lavers told NPR. “The stuff that fish and squid and birds and even turtles can eat.”
Almost every country in the world agrees deal to cut plastic pollution – except US – Almost every country in the world has signed up to a legally-binding plan to cut plastic waste – with the US a striking exception. The United Nations announced that 186 countries reached an agreement on Friday which means they will have to monitor and track movements of plastic waste outside their borders. Rolph Payet, of the UN Environment Programme, called the amendment to the Basel Convention “historic”. He said it would help create a better regulated global trade in plastic, which currently clutters pristine land, pollutes the oceans and entangles wildlife – sometimes with deadly results. “It’s sending a very strong political signal to the rest of the world – to the private sector, to the consumer market – that we need to do something,” said Mr Payet. “Countries have decided to do something which will translate into real action on the ground.” The deal affects products used in a broad array of industries, such as healthcare, technology, aerospace, fashion, and food and beverages. The agreement is likely to lead to customs agents being on the lookout for electronic or other types of potentially hazardous waste more than before. Countries will have to figure out their own ways of adhering to the accord, Mr Payet said. Even the few non-signatory countries, like the US, could be affected when they ship plastic waste to countries that have signed up.
From making it to managing it, plastic is a major contributor to climate change – Plastic is polluting oceans, freshwater lakes and rivers, food and us – but it’s also a major contributor to global climate change, warns a new report.Scientists, policymakers and consumers are increasingly aware of the threat plastic pollution poses to oceans and water, wildlife, food and people. However, often lost in calculating plastics’ environmental harm is its contributions to climate change.”I don’t feel the petrochemical buildout is being considered as part of climate change discussions at any level in our state [Pennsylvania],” Michele Fetting, program manager at the Breathe Project, a coalition of 24 environmental organizations, told EHN.Petrochemical facilities, such as cracker plants, take fuels like natural gas and convert them to chemical products, which are most often used to make plastics. Shell is building a massive petrochemical complex in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, as part of a broader effort to put such facilities in multiple spots along the Ohio River Valley. Each step in the life of a piece of plastic – production, transportation and managing waste – uses fossil fuels and emits greenhouse gases and, as petrochemical and plastic production continues to ramp up, these impacts must be considered, according to the report released today by the Center for International Environmental Law, the Environmental Integrity Project, FracTracker Alliance, the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, 5Gyres, and #BreakFreeFromPlastic.The organizations say putting a stop to increases in petrochemical and plastic production “is a critical element in addressing the climate crisis.” “Nothing short of stopping the expansion of petrochemical and plastic production and keeping fossil fuels in the ground will create the surest and most effective reductions in the climate impacts from the plastic lifecycle,” the authors wrote.
Plastics Threaten Global Climate at a Massive Scale During Each Point of Lifecycle, Report Finds -Plastic pollution across the globe is suffocating our planet and driving Earth toward catastrophic climatic conditions if not curbed significantly and immediately, according to a new report by the Center for International Environmental Law (CEIL). As first reported by The Guardian, a review of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) at each stage of the plastic lifestyle finds that increasing plastic and petrochemical industries expected to accelerate in the next ten years are threatening the ability to keep global temperature rise below 1.5°C degrees if the world does not immediately act. This year alone, the production and incineration of plastic will add more than 850 million metric tons of greenhouse gas to the atmosphere, equating to the pollution from 189 new 500-megawatt coal-fired power plants.”Humanity has less than twelve years to cut global greenhouse emissions in half and just three decades to eliminate them almost entirely,” said Carol Muffet with CEIL. “The massive and rapidly growing emissions from plastic production and disposal undermine that goal and jeopardize global efforts to keep climate change below 1.5 degrees of warming.” Comparing GHG estimates against global carbon budgets and emissions commitments, the report finds that if plastic production goes as planned, emissions will reach 1.34 gigatons per year by 2030. By 2050, the production and disposal of plastic may generate 56 gigatons of emissions, accounting for as much as 14 percent of the planet’s entire remaining carbon budget. The authors are quick to note their assumptions are conservative given the availability of data and the projection of plastic’s climate impacts are under a business-as-usual scenario. As such, realistic estimates suggest will actually be much higher. “It has long been clear that plastic threatens the global environment and puts human health at risk. This report demonstrates that plastic, like the rest of the fossil economy, is putting the climate at risk as well. Because the drivers of the climate crisis and the plastic crisis are closely linked, so to are their solutions: humanity must end its reliance on fossil fuels and on fossil plastics that the planet can no longer afford,” said Muffet. GHG emissions are emitted during each stage of the plastic lifecycle. Nearly every piece of plastic begins as a fossil fuel where extraction and transport can contribute significantly to GHG emissions directly through methane leaks and flaring, as well as fuel combustion and energy consumption. In the U.S. alone in 2015, emissions from fossil fuel extraction and transport attributed to plastic production was as high as 10.5 million metric tons of CO2 per year. The next phase, refining and manufacturing, is among the most GHG-intensive industries and are the fastest growing in terms of emissions.
Plastics Industry on Track to Burn Through 14% of World’s Remaining Carbon Budget: New Report – DeSmog –The plastics industry plays a major – and growing – role in climate change, according to a report published today by the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL). By 2050, making and disposing of plastics could be responsible for a cumulative 56 gigatons of carbon, the report found, up to 14 percent of the world’s remaining carbon budget.In 2019, the plastics industry is on track to release as much greenhouse gas pollution as 189 new coal-fired power plants running year-round, the report found – and the industry plans to expand so rapidly that by 2030, it will create 1.34 gigatons of climate-changing emissions a year, equal to 295 coal plants.It’s an expansion that, in the United States, is largely driven by the shale gas rush unleashed by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.The petrochemical expansion also comes over the same period of time that international plans to reduce climate change call for rapid reductions in greenhouse gases from all sources – transportation, electricity, and industry. “Humanity has less than twelve years to cut global greenhouse emissions in half and just three decades to eliminate them almost entirely,” said Carroll Muffett, president of CIEL, citing UN figures. “It has long been clear that plastic threatens the global environment and puts human health at risk. This report demonstrates that plastic, like the rest of the fossil economy, is putting the climate at risk as well.”“If growth trends continue,” the report concludes, “plastic will account for 20 percent of global oil consumption by 2050.” The new report, co-authored by Environmental Integrity Project, FracTracker Alliance, Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), 5 Gyres, and Break Free From Plastic, looks at how plastic production carries major impacts for the climate as it goes from raw materials tapped by the fossil fuel industries all the way through its ultimate disposal or breakdown in the environment. “The story of plastic’s contribution to climate change really begins at the wellhead,” said Matt Kelso, a manager at FracTracker Alliance, which contributed to the report, “and we can therefore say that a portion of carbon emissions from oil and gas production is attributable to the creation of plastics.”
Plastic Pollution Harms Ocean Bacteria That Produce 10 Percent of Earth’s Oxygen – It’s well known that ocean plastics harm marine life, but could the eight million metric tons of plastic that enters the seas each year also make it harder for us to breathe?That’s the troubling implication of a new study published in Communications Biology Tuesday, which found that plastic pollution can have negative impacts on the ocean bacteria that produces 10 percent of Earth’s oxygen. “We found that exposure to chemicals leaching from plastic pollution interfered with the growth, photosynthesis and oxygen production of Prochlorococcus, the ocean’s most abundant photosynthetic bacteria,” lead study author and Macquarie University researcher Dr. Sasha Tetu said in a Macquarie University press release.The tests were done in a laboratory setting, which means the researchers do not yet know if plastics are currently harming the bacteria in the environment.”Now we’d like to explore if plastic pollution is having the same impact on these microbes in the ocean,” Tetu said. The study is the first of its kind to look at the potential impacts of plastic on this vital bacteria, which, in addition to producing oxygen, are an essential part of the marine food web. Researchers assessed two strains of Prochlorococcus common at different depths of the ocean. They exposed the strains to chemicals leached from plastic bags and PCV matting. The chemicals had a noted impact on the bacteria, impairing their growth and the amount of oxygen they produced, as well as altering their gene expression.
Retired Oil Rigs off the California Coast Could Find New Lives as Artificial Reefs – Offshore oil and gas drilling has been a contentious issue in California for 50 years, ever since a rig ruptured and spilled 80,000 to 100,000 barrels of crude oil off Santa Barbara in 1969. Today it’s spurring a new debate: whether to completely dismantle 27 oil and gas platforms scattered along the southern California coast as they end their working lives, or convert the underwater sections into permanent artificial reefs for marine life.We know that here and elsewhere, many thousands of fishes and millions of invertebrates use offshore rigs as marine habitat. Working with state fisheries agencies, energy companies have converted decommissioned oil and gas platforms into manmade reefs in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, Brunei and Malaysia.Californians prize their spectacular coastline, and there are disagreements over the rigs-to-reefs concept. Some conservation groups assert that abandoned oil rigs could release toxic chemicals into the water and create underwater hazards. In contrast, supporters say the submerged sections have become productive reefs that should be left in place. We are a former research scientist for the U.S. Department of the Interior and a scholar focusing on the fishes of the Pacific coast. In a recent study, we reviewed the history of rigs-to-reefs conversions and decades of published scientific research monitoring the effects of these projects. Based on this record, we conclude that reefing the habitat under decommissioned oil and gas platforms is a viable option for California. It also could serve as a model for decommissioning some of the 7,500 other offshore platforms operating around the world.
Climate change- How frogs could vanish from ponds – BBC – Climate change is having an impact on frogs found in British ponds, research suggests. A deadly frog disease is spreading due to warmer temperatures and in the next 50 years could cause entire populations to vanish, according to a study. The virus could spell disaster for the common frog, which is a familiar sight in garden ponds and the countryside. Amphibians have been particularly hard hit by changes in the natural world. Four out of 10 species are on the edge of extinction globally due to factors such as disease, habitat loss and climate change. The study provides “strong evidence” of the impact of climate change on wildlife disease and how it might aid the spread of the virus across the UK, said Dr Stephen Price of ZSL’s Institute of Zoology. “Climate change isn’t something that’s just happening in faraway places – it’s something real and present that’s already had hard-to-predict impacts on wildlife in our own back gardens here in the UK,” he said. The research looked at a disease known as ranavirus, which can kill a large number of frogs in a short time. It found mass die-offs matched historic temperature changes, with outbreaks predicted to become more severe, widespread and over a greater proportion of the year within the next few decades, if carbon emissions continue unchecked. At present, the disease is confined largely to England, but climate change could lead to outbreaks across the UK and earlier in the year. If the disease were to hit tadpoles in spring, then whole populations could disappear “almost overnight”, said the researchers.
This Bird Went Extinct 136,000 Years Ago and Just Evolved Back Into Existence – In a rare case of a species effectively evolving into existence twice, the Aldabra rail has re-evolved back into existence after first going extinct 136,000 years ago, according to a new study. Not only that, the flightless bird has also reclaimed its home island in the Aldabra Atoll in the Indian Ocean. According to the study published Wednesday in the peer-reviewed scientific journalZoological Journal of the Linnean Society, the rail’s home in the atoll has been submerged multiple times throughout history during events that wiped out all the species that inhabited it. However, the Aldabra rail has continued to return in a rare phenomenon known as iterative evolution, when the same ancestral lineage leads to the repeated evolution of a species at different points in time, producing parallel offshoot species that are nearly identical to one another and can pop up multiple times in various eras and locations – even when past iterations have gone completely extinct. Such was the case with the Aldabra rail, having descended from a chicken-sized flying bird known as the white-throated rail, which faced its demise around 136,000 years ago when the island was completely inundated and submerged below sea level, wiping out all local fauna and flora. As sea levels fell over the course of tens of thousands of years, however, fossil evidence has shown that the species once again re-colonized it. This time, the bird lost the ability to fly due to the absence of predators who once populated the island. This isn’t the first case of iterative evolution, which has also been observed in such animals asammonites, sea turtles, and sea cows. Yet the two species of rail – the long-extinct iteration and the revived one – are the “most significant” case of avian iterative evolution ever found, the researchers concluded.
Escalating Floods Putting Mississippi River’s Old River Control Structure at Risk – The Old River Control Structure (ORCS), the Army Corps of Engineers’ critical defense against the risk of the Mississippi River undergoing an economically catastrophic change in its course, is under increasing threat due to flood heights that have escalated in recent decades. The higher floods are from increasing sedimentation of the river’s channel. This was due to the construction of the structure, plus other river engineering efforts. As detailed last week in Part I of this series, America’s Achilles’ Heel: the Mississippi River’s Old River Control Structure, the ORCS was built to act as a bulwark against the Mississippi River’s natural inclination to carve out a new channel to the Gulf of Mexico. The river wants to forge a path down the Atchafalaya River that is half as long and twice as steep as the river’s current channel, which takes it past Baton Rouge and New Orleans. The ORCS consists of four major water control structures which allow no more than 30% of the Mississippi River to flow into the Atchafalaya River: the Low Sill Structure and Overbank Structure (built in 1963), the Auxiliary Structure (completed in 1987), and the Sidney A. Murray Junior Hydroelectric Plant (completed in 1990). However, the construction of the ORCS is contributing to its potential failure: the Mississippi River is forced to slow down when it reaches the structure, and this slowdown has resulted in the deposition of a prodigious amount of sediment that has clogged up the river’s channel. Additional sedimentation has been caused by the construction of smaller wing dikes that stick out from the river’s banks into the main current (to stabilize the channel and improve navigation safety during low river flows), from armoring of the levee banks with articulated concrete and steel mattress revetments (to prevent erosion of the levees), and from a series of channel modifications done in the 1930s, when necks of 16 meander bends were sliced through to create a shorter path for the river. The net result: higher flood heights due to the clogging of the river channel, which increases the chance of the structure’s failure during a major flood.
2019 Mississippi River Flood the Longest-Lasting Since the Great Flood of 1927 — Mississippi River flooding has been ongoing for three months or longer in some locations, making it the longest-lasting flood there since the Great Flood of 1927, the worst flood in modern history on the lower Mississippi River.Take Vicksburg, Mississippi, for example.The Mississippi River went above flood stage there on Feb. 17, and has remained in flood ever since. The National Weather Service said this is the longest continuous stretch above flood stage since 1927 at Vicksburg.And by late May, the ongoing Mississippi River flood at Baton Rouge and Red River Landing, Louisiana, will also become the longest-lived at those locations since 1927, according to the NWS.The river went above its 35-foot flood stage at Baton Rouge on the morning of Jan. 6. Red River Landing has been above its 48-foot flood stage since Dec. 28.The Bonnet Carré Spillway, about 27 miles upriver from New Orleans, had to be used for the 13th time in its history and the first time in consecutive years. It’s also the fourth time the spillway was used in a single decade – the most in its history.The spillway is located in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana. When open, the Bonnet Carré Spillway helps protect New Orleans and other downstream communities from floods by diverting waters from the Mississippi River into Lake Pontchartrain and on to the Gulf of Mexico. “Federal flood controls were erected as a result of the Flood Control Act of 1928,” the New Orleans/Baton Rouge NWS office said. “Flood events prior to the Great 1927 Flood were much longer in duration, at times as long as six months.”The Mississippi River at the Quad Cities of Iowa and Illinois observed its longest stretch above major flood stage on record. The river was in major flood stage for 51 consecutive days from March 23 through May 12. The previous record was 31 days from mid-April to mid-May 2001, according to the NWS.Records for most consecutive days above major flood stage were also set at New Boston, Illinois; Keithsburg, Illinois; and Burlington, Iowa.More than 260 river gauges were reporting levels above flood stage on Tuesday. Of those, 23 gauges reported major flooding, 70 moderate flooding and 169 minor flooding. The 12 months spanning May 2018 through April 2019 were the wettest year-long period in the United States in records dating back to 1895, according to the monthly U.S. climate summary issued May 8 by the NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.
Massive flooding in New Orleans as five pumps go offline – The New Orleans Sewage and Water Board (SWB) announced this week that following several hours of heavy rain on May 12 five major city water pumps went offline. During the ensuing flash flooding the pumps, located in the City Park and Gentilly area, shut down resulting in massive street flooding in several neighborhoods in the Mid City and French Quarter areas. According to a tweet sent out by the SWB, only 115 out of the 120 drainage pumps were operational during the rains. Some three to five inches of rain fell between 11 p.m. Saturday and 6 a.m. Sunday, overwhelming the pumps drainage capacity. Images of flooded neighborhoods and streets appeared all over social media as residents complained of flooded sidewalks. The breakdown of the pumping system almost 14 years after the failure of levees during Hurricane Katrina resulted in the devastation of wide areas of the city is a further demonstration of the criminal neglect of infrastructure by city, state and federal officials in a city particularly vulnerable to flooding. According to the initial report only one pump lost power during the rains but another report released on Tuesday stated that four more pumps were also offline due to a tripped power breaker. This comes less than two weeks after a 114-year-old water pipe burst, flooding the Freret neighborhood on May 2. The burst pipe, which was installed in 1905, created dangerous water shortages to nearby hospitals, placing wide swaths of the Uptown New Orleans neighborhood under a “boil water advisory,” a public health crisis wherein residents are recommended to boil potentially contaminated water. Over the last six years New Orleans has seen 17 such advisories, usually the result of a loss in water pressure caused by either broken pipes or power failures. City Councilman Joseph Giarusso told residents, “You’ve also got to remember some of the infrastructure at the water plant dates back to World War I, too. It’s the pipes, the pumps that are nearly that old in many of the cases. We’re just working with an infrastructure that’s going to be obsolete in fairly short order.”
When ‘1-in-100-year’ floods happen often, what should you call them? — The Mississippi River is rising again as torrential rain falls across much of the Midwest. It’s the latest in a series of storms that have flooded major cities and small communities along the length of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers on and off for more than a month. In some places, homes and businesses in what’s known as the 100-year flood plain have been hit by multiple floods in a matter of weeks. One St. Louis suburb has now suffered three major floods since 2015, at least two of which were approximately 1-in-100-year events. When these sorts of floods happen back to back, many residents might start to wonder: Why are they even called 100-year floods? “The educated layperson or elected officials, they think, ‘Well, you scientists and engineers can’t get it straight because we had a 100-year flood two years ago! Why are we having another one? You guys must have your numbers wrong.’ It makes people think we don’t know what we’re doing,” says Robert Holmes, the national flood hazard coordinator at the U.S. Geological Survey.”I think the use of this 1-in-100-year and 1-in-500-year is confusing to people,” says Alice Hill, a senior researcher at the Hoover Institution and former official with the National Security Council in the Obama administration. “Many people assume that if their area has experienced the 1-in-100-year flood, that means for the next 99 years they need not worry about flooding.”That’s because the probability is hard to understand.After Hurricane Florence hit North Carolina last year, Gov. Roy Cooper told reporters, “When you have two 500-year floods within two years of each other, it’s pretty clear it’s not a 500-year flood.”During record-breaking flooding in South Carolina in 2015, then-Gov. Nikki Haley attempted to explain the storm’s magnitude, saying, “We are at a 1,000-year level of rain in parts of the low country. What does that mean? We haven’t seen this level of rain in the low country in 1,000 years. That’s how big this is.”Neither governor was correct. While it’s unlikely that two large storms that cause flooding will happen in close succession, it’s not impossible.A 1-in-100-year storm has a 1% chance of happening every year. “As with the flip of a coin, if you flip heads twice in a row, that doesn’t mean you’ll flip tails the next time,” Hill says. “So you could have three very significant floods right in a row.” And, studies say, there is a better way to communicate that reality, by telling people what their risk of flooding is over time rather than each year.
Food Crisis Is Here- Trouble For Farmers In The Corn Belt – Trouble is brewing for farmers in the United States located in the “corn belt.” Corn planting is already behind on schedule. The weather in the United States has made farming difficult as of late, while bankruptcies soar and flooding continues. As the weather in four of the top six states for corn production couples with the skyrocketing number of bankruptcies of American farmers, we could be on the precipice of a food crisis. And to make matters worse, none of the weather is expected to improve, putting even more financial pressure on the already stressed farmers according to the latest Crop Progress report is issued Monday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), according to an AccuWeather analysis. The four states significantly behind on schedule are Illinois, Minnesota, Indiana, and South Dakota; and they are expected to remain that way, according to AccuWeather meteorologists who have been analyzing the data. Those four states combined to produce nearly 40% of the corn in the U.S. If the weather continues a wet pattern through late May, consumer prices could go up this summer. Iowa and Nebraska, the other two states among the top six corn producers, are also behind, albeit, only slightly behind, according to data from the USDA. “The question will be how much farther it will fall behind the pace,” said AccuWeathersenior meteorologist Jason Nicholls. “It’s about a week behind schedule right now. If it were to go to a week and a half or two weeks, that’s big news. Most of the problems are because of consistent rains, plus there is also rain in the forecast,” Nicholls said. “Of the two key producing states, Iowa isn’t too bad, but Illinois is way off schedule.”By this time of year, 43% of corn crops would already be planted in Illinois, according to the five-year average provided by the USDA. However, just 9% has been planted so far. Iowa averages 26% of crops planted at this point, and 21% has been planted so far.Three of the other top corn producers are lagging behind this season so far. Minnesota (2% of corn crops planted by now compared to its five-year average of 24%), Indiana (2% compared to 17%) and South Dakota (0% compared to 17%) are also well off pace. – AccuWeather
Farmageddon Looms: Only 30% Of US Corn Fields Have Been Planted, 5 Year Average Is 66% – 2019 is turning out to be a nightmare that never ends for the agriculture industry. Thanks to endless rain and unprecedented flooding, fields all over the middle part of the country are absolutely soaked right now, and this has prevented many farmers from getting their crops in the ground. I knew that this was a problem, but when I heard that only 30 percent of U.S. corn fields had been planted as of Sunday, I had a really hard time believing it. But it turns out that number is 100 percent accurate. And at this point corn farmers are up against a wall because crop insurance final planting dates have either already passed or are coming up very quickly. In addition, for every day after May 15th that corn is not in the ground, farmers lose approximately 2 percent of their yield. Unfortunately, more rain is on the way, and it looks like thousands of corn farmers will not be able to plant corn at all this year. It is no exaggeration to say that what we are facing is a true national catastrophe. According to the Department of Agriculture, over the past five years an average of 66 percent of all corn fields were already planted by now… U.S. farmers seeded 30% of the U.S. 2019 corn crop by Sunday, the government said, lagging the five-year average of 66%. The soybean crop was 9% planted, behind the five-year average of 29%.Soybean farmers have more time to recover, but they are facing a unique problem of their own which we will talk about later in the article.But first, let’s take a look at the corn planting numbers from some of our most important corn producing states. I think that you will agree that these numbers are almost too crazy to believe…
- Iowa: 48 percent planted – 5 year average 76 percent
- Minnesota: 21 percent planted – 5 year average 65 percent
- North Dakota: 11 percent planted – 5 year average 43 percent
- South Dakota: 4 percent planted – 5 year average 54 percent
‘No other option’: Climate change driving many to flee Guatemala –Eastern Guatemala and western Honduras are part of a region known as the dry corridor. Over the last two years, farmers have seen near-complete losses during harvests as the effects of climate change take hold in the region, with 2018 being among the worst years in recent memory. The Guatemalan government estimates that more than 200,000 families in 13 of the 22 departments were affected during the 2018 drought. The situation was not much better in neighbouring Honduras. Officials estimate that nearly 170,000 people were affected in 2018. In the Maya Ch’orti region of Chiquimula, rivers and water sources across the region are near-depleted or completely dried up. And temperatures, according to residents and the Guatemalan government’s National Institute of Seismology, Volcanology, Meteorology, and Hydrology, have also risen significantly, adding to the strain on crops. “The temperature has risen a lot,” “If it doesn’t rain then there is no work,” . “There was no harvest of maize or beans this year. [The farmers] sowed seeds, but they lost everything.” According to a 2018 report from the Guatemalan government’s National Institute of Seismology, Volcanology, Meteorology, and Hydrology, this rise in temperature will continue due to climate change. They estimate that by 2050, the temperature is set to rise between 2.1 and 4.1 degrees Celsius. “The farmers lost over 90 percent of their crops,” . “As a result, the farmers were unable to recuperate the costs of production due to the intensity of the drought.”
5G Networks Will Likely Interfere With US Weather Satellites, Navy Warns –A US Navy memo warns that 5G mobile networks are likely to interfere with weather satellites, and senators are urging the Federal Communications Commission to avoid issuing new spectrum licenses to wireless carriers until changes are made to prevent harms to weather forecasting.The FCC has already begun an auction of 24GHz spectrum that would be used in 5G networks. But Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) today wrote a letter to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, asking him to avoid issuing licenses to winning bidders “until the FCC approves the passive band protection limits that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) determine are necessary to protect critical satelliteâ€based measurements of atmospheric water vapor needed to forecast the weather.” Wyden and Cantwell said that the “ongoing sale of wireless airwaves could damage the effectiveness of US weather satellites and harm forecasts and predictions relied on to protect safety, property, and national security.” They chided the FCC for beginning the auction “over the objections of NASA, NOAA, and members of the American Meteorological Society (AMS). These entities all argued that out-of-band emissions from future commercial broadband transmissions in the 24GHz band would disrupt the ability to collect water-vapor data measured in a neighboring frequency band (23.6 to 24GHZ) that meteorologists rely on to forecast the weather.”
Why the Melting of the Hindu Kush and Himalayan Glaciers Matters – By the end of this century climate change will have become the single biggest driver behind an unprecedented scale of migration and displacement across the Indian subcontinent, potentially with destabilizing effects. Already vulnerable to natural disasters, South Asia could be left grappling with millions of “climate refugees,” regional conflicts, and militarized contests over precious resources like food and water. This grim forewarning is grounded in the latest report assessing the health of the Hindu Kush and Himalayan (HKH) glaciers amid rising global temperatures. The landmark research predicts the mountain chain stretching from Pakistan to Myanmar will lose two-thirds of its ice fields by 2100 if global greenhouse gas emissions are not drastically curbed. Even with collective international effort to restrict global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the glaciers will still have shrunk by 36 percent by the end of this century. The study, authored by 210 scientists from 22 countries over five years, warns that the loss of ice at this scale will have serious consequences for up to 2 billion people living across the region, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, China, Myanmar, Bhutan, Nepal and Bangladesh. These eight countries are deeply intertwined by the 3,500-kilometer Hindu Kush and Himalayan mountain range and a complex web of ecosystems, weather patterns, rainfall, biodiversity and crucial natural resources. Often referred to as the third pole, the HKH glaciers have the largest ice cover outside the North and South poles, and are a critical source of water for 240 million people living in the mountain belt and its foothills. More importantly, these glaciers feed into 10 major river basins including the Mekong, Yangtze, Indus and Ganges, that support food, water and energy needs of another 1.9 billion people across South Asia.
The Last of the Arctic’s Old Sea Ice Is on the Verge of Vanishing – The severe toll of climate change at the top of the world is becoming clearer with each passing day. The latest sign comes courtesy of the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), which released its monthly sea ice update on Thursday. It shows that just 1.2 percent of ice in the Arctic Ocean is older than four years. Just 35 years ago, ice that was four years old or older made up nearly a third of all Arctic sea ice.Old sea ice is vital to holding Arctic icepack as a whole together. It acts as an anchor for younger ice and a buffer against the storms that pound the region. But as ocean and air temperatures have risen in the Arctic, its extent has shrunk dramatically. As the new report reminds us, old sea ice is now on life support. While the summer melt season isn’t likely to deliver the final knockout punch, it will be yet another blow to the region’s ice.That comes as the Arctic hit a new April low for sea ice extent, beating out April 2016 for the ignominious title. The loss of old sea ice is intimately tied to the disappearance of Arctic ice cover more broadly. As it melts out, it’s been replaced by younger, thinner ice that breaks up more easily when storms come through and melts more readily in the warming waters.If this is the four-plus year old ice finally disappears, it will mark the first time on record the Arctic has been without it. There’s a chance it could come back as the winter refreeze happens depending on what happens to ice in the 3-4 year age range over the course of the summer. If some of this ice makes it through the summer, it would age another year thus replenishing four-plus year old ice.
PIOMAS May 2019 – Arctic Sea Ice by Neven – (graphics) Another month (and a half) has passed and so here is the updated Arctic sea ice volume graph as calculated by the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS) at the Polar Science Center: The flatline that started in the second half of March, continued for a while longer during April, shot up a tiny bit towards this year’s maximum, and then essentially flatlined again, with a small dip towards the end of the month. This year’s maximum of 22,490 km3 is the third lowest on record, 116 and 1,708 km3 behind 2018 and 2017 respectively (yes, the three lowest maximums on record have all occurred in the last three years). This year’s monthly change for April was +127 km3, just 8 km3 above the average of +119 km3. Just like last month, 2019 is still fourth lowest, but the difference with 2011 and 2018, 63 and 44 km3 respectively, has become so small that you could say that they’re sharing the second position (together with 2016 that is just 13 km3 behind 2019). The difference with leader 2017 is still large at 1665 km3, but the largest gap was a whopping 2550 km3 on February 14th. Here’s how the differences with previous years have evolved from last month: Wipneus’version of the PIOMAS graph shows that 2016 dropped very fast during May, also in extent (more on that below): The anomaly trend line on the PIOMAS volume anomaly graph has gone down some more, and is now firmly in one standard deviation territory: For most of April, 2019 was lowest on record on the JAXA sea ice extent graph. This caused PIJAMAS, or average thickness, to go up fast, as the volume was spread over a smaller ice pack. The decrease in SIE then stalled, and so PIJAMAS stalled as well, but when JAXA SIE steeply declined again, PIJAMAS shot up again, following 2016’s trend line, which more or less did the same thing during April. One might say that the movements on the PIJAMAS graph around this time of year, are entirely determined by what happens on the JAXA SIE graph: The movements are less pronounced on the Polar Science Centre average thickness graph, because they don’t use JAXA SIE: One of the reasons sea ice extent was so low during April, was relatively high (or non-low) temperatures across the Arctic. Just as the month before, April 2019 was third warmest on record from 65N to the North Pole, according to the NCEP reanalysis dataset. In fact, temperatures in the Atlantic sector were highest on record, whereas on the other side, temps were second highest on record, just 0.031 °C behind last year’s record: Another reason, as always, was the weather, with winds causing the Beaufort Gyre to slowly rotate the entire ice pack towards the Atlantic. This atmospheric set-up has been fairly constant for weeks on end now, and I’ll just post the ECMWF weather forecast for the coming six days as an example. I’ve added white arrows to show you which way the winds will be blowing, and thus the ice will be moving:
Antarctica’s Ice Is Melting 5 Times Faster Than in the 90s – Yet another study has shown that glaciers in Antarctica are melting at accelerating rates. Almost 25 percent of the West Antarctic ice shelf is now thinning, and the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers are losing ice at five times the rate they were in the early 1990s, CNN reported. “In parts of Antarctica, the ice sheet has thinned by extraordinary amounts,” study lead author and Leeds University Prof. Andy Shepherd told The Guardian. The study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, comes four months after another study of the entire Antarctic continent found that it was losing ice at six times the rate it was 40 years ago. The latest study found that ice loss from both East and West Antarctica had raised global sea levels by 4.6 millimeters since 1992, according to CNN. The study relied on 25 years of satellite data covering 1992 to 2017. The satellites were fitted with altimeters to measure height changes to the ice sheets. Researchers then used weather models to separate seasonal variation due to snow fall from melting and ice loss caused by long term climate change, BBC News explained. “Using this unique dataset, we’ve been able to identify the parts of Antarctica that are undergoing rapid, sustained thinning―regions that are changing faster than we would expect due to normal weather patterns,” co-head of the UK Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling (CPOM) and Lancaster University Environmental Sensing Reader Dr. Malcolm McMillan told BBC News. “We can now clearly see how these regions have expanded through time, spreading inland across some of the most vulnerable parts of West Antarctica, which is critical for understanding the ice sheet’s contribution to global sea level rise.”
‘Extraordinary thinning’ of ice sheets revealed deep inside Antarctica –Ice losses are rapidly spreading deep into the interior of the Antarctic, new analysis of satellite data shows. The warming of the Southern Ocean is resulting in glaciers sliding into the sea increasingly rapidly, with ice now being lost five times faster than in the 1990s. The West Antarctic ice sheet was stable in 1992 but up to a quarter of its expanse is now thinning. More than 100 metres of ice thickness has been lost in the worst-hit places. A complete loss of the West Antarctic ice sheet would drive global sea levels up by about five metres, drowning coastal cities around the world. The current losses are doubling every decade, the scientists said, and sea level rise are now running at the extreme end of projections made just a few years ago. The research, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, compared 800m satellite measurements of ice sheet height from 1992 to 2017 with weather information. This distinguished short-term changes owing to varying snowfall from long-term changes owing to climate. Prof Andy Shepherd, of Leeds University in the UK, who led the study, said the thinning of some ice streams had extended 300 miles inland along their 600-mile length. “More than 50% of the Pine Island and Thwaites glacier basins have been affected by thinning in the past 25 years. We are past halfway and that is a worry.” Researchers already knew that ice was being lost from West Antarctica, but the new work pinpoints where it is happening and how rapidly. This will enable more accurate projections to be made of sea level rises and may aid preparations for these rises. In the recent past, snow falling on to Antarctica’s glaciers balanced the ice lost as icebergs calved off into the ocean. But now the glaciers are flowing faster than snow can replenish them. “Along a 3,000km [1,850-mile] stretch of West Antarctica, the water in front of the glaciers is too hot,” he said. This causes melting of the underside of the glaciers where they grind against the seabed. The melting lessens the friction and allows the glaciers then to slide more quickly into the ocean and therefore become thinner.
Nearly a quarter of West Antarctic ice is now unstable – By combining 25 years of European Space Agency satellite altimeter measurements and a model of the regional climate, the UK Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling (CPOM) have tracked changes in snow and ice cover across the continent. A team of researchers, led by Professor Andy Shepherd from the University of Leeds, found that Antarctica’s ice sheet has thinned by up to 122 metres in places, with the most rapid changes occurring in West Antarctica where ocean melting has triggered glacier imbalance. This means that the affected glaciers are unstable as they are losing more mass through melting and iceberg calving than they are gaining through snowfall. The team found that the pattern of glacier thinning has not been static. Since 1992, the thinning has spread across 24% of West Antarctica and over the majority of its largest ice streams — the Pine Island and Thwaites Glaciers — which are now losing ice five times faster than they were at the start of the survey. The study, published today in Geophysical Research Letters, used over 800 million measurements of the Antarctic ice sheet height recorded by the ERS-1, ERS-2, Envisat, and CryoSat-2 satellite altimeter missions between 1992 and 2017 and simulations of snowfall over the same period produced by the RACMO regional climate model. Together, these measurements allow changes in the ice sheet height to be separated into those due to weather patterns, such as less snowfall, and those due to longer term changes in climate, such as increasing ocean temperatures that eat away ice. They found that fluctuations in snowfall tend to drive small changes in height over large areas for a few years at a time, but the most pronounced changes in ice thickness are signals of glacier imbalance that have persisted for decades.
Hate to sound like a broken record, but we just set a scary new CO2 record – The amount of carbon dioxide in our planet’s atmosphere has reached a new high. April’s average was 413.52 parts per million, a new record, according to a spokesperson at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The last time there was this much CO2 in our atmosphere, there were trees growing at the South Pole. Humans weren’t yet a thing. In other words, we’re living in uncharted territory. The planet’s carbon dioxide levels rise and fall over the course of each year, and usually peak in May when Earth’s vast northern forests spring back to life. (The most widely used measurements are made at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s remote observatory at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, to avoid picking up CO2 from nearby cars and plants.) Scientists predict that we could pass the 415 ppm threshold this month. Since the Industrial Revolution, the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere has increased by more than 45 percent. That’s mostly thanks to the various demands of modern life: gas-guzzling cars, refrigerators, hamburgers, Bitcoin … you name it. Our gizmos and gadgets have largely been powered by the carbon-rich fossil fuels stored in the planet’s underground reservoirs.. Oil, for example, was created from the remains of dead plants, animals, and bacteria that have been compressed and pressure-cooked underground over millions of years. Some oil deposits are more than 300 million years old, meaning that they actually predate the dinosaurs.
C02 Levels Top 415 PPM for First Time in Human History – The human species experienced an alarming milestone this weekend: for the first time since Homo sapiens evolved, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels surpassed 415 parts per million (ppm), CNN reported. The carbon dioxide high was recorded by the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii and tweeted out by theScripps Institution of Oceanography Saturday, which regularly updates C02 levels. The observatory recorded a daily C02 reading of 415.26 ppm, which is the first time the daily level topped 415 ppm. Meteorologist and climate action advocate Eric Holthaus sounded the alarm about that data point in widely-shared retweet.”We don’t know a planet like this,” he said.Carbon dioxide levels did not top 300 ppm in the 800,000 years before the industrial revolution, according toUSA Today. A study in April used computer models to confirm that carbon dioxide levels today are the highest they have been in three million years. The study also showed that current levels would be at around 280 ppm if it weren’t for the burning of fossil fuels by human beings, leading to climate change.The last time carbon dioxide levels were this high was 5.3 to 2.6 million years ago during the Pliocene epoch, when beech trees grew in Antarctica, temperatures were three to four degrees Celsius warmer and sea levels were 20 meters (approximately 65.6 feet) higher.
‘We Don’t Know a Planet Like This’: CO2 Levels Hit 415 PPM for First Time in 3 Million+ Years – Atmospheric levels of carbon registered 415 parts per million over the weekend at one of the world’s key measuring stations, a concentration level researchers say has not existed in more than 3 million years – before the dawn of human history.Taken at the Mauno Loa Observatory in Hawaii by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the measure continues the upward trend of atmospheric carbon concentration that lies at the heart of the global warming and climate crisis:Meteorologist Eric Holthaus, a journalist who covers the climate crisis for Grist, contextualized the latest readings in a tweet that was shared widely on Sunday: One person responded to the Holthaus tweet by asking, “How is this not breaking news on all channels all over the world?”Rich Pancost, head of the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol in the U.K., said that the best guess of the scientific community is that global atmospheric carbon levels have not been this high for “about 3 millions years… [m]aybe more.” Writing on his Informed Comment blog Monday, historian Juan Cole said that life on Earth in that pre-historic era, known as the Pliocene Period, is not a place humans would recognize: In the Pliocene, it was much hotter. In the Pliocene, oceans were much higher, maybe 90 feet higher. That is our fate, folks. That is what 415ppm produces. It is only a matter of time, and some of the sea level rise will come quickly. Amsterdam, New Orleans, Lisbon, Miami – the list of cities that will be submerged is enormous. Elsewhere online, reaction to the unsettling milestone was met with a mix of frustration, alarm, and fresh demands for urgent action to address the crisis. “If the threshold seems unremarkable (it shouldn’t),” wrote Jonathan Shieber atTechCrunch, “it’s yet another indication of the unprecedented territory humanity is now charting as it blazes new trails toward environmental catastrophe.”
Climate change: UN chief Guterres decries ‘fading’ global efforts –Arriving in Auckland Sunday, Guterres said the world was “not on track” to confine the rise in global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels as agreed in the 2015 Paris agreement.”The paradox is that as things are getting worse on the ground, political will seems to be fading,” said the UN secretary general.”Climate change is running faster than what we are … the last four years have been the hottest registered,” he said, adding that political inadequacy was evident “everywhere.” He commended host Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on New Zealand’s ambitious parliamentary bill, tabled last week, seeking to make the 5-million-population nation mostly carbon neutral by 2050. Its key farming sector, however, is to be given some leeway, specifically on “biogenetic methane,” another climate-warming gas alongside carbon dioxide. Guterres, who will also visit the South Pacific island territories of Fiji, Tuvalu and Vanuatu, urged the world community to “protect the lives of our people, and we need to protect our planet.” His remarks precede a Climate Action Summit he plans to convene in New York in September where nations will be asked to present “concrete, realistic plans” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45% over the next decade and reach net zero by 2050.
Children Change Their Parents’ Minds about Climate Change – Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg became famous this spring for launching a student movement to compel adults to take action on climate change. Instead of going to school, Greta has been spending her Fridays in front of the Swedish parliament with a sign reading: “School Strike for Climate.” Students in more than 70 countries have since followed her lead. But before she started trying to convince the world to take action, Thunberg worked on her parents. She showered them with facts and showed them documentaries. “After a while, they started listening to what I actually said,” Thunberg told the Guardian newspaper. “That’s when I realized I could make a difference.” Thunberg is not alone. Other young people can be equally convincing, according to a paper published May 6 in Nature Climate Change. The team of social scientists and ecologists from North Carolina State University who authored the report found that children can increase their parents’ level of concern about climate change because, unlike adults, their views on the issue do not generally reflect any entrenched political ideology. Parents also really do care what their children think, even on socially charged issues like climate change or sexual orientation. Scientists in the field find the study heartening. “These encouraging results suggest that not only are children increasingly engaged in advocating for their future, they are also effective advocates to their parents,” says climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe of Texas Tech University. She was not involved in the research but works to bridge the gap between scientists and stakeholders on the issue. “As a woman myself and someone who frequently engages with conservative Christian communities,” she says, “I love that it’s the daughters who were found to be most effective at changing their hard-nosed dads’ minds.”
‘For the Love of Our Children’: Moms Rise Up in Global March for Climate Action – Marking International Mother’s Day, thousands of moms took to the streets in London and across the world Sunday to demand transformative action on behalf of Mother Earth and their children, whose futures are under threat from the global climate crisis. “Business as usual – toxic pollution in our streets and our schools – is fueling a crisis that is making our kids sick and it is families in the deprived areas that are paying the heaviest price,” Rosamund Kissi-Debra, whose daughter died from an asthma attack linked to air pollution, said during a rally on Sunday. “We need to do everything necessary to clean up our air and create a safer future for all our children.”The Mother’s Day climate demonstration in London was organized by Mothers Rise Up, a U.K.-based advocacy group led by mothers inspired by the youth climate strikes that have spread across the globe.Climate marches also took place in Australia, Spain, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and other nations on Sunday.Ahead of Sunday’s demonstrations, Mothers Rise Up published an open letter by over 100 parents calling on the governments of the world to confront the climate crisis with bold action “before it’s too late.””We are terrified at what the growing climate crisis means for our children and millions of children across the globe – many of whom are already suffering because of the extreme droughts, floods, and storms that are increasingly the norm in our rapidly over-heating world,” the letter reads. “We are inspired by the young people who are striking for climate action, but we can’t leave it to our children to fix the mess that past generations have created,” the parents wrote. “On the 12th of May – International Mother’s Day – mums, dads, grandparents and families will be taking to the streets in London and beyond to demand that action. Together with worried parents across the globe we are calling on governments to declare a climate emergency.”
A new ‘climate strike’: Opting for no children as climate fears grow – German schoolteacher Verena Brunschweiger decided shortly after her marriage not to have children – not because she did not want them but because she felt she could not justify the climate damage caused by adding to the planet’s population. She is part of a growing movement of women and young people who have vowed not to have a families out of concern about a looming climate change crisis. “We really thought long and hard about this,” Brunschweiger told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview from her home in Bavaria. “Eventually the environment was the most important factor for me,” she said. “I struggled, of course. We love children – my husband is also a teacher… But I’m certain I made the right decision.” Climate change is changing choices for some young people as the world struggles to limit global warming, aiming to hold off impacts ranging from more extreme floods, droughts, storms and sea level rise to growing hunger, water shortages and poverty. Scientists have warned hundreds of millions more people may be affected by 2050 unless unprecedented action is taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Among the personal choices people in developed countries can make that will have the most impact on limiting emissions, having fewer children, flying much less and eating a plant-based diet are most important, some scientists say. Brunschweiger and others argue that it is irresponsible to add to a world population that is expected to rise sharply from 7.6 billion in 2017 to nearly 10 billion by 2050, creating additional pressure on emissions and scarce resources. Other people have decided not to have children because they fear climate change means there may a bleak future for their offspring. Among the second group is musician and activist Blythe Pepino, who set up global campaign group BirthStrike for those who have vowed not to have children due to the “severity of the ecological crisis and the current inaction of governing forces”. Pepino fell “head over heels in love” two years ago and was planning a family, only to reconsider after reading research about global warming risks. “Knowing that the likelihood is that we are not heading into a safe future – it started to make me realize that (having children) didn’t seem like a very sensible option,” she said. She went on to set up BirthStrike, both to spread a “punchy” message about the impact of climate change and to offer a “solidarity group for the people starting to feel the emotional consequences”.
Proposal to spend 25% of EU budget on climate change – Eight European countries have called for an ambitious strategy to tackle climate change – and to spend a quarter of the entire EU budget on fighting it. The joint statement says the EU should have net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 “at the latest”. It was signed by France, Belgium, Denmark, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden. The group says their plan can “go hand in hand with prosperity” and “set an example for other countries to follow.” The position paper comes ahead of a major summit of European leaders in the Romanian city of Sibiu, beginning on Thursday, which will discuss the future of Europe and the EU’s strategy for the next five years. But not everyone is on board – there are 28 countries in the EU, and several of those absent from the joint position statement are significant players – including Germany. The position of the eight countries is that climate change has “profound implications for the future of humanity” and that its impacts are already apparent – citing “the heat waves and scorching fires of last summer”. The group also say that their citizens are clearly concerned “as shown by the recent mobilisation of young people” – in an apparent reference to the wave of walk-outs and marches by schoolchildren across the continent. The Extinction Rebellion protests in London in April also gained widespread attention and have spread to other countries.
Australians overwhelmingly agree climate emergency is nation’s No 1 threat – New polling from a respected foreign policy thinktank underscores the point that 2019 is the climate change election, with a majority of Australians saying global warming is a critical threat. The poll undertaken for Lowy says 64% of adults rank climate change number one on a list of 12 threats to Australia’s national interests, up six points from last year’s survey and a jump of 18 points since 2014. The 2019 result is the first time climate has topped the list of threats since Lowy began the research in 2006. After climate change, cyberattacks ranks second, terrorism third and North Korea’s nuclear program fourth. The Lowy result is consistent with private research undertaken by environmental groups and by the major political parties, which suggest climate change is surfacing as a concern in parts of the country normally sanguine about the issue.
Indigenous Australians Challenge Government Over Climate at UN – A group of indigenous Australians plans to submit a complaint to the UN that accuses Australia of failing to act on climate change. The group resides in the low-lying Torres Strait Islands in the country’s north. It argues that Australia’s lack of climate change policies is putting their culture and ancestral homeland at risk.”Tides are rising every year, flooding homes, lands and important cultural sites. Rising sea temperatures are blighting the health of the marine environments around the islands, by bleaching the coral and acidifying theocean,” a statement from the indigenous group said.”We are seeing this effect on our land and on the social and emotional well-being of our communities who practice culture and traditions,” said Kabay Tamu, one of the petitioners.”Many Islanders are worried that their islands could quite literally disappear in their lifetimes without urgent action,” the group said.The islanders are set to ask the UN to rule that existing international human rights law requires Australia to reduce its emissions to at least 65% below 2005 levels by 2030. They will also demand that the government invest some $14 million in emergency infrastructure, such as sea walls, to protect Torres Strait communities.
‘Huge Moment for Justice’: Landmark Verdict as UK Jury Acquits Extinction Rebellion Co-Founder Who Argued Necessity Defense — A jury in the United Kingdom acquitted a pair of climate activists – including a co-founder of the Extinction Rebellion movement – of vandalism charges Thursday after they defended their acts of civil disobedience as a proportionate response to the threats posed by the global climate crisis. Jurors at Southwark Crown Court in London unanimously cleared 25-year-old David Durant and 52-year-old Roger Hallam, the Extinction Rebellion co-founder, of all charges that stemmed from their efforts as part of an ultimately successful campaign to pressure King’s College London to divest millions of dollars from fossil fuels. On Jan. 19, 2017, Hallam wrote “divest from oil and gas” in water-soluble chalk-based spray paint on the university’s property. Hallam and Durant were arrested days later, on February 1, for spray painting the walls of the university’s Great Hall. “We are extremely grateful to the jury for following common sense,” Hallam said outside court Thursday, according to The Guardian. “Ordinary people, unlike the judiciary, are able to see the broader picture.” Durant called the charge of criminal damage he faced “ridiculous,” adding that “chalk on the wall is obviously less important than the impending catastrophe for the planet.”
Hong Kong’s new Extinction Rebellion chapter looks to turn up the heat on the government over climate change – A small yet passionate arm of the global climate-protection movement Extinction Rebellion has taken root in Hong Kong, calling on the government to reduce net carbon emissions to zero by 2025. The group, currently comprising about 40 expats and locals, said they were planning a sustained campaign of peaceful protests and demonstrations across the city. “We are here to sound the fire alarm. This is a climate emergency. The government needs to act now,” said Olivier Delalande, a founding member of the movement’s Hong Kong chapter. Extinction Rebellion made global headlines a fortnight ago by occupying vast swathes of central London, paralysing public transport and even threatening to shut down Heathrow Airport in a bid to force the British government to declare a climate emergency. The global movement echoes other climate campaigns like the Fridays for Future student strikes inspired by Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg and the Green New Deal called for by the US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. A French national who came to the city to work in a bank 10 years ago, Delalande was inspired by the movements abroad to launch the environmental pressure group a month ago. “We are a brand-new, democratic movement with no leaders and no hierarchy. Our members come from all walks of life, and we all work on a voluntary basis and don’t take donations,” he said. Along with eight fellow campaigners, they held their first demonstration on May 4, a silent “die-in” outside the Citywalk mall in Tsuen Wan, to simulate the deadly consequences of climate inaction. Among their key demands are that the government “tell the truth” by declaring a climate emergency in Hong Kong, the curbing of greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025, and having the convention of citizens’ assemblies set environmental policies to tackle the “climate catastrophe”
‘The Planet’s on F***ing Fire’: Bill Nye Explains Climate Change to Adults — Bill Nye the Science Guy has lost his cool when it comes to climate change.In a segment on John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight Sunday, the beloved science communicator riffed on the set-up of the PBS series that made him famous. Donning a lab coat and safety glasses, he proceeded to school the audience on global warming, but this time he used some very adult language. Green New Deal: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) – YouTube “By the end of this century, if emissions keep rising, the average temperature on Earth could go up another four to eight degrees,” Nye said, as CNN reported. “What I’m saying is the planet’s on f***ing fire.”Nye then proceeded to light a globe on fire with a blow torch. “There are a lot of things we could do to put it out – are any of them free? No, of course not. Nothing’s free, you idiots. Grow the f**k up. You’re not children anymore. I didn’t mind explaining photosynthesis to you when you were 12. But you’re adults now, and this is an actually crisis, got it? Safety glasses off, motherf***ers,” he added.
Playing DICE with Life on Earth: Nordhaus’s Damage Function Steve Keen (part one). – DICE stands for “Dynamic Integrated model of Climate and the Economy”. It’s the mathematical model from which Nordhaus derives the results noted in the previous figures. DICE is based on the Neoclassical long term growth model devised by the mathematical prodigy Frank Ramsey in 1928 {Ramsey, 1928 #5029}. This is the same foundation as the mainstream RBC (“Real Business Cycle”) and DSGE (“Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium”) macroeconomic models that completely failed to anticipate the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. That its macroeconomic cousins fared so badly at their chosen task is cause enough for concern. These models were intended to forecast short-term economic growth, and were completely wrong about the immediate economic future, to disastrous effect. This is a serious issue that I’ll take up in later chapters. However, the features that Nordhaus has added to model Climate Change are far worse than the inadequate foundation on which it was built. DICE’s major additions to the standard model are:
- A “damage function” that relates the increase in average global temperature to a decline in GDP. This is the source of the “Future damages” estimates shown in Figure 2 (in the previous post);
- An “abatement function” that calculates the cost of reducing global temperature rise over what would happen if nothing were done to tackle Climate Change. This is the source of “Present abatement” estimates shown in Figure 2; and
- Equations to relate GDP growth to the increase in CO2 levels in the atmosphere, along with the impact of that increased CO2 on the average global temperature.
Many critics have focused upon the high discount rate that Nordhaus chose to apply calculate the value to existing generations of reducing future Global Warming. But by far the most egregious fallacy in Nordhaus’s model is its Damage Function. Nordhaus’s Damage Function is the first substantive graphic in the DICE manual, and one look at it (see Figure 8) should give anyone – even Climate Change Deniers (CCDs) – cause for concern. Even if Anthropogenic Global Warming were a myth, even if the temperature rise was being caused by the Sun, would it really be true that a 5 degree increase in the average temperature of the globe would only reduce global GDP by 5 percent?
The climate change story is half true – Gail Tverberg – The climate change story is true in some respects: The climate is indeed changing. And CO2 emissions do seem to affect climate. Burning fossil fuels does indeed make a difference in CO2 levels. The problem I have with the climate change story is that it paints a totally inaccurate story of the predicament the world is facing. The world’s predicament arises primarily from too little affordable resources, especially energy resources; climate change models tend to give the illusion that our problem is one of a superabundance of fossil fuels. Furthermore, the world economy has no real option of using significantly less energy, because the economy tends to collapse when there is not enough energy. Economists have not studied the physics of how a networked economy really works; they rely on an overly simple supply and demand model that seems to suggest that prices can rise endlessly. The quantity of energy supply affects both the supply and demand of finished goods and services. History shows that the result of inadequate energy supplies is often collapse or a resource war, in an attempt to obtain more of the necessary resources. Climate scientists aren’t expected to be economists, but have inadvertently picked up the wrong views of economists and allowed them to affect the climate models they produce. This results in an over-focus on climate issues and an under-focus on the real issues at hand. Let’s look at a few issues related to the climate change story.
- [1] Growth in energy consumption and in world GDP are very closely linked. In fact, energy consumption seems to be the cause of GDP growth. If we look at the relationship between World GDP and energy consumption growth, we see a close correlation, with energy consumption increases and decreases often preceding GDP growth changes. This implies a causal relationship.
- [2] There are two very different views of our energy future, depending upon whether an analyst believes that oil and other energy prices can rise endlessly, or not. Nearly every time the price of oil rises very much, the US economy has tended to head into recession. And forecasters tell us that while some countries (oil exporters) would be winners with higher prices, on average the world economy will tend to shrink. Oil importers, especially, would shrink back in recession. Figure 4 shows a recent chart by Oxford Economics with the conclusion that oil prices cannot rise very much without adversely affecting the world economy.
- [3] To date economists and their policies have had pretty close to zero success in reducing world CO2 fossil fuel emissions. A popular view of economists is, “If every country limits its own CO2 emissions, certainly world emissions will be reduced.” In practice, this does not work. It simply moves emissions around and, in the process, raises total world emissions. A carbon tax sends high-carbon industries to Emerging Market nations, helping ramp up their economies. The country with the carbon tax on its own citizens then imports manufactured items from the Emerging Market nations with no carbon tax, aiding the Emerging Market countries without a carbon tax at the expense of its own citizens. How reasonable is this approach?
- [4] Probably the single most stupid thing world leaders could have done, if they were at all concerned about CO2 emissions, was to add China to the World Trade Organization in December 2001. In looking at world CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, we can see a distinct bend occurring in 2002, the year after China was added to the World Trade Organization.
Climate change: Scientists test radical ways to fix Earth’s climate – Scientists in Cambridge plan to set up a research centre to develop new ways to repair the Earth’s climate.It will investigate radical approaches such as refreezing the Earth’s poles and removing CO2 from the atmosphere.The centre is being created because of fears that current approaches will not on their own stop dangerous and irreversible damage to the planet. The initiative is the first of its kind in the world and could lead to dramatic reductions in carbon emissions. The initiative is co-ordinated by the government’s former chief scientific adviser, Prof Sir David King. “What we do over the next 10 years will determine the future of humanity for the next 10,000 years. There is no major centre in the world that would be focused on this one big issue,” he told BBC News. Some of the approaches described by Sir David are often known collectively as geoengineering. One of the most promising ideas for refreezing the poles is to “brighten” the clouds above them. The idea is to pump seawater up to tall masts on uncrewed ships through very fine nozzles. This produces tiny particles of salt which are injected into the clouds, which makes them more widespread and reflective, and so cool the areas below them. Another new approach is a variant of an idea called carbon capture and storage (CCS). CCS involves collecting carbon dioxide emissions from coal or gas fired power stations or steel plants and storing it underground. The scheme involves setting up a plant on-site which converts the firm’s carbon emissions into fuel using the plant’s waste heat,. “We have a source of hydrogen, we have a source of carbon dioxide, we have a source of heat and we have a source of renewable electricity from the plant,” he told BBC News. “We’re going to harness all those and we’re going to make synthetic fuels.” Other ideas the centre would explore include greening the oceans so they can take up more CO2. Such schemes involve fertilising the sea with iron salts which promote the growth of plankton. Previous experiments have shown that they don’t take up sufficient CO2 to make the scheme worthwhile and might disrupt the ecosystem. But according to Prof Callum Roberts of York University, approaches that are currently thought beyond the pale now have to be considered and, if possible, made to work. This is because the alternative of damaging and potentially irreversible climate change is considered beyond the pale.
President Trump Touts His Rollback of Environmental Policies in an Energy State – President Trump traveled to an energy state on Tuesday to boast about his administration’s reversal of Obama-era environmental policies, ticking off actions like approving oil pipelines, withdrawing from the Paris climate accord and opening up Arctic drilling that he said have resulted in an “American energy revolution.” Mr. Trump’s visit to Hackberry, a community of about 1,200 residents in a state where natural gas investment is a rapidly expanding sector and where he won 58 percent of the vote in 2016, was billed as a trip to promote energy infrastructure and economic growth at a time when the president is locked in a trade war with China over escalating tariffs. With hard-hatted workers assembled behind him, Mr. Trump spoke to an outdoor audience at the Cameron LNG export terminal, a facility that develops and exports liquefied natural gas. There, he claimed credit for an energy revolution that he said was largely accomplished by demolishing burdensome regulations and unleashing the potential of the energy industry. Mr. Trump also spoke of the oil and pipeline construction jobs that have been created since his election and promised the cheering crowd, “If we win this election, we’re giving you a brand-new I-10 bridge.”The president credited his administration for “opening up ANWR in Alaska,” referring to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a federally protected refuge for migrating caribou and polar bears that for decades has been closed to oil and gas exploration, as well as for “unlocking the full oil and gas potential of the Permian Basin in Texas,” a reference to the shale field that generates four million barrels of oil a day. And he touted his success in refocusing the Environmental Protection Agency and “killing” an Obama-era plan that sought to incentivize utilities to cut emissions and switch from coal to natural gas or renewable power. Mr. Trump’s administration has proposed a far less stringent rule that would still recommend regulating coal plant emissions, but by more moderate efforts like improving efficiency.
Joe Biden Looks to Revive Obama’s Climate Plan. Scientists Say That’s Not Good Enough– At a moment when mounting reports from the world’s top scientists indicate humanity is barrelling toward climate catastrophe and ecological collapse, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is preparing a climate policy that appears to put the United States back on the pre-Trump trajectory.The former vice president’s proposal is anchored in resetting the clock to 2016 by rejoining the Paris climate accord and reinstating Obama-era regulations on power plant and vehicle emissions, according to a Reuters report published Friday. The policy is expected to maintain a role for fossil fuels, and veer away from the Green New Deal framework that most of Biden’s top rivals for his party’s 2020 presidential nomination have embraced.“Reheating the Obama administration’s regulations-plus-Paris approach will be totally insufficient,” said Joseph Majkut, a climate scientist and policy expert at the center-right think tank Niskanen Center.TJ Ducklo, a spokesman for Biden’s campaign, said in an email statement that the former vice president “knows how high the stakes are” and noted his record on addressing climate change. “As president, Biden would enact a bold policy to tackle climate change in a meaningful and lasting way, and will be discussing the specifics of that plan in the near future,” he said. “Any assertions otherwise are not accurate.” While the 44th president forged the first global emissions-cutting deal to include the United States and China, his administration oversaw the rapid expansion of U.S. oil and gas production, a fact about which Obama boasted last November. Expanded U.S. drilling threatens to add 1,000 coal plants’ worth of greenhouse gases by the middle of the century, according to a January analysis by researchers at more than a dozen environmental groups. That will make the emissions reductions set out by the IPCC all but impossible to meet, and discourage countries like China, India and Indonesia – whose emissions are growing at a rapid clip – from adopting cleaner development strategies as the world’s richest nation and biggest historic emitter fails to set an example. “The greatest fault in his proposal is the suggestion that natural gas can be part of the solution,” Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University, said by email. “The solution to a problem created by burning fossil fuels cannot be the burning of fossil fuels.”
Biden’s ‘middle ground’ climate policy is code for ‘pro natural gas’ – The trial balloon that the Biden campaign floated last week – the one about how he wanted a “middle ground” climate policy – set off the closest thing to a scuffle the Democratic primary field has seen yet, with one rival after another insisting that there was no middle ground to be had, only (as the author and activist Naomi Klein put it) “sinking ground, burning ground, churning ground.” Still, we may have reason to be thankful to Biden’s team, for it’s possible that they’ve brought into the open the semi-secret internal Democratic debate on climate. It’s not actually about the danger of global warming, which thankfully everyone more or less agrees on. It’s actually about natural gas. Fracking for natural gas helped restart economic growth, and because when you burn natural gas it gives off less carbon than coal it also seemed to address climate change. It was, in Washington parlance, a win-win, even for the oil companies, who rapidly expanded their shale gas portfolios. Year after year, Obama boasted about the natural gas surge in his State of the Union addresses. Biden has followed right along. Last week in Iowa he said, “the United States is soon going to be the largest producer of energy of any nation in the world by the end of the 2020s. My Lord, what are we so afraid of?” That’s a question with some relatively easy answers. First, it turned out that fracking disrupted communities, polluted water and damaged people’s health – that’s why even moderates like New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo moved to ban it. Second, atmospheric chemists began monitoring the degree to which fracking operations were leaking methane into the atmosphere. Methane is a heat-trapping gas too, and it turned out that it was escaping in quantities large enough to nullify natural gas’s carbon advantage. Indeed, carbon dioxide emissions had fallen as coal plants closed down and gas plants opened up. But methane emissions had gone up enough to compensate. Depending on how you count methane’s heat-trapping capacity, it’s possible total emissions actually increased during the Obama/Biden years. There was another argument for natural gas in 2008, which was that we had no real alternative. Renewable energy was too expensive, and the sun went down at night – it couldn’t carry the load. But if that was true then, it isn’t true now: the engineers have done their job, and the price of a solar panel has fallen 90 percent in the last decade. Sun and wind are now the cheapest way to produce electrons across most of the planet, and the batteries to store that energy are on the same plummeting cost curve.
Could climate change submerge Joe Biden’s presidential bid? – Climate change is transforming life by redrawing coastlines, turning vast areas of forest into infernos, stirring enormous storms and spreading exotic diseases. An indirect casualty of this upheaval could be Joe Biden’s hopes of becoming US president. Biden, frontrunner in the polls to secure the Democratic nomination, has not laid out a plan to address the crisis. This is set to change, according to Reuters, with the Biden campaign working on a strategy to reinstate climate policies torn down by Donald Trump, such as restrictions on coal-fired power plants and vehicle fuel efficiency requirements. The plan, which is being worked on by the former Barack Obama adviser Heather Zichal, would see the US remain in the Paris climate agreement and offer support for nuclear energy and also natural gas, which is generally cleaner than coal but still emits planet-warming pollutants. Biden is also said to favour nascent carbon capture technology, which aims to contain and store emissions from industrial facilities. But this “middle ground” approach has been roundly attacked by environmental groups and progressive Democrats for being woefully insufficient. More importantly, it does not appear to chime with the urgent action scientists say is required to avert disastrous climate change. A landmark UN report last year stated that “unprecedented”, “rapid and far-reaching” transformations across energy, land use and transportation are needed to avoid increasingly dire flooding, wildfires, heatwaves, food insecurity and unrest. “A ‘middle ground’ policy that’s supportive of more fossil fuel development is a death sentence for our generation and the millions of people on the frontlines of the climate crisis,” said Varshini Prakash, director of the Sunrise Movement, a youth climate change organization allied to progressive Democrats such as the New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “Biden’s betting that a retreat to mediocrity and tepid policymaking will garner him the Democratic nomination, but climate change is a top issue in this election and voters expect candidates to put forward solutions in line with the crisis.”
Democrats Try to Extend Wind, Solar Aid They Agreed to Let Die – Tax credits worth billions of dollars for the wind and solar industries are set to expire or begin phasing out next year — part of a 2015 deal Democrats struck that ended a 40-year-old ban on the export of crude oil. But some Democrats are seeking to extend the credits, saying President Donald Trump’s tariffs on solar panels and moves to roll back Obama-era climate-related policies have changed the equation. “We had a change election, we’ve got new leadership in the halls of Congress and we’ve got an opportunity to seize,” Representative Haley Stevens, a Michigan Democrat elected in November, said in an interview. Stevens helped put together a letter to the chairman of the House’s main tax-writing committee — which has scheduled a hearing for Wednesday on climate change — calling for giving the wind and solar tax credits more time. It was signed by more than 100 Democrats. “For many of us who served in 2015 when that bipartisan, bicameral agreement was reached, the facts on the ground have now changed demonstrably,” the representatives wrote. The push comes amid an intra-party squabble over climate policy that has pitted progressives led by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a champion of the Green New Deal, against moderates who favor a less radical approach. Under the 2015 agreement, inserted into a 2,000-page bill needed to keep the government funded, a lucrative production tax credit for the wind industry that had expired was restored and scheduled to phase out over five years ending in 2020. The solar industry’s 30% investment tax credit was also extended as part of the deal, with a phase-down slated to begin next year and reach zero for residential projects in 2022. In exchange for granting those Democratic priorities, Republicans secured an end to the 1970s-era prohibition on exporting crude oil.The Democrats, in their letter, wrote that the Trump administration’s efforts to undermine the Clean Power Plan, relax fuel economy standards for cars and trucks, undo efforts to curtail methane emissions and withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate accords have “fundamentally altered the framework by which the 2015 agreement was reached.”
In North Carolina, wind farm ban misses a key legislative deadline – A contentious bill to ban wind farms in much of eastern North Carolina missed a key legislative deadline last week, but observers say the proposal could well reappear before lawmakers adjourn for the summer.Senate Bill 377 would prohibit new wind turbines in an area reaching into more than 50 counties and covering nearly all of the state’s coastal plain, according to a study commissioned by the General Assembly that outlines military-related activities in the state.The bill’s sponsors, led by Republican Senate Majority Leader Harry Brown of Onslow County, say the ban is crucial for preserving the state’s economically vital military industry, which could be downsized or moved to other states if 500-foot tall wind turbines begin to impede low-level flight training routes.Critics counter that federal law requires the U.S. Department of Defense and local base commanders to sign off on proposed projects, while state law prevents wind development with “a significant adverse impact” on military installations. The debate has become a perennial one in the Republican-controlled General Assembly, where Brown has introduced legislation to restrict wind turbines for three sessions in a row. But the GOP is divided on the issue, with many lawmakers arguing that clean energy comes with its own economic benefits and that restricting it interferes with private property rights.
Offshore Wind Will Need Bigger Boats. Much Bigger Boats — How do you install a wind turbine almost the size of the Chrysler building in the open ocean? Just get a boat with deck space larger than a football field and a crane that can lift the weight of 1,100 Chevy Suburban SUVs. Those specialist ships are scarce, numbering about a dozen in the world. And at a cost of more than $300 million, they each need to be capable of hoisting generators the size of shipping containers atop steel towers hundreds of feet tall. While wind turbine manufacturers led by MHI Vestas Offshore Wind A/S and General Electric Co. are expanding the size of their machines quickly, the small cadre of mainly closely-held specialist shipowners that does the installations is hesitant to build more ships before they know how big the vessels need to be. That indicates a looming ship shortage in the next decade, threatening the outlook for a seven-fold jump in offshore wind capacity by 2030. “The installation companies will have to adapt to meet expected demand,” But for now, analysts say the industry have underestimated the challenge faced by ever-larger machines. That concern doesn’t seem to register with the ambitions of renewable energy developers. Europe’s biggest utilities are investing more than $10 billion this year alone on getting electricity from sea breezes. BloombergNEF expects offshore wind capacity to jump to 154 gigawatts by the end of the next decade from about 22 gigawatts now as the thirst for cleaner electricity grows. Most offshore wind farms are in northwest Europe, but China, the U.S., and South Korea will be big markets in the future. Installing turbines is a feat of engineering. First, foundations weighing hundreds of tons are rammed or anchored into to the seabed at depths of 50 meters or more. Then, a massive crane hoists steel towers each the size of a small skyscraper on to the footings. Finally, the generator housing, or nacelle, is perched on top and the blades are put in place. Those nacelles already are about the size of a truck.
German Failure on the Road to a Renewable Future – Spiegel -The vision of the fantastic new world of the future was born eight years ago, on March 11, 2011, the day an earthquake-triggered tsunami damaged the nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan. The disaster led Chancellor Angela Merkel and her cabinet to resolve to phase out nuclear power in Germany. It was an historic event and an historic decision.But the sweeping idea has become bogged down in the details of German reality. The so-called Energiewende, the shift away from nuclear in favor of renewables, the greatest political project undertaken here since Germany’s reunification, is facing failure. In the eight years since Fukushima, none of Germany’s leaders in Berlin have fully thrown themselves into the project, not least the chancellor. Lawmakers have introduced laws, decrees and guidelines, but there is nobody to coordinate the Energiewende, much less speed it up. And all of them are terrified of resistance from the voters, whenever a wind turbine needs to be erected or a new high-voltage transmission line needs to be laid out.Analysts from McKinsey have been following the Energiewende since 2012, and their latest report is damning. Germany, it says, “is far from meeting the targets it set for itself.”Germany’s Federal Court of Auditors is even more forthright about the failures. The shift to renewables, the federal auditors say, has cost at least 160 billion euros in the last five years. Meanwhile, the expenditures “are in extreme disproportion to the results,” Federal Court of Auditors President Kay Scheller said last fall, although his assessment went largely unheard in the political arena. Scheller is even concerned that voters could soon lose all faith in the government because of this massive failure. Surveys document the transformation of this grand idea into an even grander frustration. Despite being hugely accepting initially, Germans now see it as being too expensive, too chaotic and too unfair.
Murkowski: We Must Improve America’s Mineral Security – U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, today chaired a hearing of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee to examine opportunities to strengthen our nation’s mineral security. As part of the hearing, the committee also received testimony on S. 1052, the Rare Earth Element Advanced Coal Technologies Act, and S. 1317, the American Mineral Security Act.Murkowski opened the hearing by underscoring the importance of minerals, describing them as the “foundation of our modern society.” She contrasted that with America’s rising dependence on foreign suppliers for many of the minerals used to keep our economy strong and our nation safe.“In 1997, we imported 100 percent of 11 different minerals and 50 percent or more of another 26,” Murkowski said. “A little over twenty years later, our foreign mineral dependence has increased significantly. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, last year we imported at least 50 percent of 48 minerals, including 100 percent of 18 of them.”Murkowski pointed to the many times the committee has focused on mineral security under her leadership, and reiterated that Congress must complement the administration’s actions with new legislation to help rebuild the domestic supply chain. “I hope that this is finally the year that Congress will work together to advance bipartisan legislation that will help rebuild our mineral supply chain,” Murkowski said. Joe Balash, Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management at the Department of the Interior, testified that “The Department is committed to promoting domestically sourced critical minerals. Doing so will create and sustain jobs, promote U.S. technological innovation, and reduce our Nation’s vulnerability to disruptions in the critical mineral supply chain.”
PG&E Power Lines Sparked Deadliest Wildfire in California History, Investigation Confirms — Power lines owned by Pacific Gas and Electric were the immediate cause of the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California state history, a California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) investigation concluded Wednesday, The New York Times reported. The Camp Fire, which burned 153,336 acres, destroyed the town of Paradise and killed 85 people, was also partly fueled by hot, dry conditions caused by climate change. “After a very meticulous and thorough investigation, CAL FIRE has determined that the Camp Fire was caused by electrical transmission lines owned and operated by Pacific Gas and Electricity (PG&E) located in the Pulga area,” Cal Fire concluded. The investigation uncovered two ignitions related to PG&E lines: the first near the community of Pulga in Butte county and the second at the intersection of Concow and Rim Roads. The latter was caused by an interaction between vegetation and electrical distribution lines. Cal Fire is passing the results of the investigation along to Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey. PG&E said it accepted the results of the investigation in a statement reported by CNBC. The company had already acknowledged in a February regulatory filing that its lines were the “probable” cause of the blaze. The company filed for bankruptcy protection in January after a number of lawsuits stemming from wildfires in Northern California in 2017 and 2018. It could face criminal charges, including murder or involuntary manslaughter.
California May Go Dark This Summer, and Most Aren’t Ready – A plan by California’s biggest utility to cut power on high-wind days during the onrushing wildfire season could plunge millions of residents into darkness. And most people aren’t ready. The plan by PG&E Corp. comes after the bankrupt utility said a transmission line that snapped in windy weather probably started last year’s Camp Fire, the deadliest in state history. While the plan may end one problem, it creates another as Californians seek ways to deal with what some fear could be days and days of blackouts. Some residents are turning to other power sources, a boon for home battery systems marketed by Sunrun Inc., Tesla Inc. and Vivint Solar Inc. But the numbers of those systems in use are relatively small when compared with PG&E’s 5.4 million customers. Meanwhile, Governor Gavin Newsom said he’s budgeting $75 million to help communities deal with the threat. “I’m worried,” Newsom said Thursday during a budget briefing in Sacramento. “We’re all worried about it for the elderly. We’re worried about it because we could see people’s power shut off not for a day or two but potentially a week.” Six of the 10 most destructive wildfires in California history have come in the last 18 months, killing 123 people, and often shutting down large sections of the state’s electrical grid. The wildfire season usually starts around June and runs through December, exacerbated by strong winds that race through the state and dry conditions that turn brush and plants into tinder. PG&E has warned the city of Calistoga that it could cut service as many as 15 times this fire season, said Chris Canning, mayor of the Napa Valley town scarred by wildfires two years ago.
New dam proposal in Sierra Nevada stirs debate over California energy policy – Up a remote canyon in the towering eastern Sierra, a Southern California company has an ambitious plan to dam the area’s cold, rushing waters and build one of the state’s first big hydroelectric facilities in decades. The project, southeast of Yosemite near the town of Bishop (Inyo County), faces long regulatory odds as well as daunting costs. But residents of the Owens Valley downstream and state environmentalists are not taking it lightly. The complex, as proposed in an application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last month, is scheduled for mostly federal land at the edge of the Inyo National Forest, partly in the popular John Muir Wilderness. It threatens to disrupt a landscape known for its brown trout and bighorn sheep, unparalleled alpine vistas, and pristine rivers and lakes. Yet, the plan comes at a time when California is eager for clean, climate friendly energy, and renewed interest is emerging in hydroelectric plants. Such facilities are not always considered green; however, they offer a unique way of storing wind and solar power, which are cleaner but provide only sporadic contributions to the electrical grid. The proposed “pumped-storage” project would essentially bank solar and wind energy by pumping creek water uphill when the power sources are plentiful, say during sunny or windy times, and conversely, send the water back down through power-producing turbines when the energy is needed. “It’s a great way to manage the intermittency of renewable energy,” said Frank Wolak, an economics professor at Stanford University and director of the school’s Program on Energy and Sustainable Development, who called pumped storage “ideal” for helping the state scale up its clean power. “But the problem in California is siting the projects.” Several federal and state agencies will have a say in whether a new, large hydroelectric undertaking is appropriate for California. Most regulators have only begun reviewing the proposal, though officials at the Inyo National Forest recently expressed concerns about disturbances to mountains, rivers and wildlife in a letter to the applicant.
Illinois might start charging $1,000 per year to own an electric vehicle: ‘It’s outrageous’ – A proposed hike in Illinois’ annual registration fee for electric vehicles, from $17.50 to $1,000, is being called unfair by current EV owners, and a sales disincentive by manufacturers – just as the new technology is beginning to gain broader traction. Aimed at raising money to make overdue road improvements across Illinois, the proposed legislation would also more than double the state’s gas tax to 44 cents a gallon and raise the registration fee for standard vehicles to $148, from $98, among other elements. But the kicker is a nearly 60-fold increase in the electric vehicle registration fee – one that is sure to cause sticker shock across a nascent segment of the auto industry, which has depended on government incentives to entice early adopters. Hybrids and plug-in electric hybrids, which both use gas to supplement electric power, are not included in the $1,000 fee proposal. The justification for the dramatic hike? Electric vehicles don’t provide the state with any gas tax revenue. “There’s definitely a push, because electric vehicles don’t pay any gas taxes,” said Pete Sander, president of the Illinois Automobile Dealers Association. Tesla said it opposes the Illinois fee increase. Electric truck startup Rivian, which is slated to begin production at its factory in downstate Normal next year, was more outspoken. “Imposing fees on EVs that are over 400 percent more than their gasoline-powered counterparts is not only unfair, it discourages promising new technology that will reduce our dependence on petroleum, reduce emissions, and promote the Illinois economy,” Rivian spokesman Michael McHale said. The legislation, introduced this week by Democratic Sen. Martin Sandoval of Chicago, would raise about $2.4 billion in annual transportation funding, according to its backers. .
Gas Plant Rejection Brings the Energy Transition Home to Indiana – Indiana utility Vectren South wanted to replace its baseload coal plants with a massive gas plant. In late April, regulators blocked that plan. The surprise rejection of the 850-megawatt project, which had been estimated to cost $781 million, comes as regulators in other states have applied greater scrutiny to large capital investments that utilities are seeking to build. The critique holds that massive expenditures for large, centralized assets during a time of rapid change to the electricity industry could become a bad deal for ratepayers. California has already rejected a few natural-gas plant contracts in favor of clean options like energy storage and renewables, but this is a new outcome for coal country. The Indiana decision joins a growing number of cases where state utility regulators have pushed utilities to consider more decentralized, lower-carbon grid planning. “Instead of running continuously, Vectren South’s units are now cycled up and down throughout the day, or are shut down altogether, decreasing unit efficiency and increasing wear and tear on the units,” the regulatory filing notes, paraphrasing Wayne Games, Vectren’s VP of power supply.The old plants can’t keep up with today’s fast-paced market, so Vectren South decided to retire 730 megawatts of coal plants and replace them with a 700-megawatt combined cycle gas plant, combined with 150 megawatts of new peaking capacity to replace 135 megawatts that will retire.Vectren South ran a request for proposal process and received bids for power-purchase agreements as well as build-and-sell deals, but opted to go a different route: building the plant itself.The case made for some strange bedfellows. Environmentalist groups like the Sierra Club intervened to oppose the new gas plant because t hey want to limit new fossil-fueled infrastructure. Local coal industry groups opposed the gas plant, because they want the utility to keep burning coal as long as possible. In rejecting the utility-built gas plant proposal, the commissioners highlighted a disjoint between the 30-year or longer lifetime of a major gas plant investment, and the “environment of rapid technological innovation on both the utility and customer side of the meter.” In light of those changes, which include increasingly low prices for renewable power and the maturation of energy storage, the regulators found Vectren South’s RFP to be “unduly restrictive.”
May: Global energy investment stabilised above USD 1.8 trillion in 2018, but security – Global energy investment stabilised in 2018, ending three consecutive years of decline, as capital spending on oil, gas and coal supply bounced back while investment stalled for energy efficiency and renewables, according to the International Energy Agency’s latest annual review.The findings of the World Energy Investment 2019 report signal a growing mismatch between current trends and the paths to meeting the Paris Agreement and other sustainable development goals. Global energy investment totalled more than USD 1.8 trillion in 2018, a level similar to 2017. For the third year in a row, the power sector attracted more investment than the oil and gas industry. The biggest jump in overall energy investment was in the United States, where it was boosted by higher spending in upstream supply, particularly shale, but also electricity networks. The increase narrowed the gap between the United States and China, which remained the world’s largest investment destination.Still, even as investments stabilized, approvals for new conventional oil and gas projects fell short of what would be needed to meet continued robust growth in global energy demand. At the same time, there are few signs of the substantial reallocation of capital towards energy efficiency and cleaner supply sources that is needed to bring investments in line with the Paris Agreement and other sustainable development goals.“Energy investments now face unprecedented uncertainties, with shifts in markets, policies and technologies,” said Dr Fatih Birol, the IEA’s Executive Director. “But the bottom line is that the world is not investing enough in traditional elements of supply to maintain today’s consumption patterns, nor is it investing enough in cleaner energy technologies to change course. Whichever way you look, we are storing up risks for the future.”The world is witnessing a shift in investments towards energy supply projects that have shorter lead times. In power generation and the upstream oil and gas sector, the industry is bringing capacity to market more than 20% faster than at the beginning of the decade. This reflects industry and investors seeking to better manage risks in a changing energy system, and also improved project management and lower costs for shorter-cycle assets such as solar PV, onshore wind and US shale.
We need to ditch coal before it’s too late, climate activist Bill McKibben warns – The decline of coal can’t come soon enough, and neither can the world’s shift to renewable energy, environmentalist Bill McKibben tells CBSN. “The world demand in coal has begun to sink. It’s been replaced with natural gas which, sadly, isn’t much cleaner,” McKibben said in an interview. “What we really need to do is make the leap straight to renewable energy.” It’s a problem he’s seen coming for a long time. “I wrote the first book about climate change 30 years ago this year and at the time it was still a kind of warning, but now it’s not a warning at all. Now it’s the brute fact of daily life for hundred of millions of people,” McKibben said. “We’re heading into completely unprecedented territory and if we don’t take action soon our ability to forestall this will be gone.” McKibben’s breakout nonfiction book, “The End of Nature,” served as a call to arms when it was published in 1989 and, for many, was an introduction to the concept of climate change. His work has earned him numerous accolades, including the Sierra Club’s John Muir Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. In his latest book, “Falter,” McKibben stresses the importance of taking immediate action in the face of a dwindling window to combat climate change. One of the reasons McKibben believes the world has been so slow to adapt is because of political ideologies that value markets over government and feed doubts about the reality of climate change itself. “Right at the moment when we really needed governments to step up, when we first found out about climate change in the 1970s, that was right around the time that ideology that markets can solve all problems, that government is the problem not the solution, that’s when those really took hold,” McKibben said. “And they’ve been things that have prevented us from taking action,” he continued. “They allowed the fossil fuel industry to mount this 30-year propaganda effort to make people doubt whether global warming was real. That’s not a doubt scientists share, but it’s a doubt that much of the public shares.”
Conservation groups set to sue over surface mining – Four conservation groups have given notice to President Donald Trump’s administration that it plans to launch a lawsuit against two federal agencies and the state of West Virginia over perceived threats to endangered species from surface mining.Made up of the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), the Sierra Club and its West Virginia chapter, the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy and the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, the conservation groups sent a 60-day intent-to-sue notice last week. Named in the suit, in addition to the state, are the U.S. Department of Interior’s Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (SMRE) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). The notice alleges that Trump administration officials circumvented the Endangered Species Act by using a 1996 biological opinion to allow surface mining in the habitat of the Guyandotte River and Big Sandy crayfish.Crayfish in both locations were labeled endangered in 2016.In a news release, the CBD alleges that state officials in West Virginia steered the Trump administration to look for shortcuts around federal law going as far as the West Virginia Division of Mining presenting a U.S. Department of Interior official a guidance document that the conservation group contends limits protections on the crayfish.The group further alleges the state issued mining permits which caught the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service by surprise as it was working to develop new guidance involving the crayfish species. “The public records reveal extensive efforts by Trump administration appointees to prevent the Fish and Wildlife Service from following science and doing what is needed to protect the crayfish,” the CBD news release reads.
How the West Virginia coal industry changed federal endangered species policy – Donna Branham was two miles away from the coal mine, but she could feel the blasts. In 2017, blasting at the surface mine had cracked her ceiling, her mirrors and her fireplace. When the mine was shut down amid complaints that its waste was encroaching on crayfish, a threatened species, she thought she had caught a break. Now the mine is back in business, thanks to the intervention of Trump appointees at the Department of the Interior and West Virginia officials who allowed the resumption of drilling at Twin Branch and about a half-dozen other mines under a June 2017 policy, according to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). President Trump’s pro-coal stance is not surprising, but the documents offer a rare glimpse into how state and industry officials have tapped the president’s political appointees to advance their economic interests over the objections of the agency charged with protecting endangered wildlife – in this case, two crayfish species that help keep the state’s creeks and rivers healthy. A United Nations panel warned in a report Monday that human activities have pushed one-eighth of the world’s species to the brink of extinction and urged governments to protect them. Meanwhile, the emails show that the Trump administration has moved in the opposite direction: Federal, state and industry officials bypassed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to win approval for operations near sensitive habitat. Championed by Landon “Tucker” Davis, an Interior Department official who used to represent the state’s coal industry, a 2017 directive that paved the way for mine permits illustrates how environmental rollbacks enacted at the start of the administration are reshaping the nation’s landscape in ways that could harm threatened species. Now the Center for Biological Diversity and other advocacy groups are preparing to sue the Interior Department for failing to protect the crustaceans from activities such as those at Twin Branch mine. The center’s senior scientist, Tierra Curry, who helped qualify the two species as endangered, laid out her argument as she watched a coal truck make its way recently to a mining operation permitted under Trump policy. “The law says you can’t jeopardize an endangered species, and the science says sediment and pollution from coal mines is going to jeopardize the species,” she said, referring to the Endangered Species Act. “So the law and the science are both clear.”
Danger in the Dust — It’s a disease that has impacted thousands of coal miners, with miners in our region at risk more than in any other part of the country. A July 2018 report from the Centers for Disease Control says one in 10 underground coal miners who worked in the mines for at least 25 years were diagnosed with black lung. However, in central Appalachia, as many as one in five have black lung. “I always took pride in being a coal miner…buying my family anything they wanted,” said Danny Fouts, 44. But that pride has turned to depression as he now struggles to breathe on his own, and had to quit working. Danny has to do several breathing treatments a day. He says it started off small, but the list of treatments has grown. “Well first I started out on just the nebulizer, just the breathing treatments,” Danny explained. “Then when they started seeing how advanced the black lung was, then it went to the inhalers. Then it went to oxygen.” Danny was part of the largest surge of black lung cases amongst the youngest of miners. The CDC says the uptick was especially prevalent in Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia. The U.S. Department of Labor says of the more than 4,600 cases recorded since 1970, half of those were not diagnosed until the year 2000. The disease is starting to hit a lot younger, too. Typically miners are diagnosed when they are in their 60s, but now doctors are seeing patients in their 30s become diagnosed like Danny was. At Boone Memorial Hospital in Madison, West Virginia, their black lung clinic is testing miners on a regular basis for the disease. “I usually test six or seven miners a day when I’m here,” said pulmonologist Jeffery Werchowski. “A good percentage of them end up having some form of black lung.” In the year since the black lung clinic opened, they’ve tested more than 1,000 miners. A July 2018 report from the Centers for Disease Control says one in ten underground coal miners who worked in the mines for at least 25 years were diagnosed with black lung. However, in central Appalachia, as many as one in five have black lung. Though there are treatments to make living with black lung more tolerable, but there is no cure.
Utilities Charging Customers For Coal Clean-Up Face Blowback – First, states across the U.S. ordered utilities to clean up ponds full of toxic coal waste. Now, they’re balking at how much companies want to charge for the work. Officials from Virginia to North Carolina to South Carolina are pushing back on utilities’ plans to charge customers for the costs of shuttering coal-ash ponds, long the primary way of storing residue from burning the fuel. In a potential blow to Dominion Energy Inc., the staff of Virginia’s utility regulator expressed concerns in a filing released Wednesday over the company’s bid to recover as much as $247 million through monthly bills for cleanup efforts. It’s a high-stakes battle for utilities, which have so far escaped any shareholder wrath over cleanup expenses because investors assumed the costs would be baked into customers’ rates. Duke Energy Corp. in particular would take a big hit as the utility is estimating costs of as much as $10.6 billion in the Carolinas. Officials there are already challenging more than a half-billion dollars. “Any disallowance could become problematic” for utilities, said Paul Patterson, an analyst with Glenrock Associates. On the flip side, he asked, “How do you do this in a manner that it doesn’t become the straw that breaks the camel’s back and makes things unaffordable” for customers? In Virginia, Dominion is asking for permission to charge customers the cost of a landfill, sedimentation ponds and water treatment facilities that it built at an existing coal plant in 2015. Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring has challenged the request, saying the Richmond-based company failed to consider whether the project was necessary given the region’s bounty of cheap natural gas. He noted Dominion has decided to close two units at the plant and may shut two more by 2023. The company’s project will probably provide “little or no value” to customers as a result of “these multiple decision-making failures,” energy consultant Scott Norwood said in testimony on behalf of the attorney general. Those concerns are shared by staff at the Virginia’s Division of Public Utility Regulation, a deputy director at the agency, Gregory Abbott, said in the filing released Wednesday.
Trump’s plans for protecting polluters have been a devastating success. – Across the Trump administration, top agency officials have been busy building a bureaucratic scaffolding to stymie federal enforcement actions against the nation’s wealthiest and most powerful players. Officials in the Justice Department, Environmental Protection Agency, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, among others, have been moving to muzzle agencies’ fact-finding powers, add layers of bureaucratic control, complicate chains of command, and strip power from regional officers and enforcement specialists. The result has been historic declines in enforcement actions against banks, corporations, and corporate executives – precisely as Bannon promised. The Trump administration has more than lived up to that initial slashing tone. Through its tenure, the administration has ramped up immigration enforcement, while presiding over a precipitous drop in enforcement of environmental and civil rights laws, and of regulating corporate crime. For polluters and corporations, the administration has doled out a handful of meager reprisals, wielding bureaucratic tools such as memoranda and fortified top-down structures to chill agencies’ enforcement powers. Across the agencies, enforcement actions against polluters, banks, and corporations have dwindled. The Environmental Protection Agency collected a mere $69 million in civil and administrative penalties from polluters in 2018, the lowest amount levied by the agency in more than a decade. Criminal fines collected by the EPA from polluters plunged to $88 million, the lowest total for such penalties assessed in a decade. In 2018, EPA referred the fewest new criminal cases to the Justice Department in any year since 1988. The nation’s financial sectors also received a reprieve. Corporate penalties imposed in Justice Department prosecutions plummeted by 72 percent during the first 20 months of the administration, compared to those levied during the final 20 months of the Obama presidency. Meanwhile, penalties imposed and illicit profits ordered returned by the Securities and Exchange Commission fell by 62 percent. The volume of publicly announced enforcement actions by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under Donald Trump’s tenure has also steeply declined.
Why coal ash and tailings dam disasters occur — On 25 January 2019, the structure damming a pond filled with iron ore mining wastes (tailings) burst at Brumadinho, Brazil (1), causing a massive mudslide that killed at least 232 people. This tailings dam failure was only the most recent in a long list of catastrophic tailings dam accidents (see the first figure) (2, 3). Similar accidents also occur at electric power stations, where ponds are used to store coal combustion residuals such as fly and bottom ash. There are about 1000 operating ash ponds in the United States (4), and coal consumption patterns suggest that there may be more than 9000 worldwide. The catastrophic accident at the Kingston fossil power plant in Tennessee in 2008 (5) highlights the destructive potential of ash pond failures. Detailed analysis of tailings dam and ash pond failures shows that little-understood processes such as time-delayed triggering mechanisms are more likely to manifest when best engineering practices are disregarded.Failure of the containment structure around mine tailings and coal ash is often followed by a fast-moving mudflow, which can run downstream for several miles, with catastrophic consequences. This liquefaction of the impounded materials may suggest to regulators and the public that the problem lies with the impounded materials themselves. However, in the absence of internal collapse or induced shear (for example, as a result of a seismic event), liquefaction and outflow of ponded ash and tailings occur after the dam has failed. Thus, liquefaction does not cause the failure, but rather the disaster that follows. Forensic analyses of ash pond and tailings dam failures are hindered by the massive destruction that washes away evidence from the failed zone. Nevertheless, forensic investigations of notable dam failures have identified several mechanisms, including overtopping due to water mismanagement (Merriespruit, South Africa, 1994) (6), shear failure of foundation soils (Mount Polley, Canada, 2014) (7), and shear of compressible low-permeability tailings placed near the perimeter of the impoundment (Samarco, Brazil, 2015) (8). These postfailure investigations have often found the convergence of more than one weakness in the design, construction, and/or operation of the dam.
AEP to close two units at Conesville coal plant on May 31 – American Electric Power Co. Inc. will shut down units 5 and 6 at its 1,530-MW Conesville coal plant in Coshocton County, Ohio, on May 31, a company spokeswoman confirmed. The units represent 750MW of generating capacity in the PJM Interconnection market. In October 2018, AEP said it notified employees of plans to shut down the plant by May 31, 2020. “There are market conditions that could result in two of the generating units at Conesville (Units 5 and 6) closing as soon as May 2019,” AEP spokeswoman Melissa McHenry said at the time. On May 13, she said the company had decided to close the units this month. AEP had previously announced that it would close the two units in 2022. McHenry said the company expects the other operating unit at the plant, unit 4, to remain in service until May 2020. This unit has 780 MW of capacity, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence data. The plant’s primary sources of coal, according to Market Intelligence data, are the CCU Barb Coal Tipple mine in Coshocton County, Ohio, and Buckingham Mine No. 6 in Perry County, Ohio.
Fourth-Largest Coal Producer In the US Files For Bankruptcy –Cloud Peak Energy, the US’ fourth-largest coal mining company, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy late last week as the company missed an extension deadline to make a $1.8 million loan payment. In a statement, Cloud Peak said it will continue to operate its three massive coal mines in Wyoming and Montana while it goes through the restructuring process. Colin Marshall, the president and CEO of the company, said that he believed a sale of the company’s assets “will provide the best opportunity to maximize value for Cloud Peak Energy.”Cloud Peak was one of the few major coal producers who escaped the significant coal industry downturn between 2015 and 2016. That bought it a reputation for prudence and business acumen.But thinning margins have strained the mining company as customers for thermal coal continue to dry up. Coal-fired electricity is expected to fall this summer, even though summer months are usually boom times for coal plants as air conditioning bolsters electricity demand. That’s because cheap natural gas and a boost in renewable capacity have displaced dirtier, more expensive coal. According to the Casper Star Tribune, Cloud Peak shipped 50 million tons of coal in 2018. The paper noted that after the bankruptcy filing, “speculation almost immediately began that Cloud Peak would sell its mines.”
Bankrupt Coal Company Funded Climate Change Denialism – THE BANKRUPTCY OF one of the largest domestic coal producers in the country has revealed that the company maintains financial ties to many of the leading groups that have sowed doubt over the human causes of global warming. The disclosures are from Cloud Peak Energy, a Wyoming-based coal mining corporation that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on May 10. The company had been battered by low coal prices, including in international markets cultivated by the firm. The documents in the court docket show that the coal giant gave contributions to leading think tanks that have attacked the link between the burning of fossil fuels and climate change, as well as to several conservative advocacy groups that have attempted to undermine policies intended to shift the economy toward renewable energy. The documents do not include information on the size of the contributions, yet, taken as a whole, the list of groups Cloud Peak Energy helped fund are indicative of how the company prioritized pushing climate denialism. The company did not respond to a request for comment. The contributions are revealed in a filing that lists recipients of grants, creditors, and contractors. The document shows that Cloud Peak Energy helped fund the Institute of Energy Research, a Washington, D.C.-based group that has dismissed the “so-called scientific consensus” on climate change and regularly criticizes investments in renewable energy as a “waste” of resources. Several of the groups that receive funding from Cloud Peak Energy have used aggressive tactics to attempt to discredit environmentalists. The Center for Consumer Freedom, one of the groups listed in the coal company’s filing, is part of a sprawling network of front groups set up by a lobbyist named Rick Berman geared toward attacking green groups such as the Sierra Club and Food & Water Watch as dangerous radicals.
Ohio School Near Old Uranium Plant Closed After Radioactive Contamination Found – An Ohio middle school located less than three miles from a decommissioned uranium enrichment plant has been closed for the rest of the school year after authorities found it was contaminated with radioactive chemicals, according to WLWT. A nearby air monitor detected enriched uranium and neptunium-237 at Zahn’s Corner Middle School in Piketon, southern Ohio. Today was the last day for Zahns Corner Middle School students in Piketon, OH. School leaders sent a letter home to parents. County health officials tell me if students or staff are exposed to enough enriched uranium, they’re at risk for developing cancer. @WLWTpic.twitter.com/nnJveZVRg5 – Jatara McGee WLWT (@jatara_) May 14, 2019The nearby Portsmouth gaseous diffusion plant, just 2.7 miles away, enriched weapons-grade uranium from 1954 – 2001. It was operated by Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company until 1986 – changing hands until Lockheed Martin bought its owner in 1995. In January, Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) announced that the Trump Administration had earmarked $115 million to reopen the facility, which would employ 60 people to operate 16 centrifuges, pending EPA approval. “After the Cold War, weapons-grade uranium enrichment was suspended and production facilities were leased to the private sector,” reads the Department of Energy’s website. “In 2001, enrichment operations were discontinued at the site.” Local councilwoman Jennifer Chandler told CNN that three children out of five in the school district diagnosed with cancer have died. “You don’t want to make a claim that you can’t back up,” she said. “How is this caused? Is this a genetic cancer? Is this an environmental cancer? I’m not a medical professional.” “This isn’t a game, you know. These are people’s lives.”
Radioactive ‘Nuclear Coffin’ May Be Leaking Into The Pacific — UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has sounded the alarm over a giant concrete dome built 40 years ago in the Marshall Islands to contain radioactive waste from Cold War-era atomic tests. According to Guterres, the dome – which houses approximately 73,000 cubic meters of debris on Runit island, part of the Enewetak Atoll – may be leaking radioactive material into the Pacific Ocean, as the porous ground underneath the 18″ thick dome was never lined as originally planned. It was constructed in the crater formed by the 18-kt Cactus test. “The Pacific was victimised in the past as we all know,” Guterres told students in the island nation of Figi while on a tour of the South Pacific. “I’ve just been with the President of the Marshall Islands (Hilda Heine), who is very worried because there is a risk of leaking of radioactive materials that are contained in a kind of coffin in the area.” Residents of the Islands were relocated from their ancestral lands shortly after the United States began what would become 67 nuclear weapons tests from 1946 – 1958 at Bikini and Enewetak atolls. Despite US efforts to move people to safety, thousands of islanders were exposed to radioactive fallout from above-ground tests conducted before a moratorium was enacted in 1958. The tests included the 15 Megaton Castle Bravo on the Bikini Atoll, which was detonated on March 1, 1954. It was the most powerful ever detonated by the United States – and around 1,000 times bigger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima just nine years before. Cracks are visible in the dome’s surface, and the sea sometimes washes over its surface during storms, according to ABC.”The United States Government has acknowledged that a major typhoon could break it apart and cause all of the radiation in it to disperse,” said Columbia University’s Michael Gerrard. A 2013 DoE report found that the soil outside of the dome is more contaminated than its contents – as the 1970s cleaning operation only removed an estimated 0.8 percent of the total nuclear waste in Enewetak atoll.
Chernobyl has become a refuge for wildlife 33 years after the nuclear accident – Although there are not clear figures, the physical loss of human lives and physiological consequences were huge. Estimates of the number of human fatalities vary wildly. The initial impact on the environment was also important. One of the areas more heavily affected by the radiation was the pine forest near the plant, known since then as the “Red Forest”. This area received the highest doses of radiation, the pine trees died instantly and all the leaves turned red. Few animals survived the highest radiation levels. Therefore, after the accident it was assumed that the area would become a desert for life. Considering the long time that some radioactive compounds take to decompose and disappear from the environment, the forecast was that the area would remain devoid of wildlife for centuries. But today, 33 years after the accident, the Chernobyl exclusion zone, which covers an area now in Ukraine and Belarus, is inhabited by brown bears, bisons, wolves, lynxes, Przewalski horses, and more than 200 bird species, among other animals. As part of this project, motion detection cameras were installed for several years in different areas of the exclusion zone. The photos recorded by these cameras reveal the presence of abundant fauna at all levels of radiation. These cameras recorded the first observation of brown bears and European bison inside the Ukrainian side of the zone, as well as the increase in the number of wolves and Przewalski horses. Our own work with the amphibians of Chernobyl has also detected abundant populations across the exclusion zone, even on the more contaminated areas. Furthermore, we have also found signs that could represent adaptive responses to life with radiation. For instance, frogs within the exclusion zone are darker than frogs living outside it, which is a possible defence against radiation. .Studies have also detected some negative effects of radiation at an individual level. For example, some insects seem to have a shorter lifespan and are more affected by parasites in areas of high radiation. Some birds also have higher levels of albinism, as well as physiological and genetic alterations when living in highly contaminated localities. But these effects don’t seem to affect the maintenance of wildlife population in the area. The general absence of negative effects of radiation on Chernobyl wildlife can be a consequence of several factors: First, wildlife could be much more resistant to radiation than previously thought. Another alternative possibility is that some organisms could be starting to show adaptive responses that would allow them to cope with radiation and live inside the exclusion zone without harm. In addition, the absence of humans inside the exclusion zone could be favouring many species – big mammals in particular. That final option would suggest that the pressures generated by human activities would be more negative for wildlife in the medium-term than a nuclear accident – a quite revealing vision of the human impact on the natural environment.
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