Environmental News For The Week 21July 2019

Written by rjs, MarketWatch 666

This is a collection of interesting news articles about the environment and related topics published last week. This is usually a Tuesday evening regular post at GEI (but can be posted at other times).

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A Bacterial Invasion- East-Coast-ers Face Flesh-Eating Disease Epidemic In 2019 – For years, flesh-eating bacterial infections were so rare in the U.S. that even a single case would make national headlines. But here in 2019 the news is telling us that we are seeing flesh-eating infections “at a rate much higher than in previous years”, and this outbreak really seems to have escalated dramatically over the last couple of months. In fact, I found so many cases as I was doing research for this article that I had to simply stop reading at one point or I would have never gotten this article done in time. So in this article I will be sharing quite a few examples with you, but it is far from an exhaustive list. Let’s start with a Tennessee man that was just killed by flesh-eating bacteria after a trip to the Florida panhandle. This is what his daughter had to say about his death…“About 4:00 a.m. Saturday morning, 12 hours after we were in the water, he woke up with a fever, chills and some cramping. … They got to the hospital in Memphis around 8 p.m.,” Wiygul said in the post. “They took him back immediately. As they were helping him get changed into his hospital gown they saw this terribly swollen black spot on his back that was not there before.”The man’s condition worsened over the next several hours. His immune system had been weakened by a bout with cancer, the daughter said, and he died Sunday afternoon.That is how fast flesh-eating disease can kill you. If it is not treated immediately, there is a good chance you will die.And it doesn’t take much. One woman that had just moved to Florida recently died after getting a small cut on her leg “while walking along the coast on Anna Maria Island”… A woman died two weeks after cutting her leg while walking along the coast on Anna Maria Island, Florida, according to her family. Her leg became infected with necrotizing fasciitis, commonly called flesh-eating bacteria. And one man recently contracted flesh-eating disease in Florida without even going in the water… Tyler King was at work in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, last week, when he noticed his left bicep starting to swell. He tried taking Benadryl but just a few hours later his arm had nearly tripled in size. He rushed to the emergency room. “If I had gone to sleep … and had woke up with it at the rate it was spreading, I might not have an arm right now.”

Ebola outbreak in Congo declared a global health emergency – The deadly Ebola outbreak in Congo is now an international health emergency, the World Health Organization announced Wednesday after a case was confirmed in a city of 2 million people . A WHO expert committee declined on three previous occasions to advise the United Nations health agency to make the declaration for this outbreak, even though other experts say it has long met the required conditions. More than 1,600 people have died since August in the second-deadliest Ebola outbreak in history, which is unfolding in a region described as a war zone. A declaration of a global health emergency often brings greater international attention and aid, along with concerns that nervous governments might overreact with border closures. The declaration comes days after a single case was confirmed in Goma, a major regional crossroads in northeastern Congo on the Rwandan border, with an international airport. Also, a sick Congolese fish trader traveled to Uganda and back while symptomatic – and later died of Ebola. While the risk of regional spread remains high, the risk outside the region remains low, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said after the announcement in Geneva..Those working in the field say the outbreak is clearly taking a turn for the worse despite advances that include the widespread use of an experimental but effective Ebola vaccine.

New Research Shows Malaria Can Spread In Cooler Climates – For nearly a century, scientists thought that malaria could only spread in places where it is really hot. That’s because malaria is spread by a tiny parasite that infects mosquitoes, which then infect humans – and this parasite loves warm weather. In warmer climates, the parasite grows quickly inside the mosquito’s body. But in cooler climates, the parasite develops so slowly that the mosquito will die before the it is fully grown.At least that was the prevailing understanding. New research suggests parasites don’t mind the cold as much as scientists thought.It appears that parasites can thrive in slightly cooler temperatures that were once believed to be inhospitable for them. This means that slightly warmer weather in more temperate regions could prompt parasites to reach their full potential – a situation that will put thousands or more people in danger of contracting malaria. Not only will rising temperatures spur mosquitoes to move to new areas that were formally too cold to inhabit, hotter weather will also nurture the growth of the disease-carrying parasites that live inside those mosquitos. “Our results show that not only is it possible for the mosquito to become infectious with malaria parasites at cool temperatures, but that it happens considerably faster than has been previously thought,” said Jessica Waite, a senior scientist at Penn State and a co-author of the study with Matthew Thomas, professor and Huck scholar in ecological entomology at Penn State. Their findings could help predict the spread of malaria in cooler climates. The paper, which also included researchers from the University of Exeter, appears in the journal Biology Letters.

Ticks Spread Plenty More for You to Worry About Beyond Lyme Disease – When it comes to problems caused by ticks, Lyme disease hogs a lot of the limelight. But various tick species carry and transmit a collection of other pathogens, some of which cause serious, even fatal, conditions. In fact, the number of tick-borne disease cases is on the rise in the U.S. The range where various species of ticks live in North America may be expanding due to climate change. Researchers continue to discover new pathogens that live in ticks. And new, invasive tick species keep turning up. Certain very small species of bacteria that can cause human diseases, such as rickettsia, ehrlichia and anaplasma, live in ticks. Ticks ingest these bacteria when they drink animals’ blood. Then when the ticks take a subsequent blood meal, they pass the bacteria along to the next animal or person they feed on. Probably the most well known of these bacterial diseases is Rocky Mountain spotted fever, the most frequently reported rickettsial disease in the U.S., with about 6,000 cases each year. The number of diagnoses seems to be increasing nationwide, especially among Native Americans, probably due to exposure on reservations to free-roaming dogs that can carry ticks. When people get sick with Rocky Mountain spotted fever, they usually come to a clinic with three things: fever, rash and history of tick bite. They may also report severe headache, chills and muscle pains, and gastrointestinal symptoms such as abdominal pain and diarrhea. A skin rash is usually present after a few days, but not always. Mental confusion, coma and death can occur in severe cases. Untreated, the mortality rate is about 20%; and even with treatment, 4% of those infected die. Ehrlichiosis is another bacterial disease transmitted from ticks to people. In the U.S. it’s most commonly caused by Ehrlichia chaffeensis bacteria, carried by lone star ticks which are common in the eastern U.S. Ehrlichia bacteria infect a type of blood cell called leukocytes. Human monocytic ehrlichiosis occurs mostly in the southern and south-central U.S.; 1,642 cases were reported to the CDC in 2017. Ehrlichiosis patients usually have fever, headache, muscle aches and a progressive low white blood cell count. As opposed to Rocky Mountain spotted fever, people get a rash only about 20% to 40% of the time. Doctors usually treat ehrlichiosis with doxycycline. Another tick-borne bacterial disease to worry about is human granulocytic anaplasmosis. In human granulocytic anaplasmosis, Anaplasma phagocytophilum bacteria infects a type of white blood cell called granulocytes. It mostly occurs in the upper midwestern and northeastern U.S., and the incidence is increasing, with 5,762 cases of human granulocytic anaplasmosis reported to the CDC in 2017. Symptoms include fever, headache, muscle aches and progressive low white blood cell count. It’s the deer tick Ixodes scapularis – famously also responsible for Lyme disease – that transmits the Anaplasma bacteria to humans. There’s the unlucky chance that a bite from a deer tick could infect you with both diseases.

House orders Pentagon to review if it exposed Americans to weaponised ticks – The US House of Representatives has called for an investigation into whether the spread of Lyme disease had its roots in a Pentagon experiment in weaponising ticks. The House approved an amendment proposed by a Republican congressman from New Jersey, Chris Smith, instructing the defence department’s inspector general to conduct a review of whether the US “experimented with ticks and other insects regarding use as a biological weapon between the years of 1950 and 1975″.The review would have to assess the scope of the experiment and “whether any ticks or insects used in such experiment were released outside of any laboratory by accident or experiment design”. The amendment was approved by a voice vote in the House and added to a defence spending bill, but the bill still has to be reconciled with a Senate version. Smith said the amendment was inspired by “a number of books and articles suggesting that significant research had been done at US government facilities including Fort Detrick, Maryland, and Plum Island, New York, to turn ticks and other insects into bioweapons”. A new book published in May by a Stanford University science writer and former Lyme sufferer, Kris Newby, has raised questions about the origins of the disease, which affects 400,000 Americans each year. Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons, cites the Swiss-born discoverer of the Lyme pathogen, Willy Burgdorfer, as saying that the Lyme epidemic was a military experiment that had gone wrong. Burgdorfer, who died in 2014, worked as a bioweapons researcher for the US military and said he was tasked with breeding fleas, ticks, mosquitoes and other blood-sucking insects, and infecting them with pathogens that cause human diseases. According to the book, there were programs to drop “weaponised” ticks and other bugs from the air, and that uninfected bugs were released in residential areas in the US to trace how they spread. It suggests that such a scheme could have gone awry and led to the eruption of Lyme disease in the US in the 1960s.

Fireflies’ Glow Could Soon Be Extinguished by Human Actions – In the Midwest, fireflies are dying off. But the die-offs aren’t just limited to fireflies – or to the American heartland. As anyone who’s been paying attention to the news this summer knows, species across the globe are taking a nosedive toward extinction. The United Nations report on biodiversity that came out in May is just the latest assessment to warn that the health of our ecosystems is “deteriorating more rapidly than ever.” Humans are largely to blame. By spraying toxic pesticides, polluting our air and water, degrading the landscape, and emitting ever more carbon, we’ve essentially captured nature in a big glass Mason jar, screwed the lid tight, and neglected to punch holes in the top. According to the UN report, these unsustainable actions are causing nature to decline at unprecedented rates and accelerating the rate of species’ extinction. Around 1 million animal and plant species – more than ever before in human history – are now threatened with extinction, many within decades. Scientists say that the estimated 2,000 species of fireflies have been declining for years. Losing these glowing creatures, also known as “lightning bugs” in some parts of the U.S., robs future generations of one of the simplest and most pleasurable joys of childhood. It also robs doctors and researchers of a valuable diagnostic tool. By injecting chemicals found in a firefly’s tail into human cells, researchers can detect diseases like cancer and muscular dystrophy. On a broader scale, losing plant and animal species at an accelerated rate threatens “the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide,” warn the UN researchers. Up to $577 billion in annual global crops are at risk from pollinator loss alone.

US Beekeepers Lost 40% Of Honeybee Colonies Last Year, UMD-Led Survey Finds – Recent budget cuts by the Trump Administration slashed funding for the US Department of Agriculture’s annual Honey Bee Colonies report that has recently detailed a collapse in the bee population across the nation. Now researchers will be observing a new study, one that hasn’t been affected by spending cuts, shows beekeepers lost 40.7% of their bee colonies from April 2018 to April 2019. The nationwide survey administered by the University of Maryland-led nonprofit Bee Informed Partnership warns of declining honey bee populations, could soon have an impact on food crops because these pollinating insects play a significant role in the pollination of plants. Survey results reveal the annual loss of 40.7% honey bees, a marginal increase over the yearly average of 38.7%. The study noted that the winter losses were the highest since the survey began 13 years ago. “These results are very concerning, as high winter losses hit an industry already suffering from a decade of high winter losses,” said Dennis vanEngelsdorp, associate professor of entomology at the University of Maryland and president for the Bee Informed Partnership. The survey asked more than 4,700 beekeepers managing 320,000 colonies from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, represents about 12% of the nation’s estimated 2.69 million managed colonies. One of the most significant concerns respondents had about the winter colony losses is varroa mites, an external parasitic mite that attacks and feeds on the colony. “We are increasingly concerned about varroa mites and the viruses they spread, said vanEngelsdorp. “Last year, many beekeepers reported poor treatment efficacy, and limited field tests showed that products that once removed 90% of mites or more are now removing far fewer. Since these products are no longer working as well, the mite problem seems to be getting worse,” vanEngelsdorp said. “But mites are not the only problem,” continues vanEngelsdorp. “Land use changes have led to a lack of nutrition-rich pollen sources for bees, causing poor nutrition. Pesticide exposures, environmental factors, and beekeeping practices all play some role as well.”

Bayer Monsanto Damages Reduced to $25.27 Million by U.S. Judge –U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria announced his ruling in San Francisco on Monday. Chhabria reduced the amount that Germany’s Bayer AG has to pay the claimant to $25.27 million (€22.4 million). Bayer bought Roundup maker Monsanto for $63 billion last year. Following a four-week trial in March a federal jury awarded $5 million (€4.4 million) in compensatory and $75 million in punitive damages to a man who blamed his cancer on glyphosate-based weed killer Roundup. Edwin Hardeman was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2014. At a hearing to discuss Bayer’s request to overturn the verdict earlier this month, Chhabria said, “It’s quite clear that under the Constitution I’m required to reduce the punitive damages award and it’s just a question of how much.” U.S. Supreme Court rulings limit the ratio of punitive to compensatory damages to 9 to 1. The judge said he would also take into account the fact that Hardeman was now in full remission and unlikely to suffer as much as he had in the past. Bayer says Roundup – and its active ingredient glyphosate – are safe for human use and not carcinogenic. However, in 2015 the World Health Organization’s cancer arm reached a different conclusion, classifying glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”

Trump’s EPA Won’t Ban Brain-Damaging Pesticide – President Donald Trump‘s U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will not ban the agricultural use ofchlorpyrifos, a toxic pesticide that the EPA’s own scientists have linked to brain damage in children, The New York Times reported Thursday. The decision, announced Thursday, was a response to a petition from public health and environmental groups who had pushed for a ban. The agency ruled that “critical questions remained regarding the significance of the data” on the pesticide’s health effects, according to The Guardian. The ruling is the latest in a series of Trump EPA decisions that weaken chemical safety rules, The New York Times pointed out. In April, it opted against a full ban on asbestos in favor of restrictions that critics say could usher in new uses. Also this year, it issued restrictions on a paint-stripping chemical that were weaker than a ban proposed during the Obama years. Finally, just last week, it widely expanded the use of the pesticide sulfoxaflor, which its own scientists have shown can harm bees, as HuffPost reported. “Siding with pesticide corporations over the health and well-being of kids is the new normal at the EPA,”Environmental Working Group President Ken Cook said in a statement. “Today’s decision underscores the sad truth that as long as the Trump administration is in charge, this EPA will favor the interests of the chemical lobby over children’s safety.” The EPA’s decision came after a federal court ordered the agency to make a final call on the ban by mid-July. Chlorpyrifos has been banned for home use since 2000, but farmers have continued to spray it on crops like apples, strawberries, broccoli and corn. The Obama administration had initiated a ban on agricultural uses of the pesticide, but Trump’s EPA reversed it, setting off a legal battle with environmental advocates. In the absence of federal action, states have moved against the pesticide on their own. Hawaii became the first state to ban chlorpyrifos in 2018, and California announced it would ban the chemical in May. New York is also moving towards a ban, The New York Times reported. Research has linked chlorpyrifos exposure to lower IQ, memory loss, breathing problems and increased risk of autism in babies born to mothers who lived near farms where it was sprayed, according to The Guardian.

How to Avoid Brain-Damaging Chlorpyrifos in Milk and Produce — You may know that many conventional oat cereals contain troubling amounts of the carcinogenic pesticide glyphosate. But another toxic pesticide may be contaminating your kids’ breakfast. A new study by the Organic Center shows that almost 60 percent of the non-organic milk sampled contains residues of chlorpyrifos, a pesticide scientists say is unsafe at any concentration. Chlorpyrifos is a neurotoxin – it affects the nervous system and brain, and even small amounts of exposure can cause permanent health damage to babies and children. These health effects can include impairment of children’s IQ and harm to the parts of the brain that control language, memory, behavior and emotion. A new study from the University of Southern Denmark also links chlorpyrifos exposure in pregnant women to ADHD in their children.Because millions of pounds of chlorpyrifos are sprayed on crops every year, most Americans are exposed to it through milk, fruit and other produce. Research by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that babies and developing fetuses are exposed to about five times more chlorpyrifos than what the EPA’s standard deems safe, and children consume chlorpyrifos at 11 to 15 times the EPA standard. Despite this, in 2017 the Trump EPA decided to ignore science in favor of the pesticide industry and cancelled a proposed ban on chlorpyrifos. Now the EPA won’t act to keep it out of milk and produce for at least another five years. While the EPA waits to evaluate chlorpyrifos again, roughly 30 million pounds of this chemical will be sprayed on crops, risking the health of children across the U.S.The EPA’s failure to ban chlorpyrifos has even more harmful consequences for farm workers and their families. According to The Guardian newspaper, parents in California’s Central Valley, which has some of the heaviest use of chlorpyrifos in the country, fear that drifting clouds of pesticides are causing their children’s chronic health problems, including learning problems and attention deficit disorders. They’re just not sure about possible solutions. “We know this is dangerous for the kids,” said one mother of five, “but what are we supposed to do?”

Drone Startup Gets First-Ever Approval In Iowa To Spray Chemicals On Crops – A tech startup in Iowa became the first legally authorized company to fly drones for aerial application of agrichemicals in the state of Iowa, reported Crop Life. “Our drone technology had been ready for a few months; we just needed the regulatory landscape to get sorted out,” Rantizo CEO, Michael Ott explained. “Building the technology is the easy part,” he continued. Record rainfall this spring has decimated the Midwest, including many parts of Iowa. Rantizo, which developed an easy-to-use drone spraying platform, could soon hit the fields spraying fungicide over crops to ensure parasitic fungi does not spread in the unusual wet conditions.“Rain prohibited farmers from getting their corn crops in within the timeline they are used to this year. When I last checked at the end of June, only 96% of corn crop had been planted whereas typically they’re at 100% by this time,” Ott said.“This will undoubtedly affect yields,” he continued, citing that the USDA recently lowered the national average corn yield projection to 166 bushels per acre.A Rantizo representative told The Gazette in April that the drones will replace traditional sprayer vehicles in the future because the technology is more precise and cheaper to use.“Our drone technology offers new improvements to agricultural crop applications such as increased field access, reduced headcount and ability to spot apply,” Ott stated. “In other words, we can get in the fields to treat pests faster, with less people and in more effective ways that require less chemicals.”

PFAS Crisis Expands As Millions Of Americans In 43 States Are Exposed To Toxic Chemicals – Tens of millions of Americans in 43 states may have been exposed to toxic fluorinated compounds known as PFAS in their drinking water.In a report from May, the non-profit Environmental Working Group (EWG) showed how PFAS had exposed upwards of 19 million Americans through contaminated groundwater. EWG found 610 contaminated locations ranging from public water systems, military bases, military and civilian airports, industrial plants, dumps, and firefighter training sites. Now the environmental advocacy group has identified 58 more military sites where high levels of PFAS used in firefighting foam have been detected in groundwater or drinking water, from Elmendorf Air Force Base and Fort Richardson, Alaska to Fort Eustis, Virginia, reported the Military Times. Many of the new locations contain PFAS levels over 100,000 parts per trillion.“The EPA and the Department of Defense have utterly failed to treat PFAS contamination as a crisis demanding swift and decisive action,” said Ken Cook, president of EWG, in a statement announcing the additional contaminated sites.“‘It’s time for Congress to end new PFAS pollution and clean up legacy contamination,” Cook said. For decades, the military and other civilian agencies used firefighting foams that contained PFAS. These dangerous chemicals are also in hundreds of everyday household products. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has warned that the toxic chemicals are present in the blood samples of the general population. Prior studies have shown the dangerous chemicals have been linked to weakened childhood immunity, thyroid disease, cancer, and other major health issues.

Health groups sue over Trump rollback of Obama-era emissions rule – Two major health organizations have sued the Trump administration over its rollback of an Obama-era rule on power plant emissions.The American Lung Association and the American Public Health Association are challenging President Trump’s newly unveiled American Clean Energy (ACE) rule, the administration’s replacement for the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan. Critics have widely panned the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under Trump for introducing a rule opponents say will do little to reduce pollution from power plants.“In repealing the Clean Power Plan and adopting the ACE rule, EPA abdicates its legal duties and obligations to protect public health under the Clean Air Act, which is why we are challenging these actions,” the two groups said in a statement Monday.“EPA has legal authority and obligation under the Clean Air Act to protect and preserve public health and welfare, including by regulating carbon dioxide pollution from coal-fired power plants,” they added. “However, it is simply not lawful for EPA to use its legal authority in ways that will increase dangerous air pollutants and harm the health of Americans.” The Trump administration’s replacement rule is designed to give states more time and authority to decide how to implement new technology to lower net emissions from coal-fired plants. The administration argues that the Obama rule was too extreme, and that the replacement rule focuses more narrowly on technology power plants can use to reduce their pollution. “This regulation does not cap emissions, does not set a statewide cap or a facility cap – we don’t cap emissions, we limit emissions rates,” a top EPA official told reporters on a call when the ACE rule was announced.

E.P.A. Plans to Curtail the Ability of Communities to Oppose Pollution Permits – The Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to weaken rules that for the past quarter-century have given communities a voice in deciding how much pollution may legally be released by nearby power plants and factories. The changes would eliminate the ability of individuals or community advocates to appeal against E.P.A.-issued pollution permits before a panel of agency judges. However, the industrial permit-holders could still appeal to the panel, known as the Environmental Appeals Board, to allow them to increase their pollution. “This is outrageous,” said Richard Lazarus, an environmental law professor at Harvard. “Individuals in communities will lose a way to seek relief from pollution that has historically been very effective. But industry will still be able to seek relief to pollute more.” The proposed change is the latest in the Trump administration’s long-running effort to roll back environmental regulations and reduce regulatory burdens on industry, including the June announcement of a new E.P.A. rule that would weaken regulations on planet-warming greenhouse pollution from power plant smokestacks, the expected late-summer announcement of a similar plan to weaken rules on vehicle tailpipe pollution, and a 2018 proposal to open much of the United States coastline to oil drilling. The planned changes follow a Monday speech by President Trump in which he sought to frame himself as a conservationist and protector of public land. “What E.P.A. is proposing means communities and families no longer have the right to appeal a pollution permit that might affect them,” said Patrice Simms, a former staff lawyer for the Environmental Appeals Board who is now an attorney at Earthjustice, an advocacy group. When the agency issues pollution permits, “they may or may not get it right,” Mr. Simms added. Lawyers for industrial interests said the proposed change would eliminate burdensome red tape, speeding up a process that is ultimately decided by the courts anyway.

Government Watchdog: EPA Broke Ethics Rules as It Replaced Academic Advisers With Industry Appointees – President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) violated ethics rules when it replaced academic members of advisory boards with industry appointees, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported Monday. The federal watchdog found that, in 2018, the EPA did not gather documents from staff explaining the rationale for appointing new members to two key advisory committees and failed to ensure that all committee members appointed as special government employees met ethics requirements. “This report shows that the Trump administration rigged influential advisory boards to favor its polluter backers,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said in a statement reported by The New York Times. The EPA failed to follow its own process when it appointed 20 new members to the Science Advisory Board and Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee in fiscal year 2018, GAO said. EPA staff typically provide rationales for why a person was recommended, but the appointment packets reviewed by the GAO for the two committees did not include those documents.Further, the agency is supposed to ensure that board members appointed as special government employees do not have conflicts of interest that would prevent them from giving unbiased advice. But 23 percent of the financial disclosure forms reviewed by the GAO were not signed and dated by ethics officials. The composition of some boards also significantly changed during the first year of the Trump administration, the report found. The number of academics on the Scientific Advisory Board fell 27 percent and, on the Board of Scientific Counselors, 45 percent. In contrast, the number of academics on the boards remained stable during the first year of the Obama administration, The New York Times reported. The composition changes coincided with a rule by former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt barring anyone who had received EPA funding from sitting on a board. This posed a problem for academics, InsideClimate News explained, because the EPA funds a lot of environmental research. But the hole left by the academic members was filled by industry-linked scientists and private consultants, the report confirmed.

Indoor carbon dioxide levels could be a health hazard, scientists warn – Indoor levels of carbon dioxide could be clouding our thinking and may even pose a wider danger to human health, researchers say. While air pollutants such as tiny particles and nitrogen oxides have been the subject of much research, there have been far fewer studies looking into the health impact of CO2. However, the authors of the latest study – which reviews current evidence on the issue – say there is a growing body of research suggesting levels of CO2 that can be found in bedrooms, classrooms and offices might have harmful effects on the body, including affecting cognitive performance. Writing in the journal Nature Sustainability, Hernke and colleagues report that they considered 18 studies of the levels of CO2 humans are exposed to, as well as its health impacts on both humans and animals. Traditionally, the team say, it had been thought that CO2 levels would need to reach a very high concentration of at least 5,000 parts per million (ppm) before they would affect human health. But a growing body of research suggests CO2levels as low as 1,000ppm could cause health problems, even if exposure only lasts for a few hours. The team say crowded or poorly ventilated classrooms, office environments and bedrooms have all been found to have levels of CO2 that exceed 1,000ppm, and are spaces that people often remain in for many hours at a time. Air-conditioned trains and planes have also been found to exceed 1,000ppm. “Indoor environments are of much more concern presently and for many people that is where they spend 60-80% of their time,” said Hernke, although projections suggest by 2100 some large cities might reach outdoor CO2 levels of 1,000ppm for parts of the year. In one study of 24 employees, cognitive scores were 50% lower when the participants were exposed to 1,400ppm of CO2 compared with 550ppm during a working day. The team additionally looked at the impact of CO2 levels on animals, finding that a few hours’ exposure to 2,000 ppm was linked to inflammatory responses that could lead to damage to blood vessels. There is also tentative evidence suggesting that prolonged exposure to levels between 2,000 and 3,000ppm is linked to effects including stress, kidney calcification and bone demineralisation.

Rising CO2, climate change projected to reduce availability of nutrients worldwide – One of the biggest challenges to reducing hunger and undernutrition around the world is to produce foods that provide not only enough calories but also make enough necessary nutrients widely available. New research finds that, over the next 30 years, climate change and increasing carbon dioxide (CO2) could significantly reduce the availability of critical nutrients such as protein, iron, and zinc, compared to a future without it. The total impacts of climate change shocks and elevated levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are estimated to reduce growth in global per capita nutrient availability of protein, iron, and zinc by 19.5%, 14.4%, and 14.6%, respectively.The study, “A modeling approach combining elevated atmospheric CO2 effects on protein, iron and zinc availability with projected climate change impacts on global diets,” [LINK] was co-authored by an international group of researchers and published in the peer-reviewed journal, Lancet Planetary Health. The study represents the most comprehensive synthesis of the impacts of elevated CO2 and climate change on the availability of nutrients in the global food supply to date. Improvements in technology, and markets effects are projected to increase nutrient availability over current levels by 2050, but these gains are substantially diminished by the negative impacts of rising concentrations of carbon dioxide. While higher levels of CO2 can boost photosynthesis and growth in some plants, previous research has also found they reduce the concentration of key micronutrients in crops. The new study finds that wheat, rice, maize, barley, potatoes, soybeans, and vegetables are all projected to suffer nutrient losses of about 3% on average by 2050 due to elevated CO2 concentration.The effects are not likely to be felt evenly around the world, however, and many countries currently experiencing high levels of nutrient deficiency are also projected to be more affected by lower nutrient availability in the future.

Cigarette butts hamper plant growth – study – New research has discovered that cigarette butts – the most common form of litter on the planet – significantly reduce plant growth. Led by academics from Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) and published in the journal Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety, the study is the first to show the damage that cigarette butts can cause to plants. The researchers found that the presence of cigarette butts in the soil reduces the germination success and shoot length (the length of the stem) of clover by 27% and 28% respectively, while root biomass (root weight) reduced by 57%. For grass, germination success reduced by 10% and shoot length by 13%. Most cigarette butts contain a filter made of cellulose acetate fibre, a type of a bioplastic. Filters from unsmoked cigarettes had almost the same effect on plant growth as used filters, indicating that the damage to plants is caused by the filter itself, even without the additional toxins released from the burning of the tobacco. Control experiments contained pieces of wood of identical shape and size as the cigarette butts. It is estimated that around 4.5 trillion cigarette butts are littered every year, making them the most pervasive form of plastic pollution on the planet. As part of this study, the academics sampled locations around the city of Cambridge and found areas with as many as 128 discarded cigarette butts per square metre.

“Due To A Poor Harvest Season, We’re Experiencing Shortages On Many Canned Vegetable Items” –I know that this headline is alarming, but it is actually a direct quote from a notice that was recently posted in a Kroger supermarket. And as you will see below, similar notices are being posted in the canned vegetable sections of Wal-Mart stores nationwide. I would encourage you to examine the evidence in this article very carefully and to come to your own conclusions about what is happening. At this moment, social media is buzzing with reports of shortages of canned vegetables all around the country. But so far, the mainstream media is being eerily quiet about all of this. Is there a reason why they aren’t saying anything? For months, I have been reporting on the extremely bizarre weather patterns that are causing crop failures all over the planet. But I certainly did not expect that we would already begin to see product shortages on the shelves of major U.S. supermarkets this summer. What I am about to share with you is shocking, but the truth needs to get out. For those that share my articles on your own websites, I know that all of the images in this article are going to be an inconvenience, but it is imperative that you include them when you republish this article because they tell a story. All of the images are taken directly from Facebook, and they prove that we are now facing a nationwide shortage of canned vegetables. This first image was posted on Facebook by Scott L. Biddle, and it shows a “product shortage” notice that was posted in the canned vegetable section of a Wal-Mart in Tennessee… All the way over on the west coast, similar notices were photographed by Gina Helm Taylor in the state of Oregon on July 12th… And here are a couple of notices that Daniel Moore was able to photograph during his lunch break at his local Wal-Mart… It appears that the exact same notices were sent to Wal-Mart stores all across America. Here is another one from Carol Guy Hodges… And lastly, here is a photo that was shared by Randy Sevy… This certainly isn’t the end of the world, and we can definitely survive without canned vegetables for a few weeks. But as crop failures around the globe continue to intensify, will shortages such as this start to become increasingly common?

Sudden Oak Death detected in Ohio after stores receive infected shipments of plants – – The state Department of Agriculture reports that cases of the Sudden Oak Death disease have been found in Ohio. The plant pathogen, also known as phytophthora ramorum, was found on rhododendron and lilac plants shipped to Walmart and Rural King stores in Ohio. Officials estimate that 1,600 infected plants were shipped to stores throughout the state. Shipments also went to at least 17 other states. The disease can kill oak, other tree species and woody ornamentals like rhododendron, Viburnum and Pieris. Signs of the disease can include leaf spots, shoot dieback and cankers (dead wood material) on the tree’s trunk, which can lead eventually to the death of the tree or plant. Sudden Oak Death can be difficult to diagnose because symptoms are similar to infections from fungi or insects and other conditions. The disease has devastated oak trees in California and Oregon and can be spread by splashing rainwater on the spores of a diseased plant. The pathogen does not readily produce spores or spread naturally under dry conditions and is not common in urban or suburban areas where native vegetation has largely been removed. Anyone who purchased rhododendron or lilac plants from Walmart or Rural King between March and May should immediately dispose of the plants in a way to prevent further spread of the disease, officials with the state agriculture department’s Division of Plant Health said. Infected plants can be destroyed by burning, deep burial or double-bagging the plant – including the root ball – in heavy duty trash bags for disposal. To prevent further spreading, do not compost. Also to prevent spreading the disease, garden tools used on infected plants must also be sanitized with bleach or 91% or higher alcohol before they are used again.

Researchers think they know what’s killing London’s iconic sparrow -Once a common sight around London, house sparrow (Passer domesticus) populations have been declining for decades; they’re down 71% since 1995. Now, researchers believe they know why: a mosquito-borne disease called avian malaria.Scientists collected 3 years of data from 11 sparrow colonies around London where the birds breed. They counted raw numbers of birds each year, and collected blood and excrement from a number of individuals.Seven out of the 11 colonies were losing birds, and roughly 74% of the sparrows carried avian malaria (Plasmodium relictum). That’s the highest rate of infection with this parasite seen in any wild bird population in Northern Europe, the researchers report today in Royal Society Open Science. Avian malaria may be causing declines in Western Europe, North America, and India as well, the team says. Similar to other forms of malaria, avian malaria is spread when mosquitoes bite birds and feed on their blood. The disease can lead to infections that can be fatal to the birds, and they can pass the infection on to their offspring. Most sparrows carried the parasite, but the quantity of parasites found in each bird’s system was significantly higher in declining populations, especially in younger birds, the team found. The scientists don’t know why avian malaria is particularly prevalent in house sparrows, but they say further research may provide clues.

Florida’s Corals Are Dying Off, But It’s Not All Due To Climate Change, Study Says — Brian Lapointe, a research professor at Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, has spent his career studying corals at the Looe Key Reef, in a National Marine Sanctuary in the Florida Keys. Over that time, he’s witnessed an alarming trend. In the past 20 years, half of Florida corals have died off. Lapointe is lead author on a new paper in the journal Marine Biology. It analyzes 30 years of data he’s collected. When he started his research, in 1984, coral covered 33% of the Looe Key Sanctuary Preservation area, 5.3 square nautical miles of protected ocean at the southern tip of the Florida Keys. By 2014, the coral cover had dropped to just 5%. But Lapointe thought his study would show that warming temperatures were killing off corals. Instead, the data show that the coral’s biggest problem has been another human source: nitrogen Too much nitrogen, from poorly treated sewage, as well as fertilizer and topsoil from yards and farms, is messing up the water quality in the coral habitat, his data show. And when it comes to a fix, it’s easier to reduce nitrogen levels than to reverse climate change, Lapointe says. His conclusion? “There actually is hope for coral reefs after all.” Excess nitrogen feeds blooms of algae that block out the light. It also throws off the nutrient balance in the water in ways that disrupt the coral’s life cycle. As the nitrogen has increased, it hasn’t been balanced by a similar increase of phosphorus, a mineral corals need to grow. The imbalance, according to Lapointe, is starving the corals of phosphorus.”This [nitrogen to phosphorus imbalance] is what we now realize is increasingly stressing the corals at Looe Key, and probably other areas of Florida and the world,” he says. It makes the corals unhealthy, and more susceptible to disease, to go through coral bleaching, and to die, he says.

Waste Watch: Why Do We Discard So Many Edible Fish We Pull From the Sea? — Why, in an age of declining fish stocks and persistent global hunger, do we discard so many edible fish we pull from the sea?The short answer, as the Guardian reported yesterday in Ban on discarding edible fish caught at sea has failed – Lords report:The wasteful practice of discarding edible fish at sea has been one of the key charges levelled against the EU’s common fisheries policy, which requires fishing vessels to throw back fish if they have already exceeded their quota for certain species.The practice of discarding, which has resulted in an estimated 1m tonnes of fish a year being thrown back into the water, dead or in too poor a condition to carry on living, has been targeted for reform since 2011, when the EU said it would phase it out over several years in order to conserve fish populations.But fishermen still have an incentive to carry on with the practice, because it generates more money and allows them to spend longer at sea.The House of Lords conducted an inquiry into the so-called landing obligation, which came into effect at the beginning of this year, and was supposed to address this problem at least with respect to fishing in EU waters – but has not done so. As the Guardian notes: The ban on the wasteful discards of healthy and edible fish at sea has failed, according to a Lords report. Despite its enormous popularity with the British public, the measure has been poorly implemented in the UK and the result is more fish being needlessly wasted. According to a December 2018 piece in The Conversation, There aren’t plenty of fish in the sea, so let’s eat all that we catch, “bycatch” also afflicts Australia: Discarded fish accounts for 8% of the total global catch by volume. In Australia our reluctance to eat many types of fish makes the bycatch problem even worse. This region of the Southern Ocean is fished mostly for deepwater flathead and bight redfish. There are, in fact, 120 different species that can be caught, but only 60 of these are eaten. The means up to 56% of any catch is discarded

U.S. customs seizes 32 pounds of rat meat at Chicago O’Hare airport – Agents from the U.S. Customs and Borders Protection seized 32 pounds of rat meat at Chicago O’Hare Airport, the agency’s spokesman Steven Bansbach said Wednesday. The incident occurred on June 26 when a passenger traveling from the Ivory Coast declared he had meat upon arrival in Chicago, according to Bansbach. Yet upon inspection, agents determined it was African rat meat and needed to be destroyed. “It was destroyed because the meat may have carried diseases that aren’t allowed into the U.S.,” Bansbach said, though he declined to specify any specific diseases. The man who brought the meat was not issued a penalty.

Nearly 600 suspects arrested in largest anti-wildlife-trafficking operation ever -The World Customs Organization and INTERPOL retrieved thousands of endangered animals during a sweep of arrests across 109 countries.Every day, all day long, wildlife crime is happening – and it usually feels like a supremely depressing thing that seems somehow impossible to stop.But today we have been given a glimmer of hope. The World Customs Organization (WCO) and the International Criminal Police Organization (otherwise known as INTERPOL) have announced the success of Operation Thunderball. According to the WCO, in June the two agencies conducted nearly 2,000 seizures in a historic joint-operation, noting that “Initial results have led to the identification of almost 600 suspects, triggering arrests worldwide. Further arrests and prosecutions are foreseen as ongoing investigations progress.” Operation Thunderball made 1,828 seizures, including:

• 23 live primates
• 30 big cats and large quantities of animal parts
• 440 pieces of elephant tusks and an additional 1200 pounds of ivory
• Five rhino horns
• More than 4,300 birds
• Just under 1,500 reptiles and nearly 10,000 turtles and tortoises
• Almost 7,700 wildlife parts from all species
• 2,550 cubic meters of timber (equivalent to 74 truckloads)
• More than 2,600 plants
• Almost 10,000 marine wildlife items

Among the wildlife parts were seven packages of pangolin parts weighing 1200 pounds bound for Asia seized in Nigeria.

‘The Numbers Are Just Horrendous.’ Almost 30,000 Species Face Extinction Because of Human Activity – Overfishing, hunting and land development have pushed more species closer toextinction, according to a new report.The Red List report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature(IUCN) found that 27% of the more than 105,000 species the organization has analyzed are at risk of extinction, a total of 28,338 different species.IUCN also found that no species on its list have shown any sign of improvement since it was last updated in December 2018.“Things are not getting better, they are getting worse,” Craig Hilton-Taylor, head of the IUCN Red List unit, tells TIME.The Red List places the 105,732 species of plants and animals that it analyses into different categories: the number of species that are considered threatened fall into the categories of vulnerable, endangered and critically endangered. However, there are an additional 6,435 species that fall into the near-threatened category.The endangerment of species is not only a critical issue for animal and plant life but can also have a detrimental impact for humans. “The future of humanity – food, fresh water, drinking water, clean air – is all dependent on maintaining the biodiversity around us,” Hilton-Taylor says. “We can’t afford to lose any of these species.” Particularly threatened are species of Rhino Rays that have been overfished, in part for shark fin soup, a specialty in China and parts of Asia. There are also seven species of primates that have been hunted almost into extinction for bushmeat, and freshwater fish in Japan and Mexico that have declined in population because of pollution, invasive species and loss of free flowing rivers. Even deep-sea species are at risk because of deep-fishing and the oil and gas industries, according to IUCN.

Who Eats Lemurs – and Why? – For years now conservationists have warned that many of Madagascar’s iconic lemur species face the risk of extinction due to rampant deforestation, the illegal pet trade and the emerging market for the primates’ meat. Yes, people eat lemurs, and the reasons they do aren’t exactly what we might expect. One 2016 study found – perhaps not surprisingly – that Madagascar’s extreme poverty drives the poorest families to hunt and eat lemurs and other wildlife. The study was conducted in Masoala National Park, home to ten of Madagascar’s 110-plus lemur species, including several critically endangered species. Local hunters know that killing lemurs is against the law, but there’s a reason that doesn’t stop them. The study, published in Biological Conservation, found that “almost all children in lemur-hunting households were malnourished.” Wild-caught meat, tragically, is the only readily available solution for hungry families. The authors concluded that “unless lemur conservation efforts on the Masoala [peninsula] prioritize child health, they are unlikely to reduce lemur hunting or improve lemur conservation.” Although poverty is endemic in Madagascar, it’s not the only factor driving lemur consumption. Two additional studies published that year in PLOS One and in Environmental Conservation revealed that Madagascar’s wealthier and middle-class citizens are equal participants. The studies uncovered a massive supply chain that transports meat from lemurs and other endangered species into urban and semi-urban areas, where it is sold in restaurants, open-air markets and even supermarkets. The studies, the result of almost 2,000 interviews throughout the northern half of Madagascar, found that the meat trade in these more urban areas is not about poverty. Instead, it’s because people have a preference for wild-caught meat over more commercially grown livestock. mCombined with the first study, the two supply-chain papers reveal a complex answer as to who is eating lemurs and why.

3 million gallons of untreated sewage spills into Puget Sound – Officials are investigating after failures at sewage treatment plants in Seattle have led to the spill of an estimated 3 million gallons of untreated sewage into Puget Sound. Washington state’s Department of Ecology said in a statement that the spill was due in part to power disruptions.”The West Point Wastewater Treatment Plant released an estimated 3 million gallons of untreated sewage for approximately 27 minutes, after backup pumping systems failed during power disruptions at the plant,” their statement reads.”The release of sewage into Puget Sound has prompted local health departments to issue several beach closures,” the agency said.Officials say there was also separate power failure on July 18 at the Renton Wastewater Treatment Plant. That incident may have resulted in some wastewater not being entirely disinfected over a nearly hourlong period.Local officials initially listed nine beaches as closed in response to the spill, but as of 3:30 p.m. local time their list had been updated to just two beaches in Discovery Park.

‘Disgusting dumpsters’: Rome garbage crisis sparks health fears -Landfills in flames and rats feasting on waste in the streets have sparked health fears in Rome, as doctors warn families to steer clear of disease-ridden curbside garbage and locals launch a disgusting dumpster contest online. Crowds of summer tourists are forced to navigate overflowing bins in the stifling heat, as the pungent perfume of neglected garbage draws scavenging animals and the threat of disease to the Eternal City and locals fume over the city’s refuse management. Rome’s chief physician Antonio Magi has issued a “hygiene alert”, telling AFP this could be upgraded to a health warning, with disease spread through the faeces of insects and animals banqueting on rotting waste. His warning prompted local prosecutors to open an investigation this week into the city’s refuse collection. In the meantime, furious Rome residents have launched a contest on Twitter to find the most fetid dustbins. Adding to the indignation of Rome residents is the steep price they are paying for their garbage to rot in the streets. The city spent more than 597 euros ($670) per inhabitant on household waste treatment in 2017 — by far the highest in the country, ahead of Venice (353 euros) and Florence (266 euros), according to a report by the Openpolis Foundation. But the city lacks infrastructure: of its three main landfills, one has closed and the others were ravaged by fire in recent months. And two biological treatment sites have reduced their activities for maintenance work.

Thousands protest in central China against proposed waste incinerator – Thousands demonstrated in the central Chinese city of Wuhan recently in a week-long protest to denounce a planned garbage incinerator. The Chinese government mobilised police to quash the protests while, at the same time, mass demonstrations were continuing in Hong Kong. The Wuhan protests began on June 28, triggered by local government plans to establish the waste incinerator in densely-populated Yangluo in the Xinzhou district. While authorities claimed that a location for the incinerator had not yet been approved, this did little to assuage the fears of residents. As many as 10,000 people marched that weekend to voice their opposition. The suspected site is close to housing, surrounded by 300,000 residents and two universities within a three-kilometre radius. According to reports, the protest was violently broken up by over 1,000 police, who beat and arrested demonstrators, including the elderly. According to protesters, those detained were released a few days later. Assurances from the local government that the incinerator would not be installed without further environmental studies and community approval were met with deep distrust. Smaller protests continued on July 1 and 2, then 10,000 demonstrators defiantly marched back onto the streets on July 3 for two days. Protesters chanted “give us back the green mountains and clear waters” and “garbage burning plant get lost from Yangluo.”

Cambodia to Return 1,700 Tons of Plastic Waste to U.S., Canada – Cambodia is the latest Asian country to reject the wealthy world’s plastic waste. Government officials said Wednesday that they would send 1,600 tonnes (approximately 1,764 tons) of waste back to the U.S. and Canada after the trash was discovered in 83 containers Tuesday in the country’s port of Sihanoukville, CNN reported. “Cambodia is not a dustbin where foreign countries can dispose of out-of-date e-waste, and the government also opposes any import of plastic waste and lubricants to be recycled in this country,” said Neth Pheaktra, secretary of state and spokesman of the Ministry of Environment, as CNN reported. In addition to returning the waste, Cambodia is also investigating how the containers, which were misleadingly labeled as “recyclable products,” ended up there in the first place. The companies behind the shipment could face fines if found out. Seventy of the containers came from the U.S. and 13 from Canada, Pheaktra said, as The Guardian reported. Social media users also reacted to the delivery, The Guardian reported. Cambodia’s decision follows similar moves by Asian countries in recent months, who have gotten fed up with the influx of foreign waste after China banned imports in 2018. Malaysia vowed in May to return 3,300 tons of waste shipped from countries including the U.S., UK, Australia and Canada. The Philippines, meanwhile, recalled its ambassador to Ottawa after Canada missed a May 15 deadline to take back tons of rubbish. Canada later agreed to pay for its return by the end of June.

Large earthquakes rock Indonesia, Western Australia –A massive 7.3 earthquake has hit off the remote Maluku Islands in eastern Indonesia, damaging homes and sending panicked residents running into the streets and fleeing to temporary shelters. The quake comes hours after Western Australia felt its strongest ever earthquake, which shook residents from Broome to as far south as Perth.The Indonesian quake struck about 165 kilometres south-southwest of the town of Ternate in North Maluku province at 6:28pm local time, at a depth of 10 kilometres, according to the US Geological Survey. Officials were assessing the situation but there were no immediate reports of casualties, Mansur said. No tsunami warning is in place. The province was also hit by a 6.9-magnitude tremor last week but no extensive damage was reported. The Australian quake registered at 6.6 magnitude off the Kimberley coast in the Indian Ocean about 3.39pm AEST.It was followed by a series of aftershocks including a 4.1 quake. No damage or casualties have been reported.The United States Geological Survey said that quake hit at a depth of 33km, about 203km offshore from Broome.WA residents from Broome, Port Headland, Karratha, Busselton and Perth all reported feeling shakes from the quake.

Friday earthquakes on a crustal fault show it’s not only the ‘Big One’ we should fear – Seattle Times – The Cascadia Subduction Zone may get most of the attention, but as Friday’s earthquakes north of Seattle show, the monster fault off the coast isn’t our only seismic threat.Western Washington is also crisscrossed by more than a dozen large, shallow faults – cracks in the Earth’s crust capable of unleashing damaging earthquakes. Seattle, Tacoma, Everett, Olympia and Bremerton all sit uncomfortably close to crustal faults. And new evidence suggests that in the aggregate, those faults might rupture more frequently than previously thought. The magnitude 4.6 quake that struck early Friday morning near Monroe originated more than 17 miles down on a previously unknown fault and in an area seismologists don’t understand well. The focus, or point where the fracture started, was several miles beneath the Southern Whidbey Island Fault (SWIF) zone – a wide swath of fractures that cuts diagonally across the state from Victoria, B.C, to the Tri-Cities area on the Columbia River. Washington’s major crustal faults can generate quakes as big as magnitude 7 to 7.5, Sherrod said. While that’s far less powerful than a magnitude 9 subduction zone megaquake, a quake of that size near any city in the state would be devastating. Geologists used to think large crustal fault quakes in Washington struck very rarely – only every thousand years or so, on average. But Sherrod and his colleagues recently analyzed all the geologic data from 15 faults in the Puget lowlands, and found evidence of 21 quakes of magnitude 6.6 or greater in the last 4,000 years. After statistical analysis, the researchers concluded that means a big quake rocks one fault or another every 250 years on average.

Quick Fixes Are Worsening Chennai’s Water Crisis —An article in The Hindu celebrates the fact that Metrowater – Chennai’s Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board – has arranged for a water train that will bring in 2.75 million litres of water from Jolarpet. Just the transportation component will cost the body Rs 8.67 lakh. That works out to Rs 3.17/litre, or Rs 3,170 per kilolitre (kl).At that price, the water that arrives from Jolarpet is thrice as expensive as the water provided in the bubble-top plastic containers. This additional cost is merely for transportation. The costs of extraction at the source, pumping, treatment and distribution are not factored in. Distribution of this water through tanker lorries is a costly proposition, and will add to the financial burden of the city.Compare the transportation cost – Rs 3,170/kl – of Jolarpet water with that from other sources. If you had your own well/borewell with sufficient water, your cost would be 1,000 times lower – about Rs 3/kl. Water from Redhills (when available) costs Rs 4/kl excluding distribution costs. Veeranam water costs Rs 22/kl, not counting distribution costs. Even desalinated water – already the most expensive option – costs Rs 45 per 1,000 litres or 5 paise/litre. Desperate times require desperate measures, I agree with that. I do not wish to make the task of Metrowater officials more difficult. As it is they are dealing with a horrible situation created by the lapses of other departments of the city administration, namely the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board, the Public Works Department, the Chennai Municipal Corporation, the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority, the Chennai Rivers Restoration Trust etc. That being said, the least Metrowater can do is to play an important role in influencing the activities of the city. It has, in fact, allowed rampant encroachment into wetlands and water recharge zones, and continues to do so.

Deaths, displacement as heavy rain and floods hit northeast India – Rain-triggered floods and mudslides in India’s northeast have killed over a dozen people and displaced more than a million from their homes, with officials warning the situation could worsen in the coming days. Heavy monsoon rains in Assam state killed at least 10 people in the past 72 hours, state authorities said on Saturday, while six people were reportedly killed in Arunachal Pradesh, which borders China’s Tibet region. “Ten people have died in separate incidents of drowning in the past three days and more than one million people [have been] affected, with the flood situation turning grave,” a flood bulletin issued by the Assam government said. The Brahmaputra River, which flows from the Himalayas into India and then through Bangladesh, has burst its banks, swamping more than 1,800 villages in the state, which is on maximum alert due to heavy rains. Torrential rains have affected at least 25 of Assam’s 33 districts and the federal water resources body said water levels in the Brahmaputra were expected to rise, with more rains forecast over the next three days. “The flood situation remains extremely critical,” Assam’s Water Resources Minister Keshab Mahanta told Reuters news agency.Elsewhere in Assam, the Kaziranga National Park – home to the endangered one-horn rhinoceros – has been flooded. The park is located 185km from the state capital, Dispur. “The rhinos and other animals are taking shelter in artificially created higher ground or have crossed the highway to higher areas,” said Jukti Borak, a park official. Authorities prohibited vehicles from speeding on the highway that runs along the park. Apart from the estimated 2,500 rhinos, Kaziranga is home to a variety of wild animals that cross the highway in search of higher ground during floods.

Scores killed, millions displaced as monsoon batters South Asia – More than 100 people have been killed and millions of others forced from their homes across Nepal, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh as rain-triggered floods and landslides left a trail of destruction in parts of South Asia. The death toll was the highest in Nepal, where torrential rains unleashed mudslides and caused rivers to overflow, killing at least 67 people and leaving 30 others missing, officials said on Monday.The annual deluge, which hit the country on Thursday and has impacted around a third of all districts, has so far displaced at least 10,000 people there.The downpours have eased but authorities still fear the death toll could rise, according to police spokesman Bishwaraj Pokharel.”There are the challenges of resettlement of the displaced as many houses … have been swept away. We are also cautious about the risk of epidemics due to polluted water,” Pokharel told AFP news agency.The June to September monsoon causes widespread death and destruction across South Asia each year. In the latest monsoon-related tragedy in India, a four-storey building on a hillside in the northern state of Himachal Pradesh collapsed due to heavy downpours, trapping those who had gathered for a party inside.At least 14 people were killed, including 13 soldiers, according to a statement from the chief minister’s office. Floods have also devastated much of the northeastern state of Assam, where some 4.3 million people have been forced from their homes in the last 10 days due to rising waters across the mostly rural region, according to a government release on Monday.”The flood situation has turned very critical with 31 of the 32 districts affected,” Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal told reporters. “We are working on a war footing to deal with the flood situation.”

Heatwave rages on as monsoon pauses – The southwest monsoon has lost momentum, making only marginal progress since reaching the Andaman and Nicobar Islands two weeks ago. An intense heatwave in parts of northern, central and western India has raised temperatures above 50° Celsius.The India Meteorological Department (IMD) said rains will hit the Kerala coast on June 6. Private forecaster Skymet, which initially forecast a June 4 arrival, now says it will take another three days.The arrival date has little bearing on the subsequent progress of the monsoon, which has a significant influence on rural income and demand for consumer goods, automobiles and gold. Farmers can also put up with some delay without taking a hit on yields. However, Skymet said monsoon will remain weak even after arrival. “In fact, it may go silent soon after its onset,” it said in a recent update.

The IMD says the monsoon will resume its journey towards the subcontinent in the next 24 hours. In an updated forecast, it said June-September rainfall will be normal, or within 4% of average. Adding to the anxiety is the severe heatwave that is seeing soaring temperatures. Chu-ru, Rajasthan, tops the charts with a maximum of 50.8°C. Apart from the obvious health hazards, farmers face severe depletion of soil moisture.There has also been a surge in power demand as refrigerators and airconditioners consume that much more energy. The scorching heat is forecast to intensify. “Maximum temperatures are very likely to rise gradually by 2-4°C over major parts of northwest India in the next three to four days. They are likely to remain above normal by 2-3°C over some parts of south peninsula in the next three days. No significant change in maximum temperatures is likely over rest of the country in the next two to three days,” said IMD’s latest weather bulletin.

Earth Experiences Hottest June Ever on Record in 2019 – As per the data released by the American space agency NASA on Monday, the global average land-ocean temperatures were 0.93°C above the normal temperature (taking 1951 to 1980 as base years). Such high temperatures have never been observed on Earth in recorded history since 1880. June of 2016 was the second-highest at 0.82°C above normal temperatures. A strong El Niño in 2015-16 was behind the high temperatures that year. Despite being a weak El Niño year, the margin with which this year’s June temperatures have breached the 2016 levels is a cause of concern for the climate community. As the push to declare climate emergency is gaining pace across the globe, the record temperatures of June is likely to feed the movement. In India, June witnessed intense heatwaves across the country due to the delayed arrival of monsoon. The temperatures breached 50°C in parts of Rajasthan, and the national capital Delhi recorded the highest ever June day temperature on June 10. Moreover, the temperatures skyrocketed across Europe with many countries witnessing the highest ever temperatures on record. Earlier, European climate institution Copernicus also reported that June 2019 was the warmest on record. Moreover, experts believe that July is also well on track to be the hottest ever, as North America and the middle-east continue to record extreme temperatures.

Historic heat wave is double whammy for climate change – Nearly two-thirds of the U.S. is expected to be hit by a massive weekend heat wave, forcing energy companies to brace for maxed out grids and potential blackouts. It will also create a spike in carbon emissions, as the use of fossil fuels by people seeking to cool down expands. In Texas, the Midwest, the mid-Atlantic and New England, states are facing historic heat advisories, with temperatures expected to reach into the 100s in some places. Some weather experts estimate that more than 85 percent of the lower 48 states will experience temperatures of at least 90 degrees between Friday and Tuesday. Almost 50 percent of those states will experience temperatures higher than 95 degrees. All of that will lead to spikes in energy use. “A lot of Americans don’t really have a deep understanding of the energy they are using and the fact that time of the day and peak energy is peak fossil fuel use. It’s a double whammy in terms of climate,” said Kiran Bhatraju, CEO of Arcadia Power. Increasing temperatures will likely result in increased air conditioning usage, a phenomenon power companies are keeping an eye on to make sure energy demand doesn’t exceed availability. New York’s Independent System Operator said it’s expecting peak energy loads between Friday and Sunday in excess of 30,000 megawatts (MW).

July 2019 El Niño update: I think I’ll go for a walk – Emily Becker, NOAA –El Niño is hanging on by its fingernails, but forecasters predict this event will wind down within the next couple of months. It’s likely that the temperature of the tropical Pacific Ocean surface will return to near-average soon, qualifying for “ENSO-neutral” conditions. Neutral conditions are favored to remain through the fall and winter. The June Niño3.4 index, our primary ENSO measurement, was 0.6°C above the long-term average, just above the El Niño threshold of 0.5°C. There is some evidence that theatmosphere over the central Pacific is still responding to that extra heating, as a bit more clouds and rain than average were present in June. The Southern Oscillation Index and Equatorial Southern Oscillation Index were both slightly negative in June, also indicating some continuation of the weakened Walker circulation we expect to see with El Niño. But the upper-level and near-surface winds over the equatorial Pacific, another component of the Walker circulation, were close to average during June. All in all, El Niño is still present, but just barely. As frequent readers of this blog will know, we closely monitor the temperature of the water under the surface of the tropical Pacific. This can tell us if there is a source of warmer-than-average water to supply the surface, continuing to fuel El Niño, or not. In early June, there was a small downwelling Kelvin wave of warmer waters moving eastward under the surface of the Pacific, but this wave has dissipated recently. Overall, the heat content in the top 300 meters of the equatorial Pacific is just about average now, in early July. This is one of the major factors in our forecast for a return to near-average surface temperatures and neutral ENSO conditions. Once the surface temperatures return to average, and the source of extra heat to the air above the central Pacific is gone, the atmospheric component of El Niño – that weakened Walker circulation – will also return to average.

High water, washouts in southwest Arkansas – Drivers in southwest Arkansas are being urged to use caution as a number of roads in the area are closed due to high water and washouts. The 911 system in Howard County, including in Nashville and Dierks is also out of service due to the flood emergency. . Emergency staff are on standby at the Nashville Ambulance station located at 120 W. Sypert in Nashville. KTBS 3 News viewer Tami Westfall shared incredible video with us of Nashville Primary School. It shows dangerous floodwaters swamping the campus. The area around Nashville City Hall also flooded Tuesday morning according to the Nashville News-Leader. The Arkansas Department of Transportation reports flooding in a number of areas in Howard, Pike, Nevada and Hempstead counties. A culvert has failed just west of Prescott in Hempstead County, according to ARDOT.In Nevada County, a section of U.S. Highway 371 was closed due to a washout. In Howard County, a section of U.S. Highway 70 was closed due to high water. Drivers are urged to use caution and avoid these areas.The Arkansas Department of Transportation has advised that waters have receded enough to re-open eastbound traffic on I-30. Tuesday’s flooding is also forcing the University of Arkansas Hope – Texarkana to close both the Hope and Texarkana campuses. The schools are expected to resume normal work hours on Wednesday.

Barry’s 14.58″ of Rain in Arkansas Breaks All-Time State Record –Rainfall from Tropical Depression Barry deluged southwest Arkansas over the past three days, with the 14.58″ that fell at Murfreesboro on July 14 – 16 breaking the all-time state record for precipitation from a tropical cyclone. Barry’s heavy rains that fell over southwest Arkansas inundated multiple highways, including I-30, and prompted four high-water rescues, according to weather.com. The heaviest rains from Barry have been in Louisiana, though, with 23.58″ at Beauregard.On Tuesday, the heavy rains of Barry reached all the way into Michigan–a state unaccustomed to seeing tropical cyclone impacts. Heavy rains obscured visibility on I-96 north of Ann Arbor, causing a 40+ car pile-up that injured six people, and over 4″ of rain fell in less than two hours at stations in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti–not far below the all-time state tropical cyclone precipitation record of 6.07″ set in 1961 from Hurricane Carla. Barry’s rainfall record in Arkansas is the fifth state all-time tropical cyclone precipitation record to fall in a span of less than two years, which is a pretty remarkable pace of record-breaking, since all-time state records are difficult to break. Just last year, slow-moving Hurricane Florence shattered the state precipitation record for both North Carolina (35.93″) and South Carolina (23.63″), and Category 5Hurricane Lane broke Hawaii’s all-time record with 52.02″ at Mountain View on the Big Island. Back in August 2017, Hurricane Harvey stalled over Texas and brought 60.58″ to Nederland, Texas. This smashed the all-time record not only for Texas, but for the entire U.S. A total of 12 states have beaten their all-time tropical cyclone precipitation record since 2000. Update: Dierks, Arkansas reported a 24-hour rainfall amount of 16.17″ July 15 – 16, 2019, from Tropical Depression Barry, with an additional 0.42″ falling during the previous three days, potentially from Barry. The storm total of 16.17 – 16.59″ thus establishes a new all-time state record for rain from a tropical cyclone.

As Flood Risks Rise Across the US, It’s Time to Recognize the Limits of Levees – New Orleans averted disaster this month when tropical storm Barry delivered less rain in the Crescent City than forecasters originally feared. But Barry’s slog through Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee and Missouri is just the latest event in a year that has tested levees across the central U.S.Many U.S. cities rely on levees for protection from floods. There are more than 100,000 miles of levees nationwide, in all 50 states and one of every five counties. Most of them seriously need repair: Levees received a D on the American Society of Civil Engineers’ 2018 national infrastructure report card. Levees shield farms and towns from flooding, but they also create risk. When rivers rise, they can’t naturally spread out in the floodplain as they did in the pre-flood control era. Instead, they flow harder and faster and send more water downstream. And climate models show that flood risks are increasing. During this year’s unusually wet winter and spring, dozens of levees on the Missouri, Mississippi and Arkansas rivers were overtopped or breached by floodwaters. Across the central U.S., rivers are becoming increasingly hard to control. Today Kansas City and many other U.S. river towns are fortified behind levees and floodwalls, but faith in the idea of engineered flood control is starting to erode.Disastrous Midwest flooding in the summer of 1993, which killed 50 people and caused US$15 billion in damages, showed the limitations of this strategy. Floodwaters rose to unprecedented levels, eventually breaching or overtopping more than 1,000 levees.After the waters ebbed, federal and state officials paid to move some homes and communities off floodplains to higher ground. However, this trend quickly reversed. By 2008, Missouri had authorized more than $2 billion of new development in zones that were flooded in 1993.Many Kansas City residents still believe that higher, stronger levees will hold back future floods, and Congress has authorized millions of dollars to build them. But experienced engineers like retired Army Brigadier General Gerald Galloway, who coauthored a federal government assessment of the 1993 floods, warn that “there’s no such thing as absolute protection.”For their part, many scientists and engineers have found that levees can exacerbate floods by pushing river waters to new heights. One 2018 study estimated that about 75% of increases in the magnitude of 100-year floods on the lower Mississippi River over the past 500 years could beattributed to river engineering. Kansas City is still an economic hub, but railroads and highways have been more important than barges. The Missouri carries only a fraction of the tonnage shipped on other navigable rivers, such as the Mississippi, even though its channel has been expensively built and maintained for over 100 years.

High-tide flooding on the rise, especially along the east coast, forecasters warn – Sea levels are rising, and that is sending more ocean water into streets, sewers and homes. For people who live and work in coastal communities, that means more otherwise-sunny days disrupted by flooding. “Really the future is now in terms of sea level rise impacts,” says William Sweet, an oceanographer for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Average sea levels have already started rising as a result of global climate change. “The ocean is at the brim. It’s clogging storm water systems and it’s spilling into streets.” For the last five years, Sweet and a team of forecasters at NOAA have been tracking the number of so-called high-tide flood days in coastal cities, in order to help local officials understand trends and plan ahead. Their latest report, released today, finds that the number of high-tide flood days is rising significantly in more than 40 coastal communities. While West Coast and Gulf Coast cities including San Diego, Seattle, Galveston and Houston are being affected, the biggest increases in flood risk are concentrated on the East Coast. In 2018, 12 communities broke or tied their previous records for the number of days with high-tide flooding, some with more than 20 days of storm-free flooding, according to the report. All were on the Eastern seaboard, from Massachusetts down to Florida.”The East Coast has a very highly populated, developed coastline that has experienced relatively high rates of sea level rise over the last several decades,” says Sweet. “It has a very active coastline: the water moves when the winds or the ocean currents change,” he says. “All of this is creating a situation where high-tide flooding – which is a direct result of sea level rise – is becoming apparent and more problematic throughout the coast.”

A floodier future’: Scientists say records will be broken (AP) – The federal government is warning Americans to brace for a “floodier” future. Government scientists predict 40 places in the U.S. will experience higher than normal rates of so-called sunny day flooding this year because of rising sea levels and an abnormal El Nino weather system. A report released Wednesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts that sunny day flooding, also known as tidal flooding, will continue to increase. “The future is already here, a floodier future,” said William Sweet, a NOAA oceanographer and lead author of the study. The report predicted that annual flood records will be broken again next year and for years and decades to come from sea-level rise. “Flooding that decades ago usually happened only during a powerful or localized storm can now happen when a steady breeze or a change in coastal current overlaps with a high tide,” it read. The nationwide average frequency of sunny day flooding in 2018 was five days a year, tying a record set in 2015. But the East Coast averaged twice as much flooding. The agency says the level of sunny day flooding in the U.S. has doubled since 2000. Nationwide, the agency predicted, average sunny day flooding could reach 7 to 15 days a year by 2030, and 25 to 75 days a year by 2050. “We cannot wait to act,” said Nicole LeBoeuf, acting director of NOAA’s Ocean Service. “This issue gets more urgent and complicated with every passing day.”

Creditors Start Asking Coastal Cities For Their Climate Plans – Financial credit rating institutions want answers from coastal cities about how they’re preparing for climate-change impacts like sea level rise and whether they can pay for their adaptation plans, the mayor of Honolulu said July 17.Mayor Kirk Caldwell (D), who has been leading Hawaii’s capital city since 2013, said he was asked for the first time by credit raters like Moody’s Corp. and Fitch Ratings Inc. during recent presentations in San Francisco on municipal bonds about how the city is addressing climate change impacts. For example, Moody’s Analytics in a June report found climate change impacts such as rising temperatures, intensifying extreme weather events, and sea level rise would disrupt communities, threaten infrastructure, and hurt economic productivity. His remarks, during the first hearing of the ad hoc Democratic Senate Committee on the Climate Crisis, underscores the attention financial institutions are increasingly paying to climate change risk.For example, Moody’s Analytics in a June report found climate change impacts such as rising temperatures, intensifying extreme weather events, and sea level rise would disrupt communities, threaten infrastructure, and hurt economic productivity. “They sit there and then look like investment banker type guys, and they’re just concerned about, ‘We’re issuing bonds. We’re rating your bonds. And are you going to be able to pay them back given what’s occurring in your city?’” Caldwell told Democratic senators of his recent presentation.

Why ocean acidification could make some geoengineering schemes irrelevant – The idea of runaway ocean acidification has now joined the idea of runaway global warming as a threat so large that it stands almost co-equal in its danger. Part of the problem with ocean acidification is that geoengineering schemes for lowering Earth’s temperature by reducing the sunlight that reaches the Earth’s surface won’t affect ocean acidification. And recent research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggests that there is a tipping point in acidification beyond which the process becomes self-reinforcing and could lead to a mass extinction. The idea of runaway global warming has been around for a while. In its original form it was speculation about whether the Earth could enter an unstoppable process that appears to have occurred on Venus billions of years ago and boiled its oceans away – leaving a planet so hot that surface temperatures today are high enough to melt lead. A less catastrophic but still frightening form of runaway warming has been called “Hothouse Earth,” an Earth 4 to 5 degrees Celsius warmer, that is, up to 9 degrees Fahrenheit hotter. Such scenarios have scientists thinking about geoengineering schemes that could stop such extreme scenarios from occurring. The scientists are considering these schemes because human civilization seems incapable of taking the one truly critical step that those scientists believe is the best option: dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But those geoengineering schemes which block a portion of sunlight do nothing to prevent the ongoing acidification of the oceans. This occurs as more and more carbon dioxide dissolves in ocean waters. The dissolved carbon dioxide turns into a mild acid, carbonic acid, which interferes with the formation of shells of marine life and many other life processes in the ocean. When those shells fail to form, carbon dioxide previously removed from the water by their formation instead increases in a self-inforcing manner. The greater the concentration gets, the worse the effects will be on marine life. It’s difficult to predict how mass death in the world’s oceans would affect land species like ourselves, but it is highly doubtful it would be anything but negative. The study cited above demonstrates the possibility that beyond a certain concentration, the carbonic acid triggers a cascade of change in ocean chemistry similar to that believed to have occurred during previous mass extinction events. Given the current pace of acidification, the world’s oceans are likely to reach this trigger point by the end of the century.

Greenland Was on Fire This Week Amid ‘Unprecedented’ Arctic Burn Two years ago, Greenland lit ablaze. It was weird, and a harbinger of things to come on our changing planet. It just didn’t seem like they would come again so soon.Satellites spotted another wildfire in western Greenland this week. The blaze first showed up on Wednesday. Though already out and not on the scale of 2017’s inferno, this year’s wildfire highlights the increasing risks of fires in high latitudes and comes in a year that’s seeing an “unprecedented” amount of wildfire activity in the Arctic. The fire lit up near Qeqqata Kommunia on Greenland’s western flank. It appears near a shelter on the Arctic Circle Trail and it’s possible that hikers started the fire unintentionally or otherwise. Fire crews were able to smother the flames according to the Greenlandic Broadcasting Corporation. But forecasts from the European Commission’s Global Wildfire Information System shows that the risk of fires remains high to very high over the next week in western Greenland.“We are experiencing a huge drought,” Karl Jørgen Lennert, a commissioner in the region, told the Greenlandic Broadcasting Corporation. “We got up [sic] early spring and the snow melted very quickly. That is why there is drought all over.”

The Arctic burns with unprecedented fires – Smoke is rising over the forests of Alaska and Siberia. The World Meteorological Organization called the wildfires now burning around the Arctic “unprecedented.” The United Nations agency noted that over 100 intense fires burned in the Arctic Circle alone over the past six weeks, releasing more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than Sweden does in an entire year. A rare fire even ignited in Greenland, amid unusually hot and dry weather.Amplified wildfires are an expected, predictable consequence of a warming climate. This is all the more true in the Arctic, a sprawling region that is heating up twice as fast as the rest of the globe. The profound changes here can be easily observed over the Arctic ocean, too, where sea ice has broken records for melting throughout the 2019 summer.Over the course of 10 days in July, Alaskan wildfires burned an area of land the size of Rhode Island. This is way above normal – though this doesn’t match Alaska’s extreme burning of 2015. Just across the Bering Sea, in Siberia, NASA satellite images from July 13 show dense smoke swirling over eastern Russia, with red spots designating wildfires. The future may have its many unknowns. But it’s almost certain that the Arctic will be a smokier place as the region continues a relentless, accelerating warming trend.

Sea Level Rise: West Antarctic Ice Collapse May Be Prevented by Snowing Ocean Water Onto It – The ice sheet covering West Antarctica is at risk of sliding off into the ocean. While further ice-sheet destabilisation in other parts of the continent may be limited by a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, the slow, yet inexorable loss of West Antarctic ice is likely to continue even after climate warming is stabilised. A collapse might take hundreds of years but will raise sea levels worldwide by more than three meters. A team of researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) is now scrutinising a daring way of stabilising the ice sheet: Generating trillions of tons of additional snowfall by pumping ocean water onto the glaciers and distributing it with snow canons. This would mean unprecedented engineering efforts and a substantial environmental hazard in one of the world’s last pristine regions — to prevent long-term sea level rise for some of the world’s most densely populated areas along coastlines from the US to China. “The fundamental trade-off is whether we as humanity want to sacrifice Antarctica to safe the currently inhabited coastal regions and the cultural heritage that we have built and are building on our shores. It is about global metropolises, from New York to Shanghai, which in the long term will be below sea level if nothing is done” explains Anders Levermann, physicist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and Columbia University and one of the authors of the study. “The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is one of the tipping elements in our climate system. Ice loss is accelerating and might not stop until the West Antarctic ice sheet is practically gone.”

EIA expects U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions to fall in 2019 – After a 2.7% increase in U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2018, EIA’s July Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) forecasts a 2.2% decrease in CO2 emissions for 2019. Nearly all of the forecast decrease is due to fewer emissions from coal consumption. Forecast natural gas CO2 emissions increase and petroleum CO2 emissions remain virtually unchanged. Based on data in EIA’s Monthly Energy Review, energy-related CO2 emissions in the first three months of 2019 were largely similar to those in the first three months of 2018. In the first quarter of 2019, EIA estimates that U.S. energy-related emissions totaled 1,367 million metric tons (MMmt), which is nearly equal to those in the first quarter of 2018. The first quarter of the year is typically the period with the highest CO2 emissions in the United States, and therefore, heavily influences the overall annual trend. In the past 30 years, only 6 years have had an overall annual emissions trend that was different than that of the year’s first quarter. If EIA’s emissions forecast is realized, 2019 will be the seventh such year, with overall emissions decreasing from 2018 values despite a first-quarter increase.For the remainder of the year, EIA expects that relatively mild forecast temperatures will keep energy demand and resulting energy-related CO2 emissions below last year’s levels. EIA’s expectations for weather are largely based on forecasts produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center. EIA forecasts that CO2 emissions from coal will decrease by 169 MMmt in 2019, the largest decrease in CO2 emissions from coal since 2015. Conversely, EIA projects CO2 emissions from natural gas to increase by 53 MMmt. Both changes are largely due to forecast changes in the electricity generation mix as natural gas continues to grow as the most prevalent electricity generation fuel.

Moving away from fossil fuels will be costly and slow … but essential, UBS says – Last year saw global energy demand increase at its fastest rate since 2010, according to a research note from analysts at UBS Monday. The note said that although there was a “growing desire” to transition away from fossil fuels, “demand for most energy resources, including fossil fuels” would continue to rise. It added that while renewable fuel supplies were set to increase at a fast pace, diversification from non-renewable resources would be expensive and time consuming, “Despite growing aspirations to diversify away from fossil fuels, we think demand for most energy resources, including oil, coal, and natural gas, is likely to keep rising over the coming decade,” the UBS analysts said in the research. “We believe supplies of renewable energy will keep rising at an unprecedented pace over the next few decades. But diversification of our current energy resource base away from non-renewable energy resources such as oil, coal, and natural gas on a meaningful scale will be costly and time consuming. We expect the transition to occur only gradually.” However, the research team added that the development of renewable energy was “essential” and a “necessary step in securing our energy future.” The environmental benefits of renewable sources of energy were cited as the “key motivator” for the development of renewables in the near term. The note said that diversification would be needed to “mitigate the risk of instability in energy availability and pricing.” This would be especially pertinent in times of supply or demand shocks in the oil and gas markets, it added. The renewable energy sector employed 11 million people in 2018, according to a recent report from the International Renewable Energy Association (IRENA). Most renewable energy jobs were in the solar photovoltaic industry, which employed 3.6 million people, according to IRENA.

Climate Change Lawsuits Increase Globally – Jerri-lynn Scofield – Climate change lawsuits have now been filed in at least twenty-eight countries, according to a new report Global trends in climate change litigation: 2019 snapshot, published last week by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics.I was alerted to this report by an account in the excellent Climate Liability News, Climate Litigation Has Become a Global Trend, New Report Shows.The first such lawsuit was filed in 1990. More than three-quarters of these lawsuits have been filed in the US, where as of May 2019, 1,023 cases have been filed(report, p.2). This litigation is at present concentrated not only in the US, but also in other high-income countries, including Australia, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Canada, and Spain (see Table 1 below).But this phenomenon is not limited to wealthy countries alone. The report noted that “despite significant capacity constraints, the number of legal cases in low- and middle-income countries has been growing in quantity and importance”:These include cases in Pakistan, India, the Philippines, Indonesia, South Africa, Colombia and Brazil. Litigants in these cases are seeking to hold governments to account for implementation and enforcement of existing mitigation and adaptation goals, embedding concerns about climate change in wider disputes over constitutional rights, environmental protection, land use, disaster management and natural resource conservation (Peel and Lin, forthcoming).Climate change litigation in low- and middle-income countries has already seen initial positive and innovative outcomes. These include the recognition of human rights as a legitimate basis for holding government to account for climate change (Ashgar Leghari v. Federation of Pakistan – see Box 4); recognition of a non-human entity as the subject of rights (Future Generations v. Ministry of the Environment and Others); and recognition of climate change as a relevant consideration in environmental planning (EarthLife Africa Johannesburg v. Minister of Environmental Affairs and Others). Governments comprise the bulk of defendants in these lawsuits, brought by citizens, corporations, and NGOs; but plaintiffs are increasingly targeting companies in actions brought by cities and states, and activist shareholders and investors.

Philanthropists Raise $600 Million for Extinction Rebellion and School Strikers – Heeding the call of grassroots campaigners, several wealthy philanthropists announced Friday a new fund that will raise money for climate action groups around the world. Investor Trevor Neilson, filmmaker Rory Kennedy and Aileen Getty of the Getty Oil family have so far raised more than $625,000 for their Climate Emergency Fund (CEF). The philanthropists plan to raise at least 100 times that amount over the next several months by appealing to other rich and powerful contacts around the globe, calling on them to use their immense wealth to help demand that governments take immediate, decisive climate action. Echoing the message that groups like Extinction Rebellion and the School Strike for Climate movement have been spreading for months, Neilson said he recently realized that most people who hold enough wealth to potentially sway lawmakers haven’t grasped that incremental progress to fight the climate crisis is not sufficient. “The world’s biggest philanthropists are still in a gradualist mindset,” Neilson told The Guardian. “We do not have time for gradualism.” Extinction Rebellion, which will receive a large portion of the money raised by the fund so far and which inspired Neilson to use his wealth for the cause, welcomed the development of CEF. “It’s a signal that we are coming to a tipping point,” said a spokesperson. “In the past, philanthropy has often been about personal interest, but now people are realizing that we are all in this together and putting their money forward for our collective well-being.” The money raised by CEF will also go to the School Strike for Climate. Other grassroots campaigners will be able to apply for three levels of funding: for start-ups, groups that want to create a permanent structure for their activism work, and established campaigns that are ready to organize large-scale events and pay salaries to organizers..

Extinction Rebellion Protesters Arrested in London – Six Extinction Rebellion protesters were arrested as they blocked off corporations in the UK. The group had increased their actions to week-long nationwide protests. Hundreds of protesters obstructed the entrance to the London Concrete site beginning on Tuesday. They sported banners outside the company entrance including one saying “The air that we grieve.”London Concrete is the capital’s biggest supplier of ready-mixed concrete.In a statement, Extinction Rebellion member Eleanor McAree said “concrete has a huge environmental impact and building another tunnel will only make air pollution across East London worse.””Air pollution is already at dangerous levels and is affecting the health of children and adults in the area,” she added. Police said they had arrested six people after they were caught trespassing and obstructing a highway.The concrete industry is the third largest emitter of CO2 gas in the world, just behind aviation and energy production, according to the online English newspaper Carbon Brief. It produces more emissions than any country other than the U.S. or China. British think tank Chatham House warned this month that around four billion tons of cement are produced a year. To keep to the Paris agreement, this would have to fall by at least 16% by 2030, their report said.

The extinction rebellion should not be streamed – Out of sight, out of carbon-footprint mind. And that, by and large, is the problem with the digital economy. Since we can’t see or feel the pollution emanating from our selfies and videos streams, there’s a perception these services are boundless.But this, notes the think-tank Shift Project, couldn’t be further from the truth.According to its findings, digital technologies now emit 4 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions, which is more than civil aviation. Glaringly, they add, this share could double from now to 2025 because the energy consumption required for digital technologies is increasing 9 per cent a year.A helluva a lot of that growth is related to video streaming.Which is why the think tank is advocating sobriety: digital technology is important, but not all digital technology is equally important. (For example, does the world really need an army of social media influencers who use streaming for the purposes of monetising their used bath water? The jury’s out.) Some other lesser known facts from the report:

• Online video globally emits as much C02 as Spain (over 300 Mt per year).
• Online video services (like Netflix) accounts for 60 per cent of global data flows.
• If you add Skype, live television streaming and video monitoring the figure hits 80 per cent of global data flows.
• The greenhouse gas emissions of video-on-demand services like Netflix and Amazon prime are equivalent to those of a country like Chile (more than 100 Mt per year).

The breakdown of the video streaming subsection, meanwhile, looks like this:

• 34 per cent = video online streaming (like Netflix)
• 27 per cent = pornography
• 21 per cent = Youtube-type services
• 18 per cent = social media streaming

Society Masturbating Its Way Into Climate Catastrophe- Report –Climate activists – and anyone else who views porn online – are part of the problem, according to a new report. A French think-tank, The Shift Project, reveals that adult material accounts for more than 4% of all carbon dioxide emissions linked to digital technologies, while porn constitutes 27% of all videos viewed online. Talk about a carbon handprint… “…viewing pornographic videos in the world in 2018 generated carbon emissions of the same magnitude as that of the residential sector in France,” reads the report. The authors then shift to a moral argument against porn, suggesting that “one of the problems mentioned regarding the effects of consuming pornography at the societal level is the phenomenon of shifting norms: during the consumption of content by an individual, a trend towards increased violence in the content viewed, for example, has been observed, leading to harmful effects on the individual’s sexuality and their perceptions of physical relationships.” What’s more, men can’t seem to jerk off without porn.

What Quebec’s goal to be the ‘battery’ of the Northeast means for New York – Times Union 2000s, according to news reports. Francois Legault, elected Quebec premier last October, has made partnerships with New York State and New York City to reduce carbon emissions “a number one priority,” said Catherine Loubier, Quebec’s delegate general to New York. “It seems almost an anomaly that we’re not delivering more power to New York.” The Indian Point nuclear power plant in the lower Hudson Valley is set to close in 2021, removing about 1,900 megawatts of capacity. A new power connection, the Champlain Hudson Power Express, could replace as much as 1,250 megawatts of that capacity. In all, Hydro-Quebec says it has 8,200 megawatts of exportable capacity. New England states took 47 percent of its exported power last year, with New York taking 24 percent. According to its 2019 Load & Capacity Data Report, the New York Independent System Operator imported 11,640 gigawatt hours of electricity from Hydro Quebec in 2018. NYISO operates the state’s wholesale market for 7/15/2019 What Quebec’s goal to be the ‘battery’ of the Northeast means for New York- Times Union Developers Inc. CEO Don Jessome told Politico last month that the company was considering expanding its capacity to 1,250 megawatts. .

AEP Seeks Approval for 1.5GW Wind Development in Oklahoma – American Electric Power is asking state regulators for the second time in two years to approve a multibillion-dollar investment into wind power, as it races to capitalize on fleeting federal tax credits. On Monday, AEP announced that its Public Service Co. of Oklahoma (PSO) and Southwestern Electric Power Co. (SWEPCO) utilities are seeking regulatory approval to purchase a total of 1,485 megawatts of wind projects being developed by Invenergy. The three projects in Oklahoma were selected through a competitive RFP launched in January, and the roughly $2 billion investment would help save utility customers about $3 billion, net of costs, over 30 years, the Ohio-based utility group said. This is the second attempt in as many years by PSO and SWEPCO to gain approval for a major wind farm investment from utility regulators in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana, the four states in which they operate. Last year, Texas regulators rejected a proposal by SWEPCO to purchase 70 percent of the 2-gigawatt Wind Catcher project, which was to be the single-largest wind farm in the country, citing concerns about whether it was putting too much cost risk onto the utility’s ratepayers. AEP announced it was pulling out of the project a day later, saying any further delays could jeopardize the project’s ability to be completed by 2020. That’s the deadline for wind projects to secure 100 percent of the existing federal Production Tax Credit (PTC),which is set to decline to 80 percent for projects completed by the end of 2021, 60 percent for 2022, 40 percent for 2023, and disappear completely by 2024.

New York gives green light for two huge offshore wind projects in waters off Long Island – New York State has awarded two offshore wind contracts with a combined capacity of almost 1,700 megawatts (MW) in waters off Long Island. The contracts were awarded to Norwegian firm Equinor and a joint venture between Danish company Orsted and U.S. business Eversource. The Empire Wind and Sunrise Wind developments were announced as the winners of New York’s first “comprehensive offshore wind solicitation” on Thursday. The companies will now commence negotiations for long-term contracts with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority for offshore wind renewable energy certificates. Both projects are expected to commence operations in 2024. Equinor’s 816 MW Empire Wind facility will be made up of between 60 to 80 wind turbines, according to the business. It will cover an area of 80,000 acres and be located southeast of Long Island. Total investments in the facility will amount to around $3 billion, and it will be able to power more than 500,000 homes. The Sunrise Wind project, which is a 50-50 joint venture between Orsted and Eversource, will have a capacity of 880 MW and will be built 30 miles east of Long Island’s Montauk Point. New York is aiming for 9,000 MW of offshore wind by the year 2035. The state’s Governor, Andrew M. Cuomo, described the environment and climate change as “the most critically important policy priorities we face.” “With this agreement, New York will lead the way in developing the largest source of offshore wind power in the nation,” he went on to add. While New York’s plans are ambitious, the offshore wind industry in the U.S. is still in its early stages of development. The country’s first offshore wind farm, the five turbine, 30 MW Block Island Wind Farm, only began commercial operations in late 2016. By comparison, Europe is home 18,499 MW of installed offshore wind capacity, according to industry body WindEurope.

Scotland just produced enough wind energy to power all its homes twice over -Wind turbines in Scotland generated 9,831,320 megawatt hours between January and June 2019, WWF Scotland said Monday. The numbers, which were supplied by WeatherEnergy, mean that Scottish wind generated enough electricity to power the equivalent of 4.47 million homes for six months. That is almost double the number of homes in Scotland, according to WWF Scotland. “Up and down the country, we are all benefiting from cleaner energy and so is the climate,” Robin Parker, climate and energy policy manager at WWF Scotland, said in a statement Monday. “These figures show harnessing Scotland’s plentiful onshore wind potential can provide clean, green electricity for millions of homes across not only Scotland, but England as well,” Parker added. By 2030, the Scottish government says it wants to produce half of the country’s energy consumption from renewables. It is also targeting an “almost completely” decarbonized energy system by 2050. As a whole, Europe is home to some of the world’s most ambitious wind energy projects. September 2018 saw the official opening of the Walney Extension Offshore Wind Farm in the Irish Sea. With a total capacity of 659 MW, it’s currently the world’s largest operational offshore wind farm and capable of powering nearly 600,000 homes in the U.K., according to Danish energy business Orsted.

Does renewables pioneer Germany risk running out of power? (Reuters) – Germany, a poster child for responsible energy, is renouncing nuclear and coal. The problem is, say many power producers and grid operators, it may struggle to keep the lights on. The country, the biggest electricity market in the European Union, is abandoning nuclear power by 2022 due to safety concerns compounded by the Fukushima disaster and phasing out coal plants over the next 19 years to combat climate change. In the next three years alone conventional energy capacity is expected to fall by a fifth, leaving it short of the country’s peak power demand. There is disagreement over whether there will be sufficient reliable capacity to preclude the possibility of outages, which could hammer the operations of industrial companies. The Berlin government, in a report issued this month, said the situation was secure, and shortfalls could be offset by better energy efficiency, a steadily rising supply of solar and wind power as well as electricity imports. Others are not as confident, including many utilities, network operators, manufacturing companies and analysts. Katharina Reiche, chief executive of the VKU association of local utilities, many of which face falling profitability as plants close, said the government’s strategy was risky because it had not stress-tested all scenarios. She said if the coal exit plan was not accompanied by a mandatory, risk-oriented monitoring of supply security, it would be like “walking a tightrope without a safety net”. Utilities and grid firms say if the weather is unfavorable for lengthy periods, green power supply can be negligible, while storage is still largely non-existent. Capacity aside, the network to transport renewable power from north to south is also years and thousands of kilometers behind schedule, they add.

The UK government wants to fit all new homes with charging points for electric cars – The UK government unveiled plans which could see all new-build homes fitted with electric-car charging points. The plans, which were laid out in a consultation published Monday, would look to support what the government described as “the growing uptake of electric vehicles within the U.K.” If put into practice, all new-build homes with dedicated parking spaces would have charging points to make vehicle charging cheaper and more convenient for drivers. In addition, authorities want all newly-installed rapid and higher-powered public charge points to take debit or credit card payments by the spring of 2020. In a statement Monday, Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said that there was “an appetite for cleaner, greener transport.” “Home charging provides the most convenient and low-cost option for consumers – you can simply plug your car in to charge overnight as you would a mobile phone,” Grayling added. Currently, electric car users can apply for a grant of up to £500 off the cost of installing a charge point at their residence. While electric vehicles are becoming the car of choice for an increasing number of drivers, they nevertheless face challenges, not least when it comes to perceptions surrounding range and charging infrastructure.

Column: Why the cobalt market needs Congo’s illegal miners – The death last month of 43 artisan miners at the Kamoto Copper Company KOV concession in the Democratic Republic of Congo has refocused attention on the human cost of producing what is a key input into electric vehicle (EV) batteries. The KOV concession is majority-owned by a subsidiary of trading and mining group Glencore.The official response to the incident – sending the army to clear around 20,000 “illegal” miners from the area around the mine – merely underlines the problematic nature of the world’s dependence on Congo for its supply of cobalt. The country accounted for around 64% of global mined production last year, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS). The latest incidents will do nothing to reassure automotive companies about the future stability of sustainable supply and will incentivise them further to try and reduce the amount of cobalt in EV batteries. However, for now they’re stuck with the stuff since nickel-manganese-cobalt chemistry remains the bedrock of passenger vehicle batteries, albeit with varying composition ratios. And that means they’re stuck with the Congo’s artisanal miners, who collectively represent the cobalt market’s swing capacity.In many industrial metal markets swing capacity comes from the small-scale mine sector in China or scrap, which is notoriously price sensitive. In the case of cobalt, swing capacity comes from the hundreds of thousands of artisanal miners operating in the Congolese copper-cobalt belt.

Con Ed warns more blackouts could be coming – Con Edison warned Monday that New Yorkers may have to endure another blackout this weekend, when the temperature is expected to reach a sweltering 97 degrees – and feel like 106.“We expect that there could be service outages – those things happen during heat waves,” company spokesman Mike Clendenin said.Later in the day, Con Ed further fueled fears of a potential power outage when it completely backtracked and blamed a fault in a 13,000-volt power cable that caught fire for triggering Saturday’s blackout.On Sunday, company President Timothy Cawley had called the idea of tying the incident to the failed cable “sort of a non-starter.”AccuWeather predicted four straight days of 90-plus degree temperatures beginning Friday, with a 97-degree peak on Saturday, when humidity and other factors will make it feel even worse.Saturday night’s power outage – which struck while temperatures were merely in the low 80s – led Gov. Cuomo to threaten that the state might revoke Con Ed’s operating license ecause the company “does not have a franchise granted by God” and “can be replaced.”

Why Stimulus Can’t Fix Our Energy Problems – by Gail Tverberg – Economists tell us that within the economy there is a lot of substitutability, and they are correct. However, there are a couple of not-so-minor details that they overlook:

• There is no substitute for energy. It is possible to harness energy from another source, or to make a particular object run more efficiently, but the laws of physics prevent us from substituting something else for energy. Energy is required whenever physical changes are made, such as when an object is moved, or a material is heated, or electricity is produced.
• Supplemental energy leverages human energy. The reason why the human population is as high as it is today is because pre-humans long ago started learning how to leverage their human energy (available from digesting food) with energy from other sources. Energy from burning biomass was first used over one million years ago. Other types of energy, such as harnessing the energy of animals and capturing wind energy with sails of boats, began to be used later. If we cut back on our total energy consumption in any material way, humans will lose their advantage over other species. Population will likely plummet because of epidemics and fighting over scarce resources.

Many people appear to believe that stimulus programs by governments and central banks can substitute for growth in energy consumption. Others are convinced that efficiency gains can substitute for growing energy consumption. My analysis indicates that workarounds, in the aggregate, don’t keep energy prices high enough for energy producers. Oil prices are at risk, but so are coal and natural gas prices. We end up with a different energy problem than most have expected: energy prices that remain too low for producers. Such a problem can have severe consequences. Let’s look at a few of the issues involved:

• [1] Despite all of the progress being made in reducing birth rates around the globe, the world’s population continues to grow, year after year.
• [2] This growing world population leads to a growing use of natural resources of every kind.
• [3] The years during which the quantities of material resources cease to grow correspond almost precisely to recessionary years.
• [4] World energy consumption (Figure 4) follows a very similar pattern to world resource extraction (Figure 2).
• [5] The world economy seems to need an annual growth in world energy consumption of at least 2% per year, to stay away from recession.
• [6] In the years subsequent to 2011, growth in world energy consumption has fallen behind the 2% per year growth rate required to avoid recession.
• [7] The growth rates of oil, coal and nuclear have all slowed to below 2% per year since 2011. While the consumption of natural gas, hydroelectric and other renewables is still growing faster than 2% per year, their surplus growth is less than the deficit of oil, coal and nuclear.
• [8] The economy needs to produce its own “demand” for energy products, in order to keep prices high enough for producers. When energy consumption growth is below 2% per year, the danger is that energy prices will fall below the level needed by energy producers.
• [9] There are two different ways that oil and other energy prices can damage the economy: (a) by rising too high for consumers or (b) by falling too low for producers to have funds for reinvestment, taxes and other needs. The danger at this point is from (b), energy prices falling too low for producers.
• [10] The recession that comes closest to the situation we seem to be heading into is the one that affected the world economy in 1991 and shortly thereafter.

Why did the state OK a new natural gas power plant in Killingly when the move is to renewable energy? – Hartford Courant –For those of us who follow the development of energy policy in Connecticut, June 6, 2019, will be remembered as the day of cognitive dissonance in the Nutmeg State.On that day, while the Senate in the state legislature unanimously passed a 2,000 MW off-shore wind turbine bill, which had been previously passed by the House by an overwhelming majority, 134-10), the Connecticut Siting Council approved a controversial proposal to build yet another natural gas power plant – a 650 MW facility – in Killingly, a small town near the border of Rhode Island, already burdened with air pollution from an existing power plant.Wasting no time, Gov. Ned Lamont signed the bipartisan, off-shore wind turbine bill on June 7. On that occasion, the governor stated, “Connecticut should be the central hub of the offshore wind industry in New England. This emerging industry has the potential to create hundreds of good paying jobs for the residents of our state and drive economic growth in towns along our shoreline … By adopting this new law, we are sending a clear message – Connecticut is serious about becoming a major player in the clean energy economy.” In other words, the state of Connecticut has taken a determined and enterprising step in entering the post-fossil fuel, clean energy age. Yet, the siting council made an unwise decision that negates that bold and timely move by Connecticut’s legislature. Some two years ago, a similar proposal to construct the natural gas power plant in Killingly by the Florida-based company, NTE Energy, was rejected by the siting council. At that time, the siting council stated that “the proposed facility is not necessary for the reliability of the electric power supply of the state or for a competitive market for electricity at this time.” Now that Gov. Lamont and the legislature have taken steps to move the state in a different direction, it is even more puzzling why the siting council has seen fit to approve a fossil-fuel based power plant.

In Appalachia, a massive forest is conserved, but mining can still proceed beneath its roots – A massive land acquisition by the Nature Conservancy has created a block of forestland in the heart of the Central Appalachian coalfields that may be disturbed by an activity typical of the region but atypical of conservation sites: mining.Early Monday morning, the global environmental nonprofit announced it had added 153,000 acres in Virginia known as Highlands-Lonesome Pine to its Cumberland Forest Project. When combined with an existing 100,000 acres of forest in Kentucky and Tennessee, the total footprint of the site amounts to a quarter-million acres, larger than Shenandoah National Park. Unlike Shenandoah, however, mining is likely to occur within the forest’s borders, since the Nature Conservancy only owns the surface rights to the acreage. Rights to mine the coal and oil that lie beneath the land will continue to be held by companies including EnerVest, which is headquartered in Texas but operates an office in Abingdon, and West Virginia-based Natural Resource Partners. Brad Kreps, director of the Nature Conservancy’s Clinch Valley Project in southwestern Virginia, said that he expects that mining will only occur on “a small percentage of the properties,” given declines in the use of coal as an energy source.The Nature Conservancy will receive payments from mine operators as compensation for damages to the land, as well as royalties on any coal produced. Those revenues will then be channeled toward site restoration efforts and local organizations engaged in developing a local nature-based economy.As the surface owner, furthermore, the conservancy will have the right to designate how any mined lands should be reclaimed once mining has ceased. “Since the long-term restoration of the forest is one of our highest priorities, we’re going to be interested in designating post-mining land uses that are focused on restoring native forests,” said Kreps.

Coal-fired power plant putting too-hot water into river, groups say –— The Sierra Club is threatening to sue the owners of a coal-fired power plant near Pittsburgh for releasing water that is too hot into the Allegheny River. The group sent a Clean Water Act 60-day “Notice of Intent” to sue letter to the plant’s owners. It warned of legal action if the plant doesn’t meet requirements under its pollution discharge permits. The Cheswick plant uses steam from its coal-fired boilers to create electricity. Under the terms of a clean water permit, the plant is allowed to release that water into the Allegheny River, but it’s not allowed to raise the river’s water temperature more than two degrees Fahrenheit. A series of tests done by the plant in 2012 found it had raised the river’s temperature much higher than that. The tests revealed the plant discharge was heating the river by 18 degrees Fahrenheit in one case, and the plume of hot water was detected more than a mile downstream. Higher water temperatures can be bad for some fish species because it lowers oxygen levels. The Sierra Club conducted its own survey this month and found the river temperature was increased by seven degrees Fahrenheit near the plant in some cases, said the Sierra Club’s Patrick Grenter. “The Cheswick plant is just dumping superheated water into the Allegheny River every single time they operate,” Grenter said. “We’re seeing temperatures up to 18 degrees Fahrenheit warmer in the water than it should be. This has huge impacts.” Grenter says other plants use cooling towers to lower the temperature of their water before releasing it. “Cheswick is the only coal plant left in Pennsylvania without methods to control this pollution,” Grenter said.

Wetter weather worsens risks from coal ash ponds, environmental advocates report – Ohio’s wettest 12-month period on record highlights the risk flooding can present to power plants’ coal ash ponds, but groundwater contamination remains a continuing concern for environmental advocates.“We know that there’ve been many coal ash spills because of floods in the past,” said policy analyst Gideon Weissman at the Frontier Group in Boston. Just last year, floodwaters from Hurricane Florence swept coal ash into North Carolina’s Neuse River, for example.Coal ash ponds can cause contamination from arsenic, mercury, selenium, lead, boron, bromine and other compounds, Weissman said. Those chemicals can harm human health. Some of them also build up in fish over time. And in some circumstances, coal ash spills can blanket riverbeds and smother species, according to a 2019 report from Frontier Group, Environment America and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund. In the Midwest, 21 coal plants have ash ponds within a quarter-mile of the Ohio River, that report noted. “And five of those coal plants were in 100-year flood zones,” Weissman said. “The Ohio River is a critical piece of our landscape. And it also supplies drinking water for more than 3 million people.” Ohio plants near the river include the W.H. Zimmer power plant in Moscow, the J.M. Stuart plant in Aberdeen, the General James M. Gavin plant in Cheshire, and the W.H. Sammis plant in Stratton. June ended Ohio’s wettest 12-month period since record-keeping began in 1895, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported earlier this month. “The entire Ohio [River] has been for the most part really elevated for the past year,” NOAA hydrologist James Noel said in mid-June. “We’re running like maybe four times the normal flow” for some of the upper sections, he added. Closer to Cincinnati, the volume was “maybe five times the normal flow.” Yet an Obama-era rule let power plant owners “continue to store coal ash in unlined pits despite the overwhelming evidence that this practice causes dangerous groundwater contamination and is vulnerable to catastrophic flooding events and spill.” Industry reports show that more than 95% of U.S. coal ash ponds are unlined, Earthjustice found. So while catastrophic spills “get a lot of attention, the most tragic harms from coal ash happen in slow motion: from the steady leaking of pollution from unlined pits into groundwater and nearby water bodies,”

As black lung surges among former coal miners, clinics expand to meet growing demand – In a hospital in far Eastern Kentucky this week, a stone’s throw from the West Virginia border, a group of former coal miners wore oxygen masks and heart monitors and walked on treadmills about as far as they could. They are patients of New Beginnings Pulmonary Rehab, a group of clinics in Central Appalachia that focuses on strengthening the lungs of former miners afflicted with black lung disease, a deadly and incurable illness whose prevalence has spiked in recent years. With the disease surging across the region, New Beginnings is scheduled to double its number of clinics with three new openings – one in Harlan on Sept. 1; one in Tazewell, Va., on Oct. 1; and one in Elkhorn City in Pike County, that will open later this year or in early 2020. Marcy Tate, who opened the first clinic six years ago in Norton, Va., said the expansion will create space for dozens more patients and provide easier access to care – some former miners drive more than 100 miles each way to access pulmonary care. The Harlan location already has 46 patients screened and ready to attend when it opens Sept. 1, as well as transfer patients who live in Harlan County but have to drive over winding mountain roads to clinics in Whitesburg or Norton. Read more here: https://www.kentucky.com/news/state/kentucky/article232538227.html#storylink=cpy

Another major coal producer will file for bankruptcy. It employs 2,800 in KY and WV. –Blackhawk Mining, LLC., a coal company with 2,800 employees in Kentucky and West Virginia, plans to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy later this week, according to documents released by the company.Blackhawk, based in Lexington, said in its proposed filings that the company has enough revenue to continue operating its mines during the bankruptcy and that it does not anticipate layoffs as a result of the reorganization. The announcement marks the latest in a string of bankruptcy cases from coal companies active in Eastern Kentucky.Meanwhile, Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear released a letter Tuesday asking the Office of the United States Trustee for “the immediate payment” of hundreds of Kentucky miners left out-of-work by the recent bankruptcy of Blackjewel, LLC, another major coal producer. In that case, employees of Blackjewel had their paychecks removed from their bank accounts earlier this month. Another check, due this past Friday, never came. That left miners and their families with overdrawn bank accounts and uncertainty over their finances.

Death Spiral.” How A Carbon Tax Could End Some Coal Towns … Or Fund A New Future –Declining coal tax revenues place coal-reliant counties in Appalachia at risk of fiscal collapse, according to new research from the centrist Brookings Institution and Columbia University. Policies designed to prevent further climate change would accelerate that decline, the report found, but could also provide a new stream of revenue to help communities rebound from coal’s demise. The report, published by Brookings and the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia, quantified how much of a coal-producing county’s budget came from coal, via severance taxes, property taxes, and contracts such as royalties and lease bonuses. Then authors analyzed what it might mean for those county governments if the U.S. instituted a modest price on carbon emissions. The report found that under such a policy, counties that are reliant on coal would be at risk of defaulting on bonds, failing to provide basic services such as waste removal or infrastructure maintenance, and even bankruptcy. Adele Morris, senior fellow and policy director at the Brookings Institution and one of the report’s co-authors, said the loss of tax revenue from coal producers would have far-reaching consequences.“You have the workers who are dislocated, you have the loss of property tax and sales tax revenue, people are closing schools and limiting other government services, and then what happens is, people move away,” she said. “And then you get this sort of death spiral.” The report notes that many coal communities are already experiencing some of these effects without a climate policy in place. Coal employment declined by 50 percent in Appalachia between 2011 and 2016, and according to recent data from the Appalachian Regional Commission, 190 of 420 Appalachian counties are considered distressed or at risk, in no small part due to the downturn in the coal industry.

Coal left Appalachia devastated. Now it’s doing the same to Wyoming -Wyoming is facing a potential crisis. Coal mines have shut down, hundreds of people are out of work, unemployment offices are overwhelmed, and there appears to be worse to come.The coal industry, long seen as a friend and economic linchpin in the state, is falling apart, and the very communities that have supported it most are getting screwed over in the process.This wasn’t supposed to happen in Wyoming. After all, it’s not like Appalachian coal country (West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and Pennsylvania, along with eastern Ohio and parts of Alabama, Maryland, Tennessee, and Virginia).Appalachia, which has been ground into codependent poverty by the coal industry over the course of a century, has been declining, in coal output and employment, for decades. Lately it has only gotten worse, as companies declare bankruptcy, executives get healthy bonuses, polluted coal mines are abandoned, and miners and retirees are denied long-promised health benefits and pensions. But it has long been industry conventional wisdom that Western coal would continue to prosper, at least for a while. The coal boom in the Powder River Basin – the largest coal basin in the US, the source of 40 percent of American coal, spanning northeast Wyoming and southeast Montana – dates back to the early 1970s. It has resulted in a few large companies with deep local roots, their taxes funding infrastructure and schools. Their steady profitability has made coal the heart of several Western communities. There are 13,000 coal-dependent jobs in the PRB. It’s beginning to look like conventional wisdom was wrong. Western coal is declining too, and as it does, vulture capitalists are buying up mines, squeezing out the last bit of profits, and declaring bankruptcy, leaving behind an environmental mess and workers without jobs or pensions. It’s shaping up to be Appalachia all over again, in communities that were told it would never happen.

Japan shows coal’s dilemma: More needed now, less in future – Clyde Russell (Reuters) – The dilemma facing thermal coal miners is neatly encapsulated by the current dynamics of Japan, where robust short-term demand contrasts with a diminishing long-term outlook. Japan, the world’s third-biggest coal importer behind China and India, is planning on returning coal-fired power plants with a combined capacity of more than 10 gigawatts (GW) in the next few weeks in order to meet peak summer demand. The countries utilities are preferring to restart coal generation than use cleaner burning liquefied natural gas (LNG), which is considerably more expensive. A gigawatt of power generation requires about 3.5 million tonnes of a coal a year, so it’s likely that Japan’s imports of the polluting fuel will rise for the next few months. Already vessel-tracking and port data compiled by Refinitiv suggest a boost in imports, with 13.4 million tonnes offloaded in June, up from 12.9 million in May and 12.5 million in June last year. Refinitiv estimates that Japan will import about 14.3 million tonnes of coal in July, which would be the strongest month since March, although lower than 15.3 million tonnes in July last year. These figures include coking coal used to make steel, but it’s likely that the gains will be concentrated in thermal coal given that Japan’s steel output is expected to remain largely steady over the northern summer. If the Refinitiv data for June is borne out by official numbers when they are released at the end of this month, it will mark a reversal of the trend this year to lower coal imports. But while coal exporters, particularly Japan’s biggest suppliers Australia and Indonesia, may relish the return of coal-fired power for summer, the longer-term outlook for Japan isn’t nearly so rosy. Japan’s pipeline of coal-fired power projects is shrinking as utilities, trading houses and banks become increasingly reluctant to propose and finance new generators.

New version of nuclear bailout bill would bolster solar projects in state – A Senate committee on Monday rolled out yet another version of a bill that bails out the state’s two nuclear plants, but now increases support for renewable energy in Ohio while still promising lower electricity bills for consumers. The Senate Energy and Public Utilities Committee could vote on House Bill 6 as soon as Wednesday after considering more amendments, said Sen. Steve Wilson, R-Maineville, the committee’s chairman. “We still have more work to do on this bill, but we’re really close,” he said during the committee meeting Monday. As has been the case since the legislation was introduced in the spring, FirstEnergy Solutions, the operator of the Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear plants in northern Ohio, would be the big winner under the proposal. The company, spun off from Akron-based FirstEnergy and operating under bankruptcy protection, has said it will shut down the plants unless it gets help. The plants are the main source of carbon dioxide-free electricity in the state and provide about 1,400 jobs between them. Starting next year, customers would pay 85 cents a month on their electricity bill with nearly 90% of the money raised by that fee, or about $150 million year, used to shore up those plants. The rest of the money, about $20 million a year, would support solar projects to be developed in Ohio. The legislation identifies six solar projects that likely would be eligible for funding. The money for FirstEnergy Solutions would be subject to annual review, so the subsidy could be reduced or eliminated in future years if it were no longer necessary. The subsidy would be discontinued by 2026.

Environmentalists Criticize New Energy ‘Bailout’ Bill | WKSU –Environmental advocates say the Senate’s new energy plan is taking Ohio in the wrong direction when it comes to emerging energy sources and innovations. That plan would likely bail out two nuclear power plants through new charges on electric bills. The latest proposal would create a new 85-cent fee on monthly electric bills, with most of the money going to nuclear. It also subsidizes coal plants through a $1.50 fee.To offset the cost to ratepayers, Republican lawmakers want to weaken renewable energy requirements and get rid of energy efficiency programs. Dan Sawmiller with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the plan boils down to four major steps. “It’s a nuclear bailout, a coal bailout, a reduction in incentives for new renewable energy projects that’s driving new economic development in the state, and a complete elimination of our energy efficiency program in the state which is driving new economic activity in the state of Ohio. So it certainly seems to be a step backwards,” he said.

Nuclear bailout bill clears Ohio Senate – The owner of the state’s two nuclear power plants moved another step closer Wednesday night to collecting a nearly $1 billion bailout that it says it needs to keep the plants operating. The Ohio Senate approved by a 19-12 vote its version of House Bill 6 and returned it to the House to see whether representatives will agree with the substantial changes that senators made to the bill the House passed in May. The House adjourned Wednesday night without considering the revised legislation and is expected to take up the matter again Aug. 1. If the representatives don’t approve the senators’ revisions, a conference committee made up of members from the two chambers will be tasked with working out differences in the bill. Under the bill, consumers would pay an 85-cents-a-month fee on their electricity bill with 90% of that – about $150 million a year – going to FirstEnergy Solutions, owner of the Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear plants in northern Ohio. The rest of the money, about $20 million a year, would support solar projects being developed in the state. FirstEnergy Solutions’ finances would be subject to an annual review to determine whether the fee could be lowered or eliminated. Either way, the fee would expire in 2027. In a last-minute amendment, the Senate delayed until 2021 when the fee would be imposed. The company, spun off from Akron-based FirstEnergy and operating under bankruptcy protection, has said it will shut down the plants unless it gets help this summer. Backers of the legislation have sold the bill as a clean-energy plan because it would shore up the state’s main source of carbon dioxide-free electricity.

Ohio nuclear bailout bill held up because of lawmaker absences – – After hours of debates, negotiation and votes, Ohio lawmakers prepared to give final approval to high-profile legislation to gut Ohio’s green-energy mandates and create large public subsidies for nuclear and coal plants. But there was one problem: because four “yes” votes in the House were gone, supporters fell one vote short Wednesday of getting the 50-vote majority needed to send House Bill 6 to Gov. Mike DeWine, who has indicated support for the measure. “We tried to see if we could round up enough votes to get to 50, and we were a little bit short,” said House Speaker Larry Householder, who has passing made HB6 a priority. One of the lawmakers who voted “yes” during a previous HB6 vote, Republican Steve Arndt, retired, Householder said. Three other House members were absent – Democrats Joe Miller of Amherst and John Patterson of Ashtabula County, and Republican Sara Carruthers of Hamilton. Householder said the House will “probably” try again to vote on the bill on Aug. 1, depending on members’ availability. Under the bill, from 2021 until 2027 every Ohio electricity customer would pay a new monthly surcharge that ranges from 85 cents for residential customers to $2,400 for large industrial plants. Of the $170 million per year brought in from that new surcharge, $150 million of that would go FirstEnergy Solutions to bail out its two Ohio nuclear power plants – Davis-Besse near Toledo and Perry northeast of Cleveland. The remaining $20 million per year will go to support six solar power projects being built in rural areas around the state.

Three Mile Island’s 60-year shutdown: ‘More akin to a marathon than a sprint’ –The Three Mile Island Unit 1 nuclear reactor shutdown, which is set to begin no later than Sept. 30, will take nearly 60 years and $1.2 billion to complete. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is outlining Exelon Generation’s plans to decommission TMI Unit 1, whose closure was announced in May after it became clear that the Pennsylvania General Assembly would not approve a financial rescue of the state’s nuclear plants. The federal agency is conducting a public webinar on Tuesday afternoon on the decommissioning, and a public meeting in Harrisburg next week. Exelon’s decommissioning schedule, which was spelled out in a plan released in April, calls for the immediate removal of Unit 1′s nuclear fuel from the reactor after shutdown. The uranium fuel-rod assemblies would cool in spent fuel pools for three years until they are moved to above-ground sealed canisters in 2022. But the reactor’s cooling towers and other large components would remain standing until 2074, according to Exelon’s Post-Shutdown Decommissioning Activities Report. All radioactive material would be safely stored or removed from the site by 2078. A plant decommissioning is “more akin to a marathon than a sprint,” Jack Parrott, senior project manager of the NRC’s reactor decommissioning branch, told reporters in a briefing Tuesday. The NRC’s interest is to oversee decontamination and removal of radioactive material from the site; restoration of the site to a greenfield is managed by the state and the property owner. Under federal regulations, plant operators have 60 years to clean up a site after a plant closes. The long-term decommissioning method, called SAFSTOR, allows radioactive levels to decline for decades before workers have to dismantle contaminated components, the NRC says. Exelon said the $1.2 billion cost to decommissioning the plant would be financed from a trust fund into which the power plant’s customers have paid since the plant went online in 1974. Exelon or its successors would be responsible for paying any fund shortfall. The advantage of the more rapid decontamination strategy is that it allows the owner to employ workers experienced with the plant. It also makes the site available for reuse sooner. Exelon acquired Unit 1 in 1999, two decades after the infamous nuclear accident that destroyed its twin in the nation’s worst commercial accident. The damaged reactor, owned by FirstEnergy Corp., is now dormant and is awaiting full decommissioning in tandem with the shutdown of Exelon’s plant.

Lawmakers quietly explore storing spent nuclear fuel – Wyoming legislative leadership voted by email Monday to explore temporarily storing spent nuclear fuel rods in the state, a prospect one senator says could bring in $1 billion a year.A legislative committee has appointed six of its members to investigate the idea with the U.S. Department of Energy, Sen. Jim Anderson (R-Casper) told WyoFile on Friday. Anderson is co-chairman of the Joint Minerals Business and Economic Development Committee which received approval and funding from the Legislative Management Council in an unannounced vote to study the issue before the next legislative session begins in early 2020.Wyoming’s dependence on an ailing coal industry spurred talk about pursuing the temporary storage idea, Anderson said. Fuel rods would be housed in casks with two-foot-thick walls, he said. “We’re losing a lot of revenue off coal,” he said. ‘We’ve got a huge problem,” with the state budget. Blackjewel LLC, the owner of two coal mines outside Gillette, shut their gates last week amid bankruptcy turmoil, putting some 600 miners out of work. In addition to the lost jobs, Wyoming could miss out on taxes if the mines don’t reopen, accelerating an already bleak decline in state revenues from that industry. The state is looking for other revenue options, Anderson said, and “this is a way.” The federal government could pay up to $1 billion a year for the temporary storage, he said, depending on the size and scope of a Wyoming project. That’s the amount the federal government offered last time Wyoming considered the issue about 15 years ago, he said.

Fewer Inspections for Aging Nuclear Plants, Regulators Propose – NYT – A new report by staff members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which oversees the safety of the nation’s59 aging nuclear power plants, recommends that the commissioners significantly weaken or reduce safety inspections of the plants.The report, published Tuesday, comes after a yearlong consultationand public meeting process, including views from the Nuclear Energy Institute, which lobbies on behalf of the nuclear power plant industry and has long sought weaker safety rules. It also comes amid a broader push by the Trump administration for reduced regulations on industry.Democrats in Congress and nuclear safety advocates criticized the report’s proposals, saying they reflect the influence of an industry seeking to cut regulations rather than improve public safety.The proposal comes as most of the nation’s nuclear power plants, which were designed and built in the 1960s or 1970s, are reaching the end of their original 40- to 50-year operating licenses. Many plant operators have sought licenses to extend the operating life of their plants past the original deadlines, even as experts have warned that aging plants come with heightened concerns about safety. Among the chief recommendations in the new report, sent from Margaret M. Doane, the agency’s executive director for operations, to the panel of commissioners, is to decrease inspections of nuclear operators’ safety programs from once every two years to once every three years. That change would require a vote of approval by the commission.

‘An Insanely Bad Move’: Experts Sound Alarm as Trump’s Nuclear Safety Agency Weighs Rollback of Plant Inspections – After months of experts raising alarm over the nuclear power industry pressuring U.S. regulators to roll back safety policies, staffers at the federal agency that monitors reactors sparked concerns Tuesday with official recommendations that include scaling back required inspections to save money.The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has spent months reviewing its enforcement policies – and, as part of that process, sought input from industry groups, as Common Dreams detailed in March. In response, the industry representatives requested shifting to more “self-assessments,” limiting public disclosures for “lower-level” problems at plants, and easing the “burden of radiation-protection and emergency-preparedness inspections.”According to The Associated Press, which first reported on NRC staffers’ suggestions:The recommendations, made public Tuesday, include reducing the time and scope of some annual inspections at the nation’s 90-plus nuclear power plants. Some other inspections would be cut from every two years to every three years. Some of the staff’s recommendations would require a vote by the commission, which has a majority of members appointed or reappointed by President Donald Trump, who has urged agencies to reduce regulatory requirements for industries.The NRC document that outlines the recommendations reportedly acknowledges that staffers disagree about the inspection reductions but claims that cutting back “improves efficiency while still helping to ensure reasonable assurance of adequate protection to the public.”Union of Concerned Scientists nuclear power expert Edwin Lyman, however, charged that the suggestion to decrease federal oversight of nuclear power plants “completely ignores the cause-and-effect relationship between i nspections and good performances.”

Russian Nuclear Reactors Taken Offline In 2nd Serious Incident In Under A Week – In a deeply worrisome development related to Russia’s network of ten nuclear power plants nationwide, two of them suffered significant operating incidents in under only one week, causing multiple reactors to be take offline. Russia’s TASS reported that a “transformer short circuit” at the Kalinin nuclear power plant (NPP) resulted in “a complete shutdown of two and a partial shutdown of another power unit in the Tver region” early on Thursday. In total 3 out of the 4 nuclear plant’s reactors had to be unplugged. Hours later, as evening fell, Reuters reported one or more of the units suffering shutdown were back online. Russia is well-known as among the world’s largest producers of nuclear energy.The Kalinin plant is north-west of Moscow in central Russia and has been operational since the mid-1980’s, with the last major known accident in 2016, in which two workers were injured when a power unit short circuited. Its newest reactor, No. 4, went operational in 2011. Rosenergoatom, a subsidiary of state nuclear corporation Rosatom, issued a statement stressing there was no need for panic or alarm. “The radiation level at the station and surrounding territory remains without change and is in line with normal background levels,” the company said.

Radiation from atomic testing in Marshall Islands still too high for human habitation – A team of researchers from Columbia University has found that radiation levels from atomic testing in the Marshall Islands are still too high for human habitation. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes radiation readings of soil samples from four of the islands, and what they found. Over the years 1946 to 1958, scientists working for the U.S. government carried out 67 nuclear explosion tests in the Bikini and Enewetak atolls in the Marshall Islands. The tests were conducted to learn more about nuclear weapons and their destructiveness. Prior to conducting such tests, officials with the U.S. forcibly removed the atoll residents to other sites in the Marshall Islands. During testing, researchers discovered that fallout was reaching two other inhabited atolls (Rongelap and Utirik), so those people were moved, as well. After testing ended, officials with the U.S. government met with officials from the Marshall Islands to discuss the possibility of cleaning up the test sites, and when the relocated people might return. In this new effort, the researchers ventured to all four of the atolls and tested soil samples for radiation. The researchers tested soil samples on 11 islands that were part of the four atolls, and found that external gamma radiation levels varied greatly from test to test. They further report that some of the levels were much higher than expected, and far exceeded the legal exposure limit that was agreed to by officials with both countries. Levels on Bikini, for example, were measured as high as 648 millirems per year. The “safe” level set by governmental agreement is 100 millirems per year. The researchers note such levels are also much higher than those found around the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear accident sites. The same group of researchers also conducted two prior tests – one that involved measuring radiation levels in fruit from trees in the affected areas, and another that studied the crater created by the largest explosion to take place in the region. They reported in papers also published in PNAS that they found radiation levels in fruit too high for human consumption on many of the islands. They also found that radiation levels in soil sediments in the crater were still several orders of magnitude higher than normal levels.

Radioactive coconuts: The legacy of nuclear testing in the Pacific – Radioactivity can still be found in the soil and food decades after the US ended nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands, with the highest levels found at the infamous Bikini Atoll. Three new papers, published in the noted journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America), show that gamma radiation can still be found even more than half a century since testing in the region ended. One of the studies showed that fruits, including coconuts, grown in some of the northern Marshall Islands are contaminated with a radioactive isotope of caesium at much higher levels than those found near Chernobyl or Fukushima. Dr David Krofchek from the University of Auckland said the three papers are the “first large scale measurements of radioactive isotopes produced from the US testing of nuclear weapons from 1946 through 1958 in the Marshall Islands”. “Foods tested, coconuts and pandanus, show a variety of radioactivity levels with the lowest levels detected in fruits from atolls farthest away from the weapons test sites. Northern atolls where most weapons tests were performed showed the much higher radioactivity levels. Bikini Atoll had considerably larger levels, well above most international norms for food safety. Research needs to be done on local sea food.” Krofchek added: “Both Bikini and Naen atolls also had the highest soil radiation, mostly from gamma rays, than any of the southern atolls. Bikini, which maintained the highest population before 1946, is certainly too contaminated to consider for population relocation.” The resident population of Bikini was relocated in 1946 before the US began the nuclear testing where 23 devices were tested across seven sites. An attempt was made by some of the residents to return in 1972, after US testing showed that radiation levels were safe.

Radiation in Parts of Marshall Islands Is Higher Than Chernobyl – Radiation levels in some regions of the Marshall Islands in the central Pacific, where the United States conducted nuclear tests during the Cold War, are far higher than in areas affected by the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear disasters, according to new research from Columbia University.Three studies published July 15 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) by a Columbia research team, led by Emlyn Hughes and Malvin Ruderman from the Columbia Center for Nuclear Studies, showed that the concentration of nuclear isotopes on some of the islands was well above the legal exposure limit established in agreements between the U.S. and Republic of the Marshall Islands. The studies measured soil samples, ocean sediment and a variety of fruit.Nearly 70 nuclear bombs the United States detonated between 1946 and 1958 left widespread contamination on the islands, a chain of atolls halfway between Australia and Hawaii. The largest nuclear detonation, “Castle Bravo,” in 1954 at Bikini Atoll, was 1,000 times more powerful than either of the bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.The Marshall Islands have experienced rapid growth since the 1960s. Most of the nation’s residents live on two crowded islands and are unable to return to their home islands because of nuclear contamination. Nuclear fallout from the tests is most concentrated on the Bikini, Enewetak, Rongelap and Utirik atolls. “Based upon our results, we conclude that to ensure safe relocation to Bikini and Rongelap Atolls, further environmental remediation… appears to be necessary to avoid potentially harmful exposure to radiation,” wrote the study authors, who also include Ivana Nikolic Hughes, associate professor of chemistry at Columbia.

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