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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Europe Faces Looming Syphilis Epidemic As ‘Hookup’ Apps Go Viral – The rise of dating apps and falling rates of HIV in the developed world have led to the reemergence of an STD that was, until recently, confined to literary novels from the 19th century.The spread of syphilis in Europe is intensifying, said Andrew Amato-Gauci, the head of the HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted infections and viral hepatitis program at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). He told RT that various factors play into the outbreak, such as “people having sex without condoms, multiple sexual partners and a reduced fear of acquiring HIV from condomless sex.” A new report by the ECDC shows that the number of confirmed cases of syphilis across the EU soared by 70% between 2010 and 2017. The biggest innovation in the dating world during that period is the rise of “hookup” apps like Tinder, Grindr and Bumble – aka bringing the “sharing economy” to the dating world. Rates of HIV/AIDS deaths have been declining across the world after peaking in the early 2000s. Oddly enough, the leader in Europe in Iceland, a country where the 300,000 inhabitants are all, at the very least, distant cousins. The syphilis rate in Iceland has climbed by 876%. In Ireland, syphilis rates have climbed 224%, while Germany and Britain have seen rates double.According to the ECDC, homosexual sex – specifically “men having sex with men” – is responsible for two-thirds of the cases reported between 2007 and 2017. Heterosexual men constitute 23% of the cases, and women 15%. Amato-Gauci said growing rates of unprotected sex is only part of the problem. Lack of testing and sex education are also issues.
Recent Rise of Drug-Resistant Superbug Could Be Due to Climate Crisis – A new analysis warns that “global warming may have played a pivotal role” in the recent rise of a multidrug-resistant fungal superbug, sparking questions and concerns about the emerging public health threats of the human-caused climate crisis. Reporting on the research Tuesday, CNN outlined the history of Candida auris:Until recently, scientists considered it a mystery how C. auris popped up in more than 30 countries around the globe a decade after it was first discovered in 2009. It emerged simultaneously on three continents – in India, Venezuela, and South Africa – between 2012 and 2015, each strain being genetically distinct.The study – published Tuesday in mBio, an open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology – argues that Candida auris “may be the first example of a new fungal disease emerging from climate change.””The argument that we are making based on comparison to other close relative fungi is that as the climate has gotten warmer, some of these organisms, including Candida auris, have adapted to the higher temperature, and as they adapt, they break through human’s protective temperatures,” lead author Arturo Casadevall, chair of molecular microbiology and immunology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said in a statement. Fungal diseases are relatively uncommon in humans because of body temperature – but if they adapt to rising temperatures, and aren’t easily treatable with medications, they could increasingly endanger human health on a global scale. Casadevall warned that while C. auris may be the first fungal disease whose emergence scientists have tied to rising temperatures, it potentially won’t be the last. “Global warming may lead to new fungal diseases that we don’t even know about right now,” he said. “What this study suggests is this is the beginning of fungi adapting to higher temperatures, and we are going to have more and more problems as the century goes on.”
Rising Emissions Are Robbing Us of Nutrients – It’s widely known that burning fossil fuels leads to all kinds of disastrous things: Worsening air pollution, acidic oceans, and flooding. But not many people know that the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is making our food more sugary and less nutritious. A new study in Lancet Planetary Health projects that the combined effects of climate change parching crops and the decreased nutritional value of the food those crops produce would wipe out significant efforts to combat malnourishment around the world. Nutrient deficiencies cause to2.2 million deaths every year among children under the age of five. There are lots of efforts underway to prevent those deaths: People are adding vitamins to processed foods, breeding better crops, and working to make nutrients available to more people. That work is saving lives, but the way we are altering our atmosphere is making it harder. This study suggests that the human diet of 2050 would have 19.5 percent less protein, 14.4 percent less iron, and 14.6 percent less zinc than we’d have in the absence of climate change and increased CO2 in the air. That means millions more deaths and disabilities that could have been prevented. “The size of the problem is staggering,” said Kristie Ebi, a professor of global health at the University of Washington who was not involved with this paper. “This is likely the largest impact on health from rising concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere.” The latest study takes recent research on how rising concentration of carbon dioxide saps nutrition from food, and projects their findings forward. Plants convert the additional CO2 in the air into more sugar. That means plants grow faster, without accumulating as much iron, zinc, protein, and other nutrients along the way. “Particularly for the poor, who eat more starch because it’s cheaper, the quality of food matters enormously,”
Don’t let vegetarian environmentalists shame you for eating meat. Science is on your side. – Around the world, we’re being told to stop eating meat. Headlines, think tanks and activists all ask us to change our diet to combat climate change. The Washington D.C.-based World Resource Institute suggests that resource management will require Americans to cut their average consumption of beef by about 40%, and scientists from Manchester University just claimed that “a typical summer barbecue for four people releases more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than an 80 mile car journey.” One of the professors points out that “the production of a 100g medium-sized beef burger releases enough greenhouses gases to fill more than 60 balloons.”The scientists propose a solution: we all need to replace our burgers with “veggie sausages,” swap the cheese for half an onion and replace the butter with “vegetable spread”. Voila: half the emissions. I’m a vegetarian myself for ethical reasons, but the climate scientists’ barbecue prescription leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth – and it is not just the vegetable spread.We’re often told that going vegetarian is the biggest thing that any of us could do, with headlines telling us: “Cut your carbon footprint in half by going vegetarian.” Statements like that are misleading for two reasons.First, that cut isn’t to our entire emissions – just those from food. That means Four-fifths of emissions are ignored, according to an analysis of emission from the European Union, which means the impact is actually five-times lower. Second, the more optimistic figures about how much of your emissions you can cut are based not just on a vegetarian diet, but on an entirely vegan one where we avoid every single animal product altogether. A systematic peer-review of studies of going vegetarian shows that a non-meat diet will likely reduce an individual’s emissions by the equivalent of nearly 1,200 lbs carbon dioxide. For the average person in the industrialized world, that means anemissions cut of just 4.3%.
Food Industry’s Switch to Non-BPA Linings Still Poses Health Risks – Bisphenol A (BPA) is well-known for its estrogen-mimicking properties (Trusted Source), and is used in many canned foods. While manufacturers have been removing this compound from their products, new research is showing that the substitute might be just as bad.Bisphenol S (BPS) and bisphenol F (BPF) are manufactured chemicals now being used to replace the BPA in plastics lining aluminum cans and items like cash-register receipts.But, according to a study published in the Journal of the Endocrine Society, these two substances are also linked with an increased likelihood of childhood obesity. Researchers analyzed data from the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (Trusted Source)to evaluate associations between BPA, BPS, and BPF, and body mass outcomes among children ages 6 to 19. They found children with higher levels of BPS and BPF in their urine were more likely to be obese compared to those with lower levels. Asked if she found the findings surprising, study author Melanie Jacobson, PhD, MPH, of NYU School of Medicine, told Healthline, “Unfortunately not. BPF and BPS have almost the same chemical structure as BPA, so we might expect that they could act similarly in the body.”
In Roundup case, U.S. judge cuts $2 billion verdict against Bayer to $86 million (Reuters) – A California judge on Thursday reduced a $2 billion jury verdict, slashing the award for a couple who blamed Bayer AG’s glyphosate-based weed killer, Roundup, for their cancer to $86.7 million. Superior Court Judge Winifred Smith of the California Superior Court in Oakland said the jury’s billion-dollar punitive damage awards were excessive and unconstitutional, but rejected Bayer’s request to strike the punitive award outright. Under Smith’s final order, California couple Alva and Alberta Pilliod would receive roughly $17 million in compensatory damages and $69 million in punitive damages, down from $55 million and $2 billion, respectively. The plaintiffs still have to formally accept the reduced awards. Brent Wisner, a lawyer for the Pilliods, in a statement on Friday welcomed the decision. “While we believe the reduction in damages does not fairly capture the pain and suffering experienced by Alva and Alberta, the overall result is a big win,” Wisner said. Bayer said in a statement on Thursday that Smith’s decision to slash the award was a step in the right direction, but added it would file an appeal.
As cancer haunts North Carolina communities, residents struggle to find answers – Summer Heath was home from college in the summer of 2013 when she told her mom about her headaches and blackouts, about how she’d been turning her head more and more to see so she could apply mascara on her right lashes. She didn’t realize it was because her vision in that eye had all but disappeared. “When they checked her vision, she couldn’t see the ‘big E,’” Slusarick said. “I knew it was a tumor.” Within days, doctors confirmed it was ocular, or uveal, melanoma – cancer in the eye. Ocular melanoma is only diagnosed in 2,500 people each year across the U.S. About half of cases end up metastasized, and then the chance of survival is low. It’s a disease typically found in middle-aged men. Heath was 19. She was whisked to Philadelphia, where she was treated with radiation to neutralize the tumor. And then, the tech told Heath something she didn’t expect. He had recently seen two other girls from her high school: Kenan Koll (née Colbert) and Merideth Legg. They had graduated from Hopewell High School ahead of Heath and were diagnosed with the same cancer in 2009. Their families thought it was a fluke until they connected with Slusarick online. Soon, more people came out of the woodwork: a young woman who lived in a subdivision next to the school. Another who lived just down the road. There were 15 cases analyzed by the time Huntersville officials attempted to investigate possible causes in 2015. As North Carolina and other states take action to shut down and clean up coal plants, suspicions have swarmed that historic pollution beneath Huntersville and neighboring towns could be related to energy development. But pinpointing a cause of disease, and who might be responsible, is difficult. Their search has left a trail of fragmented data points and unexplained diagnoses throughout the region.
What If Avoiding the Sun Is Bad for You? – It was around 15 years ago that Dr. Matt Zirwas, an Ohio-based dermatologist, first noticed something curious about the people he was treating at his clinic.“The older patients I was seeing [who had] lots of sun damage and lots of skin cancer would be very robust, very energetic people,” he says. These were people who, apart from their skin cancers, tended to be in excellent health and taking very few prescription drugs.“But then I’d see these people who had beautiful skin and no cancers, and they were very low-energy and taking medications for all these different health problems,” he recalls. He began to wonder whether exposure to ultraviolet (UV) light, mostly from the sun, had more health benefits than he and other experts realized. When most people consider UV light and its effects, skin cancer and premature aging come to mind. And there’s no question that exposure to the sun, tanning beds, and other sources of UV light damages the skin in ways that promote aging and cancer. That’s why most dermatologists and public health officials recommend that Americans slather sunscreen on exposed skin whenever they leave the house – even in the wintertime – or take other steps to avoid sun exposure. “The standard line from dermatologists is that no part of your skin should ever be exposed to unprotected sun,” Zirwas says. But his clinical observations made him wonder whether the story on UV light was really all negative, and if a zero-tolerance policy on sun exposure was warranted when taking a broad view of human health. “We evolved as outdoor creatures who were exposed to the sun, so it never made sense to me that sun exposure would be all bad,” he says.
Air pollution may have killed 30,000 people in a single year, study says More than 30,000 deaths in the United States in a single year may have been caused by air pollution, according to a study published Tuesday. Those deaths came even as almost every county in the United States remained within federal air quality standards. That suggests more stringent regulations are needed to protect human health, researchers say. “I think the big conclusion is that lowering the limits of air pollution could delay in the US, all together, tens of thousands of deaths each year,” said Majid Ezzati, the study’s lead author and a professor of global environmental health at Imperial College London. The research, published today in the journal PLOS Medicine, estimated the deaths for 2015, the most recent year for which data was available. Researchers analyzed air quality trends from that year back to 1999 at over 750 monitoring stations across the continental United States. They looked specifically at particulate matter — small, inhalable particles in the air that can enter the bloodstream. The study compared that air quality data with publicly available information on deaths, looking for connections between pollution and cardiorespiratory diseases, which are thought to be triggered or worsened by particle-dense air. While particulate matter has decreased over the past two decades, researchers still linked the pollution that remained to deaths across the country. The team also controlled for a variety of factors — including age, education, poverty and smoking rates — that could have explained why areas with more pollution saw worse health. “Doing everything that you can reasonably do to rule out other explanations, you still ended up with a few tens of thousands of deaths,” said Ezzati.
‘Toxic Stew’ Stirred Up by Disasters Poses Long-Term Danger, New Findings Show – – New research shows that the extreme weather and fires of recent years, similar to the flooding that has struck Louisiana and the Midwest, may be making Americans sick in ways researchers are only beginning to understand.By knocking chemicals loose from soil, homes, industrial-waste sites or other sources, and spreading them into the air, water and ground, disasters like these – often intensified by climate change – appear to be exposing people to an array of physical ailments including respiratory disease and cancer.“We are sitting on a pile of toxic poison,” said Naresh Kumar, a professor of environmental health at the University of Miami, referring to the decades’ worth of chemicals present in the environment. “Whenever we have these natural disasters, they are stirred. And through this stirring process, we get more exposure to these chemicals.”Dr. Kumar’s research has focused on the spread of PCBs, a suspected carcinogen, in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in 2017. He led a team of researchers in Guflnica, a bayside town with historically high concentrations of PCBs, and found that levels had tripled since Maria, to 450 parts per million. Worse, it wasn’t just the soil showing elevated PCBs. It was the people, too. The researchers tested 50 residents in Guflnica and found levels two to three times greater than the national average. Dr. Kumar’s hypothesis is that the PCBs from old industrial sites were pushed into or around the bay, and people ate contaminated fish or breathed contaminated air. Other research examined Hurricane Harvey in Houston, and the wildfires in Northern California, looking at the contaminants dislodged during those disasters and the health effects of those contaminants, which can include sewage, asbestos, heavy metals and others. The issue is a global concern as well. Last year, the World Health Organization issued a report warning about the public-health effects of chemical releases caused by natural disasters, citing examples in Europe, Latin America and Asia. The toxic substances displaced during disasters “are much more long-lasting and ubiquitous than I think people realize,” “And we clearly haven’t caught up in terms of our laws and regulations, and the process of disaster response.”
Sri Lankans demand UK take back rotting waste – BBC — Sri Lankans are up in arms over the alleged dumping of hazardous waste from Britain, including syringes and suspected human remains from mortuaries. The government has urged Britain to immediately take back more than 100 containers sent to the island nation that contained the putrid waste mixed up amid mattresses, clothes and plastics. Many of the containers are believed to have arrived from the UK as far back as 2017. According to reports they were only inspected last week after port officials complained that 111 containers abandoned by an importer were emitting a horrible smell. “Some of the materials have been liquidised and deteriorated to the point that we cannot even examine them and the waste is emitting a bad odour,” Customs Department spokesman Sunil Jayaratne told Sri Lanka’s Daily Mirror newspaper. Authorities said on Tuesday that they had taken “immediate action to order the re-export of the 111 containers abandoned at the port”. But on Wednesday, the UK’s Environment Agency told the BBC that while it was investigating what had happened, it was yet to receive any formal request from Sri Lankan authorities to repatriate the waste. This is just the latest case of an Asian country angered by the dumping of waste by Western nations disguised as recycling. China’s decision in January 2018 to no longer accept foreign plastic waste for recycling has upended the global industry and led to a surge in exports to other developing countries. In May, the Philippines sent 69 containers of refuse back to Canada that it said had been falsely labelled as plastic recycling.
Flesh-eating ‘Obama worm’ invading Europe through Spain, threatens local ecosystem – A 7cm-long flatworm with hundreds of eyes along the length of its body has been accidentally imported from South America and is now threatening soil quality and local wildlife in Spain, with possibly more drastic consequences. The Obama flatworm (Obama nungara) has been spotted thriving in the rice paddies of the Parc Natural de L’Albufera in Valencia. Conservationist group SEO/Birdlife raised the alarm earlier this week. While this predatory species feasts on earthworms and land snails, it has no known natural predators itself, because it tastes so foul that birds refuse to eat it after one bite. Researchers believe it came to Spain in exotic pot plants imported from Brazil. The parasite, which is named after the Brazilian Tupi words for leaf (oba) and animal (ma) rather than the former US president, threatens to decimate the native earthworm population and, in doing so, disrupt the health and fertility of local soil, which will spark a domino effect for the entire regional food chain. In addition, the decreased soil stability would increase the risk of both flooding and landslides, as well as diminishing crop production. The Obama worm is one of at least six invasive species of Latin American origin that have been detected in Spain, while other European nations have experienced similar invasions in recent years.
Giant ticks which hunt their prey confirmed in the Netherlands – The giant tick found in Drenthe last week has been confirmed as a Hyalomma marginatum, a species originating in tropical climates and previously confined to southern parts of Europe. The ticks, thought to be brought in by migrating birds, have striped legs and their body is almost twice the length of ticks normally found in the Netherlands. This can grow to around two centimetres when they are engorged with blood. Unlike common ticks, the giant tick actively hunts its prey and can identify targets up to nine metres away. They have also been observed follow their target for ten minutes or more, walking or running a distance of up to 100 metres, according to the European centre for disease prevention and control. The ticks are known to carry several diseases, including Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever but this tick was not a carrier, the public health institute RIVM said. The tick was, however, carrying bacteria which can cause Spotted Fever (Rickettsia aeschlimannii), which is rare but easily treated by antibiotics. Spotted Fever was also found in ticks in Austria last year. The Drenthe tick is the second Hyalomma to be found in the Netherlands. One was identified in eastern Gelderland in early July. Examples of the ticks have been found in several other northern European countries including Germany, where it is thought to have overwintered, and Sweden. Most have been found in livestock, primarily horses.
Japan Approves First Human-Animal Embryo Experiments – A Japanese stem-cell scientist is the first to receive government support to create animal embryos that contain human cells and transplant them into surrogate animals since a ban on the practice was overturned earlier this year.Hiromitsu Nakauchi, who leads teams at the University of Tokyo and Stanford University in California, plans to grow human cells in mouse and rat embryos and then transplant those embryos into surrogate animals. Nakauchi’s ultimate goal is to produce animals with organs made of human cells that can, eventually, be transplanted into people.Until March, Japan explicitly forbid the growth of animal embryos containing human cells beyond 14 days or the transplant of such embryos into a surrogate uterus. That month Japan’s education and science ministry issued new guidelines allowing the creation of human-animal embryos that can be transplanted into surrogate animals and brought to term.Human – animal hybrid embryos have been made in countries such as the United States, but never brought to term. Although the country allows this kind of research, the National Institutes of Health has had a moratorium on funding such work since 2015. Nakauchi’s experiments are the first to be approved under Japan’s new rules, by a committee of experts in the science ministry. Final approval from the ministry is expected next month.
Songbirds are being snatched from Miami’s forests — Even as three armed officers closed in on the small wooden cage, its occupant sang out. The call was that of a young male indigo bunting, high-pitched and simple. The bird was too young to have perfected more complex tunes, but he sang with gusto. In the wild, indigo buntings and many other songbirds traverse huge distances during their spring and fall migrations, taking wing from breeding grounds in southern Canada to wintering areas in South America, often stopping to rest in Florida. Flying mainly at night, they navigate by the stars, and as they go, the young males learn some of their songs from older ones voyaging with them. But this young bunting, its passage cut short by a trapper in Florida, had ended up with Enamorado in his Miami neighborhood. The bird’s tan and iridescent-blue face was scarred from where a trap’s wire bars had cut into him as he struggled to regain his freedom.That shouldn’t have happened. Buntings and other migratory songbirds are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, a century-old United States law that makes it illegal to capture, kill, or possess any of these birds. Violators are subject to fines and possible imprisonment for up to six months, and if they sell or smuggle the birds, to possible felony charges that may result in more extensive jail time.Yet the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reports that 40 protected bird species in Florida are routinely trapped, mostly songbirds but also owls and hawks. According to Rene Taboas – an undercover officer who heads the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s songbird investigations whom we had permission to name – almost all songbird trapping in the state occurs in national parks and on state lands and private property around Miami. According to Florida law enforcement officials who track the trade, it’s done largely by people either born in Cuba, where keeping songbirds is part of the culture, or born in the U.S. of Cuban descent.
Nearly 30,000 Species Face Extinction Because of Human Activity – The statistics around threatened species are looking grim. A new report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has added more than 9,000 new additions to its Red List of threatened species, pushing the total number of species on the list to more than 105,000 for the first time, according tothe Guardian. The IUCN last published its definitive assessment of the status of species in December. Since then, it has found many species have gotten worse and not a single one has improved. The analysis found that 27 percent of the list, or 28,338 different species, are at risk of extinction. The IUCN organizes this group into three different categories, Critically Endangered, Endangered, or Vulnerable. To make matters worse, an additional 6,435 species fall into the near-threatened category. “Things are not getting better, they are getting worse,” said Craig Hilton-Taylor, head of the IUCN Red Listunit, in an interview with TIME. The extent of the problem is global. It runs the gamut from the depths of the oceans to the peaks of mountains. Man-made destruction is the primary driver of declining plant and animal species. The red-capped mangabey, a monkey previously listed as vulnerable moved to endangered since it is hunted for bush meatand its habitat is being destroyed, according to Mongabay. Similarly, habitat loss and the pet trade moved the pancake tortoise in East Africa from vulnerable to critically endangered. In Japan, nearly half of its native freshwater fish are being pushed towards extinction as well as nearly a third of freshwater fish in Mexico.
Australia Designates Animal Rights Activists ‘Domestic Terrorists’ After Vigilante Farm Invasion – Australia’s south-eastern state government has declared Animal rights activists ‘domestic terrorists’ after several trespassing incidents, according to the Independent. The New South Wales (NSW) government has introduced on-the-spot trespassing charges of $1,000 (£565) for each “vigilante” caught illegally entering private farmland.The new rules, which come into force on 1 August, could also see individuals charged up to $220,000 (£124,000) and corporations up to $440,000 (£248,000) for any major violations of the Biosecurity Act. –Independent“Vigilantes who are entering our farmers’ property illegally are nothing short of domestic terrorists,” said NSW deputy premier John Barilaro. “Our farmers have had a gutful. They don’t deserve, nor have time, to be dealing with illegal trespass and vile harassment from a bunch of virtue-signalling thugs.” According to the report, “Earlier this year clashes between farm owners and protesters forced the police to step in Western Australia, and the owners of a small goat farm in Victoria blamed closure on continual harassment by abusive “vegan activists”.” Jail time is also under consideration as additional punishment. “Today the government is putting these vigilantes and thugs on notice,” NWS agriculture minister Adam Marshall told Australia’s ABC News. “This is just the first part of a broader package of reforms the government is working on, and jail time will be included in further legislation we are looking at.” Marshall added that the new rules are “the toughest laws anywhere in Australia for people that illegally trespass onto farmers’ properties.” Meanwhile, activist group Aussie Farms says that the new rules under the “smokescreen” of biosecurity go too far. Per executive director Chris Delforce, “Once again, the issue of biosecurity is being used as an excuse to attempt to limit consumer awareness of the systemic cruelty occurring in farms and slaughterhouses across the country.”
Germany’s forests on the verge of collapse, experts report – Germany’s parched forests are nearing ecological collapse, foresters and researchers warn. More than 1 million established trees have died since 2018 as a result of drought, winter storms and bark beetle plagues. Germany’s forests are undoubtedly suffering as a result of climate change, with millions of seedlings planted in the hope of diversifying and restoring forests dying, warns Ulrich Dohle, chairman of the 10,000-member Bunds Deutscher Forstleute (BDF) forestry trade union. “It’s a catastrophe. German forests are close to collapsing,” Dohle added in an interview with t-online, a online news portal of Germany’s Ströer media group. Low rainfall last summer saw Germany’s rivers reach extreme lows, with some waterways still struggling and forests prone to fire. “These are no longer single unusual weather events. That is climate change,” said Dohle. Helge Bruelheide, co-director of Germany’s Center for Integrative Biodiversity, warned: “if the trend prevails and the annual precipitation sinks below 400 millimeters (15.7 inches) then there will be areas in Germany that will no longer be forestable.” Lüdenscheid, a densely forested area in central Germany, was no exception, Bohle added. Its precipitation had slumped from one-meter (39 inches) in 2017 to only 483 millimeters last year. Catchments in central Europe collected only 10% more rainfall in the first half of 2019, compared to the same period in 2018, a trend exacerbated by uneven wet-then-dry months, Germany’s Institute of Hydrology (BFG) reported Thursday.
Amazon Deforestation Rate Hits 3 Football Fields Per Minute, Data Confirms – The Amazon rainforest in Brazil is being clear cut so rapidly – a rate of three football fields per minute – that it is approaching a “tipping point” from which it will not recover, according to the Guardian. As trees are lost, researchers said there is a risk that large areas could transition from rainforest to savannah as they lose the ability to make their own rainfall from evaporation and from plants giving off water vapor, according to Newsweek. A transition on that scale could have significant implications for global warming since the rainforest absorbs vast amounts of atmospheric carbon. Recent research has shown the potential for massive tree plantings to remove excess carbon from the atmosphere. “It’s very important to keep repeating these concerns. There are a number of tipping points which are not far away,” said Philip Fearnside, a professor at Brazil’s National Institute of Amazonian Research, as the Guardian reported. “We can’t see exactly where they are, but we know they are very close. It means we have to do things right away. Unfortunately that is not what is happening. There are people denying we even have a problem.” The alarming rate of deforestation and its acceleration confirms suspicions that new president Jair Bolsonarohas allowed illegal land invasion, logging and burning. Bolsonaro has called his own government’s satellite data lies. The president’s comments followed preliminary satellite data that showed more than 400 square miles of the rainforest had been cleared in the first half of July – an increase of 68 percent from the entire month of July last year, according to the BBC. Bolsonaro, the far right politician who has said he is fulfilling a mission from God, dismissed concerns expressed by European Union members and called it hypocritical since so many European forests have been wiped out.”You have to understand that the Amazon is Brazil’s, not yours,” Bolsonaro said, as the Guardian reported. “If all this devastation you accuse us of doing was done in the past the Amazon would have stopped existing, it would be a big desert.”
Brazil’s Bolsonaro restricts drugs policy council, legalizes agritoxins – President Jair Bolsonaro wants tighter control of government data on deforestation. He spoke just days after accusing Brazil’s space agency, the INPE, of falsifying data. Data released by the INPE in July data shows deforestation accelerating – raising concerns as officials negotiate an EU trade deal. Bolsonaro said his Cabinet should review data before the INPE releases it. The president came out swinging at regulators Monday. His Agriculture Ministry authorized 51 pesticides and herbicides, bringing the number of agritoxins permitted to 290 in the just over half a year of his government so far. Seven of the pesticides authorized on Monday contain an ingredient that researchers believe is contributing to the global die-off of bees. The Agriculture Ministry reports that deregulating agritoxins offers business “more-efficient alternatives of control and with less impact on the environment and human health.” Bolsonaro stripped a council that helps set drug policies of almost all of its nongovernmental members, indicating he hopes to stifle dissent. He said he wished to eliminate all councils, which mix appointees, experts and representatives of civil society created to help formulate policy.
US cities are losing 36 million trees a year. Here’s why it matters and how you can stop it – Trees can lower summer daytime temperatures by as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit, according to a recent study.But tree cover in US cities is shrinking. A study published last year by the US Forest Service found that we lost 36 million trees annually from urban and rural communities over a five-year period. That’s a 1% drop from 2009 to 2014.If we continue on this path, “cities will become warmer, more polluted and generally more unhealthy for inhabitants,” said David Nowak, a senior US Forest Service scientist and co-author of the study. Nowak says there are many reasons our tree canopy is declining, including hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, insects and disease. But the one reason for tree loss that humans can control is sensible development. “We see the tree cover being swapped out for impervious cover, which means when we look at the photographs, what was there is now replaced with a parking lot or a building,” Nowak said. More than 80% of the US population lives in urban areas, and most Americans live in forested regions along the East and West coasts, Nowak says. “Every time we put a road down, we put a building and we cut a tree or add a tree, it not only affects that site, it affects the region.” The study placed a value on tree loss based on trees’ role in air pollution removal and energy conservation. The lost value amounted to $96 million a year.
Wildfires above the Arctic Circle in Greenland and Alaska – Wildfire activity is moving north. Of the 26 new fires reported over the past two days in Alaska, ten were above the Arctic Circle. Isolated thunderstorms are expected in the central and eastern interior today, Tuesday, with high temperatures reaching the low 80s in the Yukon Flats area. Fifteen new fires were reported across Alaska Monday. Twenty-three fires are actively burning in the Tanana Zone today, with a total of 30 fires reported this year. In addition to the fires in Alaska, on July 10 a satellite detected heat signatures in Greenland that were consistent with those seen at wildland fires. And another satellite photographed what appears to be smoke. (pictures)
Satellite Images Show Vast Swaths of Arctic on Fire – Vast stretches of Earth’s northern latitudes are on fire right now. Hot weather has engulfed a huge portion of the Arctic, from Alaska to Greenland to Siberia. That’s helped create conditions ripe for wildfires, including some truly massive ones burning in remote parts of the region that are being seen by satellites. Pierre Markuse, a satellite imagery processing guru, has documented some of the blazes attacking the forests and peatlands of the Arctic. The imagery reveals the delicate landscapes with braided rivers, towering mountains, and vast swaths of forest, all under a thick blanket of smoke. In Alaska, those images show some of the damage wrought by wildfires that have burned more than 1.6 million acres of land this year. Huge fires have sent smoke streaming cities earlier this month, riding on the back of Anchorage’sfirst 90 degree day ever recorded. The image below show some of the more remote fires in Alaska as well as the Swan Lake Fire, which was responsible for the smoke swallowing Anchorage in late June and earlier this month. Intense hot conditions have also fanned flames in Siberia. The remote nature of many of the fires there means they’re burning out of control, often, through swaths of peatland that’s normally frozen or soggy. But as Thomas Smith, a fire expert at London School of Economics, noted on Twitter, there are ample signs the peat dried out due to the heat and is ablaze. That’s worrisome since peat is rich in carbon, and fires can release it into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Peat fires can also burn underground into the winter and reignite in spring. The images below show fires in Batagay in central Siberia and the region’s Lena River.
‘Unprecedented’ Wildfires in Arctic Have Scientists Concerned –So many wildfires are burning in the Arctic, they’re visible from space, new images from NASA’s Earth Observatory show. The satellite images reveal huge plumes of smoke wafting across uninhabited lands in Siberia, Greenland and Alaska, as CNNreported.Summer fires are common in the Arctic, but not at this scale.”I think it’s fair to say July Arctic Circle #wildfires are now at unprecedented levels,” said Mark Parrington, a senior scientist at Europe’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, on Twitter earlier this week. Copernicus’ scientists have been tracking more than 100 wildfires raging above the Arctic Circle since the start of June, which was the hottest June on record. July is on pace to break records too as Europe bakes under another heat wave this week.”The magnitude is unprecedented in the 16-year satellite record,” said Thomas Smith, an assistant professor in environmental geography at the London School of Economics, to USA Today. “The fires appear to be further north than usual, and some appear to have ignited peat soils.”Peat fires burn deeper in the ground and can last for weeks or even months instead of a few hours or days like most forest fires, according to the UPI. So far, the Arctic’s fires have released approximately 100 megatons, 100 million metric tons, of CO2 between June 1 and July 21, which Parrington said on Twitter “is getting close to 2017 fossil fuel CO2 emissions of Belgium” for the entire year, as USA Today reported. “These are some of the biggest fires on the planet, with a few appearing to be larger than 100,000 hectares (380 square miles),” he told USA Today. “The amount of CO2 (carbon dioxide) emitted from Arctic Circle fires in June 2019 is larger than all of the CO2 released from Arctic Circle fires in the same month from 2010 through to 2018 put together.”
Twenty injured as 1,800 firefighters battle huge wildfires in Portugal with terrified residents forced to flee their homes (photo essay & video) About 1,800 firefighters were struggling to contain wildfires in central Portugal that have already injured 20 people, including eight firefighters, authorities said today. The fires broke out on Saturday across three fronts in the district of Castelo Branco, 125 miles northeast of Lisbon, Portugal’s Civil Protection Agency said. Firefighters were being supported by 19 firefighting aircraft and hundreds of vehicles. It is the first major bout of wildfires in Portugal this year. In a statement released on Sunday afternoon, police said a 55-year-old man was detained on suspicion of starting a blaze in the district of Castelo Branco, where the wildfires started before spreading to nearby Santarem.’The suspect’s actions put people’s lives, houses and the forest at risk,’ the police said, without explicitly saying the arrested man was responsible for the ongoing wildfire.Internal administration minister Eduardo Cabrita said police had opened an investigation into the fires, adding that local authorities considered it unusual that all the blazes had started in a narrow time frame between 2.30pm and 3.30pm local time on Saturday in the same area.
Europe’s Most Important River Risks a Repeat of Historic Shutdown – The bustling boat traffic on Europe’s Rhine river ground to a halt for the first time in living memory last year, as shrinking alpine glaciers and severe drought made the key transport artery impassable. Those historic conditions could be repeated in a few weeks. With little rainfall recently, water levels at Kaub – a critical chokepoint near Frankfurt – dropped to about 150 centimeters (59 inches), half the depth from just a month ago. Movements of the heaviest barges are already restricted, and all river cargo could again cease if the level falls below 50 centimeters. With Rhine traffic at risk of a back-to-back halt, the effects of climate change have become increasingly tangible in the region. Wildfires in Sweden, violent storms in the Mediterranean and German concerns aboutmotorways buckling in June’s record-breaking heat have heightened attention on the environment. “Extreme weather events are becoming more common,” Chancellor Angela Merkel said this month in a weekly podcast. “We must do more” to protect the planet. The Rhine is critical to commerce in the region. Europe’s most important waterway snakes 800 miles through industrial zones in Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands before emptying into the North Sea at the busy Rotterdam port. It’s a key conduit for raw materials and goods from coal and iron ore to chemicals, fertilizers and car parts. Last year’s disruption contributed to a contraction in the German economy. “It is painful when we have these periods of low water,” the country’s Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer said at a June gathering of experts to discuss options to keep Rhine traffic flowing. “It’s damaging to the German economy and has implications for our standard of living.”
U.S. Soldiers Falling Ill, Dying in the Heat as Climate Warms – In 2008, 1,766 cases of heat stroke or heat exhaustion were diagnosed among active-duty service members, according to military data. By 2018, that figure had climbed to 2,792, an increase of almost 60 percent over the decade. All branches of the military saw a rise in heat-related illnesses, but the problem was most pronounced in the Marine Corps, which saw the rate of heat strokes more than double from 2008 to 2018, according to military data. The troops who died of heat exposure are among the most extreme examples of how a warming world poses a threat to military personnel, both at home and abroad. The rising heat exacerbates challenges the military is facing in some of the world’s most destabilized regions and endangers individual service members – and, by extension, U.S. security and preparedness, the Pentagon concluded in recent studies on climate change risks. Health impacts from heat have already cost the military as much as nearly $1 billion from 2008 to 2018 in lost work, retraining and medical care. The warming of the planet “will affect the Department of Defense’s ability to defend the nation and poses immediate risks to U.S. national security,” a recent Department of Defense report said. The investigation found that despite acknowledging the risks of climate change, the military continues to wrestle with finding a sustainable, comprehensive strategy for how to train in sweltering conditions. The military’s investigative reports, often heavily redacted, show evidence of disregard for heat safety rules that led to the deaths of service members. The reports document a poor level of awareness of the dangers of heat illness and the decisions of commanders who pushed troops beyond prudent limits in extremely hot conditions. One challenge in getting commanders to treat the heat threat as an urgent priority is that global warming is an increasingly taboo topic in the military under President Donald Trump, who has called climate change a hoax. In testimony before Congress, generals and admirals continue to flag climate change broadly as a threat to national security. But Trump’s stance makes it difficult for leaders at some levels to frame the heat problem as an urgent climate change threat, according to interviews with retired officers, defense academics and current military personnel. “No one is going to talk about climate change because of the political aspect and who is in the White House,” a military official, who asked to remain anonymous, said. “It’s a career killer to talk about something in opposition to that of the administration.”
It’s So Hot That Pigs Are Getting Skinnier, Boosting U.S. Prices –How hot is it? It’s so hot that pigs are losing weight. America has had a fat pig problem in recent months, with a hefty hog herd sending pork prices tumbling. But as the U.S. bakes under scorching heat, the animals are sweating off the pounds. Hog producers aggressively sold animals in June to try and work through burdensome supplies. That sent cash prices tumbling. But it appears the strategy worked and now the average weight of pigs sent to slaughter is falling, signaling that the marketers successfully offloaded their too-numerous winter and spring hogs and now have a more slender summer lot to sell. As a result, prices are rebounding.“With hog weights more under control and hot summer weather in the forecast, producers are no longer desperate to try to move hogs,” a reportfrom Steiner Consulting Group on Wednesday said. National spot prices for hogs averaged 80.88 cents a pound on Wednesday, according to the latest government data. That’s 22% higher than a year earlier.
UCS Extreme Heat Report: A Call to Action on Midwest Clean Energy – Union of Concerned Scientists – Excessively hot weather spread across the Great Plains and Midwest states last week. On Friday, Chicago faced heat indexes well above 110 degrees, and many other areas endured dangerous heat warnings and advisories. According to a sobering new report issued earlier this week by the Union of Concerned Scientists, the heat impacts of climate change will bring increasingly frequent extreme heat events such as these if we don’t take aggressive action to mitigate global warming pollution. The report, Killer Heat in the United States: Climate Choices and the Future of Dangerously Hot Days, is scary news – but it’s also a call to action. The U.S. Midwest region (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, and Wisconsin), which has historically seen an average of 6 days with a heat index over 100°F, is projected to see an average of 53 days per year with a heat index over 100°F. The region will also see 38 days per year with a heat index above 105°F and seven “off-the-charts” days per year by the end of the century. For Illinois specifically, there have historically been 34 days per year on average with a heat index above 90°F. This would increase to 80 days per year on average by midcentury and 107 days by century’s end. The state has historically had 7 days per year on average with a heat index above 100°F, but this would increase to 43 days per year on average by midcentury and 69 by the century’s end. And instead of having an average of two days per year with a heat index above 105°F, Illinois would see such extreme heat events 26 days per year on average by midcentury and 51 days a year by the century’s end.
‘This is unprecedented’: Alert, Nunavut, is warmer than Victoria – Weather watchers are focused on the world’s most northerly community, which is in the middle of a record-breaking heat wave. “It’s really quite spectacular,” said David Phillips, Environment Canada’s chief climatologist. “This is unprecedented.” The weather agency confirmed that Canadian Forces Station Alert hit a record of 21 C on Sunday. On Monday, the military listening post on the top of Ellesmere Island had reached 20 C by noon and inched slightly higher later in the day. Alert was warmer both days than Victoria, B.C., a Canadian go-to for balmy climes. The average July high for Alert is 7 C. Phillips said that means the heat wave at the top of the world is the equivalent of Toronto registering a daytime high of 42 C. Phillips said it’s the latest anomaly in what’s been a long, hot summer across the Arctic. Iqaluit saw the mercury rise to 23.5 C on July 9, Nunavut Day – the highest ever for that day. Alaska had its second-warmest June on record. Records have been falling – not by fractions, but by large margins. “That’s what we’re seeing more often,” Phillips said. “It’s not just half a degree or a 10th of a millimetre. It’s like hitting a ball out of the ballpark. It is so different than what the previous record was.” “Our models for the rest of the summer are saying, ‘Get used to it.”‘ In Alert’s case, the source of the Arctic beach weather is a large current of air that somehow found its way north from the U.S. southeast, Phillips said. It could be related to changes in the jet stream, a fast-moving, high-altitude river of air that moves west to east. That current has slowed in recent years and has become more unstable, sometimes looping much farther north or south than normal. Many scientists believe the changes are at least partly the result of melting sea ice. “It’s almost as if you’re seeing these extremes more often because of the jet stream that has a different look and a different pattern,” Phillips said. “That’s what we saw when we had those 20-degree temperatures in Iqaluit.”
Climate crisis blamed as temperature records broken in three nations – Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands have recorded their highest ever temperatures as the second extreme heatwave in as many months to be linked by scientists to the climate emergency grips the continent.The Dutch meteorological service, KNMI, said the temperature reached 39.2C(102.5F) at the Gilze-Rijen airbase near Breda on Wednesday afternoon, exceeding the previous high of 38.6C set in August 1944.In Belgium, the temperature in Kleine-Brogel hit 38.9C on Wednesday afternoon, fractionally higher than the previous record of 38.8C set in June 1947, and then subsequently rose to 39.9C. Forecasters said temperatures could climb further on Thursday.Germany’s national weather service, DWD, said it believed a new all-time national high of 40.5C – 0.2C higher than the record – had been set in the town of Geilenkirchen near the Dutch and Belgian borders, but had still to confirm it. “The most extreme heat will build from central and northern France into Belgium, the Netherlands and far western Germany into Thursday,” said Eric Leister of the forecasting group AccuWeather. After several cities in France broke previous temperature records on Tuesday, including Bordeaux, which hit 41.2C, the national weather service, Météo France, said Paris was likely to beat its all-time high of 40.4C, set in July 1947, with 42C on Thursday. City records in Amsterdam and Brussels are also expected to fall. Cities are particularly vulnerable in heatwaves because of a phenomenon known as theurban heat island effect, in which concrete buildings and asphalt roads absorb heat during the day and emit it again at night, preventing the city from cooling.
Second Major Heat Wave This Summer Smashes Records Across Europe – Europe’s second extreme heat wave of the summer has lived up to predictions, smashing records across the continent. Paris recorded its all-time highest temperature of 42.6 degrees Celsius, BBC News reported. Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands all endured record highs on Wednesday only to see them broken again on Thursday, AccuWeather reported. Thursday’s all-time highs measured 41.8 for Belgium, 42.6 for Germany and 40.7 for the Netherlands, the first time the country heated to 40 degrees or more. The UK, meanwhile, experienced its hottest ever July temperature of 38.1 degrees Celsius, BBC News reported. This is only the second time that the UK has experienced a temperature above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the UK’s Met Office tweeted. The heat has proven potentially deadly, as five deaths recorded in France may have been linked to the heat. It also interfered with transportation. Trains in Britain ran at reduced speeds to keep rails from buckling, and a Eurostar traveling from Belgium to London actually broke down Wednesday, forcing passengers to wait in the heat for three hours.”Everything was suddenly down: no air-conditioning, no electricity,” passenger Paul De Grauwe said, as The New York Times reported. “I have never been so hot in my life.” The high Paris temperatures also threatened Notre-Dame cathedral, which was damaged in a fire in April. “I am very worried about the heat wave because, as you know, the cathedral suffered from the fire, the beams coming down, but also the shock from the water from the firefighters. The masonry is saturated with water,” Chief Architect Philippe Villeneuve told Reuters, as AccuWeather reported. The Met Office noted that heat waves in Europe have gotten both more likely and more extreme because of the climate crisis, BBC News reported. “What we have at the moment is this very warm stream of air, coming up from northern Africa, bringing with it unusually warm weather,” the Met Office’s Dr. Peter Stott told BBC 5Live. “But without climate change we wouldn’t have hit the peaks that we’re hitting right now.”
New Study Predicts Millions of Americans May Become Exposed to “Off the Charts” Heat – (video & transcript) This Real News Network story, keying off the astonishing heat wave now underway in Europe (108 degrees in Paris which has pretty much no air conditioning in residential buildings), highlights the driving factors and how they are expected to play out in the US in coming decades. This summer, the climate news cycle has been dominated by two searing heat waves that have afflicted Western Europe. In one European city after another, the record for the all-time high temperature has been broken. Just today, July 25th, the record for the highest temperature in Paris, France was broken again. In the slight, the temperature soared today to a remarkable 42.4 degrees Celsius, or 108.3 degrees Fahrenheit. As Western Europe has been baking in the unprecedented heat, experts from the Union of Concerned Scientists issued an alarming new report about future levels of extreme heat back in the United States. According to that report, in less than 20 years, millions of people in the United States could be exposed to dangerous “off the charts” heat conditions of 127 degrees Fahrenheit or more. For those of you who deal with Celsius, that is nearly 53 degrees. The report goes on to predict that in 60 years, over one-third of the US population could be exposed to such conditions, posing unprecedented health risks. Now here to discuss this with us is Michael Mann. Michael is a Distinguished Professor and Director of the Earth Science Systems Service Center at Penn State University. He’s the author of several books. Perhaps most famously in 2012, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars. And most recently, The Tantrum That Saved the World, a children’s book on climate change which he co-authored with Megan Herbert. Michael joins us today from State College in Pennsylvania. Thank you for coming back on The Real News, Michael.
Groundwater Running Out Is Leading to Unsustainable Practice of Digging Deeper Wells – Drill, baby, drill! It’s what Americans are doing to find potable water.New research has found that Americans are digging deeper and deeper wells to meet our water demands, which is not a sustainable practice for our water supply needs, according to a study that is the first national assessment of U.S. groundwater wells.Nearly 120 million Americans rely on underground aquifers for drinking water, for irrigating nearly half of the nation’s crops, and for use in manufacturing. But, we have been using up that water much faster than it can be replenished, which has America running headlong into a water crisis, as Pacific Standard reported. Nearly 1,000 of California’s community water systems are at high risk of failing to provide potable drinking water. America’s aging infrastructure is in desperate need of repair, including the country’s drinking water systems, which the American Society of Civil Engineers gave a D rating in its 2017 report, according to theNew York Times.Water levels are dropping for large populations and farming regions, including California’s fertile Central Valley and the High Plains region atop the vast Ogallala aquifer, which underlies 111.8 million acres in parts of eight states from South Dakota to Texas, as Science News reported. The Ogalla aquifer is particularly frightening – a 2017 report by the U.S. Geological Survey noted that its water levels had dropped by nearly 16 feet from 1950 to 2015.The new study, published in the journal Nature Sustainability, analyzed 65 years of well depth trends to gain new insights into the management of the critical resource. “We actually don’t know that much about how much groundwater is being used and where groundwater wells are located,” said Debra Perrone, an assistant professor at the University of California – Santa Barbara, and lead author on the new study, as Pacific Standard reported. “Groundwater is often referred to as an invisible resource. Groundwater wells are small, they’re distributed, they’re often lost among the landscape.” In the end, their research focused on five mega-aquifer systems that deliver water to densely populated regions, agricultural hubs, or areas with heavy industrial activities. The data showed that across the country, groundwater users are drilling wells deeper and deeper across 70 percent of the country. But for the areas where wells haven’t gotten deeper, the wells might soon run dry, according to Pacific Standard .
3 million marooned, 26 killed as Bangladesh flood worsens – With flooding turning worse in some northern and many central districts, Bangladesh Water Development Board in a special flood bulletin released Thursday afternoon said that the rivers Jamuna and Teesta just broke 40 years of water level records. ‘This is the highest level the Jamuna and the Teesta ever reached since we began keeping records of water levels of the country’s rivers four decades ago,’ said BWDB executive engineer Arifuzzaman Bhuyan. On Wednesday, the Jamuna flowed 21.12 cms and 21.29 cms above the danger level at Bahadurabad and Fulchhari, a new record, said the BWDB in its flood bulletin. The river set its previous water level record at Bahadurabad point by flowing 20.84 cms above the danger level two years ago. The water level in the River Teesta set new record flowing 53.12 cms above the danger level at Dalia point on July 12. The Jamuna however might continue to swell over the next 24 hours until 9:00am Friday, the Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre said in a bulletin Thursday afternoon. Flooding might turn worse in Bogura, Sirajganj, Tangail, Manikganj, Faridpur and Munshiganj over the next 24 hours during the same time, the FFWC said. Flood situation in Kurigram, Jamalpur and Gaibandha would remain unchanged over the same period of time, the FFWC said. Weeklong heavy rains inside Bangladesh and in Assam, Meghalaya and other parts in the upstream in India and Nepal caused all major rivers in Bangladesh to swell rapidly and abnormally since the first week of July. In 21 districts the rivers overflowed their banks or burst protection embankments swamping thousands of villages in 122 upazilas. The government disaster report said that until Wednesday 3,247,454 people were marooned by flooding in 17 districts. The rivers flowed with so much strength that it washed away or already damaged about 60,000 houses in 13 districts, according to government estimates. The government estimate was not complete yet. Still it gave a hint of the havoc flooding wreaked in the affected districts.
Humans May Be Accidentally Geoengineering the Oceans – As the saying goes, what goes up must come down – and, as it turns out, a lot of what goes up comes down into the world’s oceans. Iron particles, released by human industrial activities, are one example of a pollutant that goes into the atmosphere and eventually settles into the sea. Now, new research suggests that human-emitted iron is accumulating in the ocean in much greater quantities than scientists previously estimated. And it may also be dissolving into the water more easily than suspected.The consequences are still unclear, but they’re worth investigating, scientists say. Iron is one of the key nutrients that tiny phytoplankton organisms in the ocean need to thrive. In regions where its levels are limited, adding more iron to the water can give plankton a boost, potentially altering both marine food webs and the ocean’s carbon uptake.In fact, this phenomenon is the basis for a controversial geoengineering concept that some scientists have proposed to tackle climate change. Known as “iron fertilization,” the idea involves adding iron to certain remote regions of the ocean where iron nutrients tend to be limited. Doing so could promote the growth of phytoplankton, which naturally suck up carbon dioxide.When the phytoplankton die, those that don’t get eaten by other animals fall through the water column and become trapped at the bottom of the sea, effectively locking away the stored-up carbon for good. To date, various research groups have conducted more than a dozen small-scale iron fertilization experiments, with somewhat mixed results. Some studies suggest that the carbon-storing effects are more significant than others. At the same time, some experts have expressed concern that iron fertilization could have unforeseen consequences on marine ecosystems. Others say more research is needed.
Major U.S. cities are leaking methane at twice the rate previously believed – Natural gas, long touted as a cleaner burning alternative to coal, has a leakage problem. A new study has found that leaks of methane, the main ingredient in natural gas and itself a potent greenhouse gas, are twice as big as official tallies suggest in major cities along the U.S. eastern seaboard. The study suggests many of these fugitive leaks come from homes and businesses – and could represent a far bigger problem than leaks from the industrial extraction of the fossil fuel itself. “This is an issue that people tend to ignore when trying to estimate methane emissions,” says Kathryn McKain, an atmospheric scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, who wasn’t involved in the new research. When compared with the global amount of natural and human-driven methane emissions, she notes, “These emissions are small, but they’re preventable.” When burned for heat or power, methane emits less carbon dioxide (CO2) than fossil fuels such as coal. But when leaked directly into the atmosphere, its warming effect can be dozens of times stronger than CO2, depending on the time scale over which the warming is measured. The new findings come courtesy of data gathered by aircraft over six U.S. cities: Washington, D.C.; Baltimore, Maryland; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; New York City; Providence; and Boston. In 2018, researchers flew at altitudes between 300 and 800 meters and measured concentrations of methane, ethane, CO2, and carbon monoxide, among other gases.
Eastern U.S. cities spewing more methane into air than thought – – Older U.S. east coast cities are leaking nine times as much natural gas into the air – from homes or pipes heading into houses – than the federal government had thought, a new airborne monitoring study finds. It’s probably not a safety problem because what’s coming out doesn’t reach explosive concentrations, but the extra methane heading into the air is a climate change issue, said study co-author University of Michigan atmospheric scientist Eric Kort. Scientists flew a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration airplane over New York City, Washington, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore and Providence, Rhode Island, for 1,200 hours in 2018 and found lots more methane. They couldn’t tell if the methane, a potent greenhouse gas, was leaking from inside homes or the pipes leading to homes. “You have a very leaky system,” study co-author Colm Sweeney, a NOAA atmospheric scientist, said Monday. The six cities spewed nearly 937,000 tons of methane (850,000 metric tons), which is more than twice what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates, according to the study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Methane comes from different places, not just natural gas, and that’s where the study found the biggest change from what the government had previously thought. The EPA’s estimates had figured much of the methane coming out of the five cities spewed from landfills and wetlands, not natural gas for home use. But the airplane monitors, which could differentiate between landfill gas and natural gas based on other chemicals that come out, found that 88% of the methane was natural gas, except in Providence. So scientists calculated that nine times as much natural gas was being released as EPA had estimated. Previous studies had looked at individual cities using different methods. This study is the first to give a comprehensive look over a large area. Methane traps about 30 times more heat than carbon dioxide, but doesn’t last nearly as long. By showing that leaks are a big issue, the study “represents a huge opportunity to get some early gains on controlling greenhouse gas emissions,” Sweeney said.
The Cost of Climate Change: Steve Keen Dismantles William Nordhaus – This piece is part of a series from Steve Keen, Climate Change and the Nobel Prize in Economics: The Age of Rebellion. From the previous post:
- William Nordhaus of The Breakthrough Institute recently won the Nobel Prize in Economics based on his work on climate change.
- Extinction Rebellion, a UK-based youth movement, is demanding policies that would cause net zero carbon emissions by 2025 and limiting global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees.
- William Nordhaus’ research encourages policy makers to manage global climate so it stabilizes at 4 degrees by the mid 22nd century.
- Nordhaus’ research also argues that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees would cost the global economy more than 50 trillion US dollars, while yielding benefits of well under US$5 trillion.
In this post, Keen delves into DICE (“Dynamic Integrated model of Climate and the Economy”) – the mathematical model underpinning Nordhaus’ work and the flaws in Nordhaus’ methodologies. Nordhaus’s Damage Function is the first substantive graphic in the DICE manual, and one look at it (see Figure 8) should give anyone – even Climate Change Deniers (CCDs) – cause for concern. Even if Anthropogenic Global Warming were a myth, even if the temperature rise was being caused by the Sun, would it really be true that a 5 degree increase in the average temperature of the globe would only reduce global GDP by 5 percent? This is not, as is sometimes believed, the result of Nordhaus applying a high discount rate to the impact of climate change in the distant future. This instead is his estimate of how much lower global GDP would be in the future – say, 130 years from now – compared to what it would have been, if temperatures had instead remained at pre-industrial levels. Given the urgency that characterises the Global Warming debate, this is, on the face of it, an extremely benign view of the impact of an increase in the global average temperature on GDP.
Why Central Banks Need to Step Up on Global Warming –Descended from historical port cities, it is not by accident that the world’s leading financial centers – New York City, London, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai – are vulnerable to flooding. But the larger challenge that climate change poses is not so much the physical as the systemic risk. What central bankers – the world’s preeminent economic decision-makers since the 1980s – are beginning to worry about is the potential for climate change to trigger financial crisis. They have been relatively late to the problem. Mark Carney – formerly of Goldman Sachs and the Canadian central bank, now governor of the Bank of England – can take credit for first raising the issue in financial circles at an after-dinner speech at Lloyd’s of London in September 2015. Two years later in Paris, leading central bankers and regulators founded the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS), which aims to throw the weight of key financial institutions behind the goals of the Paris climate agreement. The membership of the NGFS now includes most of the central banks of the G-20, such as the European Central Bank and the People’s Bank of China. It is telling that the only financial authority not to be involved in these initiatives is the U.S. Federal Reserve, the most powerful central bank in the global financial system. But even if it were to come aboard, the most critical question would remain whether the green agenda of the world’s central banks is adequate to the challenge of mitigating the effects of the climate crisis – and perhaps holding it within manageable bounds. The central banks have the powers to be a major part of the climate response. As of yet, their response is defensive, focusing on managing financial risks. The rest of us have no choice but to hope that they move into a more proactive mode in time.
House Democrats unveil more ‘realistic’ climate change plan (Reuters) – A group of U.S. House Democrats on Tuesday unveiled a climate change plan they said featured a “more realistic” goal to cut carbon emissions to net zero by 2050 rather than by 2030 as envisioned under the Green New Deal introduced early this year. Solar and wind companies have criticized the Green New Deal, introduced by Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Edward Markey in February, as unrealistic and politically divisive. Representatives Frank Pallone, Paul Tonko, Bobby Rush and others said on Tuesday they would draw up legislation late this year that aimed to avoid the worst effects of climate change including intense droughts, storms and floods. “Net zero” means cutting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions 100 percent or offsetting them by as much as is emitted. “What we’re really trying to do here is come up with a united front that’s driven by the scientific community and that’s consensus,” Pallone said in introducing the plan. Pallone said lawmakers wanted to hear ideas from the Green New Deal and its supporters as they draw up legislation. “We just think that (the 2050) target is more realistic,” Pallone said. He said the goal is based on input from scientists who “say that that’s the date that if we don’t go down to net zero carbon pollution by then we have a catastrophic situation.” Several candidates seeking the Democratic presidential nomination for 2020, including Joe Biden and Beto O’Rourke, also have climate plans that seek net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Elizabeth Warren Wants Green Bombs, not a Green New Deal – Black Agenda Report – Warren prides herself in fighting for a kinder capitalism but has no problem with a nasty, murderous imperialism. The Green New Deal has found little support among establishment Democratic Party members of Congress. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the comprehensive policy a “list of aspirations” that could never be considered all at once. Senate Democrats mostly abstained from the 57-0 Senate vote against the Green New Deal in March, calling the gesture a Republican “stunt.” Yet this “stunt” revealed that the corporate Democratic Party is not very interested in the Green New Deal even though it is supported by over eighty percent of voters in both political parties . In this stage of capitalism, the Democrat side of the two-party duopoly is just as enthusiastic a patron in the endless regime of austerity as its Republican counterpart. Elizabeth Warren has been receiving more attention from the Democratic Party establishment of late. Warren has attempted to make up for her woeful confrontation with Trump around her proclaimed indigenous identity by releasing a flurry of policy proposals on issues such as maternal mortality and student loan forgiveness. While Elizabeth Warren has voiced “strong support” for the Green New Deal, she recently tweeted a strange proposal that deviates from its principles. In mid-May, Warren announced that she would be introducing the Defense Climate Resiliency and Readiness Act to help the military become more “energy efficient.” As she stated on Twitter, “Climate change is real, it’s worsening by the day, and it’s undermining our military readiness. More and more, accomplishing the mission depends on our ability to continue operations in the face of floods, drought, wildfires, desertification, and extreme cold.” Elizabeth Warren believes that strengthening the “effectiveness” of the U.S. military is consistent with the Green New Deal. Her bill doesn’t demand that the U.S. military be reduced in size or scale.Nor does it mention that the U.S. military is the world’s largest polluter and user of oil and fossil fuels. Instead of turning the Green New Deal into concrete policy, Warren has placed her attention on renovating the one thousand U.S. military bases that exist domestically and abroad. The so-called “policy wonk” of the 2020 elections appears to be more concerned with creating “green” bombs than a “green economy.”
Pledging Zero Carbon Emissions by 2030 or 2050: Does it Matter? – We now have two responses to the climate emergency battling it out among House Democrats, the “aggressive” 2030 target for net zero emissions folded into the Green New Deal and a more “moderate” 2050 target for the same, just announced by a group of mainstream legislators. How significant is this difference? Does where you stand on climate policy depend on whether your policy has a 2030 or 2050 checkpoint? I say no. Neither target has any more than symbolic value, and what the government does or doesn’t do to prevent a klimapocalypse (can we use this interlingual word?) won’t depend on which one gets chosen. Endpoint targets have no constraining power at all. A 2030 target won’t be met or unmet until 2030, and by then it will be too late. Same, and worse, for a 2050 target. Moreover, the whole target idea is based on a misconception of how carbon emissions work. The CO2 we pump into the atmosphere will remain for several human generations; it accumulates, and the sum of the carbon we emit this year plus next plus the one after and so on is what will determine how much climate change we and our descendants will have to endure. (The relationship between our emissions and the earth system’s response is complex and may embody tipping points due to feedback effects.) Every additional ton of carbon counts the same, whether it occurs today or just before some arbitrary target date. As a secondary point, caveat emptor about the “net” emissions thing. Net of what? Purchased offsets like in California? (My emissions don’t count because I’ve given you money so you won’t increase yours by as much as you said you might, and I’m hoping no one else will step up and do your emissions instead.) Or investments in forests, that may or may not continue to store carbon in the decades ahead, and which may or may not cause more harvesting of other forests? A proper carbon budget isn’t net of anything; it’s an amount of fossil carbon we set aside for ourselves to burn, and that’s it.
The World’s Biggest Lawsuit: Juliana v. United States – By Lambert Strether –Juliana v. United States is a big and complicated case that has now advanced through two administrations. The original complaint was filed in September 2015; Judge Ann Aiken of Oregon district court rejected the government’s motion to dismiss the case in November 2016. At right is a timeline of the docket from E&E News which I am not going to go through, although it does show the twists and turns the plaintiffs have had to go through.The American Bar Association, in “Can Our Children Trust Us with Their Future?,” describes the scale of the case and the stakes: The 2016 ruling in Kelsey Cascadia Rose Juliana v. USA is one of the greatest recent events in our system of law. (See Opinion and Order, Case No. 6:15-cv-01517-TC, US District Court for Oregon, Eugene Division. Anne Aiken, Judge, filed 11/10/16.) A group of children between the ages of eight and nineteen filed suit against the federal government, asking the court to order the government to act on climate change, asserting harm from carbon emissions. The federal government’s motion to dismiss was denied. Although I am not involved in the case, I am a lifelong environmentalist, and I teach environmental law (to non-law students). This case is a shining example of what law can be. This case gives me hope that we will not continue to cooperate in our own destruction, and future generations will be able to rely on us to uphold the spirit of the law and purpose behind government. In an interview with the Real News Network, “Why A 20-Year Old Climate Activist is Suing the Federal Government“, Vic Barrett, one of the plaintiffs, sums up the theory of the case[2]: we’re asserting that the U.S. Federal Government has known since 1960 that climate change could be potentially disastrous. We have proof from administrations going back all the way to the Johnson administration, saying that they knew climate change could be an issue and they knew that fossil fuel infrastructure was causing it. And the U.S Federal Government still chose to take direct action to continue to perpetuate the fossil fuel industry and the U.S. fossil fuel economy that we have. And we’re asserting that by taking that direct action,they’ve disproportionately put the rights of young people at risk, and the rights of life liberty and property as promised to us in the Constitution. And so, what we’re looking for our in our case is for the court system to mandate that the legislative system and the executive system have to work together in order to come up with a plan that would draw down carbon emissions to a point that’s sustainable for human life, and do what we can to bring the global temperature down to at least one and a half degrees Celsius.
Climate protesters glue themselves to Capitol doors, confront lawmakers – More than a dozen protesters from the activist group Extinction Rebellion have glued themselves to multiple points in the U.S. Capitol to block lawmakers and protest inaction on climate change. Sixteen protesters from the anti-climate change group blocked multiple doorways in office buildings on Capitol Hill, including in the Cannon and Rayburn House office buildings. The protesters used Gorilla Glue to stick their hands to the doors of the buildings and one another as lawmakers tried to get to a vote at 6:30 p.m., Kaela Bamberger, an Extinction Rebellion organizer, confirmed to The Hill. “This is not a drill! Activists are superglued to the tunnel connecting the House to the Capitol building so that lawmakers are forced to face up to the climate crisis. Time is up — Declare Climate Emergency NOW!” the organization’s Twitter account shared. The protesters were seen wearing yellow signs that said “Closed. We’re sorry. Due to the climate emergency Congress is shut down until sufficient action is taken to address the crisis.” The organization also tweeted that it was met with “excessive police force.”
Trump Campaign Is Selling PlasticStraws to ‘Make Straws Great Again’ – The campaign to re-elect President Donald Trump has found a new way to troll liberals and sea turtles. The campaign website is selling packs of 10 plastic straws for $15, Trump re-election campaign manager Brad Parscale tweeted on Thursday, as USA Today reported. “Liberal paper straws don’t work. STAND WITH PRESIDENT TRUMP and buy your pack of recyclable straws today,” the straws’ description reads. Parscale further promoted the straws in an email Friday titled “Make Straws Great Again,” NPR reported. “I’m so over paper straws, and I’m sure you are too. Much like most liberal ideas, paper straws don’t work and they fall apart instantly. That’s why we just launched our latest product – Official Trump Straws,” Parscale wrote. “Now you can finally be free from liberal paper straws that fall apart within minutes and ruin your drink.” Calls to ban plastic straws increased after a video of a turtle with a straw stuck up its nose went viral. Cities like Seattle have passed restrictions, and companies including Starbucks have vowed to phase them out. California became the first state to ban them in sit-down restaurants last September.
Judge rules against oil companies to keep climate liability case in Rhode Island – A federal judge ruled against multiple oil and gas companies Monday, deciding that Rhode Island’s novel climate liability case can be tried in the state. The ruling will allow Rhode Island prosecutors to continue to bring charges against 21 oil and gas producers including Chevron, Shell and BP as the state tries to get the companies to help pay for damages caused by climate change. In his ruling, Judge William Smith of the U.S. District Court For the District of Rhode Island remanded the case to state court. “This is, needless to say, an important suit for both sides. The question presently before the Court is where in our federal system it will be decided,” the judge wrote. “Because there is no federal jurisdiction under the various statutes and doctrines adverted to by Defendants, the Court grants the state’s motion to remand.” In his ruling Monday, the judge made clear his understanding of the links with climate change in the prosecution’s case, saying, “Climate change is expensive, and the State wants help paying for it.”
Direct CO2 Capture Machines Could Use ‘a Quarter of Global Energy’ in 2100 — Machines that suck CO2 directly from the air could cut the cost of meeting global climate goals, a new study finds, but they would need as much as a quarter of global energy supplies in 2100. The research, published Monday in Nature Communications, is the first to explore the use of direct air capture (DAC) in multiple computer models. It shows that a “massive” and energy-intensive rollout of the technology could cut the cost of limiting warming to 1.5 or 2°C above pre-industrial levels.But the study also highlights the “clear risks” of assuming that DAC will be available at scale, with global temperature goals being breached by up to 0.8°C if the technology then fails to deliver.This means policymakers should not see DAC as a “panacea” that can replace immediate efforts to cut emissions, one of the study authors tells Carbon Brief, adding: “The risks of that are too high.” DAC should be seen as a “backstop for challenging abatement” where cutting emissions is too complex or too costly, says the chief executive of a startup developing the technology. He tells Carbon Brief that his firm nevertheless will “continuously push back on the ‘magic bullet’ headlines.”
Between the Devil and the Green New Deal – From space, the Bayan Obo mine in China, where 70 percent of the world’s rare earth minerals are extracted and refined, almost looks like a painting. The paisleys of the radioactive tailings ponds, miles long, concentrate the hidden colors of the earth: mineral aquamarines and ochres of the sort a painter might employ to flatter the rulers of a dying empire. To meet the demands of the Green New Deal, which proposes to convert the US economy to zero emissions, renewable power by 2030, there will be a lot more of these mines gouged into the crust of the earth. That’s because nearly every renewable energy source depends upon non-renewable and frequently hard-to-access minerals: solar panels use indium, turbines use neodymium, batteries use lithium, and all require kilotons of steel, tin, silver, and copper. The renewable-energy supply chain is a complicated hopscotch around the periodic table and around the world. To make a high-capacity solar panel, one might need copper (atomic number 29) from Chile, indium (49) from Australia, gallium (31) from China, and selenium (34) from Germany. Many of the most efficient, direct-drive wind turbines require a couple pounds of the rare-earth metal neodymium, and there’s 140 pounds of lithium in each Tesla. Dotted with “death villages” where crops will not fruit, the region of Inner Mongolia where the Bayan Obo mine is located displays Chernobylesque cancer rates. But then again, the death villages are already here. More of them are coming if we don’t do something about climate change. What matter is a dozen death villages when half the earth may be rendered uninhabitable? What matter the gray skies over Inner Mongolia if the alternative is turning the sky an endless white with sulfuric aerosols, as last-ditch geoengineering scenarios imagine? Moralists, armchair philosophers, and lesser-evilists may try to convince you that these situations resolve into a sort of trolley-car problem: do nothing and the trolley speeds down the track toward mass death. Do something, and you switch the trolley onto a track where fewer people die, but where you are more actively responsible for their deaths. When the survival of millions or even billions hangs in the balance, as it surely does when it comes to climate change, a few dozen death villages might seem a particularly good deal, a green deal, a new deal. But climate change doesn’t resolve into a single trolley-car problem. Rather, it’s a planet-spanning tangle of switchyards, with mass death on every track.
U.S. government energy consumption continues to decline – The U.S. federal government consumed 915 trillion British thermal units (Btu) of energy during the 2017 fiscal year (FY), or 20% less than a decade before. The slight decline in FY 2017 marks the fifth consecutive decline in annual federal government consumption. Consumption by defense agencies accounted for more than 75% of total government energy consumption, according to data compiled by the Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP). Defense agency energy consumption declined 0.2% from FY 2016 to FY 2017, while civilian agency energy consumption declined 0.4% during the same period. In the past decade, defense agency energy consumption has fallen 18% (compared with FY 2007), and civilian agency energy consumption has fallen 8%. Over the years, several Executive Orders (for example, EO 13834) directed federal agencies to improve the energy and environmental performance of government buildings, vehicles, and overall operations. Most of the federal government’s energy use is for vehicles and equipment, which accounted for 568 trillion Btu, or 62% of total energy consumption, in FY 2017. The jet fuel that defense agencies use is the primary driver of government vehicle and equipment energy consumption. The 509 trillion Btu of fuel consumed by defense agencies represents 90% of total government vehicle fuel consumption. Among civilian agencies, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) consumed the most energy in FY 2017, at 44 trillion Btu. More than half of the energy USPS consumed was for vehicle fuel. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and U.S. Department of Energy ranked second and third, respectively, each consuming about 29 trillion Btu.Government expenditures for energy in FY 2017 totaled $15.6 billion. Similar to their energy consumption share, defense agencies accounted for more than 75% of government energy expenditures. Defense agency energy spending is mostly for vehicles and equipment ($8.6 billion of the $11.9 billion total), and civilian agency energy spending is mostly for buildings and other uses ($2.7 billion of the $3.7 billion total).
As electric vehicle production ramps up worldwide, a supply crunch for battery materials is looming – As car manufacturers ramp up production of electric cars, the metals used to make the vehicles’ batteries may face a supply crunch in the next few years, according to a new report. Lithium, cobalt, and nickel supplies are expected to be worst hit, the Wednesday report from energy consulting and research firm Wood Mackenzie. That’s as analysts predict a boom in electric vehicle use over the next three decades, but cite limited new metal production. For now, supplies of those three metals are enough to meet demand, according to Gavin Montgomery, research director at Wood Mackenzie. But short-term market prices of those metals have fallen, and that will deter producers from increasing supply to meet future demand, he added. In fact, in the next few years, demand for the metals is expected to grow so rapidly – as car producers make more electric vehicles – that suppliers won’t be able to keep up, Montgomery noted. Montgomery isn’t the only one predicting a future supply crunch. “It’s dawning on North America and Europe that there’s a raw materials issue that needs to be addressed here,” leading metals company CleanTeQ’s chief executive officer, Sam Riggall, told Bloomberg in early July. Furthermore, limited amounts of lithium, cobalt, and nickel exist on Earth, so there may simply not be enough to meet car manufacturers’ future demand. “Getting the quantity of nickel that (electric vehicles) will need by the mid-2020s will be a challenge … with lead times often up to 10 years, investment needs to happen now,” said Montgomery.
4 Automakers Strike Emissions Deal With California, Steering Clear From Trump’s Pro-Pollution Agenda – Four automakers from three different continents have struck a deal with California and agreed to adhere to the state’s stricter emissions standards, undercutting one of the Trump administration’s environmental regulatory rollbacks, according to The New York Times. The agreement between the California Air Resources Board and Ford, Honda, Volkswagen and BMW of North America followed weeks of secret negotiations. The four automakers agreed to a fleet average of 51 mpg for light-duty vehicles by the 2026 model year. That’s slightly lower and longer than the fuel economy standards of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025 set by the Obama administration in 2012. The four major automakers’ agreement to legitimize California’s authority to set emissions standards runs counter to a White House plan to take that right from the states, as Reuters reported.Under the Trump administration’s plans to roll back the Obama-era regulations, emissions standards would top out at 37 miles per gallon. California and 13 other states stood in defiance and vowed to enforce the stricter standards, setting up an uncomfortable situation for automakers where the market would be split in two, according to The New York Times.The agreement is a win for the automakers. They will have slightly more time to deliver vehicles that will have to meet standards nearly as ambitious as the Obama administration set forth. And, it will put an end to conflicting state and federal standards.”Ensuring that America’s vehicles are efficient, safe and affordable is a priority for us all,” the automakers said in a joint statement, as Motor1reported. “These terms will provide our companies much-needed regulatory certainty by allowing us to meet both federal and state requirements with a single national fleet, avoiding a patchwork of regulations while continuing to ensure meaningful greenhouse gas emissions reductions.” Despite the agreement, the Trump administration plans to curtail California’s ability to set its own standard. It has vowed to fight all the way to the Supreme Court. By striking a deal with California, the automakers are betting California has the stronger legal case, according to The New York Times.
So You Think We’re Reducing Fossil Fuels — Think Again – If you think we’ve been doing a reasonable job of curbing fossil fuel use, you are sadly mistaken. Global energy demand grew yet again in 2018, by 2.3%, its fastest pace in ten years. 70% of that was provided by fossil fuel, and only 30% by renewablesand nuclear. Until growth in renewables exceeds that of fossil fuels, and by a lot, we will make no headway against the environmental problems we need to solve in the next two decades. Renewables and fully electric vehicles aside, all fossil fuels are increasing worldwide primarily because of economic growth in the developing world. Even coal is increasing worldwide, producing more power than hydro, nuclear and renewables combined.While the developed world is switching from coal to natural gas, the developing world sees coal as their savior. This not because coal is cheapest – it’s not.Of all energy sources, coal is merely the easiest to set up. Coal is the easiest to install in a poor or developing country that has little existing infrastructure. It is the easiest to transport – by ship, rail and truck. It is straightforward to build a coal-fired power plant. And to operate it. China is taking advantage of this situation with their ‘One Belt, One Road’ project, a 21st century version of the Silk Road that plans to build over a trillion dollars of infrastructure in developing countries, making those countries major commercial partners with, and majorly dependent on, China.
Solar power advocates will rally to oppose TECO’s gas conversion – Tampa Electric company wants to convert part of its Apollo Beach plant from one fossil fuel to another: from coal to methane gas. But the move is opposed by many environmental groups. They point out that renewable energy, like solar, would be cheaper and not contribute to climate disruption.In January both Tampa Electric and members of the publicspoke about the issue at a Hillsborough County Commission meeting. At that meeting TECO senior vice president Tom Hernandez said the company plans to add more solar power generation. But he said the company still needs to convert the Big Bend plant to methane gas, in part because solar doesn’t deliver energy when it’s needed most.WMNF interviewed Gonzalo Valdez, the Beyond Coal organizer for the Sierra Club. That’s one of the groups organizing a rally Friday to oppose TECO’s plan for its Big Bend power plant. “TECO is proposing about a $858 million build out of their existing gas infrastructure, expanding it by about a thousand megawatts. And, they’re planning on refurbishing some of the coal units to gas.“But they’re also telling people that they’re moving away from coal, which if you at their ten-year site plans, they actually plan on burning more coal in 2028 than they did this year. We’re not seeing any real long-term plan towards sustainability, toward reducing emissions. We’re actually seeing just a temporary build-out of their solar – increasing about 7%. And then they’re going to be increasing coal usage. They’ll be about 12% coal in 2028.”
NH Supreme Court denies Northern Pass appeal – The state’s highest court has pulled the plug on Northern Pass. Supreme Court justices ruled unanimously to deny a request by project officials to order a state committee to reopen deliberations on the proposed $1.6 billion transmission power line, according to their ruling released Friday. “The court has made it clear – – it is time to move on,” said Gov. Chris Sununu, a project supporter. “There are still many clean energy projects that lower electric rates to explore and develop for New Hampshire and the rest of New England.” The state Site Evaluation Committee unanimously rejected the Northern Pass project in February 2018 and later turned aside a request to reconsider its decision and resume deliberations. “We have reviewed the record and conclude that the subcommittee’s findings are supported by competent evidence and are not erroneous as a matter of law,” the 31-page ruling said. Northern Pass officials “have not sustained their burden on appeal to show that the subcommittee’s order was unreasonable or unlawful,” Associate Justice Anna Barbara Hantz Marconi wrote. Eversource, in a statement, said it was “deeply disappointed” with the decision. “We will closely review the Supreme Court’s decision and evaluate all potential options for moving forward. It’s clear that the need for new energy sources in New England is greater than ever, and we remain focused on innovative solutions that will lower costs for our customers, improve reliability and advance clean energy.” The 192-mile Northern Pass route would have run from Pittsburg to Deerfield through more than 30 communities, bringing hydropower from Quebec into New England.
Berkeley Approves Natural Gas Ban in New Buildings – Berkeley, California on Tuesday became the first U.S. city to approve a ban on natural gas hook-ups in all new residential buildings, a move that proponents argued is a needed step for all cities in the state if California is to meet its goal of shifting to net-zero carbon emissions from energy sources by 2045.The ban was passed into law less than a week after the city council unanimously voted in favor of it and following vocal support for the measure from the public.Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who is running for president in the 2020 Democratic primary, and former California state controller Steve Westly were among the climate action advocates who praised the city’s decision as part of a growing movement of local governments “[leading] the way in the fight to defeat climate change.” Last weekend, Berkeley made an incredible leap toward an electric world by placing a city-wide ban on natural gas in new homes. This is a move many other cities should seriously consider! Natural gas is a substantial contributor to climate change. – Steve Westly (@SteveWestly) July 22, 2019 Berkeley city council member Rigel Robinson noted that the lawmakers voted on the ban just a year after the city declared a climate emergency. “Many cities would be satisfied or content to just declare a climate emergency.” Robinson tweeted. “This is what acting on it looks like.”
Millions without electrical power in Michigan and northeast US — Millions of people suffered a lengthy power blackout in Michigan over the weekend, along with tens of thousands in New York City and the Washington, D.C. metro area. At its peak, more than 820,000 homes and businesses were without power in Michigan after a wave of thunderstorms swept through the state on Saturday evening. This translates into several million people with no electricity during the longest and hottest heatwave of the year, and deprived of key infrastructure such as hospitals, traffic lights and fire stations. The two major utility companies in Michigan reported maximum outages of 600,000 customers for DTE Energy, which covers most of the Detroit area, and 220,000 customers for Consumers Energy, which covers much of western and upstate Michigan. By Monday night, more than 200,000 homes were still without service from DTE alone, more than 48 hours after the blackout began. Outages are expected to last through Wednesday, with more than 1,100 DTE Energy work crews struggling to repair more than 2,600 power lines that were downed by heavy rains and powerful winds on Saturday. This includes 450 out-of-state workers and 16-hour emergency shifts as crews clear trees, broken or downed power lines and repair disabled transformers. The company has however opted not to use their 2,000 off-duty workers to aid in the recovery efforts in an effort to minimize its costs during the blackout. In the meantime, the nearly 250,000 residents still affected by the blackout have been instructed to seek cooling centers and find shade to protect themselves against temperatures that spiked above 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
Heat wave slams the grid. Here’s what to know — While nearly two-thirds of the country sweated through a crippling heat wave over the past week that’s been blamed for at least six deaths, the U.S. electric grid remained largely upright even as demand for power soared. But that reliability did not come without its toll – power outages were reported in places like Long Island, N.Y., and Philadelphia, where 300 residents of a senior center were evacuated Friday as temperatures soared without electricity, according to CBS Philly. High temperatures can affect the grid, related infrastructure and electricity workers just as much as they do ratepayers at the end of transmission lines. And as a changing climate brings more intense and longer-lasting bursts of extreme temperatures, experts are warning that grid operators will need to pay as much attention to how heat affects the grid as it does the demand from those looking to stay cool.”The electrical grid handles virtually the entire cooling load, while the heating load is distributed among electricity, natural gas, heating oil, passive solar, and biofuel,” Utilities around the country were feeling that strain over the weekend. In New York, Consolidated Edison Inc. sent out a release urging customers to conserve energy and take measures such as blocking air conditioning vents in vacant rooms. Similarly, Commonwealth Edison in Chicago said it would deploy cooling buses and care vans to provide customers with free water and charging stations in communities that may experience prolonged power outages. The scorching temperatures also caused misery in Madison, Wis., where two fires at different substations caused a power outage for some 13,000 customers Friday during some of the most intense heat.Madison Gas and Electric Co. blamed the problem on a mechanical issue at the substation level, noting it did not think it came from increased demand from the heat, although an exact cause was not yet known.”We have no reason to believe the cause of the fire is due to excessive usage from today’s high temperatures,” the utility said in a twitter post Friday. Nevertheless, the Midwest outage revealed the pain felt when infrastructure goes down in the middle of severe heat waves.
The number of electric utility rate cases increased in 2018 – EIA – In 2018, 89 utilities – or nearly half of all major U.S. electric utilities – tried to change electricity rates by filing rate cases with state regulatory commissions; this number was the largest number since 1983. U.S. public electric utility companies must obtain permission from their regulators before changing the rates they charge customers. Of the 89 utilities filing rate cases in 2018, 10 proposed to decrease rates, 1 negotiated a rate freeze until 2020, and the other 78 utilities proposed rate increases. Regulated electric utilities can request rate changes to help recover expenses for building, operating, and maintaining their electric generators, transmission and distribution equipment, and other buildings and equipment. In addition, utilities have the right to earn a return on their investments. The number of electric utility rate cases typically reflects changes in the costs of generating and delivering electricity. In 2018, increases in spending for electricity transmission and delivery, rather than for electric generation, drove most of the approved rate increases. Delivery expenses included investments to modernize and strengthen the electric power grid, connect to wind and solar installations, restore storm damage, manage vegetation, and install new customer information and billing systems. Increases in electric generation costs also led to rate increases in some areas. Reasons for higher spending on utility generation fleets included new or increasing environmental compliance costs, rising costs for operating and maintaining nuclear plants, and extra wind generation expenditures as production tax credits phase out. Electric utility rate case filings have not been this active since the early 1980s.
You’re All Serial Killers – Outraged Californians Slam $2 Billion PG&E Rate Hikes –Representatives from Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) and the California Public Utilities Commission got an earful from angry residents on Thursday over a plan to charge customers almost $2 billion over the next three years. PG&E says it will use the funds to help pay for wildfire safety improvements and other items. “The 2020 GRC proposal, which is the focus of Thursday’s public participation hearings, does not include costs associated with the 2017 and 2018 wildfires,” PG&E spokeswoman Kristi Jourdan told The Chico Enterprise-Record via email. “PG&E has the authority to track costs from these fires, including costs associated with repairs, restoration, damages and third-party claims, in memorandum accounts but would have to seek authorization from the (public utilities commission) through a separate application to recover those costs.” The request for a rate raise must be approved by the commission and would give the utility company $1 billion above current rates in 2020, $454 million more in 2021 and $486 million more for 2022. For the average customer, Jourdan said, the rate raise would be approximately $10.50 more per month – $8.75 for electricity and $1.84 for gas. –Chico Enterprise-Record “You know that what you’re doing is killing people, and that means you’re all serial killers,” said Mary Kay Benson, adding “We are not going to just lay down and be collateral damage.” “The bottom line is people should not be making profit off electricity or water or whatever people need to exist,” said William Bynum of Oroville. Chico Councilor Ann Schwab told the protesters that it was “time for PG&E to look for other ways to repair the damage and repair their infrastructure – not on the backs of us, who have been so damaged by their actions.”
Ryan Zinke Interview: Ex-Interior Secretary Takes Energy Clients – Bloomberg – Former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is lining up consulting clients in industries regulated by his former department at the same time he decries the ethics investigations that drove him from the Trump administration.In an interview with Bloomberg News, the former congressman and U.S. Navy SEAL dismissed the 15 ethics probes of his dealings atop the Interior Department as “BS.”“D.C. is so angry and hateful,” Zinke said. Ultimately, he added, he stepped down from his cabinet post in January amid concerns about mounting legal bills and the fear that “all these false allegations would be a distraction.”Zinke was a freshman representative from Montana in December 2016 when Donald Trump chose him to run the Interior Department, an $11 billion agency that oversees drilling, mining and other activities on public lands. Now, he’s going to work for oil and mining companies. Among them: Texas pipeline supplier Cressman Tubular Products Corp.and Oasis Petroleum Inc., a Houston-based oil and gas explorer that donated tens of thousands of dollars to Zinke when he was seeking re-election to the House. In April, Zinke joined the board of U.S. Gold Corp., and is set to receive $90,000 in consulting fees from the Nevada-based mining company, according to filings. He is also a managing director and consultant for North Carolina-based private investment company Artillery One, and is promoting U.S. liquefied natural gas to foreign markets. He is serving as an adviser to Turnberry Solutions, the Washington lobbying firm stacked with former Trump administration advisers and campaign aides.
More U.S. coal-fired power plants are decommissioning as retirements continue – Between 2010 and the first quarter of 2019, U.S. power companies announced the retirement of more than 546 coal-fired power units, totaling about 102 gigawatts (GW) of generating capacity. Plant owners intend to retire another 17 GW of coal-fired capacity by 2025, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA)Preliminary Monthly Electric Generator Inventory. After a coal unit retires, the power plant site goes through a complex, multi-year process that includes decommissioning, remediation, and redevelopment.Coal-fired power plants in the United States remain under significant economic pressure. Many plant owners have retired their coal-fired units because of relatively flat electricity demand growth and increased competition from natural gas and renewables. In 2018, plant owners retired more than 13 GW of coal-fired generation capacity, which is the second-highest annual total for U.S. coal retirements in EIA’s dataset; the highest total for coal retirements, at 15 GW, occurred in 2015.The annual number of retired U.S. coal units has declined since 2015, and the configuration of retired coal capacity has changed. Coal-fired units that retired after 2015 in the United States have generally been larger and younger than the units that retired before 2015. The U.S. coal units that retired in 2018 had an average capacity of 350 megawatts (MW) and an average age of 46 years, compared with an average capacity of 129 MW and average age of 56 years for the coal units that retired in 2015 During a coal-fired plant’s decommissioning process, the electric-generating equipment – such as precipitators, boilers, turbines, and generators – are shut down and operating permits are terminated. Unused coal and materials associated with both the generation process and the buildings and structures are removed. The electric-generating equipment may be used at other plants or sold as scrap. Unlike nuclear plant decommissioning, which is closely regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the physical process of decommissioning a coal-fired power plant is not as firmly regulated in terms of specific procedure. The time required to physically decommission a coal-fired power plant varies and sometimes overlaps with remediation and redevelopment.
House advances bill to aid struggling coal-fired power plant (AP) – The West Virginia House of Delegates has advanced a bill to exempt a struggling coal-fired power plant from a state tax. Lawmakers in a House finance committee unanimously approved the measure Monday to stop charging FirstEnergy Solutions the $12.5 million tax. It now moves to the full House for consideration. CEO John W. Judge said the company has been operating in bankruptcy and will be forced to shutter its Pleasants Power Station in Willow Island in the next year without the tax exemption. At least 160 people work at the plant regularly but the number increases when repairs are being made. “The plant right now is very much on an edge,” Judge told lawmakers. He said the station is the only facility in the state that pays the tax on merchant power plants, which are electricity generating centers that don’t sell direct to consumer and aren’t subject to rate regulations from the West Virginia Public Service Commission. Pleasants County Commissioner Jay Powell says the closure of the plant would gut the local economy. Delegates also noted that coal producers and other industries could also be hurt. Republican Gov. Jim Justice, who owns coal companies, is pushing for the bill and widened the scope of a special legislative session on education so that lawmakers could take up the proposal.
Coal companies deny they owe $4 million in safety fines – Coal companies named in a lawsuit filed in Virginia federal court filed an answer claiming they don’t owe $4 million in unpaid safety fines.A & G Coal Corporation, BlackRiver Coal, Chestnut Land Holdings, Four StarResources, Infinity Energy Company, Kentucky Fuel Corporation, Nine Mile Mining, Premium Coal Company, S&H Mining, Sequoia Energy, Virginia Fuel Corporation, Southern Coal Corporation, Justice Coal of Alabama and Tams Management filed the answer on July 9 in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia.”The Defendants deny the allegations…as the same allege or purport to allege that the Defendants are or have been obligated to pay $4,776,370.40 in Mine Act penalties and interest,” the answer states.The defendants argue the plaintiff’s complaint failed to state a claim upon which relief can be granted; is barred due to the applicable statute of limitations; is barred by the doctrines of accord and satisfaction, compromise, release, illegality, laches, duress, payment and/or waiver; is barred because the debt the plaintiff claims is owed was incurred in whole or in part by the acts and/or omissions of other persons, third parties and/or non-parties not under the direction and control of these the defendants; violates the defendants’ right to due process; and is barred by the plaintiff’s failure to comply with conditions precedent to the plaintiff’s right to recover. The answer also states the defendants are entitled to a set-off for all amounts paid and/or which should have been paid by independent third parties, as well as any amounts which were reduced or written down or which should have been reduced or written down; the defendants are entitled to all defenses and presumptions set forth in or arising from any rule of law or statute in Virginia and/or any other state whose law is deemed to apply in this case; and the claim asserted in the complaint is barred, in whole or in part, because the plaintiff did not incur any ascertainable loss as a result of the defendants’ conduct. Fourteen companies denied any monetary obligations have been left unpaid. Nine other companies that had been named in the suit objected to litigating the matter in the federal court in Roanoke, Va., arguing they have never done business, nor are headquartered in Virginia. Double Bonus Coal Company, Dynamic Energy, Frontier Coal Company, Justice Energy Company, Justice Highwall Mining, Keystone Services Industries, M&P Services, Nufac Mining Company and Pay Car Mining Company filed their motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction on July 9. Those companies are based in West Virginia, the motion states. “The Court does not have general jurisdiction over the Defendants because the Defendants are not incorporated under the laws of Virginia and none of the Defendants maintain their principal place of business in Virginia,” the motion states.
Coal Miners To Hit Capitol Hill For Black Lung Funding – Dozens of Appalachian coal miners plan to visit Capitol Hill Tuesday to ask lawmakers to bolster funding for the black lung disability trust fund, which miners depend upon when no responsible company can be identified to pay for needed health care. The fund is already billions of dollars in debt, and that will likely grow as more miners develop the disease and coal companies pay less into the fund. Coal companies pay a tax to support the trust fund, which pays monthly income and health benefits for miners who were disabled by the preventable and deadly occupational disease. The tax rate was increased in 1981 to pay down the fund’s debts and in 2008 that tax rate was extended for another 10 years. But Congress allowed the tax rate to expire last year and companies now pay about half as much per ton of coal. Now the trust fund’s debt is expected to rise from $4 billion to $15 billion by 2050. Over 25,000 miners and their dependents rely on the fund for monthly income and health benefits. Demand is expected to grow as diagnoses of severe forms of the disease skyrocket, particularly among Appalachian miners.
U.S. coal miners discouraged by black lung meeting with McConnell –(Reuters) – A group of coal miners afflicted with black lung disease met with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday as part of an effort to convince lawmakers to restore a higher excise tax on coal companies to help fund their medical care, but several said the meeting left them discouraged. McConnell, the Republican leader who represents Kentucky – one of the states that has seen a rebound in the progressive respiratory illness – told them their benefits would be safe but gave no assurances about the excise tax and left without answering questions or offering details, several of the miners who attended the meeting said. “We rode up here for 10 hours by bus to get some answers from him because he represents our state,” said George Massey, a miner from Harlan County, Kentucky who spent two decades in the mines and is on disability. “For him to come in for just two minutes was a low-down shame.” David Mullins, who worked in coal mines for 34 years and is currently battling an advanced stage of black lung disease, said he was also frustrated. “It’s time to act,” he said, while wearing a “Black Lung Kills” T-shirt and using an oxygen tank. Coal companies had been required to pay a $1.10 per ton tax on underground coal to finance the federal Black Lung Disability Trust Fund, which supports disabled miners whose employers go bankrupt and can no longer pay out medical benefits. But the amount reverted to the 1977 level of 55 cents this year after Congress declined to take action to maintain the rate. The coal industry had lobbied hard to allow the tax to drop as scheduled, despite a government report saying the fund was in dire financial straits, arguing the companies were already facing economic pain and that benefits for afflicted miners would not be affected.
As Disabled Miners Hit D.C., Lawmakers Introduce Bills To Fund Black Lung Benefits – Democratic members of Congress introduced legislation Tuesday to provide additional funding for coal miners suffering from black lung. The bills came as a contingent of Appalachian miners afflicted with the disease lobbied lawmakers for more support. “It doesn’t only take your health. It takes your identity,” Barry Johnson said of the disease. Johnson is a fourth-generation coal miner from Letcher County, Kentucky, who made the trip to Washington with his oxygen tank in tow. A bill introduced in the House by Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia and Rep. Alma Adams of North Carolina would restore a tax on coal that supports the federal Black Lung Disability Trust Fund, which provides benefits for some 25,000 disabled miners and their families.That tax rate expired last year, adding to the trust fund’s growing debt. A separate bill proposed in the Senate by Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania would make it easier for miners to access federal black lung benefits.Federal research shows one in every five experienced miners in the region is affected, and more than 2,000 have been diagnosed with the most severe form of the disease.
In 2018, foreign-sourced uranium accounted for 90% of U.S. nuclear operators’ purchases – Most uranium purchased by U.S. civilian nuclear power reactor operators every year comes from foreign countries. In 2018, 90% of the 40 million pounds of uranium purchased was from foreign countries, led by Canada (24% of total), Kazakhstan (20%), Australia (18%), and Russia (13%). U.S.-origin uranium accounted for 10% of purchases, or 3.9 million pounds. Since 2010, between 83% and 94% of uranium purchases in any single year have come from foreign countries.Canada was the largest source of uranium purchased by U.S. civilian nuclear power reactor operators in 2018 for the fourth year in a row. Canada, home to large, high-quality uranium reserves, has been the second-largest uranium producer in the world after Kazakhstan since 2009.Uranium concentrate (U3O8) production and employment in the uranium industry in the United States have fallen for the past several years. U.S. uranium production totaled 1.6 million pounds of U3O8 in 2018, the lowest annual total since 1950 and a 66% decrease from the 4.9 million pounds of U3O8 produced in 2014. According to uranium market employment data – which includes exploration, mining, milling and processing, and reclamation activities – full-time equivalent employees declined to 372 in 2018, the lowest total since 2003, when they totaled 321. Employment increased every year from 2004 to 2008 as uranium prices rose, peaking at 1,563 employees in 2008. Industry employment has now fallen in every year from 2012 to 2018.Exploration employment has seen the largest decline since 2008, down 94% from 457 full-time equivalent employees to only 27 in 2018 because persistently low uranium prices offer little incentive to explore more potential mining sites. Mining employment is down 80% from 2008 levels, from 558 employees to 110 employees in 2018. The only category where employment hasn’t declined is reclamation, which increased to 138 employees in 2018, up from 100 in 2017. Reclamation activities have increased because more formerly active properties are being restored to a more natural state after onsite resources are exhausted or sites become uneconomic to operate. After peaking at 145 million pounds in 2016, U.S. commercial uranium inventories have since fallen to 131 million pounds in 2018. Commercial uranium inventories include material at all points in the nuclear fuel cycle.
Infamous Three Mile Island reactor, shut down since 1979, will be sold and dismantled – An energy services company that specializes in dismantling old nuclear reactors is negotiating to acquire the damaged Three Mile Island Unit 2 near Harrisburg from FirstEnergy Corp. EnergySolutions Inc. announced Tuesday it has signed a term sheet with GPU Nuclear, a subsidiary of FirstEnergy Corp., of Akron, Ohio, to acquire the Three Mile Island reactor, which was destroyed in a 1979 accident only a few months after it began commercial operations. The agreement does not include Three Mile Island Unit 1, the neighboring reactor owned by Exelon Generation that is set to go into retirement in September. “We are looking forward to working with FirstEnergy to acquire the asset and to safely complete the decommissioning of this site,” Ken Robuck, president and chief executive of Energy Solutions, said in a statement. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Nor was a timetable, though EnergySolutions presumably would dismantle the facility on a faster schedule. The Unit 2 decommissioning costs, which FirstEnergy last year estimated at $1.26 billion, would be paid out of a trust fund. After the infamous Three Mile Island nuclear accident 40 years ago, most of the reactor’s partially melted uranium fuel was hauled away to the Idaho National Lab, where the radioactive waste now slowly decays in steel and concrete containers, awaiting long-term disposal. But the formal decommissioning of the damaged Unit 2 reactor, site of America’s worst commercial nuclear disaster, has not yet really begun. FirstEnergy Corp. has said that the plant would remain dormant until Exelon’s neighboring reactor shuts down. EnergySolutions, based in Salt Lake City, is a competitor to Holtec International of Camden in the market for decommissioning old nuclear reactors. In a nuclear industry under contraction, the dismantlement of retired reactors is one of the few growth businesses.
Report claims closing nuke plants will cost lives, money – A new report commissioned by a nuclear industry organization concludes that the expected closing of electricity-producing nuclear plants in Pennsylvania and Ohio will cause pollution and related deaths to increase as coal and natural gas plants are used to fill the void.The report by two University of Washington researchers was compiled for the Nuclear Energy Institute in April and released earlier this month by Nuclear Matters, a pro-nuclear energy group, and the National Caucus and Center on Black Aging.While the Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Station in Shippingport is slated to close in June 2021, it was not part of the study, which covered the anticipated closures of Three Mile Island in Dauphin County and the Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear plants in Ohio.All three plants and Beaver Valley are in the PJM Interconnection, a regional electricity transmission grid stretching from Illinois to the East coast. “If nuclear plants cease operating in PJM, the loss in electricity generation would likely be replaced by generation from nonnuclear plants, a change that would impact air pollution and health,” researchers wrote.
State plane scheduled to pick up lawmakers for nuclear bailout bill canceled – – The Columbus Dispatch – A state airplane scheduled to fly to Chicago on Tuesday morning to pick up at least one Ohio House member for delivery to a close, critical vote on a nuclear power plant bailout for FirstEnergy Solutions was canceled late Monday. The State Highway Patrol flight, scheduled to make the round trip at the request of House Chief of Staff Jonathan McGee, was approved by the staff of Republican Gov. Mike DeWine since it involved “state business,” said press secretary Dan Tierney. However, the flight was canceled, House spokeswoman Gail Crawley said shortly before 11:30 p.m. Monday, hours after The Dispatch story was posted online and the House had not responded to requests for comment.“We considered using the state plane and researched the cost of the state plane versus flying commercial or driving. The members decided to fly commercial or drive back for session on Tuesday,” she wrote in an email.The House, meanwhile, voted 51-38 Tuesday morning to concur with Senate changes and narrowly pass House Bill 6, sending it to DeWine, who has said he will sign the measure into law.A State Highway Patrol spokesman said on Tuesday morning that the fight related to the bill – scheduled to depart Columbus at 4:30 a.m. Tuesday and return at 10 a.m. – was canceled at 8:47 p.m. Monday. A list of House Republicans attending the Council of State Governments conference in Chicago obtained by The Dispatch consisted of Speaker Pro Tem Jim Butler of Oakwood, Tom Brinkman of Cincinnati, Bob Cupp of Lima and David Greenspan of Westlake. All voted in favor of the bill this morning except for Greenspan, who said his previously booked commercial flight returned him to Cleveland on Monday night. The patrol’s Cessna Caravan can carry 10 or more passengers.
Ohio legislature has a chance to fix HB 6’s flaws before final passage. It must do so: editorial By Editorial Board, cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer – Today, in a hastily scheduled session, Ohio’s House may vote its concurrence with the Senate version of House Bill 6, the FirstEnergy Solutions nuclear subsidy plan. That would send the bill to Gov. Mike DeWine’s desk for his expected signature. Or, the House could request a conference committee with the state Senate to, in effect, rewrite the Senate’s rewrite of HB 6. The facts demand a conference committee, not concurrence. It’s no overstatement to say the state’s future is at stake. Are we going to be a state mired in the past, unable to set the stage for a more sustainable energy future that will excite and attract the next generation — a state beholden more to lobbyists than to innovation and progress? That’s what a “yes” vote on the current HB 6 legislation would signal.Or, are we a state that genuinely values clean energy in all its forms — including energy-efficiency savings and wind, solar and other renewable energy? HB 6 as written claims to be a “clean air” bill, but its subsidies primarily reward only some contributors to clean air, steering most of its subsidies to Ohio’s two nuclear plants. It would undercut and arguably destroy the state’s renewable energy and energy-efficiency requirements for utilities.Effectively, HB 6 takes resources originally directed by state elected officials to provide Ohio with a more sustainable renewable energy profile and hands that money to two aging nuclear plants and two (non-clean-air) coal plants, one of them in Indiana. Political goal: to hide the cost to Ohioans of the nuclear subsidy by shaving the renewable energy and efficiency charges now wrapped into monthly bills.That is, HB 6, as it stands, would mortgage Ohioans’ future energy options to prop up aging nuclear and coal plants — and the utilities operating them. And this sleight of hand means that Ohio consumers’ monthly bills will appear lower than they are now after legislators simply discard most of the renewable and efficient-energy incentives, as they appear intent on doing.That’s the math. It’s not the science: Legislators can try to postpone health and environmental costs, but they can’t make them go away. But every Ohio residential electricity customer will be paying about 85 cents a month for this new subsidy – statewide, $43.2 million a year — with commercial and industrial ratepayers paying more.
After months of contentious debate, Ohio nuclear bailout bill becomes law – Columbus Dispatch – FirstEnergy Solutions will get its $150 million a year bailout from the state’s electricity customers to save its two northern Ohio nuclear power plants.The House, by a 51-38 vote Tuesday, agreed to changes in House Bill 6 approved by the Senate last week. Gov. Mike DeWine immediately signed the bill into law, completing the biggest overhaul to the state’s energy laws in more than a decade. House leadership arranged on Monday – with the approval of DeWine’s office – to dispatch a State Highway Patrol airplane to Chicago to pick up some House members attending a conference to ensure their return and presence for what was expected to be a close vote.However, after research determined the cost of the state plane was $5,677, the flight was canceled hours later by House officials late Monday and the members drove back or took commercial flights to make the House session. The House action and the governor’s signature brought a quick end to an intense and bitter months-long fight that featured a multimillion-dollar statewide television, radio and mail campaign. Unlike other bills, the legislation didn’t break along party lines; supporters and opponents included a mix of legislators from both parties. After the vote, visitors in the gallery applauded. Workers from both power plants, along with other supporters, have been fixtures in legislative hearings on the proposal. Public officials and a cadre of industry lobbyists pushed for the bill along with a variety of trade unions looking to save the 1,400 jobs at the plants. Environmentalists, some business groups, and oil and gas interests fought the legislation. “House Bill 6 is still a very bad bill that puts Ohio on the wrong track,” said Trish Demeter, advocate for the Ohio Environment Council Fund. The new law will impose a fee of 85 cents a month on residential ratepayers from 2021 through 2027, generating about $170 million a year. Most of the money, about $150 million a year, will shore up the Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear plants, which generate about 15% of Ohio’s electricity. Without that aid, FirstEnergy Solutions, the former power generation arm of Akron-based FirstEnergy that is working through bankruptcy protection, has said that it would have to close the plants.
Think tank: Nuclear plants’ bankrupt owner spent heavily for bailout – The bankrupt owner of two nuclear power plants that will be subsidized by consumers to the tune of $900 million spent heavily to influence bailout debates in Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to a renewable energy think tank. The San Francisco-based Energy and Policy Institute reviewed documents in FirstEnergy Solutions’ bankruptcy case as the corporation received bankruptcy court approval for the spending. The expense has yielded fruit at least in that Ohio. Gov. Mike DeWine wasted little time on Tuesday signing House Bill 6 into law. The measure requires consumers statewide to pay surcharges on their monthly electricity bills to keep the Davis-Besse plant in Oak Harbor and the Perry plant east of Cleveland humming for at least a few more years. The two plants directly employ about 1,400 people. Dave Anderson, the institute’s policy and communications manager, said bankruptcy filings show lobbying firms were getting paid by FirstEnergy Solutions with the permission of the court. Then FirstEnergy Solutions and the lobbying firms were launching pro-bailout coalitions like the Ohio Clean Energy Jobs Alliance. “It provided a rare window into the inner workings of what are supposedly grassroots campaigns,” he said. The almost $50 million in spending is separate from the millions spent on both sides of the Ohio fight on TV and radio ads and mailers. A pro-bailout group, Generation Now, is a dark money super PAC that is estimated to have spent more than $9 million on TV and radio ads. It will eventually have to reveal the sources of its money to the IRS.
How Fukushima Changed Japan’s Energy Mix – The 2011 Fukushima nuclear incident in Japan made international headlines for months, but it also changed Japanese attitudes towards nuclear energy. After a devastating tsunami hit Japan on March 11, 2011, emergency generators cooling the Fukushima nuclear power plant gave out and caused a total of three nuclear meltdowns, explosions and the release of radioactive material into the surrounding areas. Before the incident, the Japanese had been known as steadfast supporters of nuclear energy, taking previous nuclear catastrophes at Three Mile Island (USA) or Chernobyl (Ukraine) in stride. But a meltdown on their own soil changed the minds of many citizens and kicked the anti-nuclear power movement into gear. After mass protests, the Japanese government under then Prime Minister Yoshihiko announced plans to make Japan nuclear free by 2030 and not to rebuild any of the damaged reactors. New Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has since tried to change the nation’s mind about nuclear energy by highlighting that the technology is indeed carbon neutral and well suited to reach emission goals. As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, despite one reactor restart at Sendai power plant in Southern Japan in 2015, nuclear energy has almost vanished from Japanese electricity generation. In 2016 (latest available), only 2 percent of energy generated in Japan came from nuclear power plants. Coal and natural gas picked up most of the slack, but renewable sources, mainly solar energy, also grew after 2011.
Is Fukushima Safe For The Olympics? – The 2020 Olympic torch relay will commence in Fukushima: a place more often associated with a 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster than international sports. That’s no accident: the location is meant to convey a narrative of recovery, and the idea that Fukushima is a safe place to visit, live – and of course, do business. Olympic baseball and softball games, also to be held in Fukushima just 55 miles from the meltdown, are meant to hammer the message of these “Recovery Olympics,” as Tokyo 2020 organizers have branded them, home. But after a visit to Fukushima, their claims seem questionable at best. In fact, the entire setup is a profoundly cynical act of “post-truth” politics. Fukushima is not yet safe, and no amount of sunny rhetoric from Olympic bigwigs as well as Japanese politicians, can make it so.We traveled to Fukushima on a bus full of journalists, filmmakers, and activists from around the world. We were accompanied by professor Fujita Yasumoto who carried a dosimeter, a device that charts the levels of radiation. With two hours to drive before hitting Fukushima, his dosimeter read 0.04; anything above 0.23, he told us, was unsafe. The needle jumped further as we approached the nuclear plants and attendant cleanup operations. Outside the Decommissioning Archive Center, it moved into unsafe territory with a 0.46 reading before spiking to a truly alarming 3.77 as we approached Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1 reactor, one of three that melted down. The Olympic torch run is currently scheduled to pass through some of these high-contamination areas.As we entered Fukushima, we started to see what looked like black Hefty garbage bags, filled with radioactive topsoil that had been scraped up by workers, most of whom, we are told, travel great distances to Fukushima to work. Thousands of these bags – which locals call “black pyramids” – are piled on top of one another, but the toiling workers aren’t wearing hazmat suits. Some of the piles of bags have vegetation popping out. The sight of the plants poking through the toxic muck could be taken as a sign of hope, but, for others, they’re a portent of danger, raising fears that the wind will blow the most contaminated parts of the topsoil into the less radiated parts of the city. No one here we met is buying Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s line from 2013 when he tried to assuage the concerns of voters at the International Olympic Committee by telling them that things in Fukushima were “under control.” Hiroko Aihara, an independent journalist based in Fukushima, said to us, “The government has pushed propaganda over truth. This has people in Japan divided as to how serious it is. But for the people who live here, the crisis and the cleanup and contamination continue.”
Moscow Residents Fight Back Against ‘Second Chernobyl’ – Their signs read “We want to live!” and “Road to Death,” and many bear the bright yellow symbol warning of radiation. On Monday, several hundred protesters gathered in the south of Moscow outside residential housing blocks that overlook a nuclear waste site. The site is located between the Moskva river and the popular Kolomenskoe park. It stretches for around 500 meters along sloping river banks and contains tens of thousands of tons of radioactive waste from Moscow’s nearby Polymetals Factory. The plant used to extract thorium and uranium from ore and now produces weapons and military equipment. Demonstrators of all ages have gathered here to protest against an eight-lane road that they believe will cut through the contaminated soil. Activists are making speeches and collecting signatures against the project. “We want to live,” is how one young man explains his attendance at the rally. Local resident Anna, who prefers for DW not to print her last name, points to the windows of her apartment in one of the high-rises above. The quiet 30-year-old with blond hair and a pierced lower lip explains that she grew up in the building. “Everyone knew about it,” she says of the radioactive waste site just across the railway tracks. “When I was little my parents told me not to go there.” She says when she found out about city authorities’ plans to build a highway here in March, her first reaction was: “The government has gone crazy.” Since then she has protested against the construction project several times, the first demonstrations she has attended as an adult. Just a short walk away from the demonstration, Andrei Ozharovsky, a nuclear physicist who has become the radiation expert consulting the activists, leads DW through a forest on the radioactive heap, which he says has presumably been here since the 1940s or 1905s, when there was much more of a slapdash attitude towards nuclear safety. At the time, this spot wasn’t yet part of the city of Moscow – but bit by bit, the capital expanded. Ozharovsky notes that it is only one of many contaminated sites in the city.
Rusted shipping container stirs concern at nuclear plant – When nuclear plant workers looked in a huge, 40-foot long shipping container at an atomic fuel factory two months ago, they discovered a hole in the roof that allowed rainwater to leak inside, where barrels full of radioactive trash were stacked. Then, the workers discovered water had dripped onto some of the drums, causing uranium to trickle out and into the soil below the Westinghouse atomic fuel rod plant southeast of Columbia, according to state and federal regulatory agencies. The leaking roof is the latest problem to surface at the 50-year-old fuel factory, where recent troubles have focused the spotlight on nuclear safety and operating practices. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control are looking into the matter, even as Westinghouse scrambles to improve the way it stores barrels of nuclear garbage at the Bluff Road plant. The problem was discovered May 31, according to DHEC. “We are concerned,’’ said Tom Vukovinsky, an inspection official with the NRC in Atlanta. “Because of all the other issues going on, it’s something we’re interested in.’’ The other issues he referred to are a series of spills and leaks during the past three years at Westinghouse, one of Columbia’s major employers with about 1,000 workers. the nuclear plant leaked uranium last year through a hole in the floor of the 550,000-square-foot plant. Company officials later revealed there had been leaks in 2008 and 2011 that they had not reported to regulators. In 2016, the company allowed uranium to build up in an air pollution control device, a potentially dangerous situation that could have exposed nuclear plant workers to a burst of radiation. This summer, a small fire broke out in a drum full of waste. In the latest incident to surface, uranium-tainted trash stored in barrels inside the leaking shipping container got wet and dripped uranium on the ground below the container. The amount of uranium in the soil in one spot below the container was nearly twice the safety standard of 11 parts per million, A presentation showed scores of shipping containers on the site. These containers resemble the trailers on tractor-trailer trucks. Barrels are kept inside them.
Earthquakes repeatedly striking proposed US nuclear waste site — Repeated earthquakes could risk releasing deadly radioactivity into the earth if plans for a nuclear waste site in go ahead in Nevada’s desert, the state’s governor has warned. Tens of thousands of tons of highly radioactive used nuclear reactor fuel are due to be transferred from 35 US states to a new facility in the Mojave Desert. The Yuka Mountain nuclear waste repository is set to store this material deep within the earth. But a series of recent earthquakes in the Mojave Desert has raised concerns about the safety of storing radioactive waste at the facility. On 4 July, a 7.1 magnitude earthquake ruptured the earth in the desert, which stretches across the California-Nevada border. The force of the quake cracked buildings, sparked fires, damaged roads and caused several injuries in southern California. It was followed by a 6.4-magnitude temblor two days later. In the wake of the earthquakes, the governor of Nevada Steve Sisolak said he was committed to “fighting any continued federal effort to use Nevada as the nation’s nuclear dumping ground”.
This Texas Oil Town Actually Wants the Nation’s Nuclear Waste – Blake Roberts pointed to a pumpjack bobbing in the West Texas heat. “Everything we do revolves around oil,” Roberts said as he neared his home outside the town of Andrews in the heart of the booming Permian Basin oil field. But Roberts, 29, has his eye on what he hopes will be the next big thing for the area: nuclear waste. As president of the local chamber of commerce, knows that oil booms are inevitably followed by busts.He is supporting a plan to establish a repository in the desert about 30 miles outside of town for as much as 40,000 metric tons of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel and waste from power plants. If approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission the project could bring jobs and revenue to the area and help break a political logjam that has stranded tons of the waste at 72 power plants and other sites across the country. “We need to have income from something other than oil money,” Roberts said. Local support for the project is strong, said County Judge Charlie Falcon, who presides over the four-member Andrews County Commissioners’ Court, which functions as the county’s board of commissioners. Nuke Waste Costs Soar to $35.5 Billion as U.S. Reactors Shut The panel approved a resolution in 2015 backing the idea to accept high-level nuclear waste at the designated site, and is likely to reiterate its support with a letter in the near future, Falcon said during an interview in his chambers in the brick courthouse on Main Street. “We’ve been primarily oil-based here since 1929 and we live and die by oil prices,” said Falcon, 53, a lifelong Andrews resident. “My interest is in diversifying so we can have other sources of revenue come to our community. So we have have other sources of living.” The plan by Interim Storage Partners LLC, a joint venture between Orano CIS LLC and Waste Control Specialists LLC, calls for waste to be shipped by rail from around the country. Then it would be sealed in giant concrete casks and stored above ground for as long as 100 years, or at least until a permanent repository is built. Opponents say that could be never.
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