Environmental News For The Week 18August 2019

Written by rjs, MarketWatch 666

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

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Childhood cancer steals 7 million years of life in developing countries (including India)– Developing countries bear more than four-fifths of the global burden of childhood cancer – the equivalent of 7 million years of healthy life lost – because of a lack of early detection and limited treatment, a study has found. The study, published on August 5 in The Lancet Oncology, showed that children with cancer in low- and lower-middle-income countries have much lower survival rates, with less than 40% still alive five years after diagnosis. In wealthy countries, around 80% of children survive five years after their cancer is identified. To calculate the burden of disease, researchers estimated the number of years of healthy life that children and adolescents with cancer have lost due to illness, disability and premature death – known as disability-adjusted life years. Researchers found that developing countries faced a disproportionately high child cancer burden, relative to the incidence of disease, with low- and middle-income countries accounting for 82% of the global total. This was attributed to poor diagnosis and access to healthcare, while younger populations were also cited as a factor. In 2017, countries with a low or lower-middle socio-demographic index accounted for 38% of children newly diagnosed with cancer – 159,600 cases. However, they represented 60% of disability-adjusted life years. The study, which combined information on childhood cancers from 195 countries, estimated that about 7 million years of healthy life was lost in these poorer countries.Globally, childhood cancers killed 142,300 children in 2017 and caused a loss of more than 11.5 million disability-adjusted life years. This compares to around 37 million disability-adjusted life years lost every year to malaria and 7.6 million lost due to tuberculosis.Among the 50 most populous countries, India, China, Nigeria, Pakistan and Indonesia carried a particularly high childhood cancer burden. Sub-Saharan Africa was identified as the region with the highest burden across different cancer types, ranking highest for six out of the ten cancer types studied. Developing countries face a multitude of barriers when it comes to childhood cancer care, including inadequate staff training and the high cost of diagnostic tools. “There are also barriers within the population regarding seeking care for particular symptoms, [as well as] a lack of financial means to seek healthcare,”

Toxic Chemicals at School? 8 Important Questions to Ask There are many ways schools can reduce children’s cumulative exposure to chemicals and contaminants, and many are relatively simple. Here are eight important questions to ask:

• 1. Do the kids wash their hands before they eat? Requiring hand washing with soap and water, especially after kids have been outside and before they eat, is arguably the easiest change schools can make to reduce kids’ exposure to chemical pollutants from dust and other sources.
• 2. What cleaning products does the school use? We recommend schools use cleaning products that are third-party green certified, which means their ingredients are safer for everyone, especially children, or products with an A, or green, rating in our Guide to Healthy Cleaning.
• 3. Has the school had its drinking water tested for lead? There’s no safe level of lead exposure, but most states don’t require schools and child care centers to test their drinking water for lead. Since lead levels in a single building can vary, all faucets and drinking fountains should be tested. In California, one in five schools has found at least one faucet on their campus with water containing lead.
• 4. What landscaping chemicals are used? Chances are good your school uses chemical fertilizers, weedkillers and other pesticides for playground and grounds maintenance. Many of them, especially pesticides, are toxic and linked to childhood cancer and autism.
• 5. Does the school serve organic foods? A good first step is to focus on foods where switching from conventional to organic will make the biggest impact: milk and meat, fruits, and veggies with the most pesticides; foods grown with particularly toxic pesticides; and snacks with the worst food additives.
• 6. Are the nap mats made without flame retardants? A study conducted by the Washington state-based nonprofit Toxic-Free Future found that when child care providers replaced nap mats with chemical-free versions, the levels of flame retardants polluting children’s bodies decreased by 40 to 90 percent.
• 7. What kind of laundry detergent does the facility use? To avoid fragrances, allergens and other ingredients that can irritate children’s skin, we recommend child care providers choose detergent with a green A rating in our Guide to Healthy Cleaning.
• 8. Sunscreen is especially important for kids, who are more susceptible to the ill effects of the sun. We recommend care providers avoid chemical sunscreens and instead choose a broad spectrum mineral sunscreen with active ingredients zinc oxide and/or titanium dioxide. Use EWG’s Guide to Sunscreens to find products that offer adequate protection from both UVA and UVB rays without the addition of hazardous chemicals.

Hepatitis A is breaking out across the country in wake of opioid crisis – – Just before the Fourth of July, Trenton Burrell began feeling run-down and achy. Soon he could barely muster the energy to walk from one room to another. A friend shared an alarming observation: “You’re turning yellow.” Within days, the 40-year-old landed in the hospital, diagnosed with the highly contagious liver virus hepatitis A, which has infected more than 3,220 people in Ohio and killed at least 15. Since 2016, the virus has spawned outbreaks in at least 29 states, starting with Michigan and California. It’s sickened more than 23,600 people, sent the majority to the hospital and killed more than 230. All but California’s and Utah’s outbreaks are ongoing, and experts expect to eventually see the virus seep into every state. Like a shadow, it follows the opioid epidemic, spreading mostly among drug users and the homeless. But anyone who hasn’t been vaccinated can get hepatitis A – as Akron health officials are now finding out. “It’s getting into the general public,” said Tracy Rodriguez, communicable disease supervisor for Summit County Public Health. “It’s scary.” Hepatitis A thrives in unsanitary conditions and spreads as easily as a stomach virus: People ingest minuscule amounts of an infected person’s stool from food, drinks, drug equipment or objects as commonplace as doorknobs. Burrell, who used to live in a tent but now stays at a friend’s house, believes he contracted the virus cleaning up trash left by fellow drug users without wearing gloves. More than two weeks after his hospital stay, he described still feeling weak and “worn out” visiting friends near the spot in Akron where he once pitched his tent. The virus has stricken more people in Ohio than any other state but Kentucky, where it infected more than 4,800 people and killed at least 60. Kathleen Winter, a University of Kentucky epidemiologist, said more populous Ohio is on pace to surpass it as her state’s outbreak wanes. Relentlessly, the virus continues its march across the nation. Pennsylvania declared an outbreak as recently as May. In early August, Florida and Philadelphia declared public health emergencies, which, among other things, signal to health care providers the need to vaccinate the vulnerable. Case counts now exceed 1,000 in six states.

Superbug is evolving to thrive in hospitals and guts of people with sugary diets, scientists warn – The sugar-rich Western diet is fueling a superbug which has evolved to thrive in hospitals, scientists have warned. The gut-infecting bacterium Clostridium difficile (C.diff) is evolving into two separate species, with one group increasingly adapting to live in the guts of people with poor diets, while growing ever better at avoiding the harsh disinfectants used to clean wards. More than 13,000 NHS patients each year are infected with C.diff, which can cause debilitating diarrhoea and leave sick people dangerously dehydrated. Bacteria are also becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics, and if not treated quickly enough an infection can be fatal. Nearly 2,000 people die from the bacterium each year in Britain. Researchers at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine looked at the genetic differences of 906 strains of C-diff taken from humans and animals and the environment across 33 countries. They found that a dangerous new species is rapidly emerging which can evade common hospital disinfectants and spread easily. And poor diets are making the problem worse.Dr Trevor Lawley, the senior author from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said: “Our study provides genome and laboratory based evidence that human lifestyles can drive bacteria to form new species so they can spread more effectively. “We show that strains of C. diff bacteria have continued to evolve in response to modern diets and healthcare systems and reveal that focusing on diet and looking for new disinfectants could help in the fight against this bacteria.”

C. Diff Is Evolving Into Superbug in Response to Western Sugary Diets – One of the most widespread bacteria known to cause serious gut infections is evolving to take advantage of high-sugar diets in the West and resist disinfecting methods used in healthcare settings. The diarrhea and colitis-causing bacteriaClostridioides difficile, or C. Diff, is common throughout our environment and results in nearly 500,000 infections in the U.S. each year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says, which can be fatal for elderly and very sick people who have been hospitalized or given antibiotics. According to Mayo Clinic, C. Diff spores are often spread orally by contact with feces, which makes its way to food and other surfaces when an infected person fails to wash their hands thoroughly. The spores damage the lining of your intestine, potentially leading to severely dehydrating diarrhea, inflammation of the intestines, toxic megacolon and sepsis. C. Diff is so common in our surroundings that even some healthy adults will carry it in their system but are protected from severe symptoms by their healthy gut bacteria, The Atlantic reported. But antibiotics used to treat other infections can unintentionally eliminate the healthy bacteria, allowing C. Diff to thrive, cause an infection and spread to the environment when passed in diarrhea, NBC News reported. Recent research has shown that C. Diff can spread to and exist for months on disposable hospital gowns, stainless steel and vinyl surfaces often found in health facilities, even after being hit with concentrated chlorine disinfectant. A new study by the Wellcome Sanger Institute and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine might have revealed why. The study found that C. Diff has been evolving into two species over thousands of years, one of which is adapting into a superbug primed to spread in hospitals. The researchers found that one of the emerging species, C. Difficile clade A, was found in 70 percent of samples taken from hospital patients. A common trait of the new species was a mutation developed over thousands of years to improve sugar metabolism. The New York Post reported that common hospital foods, such as pudding cups and mashed potatoes, could become hotspots for this new C. Diff. species. The new species also had genetic mutations that changed how it formed spores, making it more resistant to disinfectants used in hospitals.

Shades of Flint in N.J. as Water Filters Fail to Trap Lead – Newark, the New Jersey city at the forefront of an economic revival, is making bottled drinking water available to almost 15,000 homes after tap tests for lead showed that city-supplied filters may be ineffective.Shawn LaTourette, chief of staff for the state environmental protection department, said 14,730 residences are potentially affected by contamination. The city earlier had said the water would go to 1,400 homes.The state’s most-populous city has taken steps to limit lead exposure since January 2017, when it disclosed the presence of the element, which can cause organ damage. On Aug. 9 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agencysaid water from two homes had exceeded federal and state lead standards.Flint, Michigan, a city where lead was detected in 2014, also tried filters. But in 2016, tests found the devices couldn’t capture lead in high quantities, according to Michigan environmental officials. Federal regulators say Flint’s water is safe after system upgrades, but Mayor Karen Weaver has said she’s not confident until more studies are conducted.Newark, with a population of more than 280,000, weathered 1967 race riots that preceded decades of blight. In recent years, though, it’s stoked a rebirth on its New York proximity, drawing startups including Audible.com, the audiobook service later acquired by Amazon Inc., andAeroFarms, the vertical-farming company whose backers include Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Newark’s former mayor, U.S. Senator Cory Booker, is running for president. Free bottled water distribution started today.

Newark’s Lead Crisis Escalates – New Jersey’s largest city began handing out lead filters to primarily low-income residents with lead service lines eight months ago, but recent tests show that filtered water samples tested over the federal and state standards for lead in drinking water. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s New York regional administrator ordered the city to begin handing out bottled water “as soon as possible” in a letter sent Friday.The Natural Resources Defense Council sued Newark last year for failing to adequately monitor the lead levels in its water supply for years. “In the senior building it’s bad,” Emmett Coleman, a senior citizen who waited two hours for cases of water Monday, told the AP. “All of us are sick or have problems, and we can’t drink the water. And the filters aren’t working.” As reported by The Washington Post:Public health experts agree that lead exposure is dangerous even at low levels. Lead can cause lasting damage to the developing brains and nervous systems of young children. The result can be long-term behavioral, cognitive and physical problems.—Mona Hanna-Attisha, the Michigan pediatrician who helped bring to light the severity of Flint’s water crisis in 2015 and who recently visited with residents in Newark, said the city needs to act quickly and aggressively to protect its residents – and work to hold on to whatever trust remains in its public officials. “For far too long, Newark has tiptoed around a comprehensive response to their lead-in-water crisis,” she said. “Newark is what keeps me up at night now.” The concern is that while we are not taking much action, children are being damaged on a generational level. We are supposed to provide them with a safe environment, not poison them.#RedforEd#GetTheLeadOut https://t.co/t1LfLDdCRq – Get the Lead Out of Our Schools (@SafeH2o4Schools) March 21, 2019 For more: AP, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CBS, ABC, Business Insider

Newark, New Jersey suspends distribution of bottled water over expiration concerns – On Tuesday, city officials in Newark, New Jersey were forced to halt handouts of bottled water over concerns over expiration labels. The emergency distribution had just begun on Monday in response to reports last week of high lead contamination in the city’s drinking water even after the use of home tap filters. The carelessness of the city government’s approach to the crisis was revealed after thousands of cases of bottled water which were being handed out were past their labeled expiration date. The slapdash character of the response was further exposed as many residents were turned away from water distribution centers or had to wait in long lines. While bottled water has no expiration and those being handed out were safe to drink – the expiration label itself is a peculiarity of New Jersey legislation – the response by city officials further exposed not only the criminal indifferences of the state in the face of a public health danger which has been known about for nearly a decade, but a deep fear by the ruling layers of the city that the water crisis could set off a social explosion. After reports of high lead content in home drinking water surfaced last year, Newark city officials had promised residents that the water filters supplied to them would remove over 99 percent of the neurotoxin. This was exposed as a lie after approximately two thirds of the water samples tested by the city last month and submitted to the state Department of Environmental Protection showed lead levels in excess of the 15 parts per billion action level set by the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Three of the 32 samples taken exceeded 50 parts per billion, more than three times the legal limit.

Paris’s Notre Dame fire: Two children test positive for lead poisoning – Four months after the April 15 fire at the Notre Dame cathedral, during which up to 440 tons of lead roofing was dispersed by smoke into the surrounding areas of Paris, at least two children have tested positive for dangerous levels of lead in their blood. The revelations are an indictment of the local Parisian government of Socialist Party Mayor Anne Hidalgo and the national government of Emmanuel Macron, which have worked to cover up the lead poisoning scandal since the fire occurred and insisted that there is no danger to the population. The government’s actions, including its refusal to close local schools, have meant that hundreds of children have been kept at creches and on school grounds contaminated by lead for months. They are now in danger of permanent damage. The Parisian Regional Health Authority (Agence Regionale de Santé – ARS) announced the results of the tests of 175 children on August 6. Sixteen were measured to have lead blood levels requiring continued monitoring (between 20 and 49 micrograms of lead per litre of blood), and two with levels above the 50 micrograms indicating a risk of lead poisoning. While the French government’s categorization assumes levels below 50 micrograms of lead per litre of blood do not pose an immediate risk of blood poisoning, the World Health Organization states that even levels as low as 5 micrograms per litre can pose a significant danger to children. Given the small number of tests conducted so far, it is likely that many more people are now threatened with lead poisoning.

Lead Decontamination Closes Streets Around Notre Dame Cathedral -Paris officials sealed off the area around the Notre Dame Cathedral to remove lead particles that have settled after a devastating fire destroyed the iconic cathedral’s roof and spire in April. After the April 15 blaze, tons of lead melted and dispersed to the surrounding area, landing on homes, shops, schools and the streets. On Tuesday morning, police closed off an area around the cathedral to vehicles and pedestrians while workers put up a barrier fence for the 10-day cleanup to begin. The nearby train station was also closed and buses were rerouted to avoid the cleanup site. It is a priority to make sure schools and day care centers are decontaminated before a new school term starts in September, according to The Guardian. “After the melting of at least 300 tons of lead in the gables of the spire and in the roof, Notre-Dame de Paris is now a polluted site,” French environmental group Robin des Bois said in a statement, as CNN reported. “The cathedral has now become filled with toxic waste.” The cleanup crews will use two decontamination techniques for the surrounding neighborhood on Ile de la Cité, according to the cultural ministry. One method will use high-pressure water hoses with chemical agents to remove lead debris. The other involves slathering an adhesive gel on benches, streetlights, mailboxes and other fixtures to absorb the lead. After the gel dries for several dies, experts then vacuum it up with the hope that it will remove all the lead. The project should take nearly three weeks to complete, as the AP reported. The painstaking work of decontaminating and cleaning the cathedral was suspended on July 25 after concerns were raised about the safety of the workers. Activists and nearby residents accused Paris officials of underestimating the threat of lead poisoning, according to the AP.

Breathing Polluted Air is Like Smoking a Pack a Day – It turns out you don’t need to smoke for a lifetime to get emphysema. Just breathing polluted air can give it to you, according to a new study that is the largest and the longest of its kind. The study, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, or JAMA, found that long-term exposure to ground level ozone, the main component of smog, is like smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, as CNNreported. Just a slightly elevated level of air pollution can lead to lung damage, even for people who have never smoked. “We found that an increase of about three parts per billion [of ground-level ozone] outside your home was equivalent to smoking a pack of cigarettes a day for 29 years,” said Joel Kaufman, a physician and epidemiologist at the University of Washington who contributed to the study, as NPR reported. The study tracked 7,071 adults aged 45 to 84 living in six U.S. cities: Chicago; Los Angeles; Baltimore; St. Paul, Minnesota; New York City and Winston-Salem, North Carolina for up to 18 years. The researchers created an exposure assessment method that looked at air pollution levels outside participants’ homes and carried out CT scans and breathing tests, according to U.S. News and World Report. They assessed environments for levels of fine particulate matter, nitrogen oxide, black carbon and ozone. All major air pollutants were linked to an increase of emphysema, a debilitating, chronic and irreversible lung disease that causes shortness of breath and shrinks the amount of oxygen that reaches the bloodstream. It’s almost always associated with smoking or long-term exposure to second hand smoke. However, exposure to ground level ozone pollution showed the strongest link to an increased prevalence of emphysema. It was also the only pollutant to show an additional decrease in lung function, as CNN reported.

It’s raining plastic: microscopic fibers fall from the sky in Rocky Mountains – Plastic was the furthest thing from Gregory Wetherbee’s mind when he began analyzing rainwater samples collected from the Rocky Mountains. “I guess I expected to see mostly soil and mineral particles,” said the US Geological Survey researcher. Instead, he found multicolored microscopic plastic fibers.The discovery, published in a recent study (pdf) titled “It is raining plastic”, raises new questions about the amount of plastic waste permeating the air, water, and soil virtually everywhere on Earth.“I think the most important result that we can share with the American public is that there’s more plastic out there than meets the eye,” said Wetherbee. “It’s in the rain, it’s in the snow. It’s a part of our environment now.”Rainwater samples collected across Colorado and analyzed under a microscope contained a rainbow of plastic fibers, as well as beads and shards. The findings shocked Wetherbee, who had been collecting the samples in order to study nitrogen pollution. “My results are purely accidental,” he said, though they are consistent with another recent study that found microplastics in the Pyrenees, suggesting plastic particles could travel with the wind for hundreds, if not thousands, of kilometers. Other studies have turned up microplastics in the deepest reaches of the ocean, inUK lakes and rivers and in US groundwater.A major contributor is trash, said Sherri Mason, a microplastics researcher and sustainability coordinator at Penn State Behrend. More than 90% of plastic waste is not recycled, and as it slowly degrades it breaks into smaller and smaller pieces. “Plastic fibers also break off your clothes every time you wash them,” Mason said, and plastic particles are byproducts of a variety of industrial processes. It’s impossible to trace the tiny pieces back to their sources, Mason said, but almost anything that’s made of plastic could be shedding particles into the atmosphere. “And then those particles get incorporated into water droplets when it rains,” she added, then wash into rivers, lakes, bays and oceans and filter into groundwater sources.

Plastic particles falling out of sky with snow in Arctic – Even in the Arctic, microscopic particles of plastic are falling out of the sky with snow, a study has found. The scientists said they were shocked by the sheer number of particles they found: more than 10,000 of them per litre in the Arctic. It means that even there, people are likely to be breathing in microplastics from the air – though the health implications remain unclear. The region is often seen as one of the world’s last pristine environments. A German-Swiss team of researchers has published the work in the journal Science Advances. The scientists also found rubber particles and fibres in the snow. Researchers collected snow samples from the Svalbard islands using a low-tech method – a dessert spoon and a flask. In the laboratory at Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven they discovered far more contaminating particles than they’d expected. Many were so small that it was hard to ascertain where they had come from. The majority appeared to be composed of natural materials like plant cellulose and animal fur. But there were also particles of plastic, along with fragments of rubber tyres, varnish, paint and possibly synthetic fibres.

West Nile virus found in NC mosquito, officials say. – A mosquito in North Carolina tested positive for West Nile virus, and health officials say it’s important to protect yourself from bites.Multiple mosquitoes in a trap on Greenville Loop Road in Wilmington were tested, and one sample came back positive for the virus, New Hanover County said on Monday.The health department is increasing “surveillance and control activities” and will spray the area on Tuesday, the county said. The public shouldn’t be alarmed but should do things to prevent bites, the county said. “While human incidence of West Nile virus is rare, it is a dangerous disease with no cure or vaccine for people, so residents should protect themselves by preventing mosquito bites,” Public Health Director Phillip Tarte said, according to WWAY. “Use EPA approved insect repellent, wear long sleeves and pants and limit outdoor activity at dawn and dusk when mosquitoes are known to be most active.” West Nile virus is the “leading cause of mosquito-borne disease” in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but only one in five infected will actually have a fever and other symptoms, and only one in 150 people infected will become seriously ill. The virus is spread through mosquito bites, and symptoms include fever, headache, body aches, joint pains, vomiting, diarrhea or a rash, the CDC says. Although there is no treatment available, over-the-counter pain medications can be used to relieve symptoms, the CDC says. As of August 6, 36 states have reported cases of West Nile virus in people, birds or mosquitoes this year, according to the CDC

40% of US honeybee colonies disappeared last year. This is what the world would look like without any bees at all. — Bees are getting so scarce and so valuable that people are stealing hives from almond farms in California and selling them at steep prices. That’s because the populations of both domestic honeybees and wild bees have been in decline for the last few decades. Extinction rates for pollinators have jumped to 100 to 1,000 times the normal rates, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO). About 40% of invertebrate pollinators, especially bees and butterflies, are facing extinction worldwide. Today, the US has only 2.5 million honeybee colonies, less than half of the bee settlements it boasted in the 1940s. Bees perform a crucial role in fruit, vegetable, and nut production – without the pollination work they do, humans would have to say goodbye to (or pay very steep prices for) some of our most nutritious foods, including berries, apples, almonds, cucumbers, peppers, and seeds. This is what the world would look like without bees. An annual survey of 4,700 beekeepers found that since 2010, they have lost an average of 37.8% of US bee colonies each year. Last year was worse. Some of your favourite foods would become rare and more expensive – or perhaps disappear altogether. Berries, chocolate, apples, pears, pumpkin, avocado, onions, cucumber, and cabbage all rely heavily on bee pollination.Almonds depend entirely on bees for pollination.Without bees, you’d also have to say goodbye to your morning brew, or at least pay a lot more for it. More than half of the fat consumed around the world could be in trouble without bees, since all of the world’s oilseed crops at least partially rely on bee pollination.Bee pollination also improves the quality of crops. A study in Burkina Faso found that cotton and sesame plants pollinated by bees had an average of 62% higher quality and quantity than those that self-pollinated.

‘Fall Armyworm’ Invades China; Wreaks Havoc On Agriculture Lands – China’s agriculture ministry warned in June that it found fall armyworms in 21 provinces, across 333,000 hectares of crops. Fall armyworms (Spodoptera frugiperda) are a destructive garden pest that can destroy a variety of crops as well as grasses.Chinese officials are worried about prevention and control measures of the pest might be failing, which could lead to crop losses this year. Beijing warned fall armyworms could damage hundreds, if not thousands of hectares of crops, leading to possible food security issues for the country.To counter the pest, China has requested farmers in the 21 provinces to use government-approved pesticides. The “heart-devouring worm” – as locals call it – has spread almost 1,900 miles north since migrating from neighboring Myanmar earlier this year, now threatens 21 provinces and regions in China and could heavily impact the country’s grain output.In Yunnan, a province in southwestern China, the pest has already destroyed 86,000 hectares of corn, sugarcane, sorghum, and ginger crops. Fall armyworm started to spread through Africa and Asia in 2016, these pests, which are moths, fly 60 miles per night, is very challenging for farmers and governments to exterminate. The pests have strained small farmers, who produce at least 90% of the country’s crop. In hard-hit Yunnan, the local government has installed 3,500 monitoring sites at farms to observe the pests and agriculture conditions, the provincial agriculture bureau wrote to Reuters via email. Sugarcane farmer Yan in Mengkang village said the only answer to the fall armyworm disaster is to spray crops with pesticide. “You have to keep spraying chemicals. If you don’t kill the worm, you will end up penniless,” he said.

According To The Feds, 19 Million Acres Of Farmland Went Un-Planted With Crops This Year Over the past few months, I have written article after articleabout the unprecedented crisis that U.S. farmers are facing this year. In those articles, I have always said that “millions” of acres of farmland did not get planted this year, because I knew that we did not have a final number yet. Well, now we do, and it is extremely troubling. Of course there are some people out there that do not even believe that we are facing a crisis, and a few have even accused me of overstating the severity of the problems that U.S. farmers are currently dealing with. Sadly, things are not as bad as I thought – the truth is that they are even worse. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, crops were not planted on 19.4 million acres of U.S. farmland this year. The following comes directly from the official website of the USDA… Agricultural producers reported they were not able to plant crops on more than 19.4 million acres in 2019, according to a new report released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). This marks the most prevented plant acres reported since USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) began releasing the report in 2007 and 17.49 million acres more than reported at this time last year. So this is the largest number that the USDA has ever reported for a single year, and it is nearly 17.5 million acres greater than last year’s final tally of less than 2 million acres. Of those prevented plant acres, more than 73 percent were in 12 Midwestern states, where heavy rainfall and flooding this year has prevented many producers from planting mostly corn, soybeans and wheat. Most farmers were able to get seeds in the ground despite the challenging conditions, but in much of the country the crops are not in good shape. In fact, according to the latest crop progress report only 57 percent of the corn is considered to be in “good” or “excellent” shape.Unfortunately, the nation’s soybean crop is in even worse shape. At this point, only 54 percent of the soybeans are in “good” or “excellent” shape.In addition, only 8 percent of the U.S. spring wheat crop has been harvested so far. That is “sharply below the 30% five-year average”.

Oregon passes law requiring eggs sold there to come from cage-free hens – Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) signed legislation into law on Monday that requires farms in the state to house egg-laying hens in a cage-free housing system.Under Senate Bill 1019, commercial farm owners or operators that yield an annual egg product ion with flocks larger than 3,000 egg-laying hens are required give their birds unrestricted room to roam.The farms are also required to provide the hens with “enrichments” that allow them to exhibit what the bill referred to as “natural behavior,” which includes, at a minimum, “scratch areas, perches, nest boxes and dust bathing areas.”The law mandates that all state facilities in which eggs are produced or sold to be cage-free by 2024, The Oregonian reports.The bill’s passage was celebrated by the Humane Society of the United States on Monday as a “monumental win for hens confined in tiny cages in the egg industry.” Voters in California approved a similar measure last year requiring all facilities that sell eggs in the state to be cage-free by 2022, The Associated Press reported at the time.

Colombia confirms that dreaded fungus has hit its banana plantations – Colombia has declared a national state of emergency following confirmation that a dread fungus has appeared in the country’s banana plantations. The 8 August declaration marks the first time that Fusarium wilt tropical race 4 (TR4), which has devastated crops in Asia, has been confirmed in Latin America, the world’s largest exporter of bananas. Signs of the fungus were first spotted in June in northern Colombia, putting the region on high alert. The Colombian Agricultural Institute (ICA) in Bogotfl has now announced plans to expand biosecurity efforts, after eradicating plants on nearly 170 hectares of quarantined farmland. ICA plans to increase sanitary control measures at all ports, airports, and border points, although the disease has so far been reported only in the La Guajira region of the country. Government officials are considering providing funding to small and medium-size banana exporters to help them implement better biosecurity measures, such as disinfecting machinery, shipping containers, and footwear in quarantined areas. The government will continue to monitor the situation through a combination of surveillance flights and on-the-ground inspections. And on 5 August, agricultural ministers from across Latin America met in Quito to discuss plans to prevent further outbreaks. TR4, for which there is no treatment, kills plants by disrupting their vascular systems, and it can persist in soil for decades. Experts at Wageningen University and the biotech company KeyGene, both in the Netherlands, used genome sequencing and molecular diagnostics to confirm the TR4 diagnosis in infected plant samples from Colombia. The fungus strikes both bananas and closely related plantains.

Tests confirm increasing levels of algae blooms in Austin – The city of Austin says additional testing has found more harmful algae at Auditorium Shores, Red Bud Isle & Barton Creek near Lady Bird Lake and are urging residents to keep pets out of water and minimize human contact. Additional testing has revealed increasing levels of neurotoxins in algae at a greater number of locations. Samples were taken on Monday, August 12, 2019, at Auditorium Shores, at Red Bud Isle and at Barton Creek. Samples at Barton Creek were taken just below the pedestrian bridge over Barton Creek on the Ann and Roy Butler Hike and Bike Trail. All the samples contained greater amounts of neurotoxins than found the previous week. Red Bud Isle remains closed. The public should not allow their dogs to swim anywhere in Lady Bird Lake. In addition, they should keep their dogs out of Barton Creek where algae is present. In addition to swimming, dogs should not be allowed to drink the water in these locations. People should avoid handling the algae and minimize their exposure to the water. Boating and paddle-boarding is still allowed at your own risk. Pets and people who come into contact with the water should rinse off. If symptoms develop, they should seek immediate medical attention. The algae will naturally die off when cooler weather returns in the fall. At this time, the City of Austin has not identified a safe and effective way to treat or remove the algae, and it is likely that Red Bud Isle will remain closed for the next several weeks.

Dogs Are Dying From Poisonous Lakes and Ponds – Pet owners around the country are seeing their beloved canines perish after letting them cool off in waters harboring toxic algae. Dogs in North Carolina, Georgia and Texas have all died recently after swimming in waters covered in a harmful algae bloom, which is difficult to detect. “Your typical lay person will not be able to tell one algae from another, or a good from a bad,” said Dr. Mark Aubel to Atlanta’s 11 Alive. “It just kind of behooves anybody that sees algae in a lake, in a pond, that they’d probably want to be cautious and just not expose themselves to it or to their pets.” Last Thursday, a couple in Wilmington, NC tried to give their three dogs some relief from the heat by letting the dogs splash around in a nearby pond. Within 15 minutes of leaving the water, one of their West Highland terriers started to suffer from seizures. When they arrived at the veterinarian’s office, the other Westie started to decline, followed shortly by the couple’s “doodle” mix therapy dog. By midnight, all three dogs were dead, as CNN reported. All three died from ingesting harmful blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria, in the water. In Austin, TX, three dogs have died after exposure to the toxic algae at Lady Bird Lake in Red Bud Isle. While people are not allowed to swim in the water, the popular spot for an off-leash dog walk had no signs warning dog walkers to keep their dogs away from the lake. Now, after three dogs have died, the city closed Red Bud Isle to the public after discovering that 40 percent of Lady Bird Lake’s surface is covered in a harmful algae bloom. This weekend, a similar story happened in Georgia, when a couple took their border collie to Lake Allatoona. Shortly after splashing around, the dog began to vomit and by the time the owners reached the vet, the dog was brain dead, according to the owner’s Facebook post. This summer has seen an unusually intense wave of algae blooms that have shut down lakes in the Pacific Northwest, New Jersey and every beach on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Scientists say the climate crisis is probably a factor in the increase of cyanobacteria, which can grow in dense clusters and produce toxic substances. An increase in the frequency and intensity of rainstorms has pushed fertilizer runoff into waterways. Furthermore, hot, sunny days and the conditions are set for a harmful algae bloom, which are appearing more frequently and earlier in the season, according to The New York Times. Dogs are particularly vulnerable to cyanobacteria because they swallow so much water when they swim, asHeavy.com reported.

Keeping Kids Safe From Toxic Algae – – Outbreaks of potentially toxic algae are fouling lakes, rivers and other bodies of water across the U.S. Nationally, news reports of algae outbreaks have been on the rise since 2010. What’s worse, some algae blooms produce dangerous toxins called microcystins. The Environmental Working Group just released a report showing that microcystins have been found in lakes across the U.S. – even when there’s no visible toxic algae outbreak. These smelly blooms aren’t actually algae at all, but photosynthetic microorganisms called cyanobacteria. Runoff from farm fields is often polluted with phosphorous and other chemicals in manure and commercial fertilizers. When this polluted runoff gets into lakes, it feeds the growth of cyanobacteria, especially in warm weather. Increasingly heavy rains and flooding, exacerbated by the climate crisis, make the problem worse. Many algae blooms are gross, forming a foul-smelling slime on a lake’s surface, ­but not hazardous. But for reasons no one yet understands, some produce poisonous chemicals called cyanotoxins, including the group known as microcystins. Microcystin-producing cyanobacteria are a hazard to anyone, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says children are especially vulnerable, since they’re most likely to ingest water while swimming. Exposure can cause coughing, nausea, weakness, cramping and headaches, as well as long-term health effects such as liver failure. Contact with skin, drinking contaminated tap water or eating contaminated fish can also cause health problems. Even breathing in microcystins can be harmful, and recent studies have shown that the toxins can become airborne, drifting a mile or more from the site of the outbreak.

Pesticide Cheerleader – EPA Rebukes California With Ban On Warning Labels For Bayer’s Roundup –President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency was accused of being a pesticide “cheerleader” last week after the agency said it would not approval labels that say that glyphosate – the active ingredient in Roundup and other weedkillers – is known to cause cancer. In a statement released Thursday announcing the move, the EPA dug in on its assertion that glyphosate does not cause cancer, though critics have said that is “an industry-friendly conclusion that’s simply not based on the best available science.” The new guidance takes aim at California’s 2017 move, in adherence with its Proposition 65, to add glyphosate to its list of chemicals known to cause cancer and require warning labels. The state cited the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer 2015 assessment that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic to humans.” The EPA, however, said those labels provided consumers with false information. “We will not allow California’s flawed program to dictate federal policy,” said EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler in the statement. The EPA also sent a letter to manufactures on Aug. 7 saying that “pesticide products bearing the Proposition 65 warning statement due to the presence of glyphosate are misbranded” under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). Brett Hartl, government affairs director for the Center for Biological Diversity, suggested the EPA wasn’t living up to its own name.“It’s a little bit sad the EPA is the biggest cheerleader and defender of glyphosate,” Hartl told The Associated Press.”It’s the Environmental Protection Agency, not the pesticide protection agency.”

Bayer mediator dismisses report of $8 billion Roundup settlement (Reuters) – Bayer AG has not offered to pay billions of dollars to settle claims in the United States related to the Roundup herbicide, mediator Ken Feinberg said, dismissing a report to that effect which drove its shares as much as 11% higher. “Bayer has not proposed paying $8 billion to settle all the U.S. Roundup cancer claims. Such a statement is pure fiction,” Feinberg said in an email on Friday. “Compensation has not even been discussed in the global mediation discussions.” Bayer shares, which had shed some of their gains before Feinberg’s statement, retreated further and closed up 1.7% at 64.63 euros. Bayer, which acquired Roundup and other glyphosate-based weedkillers as part of its $63 billion takeover of Monsanto last year, declined comment on the initial Bloomberg news report and on Feinberg’s response. Bayer Chief Executive Werner Baumann last week said the company would consider settling with U.S. plaintiffs only on reasonable terms, and if it “achieves finality of the overall litigation”. He added at the time the group was “constructively engaging” in a court-ordered process with mediator Feinberg on the cases heard in federal court. Most of the pending cases, however, have been filed with U.S. state courts.

Revealed: how Monsanto’s ‘intelligence center’ targeted journalists and activists – Monsanto operated a “fusion center” to monitor and discredit journalists and activists, and targeted a reporter who wrote a critical book on the company, documents reveal. The agrochemical corporation also investigated the singer Neil Young and wrote an internal memo on his social media activity and music.The records reviewed by the Guardian show Monsanto adopted a multi-pronged strategy to target Carey Gillam, a Reuters journalist who investigated the company’s weedkiller and its links to cancer. Monsanto, now owned by the German pharmaceutical corporation Bayer, also monitored a not-for-profit food research organization through its “intelligence fusion center”, a term that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies use for operations focused onsurveillance and terrorism. The documents, mostly from 2015 to 2017, were disclosed as part of an ongoing court battle on the health hazards of the company’s Roundup weedkiller. They show:

• Monsanto planned a series of “actions” to attack a book authored by Gillam prior to its release, including writing “talking points” for “third parties” to criticize the book and directing “industry and farmer customers” on how to post negative reviews.
• Monsanto paid Google to promote search results for “Monsanto Glyphosate Carey Gillam” that criticized her work. Monsanto PR staff also internally discussed placing sustained pressure on Reuters, saying they “continue to push back on [Gillam’s] editors very strongly every chance we get”, and that they were hoping “she gets reassigned”.
• Monsanto “fusion center” officials wrote a lengthy report about singer Neil Young’s anti-Monsanto advocacy, monitoring his impact on social media, and at one point considering “legal action”. The fusion center also monitored US Right to Know (USRTK), a not-for-profit, producing weekly reports on the organization’s online activity.
• Monsanto officials were repeatedly worried about the release of documents on their financial relationships with scientists that could support the allegations they were “covering up unflattering research”.

Report: Monsanto Paid Google to Bury Unfavorable News –Monsanto, the agrochemical company that’s attained notoriety for its agricultural pesticides and genetically modified organisms, reportedly worked overtime to discredit investigative journalists criticizing the company – and even paid the search giant Google to suppress the findings.Carey Gillam, a journalist with Reuters, was reporting on the health effects of Monsanto’s products a few years back. As part of a massive damage-control campaign, the company worked to discredit her work as much as possible, according to an investigation by The Guardian. Perhaps most troubling: the company reportedly paid Google to promote search results that questioned Gillam’s findings – a disturbing look into how readily the flow of online information can be manipulated. As Gillam prepared to publish her 2017 book, “Whitewash: The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer, and the Corruption of Science,” Monsanto went into overdrive, The Guardian reports. The company assembled a spreadsheet of 23 specific steps it would take to downplay Gillam’s key finding while promoting content claiming its chemicals were actually safe.The spreadsheet shows how Monsanto planned to launch a new website full of their talking points and pay to make sure it popped up when people googled Gillam’s name.“I’ve always known that Monsanto didn’t like my work… and worked to pressure editors and silence me,” Gillam told the Guardian. “But I never imagined a multi-billion dollar company would actually spend so much time and energy and personnel on me. It’s astonishing.”

Climate change could trigger an international food crisis, UN panel warns — A report from the United Nations’ scientific panel on climate change warns that it will be impossible to keep worldwide temperatures at safe levels unless humans change the way they produce food and use land. Simply cutting carbon emissions from automobiles and factories alone won’t be enough to avert a worldwide food crisis. The report, released Thursday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, describes how global warming is already exacerbating food insecurity by destroying crop yields, decreasing livestock productivity and increasing pests and diseases on farmland. The panel said that warming starting at 2 degrees Celsius could trigger an international food crisis in coming years. This July was the hottest month ever recorded, with global temperatures up 1.2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. If greenhouse gas emissions continue at the current rate, in roughly 20 years the atmosphere will warm up by 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. “This is not the distant future. People should be nervous,” said Tim Searchinger, a senior fellow at the World Resources Report. In fact, the temperature over land is warming at twice the speed of the global average and has already reached over the 1.5 Celsius mark, according to the report.

Survey of U.S. forests ties tree-killing insects to climate change – NBC – Human activities such as deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels are by far the biggest contributors to climate change. But by killing trees that suck heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the air, certain bugs deserve a bit of blame – and a new study shows thatinvasive insects and diseases kill enough trees in the United States each year to release 6 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere.That’s roughly equivalent to the tailpipe emissions of 4.4 million cars.“They are like fire,” study co-author Songlin Fei, a forestry professor at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, said of the tree-killing species that have been introduced into the U.S. in recent decades. “They consume everything in their path.”The study, published Aug. 12 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, grew out of an observation Fei made in his own backyard. An ash tree there was dying – a victim of the emerald ash borer, a bright-green beetle originally from Asia whose bark-munching larvae have killed hundreds of millions of trees in the U.S. since the species was discovered stateside in 2002. Fei and his collaborators decided to take a look at data collected by the U.S. Forest Service in 93,000 woodland parcels across the nation, focusing on damage done by the emerald ash borer and 14 other invasive species considered to be especially harmful to ash, elm, chestnut and other forest trees. The researchers calculated tree mortality rates in pest-free areas, and then compared them to the rates in infested areas to determine the toll taken by the pests. On average, just more than 1 percent of trees in the U.S. die each year. The study showed that close to 3.5 percent died in ash borer-infested areas. For areas infested with other pests, like the laurel wilt fungus that infects laurel trees, more than 11 percent of trees died over the course of a year. If the pests are allowed to continue unchecked, the scientists calculated, they could eventually kill or weaken a staggering 41 percent of the trees in the lower 48 states. The consequences of such widespread devastation would extend far beyond the loss of valuable woodland habitat, according to Fei. “We think about forests as one of the major solutions for climate change,” he said. “When these trees are being damaged by these insects, they become dead materials. When they become dead materials, they not only stop working for you, they release CO2 back into the atmosphere.”

New Research Finds Plants Will Feast on Increased CO2, But Only Until 2100 – Scientists studying plants ability to gobble up carbon from the atmosphere have found that plants will offer protection from greenhouse gasses for another 80 years. Beyond 2100, they are not sure if carbon levels will become so high that that plants will reach a breaking point where they can no longer remove carbon from the air, as Newsweek reported.The researchers note that the vital role trees play in absorbing carbon means preserving forests should be a global priority. The study by a Stanford-led team of scientists and published in the journal Nature Climate Change sought to predict whether or not trees will be able to absorb greenhouse gasses in the future at their current rate. Right now, plants act a lot like the title character in Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree. Trees are endlessly generous as they filter our air and slow the climate crisis by absorbing about a quarter of the greenhouse gasses emitted due to human activity. They purify our water, nurture our soil and cool us down. Yet, like the character in the children’s book, there ability to give is limited. And, as we start to overfeed them with carbon dioxide and deprive them of a balanced diet with nitrogen and phosphorous in the soil, their ability to help us will decline, as the study authors wrote in Scientific American.The researchers analyzed 138 existing studies on grassland, land used for crops, shrubland and forests with levels of elevated carbon dioxide. They covered a broad range of experiments from growing plants in special chambers to fumigating forests with carbon dioxide. The scientists also weighed the symbiotic relationship between plants and fungi, and data on soil nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus, which trees rely on to turn carbon dioxide into food, as Newsweek reported.Increased atmospheric CO2 levels should increase the biomass of plants by 12 percent in the next 80 years. That is to say, they will fatten up. Yet, if nitrogen and phosphorous levels do not rise at a commensurate level, plants will be overwhelmed and sick from too much carbon – much like a person eating too much sugar instead of a balanced diet.

World’s Forest Animal Population Drops 53% Since 1970: WWF Report – The global population of forest-dwelling vertebrates has plummeted in the period between 1970 and 2014, according to a study published Tuesday by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in Berlin.The study, titled Below The Canopy tracked the development of 268 vertebrate species and 455 populations in forests around the world. It found that the numbers of birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles have dropped by an average of 53 percent since 1970. In light of these figures, the WWF called on the international community to declare a global forest emergency and to begin taking steps to reverse the trend by adopting sustainable forestry policies and beginning the process of restoring lost forest habitats.Deforestation and degradation of forests are thought to be responsible for more than 60 percent of the decline in populations, according to the study. WWF researchers emphasized that a rich variety of animal species is vital to forest ecosystems. According to the study, a decline in forest vertebrates has “serious consequences for forest integrity and climate change, because of the role that particular vertebrate species play in forest regeneration and carbon storage. Other essential functions for forest ecosystems performed by animals include pollination and seed dispersal. “Forests are our greatest natural ally in the fight against global warming,” said Susanne Winter, program director at WWF Germany. “If we want to reverse the worldwide decline in biodiversity and prevent the climate crisis, we need to protect the forests and the species living there.” Winter pointed out that animals and forests live in symbiosis, and if certain species dwindle, flora will begin to suffer. “Forests depend on an intact animal world to perform functions essential to life,” she said. “Without animals, it is harder for forests to absorb carbon, as tree species important for protecting the climate could be lost without animals.”

Ethiopians tackle the climate crisis with 350 million new trees (in photos) – Thousands of Ethiopians took part in planting a record-breaking number of trees in the span of 12 hours on Monday. At the urging of the country’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopians of all ages joined in the national Green Legacy campaign to reforest the country and combat climate change. Ethiopia’s citizens shot far past their initial goal of 200 million trees, planting a staggering 353,633,660 tree seedlings in the 12-hour period.Twenty-five-year-old Feben Tamrat says she joined in Monday’s planting after watching ads about the campaign from the prime minister. “I was very sure that I don’t want to miss out, and I want to put my legacy as well on the ground,” Tamrattold NPR.The record-breaking tree planting is just a small part of the nation’s Green Legacy initiative. CNN reports the campaign aims to plant a total of four billion trees between May and October of this year. Ethiopia is among more than two dozen African countries that have pledged to bring 100 million hectares of land in Africa into restoration by 2030 through the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative.Just over a century ago, roughly one-third of Ethiopia’s land was forest. But agriculture, drought, and soil erosion in the last hundred years have shrunk forested area down to less than 4 percent of the country’s total land.There’s some evidence that Ethiopia’s national reforestation effort could help combat climate change. Earlier this month, a study estimated that restoring lost forests across the globe could remove two-thirds of all the greenhouse gas emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere by human activities. Critics of the massive tree planting plan have pointed out, however, that, in the past, similar efforts have introduceddamaging non-native plant species and further degraded landscapes. At the very least, Ethiopia’s tree planting engaged citizens in the fight against climate change in a record-breaking show of unity and optimism. “This showed us how much we can be strong when we come together and when we put our heads together to do something,” Tamrat told NPR.

Amazon Deforestation Increase Prompts Germany to Cut $39.5M in Funding to Brazil – Germany said Saturday it would suspend aid to Brazil aimed at helping protect the Amazon forest in light of the stark increase in rainforest clearings since President Jair Bolsonaro took office. “The policy of the Brazilian government in the Amazon raises doubts as to whether a consistent reduction of deforestation rates is still being pursued,” German Environment Minister Svenja Schulze told Saturday’s edition of the Berlin daily Tagesspiegel. Initially the amount that will be stopped is around €35 million ($39.5 million), the newspaper reported. Brazil is home to more than 60 percent of the Amazon forest, which is being cleared at an increasing rate to create more cropland.Concern about the forest has grown even more since Bolsonaro took office in January. The Brazilian leader doesn’t want to designate any further protected areas, pledging instead to allow more clearances and make more economic use of the Amazon region. The former military officer also scorns any advice from abroad. Since 2008 until this year, Berlin has paid about €95 million ($106 million) in support of various environmental protection programs in Brazil. The German government also contributes to the Amazon Fund, a forest preservation initiative created in 2008.The fund has a total volume of just under €800 million ($891 million), and is funded by Norway and to a small extent also by Germany. It is not affected by the German Environment Ministry’s action.The money is to be used to stop the deforestation of the rainforest, to finance reforestation projects and to support the indigenous population.But Bolsonaro’s plans to also use the funds for the compensation of farmers have raised hackles. Norway, which has contributed the most to the fund, has threatened to withdraw, and said last year that payments to Brazil would be cut in half and might be eliminated altogether.

Indonesia Forest-Clearing Ban Criticized as ‘Government Propaganda’ –Indonesia’s president has made permanent a temporary moratorium on forest-clearing permits for plantations and logging. It’s a policy the government says has proven effective in curtailing deforestation, but whose apparent gains have been criticized by environmental activists as mere “propaganda.” Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar said President Joko Widodo had signed the permanent extension of the moratorium on Aug. 5. The moratorium prohibits the conversion of primary natural forests and peatlands for oil palm, pulpwood and logging concessions, and was introduced in 2011 by then-president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as part of wider efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation. But the moratorium hasn’t helped slow the loss of primary forests, say activists. If anything, they say, the deforestation rate has actually increased within areas that qualify for the moratorium. The rate of deforestation in areas covered by the licensing ban between 2011 and 2018, the period during which the moratorium has been in force, is down 38 percent from the seven years prior, according to data from the Ministry of Environment and Forestry. But analysis of satellite imagery by Greenpeace shows that deforestation rates increased in those areas after 2011. The NGO recorded 12,000 square kilometers (4,630 square miles) of forest loss within the moratorium areas in the seven years after the ban was implemented. This corresponds to an average annual rate of deforestation of 1,370 square kilometers (530 square miles) – higher than the average 970 square kilometers (375 square miles) per year in the seven years before 2011. Greenpeace said the government’s data were neither consistent nor available in a format that can be processed using geographic information system (GIS) software. Instead, it relied on data from the University of Maryland, which has been tracking tropical deforestation rates around the world since 2001. “The Indonesia forests moratorium is a good example of government propaganda on forest conservation,” said Kiki Taufik, the head of Greenpeace’s Southeast Asia forests campaign. “It sounds impressive but doesn’t deliver real change on the ground.”

Trump rolls back endangered species protections – The Trump administration on Monday announced it has finalized a controversial rollback of protections for endangered species, including allowing economic factors to be weighed before adding an animal to the list. The Interior Department regulations would dramatically scale back America’s landmark conservation law, limiting protections for threatened species, how factors like climate change can be considered in listing decisions and the review process used before projects are approved on their habitat. “It means that in all likelihood that the federal government itself and individuals will be damaging the habitat and likely increase the timetable and likelihood of a species going extinct,” David Hayes, executive director of the State Energy and Environmental Impact Center and a former deputy of Interior, said in a previous interview with The Hill. Going forward, the Endangered Species Act will no longer offer the same protections for threatened species – those at risk of becoming extinct in the foreseeable future – as those that are already endangered. “These changes crash a bulldozer through the Endangered Species Act’s lifesaving protections for America’s most vulnerable wildlife,” Noah Greenwald, the Center for Biological Diversity’s endangered species director, said in a statement. Monday’s rule finalizes an earlier proposal from the Interior Department and prompted threats of lawsuits from many environmental groups who say the changes will gut the law. The Endangered Species Act, first passed in 1973, is considered a success globally, surpassing protections for flora and fauna in many other countries. Environmentalists see it as one of America’s premier environmental laws. But in the U.S it has been a target of industry, heavily criticized by some developers and lawmakers for working almost too well, making it difficult to encroach on habitat even once a species rebounds. Many would like species to be more easily removed from the list. Interior described the new regulation as a modernization of the act “designed to increase transparency and effectiveness and bring the administration of the Act into the 21st century,” the agency said in a press release.

Trump Admin Guts Endangered Species Act in the Midst of Climate Crisis and Biodiversity Loss — The Trump administration announced sweeping changes to the Endangered Species Act Monday in a move that could make it harder to protect plants and animals from the climate crisis, The New York Times reported. The changes would make it easier to remove species from the list, end the blanket rule giving threatened species the same protections as endangered ones, allow regulators to assess the economic impacts of protecting a species and give the government major leeway in how it interprets the phrase “foreseeable future.” This last change is relevant to species threatened by the climate crisis, since many of its effects may be decades away. Interior Secretary and former energy lobbyist David Bernhardt claimed the changes would increase transparency. “The act’s effectiveness rests on clear, consistent and efficient implementation,” he said in a statement reported by The New York Times. “Today, I unveiled improvements to the implementing regulations of the Endangered Species Act. In its more than 45-year history, the ESA has catalyzed countless conservation partnerships that have helped recover some of America’s most treasured animals and plants.pic.twitter.com/soY9AEBH3P” – Secretary David Bernhardt (@SecBernhardt) August 12, 2019 But conservation groups disagreed. They pointed to a major biodiversity study released this spring warning that one million species could go extinct due to human activity. “We’re facing an extinction crisis, and the administration is placing industry needs above the needs of our natural heritage,” Natural Resources Defense Council Nature Program legal director Rebecca Riley said in a statement.The Endangered Species Act has saved 99 percent of listed species from extinction, according to HuffPost. Notable successes include the bald eagle, Yellowstone grizzly bear and humpback whale, but scientists warn that the new rules could prevent the act from performing similar rescues in the future.

Trump Pushed for Mining Project That Could Destroy Alaska Salmon Ecosystems, Despite EPA Opposition – “Gold over life, literally.” That was the succinct and critical reaction of Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein to reporting on Friday that President Donald Trump had personally intervened – after a meeting with Alaska‘s Republican Governor Mike Dunleavy on Air Force One in June – to withdraw the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA‘s) opposition to a gold mining project in the state that the federal government’s own scientists have acknowledged would destroy native fisheries and undermine the state’s fragile ecosystems. So Trump meets Alaska’s governor in his airplane and agrees to push through a goldmine that had been stopped b/c it will devastate salmon habitat. This at a time that orcas are already starving death. Salmon carry entire ecosystems on their backs. Gold over life, literally.https://t.co/QcT2UosP0g – Naomi Klein (@NaomiAKlein) August 9, 2019 Based on reporting by CNN that only emerged Friday evening, the key developments happened weeks ago after Trump’s one-on-one meeting with Dunleavy – who has supported the copper and gold Pebble Mine project in Bristol Bay despite the opposition of conservationists, Indigenous groups, salmon fisheries experts, and others. The EPA told staff scientists that it was no longer opposing a controversial Alaska mining project that could devastate one of the world’s most valuable wild salmon fisheries, just one day after President Trump met with Alaska’s governor, CNN has learned https://t.co/vJmjAYfSw4pic.twitter.com/TFGjPxSeAR – CNN (@CNN) August 9, 2019 CNN reports: In 2014, the project was halted because an EPA study found that it would cause “complete loss of fish habitat due to elimination, dewatering, and fragmentation of streams, wetlands, and other aquatic resources” in some areas of Bristol Bay. The agency invoked a rarely used provision of the Clean Water Act that works like a veto, effectively banning mining on the site. “If that mine gets put in, it would … completely devastate our region,” Gayla Hoseth, second chief of the Curyung Tribal Council and a Bristol Bay Native Association director, told CNN. “It would not only kill our resources, but it would kill us culturally.”

The water is so hot in Alaska it’s killing large numbers of salmon — Alaska has been in the throes of an unprecedented heat wave this summer, and the heat stress is killing salmon in large numbers. Scientists have observed die-offs of several varieties of Alaskan salmon, including sockeye, chum and pink salmon. Stephanie Quinn-Davidson, director of the Yukon Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, told CNN she took a group of scientists on an expedition along Alaska’s Koyokuk River at the end of July, after locals alerted her to salmon die-offs on the stream. She and the other scientists counted 850 dead unspawned salmon on that expedition, although they estimated the total was likely four to 10 times larger. They looked for signs of lesions, parasites and infections, but came up empty. Nearly all the salmon they found had “beautiful eggs still inside them,” she said. Because the die-off coincided with the heat wave, they concluded that heat stress was the cause of the mass deaths. Quinn-Davidson said she’d been working as a scientist for eight years and had “never heard of anything to this extent before.”

Washington Wheat Farmers Could Be Toast If Dams Are Removed To Help Hungry Orcas – The southern resident killer whales that live off the coast of Washington state are hungry, because there are fewer and fewer of the salmon they depend on. To help them, the state is looking at removing a series of dams.Dam removal would help salmon travel up the river to spawn and down the river to the ocean, where the orcas can eat them.But the dams are also important to another population: wheat farmers. Washington’s wheat crop brings $700 million into the state’s economy, more than any crop except apples. The vast majority of that wheat gets exported, most of it to Asia.”It’ll go into steamed noodles, pastries, cookies, cakes,” says Chris Shaffer, a fifth-generation wheat farmer with a 5,000-acre farm near Walla Walla, in the heart of wheat country. The trick is getting all this wheat to Seattle and to Portland, Ore., so it can be shipped across the ocean.Some of it goes by rail. But more than half of it goes by barge, floating down the Snake River and then the Columbia River to Portland.Shaffer points out the dams make that possible. Without them, the Snake River would be too shallow and too fast-moving for barges.”If you take the dams out, the wheat industry in the state of Washington is going to change dramatically,” Shaffer says, “because you’re not going to move by road economically to Portland or Seattle.” But those same dams make it harder for salmon to move up and down the river.

Death toll from Indian floods reaches 147, thousands evacuated – The death toll from floods in the Indian states of Karnataka, Kerala and Maharashtra has risen to at least 147, according to authorities, as rescue teams raced to evacuate people and waters submerged parts of a world heritage site. Heavy rain and landslides forced hundreds of thousands of people to take shelter in relief camps, while train services were cancelled in several flood-hit areas.In the southern state of Kerala, at least 57 people were killed in rain-related incidents while more than 165,000 were in relief camps in the state, local authorities said on Sunday.”Several houses are still covered under 10-12 feet deep mud. This is hampering rescue work,” state chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan said.Authorities worried that rescue operations would be hit by thunderstorms and rainfall predicted in some parts of Kerala.”People are facing a lot of problems. Water has come from all directions, water has entered all the houses,” a rescued local, Ajeet Pattankudi, told Reuters News Agency. Last year, more than 2 00 peoplewere killed in Kerala and over five million were affected in one of the state’s worst floods in 100 years.

Asia flooding: Dozens killed in China, Pakistan and India (video)- Dozens of people have been killed in severe flooding and storms across Asia. In China, Typhoon Lekima has killed at least 36 people.Meanwhile, monsoon rains in Pakistan and India have killed 160 and displaced about 165,000 people. Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands reports.

How climate change affects where millennials get mortgages – The majority of young adults and consumers in coastal housing markets claim climate change will affect their homes or communities, which could influence where they consider buying a house, according to Zillow. This comes after a joint study by Zillow and Climate Central flagged 800,000 homes worth $450 billion for being at risk of 10-year flood inundation by 2050, and follows another Zillow report claiming nearly half a million California homes are in danger of wildfires. With a 62% share, millennials are most likely to expect to be affected by climate change and also comprise the largest cohort of homebuyers, giving them the potential to dictate purchase demand shifts to and from certain cities. Residents across all age groups in Miami, San Jose, Calif., and Los Angeles are among those most likely to anticipate being personally affected by climate change, while consumers in St. Louis, Detroit and Philadelphia are among the least likely, according to Zillow. Comparatively, about 51% of people between 35 and 54 shared similar sentiments on climate change personally affecting them, as well as 39% of those 55 and older. “This survey confirms that millions of Americans are sensitive to the risks associated with climate change and believe they will face them in their lifetimes. Young adults are much more likely to recognize the reality of climate-change-related risks to their homes and communities,” Skylar Olsen, director of economic research at Zillow, said in a press release. “Every month new evidence is brought to light about the risks ranging from rising temperatures to more frequent floods to wildfires, and people are hearing the message. Even across age groups and political lines, there is at least a consensus that when you are in a hole the first step is to stop digging, in this case by not continuing to build new homes in high-risk areas,” Olsen said.

Heatwave caused nearly 400 more deaths in Netherlands – stats agency(Reuters) – Almost 400 people more died in the Netherlands during Europe’s recent record-breaking heatwave than in a regular summer week, Dutch national statistics agency CBS said on Friday. In total, 2964 people died in the Netherlands during the week that started on July 22, the CBS said, which was around 15% more than during an average week in the summertime. Temperature records tumbled across Europe during late July’s heatwave, and for the first time since records began topped 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in the Netherlands on July 25. The death toll in the Netherlands during that week was comparable to the rate during two heatwaves in 2006, which were among the longest ever in the country, the researchers said. About 300 of the additional fatalities were among people aged 80 years and older. Most of the deaths occurred in the east of the Netherlands, where temperatures were higher and the heatwave lasted longer than in other parts of the country. The Netherlands has a total population of around 17 million. The heatwave was the second to hit Europe in a month, and climate specialists warn such bursts of heat may become more common as the planet warms up due to greenhouse gas emissions.

July 2019 Was the Hottest Month Ever Recorded, NOAA Confirms – Humanity faced its hottest month in at least 140 years in July, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said on Thursday. The finding confirms similar analysis provided by its EU counterparts.”Much of the planet sweltered in unprecedented heat,” NOAA said on its website. “The record warmth also shrank Arctic and Antarctic sea ice to historic lows.”For example, Alaska saw its warmest July since statewide records began in 1925. At the same time, despite powerful heat waves in Europe, the continent marked only the 15th-hottest July on record.The agency tracks global temperatures on land and in the oceans. According to its experts, the period between January and July was the hottest to date in parts of North and South America, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and the southern half of Africa.Globally, the current year seems set to tie with 2017 as second-hottest on record. While very warm, 2019 is unlikely to surpass the all-time heat record set by 2016.Last month, however, narrowly beat the record set in July 2016, which was cooler by 0.03 degrees Celsius. The average global temperature in July 2019 was 0.95 degrees Celsius (1.71 Fahrenheit) higher than the 20th century average for this month.It follows record-breaking heat in June, which was also the warmest June ever recorded. The agency notes that nine out of the 10 hottest Julys ever recorded all happened since 2005. The last five years have all ranked in the top five. July 2019 was also the 415th consecutive month with above-average temperatures. The Arctic Sea ice coverage shrank by 19.8% compared with average values, beating a previo

Here’s how the hottest month in recorded history unfolded around the world -During the hottest month that humans have recorded, a local television station in the Netherlands aired nonstop images of wintry landscapes to help viewers momentarily forget the heat wave outside.Officials in Switzerland and elsewherepainted stretches of rail tracks white, hoping to keep them from buckling in the extreme heat.At the port of Antwerp, Belgium, two alleged drug dealers calledpolice for help after they got stuck inside a sweltering shipping container filled with cocaine.On Monday, scientists officially pronounced July 2019 the warmest month the world has experienced since record-keeping began more than a century ago.How hot was it?Wildfires raged across millions of acres in the Arctic. A massive ice melt in Greenland sent 197 billion tons of water pouring into the Atlantic Ocean, raising sea levels. And temperature records evaporated, one after another: 101.7 degrees Fahrenheit in Cambridge, England, and 108.7 in Paris. The same in Lingen, Germany. “We have always lived through hot summers. But this is not the summer of our youth. This is not your grandfather’s summer,” U.N. Secretary General António Guterres told reporters as July gave way to August. Scientists found that the planet is headed for one of its hottest years, and the period from 2015 to 2019 is likely to go down as the warmest five-year period on record.“July has rewritten climate history, with dozens of new temperature records at [the] local, national and global level,” Petteri Taalas, secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization, said in announcing the month’s historic implications. “This is not science fiction. It is the reality of climate change. It is happening now, and it will worsen in the future without urgent climate action.”

August 2019 El Niño Update: Stick a fork in it – The El Niño of 2019 is officially done. Near-average conditions in the tropical Pacific indicate that we have returned to ENSO-neutral conditions (neither El Niño or La Niña is present). Forecasterscontinue to favor ENSO-neutral (50-55% chance) through the Northern Hemisphere winter. The July Niño3.4 index, our primary index for monitoring ENSO, was 0.4°C above the long-term average, falling below the El Niño threshold of 0.5°C for the first time since last September. In addition, tropical atmospheric conditions have trended toward neutral, as the cloudiness and rainfall over the Pacific were near average over the past month. The trade winds also have been near average lately, indicating that Walker circulation, which weakens during El Niño, has shown signs of rebounding. . Based on these latest indicators from the tropical ocean and atmosphere, NOAA forecasters have declared that El Niño has ended and neutral conditions have returned. Does a return to neutral mean that average weather conditions are expected to prevail around the globe? As Michelle pointed out a couple years ago, the answer is an emphatic NO. A return to neutral means that we will not get that predictable influence from El Niño or La Niña, but the atmosphere is certainly capable of wild swings without a push from either influence. Basically, ENSO-neutral means that the job of seasonal forecasters gets a bit tougher because we do not have that ENSO influence that we potentially can predict several months in advance (in a probabilistic form). A change to neutral could also impact the Atlantic hurricane season, which typically ramps up this time of year and peaks in early-to-mid September. El Niño tends to produce hostile conditions for Atlantic hurricanes, as explained more thoroughly in Dr. Phil Klotzbach’s guest post, so a return to neutral means that we will not get a decisive push from El Niño to the Atlantic. The updated NOAA Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook is now available, so be sure to check how these changing ENSO conditions and other drivers are impacting the Atlantic hurricane season.

Above-normal hurricane season now more likely with El Niño’s end, NOAA says – There’s an increased likelihood that this year’s Atlantic hurricane season will be above-normal now that the irregular weather pattern known as El Niño has faded, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Thursday. Scientists now predict 10 to 17 named storms throughout the season, which runs June through November. Five to nine of them could become hurricanes, including two to four major hurricanes Category 3 or higher with winds of 111 mph or greater. Two named storms already have formed this season. One became Hurricane Barry, a Category 1 hurricane that hit Louisiana in July. Historically, 95 percent of all Atlantic hurricanes form from August through October. In May, forecasters predicted a 40 percent chance of a near-normal season. They expected El Niño, a hurricane suppressant that creates wind shear over the tropical Atlantic Ocean, to cancel out conditions that have led to stronger hurricane activity since 1995.

Alaska’s hottest month portends transformation into ‘unfrozen state’ (Reuters) – July 2019 now stands as Alaska’s hottest month on record, the latest benchmark in a long-term warming trend with ominous repercussions ranging from rapidly vanishing summer sea ice and melting glaciers to raging wildfires and deadly chaos for marine life. July’s statewide average temperature rose to 58.1 degrees Fahrenheit (14.5 degrees Celsius), a level that for denizens of the Lower 48 states might seem cool enough but is actually 5.4 degrees above normal and nearly a full degree higher than Alaska’s previous record-hot month. The new high was officially declared by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in its monthly climate report, released on Wednesday. More significantly, July was the 12th consecutive month in which average temperatures were above normal nearly every day, said Brian Brettschneider, a scientist with the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy (ACCAP) at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Of Alaska’s 10 warmest months on record, seven have now occurred since 2004. “You can always have a random kind of warm month, season or even year,” Brettschneider said. “But when it happens year after year after year after year after year, then statistically it fails the test of randomness and it then becomes a trend.” Alaska, like other parts of the far north, is warming at least twice as fast as the planet as a whole, research shows. And over the past 12 months, Brettschneder said, that warming has crossed a threshold – shifting Alaska from an environment with average temperatures below freezing to above freezing. It used to be that Alaska was generally a frozen state, he said, adding, “Now we’re an unfrozen state.”

Heat-trapping gases broke records in 2018, climate crisis report finds – The gases heating the planet in 2018 were higher than humans have ever recorded, according to an authoritative new report from the American Meteorological Society and the US government. Greenhouse gas levels topped 60 years of modern measurements and 800,000 years of ice core data, the study found. The data used in the 325-page report is collected from more than 470 scientists in 60 countries. The global annual average for carbon dioxide – which is elevated because of human activities like driving cars and burning fuel – was 407.4 parts per million, 2.4 ppm higher than in 2017. The report finds 2018 was the fourth-warmest on record since the mid-to-late- 1800s. Temperatures were .3C to .4C higher than the average between 1981 and 2010. Sea levels were the highest on record, as global heating melted land-based ice and expanded the oceans. Sea surface temperatures were also near a record high. As the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration put it, the report “found that the major indicators of climate change continued to reflect trends consistent with a warming planet”. Arctic and Antarctic sea ice extent was near a record low, and glaciers continued to melt and lose mass for the 30th year in a row.

Greenhouse Gases Reach Unprecedented Level – A bleak new federal report found that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rose to levels the world has not seen in at least 800,000 years, highlighting the irreversible and mounting deleterious effects of human activity on the planet, as ABC News reported. Global carbon dioxide concentrations reached a record of 407.4 parts per million during 2018, the study found. That is 2.4 ppm greater than 2017 and “the highest in the modern instrumental record and in ice core records dating back 800,000 years,” the report said, according to CNN. It wasn’t just the amount of carbon dioxide that set record levels. Other greenhouse gases like methane and nitrous oxide also continued a rapid rise into the atmosphere. Together, the global warming power of greenhouse gases was 43 percent stronger than in 1990, according to the State of the Climate report released Monday by the American Meteorological Society, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Centers for Environmental Information. Greenhouse gases are not the only thing rising. Global sea levels also reached their highest levels on record for the seventh consecutive year, as ABC News reported. The report says that ocean levels are rising about an inch per decade, but that number may need to be revised if ice melt at the poles accelerates. For global temperatures, 2018 ranked fourth, behind 2016, 2015 and 2017 for the warmest on record. That top four finish for 2018 is despite a La Niña system over the Pacific that cooled ocean waters for part of the year. So far, 2019 is on track to be the warmest year in recorded history, according to NOAA.

Fracking causing rise in methane emissions, study finds – The boom in the US shale gas and oil may have ignited a significant global spike in methane emissions blamed for accelerating the pace of the climate crisis, according to research. Scientists at Cornell University have found the “chemical fingerprints” of the rising global methane levels point to shale oil and shale gas as the probable source. Methane, levels of which have been increasing sharply since 2008, is a potent greenhouse gas that heats the atmosphere quicker than carbon dioxide. Researchers at Cornell said the carbon composition of atmospheric methane, or the “weight” of carbon within each methane molecule, was changing too. Robert Howarth, the author of the paper published in the journal Biogeosciences, said the proportion of methane with a “carbon signature” linked to traditional fossil fuels was falling relative to the rise of methane with a slightly different carbon make-up.Researchers had previously assumed the “non-traditional” methane was frombiological sources such as cows and wetlands, but the latest research suggests unconventional oil and gas from fracking may be playing a significant part.The theory would support a correlation in the rise of methane in the atmosphere andthe boom in fracking across the US over the last decade. “This recent increase in methane is massive,” Howarth said. “It’s globally significant. It’s contributed to some of the increase in global warming we’ve seen and shale gas is a major player.”

Shareholders Sue Exxon for Misrepresenting Climate Risks –A group of Exxon investors has filed suit in federal court against several of the company’s officials, directors and board members for failing to protect their investments as well as the company from the risks of climate change.Saratoga Advantage Trust Energy and Basic Materials Portfolio, a mutual fund of Saratoga Advantage Trust, filed a derivative lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Trenton, N.J., on Tuesday against several current and former Exxon officials, including current chief executive officer and chairman of the board Darren Woods; former chief executive Rex Tillerson; principal financial officer and senior vice president Andrew Swiger; and several members of the company’s auditing committee.Aderivative suit is a lawsuit brought by shareholders against a corporation’s directors and management for failing to exercise their authority for the benefit of the company and all of its shareholders. This type of suit often arises when fraud, mismanagement or dishonesty is ignored by officers and the board of directors of a corporation and it allows the shareholders to sue on behalf of themselves and on behalf of the corporation. Saratoga alleges that the officials “knew, were reckless, or were grossly negligent in not knowing” that Exxon was misleading its investors regarding the risks of climate change to its business. It also alleges that the officials received “excessive compensation and benefits” while the company failed to accurately value its reserves, usedtwo sets of numbers to calculate climate risk and filed misleading paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Saratoga said the value of its investments dropped as a result. The defendants “did not adequately evaluate the potential impact of climate change-related risks on the value of Exxon’s assets and its long-term business prospects,” Saratoga alleged in the suit.

Climate Deniers Launch Personal Attacks on Teen Activist – Greta Thunberg, at age 16, has quickly become one of the most visible climate activists in the world. Her detractors increasingly rely on ad hominem attacks to blunt her influence. Thunberg gained prominence after she began skipping some days of school to protest climate inaction outside Swedish parliament. She spearheaded the school walkouts that saw more than a million children across the globe leaving their classrooms to demand action on global warming. She has addressed world and U.N. leaders and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Later this month, she’ll sail across the Atlantic Ocean in a 60-foot yacht powered by solar panels and underwater turbines on her way to participate in the U.N. climate talks in New York (see related story). But the success of Thunberg – who describes herself on Twitter as a “16 year old climate activist with Asperger” – remains a sore point for those who reject mainstream climate science and some who have helped shape or encourage the Trump’s administration rollback of climate policy. They frequently point to Thunberg’s autism, claim she is used by her parents and compare her call to young people on climate change to “Hitler Youth.” They have pointed to her “monotone voice” and framed her as a “millenarian weirdo” with the “look of apocalyptic dread in her eyes.” A recent opinion piece in The New York Times prompted an outcry among climate hawks and Thunberg’s allies, who said the newspaper was validating these types of personal attacks on the teenage activist. Experts say relying on ad hominem attacks has significant collateral damage in that they dissuade people with intellectual and developmental disabilities from speaking publicly. While the language of describing someone as a “puppet” or abused by adults may appear coded, it’s clearly a dog whistle that signals her words should be discounted because her mind works differently

Climate Could Be an Electoral Time Bomb, Republican Strategists Fear — When election time comes next year, Will Galloway, a student and Republican youth leader at Clemson University, will look for candidates who are strong on the mainstream conservative causes he cares about most, including gun rights and opposing abortion.But there is another issue high on his list of urgent concerns that is not on his party’s agenda: climate change.“Climate change isn’t going to discriminate between red states and blue states, so red-state actors have to start engaging on these issues,” said Mr. Galloway, 19, who is heading into his sophomore year and is chairman of the South Carolina Federation of College Republicans. “But we haven’t been. We’ve completely ceded them to the left.” While Donald Trump has led the Republican Party far down the road of denying the scientific consensus of human-caused climate change, Mr. Galloway represents a concern among younger Republicans that has caught the attention of Republican strategists.In conversations with 10 G.O.P. analysts, consultants and activists, all said they were acutely aware of the rising influence of young voters like Mr. Galloway, who in their lifetimes haven’t seen a single month of colder-than-average temperatures globally, and who call climate change a top priority. Those strategists said lawmakers were aware, too, but few were taking action. “We’re definitely sending a message to younger voters that we don’t care about things that are very important to them,” said Douglas Heye, a former communications director at the Republican National Committee. “This spells certain doom in the long term if there isn’t a plan to admit reality and have legislative prescriptions for it.”President Trump has set the tone for Republicans by deriding climate change, using White House resources to undermine scienceand avoiding even uttering the phrase. Outside of a handful of states such as Florida, where addressing climate change has become more bipartisan, analysts said Republican politicians were unlikely to buck Mr. Trump or even to talk about climate change on the campaign trail at all, except perhaps to criticize Democrats for supporting the Green New Deal. That, several strategists warned, means the party stands to lose voters to Democrats in 2020 and beyond – a prospect they said was particularly worrisome in swing districts that Republicans must win to recapture a majority in the House of Representatives.

What is geoengineering – and why should you care? – It’s becoming clear that we won’t cut carbon emissions soon enough to prevent catastrophic climate change. But there may be ways to cool the planet more quickly and buy us a little more time to shift away from fossil fuels. They’re known collectively as geoengineering, and though it was once a scientific taboo, a growing number of researchers are running computer simulations and proposing small-scale outdoor experiments. Even some legislators have begun discussing what role these technologies could play (see “The growing case for geoengineering“). Traditionally, geoengineering has encompassed two very different things:sucking carbon dioxide out of the sky so the atmosphere will trap less heat, and reflecting more sunlight away from the planet so less heat is absorbed in the first place.The first of these, known as “carbon removal” or “negative emissions technologies,” is something that scholars now largely agree we’ll need to do in order to avoid dangerous levels of warming (see “One man’s two-decade quest to suck greenhouse gas out of the sky“). Most no longer call it “geoengineering” – to avoid associating it with the second, more contentious branch, known as solar geoengineering.It’s not a particularly new idea. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson’s Science Advisory Committee warned it might be necessary to increase the reflectivity of the Earth to offset rising greenhouse-gas emissions. The committee went so far as to suggest sprinkling reflective particles across the oceans. But the best-known form of solar geoengineering involves spraying particles into the stratosphere, sometimes known as “stratospheric injection” or “stratospheric aerosol scattering.” (Sorry, we don’t come up with the names.) That’s in part because nature has already demonstrated it’s possible. Most famously, the massive eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the summer of 1991 spewed some 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the sky. By reflecting sunlight back into space, the particles in the stratosphere helped push global temperatures down about 0.5 °C over the next two years. And while we don’t have precise data, huge volcanic eruptions in the distant past had similar effects. The explosion of Mount Tambora in Indonesia in 1815 was famously followed by the “Year Without a Summer” in 1816, . Soviet climatologist Mikhail Budyko is generally credited as the first to suggest we could counteract climate change by mimicking this volcanic phenomenon. He raised the possibility of burning sulfur in the stratosphere in a 1974 book.

Who Will Pay for the Huge Costs of Holding Back Rising Seas? – For cities in the United States, the price of infrastructure projects to combat rising seas and intensifying storms is coming into focus – and so is the sticker shock.In Boston, where many neighborhoods have been built and recently expanded in low-lying areas, an estimated $2.4 billion will be needed over the next several decades to protect the city from flooding, one study says. That report came as the city abandoned plans to build a harbor barrier that would have cost between $6 billion and $12 billion, which researchers concluded was economically unfeasible.In Charleston, South Carolina, the mayor said last year that the city, which floods regularly during high tides, had an estimated $2 billion in needed drainage projects.In Norfolk, Virginia, the Army Corps of Engineers has recommended a $1.4 billion series of seawalls and other infrastructure to protect part of the shoreline. As with many cities, that’s just the start.In Harris County, home to Houston, planners say $30 billion is needed to provide protection against a 100-year flood. Hurricane Harvey, which in 2017 caused 68 deaths and $125 billion in damages in the state, was the city’s third 500-year-flood in three years.And in New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio has proposed a storm surge barrier and floodgates to shield parts of the city and New Jersey from rising waters. The estimated cost: $10 billion. While the threats to these cities are growing as climate change intensifies, what is not clear is how to pay for projects needed to protect tens of millions of people and trillions of dollars of property. Conservative estimates of the capital investments needed to combat rising seas and worsening storms run into the hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming decades. “The failure to face these costs is the next phase of climate denial,” says Richard Wiles, executive director of the Center for Climate Integrity, an environmental advocacy group that champions forcing polluters to pay for climate crisis costs. “We’ve got to look at this squarely and figure out how to pay for it.” The center recently issued a study concluding that by 2040, building sea walls for storm surge protection for U.S. coastal cities with more than 25,000 residents will require at least $42 billion. Expand that to include communities under 25,000 people and the cost skyrockets to $400 billion. That’s nearly the price of building the 47,000 miles of the interstate highway system, which took four decades and cost more than $500 billion in today’s dollars.

Defunct power plant in Minnesota thunders to ground in explosive demolition – The country’s first power plant fueled by turkey manure and wood chips was demolished Wednesday morning, Aug. 14. Built in 2007 as an alternative to land-spreading turkey litter – and as a new type of renewable energy that helped Xcel Energy meet a legislative mandate for purchasing green energy in exchange for storing radioactive waste – the massive power plant that had been praised in the past and toured by politicians was loaded with explosives and left in a heap.There were a few loud booms and seconds later the 15-story boiler house crumpled over on its side and the 30-story smokestack fell like a tree and crashed to the ground. A 10-story dryer building at the Benson Power plant, which was originally built and operated at Fibrominn, was brought down with explosives Saturday morning.

6 Offshore Wind Farms the Size of Nuclear Power Plants – Everything about offshore wind just keeps getting bigger. Last month alone, New York awarded America’s single-largest renewables procurement to offshore wind, and General Electric unveiled the world’s largest-ever turbine nacelle, also for offshore wind. Offshore wind projects, meanwhile, are already exceeding the capacity (if not the capacity factor) of small nuclear reactors. There are now half a dozen offshore wind farms larger than 400 megawatts in operation or under construction around the world, according to the Global Wind Energy Council. And the list doesn’t include projects like the 659-megawatt Walney Extension in the U.K., since it was built in phases and GWEC counts each phase of an offshore wind plant as a separate project.Here are the biggest offshore wind farms on the planet right now, as ranked by GWEC.

Renewable energy: getting to 100% requires cheap energy storage. But how cheap? – One of the most heated and interesting debates in the energy world today has to do with how far the US can get on carbon-free renewable energy alone. At the heart of the debate is the simple fact that the two biggest sources of renewable energy – wind and solar power – are “variable.” They come and go with the weather and time of day. They are not “dispatchable,” which means they cannot be turned on and off, or up and down, according to the grid’s needs. They don’t adjust to the grid; the grid adjusts to them.That means a grid with lots of renewables needs lots of flexibility, lots of different ways of smoothing and balancing out the fluctuations in wind and solar. When people predict that renewables will fall short of 100 percent, what they are predicting is that we won’t be able to find enough flexibility to accommodate them (at least not fast enough). They will require “firming” by dispatchable, nonrenewable sources.There are many sources of grid flexibility, but the one that seems to have the most potential and is laden with the highest hopes is energy storage. To a first approximation, the question of whether renewables will be able to get to 100 percent reduces to the question of whether storage will get cheap enough. With cheap-enough storage, we can add a ton of it to the grid and absorb just about any fluctuations.But how cheap is cheap enough?That question is the subject of a fascinating new bit of research out of an MIT lab run by researcher Jessika Trancik (I’ve written about Trancik’s work before), just released in the journal Joule.To spoil the ending: The answer is $20 per kilowatt hour in energy capacity costs. That’s how cheap storage would have to get for renewables to get to 100 percent. That’s around a 90 percent drop from today’s costs. While that is entirely within the realm of the possible, there is wide disagreement over when it might happen; few expect it by 2030. However, there are twists and turns to this tale, and a happier ending than that summary might indicate. Let’s take a closer look.

Trump’s Rollback of Fuel Economy Standards Could Cost Americans $460 Billion: Consumer Reports — A new analysis from the nonprofit advocacy group Consumer Reports warns that American drivers could lose about $460 billion dollars in fuel savings if the Trump administration implements its proposal to gut federal fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions standards for passenger cars and light-duty trucks.Last week, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency formally announced the administration’s plan to amend Obama-era vehicle standards for model years 2021 through 2026.Described by critics as “a disastrous wreck for consumers and the planet,” the so-called Safer Affordable Fuel Efficient (SAFE) Vehicles Rule would freeze federal fuel efficiency standards for automakers at 2020 levels. As Common Dreams reported last week, “the Trump administration’s new proposal would also revoke the power of states – most prominently California – to establish their own more stringent fuel efficiency rules.”The Consumer Reports study out Wednesday, Bloomberg noted, “undermines the administration’s chief talking points in favor of the move.””The facts don’t back this rule’s Orwellian name,” David Friedman, vice president of advocacy at Consumer Reports, said in a statement. “The evidence shows that lowering fuel economy and emissions standards won’t do anything to improve traffic safety, but it will leave Americans stuck with the bill.””Instead of making a data-driven decision, the agencies instead seem to have been given a predetermined outcome and tried to make the numbers back it,” said Friedman. “They don’t.” The Consumer Reports study – titled The Un-SAFE Rule: How a Fuel Economy Rollback Costs Americans Billions in Fuel Savings and Does Not Improve Safety – concludes that the administration’s rollback would have sweeping negative consequences.

Trump’s EPA grants 31 small refinery waivers from biofuel laws, angering corn lobby – (Reuters) – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has granted 31 small refinery biofuel waivers for 2018 on Friday, infuriating the ethanol and corn producers who blamed the Trump administration for bailing out the oil industry when U.S. farmers were suffering due to trade tariffs and low prices. The waivers from the country’s biofuel laws were fewer than previous year’s and marked an increase in the number of petitions rejected, but the EPA’s decision was still unlikely to satisfy the powerful U.S. corn lobby which wants a broad retrenchment of the biofuel waiver program it blames for undercutting ethanol demand. “At a time when ethanol plants in the Heartland are being mothballed and jobs are being lost, it is unfathomable and utterly reprehensible that the Trump administration would dole out more unwarranted waivers to prosperous petroleum refiners,” said RFA President and Chief Executive Geoff Cooper said in a statement. Small Refinery Exemptions are available to small U.S. refineries that can prove they are in financial strife, and the waivers free them from their obligation under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) to blend biofuels like ethanol into their gasoline or purchase credits from others that do. Since Trump took office, the EPA has more than quadrupled the number of waivers it has granted to refiners, saving the oil industry hundreds of millions of dollars, corn growers, who claim the move threatens ethanol demand. Refiners dismiss the argument. The agency rejected six of the applications, while three were declared withdrawn, according to the EPA website. The RFS was enacted more than a decade ago to help farmers and reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil. The waiver program, however, has emerged as a battlefield between the rivaling oil and corn industries.

Corn Industry Battered By Shocking Ethanol Decision – The Trump administration has tried to thread the needle between the corn ethanol and oil refining industries, as the two battle it out over federal policy. The EPA may have thought it came up with a balanced approach when it issued a series of recent decisions, but judging by market reactions, the agency seems to have decidedly come down on the side of oil over ethanol. Federal policy requires a certain volume of biofuels to be blended into the nation’s fuel mix. Each year, the EPA decides on the exact levels, and it is a bit of a zero-sum game between ethanol producers and oil refiners. The ethanol industry wants higher blending levels because that expands sales, while refiners want less in order to defray costs. While perennially at odds, the two industries were at a bit of standstill for much of the Obama administration because while both sides surely had their gripes, there at least was some predictability about government policy. That all changed under the Trump administration, and specifically, under the stewardship of Scott Pruitt, former administrator at EPA. Under his tenure, EPA ramped up the number of waivers that it granted to the refining industry, absolving some smaller refiners of the requirement to buy ethanol who claim the obligation would inflict economic hardship. The move upset a fragile balance between the two industries, infuriating farmers and ethanol producers. The market for renewable identification numbers (RINs), which are the credits refiners can buy to offset their blending obligations, went haywire after the increase of waivers from EPA. Trump tried to stay above the fray, fearing angering one side over the other, and told his lieutenants to hash out a compromise. Trump even proposed allowing the year-round sale of E15 – a higher concentration of ethanol that was off limits during summer months over air pollution concerns – as a way of making amends with corn and ethanol producers. But the administration just issued a shocking decision to the corn and ethanol industries. On August 9, the EPA announced its decision on 2018 waiver requests, approving 31 of them while denying six. The decision appears to be an attempt to offer something to both sides, but the biofuels industry was incensed. “The Trump Administration’s approval of 31 refinery exemptions from the Renewable Fuel Standard is just devasting news for our industry,” said Iowa Renewable Fuels Association (IRFA) Executive Director Monte Shaw in a press release. “With this action, President Trump has destroyed over a billion gallons of biofuel demand and broken his promise to Iowa voters to protect the [Renewable Fuels Standard].”

Georgia’s forests are a shrinking line of defense against global warming. – In an attempt to cut back on their own fossil fuel emissions, countries in the European Union have become increasingly fond of getting energy from burning wood pellets, the product of wood that’s been harvested, ground up, and compressed. Because Europe has relatively stringent forest protections, the pellets are largely imported from the American Southeast. If the good news is that wood isn’t a fossil fuel, the bad news is that, by certain measures, it’s worse: Burning wood releases more carbon per unit of energy than burning coal or oil. And downed trees, of course, are no longer able to absorb carbon from the atmosphere. Because trees grow back and return to capturing carbon on a much faster cycle than coal or oil, proponents of this type of fuel – called biomass energy – argue it should be considered a renewable source. But that regeneration happens on an order of decades. Last year, the United Nations’ International Panel on Climate Change produced a jarring estimate of how long the world has to forestall the worst effects of climate change: just 12 years, it said, to dramatically restructure the world economy and cut carbon emissions by nearly half, on the way to a later goal of net zero emissions by 2050. In 2017, a group of scientists – including a number of IPCC lead authors – published a letter naming a “critical flaw” in the EU’s goal to double the continent’s renewable energy by 2030. Counting wood biomass as a renewable energy source, they wrote, “amounts to selling the world’s limited time to combat climate change under mistaken claims of improvement.” The American Southeast is the world’s top exporter of wood biomass, with the bulk produced in Georgia. Initially, biomass producers made pellets out of timber residue or sawmill shavings, but increasing demand has led them to harvest whole trees. (In addition to forest cutting and carbon emissions, conservationists and community groups object to the particulate matter emitted by wood pellet – producing U.S. factories, which tend to be located in low-income, nonwhite communities.) Naturally regenerating forests in the Southeast are expected to decline between 25 and 58 percent by 2060, while the amount of forestland taken up by pine plantations could rise to as much as 34 percent. Georgia, which has been called the “Amazon of the South” for its once highly biodiverse forest ecosystems, has also been called the “Saudi Arabia of pine trees” for the potential of its wood energy.

Simultaneous wind farm and gas-fired power station failures are blamed for one of Britain’s worst power cuts in years as millions are hit by blackouts – with homes, airports, trains and even traffic lights going down – One of the worst power cuts to hit Britain in years caused transport chaos across the country last night and hit the energy supplies of almost a million people.Traffic lights stopped working, trains were cancelled, and stations were evacuated after a technical fault at two power generators run by National Grid triggered a ‘major incident’. On Friday evening, there were reports that the problems may have been caused by issues at a gas-fired power station – and at a wind farm off the coast of Yorkshire. ‘What happened is a major offshore wind generation site and a gas turbine failed at the same time,’ Devrim Celal, of Upside Energy in London, a contractor with National Grid, was reported saying. ‘There was a significant shortage of generation, and that sudden drop created ripple effects across the country.’ ‘The first generator to disconnect was a gas fired plant at Little Barford at 16:58. Two minutes later Hornsea Offshore wind farm seems to have disconnected. This might be linked to disturbance caused by first generator failing; might not. We will need to wait for National Grid’s full technical investigation to get to bottom of that.’ Commuters described ‘apocalyptic’ scenes as they tried to make their way home during the evening rush-hour. And nearly a million customers were left without electricity following the outage at around 5pm. Blackouts were reported in London and the South East, as well as the Midlands, South West, North East and the North West. The National Grid Electricity Operator took around two hours to resolve the issue. The events immediately sparked speculation over the cause. Last night, the National Cyber Security Centre said there was, as yet, no evidence of hackers assaulting the power network. Embarrassingly, Chancellor Sajid Javid visited National Grid bosses and trainees at its Eakring Training Centre, just hours before the power cut. The mayhem last night was at its worst on the transport network. Commuters travelling on the London underground and at Clapham Junction were plunged into darkness.

Texas Power Grid Operator Declares Level 1 Emergency Amid Extreme Heat – Power demand in Texas hit a record high on Monday as consumers turned up their air conditioners to escape a heatwave that is boiling much of the southern Plains over the next 7-10 days. “A large ridge of high pressure has anchored itself across the southern Plains over the last 7-10 days, promoting significant heat across Texas. As of Tuesday morning, Dallas has reached 100°F each of the last 4 days, while Houston’s Intercontinental Airport has hit 101°F each of the past 5 days. Generally speaking, warmer than normal temperatures will continue for the foreseeable future across Texas,” said Meteorologist and owner of Empire Weather LLC., Ed Vallee. According to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), who operates the electric grid and supplies energy to more than 25 million customers, representing 90% of the state’s electrical load, reported that demand surged to 74,531 megawatts (MW) at 5 p.m. CDT on Monday and could reach 75,000 MW on Tuesday. Reuters notes that the all-time high was 73,473 MW on July 19, 2018. ERCOT has 78,000 MW of generating capacity. “This is blowing up, David Hoy, a trader at Dynasty Power, told Bloomberg, “That should be the highest price of the year so far.” Meteorologist Vallee said air temperature and humidity across the region could make temperatures feel closer to 110 through the week. In comparison to other grid operators across the country, ERCOT Houston is experiencing the most significant spikes in energy costs this week. The jump in energy costs shows just how unpredictable the Texas power market has become as coal-fired generators are retired for cheaper natural gas and renewable energy sources. ERCOT said its reserve margin, which is the spread between total generation available and forecast peak demand, with the difference shown as a percentage of peak demand, is at an all-time low of 7.4% because several coal-fired power plants have been retired as of recent. Monday’s price spike also shows how renewable energy, which makes up about 25% of Texas’ energy generation, had difficulty generating enough power to handle the demand surge. Update (1325ET): Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) calls for energy conservation while declaring first-level energy emergency. Bloomberg reports that the Level 1 emergency triggered when operating reserves fall below 2,300 MW, aren’t expected to recover within 30 minutes. This emergency allows the grid operator can call on all available power supplies, including power from other grids. Additionally, Texas power prices briefly topped $9,000/MwH forcing ERCOT to call for energy conservation amid extreme heat in the region. “Extreme heat across the Ercot region will continue to result in high loads,” ERCOT said in a statement. “We may set another new record today.”

Texas heat wave spikes prices to $9,000 per megawatt-hour — Wednesday, August 14, 2019 — Texas’ electric grid continued to struggle under a heat wave yesterday after several days of electricity usage records, sending power prices to the legal maximum.

Climate Change Will Drive Up Energy Use in Texas and Beyond – On Monday, as temperatures soared past 100 degrees across the state, the grid reached a new record demand: 74,531 megawatts of electricity in one hour. That beat last year’s record – which was set during the state’s fifth hottest summer on record – by 1,000 megawatts, the equivalent of powering 200,000 homes for the day.This strain on the system prompted the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the state’s grid operator, to issue an emergency alert urging customers to reduce their electricity consumption during the hottest part of the day. The state’s grid has the lowest reserve margins, or extra supply, out of any grid system in the United States this summer. If customers had needed more electricity than predicted, there wouldn’t be much room for error, and ERCOT might have needed to initiate rolling blackouts to prevent a larger, more dangerous power outage. Given these tight margins, a recent study published in Nature Communications about the effects of climate change on global energy demand seems especially troubling. Researchers estimate that climate change could drive up global energy demand by as much as 58 percent in the next 30 years.“These changes are pretty substantial,” Ian Sue Wing, one of the paper’s authors, told the Observer. “They’re going to happen within the lifetime of young people now.” In fact, those changes are already happening here and now. On 2019’s hottest day, Texans used nearly 10,000 more megawatts of electricity than a decade ago. Summer peak demand has grown at a rate of about 1.6 percent per year. The city of Dallas experienced 97 hot days per summer (defined as a day over 90 degrees) in the year 2000; today, that number has risen to 106. TheClimate Impact Lab estimates that by 2050, it’ll be 124 days – the equivalent of four months. In San Antonio, that number could top out at 150 days by midcentury. That’s longer than the official length of summer in the Northern Hemisphere. It isn’t just hotter summers driving up energy demand in Texas: By 2050, the state’s current population is expected to double to nearly 50 million. More people means more homes and apartments that need to be cooled off. Nearly half of Texas’ peak summer demand comes from residential use; Joshua Rhodes, a research associate at UT Austin’s Energy Institute, has found that the majority of energy demand in Texas is due to air-conditioning.

Electricity prices spike to $9K again as emergency declared – Texas’ main grid operator declared a power emergency for the second time this week, as the state’s generation fleet suffered a series of unusual breakdowns.

Hot weather pushes TVA power peak to highest August in seven years – The hottest day of the summer Tuesday pushed electricity use in the Tennessee Valley to the highest peak in August in more than seven years. TVA said Tuesday’s peak demand for power reached 29,568 megawatts at 4 p.m., when the heat index across much of the seven-state TVA region topped 100 degrees, although the average temperature across the Tennessee Valley reached only 94 degrees due to scattered storms Tuesday afternoon and evening. In Chattanooga, the high reached 100 degrees, with the heat index topping 109, according to WRCB-TV Channel 3. TVA’s power demand Tuesday was the highest August peak for the agency since Aug. 1, 2012. But TVA spokeswoman Malinda Hunter said Wednesday the utility met the peak without any request or implementation of conservation measures other than TVA’s own internal suspension of most maintenance work on its power plants from 8 p.m. Monday to 8 p.m. Tuesday to limit the chances of any outages. TVA has all seven of its nuclear reactors at full power and is relying on other output from its natural gas, coal, hydro and solar generators, along with its contracts for purchased gas, wind and solar power. TVA’s peak power demand Tuesday was still far below the utility’s record power peak reached in the summer of 2007 when temperatures across the valley averaged 102 degrees and the peak demand jumped to 33,482 megawatts from heavy electricity consumption for air conditioners.

India expects coal-fired power capacity to grow 22% in 3 years An increase in coal-fired power generation capacity would be bad news for India’s cities, 14 of which feature in the World Health Organization’s 20 most polluted in the world (Reuters) – India’s coal-fired power generation capacity is expected to rise by 22.4% in three years, the federal power ministry’s chief engineer said on Wednesday, potentially neutralising its efforts to cut emissions by boosting adoption of renewable energy. India, the third biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, saw its annual coal demand rise 9.1% to nearly 1 billion tonnes in the year ended March 2019. Coal demand from utilities accounted for over three-quarters of total consumption. “Capacity by 2022 is likely to be 238 gigawatts (GW) in terms of coal-based generation,” Ghanshyam Prasad, chief engineer at India’s ministry of power said at the India Coal Conference on Wednesday. The International Energy Agency expects India to become the second largest coal consumer behind China early next decade. Electricity demand in the country rose 36% in the seven years to April 2019 while coal-fired generation capacity during the period grew by 74% to 194.44 GW, according to the Central Electricity Authority (CEA). An increase in coal-fired power generation capacity would be bad news for India’s cities, 14 of which feature in the World Health Organization’s 20 most polluted in the world. Thermal power companies account for 80% of all industrial emissions of particulate matter, sulfur and nitrous oxides in India. Prasad said the growth rate in thermal capacity had outpaced electricity consumption over the last few years, resulting in stranded utility assets across the country. “But this doesn’t mean we will not require (more) coal-fired plants in the future. With the kind of growth we are expecting, the requirement for these power stations will be there” he said.

Environmentalists object to Georgia Power coal ash plans(AP) – Environmental groups urged Georgia officials to reject plans by Georgia Power to keep coal waste in ponds at several power plants. The utility plans to leave coal ash in unlined retaining ponds that will continue leaching toxic metals after they are closed, the Southern Environmental Law Center said in a letter to Georgia environmental officials on Aug. 5. The storage pits would be submerged in groundwater, according to the environmental group. “Although Georgia Power will add no more ash to the waste ponds, nearly fifty million tons of coal ash will remain, continuing to degrade and occupy the aquifer, and continuing to leak coal ash and its pollutant-laden leachate into the environment and surrounding public waters,” said the letter signed by Christopher Bowers, senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center. It was addressed to two state officials in the environmental protection division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and also written on behalf of three other environmental groups. A Georgia Power spokeswoman said in a statement that the letter contained “incorrect assumptions and several critical inaccuracies that mislead the public of our ash pond closure process.” Coal ash is the waste product left behind when coal is burned. It contains contaminants such as mercury and arsenic that can pollute ground water if not properly managed, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The Southern Environmental Law Center cited decisions by other states requiring utilities to excavate ash and put it in lined disposal structures. In her statement, Georgia Power spokeswoman Holly Crawford said the utility’s plans “have always been, and continue to be, in compliance with all federal and state laws and regulations.”The utility plans to keep nine ash ponds in place at plants in Macon, Newnan, Smyrna, Rome, and south of Carrollton, according to the Southern Environmental Law Center.

Excessive heavy-metal contamination found in groundwater at Duke plant — Duke Energy and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection are determining how to best limit or remove contamination from coal ash stored at Duke’s Citrus County plant after high levels of heavy metals were found in groundwater samples taken at the site. In a report from June obtained last week, Geosyntec Consultants documented excessive amounts of arsenic, lithium, molybdenum and other contaminants in several samples taken in May 2018, October 2018 and March 2019 from monitoring wells surrounding the coal plants on Duke’s Crystal River Energy Complex. Reports like Geosyntec’s are required by federal law and propose remedies once a significant quantity of harmful substances is detected in groundwater from the storage of coal ash. Coal ash is the waste left behind after coal is burned to produce power. Geosyntec told Duke in its report the company must, “as soon as feasible,” select a solution to curb the inflow of contaminants, and must hold a public meeting at least 30 days prior to choosing a plan. The report does not endorse a specific means of remediating the pollution, instead highlighting options available to the company to either control the contamination at its source and/or remove it from the groundwater. Source-control measures suggested include: installation of a final cover system for the ash; excavation of the ash for reuse; or excavation and disposal of ash off-site. For controlling the contamination in groundwater, the consultants suggested: in-situ chemical immobilization; preventing the migration of affected groundwater; withdrawing affected groundwater for treatment; permeable reactive barriers; phytoremediation, or the usage of plants to remove contamination; or monitored natural attenuation – keeping an eye on the problem and seeing whether it gets better with time.

TVA plans to expand coal ash dry storage landfill for Kingston Fossil Plant – The Tennessee Valley Authority is moving forward with plans to expand the boundaries of an onsite dry storage landfill for coal combustion residuals at Kingston Fossil Plant near Harriman, Tennessee. TVA currently operates a permitted state-of-the-art dry landfill on TVA property at Kingston for coal ash and gypsum, which is produced by the air emissions controls at the plant. The landfill is designed for two phases, the first of which has been in operation since 2015. TVA is proposing to expand the boundary of the construction support area for the onsite gypsum landfill by an additional 21 acres to prepare for the next phase of the landfill. This additional land would be used as a staging area for equipment and as a source of clay borrow material, which will be used in the construction of a new phase of the landfill. The Kingston Fossil Plant itself has been in operation since 1955. Its nine coal-fired units have a total capacity of about 1,400 MW, according to the TVA. In 2008, a dike at the Kingston coal ash pond collapsed and is considered by some to have caused the worst coal ash disaster in U.S. history. Some 1.1 million gallons of coal ash slurry spilled out into the Emory River and onto surrounding land, damaging structures. The TVA spent more than $1 billion on its Kingston coal ash cleanup. The TVA has completed an amended supplemental Environmental Assessment that explains the expansion of the support area, and considered the potential impacts. The final document and associated materials are available for review at www.tva.com/nepa. TVA already has a construction permit for the next phase of the landfill. However, TVA has applied for other required permits through the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, which includes a public hearing and comment period.

The danger of coal ash, the toxic dust the fossil fuel leaves behind –Coal ash is an especially bad and dangerous byproduct of our dependence on coal and fossil fuels. Now over the years, a number of communities have dealt with coal ash spills that have turned into emergencies with real public health concerns over what’s seeped into the water. In some places, utilities have been pushed to adopt tougher standards. But as Miles O’Brien reports, some residents and activists say the power companies are fighting changes that could help protect public health. It’s part of our regular segment on the “Leading Edge” of science and technology.

• Miles O’Brien: At the kitchen table in her home of 41 years near Charlotte, Laura Tench showed me the official notice that rocked her world in 2015.
• The North Carolina Division of Public Health recommends that your well water not be used for drinking and cooking. What’s it like when you got a notice like that?
• Laura Tench: Scary. You don’t want to turn on the spigot.
• Miles O’Brien:Her well water was more like a witches’ brew – among the frightening ingredients: cancer causers, hexavalent chromium, ten times the state safety threshold, and vanadium, almost 30 times the standard.She and her family had no choice, forced to rely solely on bottled water for nearly three years.
• Laura Tench: I would not allow my children to take a tub bath. They had to take a quick shower, no luxury.
• Miles O’Brien: They didn’t have to look far to find the suspected source of the contamination: the 62-year-old Allen Steam Station coal fired power plant. It sits right next to the neighborhood, and right in the middle of a raging national debate over what to do about the toxic remnants left behind after the coal is burned.

Fidelity battles IRS in court over coal tax credits – (Reuters) – Fidelity Investments’ courtroom battle with the IRS over disallowed tax credits drew to a close on Tuesday when lawyers clashed over whether the mutual fund giant was a bonafide partner in the production of chemically treated coal. U.S. Tax Court Judge David Gustafson said he may deliver his decision in the case as early as Wednesday. The outcome of the trial is being closely watched by Wall Street firms and other U.S. corporations because the production of chemically treated, or refined coal, generates more than $1 billion a year in tax credits. Beneficiaries of the tax credit program include Goldman Sachs Group Inc, JPMorgan Chase & Co and pharmaceutical company Mylan NV, to name a few. Boston-based Fidelity invested in the production of refined coal at three South Carolina power plants to qualify for tax credits that could total up to $330 million over 10 years. The coal is treated with chemicals to cut mercury and smog pollution.

Fidelity Investments wins court battle with IRS over coal tax credits – (Reuters) – Fidelity Investments on Wednesday won its court battle with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service over tax credits for the production of chemically treated coal. U.S. Tax Court Judge David Gustafson ruled at a court hearing that a partnership led by Boston-based Fidelity was bonafide in its pursuit of generating tax credits from the production of treated coal. The case has been closely watched by Wall Street firms and other corporations because the production of chemically treated, or refined, coal generates more than $1 billion a year in tax credits.[nL2N259128] At the hearing Gustafson said he disagreed with IRS arguments that Fidelity and its partners faced insignificant downside risk on their investment in refined coal facilities. The judge said the partnership endured prolonged facility shutdowns due to permitting problems and environmental contamination, for example. Fidelity had invested in the production of refined coal at three South Carolina power plants to qualify for tax credits that could total up to $330 million over 10 years. The coal is treated with chemicals to cut mercury and smog pollution. Fidelity’s partners included insurance broker Arthur J. Gallagher & Co and Schneider Electric SE. The IRS had disallowed millions of dollars in tax credits and claimed losses reported by a Fidelity-led partnership in 2011 and 2012. The IRS said the partnership was only created to “facilitate the prohibited transaction of monetizing refined coal tax credits.”

Blocking Coal Train Railroad Tracks Over Wage Complaints, a Protest by Kentucky Miners Is Now Entering Its Third Week Coal miners in Kentucky continue to protest their former employer by blocking a railroad track that carries coal trains, demanding back pay after being laid off last month. The protest, which started on July 29 in Cumberland, Kentucky, is in response to workers who were laid off by their former employer, Blackjewel LLC, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on July 1. As well as “operational issues” in its mines, the company cited “a combination of declining commodity prices, reduced domestic demand for thermal and metallurgical coal, and increased oversight and costs associated with regulatory compliance” as factors leading to it going bankrupt in court filings. “The entire U.S. mining complex has been impacted by these events. A growing number of peers have filed for bankruptcy over the course of the past 5+ years. The entire industry either has gone through, or is currently going through, a period of financial distress and reorganization,” the document continued. The protest started with around 20 miners, posted on the track for nearly 50 hours straight – often by themselves, Jeff Willig, one of the workers who started the protest, tells TIME. Now it’s grown with the miners working in shifts of around 8-12 hours to ensure continuous coverage on the track. Members of the local community have shown their support, setting up an outdoor kitchen, providing first aid kits and bringing water and ice for the protesters. State Rep. Adam Bowling, whose district includes parts of Harlan County, has also joined the protests, the Associated Press reportsIn a world deluged by plastics, a giant factory rises to manufacture more

Sierra Club, others oppose Mason coal-to-liquids plant – WV MetroNews – Some environmental interests are hoping the state Department of Environmental Protection will put the brakes on a proposed Mason County coal-to-liquids plant project.The Sierra Club, in particular, wants the DEP to withdraw its draft air quality permit and send the developer, Domestic Synthetic Fuels, back to the drawing board to produce what it believes would be more accurate emissions data.Jim Kotcon, Sierra Club West Virginia Chapter conservation chair, broadly outlined the club’s objections at a recent public hearing DEP held on the permit in Mason County.There are a large number of areas where DSF is underestimating emissions in its permit application, Kotcon said. And DEP offered an uncritical review of the data.Sierra Club detailed its concerns in a 34-page letter submitted to DEP as part of the public comment period.Asked about the objections, DEP said in an email exchange, “Mr. Kotcon attended the public meeting we held … and his comments and concerns were given on the record. All comments submitted to the WVDEP’s Division of Air Quality regarding DSF’s proposed facility are currently being reviewed and will be taken into consideration before a final determination is made. The comments received will be addressed in our response to comments document, which will be available to the public upon completion.”

21 states sue Trump administration over new coal rules (AP) – A coalition of 21 Democratic-led states sued the Trump administration Tuesday over its decision to ease restrictions on coal-fired power plants, with California’s governor saying the president is trying to rescue an outdated industry. In June, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency eliminated the agency’s Clean Power Plan and replaced it with a new rule that gives states more leeway in deciding upgrades for coal-fired power plants. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, says the new rule violates the federal Clean Air Act because it does not meaningfully replace power plants’ greenhouse gas emissions. “They’re rolling things back to an age that no longer exists, trying to prop up the coal industry,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said at a news conference. He said the lawsuit was not just about Trump but “our kids and grandkids” who would continue to be harmed by coal pollutants. West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, whose state produced the second most coal behind Wyoming in 2017, predicted the lawsuit will ultimately fail at the U.S. Supreme Court, which stayed an earlier Obama administration attempt in 2016 at the request of a competing 27-state coalition. He called the lawsuit a “big government ‘power grab’” and argued that the Democratic attorneys general “are dead wrong” in their interpretation of the Clean Air Act. The U.S. EPA and White House issued similar statements saying they expect the new version to survive the court challenge, unlike the Obama-era rules.

29 States and Cities Sue to Block Trump’s ‘Dirty Power’ Rule — Twenty-nine states and cities sued the Trump administration Tuesday to stop it from weakening the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, which was the first regulation to set nation-wide ceilings on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, The New York Times reported. The administration’s replacement, the Affordable Clean Energy Rule, would allow states to decide whether or not to limit emissions. It would ultimately reduce climate-warming emissions by less than half of what is needed to keep global temperatures from rising more than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, according to figures cited by HuffPost. “Without significant course correction, we are careening towards a climate disaster,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement reported by HuffPost. “Rather than staying the course with policies aimed at fixing the problem and protecting people’s health, safety, and the environment, the Trump Administration repealed the Clean Power Plan and replaced it with this ‘Dirty Power’ rule.” At stake in the lawsuit is how much authority the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has to limit carbon pollution under the Clean Air Act. The 22 states and six cities (plus Washington, DC) behind the suit argue that the replacement plan, finalized in June, does not use the “best system of emissions reduction,” as the act requires. While the Clean Power Plan encouraged utilities to switch to cleaner energy sources, put a price on carbon or use carbon capture technologies, the Trump plan only focuses on improving efficiency at individual plants, The New York Times explained. “The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to utilize the best system of emissions reduction that it can find. This rule does the opposite,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra told The New York Times.

Iowa governor stops state from challenging Trump coal rule – (AP) – Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, a supporter of clean energy policies reducing greenhouse gases as a way to battle global climate change, said Wednesday he was blocked by Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds from joining 21 other states in suing the Trump administration over a policy that relaxes restrictions on coal-fired power plants.Miller, a Democrat, said he asked Reynolds in July if he could join attorneys general in the other states and officials from the cities of Boulder, Colorado; Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia and South Miami, Florida, in the lawsuit.Reynolds refused to consent, he said.Her spokesman said Wednesday she supports Trump’s policy. “She does not believe it’s in the best interest of Iowans for the state to join in this lawsuit,” said Pat Garrett in a statement. Miller reached an agreement with Reynolds in May requiring him to get the governor’s consent before joining such lawsuits. In exchange, Reynolds vetoed a bill lawmakers passed that would have weakened the attorney general’s powers to file out-of-state lawsuits. If signed into law, Iowa would have been the only state with such limits on the attorney general’s powers.

Virginia, North Carolina among states suing Trump administration over climate rule | WTKR.com The Trump administration is under fire as Virginia and North Carolina have joined more than 20 states in suing the Environmental Protection Agency. This comes as the agency fights to rollback restrictions on coal burning power plants. This latest pushback is coming mostly from Democratic-led states. They say that the administration’s policies are endangering the environment. For example, the lawsuit claims the change undercuts efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and allows the EPA to abandon its legal responsibility to crack down on pollution. The suit claims the rule change ended an aggressive effort to reduce the carbon footprint of power plants, which could lead to global warming and rising sea levels. News 3 reporter Erin Miller spoke with Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring about this Tuesday. He says we’re already seeing the impact in Hampton Roads. Herring blames the constant flooding that we deal with and sea level rise on climate change. Related: ‘It’s more than just about the road’ Flooding issues threatening local cities and Naval bases “Virginia is especially susceptible to the devastating impacts of climate change, especially Hampton Roads. It’s already facing billions of dollars in resilience costs and infrastructure costs in the coming decades,” Herring said. President Trump stands firm on his campaign promises to revive the coal industry. The EPA isn’t commenting on the lawsuit but defended the new rule, saying it will be held up in court, unlike the previous administration’s power plan.

‘Coal is over’: the miners rooting for the Green New Deal –The coal industry in Appalachia is dying – something that people there know better than anyone. Some in this region are pinning their hopes on alternative solutions, including rising Democratic star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal.“Coal is over. Forget coal,” said Jimmy Simpkins, who worked as a coalminer in the area for 29 years. “It can never be back to what it was in our heyday. It can’t happen. That coal is not there to mine.” A coal production forecast conducted in 2018 by the University of West Virginia estimates coal production will continue to decline over the next two decades.Over 34,000 coal mining jobs in the US have disappeared over the past decade, leaving around 52,000 jobs remaining in the industry, despite several promisesmade by Donald Trump throughout his 2016 election campaign that he would bring those jobs back. “A lot of guys thought they were going to bring back coal jobs, and Trump stuck it to them,” said 69-year-old Bennie Massey, who worked for 30 years as a coalminer in Lynch, Kentucky. The town was at the center of the American labor movement in the early 20th century. At the peak of the coal industry in the 1920’s, about 500,000 miners were union members. As the coal industry declined, so did union membership, and now the town’s local miners’ union, United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) Local 1440, consists entirely of retired miners. Carl Shoupe, a retired coalminer in Harlan county, Kentucky, who worked as a union organizer for 14 years, said people in Appalachia need to start moving away from relying solely on the coal industry as an economic resource for the region. “What we’ve been doing is trying to transition into the 21st century and get on past coal,” he said. Those transition efforts are still being impeded by the coal industry, as Shoupe says the majority of property in the area is still owned by coal companies and they have denied his efforts to develop solar panel fields. The Green New Deal, a resolution proposed by Ocasio-Cortez, calls on the federal government to transform the United States’ energy infrastructure and economy to deal with the climate crisis. The resolution includes a call to create millions of high-wage union jobs through a federal jobs guarantee and a just transition for vulnerable communities. Republicans – and Fox News – have slammed the proposal. “It’ll kill millions of jobs. It’ll crush the dreams of the poorest Americans and disproportionately harm minority communities,” the US president said last month. Shoupe doesn’t think so. “They have bushwhacked this Green New Deal, told all kinds of lies. For different people in different parts of the country, it means different things,” he said. Stanley Sturgill, a coalminer for 41 years in Harlan county, Kentucky, explained the Green New Deal would open the door for elected officials to use the plan to render solutions needed in their own communities. “If it was called the Red New Deal, it would be approved by now,” said Sturgill. “What you’re doing with the Green New Deal is you’re opening the door to infringe on the Republicans’ money and that’s what they’re afraid of. Republicans laugh and say you can’t pay for it. But if you tax everybody what they should be taxed, and I’m talking about the wealthy, there wouldn’t be a problem.”

EIA uses the heat content of fossil fuels to compare and aggregate energy sources – The four end-use sectors in the United States – residential, commercial, industrial, and transportation – consume a mix of fossil fuels (petroleum, natural gas, and coal), as well as renewable energy sources and electricity, to meet their energy needs. To compare and aggregate data from these different energy sources, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) measures consumption in a common energy unit, British thermal units (Btu), which describes the heat content of the fuels. EIA uses thermal conversion factors to convert the physical units that are generally measured and reported (such as barrels of petroleum or cubic feet of natural gas) into heat content values. For fossil fuels, the thermal conversion factors are based on the thermal energy released by burning or processing the fuels, also called their heat content. A decrease in heat content means that more physical units of a fuel would need to be consumed for the same useful heat output, increasing the total physical units but not the heat units. The aggregate heat contents of petroleum, natural gas, and coal vary based on the mix of component products being consumed. In reporting these fuels on an energy basis, EIA assumes that the heat contents of individual petroleum products and other liquid fuels are constant. The aggregate heat content fortotal petroleum consumption reflects the relative consumption of each of those fuels, and it has been declining in recent decades as U.S. consumers use less residual fuel oil, which has relatively high heat content. At the same time, U.S. consumption of fuels with a lower heat content has increased, including motor gasoline, distillate fuel oil, and hydrocarbon gas liquids. EIA uses data from many EIA surveys and other government sources to calculate the approximate heat content of petroleum consumption. EIA bases its estimates of the heat content of U.S. natural gas on data reported in the EIA-176 and EIA-923 surveys, and these estimates have been relatively stable since 1990. Methane, the primary component of natural gas, has a heat content of 1,010 Btu per cubic foot. Other gases such as ethane and other compounds, which may be left in the natural gas stream that is delivered to customers, have higher heat content values. Highly consistent specifications for natural gas accepted by pipelines into an integrated U.S. pipeline system have kept heat content consistent.

Attorney general shuts down proposed referendum to overturn Ohio’s new nuclear bailout law – cleveland.com – A group seeking a statewide referendum to overturn Ohio’s new nuclear-power bailout law will have to restart their efforts, as Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost on Monday rejected their proposed ballot summary.Yost, a Columbus-area Republican, wrote in a rejection letter to the group Ohioans Against Corporate Bailout that he found 21 errors with the group’s proposed summary language – a succinct explanation of the proposal provided to voters asked to sign a petition supporting the measure. The errors he cited range from inaccurate definitions of terms such as “electric distribution utility” and “operation risks” to misstating the size of energy projects that are eligible for a property tax exemption. (The proposed summary states that projects generating less than 20 megawatts are eligible, while the new law states the tax exemption is for projects greater than 20 megawatts.) The proposed summary, Yost asserted, also misstates the powers given by the new law to the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio and the newly created Ohio Air Quality Development Authority, the latter of which will oversee the distribution of $150 million per year (raised from a new $1 surcharge on every Ohio ratepayer’s bill) to Ohio’s Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear plants, both of which are owned by FirstEnergy Solutions, a subsidiary of FirstEnergy Corp. that is in bankruptcy proceedings as part of an attempt to become a separate company. Yost’s rejection means Ohioans Against Corporate Bailouts has to revise their summary language, collect another 1,000 signatures from registered voters, and resubmit their proposal to the attorney general’s office. The group has until Oct. 21 to submit language that’s acceptable to the attorney general, according to Ohioans Against Corporate Bailouts spokesman Gene Pierce.

Why some VC Summer refund checks are ‘not worth the postage’ — As it turns out, $60 million spread among 1.1 million people isn’t that much money for most customers.That was the lesson learned this week when electric customers of Dominion Energy South Carolina received the first round of checks that will refund a tiny percentage of what those customers were charged for a nuclear power plant that was never completed.In many cases, those refund checks – which stem from a class-action lawsuit by South Carolina ratepayers – were comically low, according to customers posting screenshots of settlement checks as meager as 4 cents on Facebook and Twitter over the past week, prompting other current and former ratepayers to share the pittance they got back. “It’s not worth the postage,” Scott Elliott, a Columbia attorney who represents large energy users, said of his own 8-cent check. “It’s 8 cents that we didn’t have before, but it is going to be a stretch to justify the time to make the deposit.”Some 41,000 customers – a mix of households and large energy users, such as businesses – got more than $100. But many others got $80, $30, $10 or just pennies.For many of the utility’s 728,000 electric customers, the frustration of receiving such low refund checks has been compounded by an apples-to-oranges comparison of these checks to the $1,000 refunds that were promised last year when Virginia-based Dominion Energy was drumming up public support for its offer to purchase SCANA.

Greenpeace warns Korea of Japan’s radioactive water discharge –An international environment organization has said that Japan plans to discharge radioactive waste into the Pacific Ocean in the near future and Korea will fall particularly vulnerable. Greenpeace Korea, the global NGO’s branch in Seoul, reposted on Facebook, Wednesday, a column by its nuclear specialist Shaun Burnie published in The Economist, saying Japan is planning to discharge more than 1 billion liters of contaminated water stored at the Fukushima nuclear plant since the massive earthquake and nuclear disaster of 2011. Burnie wrote in his article that the Japanese government has decided recently to take the “cheapest and fastest” way to dispose wastewater, which is to discharge it into the Pacific Ocean. The scientist added neighboring countries will be exposed to radiation as a result and Korea, in particular, will suffer the most from it. He claimed that if 1 million tons of radioactive water is discharged into the ocean, it will take 17 years and 770 million tons of water to dilute it, adding it is impossible not to discharge it without contaminating the ocean, and countries in the Pacific region will be exposed to radiation. Burnie continued that Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings has tried to find ways to handle the contaminated water for the last eight years but failed. He pointed out that the Shinzo Abe administration never speaks about the risks of radioactive pollutant, and ignores unfavorable reports when they are released.

Chernobyl-Style Cover Up- Run On Iodine Pills After Isotope Powered Rocket Explosion In Russia – Is Russia in the process of covering up a nuclear accident after a confirmed spike in radiation levels in the aftermath of a reported rocket engine explosion at a northern testing facility Thursday? Authorities confirmed the accident involved an “isotope power source for a liquid-fuelled rocket engine”.Russia’s state nuclear agency has said five of its staff members were killed at a military testing site in northern Russia, reportedly when the liquid propellant rocket engine exploded during tests on a sea platform. Some reports say it may have involved a top secret weapon that was part of Moscow’s hypersonic arsenal. Russia is pursuing hypersonic missiles as a nuclear deterrent, as Putin himself has recently verbalized. Other staff were being treated for serious burns after the accident; however, as Reuters reported, there’s a run on iodine (used to reduce the effects of radiation exposure) in the northern port cities of Arkhangelsk and Severodvinsk, near where the mystery accident occurred. “Everyone has been calling asking about iodine all day,” one pharmacy was quoted as saying by a local media outlet in Arkhangelsk area, Reuters reported.Thursday’s mystery incident came two days after 16,500 people fled their homes when a separate immensely powerful series of blasts rocked an arms depot in Siberia, which had been caught in dramatic footage. And in a follow-up report to Thursday’s mystery incident, Reuters pointed out initial emergency alert statements about a rise in radiation levels have been scrubbed from public record: …authorities in the nearby city of Severodvinsk reported what they described as a brief spike in radiation. No official explanation has been given for why such an accident would cause radiation to spike.

Russia Admits Mysterious Missile Engine Explosion Involved A Nuclear ‘Isotope Power Source’ — Russia’s state-run nuclear corporation Rosatom says that a team of its employees had been working on an experimental “isotope power source” when it exploded, killing five people and injuring three more in a still very mysterious accident yesterday. The company offered no specifics about the project, but this new information, coupled with other details, suggests that this power source may be associated with a nuclear-powered cruise missile called Burevestnik that the Kremlin first announced publicly last year. The accident occurred near the village of Nyonoksa, also written Nenoksa, in the northwestern Russian region of Arkhangelsk on Aug. 8, 2019. This is a known test site for both cruise and ballistic missiles. There have been no previous reports that Russia has previously tested Burevestnik, also known to NATO as SSC-X-9 Skyfall, which Russian President Vladimir Putin first revealedthe existence of in a speech in March 2018, at this particular location. Previous reports, citing anonymous U.S. officials, indicate that the Russians had been testing this missile, details about which are extremely limited, since at least 2017, from Novaya Zemlya, a remote archipelago in Russia’s far north that has also served as a nuclear weapon testing ground. “The tragedy happened while working with the engineering and technical support of the isotope power source in a liquid propulsion system,” Rosatom’s statement reads. “Five employees … were killed while testing a liquid propulsion system. Three of our colleagues received injuries and burns of varying severity.”

Russia Admits Radiation Releasing ‘Mystery Blast’ Involved Mini Nuclear Reactor –Russia has belatedly admitted that the mystery explosion which released radiation into the air last Thursday, triggering warning alerts across towns near the northern port cities of Arkhangelsk and Severodvinsk, involved a “small-scale nuclear reactor”. Radiation levels had spiked to 20 times their normal levels after the incident at a military testing ground in Russia’s Arkhangelsk region, prompting an emergency response team to deploy in full nuclear radiation protective gear, as photos which came out in the aftermath appeared to show. Consistent with early speculation, western defense officials and analysts now believe it was a failed test of a Russian nuclear powered cruise missile. Putin had first unveiled the experimental technology during a 2018 speech showcasing Russian defense technology developments. The chief stunning claim behind the hypersonic missile is that it can traverse the globe indefinitely at “faster than Mach 5” based on its nuclear powered core. Though within two days following last Thursday’s accident – believed to have happened on a sea platform, which resulted in an area of a White Sea port being shut down – Russia’s nuclear agency Rosatom, admitted it had been testing an “isotope power source in a liquid propulsion system,” there’s now greater confirmation it involved a cutting edge hypersonic cruise missile. One US defense analysts has pointed to “an experimental nuclear-powered cruise missile known in Russia as the 9M730 Burevestnik and by Nato as the SSC-X-9 Skyfall” – precisely the type of nuclear-powered weapon Putin had previously touted among Russia’s developing hypersonic arsenal.

Russia Initiates Civilian Evacuation Near Site Of Mini Nuclear Accident – Russia is evacuating civilians in the area of Nyonoksa village in the far northern region where a nuclear-powered experimental rocket exploded during tests last Thursday, which had killed seven, Interfax reports. So far it appears a “recommendation” and not an ordered evacuation, which officials advise should be accomplished by Wednesday, after radiation levels in the vicinity of Severodvinsk spiked to 20 times normal last week in the blast’s aftermath. The local governor is insisting its not an “ordered” evacuation but is merely highly recommended. Russian media reports say authorities are offering for a train to take Nyonoksa residents to safety, which might be due either to further clean-up and decontamination of the site or possibly to conduct some kind of new test. Work is still reportedly being carried out on the rocket engine that exploded.Russia belatedly admitted on Monday that the mystery explosion which released radiation into the air last Thursday, triggering warning alerts across towns near the northern port cities of Arkhangelsk and Severodvinsk, involved a “small-scale nuclear reactor”.Also on Monday President Trump tweeted concern over the radiation leakage, saying, “The United States is learning much from the failed missile explosion in Russia.” He added concern over the “air around the facility” which area residents have been exposed to and could possibly impact neighboring areas. Local footage last week showed emergency personnel responding to the accident in full chemical/radiation protective suits.

Peace Activists Face 25-Year Sentence for Disarmament Action at Nuclear Submarine Base – Advocates for seven faith-based peace activists are calling on the public to support the group as they fight federal charges and a potential 25-year prison sentence for disarming a nuclear submarine base.The Kings Bay Plowshares Seven (KBP7) nonviolently and symbolically disarmed the Trident nuclear submarine base in Kings Bay, Georgia on April 4, 2018. Last week in federal court, District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood heard the peace advocates’ pre-trial arguments asking her to dismiss the felony and misdemeanor charges against them.Lawyers for Mark Colville, Father Steve Kelly, Elizabeth McAlister, Martha Hennessy, Clare Grady, Patrick Michael O’Neill and Carmen Trotta say the federal government violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) when it charged the KBP7 with conspiracy, trespassing, and destruction and depredation of property.The activists say they were acting in the name of their Catholic faith when they cut through fencing and wire at the submarine base and allegedly vandalized a building and static missiles.”All of my actions and those of my co-defendants have been measured and guided by the principles of nonviolence expressed in Sacred Scripture. I would argue our communal criminal history has been all about upholding the basic tenets of love and providing for the common good,” said O’Neill in his oral argument. “My actions are an extension of my beliefs. This connection between sincerely held religious beliefs and sacramental practice (action) are one and the same.”Under the RFRA, their lawyers argued, the government is required to take each of the defendants’ beliefs into consideration and to levy the least restrictive charge against the group possible.”A prosecution on three felonies and a misdemeanor was not close to that standard,” argued attorney Stephanie McDonald, according to The Brunswick News in Brunswick, Georgia. Colville said in his argument that the group doubts the government ever considered a punishment less restrictive than the felony and misdemeanor charges and the potential 25-year prison sentence the group now faces.

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