Environmental News For The Week 22Sept 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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Blast sparks fire at Russian laboratory housing smallpox virus – A gas explosion has sparked a fire at a Russian laboratory complex stockpiling viruses ranging from smallpox to Ebola, authorities have said. The State Research Centre of Virology and Biotechnology denied that the fire had exposed the public to the pathogens stored inside, some of the deadliest on Earth.The blast took place during repairs to a fifth-floor sanitary inspection room at the facility – known as Vector – in Koltsovo, in the Novosibirsk region of Siberia,the centre said on Monday. The site housed secret biological weapons research during the Soviet era and is now one of Russia’s main disease research centres.One worker suffered third-degree burns after the blast, which blew out the glass in the building. The fire reportedly spread through the building’s ventilation system. A fire covering 30 square metres was later extinguished. Russian authorities insisted that the room where the explosion occurred was not holding any biohazardous substances and that no structural damage was caused. The mayor of Koltsovo said that the laboratory did not contain any disease samples because of ongoing repair work. The smallpox virus survives in two places on Earth: at Vector and at another high-security laboratory at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

Explosion Hits Russia’s Largest Virus Lab Which Houses Plague, Smallpox, Ebola And Other Deadly Viruses – A sudden explosion at a Siberian virus research center on Monday reportedly left the facility engulfed in flames, according to several Russian news outlets. Firefighters and other emergency personnel were dispatched to the “Vector Institute” located several miles from Novosibirsk – an emergency which was upgraded “from an ordinary emergency to a major incident,” according to RT, due to the research center for virology and biotechnology housed in the facility – however the mayor of Koltsovo said there were no biologically dangerous substances in the area where the explosion occurred, and that the Vector laboratory was not in use at the time. The State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology Vector, also known as the Vector Institute, and which is located deep inside Siberia for a reason… … is a biological research center in Koltsovo, Novosibirsk Oblast, Russia. It is analogous to both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the US Army Chemical and Biological Defense Command. It has research facilities and capabilities for all levels of Biological Hazard, CDC Levels 1-4. Of note, Vector is reportedly one of two places worldwide where smallpox is stored. The laboratory is known for having developed vaccines for Ebola and hepatitis, as well as for studying epidemics and genera issues surrounding immunology. During the Cold War, it was thought to be part of now-defunct Soviet biological weapons program, meaning that some of the most dangerous strains – including that of smallpox, Ebola, anthrax and certain plagues – are still being kept inside the Institute’s building. With that in mind, a local branch of the Emergencies Ministry swiftly responded to the call, sending in 13 fire engines and 38 firefighters, who entered the six-story building minutes after arrival. – RT According to Ukrinform.ua, a gas cylinder exploded on the fifth floor of the six-story building while construction crews were working at the time, after which a fire broke out in an area approximately 100 square feet. One worker suffered second and third degree burns and was taken to a local hospital.

Governments Not Prepared For Pandemic That Could Kill 80 Million People, Warns WHO – Governments are not prepared for a devastating pandemic that could kill up to 80 million people, a new report warns. The report was published by the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, a joint entity formed by the World Bank and the World Health Organization. “There is a very real threat of a rapidly moving, highly lethal pandemic of a respiratory pathogen killing 50 to 80 million people and wiping out nearly 5% of the world’s economy,” warns the paper, adding that “the world is not prepared” for this.“A global pandemic on that scale would be catastrophic, creating widespread havoc, instability and insecurity,” the organization warns. The GPMB says governments need to invest more in emergency preparedness and that misinformation on social media is also exacerbating the spread of diseases.

Plastic Apocalypse- Alarming Levels Of Plastic Found In Children -New studies are being published that detail high levels of dangerous microplastics had been detected in some of the most remote regions of the world. Another study warned microplastics are turning up in human stool. Now there are new reports that show high levels of microplastics have been found in blood and urine samples of children. The study, conducted by the German Environment Ministry and the Robert Koch Institute, found an alarming 97% of blood and urine samples from 2,500 children tested between 2014 and 2017 had traces of microplastics. Der Spiegel, the German weekly magazine, published the findings over the weekend, which were part of a national study focused on “human biomonitoring” of 3 to 17-year-olds, found traces of 11 out of 15 plastic ingredients in the collected samples. “Our study clearly shows that plastic ingredients, which are rising in production, are also showing up more and more in the body. It is really worrying that the youngest children are most affected as the most sensitive group,” Marike Kolossa-Gehring, one of the study’s authors, told the magazine. Researchers found perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), also used in cleaning products, waterproof clothing, food packaging, and cooking utensils, was present in the blood and urine samples. mHalf the plastics ever produced have been made in the last 15 years, & the substance is taking over Earth: Researchers just discovered microplastic in the remote Arctic: https://t.co/PNSVoeLuTA That’s bad, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg. pic.twitter.com/EaKeFnWHiD PFOA has been described as a dangerous chemical that is toxic to the liver. The EU will outlaw the substance next year.

Complexity of plastics make it impossible to know which are dangerous -A lot of people worry about microplastics and plastic pollution, but not as many of us are aware of the large number of chemicals we encounter in plastic products that we use every day.Researchers know of more than 4,000 chemicals that are currently used in plastic food packaging. But with more than 5,000 different types of plastic on the market, the number of chemicals used to make plastics is likely even larger.”The problem is that plastics are made of a complex chemical cocktail, so we often don’t know exactly what substances are in the products we use. For most of the thousands of chemicals, we have no way to tell whether they are safe or not,” says Martin Wagner, a biologist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). “This is because, practically speaking, it’s impossible to trace all of these compounds. And manufacturers may or may not know the ingredients of their products, but even if they know, they are not required to disclose this information.” “We studied eight types of plastics commonly used to make everyday products, such as yogurt cups and bath sponges, and examined their toxicity and chemical composition. Three out of four products contained toxic chemicals,” Lisa Zimmermann, Wagner’s colleague and first author of the study, says.The researchers used cell cultures to investigate the effects of the mix of chemicals in each product. They found that many plastics contain chemicals that induced general toxicity (six out of ten products), oxidative stress (four out of ten) and endocrine-disrupting effects (three out of ten).It is impossible to pinpoint specifically which chemicals were the culprits: the research group discovered more than 1,400 substances in plastics but identified only 260 of them. That means that most of the plastic chemicals remain unknown and cannot be assessed for their safety. Given that, the authors were able to conclude that plastic chemicals in polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and polyurethane (PUR) were the most toxic. Compared to PVC and PUR, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) were less toxic.

Air Pollution Reaches the Placenta During Pregnancy, New Study Finds – Air pollution particles that a pregnant woman inhales have the potential to travel through the lungs and breach the fetal side of the placenta, indicating that unborn babies are exposed to black carbon from motor vehicles and fuel burning, according to a study published in the journal Nature Communications. The research from scientists at Hasselt University in Belgium found soot-like black carbon on placentas donated by mothers, according to The Hill. It is the first study to show that the placental barrier, which is supposed to create a sterile environment for the fetus, can actually be penetrated by inhaled pollution particles.Researchers have seen a link between polluted air and an increase in miscarriages, premature births and low birth weights. In fact, researchers found that after New Jersey and Pennsylvania replaced turnpike tollbooths with EZ Pass plazas, the rate of premature births and low birth weights dropped significantly within one mile of the plazas, leading to over $440 million in healthcare savings, according to a MacArthur Foundation study thatNOVA reported on.While the link between air pollution and adverse birth outcomes has been apparent, proving it was difficult since there was no way until now to show that pollutants breach the placenta. While the study, which used the placentas donated within 10 minutes of either a pre- or full-term birth, did not actually show that the babies absorb the black carbon, it is profound evidence that there is direct exposure to pollution, as NOVA reported.”This is the smoking gun,” said Janet Curie, a health economist at Princeton University who was not involved in the study, to NOVA. The study found that the more black carbon a woman was exposed to, the more black carbon was detected on the placenta. Mothers who lived near a busy road had twice as much black carbon on the placenta than mothers who lived away from main roads, an average of 20,000 nanoparticles per cubic millimeter compared to 10,000, according to The Guardian.

Most Airlines Have Unhealthy Water, Study Finds – You might want to think twice before washing your hands in an airplane bathroom. A recent study from Hunter College’s New York City Food Policy Center and the non-profit Diet Detective ranked the water quality of major national and regional airlines, and found that only four of them had “relatively safe, clean water.” “We need to make sure violations have penalties and costs that make airlines want to comply. We should tighten up the rules and add more tests to determine aircraft water quality,” The Food Policy Center executive director and Diet Detective founder Charles Platkin told HuffPost Wednesday. “It’s not just an ick-factor ― there are public health concerns.” Which airline’s water is the safest? Our recently released study with @nycfoodpolicy rates the quality of water provided to passengers and finds that many airlines are providing unhealthy water. #FoodSafety #WaterSafety #Airlines #WaterQuality https://t.co/TtKQxUGNfPpic.twitter.com/0opaq8SKOr – Charles Platkin (@dietdetective) August 29, 2019 The study ranked the airlines on a zero to five scale based on 10 factors, among them fleet size, federal violations, positive reports of E. coli and coliform in water samples and responsiveness to questions. A score of three or higher meant the drinking water was relatively safe.Here is how the airlines fared. (see tables) While airlines only serve bottled drinking water directly to customers, they do use the plane’s water for coffee and tea. Passengers also use it in the airplane restrooms. The study authors recommended that passengers never drink airplane bathroom water, avoid airplane coffee and tea and use hand sanitizer instead of the airplane bathroom sinks. “I also don’t wash my hands in the lavatory anymore,” Platkin told HuffPost. “I make sure to have sanitizer. If you wash your hands in what could potentially be unsafe water, it sort of negates the whole process of actually washing your hands. You could be spreading E. coli all over… Sure, it’s not likely, but why should you take any chance?”

Yale Study: Wild Mosquitoes Retained Genes of Genetically Modified Mosquitoes – In Brazil a genetic engineering test of mosquitoes appears to have failed, with genes from the mutant mosquitoes now mixing with the native population, Nature reported. This comes as mad scientists in the U.S. are finding they are getting bitten back by messing with nature after running their own program to genetically modify mosquitoes.The experiment involved a company called Oxitec which took male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes and genetically engineered them to have a dominant lethal gene. The idea was first proposed in 2016, according to an article by Science Magazine that discussed the plans to release the GM insects.According to the hypothesis when the genetically modified mosquitoes mated with wild female mosquitoes, the gene was supposed to drastically cut down the number of offspring they produced. Further, the few that were born should have been too weak to survive a long period of time. A team of Yale students then studied the genomes of both the GM strain and the wild species before the release, then again six, 12 and 27 to 30 months after the release began. Around 450,000 modified males were released in Jacobina, Brazil every week for 27 months straight, totaling tens of millions, according to the Yale study. Sure enough, by the end of the test there was clear evidence that genes from the transgenic insects had been incorporated into the wild population. Although the GM mosquitoes only produce offspring about three to four percent of the time, it seems that those that are born aren’t as weak as expected. Some appear to make it to adulthood and breed themselves. In theory, if the experiment worked it would have cut down the population of mosquitoes in an area estimated up to as much as 85 percent. However, that’s not what the final results were according to Yale University. Yale explains that some of the native bugs, they found, had surprisingly retained genes from the engineered mosquitoes; and even worse, the experiments made them more resilient.According to New Atlas there are now three different strains of mosquitoes mixed together in Jacobina and other places of Brazil. The bugs in the area are now made up of three strains mixed together: the original Brazilian locals, plus strains from Cuba and Mexico – the two strains crossed to make the GM insects. This wider gene pool could make the mozzies more robust as a whole.

Brazil Experiment May Have Accidentally Created Genetically-Modified Super Mosquitoes –An experiment to deliberately release genetically modified mosquitos into Brazil appears to have failed miserably – and may have even resulted in ‘super-mosquitos’ according to a Yale research study published earlier this month. During a 27-month experiment aimed at curbing the spread of Yellow Fever, Dengue, Zika and other mosquito-borne diseases, approximately 450,000 male “OX513A” mosquitos modified by UK biotech company Oxitec were released into the wild in 2013. Females who mate with the designer mosquitos produce non-viable offspring, while Oxitec said that the man-made modifications wouldn’t make it into the local insect population. Wrong… While the experiment initially proved a success – dramatically reducing mosquito populations in the Brazilian city of Jacobina by up to 85%, the mosquitos adapted. “The claim was that genes from the release strain would not get into the general population because offspring would die,” said professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, Jeffrey Powell. “That obviously was not what happened.”What’s more, the OX513A genes were passed on to offspring that was able to reproduce anyway. Around the 18-month mark, the number of mosquitos returned to pre-release levels, while females opted to avoid mating with the weaker, genetically-modified mosquitos at the same time in a phenomenon known as “mating discrimination” according to Powell. According to the paper, some of the mosquitos likely have “hybrid vigor,” resulting in “a more robust population than the pre-release population” which may be more resistant to insecticides. Oxitec told Gizmodo that the Yale study “was found to contain numerous false, speculative and unsubstantiated claims and statements about Oxitec’s mosquito technology,” and provided a three-page document outlining the company’s issues with the research. In particular, Oxitec notes that the paper fails to identify any “negative, deleterious or unanticipated effect to people or the environment from the release of OX513A mosquitoes.”

Genetically engineered honeybees: Not the dumbest idea ever, but close to it – In the wake of widespread declines in bee populations, farmers and beekeepers are wondering who exactly is going to pollinate that third of the world’s food crops which require pollination. The declines have been attributed to pesticides, parasites and climate change. In Europe one response has been to phase out a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids. The phase-out has coincided with a revival of bee populations. But pesticides are clearly not the only factor affecting bee health. Another response has been to consider building a better bee. Enter the geneticists. Why not genetically engineer honeybees to resist those things which are undermining their health? That seems a little like suggesting that we take carbon out of the atmosphere to address climate change without doing anything about the carbon we are putting into the atmosphere. Moreover, the original idea behind the genetic engineering of bees is the same as that behind plants and even humans: One gene equals one trait. It turns out there are three problems with this idea. First, genes are multitaskers in honey bees (and in humans, too). That means genes can make more than one kind of protein which means that the idea that one gene always equals one trait has long since been disproved. Second, gene expression depends on a number epigenetic factors, that is, factors that occur during the development of the organism. Third, the term “trait” has the problem that all words have. It’s ambiguous. The world of the bee, or any living creature for that matter, is seamless. There are no gaps in the bee that divide it into “traits.” “Traits” are a human invention. Beyond this, there are no gaps between the bee and its environment. The bee and its environment are not separable. No geneticist can possibly model the bee and its environment under all possible circumstances in all possible places – nor discover in advance the effects that engineering one “trait” will have on all the others. The intended effects (and unintended effects) of genetic engineering cannot be forecast with any accuracy for the bee and the entirety of its environment (which, of course, in our environment, too). As Garrett Hardin, the author of the first law of ecology, reminds us, “we can never merely do one thing.”

Neonics May Be Killing Birds in Addition to Bees, Groundbreaking Study Finds — In addition to devastating effects on bee populations and the pollination needed to feed humans and other species, widely-used pesticides chemically related to nicotine may be deadly to birds and linked to some species’ declines, according to a new study. Researchers at the University of Saskatchewan studied the pesticide imidacloprid, in the nicotine-linked class of chemicals called neonicotinoids, or neonics, and found that the pesticide had effects on migrating birds’ health and ability to reproduce. The scientists gave small amounts of the pesticide to white-crowned sparrows and found that the limited consumption caused the birds to lose weight and delay their migration.Within hours of being given the neonics, the birds stopped eating and lost an average of six percent of their body weight and about 17 percent of their fat stores, making it impossible for them to complete their long flights south. The birds took at least an extra 3.5 days to recover and migrate.”It’s just a few days, but we know that just a few days can have significant consequences for survival and reproduction,” Margaret Eng, an ecotoxicologist who led the study told Science magazine, where the research was published Friday.The disruption of the species’ normal migration led to decreased ability to reproduce and survive, the researchers found.The study “causatively links a pesticide to something that is really, tangibly negative to birds that is causing their population declines,” study author Christy Morrissey told the Associated Press. “It’s clear evidence these chemicals can affect populations.” More than 70 percent of North American farmland bird species are currently experiencing population declines.

Three billion birds have been lost in North America since 1970 – You might not notice it while hiking through the woods or strolling through a city park, but according to a new study, bird populations across North America are in a state of quiet freefall. In fact, compared with bird counts from 1970, scientists now estimate that the United States and Canada, which are home to 760 bird species, have lost around three billion birds. The study, published today in the journal Science, analyzed a combination of long-term population surveys as well as weather radar data to tease out the trend. Overall, the researchers discovered that birds found in grasslands – including well-known families such as sparrows, warblers, blackbirds, and finches – have been hit hardest, with their populations cut 53 percent over the last 48 years. (Read why birds matter in National Geographic magazine.) With nearly three-quarters of all grassland species experiencing decline, it seems these biomes, which include farmers’ fields, are especially vulnerable to habitat loss and exposure to toxic pesticides. But plummeting bird numbers may also be linked to huge drops in insect populations – an important avian prey, the researchers say.“We should take it as staggering, devastating news,” says study senior authorPeter Marra, director of the Georgetown Environment Initiative at Georgetown University. That’s because birds are crucial to the healthy functioning of ecosystems. Not only do our feathered friends help keep crop pests and other insects in check, but they also play critical roles in distributing seeds, disposing of rotting carcasses, and even pollinating plants. Though North American birds are vastly diverse, there are some common drivers behind their demise. “You only need to fly across the country to see that we’ve drastically changed the face of the earth,” says Marra. “There’s a lot of habitat that’s just gone.” The widespread use of pesticides has not only harmed insect populations, but the birds themselves: A recent study found that when birds eat seeds treated with certain neonicotinoid pesticides, they immediately lose weight, which in turn hinders their ability to migrate. Other causes include collisions with glass windows, which may kill some 600 million birds each year, and house cats, which are estimated to hunt down between one and four billion birds each year.

Huge decline in songbirds linked to common insecticide – The world’s most widely used insecticide has been linked to the dramatic decline in songbirds in North America. A first ever study of birds in the wild found that a migrating songbird that ate the equivalent of one or two seeds treated with a neonicotinoid insecticide suffered immediate weight loss, forcing it to delay its journey.Although the birds recovered, the delay could severely harm their chances of surviving and reproducing, say the Canadian researchers whose study is published today in Science.“We show a clear link between neonicotinoid exposure at real-world levels and an impact on birds,” says lead author Margaret Eng, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Saskatchewan Toxicology Center. Neonicotinoids, introduced in the late 1980s, were supposed to be a safer alternative to previous insecticides. But study after study has found that they play a key role in insect decline, especially bees. The EU banned the use of the chemicals in 2018 because they were killing pollinators. This study is another link in the chain of environmental problems, one showing that the use of neonicotinoids is harming birds, and that bird populations are at risk as a result, Eng said in an interview.

Global warming makes it harder for birds to mate, study finds – New research led by the University of East Anglia (UEA) and University of Porto (CIBIO-InBIO) shows how global warming could reduce the mating activity and success of grassland birds. The study examined the threatened grassland bird Tetrax tetrax, or little bustard, classified as a ‘Vulnerable’ species in Europe, in order to test how rising temperatures could affect future behaviour.The males spend most of their time in April and May trying to attract females in a breeding gathering known as a ‘lek’. In leks, to get noticed, males stand upright, puff up their necks, and making a call that sounds like a ‘snort’. They also use this display to defend their territory from competing breeding males.The international team of researchers – from the UK, Kenya, Portugal, Spain and Brazil – found that high temperatures reduced this snort-call display behaviour. If temperatures become too hot, birds may have to choose between mating and sheltering or resting to save their energy and protect themselves from the heat. Published in the journal PLOS ONE, the findings show that during the mating season little bustard display behaviour is significantly related to temperature, the time of the day – something referred to as circadian rhythms – and what stage of the mating season it is. The average temperature during the day also affects how much birds display and again as temperatures increase, display rates reduce.

New Trump Admin Hog Slaughtering Rule ‘Will Result in the Fox Guarding the Henhouse’ — Trump’s U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) finalized a new hog slaughtering rule Tuesday that environmental and food safety advocates warn could harm animals, plant workers and public health, Reuters reported. The new rule will end limits on how fast slaughterhouses can kill pigs. It will also shift responsibility for removing defective meat during the slaughtering process from government inspectors to plant workers. The USDA will still inspect live pigs and the final pork products.”The implementation of the rule will result in the fox guarding the henhouse,” Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter told Reuters.The USDA claims the new rule, the first update to the slaughtering inspection process in more than 50 years, is an attempt to modernize inspections. “This regulatory change allows us to ensure food safety while eliminating outdated rules and allowing for companies to innovate,” Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue said in a press release. “The final rule is the culmination of a science-based and data-driven rule making process which builds on the food safety improvements made in 1997, when USDA introduced a system of preventive controls for industry.”

US and Brazil agree to Amazon development -The US and Brazil have agreed to promote private-sector development in the Amazon, during a meeting in Washington on Friday.They also pledged a $100m (£80m) biodiversity conservation fund for the Amazon led by the private sector.Brazil’s foreign minister said opening the rainforest to economic development was the only way to protect it. Ernesto Araujo also hit back at criticism of Brazil’s handling of the forest fires. He told reporters in Washington that claims the country is “not able to cope with the challenges” were false. On Friday, Finland urged EU countries to consider stopping importing beef and soybeans from Brazil in order to put pressure on Brazil to tackle the fires.Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has faced criticism for failing to protect the region.More than 80,000 fires have broken out in the Amazon rainforest so far this year.Experts believe the majority of the fires across Brazil this year are caused by human activity such as farmers and loggers clearing land for crops or grazing. Environmentalists will say this scheme is a ruse to open up the Amazon for mining, logging and farming. When roads are driven into the forest it attracts more settlers, who clear land and hunt wildlife. The land clearance – even on a quite small basis – leads to changed weather patterns, which harm the forest. Environmentalists will argue the best way of saving the rainforest is to leave it in the hands of indigenous people. Environmentalists say Mr Bolsonaro’s policies have led to an increase in fires this year and that he has encouraged cattle farmers to clear large areas of the rainforest since his election last October.

The Entire Global Economy Is Complicit In The Destruction Of The Amazon – Name any fast-food restaurant, personal care product or home good you have bought recently, and chances are it contributed to the deforestation of the Amazon. Now name a big bank ― any big bank, really. More than likely it has helped finance that destruction. Furniture companies like IKEA and La-Z-Boy, and footwear giants like Nike, Adidas and New Balance, are customers of Chinese manufacturers that source leather from Brazilian cattle ranches. Palm oil, produced in Brazil and elsewhere, is used in everything from pizza dough and ice cream to lipstick and shampoo. Soy, paper and wood products that come directly from the Amazon are omnipresent. It’s not hard to pinpoint our unquenchable thirst for cattle, soy, timber, palm oil and other commodities as the main driver of Amazonian deforestation and the underlying cause of the record number of fires this year. What’s more difficult is figuring out what to do about it. The sheer scale of the global economy and the complexity of the supply chains and financial systems that make it work mean that nearly every company, corporation and banking and investment institution on the planet is complicit in the destruction of the Amazon and other forest ecosystems around the world. Although hundreds of companies have made high-profile public commitments to combating deforestation, none is doing enough to actually limit ― much less end ― the practice. The world loses 30 football fields of trees to deforestation every minute, but few places highlight the problem quite like the Amazon, a rainforest that has been the subject of extensive global attention and protectionist efforts from past Brazilian leaders and conservation groups for decades.

Deforestation Is Getting Worse, 5 Years After Countries and Companies Vowed to Stop It – Five years after joining in a historic commitment to stop cutting the world’s forests, governments and companies are not only failing to slow deforestation, they are rapidly driving the disappearance of more trees.As fires consume Amazonian forests, stoking global concern about the loss of a vital ecosystem and climate regulator, a new report published Thursday finds that forests continue to be cleared at an alarming rate, driven mostly by agricultural expansion and demand for beef, palm oil and soy.”We’re losing the battle, so to speak, on stopping deforestation,” said Craig Hanson, a vice president at the World Resources Institute. “This is a clarion call.” Nearly 200 companies and governments have signed onto the 2014 New York Declaration on Forests – which includes the goals of halving deforestation by 2020 and stopping it by 2030. But the new assessment by researchers and environmental groups found that forest loss has accelerated by more than 40 percent annually since the declaration’s launch.The cutting and burning of tropical forests, especially mature tropical forests, is particularly damaging because of the carbon storage lost and the contribution to climate change when trees burn or decompose, the authors write. They found that, on average, tropical deforestation and tree deaths emitted more carbon dioxide per year in the past five years than the entire European Union did in 2017. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said the world won’t achieve critical emissions reductions goals without stopping deforestation and restoring the world’s forests. “It’s critical for climate change,” Hanson said. “We simply can’t afford to fail to achieve the New York Declaration on Forests.”

Indonesia seals off 30 companies over forest fires – Indonesia has sealed off 30 companies amid a row with Malaysia over forest fires that are spreading a thick, noxious haze around Southeast Asia, officials said Saturday. The plantation companies, including a Singapore-based company and four firms affiliated with Malaysian corporate groups, are under scrutiny and waiting for decisions on possible punishment, said Sugeng Riyanto, the law enforcement director at Indonesia’s Forestry and Environment Ministry. Nearly every year, Indonesian forest fires spread health-damaging haze across the country and into neighboring Malaysia and Singapore. The fires are often started by smallholders and plantation owners to clear land for planting. Indonesia’s forestry and environment minister, Siti Nurbaya Bakar, told reporters Friday that the government will prosecute a number of companies as a deterrent to setting fires. The move came days after she disputed that the smoke was coming from Indonesia, noting that hotspots were also detected in Malaysia’s Sarawak state. Malaysia’s environment minister, Yeo Bee Yin, responded immediately, telling Indonesia “not to be in denial.” She cited data that showed that the haze impacting parts of Malaysia originated in Indonesia. The head of Indonesia’s Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency, Dwikorita Karnawati, dismissed claims by Malaysia that haze from Indonesia has drifted to the neighboring nation for days. She said the haze began to enter the area above peninsular Malaysia and Serawak state on Thursday morning. She said the agency’s satellites and its Geohotspot analysis on Thursday detected 1,231 hotspots on Sumatra island and 1,865 on Borneo. It also detected 412 hotspots in Malaysia’s state of Serawak and 216 in Sabah.

Fires Rage Across Indonesia, 200 Suspects Arrested – Nearly 200 people have been arrested in Indonesia over their possible connections to the massive wildfires raging in the nation’s forest, officials said this week.Hundreds of wildfires have burned nearly 840,000 acres of forest in Indonesian Borneo and Sumatra this year, in the country’s worst fire crisis since 2015. Officials say that some 80 percent of the fires, usually a regular occurrence in the dry season, are due to slash-and-burn techniques to clear the land for agriculture.The fires have led to evacuations and unhealthy air quality levels across the country and in neighboring Singapore and Malaysia, with more than 600 schools in Malaysia forced to close from the smoke. For a deeper dive: CNN, New York Times $, Mongabay

California’s wildfire season is roaring to life – Fast-moving blazes kick-started California’s fire season this past week, a turnaround from a deceptively quiet summer – and one that might signal a relentless autumn. The culprit: a long hot spell, followed by a transition to more turbulent weather.It started in Southern California, where firefighters wrestled the nearly 2,000-acre Tenaja Fire, struggling to protect homes. Then, in far-northern California, thunderstorm winds propelled runaway fires, including the Walker Fire, the year’s largest at more than 44,000 acres and counting. There were evacuation orders in Butte County over the weekend and again near Santa Barbara on Monday, where brush fires closed parts of U.S. 101.“It’s been a very slow buildup; that’s why it seems so sudden,” said Alex Tardy, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in San Diego.After a very wet and cool May, the summer months were remarkably calm, as dips in the jet stream or “troughs” continued to stall the fire season not only in California but also in the Pacific Northwest and the northern Rockies. However, the state started heating up in late July, and August was well above normal.Last month’s prolonged heat dried out dead plants and stressed larger live plants and trees, making them more susceptible to fire. In many areas, it’s as if the wet winter and spring never happened because vegetation is right back to where it usually is in late August and early September – at peak dryness – and in some regions, below that. And this winter’s heavy grass crop not only ignites easily but also burns more intensely, with longer flame lengths.But the tipping point was a bout with gusty thunderstorms last week and a high-altitude weather disturbance that is now bringing cooler but dry, windy weather.

A Marine Heat Wave Intensifies, with Risks for Wildlife, Hurricanes and California Wildfires –An intensifying marine heat wave in the northeastern Pacific Ocean has triggered government warnings about harm to salmon and other fisheries along the U.S. West Coast, and it’s raising concerns about hurricane risks to the Hawaiian islands and wildfire risks in California. The last time the region saw such a widespread and intense “warm blob,” in 2014-2015, the unusually warm ocean water boosted the growth oftoxin-producing algae and suppressed the growth of small organisms at the base of the ocean food chain. The impacts rippled through ocean ecosystems, with mass die-offs of marine mammals and birds, the closure of crab and clam fisheries and warnings for sardine and anchovy fisheries because of poisoning concerns. Young salmon had less to eat as they entered the ocean, and thousands of sea lions and seal pups ended up stranded on California beaches. The halt to crab fishing cost the industry an estimated $100 million. “We’re seeing more intensity in the marine heat waves, higher high temperatures, and that would be more of a function of climate change,” said Andy Leising, a research scientist at NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, California. He said the baseline ocean temperatures are warming so fast that scientists are scrambling to keep up with measuring and classifying the events. The current marine heat wave covers a horseshoe-shaped area about the size of Alaska. It extends from the Gulf of Alaska down the coast of Western North America and westward to Hawaii. In the warmest areas, sea surface temperatures have reached about 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit above average.Around Hawaii, the overheated ocean has also contributed to a string of high temperature records on land, including the warmest summer on record for Hawaii.”Hawaii is literally sitting in the middle of the southern limb of this marine heat wave,” said University of Washington marine heat wave researcherHillary Scannell. “If these ocean temperatures persist into the fall longer than the atmospheric forcing, I worry that these conditions could intensify any possible tropical storms that might develop in this region.” If the marine heat wave continues to expand toward the U.S. West Coast, it could also raise the wildfire danger in California this autumn at the peak of the state’s wildfire season. The last northeastern Pacific warm blob contributed to both drought and wildfire conditions in California, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Houston hit with ‘worst flooding they’ve seen since Harvey’ – Floodwaters grounded flights at Houston’s largest airport and shut down major roads throughout southeastern Texas Thursday – the heaviest rainfall since Hurricane Harvey slammed the city in 2017. The remnants of Tropical Rainstorm Imelda, which made landfall about 65 miles southeast of the city Tuesday, has dropped 40 inches of rain in the greater Houston area – including more than 25 inches over a 12-hour period.That could end up at 55 inches in some suburbs and up to a foot in the central city before the storms dissipate, AccuWeather reported.“Houston could be looking at 6 to 12 inches of rain,” said Dan Kottlowski, a senior meteorologist and lead hurricane expert for AccuWeather. “This is about a third of that amount (from Harvey) right now, but this is the worst flooding they’ve seen since Harvey.” Harvey hit the region with 130 mph winds, killing as many as 80 and causing more than $125 billion in damages – dropping as much as 51 inches of rain in downtown Houston.Jeff Evans, the meteorologist in charge at the National Weather Service in Houston, said the suburbs could see more accumulation than when Harvey came through. But the center city, buried in three feet of water by Harvey, shouldn’t see those levels nor the same deadly winds. But it doesn’t take much, he said. “It’s hard to compare storms,” Evans said. “Some totals are a little bigger, but Houston is such a gigantic blueprint…. Typically for Houston, when you get to 2 or 3 inches, you really start overwhelming the capacity of the storm drain system.” He said the flooding from Imelda hit hardest east and southeast of the city, but flooding has caused problems – George Bush Intercontinental Airport was forced to ground departing flights on Thursday.In Jefferson County, the sheriff’s office reported on Facebook that the Green Pond Gulley Levy, which holds up to 5,600 acres of water, was “deteriorating and could break at any moment.”The Beaumont Police Department urged residents to seek high ground as rising floodwaters began to inundate homes and shut down major roadways, including sections of Interstate 10 and Highway 69. “The situation here is turning worse by the minute,” Michael Stephens, a resident of nearby Vidor, told CNN. “People have snakes in their apartments from the creek.”

‘Worse than Harvey’: Small Houston-area town floods in Imelda aftermath – Hundreds of people have been rescued from their homes in Chambers County as floodwaters from the aftermath of Tropical Storm Imelda – which officials fear may be “worse than Harvey” – continued on Thursday to inundate the region, where authorities were also forced to evacuate a hospital. Ryan Holzaepfel, Chambers County’s fire marshal, said that by 2 p.m., authorities had rescued about 300 people since the start of Tuesday’s storm. The brunt of them, about 250, were rescued on Thursday, he said. Authorities have also brought six horses and 25 pets, dogs and cats, to safety.Authorities from the U.S. Coast Guard and city of Baytown, as well as volunteers with boats, are pitching in with rescues, he said. The deluge of rain started Tuesday night as the storm made landfall and has continued through Thursday, causing parts of Highway 124 to fill with at least 4 feet of water, Holzaepfel said. The storm has also produced at least 100 emergency calls, but there were no immediate reports of injuries, the fire marshal continued.About 800 homes in the Winnie and Stowell area may be experiencing high water, he said.According to the National Weather Service, about 7 inches of rain fell near Mont Belvieu from Wednesday to Thursday afternoon, while 10 inches was recorded near Anahuac. As the water rose overnight, about five to six patients from the Riceland Healthcare hospital also in Winnie, Chambers County Precinct 1 Constable Dennis Dugat said.”The hospital flooded, so we have to get them out,” Dugat said. Atascocita Fire brought their high-water rescue vehicles to move the patients to another hospital, Dugat said.Mo Danishmund, chief financial officer for Riceland Healthcare, said the hospital had received several inches of rain. “This didn’t happen to us during Harvey, and also this came out of nowhere,” he said. “(This) is worse than Harvey,”

Footage shows devastation in Texas from Imelda –Footage shared across social media Thursday showed major flooding and devastation in southeast Texas as then-Tropical Depression Imelda, which was later downgraded to an open wave, moved into the region.CBS shared footage of a photographer from a local affiliate station rescuing a mother and her children after their car became stuck in floodwaters.Highways and roads were abandoned with cars still on the road as rains slammed Texas and Louisiana. Chambers County, Texas, Sheriff Brian Hawthorne told ABC affiliate KTRKthat the destruction from Imelda was so bad that it made Hurricane Harvey “look like a little thunderstorm,” referring to the Category 4 storm that devastated Texas and Louisiana in 2017.The worst of the flooding from Imelda was reported north and east of Houston, including in Beaumont, Texas. Other footage showed people trying to save local animals in the state from the floodwaters.At least one person has died from the storm, with that person dying after moving his horse from flood waters when an electrical storm hit, NBC News reported.

2 dead as flooding disaster brings Houston area to standstill – Torrential rain and deadly flooding is bringing the Houston area to a standstill, shuttering schools, canceling flights and leaving hundreds of cars swamped and abandoned. The remnants of Tropical Storm Imelda dumped up to 43 inches of rain within three days in the areas between Winnie and Beaumont, east of Houston. Most of that rain fell in just 24 hours. Some residents whose homes were flooded by Hurricane Harvey two years ago are now seeing rain seeping into their houses yet again.At least two deaths were reported on Thursday as the floodwaters rose: one man who drowned after driving into floodwaters and a second man who was electrocuted and drowned while trying to move his horse, according to authorities.Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday declared a state of disaster for 13 counties as the floodwaters climbed up to the door handles of SUVs.In Harris County, which encompasses Houston, more than 1,000 people were rescued. Some residents used tractors and air boats to pull other to safety.Houston, the nation’s 4th largest city, saw over 9 inches of rainfall on Thursday, the wettest September day ever recorded there. About 200 students from the Aldine Independent School District were forced to spend the night at school after they couldn’t get home due to the flooding, ABC Houston station KTRK reported. Houston public schools are closed Friday. This week’s downpour is the fourth highest amount of rain from a tropical system in Texas’ recorded history, as well as the seventh highest amount of rain from a tropical system in U.S. recorded history. Hurricane Harvey brought 60 inches of rain to Texas two years ago, which remains the U.S. record for most rain from a tropical system.

Hurricane season: Humberto, Jerry, Kiko set record for most storms – — Sure, it’s the middle of hurricane season. But this is ridiculous. The six named storms whirling at once this week in the Atlantic and Pacific hit a record first set in 1992, forecasters reported.”While Humberto and Kiko were spinning in the Atlantic and Eastern Pacific, four new tropical cyclones formed Tuesday: Imelda and Jerry in the Atlantic Basin, and Mario and Lorena in the Eastern Pacific Basin,” the Weather Channel reported.This combined number of active storms in both basins was believed to tie a modern record, set in September 1992, according to National Hurricane Center forecaster Eric Blake.He tweeted Tuesday that “they are forming like roaches out there.””It’s not something that you see all the time, but not unheard of, either,” said Weather Channel meteorologist Danielle Banks. According to the National Hurricane Center, there have been as many as five active Atlantic tropical cyclones at once, which occurred Sept. 10-12, 1971. In the eastern Pacific, on Aug. 26, 1974, there were five simultaneous named storms of at least tropical storm strength, Phil Klotzbach, a tropical scientist at Colorado State University, told weather.com.September is the peak month for hurricane and tropical storm activity in both the Atlantic and Pacific, NOAA reports. “In September, ocean temperatures are nearly at their yearly peak, and shearing winds that can rip apart tropical storms and hurricanes are typically at their lowest,” the Weather Channel reported.

Is California About To Get Hit By A Hurricane For The Very First Time In History? – In the entire history of our country, a hurricane has never made landfall in the state of California. So if such a thing actually happened, it would be considered to be an extremely unusual event. Well, right now there are three very dangerous tropical storms swirling in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Tropical Storm Kiko is not expected to be a serious threat to make landfall, but Tropical Storm Lorena and Tropical Storm Mario “are expected to become hurricanes by Friday as they approach the Mexican coast”. Tropical Storm Lorena is the more immediate threat, and the latest forecast is projecting that it will reach Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula by Saturday. If it maintains hurricane strength and continues to ride up the west coast, it is entirely possible that we could see something that we have never seen before. Most forecasters don’t want to talk too much about it yet, because it truly would be an unprecedented event, but there really is a chance that California could get hit by a hurricane for the very first time in U.S. history.

6 Dead in Worst Storm to Drench Eastern Spain in 140 Years – Record rainfall and flooding in southeastern Spain killed six people as of Saturday, The New York Times reported.More than 3,000 people had to be rescued from the storm that drenched Murcia, Valencia and eastern Andalusia on Spain’s Mediterranean coast last week. Some towns recorded their highest rainfall on record. While it is normal for the region to see autumn storms, last week’s deluge was the worst to hit eastern Spain in 140 years, EL PAÍS reported. Ontinyent in Valencia recorded 250 millimeters (approximately 10 inches) of rainfall in 12 hours, 10 times the normal amount for this time of year, according to EL PAÍS. The storm killed two siblings on Thursday when their car was swept away by flood waters in Caudete, in Albacete, EL PAÍS reported further. On Friday, another man drowned in Almer’a when he entered a flooded underpass. Two other men were found dead Friday: one, aged 36, in Granada, and another, aged 58, near Orihuela in Alicante. A sixth man was found dead in Orihuela Saturday. He was 41 years old. The town of Orihuela was especially hard hit. It was cut off for three days due to flooding on the roads. More than 1,100 military personnel were deployed to rescue people from flooding in Murcia and Valencia, The Guardian reported. Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said 3,500 people had to be rescued, according to The New York Times. Some people had to be rescued from rooftops by helicopter, and four people were saved from the tops of cars by boat and jet ski. The deluge closed the airports of Murcia and Almer’a, as well as train lines, roads and schools.

90% of the world’s population just experienced the hottest summer on record – The Northern Hemisphere, which holds 90% of the world’s population, just experienced its hottest meteorological summer on record, tied with 2016, scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced Monday. For the year-to-date, 2019 is the third-warmest year on record after 2016 and 2017. According to NOAA, nine of the 10 highest June-through-August global land and ocean surface temperatures have occurred since 2009. It was the second-hottest summer at a global level, according to NOAA, along with the second-hottest August on record for the planet. South America, Africa, Europe, the Gulf of Mexico and the Hawaiian region had a temperature departure from average for the summer months that ranked among the three warmest such periods on record. Africa, for example, had its warmest June-through-August period on record, according to NOAA’s report. Europe was baked by multiple scorching heat waves throughout the summer that spread record high temperatures across the continent, making Paris surpass its hottest temperature ever recorded. Germany and France had their third-warmest summers on record, while Austria had its second-warmest summer. In July, France, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands and the United Kingdom all set new all-time high temperature records. Alaska is one area that has suffered the most from the heat. Eight of Alaska’s top 13 warmest days on record were in 2019. “The Anchorage airport reached 90 degrees for the first time in that weather station’s history on July 4. Anchorage also topped 80 degrees eight times this year, the most ever since record keeping of the weather began there in 1917,” Sojda said.

Alaska just had the most ridiculous summer. That’s a red flag for the planet. — Alaska’s summer of fire and no ice is smashing records.With the Arctic warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, America’s “Last Frontier” feels like the first in line to see, smell and feel the unsettling signs of a climate in crisis. There are the smoky skies and dripping glaciers, dead salmon and hauled-out walrus but scientists also worry about the changes that are harder to see, from toxic algae blooms in the Bering Sea to insects from the Lower 48 bringing new diseases north.The head shaking among longtime locals really began on the Fourth of July, when at 90 degrees, Anchorage was hotter than Key West.A dome of hot, dry air over the southern part of the state refused to budge. When lightning struck the Kenai Peninsula, it was just the beginning of a wilderness inferno unlike any other in memory. Like rainy clockwork, Alaska’s fire season usually ends August 1 but the Swan Lake fire is still burning and only 37% contained. To the relief of exhausted fire crews and worried residents, September is bringing the first moisture in weeks but the most populous part of the state is still swallowing more smoke than ever.”We’ve had more than twice as many smoky hours in 2019 than in any other season, and in fact, almost as many as all other years combined,” says Brian Brettschneider, a climatologist at the University of Alaska. Brettschneider lists one superlative after another, pulled from a century’s worth of records that predate Alaskan statehood. “Eight of our top 13 warmest days on record are this year,” he says. “We didn’t just get a little bit past the old marks, we really blasted past them.””We’ve talked about these things occurring in decades or in centuries, but … it’s happening right now and it’s visible right now and it’s noticeable right now,” the University of Alaksa climatologist says. “The opportunity to do things about it is right now and not decades down the road. So, in one sense, it’s really bad, but people tend to kind of step up and do something about it when they feel a sense of urgency, and there really is a sense of urgency right now.”

With Greenland’s Extreme Melting, a New Risk Grows: Ice Slabs That Worsen Runoff – Scientists have added a new item to the long list of Greenland Ice Sheet woes. Along with snow-darkening algae and increasing rainfall, giant slabs of ice have been thickening and spreading under the Greenland snow at an average rate of two football fields per minute since 2001, new research shows.The slabs prevent surface meltwater from trickling down and being absorbed by the snow. Instead, more water pours off the surface of the ice sheet and into the ocean.That’s speeding Greenland’s contribution to sea level rise, said University of Liege climate researcher Xavier Fettweis, a co-author of a studypublished Wednesday in the journal Nature. “It is very likely that the current climate models overestimate the meltwater retention capacity of the ice sheet and underestimate the projected sea level rise coming from Greenland … by a factor of two or three,” he said. This past summer was either Greenland’s worst melt season on record or close to it, scientists said. Melting spiked in June. And in July and August, a heat wave led to melting over more than 60 percent of the ice sheet, including sending temperatures above freezing at the ice sheet’s summit. All summer long, the average melt extent was much higher than the 1981-2010 average. There was also open sea ice north of Greenland at a record-early date, and Arctic sea ice hovered near record-low extentall summer.The formation of the ice slabs is connected to extreme melt seasons like the one Greenland just experienced, said Mike MacFerrin, the study’s lead author and a University of Colorado climate researcher who has traversed the Greenland Ice Sheet each spring for several years to measure the phenomenon. “Ice slabs are forming where they never used to exist because big melt summers are happening ever-more-frequently, and 2019 was one of those years,” he said.

PIOMAS September 2019 – Arctic Sea Ice by Neven – Another month has passed and so here is the updated Arctic sea ice volume graph as calculated by the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS) at the Polar Science Center: Despite a massive amount of melting momentum and an advantageous thickness distribution, volume loss during August 2019 was below average (2301 vs 2559 km3 for the 2007-2018 period). Of course, being record low makes it harder to melt a lot of ice, but since 2007, only two years – 2013 and 2017 – managed to lose less volume than 2019 during August. This means that this year is no longer lowest on record, with 2012 breezing past and going 238 km3 lower. 2016, though profiting from the most extreme August weather conditions in the era of the New Abnormal, is still 521 km3 behind. Here’s how the differences with previous years have evolved from last month: Wipneus’ version of the PIOMAS graph shows that this year is the only one capable of staying somewhat close to 2012: Because extent loss during August was even slower than volume loss, average thickness has also gone down some more, second only to 2010, which saw massive dispersal towards the end of the melting season, with huge swaths of open water near the pole (I wrote about that in a blog post called North Hole during my first year of blogging). When there’s a lot of extent, the volume gets spread over a larger ice pack, and thus thickness goes down. Remember, PIJAMAS is an (imperfect) average thickness measure where I divide the PIOMAS volume numbers with JAXA sea ice extent numbers: PIJAMAS 20190831The Polar Science Centre average thickness graph shows more or less the same, but with 2011 lower than this year as well: To be honest, I expected a clearer melting momentum signal during this final phase of the melting season. Melting momentum took off slower than years like 2012 and 2016, but when it did take off, it was fireworks (see June 2019, one hell of a month). David Schröder’s melt pond fraction maps, the SMOS pixel chart, the compactness charts, the Albedo-Warming Potential graphs, the snow cover graphs, more and more they were pointing to a massive build-up of melting momentum. On top of that, PIOMAS was showing that this year was very competitive volume-wise, and for five months in a row, 2019 was in the top 3 when it came to temperature records (August coming in hottest on record):

If carbon dioxide hits a new high every year, why isn’t every year hotter than the last? –Earth’s temperature doesn’t react instantly to each year’s new record-high carbon dioxide levels. Thanks to the high heat capacity of water and the huge volume of the global oceans, Earth’s surface temperature resists rapid changes. Said another way, some of the excess heat that greenhouse gases force the Earth’s surface to absorb in any given year is hidden for a timeby the ocean, so rising greenhouse gas levels don’t immediately have their full impact. Still, when we step back and look at the big picture, it’s clear the two are tightly connected. As the graph above shows, both global temperature (colored bars) and atmospheric carbon dioxide (gray line) increased more slowly during the first half of the observational record in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rose by around 20 parts per million over the 7 decades from 1880­ – 1950, while the temperature increased by an average of 0.04° C per decade.Over the next 7 decades, however, carbon dioxide climbed nearly 100 ppm (5 times as fast!). To put those changes in some historical context, the amount of rise in carbon dioxide levels since the late 1950s would naturally, in the context of past ice ages, have taken somewhere in the range of 5,000 to 20,000 years; we’ve managed to do it in about 60. At the same time, the rate of warming averaged 0.14° C per decade. The rate of temperature rise over such a short period time points to only one thing, and that is the addition of greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide, into the environment. Within any given decade, however, the temperature bounces around between warm and cool years. The warmest years are usually El Niño years, when the eastern and central tropical Pacific is warmer than average. The coldest years are generally La Niña years. On a longer time scale, warm decades are often associated with strongly positive phases of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and cool decades with strongly negative phases.

What Is Nitrous Oxide and Why Is It a Climate Threat? – When it comes to the global climate crisis, carbon dioxide emissions represent a problem that’s massive, intractable and running short on time to solve. But it’s not the only problem.Other pollutants are rapidly warming our climate, too, sending scientists on a race to understand their implications before it’s too late. For years, experts have warned about the risks from one pollutant in particular – nitrous oxide – and yet there’s been little global action on it.The reason: “It is intimately connected to food,” said Ravi Ravishankara, an atmospheric chemist at Colorado State University who co-chaired a United Nations panel on stratospheric ozone from 2007 to 2015. Nitrous oxide is 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide, and it also depletes the ozone layer. Since it also has a shorter life span, reducing it could have a faster, significant impact on global warming. But the largest source of nitrous oxide is agriculture, particularly fertilized soil and animal waste, and that makes it harder to rein in. “One could imagine limiting carbon dioxide, less methane, less of lots of things. But nitrous oxide is so much a food production issue,” Ravishankara said. Since the 1960s, fertilizer use has shot up globally, helping usher in the “Green Revolution,” which fed millions around the world. In the U.S. alone, the use of fertilizer has risen more than 200 percent over the past 60 years, even though the amount of cropland has stayed relatively constant. At the same time, the number of large industrialized livestock operations has also gone up, creating more manure “lagoons” and excess manure, which is often over-applied on cropland.A 2013 report by the United Nations found that since the pre-industrial era, nitrous oxide emissions from human activities have increased 20 percent. At the time, the authors wrote that if nothing was done, those emissions were expected to double by 2050.Despite nitrous oxide’s role depleting the ozone layer, it is not included in the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, an international treaty that aims to restore the ozone layer by phasing out certain substances. Here’s what you should know about the potent pollutant:

Greta to Senate: Sorry, but Please Do More – Teen activist Greta Thunberg delivered a talking-to to members of Congress Tuesday during a meeting of the Senate Climate Change Task Force after politicians praised her and other youth activists for their efforts and asked their advice on how to fight climate change.”Don’t invite us here to tell us how inspiring we are without doing anything about it,” Thunberg told the assembled senators. “We don’t want to be invited to these kinds of meetings because, honestly, they don’t lead to anything…I know you are trying but just not hard enough. Sorry.” Thunberg also visited with President Barack Obama this week, and a video released by the Obama Foundation shows the two fist-bumping.

Greta Thunberg scolds Congress on climate action: ‘I know you are trying but just not hard enough’ — Youth climate activist Greta Thunberg called on Congress to step up its efforts in the fight against climate change while speaking at a Senate forum on Tuesday. “I know you are trying but just not hard enough,” she told senators while attending a meeting held by the Senate Climate Change Task Force in Washington, according to The Associated Press. She was reportedly one of a number of climate activists invited to speak to the group. Thunberg, a 16-year-old from Sweden whose climate activism sparked demonstrations across the globe, reportedly went on to tell lawmakers at the forum to “save your praise,” adding that she and other protesters “don’t want it.” “Don’t invite us here to just tell us how inspiring we are without actually doing anything about it because it doesn’t lead to anything,” she said, according to The Guardian. “If you want advice for what you should do, invite scientists, ask scientists for their expertise. We don’t want to be heard. We want the science to be heard,” Thunberg added. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who attended the event, told Thunberg that lawmakers “hear what you’re saying” and “will redouble our efforts,” The Guardian reported. Thunberg is also reportedly expected to meet later this week with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who co-sponsored the Green New Deal with Markey earlier this year. The teenage climate activist is scheduled to testify at a joint hearing on Wednesday morning before House lawmakers to discuss the global youth climate movement.

Greta Thunberg To U.S.: ‘You Have A Moral Responsibility’ On Climate Change – Greta Thunberg led a protest at the White House on Friday. But she wasn’t looking to go inside – “I don’t want to meet with people who don’t accept the science,” she says.The young Swedish activist joined a large crowd of protesters who had gathered outside, calling for immediate action to help the environment and reverse an alarming warming trend in average global temperatures. She says her message for President Trump is the same thing she tells other politicians: Listen to science, and take responsibility. Thunberg, 16, arrived in the U.S. last week after sailing across the Atlantic to avoid the carbon emissions from jet travel. She plans to spend nearly a week in Washington, D.C. – but she doesn’t plan to meet with anyone from the Trump administration during that time. “I haven’t been invited to do that yet. And honestly I don’t want to do that,” Thunberg tells NPR’s Ailsa Chang. If people in the White House who reject climate change want to change their minds, she says, they should rely on scientists and professionals to do that.But Thunberg also believes the U.S. has an “incredibly important” role to play in fighting climate change.”You are such a big country,” she says. “In Sweden, when we demand politicians to do something, they say, ‘It doesn’t matter what we do – because just look at the U.S.’ “I think you have an enormous responsibility” to lead climate efforts, she adds. “You have a moral responsibility to do that.”

‘Trollbots’ Swarm Twitter with Attacks on Climate Science Ahead of UN Summit – CNN’s seven-hour climate change town hall for presidential candidates was not a TV ratings bonanza, but it set off a marked surge of activity on Twitter aimed at ridiculing the Democrats and dismissing the science.”Climate change” became the top two-word trending topic on Twitter for several hours after the event among the accounts being tracked by Bot Sentinel, a free platform designed to track what it considers untrustworthy or automated accounts. It was quite an unusual feat for the topic to beat out – even temporarily – the phrase that sits almost constantly atop the trending list for accounts on Bot Sentinel’s watchlist: “President Trump.” Scientists, activists and politicians who are engaged in climate policy say they are being besieged by a surge of online attacks. It is difficult to divine whether the bursts of “climate change”-related Twitter activity are spontaneous or part of coordinated campaigns; some experts say that likely a small number of influencers are touching off postings by a far larger number of followers. But in a post-2016 world that is keenly aware of the role that social media played in the election of Donald Trump, the targets of climate attacks are concerned about the potential for online onslaughts to manipulate opinion and neutralize growing public support for climate action.

Kids’ world climate strikes demand that warming stop, fast – Listen up, grown-ups around the world: You’ve failed us. That is the message millions of young people from Sydney to Warsaw to London and beyond carried to the streets on Friday, as they skipped school to stage strikes demanding urgent action on climate change. The global strike is the third this year and involved more than 3,000 protests, according to Fridays for Future, the group that organized them. The strike in New York, where 1.1 million students were excused from school, comes ahead of a pair of climate meetings at the United Nations – the first-ever Youth Summit on Saturday and a one-day Climate Action Summit of the General Assembly on Monday. The New York protest was led by Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish high school student who has become the face of the fast-growing youth movement that has taken hold in more than 200 nations. Her message to world leaders is blunt and to the point: Listen to the science.”We are united behind the science and will stop at nothing to keep this crisis from getting worse,” Thunberg said from the stage in Battery Park at the south end of Manhattan as the crowd chanted, “Greta, Greta, Greta.” She not only condemned political leaders for their “empty promises, lies and inaction,” she chastised supportive adults for taking selfies with her and her fellow activists and telling them “how much they admire what we do.”That is not why the crowds turned out in the streets, she added. “We are doing this to wake up the leaders,” she said. “We deserve a safe future. Is that too much to ask?”Thunberg delivered a similar message to the U.S. Congress when she testified earlier this week. Instead of prepared remarks, she submitted last October’s report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warning that warned the rise of global temperatures was hastening to an alarming degree. To prevent 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit of warming – which would result in catastrophic food shortages, coral reef die-offs, worsening flooding, wildfires and extreme weather – the scientists advised that global greenhouse gases must be reduced by 45 percent by 2030 and 100 percent by 2050. Aside from her appearance before Congress, Thunberg met with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former President Barack Obama, and appeared at a protest in front of the Supreme Court with 21 youth plaintiffs suing the government to force court-ordered action on climate change. She also joined a strike outside the gates of the White House, which included a silent 11-minute “lie-down” in recognition that there just 11 years remaining before that first 2030 deadline.

Thousands of tech employees walked out of their workplaces to join the climate strike — Workers from Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter staged walkouts in what may be the largest coordinated worker action in the history of the tech industry. At the demonstration in Seattle, more than 3,000 tech workers walked out of their workplaces on Friday and thousands more joined actions across the country, according to Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, a group calling for Amazon to make more effort to address climate change. Globally, more than 1,800 Amazon employees walked out across 25 cities and 14 countries on Friday to protest the company’s failure to take more action to address the climate crisis. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, has made some efforts to address climate concerns, including an announcement on Thursday that the company expects to be carbon neutral by 2040 and a February announcement of a goal, known as Shipment Zero, to be carbon neutral on 50% of shipments by 2030. But workers are asking for more: zero emissions by 2030, increasing the number of electric vehicles in its fleet, and refusing to set contracts with companies that damage the climate. Other tech companies were present at marches in San Francisco and beyond. Twitter workers walked out, marching alongside workers from tech payment firm Square in San Francisco. Facebook workers walked out of offices around the country, including employees who left the headquarters in San Jose. More than 1,800 workers at Google signed a pledge supporting climate action from the company, including zero emissions by 2030, eliminating contracts with oil and gas companies, and promising zero harm to climate refugees. Hundreds walked out of Google offices across the US, including in New York City and at the headquarters in San Jose. “As individuals, we may feel alone in facing climate change,” the Google petition said. “But if we act together – if we act now – we can build a better future.”

Across the globe, millions join biggest climate protest ever – Millions of people demonstrated across the world yesterday demanding urgent action to tackle global heating, as they united across timezones and cultures to take part in the biggest climate protest in history. In an explosion of the youth movement started by the Swedish school striker Greta Thunberg just over 12 months ago, people protested from the Pacific islands, through Australia, across-south east Asia and Africa into Europe and onwards to the Americas. For the first time since the school strikes for climate began last year, young people called on adults to join them – and they were heard. Trade unions representing hundreds of millions of people around the world mobilised in support, employees left their workplaces, doctors and nurses marched and workers at firms like Amazon, Google and Facebook walked out to join the climate strikes. Global climate strike: Greta Thunberg and school students lead climate crisis protest – as it happened Read more In the estimated 185 countries where demonstrations took place, the protests often had their individual targets; from rising sea levels in the Solomon Islands, toxic waste in South Africa, to air pollution and plastic waste in India and coal expansion in Australia. But the overall message was unified – a powerful demand for an urgent step-change in action to cut emissions and stabilise the climate. The demonstrations took place on the eve of a UN climate summit, called by the secretary general, António Guterres, to inject urgency into government action to restrict the rise in global temperatures to 1.5C, as agreed under the 2015 Paris agreement. Carbon emissions climbed to a record high last year, despite a warning from the UN-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that there is little more than a decade left to act to slash emissions and stabilise the climate.

What is the Theory of Change in Naomi Klein’s “On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal”? – naked capitalism, Lambert Strether – (see also comments) Naomi Klein has just launched On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal (Simon & Schuster (2019; search for independent bookstore near you). While I confess I have not yet purchased the book, On Fire has gotten a lot of play – some from Klein herself, touring – and the nature of that play is interesting in itself. So consider this a meta-review. First, I’ll look briefly at Klein as a figure, and review my own position on a Green New Deal (GND). Then, I’ll collect several “takes” on the book. Finally, I’ll ask if a clear “theory of change” can be reverse-engineered out of those takes; that is, assuming that the desired verdict is in favor of the Green New Deal, do the takes on the book provide (#1) a clear explanation of why there is not alreadya GND, and (#2) a strategy to get the GND. Spoiler alert: On the evidence of the takes, including those of Klein herself, the answer is… no (I’m aware of the dangers of kicking a puppy, but so be it.) So, to Klein the figure. Readers will be familar with Klein’s Shock Doctrine, with its theory of “disaster capitalism.” Klein has a real track record as a writer who can powerfully communicate complex ideas, and has a real knack for skating to where the puck is going to be; Shock Doctrinewas published in 2007, right before the Crash, for example. Klein has been working on climate change for awhile. From Elle, “Progressive Prophet Naomi Klein Sees The Future. Can It Be Changed?“: Klein has never liked marching and has described herself as physically incapable of chanting, but she has become increasingly involved in climate activism. In 2011, she was arrested for the first time, protesting the Keystone XL pipeline outside the White House. She was instrumental in developing the divestment movement, which has led to $8 trillion being disinvested from fossil fuels. She also helped organize The Leap Manifesto, a document written in 2015 by a coalition of indigenous leaders, environmental activists, and union heads based around what Klein later described as a key insight: that many progressive battles could be addressed through a so-called “Marshall Plan for the Earth.”

Money Is the Oxygen on Which the Fire of Global Warming Burns – Bill McKibben – This spring, we set another high mark for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere: four hundred and fifteen parts per million, higher than it has been in many millions of years. The summer began with the hottest June ever recorded, and then July became the hottest month ever recorded. The United Kingdom, France, and Germany, which have some of the world’s oldest weather records, all hit new high temperatures, and then the heat moved north, until most of Greenland was melting and immense Siberian wildfires were sending great clouds of carbon skyward. At the beginning of September, Hurricane Dorian stalled above the Bahamas, where it unleashed what one meteorologist called “the longest siege of violent, destructive weather ever observed” on our planet. The scientific warnings of three decades ago are the deadly heat advisories and flash-flood alerts of the present, and, as for the future, we have hard deadlines. Last fall, the world’s climate scientists said that, if we are to meet the goals we set in the 2015 Paris climate accord – which would still raise the mercury fifty per cent higher than it has already climbed – we’ll essentially need to cut our use of fossil fuels in half by 2030 and eliminate them altogether by mid-century. In a world of Trumps and Putins and Bolsonaros and the fossil-fuel companies that back them, that seems nearly impossible. It’s not technologically impossible: in the past decade, the world’s engineers have dropped the price of solar and wind power by ninety and seventy per cent, respectively. But we’re moving far too slowly to exploit the opening for rapid change that this feat of engineering offers. Hence the 2 a.m. dread. Climate change is a timed test, one of the first that our civilization has faced, and with each scientific report the window narrows. By contrast, cultural change – what we eat, how we live – often comes generationally. Political change usually involves slow compromise, and that’s in a working system, not a dysfunctional gridlock such as the one we now have in Washington. And, since we face a planetary crisis, cultural and political change would have to happen in every other major country, too. But what if there were an additional lever to pull, one that could work both quickly and globally? One possibility relies on the idea that political leaders are not the only powerful actors on the planet – that those who hold most of the money also have enormous power, and that their power could be exercised in a matter of months or even hours, not years or decades. I suspect that the key to disrupting the flow of carbon into the atmosphere may lie in disrupting the flow of money to coal and oil and gas.

Divesting From Oil Companies Does ‘Nothing’ To Save The Climate, Bill Gates Says – Climate activists who have convinced pension funds to divest from energy stocks as a way of taking a stance on the climate can save their breath, because according to Microsoft founder Bill Gates, they’re wasting their time.Those who are trying to save the world from climate change would be better served by simply investing in companies that are researching disruptive non-carbon energy sources, Gates said. For example, investors might have better results if they choose to place their money in Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods – or other companies chasing similarly green business models. Gates suspects that, for all of the money that has been drained out of the energy sector because of the divestment movement, nothing has been done to reduce emissions. And the divestment movement hasn’t been confined to a few fringe groups. In recent years, it has gained real traction; Now the Church of England, an array of pension funds and sovereign wealth funds, and an investment vehicle that manages the wealth of the Rockefeller family. “Divestment, to date, probably has reduced about zero tonnes of emissions. It’s not like you’ve capital-starved [the] people making steel and gasoline,” he said. “I don’t know the mechanism of action where divestment [keeps] emissions [from] going up every year. I’m just too damn numeric.” During an interview with the FT published Tuesday, Gates questioned the strategy’s “theory of change,” arguing that it’s more effective to support companies trying to fight carbon emissions and disrupt established markets like food and fuel than trying to starve energy giants like ExxonMobil of capital. “When I’m taking billions of dollars and creating breakthrough energy ventures and funding only companies who, if they’re successful, reduce greenhouse gases by 0.5%, then I actually do see a cause and effect type thing,” he said.Gates is making the media rounds ahead of the UN General Assembly meeting later this month. He and his wife, Melinda, with whom he started the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, released their organization’s “Goalkeepers” report on Tuesday. The UN is hoping to fulfill these goals by 2030, the FT said. But Bill and Melinda Gates are trying to convince the world that not enough is being done, and that achieving their goals would be “unrealistic” on the current trajectory.The Goalkeepers report says the response to climate change can’t be limited to reining in emissions, and should instead focus on helping society cope with the changes to the climate that have already happened.

Why Degrowth Is the Only Responsible Way Forward – To sustain the natural basis of our life, we must slow down. We have to reduce the amount of extraction, pollution, and waste throughout our economy. This implies less production, less consumption, and probably also less work.The responsibility to do so must lie mainly on the rich, who currently enjoy a disproportionate share of our resources. But we should also do things differently, as much of today’s economic activity is of little benefit to human wellbeing. Imagine what could be if we organized democratically to produce what we actually need, distributed those resources fairly, and shared them in common. This, in a nutshell, is the vision of degrowth: a good life for all within planetary boundaries. And while this might seem utopian, there are already concrete policy ideas to start such a transformation.In a recent article, Leigh Phillips argues that this is a delusion. He brings forth three main critiques: degrowth is (1) not necessary, (2) unjust, and (3) marks the end of progress. He suggests that we should “take over the machine, not turn it off“, expressing his concern that an end to growth would mean an end to all the things that makes our lives so rich, like for example fridges. This reminds him of the likes of Malthus or Thatcher, whose ideologies have supported the imposition of unjust limits onto the poorer parts of society. In this response, we want to investigate the world-view behind Phillips’s critique and argue that degrowth is, in fact, very different than what he claims it is. This is not the first time that this debate has been had (see here, here, or here). Our aim is not to create further division. Instead, we want to point towards common values that degrowth shares with socialist perspectives. We claim that Phillips employs an inordinate optimism about technological possibilities, and discuss how his views are framed by a rather narrow and liberal conception of freedom and progress. We argue that an increase in social value does not depend on economic growth, allowing for further human flourishing within limits.

For Many Reporters Covering Climate, Population Remains the Elephant in the Room – In June, New York Times journalist Andy Newman wrote an article titled, “If seeing the world helps ruin it, should we stay home?” In it, he raised the question of whether or not travel by plane, boat, or car – all of which contribute to climate change, rising sea levels, and melting glaciers – might pose a moral challenge to the responsibility that each of us has to not exacerbate the already catastrophic consequences of climate change. The premise of Newman’s piece rests on his assertion that traveling “somewhere far away… is the biggest single action a private citizen can take to worsen climate change.” But that’s not true. In 2017, Seth Wynes of Lund University in Sweden and Kimberly Nicholas of the University of British Columbia estimated the carbon emissions that various individual lifestyle choices would have. The foremost way to reduce climate change, their report said, would be to have one fewer child (which would otherwise annually contribute an additional 58.6 tons of carbon dioxide, on average in developed countries, according to the researchers’ estimates). The runner-ups were living car free (2.4 tons of carbon dioxide per year), and not taking one transatlantic flight (1.6 tons of carbon dioxide per year). On the heels of Newman’s piece, The Guardian published an interactive story focused exclusively on how much carbon dioxide is emitted per flight. A month on from Newman’s story, Quartz published a story titled, “If you care about your impact on the planet you should stop flying.” For that story, Quartz replicated a graph from the Wynes and Nicholas study, but failed to include the impact that not having another child would have. When I asked the reporter, Natasha Frost, why Quartz decided to omit part of the data, she said the graphing software couldn’t fit the data properly on the graph. If any article is only talking about flying less, or eating less meat, “it’s borderline dangerous and misleading,” Erica Gies, an independent journalist who has written about population and her personal decision not to have children, says. “Or the writer is ill-informed, doesn’t want to look at the reality, or open themselves up to the personal attack that is writing about it.” If not having another child saves more than 20 times more carbon per year, why aren’t more journalists talking about human population in proportion to the climate impact that it can have?

Pa. environmental board will vet proposed rules restricting potent greenhouse gas emissions — Three years after they were first announced, new regulations restricting methane emissions from existing natural gas wells will get a hearing before a statewide rulemaking body this year, Gov. Tom Wolf’s office said Tuesday.The move comes as Republican President Donald Trump rolls back restrictions on the potent greenhouse gas.Lawmakers from both parties and environmental advocates gathered in the Capitol rotunda Tuesday afternoon to decry the White House’s decision to loosen methane regulations and thank Wolf for pushing the new rules forward.Wolf rolled out his methane restrictions in January 2016. Two years later, in the summer of 2018, the governor and the Department of Environmental Protection created permits restricting methane emissions from any new natural gas wells or pipelines. But permits that restrict existing wells have taken longer.“There’s no sense of urgency,” Rep. Greg Vitali, D-Delaware, a longtime environmental advocate, told the Capital-Star.Vitali said he’s collecting signatures for a letter asking the administration to get the rule on th e agenda for the next meeting of the Environmental Quality Board in October. If the board takes the first step to approve the rule, it will still likely be over a year before the new regulation is implemented. The restrictions would still need to traverse the state’s long regulatory review process – including two swings for comment through the Pennsylvania General Assembly.

Pa.’s lawmakers return to Harrisburg this month. Here’s their plan. – House Republicans say of all the bills on their agenda, the first priority is a package dubbed “Energize PA.” Caucus spokesman Mike Straub predicted most of the already-introduced components will begin moving through the approval process this week and next.The package consists of eight bills which would, among other things, make it easier for companies to get environmental permits, encourage development on abandoned industrial sites, and make it cheaper to run natural gas lines to businesses. Broadly, Energize PA is intended to bolster Pennsylvania’s large natural gas industry. It also serves as a repudiation by Republican leaders of Gov. Wolf’s energy plan.

San Jose moves to ban natural gas in new residential buildings – (Reuters) – San Jose, the 10th most populous U.S. city and political center of Silicon Valley, on Tuesday moved to ban natural gas in most new residential buildings beginning next year. With a unanimous vote by the 10-member city council and Mayor Sam Liccardo, San Jose became the largest U.S. city so far to seek to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by favoring appliances that run on renewable electricity sources over those powered by natural gas. As expected, the city council adopted new building codes that favor electrification over natural gas during a meeting broadcast on San Jose’s official website. But the vote also required the council to return next month with an ordinance that would go further by banning natural gas in most new homes. Mayor Liccardo had pushed for the stricter rules in recent days. The move by San Jose and others comes amid rising local and state opposition to the use of natural gas in buildings because of the fossil fuel’s contribution to climate-warming emissions.

Scientists ‘Tantalised’ by Draining Every Hydropower Dam in The US For Solar Panels -If all the hydro-power dams in the United States were removed and replaced with solar panels, it would take up a fraction of the land and produce substantially more electricity, according to a new analysis.The idea is ambitious, and for now, it’s really just a thought experiment. Today, hydropower is a significant source of renewable energy in the US, accounting for roughly six percent of the country’s total electricity output.Removing all 2,603 hydro dams in America would leave a huge energy void behind, but it could also provide room for greener opportunities.While it’s true that hydropower dams are a renewable source of energy, they still produce large amounts of greenhouse gases and can be environmentally destructive and costly to maintain in the long term.In recent years, these criticisms have led to a growing dam removal movement. And although it’s theoretical, a massive investment in solar power might be able to cushion that loss.To cover for all the hydro dams currently in use, scientists estimate we would need nearly 530,000 hectares of photovoltaics (PV). While this sounds like a lot, it’s a “surprisingly modest” amount compared to the combined size of most reservoirs, which cover nearly 4 million hectares nationwide. In fact, the new analysis suggests that substitute solar panels could match the total energy output from hydro dams while using just 13 percent of the same land.

Is there more spin than solar in Duke’s zero-carbon goal? – It’s all in the numbers and the context for those numbers.In the zero-carbon plan that Duke released yesterday, the nation’s largest owner of power plants and electricity sector emitter of CO2 also set a near-term goal to reduce its carbon emissions 50% by 2030.However, the fine print shows that this is a reduction from 2005 levels. Duke, by its own count, has already reduced emissions 31%. So this is actually a pledge to reduce emissions a further 19% by 2030, which was noted by a prominent energy writer on Twitter.This is but one of many of the details that suggests that Duke’s much-touted pledge could be an attempt to put a glossy shine on the foot-dragging that it has engaged in regarding renewables in the service area of its subsidiary utilities in the Carolinas, Florida and Indiana. This is definitely how the plan has been greeted by some advocates.While the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE) welcomed the pledge, local group NC WARN described it as “a scandalous deception foisted upon t he news media, the public and public officials such as Governor Cooper.”

Bill Gates Says Wind, Solar Subsidies Should Go to Something New— It’s time wind and solar passed their subsidies along to emerging technologies that need them more, Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates says. After decades of government incentives, wind and solar have been deployed widely enough for manufacturers and developers to become increasingly efficient and drive down costs. Now they can probably survive without them, Gates said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “The tax benefits there should be shifted into things that are more limiting, like energy storage, offshore wind — which still has a huge premium price,” said Gates, who co-chairs a global group of business, political and scientific leaders formed in 2018 to push for investments to help the world adapt to climate change. U.S. states including New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts see proposed offshore wind farms in the Atlantic Ocean as crucial ingredients to phase out fossil fuels and fight climate change. But the costs of building wind farms at sea are still nearly twice as high as on land. Energy storage, meanwhile, is key to allowing wind and solar plants to dispatch power even when the sun sets and breezes go slack. But big batteries remain expensive, too. “The progress in solar and wind is very helpful,” Gates said. “But the sun doesn’t shine 24 hours a day.”

California Supercharges Battery Incentive for Wildfire-Vulnerable Homes — California has passed its first-ever subsidy aimed specifically at bringing more distributed solar and energy storage to people at highest risk of having their power shut off by utilities trying to prevent wildfires. The California Public Utilities Commission approved changes (PDF) late last week to the Self-Generation Incentive Program, the state’s premier behind-the-meter battery incentive program. Among them is a $100 million carve-out for vulnerable households and critical services in Tier 2 and Tier 3 “high fire threat districts,” offering incentives that could pay for nearly all of a typical residential battery installation, according to the CPUC analysis. This supercharged incentive is aimed specifically at people at the highest risk of being hurt if, or when, grid power is cut off for hours or even days at a time under the state’s heightened wildfire prevention regime. While utilities have been sparing in their use of this new “public safety power shutoff” authority so far this summer, they are largely at the mercy of the weather to determine how often they’ll be forced to use it in the future, or how many customers might be affected.

Trump Admin to Officially Revoke California’s Waiver to Set Stricter Emissions Standards – In its latest move to undermine action on the climate crisis, the Trump administration will formally rescind California‘s waiver to set stricter auto emissions standards under the Clean Air Act. Revoking California’s waiver is part of a broader effort to roll back Obama-era fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks. In a draft proposal released in August of 2018, the administration had promised to replace the Obama-era requirement that cars average 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025 with a much less ambitious target of around 37 miles per gallon. It also said it would revoke California’s ability to set its own standards, so that automakers would not have to build for two national markets.But the reduced standards, which would allow nearly six billion tons of carbon dioxide pollution to enter the atmosphere, have been delayed as staff work to justify them scientifically, legally and technically, The New York Times explained. So the administration decided to move forward with revoking California’s waiver.”Trump has married his administration-wide hostility to the environment to his personal vendetta against California,” Safe Climate Campaign Director Dan Becker told The New York Times. The move is likely to set off a legal battle that could go all the way to the Supreme Court. Part of the reason that the administration moved forward with revoking the waiver is so that it would have a chance to defend the decision in the nation’s highest court before a potential election loss in 2020. The New York Times explained the stakes of that potential fight: Legal experts said that if Mr. Trump’s move was ultimately held up by the Supreme Court, it could permanently block states from regulating vehicle greenhouse gas pollution. If it was rejected by the Supreme Court, it would allow states to set separate tailpipe pollution standards from those set by the federal government. The outcome could split the United States auto market, with some states adhering to stricter pollution standards than others. For automakers, that would be a nightmare. Thirteen states, representing one third of the U.S. auto market, currently follow California’s standards. For its part, California intends to fight.

Trump Tentatively Agrees to Boost Biofuel Quota — Donald Trump has tentatively agreed to a plan for bolstering ethanol and biodiesel, amid pressure from Midwest U.S. senators who warned the president that without action, he risks votes in next year’s election. The blueprint discussed in a meeting at the White House calls for the administration to make up for three years’ worth of waived biofuel quotas tied to the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to exempt some oil refineries from annual blending requirements. That comes on top of other concessions that administration officials had already developed with the aim of encouraging greater U.S. demand for ethanol made from corn. The draft plan was described by people familiar with the matter who asked for anonymity because the deliberations are private. The deal could still unravel, as oil companies and allied senators seek to influence the final outcome and administration officials work to translate broad commitments into formal regulations. Green Plains Inc., a U.S. ethanol producer, tempered its losses after Bloomberg reported the White House deliberations. The shares fell as much as 4.9%, to $10.36, before recovering to $10.62 as of 1:16 p.m. in New York. Renewable Energy Group Inc., one of the largest U.S. biodiesel producers, erased earlier losses, gaining 0.8% to $15.46. Pacific Ethanol Inc. also tempered an earlier decline, rising to 75.61 cents a share. If the deal becomes final, the administration would begin reallocating waived quotas over multiple years, starting with 2020 targets. There is a narrow window for the Trump administration to codify the package of changes. The EPA is legally required to finalize 2020 biofuel-blending targets by Nov. 30, and any new, supplementary proposal must be submitted for public comment first.

Siouxland Energy leader says RFS waivers ‘took the sails out’ of industry – A leader at a northwest Iowa ethanol plant says after the Trump Administration granted ethanol waivers to oil refineries in August, the plant just could not continue operating.“Every one of them has hurt under the Trump Administration, but the last 31 were the final blow. In two days, ethanol prices dropped 18 to 20 cents…That just kind of took the sails out of the profitability of the ethanol industry,” said Kelly Niewenhuis, chairman of the board for Siouxland Energy in Sioux Center, which quit producing ethanol this week.Niewenhuis said they’re hoping the fix being worked on by the Trump Administration will help turn things around.“If we get the same response out of positive news that we got out of the negative news with the last round of small refinery exemptions and we get a 20-cent bounce in ethanol prices, it won’t take long to get this thing up and running again,” the Siouxland Energy board leader said. ‘ Niewenhuis said President Trump needs to keep his promise to farmers and the ethanol industry. Forty-two people have been working at the Sioux Center plant. Farmers in the area were annually selling Siouxland Energy 23.5 million bushels of corn for processing into ethanol.

Californians are buying up electric cars. But where will they plug in? – As a renter, Bruce Wolfe knows the struggles many people face driving an electric car when they lack access to a charging outlet at home. He parks on the street outside his Haight-Ashbury flat in San Francisco, which doesn’t have a garage. There aren’t any public charging stations in the neighborhood, so he charges in a parking lot outside the nonprofit where he works in Marin County. Wolfe said he can’t afford to rent an apartment that has a garage, at least not in San Francisco. Twice in the seven years he has driven electric cars, he’s run out of juice on the road and had to be towed to a charging station. “It becomes an economic justice issue and an equity issue,” Wolfe said of renters and their lack of access to car chargers. “People can’t run cables across the sidewalk.” His predicament illustrates gaps in California’s electric-vehicle charging infrastructure that clean-car advocates say could limit the state’s ability to transition from gas guzzlers – and hit its ambitious goals for limiting emissions that contribute to climate change. Californians are switching to electric cars in record numbers, putting the state on track to surpass its goal of having 1.5 million zero-emission vehicles on the road by 2025. But the plug-in infrastructure needed to support that switch is patchy. If nothing changes, the California Energy Commission projects the state could have about 81,600 fewer public and shared charging ports than it needs in five years. And that could be a low estimate: Electric-car sales could exceed the 2025 goal.

U.S. ‘falling behind’ in global race to develop electric vehicle supply chain – (Reuters) – The United States is losing the race to extract and refine minerals used to make electric vehicles and should do more to spur domestic production, a bipartisan group of senators said on Tuesday. The push comes as China has grown to dominate the market for lithium, rare earths, cobalt and other so-called strategic minerals used to make a plethora of consumer products, a dominance that politicians have said poses a strategic threat to the United States. The Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee held a Tuesday hearing in part to keep the topic fresh in the national dialogue even as attention begins to lurch toward the 2020 presidential campaign. “China is consolidating control of the entire supply chain for clean technologies,” Senator Lisa Murkowski, the Alaskan Republican who is the chair of the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said. “The United States is falling behind … and allowing that to happening is a strategic mistake.” The comments have become a kind of refrain for Murkowski, who so far this year has used her position as chair of the powerful committee to clamor for more attention to the topic.[nL2N22Q0ID Both Republican and Democratic committee members said they saw mining as crucial in order to deploy more solar, wind and other renewable technologies.

The oil industry vs. the electric car – -The oil industry is trying to crush the booming electric car movement.Groups backed by industry giants like Exxon Mobil and the Koch empire are waging a state-by-state, multimillion-dollar battle to squelch utilities’ plans to build charging stations across the country. Environmentalists call the fight a reprise of the “Who Killed the Electric Car?” battles that doomed an earlier generation of battery-driven vehicles in the 1990s.Oil-backed groups have challenged electric companies’ plans in 10 states, according to utility commission filings reviewed by POLITICO, waging regulatory and lobbying campaigns against the proposals. The showdown is taking place as utilities, eager to increase the demand for power, push for approval to build charging networks in locations such as shopping centers and rest stops in more than half the nation.“Fossil fuel interests control 90 percent of the transportation fuel market in the U.S. and are really feeling threatened,” said Gina Coplon-Newfield, director of the electric vehicle initiative at the Sierra Club.The counterattack involves an array of trade associations and industry-funded political groups representing every segment of the petroleum sector.In the Midwest, the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, a trade group for gasoline makers, has filed comments against charging plans in Kansasand Missouri, and has opposed Colorado’s new zero-emission vehicle mandate as part of a “Freedom to Drive” coalition of auto dealers and oil groups. The typical consumer, they say, should not have to pay for incentives or charging stations that mainly benefit people wealthy enough to afford cars like Teslas. “We feel like we’re on the side of the angels here in terms of wanting this to be a free market and not wanting people who don’t use the service to have to pay for service,” said Derrick Morgan, senior vice president at the fuel and petrochemicals group.In Illinois and Iowa, the American Petroleum Institute joined with Americans for Prosperity – a political group funded by the Koch oil empire – to oppose utilities’ electric vehicle investments. The owner of a large refinery joined other industrial interests to oppose utility charging and shared mobility plans in Minnesota.In Massachusetts, API teamed with gasoline marketers and convenience stores to oppose an electric vehicle charging buildout from the utility National Grid. The Western States Petroleum Association has opposed utility charging plans in Arizona alongside AFP, as well as electric vehicle legislation in California. And in Maryland, API aligned with convenience stores, gasoline stations and truck-stop owners to oppose utilities’ electric vehicle plans.

Jeff Bezos unveils sweeping plan to tackle climate change, will buy 100,000 electric vans from Rivian – Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos unveiled a sweeping new plan to tackle climate change at an event held on Thursday at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. Bezos said Amazon has committed to meet the goals of the United Nations Paris Agreement 10 years early, which will involve regularly measuring and reporting the company’s emissions, implementing decarbonization strategies and altering its business strategies to eventually eliminate carbon altogether. As part of the plan, Amazon has agreed to purchase 100,000 electric delivery vans from vehicle manufacturer Rivian. Bezos’ appearance comes as Amazon faces mounting pressure from employees to address its environmental impact. At Amazon’s annual shareholder meeting in May, thousands of employees submitted a proposal asking Bezos to develop a comprehensive climate-change plan and reduce its carbon footprint, though it was ultimately rejected. The proposal was built on an employee letter published in April that accused Amazon of donating to climate-delaying legislators and urged the company to transition away from fossil fuels. Additionally, over 1,000 Amazon employees have said they plan to walk out on Sept. 20 as part of the Global Climate Strike, of which Google and Microsoft employees also plan to participate. The employee walkout represents the first strike at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters in the company’s 25-year history, according to Wired. The company has taken previous steps to address climate change. In February, Amazon announced it would make half of all its shipments carbon neutral by 2030 by using more eco-friendly packaging, using more renewable energy like wind power, as well as using electric vans for package deliveries. As part of that effort, which it calls “Shipment Zero,” Amazon said it would share its company-wide carbon footprint for the first time later this year.

China’S Grid Architect Proposes A “Made In China” Upgrade To North America’S Power System IEEE Spectrum – IEEE SpectrumTransmission lines in the United States and Canada require approval from every state and province traversed, and that political fragmentation hinders deployment of long power links of the type connecting vast swaths of territory in regions such as China, India, and Brazil. As a result, few studies detail how technologies that efficiently move power over thousands of kilometers, such as ultrahigh-voltage direct current (UHV DC) systems, might perform in North America. Earlier this week, the Beijing-based Global Energy Interconnection Development and Cooperation Organization (GEIDCO) stepped in to fill that gap, outlining an ambitious upgrade for North America’s grids. GEIDCO’s plan promises to greatly shrink North America’s carbon footprint, but its boldest prescriptions represent technical and economic optimizations that run counter to political interests and recent trends. “Thinking out of the box is how you solve complicated, difficult problems,” said former Southern California Edison CEO Ted Craver in response to the plan. But GEIDCO’s approach, he said, raises concerns about energy sovereignty that could prove difficult to settle. As Craver put it: “There’s theory and then there’s practice.”The proposed North American transmission scheme was unveiled on Tuesday at an international transmission forum in Vancouver, Canada, byLiu Zhenya, the former State Grid Corp. of China chairman who launched GEIDCO in 2016. While at State Grid, Liu championed the development of the world’s first 800- and 1,100-kilovolt UHV DC lines and the first 1,000-kV, UHV AC transmission. State Grid has deployed them to create a brawny hybrid AC-DC electricity system that taps far-flung energy resources to power China’s densely-populated and industrialized seaboard.

U.S. utilities file legal challenge to Trump power plant rule –(Reuters) – Con Edison and eight other U.S. utilities mostly from Democratic-led states have filed a legal challenge to the Trump administration’s plan to cut carbon emissions from power plants, which replaces a much tougher Obama-era rule.The New York-based power company said in a statement on Monday that the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule undermines efforts already under way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by investing in renewable energy, electric vehicle infrastructure and energy efficiency and other clean technologies.The group of utilities, which calls itself the Power Companies Climate Coalition, have already invested heavily in adopting those technologies because their state governments passed laws requiring them to adopt large amounts of renewable energy such as wind and solar. In addition to Con Ed, the coalition comprises Exelon Corp, National Grid, PG&E Corp, Public Service Enterprise Group Inc, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, Seattle City Light, Sacramento Municipal Utility District and New York Power Authority. Together, they serve over 23 million customers in 49 states.A similar suit was filed by Democratic-led states and cities in August.

Anderson residents demand testing of particles falling from the skies around TVA’s Bull Run plant – Unidentified particulate matter has been falling from the skies around the Tennessee Valley Authority’s coal-fired plant in Anderson County for nearly a week, residents have told Knox News. TVA says it has no idea why the unidentified substance is showing up on homes, cars, driveways and mailboxes in at least two neighborhoods located on opposite sides of a smokestack at its Bull Run Fossil Plant in the Claxton community. “Bull Run is equipped with state-of-the-art air emissions controls, including equipment to limit particulate matter,” TVA spokesman Scott Brooks said in an email. “Plant personnel have checked the equipment and did not find anything to indicate the substance in the photos/pictures is coming from the plant.” Knox News captured photographs of the particles on Monday. Anderson County Commission Chairman Tracy Wandell called for an environmental analysis on Monday. He lives in Claxton, and his truck, too, has been coated in an unidentified substance. His father-in-law, Doug Kelly, has been watching particles falling around his house for at least a week. “You can see little drops falling,” Kelly said. “It’s falling out on my car … You can see it on my driveway.” Kelly and Leo York – who lives on the opposite side of the smokestack from Kelly’s home – say they have called TDEC to complain and ask for an investigation. TVA says it will test the substance if someone provides the utility a sample. Kelly said he gave one to Wandell. Particulate matter – no matter the source material – is unhealthy to breathe. The smaller the particle size, the more dangerous because the lungs can’t expel it. The particles, and whatever chemicals make up the source material – stay in the body and get into the bloodstream, according to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Residents told Knox News they’re worried the particulate matter could contain coal ash. Coal ash waste – in all its forms – is made up of at least 26 toxins, heavy metals and radioactive materials, according to various reports by the Environmental Protection Agency, TDEC, TVA and Duke Energy. In its dry form, coal ash is considered “fine” in texture and its particle size is the tiniest on the regulatory scale, numerous studies have shown. TVA produces 1,500 tons of it daily at Bull Run.

Another Illinois coal plant is closing – the fifth announced in a month – One of the dirtiest coal plants in Illinois will close within the next three years, the latest sign that the lung-damaging, climate-changing source of electricity is on the way out in the United States.Shuttering the E.D. Edwards power plant south of Peoria resolves a federal lawsuit filed six years ago by local and national environmental groups, which documented how various owners had failed to install modern pollution-control equipment.A federal judge agreed those decisions led to dirtier air in communities near the Edwards plant and contributed to smog and soot problems in Chicago and other downwind cities.The legal settlement announced M onday comes less than a month after Vistra Energy, the most recent owner of the Edwards plant,announced it will close four other Illinois coal plants by the end of the year.

Coal declining at quicker clip than previously forecast, new report finds The country’s energy data center tempered forecasts for Western coal production as demand for the mineral declines nationwide and market uncertainty persists, according to a new report released Tuesday by the Energy Information Administration. Just one month ago, the agency expected the Western coal supply to total 369 million tons this year and drop to 356 million in tonsin 2020. But the most recent report cut supplies projections for next year by 5 percent, or nearly 18 million tons, a sign that coal market instability could be sticking around for the foreseeable future. This year’s coal supply projections were trimmed compared to last month’s too. The more conservative predictions cast an ominous cloud of uncertainty over Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, one of the top sources for coal nationwide.

Year After Florence, Coal Ash Still a Concern in North Carolina -Hurricane Florence made landfall in North Carolina a year ago today. And while its winds were only Category 1-force, its record rainfall and floodwaters caused major devastation – especially to coal ash ponds, which can contain toxins like mercury and lead. This toxic sludge can pose a major public health threat if it reaches waterways or nearby communities.A year later, the state of North Carolina has made strides cleaning up these toxic sites, but advocates argue a lot of work remains.The toxic tragedy began well after Hurricane Florence hit the coast. Floodwaters stayed high, and in many places rose more than a week after the hurricane made landfall. All that water eventually caused a dam to break at Lake Sutton, which is next to a former coal plant with a coal ash pond operated by Duke Energy. The water breached the pond’s retaining wall and released the mixture into surface water, which flowed into the Cape Fear River. A study by Duke University researchers confirmed that fact – which was previously a source of debate – earlier this year in a peer-reviewed study. The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality found that in the immediate aftermath, tests showed metal contents in the river were below state thresholdsoutside of copper (which could have come from elsewhere). Coal ash was a problem in the state before Hurricane Florence, so the company had already begun the process of cleaning up. Still, the hurricane underscored the dangers of coal ash, Frank Holleman, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, told Earther. A certain level of urgency followed the fallout of Florence – an urgency that was much needed and much delayed.“Even when the weather is good, these sites are dangerous.” Holleman said. “But when the weather is bad, there’s an even greater risk.” Duke Energy has cleaned up the cooling pond at its Sutton Plant since Florence, as well as another two coal ash basins, company spokesperson Bill Norton told Earther. Eight basins have been excavated in total, amounting to some 20 million tons of coal ash. That includes 5 million tons in the last year alone, he said.

Timeline for Briefs Set in Blackjewel ‘Hot Goods’ Case, Miner Pay Remains Murky – Frank Volk, chief U.S. bankruptcy judge for the Southern District of West Virginia, gave the Labor Department, Blackjewel and Blackjewel Marketing and Sales (BJMS) – buyer of the disputed coal – until Sept. 23 to submit a series of briefs to the court. A final set of briefs is due Oct. 1.Volk said he expects to review the documents “swiftly” and rule soon after whether the coal should remain sitting until the Blackjewel workers who mined it are fully paid, or if it can be sold.While the timeline provides some clarity about the future of the coal in question, Friday’s hearing highlighted continued uncertainty about if and how hundreds of miners across the region will be paid millions of dollars in owed wages. The Labor Department says the coal is “hot goods.” Under the federal Fair Labor Standard Act, workers must be paid at least minimum wage or the things they produce can’t legally be moved or sold. More than 1,000 former Blackjewel employees across West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia are still awaiting their final paychecks more than two months after the company declared bankruptcy. “The FLSA has put the prohibition in place to discourage employers from benefiting from the uncompensated work of the employees,” Samantha Thomas, associate regional solicitor for the Labor Department, told the court during the Friday status hearing. “It’s about making sure that employers that actually abide by the law are not unfairly treated – because here’s BJMS and Blackjewel being able to profit off of the fact that [sic] they’re able to move coal that they didn’t really pay for in terms of workers being paid for their work.”Volk asked the Department of Labor about its “end game” for the coal sitting on the tracks. Thomas said that in the case the judge does affirm the coal cannot be moved, the agency would hope Blackjewel, BJMS or “another party” would step up and pay the owed wages so the coal would no longer be considered “hot goods.”

Coal, and the Harlan County Coal Miners Who Blocked a Train Over Bankrupt Blackjewel’s Wage Theft – – Lambert Strether – I want to start by recommending the Trillbilly Worker’s Party podcast, from Whitesburg, KY, not least because Whitesburg is in Letcher County, which is adjacent to Harlan County, where the unpaid miners blocked the train. and the podcast was on the story from the beginning. BothRolling Stone and the New Yorker have done some good reporting on the ground. Summarizing the basics: In July 29, coal miners in Cumberland, Kentucky began blocking a train carrying more than $1 million worth of coal to protest their former employer, Blackjewel LLC, which declared bankruptcy on July 1. According to CNN, the company wrote bad checks to 350 miners in Harlan County alone, prompting the workers to stage the protest to demand their paychecks.(Cumberland is in storied Harlan County, site of the “Harlan County War” of 1931-1939, in which the workers finally won the right to organize). More about this century’s protest shortly. Back to the podcast: “Bonus Episode: Voices of the Harlan County Coal Blockade” was made a few days after the miners blocked the train; “Episode 111: Someone’s Goin to Hell, and Someone’s Goin to Jail” covers electoral politics, fatally skewering Amy McGrath, who Chuck Schumer recruited to run against McConnell; and “Episode 112: No One Agency Should Have All That POWER,” with scathing views of consultants and the NGO ecology – close reading of grant proposals[1]! – and out-of-state liberals. In tone the Trillbillies are something like Chapo, but in substance, modulo the banter and the giggling, a lot more rigorous. Very very dark and very very dry, and the darkness and dryness is earned. All this being a round-about way of saying that I would have to listen to this podcast for many more hours – heaven forfend there should be automagically generated transcripts by podcast providers – to really feel I have any understanding of Harlan County at all. For example, the third a in “Appalachia” is not long. Who knew? All this said, I want to do four things to put the Harlan County Train Blockage in context. First, I’ll look at climate and the coal industry. Then I will look at the actual train blockage itself, the industrial action. Next, I’ll look at why the anarchist trans activists (really) left the protest. Finally, I’ll look at the ridiculous and exploitative Democrat Amy McGrath, who is those things even if she is raking in the bucks. Hopefully, as this story develops, these perspectives will be useful.

Mine sale, stockpiled coal resolution are stalled – An ongoing dispute over coal stockpiled at Blackjewel LLC sites has all but halted other proceedings in the company’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy case. Among matters stalled by the dispute, and by other factors, is the pending sale of Blackjewel’s Lone Mountain and Black Mountain assets to Tennessee-based Kopper Glo Mining LLC. Meanwhile, Kopper Glo has sweetened its offer by $1 million in the form of compensation for miners displaced by Blackjewel’s July 1 shutdown. During early August auctions, Kopper Glo was the successful bidder for the Lone Mountain/Black Mountain properties, which contain assets in Wise and Lee counties along with Harlan and Letcher counties in Kentucky. At that time, the company offered $6.35 million in cash, per-ton royalties of $9.1 million over six years and assumption of “asset retirement” obligations estimated at $38.4 million. But weeks later, a different bidder, Kentucky-based Coking Coal LLC, filed an objection to the terms of the proposed Kopper Glo sale. Coking Coal bid on Blackjewel’s Pardee mine complex and associated properties, including the Fork Ridge mine; the Band Mill refuse facility; the Pardee prep plant; Pardee Strip #1; Meadow Branch #1; and Trace Fork #1. Coking Coal asked the bankruptcy court in West Virginia to delay or add conditions to Kopper Glo’s purchase of the Lone Mountain/Black Mountain assets. Coking Coal said it wants a lease or other rights of access to those assets so that it can reach properties owned by Penn Virginia Operating Co. LLC. But attorneys for Blackjewel argue that this demand is “directly contrary” to assurances Coking Coal made in August. Meanwhile, attorneys for Blackjewel and affiliated companies filed a new proposed order for sale of Lone Mountain/Black Mountain to INMET Mining LLC, a Kopper Glo affiliate. Along with the previous terms, INMET/Kopper Glo now offers to pay displaced Lone Mountain/Black Mountain miners’ unpaid wages, with $450,000 to be paid at the sale closing and another $550,000 to be paid from royalties over two years.

Laid off and owed pay: the Kentucky miners blocking coal trains – – Harlan county, Kentucky, earned the nickname “Bloody Harlan” from a series of labor strikes and violent confrontations in the 1930s led by coalminers and union organizers against coal corporations and law enforcement. In 1973, Harlan’s coalminers went on strike for 13 months when contract negotiations with Duke Power Company broke down after miners voted to form a union. There are no longer any unionized mines in Kentucky, but Harlan’s miners are currently continuing the region’s legacy of labor struggles against wealthy and powerful coal corporations: they are blocking the coal trains from leaving a mine that laid them off. A collection of tents next to some rail tracks may not look like much compared to that rich legacy of labor struggle. A small group of families have occupied the site since 29 July, sitting on camp chairs, occasionally hosting live music and attracting sympathetic supporters from all over the US. The small protest has endured for more than six weeks now, garnering nationwide attention – including a video of support from the Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders – and preventing trains carrying more than $1m worth of coal from being moved out of Harlan county until workers are compensated for the unpaid wages they’re owed since mining firm Blackjewel filed for bankruptcy. About 1,700 coalminers in West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky and Wyoming were laid off without any notice on 1 July when Revelation Energy and it’s affiliate, Blackjewel Coal Company, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Unlike other bankruptcies in the coal industry, Blackjewel’s mines have been shut down during proceedings in court and workers experienced previous paychecks and 401k deductions bouncing from their bank accounts, while owed wages were left unpaid. “With my husband’s checks, they owe him $6,000,” said Stacy Rowe, who has helped run the Blackjewel blockade since it began. A class action lawsuit was filed in July 2019 against Blackjewel for violating the Warn Act, which mandates companies must provide workers with a 60-day written notice in advance of any mass layoffs of 100 or more employees.

Paychecks Cut For W.Va. Blackjewel Miners; KY And VA Miners Still Waiting – West Virginia employees of coal operator Blackjewel LLC have received their final paychecks more than two months after the company declared bankruptcy on July 1.In an agreement reached last week between the Department of Labor and the company, Blackjewel cut paper checks for all owed wages to a few dozen employees working at the company’s Pax Mine in Fayette County, West Virginia. While good news for former West Virginia employees, about 1,000 miners in Kentucky and Virginia are still owed millions of dollars in back wages. Christina Burgess’ husband, Greg, ran heavy equipment at the Pax Mine. The 20-year coal mining veteran had been laid off before, but the family had never before experienced the fallout from a paycheck bouncing, as Greg’s did in early July. The Burgess family received Greg’s owed wages late last week, but is still waiting for the check to clear a bank hold. Blackjewel’s bad check created a series of challenges. The first few unemployment checks the family received went straight to the bank to get the account out of the red. In total, Christina said Blackjewel’s bankruptcy has cost her family about $3,000 in penalties and fees.Christina said she empathizes with younger miners who were hit hard by Blackjewel’s sudden bankruptcy. As one of the administrators for the Blackjewel Employees Stand Together Facebook group, she has heard many stories of families unable to pay their bills as a result of not being paid by Blackjewel. She expects the fallout from Blackjewel’s bad checks to have long-term consequences as well.

West Virginia DEP OKs construction permit for coal-to-liquids facility in Mason County – WCHS – A proposed coal-to-liquids facility in Mason County has been granted a construction permit by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, the company said. Domestic Synthetic Fuels said in a news release the plant to be built near Point Pleasant in Mason County will create 130 direct jobs on site, and 130 coal mining jobs to supply the facility with raw materials. Thousands of construction workers will be needed to build the facility. The approval of the permit follows a public comment period and public meetings. At a public meeting July 30 in Point Pleasant, some people expressed concern about possible health risks from the $1.2 billion project, while others lauded the project for its direct and indirect economic benefits. Company officials said the facility will turn West Virginia coal and natural gas into ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel, aviation fuel, gasoline and other value-added products. Construction is expected to begin in October 2019 and be finished in three years.

The Day – Millstone, utilities finalize 10-year contract – – State regulators recently approved a 10-year contract between the owner of Millstone Power Station and utility companies, effectively ending the yearslong political, regulatory and environmental battles to keep the plant operational. Gov. Ned Lamont, who stepped in earlier this year to help secure a deal between haggling Dominion Energy, Eversource and United Illuminating, applauded the finalized contract in a news release Wednesday. “Had this contract not gone forward, the facility would be in danger of closing down, which would have increased greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent across the New England region,” said Lamont, who recently pushed for all of the state’s energy to come from clean sources by 2040. “Now we can renew our focus on offshore wind and other renewable energy resources.” The contract calls on the utilities to buy half the plant’s output over the next decade. The price per kilowatt hour in the contract has not yet been released to the public, according to Dominion spokesman Ken Holt. Department of Energy and Environmental Protection spokeswoman Kristina Rozek said pricing will be available 90 days after contract approval, unless Dominion chooses to release it sooner. Facing high maintenance and security costs and stiff competition from natural gas, Virginia-based Dominion had threatened to shutter the 2,100-megawatt Millstone unless the state let it compete against higher-priced solar, wind and hydropower. Nuclear plants in New York, Illinois and New Jersey have faced early retirement before lawmakers in those states approved subsidies. Dominion closed Kewaunee Power Station in Wisconsin in 2013.

Ending MOX better for S.C. nuclear disposal than keeping it, feds say in Supreme Court – The death of the over-budget and past-due Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility was more a blessing than a curse, the federal government argued in a recent Supreme Court brief, at the same time urging the high court to dismiss South Carolina’s petition for legal review. Ending the MOX project – never completed, more than a decade in the making and costing billions of dollars – actually lessens nuclear repercussions in the Palmetto State, according to the federal government’s Sept. 11 court filing.”Indeed, the decision to halt construction of the MOX facility reduces the likelihood of injury by allowing the department to focus its resources on other disposal methods that can begin more quickly and with greater certainty,” it reads in part. MOX was nixed in October 2018 by the U.S. Department of Energy’s semiautonomous weapons and nonproliferation agency, the National Nuclear Security Administration. The facility was being built at the Savannah River Site, a sprawling nuclear reserve directly south of Aiken and hours northwest of Charleston.The NNSA’s chop landed five months after U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry informed congressional defense committees of his intent to terminate the already halting venture.South Carolina officials have often argued that ending MOX would render the state a toxic waste dump. But the secretary’s decision to abandon the facility does not equate to the abandonment of nuclear material in South Carolina, the federal government stated in its brief. MOX, the product of a 2000s-era pact between the U.S. and Russia, was meant to turn 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium into nuclear fuel. While many metric tons of surplus plutonium are right now kept at the Savannah River Site, only some of the cache was destined for MOX, an administration official told the Aiken Standard earlier this year.A majority of the the MOX-bound defense plutonium never reached SRS, the same official said.

Agency could keep Three Mile Island nuclear debris in Idaho – (AP) – The partially melted reactor core from the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history could remain in Idaho for another 20 years if regulators finalize a license extension sought by the U.S. Energy Department, officials said Monday. The core from Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania partially melted in 1979, an event that changed the way Americans view nuclear technology. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has determined there would be no significant impact from extending the license to store the core at the 890-square-mile (2,305-square-kilometer) site that includes Idaho National Laboratory. The agency would also have to complete a safety evaluation report before renewing the license. The Energy Department site sits atop the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer, a Lake Erie-size underground body of water that supplies cities and farms in the region with water. The new license would be good through 2039, four years past a deadline the Energy Department initially set with Idaho to remove the radioactive waste. State and federal officials say the waste could still be shipped out of Idaho ahead of the 2035 deadline and would not affect the 1995 agreement that contains penalties for missed deadlines. Idaho is already fining the Energy Department for missing a deadline involving radioactive liquid waste stored at the site. It’s not clear where the Three Mile Island waste could be moved, as the U.S. doesn’t have a designated repository.

Fukushima’s Radioactive Water Crisis —– Tokyo Electric Power’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, which experienced three massive meltdowns in 2011, is running out of room to store radioactive water. No surprise! But now, what to do about phosphorescent water? Addressing the issue, Japan’s environmental minister Yoshiaki Harada held a news conference (September 2019). Unfortunately, he proffered the following advice: “The only option will be to drain it into the sea and dilute it.” (Source: Justin McCurry in Tokyo, Fukushima: Japan Will Have to Dump Radioactive Water Into Pacific, Minister Says, The Guardian, Sept. 10, 2019) “The only option”… Really? Over the past 8 years, Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) has scrambled like a Mad Hatter to construct emergency storage tanks (1,000) to contain upwards of one million tonnes of contaminated radioactive water, you know, the kind of stuff that, over time, destroys human cells, alters DNA, causes cancer, or produces something like the horrific disfigured creature in John Carpenter’s The Thing! That’s the upshot of a triple nuclear meltdown that necessitates constant flow of water to prevent further melting of reactor cores that have been decimated and transfigured into corium or melted blobs. It’s the closest to a full-blown “china syndrome” in all of human history. Whew! Although, the truth is it’ll be a dicey situation for decades to come. Ever since March 11, 2011, TEPCO has scrambled to build storage tanks to prevent massive amounts of radioactive water from pouring into the ocean (still, some lesser amounts pour into the ocean every day by day). Now the government is floating a trial balloon in public that, once the tanks are full, it’ll be okay to dump the radioactive water into the ocean. Their logic is bizarre, meaning, on the one hand, the meltdown happens, and they build storage tanks to contain the radioactive water, but on the other hand, once the storage tanks run out of space, it’s okay to dump radioactive water into the ocean. Seriously? Meantime, the Fukushima meltdown brings the world community face to face with TEPCO and the government of Japan in an unprecedented grand experiment that, so far, has failed miserably. Of course, dumping radiation into the Pacific is like dumping radiation into everybody’s back yard. But, for starters, isn’t that a non-starter? Along the way, deceit breeds duplicity, as the aforementioned Guardian article says the Japanese government claims only one (1) death has been associated with the Fukushima meltdown but keep that number in mind. Reliable sources in Japan claim otherwise, as explained in previous articles on the subject, for example, “Fukushima Darkness, Part Two” d/d November 24, 2017, and as highlighted further on in this article. When it comes to nuclear accidents, cover-ups reign supreme; you can count on it.

New Study Documents Depleted Uranium Impacts on Children in Iraq – (see pictures) In the years following 2003, the U.S. military dotted Iraq with over 500 military bases, many of them close to Iraqi cities. These cities suffered the impacts of bombs, bullets, chemical and other weapons, but also the environmental damage of open burn pits on U.S. bases, abandoned tanks and trucks, and the storage of weapons on U.S. bases, including depleted uranium weapons. Here’s a map of some of the U.S. bases: This map and the other illustrations below have been provided by Mozhgan Savabieasfahani, one of the authors of a forthcoming article in the journal Environmental Pollution. The article documents the results of a study undertaken in Nasiriyah near Tallil Air Base. Nasiriyah was bombed by the U.S. military in 2003 and in the early 1990s. Open-air burn pits were used at Tallil Air Base beginning in 2003. See a second map: Now take a look (do not turn away) at these images of infants who were born between August and September of 2016 to parents who had continuously lived in Nasiriyah. The visible birth defects include: anencephaly (A1 and A2 , B), lower limb anomalies (C), hydrocephalus (D), spina bifida (E), and multiple anomalies (F, G, H). Imagine if these tragic birth defects had been caused by a natural disaster or the misdeeds of the next government targeted by the United States for “regime change” – would not the outrage be widespread and thunderous? But these horrors have a different cause. Here’s another illustration, of hand and foot abnormalities in children in Nasiriyah, and in the ancient city of Ur, near the U.S. base: The study now being published found an inverse relationship between the distance one lived from Tallil Air Base and the risk of birth defects as well as of levels of thorium and uranium in one’s hair. It found a positive relationship between the presence of thorium and uranium and the presence of birth defect(s). Thorium is a decay-product of depleted uranium, and a radioactive compound. These results were found near this particular base rather than dozens of others, not because it is necessarily unique; no similar studies have yet been conducted near each of the other bases. The results found by this study are likely to be identical to results that could be found by a similar study next year, or next decade, or next century, or next millennium, at least in the absence of major efforts to mitigate the damage. The use of these weapons was a small part of the damage done to Iraq, its people, its society, and its natural environment by the war. We ought not to require any legal case before offering aid and making reparations. Basic human decency ought to suffice.

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