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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Note: Because of the high volume of news regarding the coronavirus outbreak, that news has been published separately:
- 05 Jul 2020 – Coronavirus Disease Weekly News 11July 2020
05 Jul 2020 – Coronavirus Economic Weekly News 11July 2020
Toxic hand sanitizers have blinded and killed adults and children, FDA warns – Adults and children in the United States have been blinded, hospitalized, and, in some cases, even died after drinking hand sanitizers contaminated with the extremely toxic alcohol methanol, the Food and Drug Administration reports. In an updated safety warning, the agency identified five more brands of hand sanitizer that contain methanol, a simple alcohol often linked to incorrectly distilled liquor that is poisonous if ingested, inhaled, or absorbed through the skin. The newly identified products are in addition to nine methanol-containing sanitizers the FDA identified last month, which are all made by the Mexico-based manufacturer Eskbiochem SA de CV. According to FDA testing, one of the products contained 81 percent methanol and no ethanol, a safe alcohol typically used in hand sanitizers. Methanol is metabolized to formaldehyde, then to formic acid inside the body. This can lead to a dangerous buildup of acid in the bloodstream that damages organs and tissues, particularly the optic nerve, causing vision impairment and blindness. Drinking as little as 30 milliliters – 2 tablespoons – may be lethal to children, and even smaller amounts can cause blindness.But drinking isn’t the only way methanol causes severe harms. Inhaling or absorbing methanol through the skin can lead to the same systemic effects seen from ingestion. Those can manifest as nausea, vomiting, headache, blurred vision, permanent blindness, seizures, coma, permanent damage to the nervous system, or death, the FDA notes.“Although all persons using these products on their hands are at risk for methanol poisoning, young children who accidently ingest these products and adolescents and adults who drink these products as an alcohol (ethanol) substitute, are most at risk,” the FDA said in its warning. Risks are heightened further amid the current COVID-19 pandemic since many people are using hand sanitizer more frequently to try to protect against the devastating new coronavirus. The newly identified products are as followed: (list) The full list of product codes can be found here.
FDA expands list of hand sanitizers to avoid due to methanol risk with more being recommended for recall – The Food and Drug Administration has expanded the number of hand sanitizers to avoid because they may contain methanol, a toxic substance when absorbed through skin or ingested.The FDA now lists on a chart 59 varieties of hand sanitizer that should be avoided, some which have already been recalled, and other products being recommended for recalls as they may contain the potentially fatal ingredient.All of the products in the FDA’s latest methanol update appear to have been produced in Mexico. The FDA says it has “seen a sharp increase in hand sanitizer products that are labeled to contain ethanol (also known as ethyl alcohol) but that have tested positive for methanol contamination.” In June, the FDA warned consumers not to use nine kinds of hand sanitizers because they may contain methanol, and added to the list in early July.”Methanol is not an acceptable active ingredient for hand sanitizers and must not be used due to its toxic effects,” the FDA said, noting its investigation of methanol in certain hand sanitizers is ongoing. Methanol is used industrially as a solvent, pesticide and alternative fuel source, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Exposure to it can cause nausea, vomiting, headache, blurred vision, permanent blindness, seizures, coma, permanent damage to the nervous system and death.
Salmonella outbreak: One person has died and 465 people have gotten sick after interacting with pet poultry – One person has died and 86 have been put into the hospital in the latest outbreak of salmonella connected to pet poultry, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Wednesday. The CDC says 368 people have reported getting sick since May 20, bringing this year’s total to 465 poultry-related salmonella cases reported in 42 states. That’s about twice as many as were reported at the same time last year, the CDC said.The CDC says 86 people have been hospitalized. One person in Oklahoma has died from the infection. About a third of those who have gotten sick are young children under the age of 5.Backyard flocks have become an increasingly popular hobby. People often say they want to raise the birds because they have an interest in knowing where their food comes from, but it’s also about more than just fresh eggs. People say they like the companionship the birds provide, much like a cat or dog would. Media reports at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic showed that hatcheries nationwide saw a spike in orders for the birds. The hobby can be fun and educational, but families have to be aware of how to safely manage the animals,according to the CDC. It’s a little different than raising a dog or cat.
Deadly Brain-Eating Amoeba Confirmed in Florida – As if the surging cases of coronavirus weren’t enough for Floridians to handle, now the state’s Department of Health (DOH) has confirmed that a person in the Tampa area tested positive for a rare brain-eating amoeba, according to CBS News. The Florida DOH posted a warning to residents to remind them of the dangers of the rare single-celled amoeba that attacks brain tissue. The amoeba is known, scientifically, as Naegleria fowleri. Only four people have survived Naegleria fowleri in the U.S. between 1962 and 2016, out of 143 who contracted the disease, as The Independent reported. There have been only 37 cases reported in Florida since 1962, which makes up nearly 26 percent of all instances in the U.S. Naegleria fowleri is typically found in warm freshwater such as lakes, rivers and ponds. The Florida DOH has cautioned people who swim in those freshwater sources to be aware of the amoeba’s possible presence, particularly when the water is warm, according to CNN. The DOH did not disclose where in Hillsborough County the patient had contracted the amoeba, nor the patient’s condition, according to The Independent. The amoeba’s deadly effects happen when it causes a rare infection of the brain called primary amebic meningoencephalitis (PAM), which destroys brain tissue and is usually fatal, according to Fox News. “Infections can happen when contaminated water enters the body through the nose,” the DOH said in its letter. After the amoeba enters the nose through contaminated water, it then travels to the brain where it causes PAM, according to health officials. “Infections usually occur when temperatures increase for prolonged periods of time, which results in higher water temperatures and lower water levels,” health officials stated in their letter.
Bubonic Plague Case Confirmed in China’s Inner Mongolia –A herdsman in the Chinese autonomous region of Inner Mongolia was diagnosed with the bubonic plague Sunday, The New York Times reported.The Bayannur city health commission confirmed the diagnosis and issued a third-level alert, the second from the bottom in a four-level system. Mongolian health authorities are also investigating a second suspected case involving a 15 year old who developed a fever after coming into contact with a marmot that had been hunted by a dog, China’s Global Times tweeted. “At present, there is a risk of a human plague epidemic spreading in this city. The public should improve its self-protection awareness and ability, and report abnormal health conditions promptly,” the local health authority said, according to China Daily.The bubonic plague caused the Black Death that killed around 50 million people in Africa, Asia and Europe during the 14th century, according to BBC News. But public health experts say it is unlikely to give the newcoronavirus a run for its money as a global pandemic.”Unlike in the 14th Century, we now have an understanding of how this disease is transmitted,” Stanford Health Care infectious disease physician Dr. Shanti Kappagoda told Heathline, according to BBC News. “We know how to prevent it. We are also able to treat patients who are infected with effective antibiotics.” Bubonic plague is caused by the Yersinia pestis bacterium which is spread from infected rodents to humans by fleas, according to The New York Times. In Inner Mongolia, the rodents in question are usually marmots, and the health alert put in place by Bayannur health officials warns against eating, hunting or transporting potentially infected animals and urges people to report diseased or dead rodents. The alert will remain in place till the end of the year, according to BBC News.
China Confirms Case of Bubonic Plague In Inner Mongolia – China has confirmed one case of bubonic plague in northern province Inner Mongolia, according to a statement on the local health authority’s website. The patient is now under treatment at a hospital and is in a stable condition, the Bayannur health commission said in a late Sunday night statement. It also issued a level-three alert, warning of the risks of human-to-human infection and urging citizens to report dead animals, suspected plague cases and patients running a fever for unidentified reasons.Bubonic plague, also called the ‘Black Death’, killed 50 million people in a 14th century outbreak in Europe and about 12 million globally in the 19th century. It’s now the most common type of plague and can be treated with antibiotics. Inner Mongolia reported four cases in November while Madagascar sees some cases nearly every year between the months of September and April.Sign up here for our daily coronavirus newsletter on what you need to know, and subscribe to our Covid-19 podcast for the latest news and analysis.Mongolia also confirmed two cases of bubonic plague earlier this month, triggering a quarantine in the province that borders China and Russia.Treatable AilmentWhile the ailment is treatable, unlike the novel pathogen which has caused the ongoing pandemic, Chinese health authorities are wary of any infectious disease spreading after a hard-fought containment of the coronavirus outbreak. Residents have been asked to take precautions while going to the grasslands, and refrain from approaching and eating wild animals.Bubonic plague is a bacterial infection and is characterized by painful swollen lymph nodes or ‘buboes’. Less deadly than the pneumonic plague, it occurs when an infected flea bites a person or when materials contaminated with the pathogen enter through a break in a person’s skin.
Eight million locusts have entered Nepal, consuming hundreds of hectares of crop – The first swarm of locusts, which had entered the country on Saturday morning, have already wrought havoc on a number of districts, especially in the Tarai. Since then, the locusts have quickly spread to 27 districts, including districts as high as Khotang, Okhaldhunga, Rukum West, Mustang and Solukhumbu. These large swarms are regularly breaking off and forming smaller groups and flying haphazardly in the sky, according to the Locust Information Centre at the Agriculture Ministry, formed on Sunday to keep track of the swarms and find ways to contain them.As per the Plant Quarantine and Pesticide Management Centre’s initial estimates, around seven to eight million locusts have entered Nepal. Currently, over three million are believed to be actively flying around Nepali skies in groups that can potentially damage crops, after others died off or got separated from their large swarms. The Centre, on Wednesday afternoon, issued an alert warning farmers of swarms of locusts living along the Nepal-India border that could enter Nepal given favourable winds.According to Subedi, who also heads the Centre’s information centre, five large swarms have been sighted in Bara, Parsa, Sarlahi, Bhairahawa and Kapilvastu. On Wednesday, a large swarm of locusts was seen moving towards Dhaulagiri Base Camp, flying along the Myagdi river. “Some bugs have been seen in Dhaulagiri Municipality. A big swarm is marching towards the mountains,” said Thamsara Pun, chairperson of Dhaulagiri Municipality. “We have not yet seen locusts devouring crops but we have asked locals to create smokes and chase them away.” The country’s weather, which had been impacted by westerly winds coming from the Arabian Sea in the last few days, will receive southeasterly winds for at least the next three days, according to the special weather bulletin from the Meteorological Forecasting Division. This change in wind direction is likely to coincide with the locust swarms in India’s Bhagalpur and Motihari and another group flying towards Champaran district from Kushinagar. These swarms are likely to enter Nepal, according to an alert from the Plant Quarantine and Pesticide Management Centre. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the desert locust (Schistocerca gregaria) is considered the most dangerous of all migratory pest species in the world.
Anti-locust operation completed over 2.294 million acres : NLCC – The anti-locust operations have been carried out in 9, 297 square kilometers, approximately 2.2927 million acres of land across 31 affected districts of the country in order to eradicate the locusts swarms. As many as 966 joint teams comprising over 5,082 people took part in the anti-locusts operations across the country, according to details released by the National Locust Control Center (NLCC). The joint teams of the Ministry of National Food Security, provincial agriculture departments and the Pakistan Army were conducting a comprehensive survey and control operation against the locusts in different districts and so far 388,378 square kilometers (90.55) million acres had been surveyed. About 5,082 people and 648 vehicles took part in the anti-locust operation, the NLCC data said. In the Punjab province, about 234,128 acres had been surveyed during last 24 hours and while control operation was performed over 999 acres. More than 2,282 people and 323 vehicles took part in the exercise, it added. So far the survey was completed over an area of approximately 2.83 million acres and anti-locust operation carried out on 949,910 acres. In the Sindh province the survey was conducted over 93,900 acres and the locust presence was confirmed in four districts, while anti-locust operation was carried out on 2,217 acres. More than 109 vehicles and 865 people, including the Pakistan Army personnel, participated in the campaign. So far, the survey was completed on 14.4 million acres of land in Sindh, with locust control operation carried out on area of 154,527 acres.
Six states on high alert as govt warns of more locust swarms – More swarms of crop-eating locusts are likely to migrate from Somalia to the summer breeding areas along the India-Pakistan border, the agriculture ministry has said in a statement, prompting officials in six most “at-risk” states to be on high alert. Operations to control infestation are continuing in six states — Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, and Haryana — by locust circle offices. The invasions have caused “minor crop losses”, according to a status update till July 3. The UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) has said locust invasions from Africa, the worst in 70 years, pose a “serious” risk to the country’s agriculture. Currently, immature pink locusts and adult yellow locusts are active in Jaisalmer, Barmer, Jodhpur, Nagaur, Sikar, Jaipur, and Alwar of Rajasthan and Tikamgarh (Madhya Pradesh), according to the update. An inter-ministerial empowered group has ramped up resources to protect the country’s robustly progressing kharif or summer-sown crops. It has hired five technology firms to provide five advanced drones each of up to 50kg each, apart from helicopters hired from Pawan Hans Ltd. Till July 3, control operations have been carried out in 1,32,777 hectares in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. State governments have carried out containment in another 1,13,003 hectare. One hectare equals 2.5 acre. “The use of drones is something new and is evidently very effective. India should maintain enough production and supply of malathion, the main pesticide effective against locust, throughout the summer months,” said Pramod Vajpayi, a former entomologist with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research. So far, 12 drones have been deployed in Jaisalmer, Barmer, Jodhpur, Bikaner, and Nagaur. Drones are effective for covering tall trees and inaccessible areas. One drone can douse crops with pesticides in 16-17 hectare area in one hour.
Africa’s locust outbreak is far from over – The crunch of young locusts comes with nearly every step. The worst outbreak of the voracious insects in Kenya in 70 yearsis far from over, and their newest generation is now finding its wings for proper flight.The livelihoods of millions of already vulnerable people in East Africa are at stake, and people like Boris Polo are working to limit the damage. The logistician with a helicopter firm is on contract with the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, helping to find and mark locust swarms for the targeted pesticide spraying that has been called the only effective control. “It sounds grim because there’s no way you’re gonna kill all of them because the areas are so vast,” he told The Associated Press from the field in northwestern Kenya on Thursday. “But the key of the project is to minimize” the damage, and the work is definitely having an effect, he said.For months, a large part of East Africa has been caught in a cycle with no end in sight as millions of locusts became billions, nibbling away the leaves of both crops and the brush that sustains the livestock so important to many families. “The risk of significant impact to both crops and rangelands is very high,” For now, the young yellow locusts cover the ground and tree trunks like a twitching carpet, sometimes drifting over the dust like giant grains of sand.In the past week and a half, Polo said, the locusts have transformed from hoppers to more mature flying swarms that in the next couple of weeks will take to long-distance flight, creating the vast swarms that can largely blot out the horizon. A single swarm can be the size of a large city.Once airborne, the locusts will be harder to contain, flying up to 200 kilometers (124 miles) a day.“They follow prevailing winds,” Polo said. “So they’ll start entering Sudan, Ethiopia and eventually come around toward Somalia.” By then, the winds will have shifted and whatever swarms are left will come back into Kenya. “By February, March of next year they’ll be laying eggs in Kenya again,” he said. The next generation could be up to 20 times the size of the previous one.The trouble is, only Kenya and Ethiopia are doing the pesticide control work. “In places like Sudan, South Sudan, especially Somalia, there’s no way, people can’t go there because of the issues those countries are having,” Polo said. “The limited financial capacity of some of the affected countries and the lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic have further hampered control efforts. Additionally, armed conflict in Somalia rendered some of the locust breeding areas inaccessible,”
Roundup Cancer Settlement Hits Snag Over Future Plaintiffs’ Rights – Bayer’s $10 billion settlement to put an end to roughly 125,000 lawsuits against its popular weed killerRoundup, which contains glyphosate, hit a snag this week when a federal judge in San Francisco expressed skepticism over what rights future plaintiffs would have, as the San Francisco Chronicle reported.The $10 billion settlement does not actually need judicial review and is set to move forward. The issue is that $1.25 billion from the settlement does need a court order to be approved. That part deals with future lawsuits by cancer patients who have not yet gone to court and by others who have not yet been diagnosed. The U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria said in an order Monday that he had questions about the legality and fairness of the agreement and was “tentatively inclined” to reject it, as the San Francisco Chronicle reported.In a court filing on Monday, the judge described a plan to create a class action for future litigants as problematic, and he set a July 24 hearing date to address the matter, as Bloomberg reported. “We appreciate the judge’s order raising his preliminary concerns with the proposed class settlement, which we take seriously and will address” at the hearing, Chris Loder, a U.S.-based spokesman for the Germany-based chemical and pharmaceutical giant Bayer, said in an interview. Chhabria said he “is skeptical of the propriety and fairness of the proposed settlement.” He raised concerns about the creation of a scientific panel to decide whether the key ingredient, glyphosate, causes cancer and whether the agreement unfairly limits potential plaintiffs from suing, according to The New York Times. Right now about 30,000 claims contending Roundup caused non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma are left unsettled. Some lawyers in the U.S. have vowed to file another wave of new suits that could add tens of thousands to the logjam of existing cases, according to Bloomberg. Bayer has lost a series of high-profile multi-million dollar cases for Roundup’s role in causing non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in people who used the Monsanto brand herbicide. That series of losses has seen investors flee from Bayer since it acquired Monsanto for $63 billion in 2018. To stem the tide of suits, Bayer insisted that the protection against future suits is a linchpin of the current settlement. Without it, the bulk of the $10 billion deal has the potential to fall apart, according to The New York Times. In addition to the $8.8 billion to $9.6 billion to cover about 95,000 cases, $1.25 billion was set aside to finance the scientific panel and assist impoverished Roundup users with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. As The New York Times described, that panel would then decide whether glyphosate caused cancer and, if so, what exposure level was dangerous. Both Bayer and claimants would be bound to accept the findings in future litigation. New York-based lawyer Hunter Shkolnik opposed the novel class-action idea from the onset. He described it as “nothing more than a legally infirm, backroom deal to protect Monsanto rather than compensating Roundup cancer victims,” in an emailed statement to Bloomberg.
The complex relationship between deforestation and diet diversity in the Amazon – Microplastic fiber pollution in the ocean impacts larval lobsters at each stage of their development, according to new research. A study published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin reports that the fibers affect the animals’ feeding and respiration, and they could even prevent some larvae from reaching adulthood.”In today’s ocean, organisms are exposed to so many environmental factors that affect how many make it to the next stage of life,” said Paty Matrai, a study author and senior research scientist at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences. “Lobsters play a fundamental role in the Gulf of Maine ecosystem as well as the state’s economy, and it is important that we understand how pollutants impact their development.”Young lobsters grow to adulthood through four distinct developmental stages, and the researchers found that the physiology of each stage determined how the animals interacted with plastic fibers. The youngest lobsters didn’t consume them – but they were plagued by fibers accumulating under the shells that protect their gills. In experiments where the larvae were exposed to high levels of fibers, the youngest larvae were the least likely to survive. More mobile and agile, the older lobster larvae did not accumulate fibers under their shells – but they did ingest the particles and keep them in their digestive systems. This could be problematic for lobster larvae coming of age in the ocean. Fresh plastics often leach chemicals, and their surfaces can foster potentially toxic sea life.
Famished NYC Rats Are Harassing Outdoor Diners – New York City rats, famished by restaurant closures and emboldened by starvation, are plaguing outdoor diners – crawling on their shoes and sitting on benches – as business owners call on the city to address the rodent problem. New York City has allowed restaurants to serve diners outdoors since June 22, leading to reports of meals disrupted by rodents.“Any mammals, if you take the food away you’re going to have abnormal behavior show up really quick,” said Dr. Bobby Corrigan, an urban rodentologist, toGothamist on the city’s rat resurgence. Giacomo Romano, the owner of Ciccio in SoHo, told NBC New York that a rat had run across one of his customer’s foot during his meal. Romano and other restaurateurs are asking the city to reduce the city’s rodent population, but the odds look slim – amid a budget crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the Sanitation Department’s rat mitigation budget has been by $1.5 million to $12.3 million, meaning 25% less trash pick-up in areas with significant rat issues, according to NY 1. Rats have long plagued New York City residents as garbage from the city’s nearly 27,000 restaurants provide an all-you-can eat paradise for the rodents. Corrigansays that when the restaurants closed in New York panic ensued among the rats, manifested in behaviors like infanticide and fighting. He believes that the rats took to the sewers to feed on feces and flushed goods.
A Big Rat in Congress Helped California Farmers in Their War Against Invasive Species California Rep. Josh Harder needed a way to convince the U.S. House of Representatives to pay attention to his speech about invasive species during a meeting in February. So he brought in a hefty rat carcass and laid it on the table next to him.The taxidermied rat, which Harder called “Nellie,” convinced the House to unanimously pass a bill that supports eradication efforts in states infested with nutria, large rodents also known as swamp rats that are native to South America. The legislation would revise the Nutria Eradication and Control Act of 2003, which initially provided grants to Maryland and Louisiana, to expand nutria eradication efforts to about a dozen states, including California. The nutria has been established in 17 states. A spokesperson for Harder said it was unclear when the bill would be introduced in the Senate. He said the pandemic has slowed down the momentum behind the bill. If enacted, the legislation would provide $12 million for nutria eradication, and California would receive a substantial portion of that sum. The money would be an addition to $10 million allocated to California last year for an eradication team trained to tackle the species. In April, the eradication team put a tracking device in a neutered nutria to track where the rest of the animals are located. Harder said the initiative is working and since May, California has caught 1,000 of the rodents. But more federal funding is needed to make the program fully operational, Harder said. The nutria is one of the most recent invasive species to arrive in California and one of the most harmful. For the last year, the rodents have plagued California’s Central Valley region, posing risks to agriculture and the environment by eating up crops and polluting canals, Harder said. Even with the current pandemic and resulting economic downturn, California plans to spend millions to eradicate the nutria, and farmers are on high alert. With its diverse topography, more than 400 commodity crops and lucrative agriculture industry, California faces a massive threat from invasive species, and the state spends millions every year to mitigate their impact. Harder’s goal is to eradicate the animals by 2025, potentially an arduous effort considering that one female nutria can produce more than 200 offspring in a year, he said. “If we don’t get this under control in California, there’ll be 250,000 of these giant 40-pound swamp rats within five years, which is a big deal,” he said. “And so one of the challenges here is making sure that we could make this relevant to every member of Congress.”
The Rabbit Outbreak – One of the lagoviruses of the family Caliciviridae causes a highly contagious illness called rabbit hemorrhagic disease. RHD is vexingly hard to diagnose. An infected rabbit might experience vague lethargy, or a high fever and difficulty breathing, or it might exhibit no symptoms at all. Regardless of the symptoms, though, the mortality rate for RHD can reach a gloomy hundred per cent. There is no treatment for it. The virus’s ability to survive and spread is uncanny. It can persist on dry cloth with no host for more than a hundred days; it can withstand freezing and thawing; it can thrive in a dead rabbit for months, and on rabbit pelts, and in the wool made from Angora-rabbit fur, and in the rare rabbit that gets infected but survives. It can travel on birds’ claws and flies’ feet and coyotes’ fur. Its spread has been so merciless and so devastating that some pet owners have begun referring to it as “rabbit Ebola.” According to the United States Department of Agriculture, RHD is a “foreign animal disease”: one that is “an important transmissible livestock or poultry disease believed to be absent from the United States and its territories that has the potential to create a significant health or economic impact.” All foreign animal diseases are “reportable.” This means that any incidence needs to be logged with a state animal-health official. In most places, that’s the state veterinarian, who, like a governor, oversees local policy. Alix Wilson was familiar with RHD, and she wondered in passing whether it might have been responsible for the deaths at her clinic. “But then I thought, No, impossible,” she said recently. “Rabbit hemorrhagic disease isn’t in the city.” When the diagnosis came back as a variant of the virus, called RHDV2, Wilson was astonished. The clinic immediately stopped taking in any rabbits, and began a deep cleaning, which included replacing ceiling tiles and discarding thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment that couldn’t be sterilized. Todd Johnson, the U.S.D.A.’s emergency coördinator for New York and New Jersey, helped oversee the cleanup, and a veterinary epidemiologist and an intern from the department contacted a hundred and fifty-five owners of rabbits that had been in the clinic during the previous few months, in an effort to identify Rabbit Zero. The bewildering thing was that, as it turned out, rabbits had already been dying of RHDV2 in Washington State, and soon were dying in other states, including Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, and Nevada.
In Addition To Everything Else, Now “Bunny Ebola” Is Spreading Rapidly Across The US – It has been such a challenging year, and we certainly don’t need any more problems, but now there is one more crisis that we can add to the list. An outbreak of a virus that is known as “bunny ebola” erupted in the southwestern United States in April, and since that time it has “moved like mad” from one location to another. At this point, cases have been confirmed at 146 different locations in the states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah. The good news is that this virus does not infect humans, but it is absolutely deadly for rabbits, hares, and pikas. Thousands have already died, and it appears that this pandemic is just getting started. Once rabbits start exhibiting symptoms, it is usually already too late to do anything. According to one expert in New York, the cases that he personally witnessed earlier this year all ended horribly… “Someone saw them spasming and yelled,” recalled Lorelei D’Avolio, LVM, a certified veterinary practice manager with a veterinary-technician specialty in exotics at the Center for Avian and Exotic Medicine in Manhattan. “We tried to do CPR, but these rabbits were dead within minutes. They would convulse, scream horribly, and die.” The USDA says that the incubation period for this virus is between three and nine days, and it is estimated that 50 to 70 percent of those that get infected end up dead. The virus viciously attacks internal organs, and the hemorrhaging that it often causes is the reason why it has been dubbed “bunny ebola”, but this virus is not actually related to Ebola at all. The following comes from the New York Daily News… Though the quick-moving virus is “not related in any way, shape, or form” to Ebola, the ways in which it damages the body – including system-wide inflammation and in many cases, hemorrhaging – appear similar.In addition to destroying liver cells and causing hepatitis, the virus leads to lesions on organs like the heart or lungs which result in internal bleeding. But it turns out that “bunny ebola” is “way more infectious” than COVID-19 is…The outbreak comes amid the coronavirus pandemic plaguing the human population but RHDV2 is “way more infectious,” Lorelei D’Avolio, a certified veterinary practice manager at Manhattan’s Center for Avian and Exotic Medicine, told the The Cut.“It’s way more persistent, it’s resistant to extreme temperatures, it can be transmitted on bugs, on carcasses. It can spread on water, it can be spread on shoes.” Once this virus is introduced into a community of rabbits, it is almost inevitable that they are all going to get it.
ENDANGERED SPECIES: Grizzly bears in North Cascades: Gone for good? — Thursday, July 9, 2020 The Interior Department’s cancellation of plans to reintroduce grizzly bears into the North Cascades will “result in adverse impacts” on the bears both in Washington state and “throughout their range,” federal experts predicted in an extensive study that’s now been halted in its tracks.
Yellowstone Grizzlies Win Reprieve From Trophy Hunt as Court Restores Endangered Species Protections — Grizzly bears in Wyoming and Idaho won’t be subject to a trophy hunt thanks to a federal court decisionWednesday upholding endangered species protections for these iconic animals.The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a 2018 decision from the Montana District Court reinstating protections for Yellowstone area grizzly bears after the Trump administration stripped them of protections in 2017. Wyoming and Idaho then announced plans to hunt the animals for the first time in more than 40 years.”This is a tremendous victory for all who cherish Yellowstone’s grizzly bears and for those who’ve worked to ensure they’re protected under the Endangered Species Act,” Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) attorney Andrea Zaccardi said in a press release. “Grizzlies still have a long way to go before recovery. Hunting these beautiful animals around America’s most treasured national park should never again be an option.” CBD joined the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, the Sierra Club and the National Parks Conservation Association in suing to reinstate protections for the bears. The plaintiffs were represented by Earthjustice, according to apress release. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services delisted Yellowstone area grizzlies in 2017, in a decision that impacted around 700 bears in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana, according to The Hill. Those who supported the move said that the bears’ population as well as successful conservation efforts and state policies justified the move. Then Idaho and Wyoming said they would allow up to 23 bears to be hunted and killed outside of Yellowstone National Park, according to CBD. But the Montana court ruled that the FWS did not consider the impact of delisting on a remnant population and did not use the best available science when making its decision, according to Courthouse News Service, and the Ninth Circuit agreed. Specifically, the court found that FWS did not take into account how delisting and trophy hunting would impact the genetic diversity of Yellowstone grizzlies. The court ordered the FWS to reconsider its decision with a view towards how delisting would impact a remnant population and genetic diversity.
Botswana finds more dead elephants, says test results due this week (Reuters) – Botswana wildlife officials investigating hundreds of unexplained elephant deaths have verified six more carcasses and say it is still not clear what is killing the animals, around two months after the first bodies were spotted. Officials told reporters near the Okavango Delta on Thursday that they had now verified 281 carcasses and that the deaths were concentrated in an area of 8,000 square km that is home to about 18,000 elephants. Flying over the area in a helicopter, a Reuters reporter saw one carcass splattered in droppings from vultures, which had eaten some of the flesh, and red paint from officials marking verified carcasses. Hundreds of live elephants wandered nearby. “We are not dealing with a common thing, it looks like it’s a rare cause,” said Mmadi Reuben, principal veterinary officer at the Department of Wildlife and National Parks, adding the death rate in the affected area was below 2%. “We cannot rule out anything at this stage, it could be a virus, vegetation, overnutrition after last year’s drought … We have asked the community not to interact with the carcasses.” He said officials were expecting to receive test results this week on samples sent to South Africa and Canada. Some campaign groups have criticised the government for acting too slowly to solve the mystery of the dying elephants, an accusation Reuben has denied. Although the number of deaths so far represents a fraction of the estimated 130,000 elephants in Botswana, there are fears more could die if authorities cannot establish the cause soon.
How Botswana’s Sudden Elephant Deaths Impact the Species – When an elephant dies in the wild, it’s not uncommon to later find its bones scattered throughout the surrounding landscape.That’s one way you can tell other elephants have passed through the area, says George Wittemyer, a wildlife conservation biologist at Colorado State University who’s been researching African elephants in Kenya’s Samburu National Reserve for more than 20 years.Another sign, long-term elephant conservationist Joyce Poole adds, is the presence of tracks worn through the grass leading to its body. “The vegetation will be gone and the carcass will be surrounded by elephant dung because so many elephants will have visited and stayed,” Poole says.While scientists are yet to pinpoint what exactly struck down a reported 356 elephants in Botswana’s Okavango Delta area, what we do know is that these deaths are not only significant for ecologists and conservationists – but elephants themselves. Highly social creatures that form deep familial bonds, elephants have long been observed gathering at the site where a peer or family member has died – often spending hours, even days, quietly investigating the bodies or the bones of other dead elephants. Although the popular idea that dying elephants are instinctively drawn to special communal graves – so-called “elephant graveyards” – is a myth, their tendency to go out of their way to visit the bones and tusks of the deceased isn’t unlike human rituals at graveyards, says animal psychologist Karen McComb. “They spend a lot of time touching and smelling skulls and ivory, placing the soles of their feet gently on top of them, and also lifting them up with their trunks,” McComb, who’s been studying African elephants for 25 years in Kenya’s Amboseli National Park, told DW. The most striking part of watching an elephant experience loss, Poole recalls, is the quietude. She still remembers one of the first elephant deaths she witnessed; a mother who birthed a stillborn calf. That elephant stayed with its baby for two days, trying to lift it and defending it from vultures and hyenas. “I was so struck by the expression on her face and her body. She looked so dejected. It was really like, ‘Oh God, these animals grieve…’. It was just so different,” Poole told DW.
Lemurs and Northern Right Whales Near Brink of Extinction – A new analysis by scientists at the Swiss-based International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) found that lemurs and the North Atlantic right whale are on the brink of extinction.For lemurs, the analysis found that almost one-third of the species in Madagascar are critically endangeredwhile 98 percent are threatened or worse, according to the IUCN’s updated Red List of Threatened Species. The demise of lemurs is largely attributed to deforestation and hunting on the giant island off eastern Africa, conservationists said Thursday, as the AP reported. To put that in numbers, instead of percentages, 33 lemur species are critically endangered, with 103 of the 107 surviving species threatened with extinction, according to the IUCN. The updated list now has 13 species pushed into the critically endangered category due to human activity.The IUCN also says there were fewer than 250 mature North Atlantic right whales believed to be alive in 2018, marking a 15-percent drop since 2011. That number includes about only 100 breeding females.”At the heart of this crisis is a dire need for alternative, sustainable livelihoods to replace the current reliance on deforestation and unsustainable use of wildlife,” Grethel Aguilar, IUCN’s acting director general, said in a statement, as The Washington Post reported. “These findings really bring home the urgent need for an ambitious post-2020 biodiversity framework that drives effective conservation action.” At the end of June, one dead whale was spotted off the coast of New Jersey. That six-month-old calf had been struck several times on the head, suggesting one or possibly two vessel collisions, according to The New York Times. Increasingly, collisions with ships, entanglements in fishing nets, and underwater noise pollution are killing the animals, which rely on echolocation for basic activities such as feeding, communicating and finding mates, as The Washington Post reported.The whale’s preferred home, in the Gulf of Maine’s deep waters, has warmed nearly 9 degrees Fahrenheit since 2004, faster than 99 percent of the world’s oceans for much of this century, according to The New York Times. The prospects are bleak for the North Atlantic right whale now that President Trump lifted restrictions on commercial fishing in a key area of the whale’s habitat.
Warming Oceans Deter Fish From Spawning, New Study Finds – German scientists now know why so many fish are so vulnerable to ever-warming oceans. Global heating imposes a harsh cost at the most critical time of all: the moment of spawning.”Our findings show that, both as embryos in eggs and as adults ready to mate, fish are far more sensitive to heat than in their larval stage or as sexually mature adults outside the mating season,” said Flemming Dahlke, a marine biologist with the Alfred Wegener Institute at Bremerhaven.”On the global average, for example, adults outside the mating season can survive in water that’s up to 10°C warmer than adults ready to mate, or fish eggs, can.”The finding – if it is confirmed by other research – should clear up some of the puzzles associated with fish numbers. There is clear evidence, established repeatedly over the decades, that fish are responding to climate change.But almost three fourths of the planet is blue ocean, and at depth is responding far more slowly than the land surface to global heating fueled by fossil fuel exploitation that releases greenhouse gases. Since fish in the temperate zones already experience a wide variation in seasonal water temperatures, it hasn’t been obvious why species such as cod have shifted nearer the Arctic, and sardines have migrated to the North Sea.But marine creatures are on the move, and although there are other factors at work, including overfishing andthe increasingly alarming changes in ocean chemistry, thanks to ever-higher levels of dissolved carbon dioxide, temperature change is part of the problem.The latest answer, Dr Dahlke and his colleagues report in the journal Science, is that many fish may already be living near the limits of their thermal tolerance. The temperature safety margins during the moments of spawning and embryo might be very precise, and over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, marine and freshwater species have worked out just what is best for the next generation. Rapid global warming upsets this equilibrium.
Microplastic pollution harms lobster larvae, study finds – Ten years ago, non-indigenous households from three communities in the Ucayali region in Peru regularly ate fish, wild fruits and other products collected from the Amazon forest. Combined with whatever they grew and harvested on their lands, this contributed to a relatively diverse diet. Today however, this has been largely replaced by commercial agriculture such as palm oil and cocoa. This shift in agricultural production objectives has affected the sources of food for local communities and appears to be associated with relatively less diverse diets, according to a new study authored, among others, by CIAT (now the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT) scientists. The study represents one of rather few attempts to trace changes in food access, livelihood strategies, deforestation and agricultural biodiversity over time. The scientists collected data on livelihood strategies and nutritional health among 53 families in the Ucayali region in Peru and compared the results with data gathered from the same families in the early 2000s. Despite the small sample, caused by significant outmigration from these communities, the results were remarkable. “We found that in the 15-year study period, farming households shifted from diets based on limited consumption of meat and dairy items and high consumption of plant-based foods from their own production, towards diets with high protein and fat content, with food items increasingly purchased in the market. In parallel, production systems became less diversified, more market-orientated and specialised toward commercial crops, oil palm and cacao in particular,” says Blundo Canto.
350 facilities skip reporting water pollution under temporary EPA rule –More than 350 facilities nationwide have taken advantage of a temporary Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule that lets companies forgo monitoring their water pollution during the pandemic. A total of 352 facilities, including fossil fuel companies, water treatment plants and schools, made use of the EPA’s relaxation of Clean Water Act requirements, according to a list the agency shared with The Hill. At least one company on the list recently settled with the EPA to resolve allegations of Clean Water Act violations dating back to 2016. Environmentalists are raising alarms over the number of facilities that aren’t monitoring their pollution levels, saying the damage could last well beyond the Aug. 31 expiration date of the temporary policy. “Where facilities don’t monitor their own discharges and emissions, that can present significant environmental problems depending on what wasn’t reported that got into the environment,” said Joel Mintz, a former EPA enforcement attorney. On March 26, the EPA announced it would allow companies and others to pause their pollution monitoring if they could demonstrate hardship stemming from the coronavirus pandemic. The agency said the move would allow facilities to focus more on pollution controls and safety instead of sampling and monitoring. Opponents argued that if companies are not required to monitor how much pollution they emit, they might exceed legal limits. Critics also decried the open-ended nature of the temporary policy, which until last week had no end date. Clean Water Act discharges were not the only type of pollution-monitoring impacted by the temporary EPA policy. Facilities are permitted to skip other types of pollution monitoring, meaning the total number of facilities taking advantage of the policy likely exceeds 352.
Waste Away – Notes on Beirut’s broken sewage system – Beneath every city, its underground twin. Its dark heart; its churning guts. This is no metaphor: I’m talking about the sewer system. A network of pipes connecting to every shower drain, every kitchen sink, every toilet, disappearing a household’s dirt and grease and vomit and urine and feces down the gullets of small pipes that flow down into the ground, that then feed into bigger pipes, and ever bigger pipes, all our shit merging: the organic, fibrous roughage of the rich, the nutrient-deficient poop of the poor, and all the middle-class crap in between, all democratically flowing together in a single system, ideally powered by gravity, ideally leading to the great bowel of a treatment plant meant to deal with all this waste, turn it clear again, so that it can be safely dumped into rivers and seas. Alongside this system, another one. The storm-drainage system that receives a city’s rain and rushes it back from whence it came. A rhythmic cycle, as nature intended: from river to river, lake to lake, sea to sea. This water is also used to feed the groundwater supply, some of it piped back into wells and tanks. Soil absorbs rain, feeding it into the root systems of crops and flowers and trees; asphalt, concrete does not. As such, streets must be designed to be ever so slightly convex, so that rain may flow to either side and rush down into the storm drains meant to line every one of them. Streets also ought to be kept clear of garbage, not just for aesthetic purposes, but because this water picks up pollutants and trash along its journey and brings them back to our crops, our waterways, our homes. Storm pipes are bigger than sewer pipes: the deluge from above is faster and more powerful than any faucet, any flush. Ideally, a proportional amount of money is invested in maintaining this invisible city in such a way that it keeps pace with whatever is taking place aboveground. And what we have beneath our feet is a rotting, disintegrating, barely functional sewage infrastructure. Some of the pipes date back to the 1940s. No one knows how old it is. It is notoriously difficult to get any clear “whole network” maps from the municipal offices; many activists – many of them nonpartisan urban planners and architects – have tried. That there is a decided lack of access to information is already a type of information about what sort of city we live in. In the news, it is occasionally announced that engineers have been called in to reroute old systems, build pumping stations at the different outfalls, revamp old treatment plants or build new ones. But the pumping stations remain silent; the treatment plants as well. Running them costs money, eats into profits, withholds the reward of generous bribes for the municipal authorities. Also, there is the fact that the city’s sectarian divisions, its original rotten infrastructure, extend all the way down into the underground. There are squabbles about who should host the treatment plants, how to route the sewers, through whose area. Each refuses, literally, to take the other’s shit. So they send it to the only place without a sectarian scumbag to claim it: the sea.
Severe Floods in Japan Kill at Least 34 People — Scores of people remained stranded in southern Japan on Sunday after heavy rain the day before caused deep flooding and mudslidesthat left at least 34 people confirmed or presumed dead. Floodwaters from the Kuma River inundated many houses, buildings and vehicles, causing people to climb onto roofs and wait for rescue. More than 40,000 soldiers, coast guard personnel and fire brigades are taking part in search and rescue operations. Altogether 16 residents at an elderly care home in Kuma Village are presumed dead after the facility was flooded by water and mud. Fifty-one other residents have been rescued by boats and taken to hospitals for treatment, officials said. Eighteen other people elsewhere have been confirmed dead, while more than a dozen others were still missing as of Sunday afternoon. The Fire and Disaster Management Agency said many others were still waiting to be rescued from other inundated areas. Hitoyoshi City was also badly affected by flooding, as rains in the prefecture exceeded 100 millimeters (4 inches) per hour at their height. More Rain Forecast The disaster in the Kumamoto prefecture on Kyushu island is the worst natural catastrophe since Typhoon Hagibis in October last year, which cost the lives of 90 people. Although residents in Kumamoto prefecture were advised to evacuate their homes following the downpours on Friday evening into Saturday, many people chose not to leave for fear of contracting the coronavirus.
‘Race against time’ in Japan floods, 50 feared dead –Emergency services in western Japan were “racing against time” on Tuesday (Jul 7) to rescue people stranded by devastating floods and landslides that have killed at least 50, as the country braced for more torrential downpours.Japan’s Meteorological Agency (JMA) issued its second-highest emergency warning for heavy rain and landslides over vast swathes of the country’s southwest and said “risks are rising” nationwide.Television footage showed swollen rivers breaking their banks and sweeping away bridges while landslides destroyed roads and buried houses, complicating access for the 80,000 rescue personnel battling to save lives.At least 50 deaths have been confirmed in the rains that began early Saturday, top government spokesman Yoshihide Suga said, but the toll is expected to rise, with four more feared dead and over a dozen reported missing.He warned that more heavy rain was forecast over the next two days, saying: “Even a small amount of rainfall could cause a disaster. I would like people to be on full alert against landslides and floods.” In the hardest-hit region of Kumamoto, on the southwest tip of Japan, disaster management official Yutaro Hamasaki said: “We are racing against time.” “We have not set any deadline or time to end the operation, but we really need to speed up our search as time is running out. We won’t give up to the end,” Hamasaki told AFP.At an elementary school in Omuta city, dozens of children and their teachers spent the night sheltering on the upper floor of the building after floodwater inundated the ground level. Fourteen of the dead were wheelchair-bound residents of a nursing home unable to escape to higher ground as the waters rose.
Pink Snow in the Italian Alps Means Trouble, Scientists Say – In a troubling sign for the future of the Italian Alps, the snow and ice in a glacier is turning pink due to the growth of snow-melting algae, according to scientists studying the pink ice phenomenon, as CNN reported.The algae will make the snow melt faster. The salmon-hue that has tinged the snow is from algae that carry carotenoid pigment, which reflects the distinctive color. While most algae thrive in warm freshwaters, these are known as cryophilic, meaning they thrive in colder temperatures, where they create the “watermelon snow” effect, according to Salon. The concern is that the algal bloom on the snow will accelerate the effects of the climate crisis. As Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported the plant, known as Ancylonema nordenskioeldii, is often found in Greenland’s so-called Dark Zone, where the ice is also melting.Normally ice reflects more than 80 percent of the sun’s radiation back into the atmosphere, but as algae appear, they darken the ice so that it absorbs the heat and melts more quickly, according to AFP. “Everything that darkens the snow causes it to melt because it accelerates the absorption of radiation,” said Biagio Di Mauro of Italy’s National Research Council to AFP. “We are trying to quantify the effect of other phenomena besides the human one on the overheating of the Earth.” He noted that the presence of tourists could also have an effect in weakening the snow. Di Mauro told CNN that the spring and summer had very little snowfall high in the Alps, which has seen higher than average temperatures. “This creates the perfect environment for the algae to grow,” he added. Di Mauro emphasized that the algal bloom is particularly bad news for the glaciers, which may see a rapid melting. That would be in line with glaciers around the world that are starting to fade away as global heating continues to push up atmospheric temperatures. “In this case, we’re seeing an amplifying feedback wherein biological darkening (due to Algae growing on the surface of melting ice), leads to more solar absorption by the ice and even faster melting. We call this a ‘positive feedback’ but it is anything but positive. It reflects a process which is leading to faster melting of the glaciers than our simple models predict.”
A heat wave thawed Siberia’s tundra. Now, it’s on fire. – For months, Siberia has been experiencing extreme heat due to a combination of persistent sunny weather and human-caused climate change. In addition to producing Arctic temperatures that cracked 100 degrees in June, the heat has fueled an enormous outbreak of wildfires, including fires on tundra underpinned by permafrost – normally frigid soil that is likely becoming even less frozen this year. This rash of fires on landscapes that are typically too cold, wet, and icy to burn is raising alarms for ecologists and climate scientists, who fear it’s yet another sign that the Arctic is undergoing rapid changes that could tip off a cascade of consequences both local and global. If fire becomes a regular occurrence on Siberia’s thawing tundra, it could dramatically reshape entire ecosystems, causing new species to take over and, perhaps, priming the land for more fires. The blazes themselves could also exacerbate global warming by burning deep into the soil and releasing carbon that has accumulated as frozen organic matter over hundreds of years. (Read about how melting permafrost could supercharge climate change – in a very bad way.) Siberia is no stranger to large summertime wildfires, including fires north of the Arctic Circle in the region’s expansive boreal forests. But so far, 2020 has been a banner year for fire in the Russian Arctic. Daily levels of “fire radiative power,” a measure of the fires’ heat output, rival those seen in 2019 (another extreme fire year) and far exceed anything else the Arctic has experienced since at least 2003. Russia’s Forestry Agency estimates that millions of acres of land have gone up in flames in eastern Siberia’s Sakha Republic, Chukotka, and Magadan regions. In addition to flames being extremely intense and widespread, scientists are struck by how far north fires are burning and the types of ecosystems that are igniting. Smith has been investigating this using a combination of land cover maps and satellite data. He’s found that in addition to the huge number of fires scorching northern boreal forests, many are burning even further north on the tundra and in carbon-rich peatlands. In all cases, the ecosystems that are burning sit atop frozen soils that comprise permafrost. Several of the fires might even be setting geographic records. In late June, the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 satellite detected a series of fires at latitudes close to 73 degrees north – the northernmost fires in records going back to 2003, according to satellite remote sensing expert Annamaria Luongo. The most recent one, spotted by Sentinel-2 on June 30, flared up just a few miles from the shores of the Laptev Sea, a part of the Arctic Ocean.
The Arctic Is on Fire and Warming Twice as Fast as the Rest of the Earth – Once thought too frozen to burn, Siberia is now on fire and spewing carbon after enduring its warmest June ever, according to CNN.The most immediate impacts of the climate crisis are in the nether-regions world of the world where temperatures are extreme and inhospitable. One of the most alarming examples is playing out in Siberia, which just saw temperatures reach triple digits as it endured its warmest month ever. That June heatwave in Siberia has led to some staggering numbers, according to scientists, as CNN reported.The wildfires in Siberia started much earlier in the spring than ever before, according to The Washington Post. Permafrost is thawing, infrastructure is crumbling, and sea ice is dramatically vanishing.”We always expected the Arctic to change faster than the rest of the globe,” said Walt Meier, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder, to The Washington Post. “But I don’t think anyone expected the changes to happen as fast as we are seeing them happen.” The wildfires released an estimated 59 megatonnes of carbon dioxide across Siberia in June, according to scientists at the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS). This spate of fires on landscapes that are typically too cold, wet, and icy to burn is raising alarms for ecologists and climate scientists, according toNational Geographic. They fear the rash of blazes is another sign that the Arctic is undergoing rapid changes that could set off a series of consequences on a global scale.The fires can be a double whammy for the Siberian ecosystem. If they become a regular occurrence, it could cause new species to colonize the area, which would set the stage for more fires. Also, the increased intensity and duration of the fires may accelerate the climate crisis by thawing the ground and releasing trapped carbon that has accumulated in frozen organic matter, as National Geographic reported. “By how big they are and how hot they are, I would say there’s no way they’re not burning down,” Already, the area’s carbon dioxide emissions for June were its highest in the 18 years of the CAMS dataset, surpassing the record of 53 megatonnes set just one year ago in June 2019. “Higher temperatures and drier surface conditions are providing ideal conditions for these fires to burn and to persist for so long over such a large area,” Siberia also had a warmer than average winter. CAMS said that the warm winter meant that “zombie” blazes were able to smolder through the winter and may have reignited this spring, according to Phys.org. Some parts of Siberia had an average temperature that was 10 degrees Celsius, or 18 degrees Fahrenheit, warmer than average.
Intense Arctic Wildfires Set a Pollution Record -Intense wildfires in the Arctic in June released more polluting gases into the Earth’s atmosphere than in any other month in 18 years of data collection, European scientists said in a report Tuesday.These fires offer a stark portrait of planetary warming trends.The Arctic is warming at least two and a half times faster than the global average rate. Soils in the region are drier than before. Wildfires are spreading across a large swath. In June, fires released 59 million metric tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide, greater than all the carbon emissions produced by Norway, an oil-producing country, in a year. The last time fires in the Arctic were this intense or released such a large volume of emissions was last year, which itself set a record.
UN: World could hit 1.5-degree warming threshold by 2024 – The world could see annual global temperatures pass a key threshold for the first time in the coming five years, the U.N. weather agency said Thursday. The World Meteorological Organization said forecasts suggest there’s a 20% chance that global temperatures will be 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) higher than the pre-industrial average in at least one year between 2020 and 2024. The 1.5 C mark is the level countries agreed to cap global warming at in the 2015 Paris accord. While a new annual high might be followed by several years with lower average temperatures, breaking that threshold would be seen as further evidence that international efforts to curb climate change aren’t working. “It shows how close we’re getting to what the Paris Agreement is trying to prevent,” said Maxx Dilley, director of climate services at the World Meteorological Organization. Dilley said it’s not impossible that countries will manage to achieve the target set in Paris, of keeping global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit), ideally no more than 1.5 C, by the end of the century. “But any delay just diminishes the window within which there will still be time to reverse these trends and to bring the temperature back down into those limits,” he told The Associated Press. Scientists say average temperatures around the world are already at least 1 C higher now than from 1850-1900 because of man-made greenhouse emissions.
Carbon Dioxide Emissions Near Level Not Seen in 15 Million Years, New Study Warns – As a United Nations agency released new climate projections showing that the world is on track in the next five years to hit or surpass a key limit of the Paris agreement, authors of a new study warned Thursday that increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is nearing a level not seen in 15 million years.For the study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom examined CO2 levels during the Late Pliocene about three million years ago “to search for modern and near future-like climate states,” co-author Thomas Chalk explained in a series of tweets.”A striking result we’ve found is that the warmest part of the Pliocene had between 380 and 420 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere,” Chalk told the Guardian. “This is similar to today’s value of around 415 parts per million, showing that we are already at levels that in the past were associated with temperature and sea-level significantly higher than today.”When CO2 levels peaked during the Pliocene, temperatures were 3ºC to 4ºC hotter and seas were 65 feet higher, the newspaper reported. Chalk said that “currently, our CO2 levels are rising at about 2.5 ppm per year, meaning that by 2025 we will have exceeded anything seen in the last 3.3 million years.””We are burning through the Pliocene and heading towards a Miocene-like future,” warned co-author Gavin Foster, referencing a period from about 23 to 5.3 million years ago. It was during the Miocene, around 15 million years ago, when “our ancestors are thought to have diverged from orangutans and become recognizably hominoid,” the Guardian noted. Reporting on the study elicited concern and calls for action from environmentalists and advocacy groups.”Every kilo of CO2 we emit is one we have to sequester later, provided the food doesn’t run out first,” tweetedExtinction Rebellion Finland, urging the international community to #ActNow.Nathaniel Stinnett, executive director of the U.S.-based Environmental Voter Project, also responded to the report on Twitter, saying, “Big Oil and Gas are killing us.”A new report released Thursday by the U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) about global temperatures likely coming in the next five years provoked similar alarm and demands. The WMO report projects that the annual global temperature is likely to be at least 1°C warmer than pre-industrial levels in each of the next five years. Although it is “extremely unlikely” the average temperature for 2020 – 2024 will be 1.5°C warmer than pre-industrial levels, WMO warned certain periods could hit that temperature.
EMISSIONS: Top sources of CO2: Vistra, Duke, Southern Co. — Wednesday, July 8, 2020 — .Houston-based Vistra Energy was the top emitter of carbon dioxide in the U.S. power sector in 2018, followed by Duke Energy and Southern Company, according to an environmental group’s report annual report released today.
Pa. House moves to block RGGI entrance as DEP estimates it will save money and lives -Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives is trying to block the state’s entrance into a regional effort to curb carbon emissions from power plants. The House passed H.B. 2025 to prevent the state joining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) through executive action on the same day the Department of Environmental Protection released estimates that participation in the effort would save hundreds of lives and billions of dollars. The House passed the bill with a vote of 130-71. It now goes to the state Senate. Gov. Tom Wolf has said he would veto it. Wolf signed an executive order last year directing DEP to join RGGI through regulation, with a goal of joining by 2022. As part of that, DEP needs to estimate what effect RGGI would have on health, the environment, and the economy. The agency made part of its analysis public ahead of the House debate on the bill Wednesday afternoon. The agency plans to present a draft to the Environmental Quality Board in September. If the board approves the draft, it will be put up for public comment. Under RGGI, a cap-and-trade program, power plants have to pay for the carbon dioxide they emit. Opponents to RGGI argue participation will cost the commonwealth jobs in the coal industry, causing a ripple effect that will hurt the overall economy. DEP found it will result in a net increase of 27,000 jobs and add $1.9 billion to the state’s economy. The agency did not provide details on how it arrived at those figures. The DEP analysis also estimated that the pollution reduction achieved by joining RGGI would realize more than $6 billion worth of health benefits over the next decade and cut the number of asthma attacks for children aged 6-18 by more than 45,000.
House rejects Trump cuts, proposes boost for environmental agencies – The Democratic-led House Appropriations Committee on Monday proposed a funding bump for the Interior Department and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), soundly rejecting cuts proposed by President Trump. The committee bill would increase funding for the EPA, Interior and related agencies by $771 million for fiscal 2021, including a $304 million increase for Interior and a $318 million increase for the EPA. “With this bill, we reject the Trump administration’s pandering to the fossil fuel industry and disregard for the environment and public lands. Instead, we increase funding to preserve our landscapes, protect endangered species, and help prevent the worst impacts of climate change,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) in a statement. The $36.7 billion in funding is slightly smaller than the $37.2 billion the committee approved last year. The final budget approved for the agencies was reduced following a compromise with the Republican-led Senate. Meanwhile, a separate appropriations bill would increase the Energy Department’s budget by $2.3 billion over last year’s budget. In his budget wish-list unveiled earlier this year, President Trump proposed a 26 percent cut to the EPA’s budget and a 16 percent cut to the Interior Department budget. He also proposed cutting the Energy Department’s budget by 8 percent. The House panel’s budget would provide increases of $55 million for the National Park Service, $188 million for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and $37 million for the Fish and Wildlife Service. It would cut the Bureau of Land Management’s budget by $28 million, though this would represent a significant increase in funding from Trump’s proposal. At the EPA, the bill would boost the Superfund program, which cleans up hazardous waste sites, by $37 million and would increase the agency’s environmental justice activities by $4.8 million, or about 47 percent. Funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund would no longer discretionary, but would be considered mandatory appropriations. And at Energy, the House is proposing a $10 million increase in funding for the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy, which Trump had proposed eliminating entirely.
Sanders-Biden climate task force calls for carbon-free power by 2035 A unity task force made up of supporters of both Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and former Vice President Joe Biden has come up with a series of broad environmental recommendations for Biden as he prepares to become the official Democratic presidential nominee. The task force’s broad plan includes a goal of eliminating carbon pollution from power plants by 2035, achieving net-zero emissions for all new buildings by 2030, and making energy-saving upgrades to as many as 4 million buildings and 2 million households within five years. Some of the recommendations released Wednesday set more specific targets than the former vice president’s current climate plan, which calls for a shift away from coal-fired electricity, halving the carbon footprint of buildings by 2035 and starting a national program aimed at affordable energy efficiency retrofits in homes. The group is one of several “unity task forces” made up of supporters of Sanders and Biden that is making platform recommendations as Biden courts favor from the progressive faction of the party. Sanders, who sought to challenge the former Delaware senator from the left, came in second place in the 2020 Democratic primary, repeating his result from 2016, when he lost the presidential nomination to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton The climate panel is co-chaired by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), a leading proponent of the Green New Deal, and 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. “The Unity Task Force urges that we treat climate change like the emergency that it is and answer the crisis with an ambitious, unprecedented, economy-wide mobilization to decarbonize the economy and build a resilient, stronger foundation for the American people,” the document says. The plan also calls for a significant investment in renewable energy, including installing 500 million solar panels and manufacturing 60,000 wind turbines. In the transportation sector, the group recommends the adoption of “strong standards” for clean cars and trucks and the transition of all school buses to American-made, zero-emission alternatives within five years. The New York Times first reported on some of the recommendations earlier this week.
Climate Activists See ‘New Era’ After Three Major Oil and Gas Pipeline Defeats -Climate activists sense a turning point in their war against the Trump administration’s effort to cement a fossil-fueled future for the United States, with three major defeats for high-profile oil and gas pipeline projects. Early Monday, a federal judge ordered the shut-down and emptying of the Dakota Access Pipeline pending an environmental review – an extraordinary, if not unprecedented, remedy for the Standing Rock Sioux tribe in its long fight against the project. Late in the day, the U.S. Supreme Court denied an emergency bid by the Trump administration and Canada’s TC Energy to allow construction of the Keystone XL pipeline to move forward while legal issues are resolved. And on Sunday, two big energy companies pulled the plug on a major East Coast natural gas project – the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline – which would have delivered fracked gas from West Virginia to population centers in Virginia and North Carolina. “A new era upon us – one for clean energy, and one where the risks of fossil fuel infrastructure are increasingly exposed,” said Kelly Martin, director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Dirty Fuel campaign. Greg Buppert, senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, said that six years ago, when landowners and communities took up the battle against the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, there was little reason to think they would succeed. “The remarkable thing is these communities, organizations and landowners never backed down,” Buppert said. “They’ve won a victory, really for every community facing the unfair burden of an unneeded project.” “Two things really stand out to me as the lessons – the voices of the community matter and the law matters,” said Buppert. The American Petroleum Institute, the oil and gas industry’s largest advocacy group, said in a statement after the cancellation of the Atlantic Coast pipeline that “outdated and convoluted permitting rules are opening the door for a barrage of baseless, activist-led litigation.” Coming in less than 48 hours, the pipeline decisions amounted to a vivid rebuke of President Donald Trump’s efforts to sweep aside obstacles to the oil and gas industry’s desired expansion. The future of big fossil fuel infrastructure projects is more murky than ever, despite Trump’s three executive orders expediting pipelines, his relentless regulatory rollbacks and his abandonment of climate policy. Much of the uncertainty stems from the economic turmoil wrought by the coronavirus, which some analysts believe will force an historic retrenchment of the industry. But the pipeline setbacks demonstrate the potency of the opposition the industry faces from tribes, community activists, landowners and those fighting for a clean energy transition. Pipeline proponents have vowed to push forward, however it is now clear that they are not on a glidepath, but in a slog.
Even if we start to fix climate change, the proof may not show up for 30 years – Washington Post – The young climate activists clamoring today for rapid cuts to the world’s fossil fuel emissions could be well into their 30s or 40s before the impact of those changes becomes apparent, scientists said in a study published Tuesday. As if curbing climate change wasn’t tough enough already, the new research finds that even if humans sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions now – cutting carbon dioxide, methane and other pollutants by at least 5 percent or more a year – it could still take decades before it’s clear those actions are beginning to slow the rate of the Earth’s warming. In short, because of the massive amount of fossil fuels burned since the Industrial Revolution, and the complexity of the Earth’s climate, there’s no quick payoff from changing our fossil fuel habits, researchers found.The results lend added perspective to the relatively minor drop in emissions that occurred due to worldwide shutdowns in response to the coronavirus pandemic – a drop that appears unlikely to have much effect on the planet’s overall temperature. “This is a big ship. We’ve given a lot of speed to a big heavy system,” said Bjorn Samset, a researcher with the Center for International Climate Research in Oslo who conducted the research in Nature Communications with two colleagues, Jan Fuglestvedt and Marianne Lund. “We have never warmed the world like this before, and we have certainly never cooled it.” Samset said the delayed benefits of climate action could complicate the push to quickly wean the world off fossil fuels, in part because politicians and policymakers might have a difficult time showing that measures to combat climate change are making a discernible difference in the short term – even if emissions cuts help stave off future warming. “It’s one of the things that makes climate change so difficult,” he said. “You’re looking at an avoided issue in the long term. So the best thing you can hope for is to stay at the status quo.”
Activists Not Only Slow Oil Pipelines, But Also Power Lines Needed For Renewable Energy – Builders of oil and gas pipelines suffered a trio of setbacks over legal challenges in the space of just 36 hours between Sunday and Monday. An $8 billion natural gas pipeline was cancelled, the Dakota Access oil pipeline was ordered to shut down for up to 13 months, and the Supreme Court declined to greenlight the infamous Keystone XL oil pipeline. Pipeline builders nodded grimly: growing environmental opposition and expanded federal environmental reviews mean it’s simply not as easy as it once was to build pipelines. But oil and gas executives might not be the only ones with cause for concern in an era of rising environmental concerns. Long-distance power lines designed primarily to carry electricity from parts of the U.S. with abundant wind and solar power to regions that need more of it face growing legal and regulatory barriers, according to energy and legal experts. “Power lines, like other energy infrastructure, are becoming harder to build in the US,” There are now “more environmental reviews, more governments with veto power, and more restrictions on the use of eminent domain.”Yet even as the need for such power lines grows, fewer are being built. Only about 1,300 miles of power transmission projects were built in 2018, well below a peak of about 4,600 miles built in 2013, according to federal data compiled this year by energy consulting firm ScottMadden. A growing number of proposed projects – from the 780-mile Grain Belt Express that would connect wind energy-rich Kansas to Indiana, to the 520-mile SunZia line that would stretch from New Mexico to Arizona, and others – are mired in lengthy court battles and various stages of permitting.
Appeals court backs sale of controversial wind energy line in Missouri – A state appeals court ruled in favor of a controversial wind electricity project Tuesday, putting the Grain Belt Express transmission line another step closer to construction. The project, which has been tied up in legal and legislative challenges for years, will carry wind-generated power from Kansas to Indiana on a 780-mile-long transmission line that includes eight northern Missouri counties. A group of landowners challenged a June 2019 ruling by the state’s Public Service Commission allowing Chicago-based Invenergy to acquire the line from Grain Belt. The PSC’s decision to approve the sale was a necessary step for Invenergy to buy the rights to construct the proposed line. Attorneys for the Eastern Missouri Landowners Alliance, also known as Show Me Concerned Landowners, argued that regulators did not have jurisdiction to approve the sale. They say the state should not allow a private company to use eminent domain proceedings to acquire land for the towers that will hold the line. The Missouri Court of Appeals Western District disagreed, saying the PSC decision was correct because the project will deliver energy to Missouri wholesale customers, who will provide that energy to their retail customers. “The commission found that, Grain Belt will not selectively sell to particular retail customers, but the electricity it transmits will serve the general public,” the court noted. “We find that the commission had the statutory authority to approve the sale of Grain Belt to Invenergy.”
U.S. power use to drop by record amount in 2020 due coronavirus: EIA – (Reuters) – U.S. electricity consumption will collapse by a record 4.3% in 2020 due to business closures for coronavirus-linked lockdowns, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Tuesday in its Short Term Energy Outlook (STEO). EIA projected total U.S. power demand will drop to 3,730 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) in 2020 from 3,896 billion kWh in 2019 before rising to 3,785 billion kWh in 2021. That compares with an all-time high of 4,003 billion kWh in 2018, according to federal data going back to 1949. If power consumption falls as expected in 2020, it would be the first time since 2012 that total demand declines for two consecutive years. EIA said natural gas’ share of generation will rise from 37% in 2019 to 41% in 2020 before dropping to 36% in 2021 as gas prices increase, while coal’s share will slide from 24% in 2019 to 18% in 2020 before rising to 21% in 2021. Nuclear’s share of generation will rise from 20% in 2019 to 21% in 2020 and 2021, while renewables will rise from 17% in 2019 to 20% in 2020 and 22% in 2021. Both nuclear and renewables will top coal for the first time in 2020. EIA projected power sales to commercial and industrial consumers will drop by 7.0% and 5.6%, respectively, in 2020 from 2019 as offices close and factories run at reduced capacity for the coronavirus.Electricity sales to the residential sector will hold steady in 2019 and 2020 as mild weather reduces heating and air conditioning use even though government lockdowns are causing many people to stay home.While both the residential and commercial sectors consumed record amounts of electricity in 2018 at 1,469 billion kWh and 1,382 billion kWh, respectively, the industrial sector set its all-time high of 1,064 billion kWh in 2000.
As COVID-19 surges, federal regulators worry about energy sector supply chain — Amid reports the United States has topped 3 million cases of the novel coronavirus and now leads the world in infections and deaths, federal regulators are taking a hard look at what may happen to the energy sector as the pandemic continues with no end in sight.”I want the commission to get in front of these issues as much as we can, and to think proactively about how we can respond over the coming months and even years,” Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Neil Chatterjee said Wednesday during a technical conference on the long-term impacts of the global pandemic. “We all face uncertainty, especially as we see a resurgence of cases in various areas of the country,” Chatterjee said. The country has seen decreased demand for electricity, gas and oil since March – though Chatterjee said a rebound is expected as summer peak season arrives. “Ultimately, we don’t know where these trends are heading,” he warned.That has led to concerns over supply chain issues, deferred equipment maintenance and the potential for outages.”Unfortunately it appears this is something we’re going to have to live with for a while,” Commissioner Richard Glick said.Grid operators have so far been able to maintain equipment and faced no shortages when replacing core electric components, according to James Robb, president and CEO of the North American Electric Reliability Corp. However, he told regulators on Tuesday that “the longer this goes, the risk of that continues to mount.” When quarantines and lockdowns began months ago, there were widespread concerns about the energy supply chain – particularly for generators needing to do maintenance and replace parts, according to Michael Bryson, senior vice president of operations PJM Interconnection. But looking ahead, he warned the industry needs a consider that it may become a problem in the future – particularly in light ofPresident Donald Trump’s executive order barring the installation of bulk-power system equipment designed, developed, manufactured, or supplied by some countries. Experts say the order will primarily impact equipment sourced from China, which supplies transformers and other grid components.
New safety guidelines lead to challenges as efficiency contractors return to work – Weatherization contractors in New Hampshire say some of the guidelines are inconvenient and difficult to follow.As lockdown restrictions ease, New Hampshire’s utilities have joined to create a training program for contractors to begin efficiency projects in customers’ homes. But some contractors say the program, intended to ensure employee and customer safety, ignores the realities of their work.The utilities are partnering with a Massachusetts-based occupational health and safety consulting firm, Environmental Health & Engineering (EH&E), which developed safety guidelines and webinar training. Since utilities often work across state lines, other New England contractors and utilities also participated.The guidelines were divided into two main phases: The first involved projects on the outside of the home and in parts unoccupied by the customer, like the attic. The second phase involves projects in occupied parts of the home.Contractors have to follow the guidelines to participate in utilities’ efficiency incentive programs, and quality assurance monitors accompany teams to sites.“Safety is the priority here, and EH&E is basing their guidelines on this from a safety perspective,” said Kate Peters, a New Hampshire-based energy efficiency spokesperson with Eversource, New Hampshire’s biggest utility. Information on the virus is continually evolving, Peters said, meaning the guidelines will evolve as well. “These are living documents.”
Amazon to buy bio jet fuel to lower air cargo emissions –Amazon’s plans to decarbonize its shipping supply chain isn’t just focused on electrifying its delivery vans.The logistics and retail giant announced Wednesday morning that it plans to buy 6 million gallons of bio jet fuel via a division of Shell and produced by World Energy, a big biodiesel producer. The companies said the jet fuel will be made from agricultural waste fats and oils (such as used cooking oil and inedible fats from beef processing).The move shows the efforts that Amazon is willing to go to eke out carbon emissions across its vast network of planes, vehicles and distribution centers that deliver on-demand goods across the globe. Amazon has pledged to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040, and says it will make sure half of Amazon shipments are net-zero by 2030. That commitment also includes buying 100,000 electric delivery vehicles, and using 100 percent clean energy by 2025. But the business of biofuels is a bit messier and – for bio jet fuel – at an earlier stage than procuring solar and wind energy or even purchasing electric vehicles. The market for next-generation sustainable aviation fuel is just now being trialed commercially by airlines such as JetBlue and United, produced by developers such as World Energy and Finnish company Neste, and solicited by San Francisco International (SFO) and other airports. Neste announced Tuesday that it delivered its first batch of sustainable aviation fuel via pipeline for airlines refueling at SFO to use. Over the years, a variety of airlines have tested bio jet fuels, some made with algae as a feedstock, and many abandoned the initial efforts after the fuels were not able to be made economically at scale. Since then, companies such as Neste have been able to industrialize the process of taking waste oils and fats from various sources and producing a fuel for vehicles and airplanes that can lower carbon emissions and be cost-effective. In recent years, airlines increasingly have looked to the promise of bio jet fuels as a key way for the industry to meet climate goals. United Airlines announced last year that it is investing $40 million into advancing sustainable aviation fuel, including the purchase of 10 million gallons of it over two years – a drop in the fuel tank of roughly 4.3 billion gallons the airline uses annually. Electric aircraft have been considered by much of the airline industry as too far away on the horizon and too expensive for commercial use. Regardless of the specifics, the airline industry is feeling the heat from its reliance on fossil fuel-based jet fuel and thus its relatively large emissions. Sustainability-focused large corporations whose employees do a lot of business travel are also considering ways to both reduce airline travel and also work with carbon neutral airlines. Amazon’s news doesn’t just highlight the emergence of the bio jet fuel industry and the environmental spotlight on the airline industry, it also shows growing attention and worry around the carbon intensity of air cargo. The vast majority of goods in the United States are shipped by trucks, but a small and rapidly growing segment of goods are shipped by planes.
Rain cancels rally in Jersey City, but opposition to NJ Transit power plant in Kearny wages on – While a big rain storm cancelled a planned Jersey City rally, it couldn’t dampen the mood among environmental groups and elected officials who planned to voice their opposition to NJ Transit’s proposed 140-megawatt, gas-powered power plant in Kearny. Food and Water Watch NJ and the New Jersey Sierra Club planned a rally at Leonard Gordon Park with at least four Jersey City council members, since the site overlooks Koppers Koke Peninsula – the site of the proposed plant – but the weather forced the gathering onto Zoom. Matt Smith, the state director for FWW, said in an interview that the proposed project is, from a climate change perspective, a terrible idea because the plant is expected to generate upwards of 650,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually once it goes online.“Right now in New Jersey, we get a higher percentage [of energy] from renewables: 21 percent of our energy now has to come from renewable energy, and between that and nuclear, and some other carbon-free sources, there is no way that NJ Transit can claim that building a new gas-powered plant to operate 24/7 would be good for air quality,” Smith argued.He also noted that the proposed gas-powered plant “flies in the face” of Gov. Phil Murphy’s (D) Energy Master Plan that he signed into law earlier this year to power the state’s entire energy infrastructure with clean energy sources by 2050.The plan outlines a number of strategies to get to that goal in 30 years, such as reducing energy consumption and emissions from the transportation sector.The Kearny project received an approximately $415 million federal grant, with other costs to be determined by NJ Transit.
Comment period for NIPSCO Bailly plant in Chesterton underway | IER Indiana Environmental Reporter –The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has opened the 45-day public comment period for the proposed cleanup plan of an inactive power plant in Chesterton.The proposal addresses the cleanup of Area C of the Northern Indiana Public Service Co.’s Bailly Generating Station, which abuts the Indiana Dunes National Park.Area C includes former coal ash disposal areas that threaten wildlife in the Dunes with boron contamination.The cleanup proposal includes the excavation and removal of 92,000 cubic yards of coal ash. The coal ash would then be taken to a lined landfill on the grounds of the Schahfer Generating Station in Wheatfield.The proposal also includes mixing 86,000 cubic yards of coal ash found below groundwater level with a cement mix to immobilize contamination. The EPA will accept public comments through Aug. 19. The agency will also host a virtual question and answer session Monday, Aug. 3. Building additional long-distance power lines – hulking ski lift-like structures visible from miles away – is key to America’s transition from fossil fuels to wind and solar power, a number of experts believe. Since solar farms tend to be in sunny southwestern states like California or Texas, while most wind farms are in windy states such as Iowa or Illinois, it’s important to be able to send that electricity to regions lacking in wind or sun. If that’s not possible, then states in these regions will have little choice but to crank up gas- or coal-fired power plants.
Trump Administration Seeks to Block Settlement Between Sierra Club and Michigan Utility – WSJ –The Trump administration is asking a federal judge to reject a settlement between the Sierra Club and a Michigan utility over alleged clean-air violations, arguing that the deal improperly goes beyond what the federal government has approved.The motion, filed late Wednesday, asks a U.S. district court in Michigan to reject a settlement that would require Detroit-based utility DTE Energy Co. to close three coal-fired power plants and pay $2 million for local environmental improvements.Those terms would be in addition to a $7.3 million settlement with the federal government and would have ended a decade-long case over alleged Clean Air Act violations at DTE plants.The Sierra Club has been a co-plaintiff alongside the U.S. government, but the Justice Department says it shouldn’t have the power to push for settlement terms beyond what the government approves. Justice Department lawyers say they are trying to make this a test case, leading to a national precedent limiting the ability of citizen groups to press for stiffer punishments.Shannon Fisk, an attorney for the Earthjustice environmental group who represented the Sierra Club in the case, said the government’s action jeopardizes a settlement that took more than two years to negotiate and would benefit Black and poor communities that suffered from the coal-burning plants in their communities.“It’s unconscionable,” Mr. Fisk said. “This should be an easy win for everyone involved.” A DTE spokesman said the company had no comment on the legal action, but that it remains committed to fulfilling the terms of its agreements with both the government and the Sierra Club.
Germany Approves Coal Phaseout by 2038 – The Bundestag and Bundesrat – Germany’s lower and upper houses of parliament – passed legislation on Friday that would phase out coal use in the country in less than two decades as part of a road map to reduce carbon emissions.”The fossil age in Germany comes to an irrevocable end with this decision,” said Economy Minister Peter Altmaier. Environment Minister Svenja Schulze called it a “great political success for all those who care about the climate-friendly future of our children and grandchildren.”The legislative package has two main features. The first establishes a legal avenue for the gradual reduction in emissions by 2038 at the latest, while the second targets regional economies that would be impacted by the phaseout. Coal-producing regions in the German states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Brandenburg will have access to €40 billion ($45 billion) to help absorb the impact. Those funds are also expected to go towards restructuring regional economies, re-skilling workers and expanding local infrastructure. Financial compensation is also be available to coal plant operators who face losses as a result of the early phaseout. However, compensation is contingent on operators announcing plans by 2026 to shutter plants and cease other emissions-intensive activity. Michael Vassiliadis, who heads the IG BCE trade union, called the measures a “historic landmark.” He said the package has provided a safety net for workers affected by the phase out and would provide them with the necessary support to transition to future sectors. However, not everyone agrees that the measures are enough to mitigate climate change.Environmentalist activists say the legislation falls short of its ultimate aim, with Greenpeace managing director Martin Kaiser describing it as a “historic error.”German Green party chief Annalena Baerbock said the legislation was “oblivious to the future” and instead called on the government to complete Germany’s coal phase out by 2030 the latest.
Ohio Valley Coal Companies Get Tens Of Millions In Paycheck Protection Loans – More than 50 Ohio Valley coal companies received loans totaling as much as $119 million through the Paycheck Protection Program meant to keep people employed during the pandemic’s economic downturn. Congress passed the PPP in March to help businesses keep employees on the payroll and out of unemployment lines. The data released by the Small Business Administration does not show specific dollar amounts for the loans, but rather categorizes loans into ranges such as $150,000 to $350,000 at the lowest end, and $5 million to $10 million at the upper end. Six Ohio Valley coal companies fell into that high-dollar category, including Rhino Energy, whose former CEO David Zatezelo currently heads the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration.Five subsidiaries of Lexington, Kentucky’s bankrupt Blackhawk Mining received loans totalling as much as $14 million. Four of those five subsidiaries reported that zero employees would be affected by the loan. A spokesperson from Blackhawk did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Lexington-based Ramaco Resources, with mines in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, indicated 381 jobs would be affected by the program, according to SBA records.And according to ProPublica, coal companies associated with West Virginia’s billionaire Governor Jim Justice’s family received up to $12 million from the program. Many of the Justice mines have long histories of failures to pay mine safety fines and taxes.Employment in the coal sector is uncertain in the best of times; some coal miners say they head underground each shift well aware that they may not have a job when next they see daylight. The pandemic has only worsened the prospects for miners. Just 43,800 Americans were employed in the coal industry this June, down from 51,000 last December, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And a wave of bankruptcies has now overtaken most of the region’s coal producers. To incentivize companies to use the funds to preserve jobs, PPP loans are eligible for forgiveness – meaning companies don’t have to pay the government back – if the loans are used to cover employee wages, benefits or tips. Indiana-based American Resources Corporation, which has mines in Kentucky and West Virginia, received as much as $5 million through the program, even though the company has come under fire for failing to pay its employees long before the pandemic hit. In a recent bankruptcy court hearing, Judge Gregory Schaaf urged ARC attorney Billy Shelton to use the loan instead to pay court fees, foregoing the possibility of forgiveness at a later date. If ARC chooses that path, it would put a further financial strain on a company that is already teetering under the weight of new liabilities it acquired last year. “I would expect [ARC] to liquidate given current market conditions and available liquidity,” said Josh Macey, Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago and an expert on coal-company bankruptcies in reference to ARC’s financial standing at the time of the bankruptcy hearing. “There is just not enough cash right now for them to keep operating.”The PPP loans come amid a historic downturn in the coal industry, which has only been made worse by the coronavirus pandemic. New renewable energy plants are cheaper than new coal plants “virtually everywhere,” according to a recent report, and the retirements of Ohio Valley coal-fired power plants mean the market for the resource will likely continue to worsen.
Environmental groups sue over W.Va. coal reclamation fund (AP) – Environmental groups have sued the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection over what they say is the agency’s failure to adhere to federal reporting requirements for a coal mine reclamation fund. The lawsuit filed Thursday by the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and the Sierra Club seeks to force the state to address the state’s “dramatically underfunded” program whose purpose is to cover the costs of coal mine reclamation, according to a news release. The groups said the DEP failed to notify the U.S. Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement if significant funding or budget changes were to affect the enforcement and administration of the special reclamation fund. The DEP in March sued a company that acquired more than 100 mining permits from Patriot Coal Corp.’s 2015 bankruptcy. Most of the permits are in West Virginia and others are in Kentucky, Illinois and Tennessee. The DEP has said the company, ERP Environmental Fund Inc., laid off all of its employees, ceased operations and abandoned its mining sites. An earlier notice of a pending suit from the environmental groups said the DEP indicated in its March lawsuit that the special reclamation fund would be overwhelmed if it were to take responsibility for ERP’s permits. But a letter sent this week from the DEP to the federal enforcement office indicated DEP does not believe there is a problem with its reclamation program, the environmental groups’ statement said. “This lawsuit ensures that state and federal agencies can no longer deny the existence of this pervasive and urgent crisis,” Karan Ireland of the Sierra Club’s West Virginia chapter said in the statement. The DEP did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. Money from the fund is used to complete mine reclamation when the amount of bonds that are forfeited by companies are less than the actual cost of reclamation. Most of the funding for the special reclamation fund comes from a tax of 27.9 cents on each ton of clean coal mined in the state.
Suspected mayfly swarm causes power loss at nuclear plant in Michigan | Toledo Blade – A swarm of newly hatched mayflies caused one of the Fermi 2 Nuclear Power Plant’s offsite powerlines to shut down Wednesday, authorities said. The power loss was reported at 11:05 p.m., though generators automatically kicked in to avoid a disruption in incoming power, a report from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said. The event is under review but is believed to be caused by an accumulation of mayflies around the switchyard, it said. “That occurred after a large hatch of mayflies overnight,” Fermi spokesman Stephen Tait said. “Many of those mayflies landed on equipment, which caused arcing or a short on the equipment and the loss of power on one of our lines.” The plant routinely decreases the number of exterior and interior lights visible in the area this time of year to deter the mayflies from gathering there, Mr. Tait said. Other actions are also in place to minimize the insect’s impact, he said. “The plant remains and always remained in a safe and stable condition throughout the event,” and the health and safety of the public was never compromised, he said. The power plant is in the process of restoring the line. Mayflies are a winged insect that develop on river and lake bottoms and emerge in late June to early July to mate. They are a sign of good ecological health, being unable to survive in areas with high pollution, but their vast number can cause havoc when they swarm lighted areas. Their numbers have been so thick along Lake Erie, the Detroit River, and Lake St. Clair that they sometimes show up on weather radar and have been known to leave roadways dangerously slick.
Regulatory commission rejects activist group’s challenge of Fermi 2 license extension | Toledo Blade – A Monroe County activist group’s attempt to reopen negotiations for DTE Energy’s Fermi 2 license extension has been rejected by a federal tribunal that considers challenges to U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission decisions. The NRC’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, which acts independently of the agency as a trial-level, adjudicatory panel of experts empowered to act like judges, said in a ruling issued Tuesday that Citizens’ Resistance at Fermi 2, also known as CRAFT, had failed to convince it of the need for an additional hearing, and dismissed the case. It listened to DTE, CRAFT, and the NRC present 10-minute overviews during a teleconference on June 10, then asked each party to answer a series of questions. At issue is the stability of spent fuel stored inside DTE’s Fermi 2 nuclear plant, which sits along the western Lake Erie shoreline in northern Monroe County about 30 miles from downtown Toledo. When the NRC decided in 2016 that it would grant a 20-year extension to Fermi 2’s operating license, DTE agreed to remove and replace Boraflex neutron absorbing materials, or NAMs, from the plant’s spent fuel pool. That was to happen before 2025, when the license was originally set to expire. With the 20-year extension, the expiration date has been pushed back into 2045. Recently, though, DTE asked for permission to use a less-expensive alternative to replacing the existing Boraflex. An NRC spokesman, Prema Chandrathil, said that request is currently under review. The ASLB said in its 24-page decision that CRAFT “plainly has failed to submit an admissible contention.” Jessie Collins, CRAFT co-chair, said the group is disappointed by the ruling and has 25 days to appeal, but isn’t sure yet what it will do.
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