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:
- 11 Jul 2021 – Coronavirus Disease Weekly News 11July 2021
- 11 Jul 2021 – Coronavirus Economic Weekly News 11July 2021
Even with the anomalously smaller number of Covid cases reported over the holiday weekend, the past week has seen quite a pronounced surge of new coronavirus infections in the US. New cases reported in the US during the week ending July 10th were 25.3% higher than those reported during the week ending July 3rd, and 40.6% higher than those reported during the week ending June 26th. However, since that increase is off a very low base, this week’s numbers are still 93% lower than during the worst week of January. Since the data reported for July 3rd, 4th and 5th is suspect, we’ll try comparing later in the week figures week over week to see what we get excluding the holiday effect. New cases over the three days ending Friday (July 9th) were 32.7% higher than during the same three days of the prior week (June 30, July 1 & July 2), and 53.9% higher than the 3 day period ending June 25th.
At any rate, US deaths attributed to Covid are still falling; during the week ending July 10th, US deaths from the virus were 7.9% below the death count from the week ending July 3rd, and 26.0% lower than during the week ending June 26th. We can assume there’s likely a “4th of July” effect on those figures as well, but we’ll forego the math on it at this time.
Global cases are also rising more rapidly than previously, but since some countries are already acting to lower their new infections, the overall surge is not quite as pronounced. New cases reported worldwide during the week ending July 10th were 11.2% higher than those reported during the week ending July 3rd, and 14.7% higher that cases reported during the week ending June 26th. But unlike those in the US, global deaths from Covid have turned the corner, and are up fractionally week over week; however, this week’s increase of 25 deaths worldwide is less than 0.1%.
As we mentioned, new Covid cases in many of those counties with surging infections a month ago are now falling. That’s most notable in South America, where new cases in Brazil were down 9% over the past week, new cases in Columbia were down 15%, and new cases in Argentina were down 17% week over week. Those three countries, along with India, were the four most infectious a few weeks back. On the other hand, European countries are again seeing a resurgence of infections; new cases in Spain were up 103% over this past week; new cases in France were up 61%, new cases in the Netherlands were up 386%, new cases in Portugal were up 39%, and new cases in Greece were up 163%. It’s probably not a coincidence that most of those countries are close to England; new cases reported in the UK over the week ending July 10th were 1500% higher than those reported during the week ending May 8th.
Some of the COVID-19 graphics presented in the articles linked at the beginning of this post have been updated below.
Summary data graphics:
Below are copies of graphs WorldOMeters so you can get a visuallization of what the growth and decline of this pandemic looks like in the U.S. (data through July 13):
New cases and deaths data globally are shown in the Johns Hopkins graphics below (first two graphics). These graphics shows the daily global new cases (red) and deaths (white) since the start of the pandemic up through 13 July. The third graphic shows the cummulative total vaccine doses delivered to date.
Here’s the week’s environment and energy news:
War on Science Persists Within Biden EPA as Staffers Allege Chemical Reports Altered – Four scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency are alleging that the “war on science” is continuing under the Biden administration, with managers at the agency altering reports about the risks posed by chemicals and retaliating against employees who report the misconduct. The government watchdog Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) filed a formal complaint Friday on behalf of the scientists with the EPA’s Office of the Inspector General, calling for an investigation into reports that high-level employees routinely delete crucial information from chemical risk assessments or change the documents’ conclusions to give the impression that the chemicals in question are not toxic. The group also wrote to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform’s Subcommittee on Environment, calling on lawmakers to work with the inspector general to investigate the allegations. The report follows outrage about officials in the Trump administration covering up scientific facts by deleting the EPA’s climate change website, but PEER emphasized that the problem is persisting at the agency six months into President Joe Biden’s term. “These alterations of risk assessments are not just artifacts of the Trump administration; they are continuing on a weekly basis,” said Kyla Bennett, science policy director at PEER who formerly worked at the EPA. Under the Toxic Substances Control Act, the agency is responsible for evaluating the risks of existing chemicals as well as those slated to be manufactured in or imported to the United States. The four employees said in the complaint that they’ve observed “numerous instances” in which significant changes were made to their own assessments, including:
- The removal of language identifying possible adverse effects of chemicals, including developmental toxicity, neurotoxicity, mutagenicity, and/or carcinogenicity;
- Changes to report conclusions to indicate that there are no signs of toxicity “despite significant data to the contrary”; and
- Risk assessments being reassigned to inexperienced employees “to secure their agreement to remove issues whose inclusion would be protective of human health.”
“The resulting Material Safety Data Sheets lack information vital to prevent harmful exposures, such as proper handling procedures, personal protection needed, accidental release measures, first aid, and firefighting measures,” said PEER.In one case, managers increased the dose considered safe for consumption for a certain chemical by nearly 10,000-fold, according to The Hill. “All of these altered assessments need to be pulled back and corrected in order to protect both workers handling chemicals and the American public,” said Bennett.
New UC Berkeley Study Suggests Cell Phone Use Increases Risk of Cancer – – New UC Berkeley research draws a strong link between cell phone radiation and tumors, particularly in the brain. Researchers took a comprehensive look at statistical findings from 46 different studies around the globe and found that the use of a cell phone for more than 1,000 hours, or about 17 minutes a day over a ten year period, increased the risk of tumors by 60 percent. Researchers also pointed to findings that showed cell phone use for 10 or more years doubled the risk of brain tumors. Joel Moskowitz, director of the Center for Family and Community Health with the UC Berkeley School of Public Health conducted the research in partnership with Korea’s National Cancer Center, and Seoul National University. Their analysis took a comprehensive look at statistical findings from case control studies from 16 countries including the U.S., Sweden, United Kingdom, Japan, Korea, and New Zealand. “Cell phone use highlights a host of public health issues and it has received little attention in the scientific community, unfortunately,” said Moskowitz. Cell phone use has increasingly become part of people’s daily lives, especially with the emergence of smartphones. Recent figures from the Pew Research Center showed that 97% of Americans now own a cell phone of some kind. This, as more and more people have become dependent on their mobile phones as an integral mode of communication. Figures from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics found 61.8% of adults have decided to go wireless-only. With the increased use of mobile devices, the research has been vast on their potential link to cancer. The findings have varied and at times been controversial. Many studies looking into the health risks of cell phone use have been funded or partially funded by the cellular phone industry, which critics argue can skew research results. “Moskowitz emphasized that these studies have been controversial as it is a highly sensitive political topic with significant economic ramifications for a powerful industry,” Berkeley Public Health noted.
Fish are becoming addicted to methamphetamines seeping into rivers –Illicit drug use is a growing global health concern that causes a financial burden of hundreds of billions of dollars in the US alone. But hidden beneath the societal costs of this human epidemic is a potential ecological crisis. As methamphetamine levels rise in freshwater streams, fish are increasingly becoming addicted. “Where methamphetamine users are, there is also methamphetamine pollution,” says Pavel Horký at the Czech University of Life Sciences.Humans excrete methamphetamines into wastewater, but treatment plants aren’t designed to deal with such substances. Because of this, as treated wastewater flows into streams, so do methamphetamines and other drugs.In some streams in the Czech Republic, methamphetamine concentrations have been measured at hundreds of nanograms per litre, according to Horký and his colleagues, but the effect of these levels on aquatic animals has been unclear. To investigate, they set up an experiment to detect possible adverse side effects of this hidden ecological epidemic. They divided 120 hatchery reared brown trout (Salmo trutta) into two 350 litre tanks. The water in one tank contained methamphetamines matching concentrations measured in wild streams while the other was left uncontaminated as a control. After eight weeks, the researchers removed the methamphetamine from the experimental tank. During the following 10-day “withdrawal” period, Horký tested fish selected at random from both groups for signs of addiction and withdrawal. The control fish showed no preference for one side of the simulated stream or the other, but the methamphetamine-exposed fish repeatedly chose to stay in the drugged water. What’s more, the methamphetamine-exposed fish had elevated levels of methamphetamine in their brain tissue and were also less active than normal – which might reduce their chances of surviving and reproducing. “Drug reward cravings by fish could overshadow natural rewards like foraging or mating,” says Horký. “Such contamination could change the functioning of whole ecosystems.”
DNA sequencing from water and leech bloodmeals reveal viruses circulating in the wild. – In a new scientific investigation headed by the German Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW), water from African and Mongolian waterholes as well as bloodmeals from Southeast Asian leeches were assessed for the ability to retrieve mammalian viruses without the need to find and catch the mammals. The scientists analyzed the samples using high throughput sequencing to identify known viruses as well as viruses new to science. Both approaches proved to be suitable tools for pandemic prevention research as they allow finding and monitoring reservoirs of wildlife viruses. For example, a novel coronavirus most likely associated with Southeast Asian deer species was identified. The results are published in the scientific journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution. Finding and monitoring reservoirs of wildlifeviruses such as SARS-CoV-2 – for which the reservoir has yet to be discovered – is challenging. Many areas which wildlife inhabit are difficult to access and the species in question are hard to find or catch. In order to prevent future pandemics such as COVID-19, new and effective methods to discover and monitor viruses circulating in wildlife are urgently needed. Environmental DNA (eDNA) and invertebrate-derived DNA (iDNA) based approaches may enhance the available toolkit to overcome these challenges, when coupled with high throughput sequencing. The team of scientists assessed water from African and Mongolian waterholes and bloodmeals from Southeast Asian leeches for the ability to retrieve viruses from both sample types. The usual limitation of such samples is that they contain only tiny amounts of low-quality DNA, particularly pathogen DNA. The author therefore used a modern “hybridisation capture” approach to fish out sequences similar to those from currently known vertebrate viruses and then sequenced them using sophisticated high-throughput techniques. This approach was successful in that it allowed the identification of known and novel viruses in both water and leech samples. The DNA from water samples yielded several viruses common to zebras and wild ass, which were expected as these animals frequently visit the waterholes in large numbers. In the case of the viruses found in African water holes, the authors demonstrated in a related publication that the viruses are still infectious, suggesting that the water itself may be a source of viral transmission. From the Southeast Asian leeches, many known as well as novel viruses were identified. Of particular interest was a novel coronavirus previously unknown to science, which potentially represents an entirely new genus in the Coronaviridae family and seems to be associated with deer species.
Could editing the genomes of bats prevent future coronavirus pandemics? Two scientists think it’s worth a try – Amid the devastating Covid-19 pandemic, two researchers are proposing a drastic way to stop future pandemics: using a technology called a gene drive to rewrite the DNA of bats to prevent them from becoming infected with coronaviruses. The scientists aim to block spillover events, in which viruses jump from infected bats to humans – one suspected source of the coronavirus that causes Covid. Spillover events are thought to have sparked other coronavirus outbreaks as well, including SARS-1 in the early 2000s and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). This appears to be the first time that scientists have proposed using the still-nascent gene drive technology to stop outbreaks by rendering bats immune to coronaviruses, though other teams are investigating its use to stop mosquitoes and mice from spreading malaria and Lyme disease. The scientists behind the proposal realize they face enormous technical, societal, and political obstacles, but want to spark a fresh conversation about additional ways to control diseases that are emerging with growing frequency. “With a very high probability, we are going to see this over and over again,” argues entrepreneur and computational geneticist Yaniv Erlich of the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel, who is one of two authors of the proposal, titled “Preventing COVID-59.”
Va. Dept. of Wildlife Resources receives over 1,400 reports of sick, dying birds (WWBT) – Wildlife officials are still trying to figure out what is causing hundreds of birds to be sick or dying in Virginia and other states. Between May 23 and June 30, the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources said it has taken over 1,400 reports of sick or dying birds. Of the reported cases, about 450 were described as having eye issues and/or neurological signs. Wildlife experts urge people to take down feeders as birds fall ill The counties where the cases have been reported so far include Alexandria, Arlington, Clarke, Fairfax, Falls Church, Fauquier, Frederick, Loudoun, Manassas, Prince William, Shenandoah, Warren and Winchester. On a larger scale, cases of sick or dying birds first started being reported in late May in Washington D.C., Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky. DWR said additional reports have also come in from Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana. “While the majority of affected birds are reported to be fledgling common grackles, blue jays, European starlings, and American robins, other species of songbirds have been reported as well,” DWR said. Multiple laboratories are working to determine what is causing the illness and death. Within the birds tested, the following infectious agents have not been found: Salmonella and Chlamydia (bacterial pathogens); avian influenza virus, West Nile virus and other flaviviruses, Newcastle disease virus and other paramyxoviruses, herpesviruses and poxviruses; and Trichomonas parasites. Additional microbiology, virology, parasitology and toxicology diagnostic testing are ongoing. Right now, no human health, domestic livestock or poultry issued have been reported.
NE Indiana seeing rise in sick, dying songbirds from mysterious illness (WANE) – More reports of sick and dying songbirds are appearing around northeast Indiana. According to Indiana’s Department of Natural Resources, more than 280 cases have been reported across 53 counties statewide since late May. In northeast Indiana, the affected counties are Allen, Grant, Kosciusko, LaGrange, Marion and Whitley. During a press conference last Friday, state ornithologist Allisyn Gillet specifically called out a rise in cases in Allen and Kosciusko Counties. Affected birds include blue jays, American robin, common grackle, starling, northern cardinal and brown-headed cowbird. Infected songbirds exhibit neurological symptoms, along with eye swelling and crusty discharge around the eyes. State officials are still trying to determine the exact nature of the disease but have ruled out avian influenza and West Nile virus. As a precaution, the state is asking the public to take down bird feeders to limit the spread of this illness. “The whole reason for this is because we want birds to be able to socially distance naturally,” Gillet said. “They don’t have that know-how that that’s not okay for them when there’s a disease going around.” The total number of reported cases and birds affected by an unknown illness in northeast Indiana. This disease was first detected in Monroe Co. Meanwhile, Fort Wayne’s Wild Birds Unlimited shop has published recommendations for those with bird feeders. These tips include:
Songbirds are mysteriously dying across the eastern U.S. Scientists are scrambling to find out why | Science – Jennifer Toussaint, chief of animal control in Arlington, Virginia, can’t forget the four baby blue jays. Each was plump, indicating “their parents had done a great job caring for them,” Toussaint says. But the birds were lethargic, unable to keep their balance, and blinded by crusty, oozing patches that had grown over their eyes. Toussaint and her staff soon reached a gloomy diagnosis: the jays were the latest victims of a mysterious deadly disease that had emerged in their area just a few weeks earlier and had already killed countless wild birds. Since May, when the illness was first recognized in and around Washington, D.C., researchers have documented hundreds of cases in at least a dozen species of birds in nine eastern and midwestern states. State, federal, and academic scientists are hunting for clues to a cause in bird carcasses and the environment. Last week, they reported some modest progress: Studies have ruled out a number of agents known to cause mass mortality in birds, including Salmonella bacteria, several families of viruses, and Trichomonas parasites. “Learning what isn’t the cause can be just as helpful as learning what it is,” Toussaint says. . Despite the uncertainty, researchers are beginning to get a clearer picture of the outbreak, thanks in part to thousands of people who have responded to calls from government agencies and scientists to report sick or dead birds. Not all species, for example, appear to be at high risk. “It’s been quite species specific,” says veterinarian Megan Kirchgessner of the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources. So far, most cases involve just four species – common grackles, blue jays, American robins, and European starlings – according to a 2 July statement from the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Wildlife Health Center. Young birds appear to be especially susceptible. Those demographics could change as more data come in, especially from rural areas that so far have produced few observations, says Allisyn-Marie Gillet, Indiana’s state ornithologist. At this point, the outbreak doesn’t appear to pose a serious threat to bird populations, researchers say. Still, they are watching to see whether its geographic scope expands; reports of sick birds now stretch west to Indiana and Kentucky and north to Pennsylvania.
Nearly One Third of Wisconsin’s Gray Wolves Killed in Legal Hunt, New Study Finds –A new study found that as many as a third of Wisconsin’s gray wolves died from human hunting and the loss of federal protections under the Endangered Species Act. During Wisconsin’s first public wolf hunt in February, hunters killed 218 wolves, according to new research by the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The hunt was not supposed to be legal until November 2021, but a pro-hunting group sued and won, allowing the hunt to take place in February. Wildlife officials were forced to end the legal hunt after only three days, according to HuffPost.Gray wolves were dropped from the endangered list by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 48 states, just this January before Donald Trump left the White House. Ex-Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said that, at the time, the wolves “exceeded all conservation goals for recovery,” according to HuffPost.Since the gray wolf’s removal from the Endangered Species Act, conservation goals are generally at the discretion of individual states, although they must submit five-year monitoring plans to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, according to HuffPost.Adrain Treves, the lead author of the study and an environmental studies professor at the University of Wisconsin, said that the study’s findings should raise concerns for future hunting seasons in the state, according to HuffPost.In the Spring of 2020, there were at least 1,034 wolves in Wisconsin. The deaths brought the total number of wolves between 695 and 751, according to The Associated Press.Between April 2020 and April 2021, 313 to 323 gray wolves were killed by humans – a majority of them killed during the February public hunt. The targeted amount of wolves to kill for population control was 119.More than half of the non-hunting deaths are from “cryptic poaching,” according to Treves and his co-authors. These deaths include illegal killing where the poachers leave behind no evidence. Other deaths may be from “automobile strikes and government-approved lethal controls for wolves harassing livestock,” according toThe Associated Press. “Although the [Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources] is aiming for a stable population, we estimate the population actually dropped significantly,” Treves said in a statement, according to HuffPost.
Turtle and Dolphin Deaths ‘Abnormally High’ After Ship With Toxic Chemicals Sinks off Sri Lanka— Up to 100 turtles and 20 dolphins have washed up dead on Sri Lanka’s beaches in the past month, as experts fear a link to the leak of toxic chemicals from a sunken freight ship. “So far, around 176 dead turtles have got washed onto different beaches around Sri Lanka,” said Thushan Kapurusinghe, coordinator of the Turtle Conservation Project of Sri Lanka (TCP).Marine turtles washing up dead on the Indian Ocean island are common around this time of year, which is when the peak of the monsoon turns the seas rough and leads to the turtles being fatally injured. But this June, the waves have brought in an “abnormally high” number of turtle and even dolphin carcasses, Kapurusinghe told Mongabay. But this period has also been marked by what environmental activists and experts warn is the biggest maritime disaster unfolding in Sri Lanka’s history. In late May, the Singapore-flagged cargo ship MV X-Press Pearl caught fire off Colombo, on Sri Lanka’s western coast, and sank in early June. It was carrying a cargo ofnitric acid and plastic pellets, among other items, and was loaded with 378 metric tons of bunker fuel. Modeling by researchers has shown that ocean currents would carry these pollutants south, right through the path of the turtles and toward their nesting sites, Ekanayake told Mongabay. “The timing of the accident couldn’t have been worse than this as the number of turtles in our waters would be high during this time as April-May records the highest number of nesting occurrences, going by past research,” Ekanayaka said. Satellite tracking data show that most migratory turtles nesting in Sri Lanka move along the west coast closer to shore up to the Gulf of Mannar in the north before moving out to their feeding grounds. This makes them more vulnerable to any pollution from the ship accident, Ekanayake told Mongabay.
Berta Cflceres assassination: ex-head of dam company found guilty -A US-trained former Honduran army intelligence officer who was the president of an internationally financed hydroelectric company has been found guilty over the assassination of the indigenous environmentalist Berta Cflceres. Cflceres, winner of the Goldman prize for environmental defenders, was shot dead two days before her 45th birthday by hired hitmen on 2 March 2016 after years of threats linked to her opposition of the 22-megawatt Agua Zarca dam. On Monday, Roberto David Castillo – the former head of the dam company Desarrollos Energéticos, or Desa – was found guilty of being co-collaborator in ordering the murder.The high court in Tegucigalpa ruled that Cflceres was murdered for leading the campaign to stop construction of the dam, which led to delays and financial losses for the dam company.The environmentally destructive energy project on the Gualcarque river, considered sacred by the Lenca people, was sanctioned even though it had not complied with national and international environmental and community requirements. After a trial that lasted 49 days, the high court in Tegucigalpa ruled that Castillo used paid informants as well as his military contacts and skills to monitor Cflceres over years, information which was fed back to the company executives. He coordinated, planned and obtained the money to pay for the assassination of the internationally acclaimed leader, which was carried out by seven men convicted in December 2018.
Amazônia: A Look at What We Stand to Lose – To better understand the importance of the Amazon, renowned Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado and his wife and partner, Léila Wanick Salgado, spent six years traveling through the Brazilian rainforest, visiting dozens of Indigenous tribes. He documented their daily life, their family bonds, how they gather food and eat, their ceremonial ware and their rituals. Above all, he strove to showcase how, as we jeopardize the future of the rainforest, we also endanger the people that live there – “an irreplaceable treasure of humanity.” “A Salgado photograph is instantly recognizable. Black-and-white. Biblical in scope. Human. Severe,” Smithsonian Magazine wrote. “… It’s his attention to the background that matters most. Salgado is a systems thinker, keenly aware of the larger forces that create the moments he captures.”In a similar vein, when showcasing Amazônia, Salgado began with the unparalleled beauty of this region. His images build on this to emphasize the irreplaceable nature of the rich biodiversity and Indigenous cultures whose futures are inextricably intertwined with those of the trees.”For me, it is the last frontier, a mysterious universe of its own, where the immense power of nature can be felt as nowhere else on earth,” he wrote in the book’s foreword. “Here is a forest stretching to infinity that contains one-tenth of all living plant and animal species, the world’s largest single natural laboratory.”The rich natural resources within the rainforest are an undiscovered and untapped source of foods, medicines, cures and scientific and cultural knowledge. All of this will be lost if the forest is destroyed.Salgado also teaches his readers about the Amazon’s unparalleled ability to sequester freshwater for the region. It is the only place on earth where humidity in the air does not depend on evaporation from seawater, the foreword says. This water vapor, which results from the hundreds of billions of trees in the rainforest, greatly impacts the regional water supply and the global climate, he said. As therainforest dries out due to the climate crisis, it will affect the water supply and biodiversity of the region and the people who live there.To showcase this critical and endangered ecosystem function, Salgado shot a series on the rains of Amazônia, the “aerial rivers” that bring water and life to the region.Finally, the Amazon has been called the lungs of the planet. Unfortunately, due to intense deforestation, gold mining, and fires, the rainforest has already lost its ability to act as a carbon sink. Instead, it is becoming an “enormous carbon bomb,” Salgado warned – a dangerous source of carbon on an increasingly carbon-filled planet.”With 20 percent of the Amazon’s biomass already lost, any further disruption of its ecological equilibrium will have drastic repercussions far beyond Latin America’s frontiers,” Salgado wrote in the foreword. An unrelated study predicted the collapse of the Amazon by the year 2064.
‘Historic Moment’: ‘Ecocide’ Definition Unveiled by International Lawyers –A team of international lawyers has unveiled a definition of “ecocide” that, if adopted, would treat environmental destruction on a par with crimes against humanity.After six months of deliberation, a panel of experts yesterday published the core text of a legal document that would criminalise “ecocide” if taken on by the International Criminal Court (ICC).“This is an historic moment,” said Jojo Mehta, chair of the Stop Ecocide Foundation which commissioned the team of lawyers. “This expert panel came together in direct response to a growing political appetite for real answers to the climate and ecological crisis.”In the draft law, the panel of 12 lawyers defined ecocide as “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts”.If ratified by signatory states, ecocide would become the fifth international crime investigated and prosecuted by the ICC, alongside genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression.During a webinar marking the release of the document, panel co-chair Philippe Sands QC said the proposed definition would “cause us to think about our place in the world differently and it causes us to imagine the possibility that the law could be used to protect the global environment at a time of real challenge”. “None of our international laws protect the environment as an end in itself and that’s what the crime of ecocide does,” Sands added.Mehta described the draft law as a “necessary guardrail that could help steer our civilisation back into a safe operating space”. “Without some kind of enforceable legal parameter addressing the root causes of these crises, it’s hard to see how the Paris targets and the UNSDGs [United Nations Sustainable Development Goals] can possibly be reached,” she said.The panel said that the idea of “unlawful or wanton” acts would allow judges and prosecutors to balance consideration of these elements. This idea of balance could be vital to the law’s success if it is to be agreed to by the states that subscribe to the ICC, according to co-chair Sands, who said it avoids “setting the bar too low and frightening states who we need to adopt the definition, or setting the bar so high that it becomes effectively useless in practice”.
Cleaner air has contributed one-fifth of U.S. maize and soybean yield gains since 1999 – A key factor in America’s prodigious agricultural output turns out to be something farmers can do little to control: clean air. A new Stanford-led study estimates pollution reductions between 1999 and 2019 contributed to about 20 percent of the increase in corn and soybean yield gains during that period – an amount worth about $5 billion per year.The analysis, published this week inEnvironmental Research Letters, reveals that four key air pollutants are particularly damaging to crops, and accounted for an average loss of about 5 percent of corn and soybean production over the study period. The findings could help inform technology and policy changes to benefit American agriculture, and underscore the value of reducing air pollution in other parts of the world.“Air pollution impacts have been hard to measure in the past, because two farmers even just 10 miles apart can be facing very different air quality. By using satellites, we were able to measure very fine scale patterns and unpack the role of different pollutants,” said study lead author David Lobell, the Gloria and Richard Kushel Director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment. The research highlights the considerable power of satellites to illuminate pollution impacts at a scale not possible otherwise. That power could be of even greater value in countries with less access to air monitors and yield data. Scientists have long known that air pollution is toxic to plant life in high doses, but not how much farmers’ yields are actually hurt at current levels. The impact of pollution on agriculture overall, as well as the effects of individual pollutants, has also remained unknown.Focusing on a nine-state region (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin) that produces roughly two-thirds of national maize and soybean output, Lobell and study co-author Jennifer Burney, an associate professor of environmental science at the University of California, San Diego, set out to measure the impact on crop yields of ozone, particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide.Ozone is the result of heat and sunlight-driven chemical reactions between nitrogen and hydrocarbons, such as those found in car exhaust. Particulate matter refers to large particles of dust, dirt, soot or smoke. Nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide are gases released into the atmosphere primarily through the burning of fossil fuels at power plants and other industrial facilities.
Grasshopper Plague Is Latest Sign of Climate Crisis in U.S. West – The hot, dry weather baking the U.S. West is causing another problem for the beleaguered region: an overabundance of grasshoppers.The crop-devouring insects are native to the region, and normally their population is too small to cause alarm,The Guardian explained. But warmer, drier winters beginning in 2020 created the ideal conditions for more of them to survive to adulthood. Now, their population is swelling, and ranchers fear that they will gobble up the vegetation their cattle rely on for food, according to CNN. “Climate change is a concern to all of us, and when we see extreme events such as a very bad drought, we see natural phenomenon increase such as grasshopper outbreaks,” former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Sharon Selvaggio told CNN. “It’s very concerning.”There are currently 13 states experiencing a grasshopper outbreak, according to a hazard map from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In parts of Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Arizona, Colorado and Nebraska there are as many as 15 grasshoppers per square yard of land.Grasshoppers are a problem for ranchers and farmers because of how much they eat, The Guardian explained. They compete with cattle for forage, strip the leaves off of fruit trees and settle in the dry areas around crops, eventually eating their way to the grain. Oregon Department of Agriculture entomologist and agricultural scientist Helmuth Rogg told The Guardian that can lead to losses of hundreds of thousands of dollars.”The biggest biomass consumer in the country are not cattle, are not bison. They are grasshoppers,” Rogg said. “They eat and eat from the day they get born until the day they die. That’s all they do.”While the grasshoppers emerge during drought, they also compound its effects on agriculture. “Ranchers are already short of forage because of the drought,” Lassen County Director of the University of California Cooperative Extension David Lile told LAist. “They can’t afford to lose more.”
Climate change has pushed a million people in Madagascar to the edge of starvation, UN says – Climate change is the driving force of a developing food crisis in southern Madagascar, the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) has warned.The African island has been plagued with back-to-back droughts — its worst in four decades — which have pushed 1.14 million people “right to the very edge of starvation,” said WFP executive director David Beasley in a news release Wednesday. “I met women and children who were holding on for dear life, they’d walked for hours to get to our food distribution points. These were the ones who were healthy enough to make it,” Beasley said.”Families are suffering and people are already dying from severe hunger. This is not because of war or conflict, this is because of climate change. This is an area of the world that has contributed nothing to climate change, but now, they’re the ones paying the highest price.”An estimated 14,000 people are already in catastrophic conditions, according to the WFP, a number that is predicted to double to 28,000 by October. Thousands in southern Madagascar have left their homes in search of food, while those who remain are resorting to extreme measures such as foraging for wild food to survive, the WFP said.”This is enough to bring even the most hardened humanitarian to tears. Families have been living on raw red cactus fruits, wild leaves and locusts for months now. We can’t turn our backs on the people living here while the drought threatens thousands of innocent lives,” said Beasley.”Now is the time to stand up, act and keep supporting the Malagasy government to hold back the tide of climate change and save lives.”The WFP needs $78.6 million dollars to provide lifesaving food in the next lean season and prevent a greater tragedy, it said.Beasley’s warning came a day after the WFP said 41 million people in 43 countries were now teetering on the edge of starvation, with 584,000 already experiencing famine-like conditions across Madagascar, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Yemen. This number has increased from 27 million in 2019..”Global maize prices have soared almost 90% year-on-year, while wheat prices are up almost 30% over the same period. In many countries, currency depreciation is adding to these pressures and driving prices even higher. This in turn is stoking food insecurity in countries such as Lebanon, Nigeria, Sudan, Venezuela and Zimbabwe,” said the WFP statement.
Mexico water supply buckles on worsening drought, crops at risk – A long-term drought that has hit two-thirds of Mexico is likely to worsen in coming weeks with forecasts of high temperatures and warnings of crop damage and water supply shortages on the horizon, including in the populous capital of Mexico City.Experts are sounding the alarm that parched crops could under-produce after temperatures hit 40 degrees Celsius (104F) on June 30 in some parts of northern Mexico, including key farming areas. “In some states, irrigation is practically disappearing due to lack of precipitation,” said Rafael Sanchez Bravo, a water expert at Chapingo Autonomous University, noting low reservoirs and reduced water transfers to farms. Mexico’s drought parallels that of the western United States and Canada, where crop yields are threatened and water rationing has been imposed amid extreme heat, a consequence of worldwide climate change. Nearly 500 people died in western Canada in the past week as record-breaking temperatures produced life-threatening conditions for the elderly and vulnerable groups. In the US, the heat buckled highways, hobbled public transit and triggered rolling electricity outages. While rains were 3 percent below average across Mexico as a whole last year, the strain on water reserves was exacerbated by increased domestic demand during the COVID-19 pandemic, a US government report showed last month. Hopes to replenish Mexico’s parched reservoirs now hinge on the traditional rainy season, known formally as the North American Monsoon, which is currently under way. “The next three months will be really crucial in how this drought turns out,” Much of Mexico gets between 50 percent and 80 percent of its annual rainfall between July and September.
Teviston, California without running water for several weeks, with no end in sight – In early June, the water pump in the only functioning well in the rural town of Teviston, California broke down, leaving the community of nearly 1,000 residents without running water for the last several weeks. The lack of running water is particularly problematic as the temperature in California’s Central Valley routinely exceeded 100 degrees Fahrenheit for much of June and will likely continue in the same condition for the rest of the summer. Teviston is an unincorporated community located in Tulare County. The community’s initial residents were black migrants from the Cotton Belt and Dust Bowl states in the 1930s. Today, the population is primarily composed of Latino farmworkers.Frank Galaviz, one of the Teviston Community Service District’s directors, told ABC 30 it is believed “that the well went down so low that sand started agitating down below, got into the pump and made it malfunction.” Teviston has now suffered from three well failures, including June’s broken pump. The last failure was in November of 2017, when the community’s well collapsed. As with many rural communities in California’s Central Valley, there was no working back-up well in Teviston back in 2017 and this is still the case nearly four years later. Due to the well’s failure, the Teviston Community Service District is working with several organizations to help supply residents with water. Cases of bottled water and five-gallon jugs are being provided to residents while tanker trucks are hauling water from neighboring Porterville, which is just over twenty miles away, to fill Teviston’s two water storage tanks. Teviston residents are relying on these limited supplies of bottled water for basic necessities, including hydration, cooking, bathing, and even flushing toilets. According to Galaviz, residents are resorting to visiting family or friends in neighboring towns to be able to shower or wash clothes. Galaviz added that with the water that is being supplied, “it’s just barely enough, and in some cases, not enough. Some families are larger than others.”
Water – California has 40-million people; water for maybe 30-million. These days, most years, California has less and less water. All the states listed above depend to some extent on snowpack for their water (30% of California’s water traditionally comes from the snowpack in the Sierras). About 4.4-million acre-feet of the some state’s total 90-million acre-feet consumption comes from the Colorado River which is fed from the Rocky Mountain snowpack.). During ‘normal’ years, 30% of California’s water came from ground water (meaning that some 35% of its water came from run off). The current drought in California is a result of lack of surface run-off due the lack of rain during the winter rainy season, and the diminishment of the Sierra and Rocky Mountain (Colorado) snowpacks.Snowpacks are a major source of water for most of the drought-stricken states listed above. Climate Change is reducing snowpacks across the Rockies, the Sierras, the Olympic, and the Cascades ranges (and, all around the world). Climate change is also accountable for the diminished rainfall during the rainy season, and higher temperatures.During drought years, up to 60% of California’s water comes from ground water. California’s ground water is pumped up from aquifers; aquifers being underground layers of water bearing/saturated rock, gravel, sand, silt, … . Some aquifers are regularly replenished by runoff from rain and snow melting. In others, the water therein may have been locked away for a billion years. For centuries, humans have used aquifers as a source of fresh, potable water, and for irrigation. In many areas around the world, the more easily accessible aquifers have been severely depleted by this usage. The rate of depletion has been accelerated in those areas experiencing reduced rainfall due to Climate Change, in those areas experiencing population growth, and in those areas of increased withdrawal for agriculture (70% of all extracted aquifer water is used for agriculture).Beyond depletion from over extraction, today, many aquifers are threatened by salt water intrusion due to rising sea levels caused by Climate Change (think upon the Surf City condo collapse and its extensions a moment). Aquifers are a most important source of fresh water. Fresh water is one of our most essential resources. Far more essential than fossil fuels.Aquifers, reservoirs and lakes, and snowpacks are the most significant means of storing water. In the main, aquifers hold long stored water from runoff from rain fall and melting snow. Climate Change models show severe impacts on the both. The models predict that some areas of the earth will get too much rain, some too little, and that the traditional seasonal patterns of rain and snow fall will be severely disrupted. Seasonal patterns that farmers have always depended on to plant and harvest have been changing in many areas of the world. Often, even the very choice of which crops to grow was premised on these patterns.The increased temperatures and dry grasslands across the west have led to a doubling of the frequency and the size wildfires and forest fires. The fire season that once began in October now begins in June; never ends in some areas. Resultant these fires, large parts of states, of the west, have been repeatedly blanketed in the smoke. Smoke so thick that skies were turned orange for days; air so filled with smoke that staying indoors with doors and windows closed, and the wearing face masks when outdoors was required.
Historic heat wave melts out 30% of Mt. Rainier area snowpack in 4 days – – What La Nina gave, historic heat wave took much of it away… As the winter season neared an end, mountain snowpacks were still running a decent amount above average. Then temperatures soared into the 80s, 90s — even triple digits — in the higher elevations of the Cascades and the snow didn’t stand a chance. Snow depth gauges at Paradise Ranger Station around 5,400 feet up Mt. Rainier measured 106 inches of snow on the ground on June 6, according to the Northwest Avalanche Center. A month later on July 5, there were a scant 8 inches up there.Summer melting of the snowpack is indeed an annual occurrence but the National Weather Service in Seattle says 30% of that meltoff came in the four days between June 26 and June 30. Paradise reached the upper 80s on June 28 and then hit 91 degrees on June 29.Freezing levels then were higher than any mountain in the region, reaching as high as 18,200 feet. All that heat meant a lot of snowmelt and a lot of mountain runoff into our local waterways. Still, even with the big loss of snowpack, La Nina was strong enough to keep Mt. Rainier’s snow up there to pretty close to a typical year. The mean meltout date at Paradise is July 11, according to University of Washington research meteorologist Mark Albright, though that date has drifted back to July 13 if you factor in the past 40 years. Last year, Paradise didn’t melt out until July 21, Albright said. Paradise has melted out as early as May 24 in 1941 and as late as August 25 in 1974 – a date that was challenged 10 years ago as Paradise melted out on Aug. 24 in 2011.
EXTREME WEATHER: Drought spreads to 93% of West. That’s never happened — Wednesday, July 7, 2021 — The western United States is experiencing its worst drought this century, threatening to kill crops, spark wildfires and harm public health as hot and dry conditions are expected to continue this month.
Brad Udall: Second-worst Powell inflows in more than half a century — Brad Udall on twitter yesterday ran through a striking series of graphs of the current state of the Colorado River. With his permission, I’m posting them here along with a slightly polished version of his accompanying commentary. Some key points that grabbed my attention:
- Second-lowest Powell inflow in a period of record we use dating to 1964.
- Risk of Powell dropping next year to levels that could jeopardize power production
- Risk of Mead dropping low enough in the next 18 months to trigger much deeper “Tier 2″ reductions to Lower Basin water users in 2023.
Bureau of Reclamation’s ‘unregulated inflows’ into Lake Powell show that 2021 will be the 2nd worst year after only 2002 going back to 1964. 2021 will be the RED bar most likely. This is a really grim year for runoff.2021 inflow will be only ~3 maf, compared to the 1981-2010 average of 10.3 maf or the 2000-2021 average of 8.3 maf (20% less than 1981-2010 average).(maf = million acrefeet)Considering that Powell will release or lose to evaporation ~ 8.5 maf, the lake will lose ~ 5 maf this year or ~55 feet of elevation.April 2021 snowpack above Powell peaked at ~85% of normal but will generate about 25% of normal river flow. This comes on top of April 2020 snowpack of 100% of normal that generated about 50% of normal flow.Declining runoff efficiency has been noted in multiple peer-reviewed studies. For a recent overview of recent climate change studies on the Colorado River see this written with Jonathan Overpeck:Multiple studies since 2016 have now found human fingerprints on the nearly 20% loss in flow since 2000 and attribute up to half of that loss to the approximately 1.2°C or more warming that has occurred during the last century.Jeff Lukas points out that the twitter thread implied that the low runoff efficiency this year as measured by runoff as a percent of snowpack is all due directly to warming. I did not mean to imply that. The low runoff percent numbers are much more a function of (1) very low spring precipitation in both 2020 and 2021 and to a lesser extent (2) low soil moisture from the previous year. It may be that there is a human-caused connection to the low spring precipitation although there’s no real evidence of this yet. Low soil moisture in the springs of 2020 and 2021 is definitely connected to dry and very warm late summer and early fall from the previous years. Teasing this apart to obtain the actual driver(s) is not simple. That said, no one should doubt that climate change is reducing the flows of the Colorado. Multiple peer-reviewed papers have now supported this finding.More from Jeff on this here. Here’s what’s going to happen to the nation’s 2 largest reservoirs because of this measly inflow:
Dire drought warning: California says ‘nearly all’ salmon could die in Sacramento River – The drought is making the Sacramento River so hot that “nearly all” of an endangered salmon species’ juveniles could be cooked to death this fall, California officials warned this week.In a brief update on the perilous state of the river issued this week, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife made a dire prediction about the endangered winter-run Chinook salmon and its struggles against consistently hot weather in the Sacramento Valley.“This persistent heat dome over the West Coast will likely result in earlier loss of ability to provide cool water and subsequently it is possible that nearly all in-river juveniles will not survive this season,” the department said.Given that the salmon generally have a three-year life cycle, a near-total wipeout of one year’s run of juveniles “greatly increases the risk of extinction for the species,” said Doug Obegi, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council. The winter-run salmon endured two years of severe mortality during the last drought as well. There are steps government agencies can take to protect fish. Beginning in April, the Department of Fish and Wildlife hauled millions of juvenile fall-run, hatchery-raised Chinook salmon to Bay Area waters as a pre-emptive move to keep them away from overly-warm river waters. Chuck Bonham, director of Fish and Wildlife, told reporters recently that his agency expects to conduct similar rescue missions as the summer heats up. “We’re going to be serving as Noah’s ark,” Bonham said.Nonetheless, this week’s warning shows how much the drought has worsened in recent months. In May, the National Marine Fisheries Service said 88% of the young Chinook salmon could perish in the Sacramento River this year. Now Fish and Wildlife said the fatality rate could approach 100%. “Those in the salmon industry aren’t terribly surprised but we are saddened,” said John McManus, executive director of the Golden State Salmon Association, which represents the commercial salmon fishing industry. The salmon generally can’t survive when the water temperature exceeds 56 degrees. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which operates Shasta Lake, is obligated to preserve cool water in the reservoir through spring and summer so that water that gets released later in the year won’t cook the fish. Environmentalists, however, say the bureau have already released so much water from the lake for farmers that the pool of cool water has gotten depleted.Reclamation has slashed water allocations to zero for most farmers in the Central Valley this year, but it has released water from Shasta to select groups that have special water rights, including rice growers on the west side of the Sacramento Valley.In any event, Fish and Wildlife says Shasta is heating up – which will lead to perilously warm water in the river later this year.“Continued hot weather above 100 degrees for periods in late May, early June and past two weeks continuously will lead to depletion of cold water pool in Shasta Lake sooner than modeled earlier in the season,” the agency said in this week’s briefing.
BC Heat Wave Caused Over 1 Billion Tidal Creatures to Cook to Death, Scientist Says – It’s “a frightening warning sign,” said one observer.”Heartbreaking,” another commented.Those were some of the responses to new reporting by the CBC on how last week’s extreme heatwave that gripped British Columbia may have led to the deaths of more than one billion intertidal animals like mussels and starfish that inhabit the Salish Sea coastline.Christopher Harley, a marine ecologist at the University of British Columbia, told the outlet about how he had noticed a foul odor from dead intertidal animals on rocks at Vancouver’s popular Kitsilano Beach as the cityexperienced record heat. Harley then set off with a team of researchers to gather data on nearby coastlines.What the researchers noticed, CBC reported, were “endless rows of mussels with dead meat attached inside the shell, along with other dead creatures like sea stars and barnacles.”They tracked temperatures too, recording 50°C (122°F) on rocky shoreline habitats, well above the high 30s (around 100°F) mussels can endure for short spurts. Harley likened a mussel on the rock enduring the scorching temperatures to “a toddler left in a car on a hot day” – stuck “at the mercy of the nvironment” until the tide returns. “And on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, during the heat wave, it just got so hot that the mussels, there was nothing they could do.”The heat wave was deadly for humans too.Lisa Lapointe, British Columbia’s chief coroner, announced Friday that from June 25 to July 1, the province’s death toll was 719 – three times higher than normal – and said heat was likely “a significant contributing factor to the increased number of deaths.” The heat wave was also blamed for dozens of deaths in the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington.The recent heat wave’s deadly impact on shellfish was noted in the U.S. Pacific Northwest as well.The Daily Mail reported last week on comments from the family-run Hama Hama Oyster company in Washington. “The epic heatwave is something no one has seen and then we had a low tide that was as far as it has been in 15 years and it happened mid-day,” the company said.The clams “look like they had just been cooked, like they were ready to eat,” the company told the outlet.
Oregon governor: Heat wave death toll ‘absolutely unacceptable’ Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) on Sunday denounced as “absolutely unacceptable” the scores of deaths in her state as a result of the recent record-setting heat wave in the Pacific Northwest. During an appearance on CBS’s “Face The Nation,” Brown told host Ed O’Keefe that her administration’s biggest concern “is that this is a harbinger of things to come.” “We have been working to prepare for climate change in this state for a number of years,” she said. “What was unprecedented, of course, was the three days of record-breaking heat, and it was horrific to see over 90 Oregonians lose their lives.” She added, “We literally have had four emergency declarations in this state at the federal level since April of 2020. Over Labor Day last year, we had horrific wildfires. They were historic. We lost over a million acres, over 4,000 homes and nine lives.”
U.S. Cities Are Suffocating in the Heat. Now They Want Retribution – Baltimore is suing major oil and gas companies for spurring the climate crisis and the rising temperatures that have an outsized impact on low-income, urban areasFor years, an elderly man stood as a regular fixture around his East Baltimore neighborhood for the way he would wander the streets in the summer, trying to stay outside his sweltering home until nightfall.This man, who suffers from dementia, lived in a row house that shared side walls with its neighboring homes. With windows only in the front and back, there was little air flow, which trapped the heat inside. It’s not unusual for the upper floors in such homes to be several degrees hotter than the temperature outdoors.During a nearly two-week heat wave that swept through the city in July 2019, Cynthia Brooks, executive director of the Bea Gaddy Family Center, a local non-profit that provides food and other services for the poor and homeless, noticed she hadn’t seen the man for a while. Finally, on one of the “code red” days – when the forecasted heat index is expected to be at 105F (40.56C) or higher – he stumbled out of his house, looking disoriented. No one knows how long he had been sitting inside, alone, without a fan or air conditioning. This man had no one to call – no family was around, and alerting emergency responders could have led to a hefty medical bill. This man represents the population in Baltimore most likely to face the personal impacts of the climate crisis. Around the country, global heating is increasing the frequency, intensity and duration of summer heat waves. The recent triple-digit temperatures across the Pacific north-west, where air conditioning in homes isn’t common, highlight the real-world hardships caused by extreme heat exposure and how the elderly and homeless suffer disproportionately from physical discomfort and worse health outcomes.
Death Valley could make another run at world record high temp – High heat in Death Valley pushed the mercury up to 128 degrees Fahrenheit about three weeks ago, far above what’s normal there for this time of year. And another round of above-average heat was building in the region, which could send temperatures just as high over the weekend. Sunday’s high in Death Valley is forecast to reach 130 degrees, which would be within four degrees of the record of 134 F set there in 1913. The 134-degree mark happens to be the world record for the highest temperature ever measured on Earth. AccuWeather forecasts show that the RealFeel could reach 132 degrees Sunday in Death Valley. Death Valley, along with parts of Nye County and the Mojave Desert, is set to be under an excessive heat warning from 8 a.m. Wednesday through 8 p.m. PDT Monday, according to the National Weather Service (NWS). On Wednesday, the first day of that warning, the temperature soared to 126 degrees in Death Valley. Last month, during the heat wave the gripped the Southwest, AccuWeather National Reporter Bill Wadell was on the ground in Death Valley at the height of the heat, and he spoke with people from around the country who happened to have been visiting during the hot spell. “This is exceptionally hot. It’s scary how hot it is,” Linda Utz of Titusville, Florida, marveled. “We planned this trip last October and made reservations,” she explained to Wadell. “While we knew it would be warm because it was summer, we never expected this type of heat.”And as far as it goes for people who spend almost all of their time in Death Valley, “This is an extremely hot place for us to live and work, as well as it is for people to visit,” Abby Wines, Death Valley National Park spokesperson, said. “There is something to be said for climatizing, so a person who acclimatizes to a high altitude, their body can adjust somewhat to dealing with extreme heat.” The stretch of weather extending through the end of the week could bring “dangerously hot conditions,” according to the NWS. The western Mojave Desert and Owens Valley could see temperatures as high as 110 degrees. The region could see record-rivaling or record-breaking temperatures.
North America Just Experienced Its Hottest June on Record – Last month was the hottest-ever June in North America in recorded history, researchers said Wednesday, validating a hunch held by millions of people who just endured lethal temperatures that sparked dozens of wildfires and killed more than 500 individuals and over one billion intertidal animals.While “the heat dome above western Canada and the northwest United States generated headlines around the world as daily temperature records were shattered across British Columbia, Washington, and Portland,” new satellite data “reveals this was part of a broader trend that built up over several weeks and a far wider area, which is underpinned by human-driven climate disruption,” The Guardian reported.According to the European Union-supported Copernicus Climate Change Service, “June temperatures in North America were 1.2°C higher than the average from 1991 to 2020, which is more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels,” the newspaper noted, adding that “this is the 12th consecutive year of above-average June temperatures in the region, and the greatest increase recorded until now.” After first affecting the U.S. Southwest, last month’s extreme heatwave conditions – which climate scientists have long predicted and warned will increase in frequency and intensity in the absence of effective climate action – eventually moved over the Pacific Northwest and southwestern Canada, where their devastating impacts were felt most severely.Residents of the B.C. village of Lytton – where Canada’s all-time high temperature of 121°F was recorded last week – were forced to evacuate when a wildfire tore through the area and quickly engulfed the small town, destroying homes and buildings and killing two people. Last month’s brutally hot temperatures were not confined to North America. As The Guardian noted, “The world as a whole was also warmer than average for this time of year.” Although “this would not normally be expected in the same year as a La Niña phenomenon, which is generally associated with a cooling effect,” meteorologists at the Copernicus agency stressed that unusually extreme weather trends are exacerbated by “the broader pattern of warming” driven by carbon pollution. According to The New York Times: Europe suffered through its second-warmest June ever, with only June 2019 being warmer. Temperatures were above average in Northwestern and Southern Africa, across parts of the Middle East, and in China and much of Southeast Asia. High temperatures in Arctic Siberia contributed to an early start to wildfire season there. Globally, last month was the fourth hottest June ever. Only 2016, 2019, and 2020 were hotter. While last month’s dangerously high temperatures provoked calls for policymakers to drastically reduce the emission of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in order to avert the most catastrophic effects of the climate emergency, right-wing lawmakers have continued to insist – despite a scientific consensus about the anthropogenic causes of global warming and ample real-world evidence of its consequences – that “climate change is… bullshit,” as Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) was seen saying last month during an event hosted by a GOP-aligned advocacy group. In addition, at the same time that hundreds of people in the Pacific Northwest and B.C. were succumbing to heat-related illnesses, ExxonMobil lobbyists were caught admitting that the fossil fuel corporation is still actively opposing efforts to tackle the climate emergency.
California fires: The Beckwourth Complex becomes the state’s largest wildfire –Parched forest fuels and high winds caused the Beckwourth Complex fire to explode in size on Friday, with the Plumas National Forest blaze overtaking the Lava Fire as California’s largest in 2021.The complex, a fusion of the Sugar and Dotta fires on the eastern edge of the forest about 60 miles north of Truckee, had burned 38,056 acres by Friday evening and was just 9% contained.The Lava Fire, a lightning-sparked blaze in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, held mostly steady at 25,159 acres and 70% containment as of Friday evening.In Plumas National Forest, lightning also sparked both the Dotta Fire on June 30 and the Sugar Fire on July 2. The Complex was burning timber, brush, pine and chapparal. On Friday, nearly 1,000 fire crews were battling the blaze, which was expected to continue burning until the end of July.The Lassen County Sheriff’s Office issued a mandatory evacuation order for residents on the north and south sides of Highway 395 near the Plumas/Lassen county line. For more information about evacuation orders, click here. Meanwhile the Lava Fire, burning near Mount Shasta in Siskiyou County, grew only slightly from 25,003 acres on Thursday. It is expected to be fully contained on Monday.
Oregon wildfire threatens 3K homes, forces evacuations – – A fast-growing wildfire on national forestland in south-central Oregon has prompted mandatory evacuations as it threatened about 3,000 homes, authorities said. Pushed by strong winds, the Bootleg fire in Klamath County grew from about 26 square miles Thursday to 61 square miles Friday in the Fremont-Winema National Forest and on private land. There was no containment, according to the update posted on Facebook by the incident management team.Klamath County Emergency Management issued an immediate evacuation order Friday for people in certain areas north of Beatty and near Sprague River.Fire officials said less than a quarter of the 3,000 homes under threat are under the mandatory evacuation orders. Most of those residents have been told to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice, KOIN-TV reported. Additional resources, including two teams from California, were being sent to help fight the blaze. The Fremont-Winema National Forest was partially closed Friday, and smoke was causing visibility issues for motorists in the town of Chiloquin and surrounding areas. Evacuation orders remain in place from a smaller fire about 40 miles east of Roseburg that was slowly growing, officials said. Forest service campgrounds were also under mandatory evacuations, including Apple Creek, Horseshoe Bend and Eagle Rock. That fire had burned about 9 square miles as of Friday with no containment.
California wildfire grows explosively, prompts evacuations – A California wildfire underwent explosive growth Friday as the area north of Lake Tahoe braced for triple-digit temperatures this weekend amid a summer heat wave. The Beckwourth Complex Fire on federal land near the town of Beckwourth prompted evacuations, a closure of part of the Plumas National Forest and presented serious danger for area campgrounds, National Forest Service officials said. As the fire moved east toward Nevada, officials were considering closing Highway 395, a popular route with tourists heading to Reno, said forest service spokeswoman Phyllis Ashmead. A nearby rail line was also being threatened, spokeswoman Lisa Cox added later. Multiple other roadways, including state route 284, were closed because of the fire. “Yesterday it took a big run,” she said, “and today it’s grown even more.” Containment was limited to 9 percent Friday, and 38,056 acres had burned. A singular complex fire was declared July 4 after the Dotta Fire, which started June 30, and the Sugar Fire, which began July 2, combined. Both were sparked by lightning strikes, federal officials said. The complex fire nearly doubled by Friday, adding 10,000 acres to its footprint, forest officials reported. Then it added another 14,871 acres by evening, they said. The weather outlook was bleak. The National Weather Service reported lightning strikes on the east flank of the blaze. “Cloud-to-ground lightning and erratic outflow winds greater than 30 mph are possible near the complex,” the weather service said in a special weather statement Friday. It was 94 degrees Friday in Beckwourth, about 55 miles north of Lake Tahoe. An excessive heat was warning was scheduled to take effect Saturday at noon through Monday night. The warning signifies “dangerously hot conditions” and temperatures at near 100 degrees, the weather service said. The U.S. Forest Service predicted in an incident report that by Saturday “fire activity will increase.” “The weather will become hotter and dryer with a forecasted heat wave this weekend,” it said. The Beckwourth Complex Fire appeared to be the most serious of several brush fires burning in California Friday. “Climate change is considered a key driver” of the state’s recent wildfire woes, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said earlier this year. On Thursday Gov. Gavin Newsom called on residents Thursday to cut back water consumption by 15 percent amid a statewide drought and far-reaching heat wave.
Surging California wildfire prompts Nevada evacuations (AP) – A Northern California wildfire exploding through bone-dry timber prompted Nevada authorities to evacuate a border-area community as flames leapt on ridgetops of nearby mountains. The Beckwourth Complex – a merging of two lightning-caused fires – headed into Saturday showing no sign of slowing its rush northeast from the Sierra Nevada forest region after doubling in size only a few days earlier. The fire was one of several threatening homes across Western states that are expected to see triple-digit heat through the weekend as a high-pressure zone blankets the region. On Friday, Death Valley National Park in California recorded a staggering high of 130 degrees Fahrenheit (54.4 Celsius). If verified, it would be the hottest high recorded there since July 1913, when the same Furnace Creek desert area hit 134 degrees Fahrenheit (56.6 degrees Celsius), considered the highest reliably measured temperature on Earth. California’s northern mountain areas already have seen several large fires that have destroyed more than a dozen homes. On Friday, ridgetop winds up to 20 mph (32.2 kph) combined with ferocious heat as the fire raged through bone-dry pine, fir and chaparral. As the fire’s northeastern flank raged near the border, the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office asked people to evacuate some areas in the rural communities of Ranch Haven and Flanagan Flats, north of Reno. “Evacuate now,” a Sheriff’s Office tweet said. Hot rising air formed a gigantic, smoky pyrocumulus cloud that reached thousands of feet high and created its own lightning, fire information officer Lisa Cox said Friday evening. Spot fires caused by embers leapt up to a mile (1.6 kilometers) ahead of the northeastern flank – too far for firefighters to safely battle, and winds funneled the fire up draws and canyons full of dry fuel, where “it can actually pick up speed,” Cox said. The blaze, which was only 11% contained, officially had blackened more than 38 square miles (98 square kilometers) but that figure was expected to increase dramatically when fire officials were able to make better observations. Meanwhile, other fires were burning in Oregon, Arizona and Idaho. In Oregon, pushed by strong winds, a wildfire in Klamath County grew from nearly 26 square miles (67 square kilometers) Thursday to nearly 61 square miles (158 square kilometers) on Friday in the Fremont-Winema National Forest and on private land. An evacuation order was issued for people in certain areas north of Beatty and near Sprague River. That fire was threatening transmission lines that send electricity to California, which along with expected heat-related demand prompted California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday to issue an emergency proclamation suspending some rules to allow for more power capacity. In north-central Arizona, increased humidity slowed a big wildfire that posed a threat to the rural community of Crown King. The 24.5-square-mile (63.5-square-kilometer) lightning-caused fire in Yavapai County was 29% contained. Recent rains allowed five national forests and state land managers to lift public-access closures. In Idaho, Gov. Brad Little declared a wildfire emergency Friday and mobilized the state’s National Guard to help fight fires sparked after lightning storms swept across the drought-stricken region. Fire crews in north-central Idaho were facing extreme conditions and gusts as they fought two wildfires covering a combined 19.5 square miles (50.5 square kilometers). The blazes threatened homes and forced evacuations in the tiny, remote community of Dixie about 40 miles (64 kilometers) southeast of Grangeville.
Wildfires rage in Russia, Spain and the US amid high temperatures – Forest fires have broken out in Russia’s Chelyabinsk region near Kazakhstan and in north-eastern Siberia. The Ministry of Emergency Situations said it has deployed aircraft and a helicopter to fight the fires, as well as 240 personnel to Chelyabinsk where two large villages have been evacuated. Wildfires are also ravaging northeastern Siberia where temperatures have been abnormally high. Russia’s coldest inhabited region, Yakutia, is now in the third year of unusually intense fires and around 300 are now burning. In fact, peat fires had continued to burn throughout last winter in Yakutia, even when the temperature plummeted to minus 50 degrees Centigrade. In May Alexander Kozlov, Russia’s Ministry of Natural Resources, said that, due to global warming, the permafrost is disappearing in northern Russia to such an extent that in a couple of decades it may be possible to farm the land. Meanwhile in the southern Spanish province of Malaga fire crews have been battling a fire since the early hours of Friday near the small town of Jubrique. It quickly spread to 300 hectares burning through pine, chestnut and cork trees, according to local reports. Some 13 families were forced to evacuate. Windy conditions made efforts to extinguish the blaze difficult with dozens of firefighters trying to control the blaze. And in northern California which is enduring scorching temperatures, lightning strikes have sparked fires. Hundreds of firefighters aided by aircraft are fighting the Beckwourth Complex near the border with the state of Nevada. But so far less than 10 percent of it is contained. Campgrounds and homes around Frenchman Lake were under evacuation orders on Friday and a nearly 520-square-kilometre area of the forest was closed because of the danger, fire information officer Pandora Valle said. After a day and night of explosive growth, the fire covered more than 98 square kilometres at midmorning Friday. The flames were burning through pine, fir and chaparral turned bone-dry by low humidity and high temperatures, while ridgetop winds and afternoon gusts of up to 45 kph were “really pushing” the flames at times, Valle said. The fire was one of several burning in the north, where several other large blazes destroyed dozens of homes in recent days. The number of wildfires and amount of land burned in parched California so far this year greatly exceed totals for the same period in the disastrous wildfire year of 2020. Meanwhile, forecasters warned that much of California will see dangerously hot weekend weather, with highs in triple digits in the Central Valley, mountains, deserts and other inland areas. Heat warnings did not include major coastal populations. The National Weather Service said Death Valley could reach a staggering 54 Celsius.
Cyprus’ worst wildfire on record under control – (videos) A wildfire that started in Cyprus on Saturday afternoon (LT), July 3, 2021, rapidly grew over the weekend and turned into the island’s worst wildfire since 1960 when the Republic of Cyprus was established. At least 4 people have been killed and dozens of homes destroyed.”It is the worst forest fire in the history of Cyprus,” Forestries Department Director Charalambos Alexandrou said.The main fire was brought under control Sunday morning, and the rest of it on Monday, July 5.Four bodies were found near the village of Odos in Larnaca district’s ‘most catastrophic fire since the founding of the Republic of Cyprus’ in terms of material damage.”All the indications support the fact that these are the four missing persons we have been searching for since yesterday,” Interior Minister Nicos Nouris said.All four casualties were Egyptian farm laborers aged in their 20s and 30s. They were killed by the fire as they tried to escape on foot after their car plunged into a ravine, AFP reports. Authorities sent more than 600 people to fight the blaze, along with a dozen aircraft and 70 fire trucks, and a reconnaissance drone.The fire scorched 55 km2 (21 mi2) of the Troodos Mountains, destroyed at least 50 homes, damaged power lines, and forced the evacuation of 10 villages.The police said they are questioning a 67-year-old farmer on suspicion of starting the blaze. He was reportedly seen by an eyewitness leaving the village of Arakapas in his car at the same time the fire started there.
Warmest June on record reported in New Zealand – New Zealand reported its warmest June on record, with temperatures two degrees higher than the 30-year average during what is winter in the Southern Hemisphere, The Associated Press reports. Gregor Macara, climate scientist for New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, said a range of factors contributed to the higher temperatures, including more winds coming from the north and warmer ocean temperatures.The average temperature in June was 10.6 degrees Celsius, or 51 degrees Fahrenheit, which is two degrees higher than the 30-year average for the month of June. Records on temperatures in New Zealand were first recorded in 1909, the AP notes.Macara said that while weather is subject to change from month to month, “the underlying trend is of increasing temperatures and overall warming.”According to the climate scientist, milder winters and earlier springs can be expected if the current trends continue.Though the weather has been hard on the ski industry, farmers in New Zealand have welcomed the warmer conditions, the AP reports.The warmer weather and rain has reportedly provided more grass for sheep and cattle, a boon for farmers who have dealt with drought conditions for the past two years.
Antarctica hit record-high temperature in 2020, scientists confirm – Antarctica logged a new high temperature record of 64.94 degrees Fahrenheit (18.3 Celsius) in 2020, scientists with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) confirmed this week. The temperature, which was reported on Feb. 6, 2020, and verified by the United Nations (U.N.) agency on Thursday, was recorded at the Argentine Esperanza Research Station. The U.N. agency said the previous all-time high for Antarctica was 63.5 degrees, which was recorded on March 24, 2015, at the same research station. WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas noted that the new record was “consistent with the climate change we are observing.” “The Antarctic Peninsula (the northwest tip near to South America) is among the fastest warming regions of the planet, almost 3°C over the last 50 years. This new temperature record is therefore consistent with the climate change we are observing,” Taalas said in a statement. “WMO is working in partnership with the Antarctic Treaty System to help conserve this pristine continent.” According to The Washington Post, the Argentine Esperanza Research Station is used to study climate science, meteorology and oceanography, among other fields. While scientists confirmed the temperature record, the WMO also said this week that a report of a higher temperature of 69.35 degrees that was recorded at a Brazilian automated permafrost monitoring station on Feb. 9, 2020, was inaccurate.
Tropical Storm Elsa kills 3 in the Caribbean; expected to hit Florida’s Gulf Coast on Tuesday » Tropical Storm Elsa continued to be disorganized on Sunday, but is predicted to be near hurricane strength when it makes landfall in central Cuba on Monday morning, the National Hurricane Center said in its 11 a.m. EDT Sunday advisory. Elsa had slowed down significantly since Saturday, and was headed west-northwest at 12 mph, with top winds of 60 mph and a central pressure of 1009 mb – a very high reading for a storm this strong. Heavy rains from the storm were affecting Cuba, Jamaica, and the Cayman Islands; the outer rainbands of Elsa will spread into the Florida Keys on Monday and move northwards into central Florida by Monday evening. Tropical storm warnings were up for the Florida Keys on Sunday. On Saturday afternoon, Elsa sped along the south coast of Hispaniola, bringing heavy rains and high surf to the coasts of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Two people were killed by collapsing walls in the Dominican Republic, weather.com reported, and one other person was killed on St. Lucia after the storm brought high winds and flooding rains to the Lesser Antilles islands on Friday. Satellite imagery on Sunday afternoon revealed that Elsa was positioned in the narrow channel between Jamaica and Cuba, and was struggling to grow more organized. The low-level circulation center was no longer exposed to view, and the heavy thunderstorms were growing quite intense, with cold cloud tops, indicating that they extended high into the atmosphere. However, the heaviest thunderstorms were located away from the center, and data from the Hurricane Hunters found that Elsa was poorly aligned vertically. This lack of alignment was inhibiting intensification, as was interaction with the islands of Jamaica and Cuba. As it progresses west-northwest through Monday, Elsa will have favorable conditions for development, though interaction with the high terrain of Jamaica and Cuba may interfere. Elsa is expected to maintain a relatively slow forward speed of 10-15 mph through Monday, which should help the storm become better aligned vertically. Sea surface temperatures will be a very warm 30 degrees Celsius (86°F), the atmosphere will be moist, and wind shear will be moderate, at 10-20 knots. However, the 12Z Sunday run of the SHIPS model gave only a 9% chance that Elsa would rapidly intensify by 35 mph in the 24 hours ending at 8 a.m. EDT Monday; the National Hurricane Center predicted a 10 mph increase in Elsa’s winds by Monday morning, putting it at 70 mph – just below hurricane strength.
Tropical Storm Elsa makes landfall in Cuba and forecasted to take aim at Florida next – Tropical Storm Elsa made landfall along Cuba’s southern coast Monday afternoon as forecasters said it could then turn toward Florida. Concern about possible high winds from the approaching storm was the reason officials in Surfside, Florida, ordered the demolition of the remaining part of the condominium building that partially collapsed. It was brought down late Sunday night. President Joe Biden declared a state of emergency in Florida because of the storm, making federal aid possible. Governor Ron DeSantis had already declared a state of emergency in 15 counties, including in Miami-Dade, where Surfside is. Nearly 9 million people in Florida were under tropical storm watches and warnings Monday after forecasters extended the tropical storm watch north along the state’s western coast and the storm warning west along the Panhandle. The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said Elsa was “expected to move across central and western Cuba” later Monday and “pass near the lower Florida Keys early Tuesday.” The NHC said the storm is then expected to move “near or over” parts of Florida’s west coast on Tuesday and Wednesday. Five to 10 inches of rain were expected across portions of Cuba on Monday with up to 15 inches in some spots, the hurricane center said, adding that, “This will result in significant flash flooding and mudslides.” As of 5 p.m. ET on Monday, Elsa’s center was some 45 miles southeast of Havana, scampering northwest at 14 mph. Elsa had maximum sustained winds near 50 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center, a drop from 65 mph earlier in the day. Forecasters expected the storm to move across the island over a period of several hours, then into the Florida Straits on Monday evening and past the Florida Keys early Tuesday. By Sunday, Cuban officials had evacuated 180,000 people as a precaution against the possibility of heavy flooding from a storm that already battered several Caribbean islands, killing at least three people. Most of those evacuated stayed at relatives’ homes, others went to government shelters, and hundreds living in mountainous areas took refuge in caves prepared for emergencies. The hurricane center said the storm was likely to gradually weaken while passing over central Cuba but “slight re-strengthening is forecast after Elsa moves over the southeastern Gulf of Mexico.” Elsa is the earliest fifth-named storm on record and also broke the record as the tropic’s fastest-moving hurricane, clocking in at 31 mph Saturday morning, said Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami.
Hurricane Warning Issued For Florida’s West Coast as Tropical Storm Elsa Heads For Landfall Wednesday – Tropical Storm Elsa is gaining strength in the Gulf of Mexico and will scrape Florida’s west coast, including parts of the Tampa-St. Petersburg metro, possibly as a hurricane through early Wednesday with storm surge, high winds, flooding rain and isolated tornadoes. Elsa is centered just over 150 miles south-southwest of Tampa, Florida, and is tracking north at 10 mph. Early Tuesday afternoon, the Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunters found flight-level winds in Elsa were stronger and its surface pressure lower as Elsa attempted to fight off both dry air and wind shear typically hostile for intensification. This prompted the NHC to issue hurricane warnings for areas near the west coast of Florida from Tampa Bay northward to Steinhatchee. This warning, meaning hurricane conditions are expected, includes Tampa, St. Petersburg and Cedar Key. Tropical storm warnings extend from parts of the Florida Keys to inland parts of north Florida and near the coast in southeast Georgia. This includes Marco Island, Naples, Sanibel Island and St. Simons Island. Tropical storm conditions (winds 39+ mph) will continue to spread northward across these areas through Wednesday. A tropical storm watch extends north from Altamaha Sound, Georgia, to South Santee River, South Carolina. Tropical storm conditions could spread into the Georgia and South Carolina watch areas Wednesday night into Thursday. Bands of heavy rain and gusty winds continue to spread up the Florida Peninsula. These rain bands could also produce isolated tornadoes at times. Wind gusts to 70 mph have been clocked amid the heavy rain in Key West and flooding has been reported in the Lower Keys. A tornado watch has been issued for parts of the Florida Peninsula until 11 p.m. ET. Elsa will continue to track north, then northeast the next few days. Wind shear and dry air will slow Elsa’s intensification, however, Elsa is forecast to reach Category 1 hurricane status at some point as it scrapes northward near Florida’s west coast before making landfall near Florida’s Big Bend region early Wednesday. The Tampa – St. Petersburg area will see its worst impacts from the storm Tuesday night into early Wednesday. This could be the first hurricane to track near the metro area since Irma made a Category 1 pass east of Tampa in September 2017. Other parts of the Southeast, including southeast Georgia, the coastal Carolinas and southeast Virginia, will see some impacts from Elsa late Wednesday into Thursday night. Elsa or its remnant could then brush parts of southeast New England on Friday.
Tropical Storm Elsa brings heavy winds and life-threatening storm surge as it nears landfall along Florida’s west coast – CNN – Tropical Storm Elsa is battering western Florida with heavy rain and strong gusts as it approaches landfall Wednesday morning at its northern Gulf Coast, threatening coastal flooding, wind damage and power outages there and elsewhere in the US Southeast. Elsa’s center, with sustained winds of 65 mph, was about 35 miles west of Cedar Key on Florida’s northwest coast as of about 8 a.m. ET, the National Hurricane Center said.It was moving north toward the Big Bend region, where it is expected to make landfall Wednesday morning on a path that likely will take it to Georgia, the Carolinas and eventually the mid-Atlantic coast.Besides heavy rain and flooding, Elsa threatens strong winds that could topple trees and power lines in Florida, Georgia and the lowlands of South Carolina — much of which is already saturated.Winds of at least 40 mph are possible in those states as the storm moves inland into Thursday, CNN meteorologist Chad Myers said Wednesday morning. “We’ve had a lot of rainfall this past month. If you get winds at 40 mph or 50 mph, some of these trees are going to be falling down,” Myers said.”There’s a lot more damage still to be done.”Because gusts of hurricane strength still are possible, a hurricane warning is in place Wednesday morning for Florida’s west coast from Chassahowitzka (some 60 miles north of Tampa) north to southern Taylor County in Florida’s Big Bend region. About 10,000 utility customers in Florida were without power Wednesday morning ahead of Elsa’s landfall, according to utility tracker PowerOutage.us. With Elsa having passed the Tampa-St. Petersburg area overnight, some minor street flooding was seen around Clearwater, a CNN crew there said. Some localized flooding still could develop in these areas and even further south — such as Fort Myers — if the storm’s feeder bands continue hitting them during the day, CNN meteorologists said. The system weakened to a tropical storm early Wednesday after becoming a Category 1 hurricane Tuesday. More than 13 million people are under a tropical storm warning across parts of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.Elsa will have dropped 3 to 9 inches of rain in parts of western and northern Florida by storm’s end, the National Hurricane Center said. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis expanded his state of emergency declaration Tuesday to include 33 counties as local, state and utility resources continue to prepare for the incoming storm.
1 dead as Tropical Storm Elsa moves over Florida, into Georgia – A falling tree killed a person in Florida as Tropical Storm Elsa moved through Wednesday, and 11 people were injured in Georgia when a suspected tornado touched down at a submarine base, officials said.Almost all of the injuries at Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay were classified as condition “green,” meaning not life-threatening, base spokesman Scott Bassett said. A woman was listed as condition “yellow” as a precaution because she is pregnant, he said.The suspected tornado, which is thought to be related to the tropical storm, touched down around 5:50 p.m., Bassett said. No submarines were damaged, but there was damage to recreational vehicles in the base RV park and reports of damage to buildings, the base said in a statement.A survey team from the National Weather Service will conduct a survey to determine whether a tornado struck the base. Everyone who was at the RV park has been accounted for, the base said.Earlier, a tree fell in Jacksonville, Florida, and struck two cars, killing one person, a spokesperson for the Jacksonville fire department said. The incident is considered weather-related.By 8 p.m. Wednesday, Elsa was over southern Georgia, bringing heavy rain and maximum sustained winds of 45 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center. Its center was about 75 miles west of Brunswick.The storm regained hurricane strength Tuesday but weakened to a tropical storm with 65 mph winds by the time it made landfall in Taylor County in Florida’s Big Bend region Wednesday morning, the center said. The howling wind “sounded like a train” in Cedar Key early Wednesday, Jonathan Riches told NBC affiliate WFLA of Tampa. “The hotel I was staying in, the shingles were coming off the roof itself.” In Port Charlotte, north of Fort Myers, almost 11 inches of rain had been recorded by noon, the National Weather Service said. In addition to more rain in parts of Georgia and South Carolina, Elsa could produce tornadoes, according to the hurricane center forecast.
Up next for Elsa: The I-95 corridor – Tropical storm warnings were in effect all along the Eastern Seaboard on Thursday morning, from South Carolina up through New Jersey and into New England, as Elsa continued its northward trek. As of early Thursday, Elsa was barely hanging on to tropical storm status, with sustained winds of 40 mph, and had picked up some speed as it moved northeastward at 18 mph. AccuWeather meteorologists expect the storm to deliver impacts of varying intensity to parts of the mid-Atlantic and northeastern U.S. late this week. Elsa was blamed for at least one fatality in Florida well after making landfall as a 65-mph tropical storm in Taylor County, along the upper west coast of the peninsula. The storm brought wind gusts as high as 78 mph to parts of southwestern Florida on Tuesday. AccuWeather meteorologists predict that Elsa will slowly lose wind intensity while it crosses the Southeast, eventually traveling along the mid-Atlantic and Northeast coasts from Thursday night into Friday. An area of high pressure over the Atlantic Ocean and a storm system moving into the Northeast will help to steer Elsa on a narrow path close to the coast.As Elsa tracks northward along the coast, it should remain far enough inland that the chances of intensification back to a tropical storm remains low. However, if Elsa were to move off the southern New England coast, its intensification back to a tropical storm would be more likely. If this were to happen, it would occur during the day Friday. While Elsa can bring a period of heavy rain along its track from the mid-Atlantic into New England, the fast forward movement of the storm should help to limit excessive rainfall and the threat for widespread flooding. “In the mid-Atlantic and in southern New England, for many areas along and south and east of Interstate 95, Elsa will bring a three- to six-hour period of heavy rain, some of it wind-swept, that can lead to urban and poor drainage area flooding, as well as travel delays,” AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Alex Sosnowski said.”Rainfall totals of 1-2 inches can occur over portions of eastern New Jersey, Long Island, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine,” said AccuWeather Meteorologist Adam Sadvary. Higher totals reaching into the 2- to 4-inch range are foreseen along portions of the mid-Atlantic coast and in coastal areas of northern New England. An AccuWeather Local StormMax™ of 6 inches is likely to be limited to the Carolinas and the southeastern portions of Virginia and Maryland. Elsa will also track close enough and have enough strength to bring wind gusts of 40-60 mph from southeastern Virginia into the Delarva Peninsula, coastal New Jersey, Long Island, New York, and a portion of southeastern New England from late Thursday into Friday. According to Sadvary, an AccuWeather Local StormMax™ of 70 mph is forecast for this area. This would be the most likely across Cape Cod, Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, as well as some of the capes and barrier islands along the mid-Atlantic coast. A storm surge of 1-3 feet is forecast in southeastern New England and the eastern portion of Long Island on Friday. “In addition, rough surf and rip currents are expected from the mid-Atlantic to New England shores as Elsa progresses into the northern Atlantic,” Sadvary added. Philadelphia, New York City and Boston are a few cities that could see a period of heavy rain as Elsa tracks nearby. However, if Elsa’s track shifts farther west, some of the heavier rain and gusty winds farther inland than these cities.
50 Million Americans Under Flash Flood Watch As Elsa Moves Up East Coast – At least 50 million Americans are under flash flood watch Friday morning as Tropical Storm Elsa traverses the East Coast, unleashing torrential rains and tropical force winds. According to the National Hurricane Center (NHC), as of 0500 ET, Elsa was about 5 miles east of Atlantic City, New Jersey.As Elsa moves near Long Island and southern and coastal New England today, heavy rainfall could lead to considerable flash and urban flooding.Tropical storm conditions should continue along portions of the mid-Atlantic coast early this morning. Tropical storm conditions are expected in portions of the southern New England states and New York by late this morning and afternoon. Gusty winds are expected over portions of Atlantic Canada tonight and Saturday. -NHCEarlier this week, Elsa made landfall on Florida’s west coast and pounded the Southeast. Heading north at 31 mph with maximum sustained winds of 50 mph, the storm is battering Delaware and New Jersey, and New York’s coastlines. NHC doesn’t expect the storm to strengthen but weaken into a “post-tropical cyclone” as it approaches Nova Scotia and then out to sea late Friday. Flash flood watches are posted for at least 50 million people from the mid-Atlantic and northeastern regions. Much of the Northeast could receive 2 to 4 inches of rain today. Some areas in New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts could receive up to 6 inches. NHC said torrential rain could produce “considerable flash and urban flooding.” On Thursday evening, roads and subways across NYC looked “straight out of a disaster movie Thursday,” CBS2’s Ali Bauman reported.
Residents protest backed-up sewers and uncollected trash in wake of metro Detroit flooding – On Friday, about 100 residents of Dearborn, a metro Detroit suburb, gathered outside the 19th District Court building to protest the response of the city administration to recent flooding. At least one resident, an 87-year-old man, Hussein Reda, was killed when he slipped and fell in his flooded basement. Neighbors found his body during a welfare check. The protest was apparently organized through WhatsApp and Facebook by a small group of residents who are fed up with the city’s repeated mishandling of floods. Last week, large parts of the metro Detroit area were flooded out as a result of a several days of rain. A similar disaster hit homeowners in 2014. Last week’s flood is now the second disaster in the space of seven years described by authorities as the result of a “thousand-year” rainfall. Once again, an unusually prolonged bout of rain has overwhelmed the region’s crumbling infrastructure. One of the organizers at Friday’s rally told the crowd that he had never participated in a protest, let alone organized one, before that day’s event. The organizers are calling for an independent investigation into the flooding and for a fair distribution of city services. One of the main complaints is that the east side of Dearborn has received much less assistance than the west side. The organizers called on attendees to vote in the next election for new officials and to attend an upcoming City Council meeting. They printed signs for attendees reading “Accountability” and “We want answers.”
1 million people affected by floods, 63 000 evacuated in Jiangxi Province, China – Several days of heavy rain and flooding in southeast China’s province of Jiangxi have left nearly 1.08 million people affected and forced more than 60 000 to evacuate.According to Xinhua, floods in the province began on June 28.In 5 days to July 2, when the rains finally stopped, 55 county-levels with a total of nearly 1.08 people were affected, 156 homes were destroyed and 219 damaged.Authorities relocated 63 000 people and reported damage on at least 70 300 ha (173 715 acres) of crops.Direct economic loss is estimated at about 161 million U.S. dollars.Le’an River was above the danger mark in 3 locations in the province on July 3 while the Xinjiang river stood slightly above the danger mark in Yingtan.Jiangxi has a typical northern subtropical monsoon climate. Its rainy season starts in April, with May and June the wettest, and ends in July.Widespread flooding continues in the country’s north — Heilongjiang Province and Inner Mongolia Region.
More than 500 homes destroyed, 38 people killed and 24 missing in floods and landslides across Nepal – (videos) Flash floods and landslides triggered by heavy monsoon rains have left 38 people dead, 24 missing, 51 injured and 5 100 evacuated across Nepal in 20 days to July 3, 2021, the Nepalese Home Ministry said.A total of 790 houses have been inundated and 519 destroyed. In addition, at least 90 cowsheds and 19 bridges were also destroyed.The authorities mobilized Nepal Army personnel, Nepal Police, and Armed Police Forces to carry out rescue operations.Floods and landslides are common during Nepal’s monsoon season which usually starts on or around June 10 and lasts through September 23. Monsoon brings almost 80% of the country’s average annual rain of 1 600 mm (63 inches). While some places like Mustang can receive below 300 mm (11.8 inches), more than 3 300 mm (130 inches) can fall in places like Pokhara.
At least 51 people dead as monsoon rains trigger floods and landslides in Nepal —At least 51 people have died in Nepal while 29 others have been reported missing since the beginning of the monsoon season in June 2021, according to the Health Ministry. From June 1 to July 8, heavy rains have triggered a total of 135 landslides that accounted for much of the fatalities, while flash floods claimed the lives of many others, including children. Ram Krishna Shilpakar, a wood architect of Bhaktapur who was among those affected by flooding, told ANI, “It’s been about a decade that I am running my business here. On an annual basis, I have been incurring losses of about 30 to 40 thousand.” “Machines stop working after submerged in water, other materials and essentials used for produces gets soaked and damaged. We cannot come and work in such situations which ultimately would increase loss. Also, flood water dumps wastages inside, forcing us to shift to other places.” Krishna Kumar Ranjitkar, also a flood victim, added, “Every single year, that too for over dozen times, we have been facing inundation in the area. We have to go through this situation time and again.” Since the start of the monsoon season in Nepal on June 1, as many as 51 people have died, of which 26 were men, 15 women, and 10 children. Five of the fatalities were from Sindhupalchok, the worst-hit district along with Manag; four from Doti; and three each from Rolpa, Dang, Palpa, Darchula, and Gorkha. Most of the fatalities were caused by landslides. Between June 1 and July 8, a total of 135 landslides have occurred in the country, leaving 27 people dead and seven others missing, while 41 sustained injuries. The latest fatalities occurred on July 8 as two people were killed in a mudslide at Dadhiban of Rishing Rural Municipality in Gandaki Province. On the same day, two persons died in separate landslide incidents at Tinau Rural Municipality.”Poor road building is increasingly identified as being a major factor in the high incidence of landslides in Nepal,”
Four dead, dozens missing in Japanese mudslide – At least four people are dead and 80 unaccounted for two days after a mudslide ripped through a town in Japan’s Shizuoka prefecture, The Associated Press reports. One hundred forty-seven people were believed to be missing immediately after the mudslide occurred, but that number dropped after officials confirmed that some had been safely evacuated or simply not been home at the time. Officials are planning on releasing the names of the remaining 80 who are missing, hoping that many others were also away at the time, as many of the affected properties are second homes or vacation rentals. The mudslide occurred in the seaside town of Atami after several days of heavy rain. Like many seaside Japanese towns, Atami is built on a steep hillside. The town has a population of about 36,800 and is roughly 60 miles southwest of Tokyo. Apart from the four who died, 25 people were rescued, three of whom were injured. Three coast guard ships and six military drones backed up hundreds of troops, firefighters and others working through the wreckage, the AP reports. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said rescue workers are doing their best “to rescue those who may be buried under the mud and waiting for help as soon as possible.” M
Watch: Earthquake Swarms Trigger Rockslides In Central California – An earthquake rocked Central California, followed by dozens of aftershocks Thursday afternoon. Much of the shaking was recorded in Coleville (Mono County). At 1549 local time, a magnitude 5.9 hit Coleville, approximately 150 miles east of Sacramento, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Shortly after, a swarm of more than two dozen quakes ranging from magnitude 1.0 to 4.6 hit Coleville and surrounding areas. During the shaking, people across Mono County took out their smartphones and filmed wild scenes of rockslides. Twitter user “Brett Durrant” was traveling on “I395 near Coleville” when he noticed the earthquake started to “wiggle” the road. He uploaded stunning footage of massive rockslides. It’s been reported USGS has upgraded the earthquake to a magnitude of 6.0. The agency is expected to hold a press conference following clusters of quakes.
Mud Volcano Produces Explosion Near Azerbaijan in Caspian Sea – A towering wall of fire brightened the night sky over the Caspian Sea on Sunday due in part to a unique geologic formation.Just after sunset on July 4, a large explosion and fireball could be seen offshore of Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. The cause of this explosion was a phenomenon many may not have ever heard of outside of the countries situated along the Caspian Sea.The Sunday blast occurred on a tiny island offshore of Azerbaijan known as Dashli Island.An impressive fireball could be seen after the eruption of what is called a mud volcano.”There are about 1,100 mud volcanoes that have been identified around the world, and nearly 400 of them can be found in and around Azerbaijan,” AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Tyler Roys said. An explosion off the coast of Azerbaijan in the Caspian Sea on July 4, 2021, was later determined to be the result of a mud volcano. Gavriil Grigorov/TASS.”Eruptions of mud volcanoes are driven by a deep mud reservoir that is connected to the surface,” Roys explained.When these mud volcanoes erupt, more than just mud, boulders and rocks can be lofted above the surface. Mud volcanoes can also tap into and launch oil or natural gases into the air.”The majority, about 86 percent, of the gas released from an explosion is methane,” Roys said.In the right concentration, methane gas is highly flammable and can react explosively. Hence, the tell-tale fireball that marks many mud volcano eruptions.
Unprecedented high volcanic SO2 degassing at Taal volcano, Philippines – The highest levels of volcanic sulfur dioxide or SO2 gas emission were recorded today, July 4, 2021, at an average of 22 628 tonnes/day — representing the highest ever recorded over Taal, PHIVOLCS reports. The previous record was set on June 28, 2021, with 14 326 tonnes/day.Since 00:00 UTC on Sunday, July 4 (12:00 LT), a total of 26 strong and very shallow low-frequency volcanic earthquakes associated with magmatic degassing have been recorded beneath the eastern sector of Volcano Island. Some of these earthquakes were reportedly accompanied by rumbling and weakly felt by fish cage caretakers off the northeastern shorelines of Volcano Island.These observation parameters may indicate that an eruption similar to the July 1, 2021 event may occur anytime soon.”In view of the above, DOST-PHIVOLCS is reminding the public that Alert Level 3 prevails over Taal Volcano and that current SO2 parameters indicate ongoing magmatic extrusion at the Main Crater that may further drive succeeding explosions,” the agency said. According to the Batangas governor, some 15 000 residents have evacuated their homes after the July 1 eruption. The public is reminded that the entire Taal Volcano Island is a Permanent Danger Zone (PDZ), and entry into the island as well as high-risk barangays of Agoncillo and Laurel must be prohibited.All activities on Taal Lake should not be allowed at this time, PHIVOLCS added. Because of unprecedented high SO2 degassing from Taal Main Crater, local government units are additionally advised to conduct health checks on communities affected by vog to assess the severity of SO2 impacts on their constituents and to consider temporary evacuation of severely exposed residents to safer areas.Civil aviation authorities advise pilots to avoid flying over Taal Volcano Island as airborne ash and ballistic fragments from sudden explosions and pyroclastic density currents such as base surges may pose hazards to aircraft. Its major eruption in January 2020 ejected volcanic ash up to 16.7 km (55 000 feet) above sea level, according to data provided by the Tokyo VAAC. The volcano produced powerful pyroclastic and lava flows, destroying scores of homes, killing livestock, and forcing more than 135 000 people to evacuate.Taal has produced some of the Philippines’ most powerful eruptions. Large pyroclastic flows and surges from historical eruptions have caused many fatalities.
Vog from Fagradalsfjall completely obscures view to the volcano, Iceland -Volcanic smog (vog) is a visible haze comprised of gas and an aerosol of tiny particles and acidic droplets created when sulfur dioxide (SO2) and other gases emitted from a volcano chemically interact with sunlight and atmospheric oxygen, moisture, and dust.Called Blflmóða in Icelandic, or blue smog… blflmóða killed thousands of Icelanders 1783-1785 when a volcano erupted.The video was captured on July 2.
Explosive eruption at Sangay volcano, volcanic ash up to 11 km (36 000 feet) a.s.l., Ecuador – A strong explosive eruption took place at Sangay volcano, Ecuador at 23:15 UTC on July 9, 2021. Volcanic ash dispersed by 06:40 UTC on July 10.According to the Washington VAAC, volcanic ash to 11 km (36 000 feet) above sea level was extending 45 km (28 miles) NE of the summit at 00:10 UTC on July 10. At the same time, volcanic ash to 7 km (20 000 feet) a.s.l. was extending 37 km (23 miles) WSW of the summit.IGEPN reported their SAGA seismic station recorded a high-frequency signal possibly associated with lahars (mud and debris flow) on two occasions on July 9, and warned that continuous rainfall might trigger new flows.This phenomenon has been recurrent in the current eruptive period since the rains in the volcano re-mobilize the accumulated material on the flanks, the institute said.The proximity to rivers and their tributaries is not recommended.
Very bright fireball explodes over Taiwan – (videos) A very bright fireball exploded over Taiwan shortly after 16:02 UTC on July 6, 2021 (00:02 LT, July 7). The event lasted around 40 seconds before the object disintegrated.The fireball was recorded by Lulin Observatory, located at the summit of Lulin Mountain in Nantou County, and numerous residents.The object flashed four times, with each ignition causing the fireball to grow bigger and brighter.
China Bans Building of Tallest Skyscrapers Following Safety Concerns — China is prohibiting construction of the tallest skyscrapers to ensure safety following mounting concerns over the quality of some projects. The outright ban covers buildings that are taller than 500 meters (1,640 feet), the National Development and Reform Commission said in a notice Tuesday. Local authorities will also need to strictly limit building of towers that are more than 250 meters tall. The top economic planner cited quality problems and safety hazards in some developments stemming from loose oversight. A 72-story tower in Shenzhen was closed in May for checks following reports of unexplained wobbling, feeding concern about the stability of one of the technology hub’s tallest buildings.Construction of buildings exceeding 100 meters should strictly match the scale of the city where they will be located, along with its fire rescue capability, the commission said. “It’s primarily for safety,” said Qiao Shitong, an associate law professor at the University of Hong Kong who studies property and urban law. Extremely tall buildings “are more like signature projects for mayors and not necessarily efficient.” Authorities imposed an “in-principle” ban on new towers over 500 meters last year. There are only 10 buildings in the world exceeding that height, and five of them are in mainland China, including the 632-meter Shanghai Tower, according to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. The SEG Plaza’s shaking in May prompted the local government to investigate and led to a warning from the U.S. consulate in Guangzhou urging Americans to avoid the area. Videos circulated showing people fleeing. The building remains closed.
House Democrats unite to send firm climate signal to Biden – Nearly 60 percent of the House Democratic caucus is urging President Joe Biden to ensure massive climate change and other environmental investments make it into whatever final form of infrastructure legislation emerges this year. More than 120 members, led by Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) and spanning the ideological spectrum from Progressive Caucus Chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) to centrist Problem Solvers Caucus co-chair Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), are reiterating their support for measures like a clean energy standard, significant electric vehicle investments and 10-year clean energy tax credits as part of the eventual agreement. It’s a signal that Democrats across the ideological spectrum want strong climate change action as part of any legislative action this year. “We are eager to help advance through Congress a strong American Jobs Plan that employs our communities and matches the scale of the challenge climate science tells us we face,” the Democrats wrote in a letter obtained first by POLITICO. “Ultimately, we urge you and our colleagues to act with the goal of ensuring the final legislative package gets across the finish line in the coming months while maintaining our key jobs and climate goals.” The details: The lawmakers also voiced support for provisions removing all lead drinking water lines, clean manufacturing incentives, ensuring 40 percent of benefits are directed to communities that have borne the brunt of pollution and investing in natural solutions, like restoration of public lands, to help address climate change. Among the signatories are a number of prominent committee chairs including Natural Resources Chair Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), Transportation Chair Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), Budget Chair John Yarmuth (D-Ky.), Climate Crisis Chair Kathy Castor (D-Fla.) and Oversight Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.). The context: In an interview, Levin pronounced himself agnostic about which specific legislative vehicle was used to pass the investments but said the letter indicated strong consensus within the conference that they must make it across the finish line this year. “What this letter does is speak loud and clear: These are the objectives that we seek,” he said. “It demonstrates that we understand as the House Democratic caucus that we have to take the types of bold action necessary to actually deal with the climate crisis in a manner that is commensurate with the science.” It comes as House progressives underscored this week they would not vote for an infrastructure package without sufficient provisions to address climate change. Democratic leadership can only afford to lose four votes on any particular bill to ensure passage.
John Kerry to visit Moscow officials to discuss ‘global climate ambition’ – U.S. climate envoy John Kerry will visit Moscow to speak to officials next week about “global climate ambition.” The trip will take place from July 12-15, the State Department said in a short announcement. It comes as the two nations are at odds over a multitude of issues. Russia participated in a White House climate summit in April. President Biden said at the time that he was “heartened” that Russian President Vladimir Putin called for collaborating with other countries to advance carbon dioxide removal. “The United States looks forward to working with Russia and other countries on that endeavor,” Biden said at the time. “It has great promise.” China and the U.S. lead the world in terms of emissions of coal and petroleum fumes, according to The Associated Press. Russia is ranked number four due to its dependence on coal burning. The meeting between Kerry and officials in Moscow comes amid other tensions between the two nations, notably several high-profile ransomware attacks linked to Russian actors. Biden and Putin held a summit in mid-June, after which Biden indicated that he “did what he came to do.” The leaders said at the time that after the meeting, the countries “demonstrated that, even in periods of tension, they are able to make progress on our shared goals of ensuring predictability in the strategic sphere, reducing the risk of armed conflicts and the threat of nuclear war.”
More than 75 companies ask Congress to pass clean electricity standard – More than 75 major U.S. companies including Apple, Google, Lyft and Salesforce signed a letter circulated Wednesday urging Congress to adopt a federal clean electricity standard. In the letter, signers urged the federal government adopt a standard that achieves 80 percent carbon neutrality by the end of the decade, with a goal of completely emission-free power by 2035. Signers of the letter, organized by sustainability advocacy group Ceres and the Environmental Defense Fund, also include automakers General Motors and Tesla. The letter notes that the electrical power sector alone generates a full third of nationwide carbon dioxide emissions created by burning fossil fuels. It is also the source of about 50 percent of natural gas use nationwide, which is itself a major driver of methane upstream leaks. Scientists have estimated human-produced methane accounts for at least 25 percent of current warming. “In addition to reducing emissions from the power sector, a clean electric power grid is also essential to unlock opportunities to reduce emissions in other sectors. Electrification of the transportation, buildings, and industrial sectors is a critical pathway for the U.S. to achieve a net zero-emissions future. Together, clean electricity and electrification could cut carbon pollution economy-wide by up to 75%,” the letter states. “By acting now to enact a federal clean electricity standard, Congress and the President can spur a robust economic recovery, create millions of good-paying jobs, and build the infrastructure necessary for a strong, more equitable, and more inclusive American economy for the next century,” it adds.
How the gas industry is trying to keep crappy heaters on the market – The American Gas Association, or AGA, the gas industry’s most powerful trade group, says it supports energy efficiency, and frequently advertises how much its member utilities spend on energy efficiency programs.* But in federal rulemakings, the AGA is fighting the prospect of getting more efficient natural gas heating equipment on the market. Recent comments that the industry group submitted to the Department of Energy argue against new efficiency standards for gas-powered boilers.Increasing the adoption of appliances, cars, and industrial machinery that use less energy is a key strategy for cutting emissions over the next decade, according to the International Energy Agency’s recent roadmap to net-zero. Efficient appliances save customers money and can potentially save lives by reducing strain on the power grid during fatal heat waves and cold fronts. And since the odds of passing strong climate legislation through Congress are not looking good, the Department of Energy’s mandate to set efficiency standards is one of the few climate tools at President Joe Biden’s disposal.The federal government is required to review efficiency standardsfor certain appliances and equipment every six years and decide whether to raise the minimum bar manufacturers have to hit to put a product on the market. In March, the Department of Energy took the first step in that process for boilers, which burn natural gas to generate steam or hot water for heating, by issuing a publicrequest for information on raising the standard.Boilers have been around for more than 100 years, but modern boiler efficiency varies considerably. Comments submitted by the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, a coalition of groups that works to win stronger standards, show there are dozens of models that are at least 10 percent more efficient than the existing standard. And since these appliances last for decades, every inefficient boiler sold locks in more emissions. “If someone’s going to install a gas appliance, you want it to be as efficient as possible,” said Andrew deLaski, executive director of the coalition, “because it’s going to be around for a long time.” But in a joint comment submitted to the Department of Energy with the American Public Gas Association, which represents publicly owned utilities, and a Missouri-based gas utility called Spire, the AGA argued that new federal efficiency standards “do not appear to be economically justified,” and could even be illegal. “There appears to be a big difference between these organizations’ public declarations of support for energy efficiency and their less-publicized lobbying against more ambitious energy standards,” said Alex Cranston, an analyst with the corporate watchdog InfluenceMap.
Amazon, UPS say hydrogen is further down the road than electric –Amazon expects hydrogen fuel-cell electric vehicles to be lighter, fuel faster and have longer range than battery-electric vehicles, Middle Mile Fleet Leader Tiffany Nida said during a webinar hosted by the Bipartisan Policy Coalition. “But the technology and the proof points against that are further out,” she said. “Hydrogen is … very much part of the future,” Thomas F. Jensen, senior vice president for transportation policy at UPS, said during the webinar. “But that future is yet to be defined, frankly.” Nida and Jensen said their respective employers do foresee hydrogen trucks as part of their fleet mixture. UPS views them as an option for OTR operations in the long term. For Amazon, “the details of that probably [are] further in the future,” Nida said. With hydrogen seen as being far down the road, much of the near-term talk around sustainability has centered on BEVs. Amazon has ordered 100,000 electric delivery vehicles and purchased hundreds of compressed natural gas vehicles for its last-mile fleet, to help meet one of its sustainability goals of 50% of all shipments with net-zero carbon by 2030. “We’d also love to make larger-scale purchases of electric heavy-duty trucks, but the technology and market for these heavy-duty vehicles is lagging behind,” Nida said. The webinar accompanied a report by the Bipartisan Policy Coalition, along with the Electrification Coalition and Securing America’s Future Energy, which gave suggestions on how policy could help speed the adoption of electric trucks. The three main recommendations were to:
- Create a 30% manufacturers’ credit for sales of EVs Class 4 and higher.
- Eliminate the $100,000 cap on the property tax credit that covers 30% of the cost for purchasing and installing charging stations.
- Provide “a small portion” of federal infrastructure funding to incentivize states to install heavy-duty charging.
CenterPoint’s yearslong push yields RNG, hydrogen cost recovery in Minnesota | S&P Global Market Intelligence – Minnesota’s special legislative session yielded a long-sought prize for CenterPoint Energy Inc.: a pathway for public utilities to recover the cost of displacing standard natural gas supplies with low- and zero-carbon alternatives in the state’s distribution system. The passage of the Natural Gas Innovation Act marked the realization of a CenterPoint effort to establish a regulatory framework for flowing renewable natural gas, or RNG, and green hydrogen to Minnesota gas customers. These fuels offer gas utilities a pathway to further decarbonize their operations. RNG is processed from methane waste sources like farms and landfills, while green hydrogen is produced in electrolyzers powered by renewable electricity. CenterPoint, which serves 890,000 gas customers in Minnesota, first proposed the Natural Gas Innovation Act in February 2020, after the state rejected the company’s proposed pilot project to flow RNG to Minnesota gas customers. The law was not signed into law during the 2020 and 2021 regular sessions of the Minnesota Legislature, but lawmakers incorporated it into an omnibus package during a June special legislative session. Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, signed the bill into law June 26. “This new law will help promote new Minnesota-produced, low-carbon or zero-carbon gas resources that can diversify the state’s energy supply, improve waste management and support new economic development,” Brad Tutunjian, CenterPoint’s vice president for the Minnesota region, said in a July 6 press release. The law could also impact WEC Energy Group Inc., which serves 243,000 Gopher State gas customers through Minnesota Energy Resources Corp., and Xcel Energy Inc., whose Northern States Power Co. subsidiary distributes gas to about a half million customers, chiefly in Minnesota. MDU Resources Group Inc. subsidiary Great Plains Natural Gas Co. and Greater Minnesota Gas Inc. also distribute gas in Minnesota.
Coalition of Indigenous tribes in Quebec is suing to stop Hydro-Quebec powerline construction A coalition of First Nation tribes in Quebec is filing suit against the provincial government to stop construction of a controversial powerline that would bring electricity from government-owned dams through Maine into the New England grid. Mainers are familiar with the fight over the Central Maine Power, the initiated plan to build 145 miles of new and upgraded transmission line on this side of the border. On the Quebec side, a coalition of Indigenous tribes is suing to stop construction of about 64 miles of new transmission line needed there to connect the Hydro-Quebec system to Maine’s, near Jackman. “We’re saying ‘enough is enough and you need to respect the rights of our peoples,'” said Lucien Wabanonik, a spokesperson for the coalition of five tribes, and a member of the Anishnabeg Nation. The other tribes in the coalition are the Lac Simon, Kitcisakik, Wemotaci (Atilamekw Nation) and Pessamit (Innu Nation), representing about 7,000 people, Wabanonik said. He said that while the Canadian transmission line would not directly cross tribal lands, more than a third of the dam system providing electricity for the project are on lands the tribes never ceded to the province. Wabanonik said that to serve the contracts, Hydro-Quebec is increasing production capacity at its reservoirs, likely further stressing ecosystems the tribes depend on for sustenance. “And this is something that they’re investing for a few years now. But there was no consultation, no accommodation, nor compensation to our people because of the impacts,” Wabanonik said.
New Maine law prohibits offshore wind farms in state waters – Gov. Janet Mills has signed into law a bill prohibiting offshore wind farms in state waters, in a compromise aimed at siting such projects farther from Maine’s heavily used inshore waters. Mills is a vocal supporter of wind energy who has made addressing climate change a top priority of her administration. But segments of Maine’s fishing industry – particularly lobstermen – have been battling to ban any wind development off the coast of Maine over concerns about potential loss of access to valuable fishing grounds and other conflicts. The bill proposed by Mills and signed into law this week would prohibit state and local governments from licensing or permitting the siting, construction or operation of wind turbines in the state territorial waters that extend three miles from shore. A demonstration project under development off Monhegan Island and future “pilot-scale, limited duration” research projects would be exempt from the prohibition. The bill, L.D. 1619, also would create an Offshore Wind Research Consortium with an advisory board that includes representatives of the lobster industry, other commercial fishermen and the recreational charter fishing industry as well as energy experts. The board will advise the state on local and regional impacts from offshore wind power projects as gleaned from a state-backed “research array” of up to 12 turbines to be located in federal waters.
How PG&E is fighting its massive wildfire problem with microgrids, power shutoffs and cutting down trees – California’s largest utility company, Pacific Gas & Electric, has a massive wildfire problem. Five of the ten most destructive fires in California since 2015 have been linked to PG&E equipment, including the 2018 Camp Fire that destroyed the town of Paradise and killed 85 people. Since then, PG&E has been reducing the risk of equipment sparks by shutting off the power in high fire-risk areas during dry, windy weather. It calls these Public Safety Power Shut-Offs, or PSPS events, and in 2019 they left almost a million customers in the dark for seven days. “We essentially lost that full week of service. We lost all of our food supply, we were not able to operate,” said Brennen Jensen, who owns the 100-year-old Hotel Charlotte in Groveland, California. Keeping the power on for 16 million Californians is a big job, as is maintaining the integrity of more than 100,000 miles of power lines while keeping it clear of vegetation that could turn a spark into a deadly wildfire. All this while answering to California regulators and, as an investor-owned utility, shareholders. “The management of the company mostly tried in the years leading up to Napa, Sonoma, and Paradise to please shareholders by controlling costs,” PG&E’s $5 billion 2021 Fire Mitigation Plan also includes 300 new weather stations to monitor for severe conditions; LiDAR, drones and hundreds of cameras to provide 90% visual coverage of high fire-threat areas; hardening the system by doing things like moving 23 miles of line near Paradise underground; and more aggressive clearing of trees around power lines. It’s also testing new technology. For instance, PG&E has partnered with Grass Valley-based startup BoxPower to build solar-powered microgrids, housed in shipping containers, to provide safe power for customers in remote areas. The first one serves as the full-time power source for five customers in the mountains of Briceburg, California. Until the remote grid turned on in April, they had been living solely off generator power after a 5,000-acre fire destroyed their high voltage line in 2019. PG&E is aiming to have 20 standalone remote grids operational by 2022, with plans for several hundred more. Watch the video to hear from more community members and to see the five-customer microgrid and other fire mitigation efforts PG&E says are proof it’s committed to doing better at keeping their power on and keeping them safe.
U.S. announces millions in funding for projects focused on wave energy – The U.S. Department of Energy has announced that as much as $27 million in federal funding will be provided for research and development projects focused on wave energy.In the latest attempt to encourage innovation within a sector that has a very small footprint compared to other types of renewable energy, the DOE said Tuesday the funding would aim to “advance wave energy technologies toward commercial viability.” Selected projects will undertake their research at the PacWave South facility,which is located off the coast of Oregon.Construction of PacWave South – which has received grants from the DOE and the State of Oregon, among others – began last month and it’s hoped the site will be operational in 2023.Breaking things down, the funding will be divided into three separate pots: As much as $15 million will be set aside for the testing of wave energy convertor tech; up to $7 million will go to wave energy research and development; and a maximum of $5 million will be assigned to the advancement of wave energy converter designs for PacWave. Full applications for the funding are due in October, the DOE said. In a statement issued alongside the DOE’s announcement, U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer M. Granholm said: “With wave energy, we have the opportunity to add more renewable power to the grid and deploy more sustainable energy to hard to reach communities.”
Louisiana Passed Legislation To Allow For Chemical Recycling, AKA “Advanced Recycling” – Louisiana has unanimously passed a bipartisan bill, Senate Bill 97, that will allow for advanced recycling. This term, “advanced recycling,” is a bit deceptive. Its more common term, “chemical recycling,” sounds ideal – recycling plastics instead of making more, right? Not necessarily. Chemical recycling is any process by which a polymer is chemically reduced to its original monomer form. This enables it to be processed or re-polymerized and remade into new plastic materials. Another form of this is pyrolysis, which is known as “plastics to fuel.” Non-recycled plastics from garbage are turned into synthetic crude oil that can be refined into diesel fuel, gasoline, heating oil, or even waxes. That water bottle you’ve thrown away could be turned into fuel. This isn’t a 100% bad thing, but it’s not purely good either. It’s a step down from traditional fossil fuels.SB 97 wasn’t a favorite of environmental advocates since this process is still unproven and will result in greater pollution in communities where these chemical recycling facilities are located. The Louisiana Illuminator noted back in June that many petrochemical companies were in favor of the legislation. Shell, ExxonMobil, the lobbying group Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas, the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, and the American Chemistry Council (ACC) all supported the legislation.ACC Vice President of Plastics, Joshua Baca, thanked Senator Eddie Lambert and Representative Jean-Paul Coussan for their sponsorship of the bill. ACC also announced that the new law will help fuel demand for recycling programs and centers while reducing plastic waste in Louisiana’s waterways. It will also create new jobs and encourage more investment in chemical recycling facilities.“Advanced recycling technologies enable recyclers to reuse hard-to-recycle materials that otherwise would go to waste, reducing the demand for new resources,” the ACC stated. “When used in partnership with mechanical recycling, Louisiana will be better positioned to increase its recycling rate and contribute to the US national recycling goal of 50% by 2030.”An issue that echoes the concerns of the environmental groups that didn’t support the bill was brought up by the Louisiana Illuminator in that same article. A report published by the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives back in 2020 found that chemical recycling technology hasn’t advanced enough to support its claim of being a real solution to the plastics problem.
Is global plastic pollution nearing an irreversible tipping point? –Current rates of plastic emissions globally may trigger effects that we will not be able to reverse, argues a new study by researchers from Sweden, Norway and Germany published on July 2nd in Science. According to the authors, plastic pollution is a global threat, and actions to drastically reduce emissions of plastic to the environment are “the rational policy response”.Plastic is found everywhere on the planet: from deserts and mountaintops to deep oceans and Arctic snow. As of 2016, estimates of global emissions of plastic to the world’s lakes, rivers and oceans ranged from 9 to 23 million metric tons per year, with a similar amount emitted onto land yearly. These estimates are expected to almost double by 2025 if business-as-usual scenarios apply.”Plastic is deeply engrained in our society, and it leaks out into the environment everywhere, even in countries with good waste-handling infrastructure,” says Matthew MacLeod, Professor at Stockholm University and lead author of the study. He says that emissions are trending upward even though awareness about plastic pollution among scientists and the public has increased significantly in recent years. Remote environments are particularly under threat as co-author Annika Jahnke, researcher at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and Professor at the RWTH Aachen University explains:”In remote environments, plastic debris cannot be removed by cleanups, and weathering of large plastic items will inevitably result in the generation of large numbers of micro- and nanoplastic particles as well as leaching of chemicals that were intentionally added to the plastic and other chemicals that break off the plastic polymer backbone. So, plastic in the environment is a constantly moving target of increasing complexity and mobility. Where it accumulates and what effects it may cause are challenging or maybe even impossible to predict.”
Western U.S. grid plan could remake renewables — Friday, July 2, 2021 — Stronger grid collaboration may finally be within reach for the western U.S., offering to reshape how wind and solar power is shuttled from state to state in the era of decarbonization. But installing a regional transmission organization, or RTO, across Western states isn’t a sure thing, despite signs of momentum from Oregon to Washington, D.C. The Southwest Power Pool, a grid operator based in Arkansas, is exploring a Western expansion of its RTO as some Western states with carbon-cutting plans and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Richard Glick float variations of the idea. A state-led market study that’s backed by Department of Energy funding also is examining the potential for about $2 billion of annual benefits from a Western grid organization by 2030. “The West deserves and needs an RTO,” said Vijay Satyal, manager of regional energy markets at Western Resource Advocates. Positives of such a system include creating competition and cost efficiency, and it could be easier to procure and dispatch renewables, according to Satyal. For example, wind could be sent from Wyoming to California, while solar could go from California and Arizona to Oregon and Washington, he said. However, many questions remain when it comes to a possible western RTO – of geography and governance, of costs and benefits, of renewables and reliability. Who would run it? Who would join? How might wind and solar fare? What about consumers? An organized Western market has long been under discussion by U.S. grid planners and advocates, and experts say this is a critical time to find out what’s possible. The Biden administration has endorsed the goal of a decarbonized national power sector by 2035, as well as proposed an infrastructure package that could bolster U.S. transmission. Recurring grid issues across the country, including recent extreme temperatures in the West, also have put reliability and resiliency on the minds of consumers and politicians. Eyes are on SPP after it announced last year it was considering RTO expansion to the west of its central U.S. base. At the same time, experts point to the California Independent System Operator as a vehicle that could evolve into a more regional grid organization. Both SPP and the California ISO already have limited offerings known as energy imbalance markets that are testing grid coordination among some Western power providers.
Abbott calls on PUC to improve Texas electric grid reliability, restore public trust – Gov. Greg Abbott directed members of the Public Utility Commission of Texas on Tuesday to take additional, stronger steps to improve the state’s electricity reliability and regain public trust.Abbott’s letter to the PUC comes amid speculation the governor will not include additional grid reform measures in his call for a special session to be released prior to Thursday’s opening. Some members of the Legislature, including the Democratic Caucus and Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, have called on Abbott to add more grid-related topics to the call since the end of the regular session. “Bottom line is that everything that needed to be done was done to fix the power grid in Texas,” Abbott said days after the session ended May 31, during the signing of legislation to overhaul the grid and recast ERCOT leadership.In Tuesday’s letter, Abbott directed the PUC, which has oversight over the state’s grid operator, to improve reliability through a series of orders to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.“Through clear communication, transparency, and implementation of these critical changes, the PUC and ERCOT can regain the public’s trust, restore ERCOT’s status as a leader in innovation and reliability, and ensure Texans have the reliable electric power they expect and deserve,” Abbott wrote. “The objective of these directives is to ensure that all Texans have access to reliable, safe, and affordable power, and that this task is achieved in the quickest possible way.”The four directives Abbott recommended largely centered on prioritizing thermal power plants, which include natural gas, coal and nuclear power plants:
- Provide incentives within the ERCOT market to encourage the addition of new natural gas, coal and nuclear power plants to the grid.
- Allocate costs and fees for renewable generation resources based on their intermittency.
- Instruct ERCOT to establish a maintenance schedule for natural gas, coal, nuclear and other non-renewable electricity generators.
- Order ERCOT to accelerate the development of transmission projects that increase connectivity between existing or new dispatchable generation plants, which can supply energy at a moment’s notice and aren’t subject to weather or conditions (like breeze or the sun shining), and other areas of need.
Michael Jewell, an attorney and policy adviser for Conservative Texans for Energy Innovation, said he was disappointed by the governor’s letter because it revived an anti-renewable allegation conservatives made during the legislative session. Most anti-renewable legislation, which proponents claimed would level an uneven playing field between thermals and renewables, was dropped throughout the session.
Texas Governor Backs Fossil Fuel, Nuclear Power Incentives – Texas Governor Greg Abbott is pushing regulators to strengthen incentives for fossil fuel and nuclear power generators in an effort to avoid a repeat of deadly blackouts seen this winter. Abbott ordered the Public Utility Commission of Texas to redesign parts of the power market to maintain and build more dispatchable supplies that are fueled by coal, natural gas and nuclear, according to a letter Tuesday. Generators that can’t guarantee their availability, like wind and solar, should bear the costs of failures, he said. Without those costs, it creates “an uneven playing field between non-renewable and renewable energy generators,” Abbott said in the letter. Texas is scrambling to revamp its power markets as the grid becomes increasingly strained by climate change. In February, an Arctic freeze crippled the state for nearly a week and left more than 100 dead amid the catastrophic blackouts that left millions in the dark. This summer, the region faces the threat of more power failures as scorching heat drives up the use of air conditioners. But while other grid operators, like in California, are emphasizing batteries and other ways to back up renewable power sources, Abbott’s order appears to double down on maintaining the grid of the past that relies on larger fossil fuel and nuclear plants. The PUC is already mulling some of the changes Abbott ordered, such as how to ensure adequate resources and spur the development of transmission lines. The difference is that the governor appears to be focused on picking winners rather than letting the market dictate those changes in the generation mix, though the language in his order does leave room for interpretation
In Corpus Christi’s Hillcrest Neighborhood, Black Residents Feel Like They Are Living in a ‘Sacrifice Zone’ – When Justine Knox, 57, bought her single-story home in Corpus Christi’s historic Hillcrest neighborhood in 1993, she wanted to stay and raise her family in the community where she grew up and met her husband. Twenty-eight years later, Knox’s house sits next to vacant lots where well-kept houses from the 1920s once stood, abuzz with family life. Her neighbors moved out under a voluntary resettlement plan with the Port of Corpus Christi, which razed the acquired properties in recent years to make way for the new Harbor Bridge. “They’ve torn down all of the houses of my former friends that I grew up with, and their parents’ homes,” said Knox, a senior administrative assistant for the Corpus Christi Independent School District. “The first strike against the neighborhood was the refineries moving in next to the residential area,” she said, “and the plan to construct a new harbor bridge drove the last nail in the coffin.” Hillcrest and the adjoining Washington-Coles neighborhood – once-thriving Black communities – are struggling to survive, just as Congress is haggling over the Biden administration’s $20 billion proposal to reconnect communities displaced by highways. The effort coincides with a growing momentum across American cities, seeking to remove what environmental justice advocates call “racist” highways. According to the non-profit Congress for the New Urbanism, which monitors highway removals nationwide, 28 cities have proposed 33 projects to take down highways that displaced mostly-Black neighborhoods from the 1950s onwards. Rather than solving transportation problems by building new highways, the new approach advocates making downtown areas more livable and walkable, and accessible through connecting streets and bike lanes. Biden has committed to addressing environmental racism as part of his political agenda. Mustafa Santiago Ali, who served as an associate administrator in the Environmental Protection Agency’s environmental justice office in the Obama administration, said Biden’s “all-of-government” approach to eliminating “sacrifice zones” is critical to protect people’s health and welfare in communities of color.“The question is, are the lives of these communities seen as valuable?” said Ali, who is now vice president of environmental justice, climate and community revitalization for theNational Wildlife Federation. “Because if they were valuable, then we would make sure that we’re doing everything possible to protect those lives.”
Critics urge Missouri to rethink wastewater proposal at Ameren’s largest coal plant – Environmental lawyers and activists are urging state regulators to block a proposed permit governing how St. Louis electric utility Ameren can discharge wastewater from the state’s largest coal plant into the Missouri River. The proposed wastewater permit before the Department of Natural Resources loosens prior requirements, critics say, and would allow the plant to release unlawfully hot water and to do so for longer periods of time – a change that could threaten aquatic life, including endangered species such as the pallid sturgeon. The proposal also fails to take appropriate action to regulate groundwater and river contamination from the site’s coal ash ponds, the critics say, which have leaked pollutants for decades.“It’s the biggest power plant in the state and one of the biggest in the country. It should be regulated as such,” said Peter Goode, an environmental engineer and law lecturer at Washington University’s Interdisciplinary Environmental Clinic, which tracks pollution issues tied to Ameren. “DNR is not really holding Ameren accountable.”The dispute continues a long saga of environmental concerns at the coal plant, the Labadie Energy Center in Franklin County – and adds to overarching complaints about how state regulators treat Ameren’s top power plant. The water pollution permit has a checkered history. The permit issued to the plant in 2015 attracted a range of similar concerns, and prompted a legal challenge from the Sierra Club. Five years after filing the case, and more than two years after a hearing on the matter, the organization is still awaiting a decision from the state’s Administrative Hearing Commission. Labadie is also among the largest coal-fired power plants in the country without air-pollution controls called “scrubbers” – a technology that removes sulfur dioxide from emissions, would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to install and, if required, could force the facility’s closure by rendering it uneconomical.
New report highlights daunting scope of mine reclamation funding problem facing WV, other Appalachian states –Appalachia has a multibillion-dollar coal mine reclamation problem. A report released Wednesday highlights just how daunting it is. It will cost from $7.5 billion to $9.8 billion to reclaim 633,000 acres of just coal mines that have been closed or idled since 1977 across seven Appalachian states, according to the report from environmental nonprofit Appalachian Voices. That’s twice as much as the $3.8 billion in total bonds available to those states, according to the report. The report’s author, Appalachian Voices senior program manager Erin Savage, said in a teleconference Wednesday that Appalachian state environmental regulators need to do far more to address the shortfall poised to grow as more coal companies declare bankruptcy, ditch their reclamation obligations and leave state bonding systems on the hook. “I’ll be honest, I have not seen the state agencies take this issue as seriously as I hoped they would,” Savage said. “This is something that we’ve been talking to at least some of them about for several years now.” West Virginia has an estimated 205,000 acres of land under active permits that are either unreclaimed (36,000) or partially reclaimed (169,000), according to the report. That’s more than the six other states in the study: Kentucky (54,000 unreclaimed, 139,000 partially reclaimed); Pennsylvania (69,000 unreclaimed, 49,000 partially reclaimed); Virginia (18,000 unreclaimed, 35,000 partially reclaimed); Alabama (17,000 unreclaimed, 16,000 partially reclaimed); Ohio (6,000 unreclaimed, 13,000 partially reclaimed); and Tennessee (7,000 unreclaimed, 5,000 partially reclaimed). That does not include mine lands abandoned before Congress’s 1977 passage of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, which established the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement that works with states to oversee mine cleanup.
Study: Black Lung Patients Face Higher Rates of Depression, PTSD –Many men who suffer from black lung disease also face depression, anxiety and post traumatic stress disorder, according to a study out of the University of Virginia. The study was published earlier this year in JAMA Network Open.Researchers found that many patients reported symptoms of mental illness on their health assessments. Of those that entered one Virginia clinic since 2018, a third showed signs of depression and anxiety, a quarter experienced symptoms of PTSD, and one out of ten patients have considered suicide.Patients with more severe black lung disease experienced these mental stressors at higher rates. The study looked at patients at a black lung clinic in Jonesville, Virginia. The town sits near the border between Tennessee and Kentucky. Almost all patients were white men in their sixties and early seventies.Dr. Drew Harris works at the clinic and authored the study, one of the first to examine the overall issue of mental illness among miners. He can’t say exactly why coal miners may experience more mental distress, but he understands the job comes with many traumatic occupational hazards.For example, Harris said many of his patients have witnessed walls of mines collapsing.“Even with the best of safety precautions and roof bolting, there are times when rocks will fall on top of people,” Harris said.
San Juan Generating Station taken offline after cooling tower collapse | The NM Political Report – Unit one of the San Juan Generating Station was taken off line last week after a cooling tower collapsed, sources familiar with the incident told NM Political Report. The cooling tower is necessary to operate the unit and, unless it is repaired, the unit will not be able to produce power for Public Service Company of New Mexico and Tucson Electric Power. The two utilities share ownership of the unit and each receives 170 megawatts of power. No one was injured during the June 30 collapse, which came almost exactly one year before the state’s largest utility plans to end operations of the power plant. The plant was idle on the morning of July 6 and neither unit one nor unit four were producing power. The other two units were shuttered at the end 2017. New Energy Economy, a consumer advocacy group, filed a set of interrogations on July 5 related to the collapse in the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission’s docket regarding PNM’s potential merger with Avangrid. The filing asked for confirmation that the cooling tower collapsed at approximately 4 a.m. June 30 and how that has impacted operations. New Energy Economy further requested information about how PNM is getting electricity to replace the 170 megawatts it typically receives from unit one of the power plant. New Energy Economy also requested information about which regulatory bodies, if any, were informed of the collapse.
Oyster Creek union leaders say layoffs will hurt nuclear site safety -A union whose members have worked at the now defunct Oyster Creek nuclear plant for decades say their impending layoffs will make for less safe conditions for remaining workers.Members of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1289 are slated to be laid off Aug. 1 from the plant, which is being decommissioned, according to union representatives. As many as 92 employees will be let go from the plant, according to a company spokesman and a W.A.R.N. notice sent to the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development. John Rayment and Jeffrey Munyan, IBEW union members and longtime plant workers who specialize in radiation protection, said the layoffs will result in less safe working conditions for the remaining staff.”I’ve been there for 35 years. I know how that plant works,” said Munyan. “There’s still a huge amount of radioactive material there.”A spokesman for Holtec International, the Camden-based nuclear power equipment company that is decommissioning Oyster Creek, said other skilled, union laborers will be assisting the remaining decommissioning staff.Joseph Delmar, the Holtec spokesman, disputed the union’s claim there would be a drop off in safety. But Munyan said the remaining employees were far less experienced in working with potentially radioactive material.
Watchdog subpoenas FirstEnergy info on payment to regulator (AP) – Ohio’s consumer utility watchdog is demanding that FirstEnergy Corp. share more information about $4.3 million that was paid to an attorney to end his consulting contract shortly before he became the state’s top utility regulator. Akron-based FirstEnergy disclosed that payment in the wake of allegations about a $60 million bribery scheme involving a subsidiary. Ohio Consumers’ Counsel Bruce Weston issued subpoenas through the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio late last week for more information about the payment. FirstEnergy Service Company and the FirstEnergy Foundation also received subpoenas. In addition to the consulting contract, Weston and his agency are seeking information about the company’s charitable giving and documents related to an internal investigation by FirstEnergy’s Board of Directors that resulted in the dismissal of its CEO and other top executives.The subpoenas say FirstEnergy must provide the documents by July 19. “Utilities have undue influence in Ohio,” Weston said Friday in a statement. “The public has a right to know how their state government, including the PUCO, is regulating these powerful utilities such as FirstEnergy.” FirstEnergy spokesperson Jennifer Young declined to comment, citing ongoing investigations of the company. FirstEnergy officials have said it’s cooperating in investigations of what authorities allege was a $60 million bribery scheme to win legislative approval in 2019 for a $1 billion bailout for two unprofitable nuclear power plants then operated by a wholly-owned FirstEnergy subsidiary. In the wake of those allegations, FirstEnergy disclosed in U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings that company executives paid attorney Sam Randazzo $4.3 million in January 2019 to end a purported consulting contract. Republican Gov. Mike DeWine appointed Randazzo chair of the utilities commission weeks later. The commission is responsible for setting rates paid by electric and natural gas customers in Ohio, giving Randazzo, a longtime utility attorney and lobbyist, an outsized role at the agency. Randazzo resigned in November 2020 after FBI agents searched his Columbus townhome and FirstEnergy disclosed in an SEC filing that month that former executives had violated the company’s policies and code of conduct when they paid Randazzo millions to end a consulting contract in place since 2013.
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