Climate Change, Pollution, Clean Energy, and the Environment

[goldenvalley]

Jun 15, 2021 20:39:42 GMT LFC said:

Welcome to the new reality in the American West.

And this is both insane and unsustainable.

It's not that Phoenix won't have water in 20 years, but rather that to ensure that it does, industry might need to rethink why Arizona, which is mostly desert, is one of the top three market-vegetable-producing states.

California's nut crop, alfalfa crops...some call them just a way to export water out of the state.  Someone is making money from it, but they are also planting their own destruction.  

[LFC]

The heat in the West is bad and it's early.

It might be tempting to shrug at the scorching weather across large swaths of the West. This just in: It gets hot in the summer.

But this record-setting heat wave's remarkable power, size and unusually early appearance is giving meteorologists and climate experts yet more cause for concern about the routinization of extreme weather in an era of climate change.

These sprawling, persistent high-pressure zones popularly called "heat domes" are relatively common in later summer months. This current system is different.

"It's not only unusual for June, but it is pretty extreme even in absolute terms," says Daniel Swain, climate scientist at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. "It would be a pretty extreme event for August," Swain says, when these typically occur.

They've been seeing record breaking highs.

"It's unusual in that it's more intense in terms of the maximum temperature," says Alison Bridger, a professor in the Meteorology and Climate Science department at San Jose State University. "And how widespread the impact is."

For example, Palm Springs, Calif., recently hit 123 degrees, equaling its highest recorded temperature.

Las Vegas set a daily record of 114 degrees. Phoenix reached a record 118 degrees, the earliest the city has hit that high a mark. It broke the previous record of 114 set in 2015.

Sacramento, Calif., set a new daily record of 109 degrees. The National Weather Service just extended its excessive heat warning through Sunday night in the Central Valley and parts of northern California.

Denver this week hit 100 for three straight days, the earliest date of such a streak on record, tweeted meteorologist Bob Henson. He noted that all of the 100-degree streaks in Denver's 150 years of climate record keeping have occurred in the last three decades.

And in the Plains, several cities including Omaha, Neb., set records, including a daily record high of 105 degrees. That breaks an Omaha daily record set in 1918.

Just last year, several cities in the West also hit record highs.

[pnwguy]

Jun 22, 2021 17:02:19 GMT LFC said:

The heat in the West is bad and it's early.

In Oregon we are dreading the fire season ahead.

[Bact PhD]

Jun 22, 2021 18:26:51 GMT pnwguy said:

Jun 22, 2021 17:02:19 GMT LFC said:

The heat in the West is bad and it's early.

In Oregon we are dreading the fire season ahead.

Meanwhile here in the “Sunshine State,” we’re in a pattern of nearly all-day rain absent a tropical cyclone for many days at a time. Flooding in places is becoming a bigger issue. Our heretofore “normal” summer weather pattern would be mostly sunny, 30-40% chance of an afternoon thunderstorm (between 3-5 PM) lasting maybe 30 minutes, after which it would be sunny and steamy for the rest of the day.

To think this area was in severe drought when my kiddos were young…

[LFC]

Jun 22, 2021 18:57:34 GMT Bact PhD said:

Meanwhile here in the “Sunshine State,” we’re in a pattern of nearly all-day rain absent a tropical cyclone for many days at a time. Flooding in places is becoming a bigger issue.

I hadn't seen this reported before. Are there increasing concerns with an increase in mosquito borne diseases?

[Bact PhD]

Jun 22, 2021 19:07:45 GMT LFC said:

Jun 22, 2021 18:57:34 GMT Bact PhD said:

Meanwhile here in the “Sunshine State,” we’re in a pattern of nearly all-day rain absent a tropical cyclone for many days at a time. Flooding in places is becoming a bigger issue.

I hadn't seen this reported before. Are there increasing concerns with an increase in mosquito borne diseases?

I haven’t seen anything along those lines…yet. IIRC the uptick of mosquito-borne diseases lags heavy rainfalls by a few weeks.

Anecdotal report: We’re already having problems keeping skeeters from flying in every time we open an exterior door. It’s gonna be a loooong summer.

[goldenvalley]

My husband has a friend in Baton Rouge LA. They have been drowning in water, humidity, and mildew/mold for the last 2 or 3 years...not just hurricanes but just major storm systems with huge amounts of rainfall.

Meanwhile we're so dang dry in CA and have had lots of wind all spring long and now into summer. In my suburb we are accustomed to getting "Delta breezes" up from the San Francisco Bay via the Sacramento River starting at about 5 or 5:30 PM, but this year it has been beyond breeze at 10mph plus gusts all day long. Great for driving grass fires. Then the wind stops we head to the upper 90s and low 100s.

[LFC]

NASA has an amazing animated global temperature anomaly map that displays a 5-year rolling average from 1880. The 30 second video really drives home just how much things have changed.

[AnBr]

Frightning.

[LFC]

In 2020 renewable energy (mostly wind, hydro, and solar) accounted for just over 20% of U.S. electricity generation. Coal is still big but it continues to slide.

[LFC]

Renewable energy continues to make inroads in generation. The percentages are changing slowly but in the right direction. Another eye opener is what's being built now. Here's the picture for 2020:

And here's the picture for Q1-2021:

[goldenvalley]

Until we have a stable electrical grid throughout the country the shift away from fossil fuel generated power to all other forms of generation will falter.

[LFC]

Jun 23, 2021 19:03:52 GMT goldenvalley said:

Until we have a stable electrical grid throughout the country the shift away from fossil fuel generated power to all other forms of generation will falter.

We can always use the Texas model. Oh. Wait. Never mind.

[goldenvalley]

Jun 23, 2021 20:42:53 GMT LFC said:

Jun 23, 2021 19:03:52 GMT goldenvalley said:

Until we have a stable electrical grid throughout the country the shift away from fossil fuel generated power to all other forms of generation will falter.

We can always use the Texas model. Oh. Wait. Never mind.

I should add that hydropower in California is at risk too...drought.  

[Bact PhD]

Actions have consequences, even in a place that once touted, “The Rules Are Different Here.” Nope, not when you’re talking (almost literally) building a 12-story building on sand that is constantly shifting…

www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/cause-miami-condo-collapse-unclear-experts-say-barrier-islands-present-n1272316

This jumped out at me:

Public records did not show many issues regarding the building beyond two lawsuits over cracks in a unit’s exterior wall.

One condo owner sued the unit association for failing to fix the cracks in the outside wall of her unit in 2015, according to a lawsuit filed in Miami-Dade County. The condo owner, who could not be reached for comment, said the cracks led to water damage that cost $15,000. The court documents noted that because the cracks were a structural issue the building association was liable for the expense.

The condo owner had previously filed a lawsuit against the building association in 2001 due to a similar issue. The two sides settled outside of court, but that kind of cracking is described as “of interest” in the county’s Structural Recertification Form.

Becker, the law firm that works for the building and represented it in the 2015 lawsuit, did not provide a response to a request for comment.

‘A real awakening’

Another issue at hand for the Surfside community is one shared with all of Miami Beach: The towns are built on a barrier island. Climate scientists and geologists have long warned that these islands cannot be developed responsibly. They are made of a loose mixture of sand and mud and provide a natural protection for the shoreline.

“These are very dynamic features. We didn’t understand that these islands actually migrate until the 1970s,” said Orrin Pilkey, a professor emeritus of geology at Duke University who has long studied sea-level rise and the over-development of the coast. “As sea level rises, they move back.”

Maybe failing concrete…or sinking:


www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-miami-area-condo-collapse/2021/06/25/1010228440/heres-what-we-know-about-the-condition-of-the-florida-building-before-it-collaps

Was the building sinking over time?
An April 2020 study by Florida International University professor Shimon Wdowinski and University of Padua professor Simone Fiaschi found that the area where the building collapsed showed signs of land subsidence. That's a term use to describe settling or sinking of the Earth's surface, and it has a variety of causes.

The study noted that areas with subsidence are increasingly likely to experience serious effects of rising sea levels.

Wdowinski and Fiaschi found that in the 1990s, Miami Beach experienced subsidence at the rate of 1 to 3 millimeters per year, which the former said could add up to a few inches of over the course of a decade.

But according to a press release from the university, Wdowinski said land subsidence would not be the sole cause of the building's collapse.

"When we measure subsidence or when we see movement of the buildings, it's worth checking why it happens," Wdowinski said. "We cannot say what is the reason for that from the satellite images but we can say there was movement here."

[LFC]

Alaska Just Had an ‘Ice Quake’ Due to the Extreme Heat Wave

The heat wave currently roasting the Pacific Northwest has made its way up to Alaska, where a 2.7 magnitude ice quake—the result of seismic activity triggered by melting glaciers—was just recorded 25 miles (40 kilometers) east of Juneau.

Temperatures climbed to as high as 92 degrees Fahrenheit (33.3 degrees Celsius) in parts of Alaska on Tuesday on what has been the hottest day so far of an already record-breaking heat wave. As the Anchorage Daily News reports, the scorching temperatures are a bizarre departure for a region that usually colloquially refers to this month as “Juneuary” for the signature cool drizzle it brings.

As temperatures rise, it’s normal for melting snow and glaciers to cause flooding. But it’s rarer that the water refreezing and expanding as ice triggers enough accumulated stress to result in seismic activity.

Known as a cryoseism—a non-tectonic seismic event—Tuesday’s event took place in the Alaska Panhandle at 5:29 a.m. and registered as 2.7-magnitude, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

[LFC]

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been a force of climate change denial for decades. All that matters are the short-term profits.

A new report from Brown University’s Climate and Development Lab deconstructs the messaging from one of the most aggressive climate denier organizations in the U.S.

Using publicly available internal documents from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the findings chronicle the group’s shifting methods of denial in a crucial 20-year period when it one of the most active groups lobbying against climate policy and casting doubt on climate science. The report analyzes different tactics the Chamber used in its messaging in this time period, giving us a glimpse into how the organization may rebrand itself in the future.

As late as 2009, the Chamber claimed that climate change would be good for the planet, saying in a comment submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency that year that the agency was “ignoring” analyses that showed “a warming of even 3 [degrees] C in the next 100 years would, on balance, be beneficial to humans because the reduction of wintertime mortality/morbidity would be several times larger than the increase in summertime heat stress-related mortality/morbidity.” That same year, the Chamber called for a Scopes monkey trial-style process to put climate science through a public hearing of sorts, intended, a senior vice president said, to put “the science of climate change on trial.” The Chamber’s extremist views that year led to a number of high-profile exits from members including Apple, Nike, and utilities PG&E and Exelon.

Even for someone who may know the Chamber’s dark denier past, seeing the tactics of denial laid out like this in a report is pretty illuminating. While the Chamber was repeating climate denial, the new report shows the organization knew how serious the climate crisis was going to get. An internal document published by the Chamber in 1989, which consisted of testimony from a scientist to the International Chamber of Commerce, states plainly that “sea levels will rise, wetlands will flood, salt water will infuse fresh water supplies, and there will be changes in the distribution of tree and crop species and agricultural productivity” due to climate change.

“He was describing in great detail all the adverse impacts climate change would have to places all around the world, including specific stuff like forced migration, Amsterdam and Miami flooding, things like that,” said Cole Triedman, an undergraduate co-coordinator at the Climate Development Lab and lead author of the report. “I was shocked.” That testimony was right before the Chamber stopped referring to climate change altogether, Triedman said, until the late 1990s, when it began more and more aggressively ramping up into denial.

“By the time 2009 came around, the Chamber was comparing institutional climate science to creationism,” said Triedman. “That was a pretty mindblowing backwards trajectory.”

The analysis also shows that the Chamber’s language changed depending on the political climate, shifting from presenting a forward-thinking, business-focused vision of how industry could help solve climate change during the George W. Bush administration. But the group began attacking climate science and action when threats to the status quo emerged, such as the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 or efforts to pass cap-and-trade legislation in the late 2000s.

“When there were significant threats to its bottom line, the Chamber completely pivoted gears and attacked whatever what was in front of them and used arguments like, we’re going to become less competitive than other countries, or the economy is going to suffer, or this policy is not achievable, and we’re doomed anyway,” Triedman said. “It’s all very cyclical, and this tells researchers and advocates that there’s a certain recipe organizations like this operate and message on with how they talk about climate change.”

[Bact PhD]

Jun 30, 2021 16:54:12 GMT LFC said:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been a force of climate change denial for decades. All that matters are the short-term profits.

A new report from Brown University’s Climate and Development Lab deconstructs the messaging from one of the most aggressive climate denier organizations in the U.S.

Using publicly available internal documents from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the findings chronicle the group’s shifting methods of denial in a crucial 20-year period when it one of the most active groups lobbying against climate policy and casting doubt on climate science. The report analyzes different tactics the Chamber used in its messaging in this time period, giving us a glimpse into how the organization may rebrand itself in the future.

As late as 2009, the Chamber claimed that climate change would be good for the planet, saying in a comment submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency that year that the agency was “ignoring” analyses that showed “a warming of even 3 [degrees] C in the next 100 years would, on balance, be beneficial to humans because the reduction of wintertime mortality/morbidity would be several times larger than the increase in summertime heat stress-related mortality/morbidity.” That same year, the Chamber called for a Scopes monkey trial-style process to put climate science through a public hearing of sorts, intended, a senior vice president said, to put “the science of climate change on trial.” The Chamber’s extremist views that year led to a number of high-profile exits from members including Apple, Nike, and utilities PG&E and Exelon.

Even for someone who may know the Chamber’s dark denier past, seeing the tactics of denial laid out like this in a report is pretty illuminating. While the Chamber was repeating climate denial, the new report shows the organization knew how serious the climate crisis was going to get. An internal document published by the Chamber in 1989, which consisted of testimony from a scientist to the International Chamber of Commerce, states plainly that “sea levels will rise, wetlands will flood, salt water will infuse fresh water supplies, and there will be changes in the distribution of tree and crop species and agricultural productivity” due to climate change.

“He was describing in great detail all the adverse impacts climate change would have to places all around the world, including specific stuff like forced migration, Amsterdam and Miami flooding, things like that,” said Cole Triedman, an undergraduate co-coordinator at the Climate Development Lab and lead author of the report. “I was shocked.” That testimony was right before the Chamber stopped referring to climate change altogether, Triedman said, until the late 1990s, when it began more and more aggressively ramping up into denial.

“By the time 2009 came around, the Chamber was comparing institutional climate science to creationism,” said Triedman. “That was a pretty mindblowing backwards trajectory.”

The analysis also shows that the Chamber’s language changed depending on the political climate, shifting from presenting a forward-thinking, business-focused vision of how industry could help solve climate change during the George W. Bush administration. But the group began attacking climate science and action when threats to the status quo emerged, such as the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 or efforts to pass cap-and-trade legislation in the late 2000s.

“When there were significant threats to its bottom line, the Chamber completely pivoted gears and attacked whatever what was in front of them and used arguments like, we’re going to become less competitive than other countries, or the economy is going to suffer, or this policy is not achievable, and we’re doomed anyway,” Triedman said. “It’s all very cyclical, and this tells researchers and advocates that there’s a certain recipe organizations like this operate and message on with how they talk about climate change.”

Hmmm. Some years mentioned specifically in the ramping-up of denier language: 1997, 2009, "the late 2000s" in contrast to

 presenting a forward-thinking, business-focused vision of how industry could help solve climate change during the George W. Bush administration.

Coincidence, or possibly the "political climate" referred to has more to do with which party occupies the WH?

[pnwguy]

They probably deserve to survive when humans extinguish themselves from stupidity

www.cnet.com/news/rattlesnakes-may-be-one-of-the-only-winners-of-climate-change-crisis/

[Deleted]

Stupidity must be good for survival - has a higher fitness value.

[LFC]

Lytton, BC broke the highest temperature ever recorded in Canada, clocking in at 122 F. That was after breaking the all-time high twice in the previous two days. Now it's on fire.

Out-of-control wildfires fed by a historic heatwave that then created rainless thunderstorms have converged on the small Canadian village of Lytton, engulfing the entire town in flames and destroying 90 percent of it, including the city center.

“It’s dire. The whole town is on fire,” Mayor Jan Polderman told CBC. “It took, like, a whole 15 minutes from the first sign of smoke to, all of a sudden, there being fire everywhere.”

Lytton, a town of just 250 people, had earlier in the week topped 121 degrees, setting a record for the hottest temperatures ever recorded in Canada. The entire town had to be completely evacuated as flames jumped fences and incinerated every single building. Winds of up to 45 mph whipped up burning debris. Most residents had no time to collect any belongings as the fire drew down on them, the mayor said.

[Deleted]

Jul 1, 2021 18:45:52 GMT LFC said:

Lytton, BC broke the highest temperature ever recorded in Canada, clocking in at 122 F. That was after breaking the all-time high twice in the previous two days. Now it's on fire.

Canadians now get to live in Phoenix without needing to move to Arizona?! 

[goldenvalley]

And now most of Lytton is gone.

Local officials have said that roughly 90 percent of the village, which had a population of about 250, was burned in the fire. The local ambulance station and Royal Canadian Mounted Police detachment were among the buildings burned.

Hell on earth...

[LFC]

More on the Florida condo collapse.

Residents of the doomed Champlain Towers South complex were told by the condo board in December 2020 that certain sections of the condo’s underground garage were not protected by any waterproofing whatsoever, a flaw that had “exposed the garage to water intrusion for 40 years,” according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. That was on top of the structural damage an engineer’s report noted two years earlier, much of which had occurred due to shoddy waterproofing around the building’s pool. Protecting the garage from further damage was prioritized in a planned $15 million upgrade, the 2020 documents reportedly stated. Another issue involved repairing concrete slabs under the building grounds that had been “overstressed since the day the building went up.” The board’s presentation said “inadequate slab reinforcing” was in fact noted in the building’s original structural drawings. Most of the repairs had not yet begun when the building collapsed last week, killing at least 18 people with more than 140 still missing.

This building should have been condemned ages ago.

Last October, construction workers were brought into Champlain Towers South to assess and repair worsening concrete damage in the building. But, according to documents obtained by USA Today, they discovered that the concrete deterioration had gotten so bad that workers couldn’t carry out repairs out of fear they would destabilize more areas of the condo complex. A summary of the work carried out on Oct. 13 reportedly said restoration and repair work “could not be performed” because it “could affect the stability of the remaining adjacent concrete constructions.” It’s still not known what caused last week’s collapse, which killed 18 people and has left 145 people still missing as of Friday morning. Meanwhile, officials are weighing up a plan to demolish the ruins of the complex after the search operation was paused Thursday over fears of a secondary building collapse.

[jackd]

As I suspected, the repairs were delayed while the residents argued about the cost. The ensuing (so to speak) lawsuits are going to be messy.