These are todays stories:
- Summer Wildfires Emitted More Carbon Dioxide Than India Does in a Year
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I think that I shall never see/An urban cooling device as effective as a tree
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The Rate of Global Warming During Next 25 Years Could Be Double What it Was in the Previous 50, a Renowned Climate Scientist Warns
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Lawsuit calls out Biden administration for allowing oil operators to harm Southern Beaufort Sea polar bears
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‘They screwed up our lake’: tar sands pipeline is sucking water from Minnesota watersheds
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Sen. Tina Smith on the Democratic plan to clean up the US electricity sector
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How the US labor movement is getting to grips with the climate crisis
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Alabama PFAS manufacturing plant creates the climate pollution of 125,000 cars
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New study shows drawbacks of deforestation across New England and New York
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This grid technology could make or break Biden’s solar plans
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Does Nature Have Rights? A Burgeoning Legal Movement Says Rivers, Forests and Wildlife Have Standing, Too
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The Oil Well Next Door: California’s Silent Health Hazard
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Why a Big Mining Project Could Wipe Out Rural Villages in Indonesia
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Paris car-free day: Crowds flock a pedestrianised Champs-Élysées
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Why are scientists bringing woolly mammoths back from extinction?
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This Is An Open Thread
Summer Wildfires Emitted More Carbon Dioxide Than India Does in a Year
The world set a scary new record last month: Wildfires around the world pumped out more carbon dioxide than ever before.
Forests on multiple continents went up in smoke, spewing out billions of tons of carbon dioxide, new data from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service shows. In July, wildfires emitted nearly 1.3 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide, a record that was topped by August’s 1.4 gigatons. Between the two months, forest fires emitted an amount of carbon dioxide greater than all of India’s carbon emissions in a year.
The majority of those emissions came from wildfires two regions, western North America and Siberia. Blazes in both regions were fueled by heat waves, drought conditions, and low soil moisture levels—three hallmarks of the climate crisis. In the case of North America, monster fires are still burning in the U.S. and continue to threaten everything from homes and giant sequoias. What’s been most shocking about the fires in the northern hemisphere is, well, everything.
I think that I shall never see/An urban cooling device as effective as a tree
Anyone who’s lived in New York knows that—aside from traffic tie-ups—the residents of the Five Boroughs pay precious little attention to the United Nations. Yes, Biden spoke to the General Assembly yesterday about climate change and covid, and yes the Chinese premier promised an end to financing for coal-fired power plants in other countries. But the front page of the Daily News (“New Rip on Accusers”) remained focused on former governor Andy Cuomo still trying, pathetically, to discredit the women he’d previously harassed. (The Post covered, among other things, a cancer survivor killed by an exploding beer keg).
New York—especially this week—is the venue for some of the highest level climate action. But it’s also a place that suffers grievously from climate change—and where some very local interventions might make a huge difference. Trees, for instance.
Normally, when people talk about trees and climate change, they use very big numbers, putting forward plans to plant tens of millions or billions or trillions of trees to soak up carbon dioxide and slow the rise of the planet’s temperature. At the moment, the would-be tree-planters are somewhat on the defensive, as scientists point out problems with the vast schemes, including that they’ve become a staple of too much corporate greenwashing.
Fossil Fuel Companies Say Hydrogen Made From Natural Gas Is a Climate Solution. But the Tech May Not Be Very Green
As a committee of climate scientists and environmental officials deliberated over how to drastically cut New York State’s carbon footprint last summer, natural gas industry representatives were putting forward a counterintuitive pitch: hydrogen, made from fossil fuels.
The concept was simple, explained natural-gas proponents serving on the state’s climate-action council. Industrial hydrogen suppliers had long used a process called steam methane reforming (SMR) to produce what the industry calls “gray” hydrogen from natural gas—a system that accounts for 95% of all current hydrogen production, but releases large amounts of carbon emissions. Emissions-free “green” hydrogen can be produced using water and renewable electricity, but that tends to be more expensive than making gray hydrogen. The solution, gas-industry representatives said, was to pursue a kind of carbon compromise. Instead of making expensive green hydrogen, industrial gray hydrogen facilities could be outfitted with carbon capture systems that buried their emissions underground. Voila: A new color in the hydrogen rainbow—safe, clean, abundant “blue” hydrogen to power the economy of the future.
Bob Howarth, a Cornell University climate scientist serving on the N.Y. State carbon-drawdown committee, decided to look into the gas industry’s arguments. “I’m not surprised that people in the natural gas industry are trying to suggest ways that they keep their industry alive,” he says. “But I was skeptical.” Together with Mark Jacobson, an atmospheric scientist at Stanford University, Howarth set out to document the full emissions picture arising from blue hydrogen production.
please read the Time article ^^^^
The Rate of Global Warming During Next 25 Years Could Be Double What it Was in the Previous 50, a Renowned Climate Scientist Warns
James Hansen, a climate scientist who shook Washington when he told Congress 33 years ago that human emissions of greenhouse gases were cooking the planet, is now warning that he expects the rate of global warming to double in the next 20 years.
While still warning that it is carbon dioxide and methane that are driving global warming, Hansen said that, in this case, warming is being accelerated by the decline of other industrial pollutants that they’ve cleaned from it.
Plunging sulfate aerosol emissions from industrial sources, particularly shipping, could lead global temperatures to surge well beyond the levels prescribed by the Paris Climate Agreement as soon as 2040 “unless appropriate countermeasures are taken,” Hansen wrote, together with Makiko Sato, in a monthly temperature analysis published in August by the Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions center at Columbia University’s Earth Institute.
Lawsuit calls out Biden administration for allowing oil operators to harm Southern Beaufort Sea polar bears
Groups sued the Biden administration today for issuing a regulation that allows oil and gas companies to harass Southern Beaufort Sea polar bears despite the likelihood of causing injury and death.
‘Harassment’ is a fancy legal way of saying that an action can disturb or injure polar bears,” said Nicole Schmitt, executive director of Alaska Wildlife Alliance. “This Fish and Wildlife Service rule allows oil and gas companies to harass almost half of the polar bears left in the Southern Beaufort Sea population, double the harassment that occurred under the last regulation. Mind you, these polar bears have already declined by 40 percent in the past few decades and continue to face habitat loss.”
The Alaska Oil and Gas Association asked the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to allow oil and gas operators in Alaska to harass polar bears and walruses in the Beaufort Sea and on the North Slope during a range of oil and gas activities, including exploration, construction, extraction, and transportation.
‘They screwed up our lake’: tar sands pipeline is sucking water from Minnesota watersheds
Along the eastern boundary of the White Earth Indian Reservation in north-western Minnesota, Indigenous Anishinaabe wild rice harvesters Jerry and Jim Libby set down a row of wooden pallets into the mud just beyond the dock of Upper Wild Rice Lake. It was a clear day, and tight, lush clumps of green rice heads were visible across the lake’s horizon.
In a typical year, the entrance to this – one of a long necklace of wild rice lakes in northern Minnesota to which the region’s Indigenous people flock every year in the late summer – would be covered in at least two feet of water. But now it is composed of suspended sediment as solid as chocolate pudding, through which the Libbys need to create a makeshift ramp simply to carry their canoe out to the waterline.
Minnesota is weathering an historic drought, but there is another problem beyond the weather: Enbridge’s Line 3 tar sands pipeline has taken a substantial toll on watersheds in the region, including through a permit to pump five billion gallons of water for construction. In the case of Upper Wild Rice Lake, a road construction contractor named Knife River Construction stuck a pump directly in the lake this past June, sucking out an unknown quantity of water, which locals suspect was related to the use of heavy trucks for the pipeline.
Sen. Tina Smith on the Democratic plan to clean up the US electricity sector
A wide range of climate and clean energy measures are being considered for inclusion in the budget reconciliation bill that Democrats are now hashing out, alongside a raft of other policies ranging from a child care tax credit to universal pre‑K to an expansion of Medicare.
According to the office of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D‑New York), the climate provisions in the draft bill as of early this month would collectively reduce total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 45 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 — getting us close to America’s Paris Agreement pledge.
Schumer’s numbers have not yet been backed up by outside analysts, so they should be taken with a grain of salt. But what’s clear, and unlikely to change, is that the bulk of the emission reductions would come from the electricity sector — specifically, from the clean energy tax credits and the Clean Electricity Payment Program.
How the US labor movement is getting to grips with the climate crisis
In the beginning of this summer, the US state of Connecticut passed legislation to guarantee prevailing wage and benefits are provided to workers on clean energy projects.
The law was a product of labor unions and environmental groups working together to educate workers about the climate crisis and develop solutions, with a focus on creating good-paying, unionized jobs and opportunities to combat economic inequities.
Through organizing led in part by the Climate Jobs National Resource Center and the Workers Institute at Cornell University, this strategy has been adopted in other states around the US, such as New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Illinois and Texas. For the labor movement and environmentalists it seems a win-win: tackle the ever more urgent climate crisis while at the same time address inequality by strengthening America’s labor movement.
Alabama PFAS manufacturing plant creates the climate pollution of 125,000 cars
As evidence mounts that hamburger wrappers and other kinds of grease-proof packaging contaminate food with PFAS, states have started banning the toxic chemicals from food packaging.
Now, a new report provides yet another reason to remove PFAS, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, from food wrappers: climate and ozone pollution.
PFAS exposure is linked to immune and developmental system effects, increased risk of preeclampsia in pregnant women, increased risk of kidney and testicular cancers, and higher cholesterol, among other health effects. The Daikin America plant in Decatur, Alabama, which manufactures PFAS used to coat food packaging and textiles, released 240,584 pounds of the ozone-depleting chemical Chlorodifluoromethane (HCFC-22)—the global warming equivalent of one billion pounds of carbon dioxide—in 2019, according to a new report out Thursday from the nonprofit Toxic-Free Future.
New study shows drawbacks of deforestation across New England and New York
Anew study that measures the impact of deforestation in New England comes to a conclusion familiar to environmentalists: Forest conservation is a key strategy in addressing climate change.
Deforestation impacts carbon pollution in two ways. Trees soak up carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, from the atmosphere, and their disappearance erases that benefit. Then, the act of clearing trees releases some of that stored carbon back into the atmosphere.
Scientists widely agree that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere must remain below 350 parts per million to avoid catastrophic climate change, but in 2021, atmospheric carbon dioxide increased to 420 parts per million, the study released Tuesday says.
This grid technology could make or break Biden’s solar plans
President Biden’s blueprint for getting 40 percent of the nation’s electricity from solar power by 2035 depends on development of a device that would take the place of fossil fuel plants in setting the heartbeat of power grids, experts say.
Called a grid-forming inverter, the tool is a combination of electronics and software and could also enable solar panels on millions of homes to help restore a blacked-out power network like that left behind in Louisiana and Mississippi after Hurricane Ida. Today, solar panels cannot serve that role.
Inverters are electronic devices that convert the steady stream of direct current from wind and solar generation, and from batteries, into the tightly controlled up and down waves of alternating current that deliver the grid’s energy. Solar and wind units are currently built with inverters that have some “smart” digital capabilities to support grid reliability. But they “follow” or adapt to the existing grid AC conditions and do not have the “grid-forming” capabilities envisioned by researchers.
Illinois Now Boasts the ‘Most Equitable’ Climate Law in America. So What Will That Mean?
Illinois is now the first Midwestern state to set climate-fighting targets for phasing out coal and natural gas in favor of cleaner energy sources like wind and solar power.
The bill that Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed into law on Wednesday sets a goal for Illinois to move to 100 percent clean energy by 2050.
The new law promises thousands of new jobs in clean energy, with an emphasis on hiring people of color. It sets priorities for closing sources of pollution in so-called environmental justice communities. And it gives almost $700 million over five years to subsidize three Northern Illinois nuclear power plants owned by Exelon.
The law was pushed through by a coalition of environmental, community and religious activists who held more than 100 community meetings over the last three years with thousands of people around the state. That process was in sharp contrast to what happened five years ago, when utility companies dominated the writing of the state’s last major energy law.
Does Nature Have Rights? A Burgeoning Legal Movement Says Rivers, Forests and Wildlife Have Standing, Too
For Chuck O’Neal, a lifelong outdoorsman and environmentalist, the moment of truth came on election night 2020, as results rolled in from perhaps the most partisan campaign season in American history.
He wasn’t watching Trump or Biden. O’Neal had spent the past two years running a campaign in Orange County, Florida, based on an unorthodox legal doctrine that holds that rivers, mountains and forests should have legal rights, just like people.
His effort involved amending the county’s charter, its mini-constitution, with a so-called rights of nature provision. The provision would protect waterways like the glassy Wekiva River from harmful pollution, such as that linked to toxic algae blooms fueled by fertilizer runoff from agriculture, septic systems and poor stormwater management.
The Oil Well Next Door: California’s Silent Health Hazard
Nalleli Cobo was nine years old when her nose started bleeding, off and on throughout the day, and often into her pillow at night. Then came the headaches and heart palpitations; for a while, her doctor had her wear a heart monitor. “I got to the point where I couldn’t walk,” Cobo, who is now 20, says. “My mom had to carry me from place to place.”
Doctors were stumped as to what was wrong. “I’d always been a healthy little girl,” Cobo recalled. “And then all of a sudden I’m meeting cardiologists and neurologists and all these other -ologists, and no one could figure out what I had.” Only after being sick for four years, in 2013, did she get a possible answer. Physicians for Social Responsibility, a public-health nonprofit, sent a toxicologist to Cobo’s South Los Angeles community to talk about how certain chemical byproducts of oil extraction, among them benzene and hydrogen sulfide, can cause symptoms similar to what Cobo was experiencing.
“That’s when we made the connection,” Cobo says. As it turned out, her symptoms had coincided with a 400 percent ramp-up in production at a drilling site just 300 feet from where she lived.
Why a Big Mining Project Could Wipe Out Rural Villages in Indonesia
Deep in rain-swept forests on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, an environmental and human disaster is looming, at a zinc mine ready for digging in mountains considered the most seismically dangerous on Earth. Mining experts are warning that a dam set to hold millions of tons of waste slurry from the mine is almost bound to fail, potentially engulfing Indigenous villagers in their homes just a few hundred feet away, and pouring toxins down rivers and through forests inhabited by critically endangered Sumatran orangutans.
The proposed mine would be dug underground in the Barisan Mountains, the backbone of Sumatra. The area is surrounded by protected forests and villages of the Indigenous Pakpak people, who have long lived in scattered communities across Dairi district in northern Sumatra, and the Toba people, who moved there in the early 20th century.
The $630-million project would be operated by Dairi Prima Mineral (DPM), a joint venture between Indonesian mining giant Bumi Resources, which is owned by the politically well-connected Bakrie family of Indonesia, and the Chinese state-owned China Nonferrous Metal Mining Group.
Paris car-free day: Crowds flock a pedestrianised Champs-Élysées
Crowds of Parisians and tourists strolled along the Champs-Élysées avenue on Sunday as a car-free day removed most of the traffic from the French capital's usually busy streets.
Pedestrians wandering along the most famous thoroughfare in Paris could view the Arc de Triomphe in its temporary guise as an art installation. The monument has been covered in silvery wrapping, as conceived by the late artist Christo.
"It's our chance to walk on the 'Champs', to look at the Arc de Triomphe face-to-face and not just from the sidewalk," said Annie Matuszewski, a 68-year-old Parisian.
Why are scientists bringing woolly mammoths back from extinction?
A new biotech firm wants to bring the woolly mammoth back to life.
The bioscience company, Colossal, plans to use CRISPR gene-editing technology to insert an extinct mammoth’s DNA into the genome of an Asian elephant.
The DNA, collected from mammoth tusks, bones and other preserved body parts found in ice, will be sequenced to create an “elephant-mammoth hybrid” that looks like a furrier, larger elephant with smaller ears and a high-domed head.
"Never before has humanity been able to harness the power of this technology to rebuild ecosystems, heal our Earth and preserve its future through the repopulation of extinct animals," says co-founder of the new firm, Ben Lamm.