On Saturday, July 10, the New York Times had a number of articles on the impact of climate change on our lives today; collectively they are frightening although none of the articles made the front page. I am writing a book on Teaching Climate History (Routledge) and each time I see an article like one of these I feel compelled to update the book as new information emerges. Sunday’s paper had even worse news, this time on the front page. The structural stability of Chicago, the second largest city in the United States, is threatened by new erratic water levels, record highs and lows, on Lake Michigan caused by climate change related changes in rainfall patterns in the region. Beaches have disappeared and the foundations of buildings could flood causing catastrophic events like the deadly collapse at Surfside, Florida near Miami. Combined, the articles show that climate change is a national problem, not one confined to any region. The target audience for my book is teachers, but hopefully it can also be used in high school and college electives and generate support for climate activism.
These are the headlines and brief excerpts from the Saturday and Sunday articles. In this post I only include articles on the impact of climate change on the United States.
Heat Warnings and Worries About Workers as the West Swelters Again,
by Sergio Olmos and Shawn Hubler, July 10, 2021, A10
“Western states braced for another extreme spike in temperatures this weekend after a recent heat wave in Oregon and Washington State killed nearly 200 people and endangered laborers in fields and warehouses. Excessive heat warnings were in effect across inland California and the Southwest through the weekend, and the National Weather Service predicted that temperatures would approach an all-time high by Saturday in Las Vegas. A high of at least 130 degrees — which would be one of the highest temperatures reliably recorded on earth — was forecast for Death Valley. In California, the agency that runs the state electrical grid asked residents on Thursday to set their thermostats at 78 degrees or higher to reduce power usage, and Gov. Gavin Newsom expanded a regional drought emergency to cover all but eight of the state’s 58 counties. He also asked Californians to cut their water consumption by 15 percent. Three weeks into a brutal summer across much of the nation, the heat has claimed lives in the Pacific Northwest in record numbers, threatened water supplies and set the stage in the West for what is expected to be another catastrophic fire season.”
It’s Not Just the Days. Nights Are Sultrier, and Deadlier
by Aatish Bhatia and Winston Choi-Schagrin, July 10, 2021, A9
“Last month was the hottest June on record in North America, with more than 1,200 daily temperature records broken in the final week alone. But overlooked in much of the coverage were an even greater number of daily records set by a different — and potentially more dangerous — measure of extreme heat: overnight temperatures. On average, nights are warming faster than days across most of the United States, according to the 2018 National Climate Assessment Report. It’s part of a global trend that’s being fueled by climate change.
Unusually hot summer nights can lead to a significant number of deaths, according to climate scientists and environmental epidemiologists, because they take away people’s ability to cool down from the day’s heat . . . Human bodies need time to cool off. Typically, that would happen in sleep, when body temperature naturally dips.”
Water Gives Little Shelter as Tide Pools Turn to Stew
by Catrin Einhorn, July 10, 2021, A10
“Dead mussels and clams coated rocks in the Pacific Northwest, their shells gaping open as if they’d been boiled. Sea stars were baked to death. Sockeye salmon swam sluggishly in an overheated Washington river, prompting wildlife officials to truck them to cooler areas. The combination of extraordinary heat and drought that hit the Western United States and Canada over the past two weeks has killed hundreds of millions of marine animals and continues to threaten untold species in freshwater, according to a preliminary estimate and interviews with scientists. ‘It just feels like one of those postapocalyptic movies,’ said Christopher Harley, a marine biologist at the University of British Columbia who studies the effects of climate change on coastal marine ecosystems . . . As an emergency measure, workers with the Idaho Fish and Game agency have begun capturing a variety of endangered sockeye salmon at the Lower Granite dam, putting them into a truck and driving them to hatcheries as a stopgap measure to decide what to do next . . . In California’s central valley, Jonathan Ambrose, a biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said he wished he could do something similar. The chinook salmon he monitors historically spawned in the mountains. But since the Shasta Dam was built more than three quarters of a century ago, they have adapted by breeding just in front of the mammoth structure, which they cannot cross. The critical problem this year is that the water there is expected to grow too warm for the eggs and juveniles . . . ‘We’re looking at maybe 90 percent mortality, maybe even higher this year,’ Mr. Ambrose said.”
Flood in New York’s Subway Points to Problems of Future
by Winnie Hu and Anne Barnard, July 9, 2021, A14
“When fast-moving storms flooded parts of New York City’s vast subway system on Thursday, they stranded some rush-hour commuters and underscored just how vulnerable the city’s underground transportation lifeline is to water. Even before the latest deluge, the century-old subway had a longstanding water problem that required work crews to be routinely dispatched to plug leaks. Bored through layers of rock, the subway system snakes through stopped-up natural springs and is surrounded by the groundwater that runs beneath the city. In fact, about 14 million gallons of water are pumped out of the system on a dry day. But now, the subway’s water woes are likely to get worse as more extreme rains become increasingly common with the changing climate . . . The extreme rains did not just disrupt the subway; they also clogged highways, flooded residential streets and poured into basements. New York’s aging infrastructure, including its subway system, was never built to withstand so much water in such a short period of time. As a growing number of scientific studies has shown, New York and the surrounding region is already experiencing heavier downpours and hotter temperatures as a result of planetary warming. That will present growing challenges, not just in the form of megastorms like Sandy but also with more-frequent sudden torrential downpours, which overwhelm drainage systems that — even if they were not outdated and in need of maintenance and upgrades — were built for a climate of the past.”
A Battle Between a Great City and a Great Lake
by Dan Egan, July 11, 2021, A1
“Chicago is built on a shaky prospect — the idea that the swamp that was drained will stay tamed and that Lake Michigan’s shoreline will remain in essentially the same place it’s been for the past 300 years. The lake may have other plans. Climate change has started pushing Lake Michigan’s water levels toward uncharted territory as patterns of rain, snowfall and evaporation are transformed by the warming world. The lake’s high-water cycles are threatening to get higher; the lows lower. Already, the swings between the two show signs of happening faster than any time in recorded history. A series of ferocious storms in recent years has made it clear that the threat this poses to a metro area of 9.5 million people is not abstract. “There are buildings just teetering on the edge of the lake. A few years ago, they had a beach. Now the water is lapping at their foundations,” Josh Ellis, a former vice president of Chicago’s 87-year-old, nonprofit Metropolitan Planning Council, said this year. “This is an existential problem for those neighborhoods and, ultimately, for the city.”
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