This is the 611th edition of the Spotlight on Green News & Views (previously known as the Green Diary Rescue). Here is the August 10 edition. Inclusion of a story in the Spotlight does not necessarily indicate my agreement with or endorsement of it.
OUTSTANDING GREEN STORIES
FishOutofWater writes—July was the hottest month ever measured at 1.2 C above preindustrial: Dangerously near 1.5 C Limit: “July was the hottest month since global temperature measurements began, averaging 1.22 Celsius (degrees) above the preindustrial background period of 1850 to 1900. Temperatures are closing in on the IPCC target of 1.5 Celsius at which a series of natural processes, such as the loss of summer sea ice and collapse of Siberian permafrost, will begin to amplify the temperature increases. Ominously, Berkeley Earth found that July 2019 was 2.20 degrees (1.22 Celsius) warmer than the 1850 to 1900 average, which is often used as the baseline for preindustrial temperatures. www.washingtonpost.com/... July’s weather has come as a bit of a shock to climate scientists because temperature peaks in the past have been the result of strong El Niño events which are exceptionally warm because heat stored in the tropical Pacific ocean is released to the atmosphere. The previous warmest month was in August 2016 at the end of a very strong El Niño event. There was a weak El Niño this winter and spring that has already faded to neutral, an event that wouldn’t be expected to cause record summer heat in the northern hemisphere. However, global sea ice extent dropped to a record low in late April and has remained at record low levels through mid-August. This has reduced the reflection of light and heat back to space by ice, adding heat to the polar oceans and seas.”
Mystic54 writes—Feeling Out of Sorts? All Inhabitants Of Earth Are Feeling The Stress Of An Impending Event: “Are you feeling a little out of sorts lately? Family and work conflicts seem to have increased? Are you more stressed and agitated than usual? You are not alone. In his papers on Morphic Field and Morphic Resonance, Harvard and Cambridge biologist Rupert Sheldrake, PhD presents a modestly accepted theory of an interconnectedness of planetary organisms. A sort of collective unconscious that is impacted by world events and thus reacts on some level. This reinforces some of the earlier work of scientist James Lovelock and his assertions that our planet itself is a living organism which he named Gaia. These assumptions, if correct, could account for some of the collective agitation being experienced around the world right now. The earth has never been a calm place for very long. Human caused turmoil, along with natural disasters, have always been with us, yet there are technological reasons that make this time in history different.”
marsanges writes—The Daily Bucket - The Rain Plain: “Hallo all! Here, in the Netherlands, summer is gradually waning. We had this weekend a little summer stormlet, with announced wind at 7 bf. This was an opportunity to go out into the National Park I’m living next door to, the National Park Zuid-Kennemerland. I wanted to go because way out in it, there grows a flower, which flowers specifically in August, and which is rare and special and which has been adopted as local symbol by people round this town. [...] The background is, I’m living in the coastal dunes of the Netherlands Coast, at the southern end of the North Sea, about as in the middle of our european metropolis as one can be. So the land is in large parts an assembly of cities and agroindustrial production space, but they protect their enclaves of remaining semi natural areas pretty well. They serve as recreational parks of course. The main parts of the most populous provinces of Holland lie at or below sea level and consist to a large part of land reclaimed from the sea, but they are protected by this dune belt, which is completely similar to dune belts in other continents, for instance in the Carolinas. Imagine, in the Carolina’s they would fill in the coastal lagoons and turn them into land: until the barrier islands simply become the outer end of the landmass. That is in principle what has happened here. So, our dune belt is about six kilometers wide, and forms the backbone of the National Park. Through it runs the national bicycle highway connecting one end of the country to the other, which is obviously where I started the walk.”
CRITTERS AND THE GREAT OUTDOORS
dadadata writes—'Fixing' what wasn't broke: Endangered Species Act: “I don’t have a thing to add to this self-serving claptrap emanating from thebowels of a Dumbf* lackey. This is the Interior Dept’s press release [...] Call your elected rep in Congress even if they are a Republican, and especially if he’s Devin Nunes. Trump Administration Improves the Implementing Regulations of the Endangered Species Act. Species recovery the ultimate goal. [...[ In its more than 45-year history, the Endangered Species Act (ESA) has catalyzed countless conservation partnerships that have helped recover some of America’s most treasured animals and plants from the bald eagle to the American alligator. Today, U.S. Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt unveiled improvements to the implementing regulations of the ESA designed to increase transparency and effectiveness and bring the administration of the Act into the 21st century. [...] The revisions codify alternative consultation mechanisms that may provide greater efficiency for how ESA consultations are conducted. They also establish a deadline for informal consultations to provide greater certainty for federal agencies and applicants of timely decisions, without compromising conservation of ESA-listed species. Revisions to the definitions of ‘destruction or adverse modification,’ ‘effects of the action’ and ‘environmental baseline’ further improve the consultation process by providing clarity and consistency.”
Assaf writes—The Daily Bucket: August High Water at Thornton Creek: “After a warm, dry May-June, the Pacific Northwest has been bracing itself for summer. The past two summers were partly ruined by immense wildfires far and near, that turned the sky into a smoky haze for weeks on end. July and August are the driest months, and in 2019 we seemed to careen towards them in the worst shape.And then, Nature gave its CO2-loaded dice a lucky roll for us. Thus far we’ve had one of the mildest, and surely the wettest, summer in our 17 years here. To boot, the rain has arrived in measured doses of one substantial event every 7-10 days:
By ingenious foresight (no, of course not my lucky laziness) I decided to lay our veggie garden fallow this summer. So now I don’t have to fret about tomatoes that have no chance of ripening in this weather.”
foresterbob writes—
The Daily Bucket - Oregon Storms 1, A Photo Diary: “August is usually a tranquil month in northeast Oregon. That’s one reason that I work here this time of year. The days are long, skies are blue, humidity is low. A stray thunderstorm might appear on occasion, but it comes and goes, and I can go about my business without much interruption. August 2019 has seen several waves of storms roll through the area. When skies threaten, I arrange my field work in a manner that allows me to return to my truck on short notice. And I keep the camera handy. Out in the country, big-sky photo opportunities abound. When the clouds and the lighting are right, I often find myself stopping to take another picture. The towns are small; but like anywhere else, buildings and power lines are constantly in the way. In the town of Enterprise, there is high ground near the airport with a clear view of the Wallowa Mountains. This photo diary, and the companion diary to follow, will have a combination of vantage points.”
PHScott writes—The Daily Bucket: Early Fall Wildflowers in the Florida Panhandle: “Greetings from the east side of the Florida Panhandle. Early fall means I’m guessing some of these wildflowers are 2-4 weeks early. I’ve not really tracked the past flowering times other than looking thru names in a decade of photo folders. Not complaining if some are early this year and not extraordinary since some species like Liatris go for a month or 2 with new plants blooming each week. [...] Another plant that migrates around the yard is Spotted Bee Balm (Monarda). It’s spread to the point where I am considering pulling some of it up. Well maybe, it doesn’t flower for long so more plants extend the time flowers are available for pollinators. Last winter failed to freeze them to the ground so there are double this year.”
officebss writes—Morning Open Thread: This Wonder of an Elephant - Poems for World Elephant Day: “The elephant is the largest land animal on earth. There has been some form of elephant on planet Earth for at least 55 million years. This could all too easily change before the end of the 21st century. In Asia, there may be fewer than 50,000 elephants remaining, more than half of them in India. Small herds of elephants, under increasing pressure, still inhabit some pockets of Southeast Asia and the Himalayas. In Africa, somewhere over 400,000 but less than 500,000 elephants still roam the continent, mostly in southern Africa. In the west and the forested center, African elephants are in the greatest peril of disappearing. Compare these numbers to a 1930 estimate that about 10 million wild elephants roamed the African continent. For thousands of years, humans have killed elephants for their ivory tusks. For most of that time, it was very difficult and dangerous to kill an elephant, but the invention of firearms has made it possible to kill a lot more elephants from a much safer distance. In the 19th century, big game hunting began wiping out whole herds of elephants across the continent of Africa. Today's elephants face not only local hunters, but modern poaching gangs, financed by Asian syndicates.”
annieli writes—Trump EPA reauthorizes M-44 cyanide bombs to kill wildlife among other things: “While not like the days of leg-hold traps, there remains the continuing bureaucratic battles over the degree of cruelty manifest across the Trump administration for humans and wildlife. The reauthorization of the use of M-44 cyanide traps for wild hogs among other animals has social and social-biological effects. ‘In 2017, a teenage boy named Canyon Mansfield was hiking with his dog in the woods behind his family’s home in Pocatello, Idaho when Mansfield’s dog triggered a cyanide trap that sprayed a plume of poison dust into the air. The dog died on the spot and Mansfield was rushed to the hospital, where he ultimately recovered’.”
OceanDiver writes—The Daily Bucket - peeps: “Salish Sea, PacificNorthwest.It’s migration season for peeps, the tiniest shorebirds, on the way from their breeding grounds in the farthest corner of the North American Arctic down to their winter homes, mostly in Central America. [...] Those black legs told me these were Western Sandpipers. Adults leave breeding grounds before juveniles do; thus 2 pulses of migration appear in summer/fall. Breeding females slightly precede breeding males (Butler et al. 1987), which also occurs within juveniles (Ydenberg et al. 2005). Southward migration, more protracted and leisurely than spring migration, begins the 3rd week of June, concludes mid-October. In British Columbia, all individuals arriving between 21 Jun and 21 Jul are adults; 90% adults between 22 and 31 Jul; mostly juveniles after 31 Jul (Butler et al. 1987). Peak numbers of adults by mid Aug and peak numbers of juveniles occur in late August to mid-September.”
OceanDiver writes—Dawn Chorus: Birdbaths in my Yard: “In the Pacific Northwest our normal climate includes a summer drought, months of little significant rainfall from June into October. That soggy rainy image you may have of this region is seasonal, with the vast majority falling in winter-spring. With climate change that interval has been expanding, starting earlier in summer, even in spring. The effect of this is that puddles, wetlands and seasonal creeks dry up come summer, and birds are stressed searching for adequate safe water for their drinking and bathing. It’s a real kindness to set up birdbaths or fountains for them to use during this season. It also draws in birds to your yard you might not see otherwise. Win win! [...] I have 2 simple birdbaths and 1 fountain birdbath. The simple birdbaths are a shallow one on the railing 6 feet outside my kitchen window and a bigger deeper one out in the backyard surrounded by my fruit trees. The shallow birdbath is a ceramic piece made by a friend. I bring it in every fall so it doesn’t crack and break when freezing weather comes. This birdbath is all one piece, with a hollow pedestal; I have a metal pipe bolted to the railing it fits over so it won’t fall over. It gets used by the smaller birds mostly, like finches, chickadees, sparrows, nuthatches, wrens, and such, but also occasionally by bigger birds. I get lots of opportunity to see the activity there.”
6412093 writes—The Daily Bucket—Pretty: Photo Diary.
Hunter writes—Trump's interior secretary announces a conservative gutting of the Endangered Species Act: “Trump's archconservative underlings have moved forward on another one of the Republican Party's most sought-after long-term goals: gutting the 1973 Endangered Species Act. Ex-fossil fuel lobbyist David Bernhardt, now secretary of the interior, and confirmed-perjurer-slash-rich-person Wilbur Ross, now heading up the Commerce Department, enthusiastically announced the new knifing. It will boost efforts by the companies that have paid David Bernhardt money to more cheaply and quickly extract resources from threatened habitats, will boost Ross' stock portfolio, and will almost certainly lead to the more-rapid extinction of threatened species. Which is Republicanism in a nutshell, so there you go. There are several opaque-sounding but drastic changes that Team Trump is making. One of the most significant is the removal of the section 4(d) rule, which allows federal officials to extend some of the same protections to threatened species—those in imminent danger of becoming endangered—as it can to endangered species themselves. The goal of that rule has been to help prevent threatened species from becomingendangered species. It is now gone, by fiat. Also gone: restrictions against considering economic impact when deciding whether a given species is in need of protection.”
Angmar writes—The Daily Bucket: *Crickets*: “Crickets (also known as "true crickets"), of the family Gryllidae, are insects related to bush crickets, and, more distantly, to grasshoppers. The Gryllidae have mainly cylindrical bodies, round heads, and long antennae. Behind the head is a smooth, robust pronotum. The abdomen ends in a pair of long cerci (spikes); females have a long, cylindrical ovipositor. The hind legs have enlarged femora (thighs), providing power for jumping. The front wings are adapted as tough, leathery elytra (wing covers), and some crickets chirp by rubbing parts of these together. The hind wings are membranous and folded when not in use for flight; many species, however, are flightless. The largest members of the family are the bull crickets, Brachytrupes, which are up to 5 cm (2 in) long.More than 900 species of crickets are described; the Gryllidae are distributed all around the world except at latitudes 55° or higher, with the greatest diversity being in the tropics. They occur in varied habitats from grassland, bushes, and forests to marshes, beaches, and caves. Crickets are mainly nocturnal, and are best known for the loud, persistent, chirping song of males trying to attract females, although some species are mute. The singing species have good hearing, via the tympana (eardrums) on the tibiae of the front legs.”
Dan Bacher writes—Salmon Advocates Slam Trump Move to Slash Endangered Species Act Protections: “Today the Trump administration announced that it was moving to slash protections for endangered species under the Endangered Species Act, one of the nation’s landmark environmental laws, signed by President Richard Nixon in 1973. The new rules make it easier to remove a species such as the Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon from the endangered species list and weaken protections for ‘threatened’ species such as Central Valley steelhead. The ESA defines a threatened species as ‘any species which is likely to become an endangered species within the foreseeable future throughout all or a significant portion of its range.’ These rules are the result of intense lobbying by agribusiness, the oil and gas industries, mining companies, developers and other corporate interests to remove protections for endangered species — and part of a larger push by the Trump administration and its allies to eliminate any regulatory constraints to corporations plundering the environment in search of higher and higher profits, according to environmental advocates. ‘Overall, the new rules would very likely clear the way for new mining, oil and gas drilling, and development in areas where protected species live,’ The New York Times reported: U.S. Significantly Weakens Endangered Species Act.”
Lenny Flank writes—Photo Diary: Great Bay National Wildlife Refuge, NH: “The Great Bay National Wildlife Refuge, just outside Portsmouth NH, began as a municipal airport in the 1930s. In 1951 it was turned into the Pease Air Force Base run by the Strategic Air Command. SAC based nuclear bombers here from 1951 to 1991 (their mission was to fly over the North Pole and bomb the USSR). In 1992, after the base was closed, it was transformed into the Wildlife Refuge.”
Pakalolo writes—Dead bodies piling up on Alaska's beaches due to an extraordinary marine heatwave: “Warming sea temperatures and sea ice loss are wreaking havoc on marine ecosystems in Alaska and Russia. The very web of life in the Arctic is threatened and the leading suspect is abrupt climate change.The Arctic is warming up to three times faster than anywhere else on Earth due to feedback loops that were not expected for decades. The devastating phenomenon is known as Arctic Amplification and haunts climatologists as more and more evidence surfaces that humanity may be well beyond any effort on our part to control. Arctic Today reports on the crisis that is washing up on the Bering Sea coastline for all to see. It is a must-read - filled with links that are worth exploring. The toll of discovered dead animals as of mid-July: 137 ice-dependent seals and five gray whales, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; dozens of walruses, piles of bird carcasses — marking what has become the latest in five consecutive years of bird die-offs in the region; carcasses of salmon that never got the chance to spawn clogging rivers and streams; and in some spots, stretches of dead blue mussels and krill have coated beaches.”
CLIMATE CHAOS
Walter Einenkel writes—July 2019 is the hottest July in the history of Julys, according to our own government: “While our current Republican leadership terrorizes the majority of humans on the planet by pretending not to believe in human-driven climate change, distressing environmental records continue being broken. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released their monthly Global Climate Report and July 2019 is the hottest on record. In the history of being able to record such things. Ever.”
Pakalolo writes—Greenland's Inuit traumatized by the climate crisis; N. Atlantic Current slows due to melting: “Today, the climate conditions that sustained the Inuit for centuries is unraveling. The Inuit settled in Greenland a couple of hundred years after the Vikings. The Norsemen settlements had disappeared and the Inuit became the only inhabitants when they migrated from what today is Canada. Today, the population is almost ninety percent Inuit. [...] The climate crisis is causing unprecedented levels of stress and anxiety to people in Greenland who are struggling to reconcile the traumatic impact of global heating with their traditional way of life. The first ever national survey examining the human impact of the climate emergency, revealed in The Guardian on Monday, shows that more than 90% of islanders interviewed fully accept that the climate crisis is happening, with a further 76% claiming to have personally experienced global heating in their daily lives, from coping with dangerous sea ice journeys to having sled dogs euthanised for economic reasons tied to shorter winters.”
e2247 writes—Aug. 12→ study directly links humans to West Antarctic Ice Sheet melting & What to do about it: “Team of British Antarctic Survey, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia Univ. and Dept. of Earth and Space Sciences in U. of Washington led by Paul R. Holland published their New study reveals the first evidence of a direct link between human-induced global warming and melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.That work is accessible Here. Stefan Rahmstorf is a man working as Head of Earth System Analysis at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and as a professor of Physics of the Oceans at Potsdam University who posted”:
ClimateDenierRoundup writes—Deniers Get Personal When Attacking 16-Year-Old Greta Thunberg's Climate Activism: “One of deniers’ favorite lines, used to justify the fact that basically everyone who isn’t paid by fossil fuels debunks everything they say, is that if you’re taking flak, you must be close to the target. It comes from World War II, when bomber pilots came under increasingly heavy fire as they approached the Germans’ most valuable assets. Judging by that criteria, deniers are feeling downright terrified of 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg. While most school-children are busy enjoying summer, this August began with a risible attack on Greta by denier from down under Andrew Bolt, which predictably got picked up by WUWT. To her credit, Ms. Thunberg seemed relatively unfazed by major Australian newspaper the Herald Sun running Bolt’s piece calling her ‘deeply disturbed,’ tweeting in response that yes, she is ‘indeed “deeply disturbed’”about the fact that these hate and conspiracy campaigns are allowed to go on and on and on just because we children communicate and act on the science.’And the day after Greta’s tweet, none other than the bastion of mainstream liberal media, Tne New York Times, ran an op-ed attacking Thunberg. The piece was authored by Christopher Caldwell, a senior editor at the conservative Weekly Standard. (Which may make you wonder about that “conspiracy campaign” targeting her.) ”
ClimateDenierRoundup writes—Eat Your Heart Out: Deniers Have No Real Response To IPCC Report On Climate, Land and Agriculture: “The release of a major IPCC report is, generally, cause for deniers to set out a veritable buffet of craziness. However, last week’s release of an IPCC report on climate, land use and agriculture was a much more limited affair for deniers. They struggled to respond to the report’s description of agriculture as a cause of climate change, victim of its wild weather impacts, and potential champion of solutions. Their biggest get was an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal from Bjorn Lomborg, in which he reheats the argument he made in the NY Post a couple weeks ago to argue that people don’t need to stop eating meat, but instead we should invest in agricultural R&D. Weirdly, the report does actually pretty much say that. So while there are PLENTY of details in Lomborg’s piece that are wacky, in this case, he’s not entirely wrong. Similarly, over at WUWT, there were three posts dealing with the report. One is from the GWPF, which is in turn a clipping of a story from AgriLand, that talks about how some UK farmers have taken issue with media that portrayed the report as calling for an end to meat eating. Which, again, it isn’t, so they have a point.”
ClimateDenierRoundup writes—True: False Balance On Climate Change Alive And Well, Especially In Online Outlets: “Yesterday, a group of researchers from UC-Merced published a paper in Nature Communications finding that the media is still falling into the false balance trap, with deniers getting nearly 50% more attention than real scientists. The study catalogued 100,000 stories from 1990 to 2016 (ending in October to avoid stories about the Trump administration skewing the counts) and found that over 26,072 included content from deniers, whereas only 17,530 articles reported on real climate scientists. The researchers got that number by looking at the whole media ecosystem, which includes blogs alongside more traditional media outlets. To narrow things down, the researchers also looked at how the top 30 mainstream publications have done, and found that while those top 30 outlets are only 11% of the total, they don’t give more ink to deniers than consensus scientists. Instead, they are about evenly split between the two groups--not great, but better than the disproportionate advantage deniers enjoy elsewhere. Turns out traditional journalistic standards, or the lack thereof, still count for something. But that’s just the start.”
ClimateDenierRoundup writes—Supposedly Censored Forbes Article Just Rehashes Shaviv’s Debunked Cosmic Ray Hypothesis: “Time and again, deniers cry ‘censorship’ whenever their stupidity is not tolerated. The latest instance is a story in Forbes about Professor Niv Shaviv and his (disproven) hypothesis that cosmic rays, not carbon pollution, are responsible for climate change.Forbes pulled the story shortly after it was published, replacing it with a disclaimer that reads ‘after review, this post has been removed for failing to meet our editorial standards.’ That’s...really saying something. Forbes has, at least in the past, been host to all kinds of denial nonsense, largely due to its uncontrolled ‘contributor’ program, where most anyone could post most anything with zero editorial oversight. (James Taylor was one such contributor, for example, before they switched to a more controlled contributor situation in 2018.) The author of the piece in question, Doron Levin, doesn’t appear to be a science reporter. Rather, his bio states he ‘covered the global auto industry for more than three decades.’ His other posts are all about cars, so this turn to denial certainly raises questions, especially given Forbes’ history of being used by monied interests for covertPR efforts.”
committed writes—2 degree C beyond the limit: “The potential consequences are daunting. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that if Earth heats up by an average of 2 degrees Celsius, virtually all the world’s coral reefs will die; retreating ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica could unleash massive sea level rise; and summertime Arctic sea ice, a shield against further warming, would begin to disappear. But global warming does not heat the world evenly. A Washington Post analysis of more than a century of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration temperature data across the Lower 48 states and 3,107 counties has found that major areas are nearing or have already crossed the 2-degree Celsius mark. — Today, more than 1 in 10 Americans — 34 million people — are living in rapidly heating regions, including New York City and Los Angeles. Seventy-one counties have already hit the 2-degree Celsius mark.”
Fred Siegmund writes—Planet of the Humans – A Review: “Planet of the Humans is a documentary film just released at the Traverse City Film Festival (TCFF). The film makes two clear points. First it argues and validates the alarming growth of CO2 emissions, which continues while the country does nothing of significance to counter it. Second, the film argues the environmental movement has accepted large sums of money from the energy industry and now panders to them in their obsession with growth and profit. The film focuses on the development of solar, wind, and bio-mass energy, and the public perception these efforts work well as alternatives to burning coal in the generation of heat and power. Viewers learn quickly these fuels generate a tiny share of power needs in the U.S. and elsewhere. We learn to doubt these alternative fuels can make a significant dent in the growth of CO2 emissions without limiting our use of fossil fuels. As one example, we meet a scientist who explains solar energy needs solar chips made from quartz and coal, requiring great sums of fossil fuel burning heat to produce, and they do not last indefinitely. We see large rectangular spaces filled with solar panels and learn they provide a year’s worth of energy for ten houses. We learn coal-burning energy must continue as a back-up to cloudy days.”
Meteor Blades writes—Open thread for night owls. McKibben: Don't burn trees to fight climate change, let them grow: “Of all the solutions to climate change, ones that involve trees make people the happiest. Earlier this year, when a Swiss study announced that planting 1.2 trillion trees might cancel out a decade’s worth of carbon emissions, people swooned (at least on Twitter). And last month, when Ethiopian officials announced that twenty-three million of their citizens had planted three hundred and fifty million trees in a single day, the swooning intensified. Someone tweeted, ‘This should be like the ice bucket challenge thing.’ So it may surprise you to learn that, at the moment, the main way in which the world employs trees to fight climate change is by cutting them down and burning them. Across much of Europe, countries and utilities are meeting their carbon-reduction targets by importing wood pellets from the southeastern United States and burning them in place of coal: giant ships keep up a steady flow of wood across the Atlantic. “Biomass makes up fifty per cent of the renewables mix in the E.U.,” Rita Frost, a campaigner for the Dogwood Alliance, a nonprofit organization based in Asheville, North Carolina, told me. And the practice could be on the rise in the United States, where new renewable-energy targets proposed by some Democrats and Republicans in Congress, as well as by the E.P.A., treat ‘biomass’—fuels derived from plants—as ‘carbon-neutral,’ much to the pleasure of the forestry industry. ‘Big logging groups are up on Capitol Hill working hard,’ Alexandra Wisner, the associate director of the Rachel Carson Council, told me, when I spoke with her recently. The story of how this happened begins with good intentions.”
Angmar writes—India Planted 220 Million Trees In A Single Day. Can trees actually help save us? “More than a million Indians planted 220 million trees on Friday in a government campaign to tackle climate change and improve the environment in the country’s most populous state. Forest official Bivhas Ranjan said students, lawmakers, officials and others planted dozens of species of saplings Friday along roads, rail tracks and in forest lands in northern Uttar Pradesh state. The target of 220 million saplings was achieved by 5 p.m. Ranjan said the trees, including 16 fruit species, will increase forest cover in the state. India has pledged to keep one-third of its land area under tree cover, but its 1.3 billion people and rapid industrialization are hampering its efforts.”
Angmar writes—"2°C: BEYOND THE LIMIT: Extreme climate change has arrived in America": “Over the past two decades, the 2 degrees Celsius number has emerged as a critical threshold for global warming. Alaska is the fastest-warming state in the country, but Rhode Island is the first state in the Lower 48 whose average temperature rise has eclipsed 2 degrees Celsius. Other parts of the Northeast — New Jersey, Connecticut, Maine and Massachusetts — trail close behind. ‘The potential consequences are daunting. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that if Earth heats up by an average of 2 degrees Celsius, virtually all the world’s coral reefs will die; retreating ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica could unleash massive sea level rise; and summertime Arctic sea ice, a shield against further warming, would begin to disappear.’ But global warming does not heat the world evenly.”
ENERGY
Green New Deal & 100% Clean Energy
ClimateDenierRoundup writes—GOP Hires GND Smear Author For Climate Crisis Panel Because They’re Definitely Acting In Good Faith: “As E&E reported last week, the Chamber of Commerce may have changed its website, but it hasn’t changed its agenda. Instead, it’s sticking with its plan of defending polluters by inserting itself into litigation over the Trump Administration’s replacement for Obama’s Clean Power Plan. On one side of that fight are groups like the American Lung Association, who are arguing that Trump’s plan lets polluters off the hook and is therefore not a suitable or justifiable way to reduce carbon pollution. On the other side stands Trump’s polluter-appointed administration, and next to them is the Chamber of Commerce. So some language on the website might’ve changed, but the Chamber’s agenda of attacking pollution reduction efforts remains the same. Meanwhile, how about that Garret Graves? Is he steering the GOP towards the shores of climate reality, as sea level rise continues to literally eat away at his home state? Again, E&E gives lie to the idea that the GOP is softening its denial, this time by pointing out that the House committee hired Philip Rossetti. Who’s that, you ask? Oh, just one of the CREEP-y authors of the “bogus” report claiming the Green New Deal would cost $93 trillion, a figure that even its authors acknowledge can’t possibly be accurate.”
Fossil Fuels
Oregon Expat writes—Spying on anti-Jordan Cove LNG activists: a small update: “A small update to the story about activists worried about the proposed LNG pipeline and plant in Coos County Oregon that I wrote about the other day (and was highlighted in a green blog roundup, thanks Meteor Blades!) Coos County is part of Rep. Peter DeFazio’s congressional district, and thankfully he took noticed of the legally questionable spying on non-violent activists. He wrote a letter to AG William Barr asking about the reasons for this surveillance. Representative Defazio makes some excellent points such as: I am extremely troubled by recent reports that the Department of Justice has been monitoring Oregon anti-pipeline activists. Monitoring my constituents who peacefully express their constitutionally protected free speech and assembly rights echoes J. Edgar Hoover era and must not be repeated. He also notes ‘...some Oregon tribes are also opposed to the project. Why is federal law enforcement tracking the actions of sovereign nations?’”
Emissions Controls & Carbon Pricing
Meteor Blades writes—Joining 22-state lawsuit, CA Attorney General Becerra calls Trump energy plan 'flimsy, fake': “At a press conference Tuesday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced that the state has joined 21 others, led by New York, in suing the Trump regime for its bogus replacement of the 2014 Clean Power Plan. The lawsuit was filed in the D.C. Circuit Court. The CPP was a rule designed by the Obama administration to cut greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants by means of federally guided state plans, with an emphasis on switching to renewable sources of energy. The replacement plan, carrying the misleading name of the Affordable Clean Energy Rule, would focus on making coal-burners more efficient but allow states to come up with their own emissions plans. The rule has drawn strong criticism from environmental advocates ever since it was proposed a year ago this month. The ACE rule was finalized in June. The CPP, which was hammered out over several years, provided states with guidelines for plans to cut emissions 30% by 2030 compared with the 2005 baseline. It was seen as the main tool for the United States in meeting its pledge of emissions reductions under the Paris climate accord. But thanks to a lawsuit filed against the Environmental Protection Agency by Scott Pruitt—then attorney general of Oklahoma, and soon to be Donald Trump’s first appointee to oversee the EPA—the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the plan in 2016 while the 27-state lawsuit Pruitt initiated worked its way through the courts. That became moot when the EPA under Trump announced it would come up with its own rule.”
Renewables, Efficiency, Energy Storage & Conservation
Mokurai writes—Renewable Friday: Our Land Can Save Us—Partly: “Land is a Critical Resource, IPCC report says. Land is already under growing human pressure and climate change is adding to these pressures. At the same time, keeping global warming to well below 2ºC can be achieved only by reducing greenhouse gas emissions from all sectors including land and food, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in its latest report on Thursday [Aug. 8, 2019]. Unlike the case with renewable energy and batteries and EVs, nobody is in a position to make any sort of detailed market analysis of where agricultural technology will go in the critical 30 years in front of us, in which we have to get to Net Zero Carbon, and make at least a good start on going Carbon Negative. However the details work out in all of the different countries and cultures and ecologies and markets involved, it will be worth the effort to push ahead, because any amount that we can accomplish will be worth it, for restoring nature, for food and other crops, and for as much carbon as we can stash away.”
TRANSPORTATION & INFRASTRUCTURE
thenekkidtruth writes—The Electric Motor, Reimagined: “Much has been made of the algorithmic advances in storage battery technology in recent years, but there’s another way to create quantum efficiency improvements — rethink the device which consumes the battery’s energy. A brilliant Texas father and son team formulated the Hunstable Energy Turbine (HET) and did just that (2min 33sec) [...] Every aspect of the common electric motor as we know it today went under scrutiny.:
OCEANS, WATER, DROUGHT
Dan Bacher writes—DWR to hold informational meeting on Delta Tunnel for California Tribal Community on September 11: “The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) will be hosting an ‘informational meeting’ for the “California Tribal Community” to discuss an update on Gavin Newsom’s Delta Tunnel (Delta Conveyance) plan onSeptember 11, 2019, from 9:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. at Thunder Valley Casino Conference Facility in the Pano Hall, 1200 Athens Avenue, Lincoln, CA 95628. ‘This meeting will provide interested Tribal leaders and staff with an update on recent changes in approach for Delta Conveyance and associated environmental planning efforts. Any proposal for approving Delta Conveyance will follow the Federal and State laws including CEQA and AB52 requirements,’ according to an announcement from Anecita Agustinez, Tribal Policy Advisor, Executive Division, Department of Water Resources. [...] Tribal leaders, environmental justice advocates, conservationists, fishermen, business owners, family farmers and many others consider the Delta Tunnel — formerly the Delta Tunnels — to be the most environmentally destructive public works project in California history.”
CANDIDATES, STATE AND DC ECO-RELATED POLITICS
Hunter writes—2020 Democrats are pushing for climate action; Republicans will counter with Trump-branded straws: “The fossil fuel industry has noticed that each of the major Democratic presidential candidates have identified combating climate change as a top priority, and are none too happy about it. Republicans are happy about it, according to Politico, at least if quoted Republican strategist Ford O'Connell can be believed. ‘The deeper and the longer the Democrats talk about this, the happier the Trump campaign is,’ he claimed. That’s because he thinks Trump can attack Democrats for their proposals. Nothing more. We already have the outlines of how the 2020 campaign between Democrats and Republicans will shape up, and they are not likely to change. Democrats will push for attempts to save the U.S. climate, as numerous regions of the country already soar past the 2 degree Celsius warming mark, already changing weather patterns and threatening landscapes in the Northeastern states. This is happening as affected states scramble to block rollbacks of current fossil fuel restrictions from Trump's band of arsonists. And while Democrats are presenting their plans, pushing for new government programs to turn America's slumping manufacturing sector into the world's top provider of new green technologies and threatening legal consequences for fossil fuel companies that have long attempted to block the public from learning the long-known environmental costs of their products, Republicans will sell Donald Trump-branded plastic drinking straws.”
Walter Einenkel writes—CDC whistleblower plans on suing Trump administration over insane climate change demotions: “George Luber is the former head of the climate and health program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Working at the CDC for the last 16 years, he is an expert on how climate affects populations’ health. The importance of his research for the CDC is immeasurable. In fact, the Trump administration, when downsizing our scientific research infrastructure, merged Luber’s climate change department with an asthma department and asked him to head the new frankensteins’s department—a department that conspicuously removed any mention of the word “climate” from the title. However, Luber criticized the current administration’s moves, saying the merger would water down millions earmarked by Congress for climate change research. According to Luber, this got him unofficially demoted to working at home. After Luber’s criticisms appeared, the CDC began filing grievances against Luber, saying that he had written a book in 2013 without proper ‘authorization,’ and had ‘renew ethics clearance paperwork five years earlier.’ Considering how many ethics clearance issues are sitting and have sat in our current administration, the latter charge is something more than surreal.”
BYPRODUCTS, TRASH, TOXIC & RADIOACTIVE WASTE
Denise Oliver Velez writes—What do Newark, NJ and Flint, MI have in common? Lead contaminated water. #NewarkWaterCrisis: “While Donald Trump rails about funding and building a wall — and has lied to Americans about fixing our broken infrastructure, yet another U.S. city is attempting to cope with a water contamination crisis. This time it is Newark, New Jersey, the largest city in the state, which is also majority Black and Latinx. Lead Crisis in Newark Grows, as Bottled Water Distribution Is Bungled. A growing crisis over lead contamination in drinking water gripped Newark on Wednesday as tens of thousands of residents were told to drink only bottled water, the culmination of years of neglect that has pushed New Jersey’s largest city to the forefront of an environmental problem afflicting urban areas across the nation. Urgent new warnings from federal environmental officials about contamination in drinking water from aging lead pipes spread anxiety and fear across much of Newark, but the municipal government’s makeshift efforts to set up distribution centers to hand out bottled water were hampered by confusion and frustration.”
Magnifico writes—Overnight News Digest: It's Raining Microplastics: “It's raining plastic: microscopic fibers fall from the sky in Rocky Mountains. Plastic was the furthest thing from Gregory Wetherbee’s mind when he began analyzing rainwater samples collected from the Rocky Mountains. ‘I guess I expected to see mostly soil and mineral particles,’ said the US Geological Survey researcher. Instead, he found multicolored microscopic plastic fibers. The discovery, published in a recent study (pdf) titled ‘It is raining plastic,’ raises new questions about the amount of plastic waste permeating the air, water, and soil virtually everywhere on Earth. ‘I think the most important result that we can share with the American public is that there’s more plastic out there than meets the eye,’ said Wetherbee. ‘It’s in the rain, it’s in the snow. It’s a part of our environment now’.”
AGRICULTURE, FOOD & GARDENING
Eric Nelson writes—Trump CoS Mick Mulvaney spills it; USDA's onerous relocation gambit was to force scientists to quit: “Despite the [Trump regime] Agriculture Department’s assertions that it has both the legal and budgetary authority to implement its plan to move the Economic Research Service and National Institute of Food and Agriculture from Washington, D.C., to the Kansas City region, lawmakers and an agency cited by the department disputed officials’ rationale. The Office of inspector General has already determined that this Trump regime move is unlawful: ...violates a 2018 appropriations law preventing the department from implementing any reorganization efforts without prior approval from congressional appropriations committees. [T]he Trump cabal claim boils down to; not much but; because we say so: • that such provisions are unconstitutional, pointing to the 1983 Supreme Court decision Immigration and Nationalization Service v. Chadha, which found that provisions of laws that grant congressional committees “legislative vetoes” of an executive branch decision are at best nonbinding. • The budgetary provisions cited by the OIG report requiring committee approval have been ruled unconstitutional’.”
ColoTim writes—Saturday Morning Garden Blogging, August 17, 2019 (V15.33): “This is our first year in Estes Park. We have had large quantities of snow, and we have also had numerous days of rain. It hasn’t been the constant day-long rains some of you experience, but once the snow quit around June 5th, we have had a number of storms that produced thunder and lightning along with hail and good amounts of rain. The flowers have really been loving it and I wanted to bring to you a few flowers from my yard as well as many, many flowers I’ve been seeing as I wander around the neighborhood. In the future I’ll bring you a diary or two of the meadows of wildflowers to be found up in Rocky Mountain National Park. Today, though, I just wanted to show you the gardens for our house and our neighborhood. First though, my inner courtyard. I didn’t do anything to plant in the courtyard this first summer. I wanted to see what would come up from pre-existing plantings. I had tried to grow columbine in Denver, but they just wouldn’t flourish. They are the state flower of Colorado, and I was happy to find them growing in this garden.”
MISCELLANY
Eihenetu writes—My Journey to One of the Most Polluted Places on Earth: Aba, Nigeria: “Nigeria, 1993 [...] If you want to measure the inequality within a city, just study the roads. The roads in Aba were a patchwork of paved and unpaved throughways. Hotels, municipal buildings, schools, marketplaces and office structures were situated in areas where the Aba’s roads had been finished. In order to get to the place where my mom was raised, we had to drive through shanty towns. These roadways were littered with grooves, some of which were long and wide enough to engulf the truck that nearly edged us off the road the day before. The size and frequency of the grooves and the constricted width of the thoroughfares made many of the potholes impossible for us to avoid. Our driver was forced to creep through these depressions in the ground. We were tossed around the inside of the cab as the driver navigated them. Aba was also designated as an environmental disaster area. Refuse dumps were littered throughout the town. As our car ambled forward, we frequently drove past high mountains of waste, some of which were shaped like the snow-capped peaks of my home state, mini mountains that were taller and wider than two story houses. The garbage heaps were composed of industrial and domestic waste. For some unexplainable reason, the residents of Aba were not able to bag their waste appropriately. So they tossed the trash out onto the streets of the city, and the waste piles rose skyward.”
Austin Bailey writes—5 Things: Recycled PBDEs, Bears and Cars, Aquacalypse, VATs, Trumping the Clean Water Act: “In Germany purchasers of meat and other animal products pay a 7% value added tax (VAT). The government is considering increasing that tax to %19. The goal is a reduction is the consumption of these products both on environmental and animal rights grounds. Not unexpectedly this proposal is pretty controversial. Most Germans do not like being confronted with graphic, sometimes shocking, images showing the treatment of the animals they eat. However, in the supermarket, if they believe no one is watching, most still tend to choose cheaper meat over the more animal and environmentally friendly organic products that tend to cost more than four times that of the conventional meats. Would that change if meat became more expensive? Politicians, as well as environmentalists and animal rights activists, have floated the idea of increasing the value-added tax (VAT) rate for meat and animal products from 7% to 19%. And while there is some agreement on the possibility of changing the tax rate, groups on the left and right disagree on how to spend the potential tax income. While some want to earmark the money to improve animal welfare, others want farmers and workers to see an increase in benefits.”
Austin Bailey writes—5 Things: Snorkeling Pals, ExxonMobil Fraud, Hydrogen Airships, Science vs Politics, Captive Lions: “An oil company trying to intimidate witnesses. What a shock. Last October, New York State, initiated a lawsuit against ExxonMobil. The lawsuit contended: Exxon engaged in ‘a longstanding fraudulent scheme’ to deceive investors by providing false and misleading assurances that it was effectively managing the economic risks posed by increasingly stringent policies and regulations it anticipated being adopted to address climate change, the lawsuit states. ExxonMobil has responded with all the integrity that you would expect from a fossil fuel company. As the trial is set to begin,the company is working diligently to pressure potential witnesses to be quiet.”
Austin Bailey writes—5 Things: Plastic President, EPA - Not Our Fault, Plastic Rain, Plastic Lakes, Plastic People: “Even if we could put the brakes on single use plastics, we are going to live with the residual microplastic contamination for decades. And, what are the chances that the world stops consuming all the items wrapped up in plastics? This is what’s going in right now, but this article also has some suggestions on what individuals can do to reduce their ingestion of microplastics. One research review published in June calculated that just by eating, drinking, and breathing, the average American ingests at least 74,000 microplastic particles every year. (Microplastic particles are defined as 5 millimeters at their largest; most of the ones we ingest are far smaller.) And that analysis looked at only 15 percent of the foods in an average diet, meaning the amount of plastic we consume through food could actually be far greater.Another recent study commissioned by the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF, formerly known as the World Wildlife Fund) and conducted by researchers at the University of Newcastle in Australia estimated that the average person consumes about 5 grams of plastic a week—roughly the equivalent of a credit card. (That work is still under review.”
Austin Bailey writes—5 Things: Stupid is..., As stupid does, Mad Max Time, Sic transit gloria mundi, $ till the end: “Researchers at Penn State University recently completed a behavioral study that concluded that men are reluctant to engage is environmentally friendly behaviors such as recycling or taking a reusable shopping bag to the store. Wow…Just wow. Who are these men whose sexual identity is so precarious that they are afraid to recycle or be seen with a reusable shopping bag? Researchers found that certain attempts to be more environmentally conscious are often perceived as either masculine or feminine. Using a reusable shopping bag was labelled a ‘feminine’ act by participants in the study, with both men and women found more likely to question a man’s sexuality if he shopped with a bag for life. Subjects were also more likely to question a woman’s sexual orientation if she displayed supposedly ‘masculine’ green tendencies, such as caulking windows.”
Austin Bailey writes—5 Things: Moscow Mitch, Blackjewel, Al Replaces Plastic, Al Good for Single Use, Pod People Bikes: “When the Blackjewel coal mining company declared bankruptcy in June, the company literally walked away from its obligations in Appalachia and Wyoming.Miners in Wyoming found their final pay checks bouncing and the company’s 401k plan went belly-up. Guess who came out of the Blackjewel collapse money ahead? Riverstone Holdings LLC, an energy investment firm with $39 billion in capital and offices in financial centers around the globe, may be the bankruptcy winner. Blackjewel owed the firm $34 million when it entered bankruptcy, from a loan made to the mining company in July 2017. Filings in bankruptcy court document how Riverstone maneuvered to protect its interests, propping Blackjewel up with a $5 million loan to prevent the company’s liquidation, then making deals in the bankruptcy auction to recoup its investments. If those deals hold, Riverstone could ultimately walk away from Blackjewel with $40 million, according to court filings. While Riverstone came out ahead, most everyone in Wyoming associated with Blackjewel is taking a bath.”
billofrights writes—Economy and Ecology: One and Inseparable. (Part II of Compass in the Storm): “Now the dominant themes of the vast FDR-New Deal scholarship have been focused on politics, programs and economic philosophy, if that is not too decisive a word to describe a President torn between a Keynesianism yet to be fully born, and the oppressive 19th century legacy of free trade and balanced budgets. But our times demand something fuller, and an under reported side of FDR is now getting its due. Nature’s New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Roots of the American Environmental Movement, published in 2007 and written by Neil M. Maher, who teaches in several NJ colleges, puts the work of the famous, and popular, Corps in a new light. It did much good to prevent soil erosion, revive denuded forest landscapes, build roads, water resources and construct new state and federal parks, but its ‘wise use”’philosophy, melding conservation and economic utility, including recreation, ran afoul of the militant rising wing of the national conservation movement, represented by Aldo Leopold and Bob Marshall, among others. They gave the preservation of Nature, and Wilderness areas a higher priority than the more commercial aspects of New Deal conservation efforts, especially the tourism expectations of the expanding national parks and monuments systems. The tensions between those two poles, preservation and economic utility, always present in FDR himself, are given fuller treatment in a remarkably comprehensive look at FDR’s conservation thinking , brought to us by a major historian, Douglas Brinkley, in his 2016 work “Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America’.”