A post-fire ‘nightmare’ in New Mexico: Eight floods in four weeks

 

...Ruidoso, a scenic town of nearly 8,000 in southern New Mexico, is now at the mercy of an enduring, double-barreled disaster. Two massive fires broke out last month along the mountains encircling the town, torching more than 25,000 acres, burning nearly a thousand homes and killing two people. Then, eight times and counting since June 21, including Saturday, floodwaters have cascaded down those same mountainsides into the village.

...It’s a worst-case scenario that may become more frequent as weather extremes intensify in the American West. Studies suggest climate change is increasing the risk that severe rainfall comes in the wake of wildfires. Increasingly hot and dry conditions breed fiercer blazes. Warming air can also hold more moisture, leading to more intense storms. The burn scars from fires can elevate the flooding risk for more than five years, as vegetation regrows.

The fires in June sheared hillsides of their evergreen trees and shrubs and even altered the composition of the soil, dramatically reducing its ability to absorb rainfall. Andrew Mangham, a National Weather Service hydrologist, said it was as if giant plastic sheets had been draped on the mountains, then covered with ash and tree trunks that would tumble down at the slightest invitation. The blazes came just in time for the state’s monsoon season — and suddenly even normal rainstorms could produce supercharged flash floods...more

Prosecutor outlines homicide case against Big Oil

 

As climate-fueled disasters kill thousands of Americans each year, state and local prosecutors have a strong case to charge major oil companies with homicide, a new report argues. 

Last summer, an unusually long and brutal heat wave killed hundreds of people in Maricopa County, Ariz. — “far more than all the murders the county experienced that year,” former federal prosecutor Cindy Cho wrote on Wednesday.  

These deaths ranged from homeless to wealthy; elderly people at home to a 31-year old engineer who died on a hike. And while tragic, Cho argued that these deaths were not accidental, but the result of reckless action by a clear perpetrator: The fossil fuel industry.  

The memo, which Cho prepared for civil society group Public Citizen, comes on the heels of a push by Congressional Democrats for federal prosecution of oil companies for alleged price fixing and what Democrats view as their role in covering up the climate crisis — something that one former federal prosecutor told Congress was analogous to criminal racketeering by the tobacco industry.  

But whatever decision federal prosecutors make, Cho argued, local prosecutors like those in Maricopa County — home of Phoenix — have their own clear pathway for prosecution. ...more

For farmers, watching and waiting is a spring planting ritual. Climate change is adding to anxiety

Waiting on the weather is an old story in agriculture, but as climate change drives an increase in spring rains across the Midwest, the usual anxiety around the ritual of spring planting is expected to rise along with it. In Ohio, for example, farmers have lost about five days of field work in the month of April since 1995, according to Aaron Wilson, the state’s climatologist.

When farmers have to wait for fields to dry out, already long planting days can become endurance tests that stretch into the night. Delays in planting can affect yield if they are significant enough, and the quality of crops planted in wet springs may suffer at harvest, too...more

EPA Phase Out of Gas-Powered Cars Has Ominous Historic Echoes

 

The Biden administration last week rolled out new emissions regulations that the New York Times said will “transform the American automobile market.”

In what the paper called “one of the most significant climate regulations in the nation’s history,” the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is mandating that a majority of new passenger vehicles sold in America be hybrids or EVs by 2032.

The Biden administration and defenders of the policy argue that the EPA’s regulation is “not a ban” on gas-powered cars, since carmakers are not prohibited from producing gas-powered vehicles. Instead, automakers are required to meet a government-mandated “average emissions limit” across their entire vehicle line, to force them to produce more EVs and fewer gas-powered cars.

It’s a clever ruse in that it allows the Biden administration to use regulatory power to force automobile manufactures off of gas-powered vehicles while denying that they are banning them...more

Methane: the tricky hunt for hidden emissions - why does agriculture's contribution remain so elusive?

 

A new satellite will measure global methane emissions, but why does agriculture's contribution remain so elusive?

The team behind the world's most advanced methane-monitoring satellite, MethaneSat, are keen on metaphors about cleaning. "About the size of a washing machine," was how environmental scientist Steven Wofsy, described the orbiting object at a press conference ahead of its launch. "Like a push-broom," was his phrase for its capacity to scan the surface of the Earth.

The metaphors are apt. Methane is a particularly dirty greenhouse gas, driving about 30% of the heating the planet has experienced so far. It breaks down in the atmosphere in just 12 years, which is much sooner than the centuries taken by CO2 – but it is also around 80 times more powerful over a 20-year time span...

With 60% of global methane emissions coming from human activities, reductions are essential to reaching the world's climate change targets. Equally, if not addressed in a timely way, it could contribute to the passing of dangerous tipping points that lead to rapid and irreversible change around the globe. 

MethaneSat aims to help by providing an independent source of methane monitoring, with a primary focus on methane leaked from oil and gas fields – such as the recent, months-long mega leak in Kazakhstan, which resulted in the release of 127,000 tonnes of the potent gas. By supplementing existing satellite data with even more precise measurements, MethaneSat hopes to provide a near-comprehensive view of global leaks...more

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And of course, the primary focus is on ag

Yet the oil and gas industry is also far from the only source of human-caused methane emissions. Agriculture is in fact the largest human source of methane emissions, according to the International Energy Agency, at almost 40%. Energy is in second at around 37%, and waste in third.

Within agriculture, flooded rice fields account for 8% of total human-linked emissions, but belches and manure from livestock are the biggest contributors, with cattle the biggest single offenders. In California, the non-profit coalition Climate Trace found that one single cattle feedlot produced more methane than the state's biggest oil and gas fields.

According to Sara Mikaloff-Fletcher, a biogeochemical scientist at National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand, who is leading MethaneSat's agricultural research, that capacity will only increase in relation to agriculture too. The new satellite's ability to map methane at a precision of 2 ppb (parts per billion) means it will be the first satellite well suited to measuring agricultural emissions, she says. "That number might not mean a lot to your readers, but to me it is the same precision I could get from an instrument on the ground – which is extraordinary."

...Conversely, agriculture's methane output is more elusive. Aerial remote sensing measurements, such as those taken from aircraft or drones, can capture methane leaks, says Aaron Davitt, principal analyst on remote sensing for the non-profit WattTime, but these technologies can only be deployed in limited regions for limited amounts of time.

John Kerry mocked as ‘climate clown’ for suggesting world would ‘feel better’ about Ukraine war if Russia cut emissions

 

President Biden’s outgoing climate czar, John Kerry, one of the most powerful and esteemed figures in Washington, made jaws drop this week when he suggested that the world might “feel better” about the ongoing bloodshed caused by Russia in Ukraine if Moscow cut its emissions.

“Russia is one of the largest emitters in the world. If Russia wanted to show good faith, they could go out and announce what their reductions are going to be and make a greater effort to reduce emissions,” Kerry, 80, said during a foreign press briefing in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, his penultimate day on the job before leaving to assist Biden’s re-election campaign and teach at Yale University’s Jackson School of Global Affairs.

“Maybe that would open up the door for people to feel better about what Russia is choosing to do at this point in time.”...more

Amid explosive demand, America is running out of power

 Vast swaths of the United States are at risk of running short of power as electricity-hungry data centers and clean-technology factories proliferate around the country, leaving utilities and regulators grasping for credible plans to expand the nation’s creaking power grid.

In Georgia, demand for industrial power is surging to record highs, with the projection of new electricity use for the next decade now 17 times what it was only recently. Arizona Public Service, the largest utility in that state, is also struggling to keep up, projecting it will be out of transmission capacity before the end of the decade absent major upgrades.

...The soaring demand is touching off a scramble to try to squeeze more juice out of an aging power grid while pushing commercial customers to go to extraordinary lengths to lock down energy sources, such as building their own power plants.

...The situation is sparking battles across the nation over who will pay for new power supplies, with regulators worrying that residential ratepayers could be stuck with the bill for costly upgrades. It also threatens to stifle the transition to cleaner energy, as utility executives lobby to delay the retirement of fossil fuel plants and bring more online. The power crunch imperils their ability to supply the energy that will be needed to charge the millions of electric cars and household appliances required to meet state and federal climate goals.

...It is all happening at the same time the energy transition is steering large numbers of Americans to rely on the power grid to fuel vehicles, heat pumps, induction stoves and all manner of other household appliances that previously ran on fossil fuels. A huge amount of clean energy is also needed to create the green hydrogen championed by the White House, as developers rush to build plants that can produce the powerful zero-emissions fuel, lured by generous federal subsidies.

Planners are increasingly concerned that the grid won’t be green enough or powerful enough to meet these demands.

Already, soaring power consumption is delaying coal plant closures in Kansas, Nebraska, Wisconsin and South Carolina...more

More Wall Street Firms Are Flip-Flopping on Climate. Here’s Why.

 

Financial giants were already trimming their climate pledges amid Republican attacks. Then came concerns about legal risks.

Many of the world’s biggest financial firms spent the past several years burnishing their environmental images by pledging to use their financial muscle to fight climate change.

Now, Wall Street has flip-flopped.

In recent days, giants of the financial world including JPMorgan, State Street and Pimco all pulled out of a group called Climate Action 100+, an international coalition of money managers that was pushing big companies to address climate issues.

Wall Street’s retreat from earlier environmental pledges has been on a slow, steady glide path for months, particularly as Republicans began withering political attacks, saying the investment firms were engaging in “woke capitalism.”

But in the past few weeks, things accelerated significantly. BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, scaled back its involvement in the group. Bank of America reneged on a commitment to stop financing new coal mines, coal-burning power plants and Arctic drilling projects. And Republican politicians, sensing momentum, called on other firms to follow suit.

...In addition to the risk that some clients might disapprove, and potentially sue, there were other concerns. Among them: that acting in concert to shape the behaviors of other companies could fall afoul of antitrust regulations.

...At the same time, a backlash grew, with Republicans claiming that banks and asset mangers were supporting progressive politics with their climate commitments.

Some states, including Texas and West Virginia, banned banks from doing business with the state if the firms were distancing themselves from fossil fuel companies. And late in 2022, Mr. Jordan began an antitrust investigation into the group, calling it a “climate-obsessed corporate ‘cartel."'...more

Biden Admin Targets Fridges, Freezers In Latest Slew of Appliance Crackdown

The Biden Administration is cracking down on more household appliances in its latest effort to push its radical climate change agenda. 

On Friday, the Department of Energy (DOE) finalized a slew of new energy efficiency standards for residential refrigerators and freezers and proposed standards for commercial fans and blowers. 

The agency claimed that limiting these everyday appliances would eliminate roughly 420 million metric tons of "dangerous carbon dioxide emissions" over the next three decades, saving households and businesses $5 billion a year on utility bills.

Ben Lieberman, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told Fox News Digital that the new efficiency standards could harm product performance, saying that the new dishwasher have led to cycles taking as much as twice as long to finish.

He also criticized the Biden Administration for not allowing Americans to make these choices independently. 

"Consumers are perfectly capable of making these decisions on their own, including consumers who want to buy extra efficient refrigerators or other models," he said...more

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The Immorality of COP28+

 

For the last two weeks, delegates from the world’s governments have met in the United Arab Emirates for COP28, the United Nation’s annual climate change conference. Over one hundred thousand attendees, ranging from heads of state to climate bureaucrats, corporate leaders, nongovernmental organization representatives, and activists, descended on the lavish Dubai venue to hash out new policies for governments to force on their citizens in the name of fighting climate change.

These annual meetings are designed to culminate in a final resolution where all 198 governments agree to pursue certain goals. In the draft of this year’s agreement, released Monday, the world’s governments agreed to work toward “tripling the global capacity for renewables by 2030, doubling the rate of energy savings through efficiency measures, rapidly phasing down unabated coal and limiting licenses for new power plants.”

Notably absent was a pledge to completely “phase out” fossil fuels, instead calling on the world’s governments to reduce “both consumption and production of fossil fuels . . . so as to achieve net zero [carbon emissions] by, before, or around 2050.”

This greatly upset a number of attendees as comments earlier this week from the summit president, Sultan Al Jaber, had led many to expect a call to phase fossil fuels out entirely. In response, delegates from the European Union and various countries in Oceania threatened to walk away.

...It is also ridiculous for politicians and United Nations officials to frame these policies as being necessary for our safety. Because by working to take away humanity’s only means to produce and power modern infrastructure, these governments threaten to make their citizens more vulnerable to extreme weather—even if its frequency were to decrease marginally.

Contradictions like this can be traced back to environmentalism, the ideology at the root of all these efforts. Environmentalism rests on a valuation of untouched, nonhuman nature as the highest good. It frames humanity as a destructive outside force, corrupting nature with concrete, plastic, and carbon dioxide.

While the radical environmentalists, who consistently believe Earth needs to be protected from humans, make up only one part of the broader coalition pushing for green policies, these ideologues define the moral framework for the entire movement.

COP28 hides the unseemly nature of what this movement is pushing for behind extravagant venues, big-name speakers, and the optics of international cooperation. But at its core, the conference combines evironmentalism—an antihuman ideology that is, in the words of Lew Rockwell, “every bit as pitiless and messianic as Marxism”—with the coercive power of the world’s governments. See that for the threat that it is...more

Jets Headed To Global Warming Conference “Literally Frozen On Runway” In Munich Germany

While world leaders spoke at a ‘global warming’ conference in Dubai, located in the heart of the Arabian Desert, discussing the usual: banning gas stoves, cow farts, and petrol-powered vehicles, a powerful snowstorm grounded all flights at Munich Airport in Germany. 

“Private jets in Munich on the way to Dubai global warming conference are literally frozen on the runway, which has turned into a glacier,” said Ryan Maue, a meteorologist and former NOAA chief scientist. ..more

 

Farmers and ranchers in the Southwestern U.S. face challenges due to human-induced atmospheric warming

 

The American Southwest has always been a dry place — cue the romantic visions of hot, rugged, sun-bleached, seemingly infinite landscapes and star-filled night skies. And yet, the plants, animals and people of the Four Corners region (Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona) have managed to adapt to and even flourish in the land of low rainfall and high temperatures. For centuries, Indigenous Puebloan communities practiced agriculture that is uniquely suited to and thus thrived in this dry environment. Then, when the Spanish arrived in the 1500s and introduced cattle, available forage was found suitable and abundant enough for grazing cattle and other livestock, leading to a dominance of ranching in the region.

However, the rising temperatures brought on by human-driven atmospheric warming are bringing big changes to agricultural life in the Southwest. According to a recent paper by researchers at UC Santa Barbara and UC Merced, “increased temperatures from human-caused climate change are having persistent and damaging impacts on vegetation productivity, with significant implications for ranchers and other land users in the region.”...more

World Economic Forum wants to CRIMINALIZE 'climate inaction'!

 Running too many electric lights, for too long?

It could boost your utility bill.

And it could make you a criminal.

Likewise you would be "criminal" if you are guilty of "climate inaction" by not meeting the demands of those who have submitted to the ideology that man-made global warming – changed to climate change when the warming stopped – is going to destroy life on the planet if people don't start driving electric cars, using electricity from giant, eagle-slicing windmills and such.

Slay News explained the World Economic Forum is calling on governments around the globe to turn into criminals anyone who fails through "climate inaction."

...Severe penalties must follow, the WEF said, because those offenses would be classified as a "human rights violation."...more

Calif. awards $3.7m for climate-smart ag

 

California has awarded a combined $3.7 million to 24 organizations for technical assistance in climate-smart agriculture programs.

The grants were announced Sept. 21 by the California Department of Food and Agriculture’s Office of Environmental Farming and Innovation.

Awarded organizations support producers that apply to or implement funding from CDFA’s Alternative Manure Management Program, the Healthy Soils Incentive Program, or the State Water Efficiency and Enhancement Program in the upcoming year, with an emphasis on socially disadvantaged producers.

This year’s program encourages technical assistance providers to provide bilingual support through an increased maximum award for translation and interpretation as well as supporting training opportunities for organizations to build expertise in climate smart agriculture...more

Biden uses executive power to create a New Deal-style American Climate Corps

 

After being thwarted by Congress, President Joe Biden will use his executive authority to create a New Deal-style American Climate Corps that will serve as a major green jobs training program.

In an announcement Wednesday, the White House said the program will employ more than 20,000 young adults who will build trails, plant trees, help install solar panels and do other work to boost conservation and help prevent catastrophic wildfires.

The climate corps had been proposed in early versions of the sweeping climate law approved last year but was jettisoned amid strong opposition from Republicans and concerns about cost.

Democrats and environmental advocacy groups never gave up on the plan and pushed Biden in recent weeks to issue an executive order authorizing what the White House now calls the American Climate Corps.

...With the new corps “and the historic climate investments won by our broader movement, the path towards a Green New Deal is beginning to become visible,” Prakash said, referring to a comprehensive jobs-and-climate plan supported by many activists and some Democrats but ridiculed by Republicans as a socialist nightmare that would raise taxes and hamper the economy...more

NOAA: Climate disasters cost U.S. $2.6 trillion since 1980

  

The United States has sustained more than $2.6 trillion in estimated total costs due to hundreds of climate disasters over the past 40 years, according to a new report from a subsidiary of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The comprehensive disaster cost assessment, published Tuesday by the National Centers for Environmental Information, found 371 extreme weather events since 1980 that each exceeded $1 billion in damage.

Costs were incurred through physical damage to residential, commercial, and municipal buildings, and damage to material assets and equipment. Business interruptions and loss of living quarters were taken into consideration, as well as damage to vehicles and boats; public roads, bridges, levees; electrical infrastructure and offshore energy platforms; agricultural assets including crops, livestock, commercial timber; and wildfire suppression.

This year alone there have been 23 confirmed climate disasters in the United States, with 253 people killed and estimated losses topping more than $1 billion in each catastrophe, including two floods, 18 severe storms, one tropical cyclone, one major wildfire, and one blizzard...MORE

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You can smell the game plan here.

let's spend money now on climate change and save ourselves from the long term expenses of climate disasters.

Climate protesters arrested, indicted after smearing red paint on a National Gallery of Art exhibit

A pair of climate protesters were arrested Friday and indicted for conspiracy against the U.S. and a National Gallery of Art exhibit. The duo had smeared red and black paint on the case and base of an Edgar Degas statue.

Protesters Timothy Martin, a 53-year-old North Carolinian, and Joanne Smith, a 53-year-old New Yorker, are associated with the environmentalist protest group Declare Emergency, which calls for an end to oil projects on federal and native land and for the government to declare a state of climate emergency.

At around 11 a.m. on April 27, the duo approached the case containing “Little Dancer, Age Fourteen,” specifically the wax original sculpted by French artist Edgar Degas, depicting the Belgian dancer Marie van Goethem. The statue would later be cast in multiple bronzes.

Federal law enforcement alleges that Mr. Martin and Ms. Smith had prepared water bottles full of red and black paint, and that the two waited until the area was clear in front of the statue before acting.

A video posted by Declare Emergency on Instagram depicts the stunt. On Twitter, the group identified both Mr. Martin and Ms. Smith as concerned parents terrified about what climate change means for their kids...more/

Arnold Schwarzenegger: ‘No one gives a s--- about’ climate change — this is what it should be called instead

 

Arnold Schwarzenegger says the global effort to mitigate the effects of climate change is being crippled by its fundamental communication problem.

“As long as they keep talking about global climate change, they are not gonna go anywhere. ‘Cause no one gives a s--- about that,” Schwarzenegger told CBS’ “Sunday Morning” correspondent Tracy Smith in a profile that aired Sunday. 

“So my thing is, let’s go and rephrase this and communicate differently about it and really tell people — we’re talking about pollution. Pollution creates climate change, and pollution kills,” Schwarzenegger said...

...The momentum toward fighting climate change has grown in recent years. The global investment in producing clean energy — that is, energy that doesn’t generate greenhouse gases — is surpassing the global investment in fossil fuels, according to the International Energy Agency. In 2023, $1.7 trillion is expected to go into clean technologies, including renewables, electric vehicles, nuclear power, grids, storage, low-emissions fuels, efficiency improvements and heat pumps. That’s more than the approximately $1 trillion expected to go into coal, gas and oil, the IEA said in a report released Thursday.

Still, the emissions generated from energy globally are still rising, although by only 1% in 2022, which was less than feared, the IEA said in March.

...In the United States, 54% of adults view climate change as a major threat to the country’s well-being, according to survey data from Pew Research Center. That nationwide average includes a substantial split along party lines. Almost 8 in 10 Democrats, 78%, say climate change is a major threat to the country’s well-being, and that’s up from 58% a decade ago. Meanwhile, only about 1 in 4 Republicans, 23%, say climate change is a major threat to the country’s well-being. That’s nearly unchanged from the 22% of Republicans who said climate change was a major threat in 2013, according to Pew Research Center data...more

State to hear first-of-its-kind lawsuit claiming kids have a 'right' to a 'stable climate'

 

A Montana state court is poised to hear a lawsuit against the state brought by children and teens who claim they have a right to a “stable climate.”

The “Youth Plaintiffs,” ranging in age from two to 18, allege they are “disproportionately harmed by the climate crisis” and will “face lifelong hardships” unless the government steps in to mitigate the supposed threats by developing a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to the March 2020 complaint. Since Montana’s constitution grants them a right to a “clean and healthful environment,” they argue the courts must bring the state’s energy system “into constitutional compliance.”

“The release of anthropogenic GHGs into the atmosphere is already triggering a host of adverse consequences in Montana, including dangerously increasing temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, increasing droughts and extreme weather events, increasing the frequency and severity of wildfires, increasing glacial melt, and causing numerous adverse health risks, especially to children,” the lawsuit states...more

Germany is Turning Against the EU's Green New Deal, Common Sense to the Forefront

 Fresh on the heels of a sensible request by France to pause new green regulations comes an even stronger pushback in Germany.

Last week it was President Macron who was rowing back on green measures. In a speech he asserted that Europe has, for now, gone far enough – if it introduces any more regulations without the rest of the world following suit then it will put investment at risk and harm the economy. This week, the European People’s Party – a centre right grouping which includes the German Christian Democrats, the party of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen – seems to be joining in.

The party is reported to be considering withdrawing its support for the European Commission’s Green Deal. That is the set of proposals which includes, for example, an EU-wide target for eliminating net carbon emissions by 2050. Whilst 11 EU countries have already set themselves legally-binding targets to reach net zero by 2050 (or 2045 in the case of Germany and Sweden), if the Green Deal were to go there would be no obligation on the other member states to follow suit.

Germany now seems to be taking over from France as the seedbed of opposition towards zero carbon policies, not least because it has more severe policies – and because its self-imposed, earlier target of reaching net zero by 2045 is increasingly looking out of kilter with reality...more