[✔️] August 19, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[👀 Richard Pauli]

/*August 19, 2021*/

[follow the money]
*As Disasters Mount, Central Banks Gird Against Threat of Climate Change*
 From the Bank of England to the People’s Bank of China, monetary 
authorities of the world’s largest economies are gauging how climate 
change could rock the financial system. Though long committed to being 
“market neutral,” some are even starting to push greener investments.
BY FRED PEARCE - AUGUST 18, 2021
Climate change is rattling the world’s central bankers. With 
unprecedented heat and wildfires in the American West and southern 
Europe, and record floods racing through German towns and Chinese 
megacities in recent weeks, fears are growing among regulators of a 
coming cascade of climate-induced economic blows potentially more 
far-reaching and intractable than the financial crash just over a decade 
ago.

In the past two months, the central banks of the world’s five largest 
economies — the United States, China, the European Union, Japan, and the 
United Kingdom — have all raised the stakes in their demands for the 
commercial banks they regulate to make public the looming risks they 
face as wild weather takes hold.

Their calls show that central bankers are already responding to concerns 
about their past passivity on climate — concerns reflected at a G7 
meeting in June, where Western industrial leaders issued a final 
communique that declared, “We emphasize the need to green the global 
finance system … We support moving towards mandatory climate-related 
financial disclosures.” That means requiring commercial banks to reveal 
the risks to their balance sheets — and those of their clients — of both 
a changing climate and any rapid collapse of markets for fossil fuels as 
governments try to head off disaster by weaning off fossil fuels.

The world’s major central banks, which control the production and 
distribution of money on behalf of national governments, have 
traditionally sought to remain “market neutral” when carrying out their 
responsibilities. That means they avoid favoring one part of the economy 
over others. But now the biggest central banks appear to be concluding 
that carbon neutrality is more important than market neutrality.

“Once climate change becomes a defining issue for financial stability, 
it may already be too late.”
- -
It is now 14 years since the former chief economist at the World Bank, 
Nicholas Stern, wrote an influential report for the British government 
which concluded that, as he told the London Times, climate change was 
“the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen.” Central 
bankers are still grappling with the implications. But Dougherty 
believes change is coming. “In five years, I would be very surprised if 
climate change wasn’t a major consideration in all Fed regulation,” she 
said.
https://e360.yale.edu/features/as-disasters-mount-central-banks-gird-against-threat-of-climate-change



[US Senator Bernie Sanders says we're gonna need a bigger boat ]
*The planet is in peril. We’re building Congress’s strongest-ever 
climate bill*
Bernie Sanders
More than any other legislation in US history it will transform our 
energy system away from fossil fuels and into sustainable energy
18 Aug 2021
The latest International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report is clear 
and foreboding. If the United States, China and the rest of the world do 
not act extremely aggressively to cut carbon emissions, the planet will 
face enormous and irreversible damage. The world that we will be leaving 
our children and future generations will be increasingly unhealthy and 
uninhabitable.

But we didn’t really need the IPCC to tell us that. Just take a look at 
what’s happening right now: A huge fire in Siberia is casting smoke for 
3,000 miles. Greece: burning. California: burning. Oregon: burning. 
Historic flooding in Germany and Belgium. Italy just experienced the 
hottest European day ever. July 2021 was the hottest month ever 
recorded. Drought and extreme weather disturbances are cutting food 
production, increasing hunger and raising food prices worldwide. Rising 
sea levels threaten Miami, New York, Charleston and countless coastal 
cities around the world in the not-so-distant future.
In the past, these disasters might have seemed like an absurd plot in 
some apocalypse movie. Unfortunately, this is now reality, and it will 
only get much worse in years to come if we do not act boldly – now.

The good news is that the $3.5tn budget resolution that was recently 
passed in the Senate lays the groundwork for a historic reconciliation 
bill that will not only substantially improve the lives of working 
people, elderly people, the sick and the poor, but also, in an 
unprecedented way, address the existential threat of climate change. 
More than any other legislation in American history it will transform 
our energy system away from fossil fuels and into energy efficiency and 
sustainable energy.

This legislation will be a long-overdue step forward in the fight for 
economic, racial, social and environmental justice. It will also create 
millions of well-paying jobs. As chair of the Senate budget committee my 
hope is that the various committees will soon finish their work and that 
the bill will be on the floor and adopted by Congress in late September.

Let me be honest in telling you that this reconciliation bill, the final 
details of which are still being written, will not do everything that 
needs to be done to combat climate change. But by investing hundreds of 
billions of dollars in the reduction of carbon emissions it will be a 
significant step forward and will set an example for what other 
countries should be doing.

Here are some of the proposals that are currently in the bill:

Massive investments in retrofitting homes and buildings to save energy.

Massive investment in the production of wind, solar and other forms of 
sustainable energy.

A major move toward the electrification of transportation, including 
generous rebates to enable working families to buy electric vehicles and 
energy-efficient appliances.

Major investments in greener agriculture.

Major investments in climate resiliency and ecosystem recovery projects.

Major investments in water and environmental justice.

Major investments in research and development for sustainable energy and 
battery storage.

Billions to address the warming and acidification of oceans and the 
needs of coastal communities.

The creation of a Civilian Climate Corps which will put hundreds of 
thousands of young people to work transforming our energy system and 
protecting our most vulnerable communities.

The Budget Resolution that allows us to move forward on this ambitious 
legislation was passed last Wednesday at 4am, by a vote of 50-49 after 
14 hours of debate. No Republican supported it, and no Republican will 
support the reconciliation bill. In fact, Republicans have been 
shamefully absent from serious discussions about the climate emergency.

That means that we must demand that every Democrat supports a 
reconciliation bill that is strong on solutions to the climate crisis. 
No wavering. No watering down. This is the moment. Our children and 
grandchildren are depending upon us. The future of the planet is at stake.

Bernie Sanders is a US senator and the chair of the Senate budget committee
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/18/planet-peril-congress-reconciliation-climate-bill



[Important words from a climate scientist]
AUGUST 18, 2021
*With climate change, seemingly small shifts have big consequences*
by Kevin Trenberth, The Conversation

Outgoing radiation is decreasing, owing to increasing greenhouse gases 
in the atmosphere, and leading to Earth’s energy imbalance of 460 
terawatts. The percentage going into each domain is indicated. Credit: 
Kevin Trenberth, CC BY-ND
Climate change has been accumulating slowly but relentlessly for 
decades. The changes might sound small when you hear about them—another 
tenth of a degree warmer, another centimeter of sea level rise—but 
seemingly small changes can have big effects on the world around us, 
especially regionally.

The problem is that while effects are small at any time, they 
accumulate. Those effects have now accumulated to the point where their 
influence is contributing to damaging heat waves, drought and rainfall 
extremes that can't be ignored.

The most recent report from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel 
on Climate Change is more emphatic than ever: Climate change, caused by 
human activities like burning fossil fuels, is having damaging effects 
on the climate as we know it, and those effects are rapidly getting worse.

*Earth's energy imbalance*

An excellent example of how climate change accumulates is Earth's energy 
imbalance. I am a climate scientist and have a new book on this about to 
be published by Cambridge University Press.

The Sun bombards Earth with a constant stream of about 173,600 terawatts 
(that is 12 zeros) of energy in the form of solar radiation. About 30% 
of that energy is reflected back into space by clouds and reflective 
surfaces, like ice and snow, leaving 122,100 terawatts to drive all the 
weather and climate systems around us, including the water cycle. Almost 
all of that energy cycles back to space—except for about 460 TW.

That remaining 460 TW is the problem we're facing. That excess energy, 
trapped by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, is heating up the planet. 
That is the Earth's energy imbalance, or in other words, global warming.

In comparison with the natural flow of energy through the climate 
system, 460 TW seems small—it's only a fraction of 1 percent. 
Consequently, we cannot go outside and feel the extra energy. But the 
heat accumulates, and it is now having consequences.

To put that in perspective, the total amount of electricity generated 
worldwide in 2018 was about 2.6 TW. If you look at all energy used 
around the world, including for heat, industry and vehicles, it's about 
19.5 TW. *Earth's energy imbalance is huge in comparison.*

Interfering with the natural flow of energy through the climate system 
is where humans make their mark. By burning fossil fuels, cutting down 
forests and releasing greenhouse gases in other ways, humans are sending 
gases like carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere that trap more 
of that incoming energy rather than letting it radiate back out.

The average global temperature change at different ocean depths, in 
zetajoules, from 1958 to 2020. The top chart shows the upper 2,000 
meters (6,561 feet) compared with the 1981-2010 average. The bottom 
shows the increase at different depths. Reds are warmer than average, 
blues are cooler. Credit: Cheng et al, 2021, CC BY-ND
Before the first industries began burning large amounts of fossil fuels 
in the 1800s, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 
estimated at around 280 parts per million of volume. In 1958, when Dave 
Keeling began measuring atmospheric concentrations at Mauna Loa in 
Hawaii, that level was 310 parts per million. Today, those values have 
climbed to about 415 parts per million, a 48% increase.

Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and increased amounts cause heating. 
In this case, the human increment is not small.

*Where does the extra energy go?*

Measurements over time show that over 90% of this extra energy is going 
into the oceans, where it causes the water to expand and sea level to rise.

The upper layer of the oceans started warming around the 1970s. By the 
early 1990s, heat was reaching 500 to 1,000 meters (1,640 to 3,280 feet) 
deep. By 2005, it was heating the ocean below 1,500 meters (nearly 5,000 
feet).

Global sea level, measured by flights and satellites, was rising at a 
rate of about 3 millimeters per year from 1992 to 2012. Since then, it 
been increasing at about 4 millimeters a year. In 29 years, it has risen 
over 90 millimeters (3.5 inches).

If 3.5 inches doesn't sound like much, talk to the coastal communities 
that exist a few feet above sea level. In some regions, these effects 
have led to chronic sunny day flooding during high tides, like Miami, 
San Francisco and Venice, Italy. Coastal storm surges are higher and 
much more destructive, especially from hurricanes. It's an existential 
threat to some low-lying island nations and a growing expense for U.S. 
coastal cities.

Some of that extra energy, about 13 terawatts, goes into melting ice. 
Arctic sea ice in summer has decreased by over 40% since 1979. Some 
excess energy melts land ice, such as glaciers and permafrost on 
Greenland, Antarctica, which puts more water into the ocean and 
contributes to sea level rise.

Some energy penetrates into land, about 14 TW. But as long as land is 
wet, a lot of energy cycles into evapotranspiration—evaporation and 
transpiration in plants—which moistens the atmosphere and fuels weather 
systems. It is when there is a drought or during the dry season that 
effects accumulate on land, through drying and wilting of plants, 
raising temperatures and greatly increasing risk of heat waves and wildfire.

Cyclone Yasa heads for Fiji in December 2020. It was the fourth 
most-intense tropical cyclone on record in the South Pacific. Credit: 
NASA Earth Observatory
Consequences of more heat

Over oceans, the extra heat provides a tremendous resource of moisture 
for the atmosphere. That becomes latent heat in storms that supersizes 
hurricanes and rainstorms, leading to flooding, as people in many parts 
of the world have experienced in recent months.

Air can contain about 4% more moisture for every 1 degree Fahrenheit 
(0.55 Celsius) increase in temperature, and air above the oceans is some 
5% to 15% moister than it was prior to 1970. Hence, about a 10% increase 
in heavy rain results as storms gather the excess moisture.

Again, this may not sound like much, but that increase enlivens the 
updrafts and the storms, and then the storm lasts longer, so suddenly 
there is a 30% increase in the rainfall, as has been documented in 
several cases of major flooding.

In Mediterranean climates, characterized by long, dry summers, such as 
in California, eastern Australia and around the Mediterranean, the 
wildfire risk grows, and fires can be readily triggered by natural 
sources, like dry lightning, or human causes.

Extreme events in weather have always occurred, but human influences are 
now pushing them outside their previous limits.

*The straw that breaks the camel's back syndrome**
*
So, while all weather events are driven by natural influences, the 
impacts are greatly magnified by human-induced climate change. 
Hurricanes cross thresholds, levees break and floods run amok. 
Elsewhere, fires burn out of control, things break and people die.

I call it "The straw that breaks the camel's back syndrome." This is 
extreme nonlinearity, meaning the risks aren't rising in a straight 
line—they're rising much faster, and it confounds economists who have 
greatly underestimated the costs of human-induced climate change.

The result has been far too little action both in slowing and stopping 
the problems, and in planning for impacts and building 
resilience—despite years of warnings from scientists. The lack of 
adequate planning means we all suffer the consequences.
https://phys.org/news/2021-08-climate-seemingly-small-shifts-big.html
https://theconversation.com/with-climate-change-seemingly-small-shifts-have-big-consequences-166139


[10 min video]
*40 Million People Rely on the Colorado River, and Now It's Drying Up*
Aug 14, 2021
VICE News
The first-ever official shortage on the Colorado River is expected to be 
announced on Monday, Aug. 16. A shortage will mean mandatory cutbacks to 
some user
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CADLfXOhkU



[Tipping points]
*Economists have quantified the economic risks of climate "tipping 
points." It's grim.*
We're likely underestimating the costs of carbon emissions by a quarter, 
at least.
Dave Roberts - Aug 18, 2021
- -
*Pulling tipping points into climate economics*
Just about everyone familiar with climate change has heard about 
“tipping points.” Famed climate scientist Wallace Broecker first raised 
the possibility way back in 1987, and ever since then, they’ve loomed 
large in the climate discussion.

The idea behind tipping points is fairly simple and familiar: as heat 
accumulates in the atmosphere, Earth’s geophysical systems may not 
simply adjust in linear fashion, alongside the incrementally rising 
temperature; in some cases, they may “tip over” some unpredictable 
threshold and enter a fundamentally new state, sometimes called a “phase 
shift.” Think of ice that has slowly cracked suddenly shattering, or 
“the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
- -
Because the consequences of some oft-discussed tipping points are rather 
apocalyptic, they have been used and misused for a long time in climate 
communications. It has somewhat annoyed climate scientists, because not 
only are these tipping points not a sure thing, each one is, in its own 
right, relatively unlikely.

Civilization-ending changes are not likely, but they’re not zero 
probability either. Legendary Harvard economist Martin Weitzman called 
these low-probability, high-impact possibilities “tail risks” and was 
famous for warning that economists are not taking them into account — 
and are thus underestimating the need for rapid decarbonization...
- -
However, it leaves a key question unanswered: yes, the risk of tipping 
points raises the value of mitigation, but how much? It has never been 
quantified.

Into that breach comes a new paper in the Proceedings of the National 
Academy of Sciences (PNAS), from Wagner and a group of colleagues: Simon 
Dietz and Thomas Stoerk of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate 
Change, and James Rising of the University of Delaware.

“Economic impacts of tipping points in the climate system” represents 
the first formal attempt to quantify the economic impacts of tipping 
point risks. The results are startling: the economic impact of carbon 
emissions is much higher than appreciated, as is the value of reducing 
emissions...
- -
They included the eight that have been studied by the IPCC:

        1 Thawing of permafrost leading to carbon feedback resulting in
        additional carbon dioxide and methane emissions, which flow back
        into the carbon dioxide and methane cycles.
        2 Dissociation of ocean methane hydrates resulting in additional
        methane emissions, which flow back into the methane cycle.
        3 Arctic sea ice loss (also known as “the surface albedo
        feedback”) resulting in changes in radiative forcing, which
        directly affects warming.
        4 Dieback of the Amazon rainforest releasing carbon dioxide,
        which flows back into the carbon dioxide cycle.
        5  Disintegration of the Greenland Ice Sheet increasing
        sea-level rise.
        6 Disintegration of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet increasing
        sea-level rise.
        7 Slowdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation
        modulating the relationship between global mean surface
        temperature and national mean surface temperature.
        8 Variability of the Indian summer monsoon directly affecting
        GDP per capita in India.

It’s important to note that these are not all possible tipping points, 
just the ones that have been studied, so the PNAS study’s results are, 
as the authors emphasize, a “probable underestimate, given the 
literature we synthesize has yet to cover some tipping points and misses 
possible impact channels and interactions even for those it does cover.”
- -
*We are underestimating climate risks and overestimating the costs of 
action*
As its principle metric, the study uses the “social cost of carbon” 
(SCC), meant to capture the total social and environmental damage done 
by the emission of a ton of carbon dioxide.

For convenience, it uses the current US government SCC figure, which is 
about $51. There’s a history behind this: Obama originally convened the 
working group that put the figure at around $50 during his 
administration. Under Trump, it dropped to about $1. Biden has bumped it 
back up to $51.

“They undid the Trump damage and went back to decade-old assumptions,” 
says Wagner. Now, there is work underway to update the US government SCC 
with better numbers. “If you go to the most modern estimates and turn on 
the stuff that we think ought to be turned on — we know that there are 
tipping points, we need risk aversion, we need reasonable discount 
rates, and so on — you don't get to $50,” he says, “you get $250.” (For 
the true climate modeling nerds: that’s true even in DICE, William 
Nordhaus’s model.)

I don’t know if the new number will be $250, but I’d be shocked if it 
were under $150. Anyway, that’s a subject for another post, because the 
PNAS study quantifies the relative increase in SCC when tipping points 
are incorporated rather than ignored.

The headline result: “When modelled separately and then summed together, 
the individual tipping points increase the expected SCC by 24.5%.”
- -
*The policy implications of tipping points*
Let’s take a step back and review what we can learn from this study.

First, economists have more or less been ignoring tipping points, which 
means they have systematically been underestimating the SCC. Best 
estimates put the amount of that underestimation around 25 percent.

But that 25 percent is almost certainly a lower bound. The authors have 
built a framework that can plug in new data and analysis of tipping 
points as it comes along. It is almost certain that as more tipping 
points are studied and the interactions among them are better modeled, 
the estimate of their potential damages will rise.

And again, remember that long tail. 25 percent is the median estimate, 
but the average estimate is 43 percent, and there’s at least a 10 
percent chance of 100 percent — in other words, “there's a one in 10 
chance that doing the calculation doubles the SCC,” says Wagner. “Holy 
shit, right?”
- -
This is the significance of tipping points: we are playing with fire, 
pushing Earth systems to the point that there is a small-but-real chance 
that some of them will break down entirely, entering phase shifts and 
becoming something permanently less stable and hospitable.

If that happens, we will have consigned all future generations of human 
beings to inexorably and irreversibly deteriorating conditions. It is a 
crime worse than any genocide, worse than any atrocity conceived or 
conceivable, and even if there is only a small chance that we might 
stumble into committing it, we should be hyper-cautious. We should spend 
a lot of money to reduce that risk, to insure against it.

You might notice that we are not, as a global community or within the 
US, expending $50/ton worth of effort to reduce emissions, much less 
$300/ton. In that sense, this study is just one more voice in the chorus 
urging policymakers to go bigger and faster on decarbonization.

But it does put a fine point on the fact that there is effectively no 
way for policymakers anywhere to do too much, or to go too fast, on 
decarbonization. The risk of overdoing it is vanishingly small, all but 
impossible.

We are currently underdoing it. We will be underdoing it even when we’re 
doing five times what we’re doing now. We will almost certainly be 
underdoing it for the rest of the lives of everyone reading this. That’s 
daunting, but it’s also clarifying.

There’s only one direction to push: more and faster, forever and ever, amen.
https://www.volts.wtf/p/economists-have-quantified-the-economic



[Opinion - Fiddling while we regain common sense ]
AUGUST 17, 2021
*Greed and Consumption: Why the World is Burning*
BY RAMZY BAROUD
Rome is scorching hot. This beautiful city is becoming unbearable for 
other reasons, too. Though every corner of the beaming metropolis is a 
monument to historical grandeur, from the Colosseum in Rione Monti to 
the Basilica of Saint John Lateran in San Giovanni, it is now struggling 
under the weight of its own contradictions.

In Via Appia, bins are overflowing with garbage, often spilling over 
into the streets. The smell, especially during Italy’s increasingly 
sweltering summers, is suffocating.

Meanwhile, many parts of the country are literally on fire. Since June 
15, firefighters have reportedly responded to 37,000 fire-related 
emergencies, 1,500 of them on July 18 alone. A week later, I drove 
between Campania, in southern Italy, and Abruzzo, in the center. 
Throughout the journey, I was accompanied by fire and smoke. On that 
day, many towns were evacuated, and thousands of acres of forests were 
destroyed. It will take months to assess the cost of the ongoing 
destruction, but it will certainly be measured in hundreds of millions 
of euros.

Additionally, the entire southern Europe is ablaze, as the region is 
experiencing its worst heat waves in many years. Greece, Spain, Turkey, 
and the Balkans are fighting fires that continue to rage on.

Across the Atlantic, the US and Canada, too, are desperately trying to 
battle their own wildfires, mostly direct outcomes of unprecedented heat 
waves that struck North America from Vancouver to California, along with 
the whole of the American northwest region. In June, Vancouver, Portland 
and Seattle all set new heat records, 118, 116 and 108 Fahrenheit, 
respectively.

While it is true that not all fires are a direct result of global 
warming – many in Italy, for example, are man-made – unprecedented 
increases in temperature, coupled with changes in weather patterns, are 
the main culprits of these unmitigated disasters.

The solution is more complex than simply having the resources and proper 
equipment to contain these fires. The impact of the crises continues to 
be felt for years, even if temperatures somehow stabilize. In 
California, for example, which is bracing for another horrific season, 
the devastation of the previous years can still be felt.

“After two years of drought, the soil moisture is depleted, drying out 
vegetation and making it more prone to combustion,” The New York Times 
reported on July 16. The problem, then, is neither temporary nor can be 
dealt with through easy fixes.

As I sat with my large bottle of water outside Caffettiamo Cafe, 
struggling with heat, humidity and the pungent smell of garbage, I 
thought about who is truly responsible for what seems to be our new, 
irreversible reality. Here in Italy, the conversation is often 
streamlined through the same, predictable and polarized political 
discourse. Each party points finger at the others, in the hope of 
gaining some capital prior to the upcoming October municipal elections.

Again, Italy is not the exception. Political polarization in Europe and 
the US constantly steers the conversation somewhere else entirely. 
Rarely is the problem addressed at a macro-level, independent from 
political calculations. The impact of global warming cannot and must not 
be held hostage to the ambitions of politicians. Millions of people are 
suffering, livelihoods are destroyed, the fate of future generations is 
at risk. In the grand scheme of things, whether the current mayor of 
Rome, Virginia Raggi, is elected for another term or not, is insignificant.

Writing in the Columbia Climate School website, Renee Cho highlights the 
obvious, the relationship between our insatiable appetite for 
consumption and climate change. “Did you know that Americans produce 25 
percent more waste than usual between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, 
sending an additional one million tons a week to landfills?,” Cho asks.

This leads us to think about the existential relationship between our 
insatiable consumption habits and the irreparable damage we have 
inflicted upon mother earth.
Here in Via Appia, the contradictions are unmistakable. This is the 
summer sales season in Italy. Signs reading “Saldi” – or “Sale” – are 
everywhere. For many shoppers, it is impossible to fight the temptation. 
This unhinged consumerism – the backbone and the fault line of 
capitalism – comes at a high price. People are encouraged to consume 
more, as if such consumption has no repercussions for the environment 
whatsoever. Indeed, Via Appia is the perfect microcosm of this global 
schizophrenia: people complaining about the heat and the garbage, while 
simultaneously consuming beyond their need, thus creating yet more 
garbage and, eventually, worsening the plight of the environment.
Collective problems require collective solutions. Italy’s heat cannot be 
pinned down on a few arsonists and California’s wildfires are not simply 
the fault of an ineffectual mayor. Global warming is, in large part, the 
outcome of a destructive pattern instigated and sustained by capitalism. 
The latter can only survive through unhindered consumption, inequality, 
greed and, when necessary, war. If we continue to talk about global 
warming without confronting the capitalist menace that generated much of 
the crisis in the first place, the conversation will continue to amount 
to nil.

In the final analysis, all the conferences, pledges and politicking will 
not put out a single fire, neither in Italy nor anywhere else in the world.

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/08/17/greed-and-consumption-why-the-world-is-burning/


[water below]
*THE WELL FIXER’S WARNING*
The lesson that California never learns
By Mark Arax  -- AUGUST 17, 2021
- -
 From one end of the valley to the other, 500,000 acres of new almond 
and pistachio trees have been added to the old trees over the past 10 
years. This, in a period plagued by two of the worst droughts in 
California history or, grimmer yet, one epic drought interrupted by the 
record flood year of 2017. If the water-guzzling almonds demand less 
irrigation than the water-guzzling crops that feed the mega-dairies, the 
aggregate of their intensification is no less alarming. In Madera 
County, during this same scorched decade, the ground devoted to almonds 
has expanded by 60,000 acres. The trend makes selfish sense. Almonds 
ring up far more profits than the wine and raisin grapes they’re 
replacing. But it makes almost no communal sense. Almonds consume far 
more of everyone’s water.
Angell’s surveys of wells across the Madera sub-basin tell him that the 
underground water table that sustains 348,000 acres of cropland, cattle 
ground, and suburbia is bleeding out three feet of water from one 
harvest to the next. This amounts to 1 million acre-feet of overdraft 
each dry year. That’s water taken out of the earth and not returned by 
rain or snowmelt. That’s mining. All the houses and businesses of Los 
Angeles, by comparison, consume 580,000 acre-feet of water each year.
- -
Whether it’s water, soil, climate, or crop, Californians believe they 
can keep on flouting the bounds. But drought reveals the lie of a place. 
The invention of the “Golden State” was an overreach from the get-go. 
That it relied on the genocide of the biggest flowering of Indigenous 
culture in North America should have been a first clue. The continent’s 
edge that the settlers bit off and called one state was 1,000 miles long 
with a dozen different states of nature inside it. The rain fell 140 
inches on one end. It fell 12 inches on the other end. The other end 
happened to be where most of the people wanted to live. Our conceit was 
to believe that if we built the grandest water system ever, we could 
make that difference disappear. California proceeded with the federal 
Central Valley Project in the 1930s and the State Water Project in the 
1960s and erected dams, canals, and a concrete river 444 miles long—we 
called it The Aqueduct—to move the rain to farms and faucets. We had 
engineered our way past drought and flood, if not earthquake and 
wildfire, or so we believed...
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/08/well-fixers-story-california-drought/619753/



[The news archive - looking back]
*On this day in the history of global warming August 19, 2015*

August 19, 2015: The New York Times reports:

"A little-noted portion of the chain of pipelines and equipment that 
brings natural gas from the field into power plants and homes is 
responsible for a surprising amount of methane emissions, according to a 
study on Tuesday.

"Natural-gas gathering facilities, which collect from multiple wells, 
lose about 100 billion cubic feet of natural gas a year, about eight 
times as much as estimates used by the Environmental Protection Agency, 
according to the study, which appeared in the journal Environmental 
Science and Technology.

"The newly discovered leaks, if counted in the E.P.A. inventory, would 
increase its entire systemwide estimate by about 25 percent, said the 
Environmental Defense Fund, which sponsored the research as part of 
methane emissions studies it organized."

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/19/science/methane-leaks-in-natural-gas-supply-chain-far-exceed-estimates-study-says.html?mwrsm=Email 


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