[✔️] June 30, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[👀 Richard Pauli]

/*June 30, 2021*/

[the counting begins]
*Blackouts in US Northwest due to heat wave, deaths reported*
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — The unprecedented Northwest U.S. heat wave that 
slammed Seattle and Portland, Oregon, moved inland Tuesday — prompting a 
electrical utility in Spokane, Washington, to resume rolling blackouts 
amid heavy power demand.

Officials said a dozen deaths in Washington and Oregon may be tied to 
the intense heat that began late last week.
- -
President Joe Biden, during an infrastructure speech in Wisconsin, took 
note of the Northwest as he spoke about the need to be prepared for 
extreme weather.

“Anybody ever believe you’d turn on the news and see it’s 116 degrees in 
Portland Oregon? 116 degrees,” the president said, working in a dig at 
those who cast doubt on the reality of climate change. “But don’t worry 
-- there is no global warming because it’s just a figment of our 
imaginations.”

The heat wave was caused by what meteorologists described as a dome of 
high pressure over the Northwest and worsened by human-caused climate 
change, which is making such extreme weather events more likely and more 
extreme.

https://apnews.com/article/climate-change-government-and-politics-business-environment-and-nature-6a66be20ed86ad18ed131156c9f7a517



[Journalism promises to cover crimes against the future]
*Climate crimes: a new series investigating big oil’s role in the 
climate crisis*
A new Guardian series examines attempts to hold the fossil-fuel industry 
accountable for the havoc they have created
As the impacts of the climate crisis multiply across the US, from 
intensified drought and wildfires in the west to stronger hurricanes in 
the east, a question is echoing ever louder: who should be held responsible?
According to an unprecedented number of lawsuits filed by US cities and 
states that are currently making their way through the court system, the 
answer is fossil fuel companies.
The lawsuits marshal a sweeping array of well-established facts that 
detail how for decades, major petroleum corporations knew that burning 
fossil fuels wreaked havoc on the environment. Industry elites heard 
dire warnings from their own scientists who predicted the urgency of the 
climate crisis nearly 60 years ago. But instead of taking swift action, 
the oil conglomerates staged a coordinated disinformation campaign to 
suppress political action and public awareness around the growing 
scientific consensus pointing to a climate emergency...
- -
The Guardian’s new series, Climate crimes, will examine these attempts 
to hold the industry accountable and investigate the tactics used by the 
companies to elide their own role in global heating. It will also 
interrogate the central question that emerges from these lawsuits: is 
the climate crisis in fact a crime scene?

There is a good reason to think we will know more soon. The legal 
process for the roughly two dozen climate change lawsuits currently 
pending in the US is likely to reveal more damning information that 
could further detail the extent of the oil industry’s deceptions. 
Investigative reporting has already revealed that the companies 
undertook their own climate change research decades ago – in 1979, for 
instance, an Exxon study said that burning fossil fuels “will cause 
dramatic environmental effects” in the coming decades, and concluded 
that “the potential problem is great and urgent.” By copying the 
playbook utilized by big tobacco, the firms were able to sow doubt about 
the existence of the problem that persists to this day.

The legal headaches for the industry are only likely to get worse. As 
the lawsuits move through the courts and reveal in greater detail what 
the oil companies knew and when, other states and cities can be expected 
to join the litigation. That in turn could add to the popular and 
political pressure on the petroleum giants to take the climate emergency 
seriously – and, perhaps, to make restitution.

In addition to the lawsuits, there are other signs that the tide is 
turning for the fossil fuel industry. Over the course of a single day in 
May, the industry faced a series of embarrassing rebukes, as a Dutch 
court ordered Shell to cut its emissions by 45% and activist investors 
won seats on the ExxonMobil board of directors.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/29/climate-crimes-about-this-series



[Reuters]
*Young activists say 'coward' Biden must fight harder on climate change*
Merdie Nzanga
June 29 (Reuters) - Young climate activists carrying signs reading 
"Biden, you coward - fight for us" and "No climate, no deal" gathered 
outside the White House on Monday to protest what they called U.S. 
President Joe Biden's broken promises and pandering to Republicans. 
"Biden ran with bold promises for action and climate and we turned out 
for him," said John Paul Mejia, an 18-year-old student from Miami among 
hundreds at the Sunrise Movement protest, which featured Representative 
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressive members of Congress...
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/young-activists-say-coward-biden-must-fight-harder-climate-change-2021-06-29/



[Opinion published in NYTimes]
*That Heat Dome? Yeah, It’s Climate Change.*
By Michael E. Mann and Susan Joy Hassol
June 29, 2021...
...All bets are off when one accounts for human-caused warming. It no 
longer makes sense to talk about a once-in-a-century or 
once-in-a-millennium event as if we’re just rolling an ordinary pair of 
dice, because we’ve loaded the dice through fossil fuel burning and 
other human activities that generate carbon pollution and warm the 
planet. It’s as if snake eyes, which should occur randomly only once 
every 36 times you roll a pair of dice, were coming up once every four 
times.
- -
Heat waves now occur three times as often as they did in the 1960s — on 
average at least six times a year in the United States in the 2010s. 
Record-breaking hot months are occurring five times more often than 
would be expected without global warming. And heat waves have become 
larger, affecting 25 percent more land area in the Northern Hemisphere 
than they did in 1980; including ocean areas, heat waves grew 50 percent...
These changes matter because extreme heat is the deadliest form of 
extreme weather in the United States, causing more deaths on average 
than hurricanes and floods combined over the past 30 years. Recent 
research projects that heat stress will triple in the Pacific Northwest 
by 2100 unless aggressive action is taken to reduce heat-trapping 
greenhouse gas emissions.

Some still refuse to acknowledge the dire warning that Mother Nature is 
sending us. They say the science is too unsettled to take action. But 
uncertainty, if anything, is a reason for taking even more significant 
action to reduce carbon emissions. Uncertainty is not our friend. And 
the current heat dome is an excellent example of why.

The heat wave afflicting the Pacific Northwest is characterized by what 
is known as an omega block pattern, because of the shape the sharply 
curving jet stream makes, like the Greek letter omega (Ω). This omega 
curve is part of a pattern of pronounced north-south wiggles made by the 
jet stream as it traverses the Northern Hemisphere. It is an example of 
a phenomenon known as wave resonance, which scientists (including one of 
us) have shown is increasingly favored by the considerable warming of 
the Arctic.

By decreasing the contrast in temperature between the cold pole and warm 
subtropics, the amplified warming of the Arctic causes the jet stream to 
slow down and, under the right circumstances, like the ones prevailing 
now, settle into a very wiggly and rather stable configuration. That, in 
turn, allows very deep high pressure centers, like the current heat 
dome, to remain locked in place over a region, as it is over the Pacific 
Northwest.

Those climate models that the critics claim are alarmist do a poor job 
of reproducing this phenomenon. That means that the models do not 
account for this critical factor behind many of the persistent and 
damaging weather extremes we’ve seen in recent years, including the heat 
dome.

But there is a way out of this nightmare of ever-worsening weather 
extremes, and it’s one that will serve us well in many other ways, too. 
A rapid transition to clean energy can stabilize the climate, improve 
our health, provide good-paying jobs, grow the economy and ensure our 
children’s future. The choice is ours.

Michael E. Mann is a professor of atmospheric science, the director of 
the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University and the 
author of “The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet.” 
Susan Joy Hassol is the director of the nonprofit organization Climate 
Communication. She publishes the series “Quick Facts” with the American 
Association for the Advancement of Science’s SciLine on the connections 
between extreme weather and climate change.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/29/opinion/heat-dome-climate-change.html



[Florida local paper in news scoop]
*Could the increasing assault of king tides and sea level rise have 
contributed to Miami condo collapse?*
Kimberly Miller - - Palm Beach Post - June 25, 2021
Saltwater and brine-soaked air settle into the pores of coastal 
construction, growing a rusty crust around the steel skeletons that 
reinforce oceanfront structures. It weakens the bonds between metal and 
concrete creating cracks and crumbles in vulnerable areas.

Some building experts wondered if that kind of environmental assault 
supercharged by climate change could have played a role in the 
catastrophic collapse at the 40-year-old Champlain Towers South Condo in 
Surfside, Fla.

“Sea level rise does cause potential corrosion and if that was 
happening, it’s possible it could not handle the weight of the 
building,” said Zhong-Ren Peng, professor and Director of University of 
Florida’s International Center for Adaptation Planning and Design. “I 
think this could be a wakeup call for coastal developments.”

Sea level rise, the gurgle of more frequent king tide flooding, and 
changes in soil consistency or location are elements dealt with by any 
building on a barrier island.

And below the surface — beneath parking garages — the twice-daily 
pressure of the tides on groundwater could keep a building’s foundation 
wet and on an uneven footing.

*The invisible machinations that can weaken a building’s integrity*
The Champlain Towers South Condo has a plump renourished beach and dune 
to assuage a direct ocean charge and is four blocks from Biscayne Bay.

Still, Albert Slap, president of Boca Raton-based RiskFootprint, said it 
can be invisible machinations — the push and pull of tides on limestone 
bedrock — combined with rising seas that can weaken a building’s integrity.

RiskFootprint provides assessments for private homeowners and business 
developments that includes looking at threats from sea level rise, king 
tides — so-called “sunny day” flooding — and storm surge.

“Even if when the building was built in 1981 the foundation was dry most 
of the time, with sea level rise pushing groundwater up to the surface, 
the foundation could be wet enough long enough to soften the concrete,” 
Slap said. “Many of these buildings with underground parking have sump 
pumps running and that means the foundation is in the water.”
A 2019 analysis by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration 
found that high tide flooding the previous year broke records at more 
than a dozen locations, including Miami and Cedar Key on the Gulf Coast.

At the same time global sea-level rise is about 1 inch every eight years.

*Sea-level rise in South Florida*
Between 2000 and 2017 alone, sea-level rise at the Key West tide gauge 
measured about 3.9 inches, according to the Southeast Regional Climate 
Change Compact's 2019 sea-level rise report.

South Florida's coastal waters could jump 10 to 17 inches by 2040 and 21 
to 54 inches by 2070 above the 2000 mean sea level in Key West. The 
long-term sea-level rise is predicted to be 40 to 136 inches by 2120, 
the report says.   The compact stresses that South Florida's sea-level 
rise could be faster than the global rate because of a slowing of the 
Gulf Stream current.

“Climate change can play a role,” said Atorod Azizinamini, chair of 
Florida International University’s College of Engineering. “It can cause 
settlement of the ground with sea level rise, and corrosion.”

Buildings can be designed to withstand anything anywhere. You can have a 
high rise building in the middle of the ocean, Azizinamini said. But in 
the 1980s, the subtle creep of rising seas was likely less of a concern.

A Florida International University study on the building found that it 
had been sinking since the 1990s at a rate of about 2 millimeters a 
year. FIU Department of Earth and Environment Professor Shimon Wdowinski 
was lead author on a report published in Science Direct on subsidence — 
land sinking — in Miami Beach and Norfolk, VA.

The report notes the Champlain only as a "12-story building."

“The main message now is we don’t want to rush to conclusions,” said 
Azizinamini. “Let the investigation happen and we can learn from our 
mistakes.”
*
**Investigation into collapse could take months*
Eugenio Santiago, a structural engineer and former chief building 
official at the Village of Key Biscayne, isn’t convinced rising seas or 
wet concrete had anything to do with Thursday’s collapse.

He said the way the building “pancaked” makes him think it was the 
failure of a column holding up a slab of floor. When it fails, one slab 
punches through to the next in a chain reaction until it reaches the ground.

If the building was undergoing roof work, as Surfside Mayor Charles 
Burkett said on NBC’s Today show, it’s possible heavy materials could 
have been placed improperly, causing the failure.

“It would be very rare to have a building with that much corrosion and 
no one saw it,” Santiago said about a link to saltwater and sea level 
rise. “To have that kind of corrosive damage, someone would have said 
something or seen something.”

At 40 years old, the building was undergoing a required recertification.

Madasamy Arockiasamy, director of the Center for Infrastructure and 
Constructed Facilities at Florida Atlantic University, said the settling 
noted by FIU could be one reason for the collapse. He doesn’t believe 
climate change had a direct impact, instead agreeing with Santiago that 
it could have been caused by heavy equipment on the roof.

Roofs are designed to hold a very specific amount of weight. He noted 
air conditioning units on Champlain's roof and said it would generally 
be built to withstand some light roof construction.

“The video shows the middle portion of the roof collapses followed by 
the sides,” Arockiasamy said. “More bending means you stress the 
concrete beyond its tensile capacity.”

There are older buildings on the same barrier island with Surfside that 
have not suffered the kind of structural breakdown that happened at 
Champlain Towers, but Slap said buildings deal with geologic and 
environmental situations differently.

Azizinamini agreed.

"You can have two buildings next to each other, one made a mistake in 
design and the other didn't," he said. "It's natural for people to try 
to identify right away what happened, but that's not the scientific 
approach."

Azizinamini said the investigation could take months with everything 
from corrosion to nearby construction analyzed for its potential role in 
the devastation.
Kmiller at pbpost.com
@Kmillerweather
https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/weather/2021/06/25/could-climate-change-have-contributed-surfside-condo-collapse/7779816002/



[water plants or sell the water]
*It’s Some of America’s Richest Farmland. But What Is It Without Water?*
A California farmer decides it makes better business sense to sell his 
water than to grow rice. An almond farmer considers uprooting his trees 
to put up solar panels. Drought is transforming the state, with broad 
consequences for the food supply.
By Somini Sengupta - June 29, 2021

ORDBEND, Calif. — In America’s fruit and nut basket, water is now the 
most precious crop of all.

It explains why, amid a historic drought parching much of the American 
West, a grower of premium sushi rice has concluded that it makes better 
business sense to sell the water he would have used to grow rice than to 
actually grow rice. Or why a melon farmer has left a third of his fields 
fallow. Or why a large landholder farther south is thinking of planting 
a solar array on his fields rather than the thirsty almonds that 
delivered steady profit for years.

“You want to sit there and say, ‘We want to monetize the water?’ No, we 
don’t,” said Seth Fiack, a rice grower here in Ordbend, on the banks of 
the Sacramento River, who this year sowed virtually no rice and instead 
sold his unused water for desperate farmers farther south. “It’s not 
what we prefer to do, but it’s what we kind of need to, have to.”...
- -
*From Almond Trees to Solar Arrays*
Stuart Woolf embodies the changing landscape of the San Joaquin Valley.

Mr. Woolf took over his father’s farm, headquartered in Huron, in 1986, 
retired most of the cotton his dad grew, switched to tomatoes, bought a 
factory that turns his tomatoes into tomato paste for ketchup. His 
operations expanded across 25,000 acres. Its highest value crop: almonds.

Mr. Woolf now sees the next change coming. The rice water from the north 
won’t come when he needs it. The groundwater restrictions will soon 
limit his ability to pump.

He has ripped out 400 acres of almonds. He’s not sure he will replant 
them anytime soon. In the coming years, he estimates he will stop 
growing on 30 to 40 percent of his land.

He has left one field bare to serve as a pond to recharge the aquifer, 
bought land in the north, where the water is, close to Mr. Fiack’s rice 
fields. Now, he is considering replacing some of his crops with another 
source of revenue altogether: a solar farm, from which he can harvest 
energy to sell back to the grid.

“Look, I’m a farmer in California. The tools we had to manage drought 
are getting limited,” he said. “I’ve got to fallow a lot of my ranch.”

Somini Sengupta is an international climate correspondent
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/28/climate/california-drought-farming.html



[The news archive - looking back]
*On this day in the history of global warming June 30, 2002*

June 30, 2002: Republican-turned-Independent Senator Jim Jeffords of 
Vermont calls out President George W. Bush in a New York Times piece for 
his administration's reckless disregard of climate science.

    *Unhealthy Air*
    By Jim Jeffords
    June 30, 2002

    It is already too late for the United States to lead the world in
    the fight against global warming. President Bush saw to that last
    year, when he abandoned his promise to make power plants reduce the
    amount of carbon dioxide they send into the air.

    But if the president won't lead the world, then the business
    community, the American people and their elected representatives in
    Congress must lead the president.

    This month President Bush gave up all pretense of moving forward in
    the effort to clean up the oldest and dirtiest power plants. First
    he denigrated the climate action report released by his own
    administration. That report follows the National Academy of Sciences
    and the vast majority of scientists by stating that global warming
    is real and poses a significant threat. Then his administration
    announced possibly the biggest rollback of the Clean Air Act in
    history, proposing wholesale weakening of the ''new source review''
    provision that requires old power plants to install modern pollution
    controls when they are renovated.

    Pollution from power plants causes a variety of problems. Three in
    particular are health-threatening: mercury contamination linked to
    birth defects, ozone smog that triggers asthma attacks and fine
    particulate soot that can actually lead to death. In addition, these
    plants emit the chemicals that cause acid rain and haze in our
    parks, as well as large amounts of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.

    On Thursday, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, of
    which I am chairman, voted to set strong limits on the three major
    health-threatening types of power-plant pollution and to put a cap,
    for the first time in American history, on the release of carbon
    dioxide from power plants.

    The administration's climate action report projects that American
    emissions of carbon dioxide will rise by 43 percent by 2020. Yet its
    climate policy does little or nothing to control or reduce this
    increase.

    This is a problem with a solution. The technology to clean up these
    plants already exists; some of it has been around for decades. What
    has been missing is the political will either to tell the owners to
    install this technology or to create a market to encourage that
    investment.

    America is on the verge of a boom in power-plant construction, and
    that gives us a rare opportunity. Including carbon dioxide
    reductions in a comprehensive cleanup plan now is the most efficient
    and least costly way to address the threat of global warming. The
    power industry realizes that the question on carbon dioxide is not
    whether it will be regulated, but when.

    Dealing with global warming is too important to leave solely to
    Washington. Several states, including New York, New Hampshire and
    Massachusetts, are acting on their own to limit power-plant
    emissions. But Washington has a crucial role. The scientific
    consensus has never been stronger. A broad and growing coalition of
    public health and environmental organizations and several utility
    companies agree that we must act now. I hope that at some point
    President Bush will follow this lead.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/30/opinion/unhealthy-air.html


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