[✔️] July 25, 2023- Global Warming News Digest | US Heat moving east, Maine wildfires, Fox misinformation replacement, 1977 scientists warn about coal

Tue Jul 25 10:00:10 EDT 2023

/*July*//*25, 2023*/

/[  Not so much a wave as it is a rising tide ] /
*Heatwave in US Southwest region to expand east*
By Sam Cabral
BBC News
A heatwave baking the US Southwest for weeks is set to expand into 
central and eastern regions.

Beginning in the Midwest, the hot weather will extend east as far as the 
southern tip of Florida by Wednesday, say meteorologists.

Temperature records were surpassed in several major cities over the 
weekend, and some 59 million Americans began Monday under extreme heat 
advisories.

July is now expected to be the Earth's hottest month since records began.

On Sunday, the city of Phoenix, Arizona, extended its streak of 
temperatures above 43C (110F) into a 24th day, well past the previous 
record of 18 days set in 1974.

It is on course to be the first major US city to average over 100F (38C) 
for an entire month, according to NOAA statistics and a Washington Post 
analysis.

At least 18 heat-related deaths have occurred in surrounding Maricopa 
County since April, with 69 more deaths under investigation.

Meanwhile, in the border town of El Paso, Texas, residents experienced a 
38th consecutive day at temperatures above 38C (100F).

The National Park Service has also reported at least four deaths among 
visitors to its parks in the southwest region.

Two female hikers were found dead in the Valley of Fire State Park in 
Nevada on Sunday, amid temperatures as high as 45C (114F). Police have 
not yet released their identities or a possible cause of death.

Extreme heat is the number one weather-related killer in the US.

Ocean temperatures in South Florida and the Keys could reach 
unprecedented highs as the heatwave extends east in the coming days.

According to BBC Weather, the heatwave has been caused by a "heat dome", 
a large area of high pressure.

Within this dome, air is heated from the surface and trapped in place by 
sinking hot air from above.

"Through this week, the heat dome will expand, bringing hotter weather 
and above average temperatures to pretty much the whole of continental 
US," said meteorologist Simon King of BBC Weather.

The National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center says this 
latest heatwave will last another two weeks.

*Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration* shows 
the US has this year set or tied more than 13,000 high temperature 
records, as well as 16,000 low temperature records.

Experts say heatwaves have become more frequent, more intense, and last 
longer because of human-induced climate change.

Washington state's Democratic governor Jay Inslee told ABC News Sunday 
the heatwaves reported around the world are evidence that "the Earth is 
screaming at us".

"The fuse has been burning for decades, and now the climate change bomb 
has gone off," he said.

"The scientists are telling us that this is the new age. This is the age 
of consequences."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66290589

/[ Maine expert on wildfires - text and audio  ]/
*An expert explains how climate change is worsening wildfires in North 
America*
Maine Public | By Irwin Gratz
July 24, 2023
Wildfires are not unusual in Canada, as is the case in the American 
West. But what is setting this fire season apart?

Michael Flannigan is an expert on forest fires and Canada's efforts to 
deal with them. A one-time meteorologist, Flanagan worked with the 
Canadian Forest Service. He currently studies wildland fires at Thompson 
Rivers University in Kamloops, British Columbia.

He spoke with Maine Public's Irwin Gratz about the growing danger of 
wildfires in Canada and the U.S. from human-caused climate change.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Gratz: First of all, an update, can you tell us where some of the worst 
fires are now burning in Canada?

Flannigan: Right now the most active areas are Alberta, British 
Columbia, Northwest territories -- in our West, and they're burning 
actively and probably will continue to burn for the next six, eight, 12 
weeks. It's hot and dry.

Wildfires are not unusual in Canada, as is the case in the American 
West. But what is setting this fire season apart?

So first off, it's a record-breaking year. We're kind of in uncharted 
territory. The amount of area burned is larger than the state of Maine. 
And that's much larger than our previous record, which was from 1989.

It started off with a bang in the West. There was record-breaking heat 
in the spring. And where you get warm temperatures, you often see fire 
because our fire seasons are longer, warmer weather brings more 
lightning, and warmer weather generally dries out the fuels very 
effectively. That's important for fire. So it started in the West. And 
then it came to the East, with Nova Scotia catching fire. And then those 
large fires in Quebec.

And I know you folks in Maine have been seeing some of that smoke. Some 
of these fires are huge, bigger than Prince Edward Island, and they're 
going to burn through the summer, into the fall, maybe even through 
winter, 'cause they can smolder underground in deeper layers of organic 
material. Peat, for example.

What kind of firefighting effort has Canada been able to mount?

So fire management's the responsibility of the landowners. So we have 10 
provinces in Canada. Two of the three territories fight fire, and also a 
federal agency called Parks Canada fights fire. So they all have some 
common features, but they all do things a little bit differently. But 
right now we have over 550 fires under control.

But some of these are really in far northern remote areas. And they're 
basically monitored, they're allowed to burn because our boreal forests, 
the forest survives and thrives in the stream of semi-regular 
stand-replacing, stand-renewing, high-intensity fire. And these are such 
high-intensity that they're difficult-to-impossible to extinguish 
through direct attack. It's just Mother Nature doing her thing. So when 
and where possible, many fire management agencies allow Mother Nature to 
do her thing.

Farther south, where people are, well, they're fought vigorously, just 
like in the United States. You hit 'em hard, you hit 'em fast. If the 
fire is small, it's easy to put out. Once the fire gets bigger than a 
football field, and it's hot, dry and windy, and the fields are dry, you 
now have a real problem. So initial attacks are critical for those 
unwanted fires.

Firefighters from United States have helped out a great deal because 
your fire season has been relatively quiet, it's starting to pick up now 
with the heat out west. But you've sent a lot of resources to Canada. 
And we're very grateful that just about 12 countries have been sending 
resources. And if you had an active fire season, we wouldn't have access 
to some of your crews.

The latest report from scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on 
Climate Change found that the conditions that make it more likely for 
fires to take hold is a growing problem in many parts of the world. And 
as a result, we're going to see this more and more frequently. Is that 
the case, you think, in Canada?

Yeah, our area of burn in Canada has doubled since the 1970s. And my 
colleagues and I attribute this largely -- not solely -- to human-caused 
climate change. It's even more dramatic in western United States where 
area of burn has quadrupled.

These greenhouse gases are building up and creating this warming. And as 
I mentioned, the warmer it is, the longer our fire seasons are, 
especially for places like Canada, where historically our fire season 
has been short and now they're getting longer. More lightning. Lightning 
burns most of our area of burn, 80-90% of the area burned. Our 
human-caused fires are going down, which is great. But lightning has 
more than compensated for it.

And warmer temperatures lead to drier fuels, unless we get more rain. 
And most of the models suggest we're not going to get more rain to 
compensate for the dry. The drier the fuels, the easier for fires to 
start. Easier for fire to spread. And it means more fuels available to 
burn, which leads to these high-intensity fires that are 
difficult-to-impossible to extinguish.

I've also read that about 25,000 Indigenous people have had to be 
evacuated because of fire. Is this taking a bigger toll on First Nations 
lands and wildlife in Canada?

Absolutely. You know, many of these communities are remote communities, 
and many of them are First Nations or Indigenous communities. So they 
are much more impacted by increased fire activity than the rest of the 
population.

Is there anything that, in particular, Canada should be doing 
differently to deal with the threat from these wildfires?

We can't do much about hot, dry, windy weather until we do something 
about human-caused climate change. We can't do anything about lightning.

But we can do something about human-caused fires. They're all 
preventable. In Canada, we have about 3,000 a year. And that pales in 
comparison to the United States where it's probably closer to 60,000 
human-caused fires a year.

But that number can be reduced and things like fire bans, forest 
closures are very effective. Very unpopular because it means no 
industrial activity, no recreational activity, but very effective at 
stopping human-caused fires.
https://www.mainepublic.org/environment-and-outdoors/2023-07-24/an-expert-explains-how-climate-change-is-worsening-wildfires-and-how-they-might-be-mitigated

/[  Reports from the misinformation battleground.  A dangerous and 
immoral communicator ]/
*Tucker Carlson Spread Lots of Climate Misinformation. His Replacement 
Isn’t Much Better*
Jesse Watters, the Fox News host who replaced Carlson, debuted his new 
primetime show Monday. Like his predecessor, he downplayed the climate 
crisis and stoked culture-war outrage.
By Kristoffer Tigue
July 21, 2023

Tucker Carlson may be gone from Fox News, but his spirit of climate 
denialism lives on in his replacement, Jesse Watters.

On Monday, Fox debuted Watters’ show—Jesse Watters Primetime—at 8 p.m. 
That’s the old timeslot of Carlson, whom Fox fired back in April after a 
defamation lawsuit relating to Carlson’s coverage of the 2020 
presidential election resulted in a staggering  $787 million settlement 
for the conservative media giant. Watters will be just the third person 
in the network’s 26-year history to host the much-coveted 8 p.m. 
weeknight slot.

Once Fox’s most popular news host, Carlson has been one of the world’s 
most prolific peddlers of climate misinformation. But Watters has an 
equally problematic history of embracing conspiracy theories about the 
climate crisis and downplaying its threat to the public, according to a 
new report by Media Matters America, a progressive think tank and media 
watchdog.

“Watters’ unrelenting posture of condescension falsely brands climate 
change mitigation as a corruption-laced grift to leech money from 
unsuspecting Americans,” the report said. “While Watters uses similar 
climate denial talking points as numerous other Fox News hosts, he has 
been able to wield them in a particularly damaging way that resonates 
with Fox’s audience and builds out the channel’s dangerous brand of 
misinformation.”

That’s because Watters “excels at stoking right-wing culture war 
outrage,” the report’s authors wrote, while going “out of his way to 
push climate change denial during extreme weather events, at the moments 
when the reality of climate change is most evident.”

When several major American cities, including New York City and 
Washington, D.C., were blanketed by thick wildfire smoke from Canada 
last month, Watters called the situation “normal” and accused climate 
scientists of “preying on ignorance” when they linked the increase of 
Canadian wildfires to climate change.

It’s one of dozens of misleading or false claims about global warming 
and climate science that Watters has made over the years while working 
for different Fox programs, the report found. Just this year, it said, 
Watters called global warming “corporate propaganda” and “a ruse,” said 
efforts to reduce emissions were “just a ploy” to get people “to buy 
more stuff the Democrats are selling,” and claimed that “certain parts 
of the world will get a tiny bit warmer, but the United States will do 
just fine.”

Watters has also fueled several conspiracy theories, the report noted, 
including by suggesting on air that environmental groups advocating for 
increased investment in renewable energy “are taking dirty Russian money 
… to scare Americans out of fracking and energy exploration.” He also 
helped to fuel unsubstantiated rumors being pushed by Republican 
lawmakers who say that offshore wind farms along the U.S. East 
Coast—none of which have actually been built yet—are responsible for an 
uptick of recent whale deaths.

“Watters was seemingly the first major TV news network host to parrot 
misinformation peddled by a partially fossil fuel-funded campaign 
against offshore wind projects on the East Coast,” the Media Matters 
report said. “In the following weeks, Fox News followed Watters’ lead 
and aired numerous segments insinuating that the recent deaths of whales 
across New York and New Jersey beaches were caused by the development of 
offshore wind turbines.”

Federal scientists have repeatedly said there’s no evidence that 
offshore wind development has played any role in the whale deaths, which 
appear to be more likely tied to climate change and collisions with 
boats. In fact, several whale species have been increasingly dying off 
since 2016—long before any of the offshore wind farms along the East 
Coast were in development. Evidence also suggests campaigns to halt 
offshore wind development in order to “save the whales” have in part 
been funded by fossil fuel companies and industry advocacy groups.

In many ways, Fox News has played a central role in fueling climate 
misinformation. Reports from a coalition of environmental and 
disinformation advocacy groups have identified Fox as a major spreader 
of inaccurate climate information. Those experts now fear that such 
misconceptions, often spread on social media, pose a fundamental hurdle 
to the global effort to curb climate change, largely because they fuel 
political divisions and exacerbate Western culture wars.

But stoking outrage, especially through the lens of America’s culture 
wars, has long been the format of Fox’s 8 p.m. primetime show, no matter 
who hosts it. Bill O’Reilly, who hosted Fox’s primetime spot before 
Carlson, and was fired in 2017 over sexual harassment allegations, once 
said, “Nobody can control the climate except God.” Watters, in that 
sense, is merely carrying the torch.

During his Monday debut, Watters leaned into his familiar culture-war 
rhetoric as he segued to a story about the record-breaking July heat 
waves. “It’s been a hot July,” Watters said with a smirk to the 2.5 
million viewers who tuned in to watch. “Some call it ‘global warming,’ 
some call it ‘summer.’”

Watters’ own mother, however, called into the show to offer a warning. 
“Congratulations, honeybun. We are so proud of you and your 
accomplishments … Now let’s aim to have you keep your job. And to that 
end, I do have some suggestions,” she told her son on air. “Do not 
tumble into any conspiracy rabbit holes. We do not want to lose you and 
we want no lawsuits, OK?”

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/21072023/tucker-carlson-jesse-watters-fox-news-climate-misinformation/

/[The news archive - looking back at NYT front page news on this day-]/
/*July  25, 1977*/
July 25, 1977: The New York Times runs a front-page story 
entitled:*"Scientists Fear Heavy Use of Coal May Bring Adverse Shift in 
Climate."*

    “Highly adverse consequences” may follow if the world, as now seems
    likely, depends increasingly on coal for energy over the next two
    centuries, according to a blue‐ribbon panel of scientists.

    In a report to the National Academy of Sciences on their
    two‐and‐a‐half‐year study, the scientists foresee serious climate
    changes beginning in the next century. By the latter part of the 22d
    century a global warming of 10 degrees Fahrenheit is indicated, with
    triple that rise in high latitudes.

    This, it is feared, could radically disrupt food production, lead to
    a 20‐foot rise in sea level and seriously lower productivity of the
    oceans.

    The focus of concern is the addition of carbon dioxide to the
    atmosphere by fuel burning. While that gas represents less than
    one‐tenth of 1 percent of the atmosphere, it acts like glass in a
    greenhouse. That is, it permits passage of sunlight to heat the
    earth but absorbs infrared radiation that would otherwise return
    some of that heat to space.

    In recent months several scientists have warned of the consequences
    of increasing, long‐term dependence on fossil fuels, notably coal,
    as the chief energy source because of what could be disastrous
    effects on climate. The argument has been seized on by advocates of
    nuclear energy.

    The new study does not deal with alternative energy sources. Nor
    does it call for early curtailment of coal burning. Heavy use of
    such fuel is being promoted by the Carter Administration as a means
    of avoiding excessive dependence on nuclear energy.

    The central recommendation of the report, prepared with help from a
    number of Government agencies, laboratories and computer facilities,
    is initiation of far reaching studies on a national and
    international basis to narrow the many uncertainties that affect
    assessment of the threat.

    To this end, it proposes creation by the Federal Government of a
    climatic council to coordinate American efforts and to participate
    in the development of international studies. Representatives of the
    White House and Government agencies that would be involved in such
    an effort were at the academy on Friday to hear presentations on the
    281‐page report.

    These were offered by Roger R. Revelle, chairman of the 15‐member
    panel, and by Philip H. Abelson and Thomas F. Malone, co‐chairmen of
    the academy's geophysics study committee, which initiated the project.

    Dr. Revelle heads the Center for Population Studies at Harvard
    University and was formerly director of the Scripps Institution of
    Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif. Dr. Abelson heads the Carnegie
    Institution of Washington. Dr. Malone, who directs the Holcomb
    Research Institute at Butler University in Indianapolis, has for
    many years been a leader in weather research.

    Dr. Malone said that the report was not a red light on coal use, nor
    a green light, but rather a “flashing yellow light” saying, “Watch
    out.” Dr. Revelle, in a summary of the findings, said that early
    action was needed because it would take decades to narrow the
    uncertainties and then a full generation to shift to new energy
    sources if that, as expected, proves necessary.

    *Problem of Change Stressed*

    “An interdisciplinary effort of an almost unique kind” is needed, he
    said, bringing together specialists from such fields as mathematics,
    chemistry, meteorology and the social sciences. A major challenge
    would be to find ways to bring about the needed institutional
    changes, persuading governments and people to act before it was too
    late.

    By the end of this century, Dr. Revelle said, it is expected that
    the carbon dioxide content of the air will have risen 25 percent
    above its level before the Industrial Revolution. By the end of the
    next century, it will have doubled, based on predicted increases in
    population and fuel consumption.

    By the middle of the 22d Century, he added, it should have increased
    from four to eight times and, even if fuel burning diminishes then,
    it will remain that high “at least 1,000 years thereafter.”

    It is estimated that in the last 110 years 127 billion tons of
    carbon derived from fuel and from limestone used to make cement have
    been introduced into the atmosphere. Cement manufacture accounted
    for 2 percent of that amount and burning for the rest.

    A considerable part of the carbon dioxide increase is attributed to
    clearing land for agriculture. This added 70 billion tons, according
    to an estimate that Dr. Revelle, however, described as “very
    uncertain.” He noted that one acre of a tropical forest removes 100
    tons of carbon from the atmosphere. When the land is cleared that
    carbon, through burning or decay, returns to the air. More than half
    of land clearing for agriculture has occurred since the mid‐19th
    Century, he said.

    Dr. Revelle termed the predicted worldwide rise of 11 degrees in the
    22d century “a very shaky conclusion” based on inadequate knowledge.
    But, he added, it is “a possibility that must be taken seriously.”
    Part of the uncertainty concerns the amount of added atmospheric
    carbon dioxide that would be absorbed by the oceans and plant
    growth. He predicted that a research program to achieve more
    reliable estimates would cost $20 million to $100 million.

    *Shift in Corn Belt Seen*

    Much of the report deals with expected effects of a global warming.
    Agricultural zones would be transferred to higher latitudes. The
    corn belt, for example, would shift from fertile Iowa to a Canadian
    region where the soil is far less fertile, Dr. Revelle said.

    Particularly vulnerable, he added, would be the fringes of arid
    regions, where a large part of the world population derives its
    sustenance, though the effect is difficult to predict. Marine life
    would suffer from lack of nutrients because a “lid” of warm water
    would impede circulation that normally brings nutrients to the surface.

    On the other hand, plant productivity, Dr. Revelle noted, could rise
    50 percent because plants would be “fertilized” by the higher carbon
    dioxide content of the air. The warmer climate could melt the
    floating pack ice of the Arctic Ocean, leading to radical changes in
    the Northern climate.

    The report suggests that increased snowfall on Antarctica could
    overload the West Antarctic ice sheet, sending large sections of it
    into the sea. This would raise global sea levels 16 feet. The oceans
    would swell from being warmed to make the total rise 20 feet.

    The study assumed a world population of 10 billion by late in the
    next century and a fivefold increase over present ener‐i gy
    consumption. The direct effect of heat from such energy use would be
    insignificant except locally, the report says.

    It also assumed that for public health reasons the release of
    particles into the atmosphere would be sufficiently curtailed for
    their role to be a minor one so far as climate is concerned.

    A number of research strategies are proposed to reduce
    uncertainties. The most ambiguous estimates concern the role of
    plants. It is estimated that land plants annually remove 55 billion
    tons of carbon from the atmosphere, and that oceanic plants take up
    another 25 billion tons.

    One of the firmer estimates concerns the current rise in carbon
    dioxide content of the air because of measurements conducted largely
    by Dr. Charles D. Keeling of the University of California at San
    Diego. These have been made atop Mauna Loa, the Hawaiian volcano,
    and at the South Pole, both sites being far removed from local
    sources of pollution. They show a 5 percent rise in the last 15
    years. The total rise to date has been 11.5 to 13.5 percent.

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0F11F8395E137B93C7AB178CD85F438785F9

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