[✔️] July 27, 2023- Global Warming News Digest | Fires in Europe, Tourists in Europe, Jennifer Francis El Nino, Passengers stuck in hot plane, Politics smothers climate, Sigma, 2004 Obama

[Richard Pauli]

/*July*//*27, 2023*/

/[ Fires in Europe  ]/
*‘Like a blowtorch’: Mediterranean on fire as blazes spread across nine 
countries*
‘There is no magical defence mechanism,’ says Greek prime minister as 
fires burn in northern Africa and southern Europe
Helen Sullivan , Lorenzo Tondo in Palermo, and agencies
Wed 26 Jul 2023
Wildfires were burning in at least nine countries across the 
Mediterranean on Tuesday as blazes spread in Croatia, Italy and 
Portugal, with thousands of firefighters in Europe and north Africa 
working to contain flames stoked by high temperatures, dry conditions 
and strong winds.

At least 34 people were killed in Algeria, where 8,000 firefighters on 
Tuesday battled blazes across the tinder-dry north. Fires burned in a 
total of 15 provinces, leading to the evacuation of more than 1,500 
people from their properties.

Witnesses described fleeing walls of flames that raged “like a 
blowtorch”, destroying homes and coastal resorts and turning vast forest 
areas into blackened wastelands.
The Algerian online news site TSA quoted the National Meteorological 
Office as saying temperatures had reached 50C (122F) in some regions.

Among those killed this week were 10 soldiers trapped by flames at Beni 
Ksila, in Bejaia province, according to the defence ministry. The 
official APS news agency reported on Monday night that 34 people had 
died across several regions.

Local media reflected anger about the latest deadly fires. The TSA news 
site asked: “In view of all these measures, why couldn’t we avoid the 
disaster?”

Fanned by strong winds, fires forced the closure of two border crossings 
with neighbouring Tunisia, where blazes have been especially fierce in 
the north-western Tabarka region.
More than 300 people were evacuated from the coastal village of Melloula 
by boat and overland and firefighters were still battling blazes on 
Tuesday in three areas in the north-west: Bizerte, Siliana and Beja. 
Firefighters struggled to extinguish flames destroying forests and 
citrus and hazelnut groves.
The official TAP news agency reported one death, that of a school 
principal who died of asphyxiation from a fire in Nafza, in the north-west.

Wildfires also broke out in the woodlands of Latakia, a governorate on 
the Mediterranean in north-western Syria, and helicopters are being used 
to extinguish fires.

“Firefighting teams are working to put out the massive wildfires that 
have broken out in the woods of Latakia northern countryside which are 
still uncontrolled until now,” the North Press Agency reported 
firefighters as saying on Tuesday.

Italy has been hit by violent storms and wildfires. At least seven 
people were killed on Tuesday after storms in the north and wildfires in 
Sicily.
Among those killed was a 16-year-old girl. The prime minister, Giorgia 
Meloni, said the girl died when a tree fell on her tent during a scout 
camp near Brescia after high winds and torrential rain overnight.

Milan residents reported torrential rain and hail on Tuesday morning, 
which flooded streets and uprooted trees, some of which fell on to 
parked cars.

While the north was drenched, the heatwave across the south persisted, 
with temperatures of 47.6C (117F) recorded in the eastern Sicilian city 
of Catania on Monday. The bodies of two people in their 70s were found 
in a house destroyed by the flames, while an 88-year-old woman was found 
near the Sicilian city of Palermo, according to media reports.

Sicily’s regional president, Renato Schifani, said he planned to ask the 
government to declare a state of emergency for the island. A decision 
was expected to be made at Wednesday’s ministers’ meeting in Rome.
The civil protection minister. Nello Musumeci, wrote on Facebook: “We 
are experiencing in Italy one of the most complicated days in recent 
decades – rainstorms, tornadoes and giant hail in the north, and 
scorching heat and devastating fires in the centre and south. The 
climate upheaval that has hit our country demands of us all … a change 
of attitude.”

Italian firefighters said they tackled nearly 1,400 fires between Sunday 
and Tuesday, including 650 in Sicily and 390 in Calabria, the southern 
mainland region where a bedridden 98-year-old man was killed as fire 
consumed his home.
Meanwhile, prosecutors in Palermo launched an investigation into the 
wildfires that have hit the Sicilian capital. According to 
investigators, dozens of fires could have been set deliberately by 
people, with hot winds and dry conditions fuelling the blazes.

For years, the Sicilian mafia has been suspected of being involved in 
the wildfires, pushed by the lucrative reforestation contracts, although 
that link has not been proved in this week’s fires.

On Wednesday, authorities in Calabria released a video of an arson 
suspect caught on camera by a drone. The Governor of Calabria said the 
man was reported to the police.
Greece has also been particularly hard hit this summer, with authorities 
evacuating more than 20,000 people in recent days from homes and resorts 
in the south of the holiday island of Rhodes.

Close to 3,000 tourists had returned home by plane as of Tuesday, 
according to figures from the transport ministry, and tour operators 
have cancelled upcoming trips.

Two firefighting pilots died when their plane, which had been dropping 
water, crashed on a hillside close to the town of Karystos on the island 
of Evia, east of Athens...
The Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, said: “I will state the 
obvious: in the face of what the entire planet is facing, especially the 
Mediterranean which is a climate change hotspot, there is no magical 
defence mechanism, if there was we would have implemented it.”

The body of a 41-year-old farmer, missing since Sunday, was also found 
in a shack in a remote area.
New evacuations were ordered overnight on the islands of Corfu, Evia and 
Rhodes, where thousands of tourists were moved to safety over the weekend.

In France, nearly 100 firefighters were trying to contain a wildfire in 
the municipalities of Cagnes-sur-Mer and Villeneuve-Loubet, close to 
Nice international airport, officials said on Tuesday.

The Bouches-du-Rhone department on Tuesday was placed under a “red 
alert”, with authorities seeing a “very high risk” of wildfires. More 
than 300 firefighters were battling to contain fires near the city of 
Arles, police said.
In Croatia, winds were so strong that firefighting aircraft could not 
take off, local media reported. Firefighters battled wildfires that were 
spreading just south of the Adriatic city of Dubrovnik, a tourism 
destination, late on Tuesday.
“It’s been a long night but we managed to stave off the part (of the 
fire) that is important because of the houses,” firefighting unit 
commander Stjepan Simovic told the Associated Press. “We must be careful 
because the wind has started to pick up and the fire can grow again.”

Winds brought disaster to neighbouring Montenegro, where two people 
drowned and several were injured when strong southern winds hit the 
coast, port authorities in the towns of Ulcinj and Petrovac said.

A rapidly spreading wildfire at the centre of Spain’s island of Gran 
Canaria on Tuesday prompted authorities to remove several hundred 
villagers, shut three roads and deploy firefighting helicopters.

Antonio Morales, head of the Island Council of Gran Canaria, said about 
100 firefighters and nine aircraft were working to put out the blaze 
that had so far burned through 200 hectares of forest.
In Portugal, usually one of the European countries worst hit by 
wildfires, according to EU data, hundreds of firefighters scrambled on 
Tuesday to put out flames near the popular holiday destination of 
Cascais, with strong winds complicating efforts.

The wildfire started in a mountainous area of the Sintra-Cascais park, 
which covers about 56 sq miles (145 sq km) west of Lisbon. More than 600 
firefighters were brought in and water-bombing planes also battled the 
blaze but had to stop operating as the night set in.

The mayor of Cascais, Carlos Carreiras, said gusts of up to 37mph were 
the biggest challenge and that some people had been evacuated as a 
precaution.

Portugal is under a widespread drought affecting 90% of the country.

In Turkey, a hospital and a dozen homes were evacuated as a precaution 
in the coastal town of Kemer, where firefighters for a third day battled 
a blaze raging through a woodland. At least 10 planes, 22 helicopters 
and hundreds of firefighters were deployed to extinguish the fire as 
meteorologists warned temperatures could rise several degrees above 
seasonal averages.

On Wednesday, the EU commissioner for crisis management, Janez Lenarčič 
said Brussels wanted to sign contracts this year for up to 12 
firefighting planes to improve its ability to fight blazes fuelled by 
climate heating.

The EU had already doubled its existing reserve fleet of firefighting 
aircraft in the past year, after devastating fires last summer in 
southern Europe exhausted its previous 13-craft capacity.

“The situation that we see in southern Europe shows that we are in the 
climate crisis. It’s already here,” Lenarčič said.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/26/northern-hemisphere-heatwaves-mediterranean-fires-croatia-portugal



/[  Considering the futures -- A tourist promoter says fires are "a man 
made disaster" ] /
*Will heat and fire drive tourists out of the Mediterranean? | DW News*
DW News
Jul 25, 2023  #wildfires #tourism #mediterranean
The areas affected by the fires around the Mediterranean are not only 
densely populated but also encompass several globally renowned tourist 
destinations. Each year, millions of tourists visit these regions. In 
many Mediterranean countries, tourism plays a vital role, serving as a 
major, if not the most significant, economic sector. The ongoing fires 
could potentially have severe consequences, impacting not just the 
environment but also the livelihoods of communities heavily reliant on 
the tourism industry in the region.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk8U2a6O0Bg



/[ Jennifer Francis talks about El //Niño//- video ]/
*Why is everyone talking about El Niño this year?*
Arctic Basecamp
Jun 19, 2023  #elniño #OceanCurrents #ClimateScience
Why is everyone talking about El Niño this year?

El Niño is a climate pattern characterised by unusually warm ocean 
temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, which can 
lead to significant changes in weather patterns worldwide.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APvA-dtTzwU



/[ What it's like on a Delta plane in the heat 
https://youtu.be/trCGqM7OIyk ]/
*Las Vegas airplane passengers stuck on plane in triple-digit heat | 
LiveNOW from FOX*
Live NOW from FOX
What was the experience like
Jul 18, 2023
Multiple airline passengers waiting to takeoff from the airport in Las 
Vegas became sick after waiting in triple-digit heat while taxiing 
behind more than a dozen other flights, according to Fox News field 
producer Krista Garvin, who was aboard the flight.

The situation worsened, and flight attendants were seen running up and 
down the aisles with oxygen tanks. Multiple passengers had passed out 
and some had soiled themselves.

"By the time we got back to the gate, paramedics were waiting. There was 
an ambulance on the ground," Garvin said. "Towards the back, you knew 
that people were getting sick."

LiveNOW's Lexie Petrovic spoke with Garvin about the nightmare flight 
experience and how Delta Airlines was remedying the situation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trCGqM7OIyk



/[ If politics meet global warming ]/
*‘Battle plan’: How the far right would dismantle climate programs*
By Scott Waldman | 07/26/2023

A coalition of conservative groups has assembled a plan to 
systematically target most of the federal government’s work on climate 
and clean energy.

It proposes a sweeping deconstruction of government programs that goes 
far beyond what former President Donald Trump attempted to do by 
targeting “deep state” employees in federal agencies. And it’s designed 
to be implemented on the first day of a Republican presidency.

Called Project 2025, it would block the expansion of the electrical grid 
for wind and solar energy; slash funding for the EPA environmental 
justice office; shutter the Energy Department’s renewable energy 
offices; prevent states from adopting California’s electric car 
standards; and give Republican state officials more power to regulate 
polluting industries.
It was written by hundreds of conservative policy experts, energy 
lobbyists, industry consultants and former Trump administration 
officials. If enacted, it could decimate the federal government’s 
climate work, stymie the clean energy transition and shift agencies 
toward servicing and nurturing the fossil fuel industry rather than 
regulating it.

“Project 2025 is not a white paper. We are not tinkering at the edges. 
We are writing a battle plan, and we are marshaling our forces,” said 
Paul Dans, director of Project 2025 at the Heritage Foundation. “Never 
before has the whole conservative movement banded together to 
systematically prepare to take power day one and deconstruct the 
administrative state.”

The comprehensive plan — which runs 920 pages and covers virtually all 
operations of the federal government, not just energy and climate 
programs — was compiled by the Heritage Foundation as a road map for the 
first 180 days of the next GOP administration.

Its details were crafted by more than 400 people, including former Trump 
officials who could earn top spots in his next administration, if he is 
reelected.

Republican primary candidates all pledged to go after President Joe 
Biden’s signature piece of climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction 
Act. Biden’s climate executive orders would also likely be rolled back 
the day he leaves office.

But the ideas laid out in Project 2025 show that conservative 
organizations want to move federal agencies away from public health 
protections and environmental regulations in order to help the 
industries they have been tasked with overseeing, said Andrew Rosenberg, 
a senior NOAA official in the Clinton administration and a senior fellow 
at the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey School of Public Policy.

“What this does is it basically undermines not only society but the 
economic capacity of the country at the same time as it’s doing gross 
violence to the environment,” Rosenberg said.

*‘Governing conservatism’*
The proposals are laser-like in their precision. They also indicate that 
Republican operatives learned a lesson from the chaotic nature of the 
earliest days of the Trump administration, when former New Jersey Gov. 
Chris Christie was fired from overseeing the transition, said Neil 
Chatterjee, who was chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission 
under Trump.

“Even if we lose the election and don’t get the opportunity to govern, I 
still think this defined strategy is important because we know what 
we’re for and what we can showcase to the American people even if we’re 
out of power,” said Chatterjeee, who was not involved in the plan. “We 
can say this is what we would do, this is how we would handle these 
really complex issues.”

A plan to deconstruct the government is just the beginning of what 
Republicans will expect from their presidential candidate, said Newt 
Gingrich, the former House speaker who championed controversial changes 
to welfare in the 1990s. Releasing it before the primary race heats up 
can give people “time to absorb the new idea, think it through and then 
embrace it.”

“What you’re about to see is a dramatic shift in the landscape of 
solutions away from the Left and toward a kind of creative, governing 
conservatism,” Gingrich (R-Ga.) said.

Former Trump administration officials played a key role in writing the 
chapters on dismantling EPA and DOE.

The plan to gut the Department of Energy was written by Bernard McNamee, 
a former DOE official who Trump appointed to the Federal Energy 
Regulatory Commission. McNamee, who did not have regulatory experience, 
was one of the most overtly political FERC appointees in decades. He was 
a director at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think 
tank that fights climate regulations, and was a senior adviser to Sen. 
Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

McNamee outlines cutting key divisions at DOE, including the Office of 
Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, the Office of Clean Energy 
Demonstrations and the Loan Programs Office. He has called climate 
change a “progressive policy.”

He also calls for cutting funding to DOE’s Grid Deployment Office, in 
part to stop “focusing on grid expansion for the benefit of renewable 
resources or supporting low/carbon generation.” Instead, he calls for 
strengthening grid reliability, which he describes as expanding the use 
of fossil fuels and slowing or stopping the addition of cleaner energy. 
Part of his plan includes a massive expansion of natural gas infrastructure.

“Prevent socializing costs for customers who do not benefit from the 
projects or justifying such cost shifts as advancing vague ‘societal 
benefits’ such as climate change,” McNamee wrote in the report.

McNamee did not respond to requests for comment.

Preventing the expansion of the electric grid would slow down renewable 
energy projects, threatening U.S. climate goals while cooling the 
sector’s economic growth, said Mike O’Boyle, a senior director at Energy 
Innovation and head of its electricity program.

“If we totally step away from the role of the federal government, our 
economy is going to miss out in a big way because the rest of the world 
is moving on climate, so they’re poised to reap the benefits both for 
their energy consumers but also in terms of manufacturing,” he said.

*‘A conservative EPA’*
Mandy Gunasekara, who was the former chief of staff at EPA under Trump, 
wrote a chapter within the plan to move the agency away from its focus 
on climate policy and reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

It outlines eliminating or downsizing agency functions including the 
Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, the Office of 
Enforcement and Compliance Assistance, and the Office of Public 
Engagement and Environmental Education. It also would also relocate 
regional EPA offices and would “downsize by terminating the newest hires 
in low-value programs.”

The overarching theme in remaking federal agencies is to shift power 
away from the federal government and toward states, in an effort to 
diminish regulations.

“The challenge of creating a conservative EPA will be to balance 
justified skepticism toward an agency that has long been amenable to 
being coopted by the Left for political ends against the need to 
implement the agency’s true function: protecting public health and the 
environment in cooperation with states,” Gunasekara wrote.

She declined to comment for this story.

But that increase in state power wouldn’t apply to California, which has 
a history of setting more aggressive environmental standards than those 
of the federal government under a Clean Air Act waiver. The Project 2025 
plan would “ensure that other states can adopt California’s standards 
only for traditional/criteria pollutants, not greenhouse gasses.”

Another key goal is to restructure how EPA uses science, particularly 
research that supports regulations by showing risks to public health 
from industrial pollution. The plan would require scientific studies to 
be “transparent and reproducible,” making it impossible to use key 
public health studies that rely on private data that cannot be disclosed 
to the public.

As part of that effort, one idea is to offer incentives for the public 
“to identify scientific flaws and research misconduct,” which might 
encourage opponents of regulations to target research.
https://www.eenews.net/articles/battle-plan-how-the-far-right-would-dismantle-climate-programs/



/[ get some books ] /
*6.4-Sigma Event: Antarctic Sea Ice Hits Lowest Point Since Official 
Records Began*
ENVIRONMENT
26 July 2023
By CARLY CASSELLA

2023 has gone from bad to worse for Earth's southern ocean.

In February, climate researchers announced that Antarctica's sea ice had 
hit its lowest summer level since satellite records began 45 years ago.

A few months later, in June, during what should be a 'winter growth 
phase', floating sea ice around Antarctica was still struggling to recover.

A time series of sea ice in the southern ocean, put together by climate 
researchers at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 
shows July's coverage is well below where it should be.

Compared to the extent of winter sea ice before 2010, the ocean is now 
missing about 2.6 million square kilometers of ice – almost four times 
the size of Texas.
Prof. Eliot Jacobson
@EliotJacobson
Apologies in advance for not explaining this in any way, but here are 
the daily standard deviations for Antarctic sea ice extent for every 
day, 1989-2023, based on the 1991-2020 mean. Each blue line represents 
the SD's for a full year. Lighter is more recent.

https://twitter.com/EliotJacobson/status/1683535568268050432

Doddridge says the climate crisis is most likely to blame, although how 
it is driving such extreme sea ice melt remains unclear.

For years now, Antarctica's ice has been melting in a way that climate 
models never predicted.

The mismatch makes it clear that scientists do not yet have a detailed 
understanding of how the southern hemisphere's ocean, ice, and 
atmosphere actually interact.

As the global temperature of the atmosphere has warmed from fossil fuel 
emissions, evidence suggests the surface of the southern ocean has 
somewhat cooled, while deeper parts have warmed.

Cooler surface water might sound like a hopeful condition for floating 
sea ice, but after years of a steady increase in ice coverage, 
Antarctica's sea ice suddenly collapsed in 2016.

Why this happened so abruptly is something that climate scientists are 
desperately trying to figure out.

Initial studies suggest that increasingly warm winds in the region might 
be driving the melt.

Our transition into an El Niño has created particularly stormy westerly 
winds across the Southern Ocean over the last few months.

This likely broke up a lot of the new sea ice that usually forms as 
winter sets in. But it can't fully account for the magnitude of missing 
sea ice, Princeton University climate scientist Zachary Labe explains in 
a blog post.

Upwelling of warm waters could also be eating away at the icebergs from 
underneath.

Labe suggests the lack of ice also helped increase surface air 
temperatures, which in turn likely warmed surface waters to create a 
positive feedback loop further preventing ice formation.

If enough sea ice melts around Antarctica, scientists fear it could set 
off further positive feedback loops, as waves and warm wind more easily 
reach the shore.

"It's not just the extent of the ice, but also the duration of the 
coverage," cryospheric scientist Rob Massom, of the Australian Antarctic 
Division, explained to The Guardian.

"If the sea ice is removed, you expose floating ice margins to waves 
that can flex them and increase the probability of those ice shelves 
calving. That then allows more grounded ice into the ocean."

Without more research, scientists are simply unable to predict what will 
become of the southern ocean's sea ice in the years to come.

As the southern ocean helps drive Earth's entire ocean circulation, it 
seems like something we should get on top of, fast.

"It may be that next winter it comes back," Doddridge told the ABC.

"We can hope. I don't know that it will."

https://www.sciencealert.com/6-4-sigma-event-antarctic-sea-ice-hits-lowest-point-since-official-records-began
https://twitter.com/EliotJacobson/status/1683535568268050432



/[The news archive - looking back at early Barack Obama ]/
/*July 27, 2004 */
July 27, 2004: Illinois state senator and US Senate candidate Barack 
Obama delivers a stirring speech at the Democratic National Convention 
in Boston—one that curiously doesn't mention climate change or the 
environment, save for his observation that “[Democratic presidential 
candidate] John Kerry believes in energy independence, so we aren't held 
hostage to the profits of oil companies or the sabotage of foreign oil 
fields."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWynt87PaJ0

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19751-2004Jul27.html


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