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<p><i><font size="+1"><b>June 30, 2021</b></font></i></p>
[the counting begins]<br>
<b>Blackouts in US Northwest due to heat wave, deaths reported</b><br>
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.<br>
<br>
Officials said a dozen deaths in Washington and Oregon may be tied
to the intense heat that began late last week.<br>
- -<br>
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.<br>
<br>
“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.”<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<p><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://apnews.com/article/climate-change-government-and-politics-business-environment-and-nature-6a66be20ed86ad18ed131156c9f7a517">https://apnews.com/article/climate-change-government-and-politics-business-environment-and-nature-6a66be20ed86ad18ed131156c9f7a517</a></p>
<p><br>
</p>
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[Journalism promises to cover crimes against the future]<br>
<b>Climate crimes: a new series investigating big oil’s role in the
climate crisis</b><br>
A new Guardian series examines attempts to hold the fossil-fuel
industry accountable for the havoc they have created<br>
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?<br>
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.<br>
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...<br>
- -<br>
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?<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/29/climate-crimes-about-this-series">https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/29/climate-crimes-about-this-series</a><br>
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</p>
<p><br>
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[Reuters]<br>
<b>Young activists say 'coward' Biden must fight harder on climate
change</b><br>
Merdie Nzanga<br>
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...<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/young-activists-say-coward-biden-must-fight-harder-climate-change-2021-06-29/">https://www.reuters.com/world/us/young-activists-say-coward-biden-must-fight-harder-climate-change-2021-06-29/</a><br>
<p><br>
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<p><br>
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[Opinion published in NYTimes]<br>
<b>That Heat Dome? Yeah, It’s Climate Change.</b><br>
By Michael E. Mann and Susan Joy Hassol<br>
June 29, 2021...<br>
...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.<br>
- -<br>
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...<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/29/opinion/heat-dome-climate-change.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/29/opinion/heat-dome-climate-change.html</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[Florida local paper in news scoop]<br>
<b>Could the increasing assault of king tides and sea level rise
have contributed to Miami condo collapse?</b><br>
Kimberly Miller - - Palm Beach Post - June 25, 2021<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
“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.”<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
<b>The invisible machinations that can weaken a building’s integrity</b><br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
“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.”<br>
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.<br>
<br>
At the same time global sea-level rise is about 1 inch every eight
years.<br>
<br>
<b>Sea-level rise in South Florida</b><br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
“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.”<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
The report notes the Champlain only as a "12-story building." <br>
<br>
“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.”<br>
<b><br>
</b><b>Investigation into collapse could take months</b><br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
“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.”<br>
<br>
At 40 years old, the building was undergoing a required
recertification.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
“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.”<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
Azizinamini agreed. <br>
<br>
"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." <br>
<br>
Azizinamini said the investigation could take months with everything
from corrosion to nearby construction analyzed for its potential
role in the devastation. <br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:Kmiller@pbpost.com">Kmiller@pbpost.com</a><br>
@Kmillerweather<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/weather/2021/06/25/could-climate-change-have-contributed-surfside-condo-collapse/7779816002/">https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/weather/2021/06/25/could-climate-change-have-contributed-surfside-condo-collapse/7779816002/</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[water plants or sell the water]<br>
<b>It’s Some of America’s Richest Farmland. But What Is It Without
Water?</b><br>
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.<br>
By Somini Sengupta - June 29, 2021<br>
<br>
ORDBEND, Calif. — In America’s fruit and nut basket, water is now
the most precious crop of all.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
“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.”...<br>
- -<br>
<b>From Almond Trees to Solar Arrays</b><br>
Stuart Woolf embodies the changing landscape of the San Joaquin
Valley.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
“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.”<br>
<br>
Somini Sengupta is an international climate correspondent<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/28/climate/california-drought-farming.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/28/climate/california-drought-farming.html</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
<br>
[The news archive - looking back]<br>
<font size="+1"><b>On this day in the history of global warming June
30, 2002</b></font><br>
<p>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.<br>
</p>
<blockquote>
<p><b>Unhealthy Air</b><br>
By Jim Jeffords <br>
June 30, 2002<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/30/opinion/unhealthy-air.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/30/opinion/unhealthy-air.html</a> </p>
<br>
<p>/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/</p>
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