from the inimitable rjs:
The Teflon Toxin: DuPont and the Chemistry of Deception - Called a “surfactant” because it reduces the surface tension of water, the slippery, stable compound was eventually used in hundreds of products, including Gore-Tex and other waterproof clothing; coatings for eye glasses and tennis rackets; stain-proof coatings for carpets and furniture; fire-fighting foam; fast food wrappers; microwave popcorn bags; bicycle lubricants; satellite components; ski wax; communications cables; and pizza boxes. Concerns about the safety of Teflon, C8, and other long-chain perfluorinated chemicals first came to wide public attention more than a decade ago, but the story of DuPont’s long involvement with C8 has never been fully told. Over the past 15 years, as lawyers have been waging an epic legal battle — culminating as the first of approximately 3,500 personal injury claims comes to trial in September — a long trail of documents has emerged that casts new light on C8, DuPont, and the fitful attempts of the Environmental Protection Agency to deal with a threat to public health. This story is based on many of those documents, which until they were entered into evidence for these trials had been hidden away in DuPont’s files. Among them are write-ups of experiments on rats, dogs, and rabbits showing that C8 was associated with a wide range of health problems that sometimes killed the lab animals. Many thousands of pages of expert testimony and depositions have been prepared by attorneys for the plaintiffs. And through the process of legal discovery they have uncovered hundreds of internal communications revealing that DuPont employees for many years suspected that C8 was harmful and yet continued to use it, putting the company’s workers and the people who lived near its plants at risk.
Infectious Diseases Like It Hot: How Climate Change Helps Cholera and Salmonella Outbreaks - Every year, about one million Americans and tens of millions of people worldwide suffer the debilitating effects of salmonella poisoning, episodes sometimes serious enough for hospitalization. Cholera, while rare in the United States, has been increasing steadily in other countries for the last decade, with up to 5 million cases annually, and poses a real threat after natural disasters. For the two bacteria that cause these gastrointestinal diseases, and possibly for other infectious agents like malaria, global warming presents a real opportunity. They like it hot.In recent years, atmospheric climate change has prompted a growing number of extreme weather events, including heat waves, prolonged drought, heavy precipitation, and superstorms, which, in turn, have encouraged shifts in the delicate balance of the planet’s ecosystems. These weather events, which already kill tens of thousands of people annually, also indirectly encourage the spread of infections when food and water become contaminated, a scenario that almost certainly will increase the prevalence of such infections as salmonella and cholera. Moreover, human migration and the loss of health infrastructure, as well as malnutrition caused by food insecurity, could make humans more susceptible to infections. All of these could exacerbate the spread of infectious diseases if global warming continues unabated.
IOC rules out viral testing of Rio's Olympic waters: (AP) — The International Olympic Committee ruled out conducting viral tests of Rio de Janeiro's sewage-laden waterways ahead of the 2016 games, a top official said Wednesday, despite an Associated Press study showing dangerously high levels of disease-causing viruses at all aquatic venues, with experts saying athletes are almost certain to be exposed to pathogens. Speaking at a news conference dominated by questions about Rio's sewage pollution problem, Olympic Games Executive Director Christophe Dubi said the IOC will be sticking to World Health Organization guidelines recommending only bacterial testing. The AP's independent analysis of water quality showed high levels of viruses and, in some cases, bacteria from human sewage in all of Rio's Olympic and Paralympic water venues, including the Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon, where rowing will take place, the Guanabara Bay, where the sailing competition are to be held, and at Copacabana Beach where distance swimming events will take place. In two separate emailed statements following the AP's July 30 publication about its study, the World Health Organization said it was advising the International Olympic Committee "to widen the scientific base of indicators to include viruses." However, in an emailed statement Monday, the organization backpedaled and said that "WHO has not and will not issue an 'official recommendation' on viral testing."
Toxic blue-green algae pose increasing threat to nation's drinking, recreational water - A report concludes that blooms of toxic cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, are a poorly monitored and underappreciated risk to recreational and drinking water quality in the United States, and may increasingly pose a global health threat. Several factors are contributing to the concern. Temperatures and carbon dioxide levels have risen, many rivers have been dammed worldwide, and wastewater nutrients or agricultural fertilizers in various situations can cause problems in rivers, lakes and reservoirs. No testing for cyanobacteria is mandated by state or federal drinking water regulators, according to scientists from Oregon State University, nor is reporting required of disease outbreaks associated with algal blooms. But changes in climate and land use, and even increasing toxicity of the bacteria themselves, may force greater attention to this issue in the future, the researchers said. An analysis outlining the broad scope of the problem has been published in Current Environmental Health Reports, by scientists from OSU and the University of North Carolina. The work was supported by the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Science Foundation. The researchers also noted that problems with these toxins reach their peak during the heat of summer - as they are doing right now.
New Tick Disease on the Rise: There’s a new tick disease that seems to be spreading throughout the northeastern states, and if it follows the path of Lyme disease, it may become prominent everywhere before long. Borrelia miyamotoi wasn’t even known before 2013, but the number of devastating infections borne by ticks seems to have no end. Researchers call the infection BMD for short, and it is critical to be aware of because almost all cases in a recent study were contracted in July and August, when Lyme disease isn’t as prevalent. That’s because BMD is carried by larval-stage ticks that have been infected by their mothers. Lyme is contracted by ticks at a later stage in life, often from contact with rodents and deer. Larval-stage ticks were not previously thought to carry diseases. BMD is also important to know about now because if you visit a physician after a tick bite and have severe headache and/or flu-like symptoms, a Lyme test won’t reveal the presence of the disease, which can be even more devastating left untreated than Lyme. Testing for BMD may not reveal its presence until it has been in your body for at least five days.A case series report was published online in June in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine. Patients were often very ill, with an acute headache, flu-like symptoms, rash, fever and chills. About a fourth of them ended up in hospitals. They often mimicked having a tick-borne disease called anaplasmosis. There is no specific test for BMD, but it can be detected using polymerase chain reaction techniques looking for the specific DNA of the disease.
Beekeepers try to keep bees — and livelihoods — from going extinct - Over the past decade, billions of bees have been lost to colony collapse disorder, an umbrella term for factors thought to be killing honeybees in droves and threatening the nation’s food supply. Amid the die-off, beekeepers have been going to extraordinary lengths to save both their bees and their livelihoods. That effort may finally be paying off. New data from the Agriculture Department show the number of managed honeybee colonies is on the rise, climbing to 2.7 million nationally in 2014, the highest in 20 years. Bees are still dying at unacceptable rates, especially in Florida, Oklahoma and several states bordering the Great Lakes, according to the Bee Informed Partnership, a research collaborative supported by the USDA. Last month, Ohio State University’s Honey Bee Update noted that losses among the state’s beekeepers over the past winter were as high as 80 percent. Oregon has taken less of a hit. Researchers say innovative beekeepers will be critical to helping bees bounce back. “People ask me, ‘The bees are going to be extinct soon?’ ” said Ramesh Sagili, principal investigator at the Oregon State University Honey Bee Lab. “I’m not worried about bees being extinct here. I’m worried about beekeepers being extinct.”
Scotland Bans the Growing of Genetically Modified Crops --In an effort to protect its “clean, green status,” Scotland will prohibit the growing of genetically modified (GM) crops. Rural Affairs Secretary Richard Lochhead (the country’s minister for the environment, food and rural affairs) said in a statement on Sunday that Scotland is taking advantage of new European Union rules that allow its member countries to opt out of growing EU-authorized GM crops, including GM-maize (corn) and six other GM crops that are awaiting authorization. “Scotland is known around the world for our beautiful natural environment—and banning growing genetically modified crops will protect and further enhance our clean, green status,” Lochhead said. “There is no evidence of significant demand for GM products by Scottish consumers and I am concerned that allowing GM crops to be grown in Scotland would damage our clean and green brand, thereby gambling with the future of our £14 billion food and drink sector.” GM crops (also known as GMOs) are living organisms whose genetic material has been artificially altered in labs, making it resistant against pests, herbicides, pesticides and even browning in apples. Despite claims from manufacturers and many in the scientific community that these products are safe and would help feed the world’s growing population, the topic is fraught with contention due to environmental and health concerns.
How the Midwest’s Corn Farms Are Cooking the Planet -- I've been thinking a lot recently about how fertilizer from the Midwest's big corn farms seeps into streams and causes trouble—fouling water supplies in Columbus, Toledo, Des Moines, and 60 other towns in Iowa, and generating a Connecticut-sized dead zone at the heart of the continental United States' most productive fishery, the Gulf of Mexico. But there's another way the Corn Belt's fertilizer habit damages a common resource: by releasing nitrous oxide (N2O), a greenhouse gas with nearly 300 times the heat-trapping power of carbon dioxide. Scientists had been undercounting nitrous oxide emission in the Corn Belt by about 25 gigagrams annually—the equivalent of about 1.6 million cars on the road. It turns out that the region's farms are likely generating much more nitrous oxide than scientists previously thought, according to a new peer-reviewed study by a team of researchers from the University of Minnesota, Yale, and the US Department of Agriculture. Scientists had assumed that most nitrous oxide emissions from farming occurred at the soil level—some of the nitrogen fertilizer applied onto farmland vaporizes into nitrous oxide. But as citizens of Des Moines, Columbus, and the Gulf coast know well, nitrogen fertilizer doesn't stay in soil; a portion of it leaches into streams. And some of that escaped nitrogen, too, transforms into nitrous oxide.To measure how much, the team, led by University of Minnesota researcher Pete Turner measured N2O emissions at 19 streams over a two-year period in ag-intensive southeastern Minnesota. They found that standard greenhouse gas emission measures, such as those used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), have been undercounting these "riverine" emission sources by a factor of nine; and overall N2O emissions from the area are underestimated by about 40 percent.
A Once-Flourishing Pima Cotton Industry Withers in an Arid California - Up and down the San Joaquin Valley, vast fields that once grew cotton lie fallow, remnants of a boom and bust fueled by a worldwide demand for premium T-shirts and linens.Farmers here have fallowed acres of Pima cotton by the thousands, threatening the region’s unlikely reign as the world’s biggest producer of the specialty cotton, also called Supima. Environmentalists say that farmers should never have bet so heavily on a thirsty cash crop in this dry swath of central California — particularly a crop used for luxury clothing, as opposed to food. As recently as 2011, American farmers planted a near-record 306,000 acres of Pima cotton, almost all of that in the San Joaquin Valley, consuming an estimated 249 billion gallons of water. That’s enough to meet the average yearly water needs of about 1.9 million households. But now, with reservoirs nearly dry, farmers in California’s hardest-hit districts have no surface water to irrigate their crops. At the same time, cotton prices have slumped, hurt by a global glut. Farmers may harvest as little as 100,000 acres of Pima cotton in California this year, according to the latest forecasts.
In California, Millions of ‘Shade Balls’ Combat a Nagging Drought - Facing a long-term water crisis, officials concerned with preserving a reservoir in Los Angeles hatched a plan: They would combat four years of drought with 96 million plastic balls.On Monday, Mayor Eric Garcetti said that the dark balls would help block sunlight and UV rays that promote algae growth, which would help keep the city’s drinking water safe. Officials also said the balls would help slow the rate of evaporation, which drains the water supply of about 300 million gallons a year. The balls cost $0.36 each and are part of a $34.5 million initiative to protect the water supply. In a video posted on Monday to Facebook,, an official is heard saying, “2, 1 … Shade balls away!” A moment later, the remaining balls skitter down a slope, heading for the reservoir.The Los Angeles Reservoir, which holds 3.3 billion gallons, or enough water to supply the city for up to three weeks, joins three other reservoirs already covered in the shade balls, officials said. They are also being used in nearby areas. In the video below, officials from the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District released a batch of the balls into a reservoir in June.
Who’s Behind the 96 Million ‘Shade Balls’ That Just Rolled Into L.A.’s Reservoirs? -- The shade balls of Los Angeles are 4 inches in diameter, hollow, polyethylene orbs made by XavierC, of Glendora, Calif.; Artisan Screen Process, of Azuza, Calif.; and Orange Products, of Allentown, Penn. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has now dumped 96 million balls into local reservoirs to reduce evaporation and block sunlight from encouraging algae growth and toxic chemical reactions. The balls are coated with a chemical that blocks ultraviolet light and helps the spheres last as long as 25 years. Las Virgenes, north of L.A., now uses shade balls, too.These are not your average Chuck E. Cheese’s ball-pit numbers. They’re hermetically sealed, with water inside them as ballast, lest when the wind picks up “they’ll blow out, and you’ll be chasing them down the road,” says Sydney Chase, president of XavierC. You could drink the ballast—don’t want nonpotable water leaking into the reservoirs. Chase is a 30-year veteran of manufacturing who left a $300,000 job to start XavierC. She sold her house to raise the capital to seed the company. “Either I’m going to end up under an overpass, or this is going to take off,” she recalls thinking. Chase calls her product “conservation balls,” because they can help keep reservoirs intact and clean. They’re also seeing use on the tailing ponds where miners store contaminated water, to keep birds away from toxic agents, and in wastewater treatment facilities, to keep odors at bay. They cost about 36¢ each to make. Chase declined to talk about XavierC’s financial performance.
California Farmers Fight Drought By Using More Water -- Perhaps you think the human condition could not be more absurd. If you think it could not be worse, I offer you the NPR story The Twisty Logic Of The Drought: Grow Thirsty Crops To Dig Deeper Wells. We've all heard reports about how California is running out of water, but there is water in California, tons of it deep underground in the Central Valley aquifer, the big underground pool that everyone shares. And there's a race on to get what's left. Mark Watte is a farmer in Tulare, Calif. We're driving across his 3,000 acres of beautiful cotton and black-eyed peas and corn. Watte is a very organized guy. There is a lot to do these days. Watte relies on the Central Valley aquifer to water his crops. And the water level in the aquifer is dropping 10 feet a week in some places. This is a pump that's - it should be producing water. It's not. Let's see if there's any water in it. Watte picks up a rock and tosses it down the pipe. Oh, was that - was there water? That was water, yeah. So there's water down there, but the pump that was here wouldn't reach that water anymore. We have to deepen it. Watte is putting in eight new wells - total cost - almost $2 million. He is locked in an expensive race in the Central Valley to see who can afford to drill deep enough to get to the precious water in the aquifer. A lot of people have already lost this race, like Karen Hendrickson. It's been a year. Hendrickson lives in Porterville, Calif., 30 minutes west of Mark Watte's farms. People on the east side of town have no water. They rely on relief stations like this one in the parking lot of a church. It has portable showers and sinks and hands out bottles of drinking water.
How California Is Winning the Drought - For California, there hasn’t ever been a summer quite like the summer of 2015. The state and its 39 million residents are about to enter the fifth year of a drought. It has been the driest four-year period in California history — and the hottest, too.Yet by almost every measure except precipitation, California is doing fine. Not just fine: California is doing fabulously.In 2014, the state’s economy grew 27 percent faster than the country’s economy as a whole — the state has grown faster than the nation every year of the drought.California has won back every job lost in the Great Recession and set new employment records. In the past year, California created 462,000 jobs — nearly 9,000 a week. No other state came close.The drought has inspired no Dust Bowl-style exodus. California’s population has grown faster even as the drought has deepened.More than half the fruits and vegetables grown in the United States come from California farms, and last year, the third growing season of the drought, both farm employment and farm revenue increased slightly.Amid all the nervous news, the most important California drought story is the one we aren’t noticing. California is weathering the drought with remarkable resilience, because the state has been getting ready for this drought for the past 20 years.
California wildfire grows as crews work to protect communities - Reuters: A wildfire running rampant through drought-parched vegetation in northern California grew by several thousand acres overnight into Wednesday, as firefighters worked to stop the flames from spreading toward communities. The so-called Jerusalem Fire, which was sparked on Sunday, has grown to cover 16,500 acres (6,677 hectares) of dry and rural ranch land north of Napa Valley wine country and is only 6 percent contained, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said. The fire has displaced about 150 people and threatens at least 50 more houses and ranches, department spokesman Steve Swindle said. He said that while the burn area is sparsely populated, firefighters were working to keep flames from spreading south and threatening the communities around Lake Berryessa. Overnight, firefighters merged part of the fire's northeastern edge with a southwestern stretch of a behemoth 69,636-acre (28,180 hectare) blaze nearby known as the Rocky Fire, as a way of burning through combustible vegetation, Swindle said. "There is a lot of unburned fuel between those two fires," he said. Letting the vegetation burn through between the two fires will create a safe zone, Swindle said.
As California’s Wildfires Continue To Grow, Inmates Take On Much Of The Work - Northern California is burning: the Rocky Fire has charred nearly 70,000 acres west of Clearlake, while the Jerusalem Fire has grown to more than 14,000 acres, forcing the evacuation of 150 homes near Napa. The two fires are emblematic of a season that has been marked by a seemingly endless succession of fires,stoked by an unprecedented drought that has turned the California countryside into a tinder box of dry and dying vegetation. But the fires are also emblematic of something else: the state’s dependence on inmates to help battle wildfires wherever they occur. Since the 1940s, California has depended on the cheap labor of volunteer inmates to help control wildfires — it boasts the largest inmate firefighting program in the country, with around 4,000 inmate firefighters. But just as climate change is threatening longer, more extreme fire seasons, the state is looking at ways to cut back its unconstitutionally overcrowded prison populations. That leaves state officials in a peculiar position — will prison reforms drain the state of its cheap fire fighting labor, just when climate change means it’ll need it most? Fire protection in California is hugely dependent on the inmate firefighter program, run jointly by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire). In total, the state has about 10,000 firefighters on the ground combating wildfire — which means that almost half of the firefighters in California are inmate firefighters. Unlike civilian volunteer firefighters with Cal Fire, who make minimum wage for their work ($9 an hour in California), inmates are paid $1 an hour when they are on the lines fighting fires. When they’re not actually battling fires, but are working in camp or training, the prisoners make anywhere from $1.45 to $3.90 a day. That’s paltry pay by civilian standards, but Cessa told ThinkProgress that “it’s good money for prison standards.”
Drought Draws Natural Disaster Declaration From Feds -- Drought across the region prompted the U.S. Department of Agriculture to designate counties in Idaho, eastern Washington and Oregon, and even parts of Montana, as natural disaster areas. In a release, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said he and President Obama want to ensure that “agriculture remains a bright spot in the nation’s economy” despite the drought. The natural disaster declaration gives farmers and ranchers access to low interest emergency loans. The payments will help cover agricultural losses associated with the drought. Farmers and rancher have eight months to apply for the program. In February, similar drought declarations were made in four of Oregon’s southernmost counties along with most of California.
In Puerto Rico, Water Has Been Cut Off - When it comes to droughts in the U.S., California makes all the news. But the territory right now where the drought is worse—and where the people are suffering most—is Puerto Rico. I know, because I’m on a 4-day working vacation in the capital city of San Juan, and have witnessed the subsequent water shortages and cutoffs. The island’s rain deficits have occurred since 2013, but got really bad starting in March, when El Nino’s currents produced a mild hurricane season. This has continued throughout the summer, with San Juan receiving only 4 centimeters of rain during July, normally a wet month, and the Carraizo reservoir receiving 20 inches less than is normal for this time of year. As a result, over half of Puerto Rico is suffering severe drought, and the drought for over a quarter of this territory is extreme. The government, with its $73 billion debt and recent bond default, has made the problem of drying rivers, lakes, and reservoirs worse through neglect. The inadequate water capacity results from not dredging existing reservoirs or building new dams, and from aging infrastructure that leaks water. As a result, Boricuas are suffering, with over 400,000 people going several months without regular water. Residents have been told not to make frivolous use of water—such as for car washing, personal pools, or sidewalk cleaning—and oftentimes they can’t use it for basic necessities like showers and flushing toilets. This overwhelmingly includes those in the San Juan metropolitan area, where the drought has been the worst.
El Niño May Bring Record Heat, and Rain for California - This year’s El Niño weather pattern could be the most powerful on record, federal forecasters said, while warning that the effects of the weather system are never certain. “We’re predicting this El Niño could be among the strongest El Niños in the historical record,” said Mike Halpert, the deputy director of the Climate Prediction Center for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in a teleconference with reporters. This year’s El Niño is already the second strongest for this time of year in more than 60 years of record-keeping, he said. El Niño, which begins with warmer-than-usual water temperatures in the Eastern Pacific, can affect weather around the world — in the United States, it can bring heavy winter precipitation in California and across the South. El Niño events have also been linked to droughts in Australia and India, more numerous hurricanes in the Pacific Ocean (but fewer in the Atlantic), and a warmer planet over all. The current El Niño, along with unusual warming in the Northern Pacific, will produce what is “very likely to be the warmest year on record,” Daniel Swain, a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford who runs the respected California Weather Blog, said in an interview. The federal forecasters announced a greater than 90 percent chance that El Niño would continue all winter for the Northern Hemisphere. The likelihood that the effects will last into early spring is 85 percent, up from last month’s prediction of 80 percent.
How This El Niño Is And Isn’t Like 1997 -- It was the winter of 1997-1998 when the granddaddy of El Niños — the one by which all other El Niños are judged — vaulted the climate term to household name status. Basically, it was the “polar vortex” of the late ‘90s. So it’s no wonder that it is the touchstone event that people think of when they hear that name. And naturally, as the current El Niño event has gained steam, the comparisons to 1997 have been increasingly bandied about. The most recent came this week in the form of an image from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that compares satellite shots of warm Pacific Ocean waters — a hallmark of El Niño — from this June to November 1997, when that El Niño hit its peak. On the one hand, the two are comparable given that 1997 was the strongest El Niño on record and, at the moment, the best science indicates that the current event could match or rival that one — at least in terms of ocean temperatures. But on the other hand, each El Niño event is its own beast, the product of conditions in the ocean and atmosphere, of climate and weather that are unique in that particular place and time. In the, albeit very short, modern record of El Niños, “we cannot find a single El Niño event that tracked like another El Niño event,” Michelle L’Heureux, a forecaster with NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, said. Forecasters like L’Heureux cringe at comparisons because there’s no guarantee the impacts of one El Niño will be just like that of a previous one, even if they look broadly similar. And it’s those impacts — like potential rains in drought-stricken California — that most really care about. El Niño isa shift in the background state of the climate brought about by the sloshing of warm ocean water from its normal home in the western tropical Pacific over to the east. That redistribution affects how and where ocean heat is emitted into the atmosphere, which can alter the normal patterns of winds and stormy weather in the region.
A Powerful El Niño in 2015 Threatens a Massive Coral Reef Die-off - Key Points:
A powerful El Niño event continues to strengthen in the Pacific Ocean. During El Niño the poleward transport of warm surface water out of the tropics slows down dramatically and generally results in anomalous short-term heating of the tropical ocean - home to the world's coral reefs).
Because of the long-term warming of the oceans by industrial emission of greenhouse gases, the temporary surge in tropical sea surface temperatures associated with El Niño now threatens large-scale coral bleaching episodes - times when the maximum summer water temperatures become so warm that coral die in large numbers.
The powerful El Niño now forming, combined with the ongoing ocean warming, suggests that we are likely to see a mass coral bleaching episode that approaches, or exceeds, the worldwide bleaching that came with the Super El Niño years of 1982/1983 and 1997/1998. The 1997/1998 Super El Niño saw 16% of the world's coral bleach, the largest die-off ever observed, and some of this coral has never recovered.
Panama Canal to limit ship draft due to drought - BBC News: The Panama Canal Authority says it will temporarily cut the draft of ships allowed through because of drought caused by El Nino. From 8 September, the maximum draft - or depth in the water - will be cut to 39 ft. (11.89 m), which may affect up to 20% of traffic. A similar restriction was imposed for the same reason in 1998. The authorities say a further cut could be imposed on 16 September if the situation does not improve. The authority has taken the action because water levels in the Gatun and Alhajuela lakes has reduced as a result of the El Nino weather phenomenon. The current draft limit is 39.5 ft., which will be cut to 39 ft. on 8 September and then potentially to 38.5 ft. on 16 September. Shipping companies had been warned the cuts could be coming.
Australians Survived a 13-Year Drought by Going Low-Tech - If you think California’s four-year drought is apocalyptic, try 13 years. That’s how long southeastern Australia suffered through bone-dry times. But it survived. When the so-called Millennium Drought ended in 2009, residents of Melbourne, Australia’s second-largest city, were using half the amount of water they had when it began. A group of researchers from the University of California, Irvine, set out to investigate how Melbourne, a city of 4.3 million people, dramatically cut water consumption, and whether the city’s experience might hold lessons for California and other drought-stricken regions. The short answer? Salvation came from a $2,000 rainwater tank rather than a $6 billion desalinization plant. As the Millennium Drought dragged on, authorities approved the construction of costly infrastructure projects similar to those now being considered in California, including that expensive desalinization plant. But the researchers found that conservation and recycling were the keys that got Melbourne through year after rainless year.
Texas power demand breaks record again in heat wave | Reuters: The Texas power grid operator said electric demand hit another record high on Monday as consumers cranked up their air conditioners to escape a brutal heat wave. Demand reached a record 69,783 megawatts on Monday, topping the previous records of 68,912 MW set on Aug. 6 and 68,459 MW on Aug. 5, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) said in a statement. ERCOT is the grid operator for most of the state. Before the latest heat wave, the grid's previous peak demand was 68,305 MW set on Aug. 3, 2011. One MW is enough to power about 200 homes during periods of peak demand. "Demand is expected to remain high until temperatures begin to break at the end of the week," said Dan Woodfin, ERCOT director of System Operations. Temperatures in Houston, the biggest city in Texas, have topped 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 Celsius) since Sunday and were expected to remain at or around triple digits Fahrenheit through Saturday, Aug. 15, according to weather forecaster AccuWeather.com. "Our focus continues to be on ensuring we maintain overall reliability and protect the grid, while having sufficient generation in place to meet demand," he said.
Central and eastern Europe simmering in historic heat wave --Central and eastern Europe are in the grips of a record-breaking heat wave, that may persist for at least another week to ten days. A number of locations in Germany set all-time highs last Friday and more records are likely to fall over the coming days, particularly in eastern Europe. The heat wave commenced late last week. On Friday, Weather Underground meteorologist Bob Henson reported Berlin was among more than 100 towns and cities in Germany that tied or broke all-time record highs. Berlin hit 102 degrees (38.9 Celsius) breaking its previous hottest temperature of 101.5 degrees (38.6 Celsius). On Saturday the core of the heat shifted east into Poland, where Warsaw registered its hottest August temperature ever recorded of 97.9 degrees, passing the previous record of 97.5 degrees (36.4 Celsius), AccuWeather reported. Through today, Warsaw has reached at least 90 degrees (32 Celsius) on seven straight days, AccuWeather said. A massive heat dome or upper level ridge of high pressure – which is more or less stationary over central and eastern Europe – is responsible for the spell of scorching heat. Its intensity may wane some during the middle of the week before reloading next weekend. (see graphics)
Deadly Heat Waves Sweep the Globe --This summer is undoubtedly one for the record books. Brutal heat has literally melted roads, ignited forest fires and affected millions around the planet. Extreme weather has scorched the Middle East, Asia, Europe and the U.S, as weather experts predict that this year will surpass last year as the hottest in recorded history. Death tolls are currently climbing in Egypt as temperatures soar to 114 degrees Fahrenheit. The Associated Press reported that more than 60 people—mostly elderly—have died from the heat and high humidity. An additional 581 people have been hospitalized for heat exhaustion. Earlier this week, Iran hit a sweltering 164 degrees—just a few degrees shy of the highest ever record heat index. Pakistan’s devastating heat wave in June killed 1,233 and hospitalized more than 1,900 due to dehydration, heat stroke and other heat-related illnesses. In neighboring India, 2,500 people succumbed to heat a month earlier. Japan is experiencing heat-related deaths in 29 out of its 47 prefectures, with Tokyo currently experiencing an “unprecedented” streak of temperatures over 95 degrees, according to Weather.com. Elsewhere in Asia, Chinese weather authorities have issued heat wave alerts as some parts of the country experienced temperatures in the triple digits. “This July 2015 was the warmest July on record for Spain, Italy, Switzerland and Austria,” Dr. Jeff Masters, Weather Underground’s director of meteorology, told the website.Eastern Europe is also seeing temperatures up to the mid-90s, when highs around 75 are more common this time of year, AccuWeather wrote. And Poland is also experiencing the mass extinction of one very unsuspecting victim: IKEA meatballs. Although summer is coming to an end, many parts of the U.S. will still be baking in the sun’s rays. Some Los Angelenos, for instance, will feel temperatures in the 100s this week, the Los Angeles Times reported, about 10 degrees above average for this time of year.
Hottest July On Record Keeps 2015 On Track To Crush 2014 For Hottest Year --NASA reports this was the hottest July on record. So we are now in “bet the mortgage” territory that 2015 will be the hottest year in NASA’s 125-year temperature record. In fact, 2015 is likely to crush the previous record — 2014 — probably by a wide margin, especially since one of the strongest El Niños in 50 years is adding to the strong underlying global warming trend. Climate expert Dr. John Abraham updated this NASA chart to show how the first seven months of 2015 compares to the annual temperatures of previous years: The gap between 2015 and all other years in that chart will grow since NOAA and many others project the current El Niño will keep growing stronger for many months. The soaring ocean temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, which are characteristic of an El Niño, just keep climbing. As the journal Nature reports, this El Niño “could be [the] strongest on record.” It is projected to peak in the winter and last into the spring of 2016. If the 2015-2016 El Niño does rival the 1997-1998 super El Niño, then just as 1998 crushed 1997 temperatures, we may see 2016 beat all the records set in 2015.
2015 global temperatures are right in line with climate model predictions - In an earlier post, I wrote about some research that compared ocean temperature measurements to climate model predictions. It turns out, the models have done a great job estimating the increase in ocean heat although they have slightly under-predicted the change. What about other components of the Earth’s climate? For instance, how have the models done at predicting the changes in air temperatures? With recent data now available, we can make an assessment. I communicated with NASA GISS director Dr. Gavin Schmidt, who provided the following data. The graph shows the latest computer model simulations (from the CMIP project), which were used as input to the IPCC, along with five different temperature datasets. The comparison to be made is of the heavy dashed line (annotated in the graph just below the solid black line) and the colored lines. The heavy dashed line is the average predicted temperature including updated influences from a decrease in solar energy, human emitted heat-reflecting particles, and volcanic effects. The dashed line is slightly above the colored markers in recent years, but the results are quite close. Furthermore, this year’s temperature to date is running hotter than 2014. To date, 2015 is almost exactly at the predicted mean value from the models. Importantly, the measured temperatures are well within the spread of the model predictions.
Extreme Heat Leads To Deaths, Protests In The Middle East -- At least 21 people have died and 66 more have been hospitalized as a major heat wave engulfs Egypt and much of the rest of the Middle East. High humidity levels and temperatures as high as 116.6°F made conditions deadly for Egyptians in Cairo, Marsa Matruh province, and Qena province. All of those who died were over 60,according to Al Jazeera — an age group that’s among the most vulnerable to heat waves. “There is a big rise in temperature compared with previous years. But the problem is the humidity which is affecting people more,” health ministry spokesman Hossam Abdel Ghaffar told Al Jazeera. “Long exposure under the sun is a killer.” Egypt isn’t the only country suffering from extreme heat in recent weeks. Last month, higher than average temperatures also hit Turkey, and 100 people who tried to escape the heat by swimming in pools and lakes ended up drowning. In Basra, Iraq, temperatures this week are supposed to stay steady around 123°F, the Guardian reports. Temperatures in the country are so high that on Thursday, the Iraqi government implemented a four-day holiday so that residents wouldn’t have to go to work in the heat. Last week, Iraqi citizens protested power outages that have made dealing with the extreme heat more difficult — in some regions, the BBC reports, it’s common to only have power for a few hours each day. “All of the people we spoke to here say they want to see an end to rampant corruption, they want the return of basic services, they want electricity, they want to have air conditioning at a time when Iraq is experiencing a blazingly hot record heatwave and they want to have clean water,”
Why More Conflict Is Inevitable In The Middle East - We all know how sectarian, religious and political differences have thrown many Middle Eastern countries into chaos and armed conflict. But there is a deeper factor at play which deserves greater recognition: severe water scarcity. This scarcity will not be addressed overnight, no matter who ends up prevailing in those conflicts. As such, the region will very likely continue to suffer from significant turmoil for many years to come. Using satellite data, scientists from the University of California (Irvine), NASA and the National Center for Atmospheric Research found that large parts of the arid Middle East region saw a dramatic loss of freshwater reserves over a seven-year period starting in 2003. This is shown in the following map: Parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran along the Tigris and Euphrates river basins lost some 144 cubic kilometers of total stored freshwater – almost the total amount of water in the Dead Sea. The scientists attributed the majority of this loss to pumping from underground reservoirs. Indeed, Syria and Iraq are facing severe water availability issues, compounded by the fact that the majority of their renewable water resources comes from other countries. As such, the Euphrates River – which has sustained Mesopotamian civilization from its very start – is critically important for them. However, rampant demand, wasteful government policies, intensive agriculture, pesticides and industrial use have all substantially reduced both the quality and the quantity of water available. According to a Chatham House study, this over-exploitation has curtailed the flow of the Euphrates from Turkey to downstream countries by at least 40% since 1972.
Study Links Polluted Air in China to 1.6 Million Deaths a Year - Outdoor air pollution contributes to the deaths of an estimated 1.6 million people in China every year, or about 4,400 people a day, according to a newly released scientific paper.The paper maps the geographic sources of China’s toxic air and concludes that much of the smog that routinely shrouds Beijing comes from emissions in a distant industrial zone, a finding that may complicate the government’s efforts to clean up the capital city’s air in time for the 2022 Winter Olympics.The authors are members of Berkeley Earth, a research organization based in Berkeley, Calif., that uses statistical techniques to analyze environmental issues. The paper has been accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed scientific journal PLOS One, according to the organization. According to the data presented in the paper, about three-eighths of the Chinese population breathe air that would be rated “unhealthy” by United States standards. The most dangerous of the pollutants studied were fine airborne particles less than 2.5 microns in diameter, which can find their way deep into human lungs, be absorbed into the bloodstream and cause a host of health problems, including asthma, strokes, lung cancer and heart attacks.The organization is well known for a study that reviewed the concerns of people who reject established climate science and found that the rise in global average temperatures has been caused “almost entirely” by human activity.
Yes, Mr. President, We Remade Our Atlas to Reflect Shrinking Ice - Unveiling his most aggressive plan yet to
combat climate change, President Obama on Monday referenced recent dramatic changes that National Geographic made to its atlas because of melting sea ice."Shrinking ice caps forced National Geographic to make the biggest change in its atlas since the Soviet Union broke apart," Obama said during a speech at the White House. (Watch a video of his speech.) He's right. The shrinking of the Arctic ice sheet in the 10th edition of the National Geographic Atlas of the World is one of the most striking changes in the publication's history. After