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Every Day there are New Stories on the Climate Catastrophe [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-07-16
This blog consists of a series of quotations from recent media coverage of extreme weather events currently impacting the planet. I had to stop updating it because every day the list became longer.
Political and Economic Insanity
“Ted Cruz is rallying his fellow GOP members of the Senate commerce committee to circulate a memo attacking climate measures in Biden’s proposed 2024 budget . . . The memo specifically calls on Republican members of the Senate appropriations commerce, justice, science subcommittee to reject spending provisions focused on climate resilience and environmental justice efforts for scientific agencies . . . It should come as no surprise that Cruz, who has accepted massive donations from oil and gas companies, is defending the fossil fuel industry’s interests.” – The Guardian
“Nearly a year after passage of the budget reconciliation law known as the Inflation Reduction Act, federal money is pouring into Biden administration programs to address climate change while congressional Republicans are doing what they can to stem the tide. At least four of the fiscal 2024 House Appropriations bills released so far propose to rescind some funding included in the IRA, including a big chunk of a $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund established at the EPA. The rescissions, targeted at the administration’s landmark effort to spend nearly $370 billion to address climate change, have drawn the ire of environmentalists. Republicans have defended them as part of their no-holds-barred campaign to reduce federal spending.” – Rollcall.com
“Scientists say if China’s emissions continue to rise, by midcentury it would overtake the United States as the country that has pumped the most greenhouse gases into the atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Age. All that pollution from industrialization has helped to warm the planet an average of 1.2 degrees Celsius.” – New York Times
More than 61,000 people died because of last year’s brutal summer heat waves across Europe . . . The findings suggest that two decades of efforts in Europe to adapt to a hotter world have failed to keep up with the pace of global warming. – New York Times
“The world’s biggest fossil fuel companies recently released their 2022 earnings reports, revealing record-breaking profits last year; just five companies–ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Chevron, and TotalEnergies–reported a total of nearly $200 billion in profits.” – Union of Concerned Scientists
“JPMorgan Chase has recklessly provided more than $382 billion in financing for fossil fuel companies since the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015, including $65.44 billion to the top 20 companies engaged in the greatest amount of fossil fuel expansion.” – Union of Concerned Scientists
“Three of the biggest banks in the United States made a cumulative $22.3 billion in profit last quarter, a hefty jump from the same period last year, the lenders reported Friday. The largest bank in the nation, JPMorgan Chase, led the way with $14.5 billion in profit, helped by growth virtually across the board, including increases in lending and credit-card transactions.” – New York Times
Fossil Fuels
“Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and cement have increased by 1.0% in 2022, new estimates suggest, hitting a new record high of 36.6bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2).” – Carbon Brief
“America’s production of fossil fuels is expected to hit a record high in 2023, as continued improvements in drilling efficiency in oil and gas and high enough oil prices will support increased output of all fossil fuels, including coal, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Friday. The combined production of fossil fuels—natural gas, crude oil, and coal—rose in 2021 by 2 percent to 77.14 quadrillion British thermal units, following a decline in 2020, when the pandemic hit. The administration expects U.S. fossil fuel production to continue rising both this year and next, exceeding 2019 production levels and reaching a new record in 2023.” – Oil Price
“Natural gas, long seen as a cleaner alternative to coal and an important tool in the fight to slow global warming, can be just as harmful to the climate, a new study has concluded, unless companies can all but eliminate the leaks that plague its use. It takes as little as 0.2 percent of gas to leak to make natural gas as big a driver of climate change as coal, the study found. That’s a tiny margin of error for a gas that is notorious for leaking from drill sites, processing plants and the pipes that transport it into power stations or homes and kitchens.” – New York Times
Deadly Heat
“Nearly 90 million Americans are facing heat alerts this week, including in Las Vegas, Nevada, which may break its all-time hottest temperature record; Phoenix, Arizona, which will probably break its streak of consecutive days of temperatures over 110F; and parts of Florida, where a marine heatwave has pushed up water temperatures off the coast to levels normally found in hot tubs.” – The Guardian
“The Earth could be entering a multiyear period of exceptional warmth driven by two main factors: continued emissions of heat-trapping gases, mainly caused by humans burning oil, gas and coal; and the return of El Niño, a cyclical weather pattern . . . The planet just experienced its warmest June ever recorded, researchers said, with deadly heat waves scorching Texas, Mexico and India. Off the coasts of Antarctica, sea ice levels this year have plummeted to record lows.” – New York Times
“A heat wave engulfing southern Europe is expected to send temperatures close to record highs in some areas, prompting officials in Italy, Greece, Spain and elsewhere to impose measures to protect residents and tourists from the scorching conditions. The latest round of high temperatures, frequently referred to as Cerberus after the multiheaded dog that guards the underworld in Greek mythology, has sent thermometers soaring above 98 degrees Fahrenheit (nearly 37 degrees Celsius) in the past few days. And it’s expected to get worse.” – New York Times
“Hot weather is nothing new in a place like Laredo, where summer temperatures regularly climb well past 100 degrees. But the seemingly unending wave of punishing heat and stifling humidity that began in the middle of June — parked for weeks over much of the nation’s south and west — is presenting unfamiliar and deadly new hazards . . . In all, 10 people died from heat-related illnesses within the city limits of Laredo between June 15 and July 3, a toll unheard-of in this heat-accustomed corner of Texas. Though public health officials in several states said a full and accurate count of how many people have died from the recent bout of heat is weeks away.” – New York Times
“California is heating up. A punishing heat wave arrives today and is expected to peak over the weekend, bringing triple-digit temperatures to large swaths of the state’s interior. The predicted temperatures — the highest of 2023 so far.” – New York Times
“Underneath downtown Chicago’s soaring Art Deco towers, its multilevel roadways and its busy subway and rail lines, the land is sinking, and not only for the reasons you might expect. Since the mid-20th century, the ground between the city surface and the bedrock has warmed by 5.6 degrees Fahrenheit on average, according to a new study out of Northwestern University. All that heat, which comes mostly from basements and other underground structures, has caused the layers of sand, clay and rock beneath some buildings to subside or swell by several millimeters over the decades, enough to worsen cracks and defects in walls and foundations.” – New York Times
Biblical Floods
“Thousands of people were evacuated from their homes in Delhi on Thursday after the authorities warned of widespread flooding following days of torrential rains that have battered large swaths of northern India. The level of the Yamuna River, which flows through the Indian capital and is a tributary of the Ganges, had breached the so-called danger mark by three meters (about 10 feet) on Thursday, according to the Central Water Commission. That forced the chief minister of the capital region, Arvind Kejriwal, to shut schools and convert them into disaster relief camps.” – New York Times
“The rainfall that hit parts of Vermont on Monday had less than a 1-in-100 chance of occurring in any given year, according to federal flood data. And yet, for some residents, it brought a sense of déjà vu — it rivaled the devastation of another so-called 100-year storm, Hurricane Irene, from a dozen years ago. The chances of two such deluges hitting the Green Mountain State in such a short span? Just 0.6 percent.” – Washington Post
“Six people died and three others were missing after the “heaviest rain ever” triggered floods and landslides in south-west Japan. The Japan meteorological agency warned residents in Kyushu – one of the country’s four main islands – to stay alert for more landslides, a common hazard in mountainous areas after heavy rainfall . . . Japan has been hit by unusually heavy rain and powerful typhoons in recent years, raising fears about its vulnerability to the climate crisis.” – The Guardian
Costs
“The decision by Farmers Insurance this week to stop renewing almost a third of the policies it has written in Florida, becoming the latest insurer to pull business from a state as the industry grapples with the rising costs of covering damage tied to floods, hurricanes, wildfires and other climate-related disasters.” – New York Times
“New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said she has “no doubt” the cost from this week’s extreme flooding damage across the Hudson Valley and other parts of the state will reach over $35 million. The governor said officials are still calculating what the final cost would be. Hochul said the state will apply for a disaster declaration and reimbursement from the federal government for the costs associated with cleanup “and I know that sometimes takes weeks to do,” she said Wednesday morning in Manhattan while announcing the return of services by the Metro-North Railroad.” – Spectrum
Technological Solutions?
“Researchers at Purdue University announced that they had developed the whitest paint on Earth. The color is so white that it can reflect over 98% of light. This is particularly useful because light generates heat — and we here on Earth are running a bit hot these days. If used on a building, the researchers say, the paint would reduce the temperature on the surface, lowering the temps inside and decreasing the need for air conditioning. But what if there was an even bigger application, like reducing the temperature of the entire planet? . . . the paint would need to cover between roughly 2 million and 4 million square miles. For reference, the total land area of the United States is just over 3.5 million square miles, so we'd need to cover the country in white paint from sea to paint-stained sea.” – Business Insider
“The standard version of Purdue’s ultrawhite paint uses barium sulfate, which has to be mined, driving up its carbon footprint . . . Geoengineering — manipulating different processes to control the Earth’s climate — has also been criticized for distracting from the root problem: Humans must stop burning fossil fuels to avoid more catastrophic effects of climate change. But even if all fossil fuel use stopped immediately, climate disasters would continue to unfold because of the amount of greenhouse gases that are trapped in the atmosphere.” – New York Times
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