Canada and global warming: a state of denial 2

There are so many wildfires burningduring a summer that already has twice as many 100+ Fahrenheit degree days as last year now in California that the government cannot send firefighters to all of them. At the same time environmentalist scientists worn that conditions are likely to get worse in the future. 

Burned vehicles rest beneath a tree after the complex fires tore through Vacaville, Calif.

A blistering heat wave is breaking records from Texas to Washington State. California, where I am, may have seen the hottest temperature measured reliably anywhere on earth, 130 degrees Fahrenheit in Death Valley. The heat has caused rolling power blackouts across the state and contributed to dozens of wildfires. In parts of California, police are going door to door urging residents to evacuate. ...

There's a whole lot of research showing that climate change is going to make the conditions for extreme fire far more likely in the future, you know, not just here in the U.S., but around the world, so more fires burning at greater intensity in more places than ever before. You know, think about the fires that are also currently burning in Siberia. And it's not just because we're getting these kind of crazy record-breaking hot days, it's that nights are getting hotter, too.

https://www.npr.org/2020/08/19/903982598/climate-change-may-lead-to-more...

“We've had almost double the amount of 100 degree days this summer than we did last summer,”  Michelle Mead, a warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sacramento, said. “In May we had that early heatwave, and then June was above normal, and now we've got this. So, it's just been an unfortunate summer.”

She blames a very dry winter that produced a meager snowpack and she says that allows “everything to heat up quicker and unfortunately, the fuels to dry out faster.”

The heatwave, the fires and weather patterns are in part related to climate change, says UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain, because warming temperatures are “with great certainty” increasing these conditions.

“This whole event started as a record-breaking heat wave … and we also know that climate change is increasing the severity and the acres burned by wildfires in California.”

https://www.capradio.org/articles/2020/08/18/as-californians-deal-with-h...

On Saturday even President Trump had to acknowledge the great damage being done by California wildfires by declaring it a "major disaster" in response to Governor Newsome's request for help in strengthening the state's emergency resources. The Scientific American article below describes in detail how climate change is strongly magnifying the problem. 

Embers blow off a burned tree after the LNU Lightning Complex Fire burned through the area on August 18, 2020 in Napa, California. Credit: Justin Sullivan Getty Images

The fast-moving fires, which are seen by many scientists as a sign of climate change, have killed five people, destroyed more than 1,000 structures and forced thousands to flee. More than 238,000 people either evacuated or were ready to go as more thunderstorms threatened to light new fires yesterday afternoon, according to officials. Still-active fires are affecting at least 23 counties in Northern California, stretching from Butte to Fresno. Two of the blazes rank among the largest in state history. ...

"The scope [of the damage] is absolutely astonishing," said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA. It's "hard to impress on people just how vast the acreage burned is, especially considering there were no strong offshore winds" to drive the spread.

President Trump on Saturday issued a major disaster declaration to fulfill a request by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) to bolster the state's emergency resources. Meanwhile, the National Weather Service issued a red flag warning for more thunderstorms and lightning through today.

The racing flames show how climate change is affecting the nation's most populous state, experts said. Hotter temperatures, less dependable precipitation and snowpack that melts sooner lead to drier soil and parched vegetation. Climate change also affects how much moisture is in the air, Swain said. ...

"It's actually drying out the air during these extreme heat events," which zaps plants of additional moisture, Swain said. That left much of the state a tinderbox when hundreds of lightning strikes scorched the countryside last week. This is really a testament to how dry the vegetation is, in terms of how quickly these fires spread when they were ignited by lightning," he said.

The amount of land burned last week is more than the total burned in all of 2018, and more than double the amount burned in 2017, according to data released by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire). ...

Fires erupted beginning Aug. 15 when more than 1,200 lightning strikes hit the baking landscape within 72 hours. Those came "the exact week that we were experiencing some of the hottest temperatures ever recorded in human history, 130-degree temperatures in the southern part of the state," Newsom said. It was "maybe the hottest modern recorded temperature in the history of the world," he said. He was referring to the temperature of 130 degrees Fahrenheit on Aug. 16 in Death Valley, a high not reached on Earth in 89 years. The highest temperature ever recorded on the planet is 134 Fahrenheit. ...

The heat is expected to get worse with time. Climate models estimate that average state temperatures will climb 3 degrees Fahrenheit by 2050 unless the world makes sharp cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, said Michael Wehner, a senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Even with emissions cuts, average temperatures would rise 2 degrees by midcentury, he said. ...

Swain with UCLA and other scientists earlier this year published a study that said climate change has doubled the number of extreme-risk days for California wildfires. It said temperatures statewide rose 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit since 1980, while precipitation dropped 30%. That doubled the number of autumn days that offer extreme conditions for the ignition of wildfires (Climatewire, April 3). 

The heat is expected to get worse with time. Climate models estimate that average state temperatures will climb 3 degrees Fahrenheit by 2050 unless the world makes sharp cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, said Michael Wehner, a senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Even with emissions cuts, average temperatures would rise 2 degrees by midcentury, he said.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fast-moving-california-wildfi...

The article in the previous post about the MV Wakashi oil spill mentions that the Exxon Valdez  oil spill off the Alaskan coast in 1989 was only the 36th largest oil spill in history. Yet, the following article describes how the ongoing enviromental, economic and social impacts of that spill continue to this day, more than 30 years later. 

We continue to play Russian roulette, not only with global warming but also with oil spills, including along Canada's coasts, which are three times as large as those the nation with the second longest coastline, Norway. We face catastrophic risks from Alaskan oil heading to California along BC's coasts and our own oil exports which will soon increase thanks to the Trans Mountain pipeline that Trudeau generously bought and is building for a total cost of more than $17 billion, in the Maritimes from the overseas oil carriers bring oil to Canada and in the Arctic Ocean as the black gold northern oil rush grows, thanks  to the increasingly ice-free Arctic waters, ironically brought about by global warming. 

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When the Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef on March 24, 1989, it was transporting 53 million gallons of Alaskan North Slope crude oil bound for California. The spill dumped 10.8 million gallons of the tanker’s cargo into Prince William Sound, eventually damaging 1,300 miles of shoreline. Staff/TNS/Newscom

It was on March 24, 1989, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez struck the Bligh Reef in the Prince William Sound region of Alaska to begin one of the biggest maritime fatalities at that time. Exxon Valdez, then owned by Exxon Shipping Company, was en route t0 Long Beach, California. The tanker was loaded with roughly 54 million gallons oil of which 10.8 million gallons were released into the waters of Prince William Sound as the hull of the vessel was torn open in the accident. ...

As the collision of the supertanker with the reef ruptured 8 of its 11 cargo tanks, releasing 11 million gallons of crude oil-250,000 barrels-into the waters of Prince William Sound in the days to come, over 1,300 miles of coastline were contaminated. It was reportedly a delay in initiating the cleanup efforts that made this accident catastrophic. The oil slick spread to more areas within days, making it no longer containable.

As the oil slick spread, the ecosystem consisted of a variety of marine and other species was under threat. Plants and marine mammals in the cold region, which were already facing the threat of extinction because of the rise in temperatures, had to deal with this human error.

In addition, seabirds were also forced to succumb to this disaster as the oil slick in the water trapped them to drown eventually. It is estimated that almost 250,000 seabirds, 2,800 sea otters, up to 300 harbour seals, 250 bald eagles and at least 22 killer whales were killed in this deadliest accident.

In addition, the spill has also ended the lives of an unknown number of herring and salmon, the investigations conducted in the following months revealed. As an immediate result, the fisheries for crab, herring, rockfish, salmon and shrimp etc. were closed in the area, while a ban on the commercial fishing of some variety of shrimp and salmon remained through 1990.

While it affected many financially, the indirect impact of the oil spill was visible on the several ends of the fishing industry. ...

One of the immediate short-term effects of the casualty caused by the Exxon Valdez was the impact on recreational fishing which was carried out in the Prince William Sound. This was greatly hampered because of the penetration of oil into the waters. In the year that the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill was caused, there was a total financial loss of up to $580 million due to the reduction and in some areas, the complete absence of recreational fishing. ...

Even years after the accident, the region is yet to recover completely from the oil spill. The oil discharged from the Exxon Valdez still clogs the beaches in Alaska, the fishing industry that collapsed after the accident hasn’t recovered fully and the trauma it created among the fishing communities still remain- in the form of separated families and alcoholism etc. ...

 Over 11,000 personnel, 58 air crafts and 1,400 vessels were used to clear the affected area and it involved complex operations like relocating several marine creatures in order to safeguard their life till the clean-up operations were completed. The entire course of the clean-up operation took around three years from 1989 to 1992 and even now, monitoring is being carried out in the entire length of the coastline to observe any late-emerging effects of the oil spill.

According to reports, the shipping company spent more than $3.8 billion for the cleanup operations and also compensated 11,000 fishermen and others affected by the disaster. The accident also followed a number of legal battles between the shipping company and the federal government as well as Alaska fishermen’s union. In 1994, Exxon was asked by an Alaskan court to pay $5 billion in punitive damages. However, after a number of appeals, the U.S. Supreme Court reduced the amount to $507.5 million.

Additionally, tourism was also hampered throughout Alaska after the accident. The number of tourists arrived in Alaska was in a record low for almost a year following the oil spill, making a significant impact on the local economy. According to reports, the oil spill affected more than 26,000 jobs in the tourism industry and over $2.4 billion in business. ...

The cleaning of the surface oil’ was cleared up to a larger extent, while the ‘sub-surface oil’ remained as a cause for the negative impact on the ecology. The sub-surface oil appears to be inactive in terms of a negative impact but in reality, contains far more poisonous content that could harm not just the marine creatures but also the flora and fauna. At present, despite the clean-up, about 20 acres of the Alaskan coastline is supposed to be polluted by this sub-surface oil phenomenon.

The enormity of the marine casualty caused by Exxon Valdez is something that is being felt even in recent times and will be seen even in the future.

https://www.marineinsight.com/maritime-history/the-complete-story-of-the...

A new study finds that both the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, as well as other glaciers, are melting at the worst rates predictions of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)'s most recent report, which would result in many more millions of people facing flooding in coastal regions around the world.  As a result of this melting, sea level rise is now primarily due to melting ice instead of thermal expansion of water due to the heating of water due to climate change. 

With Canada having the longest coastline of any country in the world, it is an enormous problem that the Trudeau government has failed to address in adopting Harper's greenhouse emissions targets and then failing to even meet these abysmally low targets while subsidizing further pipeline and fossil fuel development, including the Trans Mountain pipeline.

An aerial view of the icebergs near Kulusuk Island, off the southeastern coastline of Greenland, a region that is exhibiting an accelerated rate of ice loss.

Ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica whose melting rates are rapidly increasing have raised the global sea level by 1.8cm since the 1990s, and are matching the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's worst-case climate warming scenarios.

According to a new study from the University of Leeds and the Danish Meteorological Institute, if these rates continue, the ice sheets are expected to raise sea levels by a further 17cm and expose an additional 16 million people to annual coastal flooding by the end of the century.

Since the ice sheets were first monitored by satellite in the 1990s, melting from Antarctica has pushed global sea levels up by 7.2mm, while Greenland has contributed 10.6mm. And the latest measurements show that the world's oceans are now rising by 4mm each year.

"Although we anticipated the ice sheets would lose increasing amounts of ice in response to the warming of the oceans and atmosphere, the rate at which they are melting has accelerated faster than we could have imagined," said Dr Tom Slater, lead author of the study and climate researcher at the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at the University of Leeds.

"The melting is overtaking the climate models we use to guide us, and we are in danger of being unprepared for the risks posed by sea level rise." ...

The results are published today in a study in the journal Nature Climate Change. It compares the latest results from satellite surveys from the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise (IMBIE) with calculations from climate models. The authors warn that the ice sheets are losing ice at a rate predicted by the worst-case climate warming scenarios in the last large IPCC report. ...

So far, global sea levels have increased in the most part through a mechanism called thermal expansion, which means that volume of seawater expands as it gets warmer. But in the last five years, ice melt from the ice sheets and mountain glaciers has overtaken global warming as the main cause of rising sea levels.

Dr Ruth Mottram, study co-author and climate researcher at the Danish Meteorological Institute, said: "It is not only Antarctica and Greenland that are causing the water to rise. In recent years, thousands of smaller glaciers have begun to melt or disappear altogether, as we saw with the glacier Ok in Iceland, which was declared "dead" in 2014. This means that melting of ice has now taken over as the main contributor of sea level rise. "

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200831112101.htm

Deeply concerned about their drop in poll numbers due to the We charity crisis, the Trudeau Liberal prorogued Parliament and stated the legislature will start again on September 23rd and a brand new extensive legislative agenda that will face a vote of confidence immediately after the Throne Speech laying out their agenda. No doubt it will involve a nice-sounding climate change program, even more so after Ed Markey's Green New Deal victory in Massachusetts yesterday, which is described in the previous post, emphasizes the growing support for major action on global warming. 

However the Trudeau and Liberal track record on climate change has been lots of promises followed by actions that increased greenhouse gas emissions and environmental problems. 

The Liberal 25 year history of promising to deal with global warming has been one long series of promises followed by actions that always fail to meet their greenhouse emissions reduction targets and often result in an increase in emissions.

“Canada has missed two separate emission reduction targets (the 1992 Rio target and the 2005 Kyoto target) and is likely to miss the 2020 Copenhagen target as well. In fact, emissions in 2020 are expected to be nearly 20 per cent above the target.” (https://www.cpacanada.ca/en/news/canada/2018-09-18-canada-failing-to-red...)

The Liberals were deeply involved in negotiating the 1997 Kyoto Accord agreeing that "Canada's Kyoto target was a 6% total reduction by 2012 compared to 1990 levels of 461 Megatonnes (Mt)". Instead the 1997 emissions of 671 Mt during the year of the signing of the Kyoto Accord had risen to 747 Mt in 2005, the last full year of a Liberal government before the Conservatives took over. This was 33% above the 1997 Liberal Kyoto target. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_and_the_Kyoto_Protocol)

The Liberals declared a climate emergency in June 2019 and the following day announced the tripling of the Trans Mountain pipeline to carry bitumen to the coast bringing about a massive expansion of the fossil fuel production. Trudeau won the understatement of the year award today when he said "Not everyone will agree with this".  

Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna called climate change a “real and urgent crisis, driven by human activity,” requiring the government to make deep emissions reductions to meet its Paris commitments. The Liberals have failed previously failed to meet their greenhouse gas reduction goals of 1992, 1997, and 2005.

 The Trudeau Liberals promised major action on climate change in the 2015 election then adopted the weak Harper greenhouse gas emission targets, but couldn't even meet those. In March 2018 the auditor general concluded  the Trudeau Liberal government "is likely to miss the 2020 Copenhagen target as well". (http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/internet/English/parl_otp_201803_e_42883.html)

In April 2019 Environment Commissioner Julie Gelfand concluded "Canada is not on track to hit its 2030 target,". These targets were actually those of the Conservative Harper government. (https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/environment-commissioner-julie-gelfand-...)

Extinction Rebellion: rights experts say peaceful protest in UK under threat

Civil liberty experts have warned that peaceful protest is under threat in the UK, after the environmental campaigners were targeted with pre-emptive arrest and “unworkable restrictions” were placed on this week’s Extinction Rebellion (XR) demonstrations.

Thousands of people have taken to the streets this week to highlight the escalating climate emergency and demand urgent action from the government.

More than 200 campaigners have so far been arrested. The civil liberties group Liberty said legitimate protest was being hampered by forceful police tactics.....

In 2020 Trudeau has continued subsidizing the fossil fuel industry while claiming to be a climate change champion as was described in the posts #462 and #463. He has further increased subsidies during the pandemic recovery making Canada #2 in the world in fossil fuel subsidies, started new oil exploratation projects off the Newfoundland coast by eliminating marine envirnomental assessments for exploratory wells, and begun to redefine greenhouse gas emissions so that they appear lower than they actually are. 

Nobel-winning economists, financial experts and even the highly conservative International Energy Agency (IEA) are all pushing governments to use stimulus to decarbonize the economy. ...

So, the question for every government becomes: how much money are you spending on fossil fuels during the pandemic recovery?

Fortunately, a new coalition has come together to track the answers from each of the world’s largest economies. We’ve taken this data compiled by Energy Policy Tracker and charted new government support for fossil fuels by each of the G20 countries since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis. (Note that to allow fair comparisons across countries, the charts list all values in USD per capita.)

As you can see in this first G20 chart, Canadians are at the top of the fossil support charts. Canada has committed nearly ten times the G20 average per capita — for a total of $12 billion so far this year in new fossil fuel support. Only France, with its massive bailout of Air France, has managed to spend more per person, at this point.

You can also see that we’ve added a little green cap onto the top of the bar representing Canada. That’s the amount of money Canadian governments have committed to clean energy (again, per capita).

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/08/12/analysis/canada-supporting-f...

In Newfoundland the goal is to produce 650,000 more barrels of oil a day by 2030 from the Newfoundland offshore. So much for Trudeau's greenhouse emission reduction targets. The excerpts from the following article are translated from the original French of the Le Devoir article. 

Proposed exploratory oil well drilling off Newfoundland

As Canada is hit by a health crisis that is hogging media attention, the Trudeau government continues to take steps to accelerate oil drilling in the marine environment, Le Devoir noted.

It is currently conducting a public consultation to eliminate the environmental assessments required for exploratory drilling in eastern Newfoundland. At least 100 of these holes are planned by 2030. ...

The ongoing process goes completely unnoticed as Canadians face the coronavirus crisis, but it is nonetheless crucial to foster the development of the petroleum industry in eastern Canada over the next few years.

https://www.ledevoir.com/societe/environnement/575559/le-gouvernement-tr...

Canada's mismanaged forests have changed from carbon sinks that absorb carbon dioxide to extremely large carbon emitters that release more CO2 than our fossil fuel industries during the last decade thanks to the logging practices that the federal and provincial governments have allowed. 

Instead of dealing with this critical climate change problem, as well as its effects on the logging industry, the Trudeau government has simply redefined the way emissions are reported in order to make the emissions look smaller. In other words, they are cooking the books to make the problem disappear from the public's eyes. 

Death and decay are winning in Canada's vast managed forest lands. And this victory is unleashing a rising flood of climate pollution. Put simply, our forests are dying and being cut down faster than they can grow back.In 2018, the flood of CO2 pouring out of them reached record levels, at nearly a quarter billion tonnes of CO2 in a single year. That's more than Canada's once biggest climate pollution source — the oil and gas sector — emitted that year. ...

The Canadian government isn't planning new climate policies to lower this new source of emissions. Instead, it's trying use creative accounting to shift all responsibility off the current books. They've needed three big changes, so far, to do it:

1. Exclude most forest emissions from the books
2. Shift billions of tonnes of logging carbon on to future books
3. Weaken forestry's climate target

Rule change #1 -- ignore most of it

The first change was to stop reporting on any forest areas that have been heavily impacted by fires, insects or extreme weather. This change pushed a quarter of Canada's managed forest lands -- and most forest emissions -- off the books.

In 2017, Canada's managed forests lost 230 MtCO2. That's what Canada used to report on its books. But now it reports only 17 MtCO2. Even so, that's still more than the entire province of Nova Scotia emits from all sources.

 

 

Rule change #2 -- push gigatonnes into the future

Canada used to count it all in the year the wood was cut. ... A couple years ago, Canada switched to reporting wood CO2 in the year it got emitted back into the air. That's a smaller number. ... Overall, this change retroactively shifted 2,500 MtCO2 from Canada's current and past books onto the future books for Canadians to deal with later.

Rule change #3 -- weaken the target

Ottawa has been wanting to use a big whack of forest carbon "offsets" to meet Canada's 2030 climate target. But our forests are collapsing so fast that even the two huge rule changes discussed above weren't enough to save any. So, the government made a third rule change to weaken the target used to claim offsets.

Historically, Canada has used the same target for all its land use sectors, which includes managed forests and the wood logged out of them. This target is zero per cent below their 2005 baseline level. My next chart shows how this applied to managed forestry.

So, the government decided to create a new, weaker, type of climate target just for managed forests. It's called a "reference level" target and is shown by the orange dotted line on the chart. This is their guestimate for business-as-usual. Now, anything below this guestimatewill be used to "offset" emissions elsewhere. As you can see, this third change weakened the target so much that it turned zero credits into more than twenty million tonnes of credits. ...

The climate science is clear that the path to a safe and sane climate future requires us to eliminate all sources of excess CO2, regardless of origin.

So far, however, Ottawa has responded to this emerging CO2 threat by trying to push this rising new flood of CO2 off the books. To do this, they've had to roll out a series of big and controversial changes in how they account for forest carbon. 

But the atmosphere and the laws of physics don't care what kinds of creative accounting we try. They only react to the total amount of CO2 accumulating in the air. And in Canada, total emissions of CO2 are not going down as promised and as required for a safe future.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/03/30/opinion/canadas-forests-beco...

Biden Not Phasing Out Fossil Fuel, Relies on Carbon Capture - Robert Pollin (podcast)

https://theanalysis.news/interviews/biden-not-phasing-out-fossil-fuel-re...

"...Biden climate plan reveals an over-reliance on unproven carbon capture and far too limited investment in solar and wind. Biden positions the plan as part of rivalry with China instead of climate cooperation."

Why is Nfld getting much more snow, because their climate is so maritime? In Montréal we have far less, and milder winters, however this means more ice, which is extremely dangerous for pedestrians and even for motor vehicle collisions. We need better methods of ice cleaning.

Green Billionaires Behind Professional Activist Network That Led Suppression of 'Planet of the Humans' Documentary

https://thegrayzone.com/2020/09/07/green-billionaires-planet-of-the-humans/

"The Michael Moore-produced 'Planet of the Humans' faced a coordinated suppression campaign led by professional climate activists backed by the same 'green' billionaires, Wall Street investors, industry insiders and family foundations skewered in the film. 'We must take control of our environmental movement and our future from billionaires and their permanent war on Planet Earth. They are not our friends..."

Wildfires are setting records in California, Oregon and Washington states. In California, this is still early in its wildfire season, so much damage so the record temperatures and dry conditions brought on by global warming is expected to get worse there.  Idaho, Nevada, Arizona and Utah are also facing major wildfire problems.

The Bidwell Bar Bridge is surrounded by fire in Lake Oroville during the Bear fire in Oroville, California on September 9, 2020.

While California’s climate has always made the state prone to fires, the link between human-caused climate change and bigger fires is inextricable, said Park Williams, a bioclimatologist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “This climate change connection is straightforward: Warmer temperatures dry out fuels,” he said. “In areas with abundant and very dry fuels, all you need is a spark.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/09/us/fires-oregon-california-live-updat...

Wildfires have burned a record 8,000 square kilometres in California this year, and the danger for more destruction is so great that the U.S. Forest Service announced Monday it was closing all eight national forests in the state's southern half.

After a typically dry summer, California is parched heading into fall and what normally is the most dangerous time for wildfires. Two of the three largest fires in state history are burning in the San Francisco Bay Area. More than 14,000 firefighters are battling those fires and dozens of others more around California.

A three-day heat wave brought triple-digit temperatures to much of the state during Labour Day weekend. But right behind it was a weather system with dry winds that could fan fires. The state's largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, was preparing to cut power to 158,000 customers in 21 counties in the northern half of the state to reduce the possibility its lines and other equipment could spark new fires. ...

This wildfire season has already broken the previous record of 7,931 square kilometres burned in 2018. ...

Downtown Los Angeles reached 44 C on Sunday and a record-shattering high of 49.4 C was recorded in the nearby Woodland Hills neighborhood of the San Fernando Valley. It was the highest temperature ever recorded in Los Angeles County, according to the National Weather Service.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/california-wildfires-september-7-gender-re...

Record-breaking wildfires in the western U.S. have turned skies shocking shades of bright red and orange this week, thanks to a relentless and unprecedented fire season across multiple states. Social media users are sharing "apocalyptic" photos and videos of the hazy sky, comparing it to the planet Mars, the film "Blade Runner 2049" and the shows "Stranger Things" and "Avatar: The Last Airbender."

Parts of Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona and Utah are currently under critical and elevated risk of fire weather, according to the National Weather Service. Air quality in some regions has reached hazardous levels, and tens of thousands of firefighters are battling day and night to contain the thousands of fires. 

Oregon Governor Kate Brown declared a wildfire emergency on Tuesday and ordered evacuations throughout the state. Most Californians remain under Red Flag Warning as the state surpassed its wildfire record. Washington Governor Jay Inslee said this week that more acres burned on Labor Day "than in 12 of the last entire fire seasons in the state of Washington."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wildfire-photos-video-apocalyptic-red-orang...

Freakish Arctic Fires Alarmingly Intensify

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/08/12/freakish-arctic-fires-alarmingly intensify/

"NASA satellite images of fires in eastern Siberia depict an inferno of monstrous proportions, nothing in history competes. Abnormally high temperatures have spawned an intense fire season in eastern Siberia this summer..."

Earliest Snowfall on Record Blankets Northern New Mexico

https://news.yahoo.com/earliest/earliest-snowfall-record-blankets-northe...

"The town of Red River was expected to get eight meters of snow and temperatures dipping down into the 20s."

The Attorney Gerneral of Delaware is suing 30 fossil fuel companies for damage they have done to the state of the last fifty years because that is how long the companies have known the damage their greenhouse emissions have caused and misled the public. There are already 22,000 state residents threatened by sea level rise. Three other US states have already sued fossil fuel companies over climage change damage. With the lowest average height above sea level of any US state Delaware is already suffering greatly from global warming. 

 

Sea level rise damage to highway Delaware, the state with the lowest average height above sea level

Delaware, the home state of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, announced on Thursday, September 10 that it is taking dozens of major oil and gas companies including BP, Chevron, and ExxonMobil to court over the rising costs of climate impacts such as sea level rise and coastal flooding.

Like other U.S. states and municipalities suing the fossil fuel industry, Delaware says that the industry knew half a century ago about the likely climate impacts resulting from the use of its products, but instead of warning the public or changing their business model, the fossil fuel companies engaged in campaigns to attack climate science and downplay the risks of burning coal, oil, and gas in order to stave off policy responses.

“Delawareans are already paying for the malfeasance of the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies,” Attorney General Kathy Jennings said in a press release. “Exxon, Chevron, and other mega-corporations knew exactly what kind of sacrifices the world would make to support their profits, and they deceived the public for decades. Now we are staring down a crisis at our shores, and taxpayers are once again footing the bill for damage to our roads, our beaches, our environment, and our economy. We are seeking accountability from some of the world’s most powerful businesses to pay for the mess they’ve made.”

The lawsuit, filed September 10 in Delaware Superior Court, a state court, seeks monetary damages to help pay for costs the state is already incurring and that are expected to mount as climate impacts worsen.

As noted in Delaware’s complaint, the state has the lowest average elevation of any state in the country and more than 22,000 residents are currently threatened by coastal flooding. Sea level rise puts at risk over $1 billion in property value as well as the state’s $3.5 billion tourism industry with the loss of beaches. Communities of color and low-income communities in the state are especially vulnerable to extreme heat events, which are expected to substantially increase in frequency in the coming decades.

“The science is clear that these climate impacts are directly attributable to the products produced by fossil fuel companies,” Shawn Garvin, Secretary of the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, said in the press release.

These kinds of impacts could have been largely avoided or mitigated, Delaware contends, had the fossil fuel industry not actively misled the public about the risks of its product. ...

“For too long, there has been a concerted effort by some in the fossil fuel industry to mislead the public about the science behind climate change and its devastating effects,” U.S. Senator Tom Carper (D-DE), who serves as Ranking Member of the U.S.Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said in the press release. “While some companies have since seen the error of their ways, and are now working in good faith to find climate solutions, others have poured millions, maybe billions of dollars into hiding the truth about climate change. The people of Delaware see the effects of climate change in Delaware every day. Families and businesses in our state are already experiencing the environmental and economic consequences of the worsening climate crisis. It is unfortunate that litigation is necessary to drag those remaining bad actors into the light, but my hope is that this litigation will hold those actors accountable.”

Delaware is bringing its lawsuit under legal claims of public nuisance, trespass, negligent failure to warn, and violations of the state’s Consumer Fraud Act. Defendants include 29 major oil and gas companies, one coal company, and the American Petroleum Institute (API), the largest trade association for the U.S. oil and gas industry. It is the third lawsuit filed in the last few months targeting API, which had been left out of an earlier wave of climate lawsuits. Minnesota, which announced its climate lawsuit on June 24, and Hoboken, New Jersey, which filed its suit last week, also include the Big Oil trade group as a defendant.

As detailed in Delaware’s complaint, API was one of the main industry organizations behind a “sustained and widespread campaign of denial and disinformation about the existence of climate change.” This deceptive behavior, the complaint argues, is ongoing with API and some of its member companies misrepresenting the industry’s investments in clean energy and climate solutions through “greenwashing” marketing and advertising campaigns. ...

Delaware is the fourth state, and the 22nd community overall in the U.S., to turn to the courts in an effort to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for harms resulting from the climate crisis. Delaware’s climate accountability lawsuit is the third such case filed in the past week, and the second in the last two days, with the city of Charleston, South Carolina, filing its complaint on September 9.

“The climate crisis Big Oil caused is engulfing the nation, and it is costing communities billions of dollars,” Richard Wiles, executive director of the Center for Climate Integrity, an initiative that supports climate accountability lawsuits, said in a press statement. “With more than 20 climate lawsuits filed against them, and three in just the last eight days, it is clear that Big Oil is facing its ‘Big Tobacco moment,’ and accountability is coming for them.”

https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/09/10/delaware-climate-lawsuit-30-fossil...

The fire map shows the enormity of what is unfolding

Below is a look at recent global warming events in Africa and Asia, which gets less news coverage. 

Cyclone Nisarga hit Mumbai India

Tropical cyclones spinning out from the Indian Ocean are showing similar patterns. The region has long been considered a hot spot for cyclones, with some of the deadliest storms in recent history churning through the Bay of Bengal before slamming into India or Bangladesh.

Exceptionally high surface temperatures in the Indian Ocean, associated with climate change, helped Cyclone Amphan grow into a Category 5 storm in a record 18 hours before it tore into the Indian state of West Bengal in May, scientists say.

The following month, Cyclone Nisarga, initially forecast to be the first to batter Mumbai since 1948, made landfall 100 km south of the city, with winds gusting up to 120 kilometres per hour.

"Both of the cyclones were unprecedented," said Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology. "If we go back to what led to these kinds of extreme events, what we see is that very warm ocean temperatures have played a major role."

Those warm ocean temperatures are also likely contributing to extreme rainfall and flooding in China, which this summer suffered its most punishing flood season in three decades....

"The extreme rainfall events are going to become more extreme. That is something we feel pretty confident about," said Shang-Ping Xie, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California. ...

Climate Change: River Nile turns wild in East Africa floodings

Africa is feeling this now, following torrential rains and severe flooding. Tens of thousands have been left homeless by flooding from the Nile in Sudan. And in Senegal, more rain fell on a single day on Saturday than the country would usually see during three months of the rainy season, the government said.

"There's a large and growing body of evidence that is telling us that human-caused climate change is affecting extreme events," said James Kossin, a climate scientist at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "It's very rare that this is happening in a helpful way."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/extreme-weather-climate-change-1.5718546

Smoke from US wildfires propelled by global warming have prompted air quality warnings in BC and Alberta, causing Vancouver to be ranked #2 in the world for the city with the worst air quality. Portland Oregon is ranked #1 because of the US wildfires. CBC News reported this morning that Vancouver's air quality is 18 times the safe limit and even healthy people with no respiratory problems are advised to not spend extended periods outside or engage in heavy exertion. This is just the beginning of California's wildfire season. It is expected to get much worse over the next two months, so it looks like BC and Alberta will continue to suffer from smoke over an extended period. 

• 

  Smoke from wildfires burning in the U.S. fills the air as Grouse Mountain trams transport people up and down the mountain, in North Vancouver, B.C,, on Saturday, September 12, 2020. The World Air Quality Index, a non-profit that tracks air quality from monitoring stations around the world, rated Vancouver's air quality as the second worst in the world Saturday. Environment Canada has issued a special air quality statement for Metro Vancouver, showing a very high risk to health due to wildfire smoke from Washington and Oregon. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck 

• With wildfires continuing to spread across the U.S. west coast, some parts of Canada are under air quality warnings as smoke travels north of the border.

Environment Canada issued an air quality advisory for much of southern British ColumbiaFriday as multiple cities reached air quality levels high enough to pose health risks. The warning was extended to include Metro Vancouver Saturday due to wildfire smoke from Washington and Oregon. ...

The conditions got so bad that Vancouver was ranked second on a list of cities with the worst air quality in the world, with Portland in first, according to the World Air Quality index. ...

 Southern Alberta is expected to notice a difference in air quality by Sunday afternoon. ...

Canadians in areas that experience heavy smoke condition are urged to limit outdoors activity, drink water and keep windows and doors of homes and vehicles closed. 

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/smoke-from-u-s-wildfires-prompts-air-quali...

Unfortunately, we don't have until 2050 for businesses to greatly reduce their greenhouse gas emissions as the US west coast climate fires now, the record number of Atlantic hurricanes this year, the record 40 degree Celsius tempertures and Siberian climate fires this summer and Australian climate fires last year testify. Yesterday another bleak warning came in the form of melting Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. 

New data from space is providing the most precise picture yet of Antarctica’s ice, where it is accumulating most quickly and disappearing at the fastest rate, and how the changes could contribute to rising sea levels.

The information, in a paper published on Thursday in the journal Science, will help researchers better understand the largest driver of ice loss in Antarctica, the thinning of floating ice shelves that allows more ice to flow from the interior to the ocean, and how that will contribute to rising sea levels. Researchers have known for a long time that, while the continent is losing mass over all as the climate changes, the change is uneven. ...

Scientists are increasingly concerned that the loss of floating ice in West Antarctica is causing more rapid flow of grounded ice in the West Antarctic ice sheet, and that a portion of the sheet could collapse over centuries, greatly increasing sea levels.

The study looked at changes in the Greenland ice sheet as well. Unlike Antarctica, where little ice is lost through surface melting and runoff, as much as two-thirds of Greenland’s ice is lost this way.

Using their elevation data, the researchers found that Greenland is losing about 200 billion tons of mass each year on average. That’s enough to raise sea levels by about eight millimeters, or a third of an inch, over the study period. ...

The study is the first to be published using data from ICESat-2, which was designed to have an operating life of at least three years. Many more studies are expected that should add to the understanding of Earth’s frozen expanses.

“Where we’re at in ice sheet science is, there are still a lot of unknowns,” Dr. Gardner said. One advantage of ICESat-2, he said, is its ability to measure changes in some of the smallest ice sheet features. That will help scientists better understand how the changes are occurring and improve forecasts of future impacts as the climate continues to shift.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/30/climate/antarctica-ice-cl...

SIGN NOW: JOIN FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY WORKERS
CALLING FOR A GREEN RECOVERY

Oil giant BP just announced that the world has likely hit peak oil and demand will decline rapidly into the future1. Meanwhile, workers across the country are struggling with the economic effects of the COVD-19 pandemic.

As fossil fuel industry workers, and friends and family of those in the energy industry, we know fossil fuels have contributed significantly to our lives and economy. We also know it’s time to forge a sustainable energy future that creates over a million new careers.

Canada’s energy workers have the skills needed to build the new, net-zero economy and kickstart Canada’s recovery from the pandemic.

That’s why we have developed a four point plan to rapidly mobilize our workforce and upgrade our economy to meet the demands of this transition and recovery.

But in order to create these jobs and make green recovery happen, we need massive federal government investment now.

This week, the federal government will decide what our economic recovery will look like. This is our chance to win bold federal investment and ensure long term job security for every energy worker in Canada.

If thousands of fossil fuel industry workers and supporters call for a $110 billion federal investment over ten years in a green and prosperous transition, we can push Ottawa to act and make sure Canada doesn’t miss out on the jobs, technology, and future we all deserve.

NDPP wrote:

Either capitalism goes or we do.

I've been thinking that for a few decades now, and I'm pretty pessimistic. Got to keep trying, but the situation is very grim.

During Covid-19 car sales have plunged drastically thereby helping to lower greenhouse gas emissions. However thanks to government measures electric car sales have been relatively good. 

The Trudeau Liberal government could learn something from another major fossil fuel producer, Norway. tax breaks, low road tolls and free parking Norway has become the world leader in electric car sales despite its own large fossil fuel industry, with nearly half of new car sales are electric thanks to large tax breaks, low road tolls and free parking for electric cars. Furthermore,  all new car sales must be electric by law in 2025.  

One sign of the future of automobiles is that Tesla, the electric car maker, hit a record high in share price at $1,333 recently, helping it become the world's highest valued carmaker in the stock market. Trudeau has a choice: continue to heavily subsidize the fossil fuel and gas-powered auto industries as they die or shift to the green growth energy and transportation industries. His record so far beyond pious words has been dismal. 

Electric car park in Oslo (Photo: Alister Doyle)

By Alister Doyle

Pure electric cars made up almost half of car sales in Norway in the first half of 2020, in a world record as battery-powered vehicles suffer less than fossil-fueled rivals in the economic downturn caused by Covid-19.

Worldwide, car sales have plunged in 2020 but government measures to promote a greening of the auto industry in nations from China to France have made electric cars a relative bright spot in the market.

Shares in US electric car marker Tesla shares hit a record high on Wednesday at $1,333 and it overtook Toyota as the world’s most valuable carmaker.

In Norway, the global electric car leader thanks to huge tax breaks, low road tolls and free parking, sales of battery electric cars edged up to 48% of all new car registrations from January to the end of June, from 45% in the same period of 2019 and 42% in all of 2019. ...

Norway is by far the world’s biggest market by percentage for electric car sales, ahead of Iceland and the Netherlands and Sweden. Worldwide, electric cars make up about 3% of new cars, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). That figure includes plug-in hybrids, which are omitted from the Norwegian numbers. ...

The Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association, which represents electric car owners, said that sales were lagging a parliamentary goal that all new cars sold should be zero emissions by 2025. ...

Norway’s goal is earlier than targets set in other countries such as Britain in 2035 or France in 2040 as part of efforts to step up action to slow climate change under the Paris Agreement.

The IEA, in a report last month based on data to the end of April, estimated that the global passenger car market would contract by 15% this year compared to 2019, while sales of electric vehicles (EVs) would be roughly stable at 2019 levels. ...

China, for instance, the biggest overall market with 47% of 7.2 million electric cars on the roads, extended an exemption of new electric vehicles from a 10% purchase tax until 2022. France, from June, introduced huge subsidies under which a buyer could get up to €12,000 discount for buying a new Renault Zoe while scrapping an old petrol car, reducing the purchase cost to €20,000 from €32,000. 

Electric car sales in Europe this year were also boosted by the entry into force of new carbon emission standards for each manufacturer’s fleet, forcing a shift away from selling big, more profitable  and higher polluting petrol SUVs. In early 2020, more than 7% of cars sold in the European Union had a plug, double rates in 2019, said Julia Poliscanova, Senior Director, Vehicles and Emobility, at Brussels-based NGO Transport & Environment. ...

“People saw during the lockdowns how great it is to live in cities with clean air,” she told CHN. “That’s also driving awareness.”

https://www.climatechangenews.com/2020/07/02/norway-sets-electric-car-re...

PBS Frontline and NPR showed that the oil industry lied since the 1970s about how recycling of plastics could save them from damaging the environment in order to not reduce oil production for these products with calamatous consequences for landfills, oceans and greenhouse gas emissions. 

Landfill workers bury all plastic except soda bottles and milk jugs at Rogue Disposal & Recycling in southern Oregon.

NPR and PBS Frontline spent months digging into internal industry documents and interviewing top former officials. We found that the industry sold the public on an idea it knew wouldn't work — that the majority of plastic could be, and would be, recycled — all while making billions of dollars selling the world new plastic.

The industry's awareness that recycling wouldn't keep plastic out of landfills and the environment dates to the program's earliest days, we found. "There is serious doubt that [recycling plastic] can ever be made viable on an economic basis," one industry insider wrote in a 1974 speech.

Yet the industry spent millions telling people to recycle, because, as one former top industry insider told NPR, selling recycling sold plastic, even if it wasn't true.

"If the public thinks that recycling is working, then they are not going to be as concerned about the environment," Larry Thomas, former president of the Society of the Plastics Industry, known today as the Plastics Industry Association and one of the industry's most powerful trade groups in Washington, D.C., told NPR. ...

Here's the basic problem: All used plastic can be turned into new things, but picking it up, sorting it out and melting it down is expensive. Plastic also degrades each time it is reused, meaning it can't be reused more than once or twice.

On the other hand, new plastic is cheap. It's made from oil and gas, and it's almost always less expensive and of better quality to just start fresh.

All of these problems have existed for decades, no matter what new recycling technology or expensive machinery has been developed. In all that time, less than 10 percent of plastic has ever been recycled. But the public has known little about these difficulties. ...

Starting in the 1990s, the public saw an increasing number of commercials and messaging about recycling plastic. "The bottle may look empty, yet it's anything but trash," says one ad from 1990showing a plastic bottle bouncing out of a garbage truck. "It's full of potential. ... We've pioneered the country's largest, most comprehensive plastic recycling program to help plastic fill valuable uses and roles."

These commercials carried a distinct message: Plastic is special, and the consumer should recycle it. It may have sounded like an environmentalist's message, but the ads were paid for by the plastics industry, made up of companies like Exxon, Chevron, Dow, DuPont and their lobbying and trade organizations in Washington.

Industry companies spent tens of millions of dollars on these ads and ran them for years, promoting the benefits of a product that, for the most part, was buried, was burned or, in some cases, wound up in the ocean. Documents show industry officials knew this reality about recycling plastic as far back as the 1970s. Many of the industry's old documents are housed in libraries, such as the one on the grounds of the first DuPont family home in Delaware. Others are with universities, where former industry leaders sent their records. ...

Recycling plastic, it told the executives, was unlikely to happen on a broad scale. "There is no recovery from obsolete products," it says. It says pointedly: Plastic degrades with each turnover. "A degradation of resin properties and performance occurs during the initial fabrication, through aging, and in any reclamation process," the report told executives. Recycling plastic is "costly," it says, and sorting it, the report concludes, is "infeasible." ...

Larry Thomas, the former president of the Society of the Plastics Industry, wrote"The image of plastics is deteriorating at an alarming rate. We are approaching a point of no return." He told the executives they needed to act. The "viability of the industry and the profitability of your company" are at stake. ... "The feeling was the plastics industry was under fire — we got to do what it takes to take the heat off, because we want to continue to make plastic products," he says. ...

So began the plastics industry's $50 million-a-year ad campaign promoting the benefits of plastic. "Presenting the possibilities of plastic!" one iconic ad blared, showing kids in bike helmets and plastic bags floating in the air. "This advertising was motivated first and foremost by legislation and other initiatives that were being introduced in state legislatures and sometimes in Congress," Freeman says, "to ban or curb the use of plastics because of its performance in the waste stream."

At the same time, the industry launched a number of feel-good projects, telling the public to recycle plastic. It funded sorting machines, recycling centers, nonprofits, even expensive benches outside grocery stores made out of plastic bags. Few of these projects actually turned much plastic into new things. ...

NPR tracked down almost a dozen projects the industry publicized starting in 1989. All of them shuttered or failed by the mid-1990s. Mobil's Massachusetts recycling facility lasted three years, for example. ...

None of them was able to get past the economics: Making new plastic out of oil is cheaper and easier than making it out of plastic trash. ...

And Thomas, who led the trade group, says all of these efforts started to have an effect: The message that plastic could be recycled was sinking in. "I can only say that after a while, the atmosphere seemed to change," he says. "I don't know whether it was because people thought recycling had solved the problem or whether they were so in love with plastic products that they were willing to overlook the environmental concerns that were mounting up." ...

Without question, plastic has been critical to the country's success. It's cheap and durable, and it's a chemical marvel. It's also hugely profitable. The oil industry makes more than $400 billion a yearmaking plastic, and as demand for oil for cars and trucks declines, the industry is telling shareholders that future profits will increasingly come from plastic. ...

Fix recycling is the industry's message too, says Steve Russell, the industry's recent spokesman.

"Fixing recycling is an imperative, and we've got to get it right," he says. "I understand there is doubt and cynicism. That's going to exist. But check back in. We're there."

Larry Thomas, Lew Freeman and Ron Liesemer, former industry executives, helped oil companies out of the first plastic crisis by getting people to believe something the industry knew then wasn't true: That most plastic could be and would be recycled.

Russell says this time will be different. "It didn't get recycled because the system wasn't up to par," he says. "We hadn't invested in the ability to sort it and there hadn't been market signals that companies were willing to buy it, and both of those things exist today."

But plastic today is harder to sort than ever: There are more kinds of plastic, it's cheaper to make plastic out of oil than plastic trash and there is exponentially more of it than 30 years ago. And during those 30 years, oil and plastic companies made billions of dollars in profit as the public consumed ever more quantities of plastic. Russell doesn't dispute that.

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-i...

Global Youth Climate Strikes Return “For as Long as It Takes”

Youth climate activists are once again taking to the streets around the world to join the Fridays for Future strike for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic began. Student-led actions are taking place in South Korea, the Philippines, Germany, Sweden and in over 3,000 places around the globe. Swedish youth climate activist Greta Thunberg tweeted, “We will be back next week, next month and next year. For as long as it takes.”

In the Arctic Circle, 18-year-old climate activist Mya-Rose Craig held a protest this week standing on an iceberg and surrounded by open ocean, as Arctic sea ice shrank to its second-lowest minimum extent on record.

Mya-Rose Craig: “I am up here with Greenpeace in the Arctic. And I’m here to bear witness to the sea ice minimum, but I’m also here doing the most northerly Youth Strike for Climate to try and make a statement about how temporary this amazing landscape is and how our leaders have to make a decision now in order to save it.”

Although it is clear that the world must move off fossil fuels, this does not mean that there are no risks to the environment in carrying out this process, as the following example of extensive pollution in Russia by Nornickel's (one of the world's largest Arctic polluters) mining of nickel for electric car motors for Tesla and other companies illustrates. 

Every year in August and September, the people of Ust’-Avam, a remote indigenous community located in the Taimyr region of the Russian Arctic, toss nets into the Avam River to catch tugunok fish, an important traditional food. This year, the community stopped fishing early, around the start of the month. There were no tugunok to be found. Nor could locals find the fish at other common sites along the river basin fed by Lake Pyasino, which lies just a few miles north of the industrial city of Norilsk.

Gennady Shchukin, a member of the Dolgan ethnic group, has little doubt about the culprit: In late May, a reserve fuel tank at a power plant near Norilsk burst open, flooding local waterways with an estimated 23,000 tons of diesel oil. The spilled oil drifted for miles, turning part of the Ambarnaya River that feeds Lake Pyasino bright red. Norilsk Nickel, the Russian nickel mining company responsible for the spill, says it acted swiftly to contain the pollution. But Shchukin worries the contamination is far more widespread than the company claims, and that his people will be living with the consequences for years. ...

Last month, Aborigen Forum, a group of Russian indigenous activists and leaders that Shchukin heads up, launched a campaign to raise awareness of Norilsk Nickel’s impacts on their communities and to demand restitution. Rather than focus on an obscure Arctic mining company, Aborigen Forum is appealing to someone more likely to grab international headlines: Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla.

Nickel is a key ingredient in the cathodes of electric car batteries, allowing them to store more energy more cheaply. Tesla, and other EV makers, need lots of it. ...

“We don’t want the next industrial revolution of electric cars and clean energy developed for the price of indigenous peoples’ rights and traditional lands,” said Dmitry Berezhkov, a member of the Aborigen Forum network and the coordinator of a social media campaign to get Musk’s attention. ...

Aborigen Forum’s appeal to Musk was inspired by an appeal from the Tesla CEO himself. In a second-quarter earnings call in July, Musk was asked what are the biggest constraints to Tesla’s battery production capabilities. His response: nickel.

“Any mining companies out there: Please mine more nickel,” Musk said on the call. “Tesla will give you a giant contract, for a long period of time, if you mine nickel efficiently and in an environmentally sensitive way.”

Norilsk Nickel, also known as Nornickel, is one of the largest nickel producers on Earth. It claims to be the largest producer of so-called class 1 or high-purity nickel, the type coveted by battery manufacturers. Demand for high-purity nickel is predicted to surge as the electric car market grows. ...

Even before this year’s oil spill, Nornickel was one of the biggest polluters in the entire Arctic. Its nickel production sites on the Taimyr Peninsula and its refineries on the Kola Peninsula are both enormous sources of regional air pollution; the Taimyr operations alone are responsible for roughly double the annual sulfur dioxide emissions of the entire United States, according to a figure Greenpeace Russia attributes to The Russian Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring. Discharges of contaminated wastewater from Nornickel’s industrial facilities have resulted in severe heavy metal pollution in nearby water bodies and soils. Locals, Shchukin says, call the area around the city of Norilsk — a vast wasteland of dead trees and mud — “poison territory.”

https://grist.org/justice/russian-indigenous-communities-are-begging-tes...

The increasing costs of global warming are becoming more and more apparent to everyone, even American climate change deniers, every day, but the burden is mostly born by the poor, who have grown rapidly during the Covid-19 crisis. 

 A home burns as the sun sets behind smoke and flames during the Bobcat fire in Juniper Hills, California, on Friday. Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images

People across the US west, including hundreds of miles away from the blazes, reported buying air purifiers for the first time to cope with the smoke that cast a hazy glow over multiple states. The most effective air purifiers can run $200 to $500, and many sold out. Others said they had run up their air conditioning bills or paid for gas and hotels to leave the area. ...

When most people think of adaptation to the climate crisis, they think of governments building up infrastructure to protect property against rising seas or the agriculture industry finding new ways of growing crops with different rain patterns. ...

But individuals are already adapting – whether they are buying air purifiers, installing air conditioning to fight the heat or spending big to evacuate ahead of intensifying hurricanes.

Americans around the country – if they have the resources – are dedicating more of their income to living with extreme weather fueled by climate change. The most vulnerable are being left behind, in the absence of government aid.

In the western US, the climate crisis has doubled the area burned by wildfire from 1984 to 2015, according to research cited in the federal government’s climate assessment. “The area burned from 1916 to 2003 was more closely related to climate factors” than forest management, the report said.

Cities across California have opened “cleaner-air centers”, where people who can’t afford purifiers or don’t have homes can escape the smoke for a few hours. But they have been less frequented than in previous years because of concerns about Covid-19. Public spaces such as libraries have been closed, eliminating another respite.

Health officials advised residents with the means to filter the air in at least one room to create a place to get relief. Some also advertised a cheaper solution – attaching a furnace filter to a box fan. But filters quickly flew off the shelves. ...

In the short term, wildfire smoke can worsen chronic lung and heart conditions. It can trigger asthma attacks, heart attacks and strokes. It can also weaken the body’s ability to fight off illnesses like the coronavirus.

The longer-term health effects of continuous smoke exposure are unknown but expected to be significant. Researchers have linked even short-term exposures to air pollution – from factories, power plants and car exhaust – to an increase in premature deaths among the elderly. ...

At Stanford University, south of San Francisco, low-income graduate students said they were struggling to respond to the triple threat of the pandemic, heat, and dirty air. Because of Covid-19, many student researchers are working from home. Some don’t have air conditioning or ventilation because California has historically been temperate. But they also can’t open the windows because the air is choked with smoke. ...

Kristie Ebi, a climate researcher and professor at the University of Washington’s Center for Health and the Global Environment, said adapting to current climate change and trying to stem the crisiswere equally important. “The CO2 we have in the atmosphere right now will drive climate change for several more decades, so we have to mitigate, to reduce, the kinds of impacts we’re going to see in several decades,” Ebi said. “But in the short term, people are dying and suffering now.”

Adaptation is necessary, but it’s also expensive and unavailable to many. One analysis showed that about 40% of Americans would struggle to come up with $400 for an unexpected expense. A single evacuation could send them spiraling into debt.

“There’s a potentially infinite number of ways you can adapt – by changing your wardrobe or your eating habits or all these kinds of things,” said Amir Jina, an environmental economist at the University of Chicago. “But any of the really effective ones that we know of, like air conditioning or air filters, they’re going to cost money. They’re going to cost quite a lot of money, in some cases.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/23/california-climate-c...