The World Has Been On Fire for the Past Month. Here’s What It Looks Like
Ciara Nugent
Firefighters take a defensive stand against a home burning in Redwood Valley, Calif., ignited by an 80 acre wind whipped brush fire fed by tinder dry conditions, on July 7.
Firefighters take a defensive stand against a home burning in Redwood Valley, Calif., ignited by an 80 acre wind whipped brush fire fed by tinder dry conditions on July 7. Credit – Kent Porter—The Press Democrat/AP
Flames light up hillsides in British Columbia. Smoke swells over highways into Athens. A swimming pool in California is surrounded by charred rubble. Thick forests in Siberia lie shriveled and brown.
Countries across the northern hemisphere this summer are experiencing the worst wildfires in years of recorded history, with large swaths of land and entire towns in Europe, North America and Russia consumed by flames since the start of July.
Though many of these countries are used to summer fire seasons, climate change is making the hot, dry conditions that allow fires to catch and spread more common and more intense.
In parts of the western U.S., a summer of intense heat waves has arrived on the back of a weak rainy season, as a two-year-long drought stretches on. In mid-July, fires broke out in parts of Oregon and California, together consuming more than 230,000 hectares, part of a nationwide toll of over 1 million hectares burned so far in wildfires this year.
Firefighters battle a wildfire in Mugla, Marmaris district, Turkey, on Aug. 2. Turkey’s struggles against its deadliest wildfires in decades come as a blistering heatwave grips southeastern Europe.Yasin Akgul—AFP/Getty Images
A couple rides a pedal boat as smoke from nearby forest fires hangs over the city of Yakutsk, in Sakha (Yakutia), Russia on July 27.Dimitar Dilkoff—AFP/Getty Images
Fire retardant dropped from an airplane falls to the ground near the Chuweah Creek Fire as wildfires devastate Nespelem, Wash. on July 14.David Ryder—Reuters
In early July, the Canadian province of British Columbia became an icon for the extremes of destruction that wildfires can bring: the small town of Lytton briefly became one of the hottest places on earth, obliterating Canada’s heat records with temperatures topping 49.5° C (121.1° F). Then a fierce wildfire tore through town, destroying 90% of its buildings and leaving residents minutes to escape.
This month, southern Europe’s Mediterranean countries are sweltering under one of the worst heat waves to hit the region in decades. The temperature in one town in northern Greece reached 47.1°C (116.8°F) on Aug. 4, not far below Europe’s all-time record of 48°C (118.4°F). Fires in the south of the country hit residential areas on the outskirts of the capital, Athens, forcing people to flee into the city center as huge smoke plumes followed them.
In Turkey, the most severe fires on record have burned through more than 11,000 hectares of forest, killing eight people, most of them in the southern town of Manavgat. The devastation has led to anger at Turkey’s government, which has struggled to respond to the flames, admitting it has no working firefighting planes.
Men gather sheeps to take them away from an advancing fire in Mugla, Marmaris district, Turkey on Aug. 2.Yasin Akgul—AFP/Getty Images
Firefighters battle the Sugar Fire, part of the Beckwourth Complex Fire, burning in Plumas National Forest, Calif., on July 8.Noah Berger—AP
In Italy, where some 800 fires burned this week across multiple regions, tourist resorts on the eastern coastal town of Pescara rushed from a resort beach as a nearby wood went up in flames on Aug. 1.
Almost 2,000 miles north of the Mediterranean Sea, in northern Finland—where wildfires are rare—flames consumed 300 hectares of forest in the remote Kalajoki River basin in the last week of July, the worst wildfire recorded in the country since 1971.
Some of the world’s most worrying fires, in terms of managing climate change, have happened a few thousand of miles east of Finland, in eastern Russia’s Siberian Yakutia region. There, more than 4.2 million hectares have burned so far this year, and scientists fear they are destroying wetlands and causing layers of permafrost to melt—which could release large amounts of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. On Aug. 4, the E.U.’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service said fires in the area had unleashed 505 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent into the atmosphere—already surpassing 2020’s record for emissions released in an entire fire season, 450 megatonnes.
All of this could put us at risk of falling into a devastating cycle: as the greenhouse gases released by fires like these—and by other human activities including the burning of fossil fuels—continue to drive up global temperatures over the coming years, conditions will likely become even more favorable for fires, which in turn could keep driving up temperatures. If we can manage to rapidly cut our emissions, set up programs to restore natural ecosystems and get much better at preventing and controlling wildfires, we could, possibly, put a stop to that cycle some day. But between now and then, there may be many more fire seasons like this.
Forest fire rages in Varybobi, north of Athens, Greece on Aug. 3. Residential areas in Athens northern suburbs were evacuated as wildfires reached the outskirts of the city.Gerasimos Koilakos—NurPhoto/Getty Images
View of a beach resort as a wildfire burns on a hillside in Osoyoos, British Columbia, Canada, on July 20.Sara Mahony—Reuters
Children watch a helicopter dumping water on burning peatland at Palem Raya village in Ogan Ilir district, South Sumatra, Indonesia, on July 31.M. Hatta—Xinhua/eyevine/Redux
This aerial picture shows the shadow of an aircraft of the Air Forest Protection Service flying over a burned forest outside the village of Berdigestyakh, in the republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in Siberia, Russia on July 27.Dimitar Dilkoff—AFP/Getty Images
A dead goat lies on the ground in a burnt-out riding club after a forest fire in the Varibobi region of northern Athens, Greece on Aug. 4.Angelos Tzortzinis—DPA/picture alliance/Getty Images
In this photo taken by a drone, damaged structures are seen in Lytton, British Columbia, Canada on July 9, after a wildfire destroyed most of the village on June 30.Darryl Dyck—The Canadian Press/AP
Civil Defense personnel monitor a wildfire burning through hills in Qobayat, Lebanon on July 28. A Lebanese teenager was killed as he joined volunteers battling to fight the fire.Ethan Swope—Getty Images
A helicopter flies above a fire at Le Capannine beach in Catania, Sicily, Italy on July 30.Roberto Viglianisi—Reuters
‘Running out of options’: California resorts to water cutoffs as drought worsens
Julia Wick
Boat docks at the Browns Ravine Cove sit on dry earth at Folsom Lake on May 10, when California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a drought emergency in 41 of the state’s 58 counties. (Getty Images)
California water regulators took unprecedented action this week, passing an emergency regulation that will bar thousands of Californians from diverting stream and river water as the drought worsens.
The State Water Resources Control Board voted unanimously Tuesday to pass the “emergency curtailment” order for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta watershed. The watershed encompasses a wide swath of the state, from the Oregon border in northeastern California down into the Central Valley.
The regulation — which gives the state water board the authority to issue emergency curtailments and require reporting on water use — will go into effect about two weeks from now, subject to approval by the state Office of Administrative Law, with the issuing of formal curtailment orders to follow.
California’s complex water rights system is designed to allocate water use during times of shortage, and such curtailments, although rare, are not unheard of. But the scope of Tuesday’s order — which will apply to thousands of senior water rights across a wide swath of the state — goes beyond anything seen in prior droughts.
“The fact remains that water supplies are extremely limited, and we are running out of options,” Ernest A. Conant, Bureau of Reclamation California-Great Basin regional director, said during the meeting, expressing his agency’s support for the emergency regulations.
Some farmers strongly criticized the move, but regulators said it was necessary given the conditions.
Who is affected by the decision?
About 5,700 Northern California and Central Valley water rights holders — who collectively hold about 12,500 water rights — will be subject to the forthcoming curtailments, according to Erik Ekdahl, deputy director of the state water board’s Division of Water Rights. Once the regulation is in place, further curtailments in the delta watershed may be issued as the situation progresses.
“It really depends on compliance with this order, climate hydrology, and what water supply conditions evolve,” Ekdahl said.
The order will largely affect rights holders using water for agricultural irrigation purposes, though some municipal, industrial and commercial entities also will be affected. The regulation carves out an exemption for health and human safety purposes, meaning that water for drinking, bathing and domestic purposes won’t be subject to the curtailment.
The water board previously released a draft version of the proposed order in mid-July, following a notice of water unavailability — which urges, but does not order, people to stop diverting water. That was sent to many rights holders in mid-June.
The curtailments will create hardships for many growers, particularly those without access to well water. But the burden may be lessened by the time of year. Irrigation needs vary widely from farm to farm and crop to crop. Generally speaking, however, the biggest demands for agricultural irrigation in the delta watershed tend to be in the late spring and summer, meaning the bulk of water use for the year is likely behind many growers.
“It’s coming toward the end of the season here. As everything’s dwindling in a very dry year, the curtailments may not make a huge difference for a lot of crop types,” said Chris Scheuring, senior counsel for the California Farm Bureau.
Scheuring said the real question is what happens if drought conditions persist next year.
What prompted the decision?
The bottom line is there isn’t enough water to meet competing demands. The curtailments are necessary, according to the state water board’s finding of emergency, “to avoid catastrophic impacts to reservoir storage needed for human health and safety and other purposes.” Essentially, regulators need to drastically reduce the amount of water being diverted from rivers and streams to ensure that enough water remains for essential purposes and that those who are diverting are doing so legally.
“It’s pretty important for the integrity of the system to curtail water rights when there’s not enough water,” said Jay Lund, co-director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at UC Davis. “Otherwise, it’s just whoever gets their pump in first. And that’s not really a very fair way to do things.” In times of water shortage, rights holders are curtailed in order of seniority.
Drought conditions in the state rapidly worsened this spring, when expected snowpack runoff to the watershed decreased by almost 800,000 acre-feet — an amount nearly equivalent to the capacity of Folsom Reservoir — between April and May.
Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a drought emergency in 41 of California’s 58 counties on May 10. In that same month, many farmers were warned that they would receive little or nothing from two large allocation systems, the federal Central Valley Project and the State Water Project.
What happened to the snowpack?
“The simplest terms are the snow was kind of there and then it wasn’t,” said David Rizzardo, chief of the hydrology branch at the state’s Department of Water Resources.
Rizzardo said it’s not uncommon to lose 10%-20% of the snowpack to normal hydrological processes, particularly following a dry year. But losing just under 80% — let alone in such a short period of time?
“It’s beyond unprecedented,” Rizzardo said. The hydrologic conditions witnessed this year have been forecast in climate change models, but according to Rizzardo, such scenarios weren’t expected for decades from now.
Rizzardo characterized higher temperatures, drier soils and the effect of large-scale fires in the watershed as three of the primary factors driving the loss in projected runoff. (The effect of fires is two-fold, according to Rizzardo. The loss of tree cover and brush puts more direct sun radiation on the snow, which causes it to melt faster. Sooty debris from fires also creates dark surfaces, which absorb — rather than reflect — the sun’s radiation, causing even more melting.)
The delta itself is formed by the convergence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers in the western Central Valley, but the sprawling delta watershed stretches all the way from the Oregon border in the northeastern corner of the state to just north of Fresno, encompassing much of the Sierra Nevada, as well as cities like Redding, Chico, Sacramento and Stockton.
Broadly speaking, runoff from the Sierra snowpack, which feeds major Northern California reservoirs and dozens of rivers, travels through the watershed and into the delta, which then connects to the San Francisco Bay. Water from the delta contributes to the water supply for more than two-thirds of Californians and is also used to irrigate millions of acres of farmland.
What about the rest of the state?
In July, Newsom urged all Californians to voluntarily cut their water usage by 15%, but what exactly does that mean for the average California household?
The governor made the request as he extended a regional drought emergency to 50 counties, which comprise about 42% of the state’s population. For many, the talk of water reductions reminded them of the shriveled lawns, attenuated showers and water-bucket toilet flushing of the last devastating drought.
If achieved, a voluntary 15% water reduction statewide would save roughly 850,000 acre-feet of water, which is enough to supply 1.7 million households for a year, according to the governor’s office.
In April 2015, then-Gov. Jerry Brown ordered cities and towns across California to cut water use by 25%, marking the first mandatory statewide water restrictions in state history. Californians came close to meeting the goal, with residents reducing the amount of water they used by 24.5%. Now, a handful of years after the last drought, per-capita residential water use remains about 16% below 2013 levels.
Newsom’s request is intended to bring California water production roughly back to where it dropped to in 2015 and 2016, said Marielle Pinheiro, research data specialist at the State Water Resources Control Board. Pinheiro said the number seemed feasible to the board because the state had been able to maintain those levels during the last drought.
Household water usage varies dramatically across the state based on a number of factors, but speaking in the broadest terms, Pinheiro said a 15% reduction would equate to a cut of roughly 14 gallons a day per person.
Newsom’s drought emergency declaration excludes almost all of Southern California, where the drought picture is much less dire. That’s because the region is mostly supplied by big federal and state water systems, rather than local precipitation.
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which imports water from the Colorado River and the north, says it has sufficient reserves in regional reservoirs and groundwater banks — enough to carry it through this year.
Los Angeles, which is partly supplied by the MWD, similarly doesn’t expect any shortages, officials have said.
Rights Attorney Pays Price for Defending Indigenous in Ecuador Poisoned by Oil
Greg Palast
Look at his face. Emergildo Criollo, Chief of the Cofan people of the Amazon in Ecuador. Determined, dignified, in war paint, bare-chested.
Cofan Chief Emergildo Criollo, Ecuador
It was back in 2007, when I found him in his thatched stilt home in the rainforest. Criollo told me his 5-year-old son had jumped into a swimming hole, covered with an enticing shine. The shine was oil sludge, illegally dumped. His son came up vomiting blood, then dropped dead in the Chief’s arms.
I followed him to the courthouse in the dusty roustabout town of Lago Agrio (Bitter Lake) where, with a sheaf of papers, Criollo sought justice for his son.
Behind Criollo, the court clerks, in their white shirts and ties, were giggling and grinning at each other, nodding toward this “indio” painted up and half naked, thinking he can file a suit against a giant. A giant named Chevron.
In 2011, they stopped laughing. That’s when an Ecuadorian court ordered Chevron to pay Criollo and other indigenous co-plaintiffs $9.5 billion. The courts found that Chevron’s Texaco operation had illegally dumped 16 billion gallons of deadly oil waste.
Steven Donziger with Indigenous clients
(courtesy AmazonWatch)
What the gigglers didn’t know is that the Chief had a secret weapon: Steven Donziger, a US attorney, classmate of Barack Obama at Harvard law, who gave up everything — literally everything — to take on Criollo’s case.
It’s been a decade, and Chevron still hasn’t paid a dime. But Donziger has paid big time: For the last two years, he’s been under house arrest, longer than any American in history never convicted of a crime.
But weeks ago, he was convicted of contempt by a judge who denied him a jury. (The Constitution? Faggedaboudit.) And on October 8, this contemptible judge will sentence Donziger, and could put him behind bars.
Who was the prosecutor? Not the US government, but Chevron’s law firm. The first-ever criminal prosecution by a US corporation.
Say what?
On Friday, August 6 at 4pm Pacific, I will be speaking at the Free Donziger Rally at the Chevron Station on the corner of Laurel Canyon Blvd and Sunset Blvd. This is one of more than a dozen rallies on Friday from San Francisco to Tel Aviv. Check the list.
I can’t make this up.
Chevron set out to destroy Donziger, to make an example of a human rights lawyer that dares take on the petroleum pirates.
They filed suits against Donziger and the Cofan and found a former tobacco industry lawyer judge Lewis Kaplan to find Donziger in contempt for refusing to turn over his cell phone and computer to Chevron — an unprecedented attack on attorney-client privilege. To give Chevron the names of indigenous activists in South America can be a death sentence.
When Donziger said he’d appeal, the judge charged him with criminal contempt — that’s simply unprecedented. But a far more dangerous precedent was set. When federal prosecutors in New York laughed off and rejected Kaplan’s demand that they charge Donziger, the judge appointed Chevron’s lawyers, Gibson Dunn, to act as the prosecutors!
So far, 60 Nobel Laureates, several US Senators and Congresspeople, and a Who’s Who of human rights groups have publicly registered their horror at this new corporate prosecution. (Note: Gibson Dunn represented me. Never again. I’ve taken the trash to the curb.)
Chevron also went after journalists, in one case, filing a complaint against the BBC Television reporter that broke the story that Chevron had destroyed key evidence in the case. I was that reporter — and survived with my job after a year of hearings. But Chevron’s prosecution did a damn good job of scaring off other journalists.
Some were scared off; some bought off. PBS News Hour wouldn’t touch the death-by-oil story. The official chief sponsor of the PBS News Hour? Chevron.
I’ve gone way out of my way to get ChevronTexaco’s side of the story. I finally chased them down in Ecuador’s capital, Quito. I showed them a study of the epidemic of childhood leukemia centered on where their company dumped oil sludge. Here’s their reply:
“And it’s the only case of cancer in the world? How many cases of children with cancer do you have in the States?”
Texaco’s lawyer, Rodrigo Perez, was chuckling and snorting.
“Scientifically, nobody has proved that crude causes cancer.”
OK, then. But what about the epidemiological study about children with cancer in the Amazon traced to hydrocarbons?
The parents of the dead kids, he said, would have some big hurdles in court:
“If there is somebody with cancer there, they must prove it is caused by crude or by the petroleum industry. And, second, they have to prove that it is OUR crude.”
Perez leaned over with a huge grin.
“Which is absolutely impossible.”
He grinned even harder.
Maybe some guy eating monkeys in the jungle can’t prove it. And maybe that’s because the evidence of oil dumping was destroyed.
Deliberately, by Chevron.
Jaime Varela, Chevron Attorney, Quito, Ecuador
I passed the ChevronTexaco legal duo a document from their files labeled “Personal y confidential.” They read in silence. They stayed silent quite a while. Jaime Varela, Chevron’s lawyer, was wearing his tan golf pants and white shoes, an open shirt and bespoke blue blazer. He had a blow-dried bouffant hairdo much favored by the ruling elite of Latin America and skin whiter than mine, a color also favored by the elite.
Jaime had been grinning too. He read the memo. He stopped grinning. The key part says,
“Todos los informes previos deben ser sacados de las oficinas principales y las del campo, y ser destruidos.”
“. . . Reports . . . are to be removed from the division and field offices and be destroyed.”
It came from the company boss in the States, “R. C. Shields, Presidente de la Junta.”
Removed and destroyed. That smells an awful lot like an order to destroy evidence, which in this case means evidence of abandoned pits of deadly drilling residue. Destroying evidence that is part of a court action constitutes fraud.
In the United States, that would be a crime, a jail-time crime. OK, gents, you want to tell me about this document?
“Can we have a copy of this?” Varela asked me, pretending he’d never seen it before in his life.
I’ll pretend with them, if that gets me information. “Sure. You’ve never seen this?”
The ritual of innocence continued as they asked a secretary to make copies. “We’re sure there’s an explanation,” Varela said. I’m sure there is. “We’ll get back to you as soon as we find out what it is.”
Research has found that extreme heat can directly hurt economic growth.
For example, a 2018 study found that the economies of U.S. states tend to grow at a slower pace during relatively hot summers. The data shows that annual growth falls 0.15 to 0.25 percentage points for every 1 degree Fahrenheit that a state’s average summer temperature was above normal.
Laborers in weather-exposed industries such as construction work fewer hours when it’s hotter. But higher summer temperatures reduce growth in many industries that tend to involve indoor work, including retail, services and finance. Workers are less productive when it’s hotter out.
2. Crop yields drop
Agriculture is obviously exposed to weather: After all, crops grow outdoors.
While temperatures up to around 85 F to 90 F (29-32 C) can benefit crop growth, yields fall sharply when thermostats rise further. Some of the crops hit hard by extreme heat include corn, soybeans and cotton. These reductions in yields could be costly for U.S. agriculture.
For example, a recent study I conducted found that an additional 2 degrees Celsius of global warming would eliminate profits from an average acre of farmland in the Eastern U.S.
A prominent example of this was the collapse of the Russian wheat harvest in response to the country’s 2010 heat wave, which raised wheat prices throughout the world.
A 2011 study found that just one extra day with temperatures above 90 F increases annual household energy use by 0.4%. More recent research shows that energy use increases the most in places that tend to be hotter, probably because more households have air conditioning.
This increase in electricity use on hot days stresses electric grids right when people depend on them most, as seen in California and Texas during recent heat waves. Blackouts can be quite costly for the economy, as inventories of food and other goods can spoil and many businesses either have to run generators or shut down. For instance, the 2019 California blackouts cost an estimated $10 billion.
4. Education and earnings suffer
A long-term impact of increasingly hotter weather involves how it affects children’s ability to learn – and thus their future earnings.
Research has shown that hot weather during the school year reduces test scores. Math scores decrease more and more as the temperature rises beyond 70 F (21 C). Reading scores are more resistant high temperatures, which this research claims is consistent with how different regions of the brain respond to heat.
One study suggested that students in schools that lack air conditioning learn 1% less for every 1 degree Fahrenheit increase in the school year’s average temperature. It also found that minority students are especially affected by hotter school years, as their schools are especially likely to lack air conditioning.
The impact of extreme heat on development, in fact, begins before we’re even born. Research has found that adults who were exposed to extreme heat as fetuses earn less during their lifetimes. Each extra day with average temperature above 90 F (32 C) reduces earnings 30 years later by 0.1%.
Air conditioning can help – to a point
Air conditioning can offset some of these effects.
Not everyone has air conditioning, however, especially in normally cooler areas like Oregon, Washington and Canada that have experienced unusually extreme temperatures this year. And many people can’t afford to own or operate them. Survey data from 2017 found that around half of homes in the Pacific Northwest lacked air conditioning. And about 42% of U.S. classrooms lack an air conditioner.
While heat waves are shown to induce more households to install air conditioning, it’s hardly a panacea. By 2100, higher use of air conditioning could increase residential energy consumption by 83% globally. If that energy comes from fossil fuels, it could end up amplifying the heat waves that caused the higher demand in the first place.
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And in the U.S. South, where air conditioning is omnipresent, hotter-than-usual summers take the greatest toll on states’ economic growth.
In other words, as temperatures rise, economies will continue to suffer.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Derek Lemoine, University of Arizona.
Derek Lemoine does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
When turning on faucets is a source of stress: Climate change shapes where Americans relocate
Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy, USA TODAY
Garrett and Megan Warren, with their son, Reeve, 6, decided to relocate to Portland, Ore., from Los Angeles in 2016 because of drought conditions in California.
Megan Warren, who grew up in Southern California, had lived in Los Angeles for 15 years when she decided she’d had enough.
During periods of drought, when the city tried to conserve water and added plastic balls to the reservoir to reduce evaporation, neighbors in the Miracle Mile didn’t seem to care, she says.
She’d drive down her street and see one of them hosing off his driveway and others using sprinklers on their lawns. She had removed the “brown, dry and crispy grass” and water-dependent landscaping from her lawn and replaced it with succulents and ground cover that could survive in dry conditions.
“Every time I turned on the faucet to wash my dishes, it was really a source of stress for me,” she says. “I just wanted to go to a place where I could take a shower without worrying about water.”
As she explored her options, the Pacific Northwest seemed like a “dreamland.”
“There’s plentiful water, and everything is green and lush and growing,” she says. “And they have four seasons, and it’s beautiful.”
In 2016, her family picked Portland, Oregon, as their new home because the city had made ecological advances such as composting 67% of its waste, offered great public transportation options and had residents who seemed environmentally conscious.
Warren is among a growing number of Americans who may be starting to factor climate change into decisions about where they live.
Though there is no clear data about how many Americans have moved because of climate-related trends such as wildfires, heat waves, drought and hurricanes, there are signs that people may be weighing these risks when purchasing a home.
Will climate change prompt moves?
Nearly half (49%) of respondents say they plan to move in the next year, blaming extreme temperatures and the increasing frequency or intensity of natural disasters, according to a survey commissioned this year by real estate website Redfin. The survey involved 2,000 U.S. residents contacted from Feb. 25 to March 1.
Based on that insight, Redfin will announce Tuesday that it is adding local climate risk data to its site, the company told USA TODAY exclusively.
Redfin will integrate data from ClimateCheck, a startup that lets people access climate data using any address in the USA. Homebuyers who want to understand the risk of fire, heat, drought and storms will be able to see a rating from 0-100 associated with the county, city, ZIP code and neighborhood of the home they’re considering. On the scale, 0 indicates very low risk and 100 indicates very high risk of climate-related hazards for the home compared with others in the USA through the year 2050, a period within the lifespan of a 30-year mortgage signed today.
Previously, the site displayed only flood risk data.
Though climate change poses an increasingly large risk of higher insurance costs or displacement for homeowners, affordability and personal preferences have dictated homebuying decisions, economists say.
Are savings worth the risk?
“One of the reasons people haven’t been considering climate change when buying a home up to this point is because they don’t have the information in front of them,” says Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin. “Am I willing to buy a home that’s maybe 10% cheaper but has a 10-point higher flood risk?
“It’s hard to make those trade-offs when you don’t have that information at your fingertips,” she says.
Daryl Fairweather says homebuyers don’t always have the information they need on climate-based risks.
Jenny Miller, who grew up near San Antonio, remembers spending her summers playing outside and camping.
Her 6-year-old son has experienced a very different kind of summer.
“My son doesn’t even want to go out and ride his bike,” Miller says. “The heat is super unbearable to the point where you really can’t do anything outdoors unless you want to be in water.”
After 30 years in the Lone Star State, Miller and her husband decided to relocate across the country to Kennebunk, Maine.
She cites climate change – which contributed to her husband’s worsening allergies – as the biggest factor in their decision to move.
The average summer temperature in San Antonio has risen by 3.5 degrees since the 1970s, and the number of days each year when temperatures hit 100 degrees or more has climbed from one in 1970 to 25 in 2020, according to an analysis based on National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data by Climate Central, a science organization based in New Jersey.
Megan Warren and her family moved from Los Angeles to Portland, Ore., in 2016 to get away from drought conditions in California.
High risk, higher population growth
As temperatures rise, the probability of wildfires has increased in some regions.
Cal Inman, CEO of ClimateCheck, says people deserve to be informed about the current and future risk of wildfire. The six counties most at risk for wildfires are among the fastest-growing counties in the country, according to an analysis by ClimateCheck. Those fire-prone areas are in California, Idaho, Utah and Washington.
San Antonio had 25 days of above 100-degree-temperatures in 2020.
The population of Placer County, California, which has the highest wildfire risk – 98 out of 100 – in the country, grew by 7% in recent years, making it one of the fastest-growing counties in the country. Similarly, Morgan County in Utah grew by 17.5% and has a wildfire risk of 95 out of 100.
The other four counties that saw population growth and faced a severe risk of wildfire are Chelan County in Washington, Franklin County in Idaho, Weber County in Utah and Ventura County in California.
Access to climate change data
Inman, who is also a real estate developer, says his “aha moment” moment came when he discovered that real estate investors such as banks and insurance companies used climate risk data to inform their investing decisions.
Megan Warren and her son, Reeve, 6, prepare dinner together at their home in Portland, Ore., on July 26. Warren says that when the family lived in Los Angeles, they tried to save water from cooking to use for watering their plants because they had to conserve water as much as possible.
In his annual letter to business leaders last year, Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, wrote that “investors are recognizing that climate risk is investment risk.”
“What will happen to the 30-year mortgage – a key building block of finance – if lenders can’t estimate the impact of climate risk over such a long timeline, and if there is no viable market for flood or fire insurance in impacted areas?” Fink asked in the letter.
Inman, of ClimateCheck, says he wanted all the great research from the government and universities accessible to anyone buying a home.
“I don’t think people are factoring climate risk into the decision-making the way they do price point, proximity to work, proximity to school,” he says. “We’re just trying to arm the consumer with one more data point to make a decision about where to live.”
Matthew Kahn, professor of economics at the University of Southern California and author of “Climatopolis,” says regions that make smart decisions through good public policy will eventually win out.
“Those places that, either due to God or good public policy, are better able to adapt to Mother Nature’s punches and coach themselves to be more livable will be rewarded with a larger tax base as more people in jobs move there,” he says.
“If consumers have more information about the climate risks they could face before they purchase a home, they’re less likely to regret their choices,” he says.
From wildfires to milder winters
Andrea Clark and Jason Smith, a couple in their 30s, moved from Napa, California, to Cedar Springs, Michigan, last fall after three consecutive summers of wildfire-related evacuation alerts and coping with frequent power outages.
The air would be thick with smoke and their cars would be covered in ash even though the wildfires burned a considerable distance away.
“Your hair smelled of smoke, and you felt like you were at a campfire all the time when you were outside,” Clark says.
Clark, who worked at an alcohol rehabilitation center in Sonoma County, says the treatment center had to be evacuated last year.
There were times when she couldn’t get to work.
“All the routes that I would take to get to work, like quite literally, had fires on them,” she says. “Fire is definitely something we thought about quite a bit, because it was more inevitable than it was an anomaly.”
Then there’s the stress of planning.
Clark says that during the days she was on fire alert, she’d have to take their dog to work, pack a bag and leave it in the car in case she got stuck.
Last year, the couple decided to explore other places to live and picked Michigan, where Smith grew up.
Smith says he feels the weather in Cedar Springs, about 20 minutes north of Grand Rapids, has changed over the years.
“The winter weather is off a little bit here from what it was with my childhood,” he says. “It’s milder and not as much snow.”
For Clark, a native Californian, it’s been a big change. Knowing she’s getting a lot more house for her money eased the strain.
“It’s definitely a weather adjustment, but it’s nice,” she says. “It’s a lot of space, and we’re close to town and it’s an easy drive.”
You can leave, but can you escape?
For the Warrens, the Portland family, natural disasters seem unavoidable.
Oregon is dealing with water shortages and the nation’s largest wildfire, which has claimed 410,731 acres.
“It is terrifying to read,” Warren says. “Because again, that’s why we left, and now I feel like you can leave, but that doesn’t mean you’re solving the problem.”
Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy is the housing and economy reporter for USA TODAY.
It’s never a bad idea to cultivate some new interests—like growing your own year-round edible garden. Naturally, having a space to garden is key and—believe it or not—most of us have some usable real estate, whether it’s a full backyard, a small side yard, a patio, a balcony, or a window box. There are a few things to keep in mind when planning your edible garden, so we consulted award-winning landscape designer and urban farmer Christian Douglas, who’s spent over two decades creating extraordinary and productive outdoor spaces.
Through his two companies—The Backyard Farm Co. and his eponymous firm Christian Douglas Design—Douglas combines his passions for classic design and sustainable agriculture. “There’s pretty much always an edible component in everything we do,” he says. “We didn’t see a pandemic coming, for sure. But in some ways, we’ve been preparing for this a really long time by empowering self-reliance—and growing food is one way to do that.”
The San Francisco Bay Area–based designer and his team, including landscape architect Christian Macke and farming experts Christiana Paoletti and Amy Rice-Jones, help clients all over the world through a variety of virtual programs that serve to educate them about growing and harvesting food. “Based on a site assessment and soil samples, we guide them where to establish the garden (if they don’t already have one set up) and make a crop plan for the season,” Douglas says. “We tell them where to plant, when to plant, what to plant, and do regular check-ins every two weeks by FaceTime to provide feedback, tips, and advice from afar.”
Closer to home, where his clients include Tyler Florence—for whom he’s spent several years designing and maintaining a three-terraced kitchen garden, among other projects, at the chef’s Northern California property—Douglas prefers keeping his hands dirty with projects following roughly the same process.
Douglas and his team designed, planted, and maintain this three-terraced kitchen garden at chef Tyler Florence’s Northern California home. Photo: Tolan Florence
Step 1: Assessing the light and the site
“We need to know there’s ideally between six and eight hours of sunlight—particularly for things like tomatoes and peppers. We look at the amount of sunlight to determine what can grow,” he explains. “Then, of course, we look at how much space you have–there are ways of growing horizontally and vertically to maximize space, particularly if you have a small area for your garden.”
For small spaces, Douglas suggests a couple of options, including growing your garden in plant pots that can be ordered online from places like Wayfair, Houzz, or your local nurseries (which also deliver). “We like to consider the style of the house when choosing the right pots for our clients. You can pick from terra-cotta, ceramic, wood, or even fabric pots—which are a quick way to get set up. These are planters that ship folded up, and you simply unfold them, fill them with soil, and start growing.”
If you have a bit more space, you can go bigger with galvanized troughs that have a “farmhouse” aesthetic or steel planters that are more modern. “You can also go for classic lumber planter boxes,” he offers. “While it’s likely you’ll need to order the others, you can have the materials for lumber planters delivered from your local hardware store. We’re big on supporting our local retailers, and during shelter-in-place most hardware stores and nurseries are staying open. You can pick up (they’ll even load your car for you) or they’ll deliver.”
Big galvanized metal troughs offer ample space for growing your vegetables. Photo: Christian Douglas Design
Step 2: Knowing when to plant
“This question is very bioregional; everything is based on your last frost date. A lot of summer crops will perish if you get a hard frost on them when they’re small. If you’re unsure when your last frost is, you can go online to your regional master gardener program—it’s a great place to get a lot of local knowledge, particularly if you’re unsure of your bioregion.” The same principle applies for pulling up and replanting. “In California we can grow all year long, but in general planting for the next season depends on your first frost date. As soon as you start getting frost, it’s time to take everything out.” Douglas points out there are actually two planting seasons—the warm season and the cool season—and this dictates what you can plant successfully.
Though we don’t all have room for a magnificent edible backyard like this one designed by Douglas, it’s nice to think we could get our own blueberries, strawberries, or peppers growing. Photo: Caitlin Atkinson
Step 3: Deciding what to plant
“Some things you can grow with seeds, and others with vegetable starts,” Douglas says. “For seed planting, by next week you could be growing warm season crops like leafy greens—these are all your salad greens like arugula—as well as basil, cilantro, radishes, and carrots, which will start to yield in about 30 days. With vegetable starts (which you’d buy from a nursery ready to plug right into the ground) you’d go with heavy hitters like tomatoes, summer squash, Asian greens, and even shishito peppers. These give you a really great return on your investment and grow quickly so you can keep harvesting throughout the summer.”
Your cold season crops should go into the ground by late September. These are things like cauliflower, brussels sprouts, broccoli, romanesco, kale, and potatoes that will generally start producing in about 60 days. If you’re on the East Coast, you’ll eventually be under snow, but you can grow a bit indoors—all the Italian herbs, basil, and cilantro are a few options.
Herb planters line the steps of this deck—a perfect solution for growing food in a small space close to the kitchen. Photo: Christian Douglas Design
Step 4: Maintaining your new crops
“After planting, you’ll want to water thoroughly so the soil is saturated, checking with your trowel or finger to see that the soil is moist a few inches deep. Following this you’ll water once a day–preferably in the morning–taking special care to ensure seeded areas don’t dry out until they’ve safely germinated and sprouted,” instructs Douglas. “As long as your soil is damp and the plants don’t look wilted, you’re watering enough. Remember that you’re growing healthy soil with living microbes and worms, which need a moisture to survive.” To get the best harvest possible, Douglas says you’ll want to feed your plants periodically. There are two ways to do this: You can add nutrients to the soil for the plants to take up in their roots, or you can dilute nutrients in water for them to absorb through their leaves. For either option, Douglas’s favorite brand is E.B. Stone Organics.
Notes on sourcing
Douglas is a fan of several organic seed companies based in the Midwest and on the East Coast, including High Mowing Seeds and Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. “Locally, in Marin County, we love Fairfax Lumber & Hardware—they have the soil, compost, seeds, vegetable starts, fertilizers, and really everything you need to get started. The San Francisco Bay Area has so many great places, including a number of Sloat Garden Centers, Green Jeans Garden Supply in Mill Valley, and The Living Seed Company in Point Reyes Station—they’re all still stocked and have great heirloom seeds.”
Other metropolitan areas may not have as many accessible garden centers, but Douglas contends it’s not impossible to source your starts. “It might be a little different if you’re living in downtown Manhattan, but all you have to do is go up the Hudson and there’s the Hudson Valley Seed Company. Wherever you are, there are all these small retailers crying out for business.”
“We want to redefine how we perceive the landscape by turning it into a resource we can use to feed our families and still maintain a space for entertaining,” remarks Douglas. “We want to prioritize food in our landscapes and shared spaces—if nothing else this may inspire people to think differently about their spaces—particularly with what’s happening in the world today.”
Fracking in Pennsylvania used toxic ‘forever chemicals’ as Pa. officials maintain willful ignorance | Editorial
The Editorial Board August 5, 2021
The Inquirer’s editorial board identified the use of PFAS in eight fracking wells. Only the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection can shed light on the full scope.
The drill platform at the Cabot Oil & Gas Corp Flower drill site, outside of Dimock. Pa. An analysis by The Inquirer’s editorial board of 280 chemicals used in fracking found that all but 48 had been assigned a safety warning. MICHAEL BRYANT / Staff Photographer
Through Freedom of Information Act requests, the health professionals’ environmental advocacy group found that in 2011, the Environmental Protection Agency authorized the use of a group of chemicals known as PFAS in fracking. That’s despite warnings from agency scientists that these chemicals pose health hazards — including the risk of cancer, liver problems, immune disorders, and adverse effects on fetuses and breastfeeding babies. The physicians group identified the use of the chemicals in at least 1,200 wells in six states, not including Pennsylvania.
An analysis of public data by this editorial board identified the use of one of these “forever chemicals” in at least eight Pennsylvania fracking wells between 2012 and 2014. Our findings should raise concerns for all Pennsylvanians.
Using information from the database, we matched 280 chemicals to the PubChem library of the National Center for Biotechnology Information; the library includes safety information about each substance, including health and environmental warnings. A chemical can be assigned multiple warnings, and many are. This board identified 28 chemicals with an “acute toxicity” warning — the most serious safety label — and 106 with a health warning, an environmental warning, or both. Of the 280 chemicals on the list, 48 had no warning.
The “forever chemical” identified by the board is polytetrafluoroethylene, commonly known as Teflon — which PubChem reports is “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen.” According to David Andrews, a chemist and senior scientist at the Environmental Working Group, while polytetrafluoroethylene is a relatively stable compound and direct exposure is of low concern, “the real issue” is it “often has contaminants and byproducts in it.”
The compound could break down into fragments that, according to Andrews, are “incredibly persistent” and “known to cause toxic effects.” BiologistMaricel V. Maffini adds that this persistence “increases the likelihood of exposure and toxicity.”
State environmental officials have been testing water for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, but not with fracking in mind when targeting water sources. Instead, the state tested water sources within half a mile of military bases, fire training sites, landfills, and manufacturing facilities because they are known sources of contamination.
Four of the wells in which polytetrafluoroethylene has been used are in Washington County, where state officials did not test a single water source.
Steps needed
Now that the use of these chemicals in fracking is known, the commonwealth should test water near wells and waste ponds where “forever chemicals” were used.
Asked to comment on polytetrafluoroethylene being identified in at least eight wells, a Department of Environmental Protection spokesperson replied by email that the agency “is dedicated to ensuring that Pennsylvanians have safe drinking water, and in cases of water supply contamination, the supply must be replaced with water that meets or exceeds safe drinking water standards. Further, DEP understands that PFAS, an emerging environmental issue, is a serious concern that we are working to address.”
PFAS is an abbreviation for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, chemicals that were developed to prevent staining and corrosion; they are often contained in nonstick cookware and food packaging.
Other hazardous materials mayhave been used in Pennsylvania fracking. State officials maintain a list of about 430 chemicals protected from disclosure as trade secrets and say they can identify each. Asked whether the state would audit the list for “forever chemicals” — not disclosing the name of the substance or other details — a spokesperson wrote that such review is “possible” but time-consuming as “staff will need to review approximately 90 individual paper submissions” to identify the chemicals.
Compared with Pennsylvania’s important efforts to test water for those substances, reviewing 90 paper submissions for critical information about potential risk seems a minor cost.
There are tangible reasons to be concerned. A cluster of rare cancer in children prompted Gov. Tom Wolf to award $2.5 million toward studying the relationship of fracking and health. While waiting for the results — expected by the end of 2022 — a sensible step is for the Department of Environmental Protection to review the trade secret records to verify the extent to which toxic substances were injected into the commonwealth’s soil.
The only way to gain a full picture of those substances in Pennsylvania, and to prevent resulting harm, is for state environmental officials to answer: Are there “forever chemicals” on the list of substances used in fracking and registered as a trade secret? If more of those chemicals were used, and that information sat with environmental officials without disclosure or proper review, that would be a miscarriage of justice — and a violation of Pennsylvanians’ constitutional right to “pure water.”
Starving cows. Fallow farms. The Arizona drought is among the worst in the country
Jaweed Kaleem
Nancy Caywood stands beside the corn that her son Travis Hartman farms using leased land that has water rights. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
The cotton’s gone.
The alfalfa barely exists.
“Can you even call this a farm?” asked Nancy Caywood, standing on a rural stretch of land her Texas grandfather settled nearly a century ago, drawn by cheap prices and feats of engineering that brought water from afar to irrigate central Arizona’s arid soil.
The canals that used to bring water to the fields of Caywood Farms have gone dry due to the drought. In Arizona, 99% of the land is undergoing a years-long drought. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
On the family’s 247 acres an hour south of Phoenix, Caywood grew up tending to cotton and alfalfa, two water-intensive crops that fed off melted mountain snows flowing from a reservoir 120 miles away. She grew up understanding the rhythms of the desert and how fields can blossom despite a rugged, sand-swept terrain where sunlight is a given but water is precious.
Now more than ever. Looking out at her farmland recently, Caywood held back tears.
The eastern Arizona reservoir that provided much of her water was drying up, leaving empty the canals and ditches that surround her property. Bigger-than-usual summer rains did not prove ample to rescue dead fields. The drought was at her door.
Across the U.S. West, shifting climate patterns are wreaking havoc. An early start to fire season is scorching rural Oregon and parts of Northern California. Record temperatures have led to deaths of hundreds of residents of Seattle and Portland, Ore. Lake Mead, the massive Colorado River reservoir outside Las Vegas, is at its lowest point since its 1935 federal construction, threatening water supplies to Arizona, Southern California, Nevada and Mexico.
Saguaros, which can naturally withstand drought better than non-native plants, are still susceptible to damage under extreme conditions. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
In Arizona, 99% of the land is undergoing years-long drought that has accelerated. Large swaths of the region are now in extreme distress and the picture may well get worse, with less reliable mountain snowfall to feed streams and a morphing monsoon season that has only proved a temporary reprieve and even led to flooding. The state, where more than a third of all water can trace itself up the Colorado River to Lake Mead, will also be forced to make do with less beginning next year because of the lake’s dwindling supply.
“Arizona is pretty much an irrigated state and we’ve managed our water resources generally well,” said Stephanie Smallhouse, a fifth-generation cattle rancher on the far outskirts of Tucson who is the president of the Arizona Farm Bureau. “But it’s near impossible to manage yourself out of a drought.”
The history of Arizona is the history of water. Before European colonizers and American settlers moved in, Indigenous people relied on the Gila, Salt and Verde rivers outside Phoenix. The Colorado River flowed on what’s now the state’s western edge, while snowmelt from New Mexico’s Black Mountain Range formed the Gila River that came from the east to meet the Colorado, creating a lifeline for tens of thousands of subsistence farmers in Native American communities.
But as technological advances led to the construction of dams and reservoirs in the early 20th century to divert rivers for new residents — like Caywood’s grandfather — Native land went fallow, leading to sickness and poverty. As cities such as Tucson and Phoenix and farmlands between them grew over the decades, they were aided by another feat in water engineering when construction on the Central Arizona Project launched in 1973. Today, the intricate canal system carries Colorado River water hundreds of miles from Lake Havasu on the California-Arizona border to taps and irrigation ditches across central Arizona.
The Hayden-Rhodes Aqueduct, fed by the Colorado River, runs through Scottsdale, Ariz. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
It’s a history that informs who wins and loses amid drought. The state has dozens of irrigation districts that tax customers in exchange for regulating water flow from different sources. The map they form can at times resemble gerrymandered congressional districts, with it not unusual for neighboring farms to get water from canals that lead to mountains and reservoirs in opposite directions.
Longevity also goes into the equation.
“Water policy in Arizona is also rooted in the idea that a person who comes and diverts water for a beneficial use should have higher priority than the next one who comes along if there is a risk for shortage,” said Sarah Porter, the director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University.
When it comes to water, one city or farm is not always equal to the other in the state where the $23-billion agriculture industry uses up more than 70% of irrigated water, a large chunk of it on crops the federal government encourages with subsidies, such as cotton. In central Arizona, city dwellers and tribal lands tend to get first dibs on water before farms. Still, nearly everyone is preparing. Cities are raising water prices. The state is locked in a battle with hundreds of lush golf courses over demands that they cut back on water.
Yuma, a major farming region known as the “Salad Bowl” for growing broccoli, lettuce and leafy greens that are shipped across the country each winter, is in many ways spared. It has priority over water from the nearby Colorado River in part because irrigated agriculture has taken place there for more than a century. Vegetables also need significantly less water than crops that are popular inland.
A worker moves irrigation tubes on a farm in Pinal County. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
It’s farmers in the center of the state who are most worried as shortages loom. Among the hardest-hit are those in Pinal County, a largely rural patchwork of farms and cattle and dairy ranches nestled between Phoenix and Tucson where family farmers live alongside exurbs that are rapidly expanding as agriculture recedes.
Along Interstate 10, typically green farms have turned brown, skinny cattle are left with little grass to graze and saguaros lie dead. “For sale” signs advertise desperate owners looking to sell their land at discount for solar power panels and housing developments.
“There’s nothing nefarious about how the water is divided,” said Paul Orme, an attorney who represents several irrigation districts in the county. “But because of agreements that have been negotiated and where these farmers have fell in those, you could see up to 30% of farmland in Pinal County no longer irrigated over the next few years.”
For those like Caywood, that time has already come.
Casa Grande, a city of 55,000 founded in 1879 as a mining town that’s named after a structure built by the ancient Hohokam people, is one of those places at the center of the water crisis. Home to dozens of alfalfa, cotton, wheat and corn farms and as well as dairy and beef ranches, it’s long been sustained by a mix of rains, aquifers and canals drawing on the Colorado River, among other reserves.
Caywood stands in what used to be an alfalfa field. It went fallow after her family lost access to irrigated water from the San Carlos reservoir because its water levels were too low. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
The Caywood farm has a different source. When Caywood’s grandfather, Lewis Storey, established it in 1930, he agreed to pay for water from canals connected to the San Carlos reservoir 130 miles away. Storey thought the reservoir, formed on the Gila River, would be plentiful for generations with its 19,500 acre-feet supply. An acre-foot covers the amount of water that could seep a foot deep across a football field.
The family had long used that water to grow cotton that made up towels and sheets found in big-box stores. The seeds went separately for cattle feed. Alfalfa was cut and baled for ranches across the Southwest.
This summer, the San Carlos reservoir hit zero acre-feet.
“If you want to eat ice cream, you need people like us growing the feed,” Caywood said recently as she sat in the small, wooden shed on the property where she keeps a digital slideshow of the once-lively green and white fields to show kids who still come by on field trips. All that survived now were old mesquite and cottonwood trees on the edges of the land.
Cattle go up for sale at Marana Stockyards in Marana, Ariz. “If you can’t grow grass, you buy it. But the hay is too expensive because there’s less water to grow it and less water expected down the line,” said Clay Buck Parsons, who runs the auction house with his father, Clay Parsons. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
Emaciated cattle are often sold at Marana Stockyards, which has seen an increase in sales amid the decreased feed availability that the drought has caused. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
An hour south of the the Caywood property at the Pinal County line, the ranchers who show up each week at Marana Stockyards are feeling the trickle-down effects of the drought. The Parsons family has auctioned cattle here for 25 years. Business is picking up.
Dozens of men in cowboy hats and leather boots arrive each Wednesday to watch their bulls, cows and calves sold off. Clay Buck Parsons, a third-generation rancher and auctioneer, ushers cattle into holding pens outside the red barnyard-like building while Parsons’ dad mans a computer as locals in the stands make bids and buyers log in online.
“We’ve sold 12,000 more head this year already than last year,” said Parsons, 29. Most go to Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma.
“You can’t feed the animals without grass,” he said, looking out at dozens of black Angus mother cows whose shoulders and ribs jutted out from grazing on dying fields.
“If you can’t grow grass, you buy it. But the hay is too expensive because there’s less water to grow it and less water expected down the line. So the ranchers are cutting down on their herd to maintain smaller numbers where they can still make a profit.”
Clay Parsons owns Marana Stockyards, which he runs with his son, Clay Buck Parsons. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
Rancher Mike Mercer, left, regularly buys underweight cows at Marana Stockyards. He feeds them for a few months before reselling them for profit. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
Buck said it costs up to $4 a day per cow for hay, four times more than grazing on grass. The cost of raising beef can be several thousand times more than some vegetables, such as lettuce. But ranchers here said family history — and profits — had until recently seemed worth holding on to.
One of the regulars to come that day was Mike Mercer. At 54, he has been ranching since his teens. For many years, his land in Mammoth, a village of 1,650, provided for 700 mother cows. Now, he can’t have more than 100 at a time as grass disappears.
“You can’t run cattle. It’s just — everything’s gone,” Mercer said. “A lot of guys are switching into copper mining or welding or trucking.”
These days, Mercer buys skinny, sickly cows, feeds them for a few months on hay in a covered feedlot, and resells them at a profit. On that day, he sold 88 to buyers in Texas and Oklahoma.
The Parsons family’s auction house has sold 12,000 more cows this year than last year. Many ranchers can no longer afford to feed their cattle because of the drought. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
A Christian who believes God is responsible for the drought, he prayed for a change.
“You just keep saying we can’t have another year this bad and then we have another year even worse…. Leave it in God’s hands. Because I don’t know what else to do. You pray for rain. Oh, God, yeah. Pray for rain.”
Caywood, a former farming teacher at the University of California Agricultural and Natural Resources Division in El Centro, Calif., also questions those who say climate change is to blame for her struggles.
“I don’t believe in it. I believe things are cyclical. But I can’t believe that it’s happening so quickly,” said Caywood, who has a master’s degree in agricultural education.
Nancy Caywood, left, and her grandson Thomas Hartman, 14, stand at the office of Caywood Farms. Hartman is learning to farm, raising steer and chickens. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
Her son, Travis, built a home on the farm where he lives with two sons. She is thankful that he has continued in the family tradition. But she is more thankful that he is also a firefighter and EMT, a job that provides a stable income. Her `14-year-old grandkids Thomas and Cameron are learning to farm, raising steer and chickens. She has encouraged them but also told them to consider backup plans.
In the good years, the farm would easily make tens of thousands of dollars in profits, more than enough to cover $22,000 in annual property taxes. This year, Caywood, who had hoped to retire, may dip into savings to cover the bill.
Recently, her son leased two 80-acre plots in different irrigation districts that have access to canal water from the Colorado River. Just a few miles from Caywood Farms, corn stalks reach 5 feet into the air. They’ll be chopped up for dairy cow feed.
The family didn’t want more farming land but found it necessary to cover the taxes on its dying historic property.
Except there’s one problem.
Because of the drought, Arizona will have 18% less water from the Colorado River next year. Farms like Caywood’s son’s will be hit hardest because of rules governing how water is divided in the state.
“We have no cotton. It’s gone. It’s dead. The alfalfa barely exists,” Caywood said. She may be forced to use her savings to cover taxes on the farm, which isn’t making money anymore. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
“It seems there’s really no way out of drought,” Caywood said the other week, browsing old photos of her parents and son standing by cotton bales.
Sometimes, she felt as though it wasn’t just a farm but a family and way of life slipping away. Her father, Tommy, died in January at 98. Her 94-year-old mother, Sammie, was in and out of the hospital.
All around her, farms were disappearing. Next door, the Wuertzes sold much of theirs for solar panels. Down the street, an abandoned construction project stood where alfalfa once grew. Caywood had gotten offers from buyers too. She rejected them.
She looked at the barren fields where her grandfather taught her how to examine the changing color of a cotton blossom to tell where the plant was in its life span. She thought back to when water flowed freely in the dried-up irrigation canals where she would sneak away to swim as a kid.
Days like those seemed long gone. She prayed for them to come back again.
Temperatures challenge all-time records in Europe as wildfires rage in Greece, Turkey
Adam Douty
Relief from intense and record-setting heat in southeast Europe is still days away, and AccuWeather meteorologists warn the prolonged warmth will continue to fuel dangerous wildfires across parts of the parched continent.
Fires have scorched large portions of southwest Turkey during the end of July and the start of August. At least eight people have been killed by the flames, while many others have suffered injuries, according to Reuters.
Over 100 fires across Turkey during the past week have already been contained, though a number of fires in southwestern parts of the country remain out of control.
One of the fires burned near the popular resort community of Bodrum, which led to the evacuation of over 1,000 people by boat as the flames neared the coast.
A satellite image of the eastern Mediterranean Sea from Friday, July 30, 2021, shows smoke from wildfires across southwest Turkey. (Photo/NASA/WORLDVIEW)
Fires have also charred parts of southern Italy, Greece and Cyprus as intense heat and dry conditions remain in place across the region.
A wildfire near an industrial part of Athens quickly spread on Tuesday which disrupted rail travel and closed a portion of the national motorway, Reuters reported. According to local media, 80 children were safely evacuated from a camp near the fire. The fire was the worst of 81 wildfires that broke out in Greece within the span of 24 hours, The Associated Press reported.
The setup that led to the intense heat across southeast Europe included a strong area of high pressure in the upper levels of the atmosphere that has remained over the Balkans, allowing a heat dome to form, according to AccuWeather Meteorologist Alyssa Smithmyer.
Much of eastern Europe had temperatures average 5-10 degrees Fahrenheit (3-6 degrees Celsius) above normal for the month of July. During this time, parts of southern Greece and southwest Turkey reported no rainfall.
“A deficit in rainfall from dry weather earlier in the summer exacerbated the temperatures further as the dry surface heated up much more easily than what moist soil would,” Smithmyer said.
Temperatures in parts of Athens neared 110 F (43 C) on Tuesday. The current record for continental Europe stands at 118.4 F (48 C); that temperature record was set in Athens on July 10, 1997, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Due to the extreme heat, authorities in Greece closed the Acropolis and other ancient sites during afternoon hours, the AP reported. The closures were in effect from noon to 5 p.m., which is typically the hottest part of the day.
The high temperature in Trikala, Greece, was able to rise into the mid-110s F (~46 C) on Monday.
Temperatures can soar to near 116 F (47 C) across the hottest parts of central Greece.
Even during the second half of the week as temperatures abate slightly, it will still be dangerously hot for outdoor activities.
“Conditions look to remain very hot for much of the week, and will continue to rival record-high temperatures,” said Smithmyer. A break from the intense heat won’t occur until late this week and into the weekend, she added.
The storm bringing the relief in temperatures will also bring much-needed showers and thunderstorms to the central and northern Balkans.
Unfortunately, no rainfall is expected across Greece and southern Turkey through at least the end of the week and potentially through the middle of August. AccuWeather forecasters say this will keep the wildfire threat very high and can lead to additional rapidly spreading and large fires.
“Conditions for the second half of August may still remain hot and above normal, but patterns hint towards slightly above-normal temperatures rather than the extreme heat being experienced currently,” said Smithmyer.
Covid patient goes from ‘invincible’ to hospital-bed vaccine advocate
Suzanne Ciechalski
An unvaccinated Virginia man who’s been hospitalized with Covid-19 is using social media to urge others to go out and get the shot.
Travis Campbell, 43, has been in the hospital for more than a week with complications from the virus, which also infected his wife and two of their children.
Image: Travis Campbell has been making Facebook videos and posts asking people to get vaccinated against Covid-19 after testing positive and being hospitalized for the virus. (Travis Campbell)
“We just thought we were invincible and we weren’t going to get it,” said his wife, Kellie Campbell. “And we’ve just been so busy, and we just moved, and we prolonged getting the vaccine.”
Kellie Campbell said her husband tested positive on July 22 and got progressively worse. Eventually, he was hospitalized. She worries that he will be placed on a ventilator to help his breathing.
“I mean, he couldn’t catch his breath … had fever, just lethargic, he ached, just one thing after another,” she said. “He started in a regular room, and then he went to a Covid ICU room, and now he’s in the pulmonary ICU.”
Despite his condition, Travis Campbell is adamant about making videos to share on Facebook encouraging others to get vaccinated now, his wife said.
“I’m testifying to all my bulletproof friends that’s holding out, it’s time to protect your family, it’s not worth getting long term lung damage or death please go get the vaccine,” Travis Campbell wrote in a July 25 Facebook post.
Kellie Campbell said her husband is “all about other people” and doesn’t want others to have to deal with what he’s going through.
“He just doesn’t want anyone to have to endure the pain that he has, and if a vaccine will help them, that’s what they need to do,” she said.
In a video posted from his hospital bed Tuesday night, Travis Campbell asked followers to consider whether they’d rather plan their own funerals and goodbyes or get vaccinated.
“I hope to God that all my friends and family would not say, ‘Somebody hand me a piece of paper and a pen.’ That’s a sobering thought, of which I have done,” he said.
As her family and doctors take her husband’s condition day by day, Kellie Campbell said her advice to others is to go out and get vaccinated immediately.
“If you have to take time off work, if you have to miss out on something, you need to go get the vaccine, because we didn’t, and look where we are now,” she said. “I mean, that should be your top priority. Especially not just for you, but your family members.”
AP Photo/Seth Perlman. Corn yields can suffer in high heat.
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