Labor and Working – Page 183 – The Tarbabys Blog

Scientists understood physics of climate change in the 1800s – thanks to a woman named Eunice Foote

The Conversation

Scientists understood physics of climate change in the 1800s – thanks to a woman named Eunice Foote

Sylvia G. Dee July 22, 2021

Sylvia G. Dee, Assistant Professor of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences, Rice University

<span class="caption">Eunice Foote described the greenhouse gas effects of carbon dioxide in 1856.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="link rapid-noclick-resp" href="https://www.climate.gov/news-features/features/happy-200th-birthday-eunice-foote-hidden-climate-science-pioneer" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" data-ylk="slk:Carlyn Iverson/NOAA Climate.gov">Carlyn Iverson/NOAA Climate.gov</a></span> — Eunice Foote described the greenhouse gas effects of carbon dioxide in 1856. Carlyn Iverson / NOAA Climate.gov

Long before the current political divide over climate change, and even before the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865), an American scientist named Eunice Foote documented the underlying cause of today’s climate change crisis.

The year was 1856. Foote’s brief scientific paper was the first to describe the extraordinary power of carbon dioxide gas to absorb heat – the driving force of global warming.

Carbon dioxide is an odorless, tasteless, transparent gas that forms when people burn fuels, including coal, oil, gasoline and wood.

As Earth’s surface heats, one might think that the heat would just radiate back into space. But, it’s not that simple. The atmosphere stays hotter than expected mainly due to greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and atmospheric water vapor, which all absorb outgoing heat. They’re called “greenhouse gases” because, not unlike the glass of a greenhouse, they trap heat in Earth’s atmosphere and radiate it back to the planet’s surface. The idea that the atmosphere trapped heat was known, but not the cause.

Foote conducted a simple experiment. She put a thermometer in each of two glass cylinders, pumped carbon dioxide gas into one and air into the other and set the cylinders in the Sun. The cylinder containing carbon dioxide got much hotter than the one with air, and Foote realized that carbon dioxide would strongly absorb heat in the atmosphere.

Image of the journal showing the article

Foote’s discovery of the high heat absorption of carbon dioxide gas led her to conclude that “… if the air had mixed with it a higher proportion of carbon dioxide than at present, an increased temperature” would result.

A few years later, in 1861, the well-known Irish scientist John Tyndall also measured the heat absorption of carbon dioxide and was so surprised that something “so transparent to light” could so strongly absorb heat that he “made several hundred experiments with this single substance.”

Tyndall also recognized the possible effects on the climate, saying “every variation” of water vapor or carbon dioxide “must produce a change of climate.” He also noted the contribution other hydrocarbon gases, such as methane, could make to climate change, writing that “an almost inappreciable addition” of gases like methane would have “great effects on climate.”

Humans were already increasing carbon dioxide in the 1800’s

By the 1800’s, human activities were already dramatically increasing the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Burning more and more fossil fuels – coal and eventually oil and gas – added an ever-increasing amount of carbon dioxide into the air.

The first quantitative estimate of carbon dioxide-induced climate change was made by Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish scientist and Nobel laureate. In 1896, he calculated that “the temperature in the Arctic regions would rise 8 or 9 degrees Celsius if carbon dioxide increased to 2.5 or 3 times” its level at that time. Arrhenius’ estimate was likely conservative: Since 1900 atmospheric carbon dioxide has risen from about 300 parts per million to around 417 ppm as a result of human activities, and the Arctic has already warmed by about 3.8 C (6.8 F).

Nils Ekholm, a Swedish meteorologist, agreed, writing in 1901 that “The present burning of pit-coal is so great that if it continues … it must undoubtedly cause a very obvious rise in the mean temperature of the earth.” Ekholm also noted that carbon dioxide acted in a layer high in the atmosphere, above water vapor layers, where small amounts of carbon dioxide mattered.

All of this was understood well over a century ago.

Chart showing rising CO2 concentrations in recent decades. — The Keeling curve tracks the changing carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere. Observations from Hawaii starting in 1958 show the rise and fall of the seasons as concentrations climb. Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Initially, scientists thought a possible small rise in the Earth’s temperature could be a benefit, but these scientists could not envision the coming huge increases in fossil fuel use. In 1937, English engineer Guy Callendar documented how rising temperatures correlated with rising carbon dioxide levels. “By fuel combustion, man has added about 150,000 million tons of carbon dioxide to the air during the past half century,” he wrote, and “world temperatures have actually increased ….”

A warning to the president in 1965, and then …

In 1965, scientists warned U.S. President Lyndon Johnson about the growing climate risk, concluding: “Man is unwittingly conducting a vast geophysical experiment. Within a few generations he is burning the fossil fuels that slowly accumulated in the earth over the past 500 million years.” The scientists issued clear warnings of high temperatures, melting ice caps, rising sea levels and acidification of ocean waters.

In the half-century that has followed that warning, more of the ice has melted, sea level has risen further and acidification due to ever increasing absorption of carbon dioxide forming carbonic acid has become a critical problem for ocean-dwelling organisms.

Scientific research has vastly strengthened the conclusion that human-generated emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are causing dangerous warming of the climate and a host of harmful effects. Politicians, however, have been slow to respond. Some follow an approach that has been used by some fossil fuel companies of denying and casting doubt on the truth, while others want to “wait and see,” despite the overwhelming evidence that harm and costs will continue to rise.

In fact, reality is now fast overtaking scientific models. The megadrought and heat waves in the western U.S., record high temperatures and zombie fires in Siberia, massive wildfires in Australia and the U.S. West, relentless, intense Gulf Coast and European rains and more powerful hurricanes are all harbingers of increasing climate disruption.

The world has known about the warming risk posed by excessive levels of carbon dioxide for decades, even before the invention of cars or coal-fired power stations. A rare female scientist in her time, Eunice Foote, explicitly warned about the basic science 165 years ago. Why haven’t we listened more closely?

Neil Anderson, a retired chemical engineer and chemistry teacher, contributed to this article.

Read more:

Sylvia G. Dee receives funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

With Tampa Bay in grip of Red Tide, shrimpers turn their nets toward death

Tampa Bay Times, St. Petersburg, Fla.

With Tampa Bay in grip of Red Tide, shrimpers turn their nets toward death

Zachary T. Sampson, Tampa Bay Times July 22, 2021

ST. PETERSBURG — Toliver and Jessica Tucker are used to the dark, oily water, the bulging eyes, the gray flesh decaying to a pulp in the city’s bayous.

They have even become accustomed to the smell — God, the smell — of all the rotting fish in gruesome flotillas, victims of a toxic Red Tide in Tampa Bay.

But the maggots? The maggots are new. White and wriggling, they circle the scales of rotting sheepshead. They climb seawalls at the water’s edge.

The other day, Toliver saw one inching up the cockpit of the shrimp boat he and his wife sail as contractors in the urgent effort to drag millions of pounds of dead fish from Tampa Bay.

“These canals are sick,” said Toliver, 43. “It’s devastating. I’ve thought about crying.”

Pinellas County has hired an ad hoc armada of shrimp boats like the Tuckers’ to comb local waters with nets. About 30 boats have helped; in total, the county has collected more than 1,440 tons of dead sea life and debris from the beaches to the bay. And the work continues.

The boats are the most effective tool for keeping fish off land, where they are not only a grisly sight but harder to pick up once they become entangled in sand, trees and rocks. Cleaning the bay is not just a matter of vanity. The dead fish, if left to degrade, could supply more nutrients to fuel Red Tide.

Most days, the Tuckers wake up about 4:30 a.m. to drive south from their home in Spring Hill, sometimes with their son. They stripped the livewell from the center of their 25-foot boat, Southbound, to make room for all the dead fish they pick up. They start work just after dawn and don’t finish until dusk.

In that, they know, they are not alone.

• • •

The Tuckers’ first job gathering dead fish was in 2018, when a Red Tide bloom in the Gulf of Mexico cratered their bait shrimp business. No one was fishing near shore, and no one wanted to buy their shrimp.

The timing was awful. Married for nearly two decades, they were about to buy a house.

“We were broke and had nothing in the bank, and they wanted closing costs,” Jessica recalled. She was sure they would lose the property. Then the contracting gig came, giving them a steady paycheck.

So far, this year’s bloom hasn’t been as bad for Tuckers Flats Fishing. The couple works out of Hudson and was still running one boat and crew there to catch enough shrimp for continuing orders.

But if the bloom endures, sales could bottom out again.

The Tuckers sell shrimp for $60 per thousand. The boat they left behind hauled in 14,500 the other day.

In Pinellas, they make $170 an hour, Toliver said. They pay for their own gas and expenses and drive an hour or more to reach the boat launch each day. They trailer the Southbound every night. Another one of their boats, Westbound, was helping with Red Tide, but they recently sent it back to shrimping — typically an overnight job — because the crew struggled with the heat.

The pay is solid, Toliver said, but the work is brutal. “You’ve got to understand what we’re touching.”

Toliver grew up in Tarpon Springs and has long fished around Tampa Bay. The couple trawls for shrimp here each fall and winter.

The Tuckers know how life on Florida’s west coast rests on a ripple, always spreading from the water. It’s why people live here and why they visit, spending money on seaside hotel rooms and rum punches at tiki bars.

If there were no gulf, no Tampa Bay, this would just be another chunk of flat land.

The Southbound shoves off from a ramp at Demens Landing, passing Doc Ford’s Rum Bar & Grille on the St. Pete Pier, where the Tuckers like to grab lunch.

Sometimes, at the end of the day, Toliver lines up the boat and angles the motor so the wake hits the breakwater by the restaurant just right, freeing dead fish from the rocks so they can be netted.

• • •

The shrimp boats pass each other on a course entering and exiting Demens Landing, where a forklift hoists the loads of dead fish they collect into a series of dumpsters. While underway, outriggers stretched wide, the boats look like hulking birds. Each carries a couple of people to manage the nets cast over the edge.

Once the nets are full — and it doesn’t take long — the shrimpers gather them to release plumes of dead fish in the middle of the boats, filling green bags with long handles. In an hour or so, maybe even less, the Tuckers can haul away up to 3,000 pounds.

When they finish, spindly fish bones remain, piercing the Southbound’s nets.

Toliver and Jessica stretch dishwashing gloves over their hands, but inevitably, their bare skin ends up touching dead fish or Red Tide anyway. It feels like an alcohol burn. They carry a 5-gallon bucket of bleach water, in addition to hand sanitizer, wipes and antibiotic ointment.

The GPS screen plots their days in a spiderweb of green lines, past the Vinoy, a string of waterfront parks, around the Historic Old Northeast and up Coffee Pot Bayou.

This arm of the bay was a hotspot recently, Toliver says, swaths almost entirely covered in dead fish. Where the die-offs are most severe, rotting carcasses drift so close together they look like pavers. It’s as though someone could hop off a seawall and walk around without getting wet. The sour air smells like a hundred refrigerators packed with tuna were left unplugged to rot in a parking lot.

The stench gives Toliver a headache. They don’t often wear masks, they say, because the boat has an open cockpit that allows for a breeze when they’re moving.

He and Jessica leave their rubber boots outside the house when their day is done. On one long drive back to Spring Hill, Toliver felt like he could smell death the whole way home.

They take turns at the wheel of the Southbound, and Jessica pulls out her phone in hopes of capturing some sense of what they are witnessing. Like when fish swim in spastic circles before suddenly turning belly up, dying in front of their eyes.

Toliver wishes Gov. Ron DeSantis would come for a ride on the Southbound, to see what they see.

• • •

The outboard motor makes the Tuckers’ boat maneuverable. Jay Gunter, the man running contractors like them in Pinellas, calls it a mini shrimp boat.

They can pull right up to the seawall by Straub Park, where city workers extend pool skimmers to scoop fish from the tideline.

The job is worse on land. It’s slow but necessary work. The Tuckers look on in pity from under the shade of a bimini top.

“They’re dying,” Toliver says of the crews. “There’s no breeze.”

Occasionally, city employees will call out, directing boats toward fish kills they cannot reach. In especially tight spaces, under docks and lifted boats, operators use Weedoos — essentially small, floating front-end loaders — to cart debris to the deck of an idling pontoon.

Toliver cuts the Southbound northeast, out of sight of downtown toward Venetian Isles. The shoreline is fully developed with luxury homes, touting panoramic views of Tampa Bay and bayside pools adorned by statues. Toliver scans the manicured lawns, trim and green as country club fairways.

Like others who work on the water, the Tuckers blame the April wastewater dump from the Piney Point fertilizer plant for polluting the bay and helping feed this bloom. But they know the release is only one source of contamination.

All the lush lawns around them likely use fertilizer, Toliver thinks, and the runoff puts more nutrients into the bay. He knows the unbroken line of manmade seawalls is not good, either, long ago crowding out mangroves and oyster beds that helped keep the bay clean and balanced.

The Tuckers pass other shrimpers and a woman on a center console cleaning out dead fish with a teenaged deckhand.

Toliver yells to them all, saying thank you.

He steers the Southbound through a marina by Smacks Bayou, where a day earlier they removed thousands of pounds of rotting fish. Toward the back, where the water meets Snell Isle Boulevard, the Tuckers find hundreds of dead fish in a shallow bend.

“Oh my God, it’s wretched,” Toliver says. “It’s just rotting corpses.”

The water is cloudy and lifeless. They know oxygen levels have plummeted so much that nothing can survive. For all the carcasses the couple removes, tides and winds blow in more each day.

Toliver thinks about how many families could have been fed with all this seafood, and how long the bigger fish might have lived.

“That’s a snook,” Jessica says.

“No,” Toliver says, peering down. “That was a grouper at one time.”

The cove would be too narrow for outriggers, so the Tuckers call for a Weedoo and head off, finding another putrid clot around Cordova Boulevard.

“This is horrible,” Tolliver says. He spots an eel, a few feet long, that he thinks was some kind of moray. It may be the biggest he’s seen. It floats upside down near an empty Four Loko can.

This also bothers the Tuckers, how there is always garbage mixed in with all the death.

Onshore, a woman spots their boat and steps out to a patio, letting two dogs run along the seawall above the Southbound.

Toliver looks up and yells.

“We got help on the way, hon.”

About this story: Times reporters went out for a few hours on the Southbound on Friday, July 16, with Toliver and Jessica Tucker. The couple gave reporters a tour of the area they have been working and spoke about the process of picking up dead fish. The bloom’s worst effects have since moved toward the gulf beaches.

• • •

Red Tide coverage

Tampa Bay has Red Tide questions. Here are some answers.

Is it safe to eat seafood? Here’s how Red Tide affects what you eat.

Can I go fishing? The state is limiting saltwater fishing.

Piney Point: The environmental disaster may be fueling Red Tide.

Red Tide resources

• The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has a website that tracks where Red Tide is detected.

• Florida Poison Control Centers have a toll-free 24/7 hotline to report illnesses, including from exposure to Red Tide: 1-800-222-1222

• To report dead fish for clean-up in Tampa Bay, call the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission at 1-800-636-0511 or file a fish kill report online.

• In St. Petersburg, call the Mayor’s Action Center at 727-893-7111 or use St. Petersburg’s seeclickfix website.

• Visit St. Pete/Clearwater, the county’s tourism wing, runs an online beach dashboard at www.beachesupdate.com.

How to stay safe near the water

• Do not swim around dead fish.

• Those with chronic respiratory problems should be careful and stay away from places with a Red Tide bloom. Leave if you think Red Tide is affecting you.

• Do not harvest or eat mollusks or distressed and dead fish from the area. Fillets of healthy fish should be rinsed with clean water, and the guts thrown out.

• Pet owners should keep their animals away from the water and from dead fish.

• Residents living near the beach should close their windows and run air conditioners with proper filters.

• Beachgoers can protect themselves by wearing masks.

Source: Florida Department of Health in Pinellas County

Red Tide may recede in Tampa Bay but worsen off Pinellas beaches

Tampa Bay Times, St. Petersburg, Fla.

Red Tide may recede in Tampa Bay but worsen off Pinellas beaches

Zachary T. Sampson, Tampa Bay Times July 20, 2021

“Our aerial imagery is showing that the bloom has kind of transported out of the mouth over the last few days. Within the bay … it’s night and day from a week ago,” said Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Executive Director Eric Sutton. “However the bloom has now moved, it’s off the coast, and it’s expanded, and we’ve seen high bloom concentrations from Longboat Key up essentially to Dunedin and that area.”

Red Tide is “pretty extensive” off the beaches, Sutton told the Tampa Bay Times on Tuesday. It is atypical for a toxic bloom to reach as far into the bay as it did this month, but more common in the gulf. In some spots on the western shore, Sutton said, the Red Tide has reached all the way up to the beach, while in other places it may be drifting a mile or so offshore. The bloom is not one unbroken block of algae but pockets that move according to winds, tides and other environmental factors.

The toxic algae have devastated waters around Tampa Bay, killing immense numbers of fish and other sea life. Sutton said the state has found multiple manatees — likely numbering in the single digits — that appear to have been affected by Red Tide, though the cause of their deaths will not be confirmed until researchers further study the animals’ bodies.

This has been a record year for manatee deaths, with 850 dying as of July 9, according to the state. That is largely attributed to the loss of sea-grasses on the east coast, where manatees have starved around wintering zones along their Atlantic migration route. Now Red Tide threatens them on the west coast.

The last time Florida saw a bloom like this, so far into Tampa Bay at this time of summer, was in 1971, according to a Conservation Commission researcher.

Pinellas County as of Monday had picked up more than 1,270 tons of dead marine life and debris. Workers were finding dead fish on beaches from Indian Shores to the south. On Tuesday, they saw a major fish kill by the Dunedin Causeway, said county spokesman Tony Fabrizio.

The bloom seems to have been carried out of the bay by standard forces, including currents and wind, Sutton said. Persistent rainfall has helped freshen the waters of Tampa Bay, he said, lowering salinity levels that had been high weeks ago. The salinity may have made the estuary conducive to growth of the organism behind Red Tide.

But the algae have not left the area entirely, and scientists cannot be certain the bloom will continue to decline in the bay.

“The trend looks like it’s going down,” Sutton said, “but we’re not out of the woods.”

St. Petersburg officials and environmental organizations have made repeated calls for Gov. Ron DeSantis to declare a state of emergency. As of early this week, the state has agreed to provide $2.1 million to Pinellas for clean-up costs incurred by the county and city of St. Petersburg.

The governor’s office has said the Florida Department of Environmental Protection holds a fund to use in the response, so there’s no need to initiate a state of emergency, which is what happened during a bad Red Tide bloom in 2018.

The agency’s interim secretary, Shawn Hamilton, said that money is available specifically to help reimburse local governments for the cost of cleaning up fish kills. He said the agency has enough funding to surpass the aid it provided in 2018.

Pinellas alone picked up about 1,800 tons of dead sea life and debris that year.

“Those are the types of levels we’re ready to support if needed,” Hamilton said.

If the region suffers other damages, like business foundering due to a decline in tourism, Hamilton said the state tourism agency Visit Florida and the Department of Economic Opportunity, which administers state and federal aid programs, could step in to help.

North America about to turn into a graveyard of mega pipeline projects

The U.S. built the equivalent of 28 Keystone XLs over the past decade, but continent expected to become an increasingly inhospitable place for new projects, says a new report.

Yadullah Hussain July 21, 2021

Sections of the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline are seen on the construction site on the White Earth Nation Reservation near Wauburn, Minnesota, on June 5, 2021. PHOTO BY KEREM YUCEL/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES FILES

After a remarkable period of pipeline expansion, primarily in the United States over the past decade, North America is expected to become an increasingly inhospitable place for new projects, according to a new report.

While the upturn in crude oil prices, recovering oil demand and a surge in natural gas development for power generation will drive pipeline construction globally in the next few years, development of new pipelines in North America will be relatively subdued, says the report by Westwood Global Energy Group analysts Ben Wilby and Arindam Das.Globally, pipelines planned and spending on pipeline construction is set to rise US$45 billion in 2021, 10 per cent more than 2020, but still lower than the near-US$60 billion spent in 2019, according to the London, U.K.-based consultancy.

“Overall pipeline capex however, is forecast to be lower than the previous five-year period, predominantly due to a reduction in North American installation levels,” Wilby and Das said in the report. “Asia, Eastern Europe & FSU (former Soviet Union) and the Middle East are key to the realization of forecast activity levels and associated spend.”

Canada’s pipeline capital expenditures will reach US$6 billion this year, before falling to $4.7 billion in 2022 and $1.5 billion by 2023, Westwood estimates show. In terms of miles, Canada will account for 23 per cent of all North American pipeline installations until 2025.The findings may not come as a huge surprise as virtually every major North American crude oil pipeline has faced pressure from local activists and environmental groups over the past decade.

A call for climate action and Line 3 pipeline protest signs in Park Rapids, Minnesota on June 5, 2021. PHOTO BY KEREM YUCEL/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES FILES

The cancellation of TC Energy Corp.’s 1,947-kilometre Keystone XL pipeline by U.S. President Biden earlier this year has already cast a gloom over energy infrastructure spending across the continent, while Enbridge Inc.’s proposed changes to the operational Line 5 project also faces regulatory delays. TC Energy has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government under NAFTA rules, while Enbridge is in mediation with the state of Michigan, which is opposed to the changes.

“The pendulum has swung towards a lot more focus on ESG (environmental, social and governance), and a lot more focus on transition and to the extent it is right now a significant consideration in North America,” Das said in an interview.Several other obstacles also hover on the horizon that suggest there are more downside risks to the forecast, especially in North America.

“Chief among these are geopolitics, focus on climate change and the increasing momentum of the energy transition particularly in the western hemisphere,” Westwood noted in its report. “There exists the potential risk of reduced appetite from financiers and lenders to project finance fossil fuel projects going forward. This has led to increased delays (and subsequently increased costs) on several projects as well as cancellations.”

The decline in North American pipeline capex is also a reflection of prospects of lower production. The U.S. Department of Energy expects U.S. oil output to decline to 11.1 million barrels per day this year, compared to 11.3 million bpd last year, while many analysts believe U.S. shale basins may not be able to repeat their rapid growth of the past decade.The U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics show the U.S. built 51,139 miles of oil pipelines, including 33,000 miles of crude pipelines — equivalent to 28 Keystone XL pipelines since the project was first proposed in 2008.

And while Canadian companies were unable to build the massive Energy East, Northern Gateway and Keystone XL pipelines, they still managed to build nearly 11,000 kilometers of liquids pipelines between 2010-19 — their most active construction period in over seven decades, according to the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association.

“The Canadian growth trajectory was always underpinned by U.S. demand, and to the extent net zero and ambition Biden is laying down are well underway to be achieved in the next 10-15 years, what you start to see is that demand for energy in the U.S. also starts to shift,” Das said. “And in that case, if demand profile starts to shift, the requirement for the demand for oil starts to change.”IHS Markit expects Canadian oilsands production to reach 3.6 million bpd by 2030, compared to its previous estimate of 3.8 million bpd. Heavy oil production stood at 2.48 million bpd in March, according to the Canada Energy Regulator.

“Even prior to the pandemic, IHS Markit expected the coming decade to be one of sustained-but-slower growth for the oilsands, with transportation constraints such as a lack of adequate pipeline capacity and the resulting sense of price insecurity in Western Canada weighing on new large-scale incremental investments,” the energy research firm said.

Canada’s pipeline capacity stands at around 4 million bpd. Enbridge’s Alberta-to-Minnesota Line 3 has a capacity of 370,000 bpd, while the Alberta-to-British Columbia Trans Mountain conduit will add 590,000 bpd to capacity.If Enbridge Line 3 and Trans Mountain pipeline, as well as other announced smaller expansion projects are able to proceed as planned, pipeline export capacity may be adequate to keep the market in balance. However, the absence of Keystone XL pipeline leaves little room to absorb any disruption to the system and could contribute to price volatility.

While private sector funding — and appetite — for financing new pipelines may be drying up in Canada, provincial and federal governments have stepped up to fill the gap.

The International Institute for Sustainable Development estimates that provincial and federal governments in Canada bankrolled three uncompleted pipeline projects in the country.“We found at least eight different types of financial support measures provided for Trans Mountain, two for Keystone XL, and two for Coastal GasLink,” according to an IISD report published earlier this month. “Cumulatively, Canadian governments have provided over $23 billion in government support since 2018. Of this, over $11 billion is in loans, and at least $10 billion is loan guarantees or liabilities. Over $10 billion in government support to pipelines was provided after the COVID-19 pandemic hit.”

The Institute said that it crunched the number after filing access to information requests, and the final figure is “likely an understatement.”

Death for some, sunbaked cookies for others. We must get serious about the climate crisis.

USA Today

Death for some, sunbaked cookies for others. We must get serious about the climate crisis.

Dr. Thomas K. Lew July 21, 2021

Parking at the Northern California hospital where I work, I quickly break into a sweat during the 80-foot walk to the entrance. It’s 100 degrees outside, and it’s only 8 a.m. Outdoors, I can feel the intense sunlight on my skin, but inside the cool wards of the hospital, I experience the effects of the recent heat wave in my soul: My first patient of the day is gravely sick from severe heat stroke.

A healthy athlete, he became severely lightheaded, disoriented and unable to put together a coherent sentence. He had only spent 15 minutes in a car driving without air conditioning, but these effects were lasting hours. At one point, we thought he was developing a true stroke in his brain and not just heat stroke.

He’s not the only one suffering. I am seeing more and more people experiencing adverse health consequences of a warming environment. Put more bluntly, more people are getting sick from climate change. I am seeing them today. Not years in the future. Right now. For our health and survival, we need to be brave enough to stop and even reverse climate change by supporting state and national policies that strive to do this.

Heat stroke, dehydration and wildfires

That our planet is warming up is indisputable, and virtually all scientists agree that it is worsened by human activity.

Opinions in your inbox: Get the best insights and analysis every morning

Extreme temperatures and extreme weather events like hurricanes and tropical storms are becoming more frequent. The recent heat wave on the West Coast is another symptom of climate change, with the thermometer reaching triple digits for days at a time. New records were set, including the 130 degree mark in Death Valley – the second highest temperature on Earth ever recorded.

A burnt car after a wildfire in Alpine County, Calif., on July 17, 2021.

People have found fun in the extreme temperatures, cooking breakfast or baking cookies using just the sunlight. But the heat can be deadly for our most vulnerable. At least 150 deaths have been attributed to the heat in the Pacific Northwest during this recent unprecedented heat wave. If British Columbia, Canada, is counted, then that number nears 1,000 people. In my hospital, we are seeing more heat strokes and dehydration cases, especially among our elderly and homeless population.

Can-do and optimistic: We’re conservatives and we’re fighting against climate change

This is all happening as wildfire season is starting. Last year in California, the skies turned an ominous shade of red as much of the West Coast burned. Despite efforts in forest management, uncontrolled wildfires are raging once again. The environment is so dry, in fact, that one wildfire was set off by a golf club sparking when it struck the ground.

The health consequences are palpable. Last year, our medical wards filled with the sounds of wheezing lungs from struggling patients, both from COVID-19 and also pulmonary damage from wildfire smoke. Climate change continues to make these fires all the more frequent.

No time left for political bickering

President Joe Biden has argued that fighting global warming is a key priority in American infrastructure – but it’s more than that, it’s a priority for humanity’s infrastructure.

We cannot turn this battle into more political bickering; we don’t have the time. We need to push our elected officials to support policies curbing carbon emissions and promoting clean energy. We need to invest in the science. We need to believe the science.

Bipartisan infrastructure bill is a start: Climate change is no longer other worldly, and inaction is no longer an option

Aside from rising sea levels, destruction of animal habitats, melting polar caps, increased flooding and the other myriad existential hazards, we are still at grave direct health risks with worsening climate change. And those dangers are now. Nowhere is this more evident than inside a hospital, filled with patients suffering from the increasing heat and smoke. More than just causing an unpleasantly hot walk across a parking lot, climate change will certainly lead to more death and suffering unless we pull together across the political spectrum and act before it’s too late.

Thomas K. Lew, MD, is an assistant clinical professor of Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine and an attending physician of Hospital Medicine at Stanford Health Care – ValleyCare. All opinions are solely his own.

Every Trump campaign and administration official who has been indicted on federal criminal charges

Business Insider

Every Trump campaign and administration official who has been indicted on federal criminal charges

Grace Panetta July 20, 2021

Inaugural Committee chairman Tom Barrack

Tom Barrack is the latest former top Trump campaign official to be hit with federal charges.
The former inauguration chair is charged with lobbying violations, obstruction, and false statements.
Barrack, the 8th former Trump official to face federal charges, will plead not guilty.

Tom Barrack, the chairman of former President Donald Trump’s 2017 Inaugural Committee, became the 8th former official in Trump’s orbit to be hit with federal criminal charges on Tuesday.

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn charged Barrack on seven counts of unlawful lobbying, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to investigators.

Barrack is accused of violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, in connection with his work lobbying on behalf of the United Arab Emirates. Barrack’s spokesman told Insider that he will plead not guilty to all charges.

Other Trump officials were charged as part of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election and the Trump campaign’s role in it, and were subsequently granted full presidential pardons in the final months of the Trump administration.

Here’s the full list:

Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was convicted in 2018 on federal bank and tax fraud charges, pleaded guilty to more federal conspiracy charges, and was sentenced to seven and a half years in federal prison. Trump granted Manafort a full pardon in December 2020.
Former campaign chief Steve Bannon was charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering in connection with a scheme to defraud donors to fund a wall at the US southern border. Trump pardoned Bannon in January 2021 before he could face trial.
Informal Trump adviser and “fixer” Roger Stone was convicted on seven counts on obstruction, making false statements, and witness tampering in connection to the Mueller probe and was sentenced to three years in prison. Trump commuted Stone’s sentence in July 2020 and fully pardoned him in December 2020.
Deputy Trump campaign manager Rick Gates, a key aide to Manafort, pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy and false statements and received only a 45-day sentence thanks to his extensive cooperation with investigators in the Mueller probe. He did not get a presidential pardon.
Trump’s short-lived National Security Adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to one count of lying to the FBI in connection. Flynn, who went on to push conspiracy theories about non-existent fraud in the 2020 election, received a full pardon from Trump in November 2020.
Longtime Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to tax fraud, bank fraud, campaign finance violations, and lying to Congress in 2018, and was sentenced to three years in federal prison. Cohen, who turned on Trump after pleading guilty and cooperated with prosecutors, did not get a pardon.
Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in connection to the Mueller probe and served 14 days in federal prison.
Trump Inaugural Committee chairman Tom Barrack was charged with federal crimes including unlawful lobbying, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to investigators in July 2021.

Republicans’ confidence in science has dropped significantly from 1975, poll finds

The Week

Republicans’ confidence in science has dropped significantly from 1975, poll finds

Brigid Kennedy, Contributing Writer July 16, 2021

Science, welcome to 2021 — you’ve been politicized.

A new Gallup poll reveals that, in 2021, just 45 percent of Republicans report having a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in science, compared to 72 percent of Republicans in 1975. Democrats and independents have remained largely confident in science as an institution over the years, shifting from 67 percent to 79 percent, and 73 percent to 65 percent, respectively, between 1975 and 2021, per Gallup.

The current partisan gap regarding confidence in science (79 percent to 45 percent) is “among the largest Gallup measured” for any of the institutions in its annual Confidence in Institutions survey. It is “exceeded only by a 49-point party divide in ratings of the presidency and 45 points in ratings of the police,” Gallup writes.

Such distrust toward the scientific community can be felt in recent Republican attitudes toward mask mandates, the COVID-19 vaccine, and the seriousness of the pandemic as a whole, Gallup notes. Ironically, just 46 years ago, Republicans were actually more likely than Democrats to report a great deal of trust in science — but now, conservative thought and political leaders are seemingly pushing their caucus in the opposite direction.

Among all Americans, trust in science between 1975 and 2021 is down only 6 percentage points, from 70 percent to 64 percent, Gallup notes.

Gallup surveyed 1,381 adults from July 1-5, 2021. Results have a margin of error of three percentage points. See more results at Gallup.

How hot is too hot? What to know about wet bulb temperatures, an increasing danger in extreme heat.

USA Today

How hot is too hot? What to know about wet bulb temperatures, an increasing danger in extreme heat.

Elinor Aspegren, USA TODAY July 18, 2021

The persistent heat wave in the Pacific Northwest has been blamed for hundreds of deaths in Oregon and Washington and into Canada.

It’s a scenario experts warn will soon become all too common: As temperatures continue to rise, so will the death toll – potentially by the tens of thousands.

“By the mid-century, we anticipate a pretty significant extra burden of extreme heat and public health somewhere in the neighborhood of about 10,000 additional deaths,” Vijay Limaye, a climate and health scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, told USA TODAY.

Heat is already the deadliest weather-related hazard, killing about 1,300 Americans each year, Limaye said, and wet bulb temperatures – an underreported health outcome for decades – have increasingly become a most fatal culprit. Wet bulb conditions occur when it’s too hot and humid for a human’s sweat to evaporate, specifically at 95 Fahrenheit and 95% relative humidity.

The heat is on: How to stay hydrated, save on your home’s cooling bill and protect your pets

A thermometer shows an official temperature at Death Valley National Park in California on July 11, 2021.

But serious impacts can even occur at 79 degrees wet bulb. When that happens, “your body’s natural cooling mechanisms can’t work,” Limaye said.

In other words, when wet bulb temperatures are high, there’s so much humidity in the air that sweating becomes ineffective at removing the body’s excess heat, according to Colin Raymond, a researcher at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

“At some point, perhaps after six or more hours, this will lead to organ failure and death in the absence of access to artificial cooling,” he told the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

WATCH: Record-breaking heat draws people to visit Death Valley

Extreme humidity has more than doubled in frequency since 1979, Limaye said. He pointed specifically to a study written by Raymond last year: Though climate models predicted these extreme temperatures by the mid-21st century, they’ve already occurred in places like India, Pakistan, the Gulf of Mexico and even in California.

The dangerous weather risks are “expected to significantly worsen the already pretty terrible burden of extreme heat on health,” Limaye said.

“We’re getting to the point in which even in dry conditions, we are at risk of basically having potentially uninhabitable parts of the world – just kind of too hot for people to be outside working or moving around,” he added.

The sun shines behind the Space Needle in Seattle on June 28, 2021.

With no wind and sunny skies, an area with 50% humidity will hit an unlivable wet-bulb temperature at around 109, according to an article by MIT. In dry air, temperatures will become unlivable over 130 degrees – the temperature reached earlier this month in Death Valley, California.

Experts like Limaye are certain the increasing frequency of heat waves in general – and deaths that come along with them – are caused by human-created climate change.

The deadly and record-breaking heat wave in parts of the Western U.S. and Canada that began in late June and has stretched into July would have been “virtually impossible” without the influence of climate change, according to a recent study.

Every heat wave occurring today, in fact, is made more likely and more intense by climate change, the study found.

“If we continue to let climate change worsen year after year, what sort of health situation might we be confronted with, by say, the middle of the century around 2050?” Limaye asked.

Contributing: Doyle Rice, USA TODAY

Water wells are at risk of going dry in the US and worldwide

The Conversation

Water wells are at risk of going dry in the US and worldwide

Debra Perrone May 10, 2021

Debra Perrone, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, University of California Santa Barbara and Scott Jasechko, Assistant Professor of Water Resources, University of California Santa Barbara.

An orchard near Kettleman City in California’s San Joaquin Valley on April 2, 2021. Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

As the drought outlook for the Western U.S. becomes increasingly bleak, attention is turning once again to groundwater – literally, water stored in the ground. It is Earth’s most widespread and reliable source of fresh water, but it’s not limitless.

Wells that people drill to access groundwater supply nearly half the water used for irrigated agriculture in the U.S. and provide over 100 million Americans with drinking water. Unfortunately, pervasive pumping is causing groundwater levels to decline in some areas, including much of California’s San Joaquin Valley and Kansas’ High Plains.

We are a water resources engineer with training in water law and a water scientist and large-data analyst. In a recent study, we mapped the locations and depths of wells in 40 countries around the world and found that millions of wells could run dry if groundwater levels decline by only a few meters. While solutions vary from place to place, we believe that what’s most important for protecting wells from running dry is managing groundwater sustainably – especially in nations like the U.S. that use a lot of it.

About 75% of global groundwater pumping occurs in India, the U.S., China, Pakistan, Iran, Mexico and Saudi Arabia.

Groundwater use today

Humans have been digging wells for water for thousands of years. Examples include 7,400-year-old wells in the Czech Republic and Germany, 8,000-year-old wells in the eastern Mediterranean, and 10,000-year-old wells in Cyprus. Today wells supply 40% of water used for irrigation worldwide and provide billions of people with drinking water.

Groundwater flows through tiny spaces within sediments and their underlying bedrock. At some points, called discharge areas, groundwater rises to the surface, moving into lakes, rivers and streams. At other points, known as recharge areas, water percolates deep into the ground, either through precipitation or leakage from rivers, lakes and streams.

Pumping can remove groundwater from underground faster than it recharges.

Groundwater declines can have many undesirable consequences. Land surfaces sink as underground clay layers are compacted. Seawater intrusion can contaminate groundwater reserves and make them too salty to use without energy-intensive treatment. River water can leak down to underground aquifers, leaving less water available at the surface.

Groundwater depletion can also cause wells to run dry when the top surface of the groundwater – known as the water table – drops so far that the well isn’t deep enough to reach it, leaving the well literally high and dry. Yet until recently, little was known about how vulnerable global wells are to running dry because of declining groundwater levels.

There is no global database of wells, so over six years we compiled 134 unique well construction databases spanning 40 different countries. In total, we analyzed nearly 39 million well construction records, including each well’s location, the reason it was constructed and its depth.

Our results show that wells are vital to human livelihoods – and recording well depths helped us see how vulnerable wells are to running dry.

Millions of wells at risk

Our analysis led to two main findings. First, up to 20% of wells around the world extend no more than 16 feet (5 meters) below the water table. That means these wells will run dry if groundwater levels decline by just a few feet.

Second, we found that newer wells are not being dug significantly deeper than older wells in some places where groundwater levels are declining. In some areas, such as eastern New Mexico, newer wells are not drilled deeper than older wells because the deeper rock layers are impermeable and contain saline water. New wells are at least as likely to run dry as older wells in these areas.

Wells are already going dry in some locations, including parts of the U.S. West. In previous studies we estimated that as many as 1 in 30 wells were running dry in the western U.S., and as many as 1 in 5 in some areas in the southern portion of California’s Central Valley.

Households already are running out of well water in the Central Valley and southeastern Arizona. Beyond the Southwest, wells have been running dry in states as diverse as Maine, Illinois and Oregon.

What to do when the well gives out

How can households adapt when their well runs dry? Here are five strategies, all of which have drawbacks.

– Dig a new, deeper well. This is an option only if fresh groundwater exists at deeper depths. In many aquifers deeper groundwater tends to be more saline than shallower groundwater, so deeper drilling is no more than a stopgap solution. And since new wells are expensive, this approach favors wealthier groundwater users and raises equity concerns.

– Sell the property. This is often considered if constructing a new well is unaffordable. Drilling a new household well in the U.S. Southwest can cost tens of thousands of dollars. But selling a property that lacks access to a reliable and convenient water supply can be challenging.

– Divert or haul water from alternative sources, such as nearby rivers or lakes. This approach is feasible only if surface water resources are not already reserved for other users or too far away. Even if nearby surface waters are available, treating their quality to make them safe to drink can be harder than treating well water.

– Reduce water use to slow or stop groundwater level declines. This could mean switching to crops that are less water-intensive, or adopting irrigation systems that reduce water losses. Such approaches may reduce farmers’ profits or require upfront investments in new technologies.

– Limit or abandon activities that require lots of water, such as irrigation. This strategy can be challenging if irrigated land provides higher crop yields than unirrigated land. Recent research suggests that some land in the central U.S. is not suitable for unirrigated “dryland” farming.

Households and communities can take proactive steps to protect wells from running dry. For example, one of us is working closely with Rebecca Nelson of Melbourne Law School in Australia to map groundwater withdrawal permitting – the process of seeking permission to withdraw groundwater – across the U.S. West.

State and local agencies can distribute groundwater permits in ways that help stabilize falling groundwater levels over the long run, or in ways that prioritize certain water users. Enacting and enforcing policies designed to limit groundwater depletion can help protect wells from running dry. While it can be difficult to limit use of a resource as essential as water, we believe that in most cases, simply drilling deeper is not a sustainable path forward.

Read more:

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Being vegetarian makes you less likely to develop cancer and heart disease, major study finds

The Telegraph

Being vegetarian makes you less likely to develop cancer and heart disease, major study finds

Phoebe Southworth May 8, 2021

vegetables - Enrique Díaz / 7cero /Moment RF — vegetables – Enrique Díaz / 7cero /Moment RF

Being a vegetarian makes you less likely to develop cancer and heart disease, a major new study has found.

Scientists at the University of Glasgow analysed more than 177,000 adults in the UK to find out whether their dietary choice affected the level of disease markers in their bodies.

They looked at 19 health indicators, known as biomarkers, in their blood and urine related to cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and kidney function, as well as liver, bone and joint health.

The 4,000 vegetarians in the group had significantly lower levels of 13 biomarkers when compared with meat eaters, the scientists found.

These included low-density lipoprotein (so-called “bad cholesterol”); apolipoprotein A and B, which are linked to cardiovascular disease; and insulin-like growth factor, a hormone that encourages the growth and proliferation of cancer cells.

Even vegetarians who were obese, smokers or drinkers were found to have lower levels of these biomarkers, suggesting diet is an incredibly important influence on the risk of developing serious illnesses.

Dr Carlos Celis-Morales, who led the research, said: “Our findings offer real food for thought. As well as not eating red and processed meat which have been linked to heart diseases and some cancers, people who follow a vegetarian diet tend to consume more vegetables, fruits, and nuts which contain more nutrients, fibre, and other potentially beneficial compounds.

“These nutritional differences may help explain why vegetarians appear to have lower levels of disease biomarkers that can lead to cell damage and chronic disease.”

Biomarkers are widely used to assess the impact of diet on health.

The participants were aged between 37 and 73, and filled out questionnaires on what they ate. They had not radically altered their diet in the five years prior to the study.

However, the scientists noted that the biomarkers of participants were only tested once, rather than multiple times over a long period of time – so more extensive testing could yield different results.

Despite having lower levels of 13 biomarkers linked to disease, vegetarians were also found to have lower levels of some beneficial biomarkers.

These included high-density lipoprotein (so-called “good cholesterol), and vitamin D and calcium, which are linked to bone and joint health.

They also had a significantly higher level of fats (triglycerides) in the blood, as well as cystatin-C – suggesting a poorer kidney condition.

Scientists concluded in the study: “Vegetarians have a more favourable biomarkers profile than meat-eaters. These associations were independent of sociodemographics and lifestyle-related confounding factors.”

The findings will be presented to the European Congress on Obesity this week.