Homeland Security warns of ‘increasing but modest’ threat of violence from Trump conspiracy
Luke Barr
The Department of Homeland Security said Friday they have observed “an increasing but modest level of activity online” by people who are calling for violence in response to baseless claims of 2020 election fraud and related to the conspiracy theory that former President Donald Trump will be reinstated.
“Some conspiracy theories associated with reinstating former President Trump have included calls for violence if desired outcomes are not realized,” according to a DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis bulletin obtained by ABC News.
There is no evidence that shows there was widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.
“Over the last few days what has occurred is there’s been much more public visibility, meaning the discussions and these theories have migrated away from being contained within the conspiracy and extremist online communities, to where they’re being the topic of discussion on web forums, or more public web forums, and even within the sort of media ecosystem,” a senior DHS official explained.
DHS says in the bulletin they do not have specific evidence there is a plot imminent.
“As public visibility of the narratives increases, we are concerned about more calls to violence. Reporting indicates that the timing for these activities may occur during August 2021, although we lack information on specific plots or planned actions,” the bulletin sent to state and local partners reads.
PHOTO: Former President Donald Trump arrives at the Sarasota Fairgrounds to speak to his supporters during the Save America Rally in Sarasota, Fla., July 3, 2021. (Octavio Jones/Reuters, FILE)
The department “does not have the luxury of waiting till we uncover information with the level of specificity, regarding a potential location and the time of an attack” to act on potential threats due to the threat environment, the senior DHS official explained.
“Past circumstances have illustrated that calls for violence could expand rapidly in the public domain and may be occurring outside of publicly available channels. As such, lone offenders and small groups of individuals could mobilize to violence with little-to-no warning,” the bulletin says.
The senior official said that one of the lessons learned from the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol is “that information that may reflect a growing threat may be communicated on public forums.”
“The current threat environment is one which is fueled in large part by conspiracy theories and other false narratives that are spread online by foreign governments, by foreign terrorist groups and by domestic extremist thought leaders, and are consumed by individuals who are predisposed to engage in violence,” the official said.
PHOTO: A Department of Homeland Security seal hangs on a wall before a speech by Vice President Mike Pence at the agency headquarters in Washington, D.C., July 6, 2018. (Bloomberg via Getty Images, FILE)
The official pointed to the events of Jan. 6 and the attacks on the synagogues in Pittsburgh and Poway, California, as examples.
The senior DHS official also pointed to the balance DHS has to walk when putting out products.
“We don’t want to overreact, but we want to make sure that we are at the earliest stage possible providing awareness to law enforcement and other personnel who are responsible for security and are critical to mitigating risk,” the senior official said, adding the bulletin was done with civil rights and civil liberties in mind.
California drought forces shutdown of historic Hyatt hydropower plant
Anya van Wagtendonk
A large scale California hydropower plant was shut down on Thursday after ongoing drought conditions reduced water levels in Lake Oroville to historic lows, according to the Sacramento Bee.
Why it matters: It is the first time the Edward Hyatt hydroelectric power plant has ceased operations since it was constructed in 1967, at a time when California is warning about the potential for rolling blackouts.
The plant feeds from a reservoir at Lake Oroville in Butte County, the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas in Northern California, and has the capacity to power almost half a million households, according to the Bee.
But the lake is less than one-quarter full — surpassing its record lowest level set in 1977 — amid the state’s ongoing water crisis.
What they’re saying: “This is just one of many unprecedented impacts we are experiencing in California as a result of our climate-induced drought,” said Karla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources, in a statement.
“DWR anticipated this moment, and the state has planned for its loss in both water and grid management,” the statement adds.
“Falling reservoir levels are another example of why it is so critical that all Californians conserve water. We are calling on everyone to take action now to reduce water use by 15 percent, to preserve as much water supply in storage as possible should we experience another dry year. We are all in this together.”
Sooner or Later, Climate Change is Coming for Your Wallet
By Jennifer Marlon and Bianca Taylor August 6, 2021
Richard Van Der Spuy/Dreamstime.com
Last week Gary Gensler, the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, made what seemed like an uncontroversial statement: “I think we can bring greater clarity to climate risk disclosures.” The SEC, he said, will begin to consider requiring public companies to tell their investors how climate change could threaten their business. That’s an important step, because for as much as we know about how the climate crisis is changing our lives, we’re only starting to get our heads around what it will truly cost you and me.
The oil and gas industry is already pushing back. Industry groups are stepping up lobbying to avoid disclosing their emissions, according to the Financial Times. These short-sighted attempts will unfortunately hurt our economy.
According to a report released in April by SwissRe, the global reinsurance company, the U.S. economy stands to lose 10% of its economic value by 2050 under a worst case scenario, where average global temperatures rise 3°C compared to pre-industrial levels. The SwissRe “worst case” scenario, however, is our current reality—one in which temperatures remain on their current trajectory, and both the Paris Agreement and 2050 net-zero emissions targets are not met.
To some, SwissRe’s projection of a 10% loss in 30 years may not sound alarming. But that datapoint can otherwise be stated as: The U.S. will suffer natural disasters such that it is not expected our economy will be able to recover from them. The prospect of suffering damage so profound that we are unable to economically recover is alarming. And it is not a distant future.
Scientists had hoped that Covid-related disruptions would produce a large reduction in carbon emissions. But the reductions were less than expected. The world produced only 6% less carbon last year than the one before. This modest response to an unprecedented synchronous global shutdown of economic activity puts the scope and scale of current emissions into perspective. To quantify the challenge, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change indicates that emission reduction ranges must be around 45% lower than present to meet a 1.5°C temperature goal.
Weather and climate disasters cost the U.S. economy $450 billion (2.1% of GDP) in 2020, the highest year on record. And we hold the No. 1 spot for the number of disasters year-to-date according to EM-DAT, a database that tracks disasters globally. We also know climate change has made most of these events worse than they would have otherwise been.
The mere 1°C temperature increase that has already occurred has contributed to new water shortages in towns across California, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico. Increasing evaporation has also reduced soil moisture, which helps explain the $7 billion to $13 billion cost to insurers from the 2020 wildfires. Costs that will inevitably translate into a higher price tag to you, the consumer.
The future costs of climate change on the U.S. economy are uncertain, but what is worse is that they may be underestimated. Underestimation occurs because projections are often made using an enumerative approach, where losses are valued sector by sector and then tallied to estimate the total impact on social welfare.
In other words, current approaches miss cascading risks, problems that exacerbate other disasters in unforeseen ways. Global supply-chain disruptions are an example of why cascading risks are difficult to model—because all industries can be affected when businesses of all sizes as well as national and subnational governments are interdependent. Economic disruptions from Covid-19 provide a case in point. The pandemic highlighted the vulnerabilities of complex supply chains that are now ubiquitous. As severe weather events continue to worsen, the U.S. economy will continue to suffer shortages — not only from domestic disruptions to products like orange juice, corn, and soy, but also from disasters abroad. The regions that produce most semiconductor chips and rare earth elements, critical in computers, smartphones, aerospace and defense, and medical appliances are concentrated in regions particularly vulnerable to climate hazards.
The economic consequences of climate change are countless. Under the last administration the U.S. Commodities and Futures Trade Commission released the first-ever assessment of the impact of climate change on the financial system. The 196-page report’s first sentence reads: “Climate change poses a major risk to the stability of the U.S. financial system and to its ability to sustain the American economy.”
The good news is that scientists, economists, and financial regulators agree on what needs to be done—even the oil and gas executives are on board. The key recommendation from the CFTC is that “The United States establishes a price on carbon. It must be a fair, economy-wide price… at a level that reflects the true social cost of those emissions.” The authors go further, stating that “a carbon price is the single most important step to manage climate risk and drive the appropriate allocation of capital.” The SEC’s moves toward mandatory climate risk disclosures are first steps on that path.
But if you’re not in a position to influence the risk calculus of public companies, there is something else you can do. You can buy insurance. The IMF’s researchers find that insurance penetration is a top factor in determining the resilience of a country to the impact of climate change. Yes, it might cost you a little more than you expected to spend this year. But climate change is coming for your wallet sooner or later.
Guest commentaries like this one are written by authors outside the Barron’s and MarketWatch newsroom. They reflect the perspective and opinions of the authors.
About the authors: Jennifer R. Marlon is a research scientist at Yale University’s School of the Environment. Bianca Taylor is founder of Tourmaline Group and a member of the Bretton Woods Committee. The two are public voices fellows of the OpEd Project and the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.
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.
Federal judge sanctions lawyers who brought conspiracy theory-filled lawsuit trying to overturn the 2020 election, reap $160 billion in damages
Jacob Shamsian
Former President Donald Trump. Drew Angerer/Getty Images
A federal judge in Colorado sanctioned two lawyers who challenged the 2020 election results.
He called their claims “fantastical” and “the stuff of which violent insurrections are made.”
The lawyers had asked for $160 billion in damages because Joe Biden won the presidential election.
A federal judge in Colorado has sanctioned attorneys who brought a lawsuit that challenged the results of the 2020 presidential election and sought $160 billion in damages, calling their conspiratorial claims “the stuff of which violent insurrections are made.”
The Wednesday ruling from US Magistrate Judge N. Reid Neureiter concludes that the lawsuit “was filed in bad faith” and orders the attorneys, Ernest J. Walker and Gary D. Fielder, to pay the opposing lawyers’ expenses and fees. The order does not bar them from practicing law.
“This lawsuit was filed with a woeful lack of investigation into the law and (under the circumstances) the facts,” Neureiter wrote. “The lawsuit put into or repeated into the public record highly inflammatory and damaging allegations that could have put individuals’ safety in danger. Doing so without a valid legal basis or serious independent personal investigation into the facts was the height of recklessness.”
The lawsuit was first filed on December 22, more than a month after then-President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. Though it was filed in Colorado, the lawsuit named as defendants the governors and secretaries of state for swing states which Trump lost to now-President Joe Biden.
The plaintiffs – a smattering of Trump supporters who said in declarations that they believed the election results were rigged, were upset their Facebook posts were deleted, and didn’t want to get vaccinated against COVID-19 – also named Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, Priscilla Chan, and Dominion Voting Systems as defendants.
Neureiter’s ruling criticized the attorneys in scathing terms for purporting to “represent 160 million American registered voters,” seeking to nullify “actions of multiple state legislatures, municipalities, and state courts,” and then demand a “nominal amount of $1,000 per registered voter” in damages, which would amount to “a figure is greater than the annual GDP of Hungary.”
“In short, this was no slip-and-fall at the local grocery store,” Neureiter wrote. “Albeit disorganized and fantastical, the Complaint’s allegations are extraordinarily serious and, if accepted as true by large numbers of people, are the stuff of which violent insurrections are made.”
The lawyers’ ‘massive cut-and-paste job’ recycled claims from other failed lawsuits
The judge noted that sanctions were warranted because the attorneys did not bring the lawsuit based on the claims of the people they represented.
“It must also be noted that this was not a client-driven lawsuit. As Plaintiffs’ counsel, Mr. Fielder, conceded at the July 16 hearing, the lawsuit was his idea,” Neureiter wrote. “Mr. Fielder and Mr. Walker were not relying on information from the named Plaintiffs to construct the suit or for any of the substantive factual allegations.”
Neureiter said Walker and Fielder acted improperly by failing to research any factual basis for their claims that the 2020 election results were rigged, and by bringing a claim in Colorado against state officials in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Wisconsin.
Neureiter also criticized the lawyers’ “massive cut-and-paste job.” They recycled claims in their lawsuit from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Trump-affiliated lawyer Sidney Powell, both of whom failed in their own lawsuits challenging the election results.
The lawyers recycled claims from Sidney Powell, who led several failed lawsuits seeking to overturn the election results. Associated Press
The judge also criticized them for uncritically including a false Trump tweet about “Dominion deleting 2.7 million trump votes nationwide.” Neureiter wrote that when asked in a hearing about including the claim, Fielder’s only justification was that Trump was the president.
“Under the circumstances of this case, with this election, with this insurrection, with the on-going threats to election officials and company employees, including in a federal filing as if it were true such an inflammatory and damaging allegation, without any attempt at verification, merely because the out-going President had said it, was reckless and did not represent a reasonable inquiry under the circumstances,” Neureiter wrote.
Experts call for an active hurricane season as the tropics rumble awake
Dennis Mersereau
Experts call for an active hurricane season as the tropics rumble awake
We could be in for a hectic peak to the hurricane season over the next couple of months.
Experts who specialize in long-range tropical weather predictions expect more than a dozen tropical storms and hurricanes to develop in the Atlantic basin through this fall.
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) still expects above-average hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean, according to the agency’s mid-summer outlook issued on Wednesday.
Forecasters with Colorado State University issued their own prediction on Thursday, concurring that the ingredients are in place for a busy peak to this year’s hurricane season.
While the Atlantic basin has been unusually quiet for the past month, the serenity won’t last long. There are already a few disturbances out near Africa, and forecasters expect plenty more to follow in the weeks and months ahead.
EXPERTS CALL FOR 15 TO 21 NAMED STORMS THIS SEASON
NOAA predicts that this year’s hurricane season could end with a final tally of 15 to 21 named storms. A system in the Atlantic basin earns a name when it strengthens into a tropical storm.
NOAA / CSU Hurricane Forecasts Aug 5, 2021
More than half of those storms could become hurricanes, the outlook notes, and several of those hurricanes could grow into major hurricanes, packing maximum sustained winds of 178 km/h or stronger.
Colorado State University’s forecast cuts straight down the middle, calling for 18 named storms. The school’s prediction also calls for eight hurricanes, four of which could strengthen into major hurricanes.
An average Atlantic hurricane season would see 14 named storms, seven hurricanes, and three major hurricanes, which are rated category three or higher on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.
The climatological peak of the Atlantic hurricane season occurs on September 10, though heightened tropical activity is common from August through October. The season officially runs from June 1 to November 30.
THE INGREDIENTS EXIST FOR A FLURRY OF ACTIVITY
The predictions from both NOAA and Colorado State University rely on a combination of factors that include low wind shear, warm ocean temperatures, and an increase in tropical waves moving off the western coast of Africa, according to statements released by each group this week.
Atlantic Sea Surface Temps Aug 4 2021
Tropical cyclones are powerful but fragile storms. A hurricane needs warm waters, moist air, low wind shear, and intense thunderstorms in order to develop and strengthen. Lacking any of those ingredients can spell doom for a budding storm.
WE’RE WATCHING A FEW DISTURBANCES NEAR AFRICA THIS WEEK
The outlooks couldn’t come at a better time. After the Atlantic fell unusually quiet through most of July, the tropics are growing more active as tropical waves begin to roll off the African coast.
The West African monsoon season produces complexes of thunderstorms that travel west and move over the eastern Atlantic Ocean. These clusters of storms, or waves, are the seeds from which many named storms form at the height of the hurricane season.
NHC Tropical Weather Outlook Aug 4 2021
The U.S. National Hurricane Center’s 5-day tropical weather outlook on Thursday, August 5, noted several disturbances in the eastern Atlantic for potential tropical development through the weekend. We should expect more activity like this in the coming weeks as we approach the peak of the season in September.
WE’VE ALREADY SEEN FIVE STORMS SO FAR THIS YEAR
Despite July’s inactivity, we’ve already seen five named storms so far this year. The season’s first named storm formed in May, kicking off this year’s hurricane season before the official start date for a record seventh year in a row.
The Atlantic’s most recent named storm was Hurricane Elsa, which broke several records with its formation in the Caribbean Sea at the beginning of July. Elsa’s remnants produced as much as 92 mm of rain in New Brunswick.
The next name on the list is Fred, followed by Grace, Henri, and Ida.
WE COULD DIVE DEEP INTO THE LIST OF STORM NAMES AGAIN
It’s notable that the upper end of NOAA’s outlook would bring the season to the end of the list of 21 names allotted for each hurricane season. We’ve only exhausted the official list of names twice before, first in 2005 and again during last year’s historic hurricane season.
The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season was the most active on record, amassing 30 named storms between May 16 and November 18. The season ran through the list of 21 names by the middle of September, requiring the use of nine Greek letters to name the remaining storms.
The World Meteorological Organization has since abolished the use of Greek letters once the list of names runs out, opting instead to establish an alternate list of names if we see 22 or more storms in a single season.
However, it’s unlikely that we’ll see more than 21 storms this year.
Stay with The Weather Network for the latest updates throughout hurricane season.
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.
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
AP Photo/Seth Perlman. Corn yields can suffer in high heat.
