Scientists fear a critical Atlantic Ocean system might collapse, triggering ‘extreme cold’ and sea level rise
Brigid Kennedy, Contributing Writer
Ocean. MATEUSZ SLODKOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images
Scientists are worried the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a “critical aquatic conveyer belt” that drives currents in the Atlantic Ocean, is at risk of near-complete collapse due to climate change, The Washington Post reports.
A shutdown of the crucial circulation system could “bring extreme cold to Europe and parts of North America, raise sea levels along the U.S. East Coast, and disrupt seasonal monsoons that provide water to much of the world,” the Post reports. The effects, in short, would be devastating.
“The mere possibility that the AMOC tipping point is close should be enough for us to take countermeasures,” warns Levke Caesar, a climate physicist at Maynooth University.
Scientists previously believed the AMOC would in fact weaken this century, but didn’t imagine total collapse within the next 300 years except in absolute worst-case warming scenarios. Now, according to a new study, that critical threshold “is most likely much closer than we would have expected,” said Niklas Boers, the study’s author and a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. Any exact date, however, is still unknown.
It would take years of monitoring and data collection to officially confirm the AMOC slowdown, but there is a degree of “jeopardy” associated with waiting for that proof, scientists say. Besides, possible consequences, like a “cold blob” in the ocean south of Greenland, are already being felt.
Frighteningly, if the system does devastatingly shut down, the switch off would be irreversible in human lifetimes. “It’s one of those events that should not happen, and we should try all that we can to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible,” said Boers. “This is a system we don’t want to mess with.”
Louisiana needs sand to rebuild its coast. Old oil and gas pipelines are blocking the way.
By Sara Sneath August 5, 2021
Energy companies, many of them now bankrupt, have been allowed to abandon infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico without penalty
The cutter head dredge R.S. Weeks pumps sand and water from the Gulf of Mexico to a Louisiana barrier island five miles away on July 28, 2021, as part of a Louisiana Coastal Restoration and Protection Authority project to add about 400 acres of beach, dune and marshland to Grand Terre Island. (AP Photo/Janet McConnaughey)
A Houston-based energy company is asking a federal bankruptcy court for permission to walk away from its aging infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico. Fieldwood Energy is attempting to shift responsibility for removing 1,715 wells, 276 platforms and 281 pipelines to oil and gas companies that previously held leases for the same area, according to court documents.
Under existing federal regulations, companies remain liable for decommissioning infrastructure on areas of federally owned seafloor where they previously produced oil and gas. But the former holders of the Fieldwood leases — including Chevron, BP and Shell — are attempting to get out of that obligation because of the cost, estimated at $9 billion.
It’s a familiar story. A recent U.S. Government Accountability Office report found that oil and gas companies have been allowed to abandon 97 percent of offshore pipelines in place without penalty. The abandoned infrastructure poses environmental concerns, but it has also created another problem: The pipelines are blocking access to the sand that Louisiana and other gulf states desperately need to rebuild their coastlines in the face of rising seas.
The Gulf of Mexico swallows a football field of Louisiana coastline every 100 minutes on average. Barrier islands that have historically acted as speed bumps to hurricanes headed toward coastal communities are among the areas losing ground. Without them, the state is more vulnerable to climate change and severe weather.
Geologists estimate that up to 11,000 million cubic meters of sediment are needed to restore the state’s coastline, but about 58 percent of the offshore sediment in the gulf that could be used to rebuild Louisiana’s coast is blocked by pipelines, said Syed Khalil, a geologist with the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority. While there is enough sand for the coastal restoration projects that Louisiana has planned in the short term, the state’s fight to fend off rising seas will require more.
“We need every grain of sand for the restoration of coastal Louisiana,” Khalil said.
Other Gulf Coast states are facing the same problem. But the issue has come to a head in Louisiana, where coastal land is disappearing faster than anywhere else in the nation. Flood control levees built along the Mississippi River are partly to blame for the Bayou State’s land loss. Levees block off the supply of sediment once carried by the river into coastal wetlands.
Canals dug through the wetlands to build and service pipelines — which create pathways for saltwater to flow into the marsh — are also partly to blame for Louisiana’s coastal erosion. Now, those pipelines are hindering the solution.
Federal regulations require the removal of offshore pipelines once they are decommissioned, but the rules are rarely enforced. The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, the Interior Department agency that regulates offshore energy, has been mostly unsuccessful at getting companies to pay for the removal of pipelines decommissioned in place when they are later determined to be in the way.
The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) was established after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion in 2010 to address the conflicting interests of the Minerals Management Service, which was tasked with collecting lease payments from oil and gas companies and enforcing environmental and safety regulations for those same companies.
But oil and gas companies have continued to benefit from lax enforcement for decommissioning pipelines, said Megan Milliken Biven, a public policy expert who worked for the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM). The BSEE allows major oil companies to sell their leases to smaller operators, such as Fieldwood, that lack the resources to clean up when wells are drained.\
“There’s no revenue from cleaning up after yourself,” she said. “Every incentive is to avoid it.”
Often, previous pipeline operators have gone bankrupt or fight the decision by appealing to the Interior Board of Land Appeals. The previous operators of more than 100 miles of pipelines buried in sediment no longer exist, according to the GAO report. This number is expected to increase as more companies go bankrupt because of a drop in oil prices and the growth of onshore fracking that has priced out offshore gas.
Louisiana has identified the best places to get sand and sediment to rebuild its coast. But all of these underwater sediment deposits in federal waters, called “borrow areas,” contain pipelines that dredges have to navigate around, said Jessica Mallindine, a marine biologist for BOEM’s Marine Minerals Program in the Gulf of Mexico.
Dredges used to suction up sand from the bottom of the gulf are not allowed to excavate within 1,000 feet of pipelines. This is to keep the pipelines intact and to ensure the safety of workers. It is estimated that a pipeline one kilometer long (0.6 miles) — in addition to the required offset — will make about 2.3 million cubic yards of sand inaccessible. The pipelines also force dredges to operate in smaller footprints, which increases the price tag of coastal restoration projects.
It’s the difference between mowing a large, open backyard compared to mowing a small yard with garden hoses in the way. “Every time a dredge turns, it costs money, or more money than to go in a straight line,” Mallindine said. “By reducing the efficiency of the design, you’re increasing project costs.”
In 2009, BOEM sent a letter to oil and gas companies leasing federal land in the Gulf of Mexico discouraging them from leaving inactive pipelines in areas where sediment could be used for coastal restoration. In 2016, BOEM sent a letter to the BSEE with the same message: Pipelines in these areas must be removed when they are no longer in use.
Before 2016, the safety and environmental enforcement bureau allowed 3,405 miles of decommissioned pipelines to be left in these areas, BSEE spokesman Mike O’Berry said. Now when BSEE gets a request from a company to decommission a pipeline in place, the agency defers to BOEM for recommendations to remove such pipelines — or portions of pipelines — in significant sediment resource areas. In cases where BOEM recommends removal of the pipeline, BSEE denies the operator’s request to decommission in place.
Since 2016, the two agencies authorized 195 miles of pipeline to be left in areas of the gulf with sediment deposits, he said. The agency has the authority to require removal of previously decommissioned-in-place pipelines when it is determined that the pipeline is an obstruction.
But BSEE has had difficulty in getting those companies to retroactively remove pipelines because the companies are not required to set aside money for pipeline removal, and they may be bankrupt or liquidated. The agency is currently reviewing its regulations related to pipelines and is expected to release its recommendations for rule changes this year for public comment, O’Berry said.
Milliken Biven expressed doubt that a change in BSEE policy would stop oil and gas companies from abandoning pipelines in the Gulf. “The regulations are such that they should be removing pipelines,” she said. “What makes you think they’ll follow new regulations, if they don’t follow old regulations?”
A gas transmission pipeline cuts the landscape in St. Bernard Parish, La., on July 21, 2018. Pipelines run from the Gulf of Mexico to refineries in coastal Louisiana. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)
The Former Grifter-in-Chief Won’t Disappear Like a Respectable Ex-President Should
It’s no good trying to ignore Donald Trump.
He keeps popping up in the news. The stories reflect more his insults and influence-bending than actual guidance for the country, more about legal problems than help on getting people vaccinated, say, and more about his fund-raising even as he continues to pump money from those efforts into his private businesses.
Trump may have proved right about one thing. Love or hate aside, we have trouble quitting him.
So, even as efforts continue to reconcile unethical deeds over time and pundits seek to find signs of declining reign over willing Republicans, with $100 million in the bank Trump continues to be the would-be next candidate for president.
Trump keeps coming on, twisting truth or actual events for convenience and letting even friends and allies fall by the wayside on his way to the never-ending spotlight.
Some see as bad signs for Trump an election loss in Texas of his designated candidate and the pending Joe Biden victory of winning bipartisan support for an infrastructure bill that Trump never could get passed.
“The weakness Trump showed this week is real, but it isn’t new. His power over the GOP has always been limited: As president he often found himself balked on policy by congressional Republicans, and his impressive endorsement record reflects a lot of cautious winner-picking, not aggressive movement-building,” says New York Times columnist Ross Douthat.
Even as New York prosecutors are cornering Trump on fraud charges, even as new disclosures show more outrageous attempts to use the Justice Department for his personal political ends, as new orders show he must share his taxes with Congress, Trump keeps coming. He continues twisting truth or actual events for convenience and letting even friends and allies fall by the wayside on his way to the never-ending spotlight.
Again and Again
He is the new Old Faithful.
Among the week’s Trump tally:
Undermining Election Results: “Just Say the Election Was Corrupt and Leave the Rest to Me and the Republican. congressmen,” Trump told Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen in January, according to notes of the near-daily conversations with Trump disclosed by The Times. Though they had found no instances of widespread fraud, so that Trump and his allies in Congress could use the assertion to try to overturn the election results, Trump told him, though this weekend, Trump insisted that “overturn” means “guaranteeing election integrity.” Whatever translation from truth you want to accept, Trump crossed another big line trying to bully the Justice Department in violation of every ethical, governmental, maybe even legal interpretation available. To anyone but Team Trump, bad news.
Surrendering Tax Filings. The Justice Department said the Treasury Department must turn over Trump’s tax returns to congressional investigators on the House Ways and Means Committee as part of its review of the Internal Revenue Service’s presidential audit program. The Trump administration stymied the request for years and the committee sued to obtain the documents. Still, it was an unusual victory, however it turns out, for Truth in Government, since present Attorney General Merrick Garland continues to surprise all with how reluctant he is proving to be in demanding that Trump officials own up to legal abuses of the last administration.
“I am not going to look backward,” Garland has said, in interviews that are deeply unsatisfying to Democrats, government watchdogs and anyone who wants catharsis after four years of Trump’s insistence on his ‘absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department,’ as he put it to The New York Times in 2017,” notes The Washington Post Magazine.
“Those voices are calling for investigations of the politicization of the department under Trump, a public reckoning of the damage done, the spectacle of heads rolling. They speak of ‘truth commissions’ and ‘de-Trumpification.’ That is how you restore confidence in the institution, they say.”
A subpoena to the Jan. 6 investigation is looming, says The Post, among others, for Trump to give an accounting of his role in amassing, inciting and failing to stop the rioting at the U.S. Capitol. It’s a tricky thing to require Trump’s testimony, if the committee can sidestep executive privilege claims without having to go to court, because it gives Trump the ultimate platform for repeating his election rigging nonsense. But it also represents testimony under oath, and that is something Trump never wants to do, any more than his acolytes among Republican members of Congress. The number of open questions about Trump’s role continues to increase.
Meanwhile, Big Steal rolls along, amid widening reports that the Arizona re-count or re-creation of Election Day in Mariposa County is a sham, with even Republican sponsors in that state fleeing before final creative writing reports are being produced in secret. The continuing theme is that unless Cyber Ninjas makes it all up, there was little to sustain a turnaround in vote counts. Still, the efforts to do similar audits are moving to Michigan, where Republicans seem quite torn about it, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where Trump troops are going door to door asking people how they voted, as if that is somehow OK. But daily, we’re hearing about Republican punishments for anyone veering from the Trump fraud line.
Following the Money. Yes, Federal Election Commission reports confirm that Trump’s fund-raising efforts have topped $100 million for the last six months, though the Trump spending reports have gotten less attention. Money from the several Political Action Committees for Trump are sending payments to Trump properties for meetings and housing, reports The Post, with one PAC paying Trump $68,000 during the same time period. Since Trump entered the presidential race in June 2015, he has used his political campaigns and associated committees to pump more than $19 million into his own businesses, according to a Washington Post analysis of federal campaign-finance records. The Post also reported that it could not find evidence that Trump donated his last six months of salary, as pledged, nor his ample pension. The perception of Trump as a grifter also continues unabated.
Not Leaving
Still, none of the fictionalizing seems to halt seeing Trump presenting himself as if he actually still is president, any more than persistent legal and business problems. His supporters remain most comfortable blaming others for any negative news and keep faith with their idea of an iconoclastic bull in the china shop of intellectualism.
Former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows reported this week without explanation that Trump’s “Cabinet” of advisers were meeting with him at the Trump Bedminster, N.J. golf resort, as if it were a shadow presidency interested in anything other than promoting Trump.
The MAGA rallies are back, if a tad more subdued, the insult machine is alive and well, cranking out criticism for a lengthening list of enemies and the hints of an announced re-play of the election mix with the constant reporting about whether Pillow Talk Guy has identified another day in which magically Trump ousts Biden as a legitimate election winner.
I’d be happy never to see Trump again in any form, but we’re not even close.
Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York. As an editor, Terry created new approaches in newsrooms, built technological tools and digital media. He pursued efforts to recruit and train minority journalists and in scholarship programs. A resident of Harlem, he volunteers in community storytelling, arts in education programs, tutoring and is an active freelance trombone player
Starving cows. Fallow farms. The Arizona drought is among the worst in the country
Jaweed Kaleem
Nancy Caywood stands beside the corn that her son Travis Hartman farms using leased land that has water rights. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
The cotton’s gone.
The alfalfa barely exists.
“Can you even call this a farm?” asked Nancy Caywood, standing on a rural stretch of land her Texas grandfather settled nearly a century ago, drawn by cheap prices and feats of engineering that brought water from afar to irrigate central Arizona’s arid soil.
The canals that used to bring water to the fields of Caywood Farms have gone dry due to the drought. In Arizona, 99% of the land is undergoing a years-long drought. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
On the family’s 247 acres an hour south of Phoenix, Caywood grew up tending to cotton and alfalfa, two water-intensive crops that fed off melted mountain snows flowing from a reservoir 120 miles away. She grew up understanding the rhythms of the desert and how fields can blossom despite a rugged, sand-swept terrain where sunlight is a given but water is precious.
Now more than ever. Looking out at her farmland recently, Caywood held back tears.
The eastern Arizona reservoir that provided much of her water was drying up, leaving empty the canals and ditches that surround her property. Bigger-than-usual summer rains did not prove ample to rescue dead fields. The drought was at her door.
Across the U.S. West, shifting climate patterns are wreaking havoc. An early start to fire season is scorching rural Oregon and parts of Northern California. Record temperatures have led to deaths of hundreds of residents of Seattle and Portland, Ore. Lake Mead, the massive Colorado River reservoir outside Las Vegas, is at its lowest point since its 1935 federal construction, threatening water supplies to Arizona, Southern California, Nevada and Mexico.
Saguaros, which can naturally withstand drought better than non-native plants, are still susceptible to damage under extreme conditions. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
In Arizona, 99% of the land is undergoing years-long drought that has accelerated. Large swaths of the region are now in extreme distress and the picture may well get worse, with less reliable mountain snowfall to feed streams and a morphing monsoon season that has only proved a temporary reprieve and even led to flooding. The state, where more than a third of all water can trace itself up the Colorado River to Lake Mead, will also be forced to make do with less beginning next year because of the lake’s dwindling supply.
“Arizona is pretty much an irrigated state and we’ve managed our water resources generally well,” said Stephanie Smallhouse, a fifth-generation cattle rancher on the far outskirts of Tucson who is the president of the Arizona Farm Bureau. “But it’s near impossible to manage yourself out of a drought.”
The history of Arizona is the history of water. Before European colonizers and American settlers moved in, Indigenous people relied on the Gila, Salt and Verde rivers outside Phoenix. The Colorado River flowed on what’s now the state’s western edge, while snowmelt from New Mexico’s Black Mountain Range formed the Gila River that came from the east to meet the Colorado, creating a lifeline for tens of thousands of subsistence farmers in Native American communities.
But as technological advances led to the construction of dams and reservoirs in the early 20th century to divert rivers for new residents — like Caywood’s grandfather — Native land went fallow, leading to sickness and poverty. As cities such as Tucson and Phoenix and farmlands between them grew over the decades, they were aided by another feat in water engineering when construction on the Central Arizona Project launched in 1973. Today, the intricate canal system carries Colorado River water hundreds of miles from Lake Havasu on the California-Arizona border to taps and irrigation ditches across central Arizona.
The Hayden-Rhodes Aqueduct, fed by the Colorado River, runs through Scottsdale, Ariz. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
It’s a history that informs who wins and loses amid drought. The state has dozens of irrigation districts that tax customers in exchange for regulating water flow from different sources. The map they form can at times resemble gerrymandered congressional districts, with it not unusual for neighboring farms to get water from canals that lead to mountains and reservoirs in opposite directions.
Longevity also goes into the equation.
“Water policy in Arizona is also rooted in the idea that a person who comes and diverts water for a beneficial use should have higher priority than the next one who comes along if there is a risk for shortage,” said Sarah Porter, the director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University.
When it comes to water, one city or farm is not always equal to the other in the state where the $23-billion agriculture industry uses up more than 70% of irrigated water, a large chunk of it on crops the federal government encourages with subsidies, such as cotton. In central Arizona, city dwellers and tribal lands tend to get first dibs on water before farms. Still, nearly everyone is preparing. Cities are raising water prices. The state is locked in a battle with hundreds of lush golf courses over demands that they cut back on water.
Yuma, a major farming region known as the “Salad Bowl” for growing broccoli, lettuce and leafy greens that are shipped across the country each winter, is in many ways spared. It has priority over water from the nearby Colorado River in part because irrigated agriculture has taken place there for more than a century. Vegetables also need significantly less water than crops that are popular inland.
A worker moves irrigation tubes on a farm in Pinal County. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
It’s farmers in the center of the state who are most worried as shortages loom. Among the hardest-hit are those in Pinal County, a largely rural patchwork of farms and cattle and dairy ranches nestled between Phoenix and Tucson where family farmers live alongside exurbs that are rapidly expanding as agriculture recedes.
Along Interstate 10, typically green farms have turned brown, skinny cattle are left with little grass to graze and saguaros lie dead. “For sale” signs advertise desperate owners looking to sell their land at discount for solar power panels and housing developments.
“There’s nothing nefarious about how the water is divided,” said Paul Orme, an attorney who represents several irrigation districts in the county. “But because of agreements that have been negotiated and where these farmers have fell in those, you could see up to 30% of farmland in Pinal County no longer irrigated over the next few years.”
For those like Caywood, that time has already come.
Casa Grande, a city of 55,000 founded in 1879 as a mining town that’s named after a structure built by the ancient Hohokam people, is one of those places at the center of the water crisis. Home to dozens of alfalfa, cotton, wheat and corn farms and as well as dairy and beef ranches, it’s long been sustained by a mix of rains, aquifers and canals drawing on the Colorado River, among other reserves.
Caywood stands in what used to be an alfalfa field. It went fallow after her family lost access to irrigated water from the San Carlos reservoir because its water levels were too low. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
The Caywood farm has a different source. When Caywood’s grandfather, Lewis Storey, established it in 1930, he agreed to pay for water from canals connected to the San Carlos reservoir 130 miles away. Storey thought the reservoir, formed on the Gila River, would be plentiful for generations with its 19,500 acre-feet supply. An acre-foot covers the amount of water that could seep a foot deep across a football field.
The family had long used that water to grow cotton that made up towels and sheets found in big-box stores. The seeds went separately for cattle feed. Alfalfa was cut and baled for ranches across the Southwest.
This summer, the San Carlos reservoir hit zero acre-feet.
“If you want to eat ice cream, you need people like us growing the feed,” Caywood said recently as she sat in the small, wooden shed on the property where she keeps a digital slideshow of the once-lively green and white fields to show kids who still come by on field trips. All that survived now were old mesquite and cottonwood trees on the edges of the land.
Cattle go up for sale at Marana Stockyards in Marana, Ariz. “If you can’t grow grass, you buy it. But the hay is too expensive because there’s less water to grow it and less water expected down the line,” said Clay Buck Parsons, who runs the auction house with his father, Clay Parsons. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
Emaciated cattle are often sold at Marana Stockyards, which has seen an increase in sales amid the decreased feed availability that the drought has caused. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
An hour south of the the Caywood property at the Pinal County line, the ranchers who show up each week at Marana Stockyards are feeling the trickle-down effects of the drought. The Parsons family has auctioned cattle here for 25 years. Business is picking up.
Dozens of men in cowboy hats and leather boots arrive each Wednesday to watch their bulls, cows and calves sold off. Clay Buck Parsons, a third-generation rancher and auctioneer, ushers cattle into holding pens outside the red barnyard-like building while Parsons’ dad mans a computer as locals in the stands make bids and buyers log in online.
“We’ve sold 12,000 more head this year already than last year,” said Parsons, 29. Most go to Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma.
“You can’t feed the animals without grass,” he said, looking out at dozens of black Angus mother cows whose shoulders and ribs jutted out from grazing on dying fields.
“If you can’t grow grass, you buy it. But the hay is too expensive because there’s less water to grow it and less water expected down the line. So the ranchers are cutting down on their herd to maintain smaller numbers where they can still make a profit.”
Clay Parsons owns Marana Stockyards, which he runs with his son, Clay Buck Parsons. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
Rancher Mike Mercer, left, regularly buys underweight cows at Marana Stockyards. He feeds them for a few months before reselling them for profit. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
Buck said it costs up to $4 a day per cow for hay, four times more than grazing on grass. The cost of raising beef can be several thousand times more than some vegetables, such as lettuce. But ranchers here said family history — and profits — had until recently seemed worth holding on to.
One of the regulars to come that day was Mike Mercer. At 54, he has been ranching since his teens. For many years, his land in Mammoth, a village of 1,650, provided for 700 mother cows. Now, he can’t have more than 100 at a time as grass disappears.
“You can’t run cattle. It’s just — everything’s gone,” Mercer said. “A lot of guys are switching into copper mining or welding or trucking.”
These days, Mercer buys skinny, sickly cows, feeds them for a few months on hay in a covered feedlot, and resells them at a profit. On that day, he sold 88 to buyers in Texas and Oklahoma.
The Parsons family’s auction house has sold 12,000 more cows this year than last year. Many ranchers can no longer afford to feed their cattle because of the drought. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
A Christian who believes God is responsible for the drought, he prayed for a change.
“You just keep saying we can’t have another year this bad and then we have another year even worse…. Leave it in God’s hands. Because I don’t know what else to do. You pray for rain. Oh, God, yeah. Pray for rain.”
Caywood, a former farming teacher at the University of California Agricultural and Natural Resources Division in El Centro, Calif., also questions those who say climate change is to blame for her struggles.
“I don’t believe in it. I believe things are cyclical. But I can’t believe that it’s happening so quickly,” said Caywood, who has a master’s degree in agricultural education.
Nancy Caywood, left, and her grandson Thomas Hartman, 14, stand at the office of Caywood Farms. Hartman is learning to farm, raising steer and chickens. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
Her son, Travis, built a home on the farm where he lives with two sons. She is thankful that he has continued in the family tradition. But she is more thankful that he is also a firefighter and EMT, a job that provides a stable income. Her `14-year-old grandkids Thomas and Cameron are learning to farm, raising steer and chickens. She has encouraged them but also told them to consider backup plans.
In the good years, the farm would easily make tens of thousands of dollars in profits, more than enough to cover $22,000 in annual property taxes. This year, Caywood, who had hoped to retire, may dip into savings to cover the bill.
Recently, her son leased two 80-acre plots in different irrigation districts that have access to canal water from the Colorado River. Just a few miles from Caywood Farms, corn stalks reach 5 feet into the air. They’ll be chopped up for dairy cow feed.
The family didn’t want more farming land but found it necessary to cover the taxes on its dying historic property.
Except there’s one problem.
Because of the drought, Arizona will have 18% less water from the Colorado River next year. Farms like Caywood’s son’s will be hit hardest because of rules governing how water is divided in the state.
“We have no cotton. It’s gone. It’s dead. The alfalfa barely exists,” Caywood said. She may be forced to use her savings to cover taxes on the farm, which isn’t making money anymore. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
“It seems there’s really no way out of drought,” Caywood said the other week, browsing old photos of her parents and son standing by cotton bales.
Sometimes, she felt as though it wasn’t just a farm but a family and way of life slipping away. Her father, Tommy, died in January at 98. Her 94-year-old mother, Sammie, was in and out of the hospital.
All around her, farms were disappearing. Next door, the Wuertzes sold much of theirs for solar panels. Down the street, an abandoned construction project stood where alfalfa once grew. Caywood had gotten offers from buyers too. She rejected them.
She looked at the barren fields where her grandfather taught her how to examine the changing color of a cotton blossom to tell where the plant was in its life span. She thought back to when water flowed freely in the dried-up irrigation canals where she would sneak away to swim as a kid.
Days like those seemed long gone. She prayed for them to come back again.
Temperatures challenge all-time records in Europe as wildfires rage in Greece, Turkey
Adam Douty
Relief from intense and record-setting heat in southeast Europe is still days away, and AccuWeather meteorologists warn the prolonged warmth will continue to fuel dangerous wildfires across parts of the parched continent.
Fires have scorched large portions of southwest Turkey during the end of July and the start of August. At least eight people have been killed by the flames, while many others have suffered injuries, according to Reuters.
Over 100 fires across Turkey during the past week have already been contained, though a number of fires in southwestern parts of the country remain out of control.
One of the fires burned near the popular resort community of Bodrum, which led to the evacuation of over 1,000 people by boat as the flames neared the coast.
A satellite image of the eastern Mediterranean Sea from Friday, July 30, 2021, shows smoke from wildfires across southwest Turkey. (Photo/NASA/WORLDVIEW)
Fires have also charred parts of southern Italy, Greece and Cyprus as intense heat and dry conditions remain in place across the region.
A wildfire near an industrial part of Athens quickly spread on Tuesday which disrupted rail travel and closed a portion of the national motorway, Reuters reported. According to local media, 80 children were safely evacuated from a camp near the fire. The fire was the worst of 81 wildfires that broke out in Greece within the span of 24 hours, The Associated Press reported.
The setup that led to the intense heat across southeast Europe included a strong area of high pressure in the upper levels of the atmosphere that has remained over the Balkans, allowing a heat dome to form, according to AccuWeather Meteorologist Alyssa Smithmyer.
Much of eastern Europe had temperatures average 5-10 degrees Fahrenheit (3-6 degrees Celsius) above normal for the month of July. During this time, parts of southern Greece and southwest Turkey reported no rainfall.
“A deficit in rainfall from dry weather earlier in the summer exacerbated the temperatures further as the dry surface heated up much more easily than what moist soil would,” Smithmyer said.
Temperatures in parts of Athens neared 110 F (43 C) on Tuesday. The current record for continental Europe stands at 118.4 F (48 C); that temperature record was set in Athens on July 10, 1997, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Due to the extreme heat, authorities in Greece closed the Acropolis and other ancient sites during afternoon hours, the AP reported. The closures were in effect from noon to 5 p.m., which is typically the hottest part of the day.
The high temperature in Trikala, Greece, was able to rise into the mid-110s F (~46 C) on Monday.
Temperatures can soar to near 116 F (47 C) across the hottest parts of central Greece.
Even during the second half of the week as temperatures abate slightly, it will still be dangerously hot for outdoor activities.
“Conditions look to remain very hot for much of the week, and will continue to rival record-high temperatures,” said Smithmyer. A break from the intense heat won’t occur until late this week and into the weekend, she added.
The storm bringing the relief in temperatures will also bring much-needed showers and thunderstorms to the central and northern Balkans.
Unfortunately, no rainfall is expected across Greece and southern Turkey through at least the end of the week and potentially through the middle of August. AccuWeather forecasters say this will keep the wildfire threat very high and can lead to additional rapidly spreading and large fires.
“Conditions for the second half of August may still remain hot and above normal, but patterns hint towards slightly above-normal temperatures rather than the extreme heat being experienced currently,” said Smithmyer.
Our leaders look climate change in the eyes, and shrug
Hamilton Nolan
Photograph: Xinhua/Rex/Shutterstock
If you have cultivated an Edgar Allen Poe-like appreciation for the macabre, there is a certain sort of amusement to be had in watching the developed world deal with the insistent onslaught of climate change. Like many horror stories, this one features a main character full of futile determination to maintain a sense of normalcy even as the ominous signs of doom become ever more impossible to ignore. We can chuckle knowing that the monster is going to come for our designated protectors. We stop chuckling knowing that it’s coming for all of us next.
It is easy to imagine that a real live existential threat to our way of life would prompt any society to assume war footing and marshal everything it has to fight for survival. Unfortunately, this response only takes hold in actual war situations, where the threat is “other people that we can shoot and kill in glorious fashion”. When the threat comes not from enemy people, but from our own nature, we find it much harder to rise to the occasion. Where is the glory in recognizing the folly of our own greed and profligacy? Leaders are not elected on such things. We want leaders who will give us more, leading us ever onwards, upwards and into the grave.
The latest demonstration of this comes from the G20, that coalition that is as good a proxy as any for the combined will of the world’s richest countries. The latest G20 meeting wrapped up last week without firm commitments on phasing out coal power, or on what steps nations will promise to take to try to hold global warming to 1.5C. This goal is both necessary and, perhaps, unlikely – a report by scientists found that China, Russia, Brazil and Australia are all pursuing policies that could lead to a cataclysmic five degrees of warming.
The G20 is a perfect model of our collective failure to build institutions capable of coping with deep, long-term, existential problems that cannot be solved by building more weapons. On the one hand, the head of the United Nations says that there is no way for the world to meet its 1.5C warming goal without the leadership of the G20; on the other hand, a recent analysis found that G20 members have, in the past five years, paid $3.3tn in subsidies for fossil fuel production and consumption. The same group that claims to be bailing out humanity’s sinking ship with one hand is busily setting it aflame with the other hand. It is not good to be too pessimistic on climate change, because we must maintain the belief that we can win this battle if we are to have any hope at all. That said, it sure does seem like we’re screwed.
As overwhelming and omnipresent as the climate crisis is, it is not the core issue. The core issue is capitalism. Capitalism’s unfettered pursuit of economic growth is what caused climate change, and capitalism’s inability to reckon with externalities – the economic term for a cost that falls onto third parties – is what is preventing us from solving climate change. Indeed, climate change itself is the ultimate negative externality: fossil-fuel companies and assorted polluting corporations and their investors get all the benefits, and the rest of the world pays the price. Now the entire globe finds itself trapped in the gruesome logic of capitalism, where it is perfectly rational for the rich to continue doing something that is destroying the earth, as long as the profits they reap will allow them to insulate themselves from the consequences.
Capitalism is a machine made to squeeze every last cent out of this planet until there is nothing left
Congratulations, free market evangelists: this is the system you have built. It doesn’t work. I don’t want to lean too heavily on the touchy-feely, Gaia-esque interpretation of global warming as the inevitable wounds of an omniscient Mother Earth, but you must admit that viewing humanity and its pollution as a malicious virus set to be eradicated by nature is now a fairly compelling metaphor. Homo sapiens rose above the lesser animals thanks to our ability to wield logic and reason, yet we have somehow gotten ourselves to a place where the knowledge of what is driving all these wildfires and floods is not enough to enable us to do anything meaningful to stop it. The keystone experience of global capitalism is to gape at a drought-fueled fire as it consumes your home, and then go buy a bigger SUV to console yourself.
This year, the G20 is patting itself on the back for “[recognizing] carbon pricing as a potential tool to address climate change for the first time in an official communique”. This would have been encouraging 30 years ago, when we should have established a carbon tax after it became clear that carbon emissions cause tangible damage to the environment. In 2021, this sort of diplomatic marginalia is the equivalent of a child on the Titanic proudly showing his parents his completed homework, just as the ship slips beneath the waves.
Of course we need a price on carbon. Of course we need extremely strict emissions regulations, massive green energy investments, and a maniacal focus on sustainability fierce enough to radically change a society that is built to promote unlimited consumption. But, to be honest, there is little indication that we will get those things any time soon. The path we are on, still, is not one that leads to a happy ending. Rather, it is one that leads to the last billionaire standing on dry land blasting off in his private rocket as the rest of us drown in rising seas.
Capitalism is a machine made to squeeze every last cent out of this planet until there is nothing left. We can either fool ourselves about that until it kills us, or we can change it.
Covid patient goes from ‘invincible’ to hospital-bed vaccine advocate
Suzanne Ciechalski
An unvaccinated Virginia man who’s been hospitalized with Covid-19 is using social media to urge others to go out and get the shot.
Travis Campbell, 43, has been in the hospital for more than a week with complications from the virus, which also infected his wife and two of their children.
Image: Travis Campbell has been making Facebook videos and posts asking people to get vaccinated against Covid-19 after testing positive and being hospitalized for the virus. (Travis Campbell)
“We just thought we were invincible and we weren’t going to get it,” said his wife, Kellie Campbell. “And we’ve just been so busy, and we just moved, and we prolonged getting the vaccine.”
Kellie Campbell said her husband tested positive on July 22 and got progressively worse. Eventually, he was hospitalized. She worries that he will be placed on a ventilator to help his breathing.
“I mean, he couldn’t catch his breath … had fever, just lethargic, he ached, just one thing after another,” she said. “He started in a regular room, and then he went to a Covid ICU room, and now he’s in the pulmonary ICU.”
Despite his condition, Travis Campbell is adamant about making videos to share on Facebook encouraging others to get vaccinated now, his wife said.
“I’m testifying to all my bulletproof friends that’s holding out, it’s time to protect your family, it’s not worth getting long term lung damage or death please go get the vaccine,” Travis Campbell wrote in a July 25 Facebook post.
Kellie Campbell said her husband is “all about other people” and doesn’t want others to have to deal with what he’s going through.
“He just doesn’t want anyone to have to endure the pain that he has, and if a vaccine will help them, that’s what they need to do,” she said.
In a video posted from his hospital bed Tuesday night, Travis Campbell asked followers to consider whether they’d rather plan their own funerals and goodbyes or get vaccinated.
“I hope to God that all my friends and family would not say, ‘Somebody hand me a piece of paper and a pen.’ That’s a sobering thought, of which I have done,” he said.
As her family and doctors take her husband’s condition day by day, Kellie Campbell said her advice to others is to go out and get vaccinated immediately.
“If you have to take time off work, if you have to miss out on something, you need to go get the vaccine, because we didn’t, and look where we are now,” she said. “I mean, that should be your top priority. Especially not just for you, but your family members.”
Atlantic Ocean currents weaken, signaling big weather changes – study
Nina Chestney
General view shows the Atlantic ocean near the road between Saint-Jean-De-Luz and Hendaye, in Socoa, France.
LONDON (Reuters) – The Atlantic Ocean’s current system, an engine of the Northern Hemsiphere’s climate, could be weakening to such an extent that it could soon bring big changes to the world’s weather, a scientific study said on Thursday.
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is a large system of ocean currents which transports warm water from the tropics northwards into the North Atlantic.
As the atmosphere warms due to increased greenhouse gas emissions, the surface ocean beneath retains more of heat. A potential collapse of the system could have severe consequences for the world’s weather systems.
Climate models have shown that the AMOC is at its weakest in more than a 1,000 years. However, it has not been known whether the weakening is due to a change in circulation or it is to do with the loss of stability.
The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, said the difference is crucial.
“The loss of dynamical stability would imply that the AMOC has approached its critical threshold, beyond which a substantial and in practice likely irreversible transition to the weak mode could occur,” said Niklas Boers at the Potstdam Insitute for Climate Impact Research and author of the study.
By analyzing the sea-surface temperature and salinity patterns of the Atlantic Ocean, the study said the weakening of the last century is likely to be associated with a loss of stability.
“The findings support the assessment that the AMOC decline is not just a fluctuation or a linear response to increasing temperatures but likely means the approaching of a critical threshold beyond which the circulation system could collapse,” Boers said.
If the AMOC collapsed, it would increase cooling of the Northern Hemisphere, sea level rise in the Atlantic, an overall fall in precipitation over Europe and North America and a shift in monsoons in South America and Afria, Britain’s Met Office said.
Other climate models have said the AMOC will weaken over the coming century but that a collapse before 2100 is unlikely.
(Reporting by Nina Chestney; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
Trump’s lies win him the top Republican fundraiser spot
Trump continues to excel at his career-long tradition of making money off lying to people.
Zeeshan Aleem, MSNBC Opinion Columnist August 3, 2021
Trump’s next chapter: the art of making a ton of money by lying to your supporters. Anjali Nair / MSNBC; Getty Images
According to filings made public over the weekend, former President Donald Trump is the most successful fundraiser in his party this year, having closed out the first six months of 2021 with over $100 million in his war chest.
Unfortunately, the former president’s latest bid to use deception for profit is a uniquely dangerous one.
For a politician out of office and banned from mainstream social media, that’s an astonishing amount. But perhaps even more remarkable than the sheer amount is the reminder that Trump is once again excelling at his career-long tradition of making money off of lying to people.
Unfortunately, the former president’s latest bid to use deception for profit is a uniquely dangerous one. The more money he makes from convincing people that the election was rigged, the more power he has to pressure the Republican Party to embrace and replicate that lie. With more cash, he can intervene more aggressively in next year’s campaigns and lobby more effectively for the political priorities he cares about most. Ultimately, he has the capacity to reshape the party to conform with his latest heist.
Unsurprisingly, Trump’s aides exaggerated how much he raised from January to June — some of the money came from transfers from other accounts that raised money last year — but still, he dwarfed the amount raised by any other politician in his party, the closest of whom was Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina (he raised $7.8 million online). Trump even pulled in more cash than “each of the three main fund-raising arms of the Republican Party itself,” according to The New York Times.
In his handful of campaign-style public appearances since he left the White House, Trump has showered adulating supporters with conspiracy theories about irregularities in the voting process.
There are plenty of reasons Trump’s massive haul is striking. It shows how enthusiastically he’s flouting the modern post-presidential tradition of stepping away from politics after leaving the White House. It also illustrates how he remains exceptionally popular within the party despite having left the White House mired in scandal and after having incited a ragtag insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and botched the American response to the coronavirus pandemic. But his unique and brazen use of outright deception to pull it off remains perhaps the most impressive one of all.
Trump’s premier fundraising tool is to hammer home the lie that the election was rigged against him. As The New York Times notes, Trump’s fundraising numbers correspond with his direct engagement with the public, such as through speeches and his ill-fated blog. And those interactions have been centered, to the point of obsession, on the idea that the election was stolen from him.
In his handful of campaign-style public appearances since he left the White House, Trump has showered adulating supporters with conspiracy theories about irregularities in the voting process and impressed upon them the notion that he would have beaten President Joe Biden if some shadowy network of outsiders hadn’t intervened on Biden’s behalf.
A plurality of Trump’s messages on his blog and elsewhere were focused on lies about the election. He also regularly sends out fundraising emails based on false claims of “new evidence” of voter fraud, giving his supporters the illusion that their donations are helping fund some kind of long-term investigative operation.
Trump himself is open about the centrality of the “big lie” to his political focus for all of 2021: “On behalf of the millions of men and women who share my outrage and want me to continue to fight for the truth, I am grateful for your support,” he said in his statement about his fundraising this year.
Trump himself is open about the centrality of the “big lie” to his political focus for all of 2021.
And embedded within this fraud is another potential fraud. In 2020, the Trump campaign deployed a scheme of using donation forms that used distracting visuals and fine print to opt donors in to recurring donations unwittingly. Consumer advocates condemned the fundraising scheme, and the campaign eventually refunded tens of millions of dollars in response to fraud complaints, but monthly donations and fraud complaints continued into 2021 and may account for some of the money he’s raised this year.
The trouble with Trump’s latest scam is that it’s not just about accumulating money at other people’s expense. He’s using lies to convince a huge proportion of the American public that they’ve been scammed and giving them more reason to become hostile to the possibility of functioning democracy.
Donald Trump’s penchant for turning his political and legal troubles into fundraising schemes has long been recognized, but the former US president’s money hustling tricks seem to have expanded since his defeat by Joe Biden, prompting new scrutiny and criticism from campaign finance watchdogs and legal analysts.
Critics note Trump has built an arsenal of political committees and nonprofit groups, staffed with dozens of ex-administration officials and loyalists, which seem aimed at sustaining his political hopes for a comeback, and exacting revenge on Republican congressional critics. These groups have been aggressive in raising money through at times misleading appeals to the party base, which polls show share Trump’s false views he lost the White House due to fraud.
Just days after his defeat last November, Trump launched a new political action committee, dubbed Save America, that together with his campaign and the Republican National Committee quickly raked in tens of millions of dollars through text and email appeals for an “election defense fund”, ostensibly to fight the results with baseless lawsuits alleging fraud.
The fledgling Pac had raised a whopping $31.5m by year’s end, but Save America spent nothing on legal expenses in this same period, according to public records. Run by Trump’s 2016 campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, Save America spent only $340,000 on fundraising expenses last year.
In another move, Trump last month announced he was filing class-action lawsuits against Facebook, Google and Twitter, alleging “censorship” due to bans by the platforms after the 6 January Capitol attack that Trump helped stoke. But several legal experts panned the lawsuits as frivolous and a fundraising ploy.
Trump’s new legal stratagem raised red flags, in part because he teamed up with America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a nonprofit group led by ex-White House official Brooke Rollins. At a press briefing with Trump, Rollins told supporters they could “join the lawsuit” by signing up on a website, takeonbigtech.org, a claim belied by details on the website which featured a red button with the words “DONATE to AFPI”.
“Donald Trump is a one-man scam Pac,” said Paul S Ryan, vice president of policy and litigation with Common Cause. “Bait-and-switch is among his favorite fundraising tactics,” Ryan stressed, noting that Trump’s Save America Pac told “supporters he needed money to challenge the result of an election he clearly lost, and then wound up not spending nothing any on litigation last year.
“Now he’s at it again, with frivolous lawsuits filed [in July] against Facebook, Twitter and Google, accompanied by fundraising appeals,” Ryan added. “This time he’s got the unlimited dark money group America First Policy Institute in on the racket.”
Other experts voice strong concerns about Trump’s tactics.
He asked them to give money so he could contest the election results, but then he spent their contributions to pay off unrelated debts
Adav Noti
“The president deceived his donors. He asked them to give money so he could contest the election results, but then he spent their contributions to pay off unrelated debts,” said Adav Noti, a former associate general counsel at the Federal Election Commission and now chief of staff at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center.
Noti added: “That’s dangerously close to fraud. If a regular charity – or an individual who didn’t happen to be president of the United States – had raised tens of millions of dollars through that sort of deception, they would face a serious risk of prosecution.”
Such concerns have not deterred Trump’s fundraising machine from expanding further with the launch of a super Pac, Make America Great Again Action, which can accept unlimited donations. Both the Super Pac and Save America are run by Trump’s former campaign manager, Lewandowski, who did not return calls seeking comment.
The Super Pac has reportedly hosted at least two events for mega donors at Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, and in Dallas, but it’s not known how much has been hauled in so far.
Both Pacs are seen as vehicles for Trump to raise more funds to influence 2022 congressional races, where he has vowed to defeat several politicians such as the anti-Trump Republican Liz Cheney, who voted to impeach him this year after the Capitol attack.
Campaign filings for the first six months of 2021 reveal that Trump’s political groups led by Save America raised $82m, an unprecedented total for a former president. Save America banked most of the funds while spending some to pay for Trump’s travel and other expenses, instead of challenging election results in states like Arizona, despite Trump’s false claims of fraud there.
Veteran campaign finance analysts say that the bevy of Trump-linked groups launched since his defeat raise new questions about his motives and political intentions.
Trump may be more interested in fundraising than actually running
Sheila Krumholz
“Trump’s aggressive fundraising, using a variety of committees and surrogates, raises questions about whether his continual hints at running in 2024 is primarily a ploy for donations,” said Sheila Krumholz, who leads the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics. “Trump may be more interested in fundraising than actually running, especially given how unprecedented his post-loss fundraising is.”
Besides Trump’s fundraising pitches for his new Pacs and nonprofits, some major Republicans groups have collaborated in fundraising appeals since his defeat, and keep piggybacking on his allure to the party base, despite Trump’s repeated falsehoods that the election was stolen.
In the eight weeks post-election, for instance, the RNC, the Trump campaign and Save America reportedly raised about $255m, but spent only a small fraction on lawsuits.
Further, Trump’s cachet with small donors is still exploited by party allies, including the National Republican Senatorial Committee, (NRSC) the fundraising arm for Republican senators.
For instance, the NRSC in July email fundraising pitches touted a free Trump T-shirt for a limited number of donors writing checks from $35 to $5,000 to “protect the America First Majority”.
Similarly, the RNC in a 19 July email alert rolled out a money pitch to become an “official 2021 Trump Life Member” for donors who chipped in $45 or more by midnight.
Charlie Black, a longtime Republican operative, said that Republican committees realize that Trump’s “name has the most popular appeal to the grassroots, so naturally they’re going to try to figure out ways to use his brand where they can to raise more funds”.
But legal analysts caution that Trump’s new fundraising modus operandi are different, and carry clear risks for unwitting donors and US campaign finance laws.
“Our nation’s campaign finance and anti-fraud laws have proven no match for Trump’s schemes,” said Ryan of Common Cause. “So my one piece of advice for Trump supporters, is donor beware!”
