Heat stress blamed for thousands of cattle deaths in Kansas
June 16, 2022
Thousands of cattle in feedlots in southwestern Kansas have died of heat stress due to soaring temperatures, high humidity and little wind in recent days, industry officials said.
The final toll remains unclear, but as of Thursday at least 2,000 heat-related deaths had been reported to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, the state agency that assists in disposing of carcasses. Agency spokesman Matt Lara said he expects that number to rise as more feedlots report losses from this week’s heat wave.
The cattle deaths have sparked unsubstantiated reports on social media and elsewhere that something besides the weather is at play, but Kansas agriculture officials said there’s no indication of any other cause.
Cattle feed at a feed lot near Dodge City, Kansas, March 9, 2007. Thousands of cattle in feedlots in southwestern Kansas have died of heat stress amid soaring temperatures coupled with high humidity and little wind in recent days, industry officials said Thursday, June, 16, 2022.ORLIN WAGNER / AP
“This was a true weather event — it was isolated to a specific region in southwestern Kansas,” said A.J. Tarpoff, a cattle veterinarian with Kansas State University. “Yes, temperatures rose, but the more important reason why it was injurious was that we had a huge spike in humidity … and at the same time wind speeds actually dropped substantially, which is rare for western Kansas.”
Last week, temperatures were in the 70s and 80s, but on Saturday they spiked higher than 100 degrees, said Scarlett Hagins, spokeswoman for the Kansas Livestock Association.
“And it was that sudden change that didn’t allow the cattle to acclimate that caused the heat stress issues in them,” she said.https://2bfa6c9b6538fcc17b8fb63e5c030472.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
The deaths represent a huge economic loss because the animals, which typically weigh around 1,500 pounds, are worth around $2,000 per head, Hagins said. Federal disaster programs will help some producers who incurred a loss, she added.
And the worst may be over. Nighttime temperatures have been cooler and — as long as there is a breeze — the animals are able to recover, Tarpoff said.
Hagins said heat-related deaths in the industry are rare because ranchers take precautions such as providing extra drinking water, altering feeding schedules so animals are not digesting during the heat of the day, and using sprinkler systems to cool them down.
“Heat stress is always a concern this time of year for cattle and so they have mitigation protocols put in place to be prepared for this kind of thing,” she said.
Many cattle had still not shed their winter coats when the heatwave struck.
“This is a one in 10-year, 20-year type event. This is not a normal event,” said Brandon Depenbusch, operator of the Innovative Livestock Services feedlot in Great Bend, Kansas. “It is extremely abnormal, but it does happen.”
While his feedlot had “zero problems,” he noted that his part of the state did not have the same combination of high temperatures, high humidity, low winds and no cloud cover that hit southwestern Kansas.
Elsewhere, cattle ranchers haven’t been so hard hit.
The Nebraska Department of Agriculture and the Nebraska Cattlemen said they have received no reports of higher-than-normal cattle deaths in the state, despite a heat index of well over 100 degrees this week.
Oklahoma City National Stockyards President Kelli Payne said no cattle deaths have been reported since temperatures topped 90 degrees last Saturday, after rising from the mid 70s starting June 1.
“We have water and sprinklers here to help mitigate heat and the heat wave,” Payne said, but “we don’t have any control over that pesky Mother Nature.”
One Surprising Theory Why the Philippines Has Very Few Mass Shootings—Despite Easy Access to Lots of Guns
Chad de Guzman / Manila – June 15, 2022
Shop assistants pose with various handgu
Shop assistants pose with various handguns at the Defense and Sporting Arms show at a shopping mall in Manila on July 16, 2009. Credit – TED ALJIBE/AFP via Getty Images
Mass shootings are a result of a confluence of factors, but at the heart of the problem are guns—of which the Philippines has plenty. Firearms are sold openly in malls, and almost anyone can carry them, even priests and accountants.
Fixers can reportedly take care of formalities standing in the way of gun ownership, such as drug and psychological tests, and there are estimated to be some four million firearms in the nation of 110 million people. Hundreds of thousands of weapons are illegally owned. Poverty, corruption, crime, and outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal war on drugs have left deep social scars.
No consensus has been reached in the Philippines over what sets a mass shooting apart from other gun deaths, but indiscriminate slayings are uncommon. When eight people died and 11 were injured after a drunk gunman began firing wildly in the southern province of Cavite back in 2013, the tragedy was notable for its sheer rarity.
To be clear, homicides involving firearms are a fact of life in the Philippines. Hitmen can be hired for as little as $300. In fact, the Philippines is one of the deadliest places in Asia when it comes to firearm homicides. The country saw over 1,200 intentional killings using firearms in 2019. This meant guns killed one in every 100,000 people in the Southeast Asian country—one of the highest rates in Asia. (In 2020, the comparable figure for the U.S. is four.)
Elections can be particularly bloody times, with lethal attacks on poll officers and political rivals. One of the country’s worst killings, the 2009 Maguindanao massacre of 58 people, took place during a gubernatorial election. But it was a political atrocity. Shootings not related to politics or crime are uncommon—and there has been nothing as extreme as Columbine, Sandy Hook, or Uvalde.
“I think it’s just a matter of time,” says Gerry Caño, Dean of the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Cagayan de Oro College. “I think our authorities and the public safety practitioners are just waiting for that time to happen, considering that Philippine culture is greatly influenced by the West, particularly the United States.”
For now, though, powerful social factors continue to have a restraining effect on indiscriminate violence. Philippine academic Raymund Narag, a criminology associate professor at Southern Illinois University and a former prisoner himself, says mass shootings in his native country are in part deterred by hiyâ, a Tagalog word meaning shame or embarrassment. Avoidance of hiyâ, and sparing one’s family and community from it, is often described as a core Philippine value.
“It reflects on you, and reflects on your family,” Narag says. “When I was jailed, our entire clan felt humiliated.”
Visitors view displayed firearms during the Tactical, Survival and Arms Expo in Pasay City, the Philippines, Nov.15, 2019.Rouelle Umali/Xinhua via Getty
Gun culture in the Philippines
While the right to bear arms isn’t enshrined in the nation’s constitution, as it is in the United States, there is no denying the Philippine love of guns.
When the U.S. colonized the Philippines in the early 1900s, private citizens were allowed to own high-powered guns for “lawful purposes” and hunting. After Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in 1972, owners were limited to one low-powered rifle and a pistol or revolver—and both had to be licensed. But in 2000, President Joseph Estrada lifted these limits and allowed citizens to possess as many guns as they wanted, of any type and caliber.
A 2013 law set down qualifications for owning guns and carrying them in public. Licensed gun owners had to be 21 years old and take a firearm safety seminar, among other requirements. Depending on their license, most owners could possess up to 15 handguns, rifles and shotguns (collectors are allowed more than 15). Licenses were issued for as long as 10 years.
Before he was president, Estrada was a gun-wielding hero in action movies—a genre beloved of Filipinos for playing up machismo and depicting shootouts as legitimate forms of defense in a crime-riddled country. The action movie craze certainly helped Filipinos embrace gun culture.
In some of the country’s poorest communities, guns became a common sight among warring gangs, who sourced low-priced firearms from illegal sellers. Shooting clubs opened for those with more money and an interest in shooting for sport. Many affluent Filipinos took up gun collecting, while the wealthiest citizens began enthusiastically arming their bodyguards.
But despite the glorification of firearms, when gun violence takes place, the victims are rarely random bystanders in movie theaters or shopping malls. Almost a quarter of the Philippine population falls below the poverty line and “the money or the reward seems to be the best motivating factor” in many homicide cases involving firearms, Caño says.
In January, a provincial hitman admitted to committing his crime in exchange for $500 to help his child, who was suffering from meningitis. In April, another gunman confessed to killing a mechanic for $400.
Displaced children playing with wooden toy guns inside a temporary shelter area in Mamasapano, Maguindanao, on August 22, 2018, in Mamasapano, Maguindanao, southern Philippines.Jes Aznar/Getty Images
How hiyâ plays a role in social control
Narag says the strong ties of Philippine kinship mean troubled individuals are more likely to be identified before they become mass shooters. He contrasts that with the situation in the U.S., where he presently lives and teaches.
“Here, if you have problems, you have to go to a health professional,” he tells TIME. “You’ll divulge everything there. You don’t talk to your neighbors—sometimes you don’t talk to your own parents—because [there isn’t] an engaged culture where one’s problem is everyone’s problem.”
Jose Antonio Clemente, a professor of social psychology at the University of the Philippines, says community is everything. “At an early age, we are trained to give importance to our families and our relationships,” he says. “Maybe at some point we’re also taught to value our community, since there are a lot of communities that are very close-knit because of the high population density.”
National police do have mass shooting protocols in place. Authorities have also suggested an increased police presence on college campuses to deter insurgent groups from recruiting students. But it seems that ingrained values in the Philippines are restraining people from using guns indiscriminately.
Whether that is enough is up for debate. For now, however, hiyâ means you cannot “just start shooting people,” Narag says. “Because if that happens, you know the community won’t support you.”
Hellfire: The Uvalde Shooter Owned a Device That Makes AR-15s Even More Deadly
Tim Dickinson – June 15, 2022
US-TEXAS-GUNS-NRA – Credit: Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images
“Unleashing ‘Hell-Fire.’”
It pictures a gunman, wearing a skull mask with blacked out eyes, who unloads an AR-15 that is sending spent cartridges flying from its ejection port. The ad copy reads: “All you do is squeeze the trigger and shoot at rates up to 900 rpm” — or rounds per minute.
The sales pitch is for a hellfire trigger device, a gun accessory that allows a semi-automatic rifle to fire at rates similar to machine gun. Although the physics behind the device are nearly identical to that of a bump-stock — now illegal under federal law — hellfires remain cheap and easy to acquire. Including, evidently, by a teenager bent on mass murder.
The gunman in the Uvalde massacre had purchased a hellfire device, which was recovered from one of the classrooms where the massacre took place, according to investigative documents reviewed by the New York Times. Federal authorities reportedly don’t believe the device was used in the attack. But had it been deployed, the carnage at Robb Elementary School — where 19 children and two teachers were murdered — might have been, unimaginably, worse.
Even in the trigger-happy US of A, machine guns are supposed to be illegal. A central fixture of federal firearms law since the days of Al Capone’s 1930s is that fully-automatic weapons are too powerful to be in civilian hands. Yes, modern consumers can buy high-powered weapons, like AR-15-style rifles, that are nearly identical to guns used in the U.S. military, but these guns fire only one round with each trigger pull.
But in the poorly regulated market of fire-arms accessories, a small but dedicated band of companies have pushed the legal envelope. They’ve engineered and marketed devices that circumvent the limitations of semi-automatic weapons, turning rifles into bullet hoses that can fire hundreds of rounds per minute.
After a 2017 massacre in Las Vegas, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms — better known as ATF — outlawed one class of these accessories, known as bump stocks, by classifying them as machine guns. But they didn’t touch hellfire triggers.
That differential treatment has no logic, insists Josh Sugarmann, Executive Director of the Violence Policy Center. When it comes to hellfires and similar “trigger activators,” he says, “ATF has been very, very lenient in its interpretation of federal law.”
Screenshot of an ad for a Hellfire style device – Credit: Youtube
Youtube
“Bump firing without the stock”
A hellfire device and a bump-stock both rely on the same physics to mimic fully automatic fire. They absorb the energy from the recoil of a single gunshot, then rebound the weapon slightly forward, activating the trigger against a shooter’s otherwise stationary finger — again and again and again and again and again.
With a bump-stock, this rebound is generated in the butt of the rifle pressed against the shooter’s shoulder. A hellfire device attaches to the pistol grip and rebounds, instead, against the shooter’s palm.
ATF itself recognized the similarity of the devices, explicitly comparing them in 2013 correspondence with a congressman, back when both devices were deemed legal. Gun enthusiasts today praise the hellfire as offering “bump firing without the stock.” (ATF did not answer questions from Rolling Stone about why the devices are treated differently.)
From San Francisco to Waco
Hellfires are not new. In fact, the trigger devices have dark history. In a 1993 mass shooting in a San Francisco high rise, the gunman used hellfire triggers, attached to a pair of assault pistols with 50-round magazines; he killed eight, wounded six, and then took his own life. Hellfire triggers were also believed to have been in use at David Koresh’s militarized Waco, Texas, cult compound.
These days, the trigger devices are cheap, and marketed with disturbing slogans and imagery. It’s not immediately clear what device the Uvalde shooter purchased. But there are many models available online. At one retailer, just $29.95 can get you the “Classic” hellfire “made infamous by David Koresh and the Branch Davidians in Waco,” according to the sales pitch.
The “Gen II” model offers “recoil assist technology” to enable “one handed operation,” and will set you back $59.95. A new “Stealth” model, meanwhile, is for sale at just $39.95, and can be installed “invisibly within your grip on any AR15 style rifle” and be “activated or deactivated in seconds.”
Banning Bump-Stocks
It was the Trump administration, surprisingly, that banned bump-stocks — after they were used to catastrophic effect in a 2017 Las Vegas shooting. In that attack, a gunman fired bump-stock-equipped AR-15s from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel. The spray of more than 1,000 rounds killed 60 people and wounded more than 400 at a concert festival below.
Without the need of new legislation, the ATF issued a rule in 2019 outlawing bump stocks. The devices, the regulation states, “convert an otherwise semiautomatic firearm into a machinegun” by harnessing “the recoil energy… [to] continue firing without additional physical manipulation of the trigger by the shooter.” (The regulation has, at least so far, held up in court)
Despite operating on the same principle, hellfire triggers remain street legal — putting machine gun firepower in the hands of untrained amateurs. The rate of fire enabled by these devices is so high, in fact, that the more expensive hellfire models actually offer features to slow down the firing cycle “to save ammo!”
Hellfire triggers can be finicky to master — which may be why the young Uvalde shooter ultimately didn’t deploy his. And it’s impossible to know whether automatic fire would have led to even more devastation at Robb Elementary School. (The shooter was left unimpeded for more than an hour by dithering local police; the gunman was not pressed for time.)
Marketing Lethality
The “most important” takeaway from the hellfire purchase is what it reflects about “the mindset of the shooter,” argues Sugarmann. “He had done everything he could, in his mind, to find the most lethal combination of weaponry and accessories when he planned the attack.”
Such lethality is — not coincidentally — the top selling point of a the modern firearms industry, which pitches its customers on military-grade precision and firepower. That includes the maker the Uvalde shooter’s rifle, Daniel Defense, whose Georgia headquarters are located at “101 Warfighter Way.”
The Uvalde shooter simply found, in the hellfire, a low-cost accessory that promised to unlock his weapon’s full military pedigree, by mimicking the automatic fire reserved for soldiers.
Sugarmann insists the ATF has the authority to send a warning to the industry by targeting hellfire makers, who are small operators and operate at the margins of the industry. “They’re the bottom feeders,” he says. “If you took action against one of them, it would send a message throughout the industry that ATF has regulatory role that it can use to the to protect public safety.”
The Violence Policy Center founder insists that the agency “could move against them, the way that they moved against bump-stocks.” But at least so far, Sugarmann laments, “the agency has chosen not to.”
Indeed, the text of ATF’s own bump-stock regulation notes that public commenters argued the broad language could be read to encompass “Hellfire trigger mechanisms” and similar devices. The agency’s response? Simply that it “disagrees that other firearms or devices… will be reclassified as machineguns under this rule.”
‘Moment of reckoning:’ Federal official warns of Colorado River water supply cuts
Ben Adler, Senior Editor – June 15, 2022
The Colorado River’s reservoirs have diminished to the point that significant cuts to the water supplied to the seven states that rely on it will be necessary next year, a federal official warned Tuesday.
Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee maintaining “critical levels” at the largest reservoirs in the United States — Lake Mead and Lake Powell — will require large reductions in water deliveries.
“A warmer, drier West is what we are seeing today,” she said at a hearing. “And the challenges we are seeing today are unlike anything we have seen in our history.”
The relatively arid desert Southwest is viewed at 33,000 feet on May 19 near Moab, Utah. The Colorado River, flowing from Colorado’s Rocky Mountain through Utah, Arizona, Nevada and California is dependent on winter snowfall in the Rockies. (George Rose/Getty Images)
Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona, California, and Nevada all receive water from the Colorado River and next year will see a decrease of between 2 million and 4 million acre-feet of water due to the ongoing drought that has gripped most of the Western U.S. (An acre-foot is the amount of water needed to cover one acre of land in one-foot-deep water.) Current allotments of water from the Colorado range from 300,000 acre-feet for Nevada to 4.4 million acre-feet for California.
“What has been a slow-motion train wreck for 20 years is accelerating, and the moment of reckoning is near,” John Entsminger, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, told the Senate hearing. “We are 150 feet from 25 million Americans losing access to the Colorado River, and the rate of decline is accelerating.”
The West has been suffering through an acute drought since 2020, part of a megadrought that began in 2000. The last 20 years have been the driest two decades in the last 1,200 years. This year is so far the driest on record in California. Scientists attribute these conditions to climate change, which causes more water evaporation due to warmer temperatures.
“As a climate scientist, I’ve watched how climate change is making drought conditions increasingly worse — particularly in the western and central U.S.,” wrote Imtiaz Rangwala, research scientist in climate at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, in May. “The last two years have been more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 Celsius) warmer than normal in these regions. Large swaths of the Southwest have been even hotter, with temperatures more than 3 F (1.7 C) higher.”
A thick white ring shows the dramatic decline of water levels at Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir, which has reached its lowest water levels on record since it was created by damming the Colorado River in the 1930s, as growing demand for water and climate change shrink the Colorado River and endanger a water source millions of Americans depend on, near Boulder City, Nevada, April 16. (Caitlin Ochs/Reuters)
Western states have already been undertaking emergency measures to deal with the water scarcity. Seven months ago, California, Arizona and Nevada signed an agreement to take less water from Lake Mead, and six weeks ago the Department of Interior announced it is withholding some water from Lake Powell. Otherwise, DOI feared, the reservoir could drop so low that Glen Canyon Dam would not be able to generate electricity.
Last year, for the first time ever, the federal government declared a shortage on the river, which led to reductions in water deliveries to Arizona and Nevada. Some farmers in Arizona have had to leave some fields unplanted as a result.
Local governments and water utilities have been imposing restrictions on water usage. On June 1, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California instituted limits on outdoor watering; typically it will be restricted to one or two days per week. But the water shortage persists.
“Despite those efforts and a previous deal among the states to share in the shortages, the two reservoirs stand at or near record-low levels,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “Lake Mead near Las Vegas has dropped to 28% of its full capacity, while Lake Powell on the Utah-Arizona border is now just 27% full.”
A formerly sunken boat rests on a now-dry section of lakebed at the drought-stricken Lake Mead on May 10, 2022 in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Nevada. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Touton told the Senate committee that her agency is negotiating with the seven states that depend on the Colorado River to develop a plan for apportioning the water supply reductions in the next two months. In all, nearly 40 million people rely on water from the river.
Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., attributed the gathering crisis to a lack of coordinated action to mitigate climate change.
“It’s frankly a direct result of the lack of action on climate that we have seen for more than 20 years,” Heinrich said.
The Western and Southwestern states are particularly parched — nearly three-quarters of the Western region is in a state of severe to exceptional drought.
“There are a lot of downstream effects when it comes to a drought like this,” Andrew Hoell, a co-lead on the NOAA Drought Task Force, told Yahoo Finance.
Hoell explained that drought isn’t just a matter of precipitation but can be exacerbated by the evaporative effects of higher temperatures and inadequate snowpack runoff in the winter.
“By the time it’s summertime,” he said, “that vegetation is really dry. And if you get a spark, and you get a series of unfortunate events in that regard, you then have wildfires. So when it comes to drought in the West, there are just a variety and a spectrum of effects that you can feel later on whether it’s water resources and fires and reduced agricultural yields. The effects are numerous.”
NOAA
Depleted water reservoirs and wildfire damage are already taking a toll on residents and businesses. The Hermits Peak Fire, which continues to blaze in New Mexico, has already scorched around 315,830 acres.
Meanwhile, states like California have instituted severe water restrictions, though water consumption has continued to rise. On an even grimmer note, low water levels at Lake Mead have threatened hydropower plants and exposed bodies once submerged in the reservoirs.
While conditions may ease slightly as the region enters its summer monsoon season, the outlook remains dry as the region navigates a historic, multi-decade megadrought.
A number of states including California, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, and tribal nations like the Navajo Nation have all declared drought states of emergency and allocated resources for managing the water crisis.
Nick Messing pull a kayaks down to the waters edge at Wahweap Marina at Lake Powell on April 6, 2022 in Page, Arizona when water levels at Lake Powell were at a historic low. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images)
Population growth
Since 2000, droughts have cost the U.S. around $160.8 billion, according to the NOAA. That figure jumps to $272 billion when accounting for destructive wildfires that are more prone in arid conditions.
With water already becoming more scarce, the increasing population in the West — and therefore demand for water — has inflamed the situation.
An Economic Innovation Group report using county-level population data found that the trend of people moving to water-starved states has only accelerated during the pandemic.
Inland California, the Mountain West, and eastern Texas saw the greatest growth, and overall, 10 of the top 15 counties for population growth were in the Western U.S: Maricopa County, Arizona (Phoenix), was ranked first, followed by Collin County, Texas, and Riverside County, California.
A graph showing the projected rise in population in drought-prone areas. (EIG)
“The map of these demographic shifts shows some familiar pre-pandemic trends and some new patterns,” the author stated. “Overall, the Sunbelt and the Mountain West continued to outshine the rest of the country. Remote rural counties in eastern Oregon and northern Idaho experienced robust population growth while every single county in Nevada gained population.”
Another EIG study found that an additional 20 million residents could move to drought-stricken counties by 2040. Water managers are already balancing razor-thin water budgets at current population levels.
“With reservoirs at record low levels throughout the West and the effects of sustained drought conditions increasingly being felt from agriculture to development, one of the most far-reaching questions in the United States over the coming decades is whether growth trends will ultimately collide with nature’s ability to sustain such a large influx of people,” Daniel Newman, the report’s author, wrote.
Fire and water
Doling out water supplies isn’t the only issue residents have to contend with.
Suburban neighborhoods sprawling out into more rural areas are creating a more substantial wild-urban interface at the same time as the wildfire season creeps earlier and longer.
In the last month, two Colorado Springs neighborhoods were evacuated due to fires, as were the owners of coastal California mansions caught in a blaze. For those unfortunate enough to sustain damage from fires, it can leave lasting financial scars in addition to physical and emotional ones.
The damage to a neighborhood is shown after a wind-driven wildfire burned through a canyon and into their neighborhood in Laguna Niguel, California, June 1, 2022. REUTERS/Mike Blake
“Most people in the Western United States are very underinsured because they base the amount of insurance coverage on the average cost to rebuild” despite higher property costs in some regions like Lake Tahoe, California, Christina Restaino of the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension said in a webinar.
According to Restaino, the current water crisis “underscores the need to prepare communities for wildfire, because when these large emergency incidents occur what we end up having to do is use a ton of water in an already water-scarce environment to suppress wildfires.”
There are some steps residents in high-risk areas can take to protect themselves, however.
“The No. 1 thing that people can do is to create a 5-foot ember-resistant zone around their house, so you don’t want to have anything combustible within five feet around your house,” she said. “Second-easiest thing, I would say, is to screen all of your vents.”
Of equal importance, “be prepared to evacuate,” Restaino stressed. “If you have medications that you take or important things you cannot leave home without, make sure you have backups of all those in an evacuation go-bag.”
A sign indicating extreme fire danger is pictured at Storrie Lake State Park as the Hermits Peak and Calf Canyon wildfires burn near Las Vegas, New Mexico, May 2, 2022. REUTERS/Kevin Mohatt
While the current period of intense drought may ease in months or years as it has in previous years, rising temperatures due to climate change mean that many will have to get used to living with these risks.
“If I had to guess — and if there is a silver lining here — if we’re to look at the next 10 years, will they necessarily be as bad as the last 10 years in terms of precipitation?” Hoell said. “I would say probably not.”
He added that the primary problem “is the climate has not shown any indication of warming temperatures slowing down. That right there is a problem in and of itself because it changes the amount of snow that you get during the wintertime, changes the amount of snow that then makes its way into reservoirs, thereby replenishing them. So we have these different factors that kind of commingled to bring together this hydrologic situation that is not ideal for us right now.”
Yellowstone floods wipe out roads, bridges, strand visitors
Amy Beth Hanson – June 13, 2022
HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Massive floodwaters ravaged Yellowstone National Park and nearby communities Monday, washing out roads and bridges, cutting off electricity and forcing visitors to evacuate parts of the iconic park at the height of summer tourist season.
All entrances to Yellowstone were closed due to the deluge, caused by heavy rains and melting snowpack, while park officials ushered tourists out of the most affected areas. There were no immediate reports of injuries.
Some of the worst damage happened in the northern part of the park and Yellowstone’s gateway communities in southern Montana. National Park Service photos of northern Yellowstone showed a landslide, a bridge washed out over a creek, and roads badly undercut by churning floodwaters of the Gardner and Lamar rivers.
There were no immediate reports of injuries, though dozens of stranded campers had to be rescued by raft in south-central Montana.
The flooding cut off road access to Gardiner, Montana, a town of about 900 people near the confluence of the Yellowstone and Gardner rivers, just outside Yellowstone’s busy North Entrance.
At a cabin in Gardiner, Parker Manning of Terra Haute, Indiana, got an up-close view of the water rising and the river bank sloughing off in the raging Yellowstone River floodwaters just outside his door.
“We started seeing entire trees floating down the river, debris,” Manning told The Associated Press. “Saw one crazy single kayaker coming down through, which was kind of insane.”
The Yellowstone River at Corwin Springs crested at 13.88 feet (4.2 meters) Monday, higher than the previous record of 11.5 feet (3.5 meters) set in 1918, according the the National Weather Service.
Floodwaters inundated a street in Red Lodge, a Montana town of 2,100 that’s a popular jumping-off point for a scenic, winding route into the Yellowstone high country. Twenty-five miles (40 kilometers) to the northeast, in Joliet, Kristan Apodaca wiped away tears as she stood across the street from a washed-out bridge, The Billings Gazette reported.
The log cabin that belonged to her grandmother, who died in March, flooded, as did the park where Apodaca’s husband proposed.
“I am sixth-generation. This is our home,” she said. “That bridge I literally drove yesterday. My mom drove it at 3 a.m. before it was washed out.”
Yellowstone officials were evacuating the northern part of the park, where roads may remain impassable for a substantial length of time, park Superintendent Cam Sholly said in a statement.
But the flooding affected the rest of the park, too, with park officials warning of yet higher flooding and potential problems with water supplies and wastewater systems at developed areas.
“We will not know timing of the park’s reopening until flood waters subside and we’re able to assess the damage throughout the park,” Sholly said in the statement.
The park’s gates will be closed at least through Wednesday, officials said. It is unclear how many visitors have been forced to leave the park.
The rains hit right as summer tourist season was ramping up. June, at the onset of an annual wave of over 3 million visitors that doesn’t abate until fall, is one of Yellowstone’s busiest months.
Remnants of winter — in the form of snow still melting off and rushing off the mountains — made for an especially bad time to get heavy rain.
Yellowstone got 2.5 inches (6 centimeters) of rain Saturday, Sunday and into Monday. The Beartooth Mountains northeast of Yellowstone got as much as 4 inches (10 centimeters), according to the National Weather Service.
“It’s a lot of rain, but the flooding wouldn’t have been anything like this if we didn’t have so much snow,” said Cory Mottice, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Billings, Montana. “This is flooding that we’ve just never seen in our lifetimes before.”
The rain will likely abate while cooler temperatures lessen snowmelt in coming days, Mottice said.
In south-central Montana, flooding on the Stillwater River stranded 68 people at a campground. Stillwater County Emergency Services agencies and crews with the Stillwater Mine rescued people Monday from the Woodbine Campground by raft. Some roads in the area are closed due to flooding and residents have been evacuated.
“We will be assessing the loss of homes and structures when the waters recede,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement.
The flooding happened while other parts of the U.S. burned in hot and dry weather. More than 100 million Americans were being warned to stay indoors as a heat wave settles over states stretching through parts of the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes and east to the Carolinas.
Scientists say climate change is responsible for more intense and more frequent extreme events such as storms, droughts, floods and wildfires, though single weather events usually cannot be directly linked to climate change without extensive study.
Associated Press writers Thomas Peipert in Denver and Mead Gruver in Fort Collins, Colorado, contributed to this report.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine accounts for more than a third of U.S. inflation, forecaster says
Steve Goldstein – June 13, 2022
A soldier maneuvers his tank on June 08, 2022 near Sloviansk, Ukraine. In recent weeks, Russia has concentrated its firepower on Ukraine’s Donbas region, where it has long backed two separatist regions at war with the Ukrainian government since 2014. SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES
The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the sanctions that it triggered is behind more than a third of the 40-year high inflation of 8.6%, according to analysis from a leading forecaster.
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, says after decomposing the numbers, the Russian invasion represented 3.5% year-over-year growth, mostly through the direct of higher commodity prices. But, he added on a podcast by the firm that higher diesel prices causes food prices to be higher, and it’s also bleeding into things like airfares.
The COVID-19 pandemic, he said, represented 2% year-over-year growth, mostly through supply chains.
“The bulk of the supply chain constraint component on CPI is new and used vehicles, but it also includes bedding, furniture, children’s apparel, things that are really affected by the supply chains,” added Ryan Sweet, senior director at Moody’s Analytics.
The lack of affordable housing is further responsible for 0.6% year-over-year price growth, according to Moody’s calculations.
He said the American Rescue Plan, the stimulus plan that President Biden signed into law, had a negligible impact.
In all, Zandi says the typical American household is paying $460 per month more to buy the same goods and services that they would have at the same time last year.
Cris DeRitis, deputy chief economist, said the inflation readings may not have peaked. “But as we get past the summer, past the summer driving season, I think then you might to see some of that moderation,” he said. “It’s just a matter of time.”
Russia’s Oil Revenue Soars Despite Sanctions, Study Finds
Hiroko Tabuchi – June 13, 2022
Yang Mei Hu oil products tanker owned by COSCO Shipping gets moored at the crude oil terminal Kozmino on the shore of Nakhodka Bay near the port city of Nakhodka, Russia June 13, 2022. REUTERS/Tatiana Meel (Tatiana Meel / reuters)
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered global condemnation and tough sanctions aimed at denting Moscow’s war chest. Yet Russia’s revenues from fossil fuels, by far its biggest export, soared to records in the first 100 days of its war on Ukraine, driven by a windfall from oil sales amid surging prices, a new analysis shows.
Russia earned what is very likely a record 93 billion euros in revenue from exports of oil, gas and coal in the first 100 days of the country’s invasion of Ukraine, according to data analyzed by the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air, a research organization based in Helsinki. About two-thirds of those earnings, the equivalent of about $97 billion, came from oil, and most of the remainder from natural gas.
“The current rate of revenue is unprecedented, because prices are unprecedented, and export volumes are close to their highest levels on record,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, an analyst who led the center’s research.
Fossil fuel exports have been a key enabler of Russia’s military buildup. In 2021, revenue from oil and gas alone made up 45% of Russia’s federal budget, according to the International Energy Agency. The revenue from Russia’s fossil fuel exports exceeds what the country is spending on its war in Ukraine, the research center estimated, a sobering finding as momentum shifts in Russia’s favor as its forces focus on important regional targets amid a weapons shortage among Ukrainian soldiers.
Ukrainian officials again called on countries and firms to halt their trade with Russia completely.
“We’re asking the world to do everything possible in order to cut off Putin and his war machine from all possible financing, but it’s taking much too long,” Oleg Ustenko, an economic adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine, said from Kyiv about President Vladimir Putin of Russia.
Ukraine has also been tracking Russia’s exports, and Ustenko described the research center’s numbers as seeming on the conservative side. Still, the underlying finding was the same, he said: Fossil fuels continue to fund Russia’s war.
“You can stop importing Russian caviar and Russian vodka, and that’s good, but definitely not enough. You need to stop importing Russian oil,” he said.
Though Russia’s fossil fuel exports have started to fall somewhat by volume, as more countries and companies shun trading with Moscow, surging prices have more than canceled out the effects of that decline. The research found Russia’s export prices for fossil fuels have been on average around 60% higher than last year, even accounting for the fact that Russian oil is fetching about 30% below international market prices.
Europe, particularly, has struggled to wean itself from Russian energy, even as many countries send military aid to Ukraine. The European Union made most progress on reducing its imports of natural gas from Russia, buying 23% less in the first 100 days of the invasion than the same period the previous year. Still, income at Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned gas giant, remained about twice as high as the year before, thanks to higher gas prices, the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air found.
The EU also reduced its imports of Russian crude oil, which declined 18% in May. But that dip was made up by India and the United Arab Emirates, leading to no net change in Russia’s oil export volumes, the research showed. India has become a significant importer of Russian crude oil, buying 18% of the country’s exports over the 100-day period.
The United States has made a dent in Russia’s earnings, banning all Russian fossil fuel imports. Still, the United States is importing refined oil products from countries like the Netherlands and India that most likely contain Russian crude, a loophole for oil from Russia to make its way to the U.S.
Overall, China was the largest importer of Russian fossil fuels over the 100-day period, edging out Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. China imported the most oil; Japan was the top purchaser of Russian coal.
Stricter bans are coming. Late last month, the EU agreed to an embargo that will cover roughly three-quarters of Russian oil shipped to the region, though that will not be enforced for six months. Britain has said it will also phase out imports of Russian oil by year’s end. But Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, which receive Russian oil via pipelines, remain exempt. European and U.S.-owned ships also continue to transport Russian oil.
Europe is also speeding up its transition away from fossil fuels altogether. A new EU target aims to increase the region’s share of electricity from renewable forms of energy to 63% by 2030, up from a previous expected target of 55%.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said last week that Washington was in talks with its European allies about forming a cartel that would set a cap on the price of Russian oil roughly equal to the price of production. That would trim Russia’s fossil fuel revenues while also keeping Russian oil flowing to global markets, stabilizing prices and fending off a global recession, she told the Senate Finance Committee.
Ustenko said he would welcome such a move as a temporary measure until full embargoes can be imposed. He also suggested that countries should take the difference between global prices and the capped price on Russian oil and pay it into a fund to aid Ukrainian reconstruction.
“Then we’ll be able to cut off Russians from much of their financing, and almost immediately,” he said.
Why there’s no relief in sight for soaring oil and gas prices
Rick Newman, Senior Columnist – June 13, 2022
Everybody’s frustrated. If somebody could do something about it, it would be done. But oil and gasoline prices are on a tear that for the time being seems unstoppable.
U.S. gasoline prices have hit $5 per gallon for the first time ever, and Moody’s Analytics thinks they could hit $5.50 within a couple of weeks. There’s no mystery why. A confluence of forces, led by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has crimped oil supply and bumped up demand. There’s more that could go wrong, adding a “fear premium” to prices on top of the hike caused by market dynamics. It won’t last forever, but for now there’s no sign that new supply, reduced demand or an outbreak of stability will bring relief.
Four things are going wrong simultaneously for fossil-fuel purchasers. First are sanctions on Russia, the world’s third-largest oil producer. So far, sanctions have slightly reduced Russian oil sales, but Europe is phasing in an embargo, with plans to cut Russian oil purchases 90% by the end of the year. Russia will probably be able to sell some of that oil elsewhere, but exports will probably decline, reducing world supply and pushing prices upward. Since oil prices are set in a global market, no nation can insulate itself from the effect falling supply or rising demand has on prices.
China seems to be emerging from extreme COVID lockdowns that depressed economic activity, including energy consumption. As China’s economy picks back up, energy use will rise, putting upward pressure on prices. There was some hope a new deal with Iran over its nuclear weapons program would lead to the end of U.S. sanctions and more Iranian oil on the global market. But Iran seems to have scuttled negotiations, making a deal unlikely. Finally, President Biden and other leaders have already released large amounts of oil from national reserves, leaving little room for further releases.
Raoul LeBlanc, vice president of the energy practice at S&P Global, calls these four factors a “nightmare bull scenario” that could push oil prices higher still, enriching oil sellers while hammering purchasers.
“Current prices reflect the risk of that happening,” LeBlanc says. “Prices right now make sense in terms of the big drivers that could push prices higher.”
How much can consumers take? Moody’s Analytics thinks $5.50 gasoline in the United States could be the peak, with prices likely to decline steadily beginning in the second half of this year. But the research firm analyzed the likely impact on consumers and the U.S. economy if gas prices hit $6 and even $7. Surprisingly, neither scenario would induce a recession.
‘An outsize place in the mind of the U.S. consumer’
But the pain would be considerable, as any driver can imagine. In both scenarios, unprecedented gas prices would cut consumer spending on other things, and reduce overall GDP growth. But growth would still remain positive, and imbalances would eventually sort themselves out. Still, consumers might blow a gasket.
“Gasoline prices, with their illuminated roadside ubiquity, hold an outsize place in the mind of the U.S. consumer when it comes to inflation and their interpretation of the health of the economy,” Moody’s Analytics economists Matt Colyar and Ryan Sweet wrote on June 9.
President Biden is reportedly agonizing over sky-high energy prices that threaten to wreck his presidency. But it’s not a U.S.-centric problem, and there’s very little he can do. Biden, like many others, wants U.S. oil and gas producers to drill more. U.S. production is growing modestly and likely to hit a new record next year. But energy producers have been burned many times in boom and bust cycles, where prices rise, they drill more, then prices crash and they lose money.
Richard Thomas, 41, of Fontana, pays close attention to how many gallons of gas he is buying while filling up his nearly empty tank at the Chevron gas station, located at the intersection of Cesar. E. Chavez Ave. and Alameda Street in downtown Los Angeles. . (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
“High prices aren’t good for us,” Mike Wirth, CEO of Chevron, said during a June 7 event sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “They never last. In our industry, demand always moves faster than supply. Incentives are there for the producers to produce. This is not always the most popular thing, but allow markets to work.”
That may sound disingenuous, given that Chevron is one of the oil majors booking huge profits right now. But many industry executives point out that U.S. energy firms overproduced for years leading up to the 2020 COVID recession, which turned into a bloodbath for the fossil fuel industry as demand collapsed and oil prices even went negative for a brief spell. That was a searing experience energy firms and their investors don’t want to repeat.
The best thing for oil and gasoline consumers would be an end to Russia’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine. Sanctions on Russia would likely remain, but some or most of the fear premium in oil prices would dissipate as worst-case scenarios improve. There’s no sign of a breakthrough in the war, but the United States and other nations sending Ukraine weapons and aid might speed up the timeline for helping defeat Russia on the battlefield if they want to end the oil price spike.
A less favorable solution would be a global recession, which some economists think is coming. Europe, heavily dependent on Russian energy, may be there already, and the U.S. economy is certainly cooling. Recessions bring commodity prices down because economic activity subsides and demand falls — exactly what oil drillers are watching out for. That might even be what Russia wants. Battles rage in markets, too.
Rick Newman is the author of four books, including “Rebounders: How Winners Pivot from Setback to Success.”
Blame monopolies for today’s sky-high inflation, Boston Fed researchers say
Ben Winck – May 26, 2022
Grocery shopping in Rosemead, California on April 21, 2022.
Dwindling industrial competition has made the US’s inflation problem even worse, Fed researchers said.
A new paper found that increased concentration led firms to pass a greater share of cost shocks onto consumers.
Weaker competition also amplified the inflation impacts of the labor shortage and rising energy prices.
The decades-long decline of industry competition made today’s inflation crisis much worse than it needed to be, researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston said in a new paper.
The US’s industrial concentration problem isn’t anything new. The economy is at least 50% more concentrated now than it was in 2005, according to the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, a commonly used measure of industry concentration. That means a smaller group of companies control the lion’s share of their respective sectors.
Companies typically pass higher input costs on to consumer prices. Yet that pass-through “becomes about 25 percentage points greater when there is an increase in concentration similar to the one observed since the beginning of this century,” Fed economists Falk Bräuning, José L. Fillat, and Gustavo Joaquim said. Put simply, dwindling industry competition leads to companies raising prices at a much faster pace.
The pass-through happens through a variety of channels, according to the paper. The rise in concentration over the past two decades has been an “amplifying factor” to cost shocks from supply shortages, energy price spikes, and the labor shortage, the team said.
All three trends have been rife in the US economy over the past several months. Lockdowns in China roiled the global supply chain in 2021, and rising coronavirus case counts in Beijing threaten to repeat that cycle. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine boosted energy prices around the world. And the labor market is the tightest it’s been in decades, with job openings at record highs and companies still struggling to find available workers.
Encouragingly, the above-trend price increases don’t last forever, the economists said. When companies face cost shocks, they tend to pass those on to consumers over the next four quarters before returning to a more typical inflation trend. The fastest inflation typically arrives one quarter after the cost shock, according to the study. The pace of price growth then slows over the next three quarters.
Still, the research details yet another dynamic that’s allowed US inflation to recently hit its highest level since the 1980s. While factors like the labor shortage and rising energy prices are practically guaranteed to lift inflation, companies represent a critical junction between higher input costs and higher prices paid by Americans. The Boston Fed’s research signals that, unless competition rebounds, the economy will be even more susceptible to inflationary shocks in the future.
