Pool contractor photographed damage in Florida building 36 hours before collapse

Pool contractor photographed damage in Florida building 36 hours before collapse

A pool contractor photographed damage to the Champlain Towers South condo building in Surfside, Florida, 36 hours before half of it collapsed.

The man, who asked not to be named in a Monday report published by the Miami Herald, visited the building to put a bid together for cosmetic changes to the pool and updates to its equipment.

A large portion of the 40-year-old building collapsed on Thursday. Eleven people are confirmed dead, and 150 are unaccounted for after the partial collapse, local officials said Monday evening.

The contractor said he observed “standing water all over” the underground parking garage.

“He thought it was waterproofing issues,” the contractor said of a building staff member who showed him around. “I thought to myself, ‘That’s not normal.'”

South Florida Urban Search and Rescue team look through rubble for survivors at the partially collapsed Champlain Towers South condo building in Surfside, Fla., Monday, June 28, 2021. (Matias J. Ocner/Miami Herald via AP)

The man said the deepest puddle of standing water he observed was located around parking space 78, which, according to the Florida outlet, is directly under the portion of the pool deck where engineer Frank Morabito said there was a “major error” in the spot’s original design in 2018. He noted the flaw was allowing water intrusion that was causing significant damage to the concrete slabs laid below.

The contractor said he did not photograph the water because he was there to observe the pool itself, not what was underneath it.

In the pool equipment room, located in the garage but away from space 78, the contractor snapped a photo of exposed and corroding rebar.

“I wonder if this was going on in other parts of the building and caused this collapse,” the contractor said.

“You can see extensive corrosion of the rebars at the bottom of the beam. That is very serious,” said Mohammad Ehsani, an engineer and concrete restoration expert. “If the condition of the beam in the pool guy’s photo is something that was also happening under the building, that is a really major concern.”

Ehsani warned it was possible not all of the beams in the building were similarly damaged, noting the harsh chemicals the pool equipment room could have been exposed to. But he said if the damage was more widespread, it “absolutely” could have contributed to the building’s collapse.

“In these buildings that are asymmetrical like this one, there is a possibility that if you have one part of the building that collapses, the building does some turning and twisting,” he added. “In this case, it is possible that a failure any place in this building could cause distortion to the frame of the building and could cause a collapse in any of the areas, not just adjacent [to the failure].”

Maxwell Marcucci, a representative for the Champlain Towers South condo association, declined to comment on what the pool contractor noticed when reached for the report.

More jobless workers sue their states for ending unemployment benefits early

In Fashion, Regenerative Farming Isn’t an Impossible Solution

In Fashion, Regenerative Farming Isn’t an Impossible Solution

 

Eco-label Christy Dawn spent two years bringing 24 acres of depleted farmland back to life. Now, the brand is sharing the roadmap of how it did it.

In fashion, buzzwords aren’t always a bad thing. By promoting pillars of environmentalism or ethical labor, fashion swings its own needle toward a more transparent, accountable and equitable industry — theoretically, at least. It’s in the application that buzzwords can get lost.

Plastic-free packaging does not a “sustainable” brand make, you see, so brands of all makes and models are embracing specificity, like introducing circularity initiatives or launching low-emission designs. Some have even set out to restore the earth itself by way of regenerative agriculture — which, as The New York Times pointed out in April, fashion can’t seem to get enough of.

Unsurprisingly, Patagonia has already been at it for years: The intrepid outdoor retailer started piloting its own Regenerative Organic standard with cotton farmers in India way back when in 2017. Eventually, regeneration received the ultimate big-business co-sign from Kering in January, when the conglomerate co-founded a group called Regenerative Fund for Nature, providing grants to farmers and NGOs developing regenerative practices around the world.

From an ecological perspective, regenerative agriculture is deeply practical. The industrial farming practices that have long provided cotton, wool and hides for our clothing have also depleted the earth itself. By some accounts, the world could run out of topsoil in just 60 years, at which point, growing plush cotton for our jeans will be the very least of our concerns.

But regenerative farming is not an overnight fix. It takes years to not only rejuvenate exhausted farmland, but to rebuild a supply chain that amplifies local farmers and centers their ancestral methods. It’s an investment smaller businesses aren’t always able to make — especially if they don’t know where to begin.

Los Angeles-based eco-label Christy Dawn, which recently debuted a “Farm-to-Closet” regenerative collection of its own, has a better solution. What if, by making everything available online, they could offer a kind of roadmap for all brands, even those outside the fashion industry, to reference and maybe even implement?

Christy Dawn and Oshadi Collective's regenerative cotton farm in Kanjikoil, Tamil Nadu, India.
Christy Dawn and Oshadi Collective’s regenerative cotton farm in Kanjikoil, Tamil Nadu, India.

 

“We don’t want to own it,” says Christy Peterson, the designer behind Christy Dawn. “In fact, it’s not even ours to own. This has been happening for years and years before us. We’re a small brand, but our goal is to share this with the world in hopes that others can join in.”

Within fashion, Christy Dawn and its earthy, Californian wares are often said to exemplify a “cottagecore” aesthetic that celebrates a harmonious existence with nature. Christy Dawn isn’t a cottagecore brand in the literal sense in that it exists outside the definition set by teenagers on the internet in the late 2010s. It does, however, embrace the movement’s most basic ideal of romanticizing a more sustainable way of life.

This is as true in the brand’s chicken-coop-chic design sensibility as in its production practices. Since its launch in 2014, Christy Dawn has steadily gained cult-esque recognition for its use of deadstock fabrics, which artisans in Downtown Los Angeles transform into dresses fit for romping through prairie grass. No two garments are exactly alike, an eccentricity of deadstock that the brand famously commemorates by numbering each piece.

By 2018, Christy Dawn was thriving. But it was around this time that Peterson and her husband, Aras Baskauskas, who serves as Christy Dawn’s CEO, started seeing things differently.

“While we grew as a company and as people, too, we realized how toxic the industry was,” Peterson says. “We also realized that by using deadstock fabric, we weren’t necessarily a part of the problem, but we also weren’t part of the solution.”

Peterson and Baskauskas took issue with the intention of the word “sustainability” itself, which Oxford English Dictionary defines as an “avoidance of the depletion of natural resources in order to maintain an ecological balance.” At this rate, is avoidance alone enough? Climate scientists, categorically, say no.

“I have two small boys, and I remember looking around and thinking, ‘I don’t want to sustain this. How will my boys survive? How will there be food or even people left on this planet if we keep sustaining?,'” she says.

Enter regenerative farming, which doesn’t simply maintain that ecological balance, but accelerates it. Rebuilding degraded soil biodiversity can improve the water cycle and even capture more carbon dioxide from the ambient air. If performed correctly, regeneration can literally reverse climate change. Peterson and Baskauskas grew obsessed.

“We buy regenerative food,” says Peterson. “Could we grow fiber for our clothing in a way that could draw carbon down from the atmosphere?”

Christy Dawn's "Farm-to-Closet" collection.
Christy Dawn’s “Farm-to-Closet” collection.

 

To help answer this question, Peterson and Baskauskas turned to Rebecca Burgess, the executive director of sustainable non-profit organization Fibershed, and asked if she knew of anyone who may be interested in creating a regenerative farm alongside them. She didn’t, but in a twist of fate or kismet or whatever sparkly, otherworldly force you believe, the universe had other plans.

That same day, Oshadi Studio‘s Nishanth Chopra was listening to a podcast on which Burgess was a guest when he guessed her email address and sent her a note asking if she knew of any brands that could want to partner with him on a regenerative farm in India. “This was maybe five hours later,” Peterson says. “You know when you have an idea, something you just feel all over your body? It was one of those moments.”

Soon, Christy Dawn and Oshadi Studio came upon a plot of nutrient-devoid land in Kanjikoil, Tamil Nadu, India that had once served as a conventional farm. They leased four acres. (Today, that acreage has grown to 24, with plans to develop 35 more by the end of the year.)

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Then came the hard part: bringing effectively dead land back to life.

Regenerative farming can be compared to organic farming in that both encourage synthetic- and pesticide-free alternatives. But where regeneration differs is in its focus on biodiversity: A healthy cocktail of microorganisms, insects, plants, animals and yes, even humans, can create such resilient crops that there’s no need for chemical intervention in the first place.

“The farmers used so many creative techniques passed down through the generations,” says Mairin Wilson, Christy Dawn’s director of regenerative practices. In one method, farmers take a cotton pouch full of rice and bury it beneath the oldest tree on the farm, where it sits for a week, after which farmers make a tea out of the rice to spray seedlings. “The oldest tree has the most biodiverse nutrients and abundant mycelial network, so the farmers like to share that abundance with the young cotton plants.”

Meanwhile, for the land, farmers brought in goats to eat the cotton plants and generate enough manure to fertilize the soil, also planting a leguminous cover crop, like indigo or sugar cane, to restore nitrogen, without which a plant cannot grow, metabolize or produce chlorophyll. And because nothing is wasted, Wilson explains, that same indigo is later used to dye the garments while the sugar cane provides sugar that farmers can put in their coffee.

Indigo is first used as a cover crop, then used to dye garments during the production process.
Indigo is first used as a cover crop, then used to dye garments during the production process.

 

In February 2020, Peterson, Baskauskas and their sons arrived in Tamil Nadu to help harvest the farm’s first batch of cotton. But Peterson is clear: The farmers here are the true protagonists of this story.

“I like to look at this initiative as a story of relationships and intimacy, and being in the right relationship with all the stakeholders involved,” Peterson says. “This isn’t a story of saviorism.”

Fibershed (which partnered with Christy Dawn and Oshadi Studio on the project) strongly emphasizes the importance of regional textile districts, which is why Christy Dawn’s regenerative cotton is ginned, spun, woven and dyed all within six miles of the farm, by farmers who were paid a living wage and able to gain financial independence.

This spring, the brand was finally ready to release the fruits of its labor. Those 24 now-regenerated acres had been able to produce a significant yield of 6,500 dresses, the very first of Christy Dawn’s “Farm-to-Closet” collection. (The second drop arrived in early June, with a third due out July 9.)

Aesthetically, the capsule is nothing if not consistent: Shoppers are able to browse their choice of voluminous maxi dresses or smock-like frocks in a range of ditsy floral prints or rich, solid hues. Garments have been naturally dyed and/or block-printed using a host of regional flora, like wedelia flowers, madder and myrobalan, as well as that aforementioned indigo. The collection also incorporates peace silk, a cruelty-free alternative to regular silk used throughout India.

One day, Peterson aims to move away from deadstock entirely. “The goal is that eventually, we would just be a farm-to-closet company and only use the cotton that the earth provides for us,” she says. “Our projection is that in two years, we can have enough yield to sustain a whole year’s collection worth of clothing, but just from our farm.”

The impact would be considerable: Wilson estimates this initial yield sequestered 66 tons of carbon dioxide, per hectare, which rounds out to just about 22 pounds of carbon per dress.

The brand also has plans outside itself, because environmentally, one regenerative farm on a planet of dying soil is just a drop in a carbon-clogged bucket. Christy Dawn has published its progress on its website, and is open to forming a co-op with like-minded brands that share its values. Peterson warns interested parties, though: Regeneration isn’t like other buzzwords — it’s time-consuming and expensive, yes, yet the return is far greater than any investment, if the fashion industry decides to take the plunge.

“I know it’s an interesting thing that a fashion brand could be wanting to affect change while asking someone to buy a product,” says Peterson. “But we don’t even care if you buy a dress. This is just the vehicle through which we’re sharing a seed to be planted in you to create change. If we can do that while making dresses, then what a beautiful gift.”

Toyota stands out with contributions to anti-election Republicans

MSNBC – The MaddowBlog

Toyota stands out with contributions to anti-election Republicans

Dozens of corporate PACs have donated to anti-election Republicans, but “Toyota leads by a substantial margin.”
By Steve Benen             June 28, 2021
Visitors walk past a logo of Toyota Motor Corp in Tokyo

Visitors walk past a logo of Toyota Motor Corp on a Toyota Prius hybrid vehicle at the company’s showroom in Tokyo August 5, 2014. REUTERS/Yuya Shino/File Photo

Within a few days of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, a handful of prominent companies said they would pause political contributions to congressional Republicans who voted to reject President Joe Biden’s victory. As regular readers may recall, many others soon followed — including Comcast, the parent company of NBCUniversal, which owns MSNBC (my employer).

The shift did not go unnoticed. Stuart Stevens, a longtime Republican strategist, told the New Yorker that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), in particular, was “scared to death” of corporate America’s response to the insurrectionist violence.

The question, of course, was how long the pause would last.

In April, JetBlue was among the first to open its corporate wallet, making a contribution through the airline’s corporate political action committee to Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) — who, like most House Republicans, opposed certification of the results of the 2020 presidential election, even after the deadly insurrectionist attack. Soon after, major defense contractors also resumed support for the GOP’s anti-election wing.

But relying on data from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Axios reported this morning that one company stands out as being especially generous toward Republicans who took a stand against their own country’s democracy.

Nearly three-dozen corporate PACs have donated at least $5,000 to Republicans who objected to certifying the 2020 election, yet Toyota leads by a substantial margin…. Toyota gave more than twice as much — and to nearly five times as many members of Congress — as the No. 2 company on the list, Cubic Corp., a San Diego-based defense contractor.

In a written statement, a spokesperson for the automaker said, “We do not believe it is appropriate to judge members of Congress solely based on their votes on the electoral certification.”

It’s a flawed defense. The bare minimum of public service in the United States should include respect for election results, and it’s a test these Republicans failed.

Toyota’s spokesperson added, however, that the company is being judicious: “Based on our thorough review, we decided against giving to some members who, through their statements and actions, undermine the legitimacy of our elections and institutions.”

That sounds like a step in the appropriate direction, though Toyota did not offer any specifics about the company’s “review” or who failed to meet the threshold.

We know, for example, that Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), who reportedly helped organize the pre-riot “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, and who opposed Congressional Gold Medals to honor Capitol Police officers who protected the building during the pro-Trump riot, was among those who benefited from Toyota’s money.

Evidently, under Toyota’s “review,” the far-right Arizonan didn’t quite demonstrate an indifference toward “the legitimacy of our elections.”

It’s worth emphasizing for context that the amount of money at issue here is relatively modest: Toyota has donated $55,000 to 37 GOP objectors so far this year. To the typical American family, $55,000 is certainly a lot of money, but in the world of campaign financing, especially at the federal level, it’s a small drop in an enormous bucket.

But the more Toyota feels comfortable supporting anti-election Republicans, the more others are likely to follow, removing another layer of accountability for those who chose to defy democracy without remorse.

A paralyzing disease that can cause people to die within 4 years is spreading in part of Australia, and toxic algae blooms could be to blame

A paralyzing disease that can cause people to die within 4 years is spreading in part of Australia, and toxic algae blooms could be to blame

 

A paralyzing disease that can cause people to die within 4 years is spreading in part of Australia, and toxic algae blooms could be to blame
algal bloom algae toxic pond water
A girl uses a stick to try and scoop algae from an algal bloom off the beach at Maumee Bay State Park in Oregon, OH on August 3, 2014. Ty Wright for The Washington Post via Getty 

  • Certain parts of Australia have unusually high rates of motor neuron disease.
  • People with MND are progressively paralyzed and typically die 2-4 years after diagnosis.
  • Multiple factors cause the disease, and some scientists think toxic algae is one of them.

Algae blooms can cause a host of problems, from mass-murdering fish to poisoning the air we breathe.

In Australia and beyond, some researchers believe that harmful blooms of blue-green algae are linked to increasingly high rates of motor neuron disease, a condition which causes paralysis and early death.

Folks in the US might be familiar with ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease, which is the most common type of motor neuron disease.

Motor neuron diseases progressively attack nerve cells, reducing one’s ability to speak, move, and breathe and typically killing patients within two to fours years after diagnosis, researchers told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Rates of deaths due to MND have risen 250 percent over the past 30 years in Australia, Macquarie University scientists told the Herald. MND sufferers and scientists are trying to understand why certain areas of the country have especially high rates, which led them to the algae theory.

Some algae blooms release harmful toxins into the water and air

Certain areas of Australia have curiously high rates of MND. Riverina, an agricultural region of New South Wales, has between five and seven times the national incidence.

The region is home to Lake Wyangan, a reservoir that frequently has outbreaks of cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae. The area around the lake is currently on red alert, meaning people should avoid fishing and swimming in the potentially toxic water, as well as drinking it.

Cyanobacteria are known to release a number of toxins, including a neurotoxin called BMAA. Some animal research suggests that BMAA could be one of many factors that leads to the development of motor neuron deterioration.

Researchers have found BMAA in other algae-infested waterways in the Riverina area, but they haven’t yet confirmed a link to MND. It’s likely that the neurodegenerative disease stems from a combination of genetic and environmental factors.

Even in genetically predisposed cases of MND, environmental stressors like algae blooms could contribute to the disease’s onset and progression, Dominic Rowe, chair of Macquarie Neurology, told the Herald. But more research is needed to better understand how those factors interact.

“Until we actually, systematically study the genetic causes and take them out of the environment, it’s hard to be 100 percent accurate about the environmental factors,” Rowe said.

Those Red Tide blooms in Pinellas just reached the Pasco coast

Tribune Publishing

Those Red Tide blooms in Pinellas just reached the Pasco coast

 

Pinellas County officials have spent weeks dealing with a Red Tide outbreak that has spurred health warnings and left several tons of dead fish along the county’s sandy, lucrative beaches.

Now Red Tide might be Pasco County’s problem, too.

Three water samples taken off the southernmost tip of the Pasco coastline revealed the microorganism Karenia brevis, which causes the toxic algal blooms, according to the latest report Wednesday issued by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

The strongest result found in Pasco is a medium-level concentration off the island of Anclote Key, at the county line. Low concentrations were detected near the Anclote River Park boat ramp and the Anclote Gulf Park pier.

That’s the first time the state has detected the presence of the current Red Tide outbreak in Pasco. That may have been inevitable, given the concentrations that have been moving north up the Pinellas coast toward its neighbor.

In Pinellas, 11 water samples contained Karenia brevis, according to the state. The only high concentration was detected in St. Joseph Sound, between Honeymoon Island State Park’s island of Grassy Key and Burghstream Point off the coast of Palm Harbor.

But starting from the northern tip of Caladesi Island State Park and moving north, there was a medium-level bloom found there; two more between Three Rooker Island to the west and Wall Springs Park to the east; and another detected southeast of Anclote Key, near the Tarpon Springs coast.

Pinellas officials announced Tuesday night that Red Tide was continuing its trek northward. Officials used a Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office helicopter to spot blooms. They found discolored water off Redington Beach and Clearwater Beach, but said they saw improvement from previous air observations.

Red Tide was also found in three water samples taken from Hillsborough County waters and seven samples from Manatee County waters, according to the state. That is where the owner of the old Piney Point fertilizer plant released 215 million gallons of polluted wastewater into Tampa Bay. Scientists are examining a potential link between the release and the algal blooms.

Meanwhile crews continue to clean-up the Pinellas beaches. The county said workers on Tuesday removed dead fish from the Dunedin Causeway and Fred Howard Park. So far, the county has removed 66.8 tons of “Red Tide-related debris” — mostly marine life killed by Karenia brevis.

From Clearwater Beach south, water samples showed low concentrations near Causeway Boulevard, Sand Key Park Beach, Indian Shores Beach, La Contessa Pier in Redington Beach, Madeira Beach, Bert and Walter Williams Pier in Gulfport and St. Petersburg’s Bayboro Harbor. Two medium blooms were found further south near the Fort De Soto fishing pier and Mullet Key.

Red Tide resources

There are several online resources that can help residents stay informed and share information about Red Tide:

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

The agency asks business owners to email reports of Red Tide issues to pr@visitspc.com.

Pinellas County shares information with the Red Tide Respiratory Forecast tool that allows beachgoers to check for warnings.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has a website that tracks where Red Tide is detected and how strong the concentrations.

How to stay safe near the water
  • Beachgoers should avoid swimming around dead fish.
  • Those with chronic respiratory problems should be particularly careful and “consider staying away” from places with a Red Tide bloom.
  • People should not harvest or eat mollusks or distressed and dead fish from the area. Fillets of healthy fish should be rinsed with clean water, and the guts thrown out.
  • Pet owners should keep their animals away from the water and from dead fish.
  • Residents living near the beach should close their windows and run air conditioners with proper filters.
  • Visitors to the beach can wear paper masks, especially if the wind is blowing in.

Source: Florida Department of Health in Pinellas County

Disastrous future ahead for millions worldwide due to climate change, report warns

‘Worst is yet to come’: Disastrous future ahead for millions worldwide due to climate change, report warns

 

Millions of people worldwide are in for a disastrous future of hunger, drought and disease, according to a draft report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was leaked to the media this week.

“Climate change will fundamentally reshape life on Earth in the coming decades, even if humans can tame planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions,” according to Agence France-Presse , which obtained the report draft.

The report warns of a series of thresholds beyond which recovery from climate breakdown may become impossible, The Guardian said. The report warns: “Life on Earth can recover from a drastic climate shift by evolving into new species and creating new ecosystems… humans cannot.

“The worst is yet to come, affecting our children’s and grandchildren’s lives much more than our own.”

Species extinction, more widespread disease, unlivable heat, ecosystem collapse, cities menaced by rising seas – these and other devastating climate impacts are accelerating and are bound to become evident in the decades ahead, according to AFP.

Highest in more than 4 million years: Earth’s carbon dioxide levels soar to record high despite pandemic

‘They’re at the brink of existence’: California deserts have lost nearly 40% of plants to hotter and drier weather, satellite data shows

The IPCC’s 4,000-page draft report, scheduled for official release next year, offers the most comprehensive rundown to date of the impacts of climate change on our planet and our species, AFP said.

Climate change, also known as global warming, is caused by the burning of fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal, which release greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane into the Earth’s atmosphere. Those greenhouse gases have caused our atmosphere to warm to levels that scientists say cannot be due to natural causes.

So far, since the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s, the Earth has warmed by 1.1 degrees Celsius (which is roughly 2 degrees Fahrenheit), according to NASA.

Coal-fired power plants such as the Homer City Generating Station in Pennsylvania emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.
Coal-fired power plants such as the Homer City Generating Station in Pennsylvania emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.

 

The report warns of “progressively serious, centuries’ long and, in some cases, irreversible consequences.” The report also said that the millions of people who live along coastlines almost everywhere around the world could be battered by multiple climate calamities at once: drought, heatwaves, cyclones, wildfires and flooding.

Simon Lewis, a professor of global change science at University College London, told The Guardian that “nothing in the IPCC report should be a surprise, as all the information comes from the scientific literature. But put together, the stark message from the IPCC is that increasingly severe heatwaves, fires, floods and droughts are coming our way with dire impacts for many countries.

“On top of this are some irreversible changes, often called tipping points, such as where high temperatures and droughts mean parts of the Amazon rainforest can’t persist. These tipping points may then link, like toppling dominoes.”

In a statement following the leak of the report, the IPCC said that it does not comment on the contents of draft reports while work is still ongoing. The official report, designed to influence critical policy decisions, is not scheduled for release until February, AFP said.

‘The water is coming’: Florida Keys faces stark reality as seas rise

‘The water is coming’: Florida Keys faces stark reality as seas rise

 

Long famed for its spectacular fishing, sprawling coral reefs and literary residents such as Ernest Hemingway, the Florida Keys is now acknowledging a previously unthinkable reality: it faces being overwhelmed by the rising seas and not every home can be saved.

Following a grueling seven-hour public meeting on Monday, held in the appropriately named city of Marathon, officials agreed to push ahead with a plan to elevate streets throughout the Keys to keep them from perpetual flooding, while admitting they do not have the money to do so.

The string of coral cay islands that unspool from the southern tip of Florida finds itself on the frontline of the climate crisis, forcing unenviable choices upon a place that styles itself as sunshine-drenched idyll. The lives of Keys residents – a mixture of wealthy, older white people, the one in four who are Hispanic or Latino, and those struggling in poverty – face being upended.

If the funding isn’t found, the Keys will become one of the first places in the US – and certainly not the last – to inform residents that certain areas will have to be surrendered to the oncoming tides.

“The water is coming and we can’t stop it,” said Michelle Coldiron, mayor of Monroe county, which encompasses the Keys. “Some homes will have to be elevated, some will have to be bought out. It’s very difficult to have these conversations with homeowners, because this is where they live. It can get very emotional.”

Once people are unable to secure mortgages and insurance for soaked homes, the Keys will cease to be a livable place long before it’s fully underwater, according to Harold Wanless, a geographer at the University of Miami. “People don’t have a concept of what sea level rise will do to them. They just can’t conceive it,” he said.

On Monday, the county gave details of its plan to spend $1.8bn over the next 25 years to raise 150 miles of roads in the Keys, deploying a mixture of new drains, pump stations and vegetation to prevent the streets becoming inundated with seawater. The heightened roadways are eagerly anticipated by residents who told the meeting of cars being ruined by the salt water and of donning boots to wade to front doors.

“The roads are shot, they’re full of cracks, the water is permeating up,” said Kimberly Sikora, who lives in a vulnerable neighborhood of Key Largo called Stillwright Point that is still awaiting a full road elevation proposal. “I’m just looking for some kind of relief.”

Another resident, Robert Schaller of Twin Lakes, an area further along in the planning process, muttered that he “should’ve done my due diligence” when buying his house last year. “I literally stand on my balcony and watch the water come up through my street,” he said. “It’s coming up right through the pavement.”

But Monroe county’s budget will not cover the raising of all the roads, nor any mass buyout of homes, and an appeal to Florida state lawmakers to levy a new tax to cover these mounting costs has been rebuffed. Further costs will pile up as the county grapples with how – and who pays – to keep critical infrastructure such as sewers and power substations, as well as people’s homes, from being flooded along with the roads.

“If we can’t raise additional money then we will have to look at prioritizing,” said Rhonda Haag, Monroe county’s chief resilience officer.

“For example, should we spend money on raising roads if people aren’t paying to raise their yards? We are blazing trails here. We are ahead of everyone in having to think about this.”

The pancake-flat Keys are in jeopardy from rising seas that are, as a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) scientist told the county commissioners in the Monday meeting, accelerating upwards as the vast ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica melt away. Human-caused global heating means an extra 17in of sea level rise by 2040, according to an intermediate Noaa projection used by the county.

Compounding this problem, the islands’ porous limestone allows the rising seawater to bubble up from below, meaning it just takes high tides on sunny days to turn roads into ponds, while global heating is also spurring fiercer hurricanes that can occasionally crunch into the archipelago.

“The Florida Keys are one of the most vulnerable places to flooding in North America,” said Kristina Hill, an environmental planner at the University of California, Berkeley, who warned that the islands would face growing road and pipe maintenance costs, more pollution leaks and harmful algal blooms.

“Without a change in strategy, parts of the Keys will become accessible only by boat,” said Hill, adding that the islands could have to resort to floating structures and navigable canals to remain viable. “The islands will gradually disappear into a higher ocean, potentially leaving a ruined landscape of leaky underground storage tanks, old pipes, and flooded road segments behind to pollute the water.”

A sign reads ‘Salt Water No Wake’ as ocean water floods a street in Key Largo in October 2019.
A sign reads ‘Salt Water No Wake’ as ocean water floods a street in Key Largo in October 2019. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

 

The threats faced by the Keys are shrugged off by some of its wealthy retirees who view the situation with a certain fatalism, while others in this Republican-voting bastion openly question the science. Eddie Martinez, one of the county’s five elected commissioners, challenged the Noaa scientist, William Sweet, on his sea level rise projections on Monday.

The sea level rise to date is “really a nothing number”, said Martinez, who told Sweet: “You’re a little bit more on this CO2 side, I’m more on the actual measurement side.” Another commissioner, David Rice, said that “predicting the future is probably best done with a crystal ball” and speculated that global temperatures could change following several volcanic eruptions.

“There are people who don’t want to sell because they love it here, others who want to get out while they can and those in complete denial who call you a troublemaker who is driving down property values by talking about it,” said George Smyth, a retiree who moved to Key Largo a decade ago for the quiet, slow-paced lifestyle. In 2019, his neighborhood spent 90 days partially submerged in water.

The nature of the Keys has changed in this time. While the islands still include pockets of poverty, an influx of affluent second-home owners has caused new properties to sprout up around Smyth. “It used to be pretty rough and tumble, you’d see a few fights on a Saturday night,” he said. “Now everyone looks like they’ve just come from the cosmetic dentist.”

Other new realities are more laborious – Smyth has to wash his car continually to rid it of salt water and has to pay for trucks to unload piles of crushed-up rocks around his property as a buffer against the encroaching tides. While Smyth doesn’t class himself as particularly wealthy, these protections are beyond the means of low-income Keys residents, many of whom live in exposed mobile homes dotted along the islands.

Smyth fears that the county will require poorer residents to stump up the money for the roads, rather than put a levy on the tourists that flock to the Keys. “We feel we are being held hostage,” he said. “I feel sorrow for what is coming and the loss of what is a wonderful community.”

But the mayor defiantly insists the Keys can be saved, even if it is currently unclear how. “We know we live in paradise and we want to keep it that way,” said Coldiron.

Pacific Northwest bakes under once-in-a-millennium heat dome

CBS News

Pacific Northwest bakes under once-in-a-millennium heat dome

 

The heat wave baking the U.S. Pacific Northwest and British Columbia, Canada, is of an intensity never recorded by modern humans. By one measure it is more rare than a once in a 1,000 year event — which means that if you could live in this particular spot for 1,000 years, you’d likely only experience a heat dome like this once, if ever.

Portland, Oregon, has already broken its all-time record hottest temperature at 108 degrees on Saturday and the peak of the heat wave has not even been reached yet. Canada is expected to register the nation’s all-time highest temperature before the event is done. These are extremely dangerous numbers, especially in a region not used to heat like this, where many people do not have air conditioning.

By Monday, some — if not all — of the all-time record highs seen below are forecast to break, with many more cities not listed here expected to achieve the same feat.

These are all-time heat records for select cities prior to the current heat wave. Portland has already broken its former all-time record of 107. / Credit: CBS News
These are all-time heat records for select cities prior to the current heat wave. Portland has already broken its former all-time record of 107. / Credit: CBS News

 

The heat is being caused by a combination of a significant atmospheric blocking pattern on top of a human-caused climate changed world where baseline temperatures are already a couple to a few degrees higher than nature intended.

The core of the heat dome, as measured by the thickness of the air column over British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest, is - statistically speaking - equivalent to a 1-in-1,000-year event or even a 1-in-10,000-year event. / Credit: CBS News

 

This heat wave comes on the heels of another historic heat wave less than two weeks ago that baked the U.S. Intermountain West, Desert Southwest and California with hundreds of record highs.

Meanwhile, the eastern U.S. is also seeing the heat ratchet up, with “feels-like” temperatures pushing 100 degrees by Monday and Tuesday in the major cities of the I-95 corridor. The back-to-back and dueling heat waves are made more likely by a very wavy jet stream and our unnaturally heating climate.

Pacific Northwest heat wave

Sunday and Monday are projected to be the hottest days of the heat wave along the Northwest coast from Portland to Seattle. Even before the peak of the heat had been reached on Saturday, many records have already been broken, with even hotter temperatures to come.

It’s never been hotter in Portland than it was yesterday; all part of an ongoing, historic, and dangerous heatwave in the NW; many homes don’t have A/C. @WeatherProf helps explain how we know this is so historic https://t.co/AJT1oU0TLt #WAwx #ORwx #MNwx pic.twitter.com/nC2mGtRUwm

— Mike Augustyniak (@MikeAugustyniak) June 27, 2021

As the heat dome continues to build, cities like Portland will likely break their all-time heat record again, on back-to-back days. On Sunday the thermometer reached a staggering 112 degrees Fahrenheit — that’s 5 degrees higher than what had been the all-time record of 107 degrees, prior to Saturday’s 108.

 / Credit: CBS News
/ Credit: CBS News

 

In Seattle, after a record high of 102 on Saturday, the thermometer is likely to shatter its all-time record high of 103 degrees on Monday, with a forecast high of 108. In its history, Seattle has only reached 100 degrees three times before. Remarkably, in this one heat wave, highs in the city will easily top 100 degrees 3 days in a row.

Some of the inland cities in eastern Washington and Oregon will likely max out in the 115-120 degree range. And while the heat will break along the coast of Washington and Oregon by midweek, the record heat will continue over inland Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana late in the week.

 / Credit: CBS News
/ Credit: CBS News

 

For the past week, as computer models have consistently forecast seemingly unbelievable numbers, meteorologists struggled to grasp how a heat wave of this magnitude could even be possible, given this region has never experienced anything of this magnitude before. Were the models wrong? Or, given climate change, should we now expect the unexpected — is this now just becoming routine?

Projected temperatures on Sun-Mon across PacNW are so extreme that I think folks are having difficulty putting them into context. There remains some uncertainty, but places along I-5 corridor from Medford to Seattle have potential to *shatter* all-time records. #ORwx #WAwx pic.twitter.com/W9yr7XXxLF

— Daniel Swain (@Weather_West) June 23, 2021

Turns out, the models were correct and we should expect extreme heat waves, even unprecedented ones like this to become more routine. “There is no context really, in the sense that there is no analog in our past for what we are likely to see this week,” says Dr. Michael Mann, distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University and author of the new book “The New Climate War.”

But calling it a new normal does not suffice says Mann, “Some people called this a ‘new normal. But it is worse than that,” explained Mann. “We will continue to see more and more extreme heat waves, droughts, wildfires and floods as long as we continue to warm the planet through fossil fuel burning and carbon emissions.”

As shown in the below illustration from the Oregon Climate Assessment, this is only the beginning of the heating expected if humanity continues burning fossil fuels. By 2100, temperatures are expected to be 7 to 10 degrees above what they naturally should, and that would mean a dramatic increase in extreme heat waves.

As all-time record heat approaches the Pacific Northwest, a look at future climate change projections – graph shows annual mean temperature in Oregon 📈 + Oregon Climate Assessment (see fig. 10): https://t.co/CYo3H4u8nk+ National Climate Assessment: https://t.co/TXvHgQu5lj pic.twitter.com/IUZqlhg7r0

— Zack Labe (@ZLabe) June 26, 2021

In the case of this specific heat dome, which is a mountain of hot air stacked vertically through the atmosphere, it is a once in a 1,000 or even 10,000-year event for this particular area. How do we know? It’s actually quite simple to explain.

The intensity of a heat dome is measured by how “thick” the atmosphere is at a given spot. The hotter the air in that column, the larger the thickness of air in that column, because heat expands. In our historical record of North America’s Pacific Northwest this heat dome registers a statistical standard deviation from the average of greater than 4.

In layman terms, that means it falls more than 4 deviations to the right of the center of a typical bell curve (shown below) and that equates to values with less than a 99.99% chance of happening.

This is called a temperature distribution, similar to a bell curve. It illustrates the normal distribution of temperatures we should expect given the historical record. However, as the animation shows, as the globe warms and the average shifts towards the right - the warmer side. As a result, the extremes shift even more resulting in more intense and more frequent heat waves.  / Credit: Climate Central

 

In other words, statistically speaking, there is a 1 in 10,000 chance of experiencing this value. So, if you could possibly live in that spot for 10,000 years, you’d likely only experience that kind of heat dome once, if ever.

To put climate extremes into perspective we measure against the average. The sigma is the standard deviation of a normal distribution of expected values. In this case the heat dome sigma max is 4.4 – that means it’s outside of 99.99% of expected values or a 1/10,000+ chance (1/2) pic.twitter.com/8raIMAngkg

— Jeff Berardelli (@WeatherProf) June 27, 2021

It is worth noting that our historical record is limited and statistics like this are very sensitive to small changes. But if it seems like an overstatement to say there is a 1 in 10,000 chance of having a heat dome like this, it is certainly not an overstatement to say this is the kind of event you would expect to experience once in 1000 years.

But we will know the exact value soon, as some of the best extreme weather attribution scientists are likely to be hard at work doing rapid attribution — a new type of cutting edge science — this week to determine the actual values and to what degree climate change has contributed.

What it means for the Pacific NW is that there will be a very high attribution to climate change for the upcoming event and the exact numbers will depend on how hot it really gets. And the hotter it gets, the larger the attribution will be. Regardless of cause though, stay safe!

— Gavin Schmidt (@ClimateOfGavin) June 25, 2021

So what is causing this heat wave? Like any heat wave, it is being caused by a highly amplified jet stream pattern. These extreme jet stream perturbations are a natural, normal part of the atmosphere. But the climate science community is split as to whether these extreme jet stream perturbations are becoming even more likely because of climate change — a phenomena known as the wavy jet stream.

 / Credit: CBS News
/ Credit: CBS News

 

Along with a more wavy, buckling and slow-moving jet stream, comes a phenomena called “blocking”. This is when waves in the jet stream become so elongated that they break off, sit and spin. In this case there is a textbook type of block called an Omega block over the Pacific Northwest because it looks like the Greek letter Omega. Inside this Omega, the heat pools and intensifies.

There is a faction of climate scientists who believe that a warming climate — specifically the Arctic — results in a more wandering jet stream at certain times of the year. But it is hotly debated; there is an equal amount of research that does not arrive at this conclusion.

Mann and his colleagues have been involved in some of this research, in which he finds that a specific type of Northern Hemisphere blocking — what he calls Quasi Resonant Amplification — will increase by 50% this century under business as usual human-forced climate warming. “I do indeed believe that the phenomenon we describe in our work played a very important role in the record heat wave,” Mann said.

As for the lack of consensus in the climate research on the wavy jet stream and blocking, Mann thinks it has more to do with the current state of climate modeling “This is an area where current generation models are NOT capturing a real-world climate connection,” Mann explained.

Whatever the cause, the result of an extreme jet stream pattern is extreme weather across many parts of the nation and globe. Over the past few days, the central U.S. has seen over a foot of rain with flash flooding along a stalled front. And, starting on Sunday and continuing through most of the upcoming week, the major East Coast cities will also sweat through a heat wave — although not nearly as intense as the one in the West — with feels-like temperatures near 100 degrees from Washington D.C. to Philadelphia and New York City.

 / Credit: CBS News
/ Credit: CBS News

 

While natural swings between hot and cold patterns will continue, the trend is clear — extreme heat waves are bound to become more common, more extreme and more deadly in the coming years. In practice, the solution to worsening extreme weather is a herculean challenge for humanity, but in theory it is simple: “We can prevent things from getting worse if we rapidly decarbonize our civilization,” Mann said.

California’s drought and wildfire dangers rising at stunning pace

California’s drought and wildfire dangers rising at stunning pace

A home destroyed in the 2020 North Complex Fire sits above Lake Oroville on Sunday, May 23, 2021, in Oroville, Calif. At the time of this photo, the reservoir was at 39 percent of capacity and 46 percent of its historical average. California officials say the drought gripping the U.S. West is so severe it could cause one of the state's most important reservoirs to reach historic lows by late August, closing most boat ramps and shutting down a hydroelectric power plant during the peak demand of the hottest part of the summer. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

 

California’s drought and wildfire conditions are accelerating at unprecedented rates, according to state officials, and residents should brace for a summer of widespread burning and mandatory water conservation measures in some regions.

As reservoir levels across the state continue to drop, and as parched vegetation poses an increasing threat of wildfire, officials in Sacramento and Southern California offered a bleak assessment of the state’s drying climate, saying it has already begun to affect people, plants and animals.

The current drought, which blankets the entire state and a broad swath of the western United States, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, is already outpacing the state’s devastating 2012-16 drought, said Karla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources.

“It really wasn’t until year three or four when we saw these intense conditions … we’re now experiencing in the second year of the drought,” Nemeth said Friday. “That acceleration is really what’s new about this drought and what we’re working to respond to.”

California typically relies on the gradual melting of Sierra snowpack to fill its reservoirs, Nemeth said. But this year, the state saw record evaporation and record low runoff into streams and reservoirs.

It is “unprecedented in the breadth and severity of this regional drought,” said Wade Crowfoot, secretary of the state’s Natural Resources Agency.

At the same time, fire officials in Southern California warned that wildfire conditions are already like those typically seen in August and September.

“We’re seeing fires move fast,” said Chief Brian Fennessy of the Orange County Fire Authority. “Fires that normally would be an acre, 2 acres, 5 acres, so far this year are getting to 30, 50 and beyond.”

They’re also spreading more quickly, he said.

“We are seeing fire spread that is even stunning many of us that have been doing this for a very long time — fire spread that could quite easily surprise many of the citizens within this region,” he said. He urged people to evacuate as soon as they’re told to do so.

These dry conditions do not bode well for the Fourth of July weekend, when first responders will probably face their first big test as a predicted heat wave collides with amateur fireworks displays.

Last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom expanded a drought emergency to 41 California counties, covering 30% of the state’s population. On Friday, Santa Clara County declared its own local emergency, saying drought conditions were so extreme that water levels were not adequate to meet demand.

“The reality is we live in an arid region that will continue to experience droughts,” Jasneet Sharma, director of Santa Clara County’s Office of Sustainability, said in a statement. “There are many steps that we should all take, from large-scale conservation projects and household-level water conservation retrofits to simple household changes like turning off the faucet when you brush your teeth. Each one is an important part of sustainability.”

Water conservation is likely to ramp up, possibly becoming mandatory in some communities, said Joaquin Esquivel, chair of the State Water Resources Control Board.

“It’s not about conservation just because it’s drought. … We really need to see conservation and efficiency here as just [a] simple course of action that we must do, no matter if it’s dry or it’s wet,” Esquivel said.

This year’s parched conditions are already causing concern, especially after a heat wave swept across Southern California this month, breaking several records and heating Palm Springs to 123 degrees.

Usually the natural world can adapt to gradual changes in the climate, but California’s conditions are changing so frequently that plants and animals are not able to keep up, said Chuck Bonham, director of California’s Department of Fish and Wildlife.

“They don’t have the luxury of adapting over millennia anymore; they’re being forced to adapt over a period of years,” he said.

The decrease in water levels has caused some rivers to heat up, becoming uninhabitable for some fish. Department of Fish and Wildlife teams recently removed almost 17 million Chinook salmon from four hatcheries in the Central Valley and released them into the ocean at places such as San Francisco Bay. The number of fish rescues has increased since the previous drought, Bonham said.

“We also know we’re going to end up serving as a Noah’s Ark,” he added, referring to a menagerie of animals kept at UC Davis until their environments become cool enough to live in again. “Every drop of water we can save as Californians is going to matter for people, but it’s going to matter for nature too.”

The drying also carries severe consequences for wildfire.

On Friday, fire officials gathered outside a Los Angeles County fire station in La Cañada Flintridge and said the heightened fire conditions were due to drought and unseasonably warm temperatures. Scientists say that climate change has driven the shifts by creating hotter, drier weather interspersed with more extreme, erratic precipitation events.

Live fuel moisture levels, which measure the dryness of vegetation, are on par with those typically seen in the late summer or fall, said Los Angeles County Fire Chief Daryl Osby, who serves as mutual aid coordinator for the region comprising Los Angeles, Orange, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.

“You saw the fire in L.A. city, the Palisades fire that burned in the fog,” he said, referring to the blaze that forced evacuations in Topanga Canyon in mid-May. “That’s kind of unprecedented, you would think in years past, but it’s the norm now.”

The fire broke out in an area that hadn’t burned in 50 years and that was choked with drought-killed vegetation, he said. Because of the topography and dryness, it grew to more than 1,000 acres before firefighters were able to bring it under control, despite relatively calm winds.

“Our expectations are that during this summer, we’re going to have those types of fires and larger with just the winds off the ocean,” Osby said. “And then we’re really concerned moving into the fall months when we start getting our significant wind-driven fires.”

Officials have taken steps to prepare. When the forecast looks dire — for instance, if the National Weather Service issues a red-flag warning — the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services works with local jurisdictions to pre-position extra firefighters, engines and aircraft and reimburses the governments for the added cost, said Cal OES Fire and Rescue Chief Brian Marshall.

“That gives us a fighting chance to catch the fires when they’re small,” he said.

Key to that is the prompt use of aircraft, which enables ground crews to then go in and extinguish the fires, Fennessy said. Southern California fire personnel have more aircraft available this year than in years past, including large helitankers that can fly at night, he said.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection moved to peak staffing earlier this year, sooner than normal, and will maintain that level for the rest of the year, said Chief Glenn Barley, assistant region chief for Cal Fire’s Southern Region.

“Last year was the worst fire season we’ve seen in California,” Barley said. “At this point this year, we are ahead of those numbers for last year, both in terms of number of fires and number of acres burned.”

Yet fire officials said that while they’re well resourced, they still don’t have enough, particularly in light of the potentially historic fire season bearing down on the region.

“I will say that from my municipality to the state to the federal government, that we’re stretched. We’re busy,” Osby said, adding that local municipalities still have to go on medical calls — more than 1,000 a day in the case of his department — in addition to fighting fires. “None of us have all the resources that we need.”

He said L.A. County would normally have 24 inmate firefighting crews but is down to eight, as many were sent home from prison after the state granted them early release because of the pandemic. That has forced the department to dip into its budget to train more paid crew members, he said.

Meanwhile, the National Interagency Fire Center this week raised its preparedness level to 4, the second-highest, said Angeles National Forest Fire Chief Robert Garcia.

“The significance of that is that the last time we were in this preparedness Level 4 at this time of year was in 2002,” he said. “And prior to that, the last time was 1991.”