Sen. Ron Johnson mouths to GOP group that climate change is ‘bullsh–‘ just weeks before deadly heat wave
John Haltiwanger
Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican. Samuel Corum/Getty Images
Ron Johnson mouthed to a GOP luncheon that climate change is “bullsh–,” CNN reported.
His comments came weeks before a fatal heat wave in the Pacific Northwest that scientists attributed to climate change.
Johnson has a long record of rejecting facts or making comments at odds with science on climate change.
Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin called climate change “bullsh–” during a GOP luncheon in early June, just weeks before a heat wave claimed dozens of lives in the Pacific Northwest. Scientists have linked the historic high temperatures to climate change.
“I don’t know about you guys, but I think climate change is – as Lord Monckton said – bullsh–,” Johnson said during the Republican Women of Greater Wisconsin Luncheon at Alioto’s in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, in comments caught on video and first reported by CNN. “By the way, it is.”
Johnson – who referred to Lord Christopher Monckton, a climate skeptic who has held positions in the British government and press – did not actually say “bullsh–” out loud, but mouthed the word.
The Wisconsin senator defended himself in comments to CNN, rejecting the notion that he’s a climate change denier.
“My statements are consistent. I am not a climate change denier, but I also am not a climate change alarmist. Climate is not static. It has always changed and always will change,” Johnson said.
The world’s top scientists say that climate change is real and caused by human activities. In short, Johnson’s comments are not backed up by science.
Johnson further defended himself on Twitter, writing, “I do not share Rep. Ocasio-Cortez view that the ‘world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.’ Or POTUS saying the ‘greatest threat’ to U.S. security is climate change. I consider those to be extreme positions – to say the least.”
The Wisconsin Republican was referencing remarks made by Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York in January 2019. Ocasio-Cortez has said she did not mean the world would literally end in 12 years, and was referencing a United Nations report that said humans only had a dozen years to change their behavior and avoid a climate change catastrophe.
Johnson also dismissed President Joe Biden’s comments on the national security threat posed by climate change, which have been backed up by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley.
“Climate change is going to impact natural resources, for example,” Milley said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in June. “It’s going to impact increased instability in various parts of the world. It’s going to impact migrations, and so on.”
Johnson has a long record of making statements at odds with science and denying that climate change is a product of human activities. In 2010, for example, Johnson falsely said Greenland only recently froze and erroneously suggested it was named for its previously green landscapes.
Farmworkers face dangerous conditions as heat waves scorch Western U.S.
David Knowles, Senior Editor July 8, 2021
With temperatures expected to top 110 degrees in California’s Central Valley, and reach 120 degrees in the southern part of the state, migrant farmworkers will once again be forced to endure dangerous conditions born of climate change.
“Farmworkers really are at the frontlines of climate change,” Leydy Rangel, communications manager for the United Farm Workers Foundation told Yahoo News. “Unfortunately, that’s an issue that will not get better. We know that heat is the No. 1 cause of weather-related deaths in the U.S.”
When a heat dome descended over the Pacific Northwest last month, Sebastian Francisco Perez, a Guatemalan immigrant, was found unresponsive on June 26 at the farm where he had been working in 104-degree heat.
A farmer pulls a wind-felled almond tree with a tractor on an almond farm in Gustine, California, U.S., on Monday, June 14, 2021. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
In response, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown directed the state’s workplace safety agency to implement rules designed to protect workers from extreme heat.
“All Oregonians should be able to go to work knowing that conditions will be safe and that they will return home to their families at the end of the day,” Brown said in a statement. “While Oregon OSHA has been working to adopt permanent rules related to heat, it became clear that immediate action was necessary in order to protect Oregonians, especially those whose work is critical to keeping Oregon functioning and oftentimes must continue during extreme weather.”
California’s heat standards — which mandate clean drinking water for workers, breaks and access to shade — were put in place following the 2008 death of Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, a 17-year-old migrant worker from Oaxaca, Mexico. Unaware that she was pregnant, she died while while harvesting grapes at a farm near Stockton, Calif., in temperatures near 100 degrees.
“Farmworkers have been excluded from many of the rights and benefits that protect other workers partly because they are immigrants and don’t have legal status,” Rangel said.
During last month’s heat dome event in the Pacific Northwest, which killed hundreds of people across the region, the UFW conducted a text-message survey of agricultural workers in Washington state. While the results are still preliminary and have not yet been published, Rangel told Yahoo News that of the 1,875 workers who responded, 56 percent reported experiencing symptoms associated with heat illness while on the job, 26 percent said they were not being provided with cool drinking water and 96 percent said that they believed heat regulations should be improved in the state.
Ben DuVal stands in a field of triticale, one of the few crops his family was able to plant this year due to the water shortage, on Wednesday, June 9, 2021, in Tulelake, Calif. (Nathan Howard/AP Photo)
Washington, California and Minnesota are the only states in the nation that have implemented heat rights for farmworkers, Rangel said, but the standards vary. As yet there are is no federal legislation to protect workers from exposure to excessive heat.
In 2019, the Asuncion Valdivia Heat Illness and Fatality Prevention Act was introduced in the House of Representatives. Like California’s heat standards, the bill is named after an agricultural worker who perished while picking table grapes for 10 hours straight in temperatures over 100 degrees. Sens. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio; Alex Padilla, D-Calif.; and Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., introduced the bill in the Senate this year.
“Workers in California and across the country are too often exposed to dangerous heat conditions in the workplace. In the past year, Californians have faced extreme heat temperatures from wildfires, while trying to navigate the unique challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic — risking the health and safety of our workers,” Padilla said in a statement when the bill was introduced. “This vital legislation will hold employers accountable and ensure workplace protections are put in place to prevent further heat stress illness and deaths from happening.”
The bill’s sponsors noted that 815 workers in the U.S. had been killed due to heat stress injuries between 1992 and 2017, and more than 70,000 workers had been seriously injured.
Pedro Lucas (left), nephew of farm worker Sebastian Francisco Perez who died last weekend while working in an extreme heat wave, break up earth on Thursday, July, 1, 2021 near St. Paul, Ore. (Nathan Howard/AP Photo)
From soaring temperatures to increased exposure to smoke from wildfires, climate change has made the conditions for migrant farmworkers, most of whom have come to the U.S. from Mexico and Central America, increasingly dangerous. As California braces for its third record-breaking heat wave of 2021, farmworkers are having to adapt to a new normal.
“Every single year, we keep hitting record after record in terms of temperatures,” Rangel said. “That’s only going to continue. So it’s important that we do something now before we see more deaths. Everyone deserves to be protected when they go to work.”
Death Valley to see another round of record-rivaling temps
Rina Torchinsky
High heat in Death Valley pushed the mercury up to 128 degrees Fahrenheit about three weeks ago, far above what’s normal there for this time of year. And another round of above-average heat was building in the region, which could send temperatures just as high over the weekend.
Death Valley, along with parts of Nye County and the Mojave Desert, is set to be under an excessive heat warning from 8 a.m. Wednesday through 8 p.m. PDT Monday, according to the National Weather Service (NWS). On Wednesday, the first day of that warning, the temperature soared to 126 degrees in Death Valley.
FILE – In this Aug. 17, 2020, file photo, Steve Krofchik cools off with a bottle of ice water on his head in Death Valley National Park, Calif. Climate-connected disasters seem everywhere in the crazy year 2020, but scientists Wednesday, Sept. 9, say it’ll get worse. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)
“This is exceptionally hot. It’s scary how hot it is,” Linda Utz of Titusville, Florida, marveled. “We planned this trip last October and made reservations,” she explained to Wadell. “While we knew it would be warm because it was summer, we never expected this type of heat.”
And as far as it goes for people who spend almost all of their time in Death Valley, “This is an extremely hot place for us to live and work, as well as it is for people to visit,” Abby Wines, Death Valley National Park spokesperson, said. “There is something to be said for climatizing, so a person who acclimatizes to a high altitude, their body can adjust somewhat to dealing with extreme heat.”
The stretch of weather extending through the end of the week could bring “dangerously hot conditions,” according to the NWS. The western Mojave Desert and Owens Valley could see temperatures as high as 110 degrees. The region could see record-rivaling or record-breaking temperatures.
Bishop, California, already saw a record-high temperature of 105 degrees Tuesday, tying a previous record set in 1945, according to a record report from the NWS.
Just last week, the Northwest battled a round of its own record-breaking temperatures. The historic heat wave stretched well into Canada as Lytton, British Columbia, broke a national record at 121 degrees, Canada’s government weather service reported. Within days of reaching that mark, the small town was devastated by wildfires, which consumed 90% of the village.
British Columbia’s chief coroner said that there were 486 reports of “sudden and unexpected” deaths in a five-day period during the heat wave, according to The Associated Press. The province usually sees about 165 deaths within that time interval.
The NWS cautioned that the warm conditions in the Southwest could increase the potential for heat-related illnesses, especially for those who are outside. The heat warning encourages people to drink plenty of fluids and to stick to air-conditioned spaces.
Climate Central
A number of cooling stations will be activated in Clark County, Nevada, from July 7 to 12, according to a tweet from the city of Las Vegas, which cautioned residents about the dangers of heat exhaustion and heatstroke.
In addition, high heat is notorious for causing a spike in visits to the hospital. According to data compiled by Climate Central, as extreme heat builds, the risk of heat-related illnesses also mounts. The Climate Central data shows a correlation between a rise in hospital visits for different parts of the country as temperatures rise, noting that “People in historically cooler regions may be less acclimatized to heat, and lack the infrastructure to cope with it.”
Opinion: If you want to fix climate change, you need to fix this flaw in conventional economic thought
Thinking along the margins does no good when what’s needed is wholesale change
By Tom Brookes and Gernot Wagner
A thermometer at the visitors’ center at Death Valley National Park in June. AFP Getty Images
BRUSSELS, Belgium (Project Syndicate)—Nowhere are the limitations of neoclassical economic thinking—the DNA of economics as it is currently taught and practiced—more apparent than in the face of the climate crisis. While there are fresh ideas and models emerging, the old orthodoxy remains deeply entrenched. Change cannot come fast enough.
The economics discipline has failed to understand the climate crisis—let alone provide effective policy solutions for it—because most economists tend to divide problems into small, manageable pieces. Rational people, they are wont to say, think at the margin. What matters is not the average or totality of one’s actions but rather the very next step, weighed against the immediate alternatives.
The most effective way to introduce new ideas into the peer-reviewed academic literature is to follow something akin to an 80/20-rule: stick to the established script for the most part; but try to push the envelope by probing one dubious assumption at a time.
Such thinking is indeed rational for small discrete problems. Compartmentalization is necessary for managing competing demands on one’s time and attention. But marginal thinking is inadequate for an all-consuming problem touching every aspect of society.
Economics’ power over public discourse
Economists also tend to equate rationality with precision. The discipline’s power over public discourse and policy-making lies in its implicit claim that those who cannot compute precise benefits and costs are somehow irrational. This allows economists—and their models—to ignore pervasive climate risks and uncertainties, including the possibility of climatic tipping points and societal responses to them.
A return to equilibrium—getting “back to normal”—is an all-too-human preference. But it is precisely the opposite of what is needed—rapidly phasing out fossil fuels—to stabilize the world’s climate.
And when one considers economists’ fixation with equilibrium models, the mismatch between the climate challenge and the discipline’s current tools becomes too glaring to ignore.
Yes, a return to equilibrium—getting “back to normal”—is an all-too-human preference. But it is precisely the opposite of what is needed—rapidly phasing out fossil fuels—to stabilize the world’s climate.
These limitations are reflected in benefit-cost analyses of cutting emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The traditional thinking suggests a go-slow path for cutting CO2. The logic seems compelling: the cost of damage caused by climate change, after all, is incurred in the future, while the costs of climate action occur today. The Nobel Prize-winning verdict is that we should delay necessary investment in a low-carbon economy to avoid hurting the current high-carbon economy.
To be clear, a lot of new thinking has gone into showing that even this conventional logic would call for significantly more climate action now, because the costs are often overestimated while the potential (even if uncertain) benefits are underestimated.
Marginalized ideas
The young researchers advancing this work must walk a near-impossible tightrope, because they cannot publish what they believe to be their best work (based on the most defensible assumptions) without invoking the outmoded neoclassical model to demonstrate the validity of new ideas.
The very structure of academic economics all but guarantees that marginal thinking continues to dominate. The most effective way to introduce new ideas into the peer-reviewed academic literature is to follow something akin to an 80/20-rule: stick to the established script for the most part; but try to push the envelope by probing one dubious assumption at a time.
Needless to say, this makes it extremely difficult to change the overall frame of reference, even when those who helped establish the standard view are looking well beyond it themselves.
Against the backdrop of this traditional view, recent pronouncements by the International Monetary Fund and the International Energy Agency are nothing short of revolutionary. Both institutions have now concluded that ambitious climate action leads to higher growth and more jobs even in the near term.
Consider the case of Kenneth J. Arrow, who shared a Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1972 for showing how marginal actions taken by self-interested individuals can improve societal welfare. That pioneering work cemented economists’ equilibrium thinking.
But Arrow lived for another 45 years, and he spent that time moving past his earlier work. In the 1980s, for example, he was instrumental in founding the Santa Fe Institute, which is dedicated to what has since become known as complexity science—an attempt to move beyond the equilibrium mind-set he had helped establish.
Because equilibrium thinking underpins the traditional climate-economic models that were developed in the 1990s, these models assume that there are trade-offs between climate action and economic growth. They imagine a world where the economy simply glides along a Panglossian path of progress. Climate policy might still be worthwhile, but only if we are willing to accept costs that will throw the economy off its chosen path.
Climate investments create jobs
Against the backdrop of this traditional view, recent pronouncements by the International Monetary Fund and the International Energy Agency are nothing short of revolutionary. Both institutions have now concluded that ambitious climate action leads to higher growth and more jobs even in the near term.
The logic is straightforward: climate policies create many more jobs in clean-energy sectors than are lost in fossil-fuel sectors, reminding us that investment is the flip side of cost. That is why the proposal for a $2 trillion infrastructure package in the United States could be expected to spur higher net economic activity and employment. Perhaps more surprising is the finding that carbon pricing alone appears to reduce emissions without hurting jobs or overall economic growth. The problem with carbon taxes or emissions trading is that real-world policies are not reducing emissions fast enough and therefore will need to be buttressed by regulation.
There is no excuse for continuing to adhere to an intellectual paradigm that has served us so badly for so long. The standard models have been used to reject policies that would have helped turn the tide many years ago, back when the climate crisis still could have been addressed with marginal changes to the existing economic system. Now, we no longer have the luxury of being able to settle for incremental change.
The good news is that rapid change is happening on the political front, owing not least to the shrinking cost of climate action. The bad news is that the framework of neoclassical economics is still blocking progress. The discipline is long overdue for its own tipping point toward new modes of thinking commensurate with the climate challenge.
Tom Brookes is executive director of strategic communications at the European Climate Foundation. Gernot Wagner is clinical associate professor of environmental studies at New York University.
California braces for dangerously high temperatures in new heatwave
Erin McCormick in San Francisco
Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
A new heatwave is predicted to bring dangerously hot weather to California’s inland regions this week, as relentlessly high temperatures continue to torment the west coast.
Meteorologists are warning residents to prepare for “potentially record-breaking” temperatures as high as 115F (46C) in the Central Valley and 120F (49C) in desert areas like Palm Springs, with temperatures in Death Valley set to approach an all-time high. The heat is predicted to start to build on Wednesday and increase through the weekend.
“Temperatures are going to be about 10 degrees above normal for this time of year,” said Diana Crofts-Pelayo a spokesperson for the California office of emergency services. “This will be a record-setting heatwave.”
The state is already facing extreme drought and fires spawned by the dry conditions. The fire situation could be intensified by gusty winds near the Oregon border and predicted lightning storms in the Sierra Nevada mountains, the forecasters said.
“The big story is the developing heat,” said Eric Schoening, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service (NWS). “This will be a long duration event, where it is not going to cool down much at night. So it is a dangerous time for the state.”
The warnings follow on the heels of last week’s record-setting heatwave in the normally-cool Pacific north-west, which left hundreds dead in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia from heat-related illness, and as North America emerges from the hottest June on record.
The fact that California’s heat is expected to continue at night raises the risks of heat illness, said Sierra Littlefield, an NWS meteorologist.
“When it’s hot in the day and warm at night, it really wears people down,” she said.
Littlefield said residents should prepare themselves to cope with the heat by drinking plenty of water, postponing outdoor work to the early mornings or evenings and making sure to get animals out of the sun. Residents should plan for a place to go, if it gets so hot they need air conditioning.
“People should know where they can find air conditioning – whether it’s with friends or at a cooling center,” she said.
Forecasters said that those in the biggest population centers of the state, such as Los Angeles and San Francisco, which lie along the coast, will benefit from ocean cooling and not face the extra high temperatures.
One danger state officials are still assessing is whether the heatwave could result in power shortages, said Crofts-Pelayo.
She advised residents in the inland areas to pre-cool their homes, if they have air conditioning, and lower their shades to keep the cool air in. She also asked residents statewide to conserve electricity by shutting off unnecessary appliances.
“What we don’t want is for there to be a shortage of energy that requires power shutdowns,” she said.
BC Heat Wave Caused Over 1 Billion Tidal Creatures to Cook to Death, Scientist Says
By Andrea Germanos, Common Dreams July 07, 2021
A mussel bed on Vancouver Island. Stephen Bentsen / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
It’s “a frightening warning sign,” said one observer.
“Heartbreaking,” another commented.
“Can we now mobilize en masse to save all Earthly beings?” asked another.
Those were some of the responses to new reporting by the CBC on how last week’s extreme heatwave that gripped British Columbia may have led to the deaths of more than one billion intertidal animals like mussels and starfish that inhabit the Salish Sea coastline.
Christopher Harley, a marine ecologist at the University of British Columbia, told the outlet about how he had noticed a foul odor from dead intertidal animals on rocks at Vancouver’s popular Kitsilano Beach as the city experienced record heat. Harley then set off with a team of researchers to gather data on nearby coastlines.
What the researchers noticed, CBC reported, were “endless rows of mussels with dead meat attached inside the shell, along with other dead creatures like sea stars and barnacles.”
They tracked temperatures too, recording 50°C (122°F) on rocky shoreline habitats, well above the high 30s (around 100°F) mussels can endure for short spurts. Harley likened a mussel on the rock enduring the scorching temperatures to “a toddler left in a car on a hot day”—stuck “at the mercy of the environment” until the tide returns. “And on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, during the heat wave, it just got so hot that the mussels, there was nothing they could do.”
The heat wave was deadly for humans too.
Lisa Lapointe, British Columbia’s chief coroner, announced Friday that from June 25 to July 1, the province’s death toll was 719—three times higher than normal—and said heat was likely “a significant contributing factor to the increased number of deaths.” The heat wave was also blamed for dozens of deaths in the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington.
The recent heat wave’s deadly impact on shellfish was noted in the U.S. Pacific Northwest as well.
The Daily Mail reported last week on comments from the family-run Hama Hama Oyster company in Washington. “The epic heatwave is something no one has seen and then we had a low tide that was as far as it has been in 15 years and it happened mid-day,” the company said.
The clams “look like they had just been cooked, like they were ready to eat,” the company told the outlet.
In a June 30 Instagram post sharing an image of heat-impact clams, the company had a clear message: “Please vote for politicians who are brave enough to address climate change.”
Australia mice plague: How farmers are fighting back
Australian farmers have been locked in a months-long battle with hordes of mice devouring their crops
There’s a debate in Australia about how to deal with a huge plague of mice across the east of the country. Poison? Regulator says no. Snakes? That could create another problem. So what then? Steve Evans of The Canberra Times goes in search of answers.
A friend of mine still remembers the last plague of mice.
They took over his house in Dubbo in northern New South Wales. They were everywhere, hundreds of them, coming under doors, running loudly in the loft, leaving a revolting stench, not least by dying in inaccessible cavities.
His answer was a brutal trap made of sticky paper. The mice would stick to it and he would drown them in a bucket. He still remembers the horror of the squealing.
In the current plague, all kinds of other ingenious methods have been devised.
Most hardware stores have run short of commercial mice traps, so people are improvising. One fills buckets with water and coats the rims with vegetable oil, placing a peanut butter lure in the water. Mice find the peanut butter irresistible and slip on the edge of the bucket to their doom.
Some farmers have set up water-filled tubs to catch the rodents en masse
People are sharing recommendations.
“Plaster of Paris in flour will kill a mouse eventually but I prefer to see where the mice die and being able to get rid of the carcass,” Sue Hodge, a cleaner in the tiny town of Canowindra, three hours’ drive north from Canberra, told me.
She prefers traps, though they aren’t infallible. She reckons that what she calls “light-footed mice” can still lick a trap clean and get away alive.
Some farmers around here have turned whole shipping containers into traps. The trick is to lure the mice in their hundreds in at one end and funnel them through to the bait and a drowning in a tank at the other end.
But that is arduous and inadequate for the numbers involved, so some favour industrial scale poison.
In response, the government of New South Wales has allocated A$50m (£27m; $37m) in grants for a chemical called bromadiolone which has been described as “napalm for mice”.
Poison is one method being used on fields but there are concerns it is doing more harm than good
The snag is that it poisons pretty well everything else, too and destroys an eco-system.
The stuff kills mice within 24 hours but it stays active for months, and goes into the food chain as predators eat poisoned prey. That has now led the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority to decline permits for its use in some places.
Other answers have been offered.
Dr Gavin Smith of the Australian National University says snakes, as natural predators of mice, would be a good antidote. He feels they should be allowed to do their natural work.
The snag with this holistic view is that they ARE doing it – there are reports that snakes are much fatter this year because of the abundance of mice. And the rodents are still multiplying.
Mice have bred like – well, I suppose you could say like rabbits – in Australia recently because of the end of the drought and the torrents of rain which have produced an abundance of crops. Thick crops mean good feeding for mice.
And for snakes.
But there’s another factor – a bit of blowback from agricultural progress.
Land is much more intensively used these days as farming methods have improved. Sowing machines are now so accurate that they can plant seed far more precisely – within a few millimeters, in between last year’s stalks – so the previous season’s old growth doesn’t even need to be cleared away.
This abundant growth is perfect for mice – and for snakes. Progress has a cost.
Why is there a mouse plague?
It started in the spring of 2020 during the harvest season
Ideal weather conditions for breeding and a bountiful harvest followed devastating bushfires and a years-long drought
Mice flourished with plenty of grain to feed on due to diminished populations of predators
Infestations reported at schools, hospitals, supermarkets and family homes
Farmers grapple with the costs of pest control and the destruction of their crops
Some farmers have also blamed damage to machinery on gnawing mice
Climate Change Is Making It Harder for Campers to Beat the Heat
John Schwartz
Jill Laidlaw, a director of Camp Cavell, in Lexington, Mich., on June 29, 2021. Laidlaw who has observed climatic changes at the camp since she started there in 1984. (Ali Lapetina/The New York Times)
Jill Laidlaw has worked for 37 years at Camp Cavell in Lexington, Michigan, a little spot of paradise on Lake Huron. But she has seen trouble in paradise: climate change.
Temperatures in Michigan have risen by 2 to 3 degrees, on average, in the past century, and Laidlaw said she had seen the effects of that warming in many ways, from hotter days and warmer nights to stronger rainstorms, harmful algae blooms in the region’s lakes and an explosion of ticks. And increasingly common bans on any kind of burning have even restricted one of the most beloved aspects of summer camp, she said: “We’ve had ‘flashlight campfires’ the last few summers.”
Climate change, which affects many aspects of children’s lives, is upending the camp experience, as well. After more than a year of pandemic isolation and disrupted schools and social lives, the 26 million children who typically attend day and sleep-away camps are ready to get back to summer fun. But the stewards of many of those camps say that the effects of climate change — not to mention the continuing coronavirus precautions that many camps are dealing with — are making it harder to provide the carefree experiences that past generations enjoyed.
Rising temperatures, wildfire smoke, shifting species ranges and more are introducing risks, and camps are struggling to adapt. And with deadly heat waves, like the one in the Pacific Northwest, dealing with extreme heat is becoming a necessity to keep campers safe.
Beating the heat has long been part of what makes camp camp, of course, and while the connection between any single weather event and climate change varies, the effects of global warming are being felt in many ways.
“The reality is yes, they are having more high-temperature days, and generally more heat waves, and other impacts, as well,” said Donald J. Wuebbles, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Illinois. “When we do get rainfall, it’s more likely to be a bigger rainfall, and when we get a drought, it’s more likely to be a bigger drought,” he said.
As a heat dome trapped citizens of the Pacific Northwest in record-breaking temperatures that caused a spike in heat-related deaths over the past week, the directors of Camp Killoqua in Stanwood, Washington, made a decision: delay the start of their day camp. The heat — made even less bearable by the state’s coronavirus requirement that campers wear masks — forced their hand.
“We realized it would be too miserable for our campers to be here,” said Cassie Anderson, a director of the camp. “We just didn’t want to put our kids at risk of getting sick.” The pause was brief, however; within a day, things had cooled off enough that Killoqua reopened.
At Camp Sealth on Vachon Island in Puget Sound near Seattle, summer camp director Carrie Lawson said that the effects of climate change were evident. “This year, our county went into burn ban before the end of June, the earliest I’ve ever experienced.”
The link between wildfires and climate change is strong: The warming planet is making areas like the American West hotter and drier, with longer wildfire seasons; last year was the worst season on record for fire activity in California, Washington and Oregon.
Dave Jarvis of the Rainbow Trail Lutheran Camp in Hillside, Colorado, said wildfires had forced him to evacuate his campers twice in the past five years — once, on drop-off day, as the parents were saying goodbye to their children. A nearby camp was able to accommodate his campers both times, but the 2011 fire kept everyone out of Rainbow Trail for five weeks.
And Lawson said that in two of the past three years, “our region has been blanketed in smoke from wildfires, making it unhealthy or even dangerous to be outdoors.”
When asked about how the burn bans and flashlight campfires affect camp traditions like making s’mores, Laidlaw replied with an email that simply contained a single image: a jar of Marshmallow Fluff.
It’s not just camp days that have changed; with climate change, nights don’t cool down as much. Valerie Wright, executive director of House in the Wood camp in southeast Wisconsin, said that fans at night used to be enough to cool cabins and campers. “About 10 years ago, we noticed this was no longer the case,” and they installed air-conditioning in the cabins, adding significantly to camp expenses, after a “particularly brutal summer.”
Unpredictable conditions have become part of life for Julie Kroll of Camp Caroline Furnace Lutheran Camp and Retreat Center in Fort Valley, Virginia. She has studied the probable effects of climate change on her facilities, and her best-case scenario involved taking expensive measures that included installing air-conditioning, increasing insulation and replacing windows to combat an increase in weather extremes including flooding, snowstorms, microburst storms and derechos. “We are already seeing all of the ‘best-case’ impacts now, and I expect all to continue to worsen,” she wrote in an email.
In an interview, she added that she had consulted camp records of backpacking and canoeing hikes and camp-outs going back decades, and found that climate change and encroaching urban sprawl were having an unsettling effect. Water sources “that used to be reliable in the ’90s that are no longer reliable, or no longer exist,” she said, and “the river levels are no longer consistent.”
The coasts are affected, too. Fox Island Environmental Education Center, a Virginia institution run by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation for more than 40 years, shut down in 2019 because soil erosion and sea-level rise destroyed so much of the island’s salt marsh that its owners declared it unsafe.
Recent surveys reveal that young people accept the science of climate change at far higher numbers than older generations, and so they take to the lessons. Today’s youngsters are conscious of heat and health, said Janice Kerber, director of the Everglades Youth Conservation Camp in Florida; they carry water bottles and use sunscreen. Kerber, who was raised in Florida, said sunscreen was rare when she was a girl.
She has been involved with the camp since 1996, and said, “There’s been a marked difference in how much hotter it’s been.” In the late 1990s, she said, a heat index of 105 was highly unlikely. Today, a “115 heat index is not unheard-of.”
Last year, the coronavirus pandemic drove camp enrollment down to 19.5 million from 26 million, said Kyle Winkel of the American Camp Association. As this year’s season begins, camp directors and counselors will employ a variety of techniques honed over the years to deal with spiking temperatures.
At Camp Longhorn, outside of Burnet, Texas, Bill Robertson, general manager of the camp, quoted the late Tex Robertson, the founder and his father.
“It’s not hot — it’s summertime!” he said with a knowing smile.
Camp Longhorn has always dealt with high temperatures, since, despite the proximity of the cooling breezes from Inks Lake, the thermometer can rise well past 100 degrees. A warming planet simply means closer attention to the things they have been doing all along, he said, citing procedures and traditions laid down by his father’s generation.
Longhorn staff members keep campers out of the sun from 1 until 4 in the afternoon. And Robertson says he watches for signs that it’s too hot for rigorous outdoor play, like “when the kids aren’t smiling and they’re not running to their activities.”
Water is everywhere. Sprinklers spray the grass, and the campers, and plenty of activities take place in the lake. Even in the age before ubiquitous water bottles, the camp built a multi-spigot water fountain that delivered a refreshing but hard-to-control blast known as “Old Face-full.”
Many camps turn their climate woes into a learning opportunity — part of their mission of connecting children with the natural world. “We’ve been trying to educate children and adults about nature and our environment since we started since the 1950s,” said Kroll. Laidlaw also said they taught campers about climate change, and added that she tires of the politicized arguments over the science of a warming planet.
To those who would argue against the evidence, she has a suggestion: “Get out in nature and see the changes.”
A 70-Year-Old Man Had 3 Tickborne Diseases at Once—Here’s How That Happens
Korin Miller
Photo credit: Nataba – Getty Images
The idea of having one tickborne illness is terrifying enough, but one man is recovering after being diagnosed with three at the same time.
The 70-year-old man’s health ordeal made it into BMJ Case Reports published in April, which detailed his diagnosis and recovery. According to the report, the man went to the ER with a fever, swelling in his ankle, and nausea. Doctors discovered that he had leg pain, too, and lab tests showed that he had anemia, low blood platelets, injury to his kidney, and elevated aminotransaminases, which usually suggests a person has liver issues.
The man mentioned he had small red bump on his ankle about a month before, and assumed he had been bitten by a bug. He was eventually diagnosed with Lyme disease, babesiosis, and anaplasmosis—three major diseases transmitted by ticks.
The man was treated with a combination of antibiotics, an anti-fungal, and an anti-parasitic medication, and he eventually recovered.
Being diagnosed with three separate diseases may seem like a lot after a tick bite—and it is—but doctors say these so-called co-infections happen more than people realize.
What is a co-infection?
A co-infection is when a person is infected with more than one illness at the same time, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). You can have a co-infection with just about any illness, from tickborne diseases to HIV and hepatitis.
While co-infections occur with tickborne illnesses—especially with Lyme disease and another infection—it’s pretty rare for someone to have three of these diseases at once, says William Schaffner, M.D., an infectious disease specialist and professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. “Three is Olympic gold medal-worthy,” he says.
How does someone get more than one tickborne illness at once?
The same tick could carry several diseases at once, explains infectious disease expert Amesh A. Adalja, M.D., senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. The black-legged tick, for example, can transmit Lyme disease, babesiosis, and anaplasmosis and “the same tick can infect the same person,” Dr. Adalja says.
Even though that’s possible, it’s still rare. “It’s relatively uncommon for a tick to have all three diseases,” says Thomas Russo, M.D., professor and chief of infectious disease at the University at Buffalo in New York. “It’s more common for a tick to have two out of three, and most common for a tick to have one.”
It’s also possible for you to be bitten by several ticks and not realize it. “Tick bites are often unnoticed,” Dr. Schaffner says. “A person can have more than one bite and get a co-infection that way.”
Do doctors usually check for tickborne co-infections?
“Most people who get tested for these things will also have routine blood work done,” Dr. Adalja says. Diseases like babesiosis and anaplasmosis will give abnormal results on these routine tests, like lower white blood cell counts and elevated markers for liver issues. However, doctors “don’t routinely test a patient for all three unless they have some reason to do so,” Dr. Adalja says, like if they practice in an area that has a high tick population.
How are tickborne co-infections treated?
It depends on which tickborne infections you have. Anaplasmosis and Lyme disease are treated the same, Dr. Adalja says, so, “it doesn’t make too much of a difference in whether both are caught.”
But treatment for babesiosis is different—it involves an anti-parasitic and anti-fungal medication that you wouldn’t use to treat anaplasmosis and Lyme disease. “It makes things more complicated and, because of that, it’s very important to make the diagnosis,” Dr. Schaffner says. If a patient has a co-infection and isn’t properly treated for babesiosis, they will continue to feel symptoms of the illness or even suffer complications.
If you’re diagnosed with a tickborne infection and you’re not getting better with treatment, Dr. Russo says that it’s important to speak up and keep pushing for answers. “Advocate for yourself,” he says. “If there is concern for one tickborne infection, there should be concern for all.”
Des Moines faces extreme measures to find clean water
Scott McFetridge
Beaten By Pollution 1 thru 8.
Des Moines Water Works employee Bill Blubaugh makes his way to collect a water sample from the Raccoon River, Thursday, June 3, 2021, in Des Moines, Iowa. Each day the utility analyzes samples from the Raccoon River and others from the nearby Des Moines River as it works to deliver drinking water to more than 500,000 people in Iowa’s capital city and its suburbs. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall).
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — In the dim light just after dawn, Bill Blubaugh parks his Des Moines Water Works pickup truck, grabs a dipper and a couple plastic bottles and walks down a boat ramp to the Raccoon River, where he scoops up samples from a waterway that cuts through some of the nation’s most intensely farmed land.
Each day the utility analyzes what’s in those samples and others from the nearby Des Moines River as it works to deliver drinking water to more than 500,000 people in Iowa’s capital city and its suburbs.
“Some mornings walking down, it smells like ammonia,” he said. “It’s concerning. I’m down here every morning and care about the water.”
Water Works for years has tried to force or cajole farmers upstream to reduce the runoff of fertilizer that leaves the rivers with sky-high nitrate levels but lawsuits and legislative lobbying have failed. Now, it’s considering a drastic measure that, as a rule, large cities just don’t do — drilling wells to find clean water.
Small communities and individuals use wells, but large U.S. metro areas have always relied primarily on rivers and lakes for the large volumes of water needed. Surface sources provide about 70% of fresh water in the U.S., as a reliance on wells for big populations would otherwise quickly deplete aquifers.
However, the utility in Des Moines is planning to spend up to $30 million to drill wells to mix in pure water when the rivers have especially high nitrate levels from farm runoff, most likely in the summer.
After spending $18 million over the last two decades on a system to treat the tainted river water, it’s frustrating to pay out millions more for something other cities wouldn’t imagine, say utility officials.
“I look at it in disbelief,” said Ted Corrigan, the CEO and general manager of Water Works.
Des Moines has become an extreme example of the conflict over clean water between agriculture and cities in farm states with minimal regulation.
Iowa is a national leader in producing corn, soybeans, eggs and pork, and all that agricultural bounty results in enormous amounts of chemical fertilizer and animal waste pouring into waterways. The state’s 23 million pigs produce waste that would be the equivalent of 83 million people — more than 25 times the state’s human population, according to University of Iowa research engineer Chris Jones.
Most of that manure is spread over Iowa’s 26 million acres of cropland, along with chemical fertilizers.
The natural and chemical fertilizers have helped Iowa increase its corn and soybean production by roughly 50 percent over the past 30 years, but much of it ends up in Iowa’s waterways, especially in areas of north-central Iowa that drain into the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers. That’s because the area’s farmland is relatively flat and relies on drainage systems called tiles that don’t allow excess fertilizer to filter through the soil but instead quickly pour it into streams, leading to high levels of nitrate and phosphorus.
Although there is plenty of agreement on ways to filter out chemicals, such as by leaving buffer zones and planting cover crops like rye when the ground would otherwise be bare, the state’s farm lobby has opposed mandatory rules and Iowa legislators have favored a voluntary approach that so far hasn’t made a dent in the problem.
Water Works and other groups have filed lawsuits demanding more rigorous action, but judges have decided to leave the issue to the Legislature.
Lately, utility officials have become concerned by increased algae blooms, caused by a combination of fertilizer runoff, high temperatures and slow-moving water. Rivers tainted by the algae can’t be used as drinking water. Nitrates can cause so-called blue baby syndrome in which infants lose the ability to properly process oxygen into the bloodstream, giving their skin a bluish tint.
“The question was … ‘what’s next with these challenging surface waters we’re dealing with?” asked Corrigan. “Are we just going to have a rolling series of multimillion-dollar processes that make our treatment process more complex and more expensive?”
Water Works is now paying the U.S. Geological Service $770,000 to evaluate spots to drill wells just north of the city.
Brian LeMon, vice president of Minneapolis-based Barr Engineering Company, said he didn’t know of another large city with such high levels of nitrate. The much larger Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area to the north has no similar problem with the water it takes from the Mississippi River, in part because of less intensive farming and animal production upriver, required buffer strips and the river’s larger volume.
“Nitrate removal is not cheap,” said LeMon, whose company is a consultant for Des Moines Water Works’ planning process.
Mike Naig, Iowa’s secretary of agriculture, acknowledges the runoff problem but supports the state’s voluntary Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy, which uses limited state and federal funding to pay for water quality projects on farmland. Workers are now installing buffers and implementing other efforts in Polk County, where Des Moines is located, but even advocates acknowledge that making a significant difference would require filtering runoff at thousands of locations, potentially costing billions of dollars.
Dave Walton, who grows soybeans and corn in eastern Iowa, said farmers should do their part to reduce nitrates but that each farm is different and regulations wouldn’t be uniformly effective. He said preventing runoff is costly and would require public-private partnerships that likely would take decades.
“If a farm operation is going to be sustainable, they have to create profit year after year,” Walton said. “To ask a farmer to invest in something that doesn’t add to the bottom line in a period of time when they were not making a profit anyway, it’s just a moot point.”
Timothy LaPara, an engineering professor at the University of Minnesota, said nearly every city faces some complication in ensuring safe drinking water, but Des Moines’ problem requires an unusual solution.
“Nitrate doesn’t usually get to the levels you see in the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers,” he said. “Central Iowa has some of the worst water quality you’ll find.”
