It’s not summer yet, but climate change is already showing its teeth in 2022
David Knowles, Senior Editor – June 17, 2022
The evidence of how climate change is already affecting our world seems to grow more pronounced with every passing day.
At least 2,000 cows at a Kansas feedlot were killed this week by excessively high temperatures, as the latest record-breaking spring heat wave pushed east across the country.
“This was a true weather event — it was isolated to a specific region in southwestern Kansas,” A.J. Tarpoff, a cattle veterinarian with Kansas State University, told the Associated Press. “Yes, temperatures rose, but the more important reason why it was injurious was that we had a huge spike in humidity … and at the same time, wind speeds actually dropped substantially, which is rare for western Kansas.”
On Wednesday, the National Weather Service advised more than one-third of the U.S. population to remain indoors to protect themselves against that same potentially deadly combination of heat and humidity. Scientists have termed that lethal mix the “wet-bulb” effect. When the body gets hot, it sweats, and the evaporation of that sweat helps cool the body. But when the humidity in the atmosphere is too high, that evaporation isn’t possible, and the sweat doesn’t help cool the body down.
“We need a differential between the human body and the environment, and if the air is already holding as much moisture as it can, you don’t have that gradient,” Radley Horton, Lamont Research Professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, told Vice News. “Your body’s not able to get the atmosphere to take that moisture from it.”
While climate scientists had previously predicted that such high temperatures and humidity would not arrive on Earth until the mid-21st century, recent studies have found that “extreme humid heat overall has more than doubled in frequency since 1979.”
Logs pile up on a washed-out bridge near Rescue Creek in Yellowstone National Park on June 13. (National Park Service via Getty Images)
The rain unleashed on Montana was part of a so-called atmospheric river that broke records in Washington state shortly before it pushed east. Studies have linked an increase in those records to rising air and water temperatures caused by climate change.
Meanwhile, the extreme drought that has gripped the American West continues apace. The last 20 years have been the driest two decades in the past 1,200 years. As a result, rivers, lakes and reservoirs are drying up at alarming speed.
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee held a hearing this week on the dwindling water supply in the Colorado River and its reservoirs, including Lake Mead and Lake Powell. In all, 40 million people across the West rely on the Colorado for water.
The arid desert Southwest near Moab, Utah, viewed from 33,000 feet on May 19. (George Rose/Getty Images)
“What has been a slow-motion train wreck for 20 years is accelerating, and the moment of reckoning is near,” John Entsminger, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, testified at the hearing. “We are 150 feet from 25 million Americans losing access to the Colorado River, and the rate of decline is accelerating.”
Water-rationing restrictions have been put in place in California and are likely to be extended there and in other states in the coming months.
The science is crystal clear about why these weather-related disasters continue to pile up: Human beings are pumping greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which traps the sun’s radiation, warming temperatures.
For years now, the Scripps Institute of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, has measured that buildup at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, charting the steady rise on a graph known as the Keeling Curve.
Ultimately, researchers say, until mankind reduces the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the consequences being witnessed this spring will persist. Just as certainly, they will worsen along with the rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Yet there is still much that we don’t know about how climate change will play out in the coming decades. A study published in April in the Cornell University astrophysics journal arXiv concluded that mankind is ushering in an unprecedented shift in the Earth’s climate system. Those changes, contrary to the claim of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., earlier this week, are not likely to prove “healthy for us.”
“The implications of climate change are well known (droughts, heat waves, extreme phenomena, etc),” researcher Orfeu Bertolami told Live Science in an email. “If the Earth System gets into the region of chaotic behavior, we will lose all hope of somehow fixing the problem.”
EPA finds no safe level for two toxic ‘forever chemicals,’ found in many U.S. water systems
Kyle Bagenstose, USA TODAY – June 17, 2022
The Environmental Protection Agency stunned scientists and local officials across the country on Wednesday by releasing new health advisories for toxic “forever chemicals” known to be in thousands of U.S. drinking water systems, impacting potentially millions of people.
The new advisories cut the safe level of chemical PFOA by more than 17,000 times what the agency had previously said was protective of public health, to now just four “parts per quadrillion.” The safe level of a sister chemical, PFOS, was reduced by a factor of 3,500. The chemicals are part of a class of chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), also known as forever chemicals due to their extreme resistance to disintegration. They have been linked to different types of cancer, low birthweights, thyroid disease and other health ailments.
In effect, the agency now says, any detectable amounts of PFOA and PFOS are unsafe to consume.
The announcement has massive implications for water utilities, towns, and Americans across the country.
The Environmental Working Group, a national environmental nonprofit, has tracked the presence of PFOA, PFOS, and other PFAS chemicals in drinking water. Because the chemicals are not yet officially regulated, water systems are not required to test for them. But their use for decades in a range of products such as Teflon and other nonstick cookware, clothing, food packaging, furniture, and numerous industrial processes, means they are widespread in both the environment and drinking water.
Scott Faber, senior vice president with the group, said this week that at least 1,943 public water supplies across the country have been found to contain some amount of PFOS and PFOA. And there are likely many more that contain the chemicals but haven’t tested, Faber said, potentially placing many millions of Americans in harm’s way.
“This will set off alarm bells for consumers, for regulators, and for manufacturers, who thought the previous (advisories) were safe,” Faber said. “I can’t find the words to explain what kind of a moment this is. … The number of people drinking what are, according to these new numbers, unsafe levels of PFAS, is going to grow astronomically.”
Hundreds of barrels of dirt sample collected from a former Wolverine World Wide tannery site in Rockford, March 1, 2019.
Previous research has found Americans have already faced widespread exposure to the chemicals for decades.
More than 96% of Americans have at least one PFAS in their blood, studies show. Dangers are most studied for PFOA and PFOS, which were used heavily in consumer goods before a voluntary agreement between the EPA and industry phased them out of domestic production in the 2000s. Since then, the amount of PFOA and PFOS in the blood of everyday Americans has fallen, but scientists are now concerned about a newer generation of “replacement” chemicals that some studies show are also toxic.
Indeed, EPA on Wednesday released two additional, first-time health advisories for PFAS chemicals GenX, which has contaminated communities along the Cape Fear River in North Carolina, as well as PFBS.
For years, scientists have grown increasingly concerned about how the entire class of chemicals, which number in the thousands, may be impacting public health in the United States. In highly contaminated communities like Parkersburg, West Virginia, studies have linked PFOA to kidney and testicular cancers, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, and other serious ailments.
But other studies have found a range of PFAS may be toxic even at the extremely low levels found in the general population, potentially impacting the immune system, birth weights, cholesterol levels, and even cancer risk.
Philippe Grandjean, a PFAS researcher at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who has called for extremely protective limits on PFAS, said the chemicals don’t have acute toxicity. Consumers shouldn’t expect to fall instantly ill from consuming amounts common in drinking water.
Instead, PFAS work in the background, with risks building up over a lifetime of consumption. His work shows PFAS can decrease the immune response in children. They may come down with more infections than they would otherwise. Vaccinations aren’t as successful, an effect that may even extend to COVID-19 vaccination, a question research is now exploring.
No single individual is likely to know when PFAS caused their illness. But public health officials can detect its presence when studying overall rates, Grandjean said.
“If increased exposures have been in a community, then there will be an increased occurrence of these adverse effects,” Grandjean said.
Equipment used to test for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known collectively as PFAS, in drinking water is seen at Trident Laboratories in Holland, Michigan. As part of its attempt to clean up the chemical, the military is spending millions on research to better detect, understand and filter the chemicals.
Even with deep experience studying PFAS, a primary reaction among Grandjean and other experts to the EPA’s Wednesday announcement was surprise. The agency has grappled with how to handle PFAS for decades and has often been criticized for a perceived lack of action. The thorniest problem is the sheer scope of PFAS: regulating the substances, particularly at very low levels, has nationwide implications for water utilities, industry, and the public.
But the EPA under the Biden administration, Faber said, is signaling they are serious about moving in that direction.
“This administration has pledged to do more, and has accomplished more, than any other,” Faber said.
In releasing the new health advisories, EPA said they fit into a larger picture under the agency’s “Strategic Roadmap.” That includes an intention to propose a formal drinking water regulation for PFOS, PFOA, and potentially other chemicals this fall. The agency also says it is taking a holistic approach to PFAS, with measures planned to clean up contamination hotspots, address PFAS in consumer products, and offer support to impacted communities.
In a press release, the agency says it is making available the first $1 billion of a total of $5 billion in grant funding from the bipartisan infrastructure law passed last year to assist communities contaminated with PFAS. Another $6.6 billion is potentially available through existing loan programs for water and sewer utilities.
“People on the front lines of PFAS contamination have suffered for far too long,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in the release. “That’s why EPA is taking aggressive action as part of a whole-of-government approach to prevent these chemicals from entering the environment and to help protect concerned families from this pervasive challenge.”
PFAS foam floats along Van Etten Creek after being dumped from a storm pipe of water treated at a granular activated carbon GAC plant from the former Wurtsmith Air Force Base in Oscoda on Wednesday, March 13, 2019.
But the EPA is already receiving pushback from various corners.
The American Chemistry Council, an industry group representing many of the companies that use PFAS, said it believes the agency’s new advisories are “fundamentally flawed.”
“ACC supports the development of drinking water standards for PFAS based on the best available science. However, today’s announcement … reflects a failure of the agency to follow its accepted practice for ensuring the scientific integrity of its process,” the council said in a release.
Meanwhile, utilities remain skeptical the agency will ultimately do enough to tackle industry and other sources of pollution.
In 2016, Tim Hagey, general manager of the Warminster Municipal Authority in southeast Pennsylvania, came face to face with a nightmare for anyone tasked with providing safe drinking water to the public.
PFOA and PFOS — invisible, odorless, and dangerous — had slipped into the town’s water supply after leaking from nearby military bases. The discovery set off a years-long struggle in Warminster and neighboring communities, which decided to go beyond the EPA’s prior advisory and filter out the chemicals entirely. Hagey said they saw the writing on the wall.
“The EPA told us over the years that the more they study the chemicals, the uglier they are,” Hagey said. “Our local leaders had the courage to say, ‘We’re going to filter to zero.’”
Tim Hagey, left, general manager of Warminster Municipal Authority, speaks with residents during a public information session about water quality in Warminster. The meeting followed the announcement that public and private wells in Warminster (and nearby Horsham) were contaminated by two chemicals used when the Navy was operating the Naval Air Warfare Center.
But the decision was costly, adding up to tens of millions of dollars and requiring significant surcharges on customer water bills.
Hagey said the EPA’s new advisories are a “pleasant surprise” when it comes to protecting public health. But he’s frustrated that the Department of Defense has not yet addressed the contaminated groundwater beneath his town, contributing to ongoing cost fears.
“The aquifer has not been cleaned up. There needs to be leadership on that,” Hagey said.
Emily Remmel, director of regulatory affairs for the National Association of Clean Water Agencies, which represents wastewater authorities, said water and sewer utilities across the country are facing similar dilemmas. In many ways, PFAS contamination is unprecedented. The chemicals are everywhere, and the EPA has now found they are dangerous at levels smaller than can even be detected.
“We can’t measure to these levels, we can’t treat to these levels,” Remmel said. “So how do you deal with this from a public health standpoint?”
Remmel said she’d also like to see EPA take more action to get rid of PFAS at the source. Often they come from everyday consumer products that people use and wash down the drain.
“Washing your clothes, washing your face, washing your dishes,” Remmel said.
The costs to remove and dispose of PFAS are astronomical. A filter on a single water well can cost $500,000. Remmel said while the new funding is helpful, it’s also just a “drop in the bucket” for what’s needed across the country.
Ultimately, costs will need to be passed onto water consumers, who have already seen rates rising steeply over the past decade as utilities have invested in other priorities such as replacing lead pipes and outdated sewer infrastructure. Remmel said she wants the EPA to do a better job engaging at the local level to assist with the public health and financial burdens PFAS create.
“This should not be on the backs of municipalities, of ratepayers,” Remmel said.
Kyle Bagenstose covers climate change, chemicals, water and other environmental topics for USA TODAY.
Heat stress blamed for thousands of cattle deaths in Kansas
June 16, 2022
Thousands of cattle in feedlots in southwestern Kansas have died of heat stress due to soaring temperatures, high humidity and little wind in recent days, industry officials said.
The final toll remains unclear, but as of Thursday at least 2,000 heat-related deaths had been reported to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, the state agency that assists in disposing of carcasses. Agency spokesman Matt Lara said he expects that number to rise as more feedlots report losses from this week’s heat wave.
The cattle deaths have sparked unsubstantiated reports on social media and elsewhere that something besides the weather is at play, but Kansas agriculture officials said there’s no indication of any other cause.
Cattle feed at a feed lot near Dodge City, Kansas, March 9, 2007. Thousands of cattle in feedlots in southwestern Kansas have died of heat stress amid soaring temperatures coupled with high humidity and little wind in recent days, industry officials said Thursday, June, 16, 2022.ORLIN WAGNER / AP
“This was a true weather event — it was isolated to a specific region in southwestern Kansas,” said A.J. Tarpoff, a cattle veterinarian with Kansas State University. “Yes, temperatures rose, but the more important reason why it was injurious was that we had a huge spike in humidity … and at the same time wind speeds actually dropped substantially, which is rare for western Kansas.”
Last week, temperatures were in the 70s and 80s, but on Saturday they spiked higher than 100 degrees, said Scarlett Hagins, spokeswoman for the Kansas Livestock Association.
“And it was that sudden change that didn’t allow the cattle to acclimate that caused the heat stress issues in them,” she said.https://2bfa6c9b6538fcc17b8fb63e5c030472.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
The deaths represent a huge economic loss because the animals, which typically weigh around 1,500 pounds, are worth around $2,000 per head, Hagins said. Federal disaster programs will help some producers who incurred a loss, she added.
And the worst may be over. Nighttime temperatures have been cooler and — as long as there is a breeze — the animals are able to recover, Tarpoff said.
Hagins said heat-related deaths in the industry are rare because ranchers take precautions such as providing extra drinking water, altering feeding schedules so animals are not digesting during the heat of the day, and using sprinkler systems to cool them down.
“Heat stress is always a concern this time of year for cattle and so they have mitigation protocols put in place to be prepared for this kind of thing,” she said.
Many cattle had still not shed their winter coats when the heatwave struck.
“This is a one in 10-year, 20-year type event. This is not a normal event,” said Brandon Depenbusch, operator of the Innovative Livestock Services feedlot in Great Bend, Kansas. “It is extremely abnormal, but it does happen.”
While his feedlot had “zero problems,” he noted that his part of the state did not have the same combination of high temperatures, high humidity, low winds and no cloud cover that hit southwestern Kansas.
Elsewhere, cattle ranchers haven’t been so hard hit.
The Nebraska Department of Agriculture and the Nebraska Cattlemen said they have received no reports of higher-than-normal cattle deaths in the state, despite a heat index of well over 100 degrees this week.
Oklahoma City National Stockyards President Kelli Payne said no cattle deaths have been reported since temperatures topped 90 degrees last Saturday, after rising from the mid 70s starting June 1.
“We have water and sprinklers here to help mitigate heat and the heat wave,” Payne said, but “we don’t have any control over that pesky Mother Nature.”
‘Moment of reckoning:’ Federal official warns of Colorado River water supply cuts
Ben Adler, Senior Editor – June 15, 2022
The Colorado River’s reservoirs have diminished to the point that significant cuts to the water supplied to the seven states that rely on it will be necessary next year, a federal official warned Tuesday.
Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee maintaining “critical levels” at the largest reservoirs in the United States — Lake Mead and Lake Powell — will require large reductions in water deliveries.
“A warmer, drier West is what we are seeing today,” she said at a hearing. “And the challenges we are seeing today are unlike anything we have seen in our history.”
The relatively arid desert Southwest is viewed at 33,000 feet on May 19 near Moab, Utah. The Colorado River, flowing from Colorado’s Rocky Mountain through Utah, Arizona, Nevada and California is dependent on winter snowfall in the Rockies. (George Rose/Getty Images)
Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona, California, and Nevada all receive water from the Colorado River and next year will see a decrease of between 2 million and 4 million acre-feet of water due to the ongoing drought that has gripped most of the Western U.S. (An acre-foot is the amount of water needed to cover one acre of land in one-foot-deep water.) Current allotments of water from the Colorado range from 300,000 acre-feet for Nevada to 4.4 million acre-feet for California.
“What has been a slow-motion train wreck for 20 years is accelerating, and the moment of reckoning is near,” John Entsminger, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, told the Senate hearing. “We are 150 feet from 25 million Americans losing access to the Colorado River, and the rate of decline is accelerating.”
The West has been suffering through an acute drought since 2020, part of a megadrought that began in 2000. The last 20 years have been the driest two decades in the last 1,200 years. This year is so far the driest on record in California. Scientists attribute these conditions to climate change, which causes more water evaporation due to warmer temperatures.
“As a climate scientist, I’ve watched how climate change is making drought conditions increasingly worse — particularly in the western and central U.S.,” wrote Imtiaz Rangwala, research scientist in climate at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, in May. “The last two years have been more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 Celsius) warmer than normal in these regions. Large swaths of the Southwest have been even hotter, with temperatures more than 3 F (1.7 C) higher.”
A thick white ring shows the dramatic decline of water levels at Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir, which has reached its lowest water levels on record since it was created by damming the Colorado River in the 1930s, as growing demand for water and climate change shrink the Colorado River and endanger a water source millions of Americans depend on, near Boulder City, Nevada, April 16. (Caitlin Ochs/Reuters)
Western states have already been undertaking emergency measures to deal with the water scarcity. Seven months ago, California, Arizona and Nevada signed an agreement to take less water from Lake Mead, and six weeks ago the Department of Interior announced it is withholding some water from Lake Powell. Otherwise, DOI feared, the reservoir could drop so low that Glen Canyon Dam would not be able to generate electricity.
Last year, for the first time ever, the federal government declared a shortage on the river, which led to reductions in water deliveries to Arizona and Nevada. Some farmers in Arizona have had to leave some fields unplanted as a result.
Local governments and water utilities have been imposing restrictions on water usage. On June 1, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California instituted limits on outdoor watering; typically it will be restricted to one or two days per week. But the water shortage persists.
“Despite those efforts and a previous deal among the states to share in the shortages, the two reservoirs stand at or near record-low levels,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “Lake Mead near Las Vegas has dropped to 28% of its full capacity, while Lake Powell on the Utah-Arizona border is now just 27% full.”
A formerly sunken boat rests on a now-dry section of lakebed at the drought-stricken Lake Mead on May 10, 2022 in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Nevada. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Touton told the Senate committee that her agency is negotiating with the seven states that depend on the Colorado River to develop a plan for apportioning the water supply reductions in the next two months. In all, nearly 40 million people rely on water from the river.
Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., attributed the gathering crisis to a lack of coordinated action to mitigate climate change.
“It’s frankly a direct result of the lack of action on climate that we have seen for more than 20 years,” Heinrich said.
The Western and Southwestern states are particularly parched — nearly three-quarters of the Western region is in a state of severe to exceptional drought.
“There are a lot of downstream effects when it comes to a drought like this,” Andrew Hoell, a co-lead on the NOAA Drought Task Force, told Yahoo Finance.
Hoell explained that drought isn’t just a matter of precipitation but can be exacerbated by the evaporative effects of higher temperatures and inadequate snowpack runoff in the winter.
“By the time it’s summertime,” he said, “that vegetation is really dry. And if you get a spark, and you get a series of unfortunate events in that regard, you then have wildfires. So when it comes to drought in the West, there are just a variety and a spectrum of effects that you can feel later on whether it’s water resources and fires and reduced agricultural yields. The effects are numerous.”
NOAA
Depleted water reservoirs and wildfire damage are already taking a toll on residents and businesses. The Hermits Peak Fire, which continues to blaze in New Mexico, has already scorched around 315,830 acres.
Meanwhile, states like California have instituted severe water restrictions, though water consumption has continued to rise. On an even grimmer note, low water levels at Lake Mead have threatened hydropower plants and exposed bodies once submerged in the reservoirs.
While conditions may ease slightly as the region enters its summer monsoon season, the outlook remains dry as the region navigates a historic, multi-decade megadrought.
A number of states including California, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, and tribal nations like the Navajo Nation have all declared drought states of emergency and allocated resources for managing the water crisis.
Nick Messing pull a kayaks down to the waters edge at Wahweap Marina at Lake Powell on April 6, 2022 in Page, Arizona when water levels at Lake Powell were at a historic low. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images)
Population growth
Since 2000, droughts have cost the U.S. around $160.8 billion, according to the NOAA. That figure jumps to $272 billion when accounting for destructive wildfires that are more prone in arid conditions.
With water already becoming more scarce, the increasing population in the West — and therefore demand for water — has inflamed the situation.
An Economic Innovation Group report using county-level population data found that the trend of people moving to water-starved states has only accelerated during the pandemic.
Inland California, the Mountain West, and eastern Texas saw the greatest growth, and overall, 10 of the top 15 counties for population growth were in the Western U.S: Maricopa County, Arizona (Phoenix), was ranked first, followed by Collin County, Texas, and Riverside County, California.
A graph showing the projected rise in population in drought-prone areas. (EIG)
“The map of these demographic shifts shows some familiar pre-pandemic trends and some new patterns,” the author stated. “Overall, the Sunbelt and the Mountain West continued to outshine the rest of the country. Remote rural counties in eastern Oregon and northern Idaho experienced robust population growth while every single county in Nevada gained population.”
Another EIG study found that an additional 20 million residents could move to drought-stricken counties by 2040. Water managers are already balancing razor-thin water budgets at current population levels.
“With reservoirs at record low levels throughout the West and the effects of sustained drought conditions increasingly being felt from agriculture to development, one of the most far-reaching questions in the United States over the coming decades is whether growth trends will ultimately collide with nature’s ability to sustain such a large influx of people,” Daniel Newman, the report’s author, wrote.
Fire and water
Doling out water supplies isn’t the only issue residents have to contend with.
Suburban neighborhoods sprawling out into more rural areas are creating a more substantial wild-urban interface at the same time as the wildfire season creeps earlier and longer.
In the last month, two Colorado Springs neighborhoods were evacuated due to fires, as were the owners of coastal California mansions caught in a blaze. For those unfortunate enough to sustain damage from fires, it can leave lasting financial scars in addition to physical and emotional ones.
The damage to a neighborhood is shown after a wind-driven wildfire burned through a canyon and into their neighborhood in Laguna Niguel, California, June 1, 2022. REUTERS/Mike Blake
“Most people in the Western United States are very underinsured because they base the amount of insurance coverage on the average cost to rebuild” despite higher property costs in some regions like Lake Tahoe, California, Christina Restaino of the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension said in a webinar.
According to Restaino, the current water crisis “underscores the need to prepare communities for wildfire, because when these large emergency incidents occur what we end up having to do is use a ton of water in an already water-scarce environment to suppress wildfires.”
There are some steps residents in high-risk areas can take to protect themselves, however.
“The No. 1 thing that people can do is to create a 5-foot ember-resistant zone around their house, so you don’t want to have anything combustible within five feet around your house,” she said. “Second-easiest thing, I would say, is to screen all of your vents.”
Of equal importance, “be prepared to evacuate,” Restaino stressed. “If you have medications that you take or important things you cannot leave home without, make sure you have backups of all those in an evacuation go-bag.”
A sign indicating extreme fire danger is pictured at Storrie Lake State Park as the Hermits Peak and Calf Canyon wildfires burn near Las Vegas, New Mexico, May 2, 2022. REUTERS/Kevin Mohatt
While the current period of intense drought may ease in months or years as it has in previous years, rising temperatures due to climate change mean that many will have to get used to living with these risks.
“If I had to guess — and if there is a silver lining here — if we’re to look at the next 10 years, will they necessarily be as bad as the last 10 years in terms of precipitation?” Hoell said. “I would say probably not.”
He added that the primary problem “is the climate has not shown any indication of warming temperatures slowing down. That right there is a problem in and of itself because it changes the amount of snow that you get during the wintertime, changes the amount of snow that then makes its way into reservoirs, thereby replenishing them. So we have these different factors that kind of commingled to bring together this hydrologic situation that is not ideal for us right now.”
Yellowstone floods wipe out roads, bridges, strand visitors
Amy Beth Hanson – June 13, 2022
HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Massive floodwaters ravaged Yellowstone National Park and nearby communities Monday, washing out roads and bridges, cutting off electricity and forcing visitors to evacuate parts of the iconic park at the height of summer tourist season.
All entrances to Yellowstone were closed due to the deluge, caused by heavy rains and melting snowpack, while park officials ushered tourists out of the most affected areas. There were no immediate reports of injuries.
Some of the worst damage happened in the northern part of the park and Yellowstone’s gateway communities in southern Montana. National Park Service photos of northern Yellowstone showed a landslide, a bridge washed out over a creek, and roads badly undercut by churning floodwaters of the Gardner and Lamar rivers.
There were no immediate reports of injuries, though dozens of stranded campers had to be rescued by raft in south-central Montana.
The flooding cut off road access to Gardiner, Montana, a town of about 900 people near the confluence of the Yellowstone and Gardner rivers, just outside Yellowstone’s busy North Entrance.
At a cabin in Gardiner, Parker Manning of Terra Haute, Indiana, got an up-close view of the water rising and the river bank sloughing off in the raging Yellowstone River floodwaters just outside his door.
“We started seeing entire trees floating down the river, debris,” Manning told The Associated Press. “Saw one crazy single kayaker coming down through, which was kind of insane.”
The Yellowstone River at Corwin Springs crested at 13.88 feet (4.2 meters) Monday, higher than the previous record of 11.5 feet (3.5 meters) set in 1918, according the the National Weather Service.
Floodwaters inundated a street in Red Lodge, a Montana town of 2,100 that’s a popular jumping-off point for a scenic, winding route into the Yellowstone high country. Twenty-five miles (40 kilometers) to the northeast, in Joliet, Kristan Apodaca wiped away tears as she stood across the street from a washed-out bridge, The Billings Gazette reported.
The log cabin that belonged to her grandmother, who died in March, flooded, as did the park where Apodaca’s husband proposed.
“I am sixth-generation. This is our home,” she said. “That bridge I literally drove yesterday. My mom drove it at 3 a.m. before it was washed out.”
Yellowstone officials were evacuating the northern part of the park, where roads may remain impassable for a substantial length of time, park Superintendent Cam Sholly said in a statement.
But the flooding affected the rest of the park, too, with park officials warning of yet higher flooding and potential problems with water supplies and wastewater systems at developed areas.
“We will not know timing of the park’s reopening until flood waters subside and we’re able to assess the damage throughout the park,” Sholly said in the statement.
The park’s gates will be closed at least through Wednesday, officials said. It is unclear how many visitors have been forced to leave the park.
The rains hit right as summer tourist season was ramping up. June, at the onset of an annual wave of over 3 million visitors that doesn’t abate until fall, is one of Yellowstone’s busiest months.
Remnants of winter — in the form of snow still melting off and rushing off the mountains — made for an especially bad time to get heavy rain.
Yellowstone got 2.5 inches (6 centimeters) of rain Saturday, Sunday and into Monday. The Beartooth Mountains northeast of Yellowstone got as much as 4 inches (10 centimeters), according to the National Weather Service.
“It’s a lot of rain, but the flooding wouldn’t have been anything like this if we didn’t have so much snow,” said Cory Mottice, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Billings, Montana. “This is flooding that we’ve just never seen in our lifetimes before.”
The rain will likely abate while cooler temperatures lessen snowmelt in coming days, Mottice said.
In south-central Montana, flooding on the Stillwater River stranded 68 people at a campground. Stillwater County Emergency Services agencies and crews with the Stillwater Mine rescued people Monday from the Woodbine Campground by raft. Some roads in the area are closed due to flooding and residents have been evacuated.
“We will be assessing the loss of homes and structures when the waters recede,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement.
The flooding happened while other parts of the U.S. burned in hot and dry weather. More than 100 million Americans were being warned to stay indoors as a heat wave settles over states stretching through parts of the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes and east to the Carolinas.
Scientists say climate change is responsible for more intense and more frequent extreme events such as storms, droughts, floods and wildfires, though single weather events usually cannot be directly linked to climate change without extensive study.
Associated Press writers Thomas Peipert in Denver and Mead Gruver in Fort Collins, Colorado, contributed to this report.
Off-grid living beckons more than just hardy pioneer types. Here’s why it’s taking off.
Katherine Roth – June 12, 2022
The Solterre Concept House in Nova Scotia, an off-grid home featured in the book “Downsize, Living Large In a Small House” by Sheri Koones.
Living off-grid conjures images of survivalists in remote places and a rustic, “Little House on the Prairie” lifestyle with chores from morning to night.
Yet only a tiny fraction of people living off-grid do it like that, and fewer still live more than an hour from any town.
“Living off-grid doesn’t mean you don’t buy your groceries at a store or take your waste to the local dump,” says Gary Collins, who has lived off-grid, or mostly off-grid, for a decade. “It just means you are not connected to utility grids.”
He has published books on the subject, and leads online classes.
Although precise numbers of off-grid households are hard to come by, Collins estimates that only 1% of those living off-grid are in truly remote areas. Overall, the off-grid movement remains small. But it got a boost after the COVID-19 pandemic hit: City dwellers began to explore different ways of living.
Off-grid living unique to each person
More-frequent power outages, utility grids’ struggles and price hikes to handle the severe weather events brought on by climate change have added to interest.
The view from an off-grid guest house in Hollister Ranch, Calif., one of the last remaining undeveloped coastal areas in California, located on a wildlife preserve. The Anacapa Architecture firm, in Santa Barbara, California, and Portland, Oregon, has designed several upscale off-grid homes in recent years, and has several more off-grid projects in the works.
There are also those who remain connected to the grid but try to power their homes independent of it. Author Sheri Koones, whose books about sustainable houses include “Prefabulous and Almost Off the Grid,” cites the rise in “net metering,” when your property’s renewable energy source – usually solar – is producing more energy than you use, and your local utility pays you for the excess.
Today, off-grid living encompasses everything from “dry camping” in RVs (with no electrical or water hookups) to swank Santa Barbara estates, from modest dwellings tucked just outside of towns to – yes – remote rustic cabins.
Mount Jefferson looms over off-grid homes at the Three Rivers Recreational Area in Lake Billy Chinook, Ore., on April 26, 2007. Everyone in this community lives “off the grid”, part of a growing number of homeowners now drawing all their power from solar, wind, propane and other sources.
“Everyone does it differently and everyone does it their own way, because it’s their own adventure,” Collins says.
Elegant designs for a modern feel
The Anacapa Architecture firm, in Santa Barbara, California, and Portland, Oregon, has built several upscale off-grid homes in recent years, and has several more off-grid projects in the works.
“There’s definitely an increase in traction for this kind of lifestyle, especially in the last two years,” says Jon Bang, marketing and PR coordinator for Anacapa Architecture. “There’s a desire to get more in tune with nature.”
The lifestyle that Anacapa homes aim for is one of modernist elegance, not roughing it. Bang says new technologies can ensure comfortable self-sufficiency.
Another image of an off-grid guest house in Hollister Ranch, Calif., designed by The Anacapa Architecture firm. A high level of sensitivity to environmental impacts was exercised throughout all phases of design and construction, the firm says.
Such homes also are carefully designed to take advantage of the site’s landscape features with an eye to sustainability. For example, one of the firm’s homes is built into a hillside and has a green roof.
For those without the means to hire architects, there are numerous recent books, blogs, YouTube videos and more dedicated to the subject.
“A lot of people are interested in it now,” Collins says. “They contact me after watching something on TV or on YouTube and I tell them, `If you learned everything you know on YouTube, you are never going to survive.'”
He makes regular grocery runs, but also grows some of his own food and hunts wild game. He has his own septic system and well. While his previous home was entirely off-grid, with solar panels and a wind turbine for power, his current home is hooked up to an electrical grid, mainly, he says, because the bills are too low to warrant the cost of solar panels.
The off-grid guest house in Hollister Ranch, Calif., designed by the Anacapa Architecture firm, has nearly 360-degree views of the Pacific Ocean.
What health and safety considerations factor into the off-grid lifestyle?
If you want to be totally self-sufficient, he says, it takes a lot of time and physical effort. You won’t have time to hold down a job. If you’re living in a remote location, you need to consider access to medical care, and whether you are mentally prepared for that much isolation.
“Your wood won’t cut itself. You’ll have to haul water,” he says, warning, “People die off-grid all the time, because of things like chain saw accidents. You have to be very careful and think everything through. No EMS will get to you in time.”
And depending on how it’s done, he says, off-grid living is not necessarily environmentally sustainable – not if you’re driving a fuel-guzzling truck and relying on a gas-powered generator, for example.
Still, improved alternative energy sources and construction techniques are making off-grid living more thinkable for more people, including those who don’t want to haul buckets of water from a well or live by candlelight.
Reynolds designed off-the-grid homes called Earthships, according to Earthship Visitor Center, using sustainable building practices, including the usage of discarded steel and tin cans for the foundation of homes.
Architect and experimental house builder Michael Reynolds who used a variety of recycled materials to complete his first experimental home near Taos in 1974. Owned by lawyer Steve Natelson, shown in the picture, the home had a lawn on the roof, a common feature of sustainable design today, but an unusual concept for homes at the time. This experimental lawn required daily attention because of the dry environment.Inspired by the problem of trash and the lack of affordable housing, Reynolds created the “can brick” out of discarded steel and tin cans.Architect and experimental house builder Michael Reynolds who lives near Taos, New Mexico, used tires, empty steel beer and soft drink cans as some of the materials used to build the structure, with a goal of building homes 20% cheaper than conventional methods at the time.Interior view of the all aluminum beer and soft drink can experimental house near Taos, New Mexico.This photo from June 1974 shows a well housing that architect and experimental house builder Michael Reynolds built from old tires that have been covered with plaster.
Iterations of these homes evolved over the next decade to incorporate passive solar and natural ventilation.
Reynolds’ legacy continues to be a presence in the region today through a fully off-the-grid community, using exclusively solar and wind power, northwest of Taos. The community sits on over 600 acres and includes more than 300 acres of shared land.
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — Evacuations are in effect in parts of northern Arizona as a wildfire about 6 miles (9 kilometers) north of Flagstaff steadily grew Sunday, authorities said.
Coconino National Forest officials said the Pipeline Fire was reported at 10:15 a.m. by a fire lookout and had burned approximately 4,000-5,000 acres by late Sunday, pushing about 15 miles (24 kilometers).
In connection with the fire, Forest Service law enforcement said they have arrested and charged a 57-year-old man with natural resource violations. The cause of the wildfire wasn’t immediately known.
Coconino County Sheriff’s officials said the Arizona Snowbowl ski resort and people living in the area of the west Schultz Pass Road must evacuate. People living in Doney Park and the area near Mt. Elden should be prepared.
Euelda King and her family evacuated their home for the second time this year because of wildfires. She hadn’t settled back in from a springtime blaze before leaving again Sunday, this time able to grab photographs and clothing she didn’t get earlier.
“Here we go again,” she said.
The family of 11 is planning to stay at the Navajo Nation casino, which is offering assistance to tribal members who evacuated.
The family was waiting in a parking lot ahead of road closure signs, watching smoke billow through the air and aircraft flying overhead.
“The winds are high, and I think they’re going to have a little bit of a battle with it,” King said.
Wind gusts were sweeping the smoke through Schultz Pass toward Doney Park and authorities said recreationists were being told to leave immediately, especially those in the Schultz Pass area.
The American Red Cross Arizona opened a shelter at Sinagua Middle School for residents who evacuated.
“With this thing going as fast as it is, it could get much closer, of course hoping it doesn’t,” King said.
Authorities said 13 engines, nine crews, six prevention patrol units, three bulldozers and one water tender were involved in the fighting the fire. An Incident Management Team is scheduled to arrive Monday.
The Arizona Department of Transportation has closed U.S. Route 89. The department said in a Twitter post that there is no estimated time to reopen the road.
Shell Is Looking To Shake Up The Energy Game In Texas
Editor OilPrice.com – June 12, 2022
For years now, we have seen a growing divide between oil supermajors in Europe and the United States, as Big Oil has split into two factions on opposite sides of the Atlantic over what to do in response to climate change and increasing global calls for decarbonization. As climate activists grow louder and policymakers ramp up the pressure on the fossil fuels sector to clean up its act, European companies have rushed to diversify their portfolios and rebrand themselves as Big Energy. Meanwhile, in the U.S. Big Oil has stood its ground and doubled down on oil and gas, instead investing in schemes such as carbon capture, carbon offsetting, and biofuels.
The approach in the United States has been criticized as insufficient to meet global climate goals at best and greenwashing at worst. Environmentalists point out that strategies such as carbon capture and offsetting do not discourage the extraction of fossil fuels at a time when we should be doing everything we can to keep them in the ground. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the leading global body reporting on the science of global warming, has said that avoiding the worst impacts of climate change will require “immediate and deep” cuts in emissions in all countries.
On the other side of the argument, Big Oil in the United States points to the massive potential economic fallout and decline in energy security and independence that may come with a swift transition to green energy. And what of the massive infrastructure costs and all of the jobs that will be displaced? As it stands, the U.S. is extremely reliant on the fossil fuels industry, and breaking that dependence will inevitably cause serious growing pains. A recent study found that “between 2015 and 2020, fossil fuels generated roughly $138 billion each year for US localities, states, tribes, and the federal government.” That’s a lot to lose.
But while Big Oil has been dragging its feet on the renewable revolution on this side of the pond, European supermajors have seen the writing on the wall, and have made enormous advances in the field of clean energy that threatens to bury any competition from the U.S. once renewables become the norm and oil and gas slowly but surely become overshadowed and then obsolete.
Already, Europe is moving into the United States and setting up shop, in none other than Texas, the oil and gas heartland. Shell announced this week that it will begin selling electricity generated from renewable sources directly to residents and businesses in the Lone Star State. In doing so, the company will increase consumer access to the state’s already abundant supply of wind and solar power, and offer them incentives to move over to their team. “It’s a significant, serious move but also not a surprise,” Michael Webber, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, told the New York Times. “They can see the future as well as anyone, and they are not in denial about climate change.”
Shell’s play is one of the first in what is going to be a seriously competitive market to sell clean electricity to U.S. consumers, in what is going to be an exploding market with huge growth opportunities. The supermajor will likely be directly competing with Big Tech companies like Tesla, Google, and Apple, which have been at the forefront of the charge toward clean energy development in the U.S. “The irony is it should be coming from existing utilities, but generally speaking they have been very resistant,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, managing director at the Climate Policy Lab at the Tufts Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.
In fact, Shell noted that one of the reasons that it is prioritizing Texas as its first market is that “more than 26 million of the state’s nearly 29 million residents were served by a single grid operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas [ERCOT].” In fact, more opportunities to buy more energy outside of ERCOT can’t come fast enough, as Texas is staring down the barrel of potentially massive energy shortages during summer heat waves.
Climate advocates and skeptics alike can agree on one thing: becoming competitive with Europe will be essential to the future security of the United States economy. The U.S. energy sector has already lost valuable time investing in infrastructure and technology to stay relevant in a changing global energy sector. Oil prices may be high now, but fossil fuels are a fickle friend. On a long enough timeline, clean energy investing is a no-brainer. Just ask Shell.
But as the high court prepares to decide another major climate case in the coming days and resolve a controversy over water pollution this fall, the mood among environmental groups is more gloomy – and the sense of foreboding, experts say, is likely justified.
That’s not only because the Supreme Court is more conservative than it has been in decades – and perhaps more willing to reconsider precedent – but also because environmental rules are caught up in a broader fight over whether federal agencies may regulate businesses without explicit approval from Congress.
The answer to that question will have sweeping implications for President Joe Biden’s administration beyond the Environmental Protection Agency if Republicans capture control of Congress this year. Presidents of both parties often turn to agency regulations when they’re unable to move their agenda through Congress – even though those policies frequently run into trouble in court.
“Environmentalists are holding their breath to see just how bad it will be,” said Robert Percival, director of the environmental law program at the University of Maryland. “It seems likely that they’re going to be making major cutbacks in the EPA’s authority.”
Power plant emissions
In one of the most significant climate cases to reach the high court in years, the justices will soon decide whether the EPA may regulate carbon emissions from power plants. Nineteen states, led by West Virginia, challenged climate regulations approved by the Obama administration and later abandoned by President Donald Trump.
The decision will land as scientists and international groups issue dire warnings about the Earth’s changing climate. A United Nations report in April found that without significant and immediate emission reductions, limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius – a threshold that risks more severe effects – would be “beyond reach.”
As the Supreme Court prepares to decide a major climate case in the coming days and resolve a controversy over water pollution this fall, the mood among environmental groups is more gloomy.
In the eviction case, the Trump and Biden administrations relied on a 1944 public health law that lets officials “make and enforce such regulations” as they deem “necessary to prevent the…spread of communicable diseases.” But the law, the court said, doesn’t say anything specifically about halting evictions during a pandemic.
“It strains credulity to believe” Congress meant to give the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “the sweeping authority” it used to impose the moratorium, a majority of the court ruled in August. “We expect Congress to speak clearly when authorizing an agency to exercise powers of ‘vast economic and political significance.'”
President Barack Obama’s EPA required states to reduce emissions by shifting power plants away from coal. The Supreme Court blocked enforcement of those rules in 2016 and Trump repealed them a year later, prompting a new round of lawsuits. While the court’s three liberal justices signaled support for the EPA during oral arguments in February, the court’s six-member conservative bloc was harder to read.
One of the issues the justices debated then was the “major questions doctrine,” the principle that Congress can delegate some decisions to agencies but not those that involve “vast” economic or political matters. One sticky issue with that doctrine is that there’s no clear definition of “vast significance.” Those who oppose the doctrine say that if a law is vague then Congress intended to give agencies wide deference to interpret it.
Another case the high court will take up later this year deals with the 1972 Clean Water Act which requires Americans to obtain a permit before putting certain pollutants into the “waters of the United States.” The law doesn’t define exactly what that term means.
In one of the most significant climate cases to reach the high court in years, the justices will soon decide whether the EPA may regulate carbon emissions from power plants.
The couple told the court last year that the agency’s interpretation was “emblematic of all that has gone wrong with the implementation of the Clean Water Act.” Their lot, they said, doesn’t include a stream, river, or lake – the kind of navigable waterways usually covered by the federal requirements.
But the Biden administration countered in court filings that EPA’s designation was made eight years before the family bought the property and that the couple dumped nearly 2,000 cubic yards of gravel and sand to fill the wetlands anyway. The wetlands are adjacent to water that eventually feeds into Priest Lake, the government concluded.
‘Pushing the boundaries of their powers’
Legal experts point to several factors they say explain why complicated questions about agency power pop up so often in environmental cases. Some of it has to do with how the legal system works broadly as it weighs the impact of laws and regulations.
One of the challenges environmentalists face in federal court is demonstrating the cost of not protecting the environment. It’s easier for industries to quantify the expense of updating a power plant to reduce emissions, for instance, than it is to tally up the costs that climate change may impose on an entire society.
“Because we all bear the costs of pollution, the benefits of regulation are often spread broadly, while the costs of reducing pollution are concentrated where they belong – on polluters,” said Sambhav Sankar, senior vice president of programs at Earthjustice, an environmental law group.
And while there’s often an economic incentive for industries to challenge environmental regulations, there’s not always a similarly powerful force to support those rules.
“So that means that this is always a target for pro-industry conservatives,” Sankar said. “And when these cases show up in court, the court sometimes struggles to appreciate the value of regulation to society as a whole.”
Adam White, a senior fellow at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, said the agencies themselves also have a role to play. Administrations may decide that getting legislation through Congress is impossible and so turn to regulations instead. Lawmakers may not be compelled to take a difficult vote if they think the administration is going to act on its own. And agencies, sometimes, may just overstep their authority.
“The agencies with a lot of political wind in their sails have a kind of emergency mentality that they need to do as much as they can as fast as they can,” said White, who is also the co-director of the Center for the Study of the Administrative State at George Mason University. “They end up pushing the boundaries of their powers.”
Another problem with deferring to agencies, White argued, is that their leadership changes every time a new president is sworn into office.
The upside to that, he said, is that presidential elections “have consequences.”
“But the downside is that every four or eight years you get a total overhaul in regulatory policy,” White said. “At some point, everybody – the courts, the private sector, all of us – we can look at this and say, ‘That’s no way to run a country.'”
