NYC/East Coast
Global Weirding is an oft-used and apt depiction of altered weather patterns from what we are used to and what homo sapiens evolved with. Tornados were a rare event in NYC and the East Coast but they are occurring now with some frequency. One hit NYC on Aug 6 in College Point, Queens. A few days earlier, a stronger tornado was near Douglas, in central Massachusetts. And a few days later a whirlwind hit nearby Webster, displacing dozens of people from their damaged homes.
Facts on the Ground:
Flash floods swept through NY (Broome County, Vestal; Lodi) and NJ (Little Falls, Wayne, Bogota, Brick, and Woodland Park) this month leading to states of emergency in five counties in NJ (including Passaic, Essex, Morris and Monmouth) and in NY (Monroe, Delaware, Seneca, Yates and Ontario) and evacuations across the regions.
Elsewhere, Europe is baking as is South Asia, New Delhi in particular, and much of Africa. Record-breaking wildfires continue in California. The Mendocino Complex Fire has burned 283,000 acres thus far. CA is only in the middle of its fire season with the worst fires often occurring later in the year as the land becomes increasingly dry and weather patterns create windy conditions. The Mendocino Fire overtook last year’s Thomas Fire which destroyed nearly 282,000 acres. The Mendocino Fire has destroyed about 140 structures. Another fire, the Carr Fire, also in Northern California, has killed seven people and destroyed more than 1,600 buildings. It is the 12th largest in California history, at about 164,000 acres. Of the 20 largest wildfires in CA, about half have come in the last decade.
Record-breaking wildfires — 460 in one day — burn in British Columbia, and the worst forest fires in decades burns in Sweden, even extending north of the Arctic Circle where temperatures this month reached 86 F. Record-breaking rainfall in Japan was followed by record-breaking heat — 106 degrees in Kumagaya, northwest of Tokyo with dozens of heat-related deaths. Heat-related mortality is projected to increase fivefold in the US by 2080, and 12 times in less wealthy countries such as Philippines. Record-breaking heat occurred in Death Valley (127 F), and the worst drought in living memory grips Eastern Australia, and so on.
In the northernmost latitudes, where the climate is warming faster than the global average, temperatures have been the most extreme. The closer a community is to the Arctic Circle, the more this summer’s heat stood out in the temperature record. A number of cities and towns in Norway, Sweden and Finland hit all-time highs this summer, with towns as far north as the Arctic Circle recording nearly 90-degree temperatures.
Not only is much of northern and western Europe hotter than normal, but the weather is also more erratic. Torrential rains and violent thunderstorms have alternated with droughts in parts of France. In the Netherlands, a drought — rather than the rising seas — is hurting its system of dikes because there is not enough fresh water countering the seawater.
Temperatures that used to be outliers — like those in the summer of 2003 when over 70,000 people died across Europe — will become the norm for summer in our lifetimes. Heat waves could push temperatures in Europe toward 120 degrees.
In Switzerland, where cattle are led to graze in high pastures in summer, drought has stranded cows without water. Farmers have turned to the country’s helicopter association and the Swiss Air Force to transport tens of thousands of gallons of water every week to keep the herds alive. The helicopters are running 30 to 40 trips a day, transporting 250 gallons on each run.
In France, this July was one of the three hottest on record — and subtle changes are taking place countrywide. Among them are rising sea levels. Even if we achieve the goals of the Paris climate accord and stabilize the temperatures at two degrees C higher than in the preindustrial era, the level of the sea will continue to rise for many hundreds of years. There are coastal cities that are already condemned. Among them are areas of the Camargue on the Mediterranean, in Brittany both on the English Channel and along the Atlantic coast and in the Vendée and Gironde, the area near Bordeaux. In some places, that is already affecting land and house values as well as bird habitats.
In England, as in almost all of Europe, growing patterns are changing. The drought has increased food prices, and staples may be in short supply this fall. The drought in Ireland means that income for dairy farmers is likely to be cut in half this year.
Globally, 2018 is on track to be the fourth-hottest year on record with the three previous years being the only hotter ones. That string of records is part of an accelerating climb in temperatures since the start of the industrial age that scientists say is clear evidence of climate change caused by GHG emissions. The trend is clear, 17 of the 18 warmest years since modern record-keeping began have occurred since 2001. Nor are we going to reach a plateau, the warming will continue without stop as long as we continue to pour GHG into the atmosphere.
Warming has consequences. Harvests of staple grains like wheat and corn are expected to dip this year, in some cases sharply, in countries as varied as Sweden, Britain, Germany and El Salvador. In Europe, nuclear power plants shut down because the river water that cools the reactors was too warm. Heat waves on four continents crashed electricity grids.
Good News NY/CA:
New York and California combined to authorize almost $1 billion in spending aimed at speeding the rollout of necessary charging stations, marking significant investment into electric vehicle infrastructure. The California Public Utilities Commission approved $738 million in transportation electrification projects for the state’s three big investor-owned utilities. Gov. Cuomo launched EVolve NY, a new $250 million electric vehicle expansion initiative in partnership with the New York Power Authority (NYPA).
New Jersey utility PSEG also announced plans to spend $300 million on EV infrastructure as part of a multi-billion dollar clean energy and grid investment plan.
To get to a largely carbon-free California it must substantially electrifying its transportation system. In addition to project budgets, the commission approved almost $30 million for program evaluation. The commission preserved an optional dynamic electricity rate for customers who charge their electric cars when clean energy is abundant and helps grid operators more accurately balance supply and demand.
Gov. Cuomo said NYPA's EVolve NY aims to "make driving an electric car a viable choice and an affordable option.”
NYPA will commit an initial $40 million, and up to $250 million over the next seven years, as well as develop private-sector partnerships to attract investment. Funding will be awarded through the state's competitive procurement process.
The initial $40 million will be allocated to three programs through the end of next year: one aimed at developing interstate fast chargers, another aimed at airport infrastructure, and the third to develop EV model communities that would include a utility-managed charging platform.
The interstate project would identify and install up to 200 fast chargers along key interstate corridors, ideally set every 30 miles.
While electric vehicles have so-far been a tough sell to the public at large, they are widely seen as a key strategy to reducing energy emissions. A 2017 report forecast 7 million on the road by the end of 2025.
In addition to the California and NY announcements, PSEG said Thursday it will spend $300 million to build "smart" electric vehicle infrastructure as part of its plan to invest "$2.9 billion in energy efficiency and other programs that will reduce energy bills and combat climate change."
And Google spinoff Waymo announced it would greatly expand its self-driving fleet, after reaching a deal with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles for more than 60,000 minivans. The Chrysler Pacifica minivans are plug-in hybrids.
Deforestation:
To decrease growing concentrations in the atmosphere of GHG we need to be pulling carbon out of the air. The only real way to do this on a sizable scale is via the natural process of photosynthesis. And the largest concentration of trees and vegetation is in the world’s tropical forests. So, how are we doing in terms of protecting them? Poorly.
Tropical forests suffered near-record tree losses in 2017. In Brazil, forest fires set by farmers and ranchers to clear land for agriculture raged out of control last year wiping out more than 3 million acres of trees as the region experienced a severe drought. Those losses undermined Brazil’s recent efforts to protect its rain forests. This may be the new normal, where fires, deforestation, drought and climate change all interact to make the Amazon more flammable.
In Colombia, a landmark peace deal between the government and the country’s largest rebel group paved the way for a rush of mining, logging and farming that caused deforestation in the nation’s Amazon region to spike last year.
In the Caribbean, as we approach a new hurricane season, hurricanes Irma and Maria flattened nearly one-third of the forests in Dominica and a wide swath of trees in Puerto Rico last summer.
In all, the world’s tropical forests lost roughly 39 million acres of trees last year. That made 2017 the second-worst year for tropical tree cover loss in the satellite record, just below the losses in 2016.
Trees, particularly those in the lush tropics, pull carbon dioxide out of the air as they grow and lock that carbon in their wood and soil. When humans cut down or burn trees, the carbon gets released back into the atmosphere, warming the planet. By some estimates, deforestation accounts for more than 10% of humanity’s carbon dioxide emissions each year.
Indonesia may be a bright spot where a government crackdown on deforestation may be showing early signs of success. Over the past several decades, Indonesia’s farmers have been draining and burning the country’s peatlands — thick layers of partially decomposed vegetation that hold enormous stores of carbon — to grow crops like palm oil. But in 2015, amid a strong El Niño and severe dry spell, the country had its worst fire season in decades, blanketing Southeast Asia in deadly smoke and releasing huge amounts of carbon.
In 2016, Indonesia’s government imposed a moratorium on the conversion of peatland, while Norway pledged $50 million for enforcement. Early signs are encouraging: primary forest loss on Indonesia’s protected peatland dropped 88% in 2017, to the lowest level in years. Still, experts said, the real test of success may come when the next El Niño hits.
Less expected is the harm to freshwater fish due to warming waters and excessive run-off from dried vegetation, fire and heavy bursts of rain. The Rhine and Elbe rivers absorbed so much heat that fish began to suffocate. In Hamburg, authorities collected almost five metric tons of dead fish from ponds and firefighters pumped fresh water into some ponds and lakes hoping to raise oxygen levels.
Wildfires may well be the single greatest agent of deforestation worldwide. The destruction of natural habitat, the devastation of human habitation, the dislocation of large numbers of people, the disruption of commerce and the draining of government resources were all on scales in 2017 that we have not experienced before.
For the US, 2017 was the second worst for wildfires in over 60 years, with 10 million acres burned, exceeded only by 2015, when about 10.1 million acres burned.
While we naturally focus on the immediate loss of lives, the full toll may not be so immediate. Recent epidemiological research following the enormous fires in Indonesia in the past few years suggests that lung disease from smoke and particulate matter inhalation may have caused over 100,000 additional premature deaths across Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.
A dangerous, large-scale feedback loop that promotes wildfires has emerged. Forests, woodlands and grasslands hold much of Earth’s terrestrial carbon. When they burn, more carbon dioxide is released, increasing concentrations in the atmosphere and causing land and sea surface temperatures to rise. This warming increases the likelihood of even more widespread and intense fires and exacerbates the severe weather and sea level rise we are now beginning to experience.
What has been particularly worrisome in recent years is that the world’s largest forests, the taiga of Russia and its boreal forest cousins that ring the Arctic and store much of the world’s carbon, experienced wildfires at a rate and scale not seen in at least 10,000 years.
The explosive rise in wildfires has occurred for two major, interrelated reasons: climate change and human behavior. As land surface temperatures rise, there has been a general warming across all seasons, with intense periods of heat during the warmest parts of the year, longer intervals without rain and marked reductions in relative humidity. Heat waves and droughts cause vegetation to dry into combustible fuels, enabling small fires to become widespread infernos. Research on wildfires in the US over the past 20 years found that 84% were started by people, accounting for 44% of the land burned.
Black Carbon
Add to this the fact that immense fires release Black Carbon, soot, particulates, into the atmosphere. When black carbon blankets arctic ice it absorbs heat and hastens melting. This is yet another dangerous positive feedback loop as the more melting the more exposure of dark water which absorbs more heat which melts more ice and the more the earth warms the more likely to be forest fires releasing black carbon.
Unlike greenhouse gases, black carbon is a climate forcer you can see and feel. Not only does it warm the atmosphere by absorbing sunlight—it's also dark soot that's deposited onto ice and snow, speeding melting.
Black carbon stays in the atmosphere for just days to weeks, but it does lasting damage. The contribution to warming by one gram of black carbon is 100 to 2,000 times more than one gram of CO2 on a 100-year timescale. As much as a quarter of Arctic warming is caused by black carbon. Another 2015 study found that, like methane, black carbon is responsible for about a half a degree Celsius of warming in the Arctic.
Black carbon comes from natural sources like forest fires and is also driven by human activities like the production or burning of fossil fuels, biofuels and biomass. Wood burning, diesel engines and cook stoves are also big sources. What all these have in common is inefficient combustion—the type that creates black, particle-filled smoke.
Black carbon can be transported to the Arctic from more populated and industrial areas further south, but local emissions also make a big difference. About a third of Arctic warming traced to black carbon is from emissions from Arctic countries.
Flaring of natural gas—more commonplace in the Arctic where there is less available infrastructure to capture and transport natural gas associated with oil drilling—can be a major source. A 2013 study found that that gas flaring contributes less than 3% of global black carbon emissions globally, but flaring in the Arctic contributes 42% of black carbon found on the ground.
As the Trump administration advances plans to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the offshore waters of Alaska to drilling—and as decreasing sea ice increases options of Arctic drilling—that could increase in black carbon emissions.
Less ice in the Arctic will lead to more ship traffic on formerly ice-clogged routes. As shipping increases, so will emissions from heavy fuel oil—known as bunker fuel—that powers most of the region's ships. In 2010, the International Maritime Organization outlawed the thick fuel in Antarctica, but it is still allowed in the Arctic.
Washington:
In the final hours of Scott Pruitt’s tenure as administrator, the EPA moved to effectively grant a loophole that would allow a major increase in the manufacturing of a diesel freight truck that produces as much as 55 times the air pollution as trucks that have modern emissions controls. Fitzgerald Glider Kits sells trucks that use old engines built before modern emissions standards. A 300-unit cap per manufacturer that was imposed in January will no longer be enforced by the EPA.
The move by the EPA came after intense lobbying by a small set of manufacturers that sell glider trucks, which use old engines built before new technologies significantly reduced emissions of particulates and nitrogen oxide that are blamed for asthma, lung cancer and other ailments.
It was just as strongly opposed by an unusual alliance of public health groups like the American Lung Association, environmental groups like the Environmental Defense Fund and major industry players like United Parcel Service, the largest truck fleet owner, and Volvo Group, one of the largest truck manufacturers.
The glider truck concept began so the engines of relatively new trucks that had been involved in accidents could be transferred to new truck bodies. But as the emissions control requirements went into effect in recent years, companies like Fitzgerald Glider Kits of Crossville, Tenn., began to attract thousands of buyers from around the United States that wanted to evade the new rules, getting trucks they argued were cheaper to run.
Fitzgerald made about 3,000 of these trucks in 2017, a production rate that it will now be allowed to return to. An estimated 10,000 glider trucks were sold nationally in 2015 — about 4% of new heavy-duty truck sales — and production could soon return to that level.
One year’s worth of truck sales was estimated to release 13 times as much nitrogen oxide as all of the Volkswagen diesel cars with fraudulent emissions controls, a scheme that resulted in a criminal case against the company and more than $4 billion in fines.
Mr. Pruitt had championed the rollback, claiming that the EPA did not have the legal authority to force companies like Fitzgerald to significantly reduce production of glider trucks. But that move came only after Fitzgerald donated tens of thousands of dollars to Representative Diane Black, Republican of Tennessee, who is a candidate for governor there, and who asked Mr. Pruitt to reverse the rule.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia temporarily blocked EPA from lifting the limit on the number of remanufactured “glider trucks” that could be sold.
Fuel Efficiency Standards Rollback
President Trump’s recent proposal to weaken fuel-efficiency standards for cars and light trucks could be his most consequential climate-policy rollback yet, increasing GHG emissions in the US by an amount greater than many midsize countries emit in a year.
Assuming the plan is finalized and survives legal challenges, America’s cars and trucks would emit an extra 321 million to 931 million metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere between now and 2035 as a result of the weaker rules. Another study estimated the number even higher, at 1.25 billion metric tons. To put that in context, the extra pollution in 2035 alone would be more than the current annual emissions from countries like Austria, Bangladesh or Greece.
The fuel-economy rollback could have a bigger effect on emissions than either Trump’s attempts to repeal the Clean Power Plan — a federal rule to curb pollution from coal-fired power plants — or his efforts to scale back regulations on oil and gas operations that release methane, a potent GHG, into the atmosphere.
There’s a simple reason for that. Many states have already been making impressive headway on cleaning up their power plants, thanks to a glut of cheap natural gas (which is pushing coal plants into retirement) and the falling cost of wind and solar power. CO2 emissions from the US electricity sector are now on pace to fall below the targets envisioned in the original Clean Power Plan.
But pollution from cars and trucks has proved much trickier for states to take on. Transportation now accounts for 1/3 of America’s CO2 emissions, surpassing power plants as the largest source, and vehicle emissions have been steadily rising over the past few years. Federal fuel-economy standards were widely seen as a vital tool for curbing gasoline use.
The Obama-era rules granted California permission to set up a separate, more ambitious program to mandate more zero-emission cars on the road. Nine other states in the Northeast have adopted that program, which would require roughly 8% of new vehicles sold in-state to be plug-in hybrid, electric or hydrogen fuel cell models.
The Trump proposal plans to challenge California’s authority to mandate zero-emissions cars and to halt the clean vehicle program, which could dramatically slow the adoption of electric vehicles around the country in the near term. The zero-emissions vehicle waiver has been the biggest catalyst to date in bringing electric vehicles to market.
While many manufacturers have been developing new electric car models in response to the ever-rising fuel economy standards, it’s not clear how many would completely pull back if the standards were frozen. China and Europe are continuing to push hard on fuel efficiency and battery-powered vehicles, and automakers have those international markets to consider.
Vowing to defend California's authority to set its own greenhouse gas emissions rules, Gov. Jerry Brown said the state would fight the new EPA plan.
After months of discussion and drafts, the EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration formally unveiled their plan to rewrite those rules and replace them with ones so lax that even automakers are wary.
EPA officials sought to portray the proposal as the administration’s opening bid in a negotiation with California. State officials, however, loudly denounced the plan as too extreme and threatened to fight it in court. California and the 13 other states that follow its more stringent rules argue the Clean Air Act empowers them to keep the Obama-era standards in place in their markets. Together, these 14 states account for more than a third of the vehicles sold nationwide.
The rollback would undermine those states’ efforts to meet commitments the US made in the Paris agreement on climate change. It would also worsen air quality problems in Southern California and other areas where officials are already struggling to clean smog and ease rates of asthma and other illnesses.
The administration asserts that the fuel economy rules should not be used to attempt “to solve climate change, even in part” because such a goal is “fundamentally different” from the Clean Air Act’s “original purpose of addressing smog-related air quality problems."
The existing federal fuel economy targets, which were championed by California, ensure automakers keep moving toward higher efficiency vehicles, as other nations also require. Those rules require automakers to meet fleet-wide averages of more than 50 mpg by 2025, which when factoring in credits and other flexibility options, translates to about 36 mpg in real-world driving conditions.
In comparison, the Trump proposal would freeze real-world fuel economy at about 30 miles per gallon in 2020 for six years.
The emissions impact of freezing those targets, as the administration favors, could be enormous. Official projections show the plan would increase daily fuel consumption about 500,000 barrels per day, increasing GHG emissions and contributing to the rise in global temperatures.
The proposal would increase US fuel use 20% by 2035. The policy would cost the U.S. economy $457 billion and cause 13,000 deaths by 2050, as air quality suffers. Federal data show the increased cost consumers would pay for the more efficient vehicles is dwarfed by the amount of money they would save at the pump, undermining the argument that drivers will stay in older, unsafe vehicles, advocates for the tougher rules say.
Trump administration officials conceded that labor, parts and other costs — not fuel economy rules — are the main reason cars and trucks are getting more expensive. Automakers have confirmed they can build lighter cars to meet tougher emissions standards without sacrificing safety.
Negotiations have gone nowhere. California is confident the administration has no legal authority to revoke the waiver the state has been granted under the Clean Air Act allowing it to keep the Obama-era rules in place. In May, California and 16 other states filed a preemptive lawsuit arguing the rollback would be illegal.
Carl Howard, Co-Chair Global Climate Change Committee
The views expressed above are entirely my own.
Follow me on Twitter @Howard.Carl