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Rain and snow samples from Wisconsin to Maine and North Carolina after crash show highest pH levels over last decade

Chemicals released during the East Palestine train wreck fires in February 2023 in Ohio were carried across 16 US states, new research of federal precipitation and pollution data shows.

Analysis of rain and snow samples collected from northern Wisconsin to Maine and North Carolina in the weeks following the crash found the highest levels of pH and some compounds recorded over the last 10 years. That includes chloride, which researchers say was largely released during a controversial controlled burn of highly toxic vinyl chloride carried by the train.

Researchers expected to find some evidence of the burn 50 miles from the site, and the high levels of contamination in the samples across the vast range that it was spread was “very surprising”, said David Gay, a University of Wisconsin researcher and lead author.

“We saw the chemical signal from this fire at a lot of sites and far away,” he added. “There was more than we ever would have guessed.”

Dozens of cars on the Norfolk Southern train derailed and burned in the town of 4,700 at the edge of the Appalachian hills. The fire burned near tankers carrying vinyl chloride, and, two days later, fearing a “major explosion”, officials conducted a controlled burn of of the chemical as a prevention measure.

In the immediate vicinity and in pockets throughout the city, a potent chemical odor hung in the air for weeks. The pollution also spread far and wide because the wreck’s fires burned for so long, and the controlled vinyl chloride burn was extremely hot and concentrated, Gay said. It sent a towering plume into the Earth’s free troposphere, where winds often blow between 50 and 100mph.

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‘Unliveable’: Delhi’s residents struggle to cope in record-breaking heat

June 9, 2024

‘Unliveable’: Delhi’s residents struggle to cope in record-breaking heat

Temperatures of more than 45C have left population of 29 million exhausted – but the poorest suffer most

As the water tanker drove into a crowded Delhi neighbourhood, a ruckus erupted. Dozens of residents ran frantically behind it, brandishing buckets, bottles and hoses, and jumped on top of it to get even a drip of what was stored inside. Temperatures that day had soared to 49C (120F), the hottest day on record – and in many places across India’s vast capital, home to more than 29 million people, water had run out.

Every morning, Tripti, a social health worker who lives in the impoverished enclave of Vivekanand Camp, is among those who has to stand under the blazing sun with buckets and pots, waiting desperately for the water tanker to arrive.

“People have to wait for two to three hours in the queue for just for the couple of buckets of water,” she said. “The increasing temperature has made it worse. As the heat is increasing, we need more water but the supply is in fact decreasing. We are suffering badly and heat is making it impossible to live.”

Mohammad Adil Khan inspects ACs at his rental shop in Delhi.

Delhi is no stranger to heat. Its summers always bring stiflingly hot temperatures and the rich confine themselves to their air-conditioned homes, while poor households gather beneath fans and cover themselves with wet rags.

The consensus among experts and residents is that the summer temperatures are now regularly rising far above the norm as India bears the brunt of the climate crisis. A heatwave has enveloped much of north India in May – this week temperatures consecutively rose above 45C…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Brutal heatwaves and submerged cities: what a 3C world would look like

May 17, 2024

Brutal heatwaves and submerged cities: what a 3C world would look like

Climate scientists have told the Guardian they expect catastrophic levels of global heating. Here’s what that would mean for the planet

Global heating is likely to soar past internationally agreed limits, according to a Guardian survey of hundreds of leading climate experts, bringing catastrophic heatwaves, floods and storms.

Only 6% of the respondents thought the 1.5C limit could be achieved, and this would require extraordinarily fast, radical action to halt and reverse the world’s rising emissions from fossil fuel burning.

However, the experts were clear that giving up was not an option, and that 1.5C was not a cliff-edge leading to a significant change in climate damage. Instead, the climate crisis increases incrementally, meaning every tonne of CO₂ avoided reduces people’s suffering.

At 1.5C, the ‘climate benchmark’

Heatwaves and storms intensify, tropical corals die off and tipping points for ice sheet collapses and permafrost thawing may be triggered.

At 2C

The brutal heatwave that struck the The Pacific north-west in 2021 would be 100-200 times more likely. The increases in direct flood damage around the world doubles at 2C.

At 2.7C

Two billion people would be pushed outside humanity’s “climate niche”, ie the benign conditions in which the whole of civilisation arose over the past 10,000 years.

At 3C

Cities including Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro, Miami and The Hague would end up below sea level.

At 3C and above

The impact of climate shocks in one place will cascade around the world, through food price spikes, food and water shortages, broken supply chains, and refugees by the millions.

…click on the link above to read the rest of the article…

I’m a British farmer. Here’s the scary truth about what’s happening to our crops

May 10, 2024

I’m a British farmer. Here’s the scary truth about what’s happening to our crops

The climate crisis is making the farming business unsustainable – and without support for us, food security will suffer too

Farming has always been a risky business. To the chaos of Brexit and the relentless squeezing of the supermarkets, we can add the rapidly escalating threats associated with climate change. In most industries, at the point where risk is judged to outweigh the potential commercial reward, both capital and people tend to make a swift exit, following economist Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” of self-interest.

The problem with farming is that most farmers are emotionally invested in their work. An exit is seldom considered – perhaps we should be more like the bankers, but they wouldn’t be much good at growing potatoes.

Around the world, farming practice evolves in response to past success. Over 30 years, I’ve recorded planting and harvest dates, temperatures and yields, using data to guide my decisions, just like generations of farmers before me. But over the past decade, as the pace of change in weather patterns has accelerated, the value of that accumulated experience has become increasingly irrelevant. For most farmers, this last year has been about grabbing rare, good weather windows and trying to make the most of wet conditions as we repeatedly fail to get crops sown.

As the risk of crop failure has grown, margins have shrunk, meaning there’s nothing in the bank to pay for the bad years. Farm-gate prices have been driven down to levels which, in a good year, just about cover costs, but leave nothing to cover crops lost to adverse weather.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Estuaries, the ‘nurseries of the sea’, are disappearing fast

April 30, 2024

Estuaries, the ‘nurseries of the sea’, are disappearing fast

Study reveals repurposing of ecologically vital land for homes or agriculture is happening particularly rapidly in Asia

Estuaries – the place where a river meets the ocean – are often called the “nurseries of the sea”. They are home to many of the fish we eat and support vast numbers of birds, while the surrounding salt marsh helps to stabilise shorelines and absorb floods.

However, a new study shows that nearly half of the world’s estuaries have been altered by humans, and 20% of this estuary loss has occurred in the past 35 years.

Using satellite data, researchers measured the changes that had occurred at 2,396 estuaries between 1984 and 2019. The results, published in the journal Earth’s Future, found that over the past 35 years more than 100,000 hectares (250,000 acres) of estuary have been converted into urban or agricultural land, with the majority of the loss (90%) having occurred in rapidly developing Asian countries.

By contrast, very little estuary loss has occurred in high-income countries during the past 35 years – mostly because extensive estuary alteration happened many decades before, during those countries’ own phase of rapid development.

Many high-income countries are now recognising and undoing the damage, with locations such as the Tees estuary in northern England investing in returning the area to mudflats and salt marsh to help reduce flood risk, increase resilience to the climate crisis, replenish fish populations, and let nature recover.

Survey finds that 60 firms are responsible for half of world’s plastic pollution

April 29, 2024

Survey finds that 60 firms are responsible for half of world’s plastic pollution

Study confirms Altria, Philip Morris International, Danone, Nestlé, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola are worst offenders

Fewer than 60 multinationals are responsible for more than half of the world’s plastic pollution, with six responsible for a quarter of that, based on the findings of a piece of research published on Wednesday.

The researchers concluded that for every percentage increase in plastic produced, there was an equivalent increase in plastic pollution in the environment.

“Production really is pollution,” says one of the study’s authors, Lisa Erdle, director of science at the non-profit The 5 Gyres Institute.

An international team of volunteers collected and surveyed more than 1,870,000 items of plastic waste across 84 countries over five years: the bulk of the rubbish collected was single-use packaging for food, beverage, and tobacco products.

Less than half of that plastic litter had discernible branding that could be traced back to the company that produced the packaging; the rest could not be accounted for or taken responsibility for.

“This shows very, very, very well the need for transparency and traceability,” says a study author, Patricia Villarrubia-Gómez, a plastic pollution researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre. “[We need] to know who is producing what, so they can take responsibility, right?”

The branded half of the plastic was the responsibility of just 56 fast-moving consumer goods multinational companies, and a quarter of that was from just six companies.

The two tobacco companies Altria and Philip Morris International combined made up 2% of the branded plastic litter found, both Danone and Nestlé each produced 3% of it, PepsiCo was responsible for 5% of the discarded packaging, and 11% of branded plastic waste could be traced to the Coca-Cola company.

“The industry likes to put the responsibility on the individual,” says the study’s author, Marcus Eriksen, a plastic pollution expert from The 5 Gyres Institute.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

‘Washout winter’ spells price rises for UK shoppers with key crops down by a fifth

April 29, 2024

‘Washout winter’ spells price rises for UK shoppers with key crops down by a fifth

Analysts say impact on wheat, barley, oats and oilseed rape harvests means price rises on beer, bread and biscuits and more food imported

UK harvests of important crops could be down by nearly a fifth this year due to the unprecedented wet weather farmers have faced, increasing the likelihood that the prices of bread, beer and biscuits will rise.

Analysis by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) has estimated that the amount of wheat, barley, oats and oilseed rape could drop by 4m tonnes this year, a reduction of 17.5% compared with 2023.

The warnings come as farmers have borne the brunt of the heavy rainfall and bad weather experienced over the winter, with the UK experiencing 11 named storms since September.

In England, there was 1,695.9mm of rainfall between October 2022 and March 2024, the wettest 18-month period since records began in 1836.

This has resulted in planted crops either being flooded or damaged by the wet weather, or farmers not being able to establish crops at all.

A closeup picture of a flooded field of brussels sprouts — A flooded field of brussels sprouts at TH Clements and Son Ltd near Boston, Lincolnshire. Photograph: Joe Giddens/PA

Tom Lancaster, a land analyst at ECIU, said: “This washout winter is playing havoc with farmers’ fields leading to soils so waterlogged they cannot be planted or too wet for tractors to apply fertilisers.

“This is likely to mean not only a financial hit for farmers, but higher imports as we look to plug the gap left by a shortfall in UK supply. There’s also a real risk that the price of bread, beer and biscuits could increase as the poor harvest may lead to higher costs.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Mosquito-borne diseases spreading in Europe due to climate crisis, says expert

April 27, 2024

Mosquito-borne diseases spreading in Europe due to climate crisis, says expert

Illnesses such as dengue and malaria to reach unaffected parts of northern Europe, America, Asia and Australia, conference to hear

Mosquito-borne diseases are spreading across the globe, and particularly in Europe, due to climate breakdown, an expert has said.

The insects spread illnesses such as malaria and dengue fever, the prevalences of which have hugely increased over the past 80 years as global heating has given them the warmer, more humid conditions they thrive in.

Prof Rachel Lowe who leads the global health resilience group at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center in Spain, has warned that mosquito-borne disease outbreaks are set to spread across currently unaffected parts of northern Europe, Asia, North America and Australia over the next few decades.

She is due to give a presentation at the global congress of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases in Barcelona to warn that the world must be prepared for a sharp uptick in these diseases.

“Global warming due to climate change means that the disease vectors that carry and spread malaria and dengue [fever] can find a home in more regions, with outbreaks occurring in areas where people are likely to be immunologically naive and public health systems unprepared,” Lowe said.

“The stark reality is that longer hot seasons will enlarge the seasonal window for the spread of mosquito-borne diseases and favour increasingly frequent outbreaks that are increasingly complex to deal with.”

Dengue used to be primarily found in tropical and subtropical regions, as freezing overnight temperatures kill the insect’s larvae and eggs. Longer hot seasons and less frequent frosts have meant it has become the fastest-spreading mosquito-borne viral disease in the world, and it is taking hold in Europe.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

‘Where can you hide from pollution?’: cancer rises 30% in Beirut as diesel generators poison city

April 23, 2024

‘Where can you hide from pollution?’: cancer rises 30% in Beirut as diesel generators poison city

Lebanon’s economy and electricity system are broken and much power is now generated locally, with devastating effects on air quality and health

Smog hangs over Beirut most days, a brownish cloud that darkens the city’s skyline of minarets and concrete towers. An estimated 8,000 diesel generators have been powering Lebanese cities since the nation’s economic collapse in 2019. The generators can be heard, smelled and seen on the streets, but their worst impact is on the air the city’s inhabitants are forced to breathe.

New research, to be published by scientists at American University of Beirut (AUB), has found that the Lebanese capital’s over-reliance on the diesel generators in the past five years has directly doubled the risk of developing cancer. Rates of positive diagnosis, oncologists say, are shooting up.

“The results are alarming,” says Najat Saliba, an atmospheric chemist who led the study. In the area of Makassed, one of the more densely populated parts of Beirut tested, levels of pollution from fine particulates – that is, less than 2.5 micrometres in diameter (PM2.5) – peaked at 60 micrograms a cubic metre, four times the 15 mcg/m³ level the World Health Organization says people should be not exposed to for more than 3-4 days a year.

Since 2017, the last time AUB took these measurements, the level of carcinogenic pollutants emitted into the atmosphere has doubled across three areas of Beirut. Saliba says calculations suggest cancer risk will have risen by approximately 50%.

The Beirut skyline, just visible in the far distance amid a haze of smog caused by traffic and generators — The Beirut skyline is just visible amid a haze of smog. Photograph: NurPhoto/Getty Images

“It’s directly related,” she says. “We calculate the cancer risk based on the carcinogen materials emitted from diesel generators, some of which are classified as category 1A carcinogens.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

California cracks down on water pumping: ‘The ground is collapsing’

April 21, 2024

California cracks down on water pumping: ‘The ground is collapsing’

Farm region near Tulare Lake has been put on ‘probation’ as overpumping of water has caused faster sinking of ground

Even after two back-to-back wet years, California’s water wars are far from over. On Tuesday, state water officials took an unprecedented step to intervene in the destructive pumping of depleted groundwater in the state’s sprawling agricultural heartland.

The decision puts a farming region known as the Tulare Lake groundwater subbasin, which includes roughly 837 sq miles in the rural San Joaquin valley, on “probation” in accordance with a sustainable groundwater use law passed a decade ago. Large water users will face fees and state oversight of their pumping.

The move, which water officials reassured farmers would be lifted if local agencies progress on developing stronger sustainability plans to mitigate issues, is the first of its kind – but has been years in the making. Over-pumping of groundwater in this region has caused the land to collapse faster than in almost any other area in the country, in some places sinking more than a foot every year. Officials say the Tulare Lake groundwater subbasin failed for years to provide adequate plans to mitigate their well-known water problems.

Such plans are required under California’s 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), a landmark law that required local agencies to come up with their own long-term strategies to curb over-extraction and empowers the state to supervise and enforce them. Probation is a compulsory step to set lagging local agencies back on track to achieve sustainability goals that must be met by 2040.

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Climate crisis: average world incomes to diminish by nearly a fifth by 2050

April 20, 2024

Climate crisis: average world incomes to diminish by nearly a fifth by 2050

Cost of environmental damage will be six times higher than price of limiting global heating to 2C, study finds

The climate crisis will mean that average incomes will fall by almost a fifth within the next 26 years compared with what they would have been if there was no such crisis, according to a study that predicts the costs of damage will be six times higher than the price of limiting global heating to 2C.

Rising temperatures, heavier rainfall and more frequent and intense extreme weather are projected to cause $38tn (£30tn) of destruction each year by mid-century, according to the research, which is the most comprehensive analysis of its type ever undertaken, and whose findings are published in the journal Nature.

The hefty toll – which is far higher than previous estimates – is already locked into the world economy over the coming decades as a result of the enormous emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere through the burning of gas, oil, coal and trees.

This will inflict crippling losses on almost every country, with a disproportionately severe impact on those least responsible for climate disruption, further worsening inequality.

The paper says the permanent average loss of income worldwide will be 19% by 2049, in comparison to a baseline without the impacts of climate breakdown. In the United States and Europe the reduction will be about 11%, while in Africa and south Asia it will be 22%, with some individual countries much higher than this.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

‘We are damned fools’: scientist who sounded climate alarm in 80s warns of worse to come

August 31, 2023

‘We are damned fools’: scientist who sounded climate alarm in 80s warns of worse to come

James Hansen, who testified to Congress on global heating in 1988, says world is approaching a ‘new climate frontier’

The world is shifting towards a superheated climate not seen in the past 1m years, prior to human existence, because “we are damned fools” for not acting upon warnings over the climate crisis, according to James Hansen, the US scientist who alerted the world to the greenhouse effect in the 1980s.

Hansen, whose testimony to the US Senate in 1988 is cited as the first high-profile revelation of global heating, warned in a statement with two other scientists that the world was moving towards a “new climate frontier” with temperatures higher than at any point over the past million years, bringing impacts such as stronger storms, heatwaves and droughts.

The world has already warmed by about 1.2C since mass industrialization, causing a 20% chance of having the sort of extreme summer temperatures currently seen in many parts of the northern hemisphere, up from a 1% chance 50 years ago, Hansen said.

“There’s a lot more in the pipeline, unless we reduce the greenhouse gas amounts,” Hansen, who is 82, told the Guardian. “These superstorms are a taste of the storms of my grandchildren. We are headed wittingly into the new reality – we knew it was coming.”

Hansen was a Nasa climate scientist when he warned lawmakers of growing global heating and has since taken part in protests alongside activists to decry the lack of action to reduce planet-heating emissions in the decades since.

He said the record heatwaves that have roiled the US, Europe, China and elsewhere in recent weeks have heightened “a sense of disappointment that we scientists did not communicate more clearly and that we did not elect leaders capable of a more intelligent response”.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Can geoengineering fix the climate? Hundreds of scientists say not so fast

December 29, 2022

Can geoengineering fix the climate? Hundreds of scientists say not so fast

The Biden administration is developing a controversial solar geoengineering research plan to the dismay of many experts

Proposed geoengineering methods include pumping salt water into clouds to make them more reflective of sunlight, or to place ice particles in clouds to stop them from trapping heat. Photograph: Charlotte Observer/MCT/Getty Images

As global heating escalates, the US government has set out a plan to further study the controversial and seemingly sci-fi notion of deflecting the sun’s rays before they hit Earth. But a growing group of scientists denounces any steps towards what is known as solar geoengineering.

The White House has set into motion a five-year outline for research into “climate interventions”. Those include methods such as sending a phalanx of planes to spray reflective particles into the upper reaches of the atmosphere, in order to block incoming sunlight from adding to rising temperatures.

Graphic showing a polar ice cap melting through an hourglass onto a city beneath.

The work is required by Congress. It is “not new research, but a report that highlights some of the key knowledge gaps and recommendations of priority topics for relevant research”, said a spokesperson for the White House’s office of science and technology policy, adding Joe Biden’s administration wants “effective and responsible CO2 removal” as well as deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions.

Several American researchers, somewhat reluctantly, want to explore options to tinker with the climate system to help restrain runaway global heating, even as they acknowledge many of the knock-on risks aren’t fully known. “Until recently, I thought it was too risky, but slow progress on cutting emissions has increased motivation to understand techniques at the margins like solar geoengineering,” said Chris Field, who chaired a National Academies of Sciences report last year that recommended at least $100m being spent researching the issue.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

The US is a rogue state leading the world towards ecological collapse

December 9, 2022

The US is a rogue state leading the world towards ecological collapse

It’s not just indifference. It’s an active, and deadly, cavalier attitude towards the lives of others: an example other nations follow

Illustration by Eleanor Shakespeare — Illustration: Eleanor Shakespeare

There are two extraordinary facts about the convention on biological diversity, whose members are meeting in Montreal now to discuss the global ecological crisis. The first is that, of the world’s 198 states, 196 are party to it. The second is the identity of those that aren’t. Take a guess. North Korea? Russia? Wrong. Both ratified the convention years ago. One is the Holy See (the Vatican). The other is the United States of America.

This is one of several major international treaties the US has refused to ratify. Among the others are crucial instruments such as the Rome statute on international crimes, the treaties banning cluster bombs and landmines, the convention on discrimination against women, the Basel convention on hazardous waste, the convention on the law of the sea, the nuclear test ban treaty, the employment policy convention and the convention on the rights of persons with disabilities.

In some cases, it is one of only a small number to refuse: the others are generally either impoverished states with little administrative capacity or vicious dictatorships. It is the only independent nation on Earth not to ratify the convention on the rights of the child. Perhaps this is because it is the only nation to sentence children to life imprisonment without parole, among many other brutal policies. While others play by the rules, the most powerful nation refuses. If this country were a person, we’d call it a psychopath. As it is not a person, we should call it what it is: a rogue state.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

‘George Monbiot’s Multi-Level Marketing of Ecomodernism’ – The Meta-Blog, no.24

December 5, 2022

‘George Monbiot’s Multi-Level Marketing of Ecomodernism’ – The Meta-Blog, no.24

The environmental debate in Britain is maintained by a few unaccountable figures elevated to the role of eco-gate-keepers – which is why the ecological debate fails to make any real progress.

To be clear, this isn’t just about George Monbiot specifically. Using George’s recent book, ‘Regenesis’, and his column in The Guardian, this video/blog is a necessarily long and detailed deep dive into the role ‘green pundits’ have in the ecological debate – and whether that role is truly representative given the available evidence.

When one of Britain’s ‘leading environmentalists’ is saying that genetically modified bacteria in vats are better than allotments, permaculture, or integrated polyculture – while utterly downplaying the reasons for national and global hunger to support that spurious arguments – we have to question who precisely these ‘green pundits’ are working towards… and do we want to go to that destination?

For the extensively referenced text of this post, goto: http://www.fraw.org.uk/blog/posts/024…

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