And Democrats nominated Methodist megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton to challenge Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas), inspiring the Cook Report to say the seat is (barely) in play. By contemporary Kansas standards, Hamilton is a climate hawk. In 2020, he asked his congregation, “What would Jesus say about climate change?” In the sermon, he wildly misrepresented the scientific consensus on climate pollution, but otherwise accurately described the science and came to the right conclusion: “If we are abusive to the planet, if we misuse it, if we overconsume it, if we if we pollute it, are we sinning? Or are we not sinning? It seems to me like that’s an example of sin.”
I’m asking climate experts to comment on aspects of what I call the “New Climate Denial”, which is the same as the old climate denial, but just given a facelift by the Trump administration, in a DOE publication authored by the same-old same-0ld group of fossil industry war horses that have been grifting off of their crank contrarian opinions for decades. One favorite: “The number of acres of wildfire globally has gone down.” True. But misleading.
The likelihood and intensity of the most extreme wildfires has increased in North America, which has had major effects in the western US. These extreme fires have generated substantial ecological, economic, health, and livelihood impacts across the US. The consequences extend far beyond fire-prone regions due to smoke transport across continental distances, exposing populations nationwide to serious health risks.
— Below, Jeff Berardelli of WFLA has a useful explainer.
Over the past five years, the world has experienced some of its hottest years on record, and meteorologists are warning that El Niño – a periodic warming of Pacific Ocean surface waters – could drive a new series of extreme weather events in 2026 and 2027. This comes as the adoption of air conditioning around the world has already been accelerating – the result of rising incomes in many economies with hot climates and record-breaking heatwaves in regions that previously had only limited cooling demand. As extreme heat events become more frequent and widespread, perceptions of cooling are shifting, driving more consumers to consider purchasing an air conditioner (AC). At the same time, falling unit prices and elevated inventories across the supply chain are lowering barriers to AC adoption, suggesting that the number of households purchasing their first AC unit will reach new highs in the years ahead.
California’s wildfire problem, fueled by a concurrence of climate change and a heightened risk of human-caused ignitions in once uninhabited areas, has been getting worse with each passing year of the 21st century.
Researchers in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Irvine have conducted a thorough analysis of California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection wildfire statistics from 2000 to 2019, comparing them with data from 1920 to 1999. They learned that the annual burn season has lengthened in the past two decades and that the yearly peak has shifted from August to July. The team’s findings are the subject of a study published in the open-access journal Nature Scientific Reports.
The study is a focused examination of fire frequency, burned area and myriad drivers of the catastrophically destructive events. The team found that the number of hot spots – places with severe fire risk – has grown significantly in recent years, fueled by higher annual mean temperatures, greater vapor pressure deficit (lack of air moisture), drought, and an elevated chance of blazes being sparked through such human causes as power line disruptions, construction, transportation, campfires, discarded cigarettes and fireworks.
“CALFIRE data show that each new year of the 21st century has been a record breaker in terms of wildfire damage in California,” says co-author Tirtha Banerjee, UCI assistant professor of civil & environmental engineering. “We also have seen that about 80 percent of the total number of the state’s wildfires over the past few decades have been small, measuring less that 500 acres. But when fires get large, their deadliness greatly increases.”
Climate is a theme among many, although they don’t bash you over the head with it. It is in any case, absolutely brilliant, riveting, and cathartic. Bring tissue.
According to ancient Greek myth, Hades, ruler of the underworld, kidnaps the Goddess Persephone and brings about the first winter on earth. For writer Anaïs Mitchell, that sudden change in the climate is the perfect backdrop for the story of her Tony Award-winning Broadway musical “Hadestown”. The show infuses the theme of climate change with New Orleans jazz, folk, and pop music. Here to tell us more is the director of “Hadestown”, Rachel Chavkin. Rachel, welcome to Living on Earth.
CHAVKIN: Thanks very much.
BASCOMB: So for someone that hasn’t seen the show or listened to the music yet, can you give me a quick summary of what it’s about?
CHAVKIN: Yeah. So “Hadestown” is a retelling of an ancient story, for those who know their Greek mythology, which is the Orpheus and Eurydice story, as it intersects with the myth of Hades and Persephone. Eurydice says — I think these lyrics are no longer exactly in it, but — “flood will get you if the fire don’t”. So there’s a sense that the above world is a dangerous place. But you hear about this mythic place, which is Hadestown, and Hadestown is a land of plenty and a land where you sort of aren’t ever worried about where your next meal is going to come from. And so during Act One Eurydice chooses to go down to Hadestown, and the audience along with Eurydice discover that Hadestown is actually basically this proto-fascist state. And you hear about a wall that is getting built, and the wall will never be done. And Orpheus comes down to Hadestown to try to get the love of his life back.
BASCOMB: So here at Living on Earth, we tend to look at everything through the lens of the environment. But it seems pretty clear to me that there’s some clear allusions to climate change. Can you tell me about that?
CHAVKIN: Yeah. So the image of the climate being out of whack has been a core one for Anaïs since she started writing the show. And so as we thought more and more about shaping the world that Eurydice and Orpheus are living in, a world caused by, in Greek mythological terms, the decay of this ancient marriage between Hades and Persephone, a world that is out of balance, where it is either freezing or it’s blazing hot, and that food becomes a really, you know, a scarcer substance and the idea of stability becomes harder to imagine, and that Eurydice is, is a character who has spent her life running. All of those are things that kind of crystallized while we were making the show.
BASCOMB: Well, let’s play a song from the show. I want to play a clip of “Any Way the Wind Blows”. But before we do, can you set it up for me? What’s happening at this point in the storyline?
CHAVKIN: Yeah, so “Any Way the Wind Blows” is really right at the top of the story. It’s really where you hear her, this kind of tough chick who is this survivor, walk into this bar, that is Hermes’ bar where she will eventually, right after this song, meet Orpheus, the love of her life. And she talks about how screwed up the weather is.
Good reporting from Deutsche Welle here on the water constraints that are cutting output at nuclear and hydro plants around Europe. Starts with a summary of the situation in Romania and Hungary that has already been described on this page.
Interview with an expert from Ember, the go-to experts on Europe’s energy transition. Clearly, more solar and batteries would go a long way to mitigating this crunch.
Key takeaways: “Only solar power performs relatively well in these conditions.” “The Interconnectedness of Europe is one of its key strengths when it comes to energy.” “It’s not just nuclear and hydropower that have trouble in this kind of heat.”
This is pretty striking. Not something you see often, I would say. Romania blowing river channels in desperate attempt to keep cooling water flowing to Nuclear plant, as the Danube shrinks from climate enhanced drought.
UK Channel 4 report – Description:
As the mighty Danube dries up in the heatwave, there are desperate measures to keep some goods flowing and enough water to cool power plants including nuclear ones.
Water levels for the river which flows through ten countries from Germany to the Black Sea have dropped to just 23 centimetres in Budapest as severe drought grips central Europe. Hungary is preparing to completely shut down its only nuclear power plant later this week as the river becomes too shallow to supply water for cooling. The record low levels have also triggered a state of emergency in Romania, where energy conservation measures have led to two car-makers halting production.
Replaces wood for paper products. Grows in arid zones. Result of a “moonshot” research program. Implications for forestry, carbon sinks, and maybe, wildfires?
For two decades, Kimberly-Clark has scoured the Earth for a material that could replace wood fiber. The maker of Scott paper towels, Cottonelle toilet paper and Huggies diapers now says it has made a breakthrough.
Paper-based products of the future, the company says, could be made with hesperaloe, a plant with long, pointy leaves that grows in arid climates.
Fiber from the plant can be used to make paper towels, toilet paper and other products that are both stronger and softer than wood-based equivalents, executives from Kimberly-Clark said. If production reaches scale, it could also be cheaper and less environmentally damaging than cutting down trees, they say.
“We call it our Goldilocks discovery,” said Craig Slavtcheff, the company’s top research-and-development officer. The company plans to announce its findings later Monday.
Kimberly-Clark describes its continuing efforts to commercialize the findings as a “moonshot,” and executives caution that there is a long research runway ahead. Still, they expressed hope that hesperaloe could help them reach a previously stated ambition to eventually stop using fibers from natural forests in their products. The company is one of the biggest makers of paper-based products in the world.
