Same area – Oct. 8, 2022 and Oct. 3 this year of the Rio Negro River in the Brazilian state of Amazonas near the city of Manaus. Images: NASA Earth Observatory
Remember all that talk about how CO2 was going to make Planet Earth a green and verdant garden? Turns out, not so much.
Why it matters: The measurements warn that parts of the Amazon Basin, the largest watershed in the world, are being stressed and the deterioration of the one of the most biodiverseplaces on Earth may be accelerating.
The drought is also driving extensive wildfires and human-caused fires that are smothering Brazilian cities with smoke.
By the numbers: The water level of the Negro River dropped to 44.3 feet on Tuesday — the lowest since measurements began there 121 years ago.
The measurement was taken near Manaus, the capital and largest city of the Brazilian state of Amazonas situated on the confluence of the Negro and Amazon Rivers.
Around 10% of the water in the Amazon basin drains through the Negro River, which is considered the world’s sixth largest river by water volume.
The Madeira River, another vital tributary of the Amazon, also recorded historically low levels, according to AP.
Amazonas, which is almost entirely covered by the Amazon rainforest, has so far seen almost 3,000 fires — making it the worst October since records began 25 years ago.
The world is gradually becoming less green, scientists have found. Plant growth is declining all over the planet, and new research links the phenomenon to decreasing moisture in the air—a consequence of climate change.
Guardedly optimistic that the Michigan legislature may pass much needed clean energy siting reform. I’ve been posting and reposting the interviews I’ve done with farmers, landowners, local officials and clean energy advocates around the state, showing that what has been going on in local venues across the midwest over recent years, is very much a mirror of what we see happening in Washington DC today. As a small group of radical chaos agents throws a tantrum in the nation’s capitol, anyone who stands up to them starts getting intimidation, harassment, and “credible death threats.”
That’s what I’ve been hearing from farmers and citizens in places like Stanton, Blissfield, and Azalia Michigan, as well as other communities around the midwest, where I’ve been able to visit in recent years to push back on the tide of misinformation. I’ve been getting updates for several days on progress of the bills thru the House, and several hopeful messages over course of today – but I’ve felt for some months now that when Governor Gretchen Whitmer put her credibility on the line with these bills,(see below) that there would be immense pressure on Democrats, who hold narrow majorities in both legislative houses, to go along. So after weeks of dithering and uncertainty, the word was that the Guv and legislative leaders were knocking some heads and whipping members into line. There is a suite of bills that include 100 percent carbon free electricity by 2040(ish), but for my money, the critical piece is the siting bill, without which all the rest is just aspirational.
Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois, all have some version of this process. When I visited Wisconsin this past summer, it seemed as though there was broad acceptance that the state was the final arbiter, with plenty of latitude for local communities to weigh in, fine tune projects, and even cut their own side deals with developers. Illinois passed this reform some months ago, and so far, according to economist David Loomis, things seem to be working out.
As recent polling in Michigan and Nationally has shown large majorities of voters favor expanded clean energy and climate action, these measures have been increasingly inevitable. The “antis” are heavily influenced by the fossil fuel industry and climate denial, so clearly have a blind spot in this respect. They will push back, and I expect that in some cases, threats and bluster will continue. But I’ve spoken to enough local officials to know that, for many of them, this is going to come as a major relief.
A Michigan House committee on Wednesday advanced legislation that aims to speed up the development of wind and solar energy in Michigan by shifting permitting control from local government to the state.
In a 9-7 party-line vote with one Democrat abstaining, the House Energy, Communications and Technology Committee approved House Bills 5120–5123, which now go to the full House for consideration.
Identical bills were introduced in the Senate last week.
The vote came after impassioned testimony from bill opponents, with one of them comparing the package to the emergency manager law that stripped towns like Flint and Detroit of the power to self-govern during times of financial crisis.
“It’s an unfair and unjustified power grab,” said Clint Beach of Fowlerville, borrowing words that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer used in 2011 to oppose the use of emergency managers.
By supporting the energy siting legislation, Beach said, Whitmer “is trying to do the exact same thing that she so vehemently opposed just a few short years ago.”
Bill proponents, meanwhile, tout the package as a needed antidote to local conflicts that have doomed wind and solar projects across the state. Without a streamlined state process for vetting prospective renewable energy developments, they argue, Michigan may fail to swap fossil fuels for renewables by midcentury.
That’s the deadline by which scientists say humanity needs to stop adding greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere, or risk increasingly dire consequences from climate change.
Because of course they did. Campaign “confused consumers and muddied the science.” That’s the MO.
What we see now, 50 years later, is that the confluence of all these powerful campaigns to “confuse” and “muddy” – eroding Americans confidence in science and fact, have lead to the kind of chaotic, conspiracy-driven, ungovernable madness we see today – the perfect breeding ground for fascism.
In the late 1960s, natural gas utilities launched “Operation Attack,” a bold marketing campaign to bring lots more gas stoves into people’s kitchens.
The gas utilities called Operation Attack their “most ambitious advertising and merchandising program ever.” But as it got underway, concerns were becoming public about indoor pollution from gas stoves, including household levels of nitrogen dioxide.
Around the same time, Dr. Carl Shy, a federal public health researcher, was looking into the health effects of nitrogen dioxide. In 1970, Shy published a study showing that families exposed to greater levels of the air pollutant nitrogen dioxide outdoors had higher rates of respiratory illness than families in less-polluted areas. The research caught the attention of the gas utility industry, and they asked Shy for a meeting.
When they met, Shy heard from the gas industry something Americans are now learning about, more than 50 years later: the potential health risks from cooking with gas stoves. “They are the ones who told me that the gas stoves produce nitrogen dioxide because of their high temperature,” says Shy, now 91, at his home near Durham, N.C. “They said the hoods above gas stoves were really not powerful enough to pull out the nitrogen dioxide.”
But in the following decades, the gas industry argued the opposite, asserting that range hoods could clear up this pollution. And it has contended that fumes from cooking food are more of a problem than the fossil fuel pollution of nitrogen dioxide.
The narrative was part of a lengthy campaign by the gas utility industry to popularize gas stoves. Yet as it advertised the appliance, the industry also financed its own research into the potential harms from cooking with gas. Those industry-backed reports confused consumers and muddied the science that regulators relied on about the potential dangers of cooking with gas, according to an investigation by NPR and documents uncovered in a new report from the Climate Investigations Center (CIC), a research and watchdog group.
Between 2010 and 2020, the cost of solar panels dropped about 85%.
“When you have a product that becomes cheaper, the question is, OK, now this is cheaper, is it as durable as it used to be?” says Marios Theristis, a researcher at Sandia National Laboratories.
Since 2016, his team has been testing the performance and durability of more than 800 solar panels, including 13 different module types, from seven manufacturers.
They’re testing them in New Mexico, Colorado, and Florida, to see how they function in a range of climate conditions. They monitor the panels’ power output and assess how the modules are holding up physically — for example, if they develop cracks.
The research reveals significant differences among the panels. But on average, after five years of use, they performed as well as older, pricier modules.
“So far in this study, we found that despite the sharp reduction in costs, we have not seen any influence on the durability of solar panels, which is a very encouraging result,” Theristis says.
His team will continue to monitor the panels. But he says the results so far suggest that consumers can feel confident that solar panels have gone down in price, but not in quality.
Ryan Kelley, right wing candidate for Michigan Governor and J6 Capitol Rioter, made an appearance in my video about the Cult movement against Clean Energy. He’s going away for a while.
A far-right Christian nationalist Republican state lawmaker in Pennsylvania is citing the Bible to explain her vote against legislation.
“When Democrats are pushing bills like banning gas-powered mowers and gas-powered stoves in New York City, all under the name of a climate control agenda, we can all see what is really going on here,” said state Rep. Stephanie Borowicz, in a video posted by Heartland Signal. “The truth is, is in Genesis 8:22, it says, ‘as long as the Earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.’ I’ll say that again, ‘will never cease.’ Of course, we are to be good stewards of God’s creation, but not through a forceful climate control global agenda.”
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Rep. Borowicz is apparently a full service Hater, having made the news in 2019, when she asked for God’s forgiveness as the legislature swore in its first Muslim representative
State Rep. Stephanie Borowicz was on the ninth “Jesus” of her opening prayer in the Pennsylvania statehouse when other lawmakers started to look uncomfortable.
Speaker Mike Turzai, a fellow Republican, glanced up — but Borowicz carried on, delivering a 100-second ceremonial invocation that some of her colleagues decried as an offensive, divisive and Islamophobic display shortly before the legislature swore in its first Muslim woman.
“God forgive us — Jesus — we’ve lost sight of you, we’ve forgotten you, God, in our country, and we’re asking you to forgive us,” Borowicz said, followed by a quote from the Bible’s second book of Chronicles that implores God’s followers to “turn from their wicked ways.” Then she praised President Trump for his unequivocal support of Israel.
“I claim all these things in the powerful, mighty name of Jesus, the one who, at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess, Jesus, that you are Lord, in Jesus’ name,” Borowicz said.
By the time she said “Amen,” Borowicz had invoked Jesus 13 times, deploying the name between prayerful clauses as though it were a comma. She mentioned “Lord” and “God” another six times each and referenced “The Great I Am” and “the one who’s coming back again, the one who came, died and rose again on the third day.”
As the prayer reached a crescendo, at least one member shouted objections. Turzai, standing behind her, looked up again and nudged her elbow, prompting her to quickly conclude the address. Afterward, the protests only grew louder.
“It blatantly represented the Islamophobia that exists among some leaders — leaders that are supposed to represent the people,” Rep. Movita Johnson-Harrell, the newly sworn-in Democrat who is Muslim, told the Pennsylvania Capital-Staron Monday. “I came to the Capitol to help build bipartisanship and collaborations regardless of race or religion to enhance the quality of life for everyone in the Commonwealth.”
No image quite captures the nature of the current global poly-crisis quite like this one. Vladimir Putin with Rex Tillerson, then CEO of Exxon-Mobil, later Donald Trump’s Secretary of State
14 years ago when climate scientists were under attack by unknown “hackers”, following the theft of emails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, it was a widely shared sentiment among scientists and knowledgeable observers that the “hack” was a Russian op. It was known, for instance, that the stolen emails had first shown up on a Russian server. Means, Motive, opportunity, all quite clear. I remember wondering at that time, what further lengths a criminal state like Russia, so entirely dependent on fossil fuels for revenue, might go to as climate awareness, and a burgeoning clean energy transition, further threatened their economic model. Now we know.
I believe that 2009 hack was just a warmup for the nearly identical operation that stole emails from the Democratic National Committee in 2016, and used them to assist Donald Trump’s election campaign. The Republican-lead Senate Intelligence Committee later called this op part of an “aggressive, multi-faceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.”
The invasion of Ukraine had roots in Russian history, and Vladimir Putin’s dreams of restoring the Russian Empire, but clearly Ukraine’s large gas reserves, and the valuable pipeline infrastructure into Europe on Ukrainian territory, were part of the motivation. Russia’s subsequent use of gas as a weapon against global democracies further demonstrate the intention to exert influence through fossil fuel domination.
Microsoft’s plans to enter nuclear energy production were revealed after the company placed a job posting for a Nuclear Technology role. The posting called for a Principal Project Manager tasked with overseeing a global small modular reactor and micro-reactor strategy. The news follows record investment in nuclear startups in recent years, with tech billionaires Bill gates, Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel all putting their money behind nuclear power. But the move from Microsoft may also signify a realisation that dysfunctional western energy policy will not be able to provide the power-hungry AI chips and data centres with the energy they need – with big tech choosing to invest in new nuclear projects when their own governments will not.
Microsoft has made no public statement on the specific goals of its nuclear energy program, but the obvious possibility — particularly in the wake of its third-party nuclear enegry deal — is a concern for environmental issues. Although nuclear power has long been plagued by serious concerns about its safety and role in nuclear weapons proliferation, the rapidly worsening climate situation makes it a comparatively attractive alternative to fossil fuels, given the relatively large amount of energy it that can be generated without producing atmospheric emissions. – Microsoft has already moved to embrace nuclear power, signing a deal in June with Virginia-based nuclear plant operator Constellation Energy to power a data center in that area, with the aim of making that data center’s power source carbon free.
A nuclear energy project in Wyoming, backed by Bill Gates and the U.S. Energy Department, is delayed by at least two years amid worries about supplies of a special fuel currently made in Russia, the head of TerraPower, the company building it said on Wednesday.
The first pebbles of an avalanche starting to roll. Article in the Wall Street Journal mentions “extreme weather events”, but the word “climate” is not to be found. Tax payers, hold on to your wallets, beach front and ski slope property owners are coming for you, and that’s just the beginning.
Then the renewal for his home insurance arrived. The new rate for the year starting in September was around $121,000—more than seven times what the Molinaris said they paid last year, and more than 13 times what they paid when the family moved to Florida in 2019.
While they found a better rate from another insurer, at about $33,000 it is still nearly double what they paid last year. The family this month listed the home for sale with an asking price of nearly $3.5 million after determining that insurance costs made staying there too expensive. Others in Flamingo Park told The Wall Street Journal they are drawing the same conclusion.
“The for-sale signs are going up left and right,” James said of the neighborhood.
Florida’s explosion in insurance premiums threatens to ground the state’s highflying housing market. Florida home prices soared more than 60% since 2019, according to real-estate brokerage Redfin. That rate has slowed more recently, and the state’s home prices in September edged up 2.7% over the previous year, Redfin said. –
Home-insurance costs are rising everywhere, but they are rising especially fast in Florida where premiums have tripled in the past five years. Some premiums have increased by about nine times what they were last year, according to Oscar Seikaly, chief executive of NSI Insurance Group, who said he has handled insurance premiums that cost as much as $600,000 a year for multimillion-dollar homes.
“When you have a home that’s one million dollars or less, your insurance premium becomes higher than your mortgage,” he said. –
A combination of extreme weather events, higher costs to rebuild and a rise in litigation has put the state’s insurance industry into crisis. Multiple insurers have pulled out of the state altogether. Gov. Ron DeSantis last year signed a bill meant to reduce some of the litigation and bring insurance costs down, but many in the industry say it isn’t enough.
The surge in insurance premiums have led many people who own their homes outright to drop insurance. While some of these homeowners without mortgages have gotten rid of all their insurance, others have dropped only their wind coverage, which pays off after a hurricane and where the prices have risen the fastest. Newer homes generally have experienced smaller run-ups in insurance costs.
