Science

As Historic Climate Bill Heads to Biden’s Desk, Young Activists Demand More

Published

2 years ago

August 12, 2022

As Historic Climate Bill Heads to Biden’s Desk, Young Activists Demand More

WASHINGTON — For the septuagenarian lawmakers who wrote the historic local weather invoice that Congress handed on Friday, and the 79-year-old president who’s about to signal it into legislation, the measure represents a “as soon as in a era” victory.

However youthful Democrats and local weather activists crave extra. They have a look at the invoice as a down fee, and so they fear a complacent citizens will consider Washington has finally solved local weather change — when actually scientists warn it has solely taken the primary mandatory steps.

“This invoice just isn’t the invoice that my era deserves and desires to completely avert local weather disaster, however it’s the one which we will move, given how a lot energy we have now at this second,” stated Varshini Prakash, 29, who co-founded the Dawn Motion, a youth-led local weather activism group.

“We’re very clear that it took so lengthy as a result of our Congress and Senate doesn’t appear like the American individuals,” stated Ms. Ramirez, whose group is working to elect extra younger progressives dedicated to attacking world warming. “The local weather disaster goes to unfold on nearly all of younger individuals. Most of those congressional representatives shall be useless by the point we face the implications of their inaction.”

In a letter to members of Congress, Ms. Ramirez and about 50 different youth leaders informed lawmakers “your work just isn’t completed.”

The Home voted 220 to 207 Friday to approve the Inflation Discount Act, with Democrats pushing previous united Republican opposition. It was a replay of earlier this week, when Democrats within the Senate handed the invoice with out a single Republican vote. The laws supplies $370 billion over a decade for investments in wind, photo voltaic, clear hydrogen, vitality storage and different measures designed to shift the American economic system away from the fossil fuels which have underpinned it for greater than a century.

Analysts estimate the brand new legislation will draw down the US’ carbon dioxide emissions to the bottom degree since Lyndon Johnson was president — 20 % beneath 2005 ranges by the tip of this decade, on prime of one other 20 % reduce that can come because of market forces already in place. Collectively, that may eradicate an estimated one billion tons of air pollution per 12 months by the tip of 2030, nearly sufficient to fulfill Mr. Biden’s pledge to chop emissions 50 % by 2030.

Senator Patrick Leahy, 82, Democrat of Vermont, praised the laws when it handed the Senate as “a once-in-a-generation invoice to meaningfully tackle the actual threats of local weather change,” a characterization echoed by a number of of his colleagues.

However scientists say the US must do extra. It should cease including carbon dioxide to the environment by 2050, which the invoice received’t obtain. That’s the goal all main economies should meet to constrain common world temperature rise to 1.5 levels Celsius, or 2.7 levels Fahrenheit, above preindustrial ranges, scientists say. Past that threshold, the chance will increase considerably of catastrophic droughts, floods, wildfires and warmth waves. The planet has already warmed a median of about 1.1 levels Celsius.

“It’s like dropping 20 kilos when you want to lose 100 kilos,” stated Robert McNally, the president of Rapidan Power Group, an vitality consulting agency. “And this received’t get you there.”

“After the champagne is drunk, there shall be a second of sobriety,” he stated. “How do you shut the remainder of that hole?”

To achieve his 2030 purpose, Mr. Biden would nonetheless must impose new rules on emissions from energy vegetation, car tailpipes and methane leaks from oil and fuel wells. State and native governments must set new requirements to compel the speedy adoption of electrical automobiles, wind and photo voltaic powered electrical energy, and vitality environment friendly buildings to make up the final proportion factors.

For the far heavier raise — primarily eliminating the nation’s fossil gas emissions within the subsequent twenty years — Congress would want to enact much more formidable laws than the historic invoice simply handed by a razor-thin majority, specialists stated.

To zero out emissions by 2050, Congress must tackle the politically tough burden of taxing, penalizing, banning or phasing out the coal, oil and fuel air pollution that’s driving world warming.

“Will probably be mandatory for Congress to place sticks in place,” stated Dallas Burtraw, an vitality coverage skilled at Assets for the Future, a nonpartisan vitality and setting analysis group primarily based in Washington, D.C.

The brand new legislation buys Congress a while to behave, Mr. Burtraw stated. “It doesn’t must occur at the moment or tomorrow or this 12 months or subsequent 12 months,” he stated. “However it does must occur earlier than the tip of this decade.”

Consultant Pramila Jayapal of Washington, 56, who leads the Home progressive caucus stated along with deeper cuts in emissions, younger and racially various local weather advocates need new provisions that additionally shield low-income neighborhoods and communities of shade, that are disproportionately affected by local weather impacts.

“They’re actually speaking about it from this built-in perspective of jobs, justice and decarbonization,” she stated.

Consultant Sean Casten, Democrat of Illinois and a scientist who owned a clear vitality firm, stated Democrats and activists deserve “an end-zone dance” after the invoice is signed, after which should get again to work.

Within the near-term, Congress must make it simpler to construct the transmission strains and different services wanted to permit the explosion of photo voltaic, wind and different renewable vitality promised by the brand new legislation, he stated.

Mr. Casten, 50, additionally desires Congress to eradicate tax breaks and different subsidies granted to the oil, fuel and coal industries — a transfer he stated will set off markets to “appropriately allocate capital” to wash vitality industries.

“We have now to be, as legislators, very cleareyed that we aren’t going to be judged on whether or not we voted ‘sure’ or ‘no’ on this invoice,” he stated. “We’re going to be judged on whether or not the CO2 within the environment is decrease or larger 10 years from now.”

At the same time as scientific proof hyperlinks local weather change to excessive climate that’s inflicting demise and destruction in the US, polls present that the American citizens is split alongside partisan strains concerning the scale of the issue and what to do about it.

A Pew survey revealed in July discovered a majority of Republicans and Independents who lean Republican, about 82 %, say Biden’s local weather insurance policies are hurting the nation whereas 79 % of Democrats and people who lean left have been broadly supportive.

However Republicans between the ages of 18 and 29 surveyed have been extra seemingly than older adults to say the federal authorities must act on local weather change and 64 % wished the federal government to require energy firms to make use of extra vitality from renewable sources. And youthful People of each events — these born after 1981 — usually tend to be politically engaged on local weather change than older generations, in accordance with a 2021 Pew survey.

Celinda Lake, a Democratic strategist, stated she believes the political assist for a carbon tax may develop, notably as Millennial and Technology Z voters enter workplace.

“In 2024, the Millennials and youthful generations will outnumber the Boomer voters,” Ms. Lake stated.“These are the voters who vote on this problem. It mobilizes them. Within the subsequent 20 years we’ll see an enormous shift within the citizens towards individuals who need to save the planet.”

Wisconsin State Consultant Greta Neubauer, 30, led the rollout of a package deal of twenty-two local weather payments this 12 months, 5 of which she wrote. None acquired a listening to within the Republican-led legislature, a lot much less a vote. However Ms. Neubauer stated she nonetheless finds the variety of former activists like herself now turning to politics encouraging.

“When Trump was elected all of us had to go searching and acknowledge the failures of our motion,” stated Ms. Neubauer, who ran on a local weather platform and was elected in 2017. Lots of her fellow former activists have lately joined political campaigns or thought-about operating for workplace themselves “to take the battle off school campuses,” she stated.

William Reilly, who served as head of the Environmental Safety Company beneath President George H.W. Bush, stated Democrats shall be fortunate to only keep the brand new provisions that simply barely acquired by way of the Congress.

“So long as you’ve acquired a unanimous Republican place towards it, they’re going to must battle simply to maintain what they’ve acquired in place,” Mr. Reilly stated. “They’ll must battle to maintain the clear vitality incentives, battle to maintain any rules. Republicans will attempt to claw it again, except in some unspecified time in the future sufficient Republicans really feel that they’re politically free to transform.”

Benji Backer, 24, founding father of the American Conservative Coalition, a conservative local weather motion group, stated if Republicans retake both the Home or Senate in November’s midterm elections, he desires social gathering leaders to deal with local weather change.

He famous that the local weather and tax invoice consists of incentives for nuclear energy and different Republican priorities, together with carbon seize know-how that might permit coal or gas-burning energy vegetation to maintain working with decrease emissions.

“Republicans can both go after that within the subsequent Congress and champion the first-ever bipartisan local weather invoice, or they will keep the place they’ve been for the final decade,” Mr. Backer stated. “My era shall be upset in the event that they don’t lead from the entrance.”

Rhiana Gunn-Wright, 32, director of local weather coverage on the Roosevelt Institute, a liberal assume tank, and an architect of the Inexperienced New Deal, stated she is fearful a way of complacency will settle in after passage of the local weather invoice.

“Over the subsequent seven or eight years there’ll nonetheless, sadly, be excessive climate occasions and we nonetheless must hold declaring the reason for these: carbon emissions. And from the place? Fossil fuels,” she stated.

Ms. Gunn-Wright stated she is aware of activists who fought for many years to see a president signal main local weather laws shall be drained. However, she cautioned, “Within the U.S., we have now a historical past of taking numerous first steps after which not taking the second, third or fourth step.”

Science

2024 was the hottest year on record, NASA and NOAA confirm

Published

4 hours ago

January 11, 2025

Press Room

2024 was the hottest year on record, NASA and NOAA confirm

Amid a week of horrifying wildfires in Los Angeles, government agencies in the U.S. and around the world confirmed Friday that 2024 was the planet’s hottest year since recordkeeping began in 1880.

It’s the 11th consecutive year in which a new heat record has been set, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said.

“Between record-breaking temperatures and wildfires currently threatening our centers and workforce in California, it has never been more important to understand our changing planet,” Nelson said.

Firefighters on Friday were battling to protect NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge from the Eaton fire, which has burned 13,690 acres and roughly 5,000 buildings thus far.

Research has shown that global warming is contributing significantly to larger and more intense wildfires in the western U.S. in recent years, and to longer fire seasons.

The devastating fires in Southern California erupted after an abrupt shift from wet weather to extremely dry weather, a bout of climate “whiplash” that scientists say increased wildfire risks. Research has shown that these rapid wet-to-dry and dry-to-wet swings, which can worsen wildfires, flooding and other hazards, are growing more frequent and intense because of rising global temperatures.

Extreme weather events in 2024 included Hurricane Helene in the southeastern U.S., devastating floods in Valencia, Spain, and a deadly heat wave in Mexico so intense that monkeys dropped dead from the trees, noted Russell Vose, chief of the monitoring and assessment branch of NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.

“We aren’t saying any of these things were caused by changes in Earth’s climate,” Vose said. But since warmer air holds more moisture, the higher temperatures “could have exacerbated some events this year.”

Last year’s data also notes a step toward a major climate threshold. Keeping the average global surface temperature from rising 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels has long been seen as necessary to avoid many of the most harrowing climate impacts.

NOAA pegged 2024’s global average surface temperature at 1.46 degrees C above its preindustrial baseline, and NASA’s measurements put the increase at 1.47 degrees C. In 2023, NASA said the temperature was 1.36 degrees C higher than the baseline.

Considering the margin of error in their measurements, “that puts the NOAA and NASA models comfortably within the possibility that the real number is 1.5 degrees,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Calculations from other organizations passed the 1.5-degree mark more clearly.

Berkeley Earth and the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service both said the planet warmed to slightly more than 1.6 degrees C above pre-industrial times in 2024. The United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization said the increase was 1.55 degrees C and the U.K. Met Office, the country’s weather service, measured an increase of 1.53 degrees C.

Although 2024 probably marks the first calendar year in which the average temperature exceeded the 1.5-degree threshold, it doesn’t mean Earth has passed the crucial target set in the Paris Agreement, Vose said.

That describes “a sustained, multi-decade increase of 1.5 degrees,” something that’s not expected to occur until the 2030s or 2040s, the scientists noted.

“For a long time, the global mean temperature changes were a bit of an esoteric thing — nobody lives in the global mean,” Schmidt said. “But the signal is now so large that you’re not only seeing it at the global scale … you’re seeing it at the local level.”

“This is now quite personal,” he said.

The oceans, which store 90% of the planet’s excess heat, also recorded their highest average temperature since records began in 1955.

The Arctic has seen the most warming, which is concerning because the region is home to vast quantities of ice that stands to melt and raise sea levels, Schmidt said.

Temperatures there are rising 3 to 3.5 times faster than the overall global average, he added.

The only place where average surface temperatures have cooled is the area immediately around Antarctica, and that’s probably due to meltwater from shrinking ice sheets, Schmidt said.

A year ago, NOAA predicted there was only a 1 in 3 chance that 2024 would break the record set in 2023, Vose said. Then every month from January to July set a new high, and August was a tie. As a result, Friday’s declaration came as little surprise.

The longer-term trends are no better.

“We anticipate future global warming as long as we are emitting greenhouse gases,” Schmidt said. “That’s something that brings us no joy to tell people, but unfortunately that’s the case.”

Times staff writer Ian James contributed to this report.

Science

There's a reason you can't stop doomscrolling through L.A.'s fire disaster

Published

16 hours ago

January 10, 2025

Press Room

There's a reason you can't stop doomscrolling through L.A.'s fire disaster

Even for those lucky enough to get out in time, or to live outside the evacuation zones, there has been no escape from the fires in the Los Angeles area this week.

There is hardly a vantage point in the city from which flames or plumes of smoke are not visible, nowhere the scent of burning memories can’t reach.

And on our screens — on seemingly every channel and social media feed and text thread and WhatsApp group — an endless carousel of images documents a level of fear, loss and grief that felt unimaginable here as recently as Tuesday morning.

Even in places of physical safety, many in Los Angeles are finding it difficult to look away from the worst of the destruction online.

“To me it’s more comfortable to doomscroll than to sit and wait,” said Clara Sterling, who evacuated from her home Wednesday. “I would rather know exactly where the fire is going and where it’s headed than not know anything at all.”

A writer and comedian, Sterling is — by her own admission — extremely online. But the nature of this week’s fires make it particularly hard to disengage from news coverage and social media, experts said.

For one, there’s a material difference between scrolling through images of a far-off crisis and staying informed about an active disaster unfolding in your neighborhood, said Casey Fiesler, an associate professor specializing in tech ethics at the University of Colorado Boulder.

“It’s weird to even think of it as ‘doomscrolling,’ ” she said. “When you’re in it, you’re also looking for important information that can be really hard to get.”

When you share an identity with the victims of a traumatic event, you’re more likely both to seek out media coverage of the experience and to feel more distressed by the media you see, said Roxane Cohen Silver, distinguished professor of psychological science at UC Irvine.

For Los Angeles residents, this week’s fires are affecting the people we identify with most intimately: family, friends and community members. They have consumed places and landmarks that feature prominently in fond memories and regular routines.

The ubiquitous images have also fueled painful memories for those who have lived through similar disasters — a group whose numbers have increased as wildfires have grown more frequent in California, Silver said.

This she knows personally: She evacuated from the Laguna Beach fires in 1993, and began a long-term study of that fire’s survivors days after returning to her home.

“Throughout California, throughout the West, throughout communities that have had wildfire experience, we are particularly primed and sensitized to that news,” she said. “And the more we immerse ourselves in that news, the more likely we are to experience distress.”

Absorption in these images of fire and ash can cause trauma of its own, said Jyoti Mishra, an associate professor of psychiatry at UC San Diego who studied the long-term psychological health of survivors of the 2018 Camp fire.

The team identified lingering symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety both among survivors who personally experienced fire-related trauma such as injury or property loss, and — to a smaller but still significant degree — among those who indirectly experienced the trauma as witnesses.

“If you’re witnessing [trauma] in the media, happening on the streets that you’ve lived on and walked on, and you can really put yourself in that place, then it can definitely be impactful,” said Mishra, who’s also co-director of the UC Climate Change and Mental Health Council. “Psychology and neuroscience research has shown that images and videos that generate a sense of personal meaning can have deep emotional impacts.”

The emotional pull of the videos and images on social media make it hard to look away, even as many find the information there much harder to trust.

Like many others, Sterling spent a lot of time online during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Back then, Sterling said, the social media environment felt decidedly different.

“This time around I think I feel less informed about what’s going on because there’s been such a big push toward not fact-checking and getting rid of verified accounts,” she said.

The rise of AI-generated images and photos has added another troubling kink, as Sterling highlighted in a video posted to TikTok early Thursday.

“The Hollywood sign was not on fire last night. Any video or photos that you saw of the Hollywood sign on fire were fake. They were AI generated,” she said, posting from a hotel in San Diego after evacuating.

Hunter Ditch, a producer and voice actor in Lake Balboa, raised similar concerns about the lack of accurate information. Some social media content she’s encountered seemed “very polarizing” or political, and some exaggerated the scope of the disaster or featured complete fabrications, such as that flaming Hollywood sign.

The spread of false information has added another layer of stress, she said. This week, she started turning to other types of app — like the disaster mapping app, Watch Duty — to track the spreading fires and changing evacuation zones.

But that made her wonder: “If I have to check a whole other app for accurate information, then what am I even doing on social media at all?”

Science

Pink Fire Retardant, a Dramatic Wildfire Weapon, Poses Its Own Dangers

Published

1 day ago

January 10, 2025

Press Room

Pink Fire Retardant, a Dramatic Wildfire Weapon, Poses Its Own Dangers

From above the raging flames, these planes can unleash immense tankfuls of bright pink fire retardant in just 20 seconds. They have long been considered vital in the battle against wildfires.

But emerging research has shown that the millions of gallons of retardant sprayed on the landscape to tame wildfires each year come with a toxic burden, because they contain heavy metals and other chemicals that are harmful to human health and the environment.

The toxicity presents a stark dilemma. These tankers and their cargo are a powerful tool for taming deadly blazes. Yet as wildfires intensify and become more frequent in an era of climate change, firefighters are using them more often, and in the process releasing more harmful chemicals into the environment.

Some environmental groups have questioned the retardants’ effectiveness and potential for harm. The efficiency of fire retardant has been hard to measure, because it’s one of a barrage of firefighting tactics deployed in a major fire. After the flames are doused, it’s difficult to assign credit.

The frequency and severity of wildfires has grown in recent years, particularly in the western United States. Scientists have also found that fires across the region have become faster moving in recent decades.

There are also the longer-term health effects of exposure to wildfire smoke, which can penetrate the lungs and heart, causing disease. A recent global survey of the health effects of air pollution caused by wildfires found that in the United States, exposure to wildfire smoke had increased by 77 percent since 2002. Globally, wildfire smoke has been estimated to be responsible for up to 675,000 premature deaths per year.

Fire retardants add to those health and environmental burdens because they present “a really, really thorny trade-off,” said Daniel McCurry, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Southern California, who led the recent research on their heavy-metal content.

The United States Forest Service said on Thursday that nine large retardant-spraying planes, as well as 20 water-dropping helicopters, were being deployed to fight the Southern California fires, which have displaced tens of thousands of people. Several “water scooper” amphibious planes, capable of skimming the surface of the sea or other body of water to fill their tanks, are also being used.

Two large DC-10 aircraft, dubbed “Very Large Airtankers” and capable of delivering up to 9,400 gallons of retardant, were also set to join the fleet imminently, said Stanton Florea, a spokesman for the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, which coordinates national wildland firefighting efforts across the West.

Sprayed ahead of the fire, the retardants coat vegetation and prevent oxygen from allowing it to burn, Mr. Florea said. (Red dye is added so firefighters can see the retardant against the landscape.) And the retardant, typically made of salts like ammonium polyphosphate, “lasts longer. It doesn’t evaporate, like dropping water,” he said.

The new research from Dr. McCurry and his colleagues found, however, that at least four different types of heavy metals in a common type of retardant used by firefighters exceeded California’s requirements for hazardous waste.

Federal data shows that more than 440 million gallons of retardant were applied to federal, state, and private land between 2009 and 2021. Using that figure, the researchers estimated that between 2009 and 2021, more than 400 tons of heavy metals were released into the environment from fire suppression, a third of that in Southern California.

Both the federal government and the retardant’s manufacturer, Perimeter Solutions, have disputed that analysis, saying the researchers had evaluated a different version of the retardant. Dan Green, a spokesman for Perimeter, said retardants used for aerial firefighting had passed “extensive testing to confirm they meet strict standards for aquatic and mammalian safety.”

Still, the findings help explain why concentrations of heavy metals tend to surge in rivers and streams after wildfires, sometimes by hundreds of times. And as scrutiny of fire suppressants has grown, the Forestry Service has set buffer zones surrounding lakes and rivers, though its own data shows retardant still inadvertently drifts into those waters.

In 2022, the environmental nonprofit Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics sued the government in federal court in Montana, demanding that the Forest Service obtain a permit under the Clean Water Act to cover accidental spraying into waterways.

The judge ruled that the agency did indeed need to obtain a permit. But it allowed retardant use to continue to protect lives and property.