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+"In a “fireside chat” with actress Priyanka Chopra, Vice President Kamala Harris said the Biden administration is “thinking about the families in Florida [and] in Puerto Rico” and “what we need to do to help them in terms of an immediate response and aid.”
+But she also talked about the long-term need to ensure equitable treatment of “our lowest income communities and our communities of color that are most impacted by these extreme [climate] conditions … that are not of their own making.”
+Her remarks, which she made Sept. 30, set off a tsunami of criticism from Republicans, including U.S. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who accused the vice president of saying hurricane relief from the Federal Emergency Management Agency would be based on race.
+“Harris said yesterday that — or day before yesterday — that, you know, if you have a different skin color, you’re going to get relief,” Scott said in an Oct. 2 interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
+Host Margaret Brennan corrected Scott, saying: “That’s not what the vice president said.” Scott replied, “That’s exactly what she meant.”
+But Scott was just repeating what had become a Republican talking point about Harris’ response to Hurricane Ian, which devastated southwest Florida and South Carolina.
+Two days earlier, the rapid response director of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ reelection campaign responded to a tweet from @EndWokeness that misleadingly claimed, “Kamala on Hurricane Ian relief: The Biden administration will focus on ‘giving resources based on equity’ by directing funds to ‘communities of color.'” Christina Pushaw, the DeSantis aide, retweeted that comment and added, “This is false. @VP’s rhetoric is causing undue panic and must be clarified. FEMA Individual Assistance is already available to all Floridians impacted by Hurricane Ian, regardless of race or background.”
+Conservative commentators and news outlets made similar claims.
+On Oct. 3, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted: “Hurricanes do not discriminate. And neither should the federal government giving aid to people suffering from the devastation of Hurricane Ian. Is your husband’s life worth less bc he’s white?”
+Both the FEMA administrator and the White House press secretary said that hurricane aid would be distributed based on need and help everyone who needs it.
+“I was on the ground Friday and Saturday, and I committed to the governor then that we are going to provide assistance to all Floridians because we know that there are people that are just completely devastated from the storm. We are going to be there to support everybody that needs help,” said FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell, who appeared on “Face the Nation” shortly after Scott.
+At a press briefing on Oct. 3, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about Republican claims that Harris had said “people of color will get an advantage of some kind with the rebuilding efforts.” Jean-Pierre said the administration is “committed to quickly getting resources to all communities impacted,” insisting Harris’ remarks have been distorted.
+Jean-Pierre, Oct. 3: So that is not what the vice president said. The vice president was clearly talking about long-term investment, not FEMA aid, for hurricane response efforts.
+The vice president and the president have been clear that the federal government has been and will continue to be there for all Americans recovering from these devastating storms, as we’re seeing the president and the first lady do today and as we’ll see them do, clearly, in Florida on Wednesday.
+We are committed to quickly getting resources to all communities impacted, period, full stop. But we also know that some people, particularly in lower-income communities, have a hard time accessing that help. That’s why this administration has also made it a priority to remove barriers and ensure that everyone, regardless of their ZIP Code, can access federal resources. And that’s what she was talking about.
+Harris made her remarks during an interview with Chopra at a Democratic National Committee forum on women’s leadership.
+Chopra, who is from India, brought up Hurricane Ian in the context of the need for a global response to climate change and the need to help “the poorest countries [that] are affected the most.” It was a long, multiprong question that got an even longer response.
+Here’s the exchange with Harris that caused the kerfuffle.
+Chopra, Sept. 30: So just talking about a point that I am very concerned about, and I — as I’m sure so is this room: You and the administration obviously are working around the clock right now to support relief efforts in Florida and to prepare citizens as Hurricane Ian now is closing in on South Carolina.
+So, extreme weather conditions like this are becoming obviously more frequent and more severe. And I wanted to acknowledge the administration for passing the biggest climate legislation – legislation in history earlier this year because it is a fact that America’s leadership sets an example to other major economies around the world, which are truly dragging their feet when it comes to doing their bit.
+So can you talk just a little bit about the relief efforts, obviously, of Hurricane Ian and what the administration has been doing to address the climate crisis in the states?
+But — and just a little follow up, because this is important to me: We consider the global implications of emissions, right? The poorest countries are affected the most.
+Harris: Yeah.
+Chopra: They contributed the least and are affected the most. So how should voters in the U.S. feel about the administration’s long-term goals when it comes to being an international influencer on this topic?
+Harris: I’m going to unpack that question.
+Chopra: I’m going to ask you packed and loaded questions because I’ve been given a little bit of time.
+Harris: So, first of all, again, thanks to the leadership in this room, which were part of the propelling force in the 2020 election so that we could actually be in office — because one of the requests — dare I say, “demands” — of this group was, “Do something about the climate crisis.”  And so, we were able to be elected. Thank you, everyone here.
+And then have the … $370 billion in the Inflation Reduction Act dedicated to address the climate crisis — not only because it is a crisis, as it evident — as evidenced, as you have mentioned by Ian, by the wildfires happening in California, the floods, the hurricanes, but also because of America’s leadership and what it should be globally on this issue. And so that has happened, and it will propel a lot of good work.
+The crisis is real, and the clock is ticking. And the urgency with which we must act is without any question.
+And the way that we think of it and the way I think of it is both in terms of the human toll and — I know we are all thinking about the families in Florida, in Puerto Rico with Fiona — and what we need to do to help them in terms of an immediate response and aid, but also what we need to do to help restore communities and build communities back up in a way that they can be resilient — not to mention, adapt — to these extreme weather conditions, which are part of the future.
+On the point that you made about disparities: You know, when I was — back when I was District Attorney of San Francisco — I was elected in 2003 — I started one of the first environmental justice units of any DA’s office in the country focused on this issue. And in particular on the disparities, as you have described rightly, which is that it is our lowest income communities and our communities of color that are most impacted by these extreme conditions and impacted by issues that are not of their own making. And so, when —
+Chopra: And women.
+Harris: Absolutely. And so, we have to address this in a way that is about giving resources based on equity, understanding that we fight for equality, but we also need to fight for equity; understanding that not everyone starts out at the same place. And if we want people to be in an equal place, sometimes we have to take into account those disparities and do that work.
+But also, I will say, as a former prosecutor, part of this issue also has to be about enforcement and, where appropriate, making sure that the bad actors pay a price for what they do that is directly harming communities in terms of their health and wellbeing.
+So, when we think about policy then, there are many aspects to it, including something that the president and our administration and I are very excited about, which is the opportunity that moving towards a clean energy environment and industry — what it will do in terms of job creation and building up our economy. It’s tremendous.
+So, there are many benefits to this work.
+And to your point about the global piece: Among the leaders that I have been meeting and convening — just recently, in fact — and now this was, I think, the third time — I convened the presidents and prime ministers of the Caribbean countries; there’s an organization called CARICOM.  And I convened them just a couple weeks ago.  And the consistent discussion we are having is exactly your point, which is: We are one of the greatest emitters in the world and the Caribbean countries, for example, are paying the biggest price. They are some of the lowest emitters, yet the erosion that they are experiencing to their island nations is profound.
+And when you combine that with the fact that nations like that — their biggest source for their GDP is tourism, and what the climate crisis and extreme weather conditions do in terms of then plummeting their incoming resources, not to mention what we are expecting all good nations to do to contribute to mitigation and adaptation.
+So there is still a lot of work to be done to recognize the equities. And I will say, for us, as the United States, to own responsibility for what we rightly should do to recognize these disparities and contribute in a way that is fair with the goal of equitable priorities.
+Nandita Bose, the White House correspondent for Reuters and the only print reporter at the event, said in a Twitter thread that Harris’ remarks were being “deliberately distorted.”
+“So I was the only WH pool print reporter in the room on Friday at the DNC Women’s Leadership Forum and heard the remarks from @VP on climate change and Hurricane Ian, which I see are being deliberately distorted,” Bose tweeted.
+Readers can judge for themselves what Harris meant to say. What the vice president talked about, though, was the “work to be done to recognize the equities” needed to help low-emitting, poorer countries often bearing the brunt of the consequences of climate change, and the need in the U.S. to make sure that low-income communities and communities of color are not left behind in long-term mitigation plans.
+
+Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104."
+"Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the Senate plans to hold its first vote on Aug. 6 on the Inflation Reduction Act, surprising legislation that he and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a previous holdout, announced on July 27. 
+The budget reconciliation bill that the two Democratic senators have agreed upon aims, in part, to address inflation as well as to lower health care costs and prescription drug prices for millions of people. But if it receives enough votes to become law, most of the bill’s spending — an estimated $369 billion over the next 10 years — would go toward efforts to combat climate change while also investing in “energy security” for the United States. 
+The bill’s supporters have said it would reduce U.S. carbon emissions by roughly 40% from 2005 levels by 2030 — an estimate that is within the range of possible outcomes projected by at least two research firms that have analyzed the legislation in its current form. Last year, President Joe Biden announced that his administration would target between a 50% and 52% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels by the end of the decade.
+Assuming that every Senate Republican votes against the bill, as expected, Democrats would need the support of all 50 members of their caucus — and Vice President Kamala Harris to cast a tie-breaking vote — for the legislation to pass. But Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who has raised concerns about the bill’s provisions taxing corporations and investment income, has yet to publicly state how she will vote. (For more on those taxes, see “Sorting Out the Partisan Tax Spin on Inflation Reduction Act.“)
+Here we review some of the climate-focused provisions in the bill.
+Update, Aug. 18: Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law on Aug. 16.  
+Clean Energy Production
+According to a Democratic summary, the bill includes over $60 billion for clean energy manufacturing in the U.S.
+There is an estimated $30 billion in production tax credits geared toward increasing the manufacturing of solar panels, wind turbines and batteries, as well as the processing of critical minerals, such as lithium and nickel, used in electric car batteries. There is also $10 billion in investment tax credits for the construction of facilities where those and other clean technologies would be made. 
+The bill would make available $20 billion in loans to build new U.S. facilities to make clean vehicles, as well as $2 billion in grants to reconfigure existing car factories for the same purpose.
+In addition, the bill includes $500 million for the production of heat pumps and minerals processing under the Defense Production Act, which can be invoked by the president. Heat pumps can be used to heat or cool homes and other buildings. The devices are considered more environmentally friendly than furnaces and air conditioners because they do not run on oil or gas and use less electricity.
+Reducing Emissions from Various Sources
+Numerous tax credits included in the bill aim to reduce emissions from transportation, industrial manufacturing, buildings, agriculture and the production of electricity. 
+About $30 billion in the bill is set aside for grant and loan programs for states and electric companies to speed up the transition to clean electricity. Another $6 billion is slated for a new Advanced Industrial Facilities Deployment Program to reduce emissions from chemical, steel and cement plants, which are some of the largest emitters. 
+The bill also increases the value of a tax credit for carbon capture and storage investments, which incentivizes sequestration projects that suppress or remove certain carbon emissions from the atmosphere.
+In addition, $27 billion would go to a “clean energy technology accelerator,” or greenhouse gas reduction fund, that allows states to provide financial assistance to low-income communities to benefit from technologies such as rooftop solar installations. 
+As for agriculture, there is at least $20 billion to finance practices considered to be “climate smart,” according to one Democratic summary. For example, the Environmental Quality Incentives Program would get $8.45 billion in funding, which the agriculture secretary can use to improve soil carbon, reduce nitrogen losses or greenhouse gas emissions, or capture or sequester greenhouse gas emissions stemming from agricultural production.
+
+Consumer Tax Credits and Incentives
+The bill also seeks to lower energy costs and reduce utility bills for individuals through additional tax credits that encourage purchases of energy efficient homes, vehicles and appliances. 
+Notably, there is an expansion of an existing tax credit of up to $7,500 for income-eligible individuals who buy qualifying electric vehicles. For joint tax filers to be eligible, their adjusted gross income cannot be more than $300,000; for a head of household, it’s $225,000, and for other tax filers, it’s $150,000.
+In addition, the bill offers a tax credit of up to $4,000 for purchases of certain used electric vehicles. To get the credit, joint tax filers must have an AGI below $150,000. For a head of household or other tax filer, the AGI cutoffs are $112,500 and $75,000, respectively.
+There is also $9 billion for home energy rebate programs aimed at retrofitting homes and appliances to be more energy efficient.
+Oil and Gas Leasing
+At the same time, however, the legislation would facilitate more domestic energy production from fossil fuels, including oil and gas drilling — which would offset some of the emissions reductions resulting from other climate-related provisions in the bill.
+That’s because it requires the Department of Interior to conduct a number of sales for oil and gas leases in the Outer Continental Shelf, which includes the Gulf of Mexico. The department would also have to periodically make a minimum amount of federal land and offshore waters available for leasing by oil and gas companies before the agency can grant or sell leases to renewable projects using wind and solar energy. 
+But the bill would also impose fees on the operators of oil and gas facilities with annual methane emissions of more than 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. The fee would start at $900 per metric ton of reported methane emissions over the allowable threshold for calendar year 2024. That would increase to $1,200 for excess emissions in 2025 and $1,500 for excess emissions in 2026.
+Projected Emissions Reductions
+Overall, some groups that analyze energy and climate policy have projected that the bill’s provisions could lead to more emissions reductions than projected under current law.
+The Rhodium Group, a research firm, said its “preliminary estimate is that the IRA can cut US net greenhouse gas emissions down to 31% to 44% below 2005 levels in 2030 … compared to 24% to 35% under current policy.”
+In addition, Energy Innovation, a think tank that produces customized research and policy analysis on how to reduce emissions, said its modeling found that the legislation – despite its oil and gas leasing requirements – “could cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 37-41 percent below 2005 levels.” That is more than a projected 24% decrease in emissions by 2030 under a business-as-usual scenario that holds current policy constant, the think tank said.
+What Happens Next?
+As we mentioned, Schumer has said that he plans to bring the bill to the Senate floor for a vote this week. The Senate is scheduled to recess for summer break on Aug. 8 and would not reconvene until Sept. 6.
+Before a vote can be held, the Senate parliamentarian has to rule on whether the bill’s provisions qualify for consideration under the budget reconciliation process.
+In the Senate, that process allows bills to pass with a simple majority rather than the usual 60 votes needed to avoid a potential filibuster. There is also a limit on how long a bill can be debated, which is not to exceed 20 hours. To qualify for reconciliation, a bill’s provisions have to change revenues, spending or the debt limit.
+Again, if all Republicans vote against the Inflation Reduction Act, Democrats would need yes votes from all 50 members of the Senate Democratic caucus so that the vice president could break the tie.
+If the bill passes in the Senate, it would then have to be approved by the House of Representatives. At that point, Biden would be able to sign it into law.
+Since 1980, reconciliation has been used 22 times to enact laws, according to the Congressional Research Service.
+For instance, Democrats used the process to pass the Affordable Care Act in March 2010 and Republicans used it to pass the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in December 2017. More recently, Democrats used reconciliation to pass the American Rescue Plan in March 2021.
+Update, Aug. 10: The Senate passed the Inflation Reduction Act on Aug. 7. The vote was 50-50, with Vice President Harris then casting the tie-breaking vote.  
+
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+"SciCheck Digest
+There is “unequivocal” evidence that humans are causing global warming, the U.N. climate change panel has said. But viral posts revive a 2014 video of Weather Channel co-founder John Coleman falsely claiming “climate change is not happening.” The channel, which supports the scientific consensus that climate change is real, had distanced itself from Coleman.
+
+Full Story
+A vast and growing body of scientific evidence shows that climate change is occurring and is largely caused by human activity, as we’ve written on multiple occasions.
+
+In 2007, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that the “evidence is now ‘unequivocal’ that humans are causing global warming,” the U.N. said in a press release at the time. The U.N. panel has repeated that finding ever since, most recently in an April report.
+“Widespread and rapid changes” have occurred as a result of climate change and “many changes … are irreversible” for at least centuries, the U.N. climate panel said in another report issued in 2021.
+“Many changes in the climate system become larger in direct relation to increasing global warming,” the 2021 report said. “They include increases in the frequency and intensity of hot extremes, marine heatwaves, heavy precipitation, and, in some regions, agricultural and ecological droughts; an increase in the proportion of intense tropical cyclones; and reductions in Arctic sea ice, snow cover and permafrost.”
+As the effects of climate change become increasingly evident, the issue is also becoming increasingly political. Just weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June to restrict the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate carbon emissions, President Joe Biden said he would take “strong executive action” to “tackle the climate crisis” if the Senate failed to act. 
+But social media posts continue to question the existence of global warming by reviving a 2014 interview on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” with climate change skeptic and Weather Channel co-founder John Coleman. 
+One Instagram post has the headline, “Weather Channel Founder Goes Savage on CNN for Network’s Climate Change Fake News.” A caption on the video clip says, “The climate change activist and movement is a fraud!” The post has been viewed more than 18,000 times.
+A post on Twitter attached a slightly longer portion of the same Coleman interview with the caption, “Founder of The Weather Channel tells Brian Stelter climate change is a hoax.” The post has over 66,000 likes and more than 28,000 retweets. 
+In the video shared in these posts, Coleman said: “Climate change is not happening. There is no significant man-made global warming now, there hasn’t been any in the past, and there’s no reason to expect any in the future.”
+Coleman’s claims are false, and so is the implication in the social media posts that he was an expert in climate science.
+Coleman, who died in 2018, worked as a weather anchor for over 60 years, including on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” But he did not hold a degree in any scientific discipline. The CNN clip was one of many instances in which Coleman perpetuated climate change falsehoods.
+In the CNN report, anchor Brian Stelter subsequently spoke with the Weather Channel’s then-CEO David Kenny. In that exchange, which the social media posts leave out, Kenny distanced the Weather Channel from Coleman’s claims and asked viewers to focus on the science. 
+“What I want people to know is that the science is pretty clear about climate change,” Kenny said. “We’re grateful that [Coleman] got [the Weather Channel] started 32 years ago, but he hasn’t been with us in 31 years. So he’s not really speaking for the Weather Channel in any way today.”
+Kenny continued, “Our position is really clear, it’s scientifically based, and we’ve been unwavering on it for quite some time now.”
+The Weather Channel had posted its statement on climate change a few days prior to Kenny’s CNN interview. In its statement, which was updated in 2017, the organization accurately said that “the majority of the warming over the past century is a result of human activities.”
+Extensive scientific evidence gathered over many years corroborates the Weather Channel’s conclusion that, contrary to Coleman’s claims, human-caused warming exists. 
+As we’ve written, the theory of the greenhouse effect — that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide trap the sun’s heat in the atmosphere — has been repeatedly proven since it was first proposed in 1824.
+The American Association for the Advancement of Science notes that about 97% of climate scientists believe human-caused warming is occurring. Similarly, NASA calls the fact that “Earth’s climate is warming” a matter of “scientific consensus.”
+The Annual 2021 Global Climate Report, prepared by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information, found that the global annual temperature increased an average rate of 0.14 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since 1880 but “over twice that rate” since 1981.
+“The years 2013–2021 all rank among the ten warmest years on record. The year 2021 was also the 45th consecutive year (since 1977) with global temperatures, at least nominally, above the 20th century average,” the report added. 
+The year 2021 marked the sixth warmest year recorded, despite the cooling effect of La Niña climate pattern in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean.
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+Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
+NOAA charted the global average surface temperature since 1880. (See chart.)
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+“That extra heat is driving regional and seasonal temperature extremes, reducing snow cover and sea ice, intensifying heavy rainfall, and changing habitat ranges for plants and animals,” NOAA explains on climate.gov. 
+The NCEI annual report concludes that only the “human emissions of heat-trapping gases” can explain this increase in global temperature. 
+The IPCC, a U.N. body of 278 climate experts from 65 countries, in a report released in April attributed climate change to “more than a century of … unsustainable energy use, land use and land-use change, lifestyle and patterns of consumption and production.”  
+The panel warned that “without urgent, effective and equitable mitigation actions,” climate change will continue to threaten biodiversity, global health and economic growth. “[C]limate change poses a serious threat to development and wellbeing in both rich and poor countries,” the report said, citing such climate impacts as premature deaths, food insecurity and loss of land and infrastructure. 
+Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
+Sources
+Fichera, Angelo. “No, Climate Changes Isn’t ‘Made Up.’” FactCheck.org. 8 May 2019.
+McDonald, Jessica. “Trump Wrong on Climate Change, Again.” FactCheck.org. 18 Oct 2018.
+Levitan, Dave. “Jeb Bush Off on Contributions to Warming.” FactCheck.org. 22 May 2015.
+United Nations. “Evidence is now ‘unequivocal’ that humans are causing global warming — UN report.” 2 Feb 2007. 
+Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “Summary for Policymakers.” 2021.
+United Nations. “UN climate report: It’s ‘now or never’ to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.” UN News. 4 Apr 2022.
+Totenberg, Nina. “Supreme Court restricts the EPA’s authority to mandate carbon emissions reductions.” NPR. 30 Jun 2022.
+“Statement by President Joe Biden.” White House. 15 Jul 2022.
+Coleman, John. “Get politics out of climate debate: Opposing view.” USA Today. 21 Apr 2016.
+The Weather Channel. “John Coleman, The Weather Channel Co-Founder, Dies at Age 83.” 22 Jan 2018.
+Projectintellectus. “Weather Channel Founder Goes Savage on CNN for Network’s Climate Change Fake News.” Instagram. 26 Jul 2022.
+VRosen (@vrosen11). “Founder of The Weather Channel tells Brian Stelter climate change is a hoax.” Twitter. 20 Jul 2022.
+The Heartland Institute. “JOHN COLEMAN (1934-2018).” Accessed 29 Jul 2022.
+Nuccitelli, Dana. “Weather Channel co-founder John Coleman prefers conspiracies to climate science.” The Guardian. 3 Nov 2014.
+Snopes. “Did a Weather Channel Co-Founder Disprove Climate Change?” 20 Jun 2008.
+CNN. “Global warming storm at Weather Channel.” Accessed 29 Jul 2022.
+Molloy, Tim. “David Kenny Named Weather Channel Companies CEO.” Reuters. 24 Jan 2012.
+Mosbergen, Dominique. “Weather Channel Says Global Warming Is Real Following Co-Founder’s Climate Denial.” HuffPost. 30 Oct 2014.
+The Weather Channel. “Global Warming and Climate Change: The Weather Company Stand.” 9 Mar 2017.
+The Weather Channel. “Global Warming: The Weather Channel Position Statement.” Accessed 29 Jul 2022.
+Schipani, Vanessa. “Precision in Climate Science.” FactCheck.org. 7 Mar 2017.
+“What We Know: The Reality, Risks, And Response To Climate Change.” American Association for the Advancement of Science.
+NASA. “Scientific Consensus: Earth’s Climate is Warming.” Accessed 29 Jul 2022.
+NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. “State of the Climate: Monthly Global Climate Report for Annual 2021.” Accessed 29 Jul 2022.
+NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. “About.” Accessed 29 Jul 2022.
+NOAA Climate.gov. “El Niño & La Niña (El Niño — Southern Oscillation).” 14 Jun 2022.
+Lindsey, Rebecca and LuAnn Dahlman. “Climate Change: Global Temperature.” NOAA Climate.gov. 28 Jun 2022.
+Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “About the IPCC.” Accessed 29 Jul 2022.
+Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “Authors.” Accessed 29 Jul 2022.
+Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “Climate Change 2022 Mitigation of Climate Change.” Accessed 29 Jul 2022.
+Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change.” Accessed 1 Aug 2022.
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+Categories Debunking Viral Claims
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+FactCheck Posts
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+SciCheck
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+Issue climate change
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+People John Coleman"
+"SciCheck Digest
+Climate change has affected ocean ecosystems, scientists say. But an unfounded claim on social media that “plankton in the Atlantic Ocean is 90% gone” and the ocean is “now pretty much dead” is based on a faulty paper.
+
+Full Story
+The world’s oceans have changed over the last several decades. Climate change has warmed the surface water and caused the sea level to rise, for example.
+But some social media accounts that post about environmental issues have made the unfounded claim, “Plankton in the Atlantic Ocean is 90% gone.”
+Plankton — the catchall term for small marine plants, phytoplankton, and animals, zooplankton — serve two vital functions in the ecosystem. They are a major source of food for other marine life, and they absorb carbon dioxide while creating oxygen in the ocean.
+So, if the claim were true it would, indeed, be a major environmental catastrophe. But experts who study plankton have not found that to be the case.
+“We absolutely haven’t seen the drops that were noted” in the social media posts, David Johns, head of the Continuous Plankton Recorder Survey, told us in an email. “[I]n fact, in some areas there have been increases in plankton,” he said. The CPR Survey has been recording marine ecological data since 1931 and is now run by the Marine Biological Association in the U.K.
+We’ll explain how the inaccurate claim about plankton developed.
+It’s based on a quote from Howard Dryden, a marine biologist in Scotland who has, for most of his career, developed and distributed water treatment systems. In 2021, Dryden sought help from fellow members of the Ocean Cruising Club to gather water samples as part of a citizen science project.
+He wrote in a March 11, 2021, announcement calling for volunteers, “There are around 5,000 yachts crossing oceans every year, from Arctic regions to the equator. If some of these yachts were to start collecting data, then it would be invaluable for the measurement of oceanic pollution and productivity.”
+Three months later he posted a report suggesting that the primary problem facing ocean ecosystems was chemical and plastic pollution and, about a year after that, on May 6, he posted a paper titled: “Climate change…have we got it all wrong? an observational report by a Marine Biologist.”
+The abstract for that paper concluded, “peer reviewed literature shows we have lost more than 50% of all life in the oceans, but from own plankton sampling activity and other observations, we consider that losses closer to 90% have occurred, and these are due to chemical pollution from, for example, wastewater and not climate change.”
+The paper was cited in a July 17 article published by a Scottish newspaper, the Sunday Post, which also quoted extensively from an interview with Dryden.
+Among the quotes was this, referring to plankton: “Our results confirmed a 90% reduction in primary productivity in the Atlantic. Effectively, the Atlantic Ocean is now pretty much dead.”
+Shortly after the article was published, the claim that “plankton in the Atlantic Ocean is 90% gone” began circulating widely online.
+Ars Technica was among the first to address the claim and, after it published a story explaining that the claim was overstated, Dryden contacted the publication and said that the Sunday Post article should have reported a “90% reduction in marine plankton in the Equatorial Atlantic, not the whole Atlantic.”
+Dryden also changed the name of his May 6 paper to include the “equatorial Atlantic” distinction. It’s now titled: “Climate Change…Equatorial Atlantic Ocean plankton productivity and Caribbean pollution….a think piece for debate.”
+The newspaper updated its story and included an editor’s note at the bottom explaining the changes.
+The equatorial Atlantic includes currents flowing west from North Africa toward the southeast coast of the U.S. near the equator, as the name suggests.
+That area doesn’t typically have high numbers of visible plankton, though.
+“Equatorial waters are naturally not hotspots for plankton (unless you look at the really small stuff, like pico- and nanoplankton, which you cannot see with a typical microscope),” Johns, of the CPR Survey, told us. “So the claims are unfounded.”
+Johns also noted the reference in Dryden’s paper to a global loss of 50% of plankton, and disagreed with that, too.
+“I work with a large number of national and international plankton scientists,” Johns said, “and no one is reporting those sorts of declines – a decline in that order would be absolutely catastrophic, so many marine organisms depend on plankton, from larval through to adult fish, whales, whale sharks, manta rays, sea birds etc. And the phytoplankton are massively important as global producers of oxygen, and they ‘drawdown’ and fix CO2.”
+The larger premise of Dryden’s paper — that climate change isn’t much of a threat — is inaccurate, too.
+Looking at the anticipated impacts of climate change on the ocean alone, we can expect increased coastal flooding due to sea level rise, changes in climate patterns due to higher ocean temperatures that affect the currents, and decreased marine biodiversity as higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide acidify the water.
+“We have seen lots of changes relating to climate change, specifically the warming of the sea surface,” Johns said, addressing Dryden’s specific claim about the amount of plankton in the equatorial Atlantic. “In many cases, this has forced some plankton groups to retract northwards into cooler waters, and has allowed warming loving species to advance northwards as conditions for them become more favourable.”
+So, the claim that 90% of plankton has disappeared from the Atlantic is based on a faulty paper that was highlighted by a news outlet. Those who study the issue have found cause for concern about the impacts of climate change, but they haven’t clocked the magnitude of decline trumpeted in the viral social media claim.
+Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
+Sources
+Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate. Accessed 27 Jul 2022.
+National Aeronautics and Space Administration. “How Do We Know Climate Change Is Real?” Climate.nasa.gov. Updated 26 Jul 2022.
+National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “What are plankton?” Updated 26 Feb 2021.
+Johns, David. Continuous Plankton Recorder Survey. Email to FactCheck.org. 28 Jul 2022.
+Dryden, Howard. “Climate change…have we got it all wrong? an observational report by a Marine Biologist.” 6 May 2022.
+Howarth, Mark. “Our empty oceans: Scots team’s research finds Atlantic plankton all but wiped out in catastrophic loss of life.” Sunday Post. 17 Jul 2022.
+U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Climate Change Indicators: Oceans.” Updated 12 May 2021.
+United Nations. “How is climate change impacting the world’s ocean.” Accessed 29 Jul 2022."
+"Quick Take
+An architect created a map in 2015 as a “thought experiment” to show how the Mediterranean Sea would fit inside the United States. However, social media posts have misinterpreted the map as a prediction of the impact of climate change. The map’s creator said it is not related to climate change in any way.
+Full Story
+A map was created by Bret Drager, an architect, in December 2015 that superimposes the Mediterranean Sea on the continental United States. Drager posted the image to the Tumblr blog The Arcadian Ideal.
+Describing the map as “a brave new alternate United States of America,” Drager wrote that he wondered if the Mediterranean Sea would fit in the United States, and after “lots of graphic manipulation,” he was able to create the image. The image was then also posted to Brilliant Maps in October 2017. 
+Drager recently told the Associated Press that he created the map as a “thought experiment” and that it is not related to climate change in any way.
+From there, the map took on a life of its own on social media.
+In October 2021, a Twitter user posted the map with the caption, “Scientists say this map represents the US in 30 years if we don’t reverse climate change.” 
+The post quickly began to gain traction. USA Today said that many comments appeared to take the claim seriously. But the Twitter user told USA Today he intended the post as satire and “figured folks would spot Italy right away and have a good laugh.”
+The Twitter user reposted the original tweet on July 8, and it has once again gone viral. While most commenters realize the post is satire, some appear to have taken it seriously again. 
+However, the Twitter user has been retweeting fact-checks related to it as well and commented in one retweet: “Verdict. Satire.”
+We reached out to the Twitter user but haven’t received a response.
+On July 11, a Facebook user posted the same image, falsely claiming that “scientists say this map represents the United States in 30 years if we don’t reverse climate change,” and the post has gained over 100,000 views in less than 24 hours. Again, some commenters appear to take it seriously.
+According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s 2022 Global and Regional Sea Level Rise Scenarios for the United States report, the sea level along the U.S. coastline is projected to rise 10 to 12 inches on average between 2020 and 2050, which will be as much as the rise in sea level that occurred between 1920 and 2020. “Tens of millions of people in the United States already live in areas at risk of coastal flooding, with more moving to the coasts each year,” the report said.
+Various sources, such as NASA and NOAA, have created visualization tools to help see the estimated effects of the sea level rising.
+
+Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
+Sources
+NOAA. “Global and Regional Sea Level Scenarios for the United States.” Feb 2022.
+Avina, Carlos. “How crazy that scientists say this map represents the United States in 30 years if we don’t reverse climate change….. I’m low key ok with that.” Facebook. 11 Jul 2022. 
+Drager, Bret. “The Mediterranean Sea of America.” Tumblr. 26 Dec 2015. 
+
+NASA. “IPCC AR6 Sea Level Projection Tool.” Accessed 12 Jul 2022.
+The Associated Press. “Map shows Mediterranean Sea on the U.S., not climate change impact.” 9 Jul 2022.
+
+Michael (@mjr880). “Scientists say this map represents the US in 30 years if we don’t reverse climate change.” Twitter. 26 Oct 2021.
+Michael (@mjr880). “Scientists say this map represents the US in 30 years if we don’t reverse climate change.” Twitter. 8 Jul 2022.
+Michael (@mjr880). “Just in case you weren’t sure.” Twitter. 10 Jul 2022. 
+Michael (@mjr880). “Verdict. Satire.” Twitter. 10 Jul 2022. 
+Sadeghi, McKenzie. “Fact check: Posts falsely claim to show US map in 30 years if climate change isn’t addressed.” USA Today. 28 Oct 2021.
+Climate.org. “Sea Level Rise – Map Viewer.” Accessed 12 Jul 2022.
+Brilliant Maps. “The Mediterranean Sea of America.” 11 Oct 2017."
+"In speaking about the Green New Deal, Herschel Walker, the former professional football player vying for a Senate seat in Georgia, incorrectly suggested that U.S. climate efforts were pointless because “China’s bad air” would simply move over into American “air space.”
+While some forms of air pollution are largely local problems, which sometimes can travel to other places, greenhouse gases — the emissions relevant to climate change — mix in the atmosphere and therefore are shared globally. If the U.S., which is the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, substantially reduced its emissions, it would be beneficial to America and the rest of the world.
+“We in America have some of the cleanest air and cleanest water of anybody in the world,” Walker, a Republican, said on July 9 at a campaign event in Hall County, Georgia, after promising to explain the Green New Deal and climate change to the audience (his comments begin about 24 minutes in).
+Under the Green New Deal, he said, the U.S would spend “millions of billions of dollars cleaning our good air up. … Since we don’t control the air, our good air decided to float over to China’s bad air so when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move. So it moves over to our good air space. Then now we got to clean that back up, while they’re messing ours up.”
+“So what we’re doing is just spending money,” he continued. “Until these other countries can get on board and clean what they got up, it ain’t going to help us to start cleaning our stuff up. We’re already doing it the right way.”
+Walker’s comments are reminiscent of those of former President Donald Trump, who has also previously conflated traditional pollutants with greenhouse gas emissions and repeatedly touted the nation’s air and water quality. Trump endorsed Walker, who is trying to unseat Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, in September.
+Emissions of greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide, are responsible for climate change — and the U.S. is one of the worst offenders. According to Climate Watch, in 2019, the most recent year with available data, the U.S. was the second-highest emitter of greenhouse gases, behind only China — and alone responsible for 12% of the world’s emissions. The U.S. was also the highest emitter per capita.
+So the U.S. is not, as Walker claimed, “already doing it the right way” in terms of greenhouse gases.
+In terms of air and water quality, the U.S. isn’t exactly the best, either. According to the 2022 Environmental Performance Index, which is put out by Yale and Columbia universities, the U.S. ranks 16th in air quality and 23rd in drinking water.
+It’s true that some traditional air pollution does travel from Asia to the U.S. Several studies have found that pollutants from China and other countries can drift over the Pacific, contributing to smog and other air quality problems in the western U.S. Some of this pollution is due to products Americans import, since the manufacturing has been outsourced.
+
+
+
+Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Herschel Walker at a NASCAR race on July 10 in Hampton, Georgia. Photo by James Gilbert via Getty Images.
+But Walker’s description of how that international transfer works is wrong, as the U.S. does not actively “clean” air like a filter, nor does “bad” air move in to displace “good” air or vice versa. Strong global winds called “westerlies” are the reason why air pollutants in China and other parts of Asia make their way to the U.S. Air is generally cleaner in the U.S. than in China because pollution is stopped at the source and is never released in the first place, in large part due to regulations imposed by the Clean Air Act.
+The “way countries and regions improve their air quality is by reducing emissions of criteria pollutants,” such as those defined by the Clean Air Act, Steven J. Davis, a professor of Earth system science at the University of California, Irvine, told us in an email. 
+Davis is a co-author of a study published in PNAS that found in 2006 that as much as 12% to 24% of sulfate pollution over the western U.S. was due to export-related Chinese air pollution. There “can be inter-regional transport of air pollution across long distances, but air pollution doesn’t displace clean air,” he added. “It’s more like pee in a swimming pool: it dissipates and becomes less concentrated over dimensions of time and space, but no one is better off because of it.”
+In any case, Walker invoked climate change and the Green New Deal, the main goal of which is to reach net-zero greenhouse emissions in a decade, in his description — not traditional air pollutants. (The Green New Deal, as we’ve written, is a nonbinding resolution introduced in Congress in 2019 that lays out a broad vision for how the country might tackle climate change over the next decade. It never advanced out of the Senate.)
+And from that perspective, Walker’s description also is incorrect. Greenhouse gases, which include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and other fluorinated gases, accumulate in Earth’s atmosphere as a result of human activity, particularly the burning of fossil fuels, which traps heat from the sun and warms the planet.
+“Each of these gases can remain in the atmosphere for different amounts of time, ranging from a few years to thousands of years,” the Environmental Protection Agency has explained. “All of these gases remain in the atmosphere long enough to become well mixed, meaning that the amount that is measured in the atmosphere is roughly the same all over the world, regardless of the source of the emissions.”
+“There can be enhanced concentrations near point sources and urban areas, but the levels of atmospheric CO2 over the US aren’t drastically different than over China,” Davis said in an email, referring to carbon dioxide. He noted that in April 2020, carbon dioxide levels over China and the U.S were within three to four parts per million of each other.
+In other words, there is no American “good air” or Chinese “bad air.” When it comes to greenhouse gases, everyone ultimately shares the “air” — and the concentration of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere is increasing. This is raising the global average temperature, which is also causing other effects, such as sea level rise, ice melt and more extreme weather.
+About 40% of carbon dioxide emissions remain in the atmosphere, according to the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, while 30% is taken up by plants through photosynthesis, and another 30% is absorbed by the ocean. Excess carbon dioxide in the ocean leads to ocean acidification, which can negatively affect sea creatures and ecosystems, as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has explained.
+Walker’s campaign did not respond to our request for comment, but did release a statement following criticism of his remarks that attacked his opponent, Warnock. The statement claimed that Walker had “called out China for being the world’s number one polluter,” even though Walker never explicitly did so.
+At the same event, Walker also claimed, without evidence, that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was “created by China.” As we’ve written, while the origin of the coronavirus remains unknown, there is no evidence the virus leaked from a lab, and some experts say it’s virtually impossible for the virus to have been bioengineered.
+According to reporting by Georgia Public Broadcasting, Walker’s inaccurate pollution remarks have been repeated in various forms and are a part of his stump speech.
+“No matter how much money we put into controlling our air, it goes over to China or to somewhere else, and it messes it up,” Walker said at an event in Statesboro, Georgia, in May. “All of a sudden, it comes back over here.”
+As we’ve established, whether he’s referring to standard criteria air pollutants or greenhouse gas emissions, that’s not how air pollution works — and reducing greenhouse gas emissions would be beneficial both to the U.S. and to the global community.
+
+Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104.
+
+
+
+
+
+Categories FactCheck Posts
+
+SciCheck
+
+Tags 2022 Election
+
+Location Georgia
+
+Issue air pollution
+
+climate change
+
+People Donald Trump
+
+Herschel Walker"
+"On Earth Day, President Joe Biden touted his administration’s environmental initiatives, but his rhetoric made efforts to reduce methane emissions and drinking water contamination sound more expansive than they actually are.
+Global Methane Pledge
+In his April 22 remarks, Biden went too far in saying more than 100 countries had agreed to “eliminate methane.” The Global Methane Pledge is to reduce methane emissions, not eliminate them.
+Biden: We slashed methane and brought over 100 nations together when I was at the big meeting we had in Europe, hundred nations around the globe. …  There’s two things I was able to accomplish. One, I got a pledge, a pledge from a hundred, I think it was 144 of them, that they would eliminate methane. … It’s the most damaging of all the pollutants that are going up.
+We asked the White House about Biden’s remarks, and we haven’t received a response to our questions. However, there was a “big meeting” in Europe on climate change — the United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP26, in Glasgow, Scotland, in early November — at which more than 100 countries agreed to voluntarily reduce methane emissions by “at least 30 percent from 2020 levels by 2030.” The Global Methane Pledge, as it’s called, now has 111 participants.
+The pledge is a global one, not a 30% reduction for each country. If the goal is reached, it “could eliminate over 0.2˚C warming by 2050,” the pledge’s website says.
+The U.S. and the European Union invited other countries to join the pledge to reduce methane, which Biden said was important “to keep 1.5 degrees within reach,” a reference to the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with pre-industrial levels.
+Methane, which is emitted from fossil fuel systems, agriculture and landfills, traps heat more efficiently than carbon dioxide, though it also breaks down much more quickly. As we’ve explained, methane breaks down over about 12 years, while carbon dioxide’s lifetime can last thousands of years.
+The U.N. says methane is “responsible for a third of current warming from human activities.”
+In a May 2021 report, the U.N. Environment Programme and the Climate & Clean Air Coalition said there are “readily available targeted measures” that could reduce methane emissions by 30% globally by 2030, and it said most of those measures were low-cost. With additional efforts, the report said the reduction could be 40% to 45%, a level that was needed to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
+Because methane persists in the atmosphere for a relatively short period, reducing those emissions produces near-term effects. “Lower methane concentrations would rapidly reduce the rate of warming, making methane mitigation one of the best ways of limiting warming in this and subsequent decades,” the U.N. report said in its executive summary.
+The White House released an action plan in November, calling for new rules for the oil and gas sector, outreach to landfills, and incentives for farmers and ranchers to reduce emissions.
+PFAS in Drinking Water
+Biden also said that the bipartisan infrastructure law “gives communities the money they need to get forever chemicals, PFAS off, out of the water.” He said these chemicals were “deadly” and “we’re going to get rid of it all.” But it would take more than the one law to eliminate “all” PFAS in drinking water.
+PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, include thousands of chemicals found in many products, including food packaging, waterproof materials, stain-resistant products, some cookware, firefighting foam, and cosmetics, according to the Environmental Working Group.
+The Environmental Protection Agency explains that they are “long lasting chemicals,” with components that “break down very slowly over time.” They have been detected in drinking water, as well as the blood of people and animals, soil, and the air. “Scientific studies have shown that exposure to some PFAS in the environment may be linked to harmful health effects in humans and animals,” including cancer and immune-deficiency disorders, the EPA says.
+The infrastructure law, enacted in November, includes $10 billion in funding to address PFAS issues in drinking water. The National Law Review said the sum was “significantly more” than the federal government had ever dedicated to this issue, but also that “the funds will likely represent only a fraction of the money needed to address PFAS issues nationwide.”
+The Environmental Working Group says that PFAS chemicals have been detected in drinking water systems that provide water for 19 million Americans, as of the group’s tracking in July 2019, but the group also estimates that up to 110 million people could have drinking water contaminated with the chemicals.
+The National Law Review says that while the $10 million in funding — most of which will likely cover wastewater plant and residential filtration systems to filter out the chemicals — isn’t enough to completely address the problem across the country, the investment could produce “longer-term effects” that “result in more litigation against PFAS polluters.”
+In his remarks, Biden added: “We started replacing 100% — 100% of all the lead pipes … that poison our water in America.” As we’ve written before, the infrastructure law does start this process, but in this case, too, the funding isn’t enough to finish replacing 100% of the lead pipes in the U.S.
+
+FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104."
+"When President Joe Biden announced plans to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by the end of the decade, he provided a few examples, but no detailed plan, about how that would be achieved.
+Nonetheless, speculation by a British tabloid that it could include reducing beef consumption led to a wave of sarcastic outrage from Republican officials and conservative media.
+“Joe Biden’s climate plan includes cutting 90% of red meat from our diets by 2030,” freshman Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert tweeted. “They want to limit us to about four pounds a year. Why doesn’t Joe stay out of my kitchen?”
+Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on April 26 categorically denied that there is any plan by the administration to reduce beef consumption.
+But let’s deconstruct how this bogus talking point emerged.
+As we said, during opening session remarks at the Virtual Leaders Summit on Climate on April 22, Biden pitched some of the components in his American Jobs Plan that he said puts the United States “on the road to cut greenhouse gases in half — in half by the end of this decade.” That’s compared with 2005 emissions levels.
+Biden talked about “critical infrastructure to produce and deploy clean technology” and “line workers laying thousands of miles of transmission lines for a clean, modern, resilient grid.” He talked about “capping hundreds of thousands of abandoned oil and gas wells that need to be cleaned up, and abandoned coalmines that need to be reclaimed, putting a stop to the methane leaks and protecting the health of our communities.”
+He discussed a vision for “autoworkers building the next generation of electric vehicles, and electricians installing nationwide for 500,000 charging stations along our highways” and “engineers and the construction workers building new carbon capture and green hydrogen plants to forge cleaner steel and cement and produce clean power.”
+And, he said, “I see farmers deploying cutting-edge tools to make soil of our … heartland the next frontier in carbon innovation.”
+No mention of beef or cattle ranching, which does account for some greenhouse gas emissions.
+The speculation about beef reduction came from a story in the Daily Mail, which ran under the headline, “How Biden’s climate plan could limit you to eat just one burger a MONTH, cost $3.5K a year per person in taxes, force you to spend $55K on an electric car and ‘crush’ American jobs.”
+Working off Biden’s stated goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 50%, the article states, “Here’s how it could affect every day Americans.”
+Daily Mail, April 22: Americans may have to cut their red meat consumption by a whopping 90 percent and cut their consumption of other animal based foods in half.
+Gradually making those changes by 2030 could see diet-related greenhouse gas emissions reduced by 50 percent, according to a study by Michigan University’s Center for Sustainable Systems.
+To do that, it would require Americans to only consume about four pounds of red meat per year, or 0.18 ounces per day.
+It equates to consuming roughly one average sized burger per month.
+The University of Michigan study cited in the article considered diet scenarios that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including one scenario in which 90% of beef consumed in the U.S. were replaced with plant-based alternatives. But again, nothing in Biden’s stated plans mentions anything about reducing beef consumption.
+Two of the authors of the January 2020 study, Gregory A. Keoleian and Martin C. Heller, told Yahoo News that “to our knowledge, there is no connection between our study and Joe Biden’s Climate plan.”
+“This appears to be an association made erroneously by the Daily Mail that has been picked up widely,” they said. “Our study merely identifies opportunities for emissions reductions that are possible from changes in our diet. By no means does it suggest that these changes in diet would be required to meet climate goals.”
+Nonetheless, the article fueled a torrent of conservative pushback.
+“Speaking of stupid, there’s a study coming out of the University of Michigan which says that to meet the Biden Green New Deal targets, America has to, get this, America has to stop eating meat, stop eating poultry, fish, seafood, eggs, dairy and animal-based fats,” Larry Kudlow, a former adviser to then-President Donald Trump, said on his Fox Business show on April 24. “OK, you got that? No burgers on July 4. No steaks on the barbie. I’m sure Middle America is just going to love that.”
+Social media users piled on as well, with posts like this one on Facebook:
+
+Texas Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted a Fox News graphic that claimed: “Biden’s climate requirements” would “Cut 90% of red meat from diet; Max 4 lbs per year; One burger per month.” Abbott commented, “Not gonna happen in Texas!” (Fox News has since acknowledged, “A graphic and a script incorrectly implied that it was part of Biden’s plan for dealing with climate change. That is not the case.”)
+In addition to Boebert’s false tweet, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene likened Biden to the “Hamburglar” and tweeted a picture of Biden sitting at a dining table with a hamburger, with the caption, “No burgers for thee, but just for me.” 
+“It was a joke,” Greene’s communications director, Nick Dyer, told us via email.
+Asked about the fake controversy during a virtual briefing hosted by the North American Agricultural Journalists on April 26, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said, “It’s hard to answer a question that assumes that the president has a position that he doesn’t have.”
+“There is no effort designed to limit people’s intake of beef coming out of President Biden’s White House or coming out of the USDA,” Vilsack said. “Sometimes, folks, in the political world, games get played and issues are injected into the conversation knowing full well that there’s not a factual basis for the issue. But also knowing that somebody’s gonna pick it up and somebody’s gonna ask about it, and it all of a sudden becomes an issue. And this is, I think, a good example of this.”
+“There was no desire, no effort, no press release, no policy paper — none of that — that would support the notion that the Biden administration is going to suggest that people eat less meat, or that USDA has some program that’s designed to reduce meat consumption,” Vilsack said. “Just simply not the case.”
+Although not in Biden’s stated plan, it is true that livestock operations, particularly cattle farming, contribute a significant amount to greenhouse gas emissions.
+The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 10% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture, which includes livestock such as cows. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that, globally, 14.5% of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are due to livestock, and cattle represent the majority of that. A special report on climate change and land issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2019 concludes that reducing red meat consumption would not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but also promote better health.
+“There are a number in the medical field who are suggesting proper balance,” Vilsack said. But, he said, “at this point in time,” the Biden administration is not making such a proposal.
+Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104."
+"Quick Take
+A video showing Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg departing the White House on a bike was misrepresented by conservative commentators online, with some claiming he “staged” the ride. There’s no evidence for that claim, and the Department of Transportation said he traveled from the department to the White House — a three-mile trip — and back on bike.
+
+Full Story
+Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s official cabinet Twitter account recently highlighted a video of him mounting a bike in a business suit. Retweeting the video posted by a CNN producer, Buttigieg wrote: “Great way to get around!”
+But critics of Buttigieg are using the same footage to make false and misleading claims, primarily suggesting that Buttigieg was actually dropped off by motor vehicle and was staging the bike ride.
+On April 2, Dinesh D’Souza, a popular conservative personality, tweeted a link to a copy of the video he uploaded to Rumble with the false headline: “Buttigieg CAUGHT Faking Green Lifestyle, Rides Bike to Work After Car Drops Him Off Near Destination.” A YouTube post of the video the same day, viewed more than 420,000 times, declared: “Pete Buttigieg fakes riding a bike to work.”
+Other websites used similar erroneous takeaways. A story on the website the Federalist, shared more than 11,000 times on Facebook, was headlined: “Clown Show: Pete Buttigieg ‘Bikes’ To Work After SUVs Drive Him Part Of The Way.”
+And conservative personality Charlie Kirk posted the video on Rumble and YouTube, using the false headline: “CAUGHT ON CAMERA: Buttigieg Stages Fake Bike Ride To Work.” Both links were each shared on Facebook more than 5,000 times.
+All of those posts base the claim on the video taken by CNN producer DJ Judd — the same one Buttigieg himself shared. But Judd did not suggest the video showed Buttigieg staging a bike ride, and there’s no evidence that he did.
+Judd tweeted the video on April 1, saying, “Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg biked to the White House for today’s Cabinet Meeting, it would appear.”
+Asked about the video, the Department of Transportation told us in an email statement: “He rode his bike from DOT to the White House cabinet meeting and he rode his bike back to DOT after the meeting.”
+A longer version of CNN’s video does show the bike was attached to the SUV before Buttigieg began his ride; it was posted by WFMZ-TV 69 and headlined: “DC: BUTTIGIEG DEPARTS CABINET MTG ON A BIKE.” In other words, the video shows Buttigieg retrieving his bike from the SUV at the conclusion of the meeting. The SUV appears to be Buttigieg’s security detail; as Buttigieg begins to ride at the end of the video, the car can be seen following him.
+In an interview on ABC’s “The View” on April 9, Buttigieg addressed the claims himself, saying that he rode his bike to the White House. “When we were in the cabinet meeting, they loaded the bike onto the vehicle so we could drive back if we ran out of time, but actually we had enough time to ride back, too,” he explained.
+Buttigieg said he rides his bike to work some days, but acknowledged that “it doesn’t do much for my carbon footprint because I have to have a security detail.” He said he does it regardless, for exercise and as “a transportation secretary who is trying to encourage people to bike to work and make it easier and safer for people to do it.”
+Biden’s cabinet meeting began at 1:15 p.m. Judd’s video was tweeted at 4:07 p.m. The distance from the department’s headquarters in Southeast Washington to the White House in the Northwest is about 3 miles.
+Katie Barlow, of the website SCOTUS Blog, replied to Judd’s tweet with a short clip of her own showing what she said was Buttigieg exiting the White House grounds on his bike.
+Buttigieg has been previously spotted riding a bike in Washington, D.C.  He reportedly purchased a used bike in early March.
+Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here.
+Update, April 9: We updated this story to add Buttigieg’s comments addressing the claims. 
+Sources
+Barlow, Katie (@KatieLeeBarlow). “And biked out of the complex.” Twitter. 1 Apr 2021.
+Buttigieg, Pete (@SecretaryPete). “Great way to get around!” Twitter. 1 Apr 2021.
+Buttigieg, Pete (@SecretaryPete). “Good bike! Took some explaining to the staff and detail why I needed to swing by a Pizza Hut parking lot in Petworth on the way home, but we got there.” Twitter. 11 Mar 2021.
+“DC: BUTTIGIEG DEPARTS CABINET MTG ON A BIKE.” WFMZ-TV 69. 1 Apr 2021.
+“Joe Biden – President’s Public Schedule.” Factba.se. Accessed 6 Apr 2021.
+Judd, DJ (@DJJudd). “Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg biked to the White House for today’s Cabinet Meeting, it would appear.” Twitter. 1 Apr 2021.
+Laris, Michael. “Buttigieg to quarantine for 14 days after security agent tests positive for coronavirus.” Washington Post. 8 Feb 2021.
+Stratford, Michael (@mstratford). “Cabinet secretaries ⁦@bikeshare⁩ home from work, too. A person who appears to be ⁦@SecretaryPete⁩ rolling through Navy Yard just now.” Twitter. 25 Feb 2021.
+Ulloah, Jazmine. “Our neighbor sells used bikes, and last week he met a customer at a Petworth Pizza Hut. He said he was waiting for the person when a couple of black government SUVs pulled up and then a couple more — and then, out pops Pete Buttigieg.” Twitter. 11 Mar 2021. 
+U.S. Department of Transportation. Email statement to FactCheck.org. 6 Apr 2021."
+"Quick Take
+A screenshot purports to show a 2016 tweet from Texas Sen. Ted Cruz concerning climate change. Cruz’s office said the tweet was fake, and there is no record of Cruz ever posting it. The phony screenshot went viral anyway.
+
+Full Story
+As critics lambasted Texas Sen. Ted Cruz for flying to Cancun, Mexico, for a family trip amid a winter storm emergency in his state, social media users widely shared a supposed 2016 tweet from the Republican concerning his views on climate change.
+“I’ll believe in climate change when Texas freezes over,” the purported tweet reads.
+But there is no record of Cruz ever posting that tweet.
+The image shows the tweet being posted at 5:44 p.m. on Sept. 8, 2016. We searched on Twitter and found no trace of Cruz posting the tweet then — or at any other time. Nor did we find the post in an archived version of his Twitter account from Sept. 9, 2016.
+The tweet also isn’t in a log of deleted tweets by Cruz that is maintained by ProPublica.
+And Steve Guest, a communications adviser for Cruz, confirmed in an email to us that the tweet is fabricated, saying: “That tweet is fake.”
+Over the years, as we’ve reported, Cruz has challenged the facts on climate change — making inaccurate and misleading claims along the way.
+But as we said, he didn’t post the tweet in question.
+Still, well-followed, often left-leaning social media accounts shared the screenshot — treating it as authentic.
+“Sooo…you believe NOW, @tedcruz?” one tweet with the screenshot, retweeted more than 2,600 times, reads. “Asking for millions of frozen Texans.”
+One Instagram post of the screenshot alone garnered more than 350,000 likes before it was deleted.
+Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here.
+Sources
+Cruz, Ted (@TedCruz). Twitter. Archived 9 Sep 2016.
+“Deleted Tweets From Ted Cruz, R-Texas.” PolitiWoops. ProPublica. Accessed 19 Feb 2021.
+Guest, Steve. Communications adviser for Sen. Ted Cruz. Email to FactCheck.org. 19 Feb 2021.
+Levitan, Dave. “Cruz on the Global Cooling Myth and Galileo.” FactCheck.org. Updated 5 Jun 2015.
+Peoples, Steve and Jake Bleiberg. “‘Obviously a mistake’: Cruz returns from Cancun after uproar.” Associated Press. 19 Feb 2021.
+Schipani, Vanessa. “Cruz’s ‘Pseudoscientific’ Climate Claims.” FactCheck.org. 1 Feb 2016."
+"In this video, we review some of the claims Sen. Kamala Harris and Vice President Mike Pence made during the vice presidential debate on Oct. 7.
+
+
+Harris falsely claimed Trump’s China trade war cost 300,000 manufacturing jobs. The U.S. gained 146,000 factory jobs during the first 18 months after the tariffs took effect.
+Pence suggested that it’s unknown what is causing climate change. But scientists have a very good idea of what’s causing climate change: humans.
+Harris said President Donald Trump had called the coronavirus “a hoax.” Trump said he was referring to Democrats finding fault with his administration’s response to the coronavirus, not the virus itself.
+Pence repeated the false claim that the Obama administration left the Strategic National Stockpile “empty.” 
+Pence claimed that Biden and Harris “want to abolish fossil fuels and ban fracking.” Biden’s climate change plan calls for a ban on new permitting on public land; most fracking occurs in non-public areas. 
+
+For more on these claims and others from the debate, see our story “FactChecking the Vice Presidential Debate.” 
+Editor’s Note: Please consider a donation to FactCheck.org. We do not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104.
+This fact check is available at IFCN’s 2020 US Elections FactChat #Chatbot on WhatsApp. Click here for more."
+"Summary
+In the first and only vice presidential debate, Sen. Kamala Harris and Vice President Mike Pence parroted many of the false and misleading claims we have heard from the top of the tickets.
+
+Harris misleadingly said President Donald Trump’s tax law benefited “the top 1% and the biggest corporations.” Actually most households received some tax cut.
+Pence said that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden “is going to raise your taxes.” Biden’s plan says that’s true only for Americans making over $400,000 a year.
+Pence said that if the 2009 H1N1 pandemic had been as lethal as the novel coronavirus, “we would have lost 2 million American lives.” That’s a misleading comparison.
+Pence said “many” of the people in a crowded Rose Garden event “were tested” for the coronavirus. But testing isn’t enough to prevent infection.
+Harris said President Donald Trump had called the coronavirus “a hoax.” Trump said he was referring to Democrats finding fault with his administration’s response to the coronavirus, not the virus itself.
+Pence claimed Trump “secured” a law that saved 50 million jobs. The package was passed 96-0 in the Senate. A university expert estimated perhaps 5 million to 7 million jobs were preserved.
+Pence said the Trump administration “in our first three years … saw 500,000 manufacturing jobs created,” ignoring jobs lost since the pandemic. As of September, 164,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost.
+Harris falsely claimed Trump’s China trade war cost 300,000 manufacturing jobs. The U.S. gained 146,000 factory jobs during the first 18 months after the tariffs took effect.
+The vice president said that “there are no more hurricanes today than there were 100 years ago.” Climate change may not increase the number of storms, but it is making them more severe.
+Pence claimed that the U.S. “has reduced CO2 more than the countries that are still in the Paris climate accord.” But many nations taking part in the Paris Agreement have slashed emissions by a larger percentage.
+Pence did not provide the context in which Hillary Clinton said “under no circumstances should” Biden “concede the election.” She said Biden will be the declared winner when all absentee and mail-in ballots are counted, so he shouldn’t concede if it’s still close on Election Day.
+Pence warned that “universal mail-in voting” will “create a massive opportunity for voter fraud.” Election experts say the number of known cases is relatively rare.
+The candidates disagreed on whether the Trump administration had eliminated a team that planned for responses to public health emergencies. It eliminated the director’s role, but consolidated some team functions elsewhere.
+Pence falsely claimed the Trump administration has a plan to protect people with preexisting conditions; it has offered no such plan.
+Harris said that “there will be no more protection … for people with preexisting conditions” under Trump if the Supreme Court overturns the Affordable Care Act. Protections would largely remain in place for those with employer-sponsored health plans, but not on the individual market.
+Pence disputed Harris’ claim that Trump “refused to condemn white supremacists” at the presidential debate. Trump didn’t offer a clear condemnation in the debate; Pence then referred to other instances in which he did.
+Pence repeated the false claim that the Obama administration left the Strategic National Stockpile “empty.” That’s not so.
+Pence claimed that Biden and Harris “want to abolish fossil fuels and ban fracking.” Biden said he wants to ban new permitting on public land; most fracking occurs in non-public areas. 
+Pence wrongly said Trump “suspended all travel from China,” when the restrictions included exceptions.
+
+There were other repeated claims from Pence on the economy, the Osama bin Laden raid and the FBI.
+The debate was held at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City on Oct. 7.
+Analysis
+Taxes
+When it came to taxes, both sides spun the facts about Biden’s and Trump’s record and positions.
+Harris said Trump “passed a tax bill benefiting the top 1% and the biggest corporations of America.” As we have written repeatedly, while those with higher incomes reaped greater benefits from the tax law, most households received a tax cut.
+The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — a Republican-crafted bill that the president signed into law on Dec. 22, 2017 — provided tax cuts to those at all income levels, on average. The Tax Policy Center estimated that about 65% of households paid less in federal income tax in 2018 under the tax law than they would have paid under the old tax laws, while about 6% paid more.
+A higher percentage of high-income taxpayers got a tax cut, and that tax cut was, on average, greater than the tax cuts for those with lower incomes (both in dollar amounts and as a percentage of after-tax income). But 82% of middle-income earners — those with income between about $49,000 and $86,000 — received a tax cut that averaged about $1,050 in 2018, the Tax Policy Center estimated.
+We should note that most of the individual income tax provisions expire after 2025, which will then shift most of the tax benefits to the top 1%. An analysis by the Tax Policy Center found that the top 1% of income earners would get 20.5% of the tax cut benefits in 2018. That percentage would go up to 25.3% in 2025 and then jump to 82.8% in 2027.
+Pence responded with some spin of his own, repeatedly saying that Biden has promised to repeal the Trump tax cuts and that “on day one, Joe Biden is going to raise your taxes.”
+It’s true, as Pence said, that during the presidential debate on Sept. 29, Biden vowed, “I’m going to eliminate the Trump tax cuts.” But Pence is ignoring that Biden has repeatedly said he will eliminate the tax cuts in the Trump plan only for those making more than $400,000 a year.
+During the vice presidential debate, Harris used the same shorthand that Biden did, saying, “On day one, Joe Biden will repeal that tax bill, he’ll get rid of it.”
+Pence seized on that comment, saying, “America, you just heard Sen. Harris tell you, on day one, Joe Biden is going to raise your taxes.”
+“That’s not what I said,” Harris responded, later adding, “the truth and the fact is Joe Biden has been very clear he will not raise taxes on anybody who makes less than $400,000 a year.”
+Biden drew a line with that $400,000 threshold back in May. “Nobody making under 400,000 bucks would have their taxes raised. Period,” Biden said in an interview on CNBC.
+Biden has consistently stuck to that promise ever since. In numerous instances, Biden has made clear that he would not repeal the entirety of the Trump tax cuts, but rather that he would eliminate “Donald Trump’s tax cut for the wealthy,” as he put it in the first Democratic primary debate in June 2019.
+But direct taxes such as income taxes are not the whole story when it comes to evaluating the impact of Biden’s tax plan. While the Biden plan does not call for any direct tax increases for anyone making less than $400,000, independent tax analysts say Biden’s plan to raise the corporate tax rate will indirectly affect employees due to lower investment returns or lower wages over time.
+As a result, most Americans would see a reduction in after-tax income, but “[t]he change would be small for most of those middle- and lower-income households—on average, only a fraction of a percent of their after-tax income—and we estimate that 80 percent of the new tax revenue would come from the top 1 percent by income,” according to John Ricco, a senior tax analyst at the Penn Wharton Budget Model.
+Biden’s tax plan includes provisions such as imposing a payroll tax on earnings over $400,000, restoring a top income tax rate of 39.6% for income above $400,000, and increasing the top corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%.
+Ricco said that “[v]ery few families would be sending larger checks to the IRS (or having more money withheld from their paychecks) under Biden’s proposal.”
+But when you include Biden’s plan to increase corporate taxes, the Penn Wharton Budget Model analysis found that “the tax plan will affect 82 percent of families,” Ricco said. “But instead of seeing their taxes go up directly, those additional families are paying the corporate tax hikes in the form of lower investment returns or lower wages over time.”
+According to the Penn Wharton Budget Model — which estimates the Biden tax plan would raise between $3.1 trillion and $3.7 trillion over 10 years  — middle-income earners would see their after-tax income decline by 0.4%, or $180, on average.
+Garrett Watson, a senior policy analyst at the Tax Foundation, told us via email that “it’s more precise to say that Biden’s plan would lower the incomes of 82 percent of Americans as a result of the tax changes, but not that it would generate a larger direct tax bill for those Americans.”
+Swine Flu
+In defending his record on the coronavirus pandemic, Pence misleadingly pointed to Biden’s handling of 2009’s H1N1 pandemic.
+“When Joe Biden was vice president of the United States, not 7.5 million people contracted the swine flu; 60 million Americans contracted the swine flu,” he said. “If the swine flu had been as lethal as the coronavirus in 2009 when Joe Biden was vice president, we would have lost 2 million American lives.”
+It’s true that around 60 million Americans are thought to have contracted swine flu — but that’s an estimate based on modeling after the fact, which is not comparable to the raw count of the number of Americans infected with COVID-19. 
+And it’s precisely because the influenza pandemic was not especially lethal that fewer precautions were taken to prevent infections.
+Pence’s 2 million calculation of deaths appears to be based on a rough estimate of COVID-19’s case fatality rate, or the percentage of people who die who are identified as having the disease. But it’s still a tad high.
+According to figures from Johns Hopkins University, the case fatality rate as of Oct. 7 is 2.9% worldwide and 2.8% in the U.S. If applied to the 60.8 million H1N1 infections the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates occurred, that would be around 1.7 million to 1.8 million deaths.
+In reality, though, the pandemic influenza strain was not particularly deadly, and the CDC’s estimate is that 12,469 deaths occurred over a year.
+Not only has it not been a full year since the novel coronavirus hit the U.S., but those estimates for the 2009 pandemic are based on modeling — not individually counted cases, unlike the COVID-19 tally — and corrected for underreporting. A similarly estimated number of cases and lost lives from COVID-19 would almost certainly be higher than the current figures.
+Dr. Tom Frieden, president and CEO of the global health initiative Resolve to Save Lives, noted in an Oct. 5 blog post that the actual number of coronavirus infections in the U.S. is likely at least 40 million. 
+As we have written, the two viruses were very different and required different responses. Frieden, who was head of the CDC during the H1N1 pandemic, told us that in 2009 it wasn’t necessary to trace contacts or ask people to quarantine. The nation also never temporarily shut down to limit the spread of the virus.
+“The current pandemic is much more severe,” he said, “which is why we have used public health and social measures to box in the virus.”
+Pence then went on to repeat a misleading claim that Trump has made before. Referring to Biden, Pence said, “his own chief of staff, Ron Klain, would say last year that it was pure luck, that they did ‘everything possible wrong.’”
+While it’s true that Klain said something similar at a May 14, 2019, Pandemic and Biosecurity Policy Summit, he has also said that his comments are out of context when presented like that.
+As we’ve written before, Klain told us he was talking specifically about delays in the rollout of the vaccine, not the administration’s overall response to the H1N1 pandemic.
+Testing Not Enough
+So far, the president and 10 other people who attended a Sept. 26 White House announcement of Trump’s Supreme Court nominee have tested positive for COVID-19. In answering a question about the White House not following its own safety guidelines during that incident, Pence said that “many of the people who were at that event … actually were tested for coronavirus” and that “it was an outdoor event, which all of our scientists regularly routinely advise.” 
+But, as we’ve written before, testing is not enough to prevent infection. It can take days for COVID-19 to become detectable in an infected person, and the rapid tests used by the White House are less sensitive than traditional tests. 
+As Harvard epidemiologist Michael Mina explained on Twitter, tests are “not prophylactics.”
+“They alone cannot stop the test taker from getting infected. But can serve to stop onward spread from the tester,” he wrote. “To stop from getting infected, masks/social distancing are needed.”
+And while outdoor events do mitigate some of the risk of COVID-19 spreading, scientists have made it clear that gatherings such as Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s introduction in the Rose Garden are still dangerous. The CDC classifies large outdoor or indoor gatherings “where it is difficult for individuals to remain spaced at least 6 feet apart and attendees travel from outside the local area” as “highest risk.” The CDC also recommends mask wearing among other safety measures to further minimize infection risk.
+And while Pence referred to the ceremony as an “outdoor event,” that’s not entirely accurate. In addition to the outside reception in the Rose Garden, there was also an indoor reception in the White House. The New York Times published several photos from that reception, which was attended by the president, Barrett and her family, and other prominent Republicans — all maskless and close together.
+Trump’s ‘Hoax’ Comment
+When asked about the Trump administration’s response to COVID-19, Harris said, “The president said it was a hoax.” Trump referred to the Democrats’ “new hoax” after talking about the coronavirus at a rally on Feb. 28 in South Carolina, but clarified the next day he was referring to Democrats finding fault with his administration’s response to the coronavirus, not the virus itself.
+At the late February rally, Trump said: “Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus, you know that, right? Coronavirus, they’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs. You say, ‘How’s President Trump doing?’ They go, ‘Oh, not good, not good.’ They have no clue. They don’t have any clue. … They tried the impeachment hoax. … They tried anything. … And this is their new hoax.”
+The following day, after the first death in the U.S. from the coronavirus, Trump was asked in a press conference if he regretted using the word “hoax.” He replied: “No. No. No. Hoax referring to the action that they take to try and pin this on somebody because we’ve done such a good job. The hoax is on them not — I’m not talking about what’s happening here. I’m talking what they’re doing. That’s the hoax.”
+Dubious 50 Million Jobs Claim
+Pence claimed the president “secured” a program that saved 50 million jobs.
+Pence: [Trump] secured $4 trillion from the Congress of the United States to give direct payments to families [and] save 50 million jobs through the paycheck protection program.
+First, the cost of the relief package that included the PPP was over $2 trillion, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, not $4 trillion.
+And the idea that Trump “secured” it is a stretch. He signed it all right, but it passed 96-0 in the Senate with Harris herself voting for it. The House passed the bipartisan measure by a simple voice vote.
+The claim that it saved 50 million jobs is much disputed. What we know is that the economy lost 22 million jobs in March and April. How many more might have been lost without the bipartisan aid package can’t be known.
+But Richard Prisinzano, director of policy analysis at the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Wharton Budget Model and a former Treasury Department analyst in both Republican and Democratic administrations, puts the jobs saved at between 5 million and 7 million.
+Manufacturing Jobs and a Magic Wand
+Pence misleadingly said the Obama administration lost 200,000 manufacturing jobs in eight years, while the Trump administration created 500,000 jobs “in our first three years.”
+Pence counts the job losses caused by the Great Recession against Obama, but ignores the job losses caused by COVID-19 under Trump. As of September, 164,000 jobs have been lost under Trump.
+The fact is that both administrations were saddled with recessions.
+Obama, who took office in January 2009, inherited the Great Recession, which began in December 2007 and lasted until June 2009. The recession and its lingering effects reduced the number of manufacturing jobs by more than 1.1 million in Obama’s first 14 months in office. But after March 2010, when manufacturing jobs hit a low of 11.5 million, the economy added 916,000 manufacturing jobs under Obama.
+The net result under Obama: a loss of 192,000 manufacturing jobs.
+The uneven but steady rise of manufacturing jobs continued under Trump, until roughly around the time the novel coronavirus struck — although there was a slowdown in 2019 even prior to the pandemic.
+In Trump’s first three years, the economy added 475,000 manufacturing jobs. However, all but 19,000 of those jobs were added in the first two years, as the manufacturing sector in 2019 began to slow down. In 2020, the economy so far has shed 661,000 manufacturing jobs — wiping out all the gains from the first three years and then some.
+The net result under Trump: a loss of 164,000 manufacturing jobs.
+Pence also said this about the manufacturing jobs lost under Obama: “When Joe Biden was vice president we lost 200,000 manufacturing jobs and President Obama said they were never coming back. He said we needed a magic wand to bring them back.” 
+Obama’s “magic wand” remark came during the 2016 campaign, when Trump was promising to renegotiate trade deals to bring back manufacturing jobs. Obama said “some manufacturers” were returning to the U.S., because of low energy prices and a large U.S. market. But, he added, other jobs would not be returning — requiring retraining for the new manufacturing jobs being created. 
+The former president then went on to mock Trump’s promise to negotiate better trade deals, using the term “magic wand.”
+“[W]hen somebody says, like the person you just mentioned who I’m not going to advertise for, that he’s going to bring all these jobs back, well how exactly are you going to do that? What are you going to do?” Obama said, referring to Trump. “There’s — there’s no answer to it. He just says, ‘Well, I’m going to negotiate a better deal.’ Well, how — what — how exactly are you going to negotiate that? What magic wand do you have? And usually, the answer is he doesn’t have an answer.”
+False Factory Jobs Claim
+Harris falsely said Trump’s tariffs on goods from China had cost the U.S. 300,000 manufacturing jobs.
+Harris: Because of a so-called trade war with China, America lost 300,000 manufacturing jobs.
+The facts are contrary: The U.S. actually gained 146,000 manufacturing jobs after the president’s tariffs on Chinese goods went into effect July 6, 2018, and before the COVID-19 pandemic forced mass layoffs in March.
+To be sure, some economists said the China tariffs contributed to a mild downturn in manufacturing last year, but there were other causes as well, including safety problems with Boeing’s 737 Max aircraft and a strong dollar that made U.S. goods more expensive to buy overseas. But even in the worst month last year (October), the U.S. still had 104,000 more manufacturing jobs than it did when Trump’s tariffs went into effect.
+Harris was referring to an estimate from frequent Trump critic Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, who has estimated that the China trade war resulted in 300,000 fewer total jobs being created in the U.S. But that’s not just manufacturing. And it refers to jobs that might have been created but weren’t, not a loss of current jobs.
+We don’t know if Zandi’s estimate is correct. Perhaps more jobs might have been created without the tariffs. But it’s a fact that the economy added 3.4 million jobs overall after the China tariffs took effect in July 2018 and before the pandemic-induced layoffs began in March.
+Hurricanes & Climate Change
+When asked whether he agreed with the scientific consensus on climate change, Pence pivoted to clean air and conservation, before suggesting that it’s unknown what the cause is.
+“Now with regard to climate change, the climate is changing,” he said. “The issue is, what’s the cause, and what do we do about it? President Trump has made it clear that we’re going to continue to listen to the science.”
+But scientists have a very good idea of what’s causing climate change: humans. The U.S. government’s own 2018 National Climate Assessment clearly states that the issue is far from unsettled.
+“Global average temperature has increased by about 1.8°F from 1901 to 2016,” a key message of the report reads, “and observational evidence does not support any credible natural explanations for this amount of warming; instead, the evidence consistently points to human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse or heat-trapping gases, as the dominant cause.”
+Later, Pence gave a misleading impression about the link between climate change and hurricanes.
+“And with regard to hurricanes, the National Oceanic Administration tells us that actually, that as difficult as they are, there are no more hurricanes today than there were 100 years ago,” he said.
+Pence is correct that climate change may not be increasing the raw number of hurricanes. But it has been tied to more extreme hurricanes.
+A Q&A from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration explains that Atlantic hurricane activity has “increased since the 1970s,” but that the short length of good hurricane records makes it difficult to say how much of the increase is due to human activity.
+“With future warming, hurricane rainfall rates are likely to increase, as will the number of very intense hurricanes, according to both theory and numerical models,” the webpage, which was written to explain the National Climate Assessment, continues. “However, models disagree about whether the total number of Atlantic hurricanes will increase or decrease.”
+“Regardless of any human-influenced changes in storm frequency or intensity, rising sea level will increase the threat of storm surge flooding during hurricanes,” the site adds.
+The National Climate Assessment itself is even more direct.
+“Increases in greenhouse gases and decreases in air pollution have contributed to increases in Atlantic hurricane activity since 1970. In the future, Atlantic and eastern North Pacific hurricane rainfall and intensity are projected to increase,” the report concludes.
+“In the future, the total number of tropical storms is generally projected to remain steady, or even decrease, but the most intense storms are generally projected to become more frequent, and the amount of rainfall associated with a given storm is also projected to increase,” it adds.
+And the evidence on climate change making hurricanes worse keeps getting stronger. Earlier this year, NOAA scientists published an analysis of satellite data that found between 1979 and 2017, tropical cyclones across the globe became about 8% more likely each decade to be a category 3 storm or higher. The greatest changes in storm severity were in the North Atlantic.
+CO2 Emissions
+As part of his answer on climate change, Pence also spun the facts on America’s carbon dioxide emissions.
+“You know, what’s remarkable is the United States has reduced CO2 more than the countries that are still in the Paris climate accord,” he said. “But we’ve done it through innovation. And we’ve done it through natural gas and fracking.”
+Pence didn’t give a time frame for the claim, but Trump has made similar boasts in the past, when he said that since 2000, U.S. emissions “declined more than any other country on Earth” — and more than any of the Paris accord signatories.
+As we’ve written, that’s only true in terms of an absolute reduction in emissions. Many countries that are part of the Paris pact — which is nearly the entire world — have cut their emissions by a larger percentage, according to data from the International Energy Agency.
+In the past decade, numerous industrialized nations have posted larger percentage declines than the United States’ 11% drop between 2010 and 2019, including Denmark (39%), Sweden (31%), the U.K. (29%), Italy (23%), Ireland (15%), France (14%), Germany (13%) and Spain (12%).
+Hillary Clinton on Biden Not Conceding
+Pence said that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Biden not to concede the election to Trump, but Pence did not provide the context in which she made that remark.
+Clinton did not say Biden should not concede if Trump wins, as Pence suggested. She said she believes, when all absentee and mail-in ballots are counted, Biden will be the winner, and so he should not concede if the election results are still close on Election Day.
+“And now Hillary Clinton has actually said to Joe Biden that, in her own words, that ‘under no circumstances should he concede the election,’” Pence said. He was referring to comments Clinton made during an August interview for Showtime’s “The Circus.”
+In the clip, Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign communications director, Jennifer Palmieri, asked Clinton: “If it’s a close election, like, say Biden wins, what do you think Trump will do?”
+Clinton went on to describe how she believes the Trump campaign is planning on “messing up absentee balloting,” particularly by challenging absentee and mail-in ballots, so that Trump has a “narrow advantage” on Election Day. But Clinton noted that in some cases when “courts had ordered absentee ballots to be counted, if they were postmarked on Election Day, Democrats actually won some important races.”
+So, she urged Biden to wait because after all votes have been counted, she believes Biden will be declared the winner. 
+“And, you know, Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances because I think this is going to drag out, and eventually I do believe he will win if we don’t give an inch and if we are as focused and relentless as the other side is,” Clinton said.
+Mail-in Voting
+Pence echoed Trump’s repeated warnings about the potential for large-scale voter fraud due to the expansion of mail-in voting in many states this year in response to the pandemic.
+Pence said the Trump campaign is fighting in courthouses around the country to block states from changing voting rules this year “creating this universal mail-in voting that’ll create a massive opportunity for voter fraud.”
+By “universal,” Pence is referring to some states automatically mailing absentee ballots to registered voters without voters having to request them.
+Elections experts say mail-in voting is somewhat less secure than in-person voting — and in that sense Pence has a point that there may be more opportunities for fraud — but those experts also say that mail-in voter fraud is far less prevalent than the rhetoric of the president and vice president suggest. That’s due in part to measures states use to track and verify the authenticity of mail-in ballots.
+“Election fraud committed with absentee ballots is more prevalent than in person voting but it is still rare,” Richard L. Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine School of Law, and author of “The Voting Wars,” told us via email back in April. “States can and do take steps to minimize the risks, especially given the great benefits of convenience — and now safety — from the practice.”
+Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University and voter fraud expert, told us that while misconduct in the mail voting process is “meaningfully more prevalent than misconduct in the process of voting in person” it “still amounts to only a tiny fraction of the ballots cast by mail.”
+Over the past year, Trump has made numerous false, misleading and unsupported claims about mail-in ballots, some of which we summarized in our Sept. 25 story, “Trump’s Repeated False Attacks on Mail-In Ballots.”
+Pandemic Planning Team
+The candidates disagreed about how the Trump administration handled a National Security Council group dedicated to planning the national response to global health security threats, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
+“There’s a weird obsession that President Trump has had with getting rid of whatever accomplishment was achieved by President Obama and Vice President Biden. For example, they created within the White House an office that basically was responsible for monitoring pandemics,” Harris said. “They got rid of it.”
+Pence shook his head and said, “Not true.”
+We’ve written about this issue before. Here’s what actually happened:
+The Obama administration created a group tasked with global health security and biodefense within the National Security Council in 2016, following a yearslong Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
+Shortly after Trump took office, he appointed Rear Adm. R. Timothy Ziemer to lead the group. Ziemer had coordinated the President’s Malaria Initiative under both President George W. Bush and Obama.
+Ziemer left abruptly a little over a year later just as a new Ebola outbreak was starting in Congo, and he wasn’t replaced.
+Numerous experts and groups at the time had cautioned against doing away with that position, but getting rid of it didn’t necessarily mean that everyone who was part of the team was fired or that all of its functions ceased.
+Responding to claims at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic that the office had been dissolved, Tim Morrison, former senior director for counterproliferation and biodefense for the NSC, said that the group had been reorganized. He wrote in the Washington Post on March 16 that the administration “create[d] the counterproliferation and biodefense directorate, which was the result of consolidating three directorates into one, given the obvious overlap between arms control and nonproliferation, weapons of mass destruction terrorism, and global health and biodefense. It is this reorganization that critics have misconstrued or intentionally misrepresented.”
+Morrison led that directorate for a year, he wrote, before leaving that position. Another official replaced him, he said. The administration has decreased staffing at the NSC, something Morrison said was needed after “bloat” under the previous administration.
+Similarly, John Bolton, who was the national security adviser at the time Ziemer left, said on Twitter in March: “Claims that streamlining NSC structures impaired our nation’s bio defense are false. Global health remained a top NSC priority, and its expert team was critical to effectively handling the 2018-19 Africa Ebola crisis.”
+Also at the time, Beth Cameron, former senior director for the NSC team under Obama, wrote in the Post that disbanding that directorate “left an unclear structure and strategy for coordinating pandemic preparedness and response.”
+Months before the pandemic arose, a report issued in November 2019 by the bipartisan think tank Center for Strategic & International Studies had recommended that the global health security and biodefense directorate be reinstated. It reasoned, “Health security is national security. Strong, coherent, senior-level leadership at the National Security Council (NSC) is essential to guarantee effective oversight of global health security and biodefense policy and spending, speed and rigor in decisionmaking, and reliable White House engagement and coordination when dangerous pandemics inevitably strike.”
+The directorate hasn’t been reinstated, but since parts of it have been reorganized elsewhere in the NSC, saying that it was eliminated completely goes too far.
+Preexisting Conditions Disagreement
+Pence and Harris had a disagreement on whether Trump would eliminate protections for people with preexisting health conditions. We found fault with both.
+“Donald Trump is in court right now trying to get rid of the Affordable Care Act and I said it before and it bears repeating,” Harris said. “This means that there will be no more protections, if they win, for people with preexisting conditions.” Pence replied, “No.”
+Harris is correct that the Trump administration supports a lawsuit to strike down the ACA, which prohibits insurers from denying coverage, charging more or excluding coverage of certain conditions based on health status. But she went too far when she said there would be “no more protections, if they win, for people with preexisting conditions,” suggesting everyone with existing health issues would lose all protections. 
+Before the ACA, those buying plans on the individual market could face denials or higher premiums based on their health. But only 6% of the population gets coverage on the individual market.
+Nearly half of all Americans have employer-based plans, which could not deny insurance even before the ACA — except for a limited period for new employees if they had a lapse in coverage. 
+Earlier in the debate, Pence said, “President Trump and I have a plan to improve health care and protect preexisting conditions for every American.” But no plan has been released.
+The Trump administration has yet to offer a health care plan that would be implemented in place of the ACA. Trump signed an executive order on Sept. 24 that said “access to health insurance despite underlying health conditions should be maintained” even if the ACA were struck down in court. But he hasn’t provided details, and, as we have written, the executive order is meaningless without an act of Congress. 
+Trump’s Debate Response on White Supremacy
+In criticizing Trump on issues of race, Harris revisited a controversy from the first presidential debate, saying that “last week, the president of the United States took a debate stage in front of 70 million Americans and refused to condemn white supremacists.”
+Pence claimed that was “not true.”
+Harris continued: “And it wasn’t like he didn’t have a chance. He didn’t do it, and then he doubled down. And then he said, when pressed, ‘Stand back, stand by.’”
+Trump didn’t offer a clear condemnation in the debate; Pence then referred to other instances in which he did.
+During the Sept. 29 debate between Biden and Trump, moderator Chris Wallace asked Trump if he was willing “to condemn white supremacists and militia groups.” Trump’s first response was: “Sure, I’m willing to do that.” When pressed by Biden to denounce the Proud Boys, a far-right group, Trump told the group to “stand back and stand by.”
+Here’s the relevant portion of the transcript from that debate.
+Wallace: You have repeatedly criticized the vice president for not specifically calling out antifa and other left-wing extremist groups. But are you willing tonight to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and to say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number of these cities as we saw in Kenosha and as we’ve seen in Portland.
+Trump: Sure, I’m willing to do that.
+Wallace: Are you prepared specifically to do it?
+Trump: I would say almost everything I see is from the left-wing, not from the right-wing.
+Wallace: But what are you saying?
+Trump: I’m willing to do anything. I want to see peace.
+Wallace: Well, do it, sir.
+Biden: Say it, do it, say it.
+Trump: What do you want to call them? Give me a name, give me a name, go ahead who do you want me to condemn.
+Wallace: White supremacists and right-wing militia.
+Biden: Proud Boys.
+Trump: Proud Boys, stand back and stand by. But I’ll tell you what, I’ll tell you what, somebody’s got to do something about antifa and the left because this is not a right-wing problem this is a left-wing …
+While the Proud Boys has denied it tolerates white supremacy, the Anti-Defamation League says that some members “espouse white supremacist and anti-Semitic ideologies and/or engage with white supremacist groups.”
+Following the presidential debate, some GOP members called on Trump to clarify his comments and to clearly condemn such groups. “I agree with @SenatorTimScott statement about President Trump needing to make it clear Proud Boys is a racist organization antithetical to American ideals,” Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham tweeted.
+In an Oct. 1 interview with Sean Hannity, Trump said: “I have said it many times. And let me be clear again. I condemn the KKK. I condemn all white supremacists. I condemn the Proud Boys. I don’t know much about the Proud Boys, almost nothing, but I condemn that.”
+Pence during the vice presidential debate responded to Harris in part by saying that Trump has repeatedly “condemned the KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists.” We’ve previously documented a number of instances in which the president has done so.
+Stockpile Wasn’t Empty
+Pence repeated the false claim that the Obama administration left the Strategic National Stockpile “empty.” That’s not so.
+Some personal protective equipment, such as N95 respirator masks, distributed from the stockpile to states during 2009’s H1N1 influenza pandemic was not restocked. But that doesn’t mean there were none of those items available when Trump was inaugurated.
+As of 2016, the year before Trump took office, there were at least six warehouses holding “approximately $7 billion in products across more than 900 separate line items,” according to a report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. In addition, reporters who were allowed to tour at least one of the U.S. facilities that year described seeing “shelves packed with stuff” and “row after row of containers filled with mystery medications and equipment — including that one item everyone’s been talking about lately, ventilators.”
+The federal government had more than 16,000 ventilators in stock — more than it ended up distributing amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
+Fracking/Fossil Fuels
+Pence claimed that Biden and Harris “want to abolish fossil fuels and ban fracking which would cost hundreds of thousands of American jobs all across the heartland.”
+He later said to Harris: “You, yourself said on multiple occasions when you were running for president that you would ban fracking. Joe Biden looked a supporter in the eye and pointed and said, ‘I guarantee — I guarantee that we will abolish fossil fuels.’” 
+It’s true Harris supported banning fracking during her run as a presidential candidate, and at times during the Democratic primary, Biden did tell environmental activists and protesters that he would “end” or “get rid of fossil fuels.”
+But the climate change plan that Biden has proposed does not include a full ban on either fossil fuels or fracking.
+It calls for “banning new oil and gas permitting on public lands and waters.” That would allow for existing fracking permits to continue on federal lands and does nothing to prohibit fracking in non-federal areas — where most crude oil and natural gas is produced. 
+“I am not banning fracking,” Biden said emphatically at an Aug. 31 campaign rally in Pittsburgh. 
+As for fossil fuels, generally, Biden’s plan is to reduce the reliance on them and reach net-zero emissions no later than 2050. Net-zero means the amount of greenhouse gases emitted in the U.S. would be matched by the amount sequestered, or removed, from the atmosphere. In theory, this allows fossil fuels to be used with carbon capture technologies or other sequestration efforts.
+China Travel Repeats
+Pence repeated a false talking point of Trump’s, saying the president “suspended all travel from China” to combat the coronavirus.
+As we’ve written before, the travel restrictions, which went into effect on Feb. 2, were not a total ban as they included exceptions for U.S. citizens, permanent residents and the immediate family members of both. Others who had traveled to China within the prior two weeks were prohibited from entering the U.S.
+A New York Times story on April 4 found that nearly 40,000 people had flown on direct flights from China to the United States in the two months after the travel restrictions went into effect.
+Pence also claimed that Biden opposed the restrictions and called them “xenophobic.” Biden’s campaign said on April 3 that the former vice president supported the travel restrictions and that his “xenophobic” comment was in reference to Trump’s “long record of scapegoating others,” not the travel restrictions. Biden referred to Trump’s “record of hysteria and xenophobia” on the same day those travel prohibitions were announced.
+The Economy
+Pence falsely said that Trump had “turned this economy around.”
+In fact, as we wrote when Trump took office and after his 2020 State of the Union, the economy was doing quite well when Trump and Pence succeeded President Barack Obama and Vice President Biden in January 2017.
+Let’s start with jobs. “Since my election, we have created 7 million new jobs,” Trump said in the State of the Union (taking credit for thousands of jobs created after the election but while Obama was still president). In the 35 months after Trump actually took office, the economy added just under 6.4 million jobs. (Of course, the economy has since been hammered by the COVID-19 pandemic and jobs have plummeted.)
+But the rate of job growth (pre-pandemic) actually slowed down a bit under Trump. In the 35 months before he took office, the economy added nearly 8 million jobs.
+As for gross domestic product growth, the economy had posted seven straight years of annual increases in real (inflation-adjusted) GDP under Obama. It grew 3.1% in 2015, and while it grew less robustly the following year (1.7%), the 2015 rate was higher than the rate in two of Trump’s first three years in office.
+It is true that unemployment was quite low in Trump’s first three years. The average rate during Trump’s first three years was 3.9%, compared with an average monthly rate of 7.4% under Obama, 5.3% under George W. Bush and 5.2% under Bill Clinton. But the jobless rate was down to 4.7% by the time Trump took office — well below the historical norm of 5.6%, which is the median monthly rate for all the months since the start of 1948.
+Biden’s Stance on Osama bin Laden Raid
+Pence at one point made the claim that “Joe Biden actually opposed the raid against Osama bin Laden.”
+We wrote about this issue earlier this year, after Biden and the Republican National Committee offered competing takes on the former vice president’s stance on the May 2011 raid.
+Biden, as we explained, said publicly in mid-2011 and early 2012 that he advised Obama during a national security strategy meeting in April 2011 to not proceed with the raid until there was further confirmation that bin Laden was actually in the compound in Pakistan. Other officials’ accounts from the meeting offer similar details about his skepticism.
+But Biden also claimed — months later and in the time since — that in a private meeting with Obama immediately after that security meeting, he told the president to “follow your instincts,” knowing that Obama was inclined at that time to move forward with the raid.
+We don’t know what was said in a private meeting, and Biden’s story has no doubt evolved over time. But it’s worth noting that even the early version of Biden’s recollection holds that he advised Obama to seek confirmation before carrying out the raid — not that he opposed conducting it altogether.
+FBI Didn’t ‘Spy’ on Trump Campaign
+Pence also said falsely, “The FBI actually spied on President Trump’s and my campaign.” This echoes a claim made frequently over the years by Trump that Obama had spied on his campaign.
+But the Justice Department’s inspector general has investigated and found that there is no truth to that allegation.
+As we wrote, the FBI launched a counterintelligence investigation on July 31, 2016, into whether individuals associated with the Trump campaign were coordinating with the Russian government based on information from a “Friendly Foreign Government,” according to the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General report on the origins of the investigation.
+The inspector general’s report released in December 2019 found no evidence of illegal “spying” — either before or after the FBI opened the investigation, known as Crossfire Hurricane. 
+The report said that the Crossfire Hurricane team conducted an “initial analysis of links between Trump campaign members and Russia,” and then opened four individual cases in August 2016 — on Trump campaign associates George Papadopoulos, Carter Page, Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn. The IG report reviewed the department’s handling of those four cases. 
+“We found no evidence that the FBI used CHSs [confidential human sources] or UCEs [undercover employees] to interact with members of the Trump campaign prior to the opening of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” the report said. “After the opening of the investigation, we found no evidence that the FBI placed any CHSs or UCEs within the Trump campaign or tasked any CHSs or UCEs to report on the Trump campaign.”
+The report said the interactions between the Trump campaign aides and the FBI’s confidential sources “received the necessary FBI approvals” and were “consensually monitored and recorded by the FBI.”
+Editor’s Note: Please consider a donation to FactCheck.org. We do not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104.
+This fact check is available at IFCN’s 2020 US Elections FactChat #Chatbot on WhatsApp. Click here for more.
+Sources
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+Niedzwiadek, Nick, et. al. “Republicans to Trump: Condemn white supremacy now.” Politico. 30 Sep 2020.
+“Proud Boys.” Anti-Defamation League. Accessed 7 Oct 2020.
+Shannon, Joel. “Who are the Proud Boys? Far-right group has concerned experts for years.” USA Today. 30 Sep 2020.
+Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey; All employees, thousands, manufacturing, seasonally adjusted.” Data extracted 7 Oct 2020.
+“Questions for President Obama: A Town Hall Special.” Transcript. PBS NewsHour. 1 Jun 2016.
+Keith, Katie. “Trump Administration Asks Court To Strike Down Entire ACA.” Health Affairs. 26 Mar 2019.
+Claxton, Gary et al. “Pre-existing Conditions and Medical Underwriting in the Individual Insurance Market Prior to the ACA.” Kaiser Family Foundation. 12 Dec 2016.
+“Health Insurance Coverage of the Total Population.” Kaiser Family Foundation. Data extracted 7 Oct 2020.
+White House. “Executive Order on An America-First Healthcare Plan.” 24 Sep 2020.
+Fichera, Angelo. “Viral Post Overstates Effect of Trump’s Order on Preexisting Conditions.” FactCheck.org. 6 Oct 2020.
+Farley, Robert. “Trump’s Latest Voter Fraud Misinformation.” FactCheck.org. 10 Apr 2020.
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+McDonald, Jessica. “Final Night of the Democratic Convention.” FactCheck.org. 26 Aug 2020.
+Congress.gov. H.R.1, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Introduced 02 Nov 2017.
+Nunns, James R. “An Analysis of Donald Trump’s Revised Tax Plan.” Tax Policy Center. 18 Oct 2016.
+Sammartino, Frank. “The Effect of The TCJA Individual Income Tax Provisions Across Income Groups and Across the States.” Tax Policy Center. 28 Mar 2018.
+Tax Policy Center. “Distributional Analysis of the Conference Agreement for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.” 18 Dec 2017.
+Long, Heather. “Joe Biden says he won’t raise taxes on anyone making under $400,000.” Washington Post. 22 May 2020.
+Jackson, Brooks. “Republican Convention Night 2.” FactCheck.org. 26 Aug 2020.
+Farley, Robert. “Trump Distorts Biden’s Tax Plan.” FactCheck.org. 13 May 2020.
+Penn Wharton Budget Model. “The Updated Biden Tax Plan: Budgetary, Distributional, and Economic Effects.” 10 Mar 2020.
+Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey; All employees, thousands, manufacturing, seasonally adjusted.” Data extracted 8 Oct 2020.
+Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National); Total Nonfarm Employment, Seasonally Adjusted.” Data extracted 8 Oct 2020.
+Layne, Rachel. “Trump trade war with China has cost 300,000 U.S. jobs, Moody’s estimates.” CBS News. 12 Sep 2019.
+The White House. “Remarks by President Trump at Signing of H.R.748, The CARES Act.” 27 Mar 2020.
+U.S. Senate Vote #80. 22 Mar 2020.
+“2009 H1N1 Pandemic (H1N1pdm09 virus).” CDC. Accessed 8 Oct 2020.
+McDonald, Jessica. “Trump Misleads on H1N1 Swine Flu Testing.” FactCheck.org. 16 Jul 2020.
+COVID-19 Dashboard. Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Accessed 8 Oct 2020.
+Shrestha, Sundar S. et al. “Estimating the burden of 2009 pandemic influenza A (H1N1) in the United States (April 2009-April 2010).” Clinical Infectious Diseases. Vol. 52, Jan 2011. 
+Frieden, Tom. “Covid Epi Weekly: 40 million plus 1. And…NYC is on the brink of a precipice.” LinkedIn. 5 Oct 2020.
+Robertson, Lori and Farley, Robert. “Trump Spins Quotes by/About Biden.” FactCheck.org. 14 Sep 2020.
+Hayhoe, Katharine et al. Chapter 2, “Our Changing Climate.” In Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States: Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume II. U.S. Global Change Research Program.
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+“Link Between Earth’s Heat and Hurricane Strength Grows.” National Centers for Environmental Information, NOAA. 19 May 2020.
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+Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Considerations for Events and Gatherings. updated 7 Jul 2020.
+McDonald, Jessica and Robertson, Lori. “Updated: Q&A on Trump’s COVID-19 Diagnosis.” FactCheck.org. 2 Oct 2020."
+"In a briefing on the barrage of wildfires burning in the West, President Donald Trump baselessly claimed “it’ll start getting cooler,” adding that he didn’t think “science knows” whether or not temperatures would increase in the future. Scientists are very confident that global average temperatures will continue to rise as the world continues to emit heat-trapping greenhouse gases.
+The president’s comments came during a Sept. 14 briefing in McClellan Park, California, when Trump met with California Gov. Gavin Newsom and other state officials. The Golden State is battling more than two dozen wildfires, including the August Complex Fire in Northern California — the largest blaze in state history — while wildfires are also raging in Oregon and Washington.
+In an exchange with Wade Crowfoot, California’s secretary for natural resources, Trump falsely suggested that the science of climate change was unsettled.
+After noting the record-breaking temperatures in Death Valley and Los Angeles this summer, Crowfoot said that vegetation management was an area of “mutual agreement,” in terms of mitigating wildfires, but pushed Trump to acknowledge that addressing climate change is also important for forests.
+“Because if we — if we ignore that science and sort of put our head in the sand and think it’s all about vegetation management, we’re not going to succeed together protecting Californians,” he said.
+“It’ll start getting cooler,” Trump said. “You just watch.”
+“I wish science agreed with you,” Crowfoot countered. 
+“Well, I don’t think science knows, actually,” Trump said.
+Trump’s claims are groundless. “The science is crystal clear, and has been for decades,” University of California, Los Angeles climate scientist Daniel Swain told us in an email. 
+“[T]he Earth is warming due to the increased atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases resulting from human activities, and will continue to warm for as long as we continue to emit those greenhouse gases in large quantities,” he said. “For this reason, there is virtual unanimity among climate scientists that the Earth will continue warming, and will not start getting cooler, for the foreseeable future.”
+The sentiment was also shared by climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, a co-author of the Fourth National Climate Assessment and co-director of the Climate Center at Texas Tech University. 
+“It will NOT start getting cooler, because carbon emissions from human activities continue to increase,” she said on Twitter. “How sure are we? Very.”
+Forest Management
+As he did in 2019 and 2018, Trump also suggested that the main, if not only, issue plaguing California was a lack of forest management.
+“You can knock this down to nothing,” he said. “You know, you go to Europe and different places in Europe — countries where they’re forest countries — and they’re very, very strong on management and they don’t have a problem. They really don’t have with, as they say, more explosive trees than we have in California.”
+Trump repeated the notion in an interview the next day on “Fox & Friends.” “You have forests all over the world. You don’t have fires like you do in California,” he said. “In Europe, they have forest cities. You look at countries, Austria, you look at so many countries, they live in the forest, they consider forest cities so many of them, and they don’t have fires like this, and they have more explosive trees. They have trees that will catch easier, but they maintain their fire.”
+But as we’ve noted before, Trump’s comparison to forested Europe is misleading, as the climate there is in many cases colder and wetter. Austria, for instance, has an alpine climate that bears little resemblance to California’s.
+A 2011 paper in the Austrian Journal of Forest Science noted that Austria “is a Central European country largely dominated by the Alps with a forest cover primarily dominated by coniferous tree species” and that the forests “do not fulfil the characteristics of fire prone ecosystems.”
+And in fact, wildfire is a concern in many parts of the world, including Australia, Europe and parts of Africa and Central Asia.
+Swain said that forest management is an important issue for some of the current blazes, given the practice of “total fire suppression” in the 20th century that prevented the naturally occurring lower intensity fires that scientists now know help prevent the larger, more damaging blazes.
+“In densely forested regions of the American West, including much of interior California, these historical policies have indeed increased wildfire risk beyond what it would have been otherwise,” Swain said.
+But, he added, that legacy of poor forest management is only relevant to forested areas — and many of California’s most destructive wildfires aren’t true forest fires. “Right now, the fires are a mix of true forest fires and wildfires burning in other vegetation types,” he noted, such as brush, grass and woodlands. 
+And forest management for those select regions is still only part of the story. Climate change, Swain said, “is acting as a pervasive force across the landscape and is increasing the severity of wildfire across a wide range of vegetation types–meaning that climate change is an important factor in understanding the severity of *all* of the fires currently burning.”
+The main mechanism for that, he explained, is that hotter temperatures suck more moisture out of the vegetation, leaving it drier and more susceptible to burning. The resulting fires are therefore more prone to extreme fire behavior and are often faster-spreading and hotter-burning fires that are more dangerous to people and more harmful to the environment.
+In a paper published earlier this year, Swain and his colleagues found that climate change has already more than doubled the risk of extreme fire conditions in California during the fall season since the early 1980s.
+“Climate model simulations further suggest that continued warming and strengthening of seasonal drying trends in the future will likely result in further increases in extreme autumn fire weather conditions throughout California—even for a future climate scenario similar to that which would result from adherence to commitments made in the UN Paris Agreement,” the scientists concluded. “Collectively, this analysis offers strong evidence for a human fingerprint on the observed increase in meteorological preconditions necessary for extreme wildfires in California.”
+Hayhoe also debunked the idea that a lack of forest management is the only reason why wildfires are burning more land. Research has shown that the cumulative area burned by large wildfires in the West has grown significantly in the past few decades, and is approximately twice what it would have been in the absence of climate change.
+“Forest management absolutely plays a role,” she said in a tweet, but climate change “is making it a lot worse.”
+Editor’s Note: Please consider a donation to FactCheck.org. We do not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104."
+"A TV ad from a Republican super PAC uses video of Joe Biden inaccurately explaining his climate plan against him. Biden’s campaign has said he would not completely ban fossil fuels, specifically fracking, as the ad appears to show him saying.
+The ad, from America First Action, which supports the reelection of President Donald Trump, shows a clip from a July 2019 CNN debate in which Biden said, “we would make sure it’s eliminated,” when asked if there would be a place for “fossil fuels, including coal and fracking” if Biden becomes president.
+
+Biden’s campaign later clarified that he supports ending subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, and transitioning, by 2050, to a clean energy economy with net-zero emissions. That’s what the plan he released in June 2019 also says he would do.
+Later in the ad, a graphic shown on screen says, “Joe Biden could cost Pennsylvania 600,000 jobs.” But that figure comes from a U.S. Chamber of Commerce study of a nationwide ban on fracking for oil and natural gas, which Biden’s campaign said he actually doesn’t support.
+
+
+America First Action released the ad on June 4, attacking Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, for proposed policies that would have an impact on energy jobs. The pro-Trump group has so far spent more than $230,000, according to Advertising Analytics, to run the 30-second commercial in at least five TV markets across Pennsylvania — a key electoral swing state.
+The ad starts with this abbreviated exchange between Biden and CNN’s Dana Bash during a Democratic presidential candidates’ debate the cable news network hosted last summer:
+Bash, July 31, 2019: … would there be any place for fossil fuels, including coal and fracking, in a Biden administration?
+Biden: No, we would — we would work it out. We would make sure it’s eliminated. 
+Biden’s full response was: “No, we would — we would work it out. We would make sure it’s eliminated and no more subsidies for either one of those, either — any fossil fuel.”
+He has made other statements about ending fossil fuels since then.
+“I guarantee you, we’re going to end fossil fuel,” Biden told an environmental activist who confronted him at a campaign event in New Hampshire back in September.
+Five months later, at another New Hampshire rally in February, Biden said to protesters who interrupted his remarks: “We are going to get rid of fossil fuels.”
+But Biden’s plan isn’t that simple, as his campaign explained the day after his initial remarks at the July debate.
+“Joe Biden is committed to achieving a 100% clean energy economy and net-zero emissions by 2050,” his team said in a statement to reporters who asked for clarification on his proposal. “He supports eliminating subsidies for coal and gas and deploying carbon capture sequestration technology to create economic benefits for multiple industries and significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions.”
+As we have written before, net-zero emissions would mean the amount of greenhouse gases emitted in the U.S. would be matched by the amount sequestered, or removed, from the atmosphere.
+Biden’s climate goals are outlined in “Joe’s Plan for a Clean Energy Revolution and Environmental Justice,” which his campaign released in June 2019.
+The plan says Biden will provide incentives for the development and use of carbon capture technology, and work to hold polluters financially accountable. It also says Biden will help fossil fuel workers, such as coal miners and power plant operators, make the move to clean energy jobs. 
+But, during the transition, the U.S. would continue to rely on fossil fuels for at least some of its energy. Notably, Biden’s campaign has said he would continue to largely allow fracking, formally known as hydraulic fracturing, a drilling technique used to extract oil and natural gas, which are fossil fuels, from rock formations underground. 
+Some critics concluded that Biden would implement a full ban on fracking after comments he made during a one-on-one debate with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in March.
+“I’m talking about stopping fracking as soon as we possibly can,” said Sanders, stating his support for an all-out ban. “I’m talking about telling the fossil fuel industry that they are going to stop destroying this planet — no ifs, buts and maybes about it.”
+“So am I,” said Biden, before later adding: “No more – no new fracking.”
+Biden’s campaign later clarified that Biden was only referring to new drilling for oil and natural gas on federally owned areas. As his climate plan states, Biden would ban “new oil and gas permitting on public lands and waters.” 
+That makes America First Action’s claim that “Joe Biden could cost Pennsylvania 600,000 jobs” misleading. (The claim was also featured in a deceptive six-second video the super PAC posted to Facebook.)
+
+The source of the figure is a 2019 paper the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Energy Institute published on what would happen if all fracking were ordered to cease. 
+“Simply put, a ban on fracking in the United States would be catastrophic for our economy,” the paper, issued in December, said. “Our analysis shows that if such a ban were imposed in 2021, by 2025 it would eliminate 19 million jobs,” including nearly 609,000 in Pennsylvania, which is the second largest natural gas producing state.
+Most fracking, however, is reportedly done on private or state-owned land, which would not be stopped under the plan Biden has announced.
+Biden clearly would like the U.S. to be much less dependent on energy from fossil fuels, and he has inaccurately described his own clean energy plan on more than one occasion. But the plan he has released — and that his campaign said he still supports — would not eliminate fossils fuels, or fracking, completely, or cost Pennsylvania 600,000 jobs.
+
+Editor’s note: Swing State Watch is an occasional series about false and misleading political messages in key states that will help decide the 2020 presidential election.
+Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104."
+"Summary
+The first head-to-head debate of the Democratic presidential primary between former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders focused on the government’s response to the novel coronavirus outbreak. We sorted through competing claims the two front-runners made about the pandemic, as well as other topics including Social Security, super PACs and bailouts.
+
+Biden denied Sanders’ claim that he ever talked on the Senate floor “about the necessity” of “cutting Social Security.” In 1984, Biden called for a one-year spending freeze that would have included Social Security, and he boasted about that position from the Senate floor in 1995. But Sanders went too far in claiming Biden has a history of “advocat[ing]” for such cuts.
+Biden misleadingly claimed that he “did not” help write a 2005 bankruptcy bill that made it easier for credit card companies to collect debt, but decided it was better to work with Republicans to improve the bill because a Republican president was expected to sign it.
+Biden said Sanders has “nine super PACs” and Sanders said, “I don’t have any.” Sanders may not have nine super PACs supporting his campaign, but he has some.
+Biden said Sanders “voted against the bailout to the automobile industry,” when in fact Sanders supported a $15 billion aid package for automakers in 2008.
+Sanders alternatively said that “at least 30,000” and “up to 60,000” people die in a year due to lacking health insurance. There’s insufficient evidence to pin down an exact figure, though several studies have estimated that thousands of deaths annually are related to lacking coverage.
+Biden said he had a “100% rating” from the abortion-rights group NARAL. That’s true of some of his years as a senator, but not all, as a line of questioning by Sanders pointed out.
+Sanders correctly noted that average inflation-adjusted wages are close to what they were 45 years ago. But that masks the fact that wages haven’t been flat over that time: They dropped from their peak in the early 1970s and have been on a general upward trend since hitting bottom in 1996.
+In speaking about climate change, Biden incorrectly stated that his home state of Delaware “is 3 feet above sea level.” While parts of Delaware are that low-lying, most of the state is not, and the average elevation is 60 feet above sea level. 
+
+The two candidates also repeated claims we have checked before on health care, climate change, defense spending and gun control.
+The March 15 debate was hosted by CNN and Univision.
+Analysis
+Sanders Attacks Biden on Social Security
+In a fiery back-and-forth over Sanders’ claim that Biden has a long history of support for cuts to Social Security, both candidates massaged the facts.
+Biden denied Sanders’ claim that he ever talked on the Senate floor “about the necessity” of “cutting Social Security.” In 1984, Biden called for a one-year spending freeze that would have included Social Security, and he boasted about that position in 1995 during debate about a balanced budget amendment. But Sanders also went too far with his claim that Biden has “advocated” such cuts.
+Sanders: Have you been on the floor of the Senate … time and time again, talking about the necessity, with pride, about cutting Social Security, cutting Medicare, cutting veterans programs.
+Biden: No.
+Sanders: You never said that?
+Biden: No.
+Sanders implored viewers to go to YouTube to check. He’s reaching deep into Biden’s legislative past to make his point.
+As we wrote in our Jan. 24 story, “Biden vs. Sanders on Social Security and Medicare,” back in 1984 when Ronald Reagan was president, then-Sen. Biden co-sponsored a measure (along with Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley and others) seeking a one-year, across-the-board freeze on defense and domestic spending as a way to reduce budget deficits. The proposal, which failed, would have eliminated cost-of-living increases for one year for Social Security and Medicare.
+Fast forward a decade to 1995, and Biden twice cited that proposal to explain his support for a balanced budget amendment and to prove his bona fides as someone serious about reducing deficits.
+For example, on Jan. 31, 1995, Biden said from the floor of the Senate, “When I argued that we should freeze federal spending, I meant Social Security as well. I meant Medicare and Medicaid. I meant veterans benefits. I meant every single solitary thing in the government. And I not only tried it once, I tried it twice. I tried it a third time, and I tried it a fourth time. Somebody has to tell me in here how we are going to do this hard work without dealing with any of those sacred cows, some deserving more protection than others. I am not quite sure how you get from here to there. I am sure that we should tell the American people straight up that such an amendment is going to require some big changes.”
+So Biden has spoken on the Senate floor about his one-time support for a one-year freeze to Social Security.
+But there’s more to Biden’s record, and both Sanders and Biden picked from it selectively.
+Sanders noted that Biden was a “fan” of the Balanced Budget Amendment, which Sanders said “called for cuts in Social Security.” But the issue is more nuanced than Sanders suggests.
+Back in 1996, Biden was among the Democrats who voted for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. The resolution fell just short of the two-thirds majority needed to pass, 64-35.
+Biden supported an amendment that sought to protect the Social Security system from any cuts enacted as part of the balanced budget plan. Even though that amendment failed and Biden voted for the balanced budget resolution anyway, it’s not accurate for Sanders to say the balanced budget proposal “called for cuts in Social Security.” The balanced budget amendment resolution did not mention Social Security, only that “[t]otal outlays for any fiscal year shall not exceed total receipts for that fiscal year” unless three-fifths of both the House and Senate agreed to exceptions.
+Sanders also accused Biden of taking the position that “everything was on the table” in budget negotiations with Republicans, “including in your judgment, cuts to Social Security.”
+This likely refers to Biden’s comments on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on April 29, 2007, when then-presidential candidate Biden told host Tim Russert that he would “absolutely” put “age of eligibility” and “cost of living” for Social Security and Medicare on the table during discussions on reducing the deficit.
+And Biden was also involved in so-called “Grand Bargain” negotiations between then-President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner that would have reduced the deficit through a mix of tax hikes and spending cuts — and even changes to Social Security. The New York Times reported that the Grand Bargain would have raised the retirement age and changed the formula for calculating benefits. But, as the Times reported, the deal fell through as members of Boehner’s caucus objected to raising taxes.
+During the debate, Biden said that none of those instances resulted in cuts to Social Security, and that he never voted to cut Social Security.
+“I know, because people like me helped me stop that,” Sanders said. “All that I’m saying is you were prepared to cut and advocate for the cuts.”
+Saying that Biden was prepared to “advocate” cuts to Social Security is misleading. As we wrote in our story about Biden’s history on Social Security, we don’t know what Biden might have been willing to compromise on since those deals never happened. Agreeing to leave an issue “on the table” prior to a negotiation isn’t the same thing as agreeing to do it.
+We should note that in his 2020 bid, Biden has proposed a plan that would increase revenue for Social Security by eliminating the payroll tax cap and expand benefits for some of the oldest seniors.
+During the debate, Biden asked Sanders to “acknowledge” that his campaign had taken “out of context” Biden’s comments about a tax plan championed by former House Speaker Paul Ryan. We agreed those comments were used misleadingly in a Sanders campaign newsletter to suggest Biden supported the Ryan plan.
+But as we wrote at the time, Biden’s comments over time make clear that he has at least been willing to keep cuts to Social Security and Medicare as negotiating chips, while other Democrats have taken a harder line that any cuts cannot be part of budget negotiations.
+Biden’s Bankruptcy Law Spin
+Two days before the debate, Biden said he would support Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s plan to change a bankruptcy law that he had backed as a senator in 2005. Warren’s plan would make it easier for people to obtain debt relief — allowing student loan debt, for example, to be discharged in bankruptcy.
+Univision’s Ilia Calderón, one of the debate moderators, asked Biden why he had changed his position and now supported Warren’s plan.
+As Biden told it, he made the decision to improve a bill that he knew a Republican-controlled Congress would pass and Republican President George W. Bush would sign into law.
+Biden: I had a choice, it was going to pass, Republican president, Republican Congress, and I offered two amendments to make sure that people under $50,000 would not be affected and women and children would go to the front of the line on alimony and support payments. That’s what I did. It passed overwhelmingly. I did not like the rest of the bill, but I improved it, number one.
+Later, Sanders noted that Biden had “helped write” the 2005 bankruptcy bill, which Warren called “terrible for families in need” when she announced her plan to undo parts of the law.
+Sanders: Joe, if my memory is correct, you helped write that bankruptcy bill.
+Biden: I did not.
+The fact is, Biden had a long history with the legislation and his support for it predated Bush. In fact, Biden helped draft a version of the bankruptcy bill that Congress sent to President Bill Clinton in 2000, only to have the Democrat president pocket veto the bill before leaving office.
+Let’s take a look at Biden’s involvement in the bankruptcy bill.
+On March 15, 1999, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley announced that he had introduced the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1999 with the support of Democratic Sens. Robert Torricelli and Biden.
+“Sen. Chuck Grassley today introduced a bipartisan plan to improve the nation’s bankruptcy system,” the Republican senator announced in a press release. “Sens. Robert Torricelli of New Jersey and Joe Biden of Delaware joined Grassley as co-sponsors of the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1999.”
+In 2000, Biden was a member of the House-Senate conference committee that resolved the differences between the chambers’ bankruptcy bills before sending a final version to Clinton.
+On the Senate floor the day the bill passed on Dec. 7, 2000, Sen. Orrin Hatch singled out Biden, among others, for his work on the bill �� crediting its passage to Biden’s “unwavering dedication to accomplishing the important reforms in this bill.”
+For his part, Biden urged Clinton to reconsider his veto threat and touted provisions of the bill “to protect families below the median income” and make it easier for women and children to receive alimony and child support from husbands and fathers who file for bankruptcy. These were the very things that Biden claimed during the debate that he pushed for in 2005 in order to win his support.
+“[A] feature of this legislation that I think deserves much more emphasis is its historic improvement in the treatment of family support payments — child support and alimony,” Biden said on Dec. 7, 2000.
+After Clinton vetoed the bill, Grassley reintroduced the Bankruptcy Reform Act in July 2001 and Biden co-sponsored it. Biden was a member of an informal conference committee to work on the bankruptcy bill, and the committee was scheduled to have its first meeting on Sept. 12, 2001 — which, as it turned out, was the day after the 9/11 terrorist attack. At the time, Congressional Quarterly described Biden as “one of the measure’s most vocal supporters.”
+It wasn’t until 2005 that the bankruptcy bill became law.
+As he did in 2000, Hatch praised Biden for his help on the bill on the day that the Senate passed the legislation. Hatch said Biden had worked “tirelessly for years on this legislation, and they have taken some tough votes to get it done.”
+And, as he did in 2000, Biden spoke in support of the bill’s provisions that made it easier for women and children to collect alimony and child support. “I am here again today to show that, contrary to a lot of the rhetoric that has been tossed around, this bill actually improves the situation of women and children who depend on child support,” Biden said.
+Contrary to his claims during the debate, Biden helped write the bankruptcy law, and it wasn’t just because he knew the bill was going to become law under a Republican president and Republican Congress. He was involved over the years in many attempts to enact the legislation.
+Super PAC Support
+During an exchange about campaign contributions and potential federal funding of elections, Biden and Sanders disagreed over the number of super PACs supporting Sanders for president.
+“Why don’t you get rid of the super PAC that you have right now?” Sanders said to Biden. “You’ll get rid of the nine super PACs you have,” Biden then said to Sanders, who responded: “I don’t have nine super PACs. I don’t have any super PACs.”
+Biden does have at least one super PAC supporting his campaign. Unite the Country was started by former Biden aides in 2019, and it has so far spent more than $10 million promoting Biden’s candidacy.
+But Sanders also has super PACs supporting his campaign, although not nine of them — at least not according to the documentation provided by Biden’s campaign.
+The campaign emailed us a list of eight progressive organizations, and several of their affiliates, that are backing Sanders for president. The eight main groups are: Center for Popular Democracy Action, Democratic Socialists of America, Dream Defenders, Make the Road, Our Revolution, People’s Action, Progressive Democrats of America and Sunrise Movement. Those groups, and another, Student Action, are all part of a coalition called “People Power for Bernie,” which launched at the end of January.
+But according to the Biden campaign’s own documentation, only four of their affiliates are technically super PACs, which can raise unlimited amounts of money from corporations, unions, associations and individuals and can spend that money on ads that advocate for or against the election of political candidates. (And half of them have not been active during the 2020 cycle.)
+
+The rest of the groups on the list are mostly 501(c)4 social welfare organizations. As 501(c) nonprofits, the groups also may raise unlimited amounts of money from corporations, unions and individuals, but their political activity is supposed to be more limited. On Twitter, Sunrise Movement, one of the groups in the pro-Sanders coalition, called Biden’s claim a “smear” against “grassroots organizations like us.”
+
+Unlike super PACs, 501(c)4 groups — sometimes called “dark money” groups — are not required to disclose the names of their donors, although some of them do. Also, super PACs report to the Federal Election Commission, while 501(c) groups report to the Internal Revenue Service.
+It’s unclear how much money all of the groups cited by the Biden campaign have spent supporting Sanders during the 2020 cycle.
+In addition to the groups cited by Biden’s campaign, Sanders also has the support of Vote Nurses Value PAC, a super PAC affiliated with the largest union of registered nurses, National Nurses United. That super PAC has spent more than $733,000 in support of Sanders, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
+The center also lists three other super PACs backing Sanders in 2020, but none of them have spent any money.
+Biden’s Auto Bailout Stretch
+Biden stretched the facts when he said “Bernie voted against the bailout to the automobile industry” in addition to opposing the 2008 Economic Stabilization Act.
+In fact, Sanders supported a $15 billion measure specifically aimed at aiding the troubled auto industry in December 2008, in the midst of the worst economic slump since the 1930s. That bill failed to pass the Senate.
+It’s true that earlier, Sanders  opposed a Wall Street bailout bill providing $350 billion for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. President George W. Bush announced later that he would use TARP funds to aid the auto industry, too. Sanders could not have known that when he voted against the funds.
+Biden is referring to Sanders’ vote in January 2009 to block release of a second $350 billion in TARP funds, again mainly to aid financial institutions. This time it was clear that some of that would aid automakers — but it amounted to only $4 billion of the total.
+This isn’t the first time Sanders has been unfairly accused of opposing the auto bailout. Hillary Clinton made the same charge in her 2016 campaign, and we wrote about it in greater detail then.
+Sanders on Deaths Among the Uninsured
+While talking about health care in the context of the novel coronavirus pandemic, Sanders pushed for his Medicare for All proposal by citing two specific — and different — figures for the number of annual deaths linked to lacking insurance coverage.
+“And bottom line here is, in terms of Medicare for all, despite what the vice president is saying, what the experts tell us is that one of the reasons that we are unprepared and have been unprepared is we don’t have a system. We’ve got thousands of private insurance plans,” Sanders said. “That is not a system that is prepared to provide health care to all people. In a good year, without the epidemic, we’re losing up to 60,000 people who die every year because they don’t get to a doctor on time. It’s clearly this crisis is only making a bad situation worse.”
+Later, the Vermont senator offered a different figure: “You know what, last year at least 30,000 people died in America because they didn’t get health care when they should because we don’t have universal coverage. I think that’s a crisis.”
+But, as we’ve written several times, it’s hard to pin down the precise number of deaths in the U.S. attributable to lacking insurance — although multiple studies have estimated thousands of excess deaths from absent insurance coverage.
+PolitiFact looked last year specifically at Sanders’ claim that “30,000 Americans a year die waiting for health care because of the cost” and found it “lacks meaningful support either way. It could be true. But it also could easily not be.”
+Our fact-checking colleagues traced the figure to Physicians for a National Health Program, which advocates for a single-payer health care system. PNHP cited the findings of the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment, a study in which some people in the state were given Medicaid by lottery and others remained uninsured.
+But while that study “yielded important findings,” the death rate differential was not statistically significant, PolitiFact noted, citing Benjamin Sommers, an associate professor of health policy and economics at Harvard. Therefore, it didn’t “generate sufficient evidence spelling out the link between insurance coverage and mortality” — so it couldn’t be confidently applied to the country.
+We wrote in 2009 about another study by researchers with the Harvard Medical School — two of whom had strong connections to PNHP — that claimed 45,000 deaths a year could be attributed to the lack of health insurance. We found that was at the high end of estimates, but earlier studies also put the figure in the thousands.
+The higher figure cited by Sanders — “60,000” — may refer to a recent study from Yale researchers that examined Sanders’ Medicare for All proposal. That study looked at uninsured populations and the notion that “uninsured people experience a 40% elevation in age-specific mortality risk,” and concluded that “universal coverage would save 68,531 lives” annually.
+Biden’s NARAL Voting Record
+Discussing women’s reproductive rights, Biden touted a “100% rating” from the group NARAL Pro-Choice America. While it’s true that the former vice president received that voting record rating from the advocacy group during some of his years in the Senate, that was not always the case — a point made by Sanders.
+Biden: I think it is a woman’s right to choose. I think it’s a woman’s opportunity to be able to make that decision. And in fact, I’ve gotten a 100% rating from NARAL as well.
+Sanders: Excuse me, you have a lifetime 100% voting record from NARAL?
+Biden: I know my record of late from NARAL has been 100%. I don’t know whether it was 25 years ago.
+The rating highlighted by Biden was selective, though he didn’t technically claim to have a lifelong 100% voting record rating with the group. It was Sanders who added the “lifetime” qualifier.
+Still, the exchange called for further context — and NARAL’s president chimed in on Twitter to provide it. Ilyse Hogue said that while Biden has “been evolving over time,” his record was not always perfect in the group’s eyes.
+
+.@JoeBiden has been evolving over time but his lifetime rating from @naral is not 100%. His last year in Congress he had a 100%. Annual ratings are entirely dependent on what votes come up in any given session. Not what a candidate feels about any given issue. #DemDebate2020  /2
+— ilyse hogue (@ilyseh) March 16, 2020
+
+As Hogue points out, the group gives ratings to members of Congress based on their legislative activity in a given year. And Biden’s ratings reflected a mixed record.
+In the years 1996 and 1997, for example, Biden’s voting record score from the group was 43% and 34%, respectively, according to VoteSmart.org. He got a 90% rating in 2000 — and had mostly high marks in the years to follow, save for a 36% rating in 2003. After three straight years of 100% ratings, he was given a 75% rating in 2007.
+In his last year as a senator, based on three key votes in the Senate, Biden again received a 100% voting record rating, according to an archived version of the group’s 2008 Congressional Record on Choice report. Sanders, meanwhile, has maintained a 100% rating since 1996.
+Sanders’ Wage Claim
+Sanders was correct in saying that average inflation-adjusted wages are nearly the same today as they were 45 years ago, but that leaves the misleading impression that wages haven’t budged over those decades. Real wages dropped from their peak in the early 1970s but began to rise back up again beginning in the mid-1990s.
+Sanders: Why is it that over the last 45 years, despite the huge increase in productivity and technology, the average worker today is not making a nickel more in real dollars?
+Average weekly earnings of production and nonsupervisory employees in inflation-adjusted (1982-84) dollars were $319.90 for February, the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics figures available. In February 1975 — 45 years ago — the average weekly earnings were $314.90. The peak was actually a few years earlier, in 1973 at $345.95.
+Average weekly wages hit the low point 24 years ago — at $263.73 in January 1996. They have fluctuated, but generally have been on an upward trend since. Despite Sanders’ claim, real average wages are up 21.3% since hitting that bottom of the curve. For more on how there are different ways to look at wage data, see our June 2019 story, “Are Wages Rising or Flat?”
+Biden Overstates Delaware’s Low Elevation
+When the two candidates tussled over their plans to tackle climate change, Biden went too far in describing the low elevation of his home state of Delaware.
+Biden: My, my state is 3 feet above sea level. I don’t need a lecture on what’s going to happen about rising seas. I know what happens; I watched the whole Delmarva Peninsula, just like it is in South Carolina and the rest. 
+Delaware is the lowest-lying state in the U.S. and is highly susceptible to sea level rise from climate change. But, as we explained back in November when Biden made a similar claim, while there are some areas that dip as low as 3 feet above sea level, for the most part, the state sits higher. The average elevation across the state is 60 feet above sea level.
+A Delaware Geological Survey map shows that a relatively small portion of the state, mostly along the coast, is 5 feet or less above sea level.
+This time, Biden also referenced the Delmarva Peninsula, which is the piece of land that juts out into the Atlantic Ocean south of New Jersey. The name comes from the three states that make up the peninsula: Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. 
+As the U.S. Geological Survey notes, the peninsula was “significantly affected” by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, which research suggests was made more intense by climate change.
+More Repeats
+Health Care Spending. Sanders repeated his well-worn, and exaggerated, talking point that the U.S. spends “twice as much as any other country” on health care. Normally, he adds “per capita.” The U.S. spends twice as much as most countries, but not all. As we’ve said before, U.S. per capita spending on health care totaled $10,586 in 2018, according to the most recent Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development data. That’s twice as much as the OECD average and every country except for six: Switzerland, Norway, Germany, Sweden, Austria and Denmark. 
+Not a ‘Game Changer.’ Biden repeated one of his go-to lines for touting his record on climate change. “I wrote the first climate change bill that was in the Congress,” he said, adding that “PolitiFact said [it] was a game changer.” As we’ve written on multiple occasions, the fact-checking site called Biden a “climate change pioneer” in response to his more modest claim of being “one of the first guys” to introduce a climate change bill, but did not use the word “game changer.” 
+In fact, the article explains that the bill, which set up a presidential task force, was a “plan to make a plan” — not a piece of comprehensive legislation that addressed lowering carbon emissions or climate change adaptation.
+Trade Agreements and Jobs. Sanders again blamed two trade agreements – the North American Free Trade Agreement and the permanent normal trade relations with China – for the loss of “over 4 million good-paying jobs.” But, as we wrote after he made the same claim during the January Democratic Debate and during the 2016 primary, it’s unclear how many jobs have been affected by those deals.
+Sanders’ claim is supported by the labor-backed Economic Policy Institute. The EPI estimated that by 2017 the U.S. has lost 3.4 million jobs since the U.S. granted permanent normal trade relations with China in 2001. The institute also estimated that NAFTA cost the U.S. 682,900 jobs, as of 2013. But other researchers disagree. 
+The Congressional Research Service determined that NAFTA did not have a significant impact on jobs, saying in a 2017 report that the “net overall effect of NAFTA on the U.S. economy appears to have been relatively modest, primarily because trade with Canada and Mexico accounts for a small percentage of U.S. GDP.” A 2017 working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that the job losses in manufacturing since China joined the Word Trade Organization in 2001 have been partly offset by job gains in other parts of the economy.
+Underinsured. Sanders repeated his claim that there are 87 million “uninsured or underinsured” Americans. As we’ve written in our coverage of past debates, this figure comes from a study by The Commonwealth Fund. The study found that “[o]f the 194 million U.S. adults ages 19 to 64 in 2018, an estimated 87 million, or 45 percent, were inadequately insured.” The 87 million is composed of three categories: 24 million people uninsured, 43.8 million “underinsured,” and 19.3 million people who had insurance but had been uninsured at some point in the past year.
+Defense Spending. Sanders misleadingly used a military spending figure when discussing the issue of climate change. “Instead of spending $1.8 trillion on weapons of destruction designed to kill each other, maybe we should pool our resources and fight our common enemy, which is climate change,” he said. As we have explained before, that figure is not solely for weapons. It’s the 2018 total world military expenditure, as calculated by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a think tank that researches conflict, armaments and more. The group says it “discourages the use of terms such as ‘arms spending’ when referring to military expenditure, as spending on armaments is usually only a minority of the total.”
+Gun Manufacturer Lawsuits. Biden again accused Sanders of voting to allow gun manufacturers to be exempt from lawsuits. “This man is the only — one of the few Democrats I know who voted to exempt the gun industry from being able to be sued,” Biden said. “We cannot sue the gun manufacturers because he voted for that years ago.” 
+It is true that Sanders, as a member of the House then, voted in favor of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act — which protects licensed manufacturers, dealers, sellers of ammunition and firearms, as well as trade associations from civil lawsuits over the misuse of guns or ammunition — in 2003 and 2005. However, as we have explained, the bill includes six exceptions where civil suits may be granted, such as cases in which a firearm seller acted with negligence.
+Biden did acknowledge that Sanders has since expressed regret over his vote on the bill, and Sanders has indeed called his vote “a bad vote.”
+As for Biden’s claim that Sanders is “one of the few Democrats I know” who voted to enact the bill, the majority of House Democrats voted against it. But in 2003, 63 Democrats voted “yea” and 59 did so in 2005. Sanders is not included in those counts, because he was (and still is) an independent.
+Correction, March 16: In the original version of this story, we incorrectly quoted Biden when the former vice president was discussing how he would respond to the novel coronavirus as president. Biden said, “We just pass a law saying that you do not have to pay for any of this, period.” Sanders replied, “As a matter of fact, that’s not true. That law has enormous loopholes. I understand that Nancy Pelosi did her best, Republicans prevented it.” We misheard it, and apparently so did Sanders. Biden said “pass” – not “passed” – and he was referring to his plan, not to the House bill.
+— by Eugene Kiely, Brooks Jackson, Lori Robertson, Robert Farley, Rem Rieder, D’Angelo Gore, Jessica McDonald, Angelo Fichera, Katherine Hartzell, Isabella Fertel and Mitchell Aronoff
+Sources
+Cochrane, Emily and Jim Tankersley. “Here’s What’s in Congress’s Emergency Coronavirus Bill.�� New York Times. 14 Mar 2020.
+Foran, Claire et. al. “House passes coronavirus relief bill after Trump announces his support.” CNN. 14 Mar 2020.
+Hirsch, Lauren. “The Senate has not yet scheduled a vote for the coronavirus relief bill already passed by the House.” CNBC. 15 Mar 2020.
+Hogue, Ilyse (ilyseh). “.@JoeBiden has been evolving over time but his lifetime rating from @naral is not 100%. His last year in Congress he had a 100%. Annual ratings are entirely dependent on what votes come up in any given session. Not what a candidate feels about any given issue. #DemDebate2020 /2.” Twitter. 15 Mar 2020.
+“2008 Congressional Record on Choice.” NARAL Pro-Choice America. 2008.
+“Joe Biden, Jr.’s Ratings and Endorsements.” VoteSmart.org. Accessed 15 Mar 2020.
+“Bernie Sanders’ Ratings and Endorsements.” VoteSmart.org. Accessed 15 Mar 2020.
+McDonald, Jessica et. al. “FactChecking Biden’s CNN Town Hall.” FactCheck.org. 14 Nov 2019.
+Wang, L.T. SP28 Digital Elevation Model of Delaware. Delaware Geological Survey. Sep 2017. U.S.
+Geological Survey. Hurricane Sandy Response- Linking the Delmarva Peninsula’s Geologic Framework to Coastal Vulnerability. Accessed 16 Mar 2020.
+Trenberth, Kevin E. et. al. “Attribution of climate extreme events.” Nature Climate Change. 5, 725–730 (2015).
+Tollefson, Jeff. “Severe weather linked more strongly to global warming.” Nature News. 24 June 2015.
+Kruzel, John. “Was Joe Biden a climate change pioneer in Congress? History says yes.” PolitiFact. 8 May 2019.
+Kiely, Eugene et. al. “FactChecking the November Democratic Debate.” FactCheck.org. 21 Nov 2019.
+Jackson, Brooks et. al. “FactChecking the January Democratic Debate.” FactCheck.org. 15 Jan 2020.
+Bates, Andrew, spokesman for Joe Biden presidential campaign. Email sent to FactCheck.org. 15 Mar 2020.
+Seitz-Wald, Alex. “Progressive groups unite to boost Bernie Sanders as Democratic attacks on him mount.” NBC News. 30 Jan 2020.
+Ye Hee Lee, Michelle, and Narayanswamy, Anu. “Left-wing groups supporting Sanders intensify their efforts, even as Biden surges.” Washington Post. 12 Mar 2020
+Center for Responsive Politics. “2020 Outside Spending, by Super PAC.” Accessed 16 Mar 2020.
+Collins, Sara R. et. al. “Health Insurance Coverage Eight Years After the ACA.” The Commonwealth Fund. 7 Feb 2019.
+Robertson, Lori and Robert Farley. “Deaths from a Health Care Bill?” FactCheck.org. 7 Jul 2017.
+Robertson, Lori. “Dying from Lack of Insurance.” FactCheck.org. 24 Sep 2009.
+Luthra, Shefali. “Fuzzy math fuels Sanders’ claim that cost barriers to health care kill 30,000 a year.” PolitiFact. 24 Jun 2019.
+Galvani, Alison, et. al. “Improving the prognosis of health care in the USA.” The Lancet. Vol. 395, Issue 10223, pages 524-533. 15 Feb 2020.
+Farley, Robert. “Biden vs. Sanders on Social Security and Medicare.” FactCheck.org. 24 Jan 2020.
+Dewar, Helen. “Proposed One-Year Spending Freeze Is Rejected Decisively By the Senate.” Washington Post. 3 May 1984.
+Congressional Record. S. 1806. 31 Jan 1995.
+Senate website. Roll Call Vote 104th Congress – 2nd Session. On the Joint Resolution (H.J. Res. 1 as amended). 6 Jun 1996.
+Congress.gov. S.Amdt.236 to H.J.Res.1. 8 Feb 1995.
+Congress.gov. H.J.Res.1 – Proposing a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Introduced 4 Jan 1995.
+NBC News. Meet the Press Transcript. 29 Apr 2007.
+Bai, Matt. “Obama Vs. Boehner: Who Killed the Debt Deal?” New York Times. 28 Mar 2012.
+Biden Campaign Website. “The Biden Plan for Older Americans.” Accessed 16 Mar 2020.
+Kiely, Eugene “Clinton-Sanders Bailout Brawl” FactCheck.org. 7 Mar 2016.
+Kinzel, Bob “Leahy, Sanders reluctantly support auto industry rescue” Vermont Public Radio. 11 Dec 2008.
+110th Congress, U.S. Senate, 2nd Session. Roll Call Vote No. 213. 1 Oct 2008.
+Bush, George W. “President Bush Discusses Administration’s Plan to Assist Automakers” Transcript. The White House. 19 Dec 2008.
+111th Congress, U.S. Senate, 1st Session. Roll Call Vote No. 5. 15 Jan 2009.
+Average weekly earnings of production and nonsupervisory employees, 1982-84 dollars, total private, seasonally adjusted. Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National). Bureau of Labor Statistics. data extracted on 15 Mar 2020."
+"15.8KQuick Take
+Various claims online suggest that climate change hasn’t contributed to the bushfires ravaging the East Coast of Australia, pinning the blame instead on arson. Those claims distort the facts.
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+Full Story
+Several recent reports have found that climate change is contributing to the hot, dry conditions that fuel the kind of fires currently raging up the East Coast of Australia. But claims that climate change played no role in those bushfires have been proliferating online.
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+This map from Geoscience Australia shows the hot spots across Australia on Jan. 14, 2020.
+For example, a video from the conservative content generator PragerU has been viewed 2 million times since it was posted on Jan. 7. The text in the video claims: “The popular narrative is that Australia’s fires are caused by climate change. But the facts say otherwise… Since November 8, 2019, nearly 200 arsonists have been arrested for starting brush fires in Australia. The arsonists were responsible for about 50% of the bushfires. Not climate change. Arsonists. Repeat that: Not climate change. Arsonists. But the left doesn’t care, because this fact doesn’t agree with their ‘science.'”
+Here’s what the video gets wrong: First of all, “nearly 200 arsonists” haven’t been arrested since Nov. 8, 2019.
+As its source, the video cites a Jan. 7 story from Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper the Australian with the headline: “Bushfires: Firebugs fuelling crisis as arson arrest toll hits 183.”
+The story said that “police arrested 183 people for lighting bushfires across Queensland, NSW, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania in the past few months.” But that total of 183 arson arrests occurred over various periods in 2019, including all of 2019 in the case of Victoria.
+The story also referenced statistics since Nov. 8, 2019, from only one state — New South Wales. Police there announced that they had taken “legal action” against 183 people for bushfire-related offenses. Only 24 of those people were charged for “alleged deliberately-lit bushfires,” according to the police; others were cautioned or charged with different offenses.
+So, the video used the date from the New South Wales announcement and the number of arson arrests counted over five states and various periods in 2019 from the newspaper story. The effect is an inflated number of arrests since the bushfires began.
+The larger point in the video, though, is that arson is primarily responsible for the bushfires in Australia, not climate change. That message has been distilled into online memes. It also has been trumpeted by some high-profile political figures, including Donald Trump Jr.
+But overemphasizing the role of arson and pitting it against climate change distorts the issue.
+The fact is, hot, dry conditions allow for bushfires to escalate, regardless of how they are started. As we explained in 2017, in a story about wildfires in the western U.S., climate change doesn’t cause these fires, but it can exacerbate the hot and dry conditions that make wildfires more likely to develop and grow.
+Generally, about half of all bushfires are started by natural causes (mostly from lightning), according to Geoscience Australia, a government agency that deals with geology and geography. The other half are caused by people, who start them either accidentally or deliberately. Those that are started deliberately aren’t necessarily malicious, according to the agency. They could be fires that were meant to be contained, but got out of control.
+The video’s claim that half of the current fires are due to arson is also wrong.
+That figure appears to be based on another part of the story in the Australian, which said “about 50 per cent of bushfires were lit by firebugs and impending fire seasons excited them.” It attributed that statement to James Ogloff, a professor of forensic behavioral science.
+We reached out to Ogloff and asked for the source of that figure. He said it came from a 2008 Australian Institute of Criminology report. But that report, more than a decade old, analyzed only fires that were assigned a cause — 13% of those fires were deliberate and 37% were suspicious. It doesn’t account for at least 40% of all fires that weren’t assigned a cause.
+So we asked Colleen Bryant, the researcher who wrote that 2008 report, if her findings could support the claim that 50% of the current fires are attributable to arson. The short answer is, no. But she also provided to us a 14-page explanation of the current circumstances, which can be read here.
+The original report is neither a study of bushfires nor arson, she explained. Rather, it is an examination of deliberately lit vegetation fires.
+Vegetation fire is a broad category that covers any fire occurring in vegetation, whereas a bushfire is larger, akin to a wildfire. There are many more vegetation fires than bushfires.
+And deliberately lit fires aren’t necessarily arson. They, too, are a broad category that can include arson, but also include suspicious, nuisance and other types of fire ignitions, where the cause of the fire is not conclusive.
+The original report is based largely on data kept over a four- to five-year period in the late 1990s and early 2000s by various state agencies, but not all fires are recorded. Some of the largest bushfires in northern Australia’s wilderness are not attended, so they wouldn’t be part of that data, for example.
+Based on her analysis of the available fire statistics, Bryant concluded that most of those very large bushfires have a natural origin, and they account for the “overwhelming majority” of all land burned.
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+Ultimately, she wrote in response to us:
+Colleen Bryant, Jan. 15, 2020: Bryant (2008a) did conclude that as much as 50 percent of vegetation fires in Australia may be deliberately lit. However, that statistic is not, and should not be used as, an assessment of the likely causes (ignition) of Australia’s 2019‐2020 bushfires, as it is not an accurate reporting of what has occurred, and it is unlikely representative of the actual picture.
+For a rough idea of how much deliberate torching has contributed to the current fires, we reached out to the four states or territories ablaze on Australia’s East Coast and got information on the number of fires and the number of arrests from one. In Queensland, there have been 1,068 reported bushfires between Sept. 10, 2019, and Jan. 8, 2020, according to the Queensland Police Service. Of those, 114 were “deliberately or maliciously lit,” and 109 people have been cautioned, charged or sent to a restorative justice program, according to police. That would account for about 11% of the fires.
+A spokesman for the Queensland Fire and Emergency Services echoed the Geoscience Australia analysis of bushfire causes. “There’s a real mix,” he said in an interview with FactCheck.org, breaking that mix into three categories — natural causes, accidental human causes (cigarettes and sources as small as a spark from rusty breaks), and intentional human causes. Natural causes account for the bulk of the fires, he said.
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+This diagram from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology shows how pyrocumulonimbus clouds develop. Published with permission.
+And, as we noted at the start, several reports have found that climate change is contributing to the conditions that generate large-scale bushfires. The “State of the Climate” report for 2018 released by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology said: “Climate change can have a significant influence on the frequency, magnitude and impact of some types of compound events,” giving as an example warming and drying trends in Tasmania in 2015-2016, causing “record high fire danger.”
+The bureau’s “annual climate statement,” released on Jan. 9, reported that 2019 was the hottest and driest year on record for the country. It said:
+Australian Bureau of Meteorology: The second half of the year was particularly dry across most of the southern half of Australia, and followed several years of below average rainfall over parts of Queensland and New South Wales. Warm and windy conditions during spring to early summer led to repeated periods of severe fire weather, with very large bushfires affecting eastern Australia from September, with many fires continuing to burn after the end of the year.
+Those hot, dry conditions have allowed for one of the most severe fire seasons on Australia’s East Coast in decades, according to NASA’s Earth Observatory. The fires have been so severe that they have created pyrocumulonimbus, or fire clouds, that can ignite new fires with lightning strikes. In 2018, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology predicted that “conditions associated with pyrocumulonimbus cloud formation” could become more prevalent in southeast Australia, which is where many of the current fires are located.
+“The reality is that the fires are larger, hotter, and burning longer than ever before,” said Jennifer Marlon, a research scientist at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, in an interview. She likened the severity of the current fires in Australia to the recent wildfires in the western U.S.
+“There are fingerprints of climate change in all of these blazes that really can’t be denied,” Marlon said.
+Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here.
+Sources
+Bryant, Colleen. “Causes of bushfire is Australia – A response.” 15 Jan 2020.
+Bureau of Meteorology, Australian Government. State of the Climate 2018. Accessed 9 Jan 2020.
+Bureau of Meteorology, Australian Government. Annual climate statement 2019. 9 Jan 2020.
+Ross, David and Imogen Reid. “Bushfires: Firebugs fuelling crisis as national arson arrest toll hits 183.” The Australian. 8 Jan 2020.
+Geoscience Australia. Bushfire. Accessed 9 Jan 2020.
+“Queensland bushfires, investigation update.” Queensland Police Service. 10 Jan 2020.
+“Police take legal action against more than 180 people so far during 2019/2020 bushfire season.” New South Wales Police Force. 6 Jan 2020.
+Ogloff, James. Professor, Swinburne University of Technology. Email interview with FactCheck.org. 10 Jan 2020.
+Marlon, Jennifer. Research Scientist, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. Phone interview with FactCheck.org. 13 Jan 2020.
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+Categories Debunking Viral Claims
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+Featured Posts
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+Location International
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+People Donald Trump Jr."
+"4.4KSummary
+In the final Democratic debate before the Iowa caucuses, there were fewer candidates — only six — but more than a few false, misleading and exaggerated claims:
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+Former Vice President Joe Biden claimed that the “wealthy are the only ones doing well, period.” But weekly paychecks for rank-and-file workers have been rising. 
+In defending his 2002 vote to authorize the use of military force in Iraq, Biden claimed the Bush administration “said they were not going to go to war” and only sought weapons inspections. But days before the vote, President George W. Bush said, “I hope this will not require military action, but it may.”
+Sen. Bernie Sanders overstated statistics on health care spending and medical bankruptices. For instance, he said “workers” were “paying on average 20% of their incomes for health care,” but the figure would be 12.7% based on the spending number his campaign cited.
+Sanders said that unless the U.S. leads “the world right now” on climate change, “the planet we are leaving our kids will be uninhabitable.” While climate change is an urgent and serious issue, many scientists do not think it will render the entire planet uninhabitable.
+Sen. Amy Klobuchar said she was the only person “on this debate stage” who answered “Iran” in the “very first debate” when asked “what we saw as the biggest threat.” True, but there was only one candidate on stage last night — Sen. Elizabeth Warren — who was also in that first debate with Klobuchar.
+Sanders claimed half a million people are “sleeping out on the streets,” but a government count of unsheltered homeless people puts the number at closer to 200,000.
+Biden repeated a false claim that PolitiFact referred to his early climate change legislation as “a game changer.” The fact-checking website did not say that, although it did say he was a “climate change pioneer.”
+Sanders blamed two trade agreements for the loss of 4 million American jobs, but estimates on that vary.
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+The Jan. 14 debate, hosted by CNN and the Des Moines Register, was held at Drake University in Iowa.
+Analysis
+Biden Wrong on Economy
+Biden was wrong when he said only the wealthy are doing well in the current economy.
+Biden: [T]he American public is getting clobbered. The wealthy are the only ones doing well, period.
+Whether workers are doing “well” may be a matter of opinion, but the fact is, rank-and-file workers have been making steady gains in weekly paychecks.
+Figures released earlier on the day of the debate by the Bureau of Labor Statistics show average weekly earnings of all private-sector workers in “real” terms — that is, after adjusting for inflation — rose 2.5% during President Donald Trump’s first 35 months in office. That’s actually a more rapid pace than when Biden was vice president, when real weekly earnings rose 4% over eight years.
+Furthermore, rank-and-file production and nonsupervisory workers (82% of all workers) are doing just a bit better than their bosses during Trump’s tenure. Real earnings for them have gone up 2.6%.
+To be sure, those at the top are gaining faster. A study last year by ISS Analytics for the Harvard Law School’s Forum on Corporate Governance found that the median compensation of chief executive officers of S&P 600 corporations rose 95% (before inflation) between 2009 and 2018, while median worker pay rose only 20%.
+But saying that “only” the wealthy are doing well is just not true.
+Biden’s Position on the Iraq War
+Biden continued to spin the history around his vote in 2002 to authorize the use of military force in Iraq, claiming the Bush administration “said they were not going to go to war” and only sought weapons inspections. In a speech days before Biden’s vote, Bush made clear that military action was possible.
+Biden also misleadingly claimed that from the moment the war started, “I was in the position of making the case that it was a big, big mistake.” Biden criticized President Bush for getting into the war too soon, with too few allies, and without a clear plan to “win the peace,” but he did not initially oppose the war altogether.
+Here’s how Biden described things during the debate:
+Biden: It was a mistake to trust that they weren’t going to go to war. They said they were not going to go to war. They said they were just going to get inspectors in. The world, in fact, voted to send inspectors in, and they still went to war. From that point on I was in the position of making the case that it was a big, big mistake. And from that point on I voted to — I moved to bring those troops home.
+In a speech on Oct. 7, 2002, just days before Congress would vote on a resolution authorizing military force against Iraq, Bush said that after years of “containment, sanctions, inspections, even selected military action, the end result is that Saddam Hussein still has chemical and biological weapons and is increasing his capabilities to make more. And he is moving ever closer to developing a nuclear weapon.”
+Bush did call for new, tougher inspections and sanctions — as Biden said during the debate. But contrary to Biden’s claim that the Bush administration assured “they were not going to go to war,” Bush made clear in that speech that war was possible.
+“I hope this will not require military action, but it may,” Bush said.
+A day after the resolution passed the House on Oct. 10, 2002, it passed the Senate 77-23, with Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, voting in favor.
+In the days and weeks before and after the war started, Biden said that while the hope was that the resolution could be used to leverage further inspections, he also acknowledged it was a vote for the possibility of war.
+“The way the Constitution works is, we voted to give the president the authority to go to war,” Biden said in a CNN interview two weeks after the war started. “It’s our decision whether or not we go from a state of peace to a state of war. We gave him that authority. You can second guess whether we should have or not. Once we’ve [done] that then it’s his decision to prosecute the war.”
+During the debate, Biden also misleadingly claimed that from the moment the war actually started, “I was in the position of making the case that it was a big, big mistake.”
+As we have written before, Biden was a consistent critic of the way the Bush administration handled the war: its failure to exhaust diplomatic solutions, its failure to enlist a more robust group of allies for the war effort, and the lack of a plan for reconstruction of Iraq. Some of his comments proved to be quite prescient, including his warnings about the likely higher-than-expected cost and length of the war, and the complexity of “winning the peace” once Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s regime was toppled.
+In other words, Biden argued that it was a mistake the way the Bush administration went to war, but Biden never outright opposed military action in Iraq in the immediate days after the start of the invasion. The day the war commenced, Biden told CNN: “There’s a lot of us who voted for giving the president the authority to take down Saddam Hussein if he didn’t disarm. And there are those who believe, at the end of the day, even though it wasn’t handled all that well, we still have to take him down.”
+In an interview with Charlie Rose on March 20, 2003, the day after the start of the war, Biden said, “I all along, Charlie, believed the right decision is to separate him from his weapons and/or separate him from power.”
+“If the U.N. didn’t do it, do it?” Rose interjected.
+“Yes, you’ve gotta do it,” Biden said. “Now, it’s not the time to argue it, but I am disturbed at the lost opportunities we had to bring the rest of the world along with us to this point. … And so now the question is … can you make lemonade out of lemons here?”
+In a Brookings Institution address on July 31, 2003, Biden said the Bush administration was “right to confront the challenge posed by Saddam thumbing his nose at the world and refusing — refusing — to alter his conduct. Contrary to what some in my party might think, Iraq was a problem that had to be dealt with sooner, rather than later. So I commend the president. … For me, the issue was never whether we had to deal with Saddam, but when and how we dealt with Saddam. And it’s precisely the when and how that I think this administration got wrong. We went to war too soon. We went to war with too few troops. We went to war without the world, when we could have had many with us, and we’re paying the price for it now.”
+It wasn’t until Nov. 27, 2005, that Biden acknowledged on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that his 2002 vote authorizing force in Iraq was “a mistake.”
+Sanders’ Overstated Health Care Claims
+Sanders made several claims about health care that were close to true, but not quite there.
+Sanders went too far (again) when he claimed: “We’re spending twice as much per capita on health care as do the people of any other country.” The U.S. spends twice as much as most countries — and twice as much as the average for Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries — but not twice as much as “any other country.”
+According to the most recent OECD data, the U.S. per capita spending ($10,586) was twice as much as every country except six others, though the U.S. spending was close to double the amount for several of those nations (Denmark, Austria and Sweden). However, Switzerland’s per capita spending was $7,317; Norway’s was $6,187, and Germany came in at $5,986.
+The senator also exaggerated in claiming that “you’ve got 500,000 people going bankrupt because they cannot pay their medical bills.” The research he has cited indicates that medical bills or health problems contributed to — but not solely caused in all cases — a half million bankruptcy filings. We wrote more about the claim after the September debate. 
+Sanders claimed that “workers” were “paying on average 20% of their incomes for health care. That is insane.” His campaign pointed us to a figure from the Milliman Medical Index, which said in 2018 the cost for a “typical family of four” with an employer-sponsored health plan was $12,378, which includes employee contributions to premiums and out-of-pocket costs. That figure is nearly 20% of the 2018 median household income of $63,179, according to Census Bureau figures (see Table H-11), the campaign said. But that’s not the correct Census statistic to use for a “family of four.”
+The average household size was 2.52 people. Census does have a median income figure for a family of four, and that’s $97,631 (see Table F-8). That would make $12,378 in health care spending 12.7% of the median income for a family of four.
+An ‘Uninhabitable’ Planet?
+Near the end of the debate, moderators asked candidates about climate change, drawing out a response from Sanders in which he suggested the planet could become unlivable.
+Sanders: If we as a nation do not transform our energy system away from fossil fuel, not by 2050, not by 2040, but unless we lead the world right now — not easy stuff — the planet we are leaving our kids will be uninhabitable and unhealthy.
+It’s unclear exactly what timeline Sanders had in mind, or what he meant by “uninhabitable,” but many scientists disagree with the notion that the entire planet will soon become uninhabitable because of climate change.
+As we’ve noted before when clarifying politicians’ comments about climate change being an “existential” threat, NASA scientist Benjamin Cook said that it was plausible that some parts of the world could become unlivable. “In a given locality, if the impacts are so severe,” he said in a phone interview, the current way of life could become “no longer tenable.”
+But he did not think that would happen everywhere. The effects, he said, are likely to be uneven, hitting the poorest and most vulnerable the hardest.
+Scientists who reviewed a 2017 New York magazine story about climate change, “The Uninhabitable Earth,” for the website Climate Feedback also repeatedly noted that they found the notion that the planet would be uninhabitable to be unrealistic.
+“While it is clear that ongoing warming of the global climate would eventually have very severe consequences, the concept of the Earth becoming uninhabitable within anywhere near the timescales suggested in the article [by 2100] is pure hyperbole,” said Richard Betts, a climate researcher at the U.K.’s Met Office Hadley Centre and a professor at the University of Exeter.
+University of California, Los Angeles climate scientist Daniel Swain also commented, “The title itself is hyperbolic—there’s not really a plausible climate change scenario in which the Earth becomes truly uninhabitable.”
+Klobuchar Misleads on Iran Comments
+Klobuchar sought to separate herself from other Democratic candidates on the issue of Iran by claiming that she alone was prescient enough to see that Iran was the “biggest threat to our world.”
+Klobuchar: I’m the one person on this debate stage on the first night of the very first debate when we were asked what we saw as the biggest threat to our world, I said China on the economy but I said Iran because of Donald Trump. Because I feared that exactly what happened would happen: enrichment of uranium, escalation of tensions, leaving frayed relations with our allies.
+That’s technically correct, but misleading.
+Because of the large Democratic field, the first debate was split into two nights — June 26 and June 27, 2019, and 10 candidates participated in each debate for a total of 20 candidates. Klobuchar is referring to a question that was asked only of 10 of the 20 candidates — the “first night of the very first debate” — and the only candidate on stage last night who was also in that first debate with Klobuchar was Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
+That night, co-moderator Chuck Todd asked: “What is our — what is the biggest threat — what is — who is the geopolitical threat to the United States? Just give me a one-word answer.”
+Klobuchar gave two answers, and was chided for it by Todd.
+Klobuchar, June 26: Two threats, economic threat, China, but our major threat right now is what’s going in the Mideast with Iran, if we don’t get our act together.
+Todd: OK, try to keep it at one — slimmer than what we’ve been going here. One or two words.
+Warren, following the rules, simply replied “climate change.” Biden, Sanders, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and businessman Tom Steyer were not in the June 26 debate, so they weren’t asked that question.
+Klobuchar also misled when she said that in her answer to the question about the biggest threat she said Iran “because of Donald Trump, because I feared that exactly what happened would happen: enrichment of uranium, escalation of tensions, leaving frayed relations with our allies.” We provide her entire answer above.
+Klobuchar is referring to another question asked during the same debate — but that question was not asked of Warren or any of the other candidates in last night’s debate.
+Lester Holt, who was also a moderator of the June 26 debate, asked Klobuchar if the nuclear agreement was a “good deal” for the United States. She said it was “imperfect” but a “good deal for that moment.” She went on to express concern about Iran exceeding the limits on enriching uranium and the possibility of war.
+But Klobuchar is not the only Democratic candidate who sees Iran as a threat or fears Trump will lead the U.S. to war with Iran.
+In the first night of the second debate, Warren  said the world is getting “closer and closer to nuclear warfare” because Trump pulled out of the nuclear agreement with Iran.
+Warren, July 30: At a time when Donald Trump is pulling out of our nuclear negotiations, expanding the opportunities for nuclear proliferation around the world, has pulled us out of the deal in Iran, and Iran is now working on its nuclear weapon, the world gets closer and closer to nuclear warfare.
+Sanders Hypes Homelessness
+Sanders exaggerated when he said repeatedly that 500,000 people are “sleeping out on the streets.”
+Sanders: How does it happen that … half a million people are sleeping out on the streets tonight?
+Sanders: We got 500,000 people sleeping out on the streets tonight.
+That’s wrong. The most recent annual assessment of the homeless population, released Jan. 13 by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, estimated that 211,293 people were homeless and without shelter on the night the census was taken in 2019.
+Sanders was referring to the total population of homeless people, which HUD estimated at 567,715. As HUD’s report to Congress stated, “Just under two-thirds (63%) of people experiencing homelessness were staying in sheltered locations, and just over one-third (37%) were found in unsheltered locations.”
+By that measure, Sanders’ talking point is not even half true.
+Still Not a ‘Game Changer’
+After Sanders’ uninhabitable comment, Biden was given the floor to talk about climate change — and he used the opportunity to remind viewers of his historical role in taking action on the issue. 
+“My response is, back in 1986, I introduced the first climate change bill,” he said, adding, “and check [PolitiFact], they said it was a game changer.”
+We did check PolitiFact, and as in the November debate, when Biden made the same claim, it doesn’t pan out. 
+PolitiFact wrote in May about Biden’s role in legislation that was introduced in 1986 and passed in 1987, after the former vice president claimed to be “one of the first” people to introduce a climate change bill.
+While the headline referred to Biden as a “climate change pioneer,” the article never used the words “game changer.” The article also specifically noted that the bill, which directed the president to establish a global warming task force, essentially was a plan to make a plan — and should not be confused for a substantive bill that tackled greenhouse gas emissions.
+Sanders on Trade Agreements and Jobs
+Sanders blamed two trade agreements — the North American Free Trade Agreement and permanent normal trade relations with China — for the loss of 4 million American jobs.
+But it’s not clear exactly how many jobs have been affected by the deals.
+Here’s what the senator said in an exchange with Biden:
+Sanders: [T]he end result of those two, just PNTR with China, Joe, and NAFTA, cost us some 4 million jobs, as part of the race to the bottom.
+Sanders’ figure is backed up by the labor-funded Economic Policy Institute. The EPI estimated that the U.S. has lost 3.4 million jobs since the U.S. granted permanent normal trade relations with China in 2001. The institute also estimated that NAFTA cost the U.S. 682,900 jobs, as of 2013.
+The Congressional Research Service, however, found that NAFTA didn’t have a big impact on jobs. In a 2017 report, it said, “In reality, NAFTA did not cause the huge job losses feared by the critics or the large economic gains predicted by supporters. The net overall effect of NAFTA on the U.S. economy appears to have been relatively modest, primarily because trade with Canada and Mexico accounts for a small percentage of U.S. GDP.”
+And the impact of PNTR with China since it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001 is similarly unsettled. A 2017 working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that the job losses in manufacturing have been partly offset by job gains in other parts of the economy.
+This isn’t the first time that Sanders has trotted out a reference to job losses due to trade deals, we wrote about a similar claim he made during a primary debate in 2016.
+Sources
+Kiely, Eugene et. al. “FactChecking July’s Round Two Debate.” FactCheck.org. 1 Aug 2019.
+Kiely, Eugene et. al. “FactChecking the October Democratic Debate.” FactCheck.org. 16 Oct 2019.
+Cook, Benjamin. Climate scientist, NASA. Interview with FactCheck.org. 26 Jul 2019.
+ClimateFeedback.org. “Scientists explain what New York Magazine article on ‘The Uninhabitable Earth’ gets wrong.” 12 Jul 2017.
+Kruzel, John. “Was Joe Biden a climate change pioneer in Congress? History says yes.” PolitiFact. 8 May 2019.
+Kiely, Eugene et. al. “FactChecking the November Democratic Debate.” FactCheck.org. 21 Nov 2019.
+Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Health spending (indicator). Accessed on 14 Jan 2020.
+Robertson, Lori, et. al. “FactChecking the September Democratic Debate.” FactCheck.org. 13 Sep 2019.
+Girod, Chris, et. al. “2018 Milliman Medical Index.” Milliman. May 2018.
+U.S. Census Bureau. Table H-11. Size of Household by Median and Mean Income. Accessed 14 Jan 2020.
+U.S. Census Bureau. Table F-8. Size of Family — Families by Median and Mean Income. Accessed 14 Jan 2020.
+U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. “The 2019 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress.” 13 Jan 2020.
+Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National); Average Weekly Earnings of All Employees, 1982-1984 Dollars.” Data extracted 15 Jan 2020.
+Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National); Average Weekly Earnings of production and nonsupervisory employees, 1982-1984 Dollars.” Data extracted 15 Jan 2020.
+Roe, John and Kosmas Papadopoulos. “2019 U.S. Executive Compensation Trends.” Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance. 16 Apr 2019.
+“Democratic candidates on the biggest geopolitical threat facing the US.” CNBC. 26 June 2019.
+“The first Democratic debate night transcript, annotated.” Washington Post. 27 June 2019.
+“Transcript: Night 2 of the first Democratic debate.” Washington Post. 28 June 2019.
+“Transcript: The first night of the second Democratic debate.” Washington Post. 30 Jul 2019.
+“The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).” Congressional Research Service. 24 May 2017.
+Asquith, Brian, et al. “U.S. Job Flows And The China Shock.” National Bureau of Economic Research. Nov 2017."
+"9.7KSummary
+As he has done since entering the political scene in 2015, Donald Trump dominates our list of whoppers of the year.
+We identified a top 10 of falsehoods and factual distortions from the president, beginning with several impeachment-related topics — a conspiracy theory on the Democratic National Committee server, a bogus narrative on Joe Biden and a laundry list of claims about the whistleblower report.
+Several other Trump deceptions — and falsehoods we identified from Democratic presidential candidates — offer a preview of issues that are likely to take center stage as the 2020 election cycle heats up: immigration, gun control, trade, taxes, climate change and manufacturing jobs.
+Read on for descriptions of the worst falsehoods of 2019, and for more information, see links to our full stories on the spin at the end.
+
+Analysis
+Trump’s Top Whoppers
+DNC Server Delusion. Refusing to give up on the debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 elections and hacked the Democratic National Committee, Trump repeated the baseless assertion that Ukraine, or a “Ukrainian company,” has a DNC server.
+“A lot of it had to do they say with Ukraine. …They have the server, right? From the DNC, Democratic National Committee,” Trump said in a phone interview with the hosts of “Fox & Friends” in November. And he told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a July 25 phone call: “The server, they say Ukraine has it.” But there’s absolutely no evidence of that.
+Tom Bossert, a former homeland security adviser for the administration, said he explained to the president that these theories had been “completely debunked.”
+The DNC hired CrowdStrike, a U.S.-based cybersecurity firm, to investigate Russia’s hacking of its computer network in 2016, and CrowdStrike said it has “never taken physical possession of any” of the 140 servers the DNC said had to be decommissioned during the process. The company did its analysis by making an exact copy of everything on the DNC’s hard drives through a process called “imaging.” “The images, not the computer’s hardware, provide the evidence,” CrowdStrike has said.
+A Bogus Biden-Ukraine Narrative. Trump’s impeachment woes were triggered when he asked Ukrainian President Zelensky in the July 25 phone call to investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. But before that, Trump said this in a Fox News interview that aired on May 19: “[Joe] Biden, he calls them and says, ‘Don’t you dare prosecute, if you don’t fire this prosecutor’ — the prosecutor was after his son. Then he said, ‘If you fire the prosecutor, you’ll be OK. And if you don’t fire the prosecutor, we’re not giving you $2 billion in loan guarantees,’ or whatever he was supposed to give.”
+That’s a gross distortion of the facts.
+Biden, as vice president, did tell Ukrainian leaders that the U.S. would withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees until Ukraine fired its prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin. But Biden did not go rogue. As we wrote, Biden was carrying out the Obama administration’s policy, which had the support of the international community and anti-corruption advocates in Ukraine who viewed Shokin as inept and sought his ouster. Also, there’s no evidence that “the prosecutor was after his son,” Hunter, who was a board member of a Ukraine gas company when his father was vice president.  
+Wrong on the Whistleblower. Trump repeatedly made a string of false claims about the whistleblower report that accused him of “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.”
+He claimed the whistleblower report was “something totally different from what I said” on the July 25 phone call with Zelensky. But a White House memo on that call, which Trump released, corroborates the whistleblower’s three main points about the call. Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire testified that the whistleblower’s complaint “is in alignment with” the White House memo.
+Trump wrongly described that memo as “transcribed word-for-word.” It specifically says it “is not a verbatim transcript.”
+The whistleblower didn’t “disappear” after the release of the memo, as Trump claims. The whistleblower filed an anonymous complaint, as allowed under the law, and the whistleblower’s lawyers have said their client wants to remain anonymous.
+Trump also tweeted a bogus theory that the whistleblower rules were “changed” right before the complaint was submitted to allow filings based only on secondhand information. The independent Office of the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community said there had been no such change in law or policy.
+Child Separation Spin. Trump falsely blamed his predecessor for family separations at the border that were caused by the Trump administration. “President Obama separated the children. … I’m the one that stopped it,” Trump told White House reporters in April. 
+Trump actually “stopped” his own “zero-tolerance” immigration policy amid an intense public backlash. 
+Unlike the Obama administration, the Trump administration had required the Department of Homeland Security to refer all adults caught illegally entering the U.S. for criminal prosecution. As a result, thousands of children were separated from their parents, who entered the federal court system and were placed in detention centers for adults only.
+Two months after the policy was announced in April 2018, Trump was pressured into signing an executive order that directed the DHS secretary to keep such families in custody together during legal proceedings for as long as the law and finances would allow.
+Sharpiegate. The president made the inaccurate claim in a Sept. 1 tweet that Alabama “will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated” by Hurricane Dorian — a statement that was fact-checked in real time by the National Weather Service.
+“Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian. We repeat, no impacts from Hurricane #Dorian will be felt across Alabama,” the Birmingham office of the National Weather Service tweeted 20 minutes after the president. That should have been the end of it, but Trump refused to simply admit his mistake and so-called “Sharpiegate” dragged on for several days.
+As we wrote, Trump repeatedly defended his faulty forecast. He even displayed an altered forecast map in the Oval Office on Sept. 4 to erroneously make it appear that Alabama was in the path of the storm when he posted his inaccurate tweet. Two days later, NOAA — under pressure from the White House — admonished the Birmingham office for its tweet.
+More than a week after Trump’s inaccurate forecast, Louis Uccellini, the director of the National Weather Service, defended the Birmingham office, saying it didn’t know that the president was the source of the “rumors” about Alabama. “[T]hey were correct in clarifying that the threat was very low,” Uccellini said.
+False El Paso Border Claim. The president seized on a false talking point to bolster his case for construction of more border wall, claiming that El Paso, Texas, went from “one of the most dangerous cities in the country to one of the safest cities in the country overnight” after “a wall was put up” along the Mexico border. That’s wrong.
+El Paso has long been a relatively safe city, and violent crime actually increased a bit in the years after a fence was erected. Despite fact-checkers and other media pointing out the error, Trump used the falsehood in his State of the Union Address. Even after the Republican El Paso mayor publicly corrected the president, Trump again repeated the claim during a rally in El Paso, dismissing data that showed otherwise as “fake news.”
+Doubly Wrong on ISIS. Trump can legitimately say that the last of the Islamic State-controlled land in Syria and Iraq was retaken by coalition forces during his presidency (it happened in March). But instead, he  repeatedly and falsely claimed that “virtually 100%” of the caliphate’s land was regained under him, or that when he “took office, we had almost nothing.” About half of the territory had been regained under his predecessor, Barack Obama — according to Trump’s own administration.
+In a briefing on Dec. 21, 2017, Brett McGurk, then-special presidential envoy for the global coalition to counter ISIS, said that about 98 percent of the caliphate land had been regained and “50 percent” of those losses for ISIS happened in 2017.
+Trump also falsely said that captured Islamic State fighters being held in Syria are “mostly from Europe,” a claim French President Emmanuel Macron fact-checked in real time when the two leaders appeared together at the annual NATO summit in December. 
+According to a report from U.S. inspectors general, “about 800” of about 10,000 ISIS fighters in detention centers across northeastern Syria were from Europe, while about 8,000 of them were nationals of Iraq and Syria.
+No Evidence for Kim Jong Un Claims. The White House has provided no evidence for Trump’s claims that Obama had tried to call or meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un but was rebuffed.
+Before his historic meeting with Kim, Trump claimed the Obama administration was “begging for meetings constantly. And Chairman Kim would not meet with him.” Several Obama administration officials and experts on U.S.-North Korean relations said that was false, using words such as “pure fantasy,” “no basis,” “a lie” and “horse-sh*t.”
+A few months later, Trump put a new spin on his claim, saying Obama tried to call Kim “11 times” but that “the man on the other side … did not take his call” due to a “lack of respect.” Obama’s national security adviser and deputy national security adviser again called Trump’s claim false.
+It’s worth noting that last year Trump made a very different claim that “somebody” in the Obama administration told him “we haven’t thought about” meeting with North Korea.
+Smearing Ilhan Omar. Throughout the year, Trump stoked an ongoing war of words with four progressive Democrats, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley and Ilhan Omar, controversially telling them via Twitter to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested [countries] from which they came.” The president focused the bulk of his vitriol on Omar, a Somali American who became one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress last year.
+Trump’s attacks often went too far, such as when he accused Omar of professing a “love” for al Qaeda and talking about “how great” and “how wonderful” al Qaeda is. There’s no evidence Omar has said any of those things.
+During Trump’s extended criticism of Omar at a rally in North Carolina in July, audience members began chanting, “Send her back.” The next day, Trump claimed that he tried to quell the chants by “speaking very quickly.” But the video shows he did not. In September, Trump retweeted a post that purported to show Omar “celebrating” on the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. But the video was actually from a Congressional Black Caucus event on Sept. 13.
+Trade War Falsehoods. Trump’s trade war with China resulted in numerous falsehoods, some of which were summed up in this one statement by the president on May 3: “We’re charging China tariffs. We’ve never taken in 10 cents from China, and now we’re taking in billions and billions of dollars.”
+As we have written, the tariffs are taxes paid by U.S. importers in the form of customs duties, and to some extent by U.S. consumers in the form of higher prices. “The continued stability of import prices for goods from China means U.S. firms and consumers have to pay the tariff,” a Federal Reserve Bank of New York study confirmed last month.  
+Also, the U.S. has collected billions in customs duties on Chinese imports for years, so Trump’s claim about “never taken in 10 cents” doesn’t add up.
+Trump also has repeatedly taken credit for reducing trade deficits, even though the opposite is true. He has claimed that trade deficits “went down,” describing the U.S. trade balance as “changing rapidly” with Japan and “fairly rapidly” in the case of the European Union. The most recent government figures show that the total U.S. trade deficit in goods and services during the most recent 12 months on record (ending in October) was $635 billion — an increase of $132 billion, or 26.2%, compared with 2016. That includes higher trade deficits with Japan and the EU (see table 3).
+The Democrats
+Biden Rewrites History on Iraq War. During the second Democratic debate, former Vice President Joe Biden engaged in revisionist history on one of the defining issues of his career. Biden claimed that despite voting to authorize military force against Iraq in 2002 — a vote he calls a mistake — he opposed the Iraq War from “the moment” it began. That’s not accurate.
+Biden consistently criticized the way the Bush administration handled the war, including its efforts at finding diplomatic solutions, enlisting allies and planning for reconstruction of Iraq. Some of his comments proved prescient, including his warnings about the likely cost and length of the war. But Biden never outright opposed military action in Iraq in the immediate days after the start of the invasion. For example, the day the war commenced, Biden told CNN: “There’s a lot of us who voted for giving the president the authority to take down Saddam Hussein if he didn’t disarm. And there are those who believe, at the end of the day, even though it wasn’t handled all that well, we still have to take him down.”
+Biden this year acknowledged that he “misspoke” about “how quickly I said I was immediately against the war.”
+No “Middle-Class Tax Hike.” Sen. Kamala Harris, when she was still a presidential candidate, cited preliminary IRS tax refund data for 2018 to criticize the Republican tax law — a popular target of Democrats — as “a middle-class tax hike.” 
+The California senator tweeted about the Republican tax law a day after the Washington Post reported that the average tax refund check was down $170, or 8%, this year compared with last year, based on preliminary IRS data. “Let’s call the President’s tax cut what it is: a middle-class tax hike to line the pockets of already wealthy corporations and the 1%,” she tweeted. 
+But, as Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, told us: “Refunds are not the same as taxes that you owe. Refunds tell you nothing about whether a person’s tax liability has changed.” In fact, the vast majority of “middle-class” taxpayers were expected to get a tax cut in 2018 under the new law, which took effect last year, he said.
+And Top 1% Pays Higher Tax Rate. Biden gave voters a false impression about taxes in claiming, “We’re in a situation where you have the top 1%, in fact, making — paying a lower tax rate than you do, because it’s mostly capital gains. … [M]ore than a teacher, a firefighter, a cop.” But the top 1% of taxpayers, on average, pay a higher effective tax rate than middle-income people.
+According to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center, the top 1% — those making over $783,300 — will pay an average federal tax rate of about 30.2% in 2019, a higher rate than any other income category. The middle 20% of earners will pay an average 12.4% federal tax rate.
+It’s true that the top personal tax rate on capital gains (up to 23.8%) is lower than the top tax rate on ordinary income (37%). “Do some individuals [at the top] pay less? Sure,” Gleckman, at the TPC, told us. “But in general, the federal tax system is very progressive. The more you make, the more you pay.”
+Climate Change Confusion. South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a Democratic presidential candidate, wrongly said that “we could lose half the world’s oxygen because of what’s going on in the oceans.” Approximately half of the world’s oxygen comes from the ocean, but that doesn’t mean half of the world’s oxygen is at risk.
+Climate change is expected to reduce the amount of oxygen the ocean produces by about 5% by 2100 — and it will not change oxygen levels in the air by any noticeable degree. “Under no circumstances will half the world’s breathable oxygen be gone by 2100 or even by 21,000!” Scott Denning, an atmospheric scientist at Colorado State University, told us.
+Climate change does reduce the amount of dissolved oxygen in the water, which in some places could be cut in half by 2100. But globally, oceans are projected to lose only 1%-7% of their oxygen.
+Trump Did Ban Bump Stocks. Three months after the Trump administration’s ban on bump stocks went into effect, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand gave a town hall audience the false impression that he reneged on his promise to ban the devices that can make semiautomatic rifles fire more rapidly.
+“Remember after the shooting in Las Vegas, he [Trump] said, yeah, yeah we’re gonna ban the bump stocks,” Gillibrand, then a Democratic presidential candidate, said at a Fox News event in June. “Did he ban the bump stocks? No, because the NRA came crashing down and said, ‘Don’t you dare do any restrictions on our guns around this country.’”
+The National Rifle Association’s opposition ultimately didn’t stop Trump. After the deadly mass shooting at an outdoor concert in Las Vegas in October 2017, and another months later at a Florida high school in February 2018, Trump spoke consistently about banning bump stocks. And his administration went through the necessary bureaucratic process in order to issue a new federal regulation that did.
+It took more than a year — apparently longer than Gillibrand wanted — but the Trump administration’s bump stocks ban went into effect in March.
+Inflated Gun Control Stat. After a mass shooting at a Colorado school in May, then Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke pushed a popular Democratic position — universal background checks for gun purchases — but incorrectly claimed that state laws mandating universal checks “have been shown to reduce gun violence by 50%.” That turned out to be a wildly inflated estimate.
+O’Rourke’s camp said the statistic came from Everytown for Gun Safety, but the gun-control group told us it had updated its website in light of “rigorous” new research that has “improved our understanding of this.” A study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine in March found that universal background checks are associated with about a 15 percent reduction in firearm homicide. But the study stopped short of concluding that the decline was caused by those laws.
+Trump Foundation Settlement. Buttigieg falsely claimed that Trump had recently confessed “in writing, in court, to illegally diverting charitable contributions that were supposed to go to veterans.” Trump made no such admission, and the money he helped raise went to veterans.
+Instead, Trump settled a lawsuit first filed in 2018 by New York’s attorney general alleging the now-defunct Trump Foundation violated state and federal laws, including by illegally coordinating with Trump’s campaign on a national fundraiser for veterans in 2016.
+The settlement noted that the “Iowa Fundraiser” for veterans raised approximately $5.6 million, of which $2.823 million was contributed to the Trump Foundation; the rest was directly donated to veterans groups. The settlement acknowledged, though, that the campaign — not the foundation — “planned, organized, and paid for the Iowa Fundraiser,” as well as “directed the timing, amounts and recipients of the Foundation’s grants to charitable organizations supporting military veterans.”
+A state judge ordered Trump to pay $2 million to several charities as damages. The judge ruled Trump “breached his fiduciary duty” to his foundation in order to help his campaign, but also acknowledged that all the money donated to the Trump Foundation at the fundraiser did go to veterans charities.
+Wrong on Manufacturing Jobs. A TV ad from Gillibrand’s campaign claimed, “Trump promised manufacturing jobs would stay but they’re not.” Gillibrand told CNN around the same time that Trump promised to “bring back manufacturing jobs, and failed.” But there had been a net increase of nearly 500,000 manufacturing jobs under Trump’s presidency.
+Gillibrand’s ad referenced the closing of a GM plant in Lordstown, Ohio. But the ad leaves the false impression that manufacturing jobs overall have declined.
+The Gillibrand campaign pointed to the fact that some areas in the Midwest had lost manufacturing jobs. But data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that Rust Belt states, while experiencing slower job growth than the national average, had seen a net increase in manufacturing jobs under Trump.
+Sources
+Please see our stories on these claims for more information:
+Gore, D’Angelo, et. al. “Trump Repeats False Ukraine Claims.” FactCheck.org. 22 Nov 2019.
+Kiely, Eugene and Farley, Robert. “Fact: Trump TV Ad Misleads on Biden and Ukraine.” FactCheck.org. 9 Oct 2019.
+Kiely, Eugene. “FactChecking Trump’s Fox News Interview.” FactCheck.org. 22 May 2019.
+Kiely, Eugene, et. al. “Trump Misleads Rallygoers on IG Report, Impeachment.” FactCheck.org. 11 Dec 2019.
+Farley, Robert. “Trump Muddies Impeachment Timeline.” FactCheck.org. 11 Nov 2019.
+Gore, D’Angelo. “More Family Separation Spin.” FactCheck.org. 10 Apr 2019.
+Kiely, Eugene and Robertson, Lori. “Trump Doubles Down on Inaccurate Hurricane Forecast.” FactCheck.org. 5 Sep 2019.
+Farley, Robert. “Trump Wrong About Wall Effect in El Paso.” FactCheck.org. 18 Jan 2019.
+Robertson, Lori, et. al. “FactChecking Trump’s El Paso Rally.” FactCheck.org. 14 Feb 2019.
+Robertson, Lori. “Trump’s ISIS Claim Goes to the Dogs.” FactCheck.org. 26 Nov 2019.
+Kiely, Eugene, et. al. “FactChecking Trump’s NATO Remarks.” FactCheck.org. 3 Dec 2019.
+Kiely, Eugene, et. al. “Trump’s Error-filled Cabinet Meeting.” FactCheck.org. 22 Oct 2019.
+Farley, Robert. “No Evidence Kim Jong Un Rebuffed Obama’s ‘Begging.’” FactCheck.org. 2 Jul 2019.
+Farley, Robert and Robertson, Lori. “Trump’s False Claims About Rep. Ilhan Omar.” FactCheck.org. 16 Jul 2019.
+Farley, Robert. “Trump Retweets False Attack on Rep. Omar.” FactCheck.org. 18 Sep 2019.
+Jackson, Brooks. “Does China Pay Tariffs?” FactCheck.org. 28 Feb 2019.
+Kiely, Eugene. “Trump Wrong on China Trade, Again.” FactCheck.org. 7 May 2019.
+Kiely, Eugene. “U.S.-Japan Trade Deficit Not ‘Changing Rapidly.’” FactCheck.org. 16 Aug 2019.
+Farley, Robert. “Biden’s Record on Iraq War.” FactCheck.org. 10 Sep 2019.
+Kiely, Eugene. “Kamala Harris Mistweet on ‘Tax Hike.’” FactCheck.org. 13 Feb 2019.
+Farley, Robert. “Gillibrand Misleads on Trump’s Bump Stock Ban.” FactCheck.org. 5 Jun 2019.
+Kiely, Eugene et. al. “FactChecking the November Democratic Debate.” FactCheck.org. 21 Nov 2019.
+Farley, Robert. “O’Rourke Wrong on Gun Control Stat.” FactCheck.org. 10 May 2019.
+Farley, Robert. “Gillibrand Attacks Trump on Manufacturing Jobs.” FactCheck.org. 12 Jul 2019.
+McDonald, Jessica. “Buttigieg Wrong About Climate Change’s Effect on Oceans.” FactCheck.org. 9 Sep 2019.
+Farley, Robert. “Biden Misleads on Top 1% Tax Rate.” FactCheck.org. 14 Aug 2019."
+"11.3KAt a campaign rally, President Donald Trump mocked concerns about global warming, saying that oceans would rise just “[o]ne-eighth of an inch within the next 250 years.” Although Trump’s comment may have been a joke — and not intended to be a prediction of sea level rise — his figure is many times lower than scientific estimates. 
+According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, global sea level is currently increasing by about an eighth of an inch per year, not an eighth of an inch over two-and-a-half centuries. The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
+As several NOAA websites explain, climate change contributes to sea level rise through the melting of land ice, which includes glaciers and ice sheets, and because water expands when it’s warmer.
+Trump’s remark came in Hershey, Pennsylvania, during a section of his speech bashing wind power — one of his favorite topics at rallies. This time, the president also jokingly referenced global warming, poking fun at people who are concerned about sea level rise.
+Trump, Dec. 10: You’d have windmills all over the place if you had Crooked Hillary, they’d be knocking out those birds left and right. Those windmills, wah, wah wah. Darling, I want to watch television tonight and there’s no damn wind. What do I do? I want to watch the election results, darling, there’s no wind, the damn wind just isn’t blowing like it used to because of global warming, I think. I think it’s global warming. Global warming, no more wind, no more life! The oceans are going to rise. One-eighth of an inch within the next 250 years, we’re going to be wiped out! 
+We’ve explained before that birds do fly into wind turbines and die, but cats or collisions with buildings kill more birds. The temporary absence of wind doesn’t mean that someone’s electricity goes out. Wind turbines feed into an electrical grid that collectively supplies power; operators can manage the grid to make sure there isn’t a lapse in coverage when it’s not windy.
+Even if offered only in jest, Trump’s estimate of expected sea level rise is well below projections from scientists. Along with the NOAA estimate of the current rate of sea level rise, a recent special report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which reviewed and synthesized the scientific literature, concluded that sea level rise is likely to reach at least 1 foot by the end of the century. 
+The report, which was released in September, pegged future sea level rise at 1 to 2 feet by 2100, relative to levels in 1986–2005, under a lower emissions scenario. That scenario, known as RCP2.6, has a 2-in-3 chance of limiting global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2100, which is the approximate goal set by the Paris Agreement. Under a higher emissions scenario, the report said, 2 to 3.5 feet of sea level rise are expected.
+By 2300 — three decades after the president’s timeframe — sea level rise is likely to be 2 to 3.5 feet, even under lower emissions, according to the IPCC report. With higher emissions, the likely range is between a whopping 7.5 to 18 feet.
+What will come to pass will depend not only on whether society curbs its greenhouse gas emissions, but also on how the planet reacts to the extra heat. Much of the uncertainty in these sorts of long-term projections of sea level rise is in how the ice sheets will respond — particularly Antarctica, which is not well understood by scientists. “Considering the consequences of sea level rise that a collapse of parts of the Antarctic Ice Sheet entails,” the report cautions, “this high impact risk merits attention.”
+Of course, all of these estimates are for the global average sea level rise, when, in fact, what people will be dealing with on the ground may vary because of local factors. As we’ve noted before in our article about Delaware and its particular vulnerability to rising seas, some locales happen to be sinking, further exacerbating the challenge. This means that some places may be at an even higher risk from sea level rise than these numbers suggest, while others are at a lower risk.
+What are the risks of sea level rise? One of the biggest concerns relates to flooding, which with higher water levels is becoming more severe and reaching further inland. When storms hit, it can mean more extreme storm surges, which can be deadlier to people and worse in terms of damage to property and ecosystems. In fact, Trump International Golf Links filed a permit to build a sea wall to protect its golf course in Doonbeg, Ireland, from “global warming and its effects,” specifically “the rate of sea level rise,” as Politico reported in 2016.
+Even without a storm, sea level rise can cause problems, submerging low-lying roads or other pieces of infrastructure under water during periods of high tide. This is known as high tide, nuisance or sunny-day flooding. NOAA data show that much of the East Coast, including New York, where Trump owns real estate, is already seeing increases in the number of days per year with high tide flooding. 
+Once-in-a-century sea level events are projected to happen, the IPCC special report says, “at least annually at most locations by 2100” regardless of the emissions level. And for small islands and many low-lying megacities, the timeline on that moves up — to 2050. In terms of sea level rise damage, the most at-risk large cities in the U.S. include New Orleans, Boston, New York and Miami, according to a 2018 paper cited in the special report.
+Trump greatly underestimates the scale of the problem, and his dismissal of the dangers of sea level rise is not based in science."
+"720In the last Democratic debate, Sen. Bernie Sanders said that the United Nations is projecting “hundreds of millions of climate refugees” in the “years to come” as a result of climate change. The U.N., however, doesn’t currently endorse a particular estimate, and the term “climate refugee” is in many ways problematic. 
+In the debate, which was hosted by the Washington Post and MSNBC on Nov. 20, moderators asked a few presidential contenders a question about climate change: How would the candidates ensure support for climate action beyond a two-term presidency?
+As part of his reply, Sanders said, “The United Nations is telling us that in the years to come there are going to be hundreds of millions of climate refugees causing national security issues all over the world.”
+The Sanders campaign did not respond to our requests for a source for his statement, but Sanders’ remark is similar to a comment the U.N. deputy high commissioner for refugees made in 2008. While at a climate change conference in Poland, the official said that between 200 million and 250 million people would be displaced by 2050 because of global warming. 
+As we’ll explain, that figure is likely flawed — and it was also more than a decade ago. More recent statements from U.N. officials do not indicate the agency endorses an estimate. 
+In 2011, for instance, the high commissioner for refugees said there was “no consensus” on a number, and a 2016 FAQ available on the agency’s website says “it is hard to say” how many people will be displaced by climate change. A 2015 blog post by the United Nations University’s Institute for Environment and Human Security also states that there are “no reliable estimates of the number of people on the move today or in the future as a result of environmental factors” and that “[n]o one knows how many climate migrants will exist.”
+Similarly, reports from the International Organization for Migration, the U.N.’s migration agency, have discussed a range of estimates for the number of climate migrants — IOM’s preferred term — in the future. But the group has not produced its own estimate, or validated any figure. Instead, reports emphasize that too little is known to make a reliable estimate. We contacted IOM’s top migration, environment and climate change official, but did not receive a reply.
+“Such statements have been made frequently over the last 20 years, but there is little evidence to back them up,” University of Sydney migration expert Stephen Castles said in an email, of Sanders’ comment. “People do move to adapt to climate issues,” he said, “but generally move with[in] their own countries or regions.”
+We’ll run down how some of the existing estimates came to be and why experts have said they’re not dependable. But first, let’s clarify the nomenclature.
+Problematic Terms
+Scholars in the field don’t use the term “climate refugee” because “refugee” has a very specific meaning in international law — and currently would not apply to most people displaced because of climate change. 
+The U.N. Refugee Agency explains on its website that a “refugee” is a person who has crossed an international border “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion” or someone fleeing “events seriously disturbing public order.” 
+Environmental concerns aren’t listed here, and research shows people affected by climate change usually move within a country first, according to the agency. The agency says it does not endorse the term “climate refugee,” and says it is “more accurate” to talk about “persons displaced in the context of disasters and climate change.”
+That’s fairly cumbersome, so we’ll stick with “climate migrant” to refer to anyone leaving their home because of climate change — although figuring out how many or who those people are isn’t always so clear, since migration is usually due to a mix of reasons, including economic, political and social factors. IOM defines climate migration as any temporary or permanent movement away from a place of residence “predominantly for reasons of sudden or progressive change in the environment due to climate change.” 
+A related, but distinct term is “environmental migration,” which would cover any environmental reason, not just those due to climate change. Both terms, however, do not have any legal standing.
+Fuzzy Numbers
+The most recent IOM report to address estimates of climate or environmental migrants was published in 2014, and stated that there was “great uncertainty about the figures.” It noted that the forecasts for the number of environmental migrants by mid-century vary widely — by as much as a factor of 40 — or between 25 million and 1 billion. 
+The actual figure, the report explained, will depend on a host of factors that are largely unknowable at this point, including which climate scenarios will play out, how humans will respond and adapt, and political and demographic factors. As a result, the agency said it “does not advance an estimated figure.”
+The same wide-ranging estimates have appeared in a variety of IOM reports over the years, including particular mention of one estimate of 200 million environmental migrants by 2050. But each time, the reports have put the figures into context and noted the uncertainty. 
+In a section titled “Lack of reliable estimates,” a 2009 IOM report said the “most widely cited figure predicts 200 million environmental migrants by 2050” and pointed to the 40-fold range of estimates between 25 million and 1 billion.
+Another 2009 IOM report also referred to the 200 million estimate, but noted that it “has been dismissed as apocalyptic and based on no more than anecdotal evidence and intuitive judgement” and said that “[p]redictions of migration flows caused by environmental factors are impossible to make” based on the available literature.
+A 2008 IOM report also called the 200 million number “the most widely repeated prediction,” adding, “[b]ut repetition does not make the figure any more accurate.”
+Similarly, a 2016 briefing from the IOM’s Global Migration Data Analysis Centre said the 200 million to 1 billion estimates “are known for likely overestimating the phenomenon and represent guesstimates rather than actual evidence.”
+So where did these estimates originate? None of them were created by the U.N. or IOM. Instead, they largely come from one Oxford professor who first predicted in 1993 that there would be 150 million “environmental refugees in a greenhouse-affected world” by 2050. 
+In that paper, environmental scientist Norman Myers proposed approximate numbers based on projected populations and a loose tallying of the number of people who might be affected by sea level rise in places including Bangladesh, India, Egypt and China. An extra 50 million people were then added in for presumed climate-induced food shortfalls. There are few details about how each of the numbers is derived, and Myers acknowledged in the paper that his estimate was “rough.”
+In subsequent publications, including an influential 1995 report for the Climate Institute, Myers revised his number upward to 200 million. And in a 2007 interview with the British charity Christian Aid, Myers said he believed the figure would be closer to 250 million.
+Christian Aid, in fact, may be the source of the upper-end 1 billion estimate. The group’s 2007 report stated that “unless strong preventative action is taken, between now and 2050 climate change will push the number of displaced people globally to at least 1 billion.” A closer reading of the report, however, shows that the figure includes many displacements from human rights abuses and development projects. The subset attributed to environmental factors totals 300 million, including Myers’ estimate of 250 million from climate-related impacts and 50 million from natural disasters.
+It’s likely Myers’ 200 million and 250 million figures that the U.N. deputy high commissioner for refugees had in mind in 2008. As documented in a 2011 report put together for the U.K.’s Government Office of Science, most of the existing estimates of the number of climate or environmental migrants stem from Myers’ work, which over time did not incorporate new methodology. And many experts have critiqued his findings, noting that his predictions are based on the number of people in a region who could be at risk, rather than those who would actually migrate. Such predictions also assume that it’s possible to distinguish a climate or environmental migrant, despite the fact that migration usually has multiple causes.
+Castles, the University of Sydney migration expert, said there is “no basis” for Myers’ projections. After a dustup surrounding another Myers climate migrant prediction — 50 million by 2010, which did not come to pass but was shared on the U.N. Environment Programme’s website — Myers told the BBC in 2011 that it was “really difficult” to predict the number of climate refugees. But he added that “in the long run I do believe very strongly that it will be better for us to find that we have been roughly right than precisely wrong.”
+The 2008 IOM report also noted that Myers, who passed away this October, admitted that his estimate required some “heroic extrapolations.” The report concluded, “the simple fact is that nobody really knows with any certainty what climate change will mean for human population distribution.”
+In terms of more recent estimates, there are a few other figures, including one from the World Bank. The organization’s 2018 report focused on three regions of the world — sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America — and found that if no action is taken on climate change, there could be more than 143 million climate migrants in just those three areas by 2050. The report, however, doesn’t make a global prediction, and all of the migration is internal, not cross-border migration.
+Beyond Numbers
+To be clear, many scientists are concerned about climate change’s effect on migration. But there isn’t a consensus on the number of people who will move — and it’s important to recognize that not all climate migration is necessarily forced.
+As the IOM’s Migration, Environment and Climate Change Division head Dina Ionesco explains in a 2019 blog post, given the slow onset of climate change in many places, migration is still a choice for many. 
+And migrating away from an affected area is not always the worst outcome. The 2011 U.K. report notes that the people who move away from environmentally dangerous areas often have more resources than those who stay put. As a result, the report argues that focusing on the number of environmental migrants “could mean neglecting the major humanitarian issues surrounding those who stay behind, and indeed those who are unable [to] migrate and who become trapped in parlous environmental circumstances.” The report concludes: “Trying to produce global estimates of ‘environmental migrants’ is methodologically unsound, unhelpful for policy purposes and may even be counterproductive.”"
+"4.2KSummary
+We spotted several false claims and factual flubs:
+
+South Bend Mayor Peter Buttigieg falsely claimed that President Donald Trump “had to confess in writing, in court, to illegally diverting charitable contributions that were supposed to go to veterans.” Trump’s 2016 campaign unlawfully ran a veterans fundraiser for his namesake foundation, but the money raised was in fact donated to veterans groups.
+A poll released earlier in the day contradicted former Vice President Joe Biden’s claim that “the vast majority of Democrats do not support Medicare for All.” The survey showed 77% of Democrats favored the single-payer health care plan.
+Sen. Elizabeth Warren said that under her wealth tax proposal Americans worth more than $50 million would have to “pitch in 2 cents” and those worth over $1 billion “have to pitch in a few pennies more.” Those extra “pennies” would mean an annual 6% wealth tax on billionaires that would raise an estimated $1 trillion over 10 years.
+Rep. Tulsi Gabbard claimed that Buttigieg said that he “would be willing to send our troops to Mexico to fight the cartels.” Actually, Buttigieg talked about further building a “security cooperation” with Mexico’s support, and placed specific conditions on ever sending U.S. troops to combat Mexican drug cartels.
+Sen. Kamala Harris accused Trump of “shutting down the [military] operations with South Korea for the last year and a half.” In fact, those operations were scaled back significantly, but not eliminated.
+Warren wrongly said a new study found 94% of white students “have paid off their student loan debt,” while only “5% of African Americans have paid it off.” Actually, the study says 49% of white student-loan holders and 26% of black student borrowers were debt-free after 20 years.
+Biden falsely said that PolitiFact called his 1987 climate change legislation “a game changer.” The fact-checking site did not use that phrase to describe the bill, and instead highlighted its limitations.
+Sen. Amy Klobuchar went too far when she claimed “90% of the people support funding for Planned Parenthood.” One survey found support at 69%.
+Harris wrongly suggested that figures representing the pay gap between full-time, year-round male and female workers were for men and women doing “equal work.”
+Sen. Bernie Sanders claimed 87 million Americans “have no health insurance or are underinsured,” a statement he has made in two past debates. The figure includes 19.3 million who were insured at the time of the survey but had a gap in coverage in the previous year.
+
+And Biden corrected himself before we could fact-check him after he said he had the support of “the only African American woman that had ever been elected to the United States Senate.” Harris, standing mere feet from Biden on the stage, interjected, “The other one is here.” Biden corrected himself, “I said the first African American woman — the first.”
+The first was Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, who has endorsed Biden in the campaign.
+The debate was held Nov. 20 in Atlanta, hosted by MSNBC and the Washington Post, and included 10 candidates.
+Analysis
+Buttigieg Wrong on Trump Veteran Donations
+Buttigieg wrongly claimed that Trump admitted “in writing, in court, to illegally diverting charitable contributions that were supposed to go to veterans.” That’s not what happened.
+Trump was recently ordered to pay $2 million to several charities to settle a lawsuit over the dealings of his now-defunct charitable organization.
+The ruling was part of a settlement to a June 2018 case filed by the office of the New York state attorney general that alleged the Trump Foundation had long “operated in persistent violation of state and federal law governing New York State charities” by, among other things, allowing Trump’s 2016 campaign committee to direct and coordinate the foundation’s televised fundraiser for veterans in Des Moines, Iowa, in January 2016.
+According to the final settlement, Trump agreed that his campaign “planned, organized, and paid for the Iowa Fundraiser, with administrative assistance from the Foundation; and the Campaign directed the timing, amounts and recipients of the Foundation’s grants to charitable organizations supporting military veterans.” He did not admit to “illegally diverting charitable contributions” intended for veterans.
+The fundraiser raised about $5.6 million — “of which $2.823 million was contributed to the Foundation; the balance was contributed by donors directly to various veterans’ groups,” according to the settlement documents.
+The $2.823 million ultimately was distributed to veterans groups. In a Nov. 7 court order, New York state Supreme Court Justice Saliann Scarpulla wrote that the $2.8 million donated to the Trump Foundation “was used for Mr. Trump’s political campaign and disbursed by Mr. Trump’s campaign staff, rather than by the Foundation,” in violation of state law. The grants to veterans groups were announced at Trump campaign events, for example.
+Scarpulla concluded that a “review of the record, including the factual admissions in the Final Stipulation, establishes that Mr. Trump breached his fiduciary duty to the Foundation.” However, she also acknowledged that “the Funds did ultimately reach their intended destinations, i.e., charitable organizations supporting veterans.”
+Records obtained by the state show donations totaling $2.825 million were given to 34 veterans organizations between January 2016 and June 2016.
+The state argued that the judge should order Trump to pay $2.823 million in damages based on the fundraiser matter, but Scarpulla set the amount at $2 million, she said, because veterans organizations did get the money raised for them.
+Biden on Medicare for All
+Biden made a dubious claim when he said, “The fact is that right now the vast majority of Democrats do not support Medicare for All.”
+But the opposite is true, according to a poll published earlier that same day by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.
+The KFF poll of 1,205 adults was conducted Nov. 7-12 and found that 77% of Democrats (and 53% of all adult Americans regardless of party) said they favored “Medicare-for-all.” 
+That’s what they said when asked, “Do you favor or oppose having a national health plan, sometimes called ‘Medicare-for-all,’ in which all Americans would get their insurance from a single government plan?”
+Biden would be correct to say that support is soft, and might change. An earlier KFF poll, published in January, found that overall support for the idea plunged by 23 points when voters (regardless of party) were told it would require most Americans to pay more in taxes, and by 21 points when told it would eliminate private health insurance companies.
+And CNN reported in July that its own poll showed that among potential Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, only 31% supported Medicare for All when given the alternative of a “public option,” favored by 48%. That’s a government-run insurance plan that would compete with, but not replace, private insurance. CNN said 12% didn’t want a national health care plan at all.
+Warren’s ‘2 Cents’
+Warren continued to bill her wealth tax as a plan that would require the wealthiest top one-tenth of 1% of Americans to “pitch in 2 cents.” It’s true that under her plan those worth between $50 million and $1 billion would pay an annual 2% wealth tax. But the rate on assets over $1 billion would be triple that.
+Warren: You know, I have proposed a 2 cent wealth tax. That is a tax for everybody who has more than 50 billion dollars in assets. Your first $50 billion is free and clear. But your 50 billionth and first dollar, you’ve got to pitch in 2 cents. And when you hit a billion dollars, you’ve got to pitch in a few pennies more. Here’s the thing, doing a wealth tax is not about punishing anyone. It’s about saying you built something great in this country, good for you. But you did it using workers all of us helped pay to educate. You did it getting your goods on roads and bridges all of us helped pay for. You did it protected by police and firefighters all of us helped pay the salaries for. So when you make it big, when you make it really big, when you make it top one-tenth of 1% big, pitch in 2 cents so everybody gets a chance to make it.
+Under Warren’s original wealth tax plan, households would pay an annual 2% tax on all assets — net worth — above $50 million (not $50 billion, as she mistakenly said in the debate), and a 3% tax on every dollar of net worth above $1 billion.
+As we wrote in our story “Facts on Warren’s Wealth Tax Plan,” University of California, Berkeley economists Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez estimated Warren’s tax would fall on about 75,000 U.S. households (less than 0.1%) and would raise around $2.75 trillion over 10 years. As she has in past debates, Warren rattled off a list of education priorities, such as universal pre-K and free public college tuition, that the tax could pay for. (As we have written, it is a matter of debate among economists and tax experts as to whether her plan would raise as much revenue as she expects.)
+But since then, Warren unveiled her plan to pay for Medicare for All, which included upping the wealth tax on assets over $1 billion to 6%. While Forbes estimates there are less than 1,000 billionaires in the U.S., Warren estimated the additional 3% annual wealth tax — which she dismissed as “a few pennies more” — would raise an additional $1 trillion over 10 years.
+Warren said on Nov. 1 that even with the annual tax, the net worth of the super-wealthy would continue to grow, because they “will still likely pay less than what they would earn just from putting their assets into an index fund and doing nothing.” But some tax experts we spoke to doubt that’s true.
+Kyle Pomerleau, formerly chief economist at the Tax Foundation and now a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told us it was unrealistic to assume billionaires could put all their wealth into an index fund. “Housing, for example, is a source of wealth [that] isn’t simply going to be liquidated and put into the market as a means to ‘outperform’ the wealth tax,” Pomerleau said.
+An analysis by Zucman and Saez found that if an annual 3% tax on wealth over $1 billion had been enacted in 1982, the wealth of some of the richest Americans would be dramatically reduced. (See Table 4 for a breakdown of the projected effects on some of the wealthiest Americans.)
+Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, noted that Warren is taxing both wealth and the investment returns to that wealth, and by his calculation, “Someone like Bill Gates would be paying wealth and capital gains taxes equal to a marginal effective income tax rate of more than 100 percent.”
+Whatever one may think about that, Warren’s “2 cents” talking point — which she even used in a recent ad featuring several billionaires — is only true for those with a net worth between $50 million and $1 billion; for those with a net worth over $1 billion, it’s triple that.
+Gabbard, Buttigieg Spar Over Troops-to-Mexico
+Gabbard asked fact-checkers to check her claim that Buttigieg recently said that he “would be willing to send our troops to Mexico to fight the cartels.” Buttigieg called Gabbard’s claim “outlandish.”
+We reviewed the Buttigieg remarks in question, and found that Gabbard did leave out part of what he said at a Nov. 17 forum in Los Angeles.
+At the forum featuring five Democratic presidential candidates, a reporter brought up the nine Americans killed this month in northern Mexico and asked Buttigieg if he would ever consider sending U.S. troops to Mexico to help deal with the cartels, as President Trump has suggested.
+Buttigieg said “there is a scenario where we could have security cooperation” with Mexico if it is “welcomed by our partners south of the border.” But, he said, he would only send U.S. troops into conflict “if there were no other choice, if American lives were on the line, and if this was necessary in order for us to uphold our treaty obligations.”
+Here’s the Gabbard and Buttigieg exchange from the debate.
+Gabbard: I think the most recent example of your inexperience in national security and foreign policy came from your recent careless statement about how you as president would be willing to send our troops to Mexico to fight the cartels. …
+Buttigieg: I know that it’s par for the course in Washington to take remarks out of context, but that is outlandish even by the standards of today’s politics.
+Gabbard: Are you saying you that didn’t say that?
+Buttigieg: I was talking about U.S.-Mexico cooperation. We’ve been doing security cooperation with Mexico for years, with law enforcement cooperation and a military relationship that could continue to be developed with training relationships, for example. Do you seriously think anybody on this stage is proposing invading Mexico?
+Gabbard: That’s not what I said. …
+Buttigieg: I’m talking about building up alliances. …
+Gabbard: You were asked directly whether you would send our troops to Mexico to fight cartels and your answer was “yes.” The fact-checkers can check this out.
+And here are the relevant questions and answers from Buttigieg’s portion of the forum:
+ABC7 reporter Adrienne Alpert, Nov. 17: After a number of Americans were murdered in northern Mexico, President Trump suggested sending U.S. troops to help Mexico deal with the cartels. With your military experience, is there a way to deal with the cartels that doesn’t violate Mexico’s sovereignty?
+Buttigieg: Well, one of the biggest things I learned during my time deployed abroad is the importance of our alliances our friendships, and this president — needless to say — has destroyed just about every relationship he can find. That makes America less safe, whether it is turning our back on Kurdish allies who put their lives on the line to help us fight ISIS, or right here in our own hemisphere alienating those very countries that we need to have a better partnership with. Remember, it is in the interest of both the United States and Mexico for Mexico to prosper with greater economic success and security than they have right now. So, if it is in the context of a security partnership, then I would welcome ways to make sure that America is doing what we can to insure that our neighbor to the south is secure. But doing it in a way that calls into question Mexican sovereignty completely misses how we got here. By the way, a lot of this is a question of the demand side on the United States. Part of what we can do is make drug trafficking less profitable by walking away from the failed war on drugs here in the United States. That is a policy that we know through experience hasn’t worked. We’ve got to do our part here at home and partner with other countries abroad.
+Reporter: But mayor, specifically, do you see a time where troops could go into Mexico if Mexico welcomed it, for instance?
+Buttigieg: There is a scenario where we could have security cooperation as we do with countries around the world. Now, I would only order American troops into conflict if there were no other choice, if American lives were on the line, and if this was necessary in order for us to uphold our treaty obligations. But we could absolutely be in some kind of partnership role if, and only if, it is welcomed by our partners south of the border.
+Buttigieg’s campaign later added that he would only consider sending troops to Mexico as a “last resort.”
+U.S.-South Korea Military Drills
+Harris went too far when she accused Trump of “shutting down the [military] operations with South Korea for the last year and a half.” In fact, those operations were scaled back significantly, but not eliminated.
+It’s true that on June 12, 2018, Trump said he would stop “provocative” military exercises with South Korea. But only five months later, in November 2018, about 500 U.S. and South Korean Marines took part in a joint drill. And this July the two countries said regular springtime drills would continue under the name “Dong Maeng” (meaning “alliance”).
+The new drills are reported to be mainly “computer simulated” training — a far cry from earlier “Foal Eagle” exercises that had recently involved some 11,500 American troops and 290,000 South Korean troops. But Harris was wrong to say that operations had shut down entirely.
+Racial Inequality and Student Loans
+In making a point about economic injustice, Warren mixed up some figures on the student loan disparity between black and white students.
+Warren: Right now in America, African Americans are more likely to borrow money to go to college, borrow more money while they’re in college, and have a harder time paying that debt off after they get out. Today in America, a new study came out, 20 years out, whites who borrowed money, 94 percent of them have paid off their student loan debt, 5 percent of African Americans have paid it off.
+The campaign referred us to a study released in September by the Institute on Assets and Social Policy at Brandeis University, which looked at student debt for a cohort of undergraduates who started college in 1995-1996. As Warren said, that study shows that African American students were “more likely than their White peers to take on student debt, to take larger amounts of loans, and to have debt” after 20 years.
+But Warren was wrong when she said 94% of white students “have paid off their student loan debt,” while only “5% of African Americans have paid it off.” Actually, the study says 49% of white student-loan holders and 26% of black student borrowers were debt-free after 20 years.
+Instead, Warren seemed to be referring to this part of the study: “Twenty years after starting college, the median debt of White borrowing students has been reduced by 94 percent — with almost half holding no student debt — whereas Black borrowers at the median still owe 95 percent of their cumulative borrowing total.”
+The study goes on to say, “Two decades after beginning their degrees, the median Black student borrower has $18,500 in loans remaining, while the median White borrower holds just $1,000 in loans.”
+The median figure represents the midpoint, meaning half of white student borrowers owed more than $1,000 and half owned less than $1,000.
+That is still a significant disparity, but it’s not what Warren said.
+Not a ‘Game Changer’
+In defending his record on climate change, Biden referenced his legislative efforts more than three decades ago, saying he passed “the first climate change bill” and that PolitiFact said it “was a game changer.”
+In May, our fact-checking colleagues over at PolitiFact wrote about the former vice president’s claim of being “one of the first” people to introduce a climate change bill, which the website rated as true. But while the article called Biden a “climate change pioneer,” it did not say his bill was a “game changer.”
+During the debate, PolitiFact Managing Editor Katie Sanders corrected Biden on Twitter. “We didn’t call it a game changer,” she wrote. “We quoted experts with tempered takes like this,” and provided a screenshot of the section of the article that featured a quotation from Reed College history and environmental studies Professor Josh Howe.
+“It’s significant insofar as Biden has been more or less on top of the issue since the mid ’80s,” Howe said, referring to the legislation. “But let’s not stretch the intent of the bill and suggest that this was a comprehensive plan for reducing emissions or adapting to the consequences of climatic change.” He added, “It was a plan to make a plan. Which, of course, neither Reagan nor Bush ultimately did.”
+Biden’s bill, which instituted a presidential task force to create a national strategy to address global warming, was introduced in 1986. A version was enacted into law in 1987. As PolitiFact noted, the task force wasn’t established until the Clinton administration.
+Support for Planned Parenthood
+Most Americans support Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 decision legalizing abortion, and government funding for Planned Parenthood, as Klobuchar said in the debate.
+“Over 70% of the people support Roe v. Wade,” Klobuchar said. “Over 90% of the people support funding for Planned Parenthood and making sure that women can get the health care they need.”
+Klobuchar was largely right about support for Roe v. Wade, but she inflated the support for government funding of Planned Parenthood.
+A study conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation in May found that 69% of adults supported continued state funding for Planned Parenthood, and a Rasmussen Reports poll from July found that 50% of likely voters were opposed to a plan that would cut federal funding to the organization.
+When we asked about her numbers, Klobuchar’s campaign cited a 2017 survey that found 96% of voters thought women should have access to birth control. But the survey didn’t ask specifically about support for Planned Parenthood.
+Polls back up her statement about support for Roe v. Wade, though.
+According to a study released by the Pew Research Center in August, exactly 70% of people surveyed said they didn’t want Roe v. Wade to be overturned in its entirety. And the Kaiser Family Foundation study from May found that 65% of the public doesn’t want Roe v. Wade to be overturned.
+An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll conducted earlier this year asked more granular questions about respondents’ thoughts on Roe v. Wade and found that, overall, 77% of Americans wanted to keep it in some form.
+That’s the poll Klobuchar’s campaign cited when we asked about her numbers.
+Harris on Gender Pay Gap
+During the July debate, Harris suggested that figures representing the pay gap between men and women who work full-time, year-round, were for men and women doing “equal work.” She did it again in this debate.
+Harris: The reality also is that women are not paid equal for equal work in America. We passed the Equal Pay Act in 1963 but fast forward to the year of our Lord 2019 and women are paid 80 cents on the dollar, black women 61 cents, Native American women 58 cents, Latinas 53 cents.
+As we’ve written before, Harris appears to be citing figures the National Partnership for Women & Families published in May. But the statistics are not representative of men and women doing the same work.
+“Nationally, the median annual pay for a woman who holds a full-time, year-round job is $45,097 while the median annual pay for a man who holds a full-time, year-round job is $55,291,” the NPWF fact sheet says. “This means that, overall, women in the United States are paid 82 cents for every dollar paid to men, amounting to an annual gender wage gap of $10,194.”
+And for women of color, the comparison wasn’t to all men, but to non-Hispanic white males working full-time, year-round.
+“Among women who hold full-time, year-round jobs in the United States, Black women are typically paid 62 cents, Native American women 58 cents and Latinas just 54 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men,” the fact sheet explains.
+Again, as we’ve written before, an April 2019 report from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research analyzed the gap in median weekly earnings for male and female full-time workers doing the same job. It did conclude that “[w]omen’s median earnings are lower than men’s in nearly all occupations,” but the gaps varied widely depending on the occupation.
+The group’s report on 2018 earnings says that the female-to-male earnings ratio for all full–time weekly workers was 81.1 percent, and women’s percentage of their male counterparts’ median weekly earnings was higher than that in 14 of the top 20 most common occupations for women.
+Sanders Health Care Repeat
+Sanders repeated a claim he has made in two previous debates, saying, “Right now, you’ve got 87 million people who have no health insurance or are underinsured.” The figure comes from a Commonwealth Fund study and includes 19.3 million who were insured when they were surveyed but had a gap in coverage in the previous year.
+“Of the 194 million U.S. adults ages 19 to 64 in 2018, an estimated 87 million, or 45 percent, were inadequately insured,” the study said. It broke down the “inadequately insured” into three different categories: 24 million uninsured, 43.8 million who were “underinsured” and 19.3 million who were insured but had been uninsured at some point in the prior year.
+Sources
+Fichera, Angelo. “Posts Falsely Claim Trump ‘Stole’ From Vets.” FactCheck.org. 12 Nov 2019.
+Gore, D’Angelo. “Trump Spins Court Ruling on Trump Foundation.” FactCheck.org. 8 Nov 2019.
+“A.G. Underwood Announces Stipulation Dissolving Trump Foundation Under Judicial Supervision, With AG Review Of Recipient Charities.” Press release, New York State Office of the Attorney General. 18 Dec 2018.
+“Attorney General Underwood Announces Lawsuit Against Donald J. Trump Foundation And Its Board Of Directors For Extensive And Persistent Violations Of State And Federal Law.” Press release, New York State Office of the Attorney General. 14 Jun 2018.
+The People of the State of New York v. Donald Trump, et. al. Index No. 451130/2018. Decision + Order on Petition. Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of New York. 7 Nov 2019.
+Kruzel, John. “Was Joe Biden a climate change pioneer in Congress? History says yes.” PolitiFact. 8 May 2019.
+Sanders, Katie (@KatieLSanders). “Joe Biden was one of the first to introduce a climate change bill, as we at @PolitiFact checked out. We didn’t call it a game changer. We quoted experts with tempered takes like this: http://bit.ly/2LKbTeP.” Twitter. 20 Nov 2019.
+Collins, Sara R. et. al. “Health Insurance Coverage Eight Years After the ACA.” The Commonwealth Fund. 7 Feb 2019.
+“America’s Women and the Wage Gap.” National Partnership for Women & Families. Sep 2019.
+“The Gender Wage Gap by Occupation 2018 and by Race and Ethnicity.” Institute for Women’s Policy Research. Apr 2019.
+Beck, Jillian. “Democratic presidential candidates address Latino issues at Cal State LA forum.” Cal State LA News Service. 17 Nov 2019.
+Diaz, Lizbeth. “Nine Americans killed in Mexican ambush, Trump urges joint war on drug cartels.” Reuters. 5 Nov 2019.
+Kaiser Family Foundation. “Poll: On Health Care, Democrats and Democratic-Leaning Independents Trust Sen. Sanders the Most, but Significantly More People Support a Public Option than Medicare-for-All.” 20 Nov 2019.
+Kaiser Family Foundation. “KFF Health Tracking Poll – January 2019: The Public On Next Steps For The ACA And Proposals To Expand Coverage.” 23 Jan 2018.
+Enten, Harry. “Black Democrats prefer the public option to ‘Medicare for All.’” CNN.com. 27 Jul 2019.
+Trump, Donald. “Press Conference by President Trump.” The White House. 12 Jun 2018.
+Smith, Josh and Joyce Lee. “U.S., South Korea marines hold small-scale exercise ahead of North Korea talks.” Reuters. 4 Nov 2018.
+Gamel, Kim and Yoo Kyong Chang. “US-S. Korean military drills to proceed despite N. Korean objections, officials say.” Stars and Stripes. 18 Jul 2019.
+Dickstein, Cory. “US, South Korea to scale back Foal Eagle exercise this spring.” Stars and Stripes. 21 Nov 2018.
+Pew Research Center. U.S. Public Continues to Favor Legal Abortion, Oppose Overturning Roe v. Wade. 29 Aug 2019.
+Kaiser Family Foundation. KFF Poll: Public Opinion and Knowledge on Reproductive Health Policy. 3 May 2019.
+Marist Institute for Public Opinion. The Abortion Debate in the United States. 7 Jun 2019.
+Rasmussen Reports. Voters Aren’t Ready to Cut Federal Funds for Planned Parenthood. 22 Jul 2019.
+“Stalling Dreams: How Student Debt is Disrupting Life Chances and Widening the Racial Wealth Gap.” Institute on Assets and Social Policy at Brandeis University. Sep 2019.
+Farley, Robert. “Facts on Warren’s Wealth Tax Plan.” FactCheck.org. 25 Jun 2019.
+Saez, Emmanuel, and Zucman, Gabriel. Letter to Sen. Elizabeth Warren on her Wealth Tax Plan. 18 Jan 2019.
+Warren, Elizabeth. “Ending the Stranglehold of Health Care Costs on American Families.” Medium. 1 Nov 2019.
+Kroll, Luisa and Dolan, Kerry A. “Billionaires: The Richest People in the World.” Forbes. 5 Mar 2019.
+Saez, Emmanuel, and Zucman, Gabriel. “Progressive Wealth Taxation.” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity. 4 Sep 2019.
+Gleckman, Howard. “Warren’s Plan to Tax Assets And Returns To Those Assets Is Unrealistic.” TaxVox. 7 Nov 2019."
+"4.1KIn a televised town hall, former Vice President Joe Biden made several false or misleading statements while commenting on climate change, veterans and health care:
+
+Before describing the effects of climate change on his home state of Delaware, Biden incorrectly said the state was “only 3 feet above sea level.” Parts of the state are at that elevation or lower, but the average across the state is 60 feet above sea level.
+Biden also said two-thirds of his state is “in jeopardy” and that there are “close to a trillion dollars of loss up and down the coast.” While sea level rise is a real problem for Delaware, the coastal loss estimate is unsupported, and only 8% to 11% of the state is projected to lose land mass by 2100, not two-thirds of the state.
+Asked about expanding a veterans benefit program, Biden said that “only 1% of our population serves” in the military. Less than 1% of Americans actively serve in the military, but veterans make up 7.1% of the civilian population 18 years and older.
+Biden falsely claimed that a $30 trillion to $40 trillion price tag over 10 years for Medicare for All would be more than the “entire federal budget on a yearly basis.” Government estimates for spending under current law are higher than that.
+He also boasted that his health care plan would “immediately cover everybody,” but his campaign website doesn’t go that far, saying the plan would reach “more than an estimated 97% of Americans.”
+
+The presidential town hall was held in Iowa, which will be the first state to hold a primary for the 2020 election, and aired on CNN on Veterans Day.
+Sea Level Rise
+Biden’s comments on sea level rise came in response to a college student’s question about what he would do to protect Iowans from the effects of climate change. He started his reply by referencing the dangers to his state of Delaware.
+Biden, Nov. 11: It’s not just you. I live in a state that’s only 3 feet above sea level. No, no, I mean it sincerely. And my entire two-thirds of my state are in jeopardy, OK? And there are close to a trillion dollars of loss up and down the coast, OK?
+Biden went on to say that if elected president, he would rejoin the Paris climate accord, which President Donald Trump has begun to exit, and work to make those commitments stronger, along with reducing transportation emissions by building better rail systems and creating half a million new electric vehicle charging stations.
+There is no question that Delaware is a low-lying state that is especially at-risk from climate change-related sea level rise, which is happening on a global scale as warmer temperatures melt land ice and increase the volume of oceans through thermal expansion. But each of the former vice president’s statements about Delaware is either incorrect, requires more context or is unsupported.
+Delaware has the lowest average elevation of any state, but it’s not “only 3 feet above sea level,” as Biden claimed. Instead, the statewide average is 60 feet above sea level. A recent elevation map from the Delaware Geological Survey shows that while a thin strip of much of the coast is 5 feet or less above sea level, the bulk of the state stands at higher elevation.
+John Callahan, an associate scientist at the Delaware Geological Survey, noted that Biden owns a beach house in a region known for flooding due to high tides and storms. He said the house, which is just north of Rehoboth Beach, would be around 3 to 5 feet above sea level, with nearby Cape Henlopen State Park at an even lower elevation.
+Biden also said “two-thirds of my state are in jeopardy” and that “there are close to a trillion dollars of loss up and down the coast.” These statements are somewhat vague, but if interpreted to mean the impact of sea level rise on Delaware, they are misleading or unsupported. Biden’s campaign did not respond to our requests for clarification or for sources backing these loose statistics.
+According to a 2017 report by scientists at the University of Delaware and the Delaware Geological Survey, relative to 2000, sea level rise in Delaware is projected to increase by 0.52 to 1.53 meters, or approximately 1.7 to 5 feet, by the end of the century. Delaware’s Sea Level Rise Advisory Committee previously estimated that a very similar level of rise would inundate approximately 8% of the state’s land area at the low end, and 11% at the high end. That’s an incredible amount of lost land, but it is significantly less than what might be inferred when Biden said an “entire two-thirds” of the state is “in jeopardy.”
+At the same time, Callahan said he suspected that Biden was thinking of sea level rise in terms of counties rather than land area, and in that regard, Biden is correct. Delaware has only three counties: the more densely populated northern county of New Castle, the central county of Kent and the southern county of Sussex. The coastal areas of the two southern counties are and will be most significantly impacted by sea level rise, Callahan said, although the northern county will also see some effects. “Focusing on the bottom 2 counties re: coastal issues is not that uncommon,” he said, adding that it’s typical for people to use thirds to refer to portions of the state, and that often when thinking about coastal topics, people use the same fractions. Still, he acknowledged that only a portion of the counties would be impacted. When considering all the effects of climate change, such as increased temperatures and heavy rains, he said, “much of the state is in trouble.”
+As for coastal losses, we found no evidence that there have been or will be nearly $1 trillion in losses due to sea level rise in Delaware. Callahan also said he didn’t know of any studies that estimated losses that high. 
+A 2019 report from Columbia University and the First Street Foundation, a nonprofit that does flood risk modeling, found that between 2005 and 2017, Delaware lost nearly $300 million in property value from increased tidal flooding due to sea level rise. For the entire Eastern seaboard and Gulf Coast, the collective total was $15.8 billion in losses over the same time period.
+In 2018, the nonprofit advocacy group Union of Concerned Scientists also estimated that by 2100, around 24,000 properties in Delaware, currently valued at $1.3 billion, would be at risk from flooding at least 26 times per year, assuming a high level of warming. For the entire contiguous U.S., properties valued at $1 trillion are at risk. The analysis does not assume any adaptation measures and does not factor in population growth. 
+Other reports also suggest Biden’s figure is too high. In a 2017 technical report for the Fourth National Climate Assessment, the Environmental Protection Agency projected approximately $31 billion in cumulative costs between 2000 and 2100 for coastal properties in New Jersey and Delaware, assuming moderate or high degrees of warming (see page 117). This includes some $19 billion from abandoned property, as well nearly $10 billion to armor the shoreline.
+The general point Biden was making is correct: Delaware is especially vulnerable to climate change via sea level rise. Callahan said that the Delaware region has experienced approximately twice the amount of sea level rise as the global average. That’s partly because the land in Delaware is sinking and because of changes in ocean circulation patterns and reduced gravitational attraction as ice sheets melt, which bumps up the local water level.
+Military Service
+Asked about his support for expanding a veterans benefit program, Biden said, “The fact of the matter is, only 1% of our population serves.” While a little less than 1% of Americans currently are on active duty in the military or serving in the reserves, veterans make up 7.1% of the civilian population 18 years and older.
+Biden’s statement came in response to a question from Dave Degner, a veteran of the Army Reserve who is running for the state Senate in Iowa. Degner asked if Biden would extend lifetime GI Bill benefits to all veterans.
+Biden said he “would attempt to do that.” Biden said the government has a “sacred obligation” to protect its veterans, and added, “The fact of the matter is, only 1% of our population serves.”
+That’s not accurate for U.S. military veterans, the subject of the question. According to the U.S. Census, there are nearly 18 million U.S. veterans, constituting 7.1% of the civilian population 18 years and older.
+In late 2017, there were a total of 1.3 million active duty military members, about 0.5% of the adult civilian population, according to Department of Defense personnel data reported in Governing magazine. And there were another 800,000 reserve forces. Together, that comes to a little less than 1% of the adult civilian population.
+Health Care Repeats
+Biden also repeated two false claims he has made before about Medicare for All and his own health care plan.
+He claimed that Medicare for All, the health care plan backed by some of his Democratic rivals, including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, would cost more than the entire federal budget. That’s not accurate.
+Biden: This is going to cost between $30 trillion and $40 trillion over 10 years. The entire federal budget on a yearly basis is less than it will cost on a yearly basis to provide for Medicare for All, number one.
+As we wrote during the October Democratic debate, Medicare for All — which would cover everyone by transitioning to a government Medicare-like universal health care plan — could cost at least $30 trillion over 10 years, according to estimates by the Urban Institute and another by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. We don’t know a precise cost, because many of the details of the plan have yet to be determined, but those two groups estimated the federal government cost would be $32 trillion or $32.6 trillion over 10 years.
+Biden is wrong, however, that those estimates are more than the “entire federal budget.” In August, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that federal spending, or outlays, for 2019 would total $4.4 trillion, and over 10 years, from 2020 to 2029, spending would total $57.8 trillion.
+Plus, Biden leaves out the fact that while federal government spending would increase substantially under Medicare for All, health spending by everyone else — individuals, employers, local governments and insurers — would be eliminated or reduced substantially. Total national health expenditures were $3.5 trillion in 2017 and are projected to be $47 trillion over 10 years, from 2018 to 2027, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
+Biden also claimed that his health care plan would “immediately cover everybody,” while Medicare for All would take at least four years to transition to universal health care coverage.
+Biden: Number two, it, in fact — in my view, they all acknowledge and support it — it will take somewhere between four and 10 years for it to come into being. … My plan costs $750 billion, would immediately cover everybody — everybody in America, allow you to keep your private plan if you wanted it, if you wanted it.
+Biden’s own website says his plan would “insure more than an estimated 97% of Americans,” indicating that not everyone would be covered. His plan would build on the Affordable Care Act, expanding tax credits for individuals purchasing insurance on the ACA’s exchanges, offering a Medicare-style public health insurance option as a choice, and providing “premium-free access to the public option” for those who qualify for the ACA’s Medicaid expansion but live in states that chose not to expand the program."
+"34.9KFor the second year in a row, President Donald Trump inaccurately attributed California’s rash of wildfires to poor forest management. He also falsely said other states don’t have “close to the level of burn” as California.
+Most of the Golden State’s latest blazes aren’t in forests, experts explained, and therefore aren’t the types of fires that would benefit from better forest management. Wildfires also aren’t limited to California, even if the state gets more attention for them. So far this year, for example, wildfires in Alaska have burned nearly 10 times as much land as those in California.
+Trump’s comments began on the morning of Nov. 3, as firefighters in California were battling numerous fires across the state, including the Kincade Fire west of Sacramento and the Getty Fire in Los Angeles. 
+In a series of three tweets, the president attacked California Governor Gavin Newsom, saying he had done a “terrible job of forest management” and that he “must ‘clean’ his forest floors,” adding, “You don’t see close to the level of burn in other states.”
+
+The Governor of California, @GavinNewsom, has done a terrible job of forest management. I told him from the first day we met that he must “clean” his forest floors regardless of what his bosses, the environmentalists, DEMAND of him. Must also do burns and cut fire stoppers…..
+— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 3, 2019
+
+
+….putting these massive, and many, fires out. Great firefighters! Also, open up the ridiculously closed water lanes coming down from the North. Don’t pour it out into the Pacific Ocean. Should be done immediately. California desperately needs water, and you can have it now!
+— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 3, 2019
+
+Within hours, Newsom replied via tweet: “You don’t believe in climate change. You are excused from this conversation.”
+Later in the day, the president again blamed the fires on “bad” management and criticized the governor, telling reporters on the South Lawn that “it’s always California. Never — it’s rarely somebody else or someplace else.”
+Trump, Nov. 3: [Y]ou’ve got fires eating away at California every year because management is so bad. The governor doesn’t know — he’s like a child. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. And I’ve been telling this for two years: They’ve got to take care of it. Every year, it’s always California. Never — it’s rarely somebody else or someplace else.
+Not Just California
+Wildfires, of course, do happen elsewhere. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, an average of 61,375 human-caused wildfires occur every year across the U.S., of which approximately 7,500, or 12%, are in California.
+And contrary to Trump’s claim that other states don’t have “close to the level of burn” as California, other states often outrank California in terms of acres burned. As of Nov. 5, more than 2.5 million acres had gone up in flames in Alaska this year, compared with fewer than 300,000 in California.
+Figures reported to the fire center show that in 2017, both Nevada and Montana had more burned land than California, and in 2016 Oklahoma did. In 2015, Alaska had the most scorched land — more than 5 million acres — followed by Washington.
+Even in 2018, when California’s 1.8 million burned acres totaled more than any other state, other states racked up substantial acreage as well, including Nevada, with more than 1 million acres, and Oregon, with nearly 900,000 acres. 
+Of the 198 largest U.S. wildfires between 1997 and 2018, agency statistics show that 49 occurred in Alaska, 26 were in Idaho, and 23 were in California.
+California, then, is by no means the only state with wildfires. Still, it is true that California is highly susceptible to wildfires and is home to some of the most costly and destructive fires.
+California’s high risk, experts said, is explained by natural climate features and its massive population.
+“There are lots of areas that have as many or more fires than California,” said University of Utah fire scientist Philip Dennison. “The difference with California is [that] it has a very large population.” With 40 million people, he added, just about any fire that starts will impact someone, which is far less true in other, less populated Western states.
+University of California, Los Angeles climate scientist Daniel Swain also pointed to the Golden State’s climate and geography, which he said “sets it completely apart from any other region in the United States” and leaves it more susceptible to extreme wildfire than virtually anywhere else in the nation. 
+The state, he said, goes for a long time without rain — a period that coincides with high temperatures in the summer — and then seasonal winds come in during autumn when vegetation is very dry. “When the vegetation is as explosively flammable as it is in California toward the end of the dry season,” he said, “it’s surprisingly easy to spark a wildfire.”
+“California also has far more people living in high risk wildfire zones than any other state in the country,” Swain added. “Given these facts, it’s quite clear why the overall human exposure to wildfire risk is greater in California than in other states.”
+Management to Blame?
+As we explained last year, forest management techniques, including tree thinning and prescribed fires, can be helpful to reduce the severity of some wildfires. But these strategies aren’t effective for all ecosystems — and as with 2018, the latest fires in California aren’t in traditional forests.
+“It is true that a historical policy of ‘total fire suppression’ in federal forests during much of the 20th century led to a lack of beneficial, low-intensity fire,” said Swain, referring to a longstanding practice of quickly snuffing out wildfires across much of the West. “In those regions, present-day wildfires tend to burn more intensely than they would have in a more natural setting.”
+But, he added, that’s not the situation for the latest fires. Southern California’s fires are burning “almost exclusively” in dry brush and grasses, he said, while the landscape around the Kincade Fire is a patchwork of forest, brush and grass. The forest that is there, he noted, is largely not coniferous, which is the main type of forest “where the historical legacy of fire suppression is most relevant.”
+Dennison told us that weather conditions, too, limit the impact that management would have, and that “cleaning” the forest floor, as Trump suggested, “wouldn’t help with the recent fires.”
+“There are places where fuel management is appropriate to reduce the risk of ignition or to make fire easier to control,” he said. “But in the high wind situations that we saw over the last couple of weeks, there’s not much you can do.”
+Indeed, California’s current spate of wildfires coincides, as it did in 2018, with dry, hot weather and extreme winds, known as the Santa Ana winds in the south and the Diablo winds in the north. The conditions make it easy for fires to start, and once ignited, to quickly spread.
+Tinderbox conditions, of course, still need a spark, and in California, the culprit is usually a person or something related to humans, such as a downed power line. 
+Climate change, too, may be a factor in making fires more severe, because more hot weather can further dry out already dry vegetation, Swain said, and precipitation declines may delay the start of the rainy season.
+“Recent years (2017, 2018, and 2019) have each featured an unusually late onset of the rainy season in California and unusually late seasonal occurrence of extreme fire weather conditions,” he said, “consistent with expectations of autumn drying and warming due to climate change.”
+At the same time, it’s worth noting that the link between climate change and fire risk is variable, and depends on location. Alexandra Syphard, a senior research scientist at the nonprofit Conservation Biology Institute, said that for interior forests, there is a significant relationship between temperature and precipitation and an increased risk of fires — and in those forests, there’s “a very good chance” climate change could be exacerbating blazes. But in Southern or coastal California, that link is less clear. 
+In a 2016 study she co-authored, Syphard found little or no statistical relationship between climate and fire severity at low-elevations or in Southern California. One reason for that, she said, could be that if conditions are already ripe for a fire, climate change can’t make it much worse.
+In a subsequent study, Syphard, who is also chief scientist for a wildfire-focused insurance company, found that in places where there isn’t a strong relationship between climate and fire activity, there usually is a strong human presence. “What that suggests is that human influence at minimum can scramble the relationship between fire and climate,” she said, and possibly override it.
+This doesn’t necessarily mean that climate isn’t important, Syphard said, but it does suggest that there are proactive measures people can take to reduce wildfire risk, such as plugging gaps in roofs or putting screens on vents to prevent embers from igniting homes, as well as not continuing to build in the most fire-prone areas along the wildland-urban interface.
+“By talking only about climate you’re missing part of the equation,” she said. “Climate is something that requires action, but by attributing everything to climate it is playing down things that we could do otherwise.”
+Finally, fire experts were mystified by Trump’s suggestion to “open up the ridiculously closed water lanes coming down from the North.”
+“Using water in rivers or irrigation canals isn’t practical for keeping large areas from burning,” explained Dennison.
+Syphard agreed that firefighting efforts were not being hampered by a lack of water in the state. “Adding more water,” she said, “is not going to improve the situation.”"
+"2.4KWhile Sen. Bernie Sanders has said “scientists tell us” that it’s possible to go carbon neutral without relying on nuclear power, fellow Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Cory Booker, who backs the use of some nuclear energy, has said the data is on his side. Who’s right? Both have a point, but neither is telling the full story.
+Most experts agree that Sanders is correct that it’s technologically possible to decarbonize the grid without using nuclear power. But many researchers also say keeping nuclear on the table makes decarbonization easier and more likely.
+Sanders, a three-term senator from Vermont, has proposed banning new nuclear power plants and placing a moratorium on existing nuclear power plant license renewals, all while reaching 100% renewable energy by 2030 and “complete decarbonization” by 2050. Currently, 17% of electricity in the U.S. comes from renewables, including 6.5% from wind, 1.5% from solar and 7% from hydropower.
+Booker, a New Jersey senator and a former mayor of Newark, has called for reaching “100% clean energy” in the electricity sector by 2030. His plan includes a $20 billion investment in next-generation advanced nuclear research and development by the end of the next decade.
+During power generation, nuclear plants release no greenhouse gases, but they come with additional safety, security and waste disposal challenges.
+He Said, He Said
+The candidates’ divide on nuclear power became apparent on Sept. 4 during CNN’s climate crisis town hall, a two-day event in which the 10 leading Democratic presidential hopefuls were quizzed about their approaches to tackling climate change.
+After Sanders was asked about his position on nuclear power by a graduate student in the audience, CNN’s chief climate correspondent, Bill Weir, followed up, pointing out that the U.S. gets 20% of its electricity from nuclear, and France gets about 70%. Referencing the amount of land required for solar and wind, Weir asked how it would be possible to go “carbon neutral without nuclear in the short term.”
+“I think you can,” Sanders replied. “And I think the scientists tell us, in fact, that we can.” He went on to mention the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011 and 1986’s Chernobyl disaster.
+Booker, meanwhile, made his counterclaim hours later. “[N]uclear is more than 50 percent of our non-carbon causing energy,” he said. “So people who think that we can get there without nuclear being part of the blend just aren’t looking at the facts.”
+Later, in a Sept. 19 interview with the HuffPost, Booker called out his colleagues who oppose nuclear power, saying, “As much as we say the Republicans when it comes to climate change must listen to science, our party has the same obligation to listen to scientists,” he said. “The data speaks for itself.”
+“If we had a president who was going to pull us out of nuclear, we’d be more reliant on fossil fuels,” Booker added. “It’s as simple as that.”
+As we’ll explain, there is support for each perspective, although Jesse Jenkins, an energy systems engineer and professor at Princeton University, said both politicians are “making stronger claims than there’s a scientific basis.” Sanders, Jenkins explained, can point to published studies that outline how one can get to zero-carbon without nuclear. “Those exist,” he said. And bolstering Booker’s side, he said, is the “predominance of the evidence” that suggests the most cost-effective way of decarbonizing would include “some nuclear.”
+The debate over nuclear energy isn’t limited to Booker and Sanders, even if relatively few Democratic candidates have addressed nuclear power in their climate plans. Former Vice President Joe Biden backs nuclear technology research, as does entrepreneur Andrew Yang, who views nuclear as a “stopgap” measure and plans on having next-gen reactors up and running by 2027.
+Although not written into her climate plan, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said during her town hall segment that she would not build any more nuclear plants and would “start weaning” the country off nuclear energy. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota also committed to not expanding the number of nuclear plants “unless we can find safe storage.”
+Without diving into the details of individual plans, we’ll lay out what scientists know about the role of nuclear energy in decarbonizing the electrical grid.
+Nuclear Not Necessary
+To start, we’ll consider Sanders’ claim that “scientists tell us” that it’s possible to get to a zero-carbon electrical grid without nuclear power.
+“The shortest answer is yes, that’s true. Scientists do tell us that we can,” said Drew Shindell, a climate scientist at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment.
+Ryan Jones, an expert in electricity systems and a co-founder of Evolved Energy Research, a consulting company that models low-carbon transitions, agreed. “Anyone who says that nuclear is 100% necessary on a technical basis, I would claim, just hasn’t looked at the alternatives in enough detail,” he said in an email.
+Most experts FactCheck.org contacted, including those who think nuclear power should remain an option, said that from a technical perspective, nuclear is not needed to decarbonize the grid.
+But technically possible is not the same as practically feasible, or the most cost-effective. In that regard, many, although not all, researchers say nuclear — or something like it — is likely to be necessary to some degree. And even if nuclear is ultimately not needed, they say, the safer strategy is not to exclude it.
+“All the evidence says it is possible to decarbonize the energy system in the U.S. without using nuclear power,” said Jones. But, he added, there are cases, such as places that don’t have good wind resources, in which building new nuclear plants can reduce the cost of decarbonizing. Depending on the region, he said, “getting to 100% renewable energy is either very expensive or necessitates significant new transmission to import resources from elsewhere.” 
+That’s where nuclear can be helpful. It doesn’t have to be nuclear — Jones said carbon capture and sequestration, or CCS, for example, would also work. Sanders’ plan, notably, specifically excludes CCS.
+Jones also made a point to note that there is a difference between building new nuclear plants, which he said likely wouldn’t be ready to go until after 2030 anyway, and maintaining the nation’s existing reactors. Much of the future of nuclear power depends on the development of advanced technologies, but there is little disagreement that keeping safely operating plants around for as long as possible would be a boon for the climate. “Maintaining our existing fleet is a good way to keep costs low and an accelerated retirement schedule simply makes it that much harder,” he said.
+Shindell said that while Sanders is correct in a strict sense, the “more complete” answer is that eliminating nuclear as an option would complicate the effort to decarbonize, requiring the “most extreme” levels of action in other areas to reach the zero-carbon goal. “The more you take away one zero-carbon option,” he said, “the harder you have to push on the others.”
+Global Assessments
+When scientists have modeled the ways the planet as a whole can avoid the worst effects of climate change — and limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels — nuclear power is almost always part of the solution. In the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2018 special report, scientists described 85 pathways consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 degrees, or overshooting that threshold and returning to 1.5 degrees or below by 2100. 
+Shindell, who was one of the coordinating lead authors on the chapter, told us that it was a rare scenario that met or mostly met the 1.5 degrees limit and didn’t have nuclear power in the mix. “Very few, almost none in fact, can achieve 1.5 without nuclear,” he said. “It’s a very extreme scenario that can do that. And it requires enormous gains in all the zero-carbon sources.”
+A large number of scenarios expanded nuclear power, Shindell said, to around double today’s level. He estimated that 90% of the scenarios included nuclear capacity above today’s level, and just one or two scenarios phased out nuclear entirely by 2100.
+There are pathways, the report says, that “no longer see a role for nuclear fission by the end of the century.” But none include no nuclear as early as 2030 or 2050.
+Because the scenarios are global, the results don’t necessarily mean that the U.S. must keep or expand its nuclear power. And the scenarios are inherently limited to the types of studies scientists do, Shindell said. Still, the IPCC findings suggest that in a broad sense, most roads to success include nuclear reactors.
+Consider, too, the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report from 2014, which was the first to include scenarios that excluded certain technologies. In the nuclear phase out scenario, eight of nine tested scenarios were able to reach the target CO2 concentration level of 430-480 parts per million, or the equivalent of reaching 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. But the limitation in technology increased the median costs by 7% (see figure 6.24 and table SPM.2). The phase out assumed that existing plants could operate until the end of their lifetime, but did not allow for any new nuclear plants beyond those already under construction.
+A 2013 study cited in the 2014 IPCC report used an integrated assessment model to learn what might happen globally if nations stopped building any new nuclear plants in 2020. The authors concluded it was “in principle feasible” to transform the energy system and limit carbon dioxide concentrations to 450 parts per million. But they noted that it would require “massive and rapid expansion” of other low-emissions technology, such as renewables and carbon capture and sequestration. 
+“This underscores the fact that, in general, nuclear energy can be regarded as a choice rather than a necessity, and different regional and national attitudes toward nuclear energy can be accommodated,” the paper reads. “On the other hand, the forced phase-out of nuclear energy by 2020 would increase the required investments into the energy system transformation and would limit future supply-side flexibility, resulting in comparatively higher costs of CO2.”
+Local Assessments
+On a more local level, such as for individual countries or regions, scientists can perform much more detailed models of the electrical grid or energy system over space and time to determine the viability of various power mixes and their costs. Sometimes, such models are designed to find the lowest-cost option, while others are set up to test the robustness of the system.
+What’s clear from these modeling efforts is that the clearest and cheapest path forward to decarbonization is to rapidly expand renewable power, especially wind and solar. In a variety of studies, including those from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and others, large amounts of renewable power can be added to the grid without sacrificing reliability and without imposing excessively high costs. But there is some disagreement on how far renewables, on their own, can go. 
+One prominent paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2015 argued that in the U.S., 100% renewable energy is possible at low cost by 2050-2055. But numerous scientists objected to that analysis, and two separate groups, including one with more than 20 authors, published critiques; the original authors also penned rebuttals.
+Christopher Clack, the lead author of the primary critique and the founder and CEO of Vibrant Clean Energy, a company that does high-resolution electrical grid modeling, says he has yet to be convinced that 100% renewables is possible in the U.S. In his view, the concept is theoretically possible, but unlikely to be feasible in practice. 
+“We can get all the way within a model, but in reality we probably cannot due to the imperfections of forecasts, dispatch, measurements, etc.,” he said. And for him, cost is not an ancillary issue. “If it is not possible at low-cost, it is not possible in reality,” he said, “because alternatives will be used instead.”
+Regardless, each time he’s looked at studies that claim to show a successful 100% renewable grid, he’s found problems. Some models, he said, don’t go into granular enough detail, which can “smear out” challenging times for an all-renewable grid, such as an extreme cold snap. Other papers, he said, rely on unproven technology or unrealistic costs.
+The fundamental issue for renewables, of course, is weather variability, and how to handle the times when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. In Clack’s view, this challenge can mostly — but not fully — be solved by adding storage and creating a more connected and responsive electrical grid. In 2016, while working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Clack published one of the first “supergrid” papers in Nature Climate Change, which showed that by building out high-voltage, direct-current transmission lines, the U.S. could lower its electricity-sector carbon dioxide emissions by as much as 80% below 1990’s level, without an increase in the cost of electricity.
+The National Renewable Energy Laboratory similarly found that existing renewable technology, coupled with a more flexible grid, “is more than adequate” to supply 80% of the nation’s electricity in 2050.
+But to actually provide 100% of the nation’s electricity at a reasonable cost, Clack said there needs to be a non-variable source, which could include — but isn’t limited to — nuclear power.
+The importance of including some non-variable sources was also underscored in a 2018 review co-authored by Princeton’s Jenkins. That paper, which appeared in the journal Joule, reviewed 40 studies published since the IPCC’s 2014 report that explored pathways on either a global or local scale for “deep decarbonization,” defined as an 80%-100% cut in current CO2 emissions. It found that all 20 of the studies that took an agnostic approach to finding the most affordable way to go about deep decarbonization ultimately selected a power mix that included at least one low-carbon “firm” resource, such as nuclear power or fossil fuels coupled with CCS.
+As Jenkins explained it, while wind and solar can do the bulk of the work, as renewable penetration approaches 100%, problems emerge and costs rise sharply. He told us that most storage — largely lithium-ion batteries — can help with daily variation, but is insufficient for when the sun and wind stall for weeks at a time over a large geographic area, or what’s known as the “dark doldrums.” Adding even more storage capacity might be able to do the trick, he said, but that storage would be expensive to build and rarely used. The economics of such a scenario are bleak. Even assuming costs fall to less than a third of today’s, Jenkins’ review calculated that it would cost more than $7 trillion to build out enough lithium-ion batteries to store a week’s worth of electricity in the U.S. That’s almost 19 times the amount spent on the nation’s electricity over one year.
+Not everyone holds this view. Daniel Kammen, a professor of energy at the University of California, Berkeley, and director of the school’s Renewable & Appropriate Energy Laboratory, objected to the 2015 PNAS paper, but nevertheless thinks that 100% renewables are an achievable goal. “They are wrong,” he said in an email, adding that 100% clean energy is possible with solar, wind and hydro when supported with storage. Kammen, who is a former science envoy to the State Department under Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, did not reply to further questions, but pointed to his lab’s energy system model. In 2016, his group used the model to evaluate costs under a variety of assumptions for a large swath of western North America to reach a target of 85% below 1990 emissions levels by 2050.
+Trieu Mai, a senior energy researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, said the science remains unsettled over the economic viability of the various zero-carbon power options. 
+“I do not believe there has been sufficient analysis to conclusively say which technologies are necessary to reach zero emission power or energy systems,” he said in an email. “There is strong consensus in the literature that growth in renewable energy will be required,” he added, “but the extent of this growth (i.e., whether it should reach 100%) is still under debate.”
+In the end, the larger question of how to decarbonize the energy system may come down to differences in philosophy rather than the science, which is not clear-cut, and involves assumptions about the future.
+“There isn’t a single scientific truth here,” said Jenkins. “It’s a debate about priorities and feasibility, which is defined in a number of different ways by a number of different parties.”
+For Jenkins, though, banking only on solar and wind would be a “mistake.” “Given the high stakes,” he wrote in his 2018 review, “it would be prudent to expand and improve a wide set of clean energy resources, each of which may fill the critical niche for firm, low-carbon power should other technologies falter.”
+“If we’re really in a ‘climate crisis,’ then you go to war with your full arsenal,” Jenkins said. “You don’t hold anything back. And you don’t purposefully make this crisis harder by limiting our already limited options.”"
+"3.6KSummary
+We found several false and misleading claims in the October Democratic presidential debate:
+
+Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro claimed that the most recent jobs data show that “Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania … have lost jobs not gained them.” In fact, total nonfarm employment in all three states was up in August — and since President Donald Trump took office — according to the most recent preliminary federal data.
+Former Vice President Joe Biden was wrong when he said that American troops withdrawing from Syria were “being fired on by [Syrian President Bashar] Assad’s people.”
+Activist and former hedge fund manager Tom Steyer claimed 90% of workers haven’t had a raise in 40 years — but a liberal think tank says their real annual wages are up more than 22%.
+Sen. Cory Booker claimed that “raising the minimum to $15 an hour … would put more money in people’s pockets than giving them $1,000 a month” under businessman Andrew Yang’s universal basic income plan. But Yang’s plan would put more money in more pockets than Booker’s bill to raise the minimum wage.
+Leading economists and tax experts disagree about whether Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s proposed wealth tax would generate enough revenue to fund a host of Warren’s education priorities. Yang rightly noted that several European countries repealed their wealth taxes, in part because they did not raise as much revenue as projected. But Warren’s plan seeks to address some of the weaknesses of those plans.
+Yang and Steyer both exaggerated the number of opioid overdose deaths in America by using total drug overdose death figures. Yang also inaccurately attributed all of the deaths to Purdue Pharma.
+Biden claimed Medicare for All will cost “at least $30 trillion over 10 years. That is more on a yearly basis than the entire federal budget.” It may cost that much, but federal spending is projected to exceed $50 trillion over 10 years. And, while Medicare for All would significantly increase federal spending, it also would eliminate health care spending by individuals, businesses and local governments.
+Sen. Bernie Sanders repeated two claims on health care. He said that “500,000 people” are “going bankrupt” due to cancer, but the study he cites only says that medical issues contributed to those bankruptcies — they were not the sole reason. He also said that “87 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured.” The figure includes 19.3 million who were insured but had a gap in coverage in the previous year. 
+Sanders referred to climate change as an “existential threat.” Scientists agree climate change does pose a threat to humans and ecosystems, but they do not envision that climate change will obliterate all people from the planet.
+Yang repeated a baseless claim that Amazon is responsible for closing “30% of America’s stores and malls.” In fact, there’s evidence that the number of retail stores may actually be increasing.
+
+Twelve candidates for president met for the Oct. 15 debate hosted by CNN and the New York Times in Westerville, Ohio.
+Analysis
+Castro Wrong About Job Losses
+Castro, a former mayor of San Antonio and HUD secretary, was wrong when he said, “Donald Trump has broken his promises because Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania — actually in the latest jobs data — have lost jobs, not gained them.”
+In August, which is the most recent month for seasonally adjusted data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, total nonfarm employment went up by 16,500 in Pennsylvania, by 6,100 in Michigan and by 3,700 in Ohio.
+Castro’s campaign issued a press release during the debate that said the “data from August … is preliminary due to incomplete data and will be revised by the Bureau of Labor Statistics at the end of this month.” The press release added, “This fiscal year, from March through July, the latest month with final numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, non-farm payrolls are down in Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.”
+That’s all true, but it’s not the claim that Castro made during the debate. The “latest jobs data” for states, although preliminary, is for August — not July.
+The estimated job gains in August for Pennsylvania and Michigan surpassed the job losses from March through July. However, Ohio has lost 3,600 jobs from March through August.
+Furthermore, the campaign’s argument is misleading. The fact is, since Trump took office in January 2017, total nonfarm employment is up — not down — in those three states and nationwide. That’s whether one measures up to July or August.
+Biden Wrong on Syria
+Biden mistakenly said that American troops withdrawing from Syria were “being fired on by [Syrian President Bashar] Assad’s people.”
+According to news reports, Turkish militias fired artillery rounds near a U.S. military outpost in northeastern Syria last week, though no U.S. forces were injured. There have been no reports of Assad’s Syrian government forces firing on American troops.
+Biden: I would not have withdrawn the troops and I would not have withdrawn the additional thousand troops who are in Iraq, which are in retreat now, being fired on by Assad’s people.
+After a phone call on Oct. 6  with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President Donald Trump announced he would be withdrawing troops from northern Syria. After initially withdrawing 50 American troops from the Syrian border with Turkey, the Pentagon this week began pulling out all of its 1,000 soldiers from Syria, a process that was expected to take several weeks.
+With the U.S. troop withdrawal, Syrian government forces have moved to retake territory in the country’s northeast, but there have been no reports that they have fired upon retreating U.S. forces, as Biden said.
+New York Times, Oct. 14: Syrian government forces streamed into the country’s northeast on Monday, seizing towns where they had not stepped foot in years and filling a vacuum opened up by President Trump’s decision to abandon the United States’ Syrian Kurdish allies.
+Less than a week after Turkey launched an incursion into northern Syria with Mr. Trump’s assent, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, considered a war criminal by the United States, has benefited handsomely, striking a deal with the United States’ former allies to take the northern border and rapidly gaining territory without a fight.
+News reports made no mention of Syrian forces firing upon withdrawing U.S. troops, though.
+Steyer Wrong on Wages
+Tom Steyer, the billionaire liberal activist, was wrong when he claimed that “90 percent of Americans have not had a raise for 40 years.”
+Even the liberal Economic Policy Institute — a think tank that advocates for low- and middle-income earners — reported in February of this year that the annual wages of the bottom 90% of wage earners have gone up 22.2% since 1979, even after adjustment for inflation. (See Appendix Figure A.)
+And that’s only through 2017. Wages have risen further since then. Average weekly earnings of all production and nonsupervisory wage earners in the private sector have gone up 2.1% (after adjustment for inflation) between December 2017 and last month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
+EPI reports that wage growth has been “sluggish” for the vast majority of workers, compared with a 157% increase for the highest-paid 1% of earners since 1979. But Steyer goes too far when he claims there has been no growth at all.
+Minimum Wage Hike vs. Universal Basic Income
+When asked about how he would convince GM workers to end their strike, Booker took the opportunity to compare his bill to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour to Yang’s universal basic income plan.
+Booker: Well, first of all, the one point I wanted to make about the UBI conversation — and I hope that my friend, Andrew Yang, will come out for this — doing more for workers than UBI would actually be just raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. It would put more money in people’s pockets than giving them $1,000 a month.
+Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would eventually put more than $1,000 a month in some pockets, but Yang’s so-called “Freedom Dividend” would pay “$1,000 per month, or $12,000 per year, to all U.S. citizens over the age of 18 … no questions asked.”
+Booker is a cosponsor of “Raise the Wage Act,” which would increase the minimum wage to $15, but not until six years after enactment. Under the bill, there would be a seven-step phase-in period, beginning with $8.40 an hour and then increasing $1.10 per hour each year for the next six years.
+“The annual earnings for a full-time minimum-wage worker is $15,080 at the current federal minimum wage of $7.25,” according to the Center for Poverty Research at the University of California, Davis. An increase to $15 per hour would more than double that to $31,200 — a difference of $16,120, or $1,343 a month.
+But it would take five years for a person earning minimum wage to earn more than $1,000 a month in additional income.
+Under the Raise the Wage Act, the minimum raise would increase to $8.40 an hour no later than 90 days after the bill is signed into law. That’s an increase of $199 more per month — compared with Yang’s $1,000-per-month plan.
+Five years after the bill takes effect, the minimum wage would increase to $13.90 an hour, providing an additional $1,153 per month. The $15 minimum wage would be fully implemented six years after the bill takes effect, providing $1,343 per month in additional income.
+After seven years, Yang’s plan would have provided $1,000 a month, while the phasing-in of the minimum wage would provide only an average of $771 a month.
+Also, unlike Yang’s plan, the minimum wage pay hike would not affect every American. And increasing the minimum wage to $15 per hour would result in job losses, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
+In a July report, CBO said a $15 minimum wage would directly increase the wages of 17 million workers, but “1.3 million other workers would become jobless.”
+Yang’s plan would put more money in more pockets than raising the minimum wage.
+Warren’s Wealth Tax
+As she has in past debates, Warren ticked off a list of things she says could be paid for with her proposal for an annual wealth tax on all assets over $50 million. As we have written, it is a matter of debate among economists and tax experts as to whether her plan would raise as much as she expects.
+One of Warren’s challengers at the debate, Yang, noted that several European countries have repealed their wealth taxes “because it had massive implementation problems and did not generate the revenue that they’d projected.” That’s backed up in a report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. But the report also argues that a wealth tax is likely needed to close the wealth inequality gap, and it outlines a number of proposed improvements to make a wealth tax more effective than those in Europe. Warren’s plan incorporates many of those suggestions.
+Under Warren’s plan, households would pay an annual 2% tax on all assets — net worth — above $50 million, and a 3% tax on every dollar of net worth above $1 billion. During the debate, Warren highlighted some of the things that tax could bankroll.
+
+Warren: And right now in America, the top 0.1 percent have so much wealth — understand this — that if we put a 2 cent tax on their 50 millionth and first dollar, and on every dollar after that, we would have enough money to provide universal child care for every baby in this country, age zero to 5, universal pre-K for every child, raise the wages of every child care worker and preschool teacher in America, provide for universal tuition-free college, put $50 billion into historically black colleges and universities … and cancel student loan debt for 95 percent of the people who have it.
+
+Warren estimates her wealth tax would raise $2.75 trillion over 10 years, based on an analysis by University of California, Berkeley economists Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez, who study wealth inequality.
+When we wrote about Warren’s plan back in June in our story “Facts on Warren’s Wealth Tax Plan,” we noted that several prominent economists and tax experts cast doubt on Warren’s estimate of the revenue the tax would generate, warning that wealthy people would find ways to avoid the tax.
+Yang noted that that was one of the reasons several European countries scrapped their wealth tax plans.
+
+Yang: And a wealth tax makes a lot of sense in principle. The problem is that it’s been tried in Germany, France, Denmark, Sweden, and all those countries ended up repealing it, because it had massive implementation problems and did not generate the revenue that they’d projected. If we can’t learn from the failed experiences of other countries, what can we learn from? We should not be looking to other countries’ mistakes.
+
+
+Indeed, while as many as a dozen countries in Europe had a wealth tax in the early 1990s, that number has dropped to three as of 2018, according to an OECD report. (In 2018, France replaced its net wealth tax with a new real estate wealth tax.)
+“Decisions to repeal net wealth taxes have often been justified by efficiency and administrative concerns and by the observation that net wealth taxes have frequently failed to meet their redistributive goals,” the report stated. “The revenues collected from net wealth taxes have also, with a few exceptions, been very low.”
+However, the report “also argues that capital income taxes alone will most likely not be enough to address wealth inequality and suggests the need to complement capital income taxes with a form of wealth taxation.”
+The report makes several recommendations to bolster the effectiveness of a wealth tax — lessons learned from the European examples. Warren’s plan has attempted to incorporate many of those suggestions.
+For example, the OECD report recommends a wealth tax only be levied on the very wealthy, that the rate should be low, exemptions and reliefs should be limited (to prevent those subject to the tax from moving assets into exempted categories), and that payments should be allowed in installments for those “facing liquidity constraints.” All of those are part of Warren’s plan.
+Under the Warren plan, those with liquidity issues would be able to defer tax payments, with interest, for up to five years. And to guard against wealthy Americans simply moving out of the country to avoid the wealth tax, Warren’s plan would assess a one-time 40% “exit tax” on the net worth above $50 million for those who renounce their citizenship.
+We take no position on whether those provisions in the Warren plan would address the lower-than-expected revenues generated by some European countries that tried a wealth tax, but we simply note that there is significant disagreement among economists and tax experts.
+Biden on Medicare for All
+As he has done in past debates, Biden repeatedly criticized the Medicare for All proposal as a budget buster, saying it would increase federal spending by $30 trillion over 10 years. But Biden ignored that nearly all health care spending by businesses, local governments and individuals would go away.
+At one point, Biden said: “The plan is going to cost at least $30 trillion over 10 years. That is more on a yearly basis than the entire federal budget.” He turned to the issue later in the debate, saying something similar: “It costs $30 trillion. Guess what? That’s over $3 trillion — it’s more than the entire federal budget.”
+We should start out by saying that $30 trillion over 10 years is not “more than the entire federal budget.” In its August report on long-term budget projections, the Congressional Budget Office estimates federal outlays will be $57.8 trillion over 10 years, from 2020 to 2029.
+Also, as we’ve explained before, we don’t know how much Medicare for All would cost, since many details are yet to be determined. But two estimates, one by the Urban Institute and another by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, said the federal government cost would be $32 trillion or $32.6 trillion over 10 years.
+The government would have to raise taxes or fees, or cut other spending, to cover the costs. But Biden ignores the fact that current health care spending by private insurers, employers, individuals and states would shift to the federal government.
+Opioid Epidemic
+In relating the severity of the opioid epidemic, Yang and Steyer gave inaccurate figures for the number of overdose deaths from opioids.
+“I think this is one of the most heartbreaking experiences that America’s had — 72,000 people died of opioid overdoses last year,” Steyer said in response to a moderator’s question about how he would address the opioid epidemic.
+Steyer’s statistic, however, is for 2017, and applies to deaths from overdoses from any drug, not just those from opioids. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website, there were 70,237 deaths from any drug in 2017, with 47,600, or 67.8%, involving opioids. 
+For 2018, provisional CDC data suggest that overdose deaths fell, to 68,618 deaths from any drug. The agency estimates that 47,625 deaths, or 69%, were opioid-related.
+The 72,000 number that Steyer used is well known because it was widely reported as a provisional 2017 figure from the CDC in August 2018 (the final data, which we report above, differs slightly, and is limited to U.S. residents). 
+Yang made a similar error when he claimed that Purdue Pharma was responsible for eight deaths per hour.
+Yang: There was a point when there were more opiate prescriptions in the state of Ohio than human beings in the state of Ohio. And for some reason, the federal government thought that was appropriate. They ended up levying a $600 million fine against Purdue Pharma, which sounds like a lot of money, until you realize that company made $30 billion. They got a 2% fine, and they killed tens of thousands of Americans, eight an hour.
+We contacted the Yang campaign to find out the source of the eight deaths an hour claim, and we were directed to a Vox news article reporting on the initial 2017 estimate of 72,000 overdose deaths, which noted that the death toll was equivalent to nearly 200 per day. The campaign then spelled out the math, explaining that 200 divided by 24 hours was 8.33.
+The math checks out, but as with Steyer, those eight deaths per hour were not due just to opioids. Rather, opioids were involved in about 5 deaths per hour in 2017.
+Yang’s other error is to ascribe all of the overdose deaths to Purdue Pharma. While Purdue Pharma, as the maker of OxyContin, is arguably responsible for many opioid-related deaths, the company isn’t responsible for all of them.
+
+Medical Bankruptcies and the ‘Underinsured’
+Sanders stated that “500,000 people” are “going bankrupt” because “they came down with cancer.” As we wrote in September, Sanders is referencing a March 2019 editorial article in the American Journal of Public Health. Of the 910 respondents who declared bankruptcy between 2013 and 2016, 66.5% said medical expenses or medical problems either “somewhat” or “very much” contributed to their bankruptcies. This percentage translates to just under half a million bankruptcies when applied to the 750,489 non-business bankruptcies filed from 2015-2019. 
+Medical issues weren’t the sole reason for some of those bankruptcies. Also, the survey did not ask about specific medical conditions, so there’s no evidence those bankruptcies happened only because of medical expenses related to cancer or any other disease.
+Sanders repeated another claim he has made in previous debates, saying that “87 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured.” As we’ve written before, this figure comes from a Commonwealth Fund study and includes 19.3 million who were insured when they were surveyed but had a gap in coverage in the previous year.
+“Of the 194 million U.S. adults ages 19 to 64 in 2018, an estimated 87 million, or 45 percent, were inadequately insured,” the study said. It broke down the “inadequately insured” into three different categories: 24 million uninsured, 43.8 million who were “underinsured” and 19.3 million who were insured but had been uninsured at some point in the prior year.
+Climate Change
+Debate moderators did not ask candidates about climate change, but that didn’t stop a few candidates from referring to it, including Sanders, who used a descriptor that could use some clarification.
+“We’re forgetting about the existential threat of climate change,” Sanders said early on in the debate.
+“Existential” has become a popular word among Democrats to describe the danger that climate change poses. As we’ve written in our coverage of a previous debate, it’s not entirely clear what politicians mean when they use the word. But if taken literally to mean the end of humanity, the descriptor is incorrect.
+Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann told us previously in an email that the idea that humans would go extinct because of climate change “simply cannot be defended scientifically.”
+Yet scientists are clear that climate change does pose serious risks to civilization through increased temperatures, sea level rise and extreme weather, among other factors — especially if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated.
+In some cases, this could even mean a specific location would be uninhabitable, said Benjamin Cook, a climate scientist at NASA. But does he think climate change is going to wipe humanity off the face of the Earth? “No,” he said.
+Yang Wrong About Amazon — Again
+Yang doubled down on a false claim about Amazon.com.
+Yang: Amazon alone is closing 30% of America’s stores and malls, soaking up $20 billion in business while paying zero in taxes.
+As we reported Aug. 1, after he made the same claim in the second Democratic debate, Yang went way beyond the facts. We found no factual basis for the claim that 30% of stores have closed, and some evidence that the number may be increasing. The National Retail Federation reports that “54 percent of surveyed retailers plan to open new stores in 2019, and 36 percent of those surveyed will have a higher store count than in 2018.” Furthermore, the retail services firm JLL reported last year that 850 new stores were being planned over the next five years by firms that previously had sold only through the internet.
+We also noted that the Wall Street Journal has estimated that Amazon paid 8% of its income in taxes for the years 2012 through 2018 — which the Journal noted was “low, but not zero or negative.”
+It’s true that a 2017 Business Insider report estimated that 30% of retail malls (not stores) were being pushed “to the brink of death” (but not necessarily over it) by a wave of store closings by old-line retailers including JCPenney and Sears. But malls are not stores, and even that report didn’t cite Amazon’s competition as the sole cause of the malls’ distress. 
+Sources
+Kiely, Eugene et. al. “FactChecking July’s Round Two Debate.” FactCheck.org. 1 Aug 2019.
+Cook, Benjamin. Climate scientist, NASA. Interview with FactCheck.org. 26 Jul 2019.
+Mann, Michael. Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science, Pennsylvania State University. Email sent to FactCheck.org. 23 Jul 2019.
+Kiely, Eugene et. al. “FactChecking the Second Democratic Debate.” FactCheck.org. 31 Jul 2019.
+Collins, Sara R. et. al. “Health Insurance Coverage Eight Years After the ACA.” The Commonwealth Fund. 7 Feb 2019.
+Robertson, Lori et. al. “FactChecking the September Democratic Debate.” FactCheck.org. 13 Sep 2019.
+Himmelstein, David U. et. al. “Medical Bankruptcy: Still Common Despite the Affordable Care Act.” Am J Public Health. 109(3):431-433, 2019.
+United States Courts. Bankruptcy Filings Continue to Decline. 22 Apr 2019.
+U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National); Total Nonfarm Employment, Seasonally Adjusted.” Data accessed 15 Oct 2019.
+U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “State and Area Employment, Hours, and Earnings (Pennsylvania); Total Nonfarm Employment, Seasonally Adjusted.” Data accessed 15 Oct 2019.
+U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “State and Area Employment, Hours, and Earnings (Ohio); Total Nonfarm Employment, Seasonally Adjusted.” Data accessed 15 Oct 2019.
+U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “State and Area Employment, Hours, and Earnings (Michigan); Total Nonfarm Employment, Seasonally Adjusted.” Data accessed 15 Oct 2019.
+Castro, Julian. “FACT: Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania Have Lost Jobs Under Trump.” Press release. 15 Oct 2019.
+Gould, Elise. “State of Working America Wages 2018.” Economic Policy Institute. 20 Feb 2019.
+Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National); Average Weekly Earnings of production and nonsupervisory employees, 1982-1984 Dollars.” Data extracted 16 Oct 2019.
+Rubin, Richard. “Does Amazon Really Pay No Taxes? Here’s the Complicated Answer.” Wall Street Journal. 14 Jun 2019.
+Peterson, Haley and Skye Gould. “Store closures will push 30% of US malls to the brink of death.” Business Insider. 7 Mar 2017.
+Aronholt, Bethany. “Setting the record straight on the state of retail and store closures.” National Retail Federation. 15 Apr 2019.
+Maloney, Greg. “Once-Online-Only Brands Will Open 850 Brick-And-Mortar Stores Over Next Five Years.” Forbes. 12 Nov 2018.
+Congressional Budget Office. “An Update to the Budget and Economic Outlook: 2019 to 2029.” 21 Aug 2019.
+Robertson, Lori. “The Facts on Medicare for All.” FactCheck.org. 24 Apr 2019.
+Holahan, John, et. al. “The Sanders Single-Payer Health Care Plan.” Urban Institute. May 2016.
+Blahous, Charles. “The Costs of a National Single-Payer Healthcare System.” Mercatus Center, George Mason University. Jul 2018.
+“What is the Freedom Dividend?” Friends of Andrew Yang. Undated. Accessed 16 Oct 2019.
+U.S. Senate. “S. 150, Raise the Wage Act.” (as introduced 16 Jan 2019.)
+“What are the annual earnings for a full-time minimum wage worker?” Center for Poverty Research at the University of California, Davis. 12 Jan 2018. 
+Congressional Budget Office. “The Effects on Employment and Family Income of Increasing the Federal Minimum Wage.” Jul 2019.
+LaMothe, Dan. “U.S. forces say Turkey was deliberately ‘bracketing’ American troops with artillery fire in Syria.” Washington Post. 12 Oct 2019.
+White House website. “Statement from the Press Secretary.” 06 Oct 2019.
+Vanden Brook, Tom. “Pentagon to withdraw 1,000 troops from Syria within weeks, pulling back in fight against ISIS.” USA Today. 14 Oct 2019.
+Hubbard, Ben and Schmitt, Eric. “Assad Forces Surge Forward in Syria as U.S. Pulls Back.” New York Times. 14 Oct 2019.
+OECD Tax Policy Studies. “The Role and Design of Net Wealth Taxes in the OECD.” 2018.
+Farley, Robert. “Facts on Warren’s Wealth Tax Plan.” FactCheck.org. 25 Jun 2019.
+OECD iLibrary. “Overview of individual net wealth taxes in OECD countries.” 2018.
+Summers, Lawrence H. and Sarin, Natasha. “Opinions: A ‘wealth tax’ presents a revenue estimation puzzle.” Washington Post. 4 Apr 2019.
+Saez, Emmanuel and Zucman, Gabriel. “Response to Summers and Sarin, ‘A wealth tax presents a revenue estimation puzzle,’ Washington Post, April 4.” 25 Jun 2019.
+CDC. “Drug Overdose Deaths.” Accessed 16 Oct 2019. 
+CDC, National Center for Health Statistics. “Vital Statistics Rapid Release: Provisional Drug Overdose Death Counts.” Accessed 16 Oct 2019.
+Hedegaard, Holly et. al. “Drug overdose deaths in the United States, 1999–2017.” NCHS Data Brief, no 329. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. 2018.
+Ingraham, Christopher. “Fentanyl use drove drug overdose deaths to a record high in 2017, CDC estimates.” Washington Post. 15 Aug 2018.
+Sanger-Katz, Margot. “Bleak New Estimates in Drug Epidemic: A Record 72,000 Overdose Deaths in 2017.” New York Times. 15 Aug 2018.
+Lopez, German. “2017 was the worst year ever for drug overdose deaths in America.” Vox. 16 Aug 2018.
+Allyn, Bobby. “Purdue Pharma, Accused Of Fueling Opioid Crisis, Files For Chapter 11.” NPR. 16 Sep 2019."
+"9.9K1Quick Take
+A political group took credit for planting a woman who espoused “eating babies” to address climate change at a recent town hall event hosted by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But some have still misrepresented the woman as “AOC’s crazy supporter.”
+
+
+Full Story 
+A bizarre moment at an Oct. 3 town hall event with Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was seemingly designed for virality.
+Nearly an hour and a half into the event in Queens, New York, a woman stood up and proclaimed that, due to climate change, “we only have a few months left.” Her proposed solution? “We got to start eating babies.”
+The exchange was instantly shared on social media and was shown the same night on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” A reporter for the conservative website the Daily Wire shared the video on Twitter, characterizing the episode as “one of Ocasio-Cortez’s constituents loses her mind over climate change.”
+President Donald Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., shared that tweet, writing: “Seems like a normal AOC supporter to me.” The president then responded to his son’s tweet, calling Ocasio-Cortez a “Wack Job!”
+But it was quickly revealed to be a political stunt. The same night, a political action committee that supports Trump — and whose website refers to global warming as “population reduction, not science” — publicly took credit.
+“Thanks, that was us,” the Lyndon LaRouche Political Action Committee wrote in a tweet, adding: “Satire is always the best.”
+
+Also, a LaRouche PAC-endorsed U.S. Senate candidate in New Jersey, Daniel Burke, posted a statement from the organization to his campaign Facebook page on Oct. 4, saying a “volunteer for LaRouche PAC committed a prank against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez after thinking about the actual implications of the Extinction Rebellion and the Green New Deal.”
+In the days since, though, some have continued to share the video, misrepresenting it as if a genuine moment. On Oct. 4, the comedian Terrence K. Williams — a Trump supporter who recently spoke at a White House event alongside the president — posted a video of himself reacting to footage from the town hall under the caption, “AOC’s CRAZY SUPPORTER.”
+In the video, the woman is heard saying: “We only have a few months left. I love that you support the Green Deal, but it’s not getting rid of fossil fuel. It’s not going to solve the problem fast enough … I think your next campaign slogan has to be this, ‘We got to start eating babies.’ We don’t have enough time. There’s too much CO2.”
+She also removed a jacket to reveal a T-shirt that read, “Save the Planet, Eat the Children.”
+In his video, Williams tells his viewers at one point: “AOC, this is what you are creating right here. AOC, this is all you.”
+At no point does Williams acknowledge that the outburst was staged and that the woman was not a “supporter” of Ocasio-Cortez. Many who commented on his video said they were appalled by the woman’s remarks, and suggested she was representative of Ocasio-Cortez supporters. (One user wrote, “Look I don’t follow politics to [sic] much. Thanks for the posting. But seriously AOC is a lunatic and obviously her supporters are as well.”) 
+The video — which continues to attract viewers — has received more than 457,000 views and has been shared over 18,000 times. In an Oct. 7 Facebook post about the same reaction video, Williams reposted his video, urged “TWITTER LEGAL TEAM” to leave him alone, and wrote that he had “criticized AOC’s response to her looney supporter saying we should eat babies to stop climate change.”
+Another Facebook page also posted a clip of the woman’s outburst on Oct. 3 with the caption: “This is REAL. These people are out there. One of AOC’s constituents, absolutely CRAZED over climate change hysteria, advocated for eating babies at tonight’s town hall meeting.”
+Ocasio-Cortez has prioritized the issue of climate change during her months in Congress. One of her early proposals was a nonbinding resolution outlining goals for a “Green New Deal.” We should note that Ocasio-Cortez has not suggested that “we only have a few months left” due to climate change, as the woman at the event declared.
+Ocasio-Cortez didn’t directly respond to the woman’s comments about eating babies. Instead, she said: “We need to treat the climate crisis with the urgency that it does present; luckily we have more than a few months. We do need to hit net-zero [greenhouse gas emissions] in several years. But I think we all need to understand that there are a lot of solutions that we have and that we can pursue and that if we act in a positive way, there is space for hope.” 
+In a tweet after the town hall, the congresswoman said, “At one point I was concerned there was a woman in crisis & want to ensure we treat the situation compassionately.” She also said, “This person may have been suffering from a mental condition and it’s not okay that the right-wing is mocking her and potentially make her condition or crisis worse.”
+The next day, Ocasio-Cortez acknowledged that the episode was orchestrated, referring to the woman as a “Trump supporter.” We don’t know the woman’s identity, but as we said, the group that took credit for the staged incident supports Trump and has called the performance an act of satire.
+Some on Twitter also pointed out that the woman can be seen in a video about stopping the “fascist green movement” that the LaRouche PAC posted in September. 
+We reached out to the LaRouche PAC to ask for more information on the stunt and the woman at the center of it, but we did not receive a response.
+The political action committee’s namesake is Lyndon LaRouche, an eight-time presidential candidate who died earlier this year. LaRouche had once referred to global warming as a “scientific fraud.”
+Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here.
+Sources
+Lyndon LaRouche PAC (@larouchepac). “LaRouchePAC trolls AOC, AOC doesn’t rule out eating babies. #EatTheBabies.” Twitter. 3 Oct 2019.
+Lyndon LaRouche PAC (@larouchepac). “Thanks, that was us. Malthusianism isn’t new, Jonathan Swift can tell you that. Satire is always the best.” Twitter. 3 Oct 2019.
+“Remarks by President Trump at Young Black Leadership Summit 2019.” White House. 4 Oct 2019.
+“Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Town Hall Meeting.” C-SPAN. 3 Oct 2019."
+"22.8KQuick Take
+A photo was manipulated to show young climate activist Greta Thunberg with philanthropist George Soros, who is known for funding progressive causes. The original image was of Thunberg and former vice president Al Gore.
+
+
+Full Story 
+Young climate activist Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old from Sweden, has received considerable attention in recent weeks for her work raising awareness about climate change: She testified before a congressional committee on Sept. 18, spoke at the United Nations’ Climate Action Summit on Sept. 23, and became a subject of a tweet by President Donald Trump.
+She also has received some unwanted attention from social media users, who have spread a doctored image that shows her with philanthropist George Soros.
+The original image appeared on Thunberg’s Instagram in December 2018 and in reality shows Thunberg meeting former vice president Al Gore, a Democrat who is also known for his advocacy against climate change.
+The manipulated photo has a small green watermark reading “Secret News” — which we found is an online French satirical website. The website published the edited photo in an Aug. 28 story that falsely claimed Thunberg was Soros’ granddaughter.
+But the photo circulated on social media with no indication of satirical intent, and users made comments suggesting that Thunberg is “scripted” or that Soros is “paying” Thunberg. The billionaire philanthropist, known for funding liberal causes, has become a staple target of conspiracy theories and falsehoods over the years — some of which we’ve debunked.
+The photo was passed around amid other online attempts to tie Thunberg to Soros.
+The Gateway Pundit, a popular conservative blog, claimed in a misleading headline that the “Official Escort for 16-Year-Old Global Warming ‘Expert’ Greta Thunberg Is a Leftist Hack Funded by George Soros Org.” The post centered on Thunberg’s fellow climate activist Luisa Neubauer — not an “official escort” or “handler,” as the story says. The story cites Neubauer’s connection to the organization ONE, a nonprofit working to combat poverty and disease that has received “major backing” from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
+It’s correct that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation credits Soros with being involved in the origins of ONE, and that Soros’ nonprofit Open Society Foundations and its Open Society Policy Center are among nearly 50 publicly listed donors to ONE. But Neubauer was a youth ambassador to the organization — which ONE describes as a “volunteer” role for young activists — and the Gateway Pundit offered no substantiation in its article for the idea that Neubauer herself was “funded” by a “George Soros Org.”
+Furthermore, Neubauer, 23, told another fact-checking site, Lead Stories, that she “never received any money from the ONE position.” She described Thunberg as a “friend,” saying she has never been in a position to supervise her. 
+Neubauer in a recent TEDx Talk said that she first participated in a climate strike when she joined a Thunberg demonstration at the U.N.’s Climate Change Conference in 2018 — which prompted her to begin FridaysForFuture demonstrations, inspired by Thunberg, in Germany.
+Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here.
+Sources
+“About ONE.” ONE.org. Accessed 30 Sep 2019.
+“Financials.” ONE.org. Accessed 30 Sep 2019.
+“Greta Thunberg is the granddaughter of left-wing billionaire George Soros” (translated). SecretNews.fr. 28 Aug 2019.
+“Greta Thunberg (Young Climate Activist) at the Climate Action Summit 2019 – Official Video.” United Nations. YouTube. 23 Sep 2019.
+Thunberg, Greta (@gretathunberg). “Thank you @algore for being a true pioneer. Very few people have done more. It was an honour to meet you. #climatecrisis #climatebreakdown.” Instagram. 30 Dec 2018.
+U.S. House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. “Voices leading the next generation on the global climate crisis.” 18 Sep 2019.
+“Why I became a climate activist — and you should, too | Luisa Neubauer.” TEDx Talks. YouTube. 1 Aug 2019."
+"6.1KQuick Take
+A post on social media falsely claims to show litter left behind by Climate Strike protesters in London on Sept. 20. The photo is from a completely unrelated event in April. 
+
+Full Story
+The Global Climate Strike, an international series of protests from Sept. 20-27, had thousands of participants in over 150 countries marching against climate change and the fossil fuel industry. Critics have labeled these protesters as hypocrites after a photo of a littered field went viral on Facebook and Twitter, supposedly showing the aftermath of one of the Climate Strike protests.
+One Facebook post from Sept. 20 has over 130,000 shares and nearly 500 comments. The post reads: “Aftermath of ‘Climate Strike’ yesterday. Yes, listen to the kids, they will guide our planet, I guess they haven’t learnt the basics yet.” 
+The photo also received considerable attention on the Australian Youth Coal Coalition Facebook page, which has since removed a post that said: “Look at the mess today’s climate protesters left behind in beautiful Hyde Park. So much plastic. So much landfill. So sad.”
+Here are the facts: the photo shows Hyde Park in London, not the park of the same name in Sydney, Australia. It was taken April 20, not last week. And the trash was left behind by people attending an event celebrating the unofficial marijuana holiday 420 — not a climate protest.
+Even in April, people falsely identified activists from Extinction Rebellion, a movement fighting against climate change, as the source of the litter. Those protesters were nearby at a different event at the same time as the cannabis festival in Hyde Park. Royal Parks, the charity that manages Hyde Park, addressed those false claims in an April 23 tweet.
+“There’s a lot of incorrect information doing the Twitter rounds this morning,” the post reads. “This photo is the result of an unofficial event in Hyde Park on Saturday, not the #ExtinctionRebellion protestors in Marble Arch.” 
+
+
+The Hemp Trading Company, a hemp fashion brand based in London, also confirmed that the trash was from the 420 event. “This was the aftermath of Hyde Park 420 – and was *cleaned up* by Extinction Rebellion crew,” it wrote in an April 21 post on Facebook.
+
+
+
+ 
+Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here.
+Sources
+Thomson, Lizzie. “420 Hyde Park 2019: What is 420 day? Everything you need to know about the London event.” Evening Standard. 18 Apr. 2019, accessed 26 Sept. 2019.
+Royal Parks (@theroyalparks). “There’s a lot of incorrect information doing the Twitter rounds this morning. This photo is the result of an unofficial event in Hyde Park on Saturday, not the #ExtinctionRebellion protestors in Marble Arch. It costs us millions to clear #litter every year. Please take it home..” Twitter. 23 Apr. 2019.
+Extinction Rebellion (@ExtinctionR). “This is from a totally separate event that took place in Hyde park. #ExtinctionRebellion activists went to help tidy up anyway because it grossed us out as much as it does you.”
+THTC – The Hemp Trading Company. Trash in Hyde Park. Facebook, 21 Apr. 2019, www.facebook.com/THTC1/posts/10157525788004349:0. Accessed 26 Sept. 2019."
+"649In making his case for taking swift action on climate change, Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg inaccurately said that “we could lose half the world’s oxygen because of what’s going on in the oceans.” Scientists say that’s a misreading of the evidence.
+Climate change does pose a threat to oceans, including by reducing the amount of dissolved oxygen in the water, which in some places could be cut in half. But globally, oceans are projected to lose only 1%-7% of their oxygen, and the world’s atmospheric oxygen supply is not at risk.
+Buttigieg’s comment came about halfway through his 40-minute segment of CNN’s climate-focused town hall event on Sept. 4. The marathon event stretched over seven hours and featured nine other leading Democratic candidates.
+The mayor of South Bend, Indiana, began by referencing future generations before turning to the oceans and oxygen levels. 
+Buttigieg, Sept. 4: And for me and everybody I know, for the children that we hope to have, for the people who will be alive at the turn of the century, when if we don’t change what we’re doing, we could lose half the world’s oxygen because of what’s going on in the oceans. That is unthinkable.
+When asked for support for the statement, the Buttigieg campaign directed us to an online news story in Smithsonian Insider about declining oxygen levels in the ocean as a result of human activity. The story reports on a 2018 paper published in the journal Science, which details what scientists know about the subject. The Smithsonian Insider quoted a scientist as saying “approximately half” of the oxygen on Earth comes from the ocean. 
+But as Kristen Krumhardt, a postdoctoral researcher and biological oceanographer at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, told us, that fact “doesn’t really have to do with the deoxygenation problem” — and it doesn’t mean we could lose half of the world’s oxygen.
+As we’ve explained before, the Earth’s atmosphere is around 21% oxygen, and nothing about climate change is going to reduce the amount of oxygen in the air by any noticeable degree. Even if nearly every living organism were incinerated, the oxygen concentration in the air would hardly budge, falling from 20.9% to 20.4%.
+“Under no circumstances will half the world’s breathable oxygen be gone by 2100 or even by 21,000!” said Scott Denning, an atmospheric scientist at Colorado State University, in an email.
+When scientists say that oceans produce half of the world’s oxygen, they’re referring to the total amount of photosynthesis that’s being done by organisms in the ocean, such as phytoplankton, compared with all photosynthesis performed on land and the ocean. As we’ve detailed before, this is called primary production, and it turns out the job is fairly evenly split — land and ocean each do about 50%. 
+While it’s important that all that photosynthesis happens, it has almost no bearing on the current concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere because the ocean consumes virtually all of the oxygen it makes. Indeed, as we’ve written, it’s only after millions of years of slight oxygen surpluses that the planet has accumulated its hefty oxygen reserves, and nothing is going to change that anytime soon.
+Nevertheless, it is true that the total amount of oxygen the ocean produces is expected to fall with continued climate change — although not to the extent that Buttigieg said. According to Krumhardt, who has studied the topic, climate models indicate that the primary productivity of the ocean will decline by around 5% by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated. This will happen, she said, primarily because of changes in nutrient availability for the marine algae that do much of the ocean’s photosynthesis. 
+As the world’s seas warm, the higher temperatures will generally encourage phytoplankton growth, Krumhardt explained. But the heat will also reduce the amount of nutrient mixing that occurs between the layers of the ocean, increasing what scientists call ocean stratification. While some places with readily available nutrients could see a boost in productivity, generally speaking, fewer nutrients will make it to the top, sunlit areas of the ocean. The net effect, she said, will likely be a small decline in the amount of oxygen produced.
+Again, as Krumhardt said, the reduced productivity is “hardly going to make any dent” in atmospheric oxygen. But it will mean that the world’s waters are capable of supporting less life. Phytoplankton, she said, form the base of the marine food web, and a reduction in the amount of energy they make can have ripple effects up the food chain, including a decrease in the number of fish.
+While Buttigieg didn’t refer to ocean oxygen levels in his statement, ocean deoxygenation is a legitimate concern. Together with ocean acidification, deoxygenation is one of the biggest threats to the ocean from increasing global temperatures. But if deoxygenation is what he had in mind, Buttigieg also overstated the impact.
+Denise Breitburg, a marine scientist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center and the lead author of the Science review paper that the cited news story covered, told us in an email that there are places in the ocean where half the oxygen in the water could be lost, but that “isn’t true” of the whole ocean. Instead, models project the ocean will lose 1%-7% of its dissolved oxygen by 2100.
+In some locales, large oxygen declines have already occurred. In Monterey Bay, California, for example, water oxygen levels between 250 and 400 meters deep fell 40% between 1998 and 2013. A climate monitoring station in the northeastern Pacific has also documented a 22% drop in oxygen at 100-400 meters deep between 1956 and 2006.
+Less available oxygen in the water is bad news for many fish species and other aquatic creatures, such as crustaceans, that have relatively high oxygen demands. Not all organisms will be affected, since some are already adapted to low-oxygen environments, and others can continue to survive even if oxygen levels fall considerably. But fast-changing conditions in select areas could spell doom for many species. 
+Measurements of ocean oxygen suggest that global levels have fallen by about 2% since 1960, in tandem with increased greenhouse gas emissions and rising temperatures. But the declines have been much steeper in certain pockets of the ocean. According to Breitburg’s review, over the past century open-ocean oxygen-minimum zones, or areas where oxygen is too low to support most aquatic life, have grown by 1.7 million square miles — an area approximately the size of the European Union — and the portion of the ocean that is entirely lacking in oxygen has quadrupled.
+Global warming increases ocean deoxygenation in two main ways. First, because the water is warmer, oxygen solubility is lower, and the water simply holds fewer oxygen molecules. Scientists estimate that solubility alone accounts for about 15% of the oxygen loss that has already occurred, and it explains more than half of the oxygen loss in the top 1,000 meters. 
+The other 85% of deoxygenation is thought to be due to more extreme ocean stratification, which is driven both by temperature and other indirect effects of warming. “Warm water is buoyant,” Denning explained, “so surface water floats on top and can’t mix oxygen down to depths where organic matter sinks below surface.” Hotter conditions on Earth also boost ice melt and change precipitation patterns, which can lower the salinity of the surface water, adding to the separation of the ocean layers. The end result is less mixing of oxygen at the surface and less spread of nutrients from lower depths.
+Complicating matters further, under higher temperatures, organisms will have faster metabolisms and will use oxygen more quickly, which could compound the issue of deoxygenation for certain creatures.
+And in an odd feedback loop, scientists think marine bacteria could end up producing more nitrous oxide if global warming continues and lower-oxygen waters expand. Nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas that’s nearly 300 times better at trapping heat than carbon dioxide over a century. 
+In coastal areas, too, deoxygenation of waters is a problem, largely because of fertilizer runoff and sewage discharges, which trigger algal blooms that deplete the water of oxygen when microbes consume the algae. Climate change can make these events worse.
+Buttigieg is wrong about a 50% decline in the world’s oxygen. But he has a point that failing to address climate change will have an impact on oceans. As Breitburg said in her Science review, “the total amount of oxygen loss will be a few percent by the end of the century, a decline that could have substantial biogeochemical and ecological effects.”"
+"6.4K1Just as CNN was beginning its climate town hall event, President Donald Trump tweeted a list of “8 facts” boasting of the nation’s air quality and carbon emissions reductions. Several of his “facts,” however, are inaccurate or misleading.
+Contrary to the president’s claims, the United States — not China — is responsible for having released more carbon pollution than any other nation. Trump also erred when he said that no Americans live in regions with air pollution above the World Health Organization’s guideline level.
+The president’s counterprogramming arrived minutes after the first Democratic presidential candidate took the stage to talk about climate change. CNN dedicated seven hours to the event, which gave 10 of the top-polling candidates 40 minutes each to explain how they would approach the issue as president.
+In his Twitter thread, Trump began with carbon emissions before moving on to some of his favorite topics, including energy production and clean air and water.
+
+8 FACTS that #FakeNewsCNN will ignore in tonight’s “Climate Forum”
+— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 4, 2019
+
+
+4. The U.S. now leads the world in energy production…
+BUT…
+5. Who's got the world's cleanest and safest air and water? 
+AMERICA!
+— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 4, 2019
+
+
+7. The badly flawed Paris Climate Agreement protects the polluters, hurts Americans, and cost a fortune. NOT ON MY WATCH!
+8. I want crystal clean water and the cleanest and the purest air on the planet – we’ve now got that!
+— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 4, 2019
+
+Many of Trump’s claims are things we’ve heard before, so we’ll review the repeats here and also explain a few of the new ones. 
+On carbon emissions. The president kicked off his list by touting America’s progress on reducing pollution and claiming that China “has dumped the most carbon into the air.” 
+As we’ve explained before, since 2000, the United States did make the largest absolute reduction in emissions of any country. But large absolute reductions are only really possible in big countries full of people who pollute a lot per person. 
+In terms of a percent decline in emissions, many industrialized nations in Europe have bested America. Denmark slashed its emissions by 34% between 2000 and 2016, while France scored a 20% cut, and the United Kingdom made a 29% cut. In comparison, the U.S. managed only a 14% decline over the same period, and remains the second highest overall polluter and the 10th highest per capita polluter.
+Trump’s claim that China “has dumped the most carbon into the air” is false. China is currently the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide, but historically, the United States has dumped more carbon into the atmosphere. According to the Global Carbon project, the U.S. has released 399 billion tons of carbon dioxide between 1751 and 2017, more than any other nation on Earth. China is second, with 200 billion tons. The U.S. accounts for 25% of global cumulative emissions, while China’s share is 13%.
+International Energy Agency data for 2016 also show that China is not one of the biggest per capita polluters. It comes in at number 39 — 29 spots after the U.S.
+For more, see: “Trump Twists Facts in Environmental Speech,” Nov 28, 2018
+On air pollution. The president’s third fact was that 91% of the world’s population is “exposed to air pollution above the World Health Organization’s suggested level.” This is true. The WHO features the statistic on its website, and a nearly identical 90% appeared in a press release when the group announced updates to its ambient air quality database in 2018. But Trump went on to say that “NONE ARE IN THE U.S.A.!” That’s false. 
+While most Americans aren’t exposed to air pollution above the WHO’s guidelines, some are. According to a fact sheet prepared by the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute, as of 2016, about 15% of the country lives in a county that fails to meet the WHO’s standards on particulate pollution. The sheet notes that Fresno, California, for example, has pollution levels that are twice the recommended level, and other places in California and the Midwest are also above the guideline level.
+The WHO’s interactive map of air pollution also refutes the president’s categorical claim. While much of the country appears green, indicating the area meets the standard for the smallest and most dangerous form of particulate pollution known as PM2.5, there are patches of the nation that are yellow or orange and exceed those limits. Those places include multiple locales in California, an area outside of Chicago and scattered spots across the Midwest. Readings from individual cities such as Bakersfield, Houston and Steubenville, Ohio, also show places above the 10 micrograms per cubic meter guideline for PM2.5 and the 20 microgram per cubic meter guideline for PM10.
+Overall, the WHO data make the case that there is much less air pollution in the United States than in most of the world. But Trump is wrong to say that no Americans suffer from air pollution levels above the WHO guideline.
+On energy production. Trump also claimed, as he has before, that the U.S. “now leads the world in energy production.” 
+The United States, however, is not the top energy producer, at least according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The most recent global figures from the EIA put the U.S. behind China in 2016 when counting total primary energy, or the total of all fossil fuels, nuclear power and renewables.
+Under Trump, energy production has expanded, but not to a degree that eclipses China’s production in 2016. The U.S. produced 96 quadrillion Btus in 2018, which did not exceed China’s 2016 total of 107 quadrillion Btus.
+The U.S. has become the largest producer of crude oil — a threshold the nation crossed last summer, although the title was long expected. The U.S. was already No. 1 for natural gas and petroleum production before Trump took office.
+For more, see: “Trump’s Campaign Kickoff Claims,” June 19 and “FactChecking Trump’s Energy Boasts,” June 8, 2018
+On clean air and water. The president twice referenced clean air and water in his list of purported facts, first claiming America has the “cleanest and safest air and water” and later implying that he is responsible for the accomplishment.
+This is one of Trump’s favorite environmental subjects, but by several metrics, the U.S. does not rank first in the world. And there is little evidence to suggest the administration has made air or water quality better.
+As we’ve written previously, the 2018 Environmental Performance Index positions the U.S. 10th overall for best air quality and 29th for water and sanitation. On drinking water, America is ranked No. 1 along with nine other nations. But on water resources, or a measure of effective wastewater management, the U.S. comes in at No. 39, and on air pollution, a middling 83rd.
+Before ending his Twitter thread, Trump indicated he should be given credit for the nation’s air and water quality. “I want crystal clean water and the cleanest and the purest air on the planet – we’ve now got that!” he said, listing the sentence as his eighth fact. 
+But the U.S.’s only top ranking for drinking water predates Trump. As we’ve said, the ranking used 2016 data, and therefore does not reflect any change under Trump. 
+Data from the Environmental Protection Agency also do not document any meaningful improvement on air quality under Trump. Some air quality trends have gotten better between 2016 and 2018, according to the EPA’s latest report. But others, including concentrations of two kinds of particulate matter and the number of days with unhealthy levels of air pollutants for sensitive groups, have worsened.
+For more, see: “Trump Twists Facts in Environmental Speech,” July 10, “Trump Bungles Climate Change in UK,” June 7 and “U.S. Not Ranked the ‘Cleanest’ Country,” Aug. 23, 2018"
+"13.5K11Q: Does the Amazon produce 20% of the world’s oxygen?
+
+A: No. Scientists estimate the percentage is closer to 6 to 9%, and the Amazon ultimately consumes nearly all of that oxygen itself. 
+
+FULL QUESTION
+Does the Amazon Rainforest truly produce 20% of the Earth’s oxygen? Where does the remaining 80% come from?
+FULL ANSWER
+On Aug. 20, Brazil’s space agency sparked a media frenzy when it released satellite data showing an alarming number of wildfires in the Amazon rainforest over the past year — nearly 40,000, or a 77% rise compared with the same time period in 2018.
+Most of the fires have started since June. NASA also has confirmed the surge, declaring 2019 the worst year for wildfires in the region since 2010. Scientists attribute the uptick in fires to increased deforestation, at least some of which, critics say, has been encouraged by Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro.
+As news outlets across the globe picked up the story, journalists began to spread the false but catchy factoid that the Amazon produces 20% of the world’s oxygen. ABC, CNN and Newsweek, among others, cited the statistic.
+Politicians then joined in, repeating the factoid to draw attention to the blazes. For instance, Sen. Kamala Harris, a Democratic presidential candidate, shared the number and suggested it was even higher. “The Amazon creates over 20% of the world’s oxygen and is home to one million Indigenous people,” she said in an Aug. 23 tweet.
+French President Emmanuel Macron also quoted the statistic in an Aug. 22 tweet calling for world leaders to address the fires at the Group of Seven summit. (His tweet was accompanied by an outdated photo of a burning forest from 1989.)
+
+
+Readers, too, have asked us if the statistic is true. Despite its near ubiquity online following the announcement of the Amazon fires, scientists say the 20% figure is overblown. Not only is the number too high by at least half, but it also obscures the fact that the Amazon consumes almost all of the oxygen it produces. 
+As Gordon Bonan, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, told us, “Oxygen is a red herring.” Bonan said he’s been hearing the 20% factoid for at least a decade. It’s so pervasive, he’s even overheard it being said to schoolkids on tours at his workplace.
+“People want to talk about the impact of deforestation,” he said. “Somehow they’ve latched on to this idea that forests create oxygen. That’s not what deforestation is doing.”
+The Amazon isn’t critical because it makes oxygen for humans to breathe — that was largely done by phytoplankton in the sea over millions of years. Instead, it’s because of the area’s rich biodiversity, its vast stores of carbon and the way the forest influences the local and global climate.
+A Better Estimate
+Shortly after media outlets, politicians and others began to share the 20% factoid, scientists knew the number was far too high, and a few shared their own calculations to correct the record. On Twitter, environmental scientist and executive director of the nonprofit Project Drawdown, Jonathan Foley, estimated that the Amazon produces around 6% or less of the planet’s oxygen. 
+Across the pond, Yadvinder Malhi, an ecologist at the University of Oxford who specializes in the Amazon rainforest, came up with 9%.
+Bonan said that both numbers are essentially the same and are “within the ballpark of uncertainty” for the calculation.
+Both rely on estimates of how much photosynthesis — or what scientists call primary production — tropical forests do, relative to the total amount done on land and the ocean. During photosynthesis, plants and other organisms, such as aquatic algae, take in carbon dioxide, and with water and a bit of sunlight, create carbohydrates and release oxygen. As a result, the amount of photosynthesis performed is proportional to the amount of oxygen created.
+The exact numbers vary, but according to a study Foley did in 1995 and a more recent 2010 Science paper Malhi referenced, tropical forests do approximately a quarter to a little more than a third of all photosynthesis on land. The Amazon makes up about half or less of all tropical forests, so it alone does about 12-16% of all land photosynthesis. As Malhi writes in a blog post that addresses this question, rounding that higher-end figure up might be where the 20% factoid came from.
+But that’s still only considering photosynthesis from land plants. The ocean accounts for about half of all photosynthesis, which means that only about 6-9% of the world’s oxygen, and perhaps less, is produced by the Amazon.
+“With a little more analysis and a more thorough review of the literature, we could probably derive a slightly better estimate with more specific uncertainties,” said Scott Saleska, a University of Arizona ecosystem ecologist who agreed with the 6-9% approximation.
+But, Saleska said, the exact percentage doesn’t really matter because the Amazon, just like any other ecosystem, ends up consuming nearly all of the oxygen it makes. Perhaps surprisingly, plants suck up about half or more of the oxygen they produce as they, like humans, respire, using oxygen to break down carbohydrates to grow and survive in the inverse reaction to photosynthesis. People associate respiration with animals, but plants do it too — it’s just not usually detectable to scientists until nighttime, when plants have stopped pumping out oxygen, NCAR’s Bonan said.
+The remaining half or so of the Amazon’s oxygen is consumed by other creatures, mostly microorganisms, which help decompose fallen leaf litter, dead wood and other rainforest debris. In this way, Malhi explains in his blog post, the net contribution of the Amazonian ecosystem to the world’s oxygen level is “effectively zero.”
+Earth’s Oxygen Origins
+So where does the Earth’s oxygen come from, if not from plants? The answer is that it has come from plants and other photosynthetic organisms — just ones that died long ago under unique circumstances.
+Colorado State University atmospheric scientist Scott Denning said that for there to be a net oxygen gain, some portion of the photosynthetic material that made the oxygen must never rot.
+“The easiest place to do that is at the bottom of the sea, under the mud,” he said in a phone interview. As phytoplankton, or microscopic algae, die, Denning explained, most will be consumed, or rot. But a very small amount will make it all the way down into the depths of the ocean to an oxygen-free environment, where it will be retained for the long-term, eventually forming oil and gas. Because the algae never decomposed, the oxygen it made while it was alive is not offset, thus creating a small amount of extra oxygen. The same preservation process can happen on land with plants to create coal, but it requires special conditions. “The only real place is peat bogs,” said Denning.
+Only around one-millionth of all photosynthetic matter ends up buried in this way, Denning said, so in any given year, there’s only a tiny bit of oxygen being created. But over millions of years, that tiny surplus of oxygen added up — and it’s why today’s atmosphere is around 21% oxygen.
+No Lack of Oxygen
+The sheer amount of oxygen currently in the atmosphere is yet another reason why there’s no need to bemoan the Amazon’s burning out of fear that the planet’s oxygen will dwindle.
+It is true that if wide swaths of the Amazon went up in smoke, oxygen levels would fall, but only very, very slightly — and certainly not to levels that would pose a risk to humans. According to data collected by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, each year, 19 out of every million molecules of oxygen, or 0.002%, are lost, primarily from burning fossil fuels. But there is so much oxygen in the atmosphere already that these minute changes are inconsequential. Shanan Peters, a University of Wisconsin-Madison geologist, told the Atlantic that even if every living thing on Earth other than humans burned up, oxygen levels would fall from 20.9% to 20.4%. And according to Denning, it would take millions of years to meaningfully deplete the globe’s oxygen supply.
+The notion that failing to preserve tropical rainforests would deplete the Earth’s oxygen goes back to at least 1996, when Columbia geochemist and pioneering climate change researcher Wallace Broecker took the time to debunk the idea in a university magazine. Broecker, incidentally, was perhaps the first person to use the phrase “global warming,” and one of the earliest scientists to study the topic.
+The concept that oxygen levels are falling, and might be something to worry about, is even older. In a 1970 Science paper, Broecker did the math to show that because of the abundance of oxygen already in our atmosphere, the tiny drops expected from burning fossil fuels would have virtually no impact. Even if all fossil fuels were burned, he said, less than 3% of oxygen would be lost. “Claims that this important resource is in danger of serious depletion are not at all valid,” he wrote.
+Broecker’s nearly half-century-old conclusion still holds today. There is no need to worry about oxygen declines, either from fossil fuels — which are in fact the plant or plant-like remnants responsible for our abundant stores of oxygen — or from the living, breathing Amazon.
+Still Worth Protecting
+Even though the Amazon isn’t responsible for the oxygen humans breathe, all the scientists we spoke to emphasized that the place is very special, and deserves to be protected.
+At the top of the list, said Saleska, is the Amazon’s nearly unrivaled biodiversity. “It is a showcase and archive of the genetic endowment of 300 million years of evolution,” he said, “the value of which it is impossible to say because we simply don’t yet know how to read all the treasure maps that it contains.”
+The Amazon also fuels the local wet climate, as trees absorb water and then release much of it into the atmosphere as water vapor. This massive-scale recycling of water, Saleska said, provides water to populations in the south and to the agricultural breadbasket of South America, located in central Brazil.
+“The big concern is that when some of those trees are lost, that water recycling is cut off at the knees, threatening the integrity of the whole system,” he said. “We worry that we will soon cross a threshold of forest loss, a point of no return, after which the water recycling pump will be insufficient to maintain the system and we will see forest collapse independent of further human depredations.”
+In terms of limiting climate change, preserving the Amazon is incredibly important because of the immense amount of carbon stored within the forest. According to a 2015 Nature paper, the Amazon contains around 150-200 metric gigatons of carbon in its biomass and soil, making it “one of the largest ecosystem carbon pools on Earth.” 
+“If the forest were to burn down, or die off and be replaced with pastures,” said Denning, “then a huge amount of CO2 would be released to the atmosphere.” He estimates it would be enough to raise the concentration of the gas by approximately 100 parts per million — a nearly 25% increase over current levels.
+There is also some evidence that the Amazon might be helping to remove some of the excess carbon dioxide that’s pumped into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. Precisely because of the extra CO2 in the air, plants might be growing a tad faster, which for the moment, could mean a slight net removal of CO2 within the Amazon ecosystem, as long as deforestation is limited. But Denning cautioned that this is a hotly debated topic, and scientists disagree about whether any tropical forest is capable of taking out more CO2 from the air than it’s putting back in.
+“Even if they are taking net carbon out of the atmosphere, it’s at most 1% of the photosynthesis,” he said.
+Finally, even apart from climate change, scientists suspect an absent Amazon would alter conditions elsewhere on the globe, changing how heat is spread and where vegetation grows, as one of Saleska’s modeling studies showed.
+It’s for these reasons, scientists told us — and not the danger of impending suffocation — that society should protect the Amazon. While some people have argued that the reason shouldn’t matter as long as conservation prevails, scientists disagree. As Jonathan Foley, the scientist who arrived at the 6% estimate, said on Twitter, “advancing ‘facts’ known to be wrong to advance a cause, even a good one, is still wrong. We got into these environmental messes by not listening to the science. And we can’t get out of them by ignoring science.”
+Sources
+de Oliveira Andrade, Rodrigo. “Alarming surge in Amazon fires prompts global outcry.” Nature News. 23 Aug 2019.
+Andreoni, Manuela and Christine Hauser. “Fires in Amazon Rain Forest Have Surged This Year.” New York Times. 21 Aug 2019.
+NASA Earth Observatory. Uptick in Amazon Fire Activity in 2019. 23 Aug 2019, accessed 30 Aug 2019.
+Escobar, Herton. “There’s no doubt that Brazil’s fires are linked to deforestation, scientists say.” Science News. 26 Aug 2019.
+McCarthy, Kelly. “Expansive fires in the Amazon rainforest are ‘truly heart-wrenching,’ NatGeo explorer says.” ABC News. 22 Aug 2019.
+Yeung, Jessie and Abel Alvarado. “Brazil’s Amazon rainforest is burning at a record rate, research center says.” CNN. 22 Aug 2019.
+Van Hagen, Isobel. “#PRAYFORAMAZONIA: Photos of Amazon Rainforest Fire Show Devastation of One of the World’s Largest Ecosystem.” Newsweek. 21 Aug 2019.
+Harris, Kamala (@KamalaHarris). “Brazil’s President Bolsonaro must answer for this devastation. The Amazon creates over 20% of the world’s oxygen and is home to one million Indigenous people. Any destruction affects us all.” Twitter. 23 Aug 2019.
+Macron, Emmanuel (@EmmanuelMacron). “Our house is burning. Literally. The Amazon rain forest – the lungs which produces 20% of our planet’s oxygen – is on fire. It is an international crisis. Members of the G7 Summit, let’s discuss this emergency first order in two days! #ActForTheAmazon.” Twitter. 22 Aug 2019.
+Tardáguila, Cristina. “Madonna, Leonardo DiCaprio, Cristiano Ronaldo and Emmanuel Macron didn’t fact-check before posting images about the Amazon fires.” Poynter. 23 Aug 2019.
+Bonan, Gordon. Senior Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research. Interview with FactCheck.org. 28 Aug 2019.
+Malhi, Yadvinder. “Does the Amazon provide 20% of our oxygen?” Travels in Ecosystem Science blog post. 24 Aug 2019, accessed 30 Aug 2019.
+Gough, Chrisopher M. “Terrestrial Primary Production: Fuel for Life.” Nature Education Knowledge. 3(10):28, (2011).
+Foley, Jonathan A. “An equilibrium model of the terrestrial carbon budget.” Tellus B: Chemical and Physical Meteorology. Volume 47, Issue 3 (1995).
+Beer, Christian, et. al. “Terrestrial Gross Carbon Dioxide Uptake: Global Distribution and Covariation with Climate.” Science. Vol. 329, Issue 5993, pp. 834-838 (2010).
+Saleska, Scott. Assistant Professor, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona. Email sent to FactCheck.org. 29 Aug 2019.
+Denning, Scott. “Amazon fires are destructive, but they aren’t depleting Earth’s oxygen supply.” The Conversation. 26 Aug 2019.
+Denning, Scott. Professor of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University. Interview with FactCheck.org. 30 Aug 2019.
+NOAA. What are phytoplankton?. Last updated 25 Jun 2018. Accessed 30 Aug 2019.
+Scripps O2 Program. Frequently Asked Questions. Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Accessed 30 Aug 2019.
+Brannen, Peter. “The Amazon Is Not Earth’s Lungs.” The Atlantic. 27 Aug 2019.
+Broecker, Wallace S. “Et tu, O2?.” 21st C of Columbia University, 1996.
+Schwartz, John. “Wallace Broecker, 87, Dies; Sounded Early Warning on Climate Change.” New York Times. 19 Feb 2019.
+Broecker, Wallace S. “Man’s Oxygen Reserves.” Science. Vol. 168, Issue 3939, pp. 1537-1538, 1970.
+Foley, Jonathan. Executive Director, Project Drawdown. Interview with and email sent to FactCheck.org. 29 Aug 2019.
+Brienen, R. J. W. et. al.  “Long-term decline of the Amazon carbon sink.” Nature. Volume 519, pp. 344-348, (2015)."
+"2.6KSummary
+Another debate, and another crop of false and misleading claims.
+
+Sen. Kamala Harris of California and former Vice President Joe Biden disagreed on whether his health care plan would “cover everyone.” Biden’s website says it would “insure more than an estimated 97% of Americans.”
+Biden claimed that Harris’ health care plan would raise “middle-class taxes,” but Harris has said she would exempt households with up to $100,000 in income, with a higher threshold in “high-cost areas.”
+Several candidates glossed over the fact that a Medicare for All plan would require an increase in federal taxes, but would also eliminate or reduce health care spending by other payers, such as employers and individuals.
+Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York said that Biden wrote in a 1981 op-ed “that he believed that women working outside the home would, quote, ‘create the deterioration of [the] family.’” The op-ed never explicitly said that, and Biden was quoted at the time as saying either parent could stay home to raise the couple’s children.
+Businessman Andrew Yang said “Amazon is closing 30% of America’s stores” — a claim we find has no basis in fact — and that the internet giant “is paying zero taxes,” though the Wall Street Journal concludes Amazon probably paid an 8% rate over the years 2012-2018.
+Biden said that President Barack Obama “came up with the idea the first time ever, dealing with the Dreamers,” and “put that into law.” Biden was referring to an executive action — not a law, as he said — that temporarily deferred deportation for those brought into the U.S. illegally as children.
+New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio claimed the city “could not proceed” in taking disciplinary action against a police officer involved in the 2014 death of Eric Garner “because the Justice Department was pursuing their prosecution.” The New York City Police Department said it delayed out of “deference” to the DOJ, not a prohibition.
+Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey referred to climate change as “the crisis that is existential,” and Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington said “the survival of humanity on this planet” depends on the next president. Scientists, however, don’t think climate change will wipe out humans from the Earth.
+Biden attacked Harris’ past record in California, describing police department abuse that occurred under her watch that led to the release of 1,000 “prisoners.” Biden’s account — which Harris said was “simply not true” —  is broadly accurate, but he got a few important details wrong.
+Harris talked about women not being “paid equally for equal work,” but then cited figures that were not representative of men and women doing the same work.
+De Blasio said, “We got rid of stop and frisk.” The controversial police tactic has been largely curtailed in New York City but not completely eliminated. 
+
+CNN hosted the second of two Democratic debates on July 31 in Detroit, with another field of 10 candidates. For our story on the first night, see “FactChecking the Second Democratic Debate.”
+Analysis
+Harris-Biden Spar on Health Care
+Biden initially said that his health care plan would cover the “vast, vast, vast majority” of Americans, but when pushed by Harris, he later said it would “cover everyone.” His own campaign website says otherwise.
+Harris: I’m going to go back to Vice President Biden, because your plan does not cover everyone in America.
+By your staff’s and your own definition, 10 million people — as many as 10 million people will not have access to health care. And in 2019 in America, for a Democrat to be running for president with a plan that does not cover everyone, I think is without excuse. Our plan covers everyone. …
+Biden: My plan does — will cover everyone, number one.
+Biden’s website does not claim that his health care plan would cover everyone in the U.S.
+Biden’s plan calls for, among other things, offering a Medicare-style public health insurance option as a choice and increasing tax credits for individuals purchasing insurance on the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges.
+His website says his plan to “build on the Affordable Care Act” will “insure more than an estimated 97% of Americans.”
+Harris’ campaign told us she gets to Biden leaving “as many as 10 million people” uninsured by calculating 3 percent of the currently estimated U.S. population of 329.3 million, which works out to 9.88 million people. However, that figure includes more than just “Americans,” as Biden’s campaign website said, because not everyone living in the U.S. is a citizen.
+It’s worth noting that Biden’s campaign has reportedly said that under his plan, immigrants living in the U.S. illegally would be able to purchase insurance through the ACA exchanges, which is currently not allowed. Those immigrants still wouldn’t be eligible for federal subsidies, his campaign explained.
+We asked Biden’s campaign about his debate claim of coverage for everyone, but we did not receive a response.
+Harris-Biden on Health Care, Round Two
+Biden launched his own health care attack on Harris, saying her plan “will require middle-class taxes to go up, not down.”
+Harris has proposed her own version of a Medicare for All plan that features an expanded Medicare system, including private insurers, and phased in over a 10-year period.
+But, in a July 29 Medium post, Harris said her plan to pay for her proposal will “exempt households making below $100,000, along with a higher income threshold for middle-class families living in high-cost areas.”
+She said she would take that approach because, to pay for his Medicare for All plan, Sen. Bernie Sanders has proposed potentially charging a 4 percent income-based premium for families of four making over $29,000. “I believe this hits the middle class too hard,” Harris’ post said.
+The Biden campaign did not respond to our request for an explanation of his claim of a middle-class tax hike.
+Cost of Medicare for All
+In a lengthy back-and-forth about how much a Medicare for All proposal would cost in taxes, the candidates glossed over the fact that such a universal health care plan would raise federal taxes substantially but would decrease or eliminate all other sources of payment for health care. One side in this argument — Bennet and Biden — focused only on the taxes, while the other side — Harris and de Blasio — focused on costs in the current health care system.
+Bennet said that “the plan that Senator Warren and Senator Sanders and Senator Harris have proposed” would “massively raise taxes on the middle class to the tune of $30 trillion.” (See our item above on the “middle class” claim.) De Blasio later responded: “Certainly, with all due respect to Senator Bennet, what he’s saying is absolutely inaccurate about taxes. Americans right now are paying so much money for their health care, ask people about the reality of premiums, deductibles, copays, out-of-pocket expenses.”
+Bennet countered: “Bernie Sanders … is the guy who says it will cost $32 trillion and that we’re going to have to raise those taxes to pay for it. … Don’t try to distract from the truth.” Biden sided with Bennet, saying: “Thirty trillion dollars has to ultimately be paid. And I don’t know what math you do in New York, I don’t know what math you do in California, but I tell ya, that’s a lot of money, and there will be a deductible. The deductible will be out of your paycheck, because that’s what will be required.”
+Earlier, Biden had said: “The plan, no matter how you cut it, costs $3 trillion when it is, in fact, employed, number one,” to which Harris responded, “First of all, the cost of doing nothing is far too expensive. Second, we are now paying $3 trillion a year for health care in America.”
+Harris is right about what we spend now. Total national health care expenditures were $3.5 trillion in 2017, according to the National Health Expenditure Accounts.
+As we’ve explained before, we don’t know how much Medicare for All — or Harris’ new health care plan, which preserves a role for private insurers — would ultimately cost, since many details are yet to be determined. But two estimates, one by the Urban Institute and another by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, said the federal government cost would be $32 trillion or $32.6 trillion over 10 years. The government would have to raise taxes or fees, or cut other spending, to cover the costs. But, as Bennet and Biden leave out, current health care spending by private insurers, employers, individuals and states would shift to the federal government.
+Biden and Child Care
+Gillibrand asked Biden to explain statements that he made in a 1981 newspaper op-ed about legislation to expand a federal child care tax credit.
+“He voted against it, the only vote, but what he wrote in an op-ed was that he believed that women working outside the home would, quote, ‘create the deterioration of family,’” Gillibrand said. “He also said that women who were working outside the home were, quote, ‘avoiding responsibility.’” 
+That’s not exactly what Biden wrote.
+The op-ed, which her campaign communications director posted on Twitter, was critical of expanding the federal tax credit for those Biden called “upper-income families.”
+Biden wrote that it is “legitimate and necessary” for the government to help “single parents on limited incomes to get off of welfare” or “families of modest means to adequately provide the material necessities of child-rearing.” But he called it ridiculous for the government to subsidize child care expenses for an “upper-income family” that wants a second income to buy a swimming pool or a larger home.
+He offered an unsuccessful amendment that would have imposed an income cutoff, writing that 6,000 families earning more than $100,000 claimed the tax credit in 1978. (According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, $100,000 would be equivalent to about $400,000 in today’s dollars.)
+Gillibrand mentioned none of that, but she instead focused on another argument that Biden made in his op-ed: two-income families are resulting in “the deterioration of family.”
+“I think it’s a sad commentary on our society when the Senate of the United States says, as a matter of social policy, that we should make it easier for people who have neither the financial necessity nor personal need to forsake their responsibility to care for their own children,” Biden wrote, calling himself “old-fashioned.”
+Gillibrand said that Biden wrote “that he believed that women working outside the home would, quote, ‘create the deterioration of family,’” but the op-ed never explicitly said that women should stay home to care for children. And, in a recent story on Biden’s position on the 1981 legislation, HuffPost said a news story quoted Biden at the time as saying either the man or woman could stay home.
+“I do not care whether in a modern marriage you want the man or the woman to take that responsibility. That has to be resolved by each couple individually,” Biden was quoted as saying in the July 29, 1981, edition of the Indianapolis News.
+But, as the HuffPost noted, Biden’s position at the time “would have disproportionately affected women” — which led Gillibrand to ask Biden twice if he “no longer believes” that women should stay at home and not work.
+“I never believed it,” Biden said.
+Yang Wrong About Amazon
+Businessman Andrew Yang went way beyond the facts when he said, “Amazon is closing 30 percent of America’s stores and malls and paying zero in taxes while doing it.” (He was arguing for higher taxes on corporations to finance his plan to give $1,000 per month to every American.)
+We find no support for the claim that 30% of U.S. stores are closing, much less that Amazon.com Inc. is the sole cause.  Furthermore, the online giant has paid federal income taxes over the years. The Wall Street Journal has estimated that Amazon paid 8% of its income in taxes for the years 2012 through 2018 — which the Journal noted was “low, but not zero or negative.”
+Store closures — When we asked Yang’s campaign for evidence to support his claim, his staff cited a 2017 Business Insider report estimating that 30% of retail malls (not stores) were being pushed “to the brink of death” by a wave of store closures announced by JCPenney, Macy’s, Sears, American Apparel, The Limited and Abercrombie & Fitch. Yang’s staff also pointed to a 2016 CNBC interview with retail analyst Jan Kniffen, who predicted that about one-third of retail malls (not stores) were “not long for this world.”
+But neither article said Amazon was the sole cause. Kniffen laid the blame on too many stores. “On an apples-to-apples basis, we have twice as much per-capita retail space as any other place in the world,” Kniffen said. In the video interview, Kniffen cited Amazon as a contributing factor. The Business Insider report didn’t mention Amazon at all. It cited “declining customer traffic, falling occupancy rates, and low sales productivity” in “lower quality malls.” 
+We also note that Yang spoke of “stores and malls” and not just “malls.” Malls and stores are two different things, and the number of stores may be going up.
+The National Retail Federation reports that “54 percent of surveyed retailers plan to open new stores in 2019, and 36 percent of those surveyed will have a higher store count than in 2018.” One example of a flourishing brick-and-mortar store chain is retailer Dollar General — which says it puts its stores in “convenient neighborhood locations,” as opposed to malls. Since 2007, Dollar General has nearly doubled the number of its stores, from 8,194 to 15,597 as of May 3 this year.
+So we find the claim that 30 percent of “stores” are closing is without factual support.
+Taxes — It was widely reported that in 2018 Amazon paid $0 in federal income taxes — and actually got a $129 million rebate — mainly as a result of the 2017 corporate tax cut signed by President Trump. But the Wall Street Journal later reported it is not actually certain that Amazon paid zero tax in 2018 (tax returns are private under federal law). And based on Amazon’s financial disclosures to investors, the Journal said: “From 2012 through 2018, Amazon reported $25.4 billion in pretax U.S. income and current federal tax provisions totaling $1.9 billion. That is an 8% tax rate—low, but not zero or negative.”
+Obama and Dreamers
+At one point in the debate, de Blasio pressed Biden to explain his position on “all those deportations” that occurred during the Obama administration.
+“You were vice president of the United States. I didn’t hear whether you tried to stop them or not, using your power, your influence in the White House,” de Blasio said. “Do you think it was a good idea, or you think it was something that needed to be stopped?”
+Biden responded by praising Obama’s record on immigration, but the former vice president went too far.
+Biden: The president came along, and he’s the guy that came up with the idea, first time ever, dealing with the Dreamers. He put that in the law. He had talked about a comprehensive plan which he put on the – laid before the Congress, saying that we should find a pathway to citizenship for people. He said we should up the number of people that we’re able to bring in to this country.
+As president, Obama did support a comprehensive immigration plan, but he wasn’t successful in getting it into law. As a result, Obama resorted to using his executive powers to temporarily defer deportation for so-called Dreamers.
+The executive action, which Obama announced on June 15, 2012, allowed young immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children to apply for work permits without fear of deportation for two years, subject to renewal, if they meet certain eligibility requirements. The policy — the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA — applies to those who are 30 or younger and who came to the U.S. before the age of 16.
+But Obama did not “put that in the law,” as Biden said.
+The Biden campaign told us that the policy has the force of law. But, because it is not a law, another president can rescind it. That is exactly what Trump has done — resulting in a state of limbo for many young people still living in the U.S. without legal status.
+In a fact sheet on the history of the DREAM Act, the American Immigration Council recounts how Trump has attempted to rescind the policy but has been partially blocked by the courts. Currently, the program is not accepting new applicants, but those in the program or those who have been in the program in the past can apply for renewal of the DACA protections on a two-year basis, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
+A law would have provided the so-called Dreamers with permanent legal status. But such legislation has failed to garner enough Republican support — even though the first Senate bill was introduced in 2001 by a Republican, then-Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah. 
+“The first version of the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act was introduced in 2001. As a result, young undocumented immigrants have since been called Dreamers,” the American Immigration Council fact sheet says. “Over the last 18 years, at least ten versions of the Dream Act have been introduced in Congress. While the various versions of the Dream Act have contained some key differences, they all would have provided a pathway to legal status for undocumented youth who came to this country as children.”
+NYC Action in Garner Case
+New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio falsely claimed that a federal investigation barred the city from taking action against the police officer involved in the 2014 death of Eric Garner, a black man killed while being arrested for illegally selling loose cigarettes on Staten Island.
+The U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York announced on July 16 that there would be no federal civil rights charges in the case. The high-profile case became a focus during the debate, as protesters interrupted candidates with calls for the firing for Officer Daniel Pantaleo, who placed Garner in a chokehold.
+At one point, moderator Jake Tapper asked de Blasio: “Why is that police officer still on the force, the one who killed Eric Garner? Please respond.”
+
+De Blasio replied: “Well, let me tell you. I know the Garner family. They’ve gone through extraordinary pain. They are waiting for justice and they are going to get justice. There’s finally going to be justice. I have confidence in that — in the next 30 days — in New York. You know why? Because for the first time, we are not waiting on the federal Justice Department, which told the city of New York that we could not proceed because the Justice Department was pursuing their prosecution. And years went by, and a lot of pain accrued.”
+But de Blasio’s own previous statements affirm that the city deferred to the Justice Department — not that the city was technically prevented from taking disciplinary action.
+“Years ago, we put our faith in the federal government to act. We won’t make that mistake again,” de Blasio said in a July 16 statement. “New York City is not the same city it was five years ago. We are a different city, and we must act like a different city. Moving forward, we will not wait for the federal government to commence our own disciplinary proceedings.”
+Likewise, a New York City Police Department deputy commissioner said in a 2018 letter to the Justice Department that the force had delayed disciplinary proceedings out of “deference to ongoing requests from the U.S. Department of Justice … so as not to have an adverse impact on any ongoing federal criminal civil rights investigation or possible federal criminal prosecution.”
+A Justice Department media statement responding to that letter said the DOJ had “informed” the deputy commissioner “this spring” that “the New York Police Department may move forward with their disciplinary proceedings as they deem appropriate.”
+The police department’s disciplinary trial for Pantaleo concluded in June. A decision is still forthcoming.
+Climate Change
+Two candidates, Booker and Inslee, used language of survival and existence to describe the threat of climate change, which could be misleading.
+Booker said during the climate section of the debate, “Everything must be sublimated, to the challenge and the crisis that is existential, which is dealing with the climate threat.”
+Inslee, in his closing remarks, echoed that sentiment.
+Inslee: For decades, we have kicked the can down the road on climate change. And now under Donald Trump, we face a looming catastrophe. But it is not too late. We have one last chance. And when you have one chance in life, you take it. Think about this: Literally the survival of humanity on this planet and civilization as we know it is in the hands of the next president. 
+Many other candidates have also used the word “existential” in the past to describe the threat of climate change, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren in last night’s debate. 
+The language is vague, so it’s hard to tell exactly what is meant in each case, but it’s worth noting that climate scientists do not expect climate change to eliminate the human race from the planet.
+“There is too much over-heated rhetoric these days arguing that all life, including human beings, will go extinct,” said Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann about climate change in an email. “That simply cannot be defended scientifically.”
+Nevertheless, he said it was valid to argue that if the world fails to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, it could lead to levels of warming and other climate effects — including sea level rise and extreme weather events — that represent threats to civilization.
+“A ‘Mad Max’-like future, while not constituting extinction per se,” he said, “is not a future any of us would want to live in.”
+Sonali McDermid, a climate scientist at New York University, agreed. “While I don’t think [climate change] will annihilate our species, I think it will make this planet a much more difficult place to live, negatively impact a lot of people who had very little to do with causing the problem, and generally compromise our well-being,” she said.
+Benjamin Cook, a climate scientist at NASA, also concurred with that assessment. 
+“Do I think climate change is going to wipe humanity off the face of the Earth?” he asked. “No.”
+But the effects could be serious, he said, and are likely to depend on where one lives. “It could be existential in a given locality if the impacts are so severe that the current way of life is no longer tenable,” he said.
+Inslee’s comments also imply that the next four or so years represent a “last chance” to take action on climate change. That’s unlikely to be true. 
+As we’ve explained before, scientists don’t view climate change as having a hard cutoff. Being aggressive on emissions now will certainly reduce negative consequences and make it easier in the long run to address the challenge, but that does not mean efforts at a later date would have no impact.
+Biden on Harris’ 1,000 ‘Prisoners’
+Biden related a story from Harris’ past that charged her with failing to prevent abuse in the criminal justice system.
+Biden: Secondly, she also was in a situation where she had a police department when she was there that in fact was abusing people’s rights. And the fact was that she in fact was told by her own people that her own staff that she should do something about and disclose to defense attorneys like me that you in fact have been — the police officer did something that did not give you information [that would exculpate] your — your client. She didn’t do that. She never did it. And so what happened.
+Along came a federal judge and said enough, enough. And he freed 1,000 of these people. If you doubt me, Google 1,000 prisoners freed, Kamala Harris.
+When allowed to respond, Harris said, “That is — is simply not true.”
+Biden is likely referring to events when Harris was district attorney of San Francisco. In June, the Wall Street Journal reported that in 2005, against the advice of her staff, Harris did not institute a so-called “Brady policy” that would have required prosecutors to inform defendants of any past misconduct by law enforcement. 
+In 2010, a crime lab tech was found to be stealing drug evidence from the lab, which led to a scandal in which 1,000 drug cases were dismissed.
+A Superior Court judge, Anne-Christine Massullo, reprimanded Harris, saying in a court order that the “District Attorney failed to disclose information that clearly should have been disclosed.”
+After the scandal, Harris did institute a Brady policy.
+Based on the reporting, Biden’s version of events mostly hews to what happened. But he erred in saying Harris never implemented a Brady policy and when referencing 1,000 “prisoners” being freed, when that was the number of cases that were dropped. He also misidentified the judge by gender and court level.
+Harris on Gender Pay Gap
+Harris suggested that figures representing the pay gap between men and women who work full-time, year round, were for men and women doing “equal work.”
+Harris: Since 1963, when we passed the Equal Pay Act, we have been talking about the fact women are not paid equally for equal work. Fast forward to the year of our lord 2019, and women are paid 80 cents on the dollar, black women 61 cents, Native American woman 58 cents, Latinas 53 cents.
+Harris appears to be citing figures the National Partnership for Women & Families published in May. But the statistics are not representative of men and women doing the same work.
+“Nationally, the median annual pay for a woman who holds a full-time, year-round job is $41,977 while the median annual pay for a man who holds a full-time, year-round job is $52,146,” the NPWF fact sheet says. “This means that, overall, women in the United States are paid 80 cents for every dollar paid to men, amounting to an annual gender wage gap of $10,169.”
+And for women of color, the comparison wasn’t to all men, but to non-Hispanic white males working full-time, year-round.
+“Among women who hold full-time, year-round jobs in the United States, Black women are typically paid 61 cents, Native American women 58 cents and Latinas just 53 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men,” the fact sheet explains.
+Now, as we’ve written before, an April 2019 report from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research analyzed the gap in median weekly earnings for male and female full-time workers doing the same job. It did conclude that “[w]omen’s median earnings are lower than men’s in nearly all occupations,” but the gaps varied widely depending on the occupation.
+The group’s report on 2018 earnings says that the female-to-male earnings ratio for all full–time weekly workers was 81.1 percent, and women’s percentage of their male counterparts’ median weekly earnings was higher than that in 14 of the top 20 most common occupations for women.
+Those who made nearly as much as their male counterparts included cashiers and customer service representatives (almost 99 percent); bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks (95 percent); social workers (nearly 94 percent); and registered nurses (91 percent). And in two cases, female workers earned more than their male counterparts: receptionists and information clerks (102 percent) and general office clerks (nearly 105 percent).
+On the other hand, the analysis shows that women do not earn more than men in any of the top 20 male-dominated occupations.
+The study didn’t find enough data for female workers to make a valid comparison in five of those fields, but in the other 15 professions for which comparable data are available, women earned more than 81.1 percent of their male counterparts’ earnings in just six professions, including software developers (nearly 87 percent) and laborers and freight, stock and material movers (87.3 percent).
+De Blasio on ‘Stop and Frisk’
+De Blasio used his opening remarks to tout his mayoral record, including on crime. “We got rid of stop and frisk and we lowered crime,” he said.
+De Blasio’s claim would benefit from additional context. The controversial policy of stopping people for suspicious activity — Stop, Question and Frisk — has been largely curtailed under de Blasio, but the most recent data available show such stops are not gone altogether.
+As we’ve explained before, such stops were already on the decline when de Blasio took office in early 2014, but they have been greatly reduced under his administration. The number of such stops was at nearly 700,000 in 2011, according to New York City Police Department data. That was reduced to about 192,000 in 2013 — the year before de Blasio took office — and then to nearly 46,000 in 2014. Since then, the number of stops has dropped to about 11,000 in 2018.
+The de Blasio campaign could not provide data for 2019. “We ended the era of mass stop & frisk — which was really at its peak in 2011,” a de Blasio spokeswoman told us.
+As for de Blasio’s claim about lowered crime in the city, many crimes in New York have indeed declined under his administration. The total number of major felony offenses, for example, has dropped every year under de Blasio, NYPD data show. For more on that, see “The Trumps vs. de Blasio on NYC Crime.”
+Sources
+Farley, Robert. “The Trumps vs. de Blasio on NYC Crime.” FactCheck.org. 17 May 2019.
+“Seven Major Felony Offenses.” New York City Police Department. Accessed 31 Jul 2019.
+“Stop, Question and Frisk Data.” New York City Police Department. Accessed 31 Jul 2019.
+Cook, Benjamin. Climate scientist, NASA. Interview with FactCheck.org. 26 Jul 2019.
+Mann, Michael. Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science, Pennsylvania State University. Email sent to FactCheck.org. 23 Jul 2019.
+McDermid, Sonali. Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, New York University. Email sent to FactCheck.org. 28 Jul 2019.
+Arkin, Daniel. “NYPD officers in Eric Garner case face disciplinary action.” NBC News. 19 Jul 2018.
+“Statement by United States Attorney Richard P. Donoghue.” Press release, U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York. 16 Jul 2019.
+“Statement from Mayor de Blasio on Department of Justice Decision Regarding the Death of Eric Garner.” Press release, City of New York. 16 Jul 2019.
+McLaughlin, Eliott C. and Mark Morales. “With his career on the line, NYPD police officer accused of fatally choking.” CNN. 6 Jun 2019.
+Rubin, Richard. “Does Amazon Really Pay No Taxes? Here’s the Complicated Answer” Wall Street Journal. 14 Jun 2019.
+Peterson, Haley and Skye Gould. “Store closures will push 30% of US malls to the brink of death.” Business Insider. 7 Mar 2017.
+DiChristopher, Tom. “1 in 3 American malls are doomed: Retail consultant Jan Kniffen.” CNBC.com. 12 May 2016.
+Aronholt, Bethany. “Setting the record straight on the state of retail and store closures.” National Retail Federation. 15 Apr 2019.
+Dollar General Corporation. “Fast Facts.” Undated web page. accessed 1 Aug 2019.
+Conway, Jan. “Number of stores of Dollar General in the United States from 2007 to 2018.” Statistica. 28 May 2019.
+Davis, Andrew. “Why Amazon paid no 2018 US federal income tax.” CNBC.com. 4 Apr 2019.
+Holahan, John, et. al. “The Sanders Single-Payer Health Care Plan.” Urban Institute. May 2016
+Blahous, Charles. “The Costs of a National Single-Payer Healthcare System.” Mercatus Center, George Mason University. Jul 2018.
+Terkel, Amanda and Arthur Delaney. “In 1981, Joe Biden Took A Lonely Stand Against Expanding A Child Care Tax Credit.” HuffPost. 26 Jul 2019.
+White House. “Remarks by the President on Immigration.” Transcript. 15 Jun 2012.
+Napolitano, Janet. Secretary, Department of Homeland Security. Letter to David V. Aguilar, acting commissioner, U.S. Customs and Border Protection et al. 15 Jun 2012.
+“The Dream Act, DACA, and Other Policies Designed to Protect Dreamers.” American Immigration Council. 3 Jun 2019.
+Department of Homeland Security. “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).” 23 Jun 2018.
+U.S. Senate. “S.1291 – DREAM Act.” (as introduced 1 Aug 2001).
+Elinson, Zusha and Alejandro Lazo. “Kamala Harris Didn’t Act for 5 Years on Policy to Help Ensure Fair Trials.” The Wall Street Journal. 10 Jun 2019.
+“1,000 San Francisco drug cases to be dismissed in lab scandal.” AP. 1 Apr 2010.
+People of the State of California v. Bilbao. Superior Court of the State of California, County of San Franscisco. 17 May 2010."
+"1.3KSummary
+We flagged false and misleading claims from several candidates:
+
+Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke got it wrong in claiming “no other country comes even close to” the number of gun-violence deaths in the United States. Brazil had more firearm injury deaths in 2016 and several countries have higher firearm death rates.
+Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and author Marianne Williamson made misleading claims about the 2017 Republican tax cut, wrongly painting it as providing all or nearly all its benefits to the wealthiest Americans.
+Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper implied that there has been no manufacturing job growth when he asked, “Where’s the small manufacturing jobs that are supposed to come back?” Under Trump, the economy has added nearly 500,000 manufacturing jobs.
+When addressing climate change, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg called 2030 a “point of no return” and O’Rourke said scientists say there aren’t “more than 10 years to get this right.” Those conclusions misconstrue the findings of a special report from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
+Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio falsely claimed farmers “haven’t made a profit in five years.” Actually, farm profits haven’t fallen below $60 billion a year in over a decade.
+Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said “tonight in America” there are “87 million uninsured or underinsured.” The figure includes 19.3 million who were insured when surveyed but had a gap in coverage in the prior year.
+Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts pitched her “wealth tax” plan to fund several child care and education programs, but some economists are skeptical that she can deliver as much revenue as she expects.
+O’Rourke said “wind and solar jobs are the fastest-growing jobs in the country.” The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that solar photovoltaic installers and wind turbine technicians will be the fastest-growing, on a percentage basis, by 2026. But they aren’t currently the fastest-growing occupations.
+Both former Maryland Rep. John Delaney and Hickenlooper said, incorrectly, that the Green New Deal guarantees every American a government job. The nonbinding resolution does not specify that the jobs are in the public sector.
+
+The second set of Democratic primary debates was hosted by CNN at Detroit’s Fox Theatre on July 30 with 10 candidates. Another 10 will take the stage on July 31.
+Analysis
+Global Gun Violence
+O’Rourke falsely claimed that “no other country” has as many firearm-related deaths as the U.S.
+O’Rourke: How else can we explain that we lose nearly 40,000 people in this country to gun violence, a number that no other country comes even close to.
+O’Rourke didn’t specify a time period, but 39,773 people died from firearm-related injuries in the U.S. in 2017, according to the most recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. Of those deaths, 60% were suicides and 36.6% were homicides.
+But it’s not true that no other country comes close to the U.S., as O’Rourke said.
+In 2016, there were an estimated 43,200 firearm injury deaths in Brazil, according to a 2018 study published in JAMA. That was more than the estimated 37,200 firearm deaths that year in the U.S. Mexico, with an estimated 15,400 deaths by firearms, was the next closest country.
+The U.S., with 10.6 deaths per 100,000 people, also did not have the highest firearm injury death rate. More than a dozen countries had a higher rate than the U.S., including Brazil (19.4), Honduras (22.5), Guatemala (32.3) and Venezuela (38.7). El Salvador’s rate of 39.2 deaths per 100,000 people was the highest.
+O’Rourke also claimed that the CDC is “prevented from actually studying the issue [of gun violence] in the first place.” Under what’s known as the Dickey Amendment, no CDC funds “for injury prevention and control … may be used, in whole or in part, to advocate or promote gun control.” However, compromise language accompanying a 2018 spending bill clarified that, while that prohibition remains, “the Secretary of Health and Human Services has stated the CDC has the authority to conduct research on the causes of gun violence.”
+Update, July 31: A spokesman for O’Rourke’s campaign told us the former congressman meant that “no other developed country comes close to the number of gun deaths” in the U.S. That claim is accurate, but it’s not what he said in the debate.
+
+Misleading Tax Cut Claims
+The candidates engaged in some misleading claims about the effects of the 2017 Republican tax cut.
+“Left everyone behind?” — Klobuchar referred to the bill as “that regressive tax bill that left everyone behind, but really made his Mar-a-Lago friends richer.” 
+The bill did benefit wealthy people like those able to afford the $200,000 membership fee to join Trump’s Palm Beach resort. A 2017 analysis by the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center estimated that in 2018 the average tax cut for those in the top one-tenth of 1% in income would amount to $193,380.
+But the bill certainly didn’t “leave everyone behind.” The TPC analysis estimated that the middle 20% in income would get an average cut of $930 in 2018.
+Klobuchar would have been correct to say that the bill favored the rich more than others. The TPC analysis estimated that the middle 20% would see their after-tax income go up 1.6%, less than half the 3.4% increase in after-tax income for the top 1%.
+“83 cents”? — Williamson dusted off a shopworn and misleading Democratic talking point that we’ve debunked before. She said, “We had a $2 trillion tax cut, where 83 cents of every dollar goes to the very, very richest among us.” That’s misleading.
+
+She’s referring to the TPC’s analysis of the effect of the Trump tax bill in 2027 — which is after most of the individual income tax changes would expire, should Congress not extend them. In 2025, when all of the bill’s provisions would still be in effect, the top 1% would get just over 25 cents of every dollar of the cuts.
+
+
+Manufacturing Jobs
+In explaining how he would run against Trump in the general election, Hickenlooper accused the president of “malpractice” and ticked off several examples — including manufacturing job growth.
+“Where’s the small manufacturing jobs that are supposed to come back?” he asked.
+It’s true that there are still 892,000 fewer manufacturing jobs, as of June, than there were in December 2007, when the Great Recession started. However, manufacturing jobs have increased under Trump.
+The economy has added 486,000 manufacturing jobs between Trump’s inauguration and June, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As we wrote in the most recent installment of “Trump’s Numbers,” that amounts to 3.9% growth — the same rate as total employment has grown during that time.
+
+Climate Change
+
+In discussing climate change, two candidates referred to decade-long deadlines to take action on the issue.
+
+
+Buttigieg broached the subject in his opening statement, saying, “Science tells us we have 12 years before we reach the horizon of catastrophe when it comes to our climate.”
+O’Rourke also referenced a similar time period. “I’ve listened to the scientists on this, and they’re very clear,” he said. “We don’t have more than 10 years to get this right.”
+In his closing statement, Buttigieg returned to the idea, adding, “By 2030 we will have passed the point of no return on climate.”
+As we explained in our coverage of the last Democratic debate, the time frames both politicians reference are pulled from a special report issued by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2018.
+The IPCC report concluded that to avoid many of the more severe impacts of climate change, global warming would have to be limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels — or about half a degree more than current warming. To reach that goal, the report said carbon dioxide emissions around the world would need to fall 45% below 2010 levels by 2030, and be net-zero by 2050.
+With just 12 years between 2018 and 2030, the report’s message was misinterpreted by many to mean that just over a decade remained to take action on climate change, or before an ecological catastrophe.
+“The problem with that framing from a scientific perspective is that climate change is not pass/fail,” Benjamin Cook, a climate scientist at NASA explained in a phone interview. “The 1.5 and 2 degree thresholds aren’t magical tipping points,” he said, where “we’re okay before then and it’s a disaster afterwards.”
+The consequences will be worse if we wait, he said, but even if the world surpasses 2 degrees of warming, any action we take to prevent further warming would still have value.
+It’s a point that other scientists have made as well. 
+“Please stop saying something globally bad is going to happen in 2030,” wrote Myles Allen, an author of the IPCC report and the leader of the ECI Climate Research Programme at the University of Oxford, in a Conversation article. “Bad stuff is already happening and every half a degree of warming matters, but the IPCC does not draw a ‘planetary boundary’ at 1.5°C beyond which lie climate dragons.”
+Sonali McDermid, a climate scientist at New York University, noted in an email that the longer we wait to take action, the harder it will be to make progress on climate change, which after the 1.5 degree target, could lead to or exacerbate loss of key ecosystems, increases in extremes, changes in seasonality that affect food production and infrastructure, and higher sea level rise. “But that doesn’t – and shouldn’t – imply or mean that we just give up after 12 years,” she wrote.
+So while the candidates are correct to say that scientists have warned about the effects of climate change — and advocate for sooner, rather than later movement on the issue — it’s not the case that 2030 is a “point of no return” or that there is a particular deadline for taking action.
+Farm Profits
+Ryan said of farmers, “They haven’t made a profit in five years.” That’s far from being true.
+The Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture recently projected that net farm income would rise 10% this year, to $69.4 billion. And that broad measure of farm profits hasn’t been below $60 billion since 2006.
+
+It’s true that net farm income peaked at $123 billion in 2013 — a period of high commodity prices. Ryan would have been on firmer ground had he said farmers haven’t seen a big profit increase in five years.
+
+
+87 Million Underinsured?
+Sanders twice said that there were “87 million uninsured or underinsured,” saying this was the case “tonight in America, as we speak.” A Commonwealth Fund study supports that figure, though it includes those who were insured at the time they were surveyed but had had a gap in coverage in the prior year.
+“Of the 194 million U.S. adults ages 19 to 64 in 2018, an estimated 87 million, or 45 percent, were inadequately insured,” the study found, directing readers to Tables 1 and 2. The 87 million figure includes: 24 million uninsured in 2018, 43.8 million who were “underinsured” and 19.3 million who were insured at the time of the survey but had a gap in coverage in the previous year. The underinsured measure looks at out-of-pocket costs, not including insurance premiums, and the plan deductible. It includes people whose out-of-pocket costs were 10 percent or more of household income over 12 months, or 5 percent or more of household income for those earning under 200% of the federal poverty level; it also includes those whose deductibles were 5 percent or more of household income.
+The study found that fewer adults were uninsured in 2018, compared with 2010, but more people were underinsured.
+Warren’s Wealth Tax
+Warren defended her plan to fund child care and education by taxing “the top one-tenth of 1% of fortunes in this country.”
+By collecting a 2% tax on net worth over $50 million and a 3% tax on net worth over $1 billion, Warren promises to provide universal child care for kids up to age 5 and universal pre-K, raise the wages of child care and preschool teachers, offer free tuition at community and technical colleges, dedicate $50 billion to historically black colleges and universities, and cancel student debt for 95 percent of those who have it.
+Delivering on that promise depends on her tax plan generating $2.75 trillion over 10 years. But some economists are skeptical that it will actually raise that much. We wrote about it here.
+An op-ed from Lawrence Summers, a former treasury secretary and an economic adviser to former President Barack Obama, and Natasha Sarin, a law and business professor, suggested that Warren’s plan would raise about 40% of the projection.
+The Warren campaign hit back on the criticisms raised in that piece, arguing that the tax plan wouldn’t be weakened by loopholes and would include funds to bolster IRS enforcement. But it’s far from settled as to whether or not Warren���s plan will be able to pay for everything it has promised.
+Wind and Solar Jobs
+When asked about the economic impact of policy proposals that would reduce public reliance on fossil fuels, O’Rourke said “wind and solar jobs are the fastest-growing jobs in the country.” 
+We covered this issue once before — when Washington Gov. Jay Inslee made a similar statement — and found no federal data that could support such a claim.
+The BLS, the country’s official custodian of employment data, discontinued collecting data on all so-called “green jobs” in 2013. However, the agency does measure the number of jobs for some individual green occupations on an annual basis and projects job growth for these occupations.
+In 2017, BLS projected that solar photovoltaic installers and wind turbine technicians will be the two fastest-growing occupations by 2026. But that’s future growth, not current growth, and it is on a percentage basis. The actual number of additional jobs projected by 2026 is quite small.
+By 2026, BLS projects there will be 11,800 additional solar installers and 5,600 new wind turbine service technicians. That would be a 105 percent increase in solar photovoltaic installers and a 96 percent increase in wind turbine technicians from 2016 levels. By contrast, the third fastest-growing occupation — home health aides — will add 431,200 jobs, an increase of 47 percent.
+Home health aides also appears on the agency’s “most new jobs” projections, but the solar and wind jobs do not.
+We also found that, as of May 2018, there were an estimated 8,950 solar installers and 5,580 wind turbine service technicians. But a BLS spokesman told us that those figures represent a moving three-year average, so those figures should not be compared with those from previous years.
+The BLS data limitations make it impossible to measure the growth in “green jobs” in a way that is comparable with other occupations tracked by the agency. 
+
+
+Green New Deal
+Two candidates misrepresented the Green New Deal during the debate, inaccurately stating that the nonbinding resolution offers Americans a guarantee of a government job.
+When asked why he felt the Green New Deal was unrealistic, Delaney responded, “Well, first of all, because it ties its progress to other things that are completely unrelated to climate, like universal health care, guaranteed government jobs, and universal basic income. So that only makes it harder to do.”
+Hickenlooper made the same claim in the last debate, and repeated it again twice in this debate.
+The Green New Deal, he said, would “make sure that every American is guaranteed a government job that they want.” 
+Later, when Hickenlooper was also asked why he is opposed to the Green New Deal, he replied, “Well, I think the guarantee for a public job for everyone who wants one is a classic part of the problem. It’s a distraction.”
+As we explained after the June debate, the Green New Deal guarantees “a job with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States.” The legislation, which failed to advance in the Senate in March, does not require the job be a public sector position.
+
+ 
+Sources
+The Global Burden of Disease 2016 Injury Collaborators. “Global Mortality From Firearms, 1990-2016.” JAMA. 28 Aug 2018.
+Santhanam, Laura. “There’s a new global ranking of gun deaths. Here’s where the U.S. stands.” PBS NewsHour. 28 Aug 2018.
+Kochanek K.D., et al. “Deaths: Final data for 2017.” National Vital Statistics Reports; vol 68 no 9. National Center for Health Statistics. 24 Jun 2019.
+Collins, Sara R. et. al. “Health Insurance Coverage Eight Years After the ACA.” The Commonwealth Fund. 7 Feb 2019.
+
+Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. “Distributional Analysis of the Conference Agreement for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” 18 Dec 2017.
+Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture. “Highlights From the March 2019 Farm Income Forecast: Farm Sector Profits Expected To Increase in 2019.” 7 Mar 2019.
+Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture. “Value added to the U.S. economy by the agricultural sector, 2000-2009 Nominal (current dollars).” Data accessed 31 Jul 2019.
+Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture. “Value added to the U.S. economy by the agricultural sector, 2010-2019F Nominal (current dollars).” Data accessed 31 Jul 2019.
+McDonald, Jessica. “The Facts on the ‘Green New Deal.’” FactCheck.org. 15 Feb 2019.
+Allen, Myles. “Why protesters should be wary of ‘12 years to climate breakdown’ rhetoric.” The Conversation. 18 Apr 2019.
+IPCC, 2018: Summary for Policymakers. Global warming of 1.5°C. An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty. World Meteorological Organization, Geneva, Switzerland.
+Cook, Benjamin. Climate scientist, NASA. Interview with FactCheck.org. 26 Jul 2019.
+McDermid, Sonali. Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, New York University. Emails sent to FactCheck.org. 28 and 30 Jul 2019.
+Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey; All employees, thousands, manufacturing, seasonally adjusted.” Accessed 31 Jul 2019.
+Jackson, Brooks. “Trump’s Numbers July 2019 Update.” FactCheck.org. 12 Jul 2019.
+Kiely, Eugene. “Jay Inslee’s Green Jobs Claim.” FactCheck.org. 16 Apr 2019.
+Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Thirty fastest growing occupations projected to account for 19 percent of new jobs from 2016 to 2026.” Press release. 30 Oct 2017.
+Torpey, Elka. “Green growth: Employment projections in environmentally focused occupations.” Bureau of Labor Statistics. Apr 2018.
+Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Most New Jobs.” Updated 12 Apr 2019. Accessed 31 Jul 2019.
+Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2018. 47-2231 Solar Photovoltaic Installers.” Accessed 31 Jul 2019.
+Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2018. 49-9081 Wind Turbine Service Technicians.” Accessed 31 Jul 2019."
+"11KIn a July 8 speech dedicated to the environment, President Donald Trump made a series of misleading or false statements as he played up the U.S.’s environmental achievements, many of which predate his time as commander-in-chief.
+
+
+The president falsely claimed that in 2018 the EPA “completed more Superfund hazardous waste clean-ups than any year of the previous administrations.” There were more deletions every year between 1995 and 2001.
+Trump misleadingly claimed that the U.S. since 2000 has reduced energy-related carbon emissions “more than any other country on Earth.” That’s true, but only on an absolute basis — more than 10 other countries have larger percent declines.
+Trump also took credit for projected emissions declines in 2019 and 2020, even though the U.S. Energy Information Administration says those drops are expected because of “milder weather … and, consequently, less energy consumption.”
+Trump boasted about a newly completed regulation that would decrease exposure to lead dust. He neglected to mention that EPA action on the issue was court-ordered.
+The president claimed credit for the U.S.’s top ranking in access to clean drinking water, but the scores were based on data from 2016 — before Trump entered office.
+Trump repeated his misleading and exaggerated claim that the Green New Deal would “cost our economy nearly $100 trillion.” As a nonbinding resolution, the measure itself would not cost anything. The estimate, produced by conservative think tank, includes costs but not economic benefits.
+Trump said particulate matter, a form of air pollution, is “six times lower here than the global average.” That’s correct, but the global average is bumped up by high levels of dust coming from the Sahara Desert.
+
+In remarks at the White House, the president and his top aides cast the administration’s environmental record in a positive light. “We’re making tremendous environmental progress under President Trump, and the public needs to know that,” said Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler, who was a lobbyist for coal and other energy companies. 
+
+But many of the environmental victories Trump cited have been in the works for years or decades, such as the cleanup of Superfund sites or the court-ordered EPA regulations. 
+The president spoke of “revising the past administration’s misguided regulations to better protect the environment and to protect our American workers,” without specifying the impact of his many regulatory rollbacks. 
+Trump has declined to support or sought to undo many of President Barack Obama’s signature environmental policies, including the Clean Power Plan. By the EPA’s own calculations, Trump’s replacement, the Affordable Clean Energy rule, provides very few carbon emissions reductions.
+The Trump administration has also proposed freezing fuel economy standards at 2020 levels through 2026 — an action the EPA says would increase CO2 emissions by 7.4 billion metric tons by the year 2100.
+The president also did not mention that he has proposed hefty cuts to the EPA’s budget each year, most recently proposing a 31% cut in fiscal year 2020 — including a 9 percent cut, or $109 million, to the Superfund program that Trump touted in his speech.
+Superfund Cleanups
+The president falsely claimed that his administration last year completed a record number of Superfund cleanups. 
+“We’ve refocused the EPA back on its core mission,” he said, “and, last year, the agency completed more Superfund hazardous waste cleanups than any year of the previous administrations and set records in almost every year. We have done tremendous work on Superfunds.”
+But there are several other years when the agency has removed more sites from the Superfund list than it did in 2018.
+By calendar year, 2018 had 17 full site deletions; by fiscal year, which ran from Oct. 1, 2017 through Sept. 30, 2018, there were 18. When including partial deletions, the tally rises to 22 for fiscal year 2018. This is the number the EPA likes to cite, noting that it is more deletions in any year since fiscal year 2005. An EPA spokesman told us this is what the president was referring to. But the figure is not a historical record.
+In calendar year 1996, the EPA removed 45 Superfund sites, or 34 when counting by fiscal year. Fiscal years 1997 and 2001 also each had more than 30 Superfund deletions. And every calendar year between 1995 and 2001 had at least 19 deletions. In 2017, there were just three calendar year deletions and two fiscal year deletions. So far in 2019, only one site has been deleted. 
+As we’ve also noted before, Superfund cleanups often take decades to complete, so it’s inaccurate for Trump to take full credit for these deletions. In fact, of the 18 fully deleted sites in fiscal year 2018, all completed physical cleanup before 2016 and only two were made ready for reuse after 2016. The ready-for-reuse stage, regional EPA spokespeople previously told us, occurs when all of the remediation is complete and what’s left is contamination monitoring and paperwork.
+Carbon Emissions
+Trump did not once say “climate change” in his speech. But he did tout the nation’s progress over the past nearly two decades on reducing carbon dioxide emissions — even though Energy Information Administration data show energy-related CO2 emissions were 1.9% higher in 2018 than they were in 2016.
+
+Trump, July 8: Since 2000, our nation’s energy-related carbon emissions have declined more than any other country on Earth.  Think of that.  Emissions are projected to drop in 2019 and 2020.  We’re doing a very tough job and not everybody knows it, and that’s one of the reasons we’re here today to speak to you.  Every single one of the signatories to the Paris Climate Accord lags behind America in overall emissions reductions.
+Trump’s statistic is accurate, but it’s misleading because it refers to an absolute reduction in emissions, rather than a percent reduction. Absolute reductions fail to account for differences in population size or starting levels of emissions, rendering international comparisons meaningless.
+The factoid may have come from the International Energy Agency, which noted in its 2018 report that despite rising in 2018, “emissions in the United States remain around their 1990 levels, 14% and 800 Mt [million metric tons] of CO2 below their peak in 2000. This is the largest absolute decline among all countries since 2000.” (Note: While IEA data shows that peak emissions were in 2000, the EIA says that milestone occurred in 2007. Either way, the drop is around 14%.)
+While impressive, more than 10 other nations participating in the Paris Agreement have posted higher percent declines. IEA data, for example, shows Denmark’s emissions fell a whopping 34% between 2000 and 2016, while the United Kingdom and France posted declines of 29% and 20%, respectively.
+Many industrialized nations taking part in the Paris Agreement have no chance of besting the U.S. on this particular bragging right. That’s because most of these nations are small relative to the U.S., and their residents already produce relatively few emissions per capita.
+In some cases, it’s not even possible. In 2000, for example, France’s total emissions couldn’t have dropped by 800 million metric tons because they were only 365 million metric tons to begin with.
+As the IEA report highlights, Trump also omits the fact that CO2 emissions rose in 2018, which the EIA attributed to “weather and continued economic growth.”
+Finally, Trump took credit for expected emissions reductions this and next year. “Emissions are projected to drop in 2019 and 2020,” he said. “We’re doing a very tough job and not everybody knows it, and that’s one of the reasons we’re here today to speak to you.”
+But according to the EIA, those drops are expected because of “milder weather … and, consequently, less energy consumption.” The agency says that even with two back-to-back declines, emissions are not projected to fall below 2017 levels.
+Lead Regulations
+The president also highlighted some recent EPA regulations designed to protect children from lead exposure. The World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say there is no safe blood lead level in children. 
+Trump, July 8: And for the first time in nearly 30 years, we’re in the process of strengthening national drinking water standards to protect vulnerable children from lead and copper exposure — something that has not been done, and we’re doing it.  And last month, our EPA took the first major action in nearly two decades to reduce exposure to lead-contaminated dust.
+Trump may very well be the first administration in almost three decades to substantially update the lead and copper rule, a 1991 regulation pertaining to drinking water. A proposed rule is expected in July.
+But that doesn’t tell the whole story. According to the EPA, there were revisions to the rule in 2007 “to enhance implementation in the areas of monitoring, treatment, customer awareness, and lead service line replacement.” 
+And the Obama administration conducted many of the preliminary actions, including a 2016 white paper outlining potential revisions. The Trump EPA repeatedly has delayed issuing the standards.
+Trump also presents the rule on lead dust as an administrative initiative. But the lead-dust regulation was court-ordered, and health advocates say the resulting standards don’t go far enough. 
+The final lead dust rule, which the EPA announced on June 21 and has yet to take effect, lowers the amount of lead dust allowed on floors and window sills in childcare centers and homes built before 1978 — the year the federal government banned lead paint in homes.
+In December 2017, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the agency to review the standards “in light of the obvious need.” 
+The lawsuit was filed during the Obama administration. But the Trump EPA fought the petition in June of 2017, and according to the decision, offered “a vague intention to issue a proposed rule in four years and a final rule in six” — a timeline the court considered “unreasonable.” The court gave the EPA 90 days to produce a proposed rule and an additional year to produce a final rule.
+The new rule lowers the hazard levels, making them more stringent. But it kept in place higher clearance levels, or the standards that would have to be met after a lead removal project. This discrepancy has activists concerned that the regulation will fail to keep kids safe, according to E&E News, an energy and environment news site.
+Drinking Water
+Trump suggested that his administration was responsible for the U.S. placing first in drinking water rankings determined by university researchers.
+“And today, the United States is ranked — listen to this — number one in the world for access to clean drinking water,” Trump said, after mentioning several things he said happened since he was elected or became president.
+The White House told us Trump was referring to the 2018 Environmental Performance Index, which scores countries based on their performances in a number of categories covering environmental health and ecosystem vitality. It is jointly produced by Yale and Columbia universities in collaboration with the World Economic Forum.
+The most recent EPI does show that the U.S. was tops in drinking water along with nine other countries. The drinking water indicator, the report says, is measured “as the proportion of a country’s population exposed to health risks from their access to drinking water, defined by the primary water source used by households and the household water treatment, or the treatment that happens at the point of water collection.”
+But America’s score is not based on anything Trump has done as president.
+The 2018 EPI report — which was published in January 2018 — says the data used for the sanitation and drinking water indicators predates the Trump administration. The EPI’s technical appendix designates 2016 as the year supporting the current scores for the drinking water category.
+Green New Deal
+Trump repeated his misleading and exaggerated claim that the Green New Deal will “cost our economy nearly $100 trillion.” As we have written, Trump is referring to a nonbinding resolution introduced in the House by Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
+As a “simple resolution,” Ocasio-Cortez’s measure would not cost anything. The House hasn’t taken up the resolution but, even if it passed, it would not go the Senate or to the president for his signature. It merely recognizes that climate change is a problem and calls for the U.S. to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions through a “10-year national mobilization.”
+In addition, the $100 trillion is a high-end, rounded up estimate that comes from a conservative nonprofit policy group and coauthored by John McCain’s chief economic adviser during the 2008 presidential campaign. 
+The estimate — which actually ranges from $51 trillion to $93 trillion between 2020 and 2029 — only includes costs, and doesn’t account for economic benefits or other effects. Experts have told us that attempting to put a specific price on the resolution is misleading, since the Green New Deal is so vague.
+The Senate resolution, which was introduced by Sen. Ed Markey, failed to get a single supporter in a procedural vote taken in March.
+Particulate Matter
+In claiming that his administration is “proving” that “a strong economy and a vibrant energy sector” is compatible with “a healthy environment,” the president boasted that the level for particulate matter is “six times lower here than the global average.” The U.S. level is low, but the global average he cites is skewed by high levels of dust in countries located in North Africa and the Middle East. 
+Trump, July 8: One of the main [measures] of air pollution — particulate matter — is six times lower here than the global average.  So we hear so much about some countries and what everyone is doing.  We’re six times lower than the average.  That’s a tremendous number.
+The EPA told us that Trump was referring to a World Health Organization’s 2019 global air quality report on fine particulate matter, or PM 2.5, which are particles 2.5 micrometers in diameter and smaller.
+Trump has a point. “The 10 countries with the lowest national PM2.5 exposure levels were the Maldives, the United States, Norway, Estonia, Iceland, Canada, Sweden, New Zealand, Brunei, and Finland. Population-weighted PM2.5 concentrations averaged 8 µg/m3 or less in these countries,” according to the 2019 report, which was based on 2017 data.
+The global average, weighted by population, was 46 micrograms per cubic meter, or ug/m3, which is about six times higher than the U.S. level of 7.4 ug/m3. However, the report also indicates that the global average is skewed by high levels of dust — not industrial pollution — in some countries.
+“The sources responsible for PM2.5 pollution vary within and between countries and regions,” the report said. “Dust from the Sahara Desert contributes to the high particulate matter concentrations in North Africa and the Middle East, as well as to the high concentrations in some countries in western sub-Saharan Africa.”
+The regional average levels were higher than the global averages in North Africa and the Middle East (55 micrograms per cubic meter) and the western sub-Saharan Africa (59 micrograms per cubic meter). That includes countries such as Niger (94 ug/m3), Egypt (87 ug/m3) and Chad (66 ug/m3).
+By contrast, the regional average for Western Europe was just 12 ug/m3, and includes four countries — Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden — that had lower levels of PM2.5 pollution than the United States."
+"10.1KSummary
+The second group of 10 Democratic presidential candidates made false and misleading claims about immigration, gun control legislation and the environment, and repeated familiar talking points on taxes, health care and poverty.
+
+Former Vice President Joe Biden falsely claimed President Trump “immediately discontinued” an aid program to Central America, and implied that’s the cause of surging immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border. The aid was reduced about 23 percent during Trump’s first two years.
+Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and Sen. Bernie Sanders both alluded to a deadline for climate change, but scientists say it’s the wrong way of thinking about it.
+Sanders repeated an old, misleading claim that 83% of the benefits from the Republican tax law go to the top 1% of income earners. That won’t be true until 2027, when most of the individual income tax changes expire unless Congress extends them.
+Pushing back against Trump’s claims that the economy is doing great, Sen. Kamala Harris said, “Well yeah people in America are working — they’re working two and three jobs.” The percentage of American workers holding multiple jobs is 5 percent and is virtually unchanged from when Trump took office.
+Biden accused Harris of “a mischaracterization of my position across the board” after she confronted him on his past opposition to school busing and his recent comments about working with “some civility” in the 1970s with two segregationist southern Democrats. Both candidates have a point.
+California Rep. Eric Swalwell said he was “the only person on this stage who has voted and passed background checks.” That’s false. A campaign spokesperson said he was referring to “universal background checks,” but even that claim is misleading.
+Hickenlooper said, inaccurately, that the Green New Deal promises every American a government job. The nonbinding resolution guarantees a job, but not necessarily one in government.
+Sanders claimed that Trump tried to “throw 32 million people off their health care that they have,” a figure that includes people who would choose to no longer purchase insurance if Congress repealed the Affordable Care Act without replacing it.
+Sanders repeated an erroneous claim from his 2016 presidential campaign that the U.S. has the “highest rate of childhood poverty.” While the country does have a high relative child poverty rate, several other countries have worse rates.
+
+Night two of the primary election debates, on June 27, was again hosted by NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo.
+Analysis
+Biden on Central American Aid
+Former Vice President Joe Biden falsely claimed President Trump “immediately discontinued” an aid program to Central America, and implied that’s the cause of surging immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border.
+In fact, the Obama-era aid program was reduced only about 23 percent during Trump’s first two years, while illegal border crossings surged to more than triple the levels than before the Obama aid program commenced. Trump has already relented on a recent threat to cut off the aid entirely.
+Biden: I’m the guy that got a bipartisan agreement … to spend $740 million to deal with the [border] problem, and that was to go to the root cause of why people are leaving in the first place. It was working.
+We saw, as you know, a net decrease in the number of children who were coming. The crisis was abated. And along came this president, and he said — he immediately discontinued that.
+
+Biden was referring to the “U.S. Strategy for Engagement in Central America,” which began under Obama in fiscal year 2016 at a level of $750 million, according to a June 12 report by the Congressional Research Service, an arm of the Library of Congress. (See Table 5, page 13.)
+Appropriations for the program had already decreased to just under $685 million by fiscal year 2017, which began Oct. 1, 2016, before Trump was elected and nearly four months before he took office.
+From there, appropriations fell further to an estimated $527.6 million in the current fiscal year, according to the CRS report. That’s a reduction of just under 23 percent.
+Trump’s budget request for fiscal 2020, which begins Oct. 1, calls for a further cut to $445 million — which would represent a cumulative reduction in annual appropriation levels of 35 percent since the last fiscal year that began under Obama.
+In March, however, Trump told reporters, “I’ve ended payments to Guatemala, to Honduras, and to El Salvador. No money goes there anymore.” He directed the State Department to withhold appropriated aid funds. But that was a response to — not a cause of — the renewed surge in immigration.
+At the time Trump spoke, March apprehensions of immigrants illegally attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border were surging to 92,840, more than triple the level of March 2015, prior to the aid program to which Biden referred. Far from being “abated,” the “crisis” of which Biden spoke had come back with a vengeance.
+Trump has since relented on his threat. On June 18 — after widespread criticism — his administration said it would go ahead with $432 million in projects and grants that had been previously approved — out of the $615 million in aid that Trump had ordered to be frozen. 
+Climate Change Confusion
+Two candidates, former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and Sen. Bernie Sanders, mentioned time frames in their discussions of climate change that could use some additional context. 
+Hickenlooper, who studied to be a geologist, and is a two-term former governor of Colorado, said in response to a question about climate change, “I share the sense of urgency. I’m a scientist, so I recognize that we’re within 10 or 12 years of actually, you know, suffering irreversible damage.”
+Sanders later said, “The scientists tell us we are 12 years before there is irreparable damage to this planet.”
+The 12-year figure is frequently mentioned by the press and politicians, and is extrapolated from a 2018 special report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which found that global warming “is likely to reach 1.5°C between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate.” The world has already warmed about 1 degree Celsius.
+The report also concluded that to stave off warming beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels — and avoid the many climate change effects — the world would have to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 45% from 2010 levels by 2030 and be net-zero by 2050.
+In 2018, that statement was taken by many to mean there were only 12 years left to do something about climate change. But many scientists have since come forward to say that’s the wrong way of thinking about it.
+Myles Allen, an author of the IPCC report and the leader of the ECI Climate Research Programme at the University of Oxford, explained in a Conversation story he wrote in April that the IPCC’s timing is only a best estimate.
+“Please stop saying something globally bad is going to happen in 2030,” he wrote. “Bad stuff is already happening and every half a degree of warming matters, but the IPCC does not draw a ‘planetary boundary’ at 1.5°C beyond which lie climate dragons.”
+Kristie L. Ebi, director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at the University of Washington in Seattle, told the AP, “This has been a persistent source of confusion,” adding, “The report never said we only have 12 years left.”
+And Kate Marvel, a NASA climate scientist, told Axios in January, “12 years isn’t a deadline, and climate change isn’t a cliff we fall off — it’s a slope we slide down.” She added, “We don’t have 12 years to prevent climate change — we have no time. It’s already here. And even under a business-as-usual scenario, the world isn’t going to end in exactly twelve years.”
+Sanders’ Tax Law Talking Point
+Sanders repeated the same misleading claim about the Republican tax law that he and other Democrats have recited since the law passed at the end of 2017.
+Sanders said during the debate, “83% of your tax benefits go to the 1%.”
+But that won’t be true until 2027, when most of the individual income tax changes will have expired.
+We’ve written about this claim before — when Sanders said it during a CNN town hall and when Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said it shortly after the law passed.
+Sen. Kamala Harris also partly echoed the claim during the debate, saying that she would repeal the “tax bill that benefits the top 1% and the biggest corporations in this country.”
+Most of the individual income tax provisions expire after 2025, which will shift most of the tax benefits to the top 1%. An analysis by the Tax Policy Center found that the top 1% of income earners would get 20.5% of the tax cut benefits in 2018. That percentage would go up to 25.3% in 2025 and then jump to 82.8% in 2027.
+Before the law was passed, Republicans said that they expected a future Congress to extend the individual income tax cuts, instead of allowing taxes for many to increase. They structured the law that way so they could pass their tax bill through budget reconciliation, a process requiring only a majority vote in the Senate, which meant that Republican lawmakers could not add more than $1.5 trillion to the deficit over 10 years. Also, they couldn’t have a bill that added to the deficit beyond that 10-year window.
+So, while it will be true that 83% of the tax cut benefits will go to the top 1% of income earners in 2027 if Congress doesn’t act before then, it is misleading to give that statistic without context.
+Harris on People Working Multiple Jobs
+Pushing back against President Trump’s claims that the economy is doing great, Sen. Kamala Harris said, “Well yeah, people in America are working — they’re working two and three jobs.” The percentage of American workers who hold multiple jobs is virtually unchanged from when Trump took office, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
+Harris: I’m meeting people who are working two and three jobs — you know this president walks around talking about and flouting his great economy right — my great economy, my great economy … You ask him how are you measuring the greatness of this economy of yours? And they point to the jobless numbers and the unemployment numbers. Well yeah people in America are working — they’re working two and three jobs.
+According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 7,855,000 people who held multiple jobs in May, or 5 percent of all those who are employed. That percentage has remained virtually unchanged during Trump’s presidency — it was 4.9 percent in January 2017 when he took office. In fact, the percentage of the employed working multiple jobs has hovered around 5 percent since late 2009, and it’s lower than the roughly 6 percent of workers who held multiple jobs during the late 1990s.
+Looking deeper into the 7,855,000 who held multiple jobs in May, the majority — 4.4 million — were people with full-time jobs who had a secondary part-time job, according to a BLS news release (See Table A-18). Another nearly 2 million had two part-time jobs, and about 325,000 held two full-time jobs.
+We looked into a similar claim last July when then-congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrongly claimed that the low U.S. unemployment rate was “because everyone has two jobs.” The number of people holding more than one job has no bearing on the unemployment rate.
+Biden, Harris on Race
+In one of the most contentious moments of the debate, Harris confronted Biden on two race-related issues: Biden’s past opposition to school busing and his recent comments about working with “some civility” in the 1970s with two segregationist southern Democrats, Sens. James Eastland of Mississippi and Herman Talmadge of Georgia.
+Harris, who is black, accurately noted that Biden “worked with them to oppose busing,” and told the story of her own school integration experience as an elementary student. As we have written, Berkeley public schools in California began busing students to fully integrate the school district in 1968, and Harris began attending Thousands Oaks Elementary School in 1970.
+Biden, who was first elected to the Senate in 1972, accused Harris of “a mischaracterization of my position across the board.” In telling her personal story, Harris left out a key detail: It was the local school district’s decision to integrate its schools.
+The former vice president said he opposed busing “ordered by the Department of Education,” or what critics called “forced busing,” in the 1970s. “You would have been able to go to school the same exact way because it was a local decision made by your city council,” Biden said. In fact, Harris was attending an integrated school before Biden even joined the Senate.
+But Harris did not mischaracterize Biden’s comments about Eastland and Talmadge, so she did not mischaracterize his position ��across the board.”
+Harris said “it was hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States senators who built their reputations and career on the segregation of race in this country.” Biden responded by saying, “I did not praise racists.” Harris didn’t say he did. She said he talked about their reputations, and Biden did say that he was able to work with them in a civil way to get things done in the Senate, despite their political and personal differences.
+At a June 18 fundraiser in New York, Biden described Talmadge as “one of the meanest guys I ever knew,” and said Eastland referred to him as “son” instead of senator, which he took as a sign of disrespect.
+But, in comparison to the current political climate in Washington, Biden went on to say: “At least there was some civility. We got things done. We didn’t agree on much of anything. We got things done. We got it finished. But today, you look at the other side and you’re the enemy. Not the opposition, the enemy. We don’t talk to each other anymore.”
+Swalwell on Background Checks
+Rep. Eric Swalwell, trying to distinguish himself from the other candidates on gun issues, said he was “the only person on stage who has voted and passed background checks.”
+That’s clearly false. Biden, for example, was in the Senate in 1993 and voted for the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, which became law. It requires federally licensed firearms dealers to conduct background checks on most gun transfers to prospective buyers.
+Swalwell’s campaign explained that the California congressman meant he “was the only person on stage who has voted for and passed universal background checks.”
+That’s true, but still misleading.
+Swalwell did vote for the Bipartisan Background Checks Act that passed the Democratic-controlled House by a vote of 240-190 in February. The legislation, according to the Congressional Research Service, expands background check requirements by prohibiting a firearm transfer between unlicensed individuals “unless a licensed gun dealer, manufacturer, or importer first takes possession of the firearm to conduct a background check.”
+However, four other people on the debate stage — Sanders, Harris, Sen. Michael Bennet and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand — are all co-sponsors of the Background Check Expansion Act, which would “expand federal background checks to all gun sales,” according to lawmakers who reintroduced the bill in January. (Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker, who were in the previous night’s debate, are also co-sponsors.)
+But because the Senate is currently controlled by Republicans, that bill has virtually no chance at passing in the chamber.
+Spinning the Green New Deal
+After being asked about his concerns about “embracing socialism,” Hickenlooper misrepresented the Green New Deal, objecting to a provision in the legislation that doesn’t exist. 
+“I admire the sense of urgency and how important it is to do climate change — I’m a scientist,” he said, “but we can’t promise every American a government job.”
+The Green New Deal, which we’ve written about before, is a nonbinding resolution that aims to tackle climate change while ensuring job security, health care and protecting vulnerable communities.
+The Green New Deal doesn’t promise every American a position in the government. Instead, it guarantees “a job with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States.”
+The resolution was introduced into both chambers of Congress in February, and is most closely associated with New York freshman congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In March, the resolution did not advance in the Senate, after nearly all Democrats voted “present.”
+Health Care Repeat
+Sanders claimed that Trump tried to “throw 32 million people off their health care that they have,” a figure that includes people who would choose to no longer purchase insurance if Congress repealed the Affordable Care Act without replacing it. As we’ve written before, it’s misleading to say 32 million would all be thrown off.
+Trump supported a partial repeal-and-replace bill in the Republican-backed American Health Care Act, which wasn’t expected to have as big of an impact on the uninsured. But he also backed an immediate repeal of the ACA, with a replacement at a “later date.”
+In 2017 the Congressional Budget Office estimated the Obamacare Repeal Reconciliation Act of 2017, a bill that would fit that description,  would increase the number of uninsured by 32 million people over 10 years. But not all of them would be thrown off their insurance. CBO said: “In the nongroup market, some people would choose not to have insurance partly because they choose to be covered by insurance under current law to avoid paying the penalty.”
+The ACA imposed a tax penalty, known as the mandate, on those without health insurance, but the Republican tax law repealed that penalty as of Jan. 1 of this year. It’s worth noting that in May 2018, the CBO revised downward its estimate of the impact of repealing the mandate.
+2016 Flashback on Poverty Claim
+In his closing statement, Sanders said he suspects “people all over the country who are watching this debate are saying these are good people, they have great ideas, but how come nothing really changes?”
+He then posed several questions, including, “How come we have the highest rate of childhood poverty?”
+That’s an unchanging — and false — Sanders claim. We debunked it twice during his 2016 presidential run.
+A 2017 report by the United Nations Children’s Fund, or UNICEF, did note that the United States is above average when it comes to the “relative child poverty” rate — which “shows the proportion of each nation’s children living in a household where disposable income is less than 60% of the national median.”
+But the report did not indicate the U.S. had the “highest” rate. The country ranked No. 7 out of 41 rich countries, behind Romania, Israel, Turkey and others.
+The U.S. Census Bureau pegged the 2017 poverty rate for those under age 18 at 17.5 percent (see Table 3), which is the lowest it’s been since 2006.
+The bureau also calculates the Supplemental Poverty Measure, which accounts for government programs that assist low-income families and are not considered in the official poverty measure. The SPM rate for children in 2017 was 15.6 percent.
+Update, July 3: We amended our story to note that Sen. Kamala Harris began attending Thousand Oaks Elementary School, a public school in Berkeley, California, in 1970, according to her campaign. We previously reported, based on information from her Senate office, that she began there in 1969.
+Sources
+Meyer, Peter J. “U.S. Strategy for Engagement in Central America: Policy Issues for Congress.” Congressional Research Service. 12 Jun 2019.
+Brennan, Margaret and Grace Segers. “Trump directs State Department to cut off aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.” CBS News. 30 Mar 2019.
+U.S. Customs and Border Protection. “Southwest Border Migration FY 2019.” Undated website accessed 28 Jun 2019.
+Lee, Matthew. “US restores some aid to El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala.” The Associated Press. 18 Jun 2019.
+Smith, Allan and Doha Madani. “Biden doubles down on segregationist comments, says critics like Cory Booker ‘should apologize’ to him.” NBC News. 19 Jun 2019.
+Spencer, Saranac Hale. “Sen. Harris Didn’t ‘Lie’ About Integration.” FactCheck.org. 13 Jul 2018.
+U.S. Congress. “Joseph Robinette Jr.” Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress. Undated. Accessed 28 Jun 2019.
+Sokol, Jason. “How a Young Joe Biden Turned Liberals Against Integration.” Politico Magazine. 4 Aug 2015.
+Bobic, Igor. “Democrats Slam Joe Biden Over Comments Invoking Segregationist Senators.” HuffPost. 19 Jun 2019.
+Congressional Budget Office. Cost Estimate: H.R. 1628 Obamacare Repeal Reconciliation Act of 2017. 19 Jul 2017.
+Congressional Budget Office. Federal Subsidies for Health Insurance Coverage for People Under Age 65: 2018 to 2028. May 2018.
+U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Multiple Jobholders. Retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis on 28 Jun 2019.
+U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Multiple Jobholders as a Percent of Employed. Retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis on 28 Jun 2019.
+Bureau of Labor Statistics. News release: The Employment Situation — May 2019. 7 Jun 2019.
+Berman, Corey and Farley, Robert. “Ocasio-Cortez Wrong on Cause of Low Unemployment.” FactCheck.org. 18 Jul 2018.
+UNICEF. “Innocenti Report Card 14 Children in the Developed World.” Jun 2017.
+U.S. Census Bureau. “Income and Poverty in the United States: 2017.” 12 Sep 2018.
+U.S. Census Bureau. “Historical Poverty Tables: People and Families – 1959 to 2017.” Accessed 28 Jun 2019.
+U.S. Census Bureau. “The Supplemental Poverty Measure: 2017.” 12 Sep 2018.
+U.S House. “H.Res.109, Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal.” (as introduced 7 Feb 2019).
+Davis, Susan. “Senate Blocks Green New Deal, But Climate Change Emerges As Key 2020 Issue.” NPR. 26 Mar 2019.
+McDonald, Jessica. “The Facts on the ‘Green New Deal’.” FactCheck.org. 15 Feb 2019.
+Freedman, Andrew. “Climate scientists refute 12-year deadline to curb global warming.” Axios. 22 Jan 2019.
+Allen, Myles. “Why protesters should be wary of ‘12 years to climate breakdown’ rhetoric.” The Conversation. 18 Apr 2019.
+Woodward, Calvin et. al. “AP FACT CHECK: O’Rourke on climate, Trump on ‘no collusion’.” Associated Press. 16 Mar 2019.
+IPCC, 2018: Summary for Policymakers. Global warming of 1.5°C. An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty. World Meteorological Organization, Geneva, Switzerland."
+"4.7KDuring a trip to the United Kingdom, President Donald Trump once again expressed skepticism about climate change, making several false or misleading statements in a television interview on “Good Morning Britain” with host Piers Morgan.
+
+Trump said the United States has “among the cleanest climates,” adding that he wants clean water and air. But what’s relevant to climate are greenhouse gas emissions, and the U.S. is the second-biggest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world.
+When asked whether he believes in climate change, Trump said, confusingly, that there is “a change in the weather” that “changes both ways.” Weather will always be variable, but long-term shifts in weather refer to climate. And the global average trend is for temperatures to increase.
+He also falsely stated that the term “global warming” shifted to “climate change,” and has now switched to “extreme weather.” Each of these terms has a different specific meaning and is in current use by scientists.
+
+Trump went on to give examples of extreme weather, including tornadoes and hurricanes, that he says were worse in the past. The science isn’t clear on whether tornadoes are changing because of climate change, but there is evidence to suggest hurricanes are likely to get worse in the future because of greenhouse emissions. In any case, the examples don’t refute the overwhelming evidence that climate change is happening.
+‘Cleanest Climate’
+In an interview that aired June 5, Morgan asked the president what Prince Charles, a known environmentalist, had told Trump about climate change. The meeting, Trump said, was originally supposed to be only 15 minutes, but lasted an hour and a half.
+Trump: [Charles] wants to make sure future generations have climate that is good climate, as opposed to a disaster, and I agree. I did mention a couple of things. I did say well, the United States right now has among the cleanest climates there are based on all statistics, and it’s even getting better. Because I agree with that, I want the best water, the cleanest water. Crystal clean … air.
+Later that day in a press conference in Ireland, Trump echoed that statement, again responding to a question about his stance on climate change by referencing water and air. “But, you know,” Trump said, “we have the cleanest air in the world, in the United States, and it’s gotten better since I’m president. We have the cleanest water; it’s crystal clean.”
+As we have written before, the United States does not have the cleanest air in the world. According to the 2018 Environmental Performance Index, which is put out by Yale and Columbia universities in collaboration with the World Economic Forum, the U.S. comes in 10th. With respect to water, the same index places the U.S. in a 10-way tie for first for drinking water, and 29th in the larger category of water and sanitation. 
+It’s not clear whether air quality has gotten better, as Trump claims. Some Environmental Protection Agency metrics, such as the average national air pollutant concentrations for sulfur dioxide and ozone, improved slightly from 2016 to 2017. Others, however, showed the opposite pattern, including increases in two types of particulate matter. And the number of days with unhealthy levels of air pollutants for sensitive groups, such as children and older adults, rose from 701 days in 2016 to 729 days in 2017. There isn’t data yet for 2018. Given some of the conflicting trends and limited data, it’s hard to make concrete conclusions about how air quality has changed under a Trump presidency.
+More importantly, by bringing up air and water quality when asked about climate change, and saying the U.S. has among the “cleanest climates,” the president is mistaking traditional pollutants with greenhouse gas emissions, including carbon dioxide. 
+The latter are responsible for driving climate change, and as we’ve detailed before, the U.S. is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gases in the world. In 2016, the International Energy Agency listed the U.S. as the second-biggest emitter of CO2, behind China, and the 10th highest for CO2 emissions per person. 
+Estimates also indicate that U.S. emissions rose in 2018 after three years of declines. According to the Energy Information Administration, energy-related CO2 emissions increased by 2.8 percent in 2018 — the largest increase since 2010. The Rhodium Group, an economics analytics firm, also calculated a 3.4 percent increase in emissions across all sectors. 
+Although increases in CO2 emissions are not expected in 2019 and 2020, the EIA projects that CO2 emissions will still be higher in both years than they were in 2017.
+Weather vs. Climate
+Trump’s most direct comments on climate change came in response to Morgan’s question about whether the president personally believes in climate change.
+Trump: I believe that there’s a change in weather, and I think it changes both ways. Don’t forget it used to be called global warming. That wasn’t working. Then it was called climate change. Now it’s actually called extreme weather, because with extreme weather, you can’t miss.
+It’s not entirely clear what the president meant when he said there is “a change in weather.” We contacted the White House for clarification, but did not receive a reply. 
+If Trump is referring to a change in weather over many decades, then he’s describing climate. If not, he’s simply stating that weather — which is inherently variable — changes. That would be correct, but it also isn’t saying much. And it’s not commenting on climate change. Either way, his response is potentially misleading, and touches on a common failure to understand the difference between climate and weather.
+As NASA explains on its website, weather refers to atmospheric conditions over short periods of time, such as minutes, days or months. Climate, in contrast, is concerned with average weather conditions over a much longer period of time, such as 30 years. 
+Or, as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration puts it, “Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.” Another way of thinking about it is that weather is one or two plays in a football game, whereas climate is the entire football season.
+This difference in perspective matters because weather will always fluctuate. Even in a warming world, there will still be colder days and months. NASA notes that climate change “is not proven nor disproven by individual warming or cooling spells. It’s the longer-term trends, of a decade or more, which place less emphasis on single-year variability, that count.”
+In the case of climate change, the global average temperature trend is going in one direction, contrary to Trump’s suggestion that “it changes both ways.” This doesn’t mean, however, that all places on Earth are experiencing warming or are doing so at the same rate. 
+Again, it’s not clear what the president means by “it changes both ways.” Where Trump could have a point about the climate changing “both ways” is that not all of the effects of climate change will be in the same direction for all locations. Rainfall, as we’ve discussed, could increase in some places and decrease in others. But the fact that the impacts of climate change can differ depending on locale doesn’t undermine the idea that these changes are happening.
+No Terminology Change
+Trump also contends that the terminology surrounding climate change has purposely shifted over the years, starting first as “global warming,” morphing into “climate change” and finally becoming “extreme weather.” This misrepresents the history of the terms.  
+As we explained in 2016, when Ted Cruz made the same argument about “climate change” and “global warming,” the two terms both go back decades in the scientific literature, and technically refer to slightly different concepts, although they are often used interchangeably.
+Global warming, according to NASA, specifically means the warming of the Earth over the last century or so, because of the burning of fossil fuels. 
+Climate change is a broader concept, in that it includes higher temperatures as a result of global warming, but also other changes that result from that warming, such as sea level rise, shifting precipitation patterns and yes, some extreme weather. 
+Pennsylvania State University climatologist Michael Mann told us in 2016 that many scientists prefer to use climate change because of its broader meaning. But both terms are still commonly used, and their dual existence is not because the term “global warming” wasn’t “working.” 
+If anything, some of the increased use of “climate change,” at least among politicians, was due to a Republican strategist who pushed the Bush administration to use it because it sounded less “frightening” than global warming.
+Extreme weather has become a more commonly talked-about feature or example of climate change, but it is not used by scientists in place of “climate change” or “global warming.” In 2014, for example, the National Climate Assessment stated, “Changes in extreme weather and climate events, such as heat waves and droughts, are the primary way that most people experience climate change.”
+“Extreme weather” on its own simply means highly unusual weather. Extreme weather can include heat waves, drought, heavy downpours, floods or other storms. Not all types of extreme weather have been linked to climate change, and it’s difficult to say any particular event was affected by climate change.
+Nevertheless, scientists have made progress in what’s called attribution science, and are increasingly more confident about linking individual storms or events to climate change. In these cases, scientists are not saying that climate change caused the event, but that climate change made conditions more likely or more severe. 
+In the next section, we’ll discuss some examples, including two that Trump mentioned.
+Tornadoes & Hurricanes
+Immediately after Trump’s statement about terminology, he pointed to two examples of extreme weather that he claims were worse in the past.
+Trump: Look, we have a thing now with tornadoes, I don’t remember tornadoes in the U.S. to the extent. But then when you look back, 40 years ago, we had the worst tornado binge that we’ve ever had. In the 1890s, we had our worst hurricanes. And I would say we’ve had some very bad hurricanes.
+Trump’s tornado example is likely a reference to a so-called tornado “outbreak,” or cluster of tornadoes coming from the same weather system, that occurred over April 3 and 4, 1974.
+The 1974 event was certainly one of the worst, but there was another outbreak in 2011 that included more tornadoes and was deadlier. 
+An FAQ document from NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center explains that the 2011 outbreak killed 316 people, or six more than the 1974 event. Using the storm center’s usual way of counting the number of tornadoes in a single “convective day,” the 2011 event included 175 tornadoes, or 28 more than in 1974. The 2011 event also comes out on top when counting by calendar day. The 1974 outbreak, however, had more of the most intense tornadoes, rated as F5.
+The latest string of tornadoes in May didn’t produce a single day with tornado tallies topping these earlier outbreaks, but there were an unusually high number of tornadoes over a 30-day period.
+Trump’s other example of the 1890 hurricane season is more befuddling. That year was one of the least active for hurricanes, and included just four tropical cyclones. Only two reached hurricane status, and just one reached the category 3 rating to be classified as “major.”
+Although there was a reduced ability to identify storms before 1944, by any objective measure, 1890 was not a year with “our worst” hurricanes. 
+NOAA, for example, describes 2005’s Hurricane Katrina as “one of the most devastating hurricanes in the history of the United States,” and the deadliest since 1928.
+A much better choice for Trump would have been the 1900 Galveston Hurricane, which NOAA describes as the “deadliest weather disaster” in American history. The fact that bad hurricanes happened more than a century ago, however, doesn’t disprove climate change, and it also doesn’t establish whether or not climate change is making or will make hurricanes more frequent or worse.
+As before with our discussion of weather, the important thing is to look at the long-term record. Knowledge about the physical processes driving a particular weather event and modeling can also be used to study whether climate change is influencing or is likely to influence the severity or frequency of events.
+For hurricanes, as we’ve detailed before, there is some evidence to suggest a climate change connection, although there is uncertainty about how much humans have contributed to hurricane activity thus far. 
+Scientists are more confident that in the future hurricanes will be more intense with continued warming. “With future warming, hurricane rainfall rates are likely to increase, as will the number of very intense hurricanes, according to both theory and numerical models,” explains an FAQ to the 2018 National Climate Assessment.
+In the case of tornadoes, outbreaks have become more common over the last several decades, but the number of days with a tornado has decreased. Some evidence suggests tornadoes are also shifting eastward. But whether these changes are related to climate isn’t clear. 
+In 2016, the National Academies released a report on the attribution of extreme events, and noted that tornadoes, which are a type of severe convective storm, “are arguably the most difficult events to attribute, and accordingly, no studies have been performed.” The report continues, “These events are poorly observed, cannot be simulated in climate models at present, and have a complex and subtle relation to climate change, with competing factors tending to drive the response in opposite directions.”
+Similarly, the 2018 National Climate Assessment concluded that tornadoes are “exhibiting changes that may be related to climate change, but scientific understanding is not yet detailed enough to confidently project the direction and magnitude of future change.”"
+"4KQuick Take
+A viral meme attempts to undercut the evidence of climate change by using an edited cover of Time magazine — and regurgitating a misleading claim about “global cooling.”
+
+
+Full Story 
+A doctored cover of Time magazine casting doubt on climate change has circulated for years — at one point, according to Politico, even reaching the desk of President Donald Trump.
+That supposed cover, warning of an “Ice Age,” appeared again in recent weeks on Facebook, where thousands of users — including the musician Ted Nugent — shared it through a meme.
+“When the exact same group of ‘experts’ who claimed it was global cooling in 1977 now claim it’s global warming you can easily see why I am skeptical,” the meme reads.
+It includes two Time magazine covers — one manipulated and one legitimate. The first, on the left, is falsely identified as being from 1977 and includes a doctored headline reading, “How to Survive the Coming Ice Age.” The cover on the right, which is real, is from 2008 and has a headline that reads: “How to Win the War on Global Warming.”
+The cover falsely purported to be from 1977 was actually published April 9, 2007, and is available on the magazine’s website. Its real headline? “The Global Warming Survival Guide.”
+Time itself attempted to set the record straight in a 2013 post that debunked the fictitious version, but the false cover has persisted online nonetheless.
+The meme’s overarching claim about “experts” warning of a “global cooling in 1977” also isn’t new. We addressed a similar claim advanced by Trump last year, and by Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz before him.
+As we’ve written before, there were indeed articles (including in Time) in the 1970s that warned of cooling world temperatures. A 1975 Newsweek story has received considerable attention. But the journalist who wrote that piece criticized it himself in 2014, taking aim at parts that were not fully supported by the research.
+Moreover, the notion of global cooling was not widely accepted among climate scientists — as global warming is today. (NASA notes that studies show that “97 percent or more” of active climate scientists believe human-caused warming is occurring.)
+We’ll again refer to the 2008 study published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society that found there was not a scientific consensus in the 1970s on the cooling idea. The authors, by surveying the peer-reviewed literature between 1965 and 1979, found quite the opposite.
+“A review of the literature suggests that, on the contrary, greenhouse warming even then dominated scientists’ thinking as being one of the most important forces shaping Earth’s climate on human time scales,” they found.
+Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here.
+Sources
+Goldmacher, Shane. “How Trump gets his fake news.” Politico. 15 May 2017.
+Gwynne, Peter. “My 1975 ‘Cooling World’ Story Doesn’t Make Today’s Climate Scientists Wrong.” Inside Science. 21 May 2014.
+Levitan, Dave. “Cruz on the Global Cooling Myth and Galileo.” FactCheck.org. 27 Mar 2015.
+McDonald, Jessica. “The Science Trump Got Wrong in the Post Interview.” FactCheck.org. 28 Nov 2018.
+Peterson, Thomas C., et. al. “The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus.” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. 1 Sep 2008.
+“Scientific Consensus: Earth’s Climate is Warming.” NASA. Accessed 21 May 2019.
+Walsh, Bryan. “Sorry, a TIME Magazine Cover Did Not Predict a Coming Ice Age.” TIME. 6 Jun 2013."
+"4.2KIn a recent town hall, Iowa Rep. Steve King focused on the positives of climate change, inaccurately stating that increased evaporation under higher temperatures will lead to rain in “more and more places” — a result that’s “surely gotta shrink the deserts and expand the green growth.”
+Part of what King says is true — warmer temperatures will increase evaporation — but rainfall is expected to be uneven, growing in some places, and lessening in others. Climate models tend to project precipitation increases in areas where it already rains or snows, while decreases are projected in drier regions.
+King made his comments in a town hall in Cherokee, Iowa, on April 23 in response to a woman’s question about geoengineering (at about the 25:30 mark in the video).
+“You didn’t mention the global warming part of this, other than the weather patterns that are there,” King said. “But I think that, I began, when I first looked at that, I thought, ‘I’m hearing all these things that are bad. Well, what could be good?’ Surely on the other side there is something good.”
+He went on to give the example of being able to measure the amount of water evaporating from a barrel in Iowa in July, before launching into how precipitation changes would provide benefits:
+King, April 23: Seventy percent of the earth is covered by water. If the earth warms, then there will be more evaporation that goes into the atmosphere. According to Newton’s First Law of Physics, what goes up must come down.
+That means it will rain more and more places. It might rain harder in some places, it might snow in some of those places. But it’s surely gotta shrink the deserts and expand the green growth, there’s got to be some good in that. So I just look at the other, good side.
+King’s explanation starts off fairly well — under increased temperatures, there will be more evaporation, and he’s mostly right that the water that goes up will come back down. But that’s not because of a law of physics, and certainly not Newton’s first law of inertia, which states that an object will remain at rest or continue moving unless another force acts upon it. It’s because of the water cycle.
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+An overview of the water cycle. Credit: NASA
+We reached out to King’s office to ask for support for his statements, but did not receive a reply.
+We’ll go into more detail about why King’s conclusions about rainfall aren’t accurate, and why he might be correct that green growth will expand — but not, as he thinks, because of increased precipitation.
+Rain ‘More and More Places’?
+King’s central argument is that as temperatures rise, evaporation will increase, resulting in rain “more and more places.” 
+As multiple experts explained, King is partly right — evaporation will increase, and models predict there will be slightly more rain, on average, across the globe. But that’s only the average. It doesn’t account for the kind of precipitation events or where they occur.
+“It’s not true it’s going to rain more everywhere,” said Jack Scheff, an atmospheric scientist at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, in a phone interview.
+It will rain more in some places, he said, but less in others, and some may not change much at all. Or, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fifth assessment report put it, “Changes in precipitation will not be uniform.”
+With global warming, precipitation changes are more difficult to assess than temperature. So, scientists are less certain about them, and different climate models disagree about what will happen for much of the globe. But for the places on which the majority of the models do agree, it’s typically drier spots that are projected to see drops in precipitation, while the bumps happen in wetter areas.
+“The high latitudes and the equatorial Pacific are likely to experience an increase in annual mean precipitation,” the IPCC synthesis report said of a scenario with continued warming. “In many mid-latitude and subtropical dry regions, mean precipitation will likely decrease, while in many mid-latitude wet regions, mean precipitation will likely increase.” The IPCC defines likely as having a 66 to 100 percent probability.
+Averaged precipitation also hides the precipitation-related part of climate change that scientists are most confident about: increases in extreme precipitation.
+“With global warming, there is more water vapor in the atmosphere and that tends to increase the intensity of certain precipitation events,” said Paul O’Gorman, an atmospheric scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in a phone interview. “But importantly, that applies mostly for heavy precipitation events.” 
+O’Gorman noted that models project that most places on Earth, with the exception of certain ocean regions, will see heavy precipitation getting stronger.
+Downpours might be helpful in some cases, but they contribute to flooding, including flash flooding, runoff and soil erosion. And they can decrease water quality, as pollutants are washed into waterways humans rely on for drinking.
+“It seems clear it’s not just going to be positive impacts,” O’Gorman said.
+Angeline Pendergrass, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research who studies how precipitation changes with global warming, added that not only will heavy precipitation likely get heavier as the world warms, but light and moderate rainfall will become less frequent.
+‘Shrink the Deserts’?
+King jumped from his presumption of increased rainfall in “more and more places” to concluding that deserts might shrink in a warming future.
+When asked about shrinking deserts, Pendergrass said, “I would say that’s not a thing. If anything, we expect deserts to expand.” 
+There is some evidence, she said, that the large-scale circulation patterns that govern rainfall in the tropics and lack of rain in the subtropics might extend, widening the area without much rain.
+University of Maryland climate scientist Sumant Nigam has researched the Sahara and found that the desert has increased over the last century, in part due to climate change. He pointed us back to the long-term trends in observed rainfall that find precipitation increases and decreases in different places. 
+“Some of the decreasing regions overlap with current deserts, like the Sahara, which is expanding,” he said in an email. “That does not, however, rule out the possibility that precipitation may be increasing over another Desert, but this was certainly not the case over the largest one.”
+O’Gorman said he was not aware of “any evidence that would suggest the deserts would decrease in extent.”
+UNC’s Scheff, however, didn’t reject the idea because he said it depends on a person’s definition of a desert. Traditional definitions are pegged to precipitation amount, or the ratio of how much precipitation falls relative to the ability of the air to evaporate moisture — or what is called potential evapotranspiration. Under those definitions, he said, most research would suggest that deserts would stay about the same size or increase as warming continues. But if someone defines a desert by a lack of vegetation, deserts could shrink because global warming might increase plant growth, as we’ll explain below.
+‘Expand the Green Growth’?
+King also suggested that added precipitation would “expand the green growth.” Scheff said that some scientists, Scheff included, do think that a warming world might get greener — but not because of precipitation changes. 
+Instead, what drives the added growth, he said, is the increase in carbon dioxide, which, because of basic plant biology, would allow plants to get more of the gas they need without losing as much water.
+Plants take in CO2 through tiny pores in their leaves called stomata. When the pores are open, however, plants lose water, so it’s a delicate balance for a hungry plant to get all the CO2 it wants to perform photosynthesis and grow, while not becoming dehydrated and wilting. 
+If there’s more CO2 in the air, which would be the case with increasing emissions, then plants don’t need to open their stomata as much, reducing their demand for water. Scheff said that might mean plants would be able to grow more on the same amount of water, and that with climate change, there’d be more plant growth. 
+While the idea is somewhat controversial, Scheff said there is evidence that it’s already happening. Satellite images, for example, show a greening trend in recent decades.
+But, Scheff said, it’s not necessarily clear that the greening trend will continue as the world warms. “If it gets too hot,” he said, “plants might start dying.”
+And while Scheff leans toward the green growth aspect being helpful overall, it would come with some downsides. Weeds and some allergens, such as ragweed, he said, are likely to do especially well under higher CO2. So that part of farming might become more difficult, and people’s allergies might get worse. 
+As Scheff noted in an email, and as we’ve written about before, plant biologists have also shown that crops would become less nutritious — a process Scheff likes to call “global starching” or “global fattening.” 
+“This is because with CO2 so abundant relative to other nutrients, the leaves become enriched in carbohydrates,” he explained, “but depleted in nitrogen- and phosphorus-bearing compounds like proteins and phytochemicals.”
+As we’ve just established, King isn’t wrong that climate change might have some upsides. But it’s also true that there are many potential detrimental effects.
+The exact impacts will vary region to region and will depend on how people adapt, MIT’s O’Gorman said. But, he said, there is a risk of “some very serious negative effects,” such as sea level rise and heat stress. “Those would outweigh many of the possible benefits,” he said.
+Scheff said he considers CO2’s ability to reduce the water requirements of plants one of the few silver linings of climate change. “It’s a silver lining on some really scary stuff,” he said, also citing heat stress and sea level rise, as well as increases in extreme weather and the spread of disease. “There are way more bad things.”
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+       Share The Facts    Rep. Steve King  Iowa Republican          Global warming will result in ""more evaporation"" and more rain in ""more places,"" and that's ""surely gotta shrink the deserts and expand the green growth.""   Cherokee, Iowa – Tuesday, April 23, 2019   Share Read More     Embed     Information on embedding in your site  oEmbed Link  https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/456da28a-7d9d-49b8-8d67-274bc4cd5bc5     
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+Categories Featured Posts
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+SciCheck
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+Location International
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+Iowa
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+Issue climate change
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+extreme weather
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+global warming
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+People Steve King"
+"10.7KQuick Take
+Popular social media posts claim that climate change is a “made-up catastrophe,” despite a large body of evidence that supports the scientific consensus that it is real.
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+Full Story
+Comprehensive national and international reports in the last year alone have offered warnings about the impacts of climate change. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published a special report about the ramifications of continued warming, for example, and the U.S. government highlighted current and future risks in its National Climate Assessment.
+But a post liked by thousands on Instagram and shared repeatedly throughout social media claims climate change isn’t real, calling it a “made-up catastrophe used by globalists & socialists to instill fear and guilt to tax, regulate, and remove our freedoms while pretending to be saving the planet.”
+There’s a lot to unpack in that statement, but we’ll focus on the core falsehood: that climate change is a “made-up catastrophe.”
+Climate change is actually understood through a large body of scientific evidence that has been gathered over many years. The theory of the greenhouse effect — that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide trap the sun’s heat in the atmosphere — has been repeatedly proven since it was first proposed in 1824.
+Today, NASA notes, studies show that “97 percent or more” of active climate scientists believe human-caused warming is occurring. The agency calls the fact that “Earth’s climate is warming” a matter of “scientific consensus.”
+The 2018 National Climate Assessment — prepared by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which involves 13 federal departments and agencies — states that “global average temperature has increased by about 1.8°F from 1901 to 2016, and observational evidence does not support any credible natural explanations for this amount of warming; instead, the evidence consistently points to human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse or heat-trapping gases, as the dominant cause.”
+It adds: “Sixteen of the last 17 years have been the warmest ever recorded by human observations.”
+The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as we’ve written before, found that it is “extremely likely” — defined as being between a 95 and 100 percent probability — that the majority of the increase in global average surface temperature between 1951 and 2010 was due to human activities.
+Climate change effects are already being felt, the federal National Climate Assessment report said — citing the impact of higher temperatures on droughts, extreme weather events, coral reef ecosystems and more.
+The U.N.’s 2018 special report warns of exacerbated risks — including sea-level rise, loss of biodiversity, species extinction, crop loss, and limits on water supplies and economic growth — if trends continue.
+But to say climate change is a “made-up catastrophe” is to ignore the scientific conclusions established by actively publishing climate scientists from around the world.
+Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here.
+Sources
+Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States: Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume II. U.S. Global Change Research Program. 2018.
+McDonald, Jessica. “The Science Trump Got Wrong in the Post Interview.” FactCheck.org. 28 Nov 2018.
+“Scientific Consensus: Earth’s Climate is Warming.” NASA. Accessed 7 May 2019.
+Special Report: Global Warming of 1.5 ºC. United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 2018."
+"1.2KThe Trump administration is in the process of rolling back Obama-era fuel economy standards, which were originally set to hit an average of 54.5 miles per gallon for passenger cars and trucks by 2025. 
+While not yet finalized, the Trump administration’s proposed rule freezes fuel economy standards at 2020 levels through 2026 — a move the government says will save lives and money.
+But many experts, and even an official inside the Environmental Protection Agency, are skeptical of those new conclusions. Researchers have identified numerous errors and faulty assumptions in the administration’s latest analyses, some of which violate the basic principles of economics.
+For example, Mark Jacobsen, an economist at the University of California, San Diego, said the administration implausibly assumes that the U.S. will have about 6 million fewer cars on the road by 2029 if the rollback happens. The Trump administration has cited Jacobsen’s research in pushing for the rollback, but he said his work is being misapplied, resulting in misleading conclusions about fatalities and pollution.
+William Charmley, an official with the EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality, wrote in an internal staff memo that the proposed standards would increase the fatality rate and “are detrimental to safety.”
+Under President Donald Trump, the EPA also has said it will remove California’s unique ability to set stricter emissions standards for vehicles. California currently accepts federal standards, but doesn’t want to continue to accept them if they are frozen at the 2020 level. If EPA revokes California’s special power, that decision would likely be challenged in court and might lead to a patchwork of regulations across the country — an outcome many automakers would prefer to avoid.
+We’ll explain how U.S. fuel economy regulations work, go over what President Barack Obama implemented, and take a look at the Trump administration’s justification for the proposed rollback.
+Two Fuel Economy Programs
+The idea behind a fuel economy standard is to push automakers to produce vehicles that travel further on the same amount of fuel, thereby reducing the need for gasoline and decreasing pollution.
+Today, the U.S. fuel economy program technically includes two standards that are overseen by different agencies under different laws.
+The Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, standard is set by the Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA. The standard is set in miles per gallon, and was first used on model year 1978 cars and 1979 trucks following the 1973-74 oil embargo, which had drastically raised gas prices. At the time, the motivation for the standard was to make the nation less dependent on foreign oil.
+Following a 2007 Supreme Court decision that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the Clean Air Act, the EPA concluded in 2009 that greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles endanger public health and welfare. This allowed the EPA to create a greenhouse gas emissions standard for cars and trucks, which is set in grams of emitted carbon dioxide, or the CO2-equivalent of another greenhouse gas, per mile traveled.
+Under Obama, NHTSA and EPA worked together to set standards that would be essentially equivalent to each other. The agencies also collaborated with the state of California, which had been allowed to set a stricter standard under the Clean Air Act, so that the state would accept the federal standards, thereby creating a so-called “national program.”
+Obama first set new standards in this way for model years 2012-2016, and also included the United Auto Workers union and major automakers when brokering the deal. In 2011, he then announced a second phase of fuel economy improvements for model years 2017-2025. It’s the latter half of this second phase of improvements that the Trump administration has proposed to eliminate.
+How the Standards Work
+While the standards are often summarized by a single number, such as Obama’s 2025 goal of 54.5 mpg as an average across all vehicles, that is simply an estimate of what the agency expects under the program.
+As a Congressional Research Service FAQ document on the topic says, “the 54.5 number is not a requirement for every — or for any specific — vehicle or manufacturer.”
+Each vehicle has a specified fuel economy target, which is based on its size and class. But what matters is the average target across all of the cars that are sold in a given fleet. This means manufacturers can sell underperforming cars and make up the difference by selling other cars that outperform their targets.
+Companies face financial penalties if their vehicle fleets do not meet their individually calculated standards. But there are built-in flexibilities that mean automakers still have ways of avoiding penalties if they miss their marks in a given year. 
+Both NHTSA’s CAFE program and EPA’s greenhouse gas program operate on credit systems that allow companies to stockpile credits if they overperform; those credits can then be used in the future or even applied retroactively. Automakers can also transfer credits between their fleets or trade credits to other manufacturers. As a result, even a company that fails to meet its standard one year could be in compliance because of previous good performance or by credit swapping within the industry. 
+Finally, it’s worth noting that the standards sound more stringent than they are in reality. As the EPA explains, real-world greenhouse emissions are about 25 percent higher than the CO2 standard, and on-the-road fuel economy is about 20 percent lower than the listed CAFE standard.
+Obama’s initial 2025 goal of 54.5 mpg is a mpg version of the CO2 standard. To put that in perspective, the EPA estimates that the gas mileage is closer to 40 mpg. But even that assumes that all of the greenhouse gas improvements come from fuel economy, which is unlikely to be the case, since some are expected to come from other areas, such as air conditioning. The real-world fuel economy will be even lower.
+Obama’s Standards
+Under Obama’s proposal for 2017-2025, emissions standards would tighten by 3.5 percent every year for the first five model years, and by 5 percent every year for the last four years.
+In 2012, the EPA finalized Obama’s proposed increases to the fuel economy standards for all model years, and NHTSA finalized the rules through model year 2021, since the agency could not legally finalize standards for more than five years at a time. Given the long lead time, the EPA also agreed to a process in which the 2022-2025 model years would be reevaluated in a midterm evaluation to see whether they were still appropriate. 
+In late November 2016, the EPA issued a proposed determination that the rules remained appropriate, and did not need to be made more or less stringent. Based on a technical assessment report and other updated information, including public comments on that report, the EPA found that, if anything, the cost of installing fuel economy technology was lower than projected in 2012. 
+On Jan. 12, 2017, a week before Trump took office, Obama’s EPA head, Gina McCarthy, issued a final determination that the 2022-25 standards were appropriate. 
+Although the standards had not changed, the agency’s updated fleet information shifted the average emissions and fuel economy projections slightly. Instead of 163 grams of CO2 per mile, or the equivalent of 54.5 mpg in 2025, the agency now expected 173 grams per mile, or the equivalent of 51.4 mpg. This level of fuel efficiency, the EPA explained, would be met by a car getting about 36 mpg in the real world — some 10 mpg higher than a typical 2016 vehicle.
+Trump’s Proposal
+Just a few months after Trump took office, his administration announced its intent to challenge the 2022-2025 fuel economy rules. 
+In April 2017, Scott Pruitt, the EPA administrator at the time, formally withdrew the final determination McCarthy had issued in January, arguing that the standards were “based on outdated information, and that more recent information suggests that the current standards may be too stringent.”
+Then, in August 2018, the EPA and NHTSA released a new plan for fuel efficiency called the Safer Affordable Fuel Efficient Vehicles rule, or SAFE, which would apply to model year 2021-2026 cars and trucks.
+In the notice of proposed rulemaking for SAFE, the agencies outlined nine different alternatives to the Obama rules, but stated that the preferred option was the most complete rollback: freezing the standards at the 2020 level through model year 2026.
+The proposed rule also revokes California’s ability to set its own, higher fuel efficiency standards. 
+Justification for the Rollback
+The gist of the administration’s justification for the rollback is that the Obama-era standard is too expensive to do and is no longer feasible or reasonable for automakers to achieve.
+In the notice of proposed rulemaking, which includes a new analysis, EPA and NHTSA said that SAFE would save more than $500 billion in costs to society, for a net gain of about $177 billion. 
+Freezing the standards at 2020 levels, the agencies said, would also result in 12,700 fewer fatalities from car accidents — a tally that includes deaths over the lifetime of vehicles through model year 2029.
+At the same time, the administration concluded the rollback would lead the U.S. to use about half a million more barrels of oil every day — an increase of 2 to 3 percent — and would result in an extra 7.4 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide being released by 2100. 
+The administration argues that this figure is minimal, since it corresponds to 3/1000ths of a degree Celsius in warming. But it’s equivalent to about four years’ worth of greenhouse gas emissions from the nation’s entire transportation sector.
+Criticisms of the Trump Analysis
+Numerous economists have come forward to point out flaws and errors in the Trump analysis, suggesting that the costs of the standards are not as high as the administration estimates and questioning the validity of the safety claims.
+Flawed modeling: The biggest error, said Mark Jacobsen, an economist at the University of California, San Diego, is that the administration inappropriately assumes that the U.S. will have about 6 million fewer cars on the road by 2029 if the rollback happens.
+The assumption runs counter to everything economists know about loosening regulations and lowering the price of vehicles. If costs fall, people will buy more cars, not fewer.
+“It’s not plausible,” Jacobsen told us of a fleet size decrease under the rollback. “It can’t happen.”
+Jacobsen is one of 11 authors on a policy forum paper published in the journal Science last December that concluded the Trump analysis “has fundamental flaws and inconsistencies, is at odds with basic economic theory and empirical studies” and is “misleading.”
+This particular error, Jacobsen said, is a result of a faulty fleet turnover model that attempts to incorporate scrappage, or how often people choose to scrap, or junk, their cars.
+Jacobsen has studied scrappage, and the Trump administration has cited his work in pushing for the rollback. While he’s encouraged that scrappage is entering into the government’s thinking — it wasn’t part of the Obama analysis — he said his work is being misapplied and taken to a level “that’s not even feasible economically.”
+The reason why a smaller fleet size under the rollback is such a big deal is because it changes all of the subsequent calculations. 
+As the Science paper explains, fewer cars mean fewer miles traveled, which means less gas consumed, less traffic congestion and noise, less pollution and fewer car accidents. In other words, the Trump analysis isn’t counting any of the negatives for at least 6 million cars, making the rollback appear more beneficial than it is.
+Doubled rebound effect: Another point of contention comes from the rebound effect, or the adjustment made to account for the fact that when people have more fuel efficient cars that are cheaper to run, they tend to drive them more. 
+The 2016 Obama analysis used a figure of 10 percent, meaning that for every 10 percent drop in fuel costs, people would drive 1 percent more. It’s essentially how much of the fuel savings will be lost to the extra driving — in this case, roughly 0.5 percent of the 5 percent increase in fuel efficiency.
+The 2018 Trump analysis doubled the rebound effect to 20 percent. But Yale economist and fellow Science paper co-author Kenneth Gillingham, who has worked for the California Air Resources Board and was on the Council of Economic Advisers under Presidents Obama and George W. Bush, said that the best evidence doesn’t support such an increase. 
+There are studies that identify 20 percent or larger rebound effects, he said, but those studies tend to be decades older and survey-based, or from Europe, where gas prices are higher and public transportation systems are more robust. 
+Studies within the past decade in America using multiple odometer readings, which are more reliable than people’s memories, have turned up much smaller rebound effects. 
+According to Gillingham’s review of the literature, which he shared with the agencies in response to the SAFE proposal, the average rebound estimate from these recent odometer studies is 8.1 percent, with some identifying no rebound effect at all. Many of these studies weren’t included in NHTSA and EPA’s review.
+“They’re relying on effects from Europe, old estimates and a cherry-picked set of estimates from more recent times,” Gillingham said of the agencies in an interview. “It’s pretty hard if you look at the more recent work to argue for 20 percent.”
+The change to the rebound effect doesn’t alter the cost-benefit analysis figures all that much, the Science paper says, but it’s a big part of how the agencies are able to arrive at their estimate of 12,700 additional deaths under the Obama standards. As we’ll explain in more detail below, that conclusion is also likely faulty.
+A Sketchy Safety Argument
+One of the key ways the Trump administration justifies the rollback is by claiming that it would save lives. 
+Lower car costs, the agencies argue, would allow more people to buy new, safer cars. Without the standards, automakers also wouldn’t tinker with vehicle weight, and there wouldn’t be the extra miles from people driving more fuel efficient vehicles.
+The researchers we spoke with, however, weren’t convinced by this line of thinking.
+Michael Anderson, a health and environmental economist at the University of California, Berkeley who was not involved with the Science paper, said that while faster fleet turnover might help somewhat with safety, many factors, such as driver age and wealth, correlate with newer vehicles, so it’s “hard to know exactly how much that matters.” 
+The entire premise of faster turnover is also predicated on the idea that under the Obama standards, cars will cost much more and new vehicle sales will fall. But Gillingham uncovered a simple math error when the agencies failed to convert a quarterly figure into an annual one. When corrected, the estimated number of lost sales — or new cars that would be sold under the rollback, but not under the Obama rules — drops by 70 percent.
+“That right off the bat cuts the number of fatalities,” said Gillingham, who added that fixing the single error would reduce the 12,700 deaths by a third. “It’s huge. That is a really important fact that they did not get right.”
+The Trump administration also predicts that automakers would downsize vehicles to meet the standards, and says those weight adjustments would have a negative effect on safety (see page 43106).
+But Anderson, who has studied the effect of vehicle weight on traffic fatalities, told us that the relationship between safety and car mass is complex. While adding 100 pounds to one car makes that car safer, it makes other collisions less safe. The best thing for safety is to have vehicles that are the same size. But it’s not obvious, he said, what the standards would do to vehicle size.
+Finally, the administration’s tables (see tables 11-71, 11-73, 11-75 and 11-77) show that about half or more of the lives come from the rebound effect — which, as we explained, was doubled in the Trump analysis, and refers to when people drive more often if their vehicles are more fuel efficient. A small number of lives saved are from weight changes.
+“The preponderance of evidence would suggest,” Anderson said of the standards, “that whatever the safety changes are — they might be negative, they might be positive — they’re not going to be very large in magnitude.”
+The 12,700 tally, he said, is “not based on the best evidence or data that we have on this subject.”
+Internal documents reveal EPA staff also doubted the high fatality estimates before the publication of the SAFE proposal in August 2018.
+In June 2018, William Charmley, an official with the EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality, shared his concerns about NHTSA’s modeling in a memo that became public in a government docket.
+In it, he specifically called out the scrappage model for inappropriately inflating the number of vehicle miles driven and thereby increasing the number of fatalities, at one point stating that the result is “clearly wrong” and “driving incorrect fatality estimates.” The memo also documents code revision work EPA staff did in an attempt to fix some of the obvious errors, which found that a rollback would increase the fatality rate and lead to 17 more deaths each year between 2036 and 2045, not including rebound effects.
+“The Proposed standards are detrimental to safety, rather than beneficial,” the memo reads.
+What Happens Next?
+The Trump administration hasn’t yet finalized its fuel economy rollback. Initially, the finalized rule was expected at the end of March, but Andrew Wheeler, the head of the EPA, has since stated that the rule would hopefully come out later in the spring or early this summer.
+The New York Times reported in April, according to anonymous sources familiar with the administration’s plan, that rather than completely eliminating the previous administration’s 5 percent increases in CO2 emissions stringency, the agency might opt for a 1 percent improvement each year. Wheeler said in an April 11 interview with Reuters that the final rule “is not going to be the same” as the proposed rule, but wouldn’t elaborate any further because EPA was “still reviewing the data and information.”
+What is also unclear is whether the agencies will fix the flaws identified by outside scientists and by members of its own teams. On April 2, Wheeler said that career staff had been consulted on the proposed rule and would continue to be for the finalized version (see 27 minutes into video). In the Reuters interview, he referred to the feedback the agency had received, saying, “We have taken constructive comments, criticisms and concerns from a whole host of different interest groups, and I hope that our final regulation is something that everyone can get behind and support.”
+The other big question is what will happen with California. Government officials announced at the end of February that talks with the California Air Resources Board had fallen apart and the agencies would proceed on the rulemaking without the state’s approval.
+That result makes some automakers nervous because while many had pushed Trump to weaken the standards, they still wanted buy-in from California so that there would be a single standard across the U.S. Around a dozen other states and a third of the American market follow the Golden State’s standards. EPA argues that it is providing a single federal standard by removing California’s ability to set a higher one. But California is expected to sue in response, sending the issue to the courts and into a protracted legal limbo — a result that fails to provide regulatory certainty.
+California has already announced that it is suing EPA and NHTSA for failing to provide additional information explaining how the agencies arrived at their decision to overturn the Obama rules. According to the state, that information had been requested under the Freedom of Information Act in September."
+"736Quick Take
+Headlines shared widely on social media misleadingly tell readers New York City will “ban” hot dogs. A city spokesman told us a plan to phase out government purchases of processed meats and reduce purchases of beef “would not impact hot dogs” sold “at baseball games, street vendors, restaurants, etc.”
+
+
+Full Story
+New York City recently unveiled what it has dubbed its own “Green New Deal” — a reference to congressional Democrats’ proposal to address climate change.
+The city’s plans are part of a larger effort known as “OneNYC 2050,” which also touches on issues such as economic inequalities and health. The initiative calls for a “nearly 30 percent additional reduction in emissions by 2030.” It contains numerous components – including a mandate that large buildings cut emissions, or face penalties, and a goal to “convert government operations to 100 percent clean electricity.”
+But in some circles on social media, thousands of users shared headlines zeroing in on one supposed target of the plan: hot dogs.
+“NYC To Ban Hot Dogs and Processed Meats To Improve Climate,” reads the misleading headline posted on a network of radio websites.
+At least 20 various iHeart.com pages published the same story, which has an equally disingenuous opening sentence: “New York City is the first city in the United States to eliminate processed meats.”
+In reality, the changes outlined apply only to meat purchases by the city government.
+“This policy would apply only to City purchases. The plan is to phase out completely purchases of processed meats by agencies, and reduce how much agencies spend on beef by 50 percent,” a city spokesman, Phil Ortiz, told FactCheck.org in an email. “This would affect, for example, hamburgers in NYC public school lunches. It would not impact hot dogs at baseball games, street vendors, restaurants, etc.”
+It’s not clear when the changes would be made; we asked and Ortiz said: “We will have more to say about the implementation in the coming weeks.”
+The iHeart.com story only hints at what is truly happening in the second paragraph, which says: “The plan will cut purchases of red meat by 50 percent in its city-controlled facilities such as hospitals, schools, and correctional facilities.”
+Other websites, such as thedcpatriot.com, carried similarly misleading headlines. And another post that appeared on an iHeart.com website — “NYC Banning Hot Dogs As Part Of Green New Deal” — further distorts the facts.
+“Could this be the end of the dirty water dog?” it reads. “Who doesn’t love a dirty water dog before or after a show in the city … What are your thoughts on this proposed ban on hot dogs and processed meats?”
+The full “OneNYC report” report doesn’t even specifically mention hot dogs. It does, however, repeatedly note that the changes regarding processed meats and beef relate to city operations.
+The report states at one point that the city will lead “by example on climate change by ending City purchases of unnecessary single-use plastic foodware and phasing out the purchase of processed meat, cutting beef purchasing in half.”
+It also notes that processed meat “has been linked with increased risk of cancer and is often high in saturated fat and sodium which is linked to heart disease. Processed meat will be replaced by healthier proteins, including an increase in plant-based options.”
+The International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organization, does indeed categorize processed meats as a “Group 1” agent, which it defines as being “carcinogenic to humans.”
+“In the case of processed meat, this classification is based on sufficient evidence from epidemiological studies that eating processed meat causes colorectal cancer,” also known as colon cancer, the WHO reports.
+While “Group 1” also includes tobacco smoking and asbestos, the WHO notes that being in the same classification “does NOT mean that they are all equally dangerous.” Instead, the classification is based on “the strength of the scientific evidence about an agent being a cause of cancer, rather than assessing the level of risk.”
+Red meat, meanwhile, is listed in “Group 2A” — “probably carcinogenic to humans.” On that, the WHO says “the classification is based on limited evidence from epidemiological studies showing positive associations between eating red meat and developing colorectal cancer as well as strong mechanistic evidence.”
+Livestock do indeed affect climate change, as we’ve reported before. Cows, for example, produce and release methane, a greenhouse gas, as a result of digesting food. Almost a third of greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture are methane production from livestock. Methane is about 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a century.
+Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on the social media network. Our previous stories can be found here.
+Sources
+“Agents Classified by the IARC Monographs, Volumes 1—123.” International Agency for Research on Cancer, World Health Organization. 25 Mar 2019.
+McDonald, Jessica. “The Facts on the ‘Green New Deal.’” FactCheck.org. 15 Feb 2019.
+“OneNYC 2050: Building a strong and fair city.” City of New York. April 2019.
+Ortiz, Phil. Assistant Director for external affairs, NYC Mayor’s Office of Recovery and Resiliency. Email to FactCheck.org. 25 Apr 2019.
+“Q&A on the carcinogenicity of the consumption of red meat and processed meat.” World Health Organization. October 2015."
+"69In an op-ed and at a town hall, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has claimed that the top two fastest-growing jobs in the United States are in clean energy: solar photovoltaic installers and wind turbine technicians. That’s not the case — at least not yet.
+The governor is referring to Bureau of Labor Statistics’ projections that these two occupations will be the fastest-growing by 2026. But there isn’t any evidence yet that they are currently the fastest-growing occupations.
+Also, the two occupations combined employed an estimated 14,500 people, as of May 2018. Even if its projections turn out to be accurate, BLS notes that “the number of new jobs is projected to be relatively small.”
+It is also worth mentioning, although the governor doesn’t, that four oil and natural gas occupations are on the bureau’s list of “fastest growing occupations,” and collectively those occupations would add more jobs to the economy than solar installers and wind turbine technicians.
+Inslee, a Democratic presidential candidate who is making climate change his No. 1 campaign priority, spoke about green jobs at a town hall televised by CNN on April 10, when moderator Wolf Blitzer followed up on a question that an audience member had asked regarding the economic impact of clean energy on “Americans who live in coal-, gas- and oil-dependent economies.”
+Blitzer, April 10: So what happens to the approximately 1.2 million Americans right now, still working fossil fuel extraction and power generation?
+Inslee: … Look, one of the things we talk about in this is that we need a just transition. This is going to be a huge transition. We are a fossil fuel-based economy largely right now, and we know we’re going to have to go to clean energy sources by the midcentury. This is just a scientific fact.
+But while we do this, we have to make sure that people during that transition have opportunities along with everyone else. So we need to do the kind of things we’ve done in Centralia, Washington, where we are closing our last coal-fired plant, to have about a $55 million fund to help those employees in training and transition assistance, to help businesses where we can make sure that local economy continues to thrive, and give a transition period of several years so that there’s not, you know, trauma for these families. …
+And we know that there are going to be jobs aplenty. It’s interesting, there are 3 million people — you mentioned a million in fossil fuels — there are 3 million people tonight working in clean energy in the United States. It’s growing twice as fast as the rest of the U.S. economy. The most rapidly growing job in America is solar installer, and second is wind turbine technician.
+A day later, Inslee wrote an opinion piece published by CNN and repeated the claim about the top two “most rapidly growing” jobs.
+Inslee, April 11: Jobs in this sector are growing twice as fast as the rest of the economy. The fastest growing job in the country is a solar installer. Number two? Wind turbine technician.
+In both instances, Inslee spoke about the growth in jobs for solar installers and wind turbine technicians in the present tense. But the links in Inslee’s op-ed, which we included in his quote, provide no evidence that these jobs are currently the fastest growing.
+Instead, both articles refer to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ most recent biennial employment projections released in October 2017 that provide projections for job growth in 2026, compared with employment levels in 2016.
+BLS projects that there will be a 105 percent increase in solar photovoltaic installers and a 96 percent increase in wind turbine technicians from 2016 to 2026. The third fastest-growing occupation is home health aide, which also appears on the bureau’s list of occupations with the “most new jobs” at the end of the 2016-2026 period.
+By 2026, BLS projects there will be 11,800 additional solar installers and 5,600 new wind turbine service technicians. For context, the third fastest-growing occupation — home health aides — will add 431,200 jobs.
+The bureau’s list of the top 30 “fastest growing occupations” also includes four oil industry occupations: Roustabouts, oil and gas; service unit operators, oil, gas, and mining; rotary drill operators, oil and gas; derrick operators, oil and gas. Collectively, those four occupations are projected to add 28,900 jobs, while the two clean energy occupations cited by Inslee would add 17,400.
+
+BLS does not provide annual projections for the green jobs cited by the governor. It does, however, annually estimate the number of solar installers and wind turbine technicians using the Occupational Employment Statistics survey.
+As of May 2018, there were an estimated 8,950 solar installers and 5,580 wind turbine service technicians. But BLS spokesman Gary Steinberg told us those figures actually represent a moving three-year average, so they should not be compared with previous years. He referred us to an FAQ that said, “The OES methodology that allows such detailed area and industry estimates also makes it difficult to use OES data for comparisons across short time periods.”
+That means there is no official employment data that would support Inslee’s claim that “[t]he most rapidly growing job in America is solar installer, and second is wind turbine technician.”
+Jared Leopold, Inslee’s campaign spokesman, told us that the governor was using shorthand to describe future job growth and didn’t intend to suggest the jobs are currently the fastest growing. He cited other publications that referred to “fastest-growing jobs,” such as CNBC’s report on the BLS projections.
+However, that CNBC report also provided the context when listing the “fastest-growing jobs,” such as noting that “these jobs are projected to grow quickly” between 2016 and 2026."
+"3.5KSince the ambitious and controversial Green New Deal debuted last month, Republicans and Democrats have sparred over the cost of the measure — a nonbinding resolution that broadly outlines how the U.S. should address climate change over the next decade.
+But sometimes the politicians have erred in their descriptions of the proposal and the costs of climate action and inaction.
+
+Numerous Republicans have touted a $93 trillion price tag for the resolution. President Donald Trump has rounded that up to $100 trillion. But the estimate, which comes from a right-leaning think tank, has important caveats, and experts told us the Green New Deal is too vague to try to estimate its cost.
+Sen. Ed Markey, the Democratic sponsor of the resolution, claimed that without any action climate change “will result in 10% GDP loss by 2090,” citing the National Climate Assessment. That number is an upper-end estimate, and two of the researchers who did the original study caution against using it.
+
+We’ll explain the origin of Markey’s 10 percent gross domestic product line, and go over why it’s not the best way to summarize the economic impacts of climate change.
+And we’ll demystify the seemingly specific $93 trillion figure, which the think tank report’s own authors say should not be the only takeaway.
+We’ve already written about the Green New Deal, and the confusion over what the resolution entails. Some of that applies here, too, as many Republicans continue to say the proposal covers things it doesn’t.
+The Green New Deal, which hasn’t yet come up for a vote in either chamber, is a nonbinding resolution that calls for the country to address climate change by reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions through a “10-year national mobilization.” The proposal requires that the transition to clean energy be done in a way that is sensitive to vulnerable populations, and includes other large-scale goals, such as providing all Americans with health care, housing and economic security.
+$93 Trillion?
+In the past two weeks, the cost of the Green New Deal has been a relentless focus for Republicans, including during a Feb. 27 Western Caucus forum and press conference organized by Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar that was devoted to denouncing the proposal.
+At the annual Conservative Political Action Conference on Mar. 2, Trump said the Democrats would “completely takeover American energy and completely destroy America’s economy through their new $100 trillion Green New Deal.”
+And on Mar. 5, Eric Trump, the president’s second eldest son and an executive vice president of the Trump Organization, said on Fox News Radio that the proposal would cost $93 trillion, adding, falsely, that it banned airplanes, cows and cars. (As we’ve explained before, the Green New Deal doesn’t call for any of those prohibitions.)
+Sens. John Barrasso, Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn and Joni Ernst, among many others, have also cited the same $93 trillion figure. 
+The number is an estimate from the American Action Forum, a self-described “center-right policy institute.” The AAF is the “sister organization” of the American Action Network, a conservative nonprofit that has spent tens of millions of dollars supporting Republicans in general elections. The AAN is a tax-exempt 501(c)(4) that doesn’t disclose donors, but must disclose any independent expenditures on TV ads for or against specific candidates to the Federal Election Commission.
+In a brief analysis, the AAF estimated costs for six sectors related to Green New Deal goals, including clean energy, high-speed rail, a job guarantee, health care, green housing and food security. The estimated costs only include outlays, and don’t factor in economic benefits or other effects. 
+The group produced a single figure or range for each category, which, when tallied, runs from $51 trillion to $93 trillion between 2020 and 2029. The summed figures don’t appear in the report, although they are mentioned in a separate summary. The upper number has gotten the most attention.
+But the experts we spoke to said it’s not possible to put a specific price tag on the Green New Deal.
+“I’d say that it is *way* too early to even pretend to put cost estimates on the ‘Green New Deal.’ It’s at this point a still-amorphous construct,” said Josh Bivens, director of research at the labor-funded Economic Policy Institute, in an email to FactCheck.org.
+Noah Kaufman, a research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, agreed. When asked what one can say about how much the Green New Deal would cost, he said, “basically nothing.”
+The Green New Deal, he said, is a set of ambitions, not policies, and how much things cost will depend on what the policies are.
+“You can’t use policy analysis if you don’t have policy,” said Kaufman, who previously served as President Barack Obama’s deputy associate director of energy and climate change. “It just seems definitely premature and a little misleading to try to claim we know how much.”
+Jeffrey Miron, the director of economic studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, said, “It’s hard to be very precise because a lot of the proposals are broad brush and vague.”
+He nevertheless noted that other estimates — including one back-of-the-envelope calculation from Bloomberg Opinion writer Noah Smith, which came out to $6.6 trillion every year — have been roughly the same as the American Action Forum’s figure.
+The president of the American Action Forum and a co-author of the analysis, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, defended the estimate, but acknowledged that using the $93 trillion figure by itself was not ideal. 
+“The figure’s not wrong, but it’s incomplete,” he said, adding that in a perfect world, people would give ranges and convey uncertainty. Holtz-Eakin is a former director of the Congressional Budget Office and was John McCain’s chief economic adviser during the 2008 presidential campaign. 
+A better numerical summary of the findings, Holtz-Eakin said, would be $50 trillion to $90 trillion, with some mention of the nuances in the report.
+The analysis, for example, notes that the breadth of the Green New Deal “makes it daunting to apply the standard tools of policy analysis.”
+The paper goes on to say that the Green New Deal would result in changes that “are impossible to quantify at this point,” and that redundancy in certain policies “complicates a precise analysis, as the interactions are difficult to predict.” 
+Those caveats aren’t included when Republicans bring up the Green New Deal’s price tag.
+Strictly speaking, as a nonbinding resolution that would require other legislation to carry out its goals, the Green New Deal costs nothing. Even if it passed both the House and the Senate, it would not have the force of law. Lawmakers would have to propose other legislation to act on any of the broad goals in the resolution. And that legislation would include specific policy proposals, which the CBO would score as it would any other bill. The score would then be provided to lawmakers so they could be informed about the impact of the legislation on the federal budget.
+The AAF estimate shouldn’t be thought of as the same or even similar to a CBO cost estimate, which estimates the full impact of the legislation on the federal budget, given spending and revenue changes.
+A Closer Look
+We won’t pick through all of the AAF estimate — most economists we spoke to didn’t want to comment on it. As Miron said, “it’s impossible to argue about details because the exact proposals don’t have enough details.”
+But a few key examples help explain why the $93 trillion figure is problematic.
+Because none of the Green New Deal’s policies are defined yet, the estimate’s authors had to make assumptions about what sorts of policies would be made.
+In the case of health care, AAF authors assumed the Green New Deal would be similar to Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All proposal, despite the fact that the only thing the resolution says about health care is that it should be “high-quality” and provided to “all people of the United States.” The group calculated that single line item would cost $36 trillion over a decade. 
+As Miron pointed out, there are a variety of different universal health care systems that one could choose to implement, and the costs for each vary widely.
+Similarly, the AAF estimate also makes assumptions about the Green New Deal’s plan to invest in high-speed rail. The estimate states, inaccurately, that the Green New Deal “envisions enough high-speed rail to make air travel unnecessary.” 
+That idea was originally included in a FAQ sheet that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s office distributed to news organizations, but it does not appear in the resolution. The resolution, which Ocasio-Cortez sponsored in the House, simply mentions investment in high-speed rail as one way of “overhauling transportation systems” to reduce pollution and greenhouse emissions in the sector “as much as is technologically feasible.”
+Furthermore, the rail estimate isn’t reliable because it claims to come from the number of airline miles flown multiplied by a cost per mile estimate. But the airline miles number that was used actually represents the number of airports in the country.
+Redundancies, too, could have a large impact on the ultimate cost of any Green New Deal. Miron explained that some of the Green New Deal’s goals would have substantial overlap with others, which could lead to double-counting. For example, if there’s infrastructure spending to build new rail lines, that could create jobs, reducing the costs of a jobs program. But the AAF estimate counts both separately, without factoring in those interactions.
+Holtz-Eakin said his group would have accounted for this if it could have.
+Cost of Going Green
+It’s worth noting that more than 80 percent of the AAF estimate was for social programs such as health care, not for clean energy and climate policies.
+Kaufman, the Columbia researcher, said he does have concerns about cost, but reducing greenhouse gas emissions doesn’t have to break the bank.
+“It turns out if you do something like carbon tax and use that money to reduce other taxes, what happens is you get a drastic reduction on emissions and basically no effect on the economy at all,” he said.
+Economists of all stripes generally agree that the most efficient way to cut emissions is to put a price on carbon. If the Green New Deal were not to take such an approach, the costs would almost certainly be much higher.
+Several economists have looked at how to implement plans that reach or work toward net zero emissions.
+Robert Pollin, an economist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, thinks it’s entirely possible to get to net zero by 2050 by spending around 2 percent of GDP each year, or around $18 trillion in total. 
+“$18 trillion is real money,” he said. “But when you spread it out over 30 years, it’s entirely feasible and it will have a lot of economic benefits in addition to getting us down to zero emissions.”
+Under his scenario, Pollin says the economy would continue to grow and consumers would not see increases in their utility bills — one of the prospects that some politicians have highlighted under a shift to a greener economy.
+Pollin, however, strongly disagrees with the resolution’s aim of getting to net zero with just a decade of investment.
+“I think it’s completely unrealistic and it’s not worth costing out,” he said of the Green New Deal.
+Edward Barbier, an economist at Colorado State University, agrees that a strict timeline isn’t realistic. He advocates jump-starting the transition by investing about 5 percent of GDP over five or so years. GDP was $20.5 trillion in 2018, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, so that’s a little over $1 trillion a year.
+“That would push us on a path to clean energy, and a path that permanently lowers carbon emissions,” he told us. 
+After that push, Barbier said the costs of renewables and other technologies would fall, and the country would be able to take advantage of those reductions.
+10 Percent of GDP?
+As Republicans have attacked the Green New Deal because of its potential price tag, Democrats have hit back, arguing that the costs of climate change are also high. 
+Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, for example, pointed to the National Climate Assessment and a frequently cited GDP statistic.
+
+Climate change is literally destroying the planet. According to the Trump admin's National Climate Assessment, with no action, climate change will result in 10% GDP loss by 2090. A #GreenNewDeal addresses this climate reality, not right-wing misinformationhttps://t.co/3m3fKAd94t
+— Ed Markey (@SenMarkey) February 28, 2019
+
+The National Climate Assessment doesn’t make such a definite prediction, and the scientists behind the number say it really shouldn’t be used without providing more context. One told us a better estimate to use would be roughly 4 percent of GDP, but that, too, is only a projection. (Climate change, it should also be noted, is making life more difficult for humans and many other organisms on Earth, but it won’t literally destroy the planet, as Markey said.)
+The GDP estimate doesn’t appear anywhere in the text of the climate report. Instead, it’s found in a graphic that was reprinted from a 2017 Science paper. 
+The graph plots out damage to the U.S. economy by around 2090 as a function of various climate scenarios and temperature increases. Damages amounting to 10 percent of GDP are projected only under the higher climate scenario, which assumes emissions continue unabated, and under large temperature changes.
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+Part of figure 29.3 from the 2018 National Climate Assessment.
+One of the Science paper’s authors, Amir Jina, wrote an entire article in Forbes to explain the research after several news outlets highlighted the 10 percent figure in their coverage of the fourth National Climate Assessment. 
+Jina, who is an environmental economist at the University of Chicago, explained that the number “mischaracterizes” his study. The number is too high because losses equivalent to 10 percent of GDP are unlikely. 
+“While it is true that we estimated damages as high as 10% of GDP annually at the end of the century for warming of 15°F above pre-industrial levels, the odds of a temperature change that would drive damages of this magnitude are slim,” he wrote. “In fact, they are less than 1-in-100 by our original calculation.” 
+The study found that for every 1.8 degree Fahrenheit increase in global mean temperature, the damages would amount to about 1.2 percent of GDP. The researchers arrived at those numbers by tabulating the economic benefits and losses under different temperature increases from six sectors, including agriculture, crime, energy, human mortality and labor.
+At the same time, Jina said there is also a chance that 10 percent of GDP is an underestimate. That’s because the number includes only a subset of the impacts, and not others, such as ecosystem damages, that the researchers didn’t have enough information to model.
+And Jina noted that even if climate change’s impact on the economy as a whole is small, some locales will be hit much harder than others. Under a more likely scenario of a 7 degree Fahrenheit temperature increase, many individual counties in the U.S. could experience damages of more than 10 percent of GDP by the end of the century. The economic toll of climate change in Florida’s Union County, for example, could be close to 28 percent of the county’s GDP.
+Robert Kopp, a climate scientist at Rutgers University and a fellow co-author of the Science paper, said Markey’s phrasing is incorrect because he said climate change “will” result in the 10 percent loss in GDP, when that level of damage is just one possibility. 
+But Kopp said Markey also failed to mention another assumption baked into the number, which is that researchers were factoring in a limited level of adaptation. The group included the sorts of things that people have done in the past to respond to heat or cold, for instance, but not novel approaches. If people are more creative and come up with better ways of adapting to climate change, that wouldn’t be reflected in the economic damages.
+If that sounds like a minor thing, it gets at a fundamental aspect that many people misunderstand about climate science. We’ve discussed it before with climate scenarios, but Kopp said the goal of the study wasn’t to predict the future, but to understand a range of possibilities so scientists are more aware of the level of risk the country will have to manage. That’s a slightly different perspective that often gets lost when politicians and others summarize these sorts of findings.
+Finally, Kopp explained that his study wasn’t estimating how much climate change would reduce GDP, but rather, how much the costs would be, expressed as a percent of GDP. A good chunk of the calculated GDP damages come from people dying, so the group estimated those costs using the government’s estimate of how much people value a life — a common practice in economics — and turned that into a GDP-equivalent.
+Keeping all these caveats in mind, Kopp said it’s better for Markey and others to say that around the turn of the next century, climate change could result in annual damages worth roughly 4 percent of GDP. Even this lower value at the economy’s current size would reach about $16 trillion between 2080 and 2099. When factoring in growth of the economy, the cost of climate change could easily balloon into the tens of trillions.
+Thus, while Markey flubbed this particular statistic, he’s not wrong that scientists expect substantial damages from climate change if little action is taken.
+For Kopp, that’s where the value of the Green New Deal comes in. The only way to stabilize the climate is to get to net zero emissions, he said, and the proposal is starting a discussion about how to do that.
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+       Share The Facts    Donald Trump President of the United States         ""The Democrats’ plan to completely takeover American energy and completely destroy America’s economy through their new $100 trillion Green New Deal.""   CPAC – Sunday, March 3, 2019   Share Read More     Embed     Information on embedding in your site  oEmbed Link  https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/17680109-9dbd-4c28-91cb-877b090097db     
+ 
+       Share The Facts    Sen. Ed Markey Sponsor of Green New Deal         ""According to the Trump admin's National Climate Assessment, with no action, climate change will result in 10% GDP loss by 2090.""   Twitter – Thursday, February 28, 2019   Share Read More     Embed     Information on embedding in your site  oEmbed Link  https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/98551723-463c-4252-aa71-31a78362ea1b     
+
+
+Categories Featured Posts
+
+SciCheck
+
+Location National
+
+Issue clean energy
+
+climate change
+
+Green New Deal
+
+People Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
+
+Donald Trump
+
+Ed Markey
+
+Eric Trump
+
+john barrasso
+
+John Cornyn
+
+Joni Ernst
+
+Mitch McConnell
+
+paul gosar"
+"18.8KOn Feb. 7, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced her Green New Deal in the House and Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts introduced a companion resolution in the Senate. 
+The text of the legislation, which is a nonbinding resolution, lays out a broad vision for how the country might tackle climate change over the next decade, while creating high-paying jobs and protecting vulnerable communities. 
+Unlike a bill, this type of legislation is not presented to the president and cannot become law. Even if the Green New Deal passed in one or both chambers of Congress, separate legislation would have to be introduced to make any of the resolution’s goals a reality.
+Much of the response to the proposal has focused on details that don’t appear in the resolution text. President Donald Trump, for example, suggested on Feb. 9 in a tweet that the plan would “permanently eliminate all Planes, Cars, Cows, Oil, Gas & the Military.”
+
+I think it is very important for the Democrats to press forward with their Green New Deal. It would be great for the so-called “Carbon Footprint” to permanently eliminate all Planes, Cars, Cows, Oil, Gas & the Military – even if no other country would do the same. Brilliant!
+— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2019
+
+Two days later, at a rally in El Paso, Trump repeated some of those claims, saying that he really doesn’t like “their policy of taking away your car, taking away your airplane flights, of ‘let’s hop a train to California,’ of ‘you’re not allowed to own cows anymore!’”
+Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming made similar claims when she warned in a subcommittee hearing on Feb. 12 that the Green New Deal would “outlaw” plane travel, gasoline, cars and “probably the entire U.S. military.”
+The Green New Deal doesn’t call for any of these prohibitions. But documents about the resolution released by Ocasio-Cortez’s office did address some of the issues raised by Trump and others.  
+In a Feb. 8 interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, an adviser to Ocasio-Cortez incorrectly said that an FAQ document promising all Americans economic security, even if they were “unwilling to work,” was doctored, and was not put out by Ocasio-Cortez’s office. Although the resolution does not include that language, it was part of a fact sheet Ocasio-Cortez provided to media outlets and at one time was available on a blog post on the representative’s website. Her adviser, Robert Hockett, later admitted he was wrong. 
+Here we explain what the Green New Deal includes — and doesn’t — and why there is confusion over some of the content.
+Goals of the Legislation
+The Green New Deal is modeled in part after Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, which was a large federal program designed to stabilize the economy and recover from the Great Depression. The Green New Deal focuses on tackling climate change, but isn’t concerned just with reducing emissions. 
+There are five goals, which the resolution says should be accomplished in a 10-year mobilization effort: 
+
+Achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers
+Create millions of good, high-wage jobs and ensure prosperity and economic security for all people of the United States
+Invest in the infrastructure and industry of the United States to sustainably meet the challenges of the 21st century
+Secure for all people of the United States for generations to come: clean air and water; climate and community resiliency; healthy food; access to nature; and a sustainable environment
+Promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth (“frontline and vulnerable communities”)
+
+The primary climate change goal is to reach net-zero greenhouse emissions in a decade. “Net-zero” means that after tallying up all the greenhouse gases that are released and subtracting those that are sequestered, or removed, there is no net addition to the atmosphere. The goal, then, is slightly less ambitious than calling for no greenhouse gas emissions at all.
+In October, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded in a special report that in order to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels — and thereby avoid many climate change impacts — the world would have to reach net-zero emissions of carbon dioxide by the year 2050.
+The resolution goes on to propose additional aims and projects to accomplish these overarching goals, but generally does not stipulate how the country will reach them. The resolution is also silent on cost and funding mechanisms.
+We’ll go through some of the specific topics that have received the most attention.
+Electricity
+One of the most ambitious and prominent goals of the Green New Deal is to meet “100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources.”
+The resolution doesn’t offer any more details, other than to say that this would include “dramatically expanding and upgrading renewable power sources” and “deploying new capacity.”
+One point of confusion has been what sorts of energy sources the Green New Deal would allow for electricity generation. Ocasio-Cortez’s office released an FAQ document that specifically said that new nuclear plants would not be permitted, although existing nuclear plants could stay. And in response to a question about carbon capture, utilization and storage, or CCUS, the fact sheet read, “We believe the right way to capture carbon is to plant trees and restore our natural ecosystems. CCUS technology to date has not proven effective.”
+But the text of the resolution does not mention nuclear power or carbon capture, and as written, does not prohibit either method of generation.
+In a press conference on Feb. 7 announcing the proposal, Markey told reporters that the fact sheet’s thoughts on nuclear power were not part of the resolution. He also added that while the resolution doesn’t mention carbon capture, “we are open to whatever works.”
+The power sector is one of the biggest contributors to the nation’s carbon footprint, although in recent years emissions have begun to fall. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, generating electricity accounts for about 28 percent of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions.
+Transportation
+If the country wants to reach net-zero emissions in a decade, one of the most important areas in which emissions reductions need to occur is transportation. Transportation recently surpassed power generation as the sector with the highest greenhouse gas emissions, and is responsible for about 28 percent of the U.S. total.
+As with electricity generation, the text of the resolution that discusses transportation is open-ended. The Green New Deal requires “overhauling transportation systems in the United States to remove pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector as much as is technologically feasible, including through investment in— (i) zero-emission vehicle infrastructure and manufacturing; (ii) clean, affordable, and accessible public transit; and (iii) high-speed rail.”
+Some people, including the president, have said that the Green New Deal gets rid of cars or air travel. And as we’ve detailed elsewhere, some popular memes online have even suggested that the plan advocates building “trains over the oceans.”
+The resolution does not call for that. It only states that transportation emissions should be reduced “as much as is technically feasible,” and suggests three ways of reaching that goal, including high-speed rail and zero-emission vehicles, which would include electric cars. There is no mention of air travel.
+But air travel was mentioned in various FAQ materials produced by Ocasio-Cortez’s office. 
+In one FAQ that was given to NPR, one of the highlighted projects was to “totally overhaul transportation by massively expanding electric vehicle manufacturing, build charging stations everywhere, build out high-speed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary, create affordable public transit available to all, with goal to replace every combustion-engine vehicle.”
+At another point, the FAQ was trying to explain why the goal was net-zero emissions, rather than none at all, and said that was “because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast.”
+Corbin Trent, Ocasio-Cortez’s communications director, said in a phone interview that any such interpretation of the fact sheets was not intended. “Obviously, no, we’re not trying to ban air travel,” he said. 
+Trent iterated that the Green New Deal does not include details in any other documents. “The resolution is what we’re focused on,” he said.
+Agriculture
+A third major industry the Green New Deal targets is agriculture. About 9 percent of the nation’s greenhouse gases stem from agricultural activities, including the release of nitrous oxide from soil and methane from livestock. 
+Once again, the agriculture section of the resolution is vague, stating only that one of the goals of the Green New Deal is “working collaboratively with farmers and ranchers in the United States to remove pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector as much as is technologically feasible, including— (i) by supporting family farming; (ii) by investing in sustainable farming and land use practices that increase soil health; and (iii) by building a more sustainable food system that ensures universal access to healthy food.”
+Although the resolution doesn’t say anything about cows, the animal is frequently mentioned by critics of the Green New Deal. The president referenced cows twice — once in his tweet, and again in El Paso. 
+And on Feb. 12, Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming incorrectly said livestock would be banned and that ice cream was “another victim” of the proposal. “Say goodbye to dairy, to beef, to family farms to ranches,” he said. “American favorites like cheeseburgers and milkshakes will become a thing of the past.”
+Cows were discussed in two FAQ documents, which likely explains the preoccupation. As mentioned earlier, the fact sheet sent to NPR reads, “We set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast.”
+The same idea also appeared in a blog post on Ocasio-Cortez’s website, although the language was tweaked to omit “farting.” The post was taken down and no longer appears.
+Cows are one of several animals that produce methane as a result of digesting food. In a process known as enteric fermentation, microbes in the cow’s stomach help break down cattle feed, releasing the gas. The majority of the gas is actually exhaled from the mouth, or belched, not released from the back end. 
+In the U.S., methane production from livestock accounts for almost a third of the greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, and more than a quarter of all methane emissions. Methane is about 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a century.
+Economic Security
+Along with its environmental goals, the Green New Deal aims to provide economic security for Americans. 
+One of the proposal’s key goals is to “create millions of good, high-wage jobs and ensure prosperity and economic security for all people of the United States.” The plan also guarantees “a job with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States.”
+Both FAQ sheets — the version sent to NPR and the one posted to Ocasio-Cortez’s website — however, go further, and include a provision guaranteeing economic security to “all who are unable or unwilling to work.”
+There is nothing in the Green New Deal about providing for people who are “unwilling to work,” but the inclusion in the FAQ materials has proven to be one of the most contentious aspects of the Green New Deal’s rollout. 
+In his Feb. 8 interview on Fox News, Hockett, a Cornell law professor and adviser to Ocasio-Cortez, falsely said that no materials released by the congresswoman included the “unwilling to work” language, and must have come from a doctored version. 
+He later told the Daily Caller that he had been mistaken, and had been thinking of a doctored version of the Green New Deal that Ocasio-Cortez had tweeted about. That fake version of the Green New Deal falsely claimed that men would be required to urinate in “an empty milk jug instead of a toilet.”
+On Feb. 9, after a Washington Post reporter noticed the disconnect, Ocasio-Cortez responded on Twitter, noting that there were various versions of the Green New Deal and the FAQs.
+
+There are multiple doctored GND resolutions and FAQs floating around. There was also a draft version that got uploaded + taken down. There’s also draft versions floating out there.
+Point is, the real one is our submitted resolution, H.Res. 109: https://t.co/ZlgWmNQn57
+— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 9, 2019
+
+Saikat Chakrabarti, Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, also replied, saying that “an early draft of a FAQ that was clearly unfinished and that doesn’t represent the GND resolution got published to the website by mistake.” 
+
+There separately IS a doctored FAQ floating around. And an early draft of a FAQ that was clearly unfinished and that doesn’t represent the GND resolution got published to the website by mistake (idea was to wait for launch, monitor q's, and rewrite that FAQ before publishing).
+— Saikat Chakrabarti (@saikatc) February 9, 2019
+
+“Mistakes happen when doing time launches like this coordinating multiple groups and collaborators,” he added. “But what’s in the resolution is the GND.”
+Corbin Trent, Ocasio-Cortez’s communications director, told us, “There was a mistake on the FAQ,” and said that he was personally responsible, but would not comment further. He pointed us to Chakrabarti’s Twitter thread and the resulting Washington Post article, which he said explained things well.
+Whether done accidentally or not, much of the confusion about what the resolution contains originates from discrepancies between the official resolution and documents that Ocasio-Cortez’s office distributed to news outlets and posted on her website, not because of “doctored” copies.
+Military
+The president’s Feb. 9 tweet also suggested that the Green New Deal would “permanently eliminate” the military. But the resolution does not mention the military at all, and neither do any of the FAQ materials Ocasio-Cortez’s office released or posted. 
+Where did the idea come from? When we contacted the White House, the press office did not provide us with an on-the-record explanation. But one possibility is a separate proposal by the Green Party of the United States. The party’s policy also goes by the name “Green New Deal” and includes cutting military spending “by at least half” and closing military bases overseas, although it does not call for a complete end to the military.
+ Despite some similarities, the two plans are distinct and should not be conflated."
+"4.4KQuick Take
+A resolution before Congress outlining actions to address climate change prompted the misleading claim that the deal aims to “end” air travel and “build trains over the oceans.”
+
+
+Full Story
+The rollout of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal” last week prompted no shortage of confusion and misleading claims on social media about what the ambitious environmental proposal would do.
+One popular Facebook post spread the claim that “Sandy Ocasio-Cortez’s ‘NEW GREEN DEAL’ Calls For End To Air Travel & To Build Trains Over The Oceans,” referring to the New York Democrat by her high school nickname.
+But the non-binding House resolution — which recognizes “the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal” — does not call for ending air travel or building rail lines over any ocean. A companion resolution was also introduced in the Senate.
+The language of the Facebook post mirrors the text of a headline on the conservative website The Gateway Pundit, but it doesn’t come from the text of the actual resolution.
+Instead, it might stem from an interpretation of, or confusion over, documents about the resolution circulated by Ocasio-Cortez’s office.
+An “overview” of the resolution that was provided to NPR, for example, pledged to “begin work immediately on Green New Deal bills to put the nuts and bolts on the plan described in this resolution.” The outline included this about infrastructure and industrial projects: “Totally overhaul transportation by massively expanding electric vehicle manufacturing, build charging stations everywhere, build out high-speed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary, create affordable public transit available to all, with goal to replace every combustion-engine vehicle.” (Italic emphasis ours.)
+At another point, in explaining its 10-year greenhouse gas emission goal, the outline says “we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast.” A now-deleted blog post on Ocasio-Cortez’s House website included similar language.
+People can debate the choice of words used in those background materials, but the actual resolution introduced in Congress does not include any language suggesting an “end to air travel” or about building trains “over the oceans.”
+The resolution outlines broad goals such as, reaching “net-zero greenhouse gas emissions”; creating “millions of good, high-wage jobs”; investing in infrastructure; guaranteeing future generations clean air and water, and “climate and community resiliency”; and more.
+The only reference to trains is a call to invest in “high-speed rail” as part of an effort to overhaul “transportation systems in the United States to remove pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector as much as is technologically feasible.”
+Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on the social media network.
+Sources
+“Green New Deal FAQ.” Blog post, office of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 5 Feb 2019.
+U.S. House. “H. Res. 109, Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal.” (as introduced 7 Feb 2019.)
+Kurtzleben, Danielle. “Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Releases Green New Deal Outline.” NPR. 7 Feb 2019."
+"1KDuring his confirmation hearing on Jan. 16, Andrew Wheeler, President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency, repeatedly used a misleading statistic to defend the EPA’s proposed replacement for the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan.
+In describing the new proposal, known as the Affordable Clean Energy, or ACE, rule, Wheeler said the policy would lead to a 34 percent reduction in CO2 emissions from 2005 levels in 2030. That’s an accurate figure from the EPA, but it lacks context: Almost all of that reduction would happen anyway, not because of the EPA proposal.
+ACE, which was announced in late August, targets individual coal-fired power plants and encourages what are called heat rate improvements, or HRIs, which increase efficiency so that more energy is produced from the same amount of coal. This approach to reducing CO2 emissions from power plants differs from the Clean Power Plan, or CPP, which emphasized shifting away from coal as an energy source and would have required states to meet specific emissions reductions using a variety of techniques.
+In 2016, the Supreme Court issued a stay preventing the CPP from being implemented after 27 states sued to block the regulations. ACE has not yet been finalized.
+‘34 Percent’ Needs More Context
+Wheeler, who has been acting EPA administrator since Scott Pruitt’s departure in July, summarized and defended the ACE rule with the 34 percent reduction number no fewer than five times during his confirmation testimony.
+After being challenged by Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, for example, Wheeler said, “My agency experts have told me that we’re going to get a 34 percent reduction in CO2 based on 2005 levels once the ACE regulation is fully implemented.”
+Wheeler’s number is correct — or nearly so. In table 3-6 of the EPA’s Regulatory Impact Analysis, or RIA, for the proposed rule, the agency lists either a 33 percent or 34 percent drop in emissions relative to 2005 in 2030 for the three ACE scenarios. That is close, but not quite correct, due to a labeling error in the table. The data for 2030 are actually in the middle column, meaning the agency’s estimate for all the ACE scenarios is a 33 percent reduction, which also matches the numbers described in the accompanying text.
+What Wheeler leaves out, however, is that the vast majority of this percentage is projected to occur without ACE in place. In fact, with no policy at all, the agency estimates a 32 percent drop in emissions relative to 2005 in 2030 (in table 3-6, shown below with highlights).
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+The columns are mislabeled. The central column represents data from 2030, not 2025, and the right column represents 2035. The three ACE scenarios are the bottom rows listed as an average heat rate improvement, or HRI, at the specified cost per kilowatt. CPP refers to the Clean Power Plan, and No CPP is the no-policy scenario.
+ 
+A better measure of how effective ACE would be at reducing CO2 is one that incorporates both pieces of information, and directly compares ACE to a no-policy scenario. Such a number would do away with any comparison to 2005, and cut to the chase: How much lower are emissions expected to be in a given year under the policy? And indeed, the EPA provides those numbers in multiple places in the RIA. 
+In tables 3-5 and ES-6, for example, the agency lists the percent change in CO2 emissions for the ACE scenarios compared with no policy. Under the three ACE scenarios, CO2 emissions are estimated to be about 1 percent lower in 2030 than what they would be without any policy.
+We’ve copied the table below, but also added some of the percentages with less rounding to show more detail.
+
+The roughly 1 percent decline under ACE is the more relevant number for Wheeler to share with senators, not the 34 percent decline from 2005 levels, which should be 33 percent. If sharing the 33 percent, Wheeler should volunteer that 32 of the percentage points are already expected without any policy.
+A Changing Baseline
+The 33 percent drop under ACE sounds impressive, though, in part because when President Barack Obama first proposed the Clean Power Plan, it was designed to reduce emissions by 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. 
+On the surface, that could make it seem like ACE outperforms the CPP. But the two estimates were made at different times, using different assumptions, and they can’t be compared. We’ll explain later how ACE and the CPP really stack up to one another, but ACE doesn’t lead to a greater reduction in emissions.
+One of the biggest things that changed over time was the EPA’s baseline projection for future emissions. 
+In 2015, when the CPP was developed, the EPA thought emissions would be much higher in 2030. The agency estimated that the policy would reduce CO2 emissions in the electricity sector by 19 percent in 2030, which would be equivalent to 32 percent below 2005 levels. If the U.S. had no policy to reign in carbon emissions from power plants, the agency estimated emissions from the electricity sector would be about 17 percent below 2005 levels in 2030. 
+By 2018, when the ACE rule was proposed, EPA scientists had revised the expected 2030 emissions downward — so much so, that doing nothing would already meet the once lofty 32 percent below 2005 goal.
+This changing baseline explains many of the seemingly contradictory statistics related to the two plans, including why the ACE plan can claim a hefty below-2005 reduction, even though it hardly reduces emissions in 2030. 
+Why did the baseline change? In short, the U.S. energy sector got cleaner faster than expected as the electricity sector shifted away from coal and more toward natural gas and renewables. Although still a fossil fuel, natural gas usually has a lower carbon footprint than coal.
+Many of these changes were precisely the things that the CPP wanted to encourage. As a result, even before ACE was proposed, analysts were downgrading their estimates for how much the CPP would do to reduce CO2 emissions. As the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service explains in a report on the ACE rule, “This reflects the fact that many of the changes EPA expected to result from the CPP (e.g., natural gas and renewables replacing coal-fired units) have already happened as the result of market forces in the electric power sector” (page 25).
+This is why there isn’t as big of a difference between CO2 emissions under the CPP and ACE plans as many people might expect. According to the ACE impact analysis, which directly compares both policies, CO2 emissions in 2030 would be about 3 percent to 6 percent higher under ACE than under the CPP (see tables 3-4 and 3-41).
+This figure is far lower than has been reported in some major media outlets. Several news organizations, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, have used the CPP’s original estimate of a 19 percent reduction in 2030 and compared it to ACE’s 1 percent reduction. The comparison can give some idea of how ambitious each proposal was, but it doesn’t tell how much each plan is expected to reduce emissions going forward.
+We’ve summarized all these wonky figures in the chart below, showing the EPA’s estimates for each metric in 2015 and 2018. Only the numbers from the same year can be directly compared.
+EPA-Estimated CO2 Emissions in 2030
+
+
+
+
+2015
+2018
+
+
+
+CO2 Emissions   (million short tons)
+Percent CO2 Emissions Reduction, Relative to No Policy Projection
+Percent CO2 Emissions Reduction, Relative to 2005
+CO2 Emissions   (million short tons)
+Percent CO2 Emissions Reduction, Relative to No Policy Projection
+Percent CO2 Emissions Reduction, Relative to 2005
+
+
+ACE
+NA
+NA
+NA
+1,785-1,798
+1%
+33%
+
+
+No policy
+2,227
+0%
+17%
+1,811
+0%
+32%
+
+
+CPP
+1,812
+19%
+32%
+1,695-1,737
+4-6%
+35-37%
+
+
+Note: This table is adapted from tables 3-5 and 3-6 of the 2015 CPP RIA and tables 3-5, 3-6 and 3-41 of the 2018 ACE RIA. Where percentages differ, we have relied on the listed tons and performed the appropriate calculations. The 2005 emissions figure is 2,683 million short tons.
+
+
+
+ 
+Higher Uncertainty Under ACE
+So far, we’ve focused on explaining the EPA’s numbers, but it’s important to mention that there is uncertainty about the agency’s CO2 emissions estimates under the ACE rule.
+“While uncertainty is inherent in any projection,” the Congressional Research Service’s report explains, “the emission estimates for the ACE scenarios may contain more uncertainty than the estimates for the CPP.” 
+Part of this uncertainty stems from the fact that the CPP set concrete, enforceable emissions standards, whereas ACE does not. Under ACE, states would set a standard using an EPA-prepared list of “candidate technologies” for heat rate improvements at coal-fired power plants, including upgrades to steam turbine blades or better computer models that can optimize combustion (CRS report, page 12). 
+But states would have, in the EPA’s words, “considerable flexibility” in setting these standards, and would be allowed to factor in certain features, such as how much remaining useful life a coal-fired generator has left, the payback period for investments, and space or other physical restraints that might prevent a plant from upgrading, among others (Federal Register, page 44766).
+This flexibility makes it difficult to predict what level of heat rate improvements the nation’s fleet of coal-fired power plants might actually achieve, and in turn, what that would do to CO2 emissions. Indeed, the EPA states in its description of the rule in the Federal Register, “Consideration of these factors may result in the application of the standard of performance in a less stringent manner than would otherwise be suggested by strict implementation” of the heat rate improvements.
+Another area of uncertainty comes from something called the rebound effect, which is when an efficiency improvement leads to greater use. In the case of a coal-fired power plant, the idea is that while a plant might become cleaner to run, it might then be used more, which could partially or fully offset any emissions reductions.
+The EPA says in its proposed rule that the agency’s analysis “indicates that the system-wide emission decreases due to reduced heat rate are likely to be larger than any system-wide increases due to increased operation” (Federal Register, page 44761).
+But the CRS report points out that the agency did not factor in any federal initiatives that would extend the life of coal-fired power plants. “Actual emissions under ACE could be higher than estimated emissions,” the report reads, “if the coal-fired power plants that were assumed to retire in EPA’s analysis continue operating beyond planned retirement dates.”
+The CRS report also notes that previously, the EPA “raised concerns about the rebound effect—particularly when using an HRI approach in isolation (as is done in the ACE proposal)—and concluded in 2015 that a combined approach using all three building blocks would alleviate such concerns.” In addition to efficiency improvements at coal-fired plants, the CPP contained two other main strategies: shifting from coal to natural gas, and from fossil fuels to renewables.
+No one will know, of course, how accurate the EPA’s estimates are for CO2 emissions under ACE until the policy goes into effect and some time passes. Before that happens, though, ACE still needs to be finalized — which an EPA spokesperson told us in an email would happen sometime in 2019, after the agency finishes its review of the 500,000-some comments it received on the proposal. The plan is also expected to face legal challenges.
+As for Wheeler, the Senate committee that held his hearing has not yet voted on whether to advance his nomination, although a spokesman for the majority members told us in an email that the vote was scheduled for Feb. 5. Wheeler is expected to be confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate.
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+       Share The Facts    Andrew Wheeler Acting EPA Administrator         “My agency experts have told me that we’re going to get a 34 percent reduction in CO2 based on 2005 levels once the ACE regulation is fully implemented.”   confirmation hearing – Wednesday, January 16, 2019   Share Read More     Embed     Information on embedding in your site  oEmbed Link  https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/5729eeb2-0b46-4d88-8b92-21b8e54bab2a     
+
+
+Categories Featured Posts
+
+SciCheck
+
+Location National
+
+Issue Affordable Clean Energy
+
+carbon emissions
+
+Clean Power Plan
+
+climate change
+
+People Andrew Wheeler
+
+Barack Obama
+
+Donald Trump"
+"9.8K1Since the National Climate Assessment dropped on Black Friday, members of the Trump administration have inaccurately attacked the report for lacking transparency and factual basis, and for focusing on an “extreme” climate scenario. The EPA has also suggested — without evidence — that the Obama administration “pushed” the “worst-case scenario.”
+The report — which is the product of 13 federal agencies and more than 300 governmental and non-governmental experts — is legally required to be produced by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, or USGCRP, which issued its first assessment in 2000. It details how climate change is already affecting the country, from increased temperatures and flooding to more frequent hurricanes and large wildfires. It also looks at potential future consequences on the environment, infrastructure, human health and the economy. 
+President Donald Trump has largely dismissed the report. When asked about the assessment, the president has minimized the impact of human activity on climate change and made unrelated claims regarding the cleanliness of U.S. air and water, as we’ve written previously.
+But more specific critiques came from administration officials and White House representatives.
+For example, White House Deputy Press Secretary Lindsay Walters released a statement to us that downplayed the report by claiming it “is largely based on the most extreme scenario,” adding, “we need to focus on improving the transparency and accuracy of our modeling and projections.” She also noted that the next climate assessment “gives us the opportunity to provide for a more transparent and data-driven process that includes fuller information on the range of potential scenarios and outcomes.”
+Many of these talking points were reprised by White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders during a White House briefing on Nov. 27, when she said the report “is based on the most extreme modeled scenario,” is “not based on facts” and is “not data-driven.” Instead, she said, the report is “based on modeling, which is extremely hard to do when you’re talking about the climate.”
+In an interview with the NBC affiliate in Sacramento, California, on Nov. 27, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke also referenced the scenarios, saying “it appears they took the worst scenarios and they built predictions upon that.” He added, “It should be more probability.” 
+Zinke, who has since resigned, also said “there is some concern within the USGS” about the climate report, referring to the U.S. Geological Survey, without providing any evidence.  
+Finally, acting Environmental Protection Agency head Andrew Wheeler said at a Washington Post Live event on Nov. 28 that he “wouldn’t be surprised if the Obama administration told the report’s authors, ‘Take a look at the worst-case scenario for this report.’” The EPA press office then doubled down on Wheeler’s speculation, issuing a press release that said the Obama administration “pushed” the “worst-case scenario'” and citing the Daily Caller’s reporting as proof of such manipulation. 
+These claims, however, are false, exaggerated or unsubstantiated:
+
+The climate assessment, or NCA4, uses a range of scenarios, not just a “worst” or “most extreme” scenario. The majority of the report uses two main scenarios, RCP8.5 as a “higher” scenario with more warming, and RCP4.5 as a “lower” scenario with less warming. Portions of the report also include a third lower scenario, known as RCP2.6. Much of the report also documents climate change effects that have already occurred.
+The report is a fact-based document. It draws on hundreds of peer-reviewed papers in the scientific literature, and also includes other observational and modeling data, all of which meet the standards of the Information Quality Act. 
+The assessment is transparent. Each chapter after the introductory overview chapter includes a “traceable accounts” section that documents the source material for each “key message.” In addition, the report underwent multiple reviews by both internal and external experts, and was opened for public review for three months.
+There is no evidence that the Obama administration “pushed” the “worst-case scenario.” The EPA cites a conservative website, whose only evidence is a publicly available memo that describes the group’s rationale for using the scenarios that it did.
+
+Because the claims clustered around these four themes, we’ll address each of them in more detail in the sections below.
+As for Zinke’s comment that there is “concern within the USGS” about the climate report, there is no evidence to support his statement. 
+U.S. Geological Survey representatives did not respond to our inquiries, but the USGS is one of the key agencies that was responsible for creating the report. In fact, nearly two dozen USGS scientists served as authors, contributing to 10 of the 29 chapters. And Virginia Burkett, USGS chief scientist for climate and land use change, is part of the leadership of the U.S. Global Change Research Program.
+What the Climate Assessment Says
+The report is organized into four main sections, the first tackling “national topics” such as water, agriculture, air quality and coastal effects. For each issue, the authors describe existing climate change impacts as well as those that could be on the horizon. For example, on temperature, the authors explain that annual average temperatures in the contiguous U.S. have increased by 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit since the beginning of the last century. Over the next few decades, temperatures are expected to rise to an increase of 2.5 degrees, regardless of future emissions. And by the end of the century, the increase could be anywhere between 3 and 12 degrees, “depending on whether the world follows a higher or lower future scenario.”
+The next section takes a closer look at 10 specific regions of the country, each of which faces different challenges because of variation in geography, climate and population. For example, the Northeast is already seeing less distinct seasons that “adversely impact” tourism, farming and forestry, while the Southeast is already vulnerable to flooding and the Southwest has seen more intense wildfires and droughts.
+A third section discusses mitigation strategies — approaches that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and therefore limit the amount of climate change — and adaptation strategies, which refer to methods of reducing the risk of climate change, for example, by elevating homes threatened by flooding. The mitigation chapter, in particular, has been frequently cited in the press, because it goes into the possible economic impacts of climate change, which the report says could amount to “hundreds of billions of dollars” by 2100 under a higher emissions scenario. 
+Finally, a fourth section is devoted to a series of appendices, including explanations of how the report was put together and what kind of information was used. We’ll be coming back to these, because they contain a lot of the nitty-gritty details that demonstrate the report’s transparency and data-driven approach.
+Based on a ‘Worst-Case’ Scenario?
+Wheeler, Zinke, Sanders and Walters each criticized the National Climate Assessment for using or being “based” or “largely based” on a scenario they variously described as “worst-case” or “the most extreme.” They’re referring to a scenario known as RCP8.5, which is the highest of the four scenarios most frequently used by scientists to do climate projections.
+But a quick skim of the National Climate Assessment reveals that the document does not rely on this single scenario. Figures often feature at least two scenarios, and sometimes include a third.
+“Not every statement has every RCP scenario in it,” said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist and director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University, and an author of the report, in a phone interview. But, she said, there are “dozens of examples” where multiple RCPs are used.
+Indeed, the report itself says it focused on RCP8.5 as a “higher” scenario with more warming, and RCP4.5 as a “lower” scenario with less, while also including other scenarios, such as the “very low” RCP2.6. We’ll return to the specifics on this decision later. RCPs were used in the fifth and most recent climate assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, which is part of the United Nations.
+And of course, none of the scenarios are relevant to the many statements in the report about the climate change effects that have already happened, such as the fact that the U.S. has already become warmer by about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit over the last century, or that, because of sea level rise, multiple communities are now five to 10 times more likely to have high tide flooding than in the 1960s.
+Understanding RCPs
+It’s worth pausing here to understand what RCPs are in the first place, because they can be easily misinterpreted.
+RCP stands for “representative concentration pathway,” and each numbered scenario refers to the total amount of radiative forcing — essentially the amount of climate change — that would occur by the year 2100, relative to pre-industrial times. RCP8.5, then, is a pathway that assumes that by the turn of the next century, the Earth will have added an extra 8.5 watts per square meter to its energy balance.
+By focusing on radiative forcing, the RCP system avoids making specific assumptions about emissions, population growth, or economic and technological development.
+“For any one radiative forcing trajectory, there are theoretically an infinite number of socioeconomic and emission scenarios to get you there,” said Richard Moss, a visiting senior research scientist at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, in a phone interview. He helped formulate the RCP approach.
+But there are certain trajectories that are consistent with the various RCPs, and these are often used to describe them. For example, RCP8.5 is consistent with a future in which fossil fuels continue to dominate, there is no climate policy to speak of, and there is high population growth and low — but not zero — technological development. RCP4.5, in contrast, does include climate policies, such as a price put on emissions, and there is less population growth and more technological development. In RCP2.6, more stringent mitigation policies are in place and emissions peak and turn negative by the beginning of the next century.
+The RCP system may be less straightforward than a basic emissions scenario, but Moss said scientists developed RCPs because it allowed them to be more flexible and do climate modeling more quickly than before. 
+In 2007, an independent group of climate scientists selected four RCPs that represented the wide range in the scientific literature and were well-spaced apart: 2.6, 4.5, 6.0 and 8.5.
+RCPs Aren’t Forecasts
+A larger issue with RCPs is that they aren’t intended to be forecasts of what will happen, even though that’s exactly what the public often interprets them to be. 
+“They’re not predictions, they’re what-if exercises,” said Moss. Many people assume scientists are offering forecasts on the most likely scenario, he said, but the “point is specifically not to say what is most likely.” 
+Scientists, then, want to use a range of scenarios that give a solid idea of where we might be headed, while at the same time, not overselling any particular one. 
+The other angle is that scientists use scenarios for risk assessment. And as Moss explained, “you don’t choose a middle scenario” for that. You choose a high scenario to describe the potentially bad outcomes that “may have low probability but high consequence.”
+RCP8.5 Isn’t the ‘Worst’
+As for RCP8.5 itself, Moss and Hayhoe both said it’s inaccurate to call the scenario the “worst” or a “worse-case.” Hayhoe said it was a very deliberate choice on the authors’ parts to call RCP8.5 the “higher” scenario, to contrast with the RCP4.5 “lower” scenario. In the report, these are often used together.
+In chapter four of the earlier volume of the climate report, the authors note that RCP8.5 “is not intended to serve as an upper limit on possible emissions” (see section 4.2.1). 
+Moss and Hayhoe also said climate modeling might be missing certain elements that could make RCP8.5’s projections too low.
+Finally, there is the fact that, of late, the Earth seems to be following RCP8.5. The climate report explains that the “observed acceleration in carbon emissions over the past 15–20 years has been consistent with the higher future scenarios (such as RCP8.5).” It goes on to say that while emission rates began to slow in 2014, and even approach zero growth in 2016, preliminary data in 2017 suggest a return to an increasing rate of emissions. Separately, reports released in early December indicate 2018 is also headed toward a higher emission rate. This doesn’t mean 80 years down the line the Earth is likely to still be following RCP8.5, but it is plausible.
+Obama Administration ‘Pushed Worst-Case Scenario’?
+Andrew Wheeler, the acting EPA chief, suggested on Nov. 28 that the Obama administration told the climate assessment authors to use the highest scenarios. In a Washington Post Live interview, Wheeler said he “wouldn’t be surprised if the Obama administration” directed authors to the “worst-case scenario.” 
+Later that day, the EPA press office wrote in a press release that Wheeler “was right” when he made that statement, adding, “In fact, the Obama administration did just that.” The press release was titled “Fact-Check: Obama Administration Pushed ‘Worst-Case Scenario’ In Climate Assessment.”
+It’s true that the scenarios were selected at a time when Obama was in office, but that is not evidence that the administration pushed for a higher scenario. As we’ve just explained, RCP8.5 was in standard use at the time.
+In the press release, the EPA pointed to reporting by the Daily Caller, a conservative website, which wrote that a May 2015 memo proved Wheeler’s the point. The website also wrote that the memo contradicted John Holdren, Obama’s director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, or OSTP, who told Politico that he did not choose the authors of the report and was not involved in scenario selection. 
+In an email to us, Holdren also denied playing a role in the report’s approach. “The insinuations out there that I or some other senior official was behind it [scenario selection] are absolutely false,” he said.
+The memo, which is unsigned, does not show that the Obama administration pushed for certain scenarios. The memo lays out the rationale for using a range of scenarios, and for focusing on the RCP8.5 and 4.5 for impact assessments. “For assessments of impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation responses,” the memo states, “NCA4 will focus on RCP 8.5 as a high-end scenario and RCP 4.5 as a low-end scenario. Other scenarios (e.g., RCP 2.6) may be used in addition where instructive, such as in analyses of mitigation issues,” adding that “using a low-end and a high-end scenario will facilitate communications of assessment findings.”
+The memo goes on to explain that the choice of these two main RCPs was made in part to “maintain continuity and consistency” not only with other major climate assessments, such as the IPCC reports, but also to previous National Climate Assessments. Two earlier editions of the assessment, for example, used an older set of scenarios that are roughly equivalent to RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. (The memo doesn’t mention this, but this includes the second climate assessment published in 2009, which would have largely been developed during the Bush administration.)
+Many of these points are also made in the climate assessment itself, such as in the report guide and in the third appendix. The report also cites the memo — something you would not expect if it contained proof of political meddling.
+The choice of using RCP8.5 and 4.5 is not limited to various climate assessments. A literature search with both terms, for instance, reveals dozens of papers that are premised on the very same comparisons. Moss, for his part, said the decision to focus on RCP4.5 and 8.5, was “very reasonable.”
+A Lack of Transparency?
+In a statement to us, White House Deputy Press Secretary Lindsay Walters said that “we need to focus on improving the transparency and accuracy of our modeling and projections” and that the next climate assessment “gives us the opportunity to provide for a more transparent and data-driven process.”
+The climate report, however, is by design a transparent document. The creation process included repeated opportunities not only for scientists in and out of the government to make changes, but also for the public to comment.
+Each draft and outline was subject either to an interagency review, technical review by a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-funded group at North Carolina University or an outside review.
+The third draft, for example, was released to the public for three months, during which time the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine also reviewed it. Chapter authors were then “required to respond to each and every comment” and to update their sections accordingly. Review editors made sure the responses were adequate. All of the feedback, along with the responses, is available online.
+With transparency in mind, scientists also included “traceable accounts” at the end of chapters to document the evidence base and uncertainties for each “key message.” These provide explanations of why authors came to the conclusions that they did, as well as a description of the confidence or likelihood for that message.
+“The traceable accounts go into excruciating detail,” said Hayhoe. “It’s hard to imagine anything more transparent.”
+Facts and Climate Modeling
+The final claim we’ll address is the notion that the National Climate Assessment isn’t “based on facts,” or isn’t “data-driven,” as Sanders said.
+This is false. As is clear from the extensive reference lists for each chapter, the report is fact-based. The report describes its many sources this way.
+NCA4, November 2018: The findings in this report are based on an assessment of the peer-reviewed scientific literature, complemented by other sources (such as gray literature) where appropriate. In addition, authors used well-established and carefully evaluated observational and modeling datasets, technical input reports, USGCRP’s sustained assessment products, and a suite of scenario products. Each source was determined to meet the standards of the Information Quality Act.
+In the second appendix, the report goes into even more detail about its sources, noting that the “vast majority” are from the peer-reviewed scientific literature. In the rare circumstance that information didn’t come from the literature or the government, authors evaluated the quality of the source by asking a few key questions, such as how important the source is to the topic, and whether it is objective and publicly available. NOAA also checked that all sources met its guidelines.
+Sanders claimed that climate modeling is “an extremely complicated science that is never exact.” She repeated the idea again, after saying that the administration would like to see something “more data-driven,” adding, “it’s based on modeling, which is extremely hard to do when you’re talking about the climate.”
+Part of what Sanders is saying is absolutely correct. “She’s right climate modeling is very complex,” said Hayhoe.
+But just because modeling is difficult doesn’t mean it’s not based on data, or that climate models are unreliable. This misrepresents how climate modeling works and what we know about its performance.
+Climate models essentially are sets of equations that incorporate what scientists know about the fundamental physics, chemistry and biology of Earth systems. To make projections about the future, researchers first make the problem more manageable by divvying up the Earth’s atmosphere and surface into smaller chunks, or grid cells. Then they run the models for each cell over a set period of time, allowing neighboring cells to interact with one another. That data is recorded, and then repeated until a researcher reaches a target year. In this iterative fashion, scientists develop maps of varying resolution that show how the climate might change under certain scenarios.
+There are, of course, uncertainties associated with modeling. Scientists are well aware of this and don’t claim to have everything figured out. In fact, they know they’re missing some of the more complex interactions. But Hayhoe said it’s precisely because of this that scientists are “more concerned, not less.”
+“We know that there are processes not included that would make sea level rise faster and greater,” she said. “We’re so conservative — unless we totally understand something, we don’t put it in the model.”
+This point is also made in the climate assessment. 
+“While climate models incorporate important climate processes that can be well quantified, they do not include all of the processes that can contribute to feedbacks, compound extreme events, and abrupt and/or irreversible changes, including key ice sheet processes and arctic carbon reservoirs,” the report reads. “The systematic tendency of climate models to underestimate temperature change during warm paleoclimates suggests that climate models are more likely to underestimate than to overestimate the amount of long-term future change; this is likely to be especially true for trends in extreme events.”
+Contrary to Sanders’ insinuation, complexity isn’t a reason to doubt the projections, although no one should view them as certainties. If anything, it’s a reason to think they could be on the low side."
+"1.2KOn Dec. 4, President Donald Trump tweeted about French President Emmanuel Macron and the Paris Agreement, misrepresenting the foreign leader’s position on the climate accord. Macron has not said or suggested the Paris Agreement is “fatally flawed,” as Trump implied. Trump also made a few familiar omissions and errors on the subject of climate change.
+
+….in the world. I want clean air and clean water and have been making great strides in improving America’s environment. But American taxpayers – and American workers – shouldn’t pay to clean up others countries’ pollution.
+— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 4, 2018
+
+Trump’s comments followed the French government’s announcement that it would delay a planned gas tax increase for six months in response to violent protests. The country also said it would not raise electricity or natural gas prices until May of next year. For weeks, “yellow vest” protestors have agitated over the gas tax hike, which is part of France’s efforts to bring down its greenhouse gas emissions. It had been scheduled to begin on Jan. 1.
+Trump’s tweet implies that after the protests — and the decision to postpone the higher tax — Macron now agrees with Trump that the Paris Agreement is “fatally flawed.” While the concessions won’t help France reduce its carbon emissions, there is no evidence to suggest that Macron no longer supports the Paris Agreement, or that France plans to exit the accord, as Trump has said the United States will do. (Officially, nations cannot remove themselves until November 2020; in June 2017, Trump announced his intention to withdraw and said the U.S. would immediately “cease all implementation.”)
+Macron has been an enthusiastic supporter of the Paris Agreement, and at the G20 meeting last week, reaffirmed France’s commitment to the pact.
+The accord, which has now been ratified by 184 countries since the Paris meeting in 2015, aims to limit global temperature increases since the pre-industrial era to less than 2 degrees Celsius — and ideally, even lower, to 1.5 degrees. Each country sets its own emission targets, which are nonbinding. Relative to 1990, France committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2030 and by 75 percent by 2050. 
+According to a United Nations report released in November, the European Union as a whole is not on track to meet its Paris pledges (see page 8). That report, however, doesn’t provide information about how individual members of the EU are doing.
+Gas taxes do not appear in the climate plan France submitted to the United Nations for meeting its Paris goals. However, the plan describes broad strategies including promoting carpooling and teleworking, renovating the building stock to improve energy efficiency, and investing in renewable energy sources, among many others.
+This brings us to Trump’s other claims and insinuations. Trump’s description of the Paris Agreement makes it sound as though the U.S. is not one of the “worst polluters.” But as we’ve written, the U.S. is precisely that. On an absolute level, the U.S. is the second highest emitter of carbon dioxide, behind China. And the U.S. is 10th highest in the world for per capita emissions. (France, in comparison, is 60th, with a per-capita rate that’s less than a third of the United States’.) 
+Trump also returns to the idea of “clean air and clean water,” suggesting that air and water quality is the same as having a small carbon footprint. As we’ve detailed, this confuses traditional pollutants with carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Being strict about traditional pollutants does not necessarily mean a country is limiting its greenhouse gas emissions. The Paris Agreement is only concerned with the latter, as it is targeting climate change.
+Trump’s final claim — that American taxpayers are paying to clean up other countries’ pollution — is true in that there is a portion of the Paris Agreement that asks developed nations to assist developing ones in mitigating and adapting to climate change. But the claim leaves out some important context. 
+The reason virtually the entire world agreed to this financial set-up is because poorer nations are in many cases more vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Developing nations have fewer resources to protect themselves from climate change, and they are frequently located in areas where things such as sea level rise and temperature increases will have the biggest impacts. Wealthier nations also have tended to contribute more greenhouse gases over time than their less well-off peers.
+As we’ve covered before, the U.S. initially pledged to give $3 billion to one funding mechanism, known as the Green Climate Fund, and paid $1 billion under President Barack Obama. Under Trump, the U.S. has not contributed any more.
+More importantly, the Paris Agreement is primarily about each country lowering its own greenhouse gas emissions. The French gas tax, for example, is all about French taxpayers paying to lower French emissions, not anyone else’s. The same is true in the U.S. or any other country."
+"515In this week’s fact-checking video, CNN’s Jake Tapper looks at three climate-related claims President Donald Trump made in an interview with the Washington Post.
+Trump’s comments came in response to reporters asking why he was skeptical of the findings of the recently released National Climate Assessment. The report documents the current and future impacts of climate change on America and was produced by more than 300 governmental and non-governmental experts.
+
+The president first erred by conflating the greenhouse gas pollution that drives climate change with more typical air and water pollutants.
+Trump, Nov. 27: One of the problems that a lot of people like myself — we have very high levels of intelligence, but we’re not necessarily such believers. You look at our air and our water, and it’s right now at a record clean.
+Countries can have good air and water quality and still have very high carbon footprints. Indeed, the United States has some of the highest CO2 emissions in the world. According to the International Energy Agency, in 2016 the U.S. produced more CO2 than any other country except for China.
+In the Post interview, Trump also cited older articles about global cooling as further evidence for his skepticism. But as Tapper explains, those views were not held by a majority of scientists, and in fact, more scientists in the 1970s were concerned about warming.
+The third claim is one of Trump’s oft-repeated lines questioning whether climate change is “man-made.” The scientific evidence points to human activity as a primary driver of the observed temperature increases, and does not support alternative explanations.
+The video is based on our SciCheck article “The Science Trump Got Wrong in the Post Interview,” which also details a fourth false claim about wildfires and forest management. You can find all of our past collaborations with CNN’s “State of the Union with Jake Tapper” here."
+"3KIn a Nov. 27 interview with the Washington Post, President Donald Trump made a series of inaccurate statements. He questioned the cause of climate change, praised a nonexistent method for wildfire prevention and even recycled a long-debunked news story from the 1970s.
+The president explained, among other things, why he does not accept the findings of the National Climate Assessment — a government report released on Black Friday that details the current and potential impact of climate change on the United States.
+We’ve heard most of these ideas before, and have written about them already, so we’re doing a roundup of what the facts are in each case, with links to our past stories.
+On why he was skeptical of the recently released Climate Assessment Report: “One of the problems that a lot of people like myself — we have very high levels of intelligence, but we’re not necessarily such believers. You look at our air and our water, and it’s right now at a record clean.”
+Trump’s response conflates the impact of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases on global warming and climate change with the impact of air and water pollution on the environment. 
+Traditional pollutants and carbon dioxide emissions can come from the same sources, such as motor vehicles and power plants. But the pollutants are regulated differently, and technologies that remove traditional air pollutants are widespread — whereas technologies to do the same for carbon dioxide are still being developed or are in limited use. As a result, air and water quality say little about a nation’s overall carbon footprint. 
+In fact, when it comes to greenhouse gases, the U.S. is one of the worst offenders. According to the International Energy Agency, in 2016 the U.S. produced more CO2 than any other country except for China.
+Moreover, while air and water quality have generally improved over time, the U.S. is not the “cleanest” country — something Trump has claimed in the past.
+“America Not ‘Cleanest We’ve Ever Been’” Nov. 27, 2018
+“U.S. Not Ranked the ‘Cleanest’ Country” Aug. 23, 2018
+Continuing his explanation of why he does not accept the findings of the Climate Assessment report: “If you go back and if you look at articles, they talked about global freezing, they talked about at some point the planets could have freeze to death, then it’s going to die of heat exhaustion.”
+Trump appears to be referring to news articles from the 1970s that suggested the Earth might soon undergo a dramatic cooling. Other politicians in the past, including Sen. Ted Cruz, have made the same argument to rebut scientists’ concerns today about a warming world. (Cruz begins talking about climate change 14:24 into the video.)
+In particular, a 1975 Newsweek story by journalist Peter Gwynne warned of cooler temperatures and reduced crop yields. But Gwynne later admitted he erred in his reporting, and critically, there was never a consensus among scientists at the time that global cooling was coming in the future. Even then, more scientists were worried about warming.
+“Cruz on the Global Cooling Myth and Galileo” March 27, 2015
+On the causes of climate change: “As to whether or not it’s man-made and whether or not the effects that you’re talking about are there, I don’t see it — not nearly like it is.” 
+As another part of his response to the Climate Assessment Report, Trump rehashed the idea that climate change might not be due to human activity.
+But climate scientists are not in doubt about this. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s most recent assessment concluded that it is “extremely likely” — between a 95 and 100 percent probability — that the majority of the increase in global surface temperature between 1951 and 2010 was due to humans. This conclusion is even more confident than in previous reports.
+Indeed, the National Climate Assessment unequivocally states, “Global average temperature has increased by about 1.8°F from 1901 to 2016, and observational evidence does not support any credible natural explanations for this amount of warming; instead, the evidence consistently points to human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse or heat-trapping gases, as the dominant cause.”
+“Trump Wrong on Climate Change, Again” Oct. 18, 2018
+On wildfires and forest management in California: “I was watching the firemen, and they’re raking brush — you know the tumbleweed and brush, and all this stuff that’s growing underneath. It’s on fire, and they’re raking it, working so hard, and they’re raking all this stuff. If that was raked in the beginning, there’d be nothing to catch on fire. It’s very interesting to see. A lot of the trees, they took tremendous burn at the bottom, but they didn’t catch on fire. The bottom is all burned but they didn’t catch on fire because they sucked the water, they’re wet. You need forest management, and they don’t have it.” 
+Here, Trump repeats the notion that if California had done forest raking, the state could have avoided two recent catastrophic fires. 
+Forest raking, however, is not a fire management technique. Timo Kuuluvainen, a forest scientist at the University of Helsinki, told us in an email, “Raking is not done in forests!!!”
+And University of Arizona disturbance ecologist Erica Newman explained that while forest management is an important tool for limiting the severity of wildfires in certain types of ecosystems, it wouldn’t have helped in either of California’s latest fires. The Woolsey Fire burning in Southern California wasn’t consuming trees, but rather a type of woody shrubbery called chaparral — and management can make fire risk go up. And the Camp Fire in Northern California was driven by wind, meaning that removal of trees or other flammable material wouldn’t have prevented its spread.
+“Trump Repeatedly Errs on California Wildfires” Nov. 20, 2018
+“Warming to Blame for Western Wildfires?” Oct. 10, 2017"
+"3.8K1In response to a question about climate change, President Donald Trump falsely claimed that the United States was “the cleanest we’ve ever been.” Data from a variety of sources show that while the country has made strides in the last decade, its carbon dioxide, or CO2, emissions are far from their lowest point.
+The president’s comments came on Nov. 26 after he was asked by a journalist about the latest National Climate Assessment. The report, which was released on Nov. 23 and written by more than 300 government and non-government experts, describes in detail how climate change has already begun to affect the nation. It also warns of future harm to people, ecosystems and the economy if more action isn’t taken soon.
+Here is the exchange:
+Reporter, Nov. 26: Mr. President, have you read the climate report yet?
+Trump:  I’ve seen it, I’ve read some of it, and it’s fine. 
+Reporter: They say economic impact could be devastating — of climate change.
+Trump:  Yeah. I don’t believe it. 
+Reporter: You don’t believe it?
+Trump:  No.  No. I don’t believe it. And here’s the other thing — you’re going to have to have China, and Japan, and all of Asia, and all of these other countries — you know, it — it addresses our country. 
+Right now, we’re at the cleanest we’ve ever been, and that’s very important to me. But if we’re clean but every other place on Earth on is dirty, that’s not so good. 
+So I want clean air. I want clean water. Very important. 
+Trump’s comments echo previous claims that the United States has the cleanest water and air, which we’ve previously debunked. Compared to much of the world, America has enviable air and water, but it doesn’t rank as the “cleanest,” based on the 2018 Environmental Performance Index.
+This time, it isn’t entirely clear what the president means by “cleanest,” and the White House did not provide clarification. But when talking about climate change, the relevant metrics are greenhouse gases — particularly CO2, which is the primary driver. And here, the U.S. is neither tops in the world nor at its historical best.
+Historical Perspective
+Some of the most comprehensive data about CO2 emissions come from the Energy Information Administration, or EIA. The agency reports on energy-related CO2 emissions, which includes things such as transportation, heating and electricity — and has been doing so since the early 1970s. Since 98 percent of all CO2 emissions in the U.S. stem from the energy sector, this is a pretty good indication of the national trend. 
+The data, which we’ve graphed below, reveal that despite a promising downward slope, CO2 emissions are nowhere near their nadir. In 2017, U.S. carbon emissions were 5,144 million metric tons — the lowest it has been since 1992. But emissions were lower than that every year from 1973 through 1992.
+
+World Bank data, which goes back even further, tells a similar story. In 2014, emissions were trending down, but were still more than 1.8 times those in 1960.
+
+One reason for the increase in emissions is a growing population — which improves the picture for the U.S. when measuring carbon emissions on a per-capita basis. These values have tumbled after peaking in the early 1970s. But they are still higher than the lowest recorded points in the 1960s. On both absolute and relative terms, then, it is false to claim that America is at its “cleanest.”
+One caveat to these values is that they do not include other greenhouse gases or CO2 emissions from non-energy sources. EPA data does factor these in, but they only go back to 1990, making longer historical comparisons difficult — especially because this period is precisely when emissions begin to reach present-day levels.
+Finally, it is worth mentioning that the recent downward trend in CO2 emissions isn’t expected to continue in the short term. In October, the EIA projected that CO2 emissions will go up 2.2 percent in 2018. If that happens, it will be the first rise in carbon emissions since 2014.
+Worldwide Perspective
+The president also compared the U.S. to other countries when he said, “if we’re clean but every other place on Earth on is dirty, that’s not so good.”
+Although the U.S. has made progress on reducing its greenhouse gas emissions, it is by no means one of the lower emitters on the world stage.
+Data from the International Energy Agency for 2016 show that the U.S. is second to China in its total CO2 output, followed by India, Russia, and Japan. And the U.S. is higher than all of these countries in its per-capita values. In fact, America ranks 10th highest for its CO2 emissions per person, behind No. 1 Qatar, as well as Saudi Arabia and Australia. 
+So even though this number has fallen dramatically in the last decade, America is disproportionately contributing to climate change — far more than even China, which ranks 39th on a per-capita basis. 
+Other countries may need to reduce their CO2 emissions, but to say that the U.S. is already “clean” is false."
+"4.7KOver the past two weekends, as two major wildfires devastated communities in Northern and Southern California, President Donald Trump has inaccurately blamed the state’s forest management practices for the blazes. He has also wrongly said that raking — a method he attributed to Finland — could have solved the problem.
+Trump has a history of critiquing California for its frequent wildfires, but his latest comments started with an early morning tweet on Nov. 10, two days after the two fires began:
+
+There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor. Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!
+— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 10, 2018
+
+The next day, Trump followed up with another tweet:
+
+With proper Forest Management, we can stop the devastation constantly going on in California. Get Smart!
+— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 11, 2018
+
+This past weekend, the president continued with the theme, announcing on his way to California that he would be talking with Gov. Jerry Brown and Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom about forest management, adding, “I’ve been saying that for a long time. And this could have been a lot different situation.”
+While forest management can be an important element in certain wildfires, Trump’s claim that forest management is solely or even largely responsible for these fires is false. Experts told us neither of the wildfires are true forest fires, and wind was a presiding factor that quickly spread the flames. Dry, hot conditions —  both of which are exacerbated by climate change — made the fires possible and gave them extra life. Humans, too, were contributors, by living and building in areas prone to fires.
+The two wildfires in question are the Woolsey Fire outside of Los Angeles in Southern California and the innocuous-sounding Camp Fire near the town of Paradise in Northern California. As of this writing, the Woolsey Fire has killed three people, destroyed 1,500 structures and consumed nearly 100,000 acres. The Camp Fire has killed 79 people and claimed more than 15,000 buildings across 150,000 acres, making it the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history. Hundreds of people are also missing.
+Trump blundered again during his visit to Northern California, when he singled out Finland’s forest management practices and suggested raking to prevent fires.
+Trump, Nov. 17: You have to take care of the floors, you know, the floors of the forest, very important. You look at other countries where they do it differently and it’s a whole different story. I was with the president of Finland and he said we have a, we’re a forest nation — he called it a forest nation — and they spent a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things and they don’t have any problem. And when it is, it’s a very small problem.
+Finland does have fewer severe forest fires, but they do not rake as a fire prevention method, and raking would not have prevented the fires in California. Finnish forests are also very different from the California ecosystems that are burning, making the comparison invalid.
+We’ve discussed the science of wildfires before. But in light of Trump’s repeated claims, we’re taking another look, and we’ll explain why Trump’s focus on forest management in this case is misplaced.
+The Ecosystem Matters
+One of the president’s key mistakes, scientists said, was failing to consider the particular ecosystems of the current fires.
+The Woolsey Fire that hit Malibu and the surrounding area, for example, is not a forest fire. It’s burning chaparral, a woody shrubland that University of Arizona disturbance ecologist and postdoctoral researcher Erica Newman said is almost completely treeless. 
+As a result, forest management methods, which include tree thinning, or the selective removal of smaller trees, and prescribed burns — often in combination — aren’t exactly relevant. 
+Those practices can be helpful in other areas, such as California’s Sierra mixed conifer forests, Newman said. The forests there have generally not burned enough over the last century, thanks to decades of fire suppression by the U.S. Forest Service, and tree thinning and prescribed fire can mitigate some of the risk.
+The basic idea with management is to reduce the amount of material that can burn, or what scientists call fuels, so that any resulting fire will have less fuel and spread less quickly. This helps avoid the most intense fires that harm forests and are the most dangerous to humans.
+Chaparral, though, is a different story. Not only are there no trees to manage, but Newman said doing vegetation management on chaparral is likely to exacerbate the problem.
+“Managing California chaparral, whether with fire, cutting, or mechanical removal like mastication, leads to degradation of the ecosystem,” she told us in an email. “Management of any type causes fire risk to increase, because non-native grasses invade, introducing fine fuels into the ecosystem that are more ignitable.”
+Philip Dennison, a geographer and fire scientist with the University of Utah who has previously studied fires in Southern California, agreed that poor management was not at fault in the Woolsey Fire. Instead, wind was a driving factor.
+“It jumped the 101 freeway eight lanes wide with no problem,” he said in a phone interview. “There’s really no management that would have helped.”
+The Camp Fire in Northern California is different from the Woolsey Fire. Trees were involved in the Camp Fire, but it was not a true forest fire, either. Most experts told us management had little or nothing to do with how the fire manifested.
+One of the reasons to do tree thinning is to prevent smaller trees from serving as “ladder fuels” that allow fire to spread to the canopies of large trees. But Newman told us the majority of the area burning in the Camp Fire isn’t the kind of crowded, closed-canopy forest that benefits from such treatment.
+The region there contains multiple ecosystems, including Ponderosa pines at high elevations, chaparral and other forest types, such as oak woodlands lower down, and some grasslands. Many of the ecosystems, she added, are heavily invaded with ornamental plants and non-native grasses that affect fire behavior.
+The Ponderosa pines can be managed with thinning and prescribed burning, Newman said, but the area had previously been logged, and as Dennison pointed out, there were two wildfires in 2008 that would have already greatly reduced the fuel load.
+Further treatment would be unlikely to do anything, Newman explained, because the wind was so strong. In these types of wind-driven fires, she said, many thousands of embers are thrown up ahead — sometimes as far as a mile or more — and these create many new blazes. This dramatic and far-flung transfer means the fire will spread regardless of efforts to reduce the number of fuels or to create breaks in the environment.
+“In 80 mile per hour winds, the overall sparseness and ‘managedness’ of the vegetation will not prevent embers from reaching additional flammable things,” she said.
+As evidence, Newman points to the pictures of the Camp Fire scene, which often show houses reduced to ash, but nearby trees and shrubs intact. This suggests that in many cases, the fire wasn’t spreading from neighboring vegetation, as it might in a more typical fire, but rather from other buildings.
+Chris Dicus, a professor of fire science at Cal Poly, took a different view from Newman, and said that additional tree thinning or logging might have helped slow the intensity of the fire’s spread before it reached the town of Paradise. But he also acknowledged the dominant role of wind. “Even if you’ve done everything,” he said, “when you have hot, dry winds pushing through these landscapes, it’s going to burn through.”
+Multiple ‘Causes’
+The scientists we consulted were careful to note that there is no single reason for wildfires, and that was no less true of the California cases here. 
+As we’ve written before, there’s a distinction between what provides the literal spark to a wildfire, and the overall conditions that enable the fire to become a disaster. 
+In terms of the spark, Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, told us in an email that it’s “nearly certain” that both the Woolsey and Camp Fires were caused in some way by human activity. Lightning, he said, is the only natural culprit, and thunderstorms were not present for weeks before the blazes began. Both fires remain under investigation, but there are already suspicions that the Camp Fire may have started from damaged power lines. 
+As for the conditions, Swain pointed to a combination of weather and climate. 
+“In the case of both the Camp Fire and Woolsey Fire,” he said, “strong and dry land-to-sea (‘offshore’) winds were a major factor in pushing these fires rapidly down slopes and canyons into populated regions.” 
+These Santa Ana and Santa Ana-like winds typically peak in late fall, so they’re expected. But this year the vegetation was especially dry: The summer was one of the warmest on record, and the rainy season, which usually kicks into gear by mid-October — especially in the north — was late.
+Although climate change can’t be tied to any particular fire, Swain said it can make several of these contributing factors more extreme, and in that way, acts as “threat multiplier.” 
+“Climate trends are taking pre-existing wildfire hazards that are already quite high in many regions and amplifying them well beyond what they would be otherwise,” he said. For example, in California, the fire season is now starting earlier and ending later because of hotter temperatures and a shortening raining season. 
+“All else being equal, warming temperatures and longer dry seasons mean that vegetation is drier and more flammable than it would be otherwise,” Swain added. “And in California specifically, there is an increasing chance that the dangerous offshore wind season in autumn coincides with summer-like dryness.”
+The other essential component in all of this is humans. 
+Wildfires, of course, would still happen in California with or without humans. But Swain said people are increasingly building homes and towns in high wildfire risk zones, or what scientists term the wildland-urban interface. And this makes it more likely that when a fire happens, it will have a major impact on communities.
+The Case of Finland
+In perhaps the oddest chapter of all of Trump’s comments on wildfires, the president invoked Finland, and said the Finnish president had told him they “spent a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things and they don’t have any problem.”
+While it’s true that Finland has surprisingly few forest fires for a nation that’s 75 percent forest, it’s not attributable to raking. 
+Timo Kuuluvainen, a forest scientist at the University of Helsinki, told us emphatically via email, “Raking is not done in forests!!!” A representative of the Finnish Interior Ministry, which is responsible for wildfire management, has also said that raking does not occur, and the Finnish president has stated that he never told Trump that his country rakes.
+Newman, the disturbance ecologist at the University of Arizona, was not familiar with raking as a fire prevention technique beyond the raking a person might do around their house or yard, which, she said, would remain “a very local and small-scale effort.” 
+The White House did not respond to our questions about the president’s remarks on the California wildfires. But based on Trump’s description, Newman said it’s possible he could be thinking of a mop-up, which happens after a fire has already burned through an area. To keep a fire from spreading, firefighters use rakes and garden hoe- and ax-like tools, combined with water hoses, to squelch hot embers and extinguish any remaining pockets of fire. While this is helpful, it doesn’t stop fires from happening in the first place, and is part of containment.
+Forest management in Finland, Kuuluvainen explained, is primarily tree thinning, with a very small amount of prescribed fire. The country also sponsors an airplane monitoring system that operates during dry spells, and a vast network of forest roads on flat terrain make it easy for voluntary fire brigades to rapidly snuff out any fires.
+But any success Finland has had in reducing the number of severe wildfires is not very relevant to the United States because the climate is so different. “[Finland] is much colder, and supports very different, moister vegetation that is not as prone to drying out and burning,” said Newman. The Nordic country, she noted, is between 60 and 70 degrees latitude, which is farther north than anywhere in the U.S. except Alaska. Finland also benefits from a landscape peppered with lakes and swamps that serve as natural barriers and can prevent fires from spreading. All of these features mean Finland’s fire risk is naturally much lower than California’s.
+“Comparison is impossible,” Kuuluvainen said, “because the ecosystems and weather conditions are totally different.”
+Fire is Forever
+The other sticking point for many of the fire experts we spoke to was Trump’s insinuation that wildfires can be eliminated from California. The reality is that even with ideal fire management, the state will always have them.
+“Fire is part of California’s ecosystem,” said Dennison, “and it’s impossible to remove.”
+Maureen Kennedy, a fire ecologist at the University of Washington Tacoma, agreed. “Fires have always occurred and will always continue to occur,” she said in a phone interview.
+To think otherwise is potentially dangerous because it assumes our tools work better than they actually do. Even in the forests that can benefit from thinning and prescribed burning, Kennedy explained that the goal is not to stop wildfire, but to change its distribution, shifting the most intense flames to places further away from humans.
+And many of the most effective methods, at least in terms of saving lives and communities, are likely to have less to do with trying to control fire, and more to do with fireproofing homes in vulnerable areas and changing where people live.
+As an international group of scientists warned in a 2014 review in the journal Nature, “Unless people view and plan for fire as an inevitable and natural process, it will continue to have serious consequences for both social and ecological systems.”"
+"3.1KIn his rallies, President Donald Trump repeatedly talks about “clean coal,” using the phrase more than a dozen times over the past three months. He also has said in other appearances that clean coal can be exported or “loaded up” on railway cars.
+But “clean coal” refers to technologies deployed at power plants that make coal cleaner to burn, not to the fuel itself. Modern definitions require cuts in carbon dioxide emissions, and the only way to do that in a substantial way is through carbon capture. Just two coal power plants in the world use the technique, and it makes up less than 0.1 percent of American coal-fired capacity.
+“Clean coal” has become a popular talking point for the president, especially when he addresses crowds in coal-producing states, such as West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Montana.
+On Nov. 3 in Belgrade, Montana, Trump said: “And we then did the war on clean, beautiful coal, and we are putting — and you see it better than almost anybody — our coal miners. They’re all back to work, and they’re going back to work. Clean coal, clean coal. Nobody thought that was going to happen so fast, either.”
+But what does “clean coal” mean? And how does the technology work? We’ll dive into the various ways coal combustion can be made cleaner, and take a look at the future of coal in a world grappling with the effects of climate change.
+What Is ‘Clean Coal’?
+The term “clean coal,” which is used by industry, the government and academics, is annoyingly nebulous.
+“Clean coal turns out to mean largely whatever one wants it to mean,” said Edward S. Rubin, a professor of mechanical engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, in a phone interview. He has worked on energy and environmental issues for almost half a century, and on coal technologies nearly as long.
+Julio Friedmann, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy and CEO of the company Carbon Wrangler, agrees. 
+“There is no formal definition of clean coal,” he said in a phone interview. “And it is often in the eye of the beholder.”
+Rubin recalls the term first being widely used in the mid-1980s, when the Department of Energy launched its Clean Coal program. At the time, acid rain was a top priority, and coal plants were a key culprit. Coal contains impurities, that, when burned, escape into the air as harmful air pollutants, including acid-rain-causing chemicals such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. Fortunately, scrubbers and catalytic converters could be added to power plants to chemically remove the majority of these pollutants.
+Over time, the definition expanded as society recognized that burning coal resulted in other pollution problems. In the ‘90s, for example, as scientists realized the importance of mercury emissions from coal, that too became a clean coal signifier. Mercury released into the air eventually makes its way back down to Earth, where it can become a health hazard for humans and damage ecosystems and wildlife. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates coal-burning power plants are responsible for about 42 percent of all man-made mercury emissions in the United States. 
+Finally, the “clean” label evolved to include reductions in carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas scientists say is driving climate change. The EPA formally designated carbon dioxide as an air pollutant in 2009, in recognition of the harm the gas poses “to public health and welfare” in its role in global warming. 
+Coal plants pump out inordinate amounts of the gas. According to the Energy Information Administration, coal power plants released 1,207 million metric tons of CO2 in 2017 — far more than any other source of electricity. And that’s despite a decline in coal use. As the EPA notes, “although coal accounted for about 67 percent of CO2 emissions from the sector, it represented only about 32 percent of the electricity generated in the United States in 2016.”
+“These days, my own sense is that talking about clean coal without extending it to mean significant reductions in carbon emissions is basically ignoring the climate-related impacts of coal combustion,” Rubin said.
+It’s a sentiment Friedmann shares. “I personally believe coal cannot be clean unless it controls CO2 emissions as well,” he said.
+But Rubin notes that coal industry definitions are often vague, referring to environmental performance improvements that may make only incremental advancements. Even if industry groups accept that carbon dioxide control is part of clean coal, as some do, it’s often a question of how much. Someone could argue, Rubin said, that a 5 percent reduction in emissions is enough to make coal “clean.”
+Clearly, the “clean” part of “clean coal” is relative, and is better described as “cleaner.” For this reason, many environmentalists think that “clean coal” doesn’t exist and consider the phrase an oxymoron. Coal can never be clean, they argue, because even if sophisticated power plants capture pollutants, there is environmental damage during the mining and transport of coal. Mountaintop removal in particular is notorious for polluting streams and harming ecosystems, especially aquatic ones. This environmental damage is well documented by the EPA.
+But while Friedmann considers these fair complaints, he also thinks they should be put in perspective, as just 5 percent of U.S. coal production is done by mountaintop removal. “It doesn’t represent a big fraction of how coal is produced,” he said.
+The best technology cannot make coal completely pollution-free or carbon-neutral, but it can mitigate a lot of the negative environmental impacts. This technology, known as carbon capture and sequestration (or storage), or CCS, is a process in which CO2 is trapped and kept out of the atmosphere, usually by forcing the gas into below-ground formations. As we’ll explain, there are several ways to do CCS. But the technology is expensive and is not yet widespread.
+Other “clean coal” methods also address carbon dioxide emissions, including novel ways of burning coal more efficiently. In a standard coal-fired power plant, coal is burned to heat a boiler, which creates steam that turns a turbine, which powers a generator to create electricity. Increasing the temperature and pressure of the steam, as is done in so-called supercritical and ultrasupercritical plants, makes this process more efficient. Because less coal needs to be burned to create the same amount of energy, the plants have smaller carbon footprints. These improvements, however, usually yield only modest reductions in carbon dioxide, such that they still do not match the lower emissions of modern natural gas plants. Rubin said these are also not widely used in the United States. 
+What Trump Could Mean
+The White House did not reply to requests for clarification on what Trump means when he says “clean coal.” Trump could simply be thinking of the basic scrubbers that prevent acid rain — but do nothing to reduce CO2 emissions.
+Some of Trump’s more specific comments, however, incorrectly describe coal itself as being “clean,” not the burning of it.
+Take, for instance, the idea that coal sitting in railway cars is clean, and that the U.S. exports clean coal, both ideas he floated in September.
+Trump, United Nations speech, Sept. 25: We have become the largest energy producer anywhere on the face of the Earth. The United States stands ready to export our abundant, affordable supply of oil, clean coal, and natural gas.
+Trump, aboard Air Force One, Sept. 7: No administration has done what I’ve done. I just left Montana, and I looked at those trains and they’re loaded up with clean coal — beautiful clean coal. And those trains were empty two years ago. They were empty; they were dying. Nobody’s done what I’ve done.
+Setting aside Trump’s inflated claims about reviving the coal industry, which we’ve addressed before, Rubin said Trump’s words don’t make a lot of sense, given the normal definitions of clean coal.
+“It isn’t the coal that’s clean,” said Rubin. “It’s using coal, and using it in a way that generates useful energy, without significant environmental emissions.” All of the meaningful ways to do this, he said, happen at a power plant.
+There is only one plausible way Trump could argue his case, and it’s a stretch.
+He could be thinking of coal cleaning or coal washing, an older technology that removes impurities, such as non-combustible mineral matter and sulfur, from coal. This can cut down on coal ash pollution, and slightly reduce sulfur dioxide emissions. But this processing hardly makes coal clean.
+“Today, no one really thinks of coal cleaning as a significant clean coal technology,” said Rubin.
+According to the Energy Information Administration, less than 20 percent of U.S. coal is washed, usually higher-sulfur coal in the East, and cleaning does not change coal’s carbon dioxide emissions.
+Coal washing, notably, appears on a list of technologies posted on the American Coal Council’s website, but the industry group is careful to label the entire list “cleaner” rather than “clean.”
+As for the export claim, Friedmann is equally baffled.
+“In my mind, I don’t see how you can export coal and call it clean unless you export clean coal technology with it,” said Friedmann, adding that this is something the Trump administration is not doing.
+And no exported coal heads to carbon capture facilities. Of the two coal-fired CCS plants, only one — the Boundary Dam Power Station in Saskatchewan, Canada — is outside the United States, and it gets its coal domestically.
+How Coal CCS Works
+Understanding the basics of how coal-based carbon capture and sequestration works will help explain why it isn’t more widespread.
+There are three main ways to do carbon capture, which differ in when and how the CO2 is removed:
+
+Post-combustion: CO2 is captured after the coal has been burned. This is the only capture method in commercial operation. Essentially, before the flue gases are sent up the chimney, the CO2 is pulled out with chemicals, usually nitrogen-rich amines. This technique can be applied to existing coal plants as a retrofit — a huge advantage over the other methods. But it still takes quite a bit of energy to run the system, Rubin explained, mainly because the CO2-absorbing chemicals need to be stripped of CO2 so they can be regenerated and used again.
+Pre-combustion: CO2 is captured from a coal-sourced gas before being burned. The carbon capture part is less expensive than in post-combustion capture, but the overall cost of gasification plants is high. To Rubin’s knowledge, just two American power plants use gasification at all. One plant, in Kemper County, Mississippi, was designed to do coal gasification with carbon capture, but had to scrap those plans after cost overruns and delays. It now runs on natural gas.
+Oxy-fuel: Coal is burned in oxygen rather than air. This makes it easier to collect the CO2, but according to Rubin, running an oxygen plant takes a lot of energy, and the economics may or may not make sense compared with post-combustion capture.
+
+Perhaps surprisingly, the basic technology hasn’t changed much since we last wrote about it in 2009, when then-President Barack Obama was taking heat from environmental groups for supporting clean coal. What has changed is that there are now two commercial coal CCS plants in operation. One is the Petra Nova plant in Houston, Texas, which came online in 2017, and the other is Canada’s Boundary Dam, which debuted in 2014. Both grab the CO2 after combustion using chemicals, although their setups are different.
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+The Petra Nova coal CCS plant in Houston, Texas. The carbon capture facility is the tall tower in the center. The auxiliary natural gas plant that runs the carbon capture system is in the upper right-hand corner. (Photo courtesy of NRG Energy)
+
+One of the differences is in how the plants get the extra energy to run their capture systems, which Rubin said can take 20 to 25 percent of an efficient coal-fired power plant’s energy to run. Boundary Dam uses internal power, reducing its output. Petra Nova, in contrast, uses a separate natural gas plant — without carbon capture. As a result, Petra Nova can produce more electricity, but its overall carbon footprint is higher than one might think. Even though Petra Nova captures 90 percent of its CO2 emissions, Rubin estimates that the net reduction is only about 70 percent.
+That’s still substantial, but it’s important to keep in mind when evaluating how clean even this type of advanced technology actually is. “An efficient natural gas plant would have roughly half the emissions of a modern coal plant, without doing anything,” explains Rubin.
+Along with reducing the plant’s green credentials, the extra energy required to do carbon capture drives up the cost of electricity, which is arguably the bigger hurdle keeping coal CCS from going mainstream. 
+One workaround, which is what the Petra Nova and Boundary Dam plants are doing, is to profit off of their captured CO2 through something called enhanced oil recovery. It turns out that CO2 is useful to oil companies because injecting the gas into the ground can help squeeze out more oil.
+Of course, not everyone is on board with using captured CO2 to find more oil, which as a fellow fossil fuel would be contributing to our CO2 problem. But Rubin said it depends on one’s assumptions as to whether on net, there’s a decrease in CO2 emissions or not. “It’s something that needs to be considered,” he said, “but there’s not a clear answer.”
+The Coal CCS Outlook
+With just two coal plants in the world that make significant reductions in all air pollutants, anything approaching clean coal is happening on an extremely small scale. In fact, the carbon capture systems at both plants are only running on a portion of the total coal that is burned. 
+At Boundary Dam, the total capacity of all the units is 672 megawatts, but the single carbon capture unit is capable of about 120 megawatts. It is often down for repairs or running below capacity. At Petra Nova, carbon capture is applied to 240 megawatts of the 654 megawatt unit. That makes Petra Nova the largest coal CCS project in the world — an impressive feat. But given that the country’s total coal-fired power plant capacity tops 250,000 megawatts, it still means that less than 0.1 percent of American capacity uses the technique. Will we see more?
+“With the price of natural gas being as low as it currently is, there is relatively little interest in building new coal plants of any sort,” said Rubin. What’s needed, he said, are regulations and policies that make it economically worthwhile for more companies to build these sorts of power plants, such as a sufficiently high price on CO2 emissions, or a standard that requires emission reductions.
+“We have neither of these today,” he said, “nor any prospects of such incentives from the current administration.”
+In February, Trump signed into law a set of expanded tax credits that could encourage various carbon capture projects. The measure provides tax credits for every ton of CO2 that’s either stored or reused. But while Friedmann thinks the credits might allow for a few existing coal plants to do CCS retrofits, even those projects would likely need extra support. 
+In the end, Friedmann said, the focus shouldn’t really be on coal or any other fuel, it should be on the power plant. “You shouldn’t care if it’s using coal, natural gas, or tires,” he said. “You should care about what is emitted. That’s the only thing that the Earth cares about.”
+Clarification, Nov. 9: We clarified that only two American power plants use gasification.
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+       Share The Facts    Donald Trump President of the United States         ""I just left Montana, and I looked at those trains and they’re loaded up with clean coal — beautiful clean coal.""   Press gaggle – Friday, September 7, 2018   Share Read More     Embed     Information on embedding in your site  oEmbed Link  https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/be038492-280e-41c2-8068-834e371171e6     
+
+
+Categories SciCheck
+
+Location Montana
+
+National
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+Pennsylvania
+
+West Virginia
+
+Issue clean coal
+
+climate change
+
+Coal
+
+energy
+
+People Donald Trump"
+"16.6KIn two recent interviews, President Donald Trump said he is not convinced that climate change is due to human activity, and he suggested that any changes will reverse themselves — two ideas that lack scientific backing.
+He also claimed in a third interview that there are scientists “on both sides” of climate change, despite published papers showing that the vast majority of climate scientists — as high as 97 percent — agree on the issue.
+Trump’s first comments on climate change this week came during a CBS “60 Minutes” interview on Oct. 14, when CBS’ Lesley Stahl asked whether Trump still viewed climate change as a hoax.
+Stahl, Oct. 14: Do you still think that climate change is a hoax?
+Trump: I think something’s happening. Something’s changing and it’ll change back again. I don’t think it’s a hoax, I think there’s probably a difference. But I don’t know that it’s man-made. I will say this. I don’t wanna give trillions and trillions of dollars. I don’t wanna lose millions and millions of jobs. I don’t wanna be put at a disadvantage.
+Stahl: I wish you could go to Greenland, watch these huge chunks of ice just falling into the ocean, raising the sea levels.
+Trump: And you don’t know whether or not that would have happened with or without man. You don’t know.
+Stahl: Well, your scientists, your scientists–
+Trump: No, we have–
+Stahl: At NOAA and NASA–
+Trump: We have scientists that disagree with that.
+Stahl: You know, I– I was thinking what if he said, “No, I’ve seen the hurricane situations, I’ve changed my mind. There really is climate change.” And I thought, “Wow, what an impact.”
+Trump: Well– I’m not denying.
+Stahl: What an impact that would make.
+Trump: I’m not denying climate change. But it could very well go back. You know, we’re talkin’ about over a millions of years.
+The following day, the president repeated these ideas during a briefing about Hurricane Michael when asked by a reporter why he had changed his mind about climate change being a hoax.
+Trump, Oct. 15: There’s no question. There is something there — man-made or not.  I mean, there’s something there. And it’s going to go, and it’s going to go back and forth. But there is something there.
+Then, on Oct. 16, in an interview with the Associated Press, Trump once again said he agrees “the climate changes,” but said that it “goes back and forth, back and forth.” He said he was unwilling to “sacrifice the economic well-being of our country for something that nobody really knows,” noting that “you have scientists on both sides of the issue.”
+Can Climate Change ‘Go Back’?
+The president presents climate change as a phenomenon that naturally swings back and forth, arguing that it might reverse itself all on its own.
+Climate systems are complex and do have natural cycles and feedbacks. But these cycles are already accounted for when scientists evaluate what is happening as the Earth warms from increases in greenhouse gases.
+“There is no reason to believe the climate would swing back because something would have to push it back,” said Drew Shindell, a climate scientist at Duke University, in a phone interview. “We have changed things so much that we now overwhelm things like the ice age cycles.”
+When scientists, such as those with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, model future climate changes, there are no scenarios in which the general warming trend decreases by the year 2100.
+The IPCC makes future projections under different greenhouse gas concentrations and emissions, among other factors, in what it calls Representative Concentration Pathways, to show what we might expect given various levels of action on climate change.
+According to the IPCC’s fifth assessment report, which was finalized in 2014, global surface temperatures are expected to rise by 0.3 to 1.7 degrees Celsius by the end of this century in even the most aggressive scenario, known as RCP 2.6. In this scenario, greenhouse gas emissions are severely limited, consistent with the goal of limiting temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius. While this goal is thought to be technically feasible, it requires the participation of all countries.
+Taking no additional action on climate change is projected in the same report to result in a global temperature increase between that expected for the two most lax scenarios, which range from 1.4 to 3.1 and 2.6 to 4.8 degrees Celsius. Looking further out, warming continues after 2100 in all scenarios except for RCP 2.6, the most stringent one.
+“All the scientific evidence suggests that the changes humans are causing now will last for hundreds or thousands of years, so long enough that we will have to move cities and infrastructure,” Natalie Mahowald, a climate scientist at Cornell University, and a lead author of the IPCC’s latest special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, told us in an email.
+On a very long timescale, the Earth might eventually cool after today’s warming has taken effect and an ice age sets in. But Shindell explained that won’t happen for at least thousands of years.
+“The CO2 going away will take thousands of years,” he said in an email, “and even then it’d have to be driven by changes in earth-sun orbital alignment going in the right direction once the CO2 levels have declined.”
+If that is the “back and forth” Trump has in mind, it will come too late to prevent the Earth from having to experience the ecosystem changes, extreme weather events, and rises in sea level that scientists expect from climate change in the near future.
+Is Climate Change Man-Made?
+In both the “60 Minutes” interview and the briefing on Hurricane Michael, the president questioned whether climate change is caused by humans, saying, “I don’t know that it’s man-made,” and “There is something there — man-made or not.” As we have written before, this is not an open question. Hundreds of scientists from across the world agree that climate change is driven by humans.
+In the latest IPCC assessment, the group was even more confident than in its previous report that human activity causes climate change, writing, “It is extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in GHG [greenhouse gas] concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together.” The IPCC defines “extremely likely” as between 95 percent to 100 percent probability. 
+The U.S. Global Change Research Program’s 2017 Climate Science Special Report comes to the same determination. The program’s website explains that the “assessment concludes, based on extensive evidence, that it is extremely likely that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, are the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.” It adds, “For the warming over the last century, there is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence.”
+In the “60 Minutes” interview, Trump also responded to Stahl’s example of ice chunks falling off of Greenland and raising the sea level by saying, “And you don’t know whether or not that would have happened with or without man. You don’t know.”
+Trump is right — but only to a point. It is impossible to tie any particular ice chunk to climate change and human activity. “Any individual chunk of ice, we don’t know if that particular bit of frozen water would have fallen off without climate change,” said Drew Shindell, the Duke climate scientist. But, he said, Trump is correct only in the narrowest sense. “We’re quite sure that the observations of the accelerated Greenland-wide loss are related to climate change,” he said.
+Trump has questioned the status of glaciers, or what he called “ice caps,” before, and as we’ve explained, satellite imagery shows that Greenland has been losing mass since at least 2002, with increases in that rate since 2009. 
+The National Aeronautics and Space Administration estimates that for the last 15 or so years, Greenland has lost a whopping 286 gigatonnes of ice per year, and this has led to a 0.8 millimeter rise in the global sea level each year. Some of the ice loss is from iceberg calving, which is when ice breaks off from the edge of a glacier, and is likely what Stahl had in mind, and some is from surface melting.
+The fifth IPCC assessment also concluded that human activity likely was behind ice loss and that it is connected to sea level rise. 
+“Glaciers have lost mass and contributed to sea level rise throughout the 20th century,” the report reads. “The rate of ice mass loss from the Greenland ice sheet has very likely substantially increased over the period 1992 to 2011, resulting in a larger mass loss over 2002 to 2011 than over 1992 to 2011.” The report adds, “Anthropogenic influences likely contributed to the retreat of glaciers since the 1960s and to the increased surface melting of the Greenland ice sheet since 1993.”
+Even in the specific case of Greenland’s ice sheet, the president’s skepticism about climate change being man-made is misleading and does not reflect what is known by scientists.
+Do Scientists Disagree?
+In the AP interview, Trump repeatedly claimed that scientists do not agree about climate change, saying, “you have scientists on both sides of the issue.”
+The president made a similar statement two days before, when he said that “we have scientists that disagree” in response to Stahl challenging him on his remark about Greenland, when she brought up “your scientists” at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
+It is unclear from the president’s comments whether he was saying that NOAA and NASA scientists disagree, and the White House did not respond to our request for clarification or for help identifying these scientists. 
+But both the NOAA and NASA websites clearly support the scientific consensus that climate change is happening and is primarily caused by human activity, and these agencies are behind important climate change research projects in Greenland. NASA notes that studies have shown that “97 percent or more” of actively publishing climate scientists are in agreement — studies we have discussed before.
+“There are very few climate scientists today who are skeptical of climate change, and their arguments tend to be rather weak,” said Mahowald, the Cornell climate scientist. “They argue that the models are not accurate enough, and that the feedbacks will reduce the impact. But they can’t explain the trends.”
+Mahowald said the IPCC’s results, which represent the scientific consensus, are carefully put together by many scientists after assessing the scientific literature, and are accepted by governments, including the United States, in approval sessions. 
+“Any results that are scientifically controversial do not make it into the reports,” she said. As a result, rather than exaggerating the impact or importance of climate change, she said the reports “tend to be rather conservative.”"
+"495Two federal agencies this month took steps that would allow the oil and gas industry to release more methane, a greenhouse gas, into the environment. Critics warned that methane is more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping the Earth’s heat, but some gave wildly divergent figures to describe how much more potent.
+Sen. Bernie Sanders said methane is 86 times more potent than carbon dioxide, while others, including New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone, said it was 25 times as potent. So, which is it — 86 or 25 times?
+Perhaps surprisingly, both numbers are accurate. The amounts greatly vary, though, because they correspond to different time frames — a detail that often goes unmentioned when these statistics are given.
+
+The values used by Sanders and Pallone are what climatologists refer to as global warming potentials, or GWPs, which is one metric scientists use to compare greenhouse gas potencies. Since these numbers are often given without much explanation of what they actually mean, we’ll dive into some of the details to show the science behind them and the types of assumptions that are baked in.
+Sanders and Pallone were responding to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Sept. 11 announcement that it plans to relax regulations designed to limit methane emissions from the oil and gas industry. The public will have 60 days to comment once the proposed rule is published in the Federal Register. 
+If the EPA’s change goes through, companies wouldn’t have to monitor for “fugitive emissions,” or leaks, of methane as frequently, and would also have more time to stop leaks before facing penalties. The agency says the amended rules would save the industry about $484 million in regulatory costs between 2019 and 2025, but would also lead to 380,000 more tons of methane being released over the same period.
+A week later, the Department of the Interior announced it had finalized a similar rule regarding methane emissions on federal and tribal lands, which the government leases to companies for oil and gas exploration and development. The rule largely repeals a set of regulations slated to go into effect that were created to prevent methane loss at drilling sites. The Bureau of Land Management previously estimated that those regulations would prevent 175,000 to 180,000 tons of methane emissions every year, the equivalent of about 4.4 to 4.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.
+Global Warming Potentials, Explained
+The idea behind GWP is to compare how much warming a newly emitted gas will cause, relative to the same mass of carbon dioxide, or CO2, over a set period of time. These are often used to calculate CO2 equivalents, as in the Bureau of Land Management’s calculation above, and can be used to tally up emissions from all the different greenhouse gases. Warming here goes by a fancy term called radiative forcing, which can be thought of as an index of the Earth’s energy budget. As we’ll explain later, this is a bit different from a temperature increase, which is captured in a different metric.
+Different factors can therefore influence this value, including:
+
+The gas’s inherent ability to warm: Some gases trap heat better than others, and some also produce chemical reactions that can lead to the production of other greenhouse gases, among other effects. Methane, for example, is a better heat-trapper than CO2, and also can increase lower-atmospheric ozone, which indirectly adds to methane’s warming ability. Various versions of GWP include or exclude different indirect effects.
+Lifetime of the gas: Different gases persist in the atmosphere for different periods of time. Some, such as methane, break down rather quickly, while others can last hundreds or thousands of years, still contributing to warming.
+
+An extra wrinkle when accounting for a gas’s warming ability is that the radiative forcing for many greenhouse gases changes depending on how much of the gas is already in the atmosphere. The primary way gases warm is by absorbing infrared radiation, or heat. But because gases only absorb specific wavelengths, there is a kind of saturation effect once a lot of a particular gas is around.
+“If a gas has absorbed all the infrared radiation it can, then doubling the concentration of the gas won’t change that absorption,” explains Keith Shine, a climate scientist at the University of Reading in the U.K., over email. Shine has been heavily involved in developing comparative metrics for greenhouse gases.
+Shine notes that things are a bit more complicated in reality because gases can both absorb and emit radiation, but the general principle holds — and it’s key to understanding the relative impact of methane. 
+“Probably the dominant driver of the difference between CO2 and methane is that there is already much more CO2 in the atmosphere than methane,” says Shine. “This acts to mute the effect of adding more CO2.”
+That doesn’t mean CO2 isn’t doing anything or isn’t important — its emissions are so much greater than other greenhouse gases that it remains the largest contributor to climate change — but it does reduce the relative impact of the gas. Shine adds that this is a well-known phenomenon that climate scientists have factored into their modeling calculations for more than 50 years, and has been included in all of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, assessments.
+The Importance of Time
+One of the crucial variables for GWP is the selected time window. As the Sanders and Pallone tweets indicate, the values can change quite significantly depending on how far out one looks. If one considers a long time frame, then the longer-lived gases will appear stronger, and vice-versa if one considers a short time frame. 
+This is why the values for methane appear to be all over the map. Methane sticks around for only about a dozen years, so it does its warming early on. Carbon dioxide, in contrast, can persist for thousands of years, steadily warming that whole time. As a result, methane’s potency is much higher if evaluated over 20 years rather than 100.
+The potencies of other greenhouse gases can fluctuate in the other direction, with longer-lived gases such as tetrafluoromethane getting even stronger when evaluated on a century-long scale.
+
+
+
+
+Lifetime (years)
+GWP20
+(over 20 years)
+GWP100
+(over 100 years)
+
+
+Carbon dioxide (CO2)
+Varies (can be thousands)
+1
+1
+
+
+Methane (CH4)
+12.4
+84
+28
+
+
+Nitrous oxide (N2O)
+121.0
+264
+265
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+
+Tetrafluoromethane (CF4)
+50,000.0
+4880
+6630
+
+
+
+Table 1: GWP for select greenhouse gases, adapted from Table 8.7 from the Working Group I’s contribution to the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (2013). Does not include climate-carbon feedbacks. 
+The 100-year metric has become a default standard. But this is really just a snapshot, since a longer view will under-report the damage a short-lived gas such as methane is doing today, and a shorter view will completely miss the ongoing warming that will come from a longer-lived gas in the future. Built-in to these numbers is a certain perspective.
+This is something the IPCC is very upfront about, as its latest report states, “There is no scientific argument for selecting 100 years compared with other choices. The choice of time horizon is a value judgement because it depends on the relative weight assigned to effects at different times.”
+Shine says that the use of the 100-year time frame came about more or less by accident. “The use of GWP100 is now quite firmly entrenched in policymaking and so is regarded as many policymakers as the metric of choice,” he says. “But really it was the result of a number of somewhat arbitrary decisions.”
+Other Metrics
+While GWP is the most common metric, others exist, and scientists are still trying to improve upon them.
+For example, Global Temperature Potential, or GTP, compares greenhouse gases to CO2 in their ability to change global mean surface temperatures. In many ways this metric is similar to GWP — it, too, is pegged to a certain time — but it goes one step further to translate the relative warming into a temperature multiplier. In other words, methane’s GTP100 of 4 means that methane released today will cause a temperature change in 100 years that is quadruple that due to the same mass of CO2 emitted today.
+This translation process depends more on climate models and scientists’ understanding of how everything in the system interacts to produce a temperature change, including how quickly the climate will respond, so there is more uncertainty in the value. Perhaps because of this, and because it is newer — it debuted in 2005 — GTP tends to be used less, and is not usually the number politicians or journalists cite when comparing the potencies of greenhouse gases. But it can be useful to policymakers because it’s more directly related to temperature change, which is often what climate treaties are organized around.
+Some climate scientists have also suggested slightly different metrics that try to get around some of the drawbacks of GWP. In particular, Shine and colleagues have proposed a new variant called GWP* specifically designed to resolve GWP’s shortcomings with methane and other short-lived gases. Shine says that this metric may be better to use in the future because it focuses on changes in methane emissions, rather than total emissions. By only considering increases to methane emissions as added warming, this helps account for methane’s short lifetime. If methane emissions are flat or falling, as is expected in coming years, it may better reflect what methane is doing to the climate. 
+But, he adds, GWP* hasn’t been assessed by the IPCC yet, and it’s still preliminary. “This would be quite a radical change, and it will take time to see if our idea takes root,” he says.
+Continual Updates
+Adding to the general confusion about methane is the fact that as scientists have learned more about its warming effects, there has been a steady revision upward for its relative potency. In some cases, however, the latest revisions to GWP aren’t widely disseminated, in part because it makes sense for policymakers to stick with the older, lower GWPs used in past agreements, such as the Kyoto Protocol.
+In the 1990s, for example, the first two IPCC assessments listed methane’s GWP100 as 21. By 2013, with the release of the fifth IPCC report, the GWP100 for methane was 28, rising as high as 34 if including climate-carbon feedbacks. But in many of that report’s materials, additional calculations were done using the earlier GWP100 figures. The oft-cited statistic of 25 times, meanwhile, stems from the IPCC’s fourth report in 2007.
+Much of the updating of methane’s potency has to do with reassessing the indirect effects of methane on ozone. When methane is broken down in the lower part of the atmosphere called the troposphere, for instance, that encourages ozone formation. This ozone contributes to smog and to warming; it’s not considered the “good” type of ozone located higher up in the stratosphere, which plays a protective role in blocking out ultraviolet rays.
+Since the last update, climatologists have made additional discoveries. Shine and colleagues, for example, reported in Geophysical Research Letters in 2016 that methane could contribute to warming by absorbing solar radiation — a feature that hadn’t been previously recognized or included in GWP estimates.
+Scientists are also always learning more about CO2, and because GWP is by definition in reference to CO2, any changes to its parameters also will affect the end values for the other greenhouse gases.
+Shine says that if work from his group and others holds up, it’s possible the IPCC’s sixth report could revise methane’s GWP100 upward to 35 or higher. That number, like all the others before it, will be in flux as climatologists learn more and make refinements. It’s also likely to include a fair amount of uncertainty. GWP values for methane typically come with uncertainties between 30 percent and 40 percent, according to the IPCC.
+“We’ve made a lot of progress in the past 10 years,” Shine says, “so I hope within another 10, we will have brought those uncertainties down.”
+How Fossil Fuel Methane Is Different
+In the case of methane, there’s yet another factor to consider when talking about potency. GWP values don’t usually differentiate based on the source of the gas. But with methane, fossil fuel sources, such as those from the oil and gas industry, pack a slightly higher punch than others.
+The difference relates to the fact that when a methane is oxidized, or broken down, in the atmosphere, some CO2 is produced in that chemical reaction. GWP doesn’t normally factor this in, but that’s okay because for many sources of methane, the extra CO2 is already accounted for. If the methane came from a cow or rice paddy, for instance, the carbon is simply being recycled. The plant already removed a molecule of CO2 during photosynthesis, so that offsets the molecule of CO2 that forms when methane is broken down. 
+Fossil fuel methane technically also has this offset because oil and natural gas started off as dead organic matter. But the associated CO2 was pulled out of the atmosphere millions of years ago, so to include the offset now underestimates what that methane will do to the climate.
+In the end, this means that for fossil fuel methane, one has to increase the GWP20 by 1, raising it to 85 (or 87, including feedbacks), and increase the GWP100 by 2, raising it to 30 (or 36, including feedbacks).
+Because not all methane comes from this source, though, the IPCC opted in its last report to use the lower values for methane in its main tables, so one is likely to see those most often.
+According to the EPA, in the U.S., 31 percent of methane emissions due to human activity come from the oil and gas industry; 26 percent come from livestock, such as cows; and another 16 percent come from landfills. Methane also has many natural sources, including wetlands and termites.
+Metrics Are Only Tools
+The fact that methane’s potency can vary so much — Shine says it can range from 1 to 100, depending on the metric and the time frame — is an inevitable feature of how scientists put together these comparisons, which is why it’s helpful to understand some of the underlying assumptions.
+The IPCC even warns in its latest report, “Metrics do not define goals and policy — they are tools that enable evaluation and implementation of multi-component policies,” adding that “the most appropriate metric will depend on which aspects of climate change are most important to a particular application.”
+For all this focus on methane’s potency, though, it’s useful to remember that methane is still a smaller overall contributor to climate change than CO2. As we’ve written before, CO2 is the main driver. Other gases, such as methane, are important, but they’re far less abundant.
+According to the IPCC, “carbon dioxide is the largest single contributor to radiative forcing over 1750–2011 and its trend since 1970.” By itself, CO2 accounted for 76 percent of all human-made greenhouse gases in 2010.
+Methane ranks as the second-largest single contributor, responsible for 16 percent of the same total if using the older GWP100 values, or 20 percent if using the newer ones. Go ahead, and take your pick."
+"6.4KDuring a recent hearing on the role of innovation in addressing climate change, several Republicans made faulty claims about the climate, past and present:
+
+Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks falsely claimed river sediment deposits and rocks falling from cliffs cause sea level rise, later writing that this was “the #1 cause.” Melting ice at the poles and ocean thermal expansion are the dominant causes.
+Brooks also said global warming leads to more ice on Antarctica. That’s false. The continent has been losing ice since the beginning of the 21st century.
+Texas Rep. Lamar Smith falsely said there’s “no correlation” between sea level rise and carbon emissions. Sea level rise is strongly linked to global warming, which is primarily caused by increased carbon emissions from humans.
+Florida Rep. Bill Posey falsely claimed it was “30 degrees warmer when the dinosaurs roamed.” It was never that hot when dinosaurs lived. More importantly, it has never been close to that hot when humans lived.
+Posey also claimed the last ice age “was caused by a cataclysmic collision of an asteroid.” That’s false. Ice ages are caused by changes in the Earth’s orbit and related factors.
+
+The congressmen — all members of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee — made their claims while questioning Philip Duffy, a physicist and the president of the Woods Hole Research Center, a climate change think tank. On a number of occasions, Duffy contested what the Republicans said, to no avail. We’ll take their claims one by one.
+An Alabaman in Antarctica
+Brooks, the congressman from Alabama, made two false claims during the hearing — one about river sediments and cliff rocks and another about ice in Antarctica — both during a debate with Duffy about the causes of sea level rise.
+Brooks asked why “sea levels have risen” since “human beings have been on the planet.” Duffy then correctly explained that “sea levels over the last 3 million years have gone up and down in line with the cycles of ice ages.”
+During their exchange, Duffy also said that “ground subsidence” is “a factor in some regions.” Ground subsidence, or the sinking of land, does contribute to land loss in some regions, such as in Louisiana, which we wrote about in March 2017.
+But those answers didn’t satisfy Brooks, so he pointed to factors he believed are causing sea level rise.
+Brooks, May 16: What about erosion? Every single year that we’re on Earth, you have huge tons of silt deposited by the Mississippi River, by the Amazon River, by the Nile, by every major river system and, for that matter, creek, all the way down to the smallest systems. And every time you have that soil or rock, or whatever is it, that is deposited into the seas, that forces the sea levels to rise because now you’ve got less space in those oceans because the bottom is moving up. What about the White Cliffs of Dover, California, where you have the waves crashing against the shoreline, and time and time again you’re having the cliffs crash into the sea? All of that displaces water which forces it to rise. Does it not?
+Duffy’s response: “I’m pretty sure that on human time scales those are minuscule effects.” Duffy is right again, as we’ll explain.
+Brooks doubled-down on these claims in a May 19 op-ed published on the news site AL.com. “Over the history of planet Earth, far and away the #1 cause of sea level rise has been erosion and its resulting deposits of sediment and rocks into the world’s seas and oceans,” he wrote, adding, “There is no close second cause of sea level rise.”
+This is false.
+According to a 2017 report by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, global sea level rise is “primarily driven by two factors,” both directly related to global warming.
+First, the oceans are expanding because water swells as it gets warmer. According the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the “oceans are absorbing more than 90 percent of the increased atmospheric heat associated with emissions from human activity.”
+Second, there’s also more water in the oceans because mountain glaciers and the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are melting, explains the 2017 report. 
+We asked Steven Goodbred Jr., an environmental scientist at Vanderbilt University whom we interviewed for another piece on sea level rise, for his take on Brooks’ claim. He did say that “sediment does displace water,” but it has a minuscule effect “on shorter time scales (<100 years) due to the small volume of sediment relative to the immense volume of the oceans.”
+On time scales longer than 100 years, “it has no real effect” because of a process called isostasy, where “the added weight of sediment to the oceans causes the crust to sink and the reduced weight of the sediment eroded from the land causes it to rise,” Goodbred added. In other words, there’s “no net change in water level relative to land,” he said.
+Torbjörn E. Törnqvist, a geology professor at Tulane University in New Orleans whom we spoke with for the March 2017 piece on land loss in Louisiana, gave us the same explanation, adding that Brooks’ comments “are utter nonsense.”
+This brings us to the second false claim Brooks made. As he continued his exchange with Duffy, Brooks asked “would it surprise you to know that as global temperatures rise — assuming for the moment that they do — that that actually increases the amount of ice that is collected on Antarctica?” Brooks repeated these claims in his May 19 op-ed.
+Duffy’s response: “That’s not true sir.” Duffy is right — it’s not.
+We wrote about ice levels in Antarctica and Greenland in January, after President Donald Trump falsely implied the globe’s ice caps are at “record” high levels. According to NASA, both of these ice sheets have declined in mass since 2002. “Both ice sheets have seen an acceleration of ice mass loss since 2009,” the agency adds. 
+During the hearing, Brooks supported his claim by saying that he “made a trip down to Antarctica and met with National Science Foundation scientists and they all agreed with global warming and they emphasized that you’re going to have an increase in the amount of ice in Antarctica because of global warming.”
+His explanation?
+“[P]rojected global warming will LOWER sea levels because warmer Antarctic air will carry more moisture above the Antarctic land mass, and deposit that moisture in the interior of Antarctica, where it will take hundreds of years to glacially make its way to the sea,” wrote Brooks in his op-ed. NSF “scientists opined that the increase in Antarctic continental ice will more than offset the loss of ice elsewhere on planet Earth.”
+We reached out to Brooks’ office to ask for the names of the NSF-funded scientists who gave him this information, but we received no response. We also contacted multiple researchers studying the topic, and they all agreed that Brooks’ explanation was inaccurate.
+Santiago de la Peña, a researcher at Ohio State University who studies glacier dynamics, told us that, while he was there when Brooks and other politicians visited Antarctica in 2014, he did “not recall having said conversation” with Brooks.
+“Current climate models do contemplate an increase of snowfall over Antarctica in a warming scenario, which is logical given a potential increase of moisture in the atmosphere,” he added, but “the increase would be of an order of magnitude smaller than total mass loss.”
+Erin Pettit, an associate professor at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, who studies glaciers, told us that she “did meet with the congressional visitors as a whole for about 10 minutes,” but she didn’t speak with Brooks specifically. “The vast majority of the peer reviewed papers in recent years would not agree with the congressman’s statement,” she added.  
+In short, while there might be some ice gained in the interior of Antarctica, there’s a net loss because ice is retreating along the coasts at a faster rate. Other experts in this area — Eric Steig at the University of Washington, David Holland at New York University and Richard Alley at Penn State — also told us Brooks’ claim was inaccurate for the same reasons. 
+
+Smith Strikes Again
+We’ve written plenty of times about claims made by Rep. Lamar Smith, who is the chairman of the House science committee. But rarely, if ever, has a scientist corrected him on the spot, as Duffy did during the hearing.
+While putting up a slide showing two graphs (see image below), Smith said, “You will see that for the last 100 years sea level rise has been basically constant,” adding, “It’s been going up at about 1.8 mm per year, and you’ll see that there appears to be no correlation between the increase in the sea level and carbon emissions.”
+
+Duffy interjected, pointing out to Smith that he had “shown a sea level record from one location.”
+
+Duffy, May 16: You’ve shown a sea level record from one location.
+Smith: Right, this is San Francisco. I’ve looked at also Boston, which appears to be the same.
+Duffy: The rate of global sea level rise has accelerated and is now four times faster than it was 100 years ago.
+Smith: Is this chart inaccurate then?
+Duffy: It’s accurate, but it doesn’t represent what’s happening globally. It represents what’s happening in San Francisco.
+Smith: All of the charts I’ve seen, whether it be San Francisco, whether it be Boston, or anywhere else, show about the same degree of increase.
+Again, Duffy is right.
+First, the rate of global sea level rise is around four times faster than what it was about 100 years ago. We reached out to Duffy for support for his claim, and he sent us a study led by James Hansen, a climate scientist at Columbia University. That paper summed up previous research on the topic, which showed the average rate of sea level rise was about 0.6 millimeters per year between 1900 and 1930. Between 1993 and 2015, the rate was about 2.6 mm per year, which is 4.3 times faster — and that’s the conservative estimate. 
+However, we should mention that we’ve written previously that other climate scientists have said the Hansen paper’s future projections for global sea level rise are exaggerated, one of those scientists being Michael Mann, the director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University. We reached out to Mann to ask him if the paper’s summary of past observations is accurate, and he confirmed that it is. 
+Second, Duffy is right that sea level rise in San Francisco, or any other specific location, “doesn’t represent what’s happening globally.” As we explained in March 2017, local sea level rise takes into consideration phenomena, such as ground subsidence, not just melting ice and the thermal expansion of the oceans, which is what scientists consider when they look at rise globally.
+Plus, juxtaposing sea level rise in one location with global carbon emissions is an apples-to-oranges comparison. When you look at sea level rise globally and compare it with global temperature rise, there is a strong association, says the 2017 Global Change Research Program’s report. And as we’ve written countless times, there’s also a causal link between global temperature rise and carbon emissions from human activity.
+When we reached out to Smith’s office for comment, his spokesperson didn’t provide us with any evidence to the contrary.
+Posey’s Scientific Faux Pas
+Florida Rep. Bill Posey also questioned Duffy about the Earth’s climate previous to the development of human civilization — and made several scientific misstatements along the way.
+During their exchange, Posey asked Duffy what “the temperature on Earth [was] before the last ice age,” to which Duffy responded, “Before the last ice age, the last interglacial, well, similar to what it was about 100 years ago.”
+Duffy is a little off here. According to NOAA, “global mean annual surface temperatures were warmer than preindustrial [times] by about 1° to 2°C” during the last interglacial period, which started about 125,000 years ago. 
+Posey followed up by rhetorically asking, “You think? You don’t think maybe it was 30 degrees warmer when dinosaurs roamed the Earth?” As we’ll explain, he’s much more than a little off.
+Duffy then responded by correctly stating, “There certainly have been epochs in the past when global temperature was warmer than it is now.”
+There have been periods during which the Earth’s mean temperature was warmer than it is today, but Posey is wrong to say that the mean global temperature was 30 degrees warmer at any point when dinosaurs roamed.
+NOAA explains: “Our planet probably experienced its hottest temperatures in its earliest days” at more than 3000 degrees Fahrenheit about 4.54 billion years ago. Even after “those first scorching millennia,” Earth “has sometimes been much warmer than it is now,” the agency adds. NOAA points to two such periods — between 600 and 800 million years ago and about 55 to 56 million years ago. 
+NOAA points out that these record periods “occurred before humans existed.” It added, “Those ancient climates would have been like nothing our species has ever seen.” But did dinosaurs roam during either of these periods? 
+Dinosaurs are traditionally thought of as living between 247 and 66 million years ago, a time known as the Mesozoic Era. However, scientifically speaking, dinosaurs still exist today, as research has shown that modern-day birds are a group of dinosaurs that survived the mass extinction of dinosaurs occurring 66 million years ago.
+So, a record warm period didn’t occur when dinosaurs, as we typically think of them, roamed the Earth. Still, since modern-day birds are technically dinosaurs, one could say dinosaurs were still around about 55 to 56 million years ago. But how hot was it?
+During this period — what scientists call the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum — evidence suggests that the planet’s global mean temperature rose “by as much as 5-8°C (9-14°F) to an average temperature as high as 73°F,” NOAA explains. The global average temperature over the past few years has hovered between 58 and 59 F, or upwards of 1.5 F above the 20th century average of 57 F. 
+So that comes out to, at most, around 14.5 F warmer about 55 million years ago than now — not 30 F warmer, as Posey said. In degrees Celsius, the difference would be even smaller. And it’s also worth reiterating that this warm period did not occur during the previous interglacial period — or the last ice age — about 125,000 years ago, which is what Posey first asked Duffy about.
+In short, Posey’s statement is wrong on multiple counts.
+Posey made another false claim while questioning Duffy about the cause of the last ice age.
+Posey, May 16: What caused the end of the last ice age?
+Duffy: The ice ages are caused by oscillations in the Earth’s orbital parameters.
+Posey: Yeah, the last one was caused by a cataclysmic collision of an asteroid on this planet, I believe.
+Again, Duffy is right and Posey is wrong. There are additional factors, however.
+NOAA explains, “Variations in Earth’s orbit through time have changed the amount of solar radiation Earth receives in each season.” And the warmer periods — the interglacials — “tend to occur during periods of peak solar radiation in the Northern Hemisphere summer.” But there are likely other factors at play as well. 
+Pettit, at the University of Alaska, put it this way: “Ice ages in general are caused by subtle changes in the Earth’s orbit and Earth’s tilt, with complexities introduced by feedbacks within our climate system and the arrangement of the oceans and continents.” 
+One example of a feedback in the climate system is the ice-albedo feedback, NOAA explains. As solar radiation increases with changes to the Earth’s orbit, it melts ice covering the planet, which, in turn, leads to more solar radiation being absorbed by surface, leading to more warmth. Why? Because ice is more reflective, or has a higher albedo, than land or water.
+So where did Posey get this idea that an asteroid caused the last ice age? We contacted his office to find out, but we never received a response.
+Posey may be confusing the cause of ice ages with the theory that asteroid impacts caused the Younger Dryas. This is a period between 11,600 and 12,900 years ago when the planet’s climate got drastically colder, explains Nature in a September 2013 article. 
+But as Pettit explained to us in an email, “That theory is definitely not the leading one, but more importantly it only applies to *one* particular cold period of a thousand years at the very end of the last ice age. It did *not* cause the last ice age.”
+Toward the end of their exchange, Posey asked Duffy: “What do you say to people who theorize that the Earth, as it continues to warm, is returning to its normal temperature?” Duffy responded: “If you want to characterize a temperature above today’s temperature as normal, you’re free to do that, but that doesn’t mean that’s a planet that we want to live on.”
+Posey then replied, “I don’t want to get philosophical,” adding, “I’m trying to stay on the science here.” But the fact of the matter is — he didn’t stick to the science, and neither did Brooks nor Smith."
+"25Political leanings: Liberal
+Spending target: $30 million
+NextGen Climate Action Committee, a super PAC, and NextGen Climate Action, a 501(c)(4), were founded in 2013 by San Francisco billionaire Tom Steyer. They currently operate under the umbrella organization known as NextGen America, an environmental advocacy organization.
+In 2012, Steyer, who is reported to be worth $1.6 billion, sold the San Francisco-based hedge fund he founded in 1986 and turned to philanthropy and political action. Steyer made headlines last year for announcing he would spend $20 million on television ads calling for President Donald Trump’s impeachment. He has said that he intends to spend $30 million on mobilizing the youth vote for the 2018 elections.
+“I’m putting $30 million behind NextGen America’s youth organizing program to unleash the full political power of young voters,” Steyer said on Jan. 8, when he announced that he would not run for public office.
+NextGen America will focus on 30 House races in 10 states — Arizona, California, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin, Steyer said.
+In the 2016 election, the NextGen super PAC spent more than $96 million — much of that, $89.5 million, was contributed directly by Steyer. Of that, the super PAC spent nearly $10 million on independent expenditures — almost $3.5 million in support of seven Democratic candidates, and more than $6.3 million against six Republicans and a libertarian candidate.
+NextGen Climate Action Committee spent millions on ads during the 2016 presidential campaign boosting Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, criticizing Republican nominee Donald Trump, denouncing Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson, and emphasizing climate change’s impact on national security.
+As of April 2018, the NextGen super PAC reported raising $16.5 million and spending $15.7 million in the 2018 campaign cycle. It had yet to spend any of its money advocating for or against any federal candidates, but the group had donated $1.5 million to For Our Future, a liberal PAC formed in 2016, and nearly $1.6 million to other liberal PACs.
+NextGen Climate Action also has gotten increasingly involved in state elections. It spent nearly $1 million helping Democrat Ralph Northam win the Virginia gubernatorial race last year. It also reported having registered nearly 20,000 voters in the state before the Oct. 16 deadline.
+Steyer has not shied away from using NextGen America, the umbrella group, to lobby on other issues besides climate change. NextGen America issued press releases highlighting immigration support services and criticizing the GOP tax plan as it moved through Congress."
+"6.7K3In an op-ed for Fox News, Rep. Lamar Smith, the chairman of the House science committee, made a host of false and misleading claims about climate change and related issues:
+
+Smith took a quote by climate scientist Stephen Schneider out of context, claiming he advised other researchers in his field to “never express doubt” about their work to the public.
+Smith said climate scientists have predicted “global temperatures would increase more than one degree Celsius by 2020,” but observed temperatures have been “half as high.” Since the late 19th century, the planet has already warmed about 1.1 C, says NASA.
+He said research shows the Paris agreement “would decrease warming only 0.16 degree Celsius by 2100.” But the author of that study said his research was cherry-picked.
+He claimed the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has “low confidence” that climate change contributes to extreme weather. The IPCC’s confidence in 2012 varied from medium to low. Newer reports by other organizations have increased confidence.
+He said “the historical record disproves” climate scientists who have “tried to link [hurricanes] and climate change.” But there is evidence to suggest there’s a link.
+He claimed wildfires are “decreasing in frequency.” But they’ve increased in total acreage — the metric scientists use to measure fire behavior.
+
+Smith, who announced his retirement from Congress when his term ends this year, primarily argued in his March 12 op-ed that the House Science, Space and Technology Committee — unlike “climate alarmists” — “follows the scientific method, which welcomes critiques, avoids exaggerated predictions, and relies on unbiased data.”
+Yet his op-ed is filled with scientifically inaccurate claims. Let’s take a look at them one by one.
+Doubt in Science
+Smith took a quote by Stephen Schneider, a professor at Stanford University who died in 2010, out of context when he claimed the climate scientist “has said, ‘…we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have.’ ” Smith added, “His message is clear: never express doubt and never accept any critiques.” That was not Schneider’s message.
+The quote comes from an article published in Discover magazine’s 1989 issue. Schneider, who also served as a co-author or lead author on all five IPCC reports, provides the full quote from that article in an editorial he wrote for the American Physical Society’s newspaper in 1996. (We verified this quote’s accuracy with a microfilm version of that issue of Discover.)
+Schneider, Oct. 1989, Discover: On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but – which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.
+Smith ignores that Schneider said scientists are “ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth … which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts.” But Schneider went on to say that talking to the media presents a “double ethical bind” where scientists need to also “make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have.”
+Similar to Smith, others have interpreted Schneider’s quote as advocating being dishonest with the media, but Schneider concludes by saying his “hope” is that climate scientists would be both “effective” and “honest” in the public eye.
+In his 1996 editorial, Schneider says that he was “telling the Discover interviewer” about his “disdain for a soundbite-communications process that imposes the double ethical bind on all who venture into the popular media.” With soundbites, “nobody gets enough time in the media either to cover all the caveats in depth, (i.e., ‘being honest’) or to present all the plausible threats (i.e., ‘being effective’),” he wrote.
+“To twist my openly stated and serious objections to the soundbite process into some kind of advocacy of exaggeration is a clear distortion,” he added.
+It’s also worth mentioning that Schneider welcomed critiques of his work, contrary to what Smith claimed.
+“[A]ll good scientists are skeptics and should be challenging every aspect of what we do that has plausible alternative hypotheses,” he wrote in an email to a colleague, according to a biography by the National Academy of Sciences. In that email, Schneider discussed a paper he had published early in his career that supported a theory of global cooling. We’ve written about the theory of global cooling before, explaining how scientists discovered the world was warming, not cooling, after conducting more research.
+“I personally published what was wrong (with) my own original 1971 cooling hypothesis a few years later when more data and better models came along and further analysis showed [anthropogenic global warming] as the much more likely,” Schneider wrote in the email. “[F]or me that is a very proud event — to have discovered with colleagues why our initial assumptions were unlikely and better ones reversed the conclusions — an early example of scientific skepticism in action in climatology.”
+When we reached out to Smith’s office for comment by email, a committee spokesperson told us Schneider’s quote was “presented with appropriate context and conveys the meaning of his words accurately.”
+But Schneider himself has said such characterizations misrepresent his words. And that’s the case in Smith’s op-ed as well.  
+
+The Rise and Fall of Global Temperatures
+Smith also made a couple of faulty claims about global temperatures. For one, he claimed that global warming predictions scientists made in the 1970s “are so far off” observed temperatures.
+Smith, March 12: Since the late 1970s, climate scientists have told the American people that global temperatures would increase more than one degree Celsius by 2020. However, actual satellite temperature observations do not support these predictions. Observed temperatures were less than half as high as the climate models’ predictions. When the predictions are so far off, we should not make policy decisions based on them.
+We couldn’t find any support for Smith’s claims, and his office didn’t provide us with any solid support either. The spokesperson said that “climate models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change consistently predict temperatures that are higher than the temperature[s] that are observed by satellites.” 
+The spokesperson also pointed us to March 2017 congressional testimony by John R. Christy, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama, that questions the validity of IPCC models and humans’ contribution to global warming. 
+The IPCC reports only date back to 1990, not the 1970s. More importantly, the IPCC’s fifth assessment report, published in 2013, took a look at previous IPCC report predictions and found that “the trend in globally averaged surface temperatures falls within the range of the previous IPCC projections.”
+Regardless, the globe had already warmed about 1 C between 1901 and 2016, according to a 2017 report by the U.S. Global Change Research Program. NASA provides a similar figure — about 1.1 C since the late 19th century.
+It’s also unclear why Smith only cites satellite temperature observations. When we asked his office, the spokesperson responded, “The op-ed noted satellite data to demonstrate that this is one piece of the observational puzzle that demonstrates a discrepancy between the predictive models and the actual observations.”
+But scientists monitor global temperatures by integrating data from a variety of sources, including ocean buoys, ships, land-based stations and satellites. In fact, satellite data only supplement land and ocean based temperature measurements, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says.
+Data from all of these sources are “processed, examined for random and systematic errors, and then finally combined to produce a time series of global average temperature change,” NOAA explains. “The warming trend … is apparent in all of the independent methods of calculating global temperature change.” So satellite data, along with land and ocean data, confirm the trend, NOAA says. 
+Smith made one other faulty claim related to global temperatures. He said research out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology “shows that the [Paris] agreement would decrease warming only 0.16 degree Celsius by 2100 – over 80 years from now – and only if all 195 countries completely abided by the agreement.”
+Smith’s office told us he meant to use the figure 0.2 C. But one of the authors of the MIT report has said that figure is “cherry-picked.”
+We’ve written about this topic before, when President Donald Trump and Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt made similar claims when the president announced the U.S. would pull out of the Paris Agreement.
+As we explained previously, the 0.2 C estimate doesn’t consider the full potential effect of the Paris Agreement. The MIT report assumed countries participating in the agreement wouldn’t further strengthen their commitments to combat climate change after 2030. But one central goal of the Paris Agreement is for countries to strengthen their commitments over time.
+The Paris Agreement also builds on other commitments made by the countries party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. John Reilly, the MIT researcher, argued in a Washington Post op-ed that it’s the “cumulative effect” of all commitments made under this framework that’s the “relevant number, not 0.2 degrees.” 
+Reilly pointed to one analysis by the climate modeling nonprofit Climate Interactive that found this cumulative effect would be a reduction of 0.9 C by 2100, compared with business as usual.
+
+Erroneous Claims About Extreme Weather
+Smith made a few faulty claims about the link between extreme weather and warming as well, all of which we’ve written about before.
+To start, Smith said, “Even the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has affirmed that they have ‘low confidence’ in climate change contributing to extreme weather.” That’s not what the IPCC said. Instead, it has different levels of confidence for different extreme weather events.
+We’ve made this point repeatedly in articles, including one that looked at a similar claim Smith made back in 2015.
+Smith’s spokesperson pointed us to a 2012 IPCC report, which says, for example, that scientists have “medium confidence” that human influences have contributed to extreme precipitation globally and an “increase in length or number” of heat waves in many regions. But the report has “low confidence” that there’s been “increases in tropical cyclone activity” globally.
+The report clarifies that “low confidence” doesn’t mean there definitively haven’t been changes in a particular extreme event. Rather, it means the data don’t give scientists enough confidence to say one way or the other.
+But the 2012 IPCC report is dated. About a year ago, we wrote about the varying levels of confidence scientists have when linking global warming to various extreme weather events, based on a 2016 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. The report authors have high confidence when linking global warming to an increased likelihood of extreme heat events, for example, but medium confidence when linking it to an increased likelihood of droughts and extreme rainfall.
+This brings us to another claim about extreme weather Smith made in his March 12 op-ed.
+Smith said that “the historical record disproves” climate scientists who have “tried to link [recent hurricanes] and climate change,” adding, “Hurricane landfalls in the United States since 1900 are on a steady decline.”
+For support, the spokesperson again referred us to the 2012 IPCC special report. That IPCC report looks at hurricane activity in general, not hurricane landfalls. As already noted, it does say scientists have “low confidence” that there have been “increases in tropical cyclone activity” globally.
+However, a 2017 U.S. Global Change Research Program report says scientists have “medium confidence” that there’s a link between human activity and increased hurricane activity in the North Atlantic Ocean, where hurricanes that make landfall in the U.S. originate.
+
+2017 Global Change report: Human activities have contributed substantially to observed ocean–atmosphere variability in the Atlantic Ocean … and these changes have contributed to the observed upward trend in North Atlantic hurricane activity since the 1970s.
+To be clear, climate scientists don’t say climate change causes intense hurricanes to occur, but evidence suggests it makes them more likely to occur, an important distinction we’ve made previously. 
+So while the link between warming and hurricane activity is not as solid as the link between warming and other extreme weather events, such as heat waves, there is still evidence to suggest warming has an impact. 
+Lastly, Smith claimed in his op-ed: “Examination of patterns of other extreme weather events in the United States shows that a changing climate does not increase the frequency of these events,” adding, “U.S. wildland fires are decreasing in frequency.” But scientists look at the total acreage of fires -– not the number of fires -– to evaluate links with global warming. And the total acreage has increased since at least the 1980s.
+Kari Cobb, a spokesperson for the National Interagency Fire Center, explained to us by email: “It’s important to look at the acreage burned over the number of fires reported because that is what is indicative of fire behavior.” 
+The “acres burned can be tied to environmental factors like climate and availability of fuels,” such as dry leaves, brush or grass. But the number of fires “does not provide a correlation to most environmental factors that truly affect fire.” In other words, “All it provides is how many of fires were reported, not how that fire behaved or moved across the landscape,” she said.
+We also spoke with Cobb for an article we wrote back in October that looked at whether global warming is linked to the increase in the total acreage of wildfires in the West — an increase that dates back to at least the 1980s. As we pointed out in that piece, researchers say a hot and dry summer — conditions more likely in a warmer world — caused widespread wildfires in Western states last year. But land use changes dating back to the 1800s have also played a role.
+When we asked Cobb in October what role climate change plays in the severity and length of the fire season, she pointed to “longer summers, higher temperatures, decreased precipitation, and longer episodes of drought.” She added, “The combination of these changes has increased the availability of dry fuels and the ease at which fire ignites and spreads.” 
+Overall, Smith’s Fox News piece twisted the words, findings and methods of climate scientists, making it what we’d call an error-filled op-ed."
+"7.4KIn a recent interview with the British station ITV, President Donald Trump falsely implied the globe’s ice caps are at “record” high levels. But ice caps generally have been declining worldwide.
+Trump made his claim in an interview with Piers Morgan, host of the ITV show “Good Morning Britain,” that aired on Jan. 28.
+Piers Morgan, Jan. 28: Do you believe in climate change? Do you believe it exists?
+Trump: There is a cooling and there is a heating and I mean, look – it used to not be climate change. It used to be global warming. Right?
+Morgan: Right.
+Trump: That wasn’t working too well, because it was getting too cold all over the place. The ice caps were going to melt, they were going to be gone by now, but now they’re setting records, so OK, they’re at a record level.
+Trump doesn’t specify whether he means record high ice cap levels or record low, though from the context he suggests high. He also doesn’t specify which ice caps he’s referring to or what time periods. We reached out to the White House for clarification and support for Trump’s claim. The White House has yet to get back to us.
+Technically, the term “ice cap” refers to a type of glacier that covers less than 50,000 square kilometers (19,305 square miles).
+But, as Reuters points out, “Many people use the term ‘ice cap’ to refer to polar sea ice or vast ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica.”
+The two swaths of ice in Greenland and Antarctica contain 99 percent of the world’s freshwater ice. If they melted entirely, it would lead to hundreds of feet of sea level rise, says the National Snow and Ice Data Center, which is based at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
+According to NASA, both of these ice sheets have declined in mass since 2002. And “[b]oth ice sheets have seen an acceleration of ice mass loss since 2009,” the agency adds.
+However, the Greenland ice sheet has melted considerably faster, at a rate of about 286 gigatonnes per year on average (see chart to left). That’s compared with about 127 gigatonnes per year on average for the Antarctic ice sheet (see chart below). (One gigaton is equal to 1 billion metric tons, or 1.1 billion U.S. tons, which can fill 400,000 Olympic-size swimming pools.)
+Scientists distinguish ice on these land masses from sea ice, which floats on the ocean’s surface near the poles. Sea ice around Greenland, or Arctic sea ice, has also seen a general decline, according to NASA.
+Sea ice levels at the poles fluctuate seasonally — in summer, they’re at their lowest levels of the year, and in winter they’re at their highest. Scientists can measure decline in these ice sheets over time by evaluating whether winter and summer levels are smaller or larger than previously recorded.
+For the Arctic, that summer minimum occurs around September, and the winter maximum occurs around March. For the Antarctic, it’s the opposite.
+September Arctic sea ice has trended downward over the past few decades, from a high of 7.9 million square kilometers in 1980 to a low of 3.4 million sq km in 2012, says NASA. In September 2017, it was at 4.8 million sq km.
+In March 2017, the agency’s satellites also recorded the lowest winter Arctic sea ice levels and the lowest summer Antarctic sea ice levels since measurements began in 1979.
+But unlike the data on Arctic sea ice levels, the data on Antarctic sea ice doesn’t yet show that the sea ice is generally declining.
+“It is tempting to say that the record low we are seeing this year is global warming finally catching up with Antarctica,” said Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at NASA, back in March 2017.
+“However, this might just be an extreme case of pushing the envelope of year-to-year variability,” he added. “We’ll need to have several more years of data to be able to say there has been a significant change in the trend.”
+Still, ice caps around the world are far from hitting record high levels, as Trump implied. The trend points downward.
+In his interview with ITV, Trump also made two other claims we’ve written about before.
+First, Trump’s statement that the globe has seen cooling and heating of late isn’t supported by the evidence.
+As we wrote in a previous article, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has said that 2016 set a new record high annual temperature (along with 2005, 2010, 2014, and 2015) and marked “the 40th consecutive year (since 1977) that the annual temperature has been above the 20th century average.”
+Last year continued that trend. At likely the third warmest year on record, 2017 marked the 41st consecutive year above the 20th century average.
+Second, Trump’s claim that terminology switched from “global warming” to “climate change” because “it was getting too cold all over the place” is also false.
+As we’ve written before, scientists still use both terms — “global warming” and “climate change” — which refer to different phenomena.
+“Global warming” refers to a rise in the planet’s average temperature due to increasing greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels. Global warming then causes other changes in the planet’s climate, such as sea level rise and the melting of ice caps. “Climate change” refers to all of these climatic changes.
+       Share The Facts    Donald Trump President of the United States         ""The ice caps were going to melt, they were going to be gone by now, but now they’re setting records, so OK, they’re at a record level.""   “Good Morning Britain"" interview – Sunday, January 28, 2018   Share Read More     Embed     Information on embedding in your site  oEmbed Link  https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/bdcfdb67-bfaa-4ea6-a2e3-23ed61521ad3"
+"2KSen. James Inhofe misleadingly claimed that the statistics behind the globe’s likely hottest years on record — 2014, 2015 and 2016 — were “meaningless” because the temperature increases were “well within the margin of error.” Taking into account the margins of error, there’s still a long-term warming trend.
+Inhofe, a longtime skeptic of human-caused climate change, made his claim Jan. 3 on the Senate floor.
+Inhofe, Jan. 3: The Obama administration touted 2014, 2015, and 2016 as the hottest years on record. But the increases are well within the margin of error. In 2016, NOAA said the Earth warmed by 0.04 degrees Celsius, and the British Government pegged it at 0.01 Celsius. However, the margin of error is 0.1 degree, not 0.01. So it is all statistically meaningless and below the doom-and-gloom temperature predictions from all the various models from consensus scientists.
+Since Inhofe cites data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the British government, we’ll concentrate on their analyses.
+According to NOAA, 2016 was the warmest year on record for the globe since record keeping began in 1880; 2015 ranked the second warmest year and 2014 the third warmest. There are uncertainties in those rankings, however. 
+As we explained in 2015 when then-President Obama proclaimed 2014 “the planet’s warmest year on record,” such a definitive claim is problematic. For instance, while NOAA found then that 2014 had the highest probability of being the warmest, there remained statistical odds that other years could have held that distinction. But as we explained, scientists are more concerned with long-term trends than any given year. 
+And 2017 is on track to be another warm year. On Dec. 18, NOAA said 2017 could end up being the third warmest on record, based on data for January to November. NOAA spokesman Brady Philips told us the agency will release information on the year as a whole on Jan. 18.
+Update, Jan. 18: NOAA has confirmed 2017 was likely the third hottest year on record since record keeping began in 1880. On Jan. 18, the agency said 2017 was 0.84 C (1.51 F) warmer than the 20th century mean, with a margin of error of plus-or-minus 0.15 C (0.27 F).
+NOAA ranks years by looking at how much their average temperatures differ from the 20th century average — what scientists call a temperature anomaly.
+Based on the agency’s analysis, the average temperature for 2016 was 0.94 degrees Celsius (1.69 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 20th century average of 13.9 C (56.9 F). The margin of error for 2016 was plus-or-minus 0.15 C (0.27 F).
+NOAA explains that a margin of error takes into account the “inherent level of uncertainty” that comes with “[e]valuating the temperature of the entire planet.”
+The agency adds that the reported temperature anomaly — 0.94 C in the case of 2016 — “is not an exact measurement; instead it is the central — and most likely — value within a range of possible values.”
+For example, that range, or margin of error, would be 0.79 C (1.42 F) to 1.09 C (1.96 F) for 2016. Scientists at NOAA are 95 percent certain the temperature anomaly for 2016, or for any given year, will fall within the margin of error.
+As Inhofe notes, NOAA scientists found that the average temperature for 2015 was 0.04 C less than 2016’s at 0.90 C (1.62 F) above the 20th century norm. The margin of error for 2015 was plus-or-minus 0.08 C (0.14 F), which means the range for 2015 is between 0.82 C (1.48 F) and 0.98 C (1.76 F).
+The difference between 2015 and 2014, however, was wider. The average temperature for 2014 was 0.74 C (1.33 F) above the 20th century mean, or 0.16 C (0.29 F) less than 2015. The range for 2014 is between 0.59 C (1.06 F) and 0.89 C (1.60 F).
+So the margins of error for these three years do overlap. When we requested evidence from Inhofe’s office, spokeswoman Leacy Burke sent us links to articles that reiterate the senator’s claim that the temperature increase in 2016 was within a margin of error – meaning, again, that while 2016 is most likely the warmest on record, other years that fall within that margin, including 2015 and 2014, could be the warmest. Still that doesn’t mean the statistics are “meaningless.” Over the long haul, data show an increasing trend, as the chart below shows.
+
+“Overall, the global annual temperature has increased at an average rate of 0.07°C (0.13°F) per decade since 1880 and at an average rate of 0.17°C (0.31°F) per decade since 1970,” says NOAA.
+Similar to NOAA, the U.K.’s Met Office, the country’s national weather service, reported that 2016 “was one of the warmest two years on record, nominally exceeding the record temperature of 2015.” The agency also found that 2014 likely ranked the third warmest year.
+Both NOAA and the Met Office note that human-caused global warming isn’t the only force behind the record temperatures.
+Peter Stott, then the acting director of the Met Office Hadley Centre, said: “A particularly strong El Niño event contributed about 0.2C to the annual average for 2016, which was about 1.1C above the long term average from 1850 to 1900.” El Niño is a naturally occurring interaction between the atmosphere and ocean that is linked to periodic warming.
+Stott added, “However, the main contributor to warming over the last 150 years is human influence on climate from increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”
+The Met Office’s numbers differ slightly from NOAA’s, in part, because the agency uses a different reference point.
+NOAA ranks years based on how much their average temperatures differ from the 20th century norm. The Met Office uses the temperature average between 1850 and 1900 or between 1961 and 1990.
+Using that latter reference point, the Met Office found 2016’s temperature anomaly to be 0.77 C, plus-or-minus 0.1 C, which was only 0.01 more than 2015’s temperature anomaly.
+So Inhofe is right that the British government’s margins of error for 2016 and 2015 overlap.
+But Grahame Madge, a spokesman for the Met Office, explained in an email to us why it’s important to look at the long-term trend — not just the difference between two years, as Inhofe did.
+Madge, Jan. 6: When looking at global temperature rise it helps to look at the way the stats and figures are framed. For example, 2016 was the warmest year since pre-industrial times. However, it was only marginally warmer than the previous year, which was also a record. When viewed as parallel years, however, they really stand out in the long-term record. … We try to focus on the long term when presenting information. You can make a desert seem like a lush wetland if you only show the oasis.
+NOAA also explains the difference between looking at single years versus the long-term trend: “As more and more data builds a long-term series, there is less and less influence of single ‘outliers’ on the overall trend, making the long-term trend even more certain than the individual points along it.”
+In other words, if scientists found that the globe had just one year with an exceptionally high temperature average, they may not be convinced that global warming is occurring. But if data show that the planet has experienced a number of record warm years in a row, it suggests the warming trend is real.
+In fact, NOAA says there’s only a 0.0125 percent chance of seeing three outliers in a row — and the Earth has seen many more record warm years than three.
+NOAA writes that 2016 “marks the fifth time in the 21st century a new record high annual temperature has been set (along with 2005, 2010, 2014, and 2015) and also marks the 40th consecutive year (since 1977) that the annual temperature has been above the 20th century average.”
+So while Inhofe was right that the margins of error for temperature measurements in recent years overlap, that doesn’t negate a long-term warming trend or render the temperature anomalies “meaningless.”
+
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation. 
+
+       Share The Facts    James Inhofe U.S. Senator         Temperature increases for the likely hottest years on record (2014, 2015 and 2016) are ""meaningless"" because they are “well within the margin of error.”   Senate floor speech – Wednesday, January 3, 2018   Share Read More     Embed     Information on embedding in your site  oEmbed Link  https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/6aa017a3-2e5a-4f43-a875-1d8e352223b4"
+"1.1KQ: Did climate change cause the wildfires out West?
+
+A: Scientists say a hot and dry summer — conditions more likely in a warmer world — caused widespread wildfires in Western states. But land use changes also have played a role.
+
+
+FULL ANSWER
+As of early October, the National Interagency Fire Center reported that roughly 8.4 million acres — an area larger than Maryland — have burned across the U.S. this year. Just five Western states — Montana, Nevada, California, Idaho and Oregon — made up more than half of that acreage. Alaska and Texas, the country’s two largest states, also contributed hefty sums.
+
+That does not include the tens of thousands of acres that have been lost this week in Northern California, where ongoing wildfires so far have killed 10 people and destroyed 1,500 structures.
+One of our readers wrote to us about the wildfires in Oregon, saying that they are “NOT due to ‘climate change,’” but rather “directly caused by the ending of good sustainable timber harvests.” So, we thought we would lay out the evidence behind the cause of the fires in the West. Is climate change to blame? Or land management practices, such as timber harvesting? The answer is: It’s complicated.
+Climate influences the occurrence of wildfires and so do land management decisions. But when it comes to the latter, it’s less about timber harvesting specifically and more about broad-scale land use changes that has occurred over the past two centuries.
+Is This Fire Season Particularly Bad?
+First, it’s worth putting this season into the context of the past. Kari Cobb, a spokesperson for the National Interagency Fire Center, told us by email that there are a few different ways to assess the severity of a particular fire season, such as acres burned or homes lost. The NIFC is a partnership of nine different federal agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service. 
+Different regions experience their fire seasons at different times of the year. The fire season starts earliest in the Southwest, around March or April, while the Northwest’s fire season starts around July. In the “latter part of the year,” Southern California along with Georgia and Alabama may still see fires, she added. For example, in addition to the Northern California fires, thousands of homes have been evacuated and acres consumed as a result of fires this week in parts of Southern California.
+When it comes to homes lost, Cobb said that as of the morning of Oct. 10, 4,619 structures have been lost to wildfires. That includes 3,240 homes, 155 commercial structures and 1,224 other minor structures, such as sheds or garages. But wildfires consumed 5,775 structures in 2003 — the most in one year since 2001, the first year for which Cobb had this data.
+As for the most acres consumed by wildfires, 2017 doesn’t top the list, but it does make the top 10 — coming in 7th place so far, according to data dating back to 1960 (see chart below). Since 1960, the top 10 worst fire seasons by acreage all occurred in the 21st century with 2015 topping the list at just over 10.1 million acres burned.
+Source: National Interagency Fire Center; ytd = year-to-date
+However, data prior to 1983 aren’t as solid as data after that year. For that reason, data before that year shouldn’t be compared with data after it, the NIFC says. Still, the trend since 1983 shows a general increase in acres burned per year.
+But a different picture unfolds when forest fires of recent years are put into the context of the past three millennia.
+In a paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2012, Jennifer Marlon, a scientist at Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and colleagues, looked at charcoal accumulation in sedimentary rocks, among other data, to understand the impact of fires in the West over the past 3,000 years.
+The “lowest levels” of Western fires occurred in the 20th century and between 1400 and 1700, while “[p]rominent peaks in forest fires” took place between 950 and 1250 and during the 1800s, the paper found. The researchers add that the 21st century rate of burning “is not unusual” based on patterns over the past 3,000 years.
+Marlon and her group also found that the Western United States has actually experienced “a slight decline in burning over the past” 3,000 years, leading to what they call a “fire deficit.”
+What’s a fire deficit? Without fire some ecosystems can be “unhealthy,” explains the U.S. Forest Service. For example, fire reduces “the spread of pest insects and disease” and “[r]ecycles nutrients back to the soil,” which “[p]romotes the growth of trees, wildflowers, and other plants.”
+Even with the increase in fires since the 1980s, the fire deficit continues to grow.
+Update, Oct. 11: This story has been updated to include data for the number of structures that have been lost to wildfires this year, as of Oct. 10.
+What Sparks and Fuels Wildfires
+There’s a difference between what sparks fires initially and what factors make them more likely to occur and grow. If we’re talking about what initially sparked the wildfires out West, the answer is humans and lightning.
+In Montana — the state that’s seen the most burning by acreage — lightning has sparked more than 90 percent of the fires to date. In Oregon, Nevada and Idaho, lightning was also to blame for the majority of wildfires. But in California, humans sparked slightly more fires than lightning did to date, Cobb told us.
+Lightning and humans pose less of a threat to Western forests when the region experiences a wet and mild summer. That was hardly the case this year.
+“The United States is [in] the middle of an unfortunate spate of natural disasters,” wrote NASA on Aug. 28. “In Texas the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey is causing widespread flooding, and in the western United States just the opposite — dry conditions and extreme heat — are causing widespread forest fires.”
+Cobb emphasized that it was the combination of “a very wet winter and a very wet spring” followed by a dry and hot summer that did the West in. 
+The wet winter and spring led to “an increase in fuel loading,” or more plant growth, she said. “Once the spring precipitation ceased, temperatures increased at a very steady rate, causing all that fuel to dry out relatively quickly,” she added. “With such dense, dry fuels, much of it was easily ignitable” by humans or lightning.  
+John Abatzoglou, an associate professor at the University of Idaho who studies wildfires, also told us by email: “Timber groups and foresters have suggested that the current fire problem may be related to the decline in western U.S. timber cultivation,” which our reader mentioned when emailing us. The argument is that if more trees are cut down, there is less fuel to burn in a wildfire. 
+But Abatzoglou said that a decline in timber harvesting isn’t always followed by a rise in wildfires. In fact, a 2009 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture says timber harvesting can, in some cases, increase fire risk. The report explains that when big, spread out trees are cut down for timber, smaller, densely packed trees can crop up in their place, which can actually lead to more fuel for fires.
+Still, “a decline in timber harvest on federal lands … may contribute to a bit more ‘fuel’ in spots,” Abatzoglou acknowledged.
+Timber harvesting on federal lands in the Pacific Northwest has declined since at least 1990, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the northern spotted owl as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, according to a 2005 USDA report. The listing led to the protection of large areas of forest for the bird’s habitat. Additional environmental protections imposed after 1990 also reduced timber harvesting.
+The Role of Climate Change
+Apart from sparking wildfires with cigarettes and campfires, humans can affect the occurrence and spread of wildfires in a few other ways. For one, the way we use and manage the land can impact the prevalence of fires.
+Human activity also has led to changes in the climate, as we’ve written, and scientists say climate has historically been the primary control knob for fires in the West, write Marlon and colleagues in their PNAS paper. Let’s take a look at the climate’s role first.
+In their 2012 study, the researchers found that changes in climate accounted for roughly 80 percent of variations in biomass burning in the West from at least 500 to 1800, at least when it comes to changes over multiple decades and centuries (not individual years). Temperature accounted for about half of the total variance in burning, while drought was responsible for about a third. Marlon and her group chose this specific period because data prior to 500 weren’t sufficient. After 1800, human settlement in the West complicated the picture, which we’ll get into later.
+However, humans haven’t been responsible for changes in the climate until relatively recently in the planet’s history. According to the 2013 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, it’s “extremely likely” (95 percent to 100 percent confident) that more than half of the observed temperature increase since 1950 is due to human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels. Natural phenomena, such as solar activity and volcanoes, can also affect the global climate.
+When we asked Cobb what role climate change plays in the severity and length of the fire season, she pointed to “longer summers, higher temperatures, decreased precipitation, and longer episodes of drought.” She added, “The combination of these changes has increased the availability of dry fuels and the ease at which fire ignites and spreads.” 
+Abatzoglou similarly told us, “Climate change plays a role in increasing the rate at which vegetation dries out and becomes receptive to igniting and carrying fire.” 
+This year is a good example of that: With more precipitation in the spring than in the summer, vegetation dried out fast and turned into fire fuel. We mentioned this general shift from steady summer rain to spring storms in August, when we wrote about the impact of climate change on agriculture.
+But as we’ve also written previously, researchers have varying degrees of confidence when attributing warming to different types of extreme events, such as hurricanes, drought, extreme heat and wildfires. They examine the relationship between global warming and extreme events from three different angles: observation, theory and modeling.
+Scientists have the highest confidence saying that warming exacerbated a particular kind of phenomenon when there’s solid data from the past, physical principles to explain the link between the event and warming and models to reproduce that relationship.
+According to a 2016 report by the National Academies of the Sciences, this is the case for extreme heat, one phenomenon that exacerbates wildfires. Solid historical data suggest there will be more extreme heat in a warmer world. Models also show a link between extreme heat and global warming, and there’s theory to support the link, too.
+However, scientists have medium confidence that warming exacerbates drought — another wildfire aggravator — because their models, theory and observational record backing the link are somewhat less solid than those linking extreme heat and warming.
+To be clear, warming doesn’t cause wildfires. But it can bring about the conditions that make wildfires more likely to occur and spread, such as heat and drought. We explained this distinction back in August, when we wrote about the relationship between hurricanes and climate change in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey.
+As with wildfires, scientists have more confidence linking warming to the phenomena that are known to exacerbate hurricanes — such as warmer ocean waters — than to hurricanes themselves.
+Still, scientists especially struggle with linking warming to wildfires because so many factors contribute to their occurrence, the NAS report says. Among these factors are land use change and management.
+The Role of Land Use Changes
+We mentioned that human settlement post-1800 complicated the picture when it comes to understanding trends in wildfires in the West. Marlon and her colleagues elaborate on why this is in their 2012 paper.
+After 1800, many people began settling in the West, which led to the burning and clearing of large swaths of forest for agriculture and development. Humans also brought with them many invasive species, which “had major impacts on a host of ecological processes that affect fire, including forest composition and structure, nutrient cycling, soils” and other processes, the researchers explain.
+With more humans, there were also more accidental fires. For example, “the development of steam power and railroads … created sparks leading to large numbers of wildfires until the early 1900s (when the railroads were required to start clearing woodlands within 100 feet of tracks to prevent fires),” Marlon and her group write.
+All of these actions threw wildfire activity out of sync with the climate, an equilibrium that had been in place for thousands of years prior to human settlement. Actions in the 1900s have also contributed to this imbalance.
+By the late 1800s, wildfires began to decline, also “largely due to human activities,” the researchers add. For one, “Hundreds of thousands of livestock were introduced to pine forests and grasslands in western states,” which led to reduced fuel for fires, they explain. Road building also “created fire breaks that limited the natural spread of fires,” they write.
+Several large and deadly fires also changed people’s attitudes about fire policies, they explain. This paradigm shift led to the creation of the U.S. Forest Service in 1905, which had the “primary mission of suppressing all fires that occurred on reserved lands,” they add.
+Abatzoglou told us this fire suppression policy still largely remains in place today. However, “There have been policies implemented over the last 30 years to occasionally let fires burn for natural benefit in certain areas that are not at risk (e.g., unpopulated, away from sensitive ecosystems), but those represent a fairly small sample of fires,” he said. 
+Some prescribed fires also have been used as of late, he said. According to the U.S. National Park Service, “Prescribed fire is one of the most important tools used to manage fire today.” The rationale is that burning forest fuel under optimal and controllable conditions reduces the chance of catastrophic wildfires. But, in some cases, these controlled burns are “politically unpopular,” Abatzoglou said, because prescribed fires, like all fires, create smoke that’s toxic to humans.
+Compared with previous centuries, Western forests were “fundamentally changed in the 1800 and 1900s,” Marlon and her group conclude in their 2012 paper. These land use and management changes have thrown the once strong link between climate and wildfires out of equilibrium, they add.
+Where does that leave us in the 21st century?
+The combination of the land use changes that occurred during the 1800s, the fire deficit that grew in the 1900s and the current projections for temperature increase into the 21st century has put us on an “unsustainable” path, write Marlon and colleagues. Meaning, the situation isn’t getting any better.
+Modest temperature increase will have a substantial impact, but “[m]ore dramatic increases in temperature or drought are likely to produce a response in fire regimes that are beyond those observed during the past 3,000” years, the researchers say.
+However, Abatzoglou pointed out that, given the fire suppression that has occurred since the early 1900s, we do still have a fire deficit. “Warmer conditions and drier fuels aided by climate change” have begun to address this deficit, he said, “but it’s a new ballgame with a completely different landscape and a population living in the West today that is figuring out how to live with fire.”
+In fact, Cobb said that what made a lot of the fires in Oregon, Washington, California, Montana and Texas bad this year was their proximity to communities. People continue to move to the regions close to natural areas that are prone to burning, which makes it “harder … to carryout fuel treatments on the landscape,” she said. “Instead of being able to let some areas burn for resource benefit, firefighters have to directly or indirectly attack the fire in order to prevent the fire from affecting homes and commercial buildings.” 
+So whether it’s human-caused warming or land use changes, we are primarily responsible for putting wildfire activity out West on an unsustainable path.
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation. 
+Sources
+National Interagency Fire Center. Fire Report. Accessed 6 Oct 2017.
+U.S. Census Bureau. State Area Measurements and Internal Point Coordinates. Accessed 10 Oct 2017.
+Northern Rockies Coordination Center. 2017 Year-to-Date Fires and Acres. Accessed 10 Oct 2017.
+Great Basin Coordination Center. 2017 Year-to-Date Fires and Acres. Accessed 10 Oct 2017.
+Northwest Coordination Center. Situation Report. 5 Oct 2017.
+Alaska Interagency Coordination Center. Situation Report. 29 Sep 2017.
+Wong, Julia Carrie and Gee, Alastair. “California fires: at least 10 killed in ‘unprecedented’ wine country blaze.” The Guardian. 10 Oct 2017.
+Anh Do et al. “More than 5,000 homes evacuated as O.C. fire grows to 6,000 acres, destroying 24 structures.” Los Angeles Times. 9 Oct 2017.
+National Interagency Fire Center. Total Wildland Fires and Acres (1960-2016). Accessed 10 Oct 2017.
+Marlon, Jennifer R. et al. “Long-term perspective on wildfires in the western USA.” Proceedings of the National Academies of the Sciences. 10 Jan 2012.
+U.S. Forest Service. Prescribed Fire. Accessed 10 Oct 2017.
+NASA. “Dozens of Wildfires in Western United States.” 28 Aug 2017.
+Daniels, Jean M. “The Rise and Fall of the Pacific Northwest Log Export Market.” USDA. Feb 2005.
+U.S. National Park Service. “Wildfire Causes.” Accessed 10 Oct 2017.
+Schipani, Vanessa. “Precision in Climate Science.” FactCheck.org. 3 Mar 2017.
+IPCC. Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 2013.
+Schipani, Vanessa. “Pruitt on Climate Change, Again.” FactCheck.org. 9 Mar 2017.
+Schipani, Vanessa. “CO2: Friend or Foe to Agriculture?” FactCheck.org. 10 Aug 2017.
+NAS. Attribution of Extreme Weather Events in the Context of Climate Change. 2016.
+Schipani, Vanessa. Hurricane Harvey and Climate Change. FactCheck.org. 30 Aug 2017.
+U.S. National Park Service. Prescribed Fire. Accessed 10 Oct 2017.
+USDA. “Wildfire, Wildlands, and People: Understanding and Preparing for Wildfire in the Wildland-Urban Interface.” Jan 2013."
+"2.6K1Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt criticized former President Barack Obama for leaving 40 percent of Americans with air quality that doesn’t meet EPA standards. By some measures, this is true. But a report Pruitt’s office cited as evidence said there had been a “major improvement” in air quality under Obama.
+The American Lung Association’s 2017 air quality report does say that 38.9 percent of the population was breathing “unhealthy air,” based on EPA data from 2013 to 2015 for two of the most common air pollutants. However, that figure is down from 58 percent of the population before Obama took office.
+Pruitt also failed to mention that the Obama administration updated the standard for four out of the six air pollutants that the EPA regulates under the Clean Air Act, one of which hadn’t changed since the early 1970s, when the act was first put into law.
+Pruitt made his claim on Sept. 11 during an interview with the Washington Examiner:
+Pruitt, Sept. 11: Everybody looks at the Obama Administration as being the environmental savior. Really? He was the environmental savior? He’s the gold standard, right? He left us with more Superfund sites than when he came in. Air quality standards, 40 percent of the country, nonattainment.
+This isn’t the first time Pruitt has criticized Obama’s environmental record. In May, he cited the same 40 percent figure on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, adding, “What exactly did [the Obama administration] accomplish for the environment that folks are so excited about?”
+Pruitt has a right to his opinion that the Obama administration shouldn’t be the “gold standard” for environmental protection. But he cites a statistic — that 40 percent of Americans live in nonattainment areas — without providing any context. In fact, there’s evidence of improvement in air quality under Obama.
+(Pruitt also isn’t telling the whole story when it comes to Obama’s action on Superfund sites, which are areas that have been contaminated by hazardous waste. The EPA identifies these sites for cleanup when they could impact human health or the environment. But we’ll be explaining the ins and outs of that issue in a future article.)
+Air Quality Improves with Clean Air Act
+There are a number of different ways to evaluate whether air quality has gotten better or worse over time. Let’s start with the most straightforward — did the concentration of air pollutants go up or down during President Obama’s tenure?
+Between 2010 and 2016, which makes up the bulk of his presidency, the concentrations of all six air pollutants the EPA monitors decreased, some by as much as 77 percent. This makes sense, because cars, power plants, factories and other sources decreased emissions of these pollutants during this same period.
+However, emissions haven’t decreased just during this period — they’ve been decreasing since the inception of the Clean Air Act in 1970.
+Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA regulates carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen dioxide, ground level ozone, particle pollution and sulfur dioxide. Each of these pollutants pose a risk to human health, the environment or both.
+Particle pollution, for example, gets into the air via smokestacks, fires and other sources and can cause both respiratory and heart issues. It can also reduce visibility and damage forests, crops and water sources.
+Unlike particulate matter, ground level ozone isn’t emitted directly into the air. It’s created when pollutants from cars, power plants and other sources react to sunlight. Ground level ozone shouldn’t be confused with the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere, which protects the planet from the sun’s ultraviolet rays.
+These two pollutants are the most widespread, according to the American Lung Association.
+How Many Still Breathe ‘Unhealthy’ Air?
+Another metric for air quality is the percentage of people in the country exposed to concentrations of air pollutants above the EPA’s standards. That’s what Pruitt means by 40 percent “nonattainment.” By this measure, air quality also improved under Obama.
+When we reached out to the EPA for comment on Pruitt’s claim, agency spokeswoman Liz Bowman said he was “primarily” referring to ozone when he said the country is at 40 percent nonattainment.
+Specifically, Bowman referred us to the page on the EPA’s website that gives regional and population-based nonattainment estimates for ozone’s older 2008 standard – which was strengthened by Obama along with the standards for nitrogen dioxide, particle pollution and sulfur dioxide. It wasn’t clear to us how data based on an outdated standard supported Pruitt’s claim. We asked for clarification, but she has yet to respond.
+
+
+
+ALA Report Year
+Analysis Years
+Percent of Population* 
+
+Number of People (in millions)*
+
+
+
+2010
+2006 – 2008
+58
+175.3
+
+
+2011
+2007 – 2009
+50.3
+154.5
+
+
+2012
+2008 – 2010
+41
+127
+
+
+2013
+2009 – 2011
+42
+131.8
+
+
+2014
+2010 – 2012
+47
+147.6
+
+
+2015
+2011 – 2013
+44
+138.5
+
+
+2016
+2012 – 2014
+52.1
+166
+
+
+2017
+2013 – 2015
+38.9
+125
+
+
+*Refers to the share of Americans who live in areas that don’t meet the EPA’s air quality standards, according to the American Lung Association reports.
+
+
+
+Bowman also referred us to the American Lung Association’s 2017 air quality report that found that, between 2013 and 2015, 38.9 percent of the population — or about 125 million people — lived in areas with air that didn’t meet the EPA’s current standards for particle pollution or ozone (see table to left). 
+However, that report says there had been a “major improvement” in air quality under Obama.
+According to the association’s 2010 report, between 2006 and 2008, before Obama took office in 2009, about 58 percent of the U.S. population — an estimated 175.3 million people — lived in areas where the levels of these two pollutants were worse than the EPA’s standards. 
+That’s an estimated 50 million fewer people living in nonattainment areas during Obama’s second term than before he took office.
+The association attributes the lion’s share of these improvements “to cleaner power plants and increased use of cleaner vehicles and engines.”
+Obama lowered the acceptable concentration of ozone in the air in 2015, and the American Lung Association began using the more strict standard on ozone in its 2016 report – even though that report covered 2012-2014. This initially increased the number of people living in nonattainment areas, but the figure then dropped. “One-quarter fewer people now live where the air quality hit unhealthy levels in 2013-2015 than in the 2016 report,” the ALA said in its most recent report.
+During his presidency, Obama also finalized rules to increase fuel efficiency standards for vehicles. Higher fuel efficiency leads to less emissions, which contribute to both ozone and particle matter pollution. The average EPA city/highway sticker mileage of light duty vehicles sold rose from 21 miles per gallon in January 2009, when Obama took office, to 25.1 mpg by the time he left, according to the Transportation Research Institute of the University of Michigan.
+However, President Donald Trump said in March that he may roll back some of these Obama-era rules. At that time, Pruitt said he supported the review of Obama’s standards, calling them “costly for automakers and the American people.”
+Despite improvements in air quality, the American Lung Association concluded in 2017 that “too many people in the United States live where the air is unhealthy for them to breathe.”
+Climate Change Affects Air Quality, Too
+Pruitt has repeatedly criticized Obama on air quality issues. As we already mentioned, he made similar claims on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show back in May.
+In February, Pruitt also criticized Obama for being “so focused on climate change and so focused on CO2” that “other priorities were left behind.” These other priorities included “air quality issues and water quality issues that cross state lines.”
+But it’s worth mentioning that the American Lung Association reports have emphasized that climate change will hinder efforts to further improve air quality.
+In fact, the association attributes the 5 percent increase in the population exposed to “unhealthy” levels of ozone or particle pollution between its 2013 and 2014 reports (see table above) primarily to “warmer temperatures” worsening ozone levels. “Sunlight and heat create conditions that increase the risk of high ozone levels,” the association explains.
+As we said, Pruitt is entitled to his opinion of Obama’s environmental record. But Pruitt cited a statistic without context, and the evidence shows air quality actually improved under Obama.
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation. 
+       Share The Facts    Scott Pruitt EPA Administrator         Obama left 40% of the U.S. with air quality that doesn’t meet EPA standards.   Interview with Washington Examiner – Monday, September 11, 2017   Share Read More     Embed     Information on embedding in your site  oEmbed Link  https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/f2a28ae9-dff2-42c0-817a-6f8436c05c9c"
+"4.4KHurricane Harvey has brought with it both a record amount of rain and questions about how much climate change can be blamed for the storm. Climate change did not cause Harvey, or any other storm, but it makes intense storms like Harvey more likely to occur, scientists say.
+The most recent analysis of what’s known about the effect of climate change on hurricane activity comes from the June 28 draft of the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s Climate Science Special Report.
+One of that report’s key findings said that human activities have “contributed to the observed increase in hurricane activity” in the North Atlantic Ocean since the 1970s. The Gulf of Mexico, where Harvey formed, is part of the North Atlantic Ocean.
+The draft report echoes the findings of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2013 assessment report, which found that scientists are “virtually certain” (99 percent to 100 percent confident) that there has been an “increase in the frequency and intensity of the strongest tropical cyclones since the 1970s” in the North Atlantic Ocean.
+Still, the U.S. Global Change research program’s report says there’s uncertainty in how much humans have contributed to hurricane activity relative to natural causes. The studies that have looked at this question have come up with a “fairly broad” range of contributions for humans, but “virtually all studies identify a measurable, and generally substantial, [human] influence,” it adds.
+Another key finding of the report concluded that climate models generally show that a “warmer world” leads to an increase in the intensity of hurricanes, as well as an increase in the frequency of “very intense” hurricanes. The report also says the Atlantic Ocean specifically is projected to see increases in hurricane precipitation.
+These projections also fit with scientists’ theories about how a warmer world leads to greater moisture in the atmosphere, which leads to greater precipitation, which leads to more intense storms.
+But there is some uncertainty: The projections don’t yet align with the observed data on hurricanes because the data are “not of a high enough quality” to detect human contribution to the trend, the report says.
+What about Hurricane Harvey in particular?
+As we’ve said, it’s inaccurate to say that climate change is the cause of Harvey, which dumped a record 50 inches of rain on southern Texas over four days.
+But scientists have said that Harvey was likely worsened by climate change for a few reasons.
+Michael Mann, a professor of atmospheric science at Penn State, pointed to at least three factors that likely affected Harvey — higher sea levels, warmer ocean waters and weak prevailing winds — in an article published in the Guardian on Aug. 28.
+Sea level rise contributes to higher storm surges, explains Mann. Higher storm surges then lead to more coastal flooding, he says.
+Warmer waters, on the other hand, lead to increased moisture in the atmosphere, which “creates the potential for much greater rainfalls and greater flooding,” Mann explains. “The combination of coastal flooding and heavy rainfall is responsible for the devastating flooding that Houston is experiencing.”
+Though “more tenuous” than the other two factors, says Mann, Harvey also may have stalled near the coast because of weak prevailing winds that failed “to steer the storm off to sea.” This stalling then led to continued heavy rainfall on Texas that eventually topped 50 inches.
+The weak prevailing winds are caused by a “greatly expanded subtropical high pressure system” currently over much of the U.S., which is “predicted in model simulations of human-caused climate change,” says Mann.
+Scientists say other storms were likely made worse by climate change as well.
+In a perspective paper published in Nature Climate Change in 2015, Kevin E. Trenberth, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, and others discussed how climate change likely affected Hurricane Sandy, which hit New York and New Jersey particularly hard in October 2012.
+Trenberth et al., June 2015: Although perhaps only one-half to one-third of the [sea surface temperature] increase can be blamed on global warming from human activities, it is readily apparent that the storm surge and associated damage was considerably influenced by climate change. It is quite possible that the subways and tunnels [in and around New York City] might not have flooded without the warming-induced increases in sea level and in storm intensity and size, putting a potential price tag of human climate change on this storm in the tens of billions of dollars.
+So is climate change all to blame for Harvey? No. But it did play a role in making the storm worse, as it has with other storms, scientists say.
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation. For more information about extreme weather and climate change, please see our item “Precision in Climate Science.”"
+"746Rep. Lamar Smith said climate change “alarmists” ignore the “positive impacts” of more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, such as increased food production and quality. But the impact of increased CO2 levels on agriculture is more complicated than that — and, on balance, likely negative, particularly in the future.
+Other factors aside, an atmosphere with more CO2 does boost crop yield in the short term via increased rates of photosynthesis. In the long term, multiple experts told us the positive effect of increased CO2 on crops will diminish and the negative impacts of climate change, such as higher temperatures and extreme rainfall, will grow.
+Smith, the chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space & Technology, made his claim in a July 24 op-ed published in the Daily Signal, a news website created by the conservative Heritage Foundation.
+
+Smith, July 24:  A higher concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere would aid photosynthesis, which in turn contributes to increased plant growth. This correlates to a greater volume of food production and better quality food. Studies indicate that crops would utilize water more efficiently, requiring less water. And colder areas along the farm belt will experience longer growing seasons.
+
+In making his claim, Smith also argued, “The American people should be made aware of both the negative and positive impacts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,” adding, “Without the whole story, how can we expect an objective evaluation of the issues involving climate change?”
+We agree. Below, we take a look at both the pros and cons of increased CO2 on agriculture.
+Carbon Dioxide’s Diminishing Return
+Let’s take a look at Smith’s claims one by one. First, does a “higher concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere … aid photosynthesis, which in turn contributes to increased plant growth,” as Smith said?
+Yes, but to a point.
+During photosynthesis, plants use energy from sunlight to convert CO2 and water into oxygen and glucose, a sugar molecule. Plants then release oxygen from their leaves, but they also combine oxygen with glucose to produce energy for growth through a different process called respiration.
+The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2014 report does say that increased atmospheric CO2 has “virtually certainly enhanced [crop] water use efficiency and yields.” So, Smith is right that more CO2 leads to more photosynthesis, which correlates to increased crop yields. And he’s also right that “[s]tudies indicate that crops would utilize water more efficiently” in an atmosphere with more CO2.
+But the IPCC adds that the CO2 effect has a greater impact on wheat and rice, than on corn and sugarcane.
+Photosynthesis in wheat and rice relies more on CO2 in the atmosphere, while corn and sugarcane rely more on “internal cycling” during photosynthesis, Jerry Hatfield, the director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Laboratory for Agriculture and The Environment, explained to us over the phone.
+In other words, increased CO2 doesn’t boost crop yield equally across the board.
+Hatfield, who was also part of the IPCC process that received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize and who currently serves on an IPCC special committee, also explained to us that the positive impacts of CO2 may “reach a point of diminishing return,” or “saturation,” in the future. What does that mean?
+Right now, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is just over 400 parts per million, according to NASA. (For comparison, before 1950, the level of CO2 hadn’t surpassed 300 ppm for hundreds of thousands of years.)
+Hatfield told us that plants would reach CO2 saturation at around 550 to 600 ppm, at which point more gas “won’t be as beneficial.”
+In an email, Frances Moore, an assistant professor studying climate change’s impact on agriculture at the University of California, Davis, put it this way: “My research does show that higher CO2 concentrations are beneficial to crops, but this effect quickly declines at higher and higher concentrations because plant growth becomes limited by other nutrients.”
+Higher levels of CO2 wouldn’t necessarily be harmful to crops, added Hatfield. Still, “we know so little about the effects of super high concentrations of CO2 on plant growth,” he said.
+At an increase of 3 ppm per year, the rate in 2015 and 2016, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Earth would reach saturation well before the end of the century. Since 1960, the rate has fluctuated, so it could decrease, but the trend generally shows an increasing rate.
+Better Quality Food?
+In his op-ed, Smith also said increased CO2 correlates to “better quality food.” We reached out to his office to get some clarification on what the chairman meant by “better quality.”
+Alicia Criscuolo, a press assistant for the House science committee, told us by email, “Chairman Smith uses ‘quality’ as a term to encompass a wide range of benefits,” such as a “rise in production and size of plants grown in a CO2 enhanced environment” and an “increased concentration of vitamin C that results from increased CO2 exposure.”
+Specifically, his office pointed us to two papers, one about strawberries and another concerning sour oranges.
+The paper about strawberries, published in Photosynthesis Research in 2001, didn’t exactly conclude that increased CO2 “leads to an increase in biomass and overall production of strawberries,” as Criscuolo said in an email to us.
+Rather, the study, authored by USDA collaborator James A. Bunce, investigated how other factors, such as temperature and soil quality, affected a strawberry plant’s propensity to increase its photosynthesis rate in an environment with elevated CO2 levels. While the study did show that strawberries photosynthesize more with increased CO2 levels, it didn’t look at strawberry quantity or quality.
+The paper about sour oranges, published in the journal Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment in June 2002, found that when a 75 percent increase in CO2 levels — from 400 ppm to 700 ppm — doubles fruit production, it also increases the vitamin C concentration of the fruit’s juice by 7 percent.
+It’s important to note two things about this study. First, its primary author, Sherwood B. Idso, is the president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, a nonprofit that denies that increased CO2 causes global warming. Second, sour oranges shouldn’t be confused with juicing oranges. Sour oranges are mostly used to make marmalade.
+We also asked Samuel S. Myers, a senior research scientist at Harvard studying the human health impacts of climate change, what he thought of the idea that increased atmospheric CO2 will lead to “better quality food,” as Smith said.
+“Rep. Smith’s claim about better quality food is pure fabrication,” he told us by email. “All our research shows that rising concentrations of CO2 reduce the nutritional value of staple food crops,” such as wheat, barley and rice. “We have shown … that staple food crops lose significant amounts of iron, zinc, and protein (critical nutrients for human health) when grown in open-field conditions” at elevated CO2 levels, he said, though scientists aren’t sure why increased CO2 leads to decreased nutrients in staple crops.
+In fact, earlier this month, Myers and colleagues published a paper in Environmental Health Perspectives that found that “an additional 1.6% or 148.4 million of the world’s population may be placed at risk of protein deficiency” because of elevated CO2 levels.
+Longer Growing Seasons?
+In his op-ed, Smith also claimed that, due to increased CO2, “colder areas along the farm belt will experience longer growing seasons.” This is true, but warmer regions, such as the southern states, will also experience negative effects because of climate change.
+To support his claim, Smith’s office pointed us to a June 2014 paper in Nature by Melissa Reyes-Fox, a technician at the USDA, and others. The paper explains that scientists have previously found evidence to suggest that global warming has caused a lengthening of the growing season in temperate and polar regions of the Earth.
+Reyes-Fox and her group found that a longer growing season, especially when water is a limiting factor, “is not due to warming alone, but also to higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations.” However, the researchers didn’t look at food crops, but a grassland in Wyoming.
+Still, the IPCC’s 2014 report does say with “high confidence that warming has benefitted crop production in some high-latitude regions, such as northeast China or the UK,” and that “high-latitude locations will, in general, become more suitable for crops.” This is due, in part, to the fact that “declines in frost occurrence will lead to longer growing seasons,” the report says.
+However, this “latitudinal expansion of cold-climate cropping zones polewards … may be largely offset by reductions in cropping production in the mid-latitudes as a result of rainfall reduction and temperature increase,” the IPCC adds. “For tropical systems where moisture availability or extreme heat rather than frost limits the length of the growing season, there is a likelihood that the length of the growing season and overall suitability for crops will decline.”
+Fewer frost days may also negatively impact fruit and nut trees, Hatfield, at the USDA, told us. The IPCC and the U.S. Global Change Program make similar conclusions in their reports.
+The Global Change report explains, for example, that fruit and nut trees “have a winter chilling requirement,” or a number of hours a year where temperatures are between 32 and 50 degrees F, ranging from 200 to 2,000 hours depending on the type of tree. These temperatures signal fruiting trees to develop flower buds in the spring.
+But not all crops and not all regions will be affected in the same way.
+“Projections show that chilling requirements for fruit and nut trees in California will not be met by the middle to the end of this century,” the Global Change report says. However, the report adds that scientists expect apples in the Northeast to have sufficient chilling hours for the rest of the century, though this might not be the case for plums and cherries in the region.
+The IPCC report also points out, “Several studies have projected negative yield impacts of climate trends for perennial trees, including apples in eastern Washington … and cherries in California … although CO2 increases may offset some or all of these losses.”
+The projections for wine and coffee are even less favorable. Increasing temperatures associated with rising CO2 emissions are likely to reduce the area suitable for grapes used to produce the highest-quality wines “by more than 50% by late this century,” the Global Change report says.  And coffee production in Costa Rica, Nicaragua and El Salvador “will be reduced by more than 40%,” according to the IPCC report.
+Unreliable Rainfall
+Smith didn’t address how changes in rainfall might affect agriculture in the future. But all the experts we spoke with emphasized the importance of reliable water availability, in addition to temperature and CO2, for crop production and quality. For this reason, it’s worth outlining how climate change will change precipitation patterns.
+First, as we’ve written before, scientists are more confident when linking temperature-related weather to global warming than they are linking precipitation changes to global warming. But there is still plenty of evidence to suggest global warming will affect rainfall patterns across the globe.
+Hatfield, at the USDA, explained to us that crops generally prefer steady rainfall during the summer, when the most growth occurs. But climate change, due to increased CO2, is causing the U.S. to see more precipitation in the form of spring storms.
+The Global Change report also makes a note of this.
+The Midwest, for example, is seeing “increasing intensity of storms and the shifting of rainfall patterns toward more spring precipitation,” the report says. In Iowa in particular, there hasn’t been an increase in total precipitation per year, but there has been a “large increase in the number of days with heavy rainfall,” the report adds.
+Extreme rainfall is bad for crops for a number of reasons, one being that it leads to soil erosion. During these weather events, the nutrients from the soil are washed away into nearby lakes and rivers, polluting them. The extreme rainfall then leaves the soil less capable of supporting crop growth, the Global Change report adds.
+Yet More Cons to CO2
+Increased CO2 can also negatively impact crop production by disproportionately benefiting weeds, says Global Change report. Hatfield explained to us that weeds are genetically diverse and, as a result, can adapt to changing environments. Crops, on the other hand, are, by default, inbred and genetically uniform. For this reason, they aren’t as adaptable to changing environments.
+There are also other negative effects of burning fossil fuels — such as an increase in ground-level ozone, which hinders photosynthesis and other important plant functions, as the IPCC explains in its report. “This results in stunted crop plants, inferior crop quality, and decreased yields … and poses a growing threat to global food security,” the report adds.
+Overall, every expert we spoke with said the net impact of CO2 and climate change will leave crop production and quality worse off in the future, not better.
+For example, Myers, at Harvard, told us, “While there may be a small fertilization effect of elevated CO2 on plant growth, this increase will be more than offset by climate change which is causing increased temperatures, changes in precipitation, and complex changes in agricultural pests, pathogens and pollinators.” 
+Moore, at the University of California, Davis, also told us: “Considering just CO2 fertilization and the effect of higher temperatures, we find that at very small amounts of warming (i.e. one degree C) the net effect might be a slight increase in crop yields.” (Since 1880, the Earth has warmed nearly 1 degrees C already, according to NASA.)
+But Moore added that “at higher levels of warming, the negative effect of higher temperatures rapidly comes to dominate the positive effect of CO2 fertilization, causing crop yields to decline markedly, including in the United States.” And that doesn’t even take into account other negative effects, such as “disruptive rainfall patterns” and benefits to weeds, she said.
+So Smith is right that there are some positive sides to increased CO2 in the atmosphere, but the net impact is likely negative, especially in the future.
+
+
+
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation.
+Correction, Aug. 18: We originally used the wrong middle initial for Samuel S. Myers. We have corrected the article.
+
+
+
+       Share The Facts    Rep. Lamar Smith  Chairman, House science committee         Writes that climate change “alarmists” ignore the “positive impacts” of more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere on agriculture.   Op-ed in the Daily Signal – Monday, July 24, 2017   Share Read More     Embed     Information on embedding in your site  oEmbed Link  https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/ec6e75e4-74cb-450e-904f-f3f3e3799cf0"
+"3.2KThe 2020 presidential campaign is more than 1,200 days away, but President Donald Trump held yet another Make America Great Again rally — this time in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. And, as he did in past campaign speeches, Trump spoke for a long time and reeled off numerous false and misleading claims:
+
+Trump exaggerated when he claimed that his administration has deported MS-13 gang members “by the thousands.” It is by the hundreds, not thousands.
+Trump said he is pushing repeal of the federal estate tax so “farms can be passed on” to farmers’ children and grandchildren. Actually, the tax falls on fewer than one-half of 1 percent of farm estates.
+Trump was wrong when he said that “all” insurance companies have “fled the state of Iowa” and that “they’re leaving all of the states.” One insurer plans to offer Iowa policies on HealthCare.gov in 2018, and 44 counties in three states are currently at risk of having no insurer.
+Trump again claimed he has reversed the trend of coal mining job losses, and misleadingly pointed to the opening of a new coal mine in Pennsylvania as evidence that his policies have led to a resurgence in coal mining. Neither of those is true.
+Trump disputed the characterization of the Paris Agreement as not legally binding. “Like hell it’s nonbinding,” he said. The fact is, signatories of the agreement are not penalized for failing to adhere to their proposed emissions cuts.
+Trump proposed a new law to bar new immigrants from receiving welfare for five years, but a 20-year-old law already does that, with some exceptions.
+Trump said, “As of a few months ago, our country has spent $6 trillion in the Middle East” since 2001. Actually, the U.S. has spent about $1.7 trillion, as of Sept. 30, 2016. The $6 trillion figure is an estimate of the cost over the next four decades.
+
+The president visited Iowa on June 21, making an official stop first at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids to talk about agriculture. Later that evening, Trump spoke to a large crowd in the nearby U.S. Cellular Center at a political rally organized by his campaign.
+Deporting Gang Members
+At his rally, Trump exaggerated when he claimed that his administration had deported MS-13 gang members “by the thousands.” It is by the hundreds, not thousands.
+Trump, June 21: The other thing that I have to tell you. You have a gang called MS-13. … These are true animals. We are moving them out of the country by the thousands, by the thousands.
+Trump is referring to the Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, a gang that was formed by Salvadoran immigrants in Los Angeles in the 1980s. In April, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said that there are 10,000 MS-13 gang members in the United States. That made us skeptical of the claim that “thousands” already had been deported.
+We asked the White House how many gang members have been removed under the Trump administration, but it declined to comment.
+However, the Washington Post on May 24 wrote that this year the U.S. has deported 398 gang members to El Salvador “compared with 534 in all of 2016, according to Salvadoran government statistics.” Those figures represent members of all El Salvador gangs, such as MS-13 and the 18th Street gang. MS-13 is “primarily El Salvadoran,” according to a 2005 National Gang Threat Assessment report by the National Alliance of Gang Investigators Association, though it’s possible there are members from other countries.
+Danielle Bennett, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told us in an email that so far in fiscal year 2017 — from Oct. 1, 2016, to June 4, 2017 — ICE has removed 2,798 gang members. But that includes all gang members, not just MS-13 members. She said ICE “does not track gang removals by specific gang,” so it does not know how many of the 2,798 were MS-13 members. The 2,798 removals also span both the Obama and Trump administrations, so not all of the FY 2017 deportations occurred under Trump.
+By contrast, there were 2,057 gang members deported in fiscal 2016, so there has been an increase this fiscal year. We don’t know how much of that is attributable to Trump’s policies, but Bennett said that ICE under the Trump administration “does specifically target MS-13 members for arrest and removal.” That appears to be corroborated by the statistics from El Salvador published in the Post.
+Bennett also said that ICE Homeland Security Investigations has made 602 criminal arrests and 170 administrative immigration arrests of MS-13 members so far in fiscal year 2017, as of June 4. But those figures include arrests made under both administrations, and the criminal arrests include citizens and noncitizens alike. For example, ICE reported last month that it arrested 104 MS-13 gang members as part of a six-week anti-gang enforcement operation that resulted in 1,378 arrests from March 26 to May 6. But nearly two-thirds of all those arrested were U.S. citizens, so most would not have been eligible for deportation.
+Trump can take credit perhaps for cracking down on gang members and increasing the deportation rate of gang members from El Salvador. But he exaggerates when he says he is deporting MS-13 gang members “by the thousands.”
+Update, July 5: The U.S. has deported 580 gang members to El Salvador in the first half of 2017, from Jan. 1 to June 30, according to the Salvadoran government. That figure includes all gang members, not just those with MS-13.
+       Share The Facts    Donald Trump President of the United States         Claimed that his administration has deported MS-13 gang members “by the thousands.”   Rally in Iowa – Wednesday, June 21, 2017   Share Read More     Embed     Information on embedding in your site  oEmbed Link  https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/79bd25b6-3503-42f6-b000-16f7ee6d50ed     
+ 
+Estate Tax Myth
+In the farming state of Iowa, Trump repeatedly played on the mythical claim that the federal estate tax is keeping family farms from being passed on to the next generation of farmers.
+First, in his speech at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, the president said:
+Trump: I want to make sure the next generation of Americans has that opportunity [to live on a farm] as well.  And, in particular, that includes your children and your grandchildren, and [we are] working very hard to get rid of the death tax so that those farms can be passed on.
+And at his rally later that evening, he said the estate tax should go because, “You should have a right to pass your farm onto your children and onto your grandchildren.”
+The fact is, however, that more than 99 percent of all farms are expected to be passed on without paying any estate tax at all. Repeal of the federal estate tax would benefit only the very wealthiest multimillionaires. And even the few who owe any tax may spread payments out over more than a decade.
+A March 15 study by the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated that 38,328 farms would become part of estates in 2016, of which only 0.42 percent — 161 estates — would owe any estate tax at all.
+All of those would be multimillion-dollar farms; only estates worth $5.45 million or more must file a return, and most of them don’t owe any tax. For those who do owe tax, the study estimated that the average effective rate would be 20 percent — with the option of spreading payments over 14 years.
+Separate research by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center puts the number even lower. TPC estimates that only 50 farms and closely held businesses will pay any estate tax in 2017.
+And regardless of whether the number is 161 or 50, those farm estates that owe any tax at all have the option to spread installments over 14 years at reduced interest rates.
+When we wrote about this estate-tax myth in 2015, we reached out to Neil Harl, an Iowa State University professor of economics and agriculture, who has been studying the estate tax’s impact on small businesses and farms for decades.
+“I have been involved in this area since 1958 and I have never seen land that had to be sold to pay the federal estate tax and I have conducted more than 3,400 seminars in 43 states which included federal estate tax planning,” Harl wrote to us in an email. The italics were his. And for this article, we checked back with him, and he said that is still the case.
+“The lobbyists early on, I am told, concluded farmers as a group are more highly respected than billionaires, at least on this issue,” he added.
+       Share The Facts    Donald Trump President of the United States         Said he is pushing repeal of the federal estate tax so “farms can be passed on” to farmers’ children and grandchildren.   Rally in Iowa – Wednesday, June 21, 2017   Share Read More     Embed     Information on embedding in your site  oEmbed Link  https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/bd18c826-18be-4d19-9853-20fa760839d7     
+ 
+Still an Insurer in Iowa
+Trump wrongly claimed that “all” insurance companies have left the individual market in Iowa. In fact, Medica Health announced on Monday that it would stay in the market statewide.
+The president further claimed that insurers are “leaving all of the states.” There are currently 44 counties in three states with no insurer for 2018, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
+Trump: In fact, I was just told by your great governor and ex-governor that your insurance companies have all fled the state of Iowa. Pretty sad, isn’t it? Well, they’re — I’ll tell you what, they’re going from every state. They’re leaving all of the states.
+Iowa’s individual insurance marketplace — where those who get Affordable Care Act subsidies buy their own insurance — has had a shaky outlook for 2018. Before Medica’s announcement on Monday, the state was unsure if the insurance carrier would participate next year. Two other insurers — Aetna and Wellmark — had already said they wouldn’t sell plans on the state marketplace in 2018, leaving Medica as potentially the sole statewide insurer. (Gundersen Health Plan sells policies in five of the state’s 99 counties, Iowa’s Insurance Division says.)
+Iowa’s Insurance Division said it was “unlikely these carriers will remain” in 2018 and proposed on June 12 to the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services a “stopgap measure” to retool the state’s ACA marketplace, where 72,000 Iowans now get coverage. That stopgap measure would change the income-based tax credits to age- and income-based assistance; create one plan rather than the metal levels of the ACA (bronze, silver, gold, platinum); and add funding to a state reinsurance program to help insurers cover high-cost individuals.
+Iowa’s Insurance Division confirmed to FactCheck.org that Medica was the only insurer to file 2018 proposed rates by this week’s deadline; Gundersen did not.
+Medica’s announcement was widely reported, and it said its 2018 plans would come with a 43 percent average premium increase. Iowa Insurance Commissioner Doug Ommen said the state would still move forward with the stopgap proposal, and he expressed concern about Medica’s average rate increase driving away younger and healthier policyholders.
+Medica CEO John Naylor told CNBC on June 16 that the company wanted certainty from the federal government on whether cost-sharing subsidies for low-income individuals would continue. In late May, the Trump administration and House of Representatives asked for a 90-day delay to the federal lawsuit on the matter, according to Politico.
+“When the federal government set out certain rules, our expectations are that these rules are followed,” Naylor told CNBC. “So as we look at pricing we need to know are those rules going to be enforced in 2018.”
+Trump greatly exaggerated when he claimed that insurance companies are “leaving all of the states.” As of June 21, there were 44 counties, with 31,268 insurance enrollees, at risk of having no insurance carrier for 2018, according to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which relied on state rate filings and media reports. Those counties are in three states: Ohio, Missouri and Washington. However, the analysis notes that the insurer Centene said it would expand its insurance business in several states, including those three, but hasn’t detailed exactly where.
+“Insurer participation in 2018 will not be finalized until fall of 2017,” KFF says.
+       Share The Facts    Donald Trump President of the United States         ""Your [health] insurance companies have all fled the state of Iowa.""   Rally in Iowa – Wednesday, June 21, 2017   Share Read More     Embed     Information on embedding in your site  oEmbed Link  https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/1cad598f-63f1-4d62-b7f5-fcebc7c00042     
+ 
+On Coal Mining
+Trump again claimed he has reversed the trend of coal mining job losses, and misleadingly pointed to the opening of a new coal mine in Western Pennsylvania as evidence that his policies have led to a resurgence in coal mining. Neither of those is true.
+Trump, June 21: And we’ve ended the war on clean, beautiful coal. And we’re putting our miners back to work. In fact, you read about it, last week a brand new coal mine just opened in the state of Pennsylvania, first time in decades, decades. We’ve reversed – and 33,000 mining jobs have been added since my inauguration.
+In fact, there has been an increase of about 1,000 coal mining jobs since January, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For some perspective, there has been a total loss of nearly 40,000 coal mining jobs over the last five years.
+
+How does Trump get to 33,000? After talking specifically about coal mining, Trump cites a figure for all mining jobs – including gas, oil, metal ores, coal and nonmetallic mineral mining and quarrying. There have been 32,600 total mining jobs added since January. We wrote about this issue once before when EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt tried a similar sleight of hand.
+As for the grand opening of the Corsa Coal Company’s Acosta Deep Mine near Pittsburgh on June 8, that had nothing to do with Trump’s efforts to roll back coal regulations. As we wrote when Trump made similar boasts earlier this month, development of the Acosta mine began in September, two months before Trump’s election victory.
+Industry experts also tell us it is not emblematic of a resurgence of coal mining.
+The Acosta mine produces a particular type of coal that is used to make steel. That’s a bit of a niche market in the coal industry, accounting for just 10 percent of coal production in the U.S. There has been a surge in demand for this kind of coal because of production problems overseas.
+However, the vast majority of coal produced in the U.S. is thermal coal, the kind used to generate electricity. Consumption of that kind of coal has declined by nearly 18 percent between 2012 and 2016, mostly due to the surge in cheaper natural gas production driven by the shale revolution and to competition from renewable energy.
+Environmental regulations — which Trump has targeted — also hurt coal mining, but according to an April report from Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, those regulations were a “significantly smaller factor” in the shrinking of the coal industry. Industry experts say Trump’s efforts to roll back those regulations might stem the decline in coal consumption, but would not bring coal mining jobs back to levels seen even a few years ago.
+       Share The Facts    Donald Trump President of the United States         ""We’re putting our miners back to work. In fact, you read about it, last week a brand new coal mine just opened in the state of Pennsylvania, first time in decades, decades. ... 33,000 mining jobs have been added since my inauguration.""   Rally in Iowa – Wednesday, June 21, 2017   Share Read More     Embed     Information on embedding in your site  oEmbed Link  https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/387fa26f-9201-4a34-92c5-85ab20235787     
+ 
+Paris Agreement Not Legally Binding
+Trump touted his decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, which he said would have been an economic “catastrophe” for the U.S. The agreement, which took effect last year, was signed by 195 countries and primarily aims to keep warming “well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” and to pursue “efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C.”
+The president pushed back at critics who said the pact is nonbinding.
+“And they all say it’s nonbinding,” he said. “Like hell it’s nonbinding. When we get sued by everybody because we thought it was nonbinding, then you can tell me it was nonbinding.”
+There are aspects of the agreement that are legally binding. Todd Stern, a former U.S. special envoy for climate change, explained in a press conference shortly before the agreement was reached that countries must submit “nationally determined contributions” that outline their emissions targets and report actions taken to meet those targets. But meeting emissions targets wasn’t one of the legal requirements.
+Stern, Dec. 2, 2015: We’ve made our position clear all year long that we support an agreement that’s legally binding in many respects, including the elements of accountability of the agreement, the requirement to put forward a target, to do it with information that clarifies it, the obligation to report and be reviewed on your inventories and the actions you’re taking in order to meet your target. Any number of rules and so forth. So a whole number of elements that are legally binding, but not the target itself.
+Stern wrote a May 8 op-ed for the Washington Post urging Trump to stay in the Paris Agreement. He said the president should “keep in mind that — as much as I would be sorry to see any retrenchment — countries can adjust their emissions targets downward. The agreement permits it, and I know because I helped negotiate that flexibility.”
+       Share The Facts    Donald Trump President of the United States         Claimed the Paris Agreement on climate change is legally binding.   Rally in Iowa – Wednesday, June 21, 2017   Share Read More     Embed     Information on embedding in your site  oEmbed Link  https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/69ad04cf-e053-40a7-93f1-6b034e238765     
+ 
+On Welfare for Immigrants
+Trump said he was promoting legislation that would bar new immigrants from receiving welfare for five years, but a 20-year-old law already does that. He introduced his proposal after promising to preserve the “safety net” for people who “truly need help.”
+Trump, June 21: But others don’t treat us fairly. That’s why I believe the time has come for new immigration rules which say that those seeking admission into our country must be able to support themselves financially and should not use welfare for a period of at least five years. And we’ll be putting in legislation to that effect very shortly.
+But as The Hill pointed out, such a law already exists. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, signed into law in 1996 by then-President Bill Clinton, states that immigrants are “not eligible for any Federal means-tested public benefit for a period of 5 years beginning on the date of the alien’s entry into the United States.” That would include such benefits as food stamps, Medicaid and Social Security.
+As USA Today noted, there are some exceptions in the law for children and pregnant women, refugees, and active duty military or veterans. It’s possible, the story notes, that Trump is seeking to toughen the restrictions, or to eliminate some exceptions. Trump’s proposed FY 2018 budget notes that refugees are exempt from the five-year waiting period, and stresses the need to control the cost of benefits paid to immigrant-headed households. But it offered no details on how that would be accomplished beyond reducing the number of refugees, curbing illegal immigration and increasing merit-based legal immigration.
+We reached out to Trump’s press office for clarification, but it declined to provide any information on the record.
+       Share The Facts    Donald Trump President of the United States         ""I believe the time has come for new immigration rules which say that those seeking admission into our country must be able to support themselves financially and should not use welfare for a period of at least five years.""   Rally in Iowa – Wednesday, June 21, 2017   Share Read More     Embed     Information on embedding in your site  oEmbed Link  https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/2f668697-eee2-437d-9516-95293496b95c     
+ 
+Cost of Wars
+Trump also repeated the claim that the U.S. already has spent $6 trillion in the Middle East since 2001. It hasn’t.
+Trump, June 21: After decades of rebuilding foreign nations all over the world, we are now rebuilding our nation. As of a few months ago, our country has spent $6 trillion in the Middle East, wasted. … We started 16 years ago and it’s in far worse shape than it was 16 years ago by many times over. So, we spent all of this money, all of these lives.
+Actually, the U.S. has spent about $1.7 trillion through fiscal year 2016, which ended Sept. 30, 2016, according to a February report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.
+During the campaign, Trump made the $6 trillion figure a talking point. For example, in Philadelphia, he gave a speech in which he said, “We must declare our independence from a failed establishment that has squandered $6 trillion on foreign wars in the Middle East that never end and that we never win and that have made us less safe.”
+His campaign at the time cited a Reuters news article about a study that projected the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will cost the U.S. $6 trillion “over the next four decades.” The story said the cost estimate included “future commitments, such as the medical and disability claims of U.S. war veterans.”
+It may be that the wars eventually will cost the U.S. $6 trillion. However, Trump said the U.S. “has spent $6 trillion” (past tense) as of “a few months ago.” That’s not accurate.
+       Share The Facts    Donald Trump President of the United States         ""As of a few months ago, our country has spent $6 trillion in the Middle East"" since 2001.   Rally in Iowa – Wednesday, June 21, 2017   Share Read More     Embed     Information on embedding in your site  oEmbed Link  https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/8420b13c-a694-48a4-9783-0412e5cb93df"
+"4KIn an interview on CNBC, Energy Secretary Rick Perry said carbon dioxide is not “the primary control knob” for the Earth’s temperature and climate. But scientists say it’s “extremely likely” that human activity — primarily CO2 emissions — is the main cause of global warming.
+Perry made his claim during an interview with Joe Kernen on CNBC.
+Kernen, June 19: Do you believe CO2 is the primary control knob for the temperature of the Earth and for, for the climate?
+Perry: No, most likely the primary control knob is the ocean waters and this environment that we live in.
+Perry is not the first member of the Trump administration to make this claim. Back in March, Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt said, “I would not agree that [CO2 is] a primary contributor to the, to the global warming that we see.”
+But as we have written time and again, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fifth assessment report says it’s “extremely likely” (at least 95 percent probable) that more than half of the observed temperature increase since the mid-20th century is due to human, or anthropogenic, activity.
+What does “human activity” entail? The IPCC sums it up like this:
+IPCC, 2014: Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have increased since the pre-industrial era, driven largely by economic and population growth, and are now higher than ever. This has led to atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide that are unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years. Their effects, together with those of other anthropogenic drivers, have been detected throughout the climate system and are extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.
+The report adds, “Emissions of CO2 from fossil fuel combustion and industrial processes contributed about 78% of the total GHG emissions increase from 1970 to 2010.”
+This means that, among all of the human activities that contribute to global warming, emitting CO2 makes the largest contribution. Still, there are other drivers, such as deforestation, the decomposition of wastes in landfills and agriculture.
+What about the oceans’ role in global warming? Perry got it backward.
+The oceans play a “central role in stabilizing Earth’s climate system” by storing and releasing heat over long periods of time, explains the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And the oceans have stored the majority of the excess heat trapped by increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to human activities.
+But this “heat energy eventually re-enters the rest of the Earth system by melting ice shelves, evaporating water, or directly reheating the atmosphere,” adds NOAA. “Thus, heat energy in the ocean can warm the planet for decades after it was absorbed.”
+In other words, “Though the atmosphere has been spared from the full extent of global warming for now, heat already stored in the ocean will eventually be released, committing Earth to additional warming in the future,” says NOAA.
+One last point: Perry also said, “Are we going to continue to have innovation that helps to effect in a positive way our environment? Absolutely,” adding, “I’m excited about what we’re going to see coming out of our national labs, coming out of the private sector, working in concert with private, or I should say, public and private sector opportunities.”
+But under Trump’s proposed budget, the Department of Energy’s Office of Science would lose $900 million of its roughly $5 billion budget — an 18 percent decrease. That office funds research at more than 300 universities and institutes, as well as 10 of the DOE’s 17 national labs, according to the department’s website.
+So it’s unclear at this point how much the public sector will be able to contribute to innovation compared with past years.
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation."
+"1.7KPresident Donald Trump and his top environmental official said the Paris Agreement would reduce the global average temperature by only 0.2 degrees Celsius. Former Vice President Al Gore said that’s “not true.” Who’s right?
+Trump and Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, are correct that one report did estimate a 0.2 C reduction. But the report’s author said the Trump administration “cherry-picked” that figure.
+Other studies have shown greater reductions. Estimates differ because researchers make different assumptions at the onset of their calculations, such as whether countries will make more ambitious pledges to reduce carbon emissions in the future.
+The 0.2 C Figure
+Trump made his claim about the agreement’s effect on global warming during a June 1 speech announcing that the U.S. would “withdraw” from the international deal.
+The agreement, which went into effect Nov. 4, 2016, primarily aims to keep warming “well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” and to pursue “efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C.” The planet has warmed nearly 1 C already, according to NASA.
+Trump, June 1: Even if the Paris Agreement were implemented in full, with total compliance from all nations, it is estimated it would only produce a two-tenths of one degree — think of that; this much — Celsius reduction in global temperature by the year 2100. Tiny, tiny amount.
+A day after the president’s announcement, Pruitt said “even if all of the targets were met by all nations across the globe, it only reduced the temperature by less than two-tenths of one degree.”
+Gore, who shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for increasing public knowledge about climate change, was asked on CNN’s “State of the Union” on June 4 about the statements made by Trump and Pruitt.
+“Well, first of all, it’s not true,” Gore said, adding that the Paris Agreement “gives tremendous momentum” to reducing global warming.
+We reached out to spokespeople for Gore, Trump and Pruitt for support for their claims. Gore’s office didn’t respond. The White House also didn’t respond, but in a video posted to Facebook on June 1, it cites research out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to support the claim that “if every member nation met all of their commitments [under the Paris Agreement] through this century, the impact on the climate would be negligible.” EPA spokesperson Liz Bowman also pointed us to the 2015 MIT report.
+Under the Paris Agreement, countries submit pledges that outline their emissions targets and other aims related to mitigating and adapting to climate change. Countries must submit new pledges every five years. These pledges should grow more ambitious over time, the agreement stipulates, although the targets are voluntary and there are no penalties for failing to meet them.
+The MIT report looked at the effect that the majority of the first set of pledges would have on warming by 2100. In their report, the MIT researchers assumed countries wouldn’t make additional, more ambitious pledges.
+“Assuming the proposed cuts [under the Paris Agreement] are extended through 2100 but not deepened further, they result in about 0.2°C less warming by the end of the century,” the report said.
+To come up with that estimate, the researchers compared the bulk of the Paris pledges’ impact on warming with the impact of emissions targets set under climate agreements made in Copenhagen in 2009 and Cancun in 2010. As we’ll explain below, other studies that found larger reductions compared the Paris pledges with other baselines, such as climate policies in place since 2005.
+On June 8, John Reilly, the co-director of MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change and co-author of the 2015 report, published an op-ed in the Washington Post, in which he argued that the Trump “administration cherry-picked [his] group’s findings to help make their case.”
+The Paris Agreement builds on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and was signed by all but two of the 197 countries party to the convention. Reilly argues it’s the “cumulative effect” of all commitments made under this framework that’s the “relevant number, not 0.2 degrees.” The 0.2 C figure, in other words, “reflects only the incremental effect of Paris when built upon all the previous commitments made through the UNFCCC.”
+The 0.2 C estimate also doesn’t take into consideration the full potential effect of the Paris Agreement alone. In calculating the 0.2 C figure, Reilly and his colleagues “assumed no further strengthening of national commitments in years after 2030,” which is another “critically important” distinction, he says.
+Bowman at the EPA also cited a 2015 paper by Bjorn Lomborg, the president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center in Denmark. Lomborg authored the 2001 book “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” in which he writes that global warming is “taking place,” but that cutting back fossil fuels will create greater problems for the world than global warming. Other scientists have criticized Lomborg’s book.
+Published in the journal Global Policy in November 2015, Lomborg’s study compared warming under a business-as-usual scenario to warming with the Paris pledges. He concluded that the difference is about 0.17 C in 2100.
+Unlike the MIT report and Lomborg’s paper, other studies that found greater reductions did assume countries would make more ambitious pledges in the future, as the agreement specifies.
+The Paris Effect(s)
+So what is the “relevant number,” as Reilly put it?
+The MIT researcher points to one analysis by the climate modeling nonprofit Climate Interactive that found that national contributions made by UNFCCC parties to date, which include the Paris Agreement pledges, would result in roughly 3.3 C of warming above pre-industrial levels by 2100. That’s compared with 4.2 C of warming for business as usual, a 0.9 C difference.
+Roughly 1 degree “might not sound like a lot,” explains Reilly, but it’s actually the amount of warming that the planet “has experienced in roughly the past century and a half, and in that time we’ve observed retreating mountain glaciers, rising sea levels and other significant impacts.”
+Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, a climate physicist at Climate Analytics, a nonprofit climate science and policy institute in Germany, also put the 0.2 C figure into context for us. He said it’s subjective whether or not something is “tiny.” Still, “A few systems are particularly sensitive to also small warming increments,” Schleussner told us by email. These systems include tropical coral reef bleaching, “for which every tenth of a degree matters,” and Arctic sea-ice melting, he added. 
+Another analysis by Joeri Rogelj, an energy modeling and climate policy expert at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria, and others took a more nuanced approach to estimating the impact of the Paris Agreement on climate change.
+Published in the journal Nature in June 2016, Rogelj’s study looks at four scenarios that each make different assumptions about global effort to reduce warming by 2100:
+
+No new climate policies since 2005.
+All global climate commitments, excluding those under the Paris Agreement.
+All global climate commitments including those under the Paris Agreement, but excluding those with financial aid conditions.
+All global climate commitments including those under the Paris Agreement with or without financial aid conditions.
+
+The researchers also took into consideration three different probabilities for the four different scenarios. For example, they estimated there’s a 90 percent probability warming would be around 3.7 C under scenario four. They also estimated warming under this scenario would be limited to 2.7 C, but only with a 50 percent probability.
+The researchers note that UNFCCC policymakers have been satisfied with a 66 percent probability when discussing policies to keep warming below 2 C. Under this probability level, total warming ranges from 3 C for scenario four to 4.5 C for scenario one. But what about the reductions due to the Paris Agreement pledges specifically?
+When comparing the level of warming for all Paris Agreement pledges, regardless of financial aid conditions (scenario four), with all climate policies excluding the Paris Agreement (scenario two), the difference is 0.6 C, more than the MIT researchers’ estimate of 0.2 C.
+Why did Rogelj’s study find a larger reduction?
+Unlike the MIT researchers, Rogelj and his group assumed pledges would continue to become progressively more ambitious over time because, “[s]talling climate action after 2030 would be in contradiction with the provisions of the Paris Agreement,” the researchers write.
+Still, in their review of the scientific literature, the researchers found that studies came to “a wide range of estimates of future emissions under nominally similar scenarios.” How much greenhouse gas emissions are put into the atmosphere directly relates to how much the planet will warm, so if researchers have different estimates of emissions, they will also have different estimates for warming.
+For example, countries didn’t submit their pledges under the Paris Agreement all in the same format. Some provided their emissions targets in an absolute format, such as a percentage reduction compared with some baseline. Other countries provided targets in terms of “emissions intensity,” which is a ratio of emissions to economic output. Some countries provided no specific emissions target at all and instead pledged to increase their share of renewable energy or cut their use of fossil fuels.
+Researchers have to translate all of these different quantities into an absolute emissions format in order to come up with an estimate for total warming. And they might not all make these conversions in the same way. Hence, they come to different estimates for warming.
+In short, the assumptions researchers make when calculating global average temperature reductions due to the Paris Agreement influence their final estimates. There are a range of estimates that make different assumptions, and 0.2 C is one of those estimates.
+So, while Trump is right about the estimate from one particular study, a co-author of that report says a more “relevant” estimate of the Paris Agreement’s impact on warming is closer to 1 C. That researcher also disputed the Trump administration’s characterization of the total reduction as “negligible.”
+Even if 0.2 C was the relevant figure, it’s not a negligible quantity when it comes to tropical coral reef bleaching or Arctic sea ice melting.
+
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation.
+
+       Share The Facts    Donald Trump President of the United States         ""Even if the Paris Agreement were implemented in full, with total compliance from all nations, it is estimated it would only produce a two-tenths of one degree ... Celsius reduction in global temperature by the year 2100.""   Rose Garden speech – Thursday, June 1, 2017   Share Read More     Embed     Information on embedding in your site  oEmbed Link  https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/5ba6478c-de9c-45e5-b82c-0f3f616626ab     
+       Share The Facts    Al Gore  Former Vice President          Said ""it's not true"" that the Paris Agreement if fully implemented would reduce the global average temperature by only 0.2 degrees Celsius.   CNN's State of the Union – Sunday, June 4, 2017   Share Read More     Embed     Information on embedding in your site  oEmbed Link  https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/cf8f7c1e-7728-4141-831a-6657a2c12f8b"
+"2.4KFormer Vice President Al Gore and Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt made competing claims about whether the U.S. could have changed its emissions targets under the Paris Agreement, instead of pulling out of the deal. Legal experts side with Gore, who claimed the targets could have been changed.
+The Paris Agreement is voluntary. Countries aren’t penalized for failing to adhere to their proposed emissions cuts. So President Donald Trump could have ignored or changed the U.S. pledged emissions targets without withdrawing from the agreement.  
+The Paris Agreement entered into force on Nov. 4, 2016. It builds on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and was signed by all but two of the 197 countries that are party to the convention. The agreement primarily aims to keep global average temperature “well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels.” The planet has warmed about 1 degree Celsius already, according to NASA.
+To meet this goal, countries submit “nationally determined contributions” that outline their emissions targets, among other aims related to mitigating and adapting to climate change. Under the Obama administration, the U.S. pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 26 percent to 28 percent below its 2005 level in 2025.
+But on June 1, Trump announced the U.S. would “withdraw” from the agreement, an action that couldn’t formally occur before Nov. 4, 2020, the day after Election Day.
+On June 4, Gore told CNN’s Jake Tapper that, under the Paris Agreement, the United States’ emissions “requirements were voluntary,” adding that Trump “could have simply changed those requirements.” 
+The same day, in a debate with NBC’s Chuck Todd, Pruitt argued the opposite. Todd first said, “You can change those targets.” Pruitt responded, “No, no, no. No, not under the agreement. Not under the agreement,” adding, the targets “can only be ratcheted up.”
+We reached out to Gore’s press office, but have yet to hear back. EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman, however, did get back to us. She cited provisions in the agreement — one, for example, that says each country’s “successive nationally determined contribution will represent a progression beyond the Party’s then current nationally determined contribution.”
+But Todd Stern, a former U.S. special envoy for climate change, wrote in a May 8 op-ed for the Washington Post, “countries can adjust their emissions targets downward,” adding, “The agreement permits it, and I know because I helped negotiate that flexibility.”
+While countries were meeting in Paris to negotiate the deal in December 2015, Stern also explained in a press conference that the agreement would entail some legal requirements, but meeting emissions targets wasn’t one of them.
+
+Stern, Dec. 2, 2015: We’ve made our position clear all year long that we support an agreement that’s legally binding in many respects, including the elements of accountability of the agreement, the requirement to put forward a target, to do it with information that clarifies it, the obligation to report and be reviewed on your inventories and the actions you’re taking in order to meet your target. Any number of rules and so forth. So a whole number of elements that are legally binding, but not the target itself.
+
+Legal experts we spoke with also sided with Gore’s position.
+Michael Burger, the executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, told us by email, “My view is that the legal arguments that the Paris Agreement permits countries to adjust their current targets downward are persuasive.” He added, “More importantly, the simple fact is that there are no enforcement mechanisms in the Paris Agreement in regards to the NDCs — that is the whole point of the NDC process. There are no penalties for missing targets set forth in an NDC. And the Paris Agreement does not require EPA to set any particular standard.”
+As for Pruitt’s claim that emissions reduction targets “can only be ratcheted up,” the Paris Agreement says in Article 4.11 that a country “may at any time adjust its existing nationally determined contribution with a view to enhancing its level of ambition.” 
+In an article published by the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, former U.S. State Department Deputy Legal Adviser Susan Biniaz and Daniel Bodansky, an environmental law professor at Arizona State University, said that provision makes clear that “higher ambition is not a legal requirement.”
+
+Biniaz and Bodansky, May 2017: This provision makes clear that, if a party chooses to revise its existing target, it is encouraged to do so in a more ambitious direction. However, higher ambition is not a legal requirement, and Article 4.11 does not legally prohibit a party from adjusting its NDC in another direction.
+
+Biniaz and Bodansky also note that during the negotiation of the Paris Agreement, some negotiators argued for “legally prohibiting a ‘downward’ revision,” but ultimately this idea was rejected. “Some believed the agreement would be more resilient over the long term if it enabled parties to make adjustments, rather than withdraw completely,” they explained.
+David Hunter, a professor of environmental law at American University, also told us by email: “There is nothing stopping a party from submitting a change of commitment that would be weaker, although mid-course changes were expected to be done with a view that new commitments would be stronger.” 
+But Hunter added, “Why else would a party change? It’s cynical at best to argue that we are exiting because we can’t submit a weaker commitment. The parties believed since there was no sanction for failing to meet [targets], why would you ever make a weaker commitment mid-course?”
+So, according to experts, Gore was right, and Pruitt was wrong: The U.S. could have changed its emissions targets, instead of pulling out of the agreement. The U.S. also could have ignored the targets, because there are no penalties for not meeting them.
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation."
+"4.1KPresident Donald Trump wrongly claimed that the Paris Agreement would allow China to “build hundreds of additional coal plants” and allow India to “double its coal production by 2020” but the United States “can’t build the plants.”
+Strictly speaking, there’s nothing in the agreement stipulating which countries can and can’t build coal plants. While the United States is held to a higher standard than developing countries, the two he mentioned — China and India — have agreed to climate measures that would preclude a major expansion of coal. And perhaps most important, new coal plants in the U.S. aren’t economically feasible right now, due to lower costs of other forms of energy.
+“You can’t build them cheaply enough,” James Van Nostrand, director of the Center for Energy and Sustainable Development at West Virginia University’s College of Law, says of new coal plants. Natural gas plants are cheaper to build, more efficient and cleaner. “It’s economics, it’s market forces.” Van Nostrand told us.
+Emissions Targets in the Agreement
+Trump made his claim on June 1 in announcing that the U.S. would withdraw from the Paris Agreement, which he described as “very unfair” to the United States.
+The president has a point that the United States, and other developed countries, aren’t held to the same standards as developing countries. The accord states that they shouldn’t be, given their “different national circumstances.” Developed countries agreed to set economy-wide reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, while developing countries, according to the agreement, “should continue enhancing their mitigation efforts” with the aim of achieving economy-wide absolute reductions eventually.
+The U.S., for instance, set a target of reducing its emissions by 26 percent to 28 percent below its 2005 level by 2025. That’s an absolute reduction. China, meanwhile, set a target that’s a ratio of gross domestic product, which means its total emissions will continue to increase as the country develops. China says it will lower its emissions per unit of gross domestic product within the range of 60 percent to 65 percent below the 2005 level by 2030. And the country set a goal of peaking its carbon dioxide emissions around 2030, with “best efforts to peak early.”
+All 195 countries that signed on to the agreement were asked to submit “nationally determined contributions,” which are voluntary targets for how they will contribute to achieving the agreement’s primary goal — to keep global average temperature “well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels.”
+India, too, has pledged an emissions reduction per unit of GDP, not an absolute reduction. Its target is for emissions per unit of GDP to be within the range of 33 percent to 35 percent below the 2005 level in 2030.
+Since China’s and India’s targets allow emissions to increase until 2030, while the U.S. has set absolute reduction targets, we’ve heard misleading claims that those two developing countries don’t have to do anything until 2030. But as we’ve explained, they do have to take steps to meet those 2030 goals, and both countries have said they’ll increase their share of non-fossil fuel energy.
+China said it would boost non-fossil fuel energy to 20 percent by 2030 to meet its emission targets. The share was 11.2 percent in 2014. India has set a goal of increasing its share of non-fossil fuel installed capacity to 40 percent — that’s up from 30 percent in 2016.
+India’s Central Electricity Authority expects the share of non-fossil fuel installed capacity to reach 46.8 percent by the end of 2022 and 56.5 percent by the end of 2027.
+Those countries can’t hit such targets by relying on coal, experts told us.
+Van Nostrand at West Virginia University told us that while China is committed to growing its economy, it has been willing to commit to reducing the intensity of carbon dioxide. (That’s the reduction as a ratio of GDP.) “You can’t get there if you continue to invest heavily in coal,” he said.
+China is also building fewer coal plants than the country had planned because of air pollution. It canceled plans for 103 plants, some of which were under construction, in January of this year, and had announced other cancellations in 2016.
+India, too, has a goal to reduce carbon intensity, and to meet that goal of 40 percent non-fossil fuel capacity. It’s “hard to keep adding more coal plants,” Van Nostrand notes, if the country is committed to that.
+Ranping Song, the developing country climate action manager for the World Resources Institute, told us in an email that “China and India are more likely … to curb coal growth” than promote it, due to their targets of decreasing reliance on coal and boosting renewable energy. “The latest draft National Electricity Plan of India, which goes through 2027, proposes no new coal-fired power plants at all during this period,” he noted, while “coal consumption in China has declined three years in a row.”
+Plants in the U.S.?
+While the Paris Agreement “does not forbid any country to build coal plants,” as Song told us, the U.S. wouldn’t hit its Paris Agreement targets by building new plants. That said, it’s economic forces, more so than environmental regulations, that has stymied an expansion of coal in this country.
+Trump signed an executive order in March to review and potentially rescind environmental regulations such as President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which aims to reduce carbon emissions for existing power plants. So, without a Paris Agreement and a Clean Power Plan, would the U.S. build new coal plants? “No,” says Van Nostrand. “They don’t make economic sense.”
+He says the utility industry is a “ruthlessly competitive wholesale market” and coal can’t compete right now with natural gas. Even wind is now cheaper than coal. Last year, Bloomberg New Energy Finance provided us with prices for the second half of 2016, showing onshore wind at $56 per megawatt hour in the U.S. on average compared with coal at $65 per MWh, not including government subsidies.
+Gary Cohn, director of the president’s National Economic Council, also has acknowledged that natural gas is more competitive than coal. He told reporters on Air Force One in late May that “coal doesn’t even make that much sense anymore as a feedstock. Natural gas, which we have become an abundant producer, which we’re going to become a major exporter of, is such a cleaner fuel.”
+In his June 1 speech on the Paris Agreement, Trump also claimed that the accord “effectively blocks the development of clean coal in America.” But the only way to meet emissions targets in the agreement with coal is by using clean coal.
+“If anything the Paris Agreement encourages clean coal technologies,” Van Nostrand said.
+Of course if a coal plant isn’t cost-effective right now, neither is a more expensive plant with clean coal technology. But without this agreement to cut carbon emissions, he said, “you have no reason to spend that extra money.”"
+"19.2K1In announcing that the U.S. would withdraw from the Paris Agreement, a global accord aimed at addressing climate change, President Donald Trump made more than a few false and misleading claims:
+
+Trump said the U.S. would be exposed to “massive legal liability if we stay in” the Paris Agreement. But there is no liability mechanism in the Paris Agreement. International environmental law experts tell us that pulling out of the agreement won’t reduce U.S. exposure to liability claims and, in fact, may increase it.
+Trump called China and India the “world’s leading polluters,” referring to carbon emissions. That’s not accurate. China and the U.S. were the top emitters per kiloton in 2015.
+The president also falsely said “nobody even knows where the money [in the Green Climate Fund] is going to.” The fund’s website outlines all of the projects that have been funded.
+Trump said the agreement would cost “close to $3 trillion in lost GDP.” That’s one estimate from a report for a business-funded group that found a much smaller impact under a different scenario. Yet another analysis said the impact of meeting the emissions targets would be “modest.”
+Trump again took credit for job gains, saying the economy has added more than a million private sector jobs since his election. That’s true, but only 493,000 of them were added since he took office.
+
+The Paris Agreement was reached on Dec. 12, 2015. It builds on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and it was accepted by all but two of the 197 countries that were party to the convention.
+Trump made his announcement on the Paris Agreement in a speech in the Rose Garden at the White House. The president, who promised during the campaign to withdraw from the climate agreement, said “the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate accord, but begin negotiations to reenter either the Paris accord” or another “entirely new transaction, on terms that are fair to the United States.”
+The process for withdrawal isn’t easy. It will take nearly four years to complete the process, meaning that the final decision would not happen until after the 2020 presidential election.
+
+‘Massive Legal Liability’?
+In listing his reasons why the U.S. should pull out of the Paris climate agreement, Trump claimed that the U.S. would be exposed to “massive legal liability if we stay in.” But international environmental law experts say that that is not true.
+Trump, June 1: The risks grow as historically these agreements only tend to become more and more ambitious over time. In other words, the Paris framework is just a starting point, as bad as it is, not an end point. And exiting the agreement protects the United States from future intrusions on the United States sovereignty and massive future legal liability. Believe me, we have massive legal liability if we stay in.
+Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, told us Trump is wrong. He said the U.S. actually may be more exposed to lawsuits if it withdraws from the agreement.
+“Withdrawal may actually create a greater likelihood of success in lawsuits challenging government inaction,” Burger told us. “So not only is he wrong, he actually has it backwards.”
+We also asked James Salzman, a professor of environmental law at the UCLA School of Law and at UC Santa Barbara, if it is true that the U.S. would be exposed to “massive legal liability” if it remained in the Paris Agreement.
+“No. It is not true,” Salzman told us in an email. “There is no liability mechanism under the Paris Agreement. There was language in the agreement about loss and damage from climate change but the accompanying decision text stated clearly that this does not provide a basis of liability and compensation for claims. Ironically, this text had been added to address U.S. concerns.”
+Liability and compensation were key issues in negotiating the Paris Agreement. Poor developing countries wanted the agreement to address compensation for losses and damages resulting from climate change. But wealthier countries “feared setting a precedent that might create legal liability for harms attributable to climate change,” the World Resources Institute wrote in a Dec. 24, 2015, blog post after the contentious issue was settled.
+At a press conference in Paris on Dec. 2, 2015, Todd Stern, the U.S. special envoy for climate change, said that the United States acknowledged the need to address the issue of losses and damages, but it would not accept an agreement that would expose it to future liability claims.
+“On loss and damage there are ongoing negotiations on this. We have made it clear that we are supportive of the concept broadly speaking,” Stern said. “We’ve also made it clear that we are not at all supportive of and would not accept the notion of liability and compensation being part of that.”
+The final agreement, which was reached on Dec. 12, 2015, contained a compromise. There was a separate article in the agreement “recognizing the importance of ‘averting, minimizing and addressing loss and damage,'” but it also included “language clarifying that the article on loss and damage does not provide a basis for liability or compensation,” as explained by the World Resources Institute.
+World Resources Institute, Dec. 24, 2015: The loss and damage article of the agreement calls on countries to cooperate to enhance understanding, action and support in areas such as early warning systems, disaster preparedness, risk assessment and management, and insurance. It also states the need for greater cooperation in building the resilience of communities, livelihoods and ecosystems, and in understanding non-economic losses associated with climate change, such as damage to sites with cultural or historic importance. The COP decision text accompanying the Agreement establishes a task force for addressing human displacement associated with climate change. It also includes language clarifying that the article on loss and damage does not provide a basis for liability or compensation.
+Dan Bodansky, co-director of the Center for Law and Global Affairs at Arizona State University, said Trump’s claim is “completely untrue.”
+“To the extent large emitters like the US are liable for climate change damages, the liability arises under general international law (and, in particular, the customary duty to use due diligence to prevent significant transboundary harms), not the Paris Agreement, so pulling out wouldn’t affect US exposure to claims for climate damages,” Bodansky told us in an email. “Conversely, pulling out in violation of international law or staying in the agreement but violating its terms actually opens up the United States to ‘counter-measures’ by other countries.”
+Who Emits the Most?
+Speaking about carbon emissions, Trump called China and India the “world’s leading polluters” and the U.S. the “world’s leader in environmental protection.” That’s not entirely accurate.
+China and the U.S. were the top emitters per kiloton in 2015. In fact, Americans emitted more than twice as much as the Chinese and over eight times as much as Indians per capita in 2015.
+Trump, June 1: As someone who cares deeply about the environment, which I do, I cannot in good conscious support a deal that punishes the United States, which is what it does. The world’s leader in environmental protection, while imposing no meaningful obligations on the world’s leading polluters. For example, under the agreement, China will be able to increase these emissions by a staggering number of years, 13. They can do whatever they want for 13 years. Not us. India makes its participation contingent on receiving billions and billions and billions of dollars in foreign aid from developed countries. There are many other examples. But the bottom line is that the Paris Accord is very unfair at the highest level to the United States.
+We’ve written about this claim before. In March, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt claimed China and India are “the largest producers of CO2 internationally.”
+
+
+
+Country
+Total Kilotons of CO2
+Percentage of Global Total
+
+
+China
+10,641,788.99
+29.4
+
+
+US
+5,172,337.73
+14.3
+
+
+EU
+3,469,670.82
+9.6
+
+
+India
+ 2,454,968.12
+6.8
+
+
+
+According to the European Commission’s Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research, in 2015 China came in first for total kilotons of carbon dioxide emitted. The U.S., the European Union and India trailed China in that order (see table left).
+Per capita, however, the U.S. pumped out more CO2 than China and India combined in 2015. On average, each individual living in the United States contributed 16.07 tons to the country’s total. But each individual living in China and India contributed 7.73 and 1.87 tons on average, respectively.
+China still emits the most overall because its population is almost 1.4 billion people, while nearly 325 million live in the U.S. More than 1.3 billion people live in India.
+Economic Impact
+Trump claimed that the “cost to the economy at this time would be close to $3 trillion in lost GDP” under the Paris Agreement. That figure is for the year 2040 and for one scenario in a report that found a smaller impact under a different scenario. Another analysis estimated the potential economic impact of meeting the Paris Agreement emissions targets would be “modest” and the cost of delaying action would be “high.”
+We looked at the potential impact of the Paris Agreement on GDP in May, after Trump claimed that “full compliance with the agreement could ultimately shrink America’s GDP by $2.5 trillion over a 10-year period.” That was actually an estimate for a 20-year period, and it came from researchers for the conservative Heritage Foundation. They concluded that the Paris Agreement “will result in over $2.5 trillion in lost GDP by 2035,” according to the April 2016 report, by using a carbon tax rate from the Environmental Protection Agency for the social cost of carbon. (For context, the total U.S. GDP was $18.6 trillion in 2016.)
+But a November 2016 report by the economic analysis group Resources for the Future used a carbon tax rate that would be needed for the U.S. to meet its pledged emissions target under the Paris Agreement by 2025. That analysis concluded that “the size of the 2025 carbon taxes and their corresponding economic costs are modest.” And the researchers said that “the cost of delaying the implementation of a carbon tax is high.” Delaying implementation of the agreement would raise the cost of a carbon tax needed to meet the 2025 emissions target.
+In his June 1 speech, Trump cites an estimate from the National Economic Research Associates Economic Consulting. NERA prepared a March 2017 report for the American Council for Capital Formation Center for Policy Research, part of a group that acts “as a liaison between Washington’s leading policymakers, the press, and representatives of the business community,” according to its website. The Institute for 21st Century Energy at the U.S. Chambers of Commerce also sponsored the report.
+That report estimated an annual loss in GDP of “nearly $3 trillion by 2040.” That’s under one scenario that assumes emissions caps are set for four broad sectors in order to meet the U.S. emission targets under the Paris Agreement. The study created “different scenarios to reflect different ways in which reduction programs might be implemented or regulated.” The final, or fifth, scenario “layers regulatory measures on top of a cap-and-trade approach, a hybrid approach.” That scenario has a much lower impact on GDP, according to the study.
+While the average yearly reduction in GDP was 6.8 percent under scenario 1 from 2034-2040, the average yearly reduction was 2.2 percent over that time period under scenario 5.
+So the actual cost to the economy depends on how the U.S. would go about meeting its target emissions reduction. Trump’s claim that the cost “at this time would be close to $3 trillion in lost GDP” leaves out the fact that it’s an estimate for the year 2040 and that another scenario in that same study estimated a much lower impact.
+The Green Climate Fund
+The Green Climate Fund is a United Nations program that uses funds collected from industrialized countries and other sources to back climate mitigation and adaptation projects in developing countries.
+Trump falsely said “nobody even knows where the money” contributed to the Green Climate Fund “is going to.” The fund’s website outlines all of the projects that have been funded.
+This isn’t the first time Trump has made a questionable claim about funding related to the Paris Agreement. Back in April he made this claim.
+
+Trump, April 29: Our government rushed to join international agreements where the United States pays the costs and bears the burdens while other countries get the benefit and pay nothing. This includes deals like the one-sided Paris climate accord, where the United States pays billions of dollars while China, Russia and India have contributed and will contribute nothing.
+
+As we wrote at the time, industrialized countries are expected to help fund climate change mitigation efforts in developing countries, which include China and India, under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The Paris Agreement builds upon the UNFCCC and follows the same logic when it comes to funding.
+The Green Climate Fund is one funding mechanism set up by the UNFCCC to serve this purpose. The U.S. has promised to contribute $3 billion to this fund, and it has contributed $1 billion to date. The fund’s “pledge tracker” states that the U.S. contribution is “[s]ubject to the availability of funds. USD 500 million provided to date.” But a State Department official told us that the fund has received $1 billion from the U.S., as announced on Jan. 17 by the State Department.
+So far, this fund has supported 43 projects that help developing countries mitigate and adapt to climate change, such as projects to improve their renewable energy sectors. That’s contrary to Trump’s claim that “nobody even knows where the money [in the Green Climate Fund] is going to.”
+Correction, June 2: An earlier version of this story said: “Trump falsely claimed the ‘United States has already handed over $1 billion’ to the Green Climate Fund. The U.S. has contributed $500 million to the fund so far.” We were wrong. The State Department on Jan. 17 – three days before Trump took office – made the second of two $500 million payments to the fund. We regret the error. 
+‘A Million Jobs’?
+Trump again took credit for job gains, saying the economy has added more than a million private sector jobs since his election. That’s true, but only 493,000 of them were added since he took office.
+Moreover, Trump suggests the economy is only now “starting to come back,” but jobs data show the U.S. has been steadily adding jobs every month since early 2010.
+Trump, June 1: I’d like to begin with an update on our tremendous, absolutely tremendous economic progress since Election Day on Nov. 8. The economy is starting to come back, and very, very rapidly. We have added $3.3 trillion in stock market value to our economy, and more than a million private sector jobs.
+It’s true the U.S. has added just over a million private sector jobs since November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But Barack Obama was the president — albeit a lame-duck president — until Jan. 20. In touting job gains, Trump has frequently, and inaccurately, counted January jobs in his total as president. But as we have noted, the January numbers were based on a survey that was concluded before Trump took office. Just counting the job gains in February, March and April — the only figures available from BLS when Trump made his speech — the total number of private sector jobs added since Trump took office is 493,000.
+Although BLS had not yet announced its May job totals, the payroll processor ADP estimated employers added a better-than-projected 253,000 jobs that month.
+“Job growth is rip-roaring,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, which helps produce the report. “The current pace of job growth is nearly three times the rate necessary to absorb growth in the labor force. Increasingly, businesses’ number one challenge will be a shortage of labor.”
+But as this chart from BLS shows, Trump is wrong to say the economy “is starting to come back” since his election. In fact, the economy has been steadily adding jobs for years. The nation has now experienced positive job growth for 79 straight months, with 76 of those under Trump’s predecessor.
+
+“The job market is great and getting better,” Zandi told us via email. “But it is unfair to say the good economic news began with Trump’s election. The economy has been consistently creating jobs for about 7 years – a record length of time. And the pace of job growth has been very consistent; the same before and after the President’s inauguration. The economy was on fundamentally solid ground when Trump took office, and that hasn’t changed.”
+Correction, Oct. 27: There were 76 straight months of job growth under Obama — not 75 as we originally wrote — and 79 straight months of growth through April.
+
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation."
+"2.2KTrump made two claims about the Paris Agreement, a global accord aimed at addressing climate change, that require context:
+
+Trump said that the U.S. “pays billions of dollars” for the Paris Agreement, but China, Russia and India have paid “nothing.” The U.S. has pledged $3 billion, but so far has paid $1 billion. The agreement requires developed countries, such as the U.S., to help developing countries, including China and India, with mitigating climate change. Russia has not ratified the agreement.
+He said that “the agreement could ultimately shrink America’s GDP by $2.5 trillion over a 10-year period.” But that estimate is over 20 years, not 10, and it comes from a conservative think tank. Another analysis described the potential economic impact as “modest” and the cost of delaying action as “high.” 
+
+Trump made his claims at a rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on his 100th day in office, April 29.
+
+Trump, April 29: Our government rushed to join international agreements where the United States pays the costs and bears the burdens while other countries get the benefit and pay nothing. This includes deals like the one-sided Paris climate accord, where the United States pays billions of dollars while China, Russia and India have contributed and will contribute nothing. Does that remind you of the Iran deal? How about that beauty, right? On top of all of that, it’s estimated that full compliance with the agreement could ultimately shrink America’s GDP by $2.5 trillion over a 10-year period. That means factories and plants closing all over our country. Here we go again. Not with me, folks. Those are the facts, whether we like them or not. 
+
+The Paris Agreement entered into force on Nov. 4, 2016. It primarily aims to keep global average temperature “well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels,” but preferably “to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C” above pre-industrial levels. The planet has warmed about 1 degree Celsius already, according to NASA.
+U.S. ‘Pays Billions’ for Paris Agreement?
+The Paris Agreement builds upon the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, a treaty which entered into force in March 1994. With 197 countries taking part in the UNFCCC, it has “near-universal membership” across the globe.
+The main aim of the UNFCCC is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations “at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic (human induced) interference with the climate system,” a task that “should be achieved within a time-frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened, and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.”
+Industrialized countries, which the UNFCCC calls Annex I countries, are expected to do the most to cut emissions because “they are the source of most past and current greenhouse gas emissions,” according to the UNFCCC. Annex I countries include the U.S. and Russia.
+Under the UNFCCC, industrialized countries are also expected to help fund climate change initiatives in developing countries, or Non Annex I countries, which include China and India. The Paris Agreement itself follows much of the same logic, and it uses funding mechanisms set up under the UNFCCC.
+Those funding mechanisms include grants and loans managed by the Global Environment Facility, which funds climate initiatives as well as projects related to other environmental issues, such as biodiversity, forests and chemical waste.
+Countries could also contribute funds to the Green Climate Fund, a separate program for the transfer of funds from industrialized to developing countries. So far, this fund has backed 43 projects that help developing countries mitigate and adapt to climate change, such as projects to improve their renewable energy sectors.
+To “pay” for the Paris Agreement, countries would contribute money to the above funds, in addition to spending money to combat climate change within their own borders.
+But when we asked the White House for support for Trump’s claim that the U.S. “pays billions of dollars” for the Paris Agreement while China, Russia and India have paid and will pay “nothing,” White House spokesman Steven Cheung specifically referred us to the Green Climate Fund.
+The U.S. has promised to contribute $3 billion to this fund, but as of March 3 it has contributed only $1 billion. The fund’s website states that the U.S. contribution is “[s]ubject to the availability of funds.”
+Even if the U.S. does provide $3 billion to this fund, it still wouldn’t have contributed the most on a per-capita basis. Sweden has already contributed $581 million, which is nearly $60 per person — the largest per-capita contribution of any country. And Luxembourg has pledged, but not fully contributed, nearly $94 per person, which would make it the largest. In fact, the U.S. ranked 11th in its pledged contribution per capita, after a number of European countries and Japan.
+Meanwhile, China and India haven’t contributed to the Green Climate Fund. Of the 43 governments that have pledged money to the fund, only nine represent developing countries, the fund’s website says.
+Russia hasn’t contributed any funds either, but it also hasn’t ratified the Paris Agreement or submitted an outline of what actions it will take to play a part in achieving the accord’s primary aim, namely, to keep global temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. This outline, what the UNFCCC calls a country’s “nationally determined contribution,” might include actions such as increasing its share of renewable energy or quantifying how much it will cut emissions overall. The U.S., for example, has pledged to cut emissions to 26 percent to 28 percent below its 2005 level by 2025.
+China, India, Russia and the U.S. were all donors in the latest funding cycle for the Global Environment Facility. Out of a total of $4.43 billion for the 2014 to 2018 cycle, U.S. funds made up 14.7 percent, or just over $651 million; China contributed 0.54 percent, or almost $24 million; Russia gave 0.4 percent, or $17.7 million; and India provided 0.32 percent, or just over $14 million. The U.S. contributed the second most overall, topped by Japan, which contributed 16.34 percent, or almost $724 million.
+It’s also important to mention that, per capita, the U.S. emitted more greenhouse gases than China and India combined in 2015, as we’ve written previously.
+Each person living in the United States contributed 16.07 tons to the country’s total on average, while each person living in China and India contributed 7.73 and 1.87 tons on average, respectively. However, China still emits the most in total tons because its population is almost 1.4 billion people, while nearly 325 million live in the United States. Russia, on the other hand, emitted 12.27 tons per person on average in 2015, or the 5th most in total tons, after China, the U.S., the European Union and India.
+Significant Economic Harm?
+To support Trump’s claim that “full compliance with the agreement could ultimately shrink America’s GDP by $2.5 trillion over a 10-year period,” Cheung, the White House spokesman, pointed us to a March commentary piece on the Heritage Foundation’s website. That referred to work originally done by Heritage Foundation senior statistician Kevin D. Dayaratna and others in an April 2016 report. The Heritage Foundation’s mission is to ��formulate and promote conservative public policies.”
+
+
+Dayaratna and his group concluded that the Paris Agreement “will result in over $2.5 trillion in lost GDP by 2035,” which would be a 20-year period, not a 10-year period, as Trump said. GDP, or gross domestic product, is a measure of a country’s economic output.
+We asked Roberton C. Williams III, a resource economist at the University of Maryland and a senior fellow and director of academic programs at the economic analysis group Resources for the Future, to review the Heritage Foundation’s report. He called the $2.5 trillion figure a “reasonable estimate,” given the numbers and methodology used in the report, but said it was “expressed in a misleading way.”
+The standard, he said, is to express lost GDP as a percentage of total GDP. So the foundation’s total amount — $2.5 trillion in lost GDP by 2035 — would be equivalent to a 0.55 percent decrease on average in the total GDP per year, he calculated. Williams also emphasized that the annual 0.55 percent reduction in total GDP is not to be confused with a 0.55 percent drop in the real GDP growth rate, which was 1.6 percent in 2016. The total U.S. GDP was $18.6 trillion in 2016.
+To estimate the effect of the Paris Agreement on U.S. GDP, Dayaratna and his colleagues at the Heritage Foundation plugged a carbon tax rate — which started at $36 (in 2007 dollars) in 2015 and increased 3 percent each year thereafter — into what they called the “Heritage Energy Model.” This model, the authors say, is a “clone” of the National Energy Model System used by the federal Energy Information Administration.
+A carbon tax “directly sets a price on carbon by defining a tax rate on greenhouse gas emissions or – more commonly – on the carbon content of fossil fuels,” writes the World Bank. The specific carbon tax rate the Heritage Foundation authors used comes from the Environmental Protection Agency’s estimate for the social cost of carbon, which takes into consideration “long-term damage done by a ton of carbon dioxide,” including changes in agricultural productivity, human health and property damage.
+Dayaratna and his colleagues say in their report: “Modeling tax changes as a substitute for quantifying the economic impact of regulatory proposals is a widely accepted practice.” Williams confirmed that this is in fact the case.
+
+Williams told us economists consider multiple factors when choosing what specific carbon tax rate to use when estimating economic effects. Economists might use what he called a “politically viable” rate based on a carbon tax already proposed by a politician. They might also use a carbon tax rate associated with the social cost of carbon for a particular country or region, as the Heritage Foundation authors did. Or economists might use a carbon tax rate that would be needed to meet a specific emissions target.
+
+When it comes to the Paris Agreement, Williams said going the third route makes the most sense; that is, calculating what carbon tax rate would be needed for the U.S. to meet its pledged emissions target of 26 percent to 28 percent below its 2005 level by 2025. In fact, Williams pointed us to a November 2016 report by Resources for the Future that did exactly that.
+Yunguang Chen and Marc A.C. Hafstead, both fellows at the organization, found that a constant carbon tax of $21.22 (in 2013 dollars) starting in 2017 would allow the U.S. to meet its Paris Agreement target by 2025. The U.S. could alternatively use a carbon tax rate starting at $16.87 in 2017 and rising at 3 percent per year to meet its target. This, and similar carbon tax rates, would reduce the real GDP from 2017 to 2025 by between just under 0.10 percent and 0.35 percent per year, depending on how the revenue from the taxes are used and depending on the year. (See figure 4.) Those figures are lower than the equivalent 0.55 percent per year decrease in real GDP from the Heritage study.
+The authors conclude that “the size of the 2025 carbon taxes and their corresponding economic costs are modest.” They also say that “the cost of delaying the implementation of a carbon tax is high.”
+“Delaying implementation until 2020 raises the costs of using an economy-wide carbon tax to meet the 2025 targets by 12 percent relative to implementing the policy in 2017,” the report says. “Delaying until 2023 increases the costs relative to 2017 by over 29 percent.”
+Geoffrey Heal, a resource and environmental economist at Columbia University, told us the cost of doing nothing would be “very expensive.”
+“The Paris agreement will cost little or nothing and allowing climate change to proceed would be very expensive indeed,” Heal said, adding that “staying in Paris does not fully prevent climate change but it’s a good start.”
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation.
+Correction, June 7: This article originally said the U.S. had contributed $500 million to the Green Climate Fund. That’s wrong. The U.S. has contributed $1 billion."
+"3KAppearing on ABC’s “This Week,” Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt made two false claims about the Paris Accord, a global agreement aimed at addressing climate change:
+
+He claimed China and India are “the largest producers of CO2 internationally.” China is the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide per kiloton, followed by the United States. Per capita, the U.S. emits more than twice as much as China and over eight times more than India.
+He said that China and India don’t “have to take steps until 2030” under the Paris Accord. But both countries would have to take steps before 2030 to meet goals they set for that year.
+
+Pruitt made his claims on March 26 during an interview with George Stephanopoulos, the host of “This Week.”
+
+Pruitt, March 26: You mentioned the Paris accord. You know, what was wrong with Paris was not just that it was — you know, failed to be treated as a treaty, but China and India got away, the largest producers of CO2 internationally, got away scot-free. They didn’t have to take steps until 2030. So we penalized ourselves through lost jobs while China and India didn’t take steps to address the issue internationally. So Paris was just a bad deal, in my estimation.
+
+First, we’ll explain who emits the most carbon dioxide using two different metrics — per kiloton and per capita.
+According to the European Commission’s Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research, in 2015 China ranked first in total kilotons of carbon dioxide emitted. It was followed by the U.S., the European Union and India.
+
+
+
+Country
+Total Kilotons of CO2
+Percentage of Global Total
+
+
+China
+10,641,788.99
+29.4
+
+
+US
+5,172,337.73
+14.3
+
+
+EU
+3,469,670.82
+9.6
+
+
+India
+ 2,454,968.12
+6.8
+
+
+
+But per capita, the U.S. emitted more than China and India combined in 2015. Each person living in the United States contributed 16.07 tons to the country’s total on average, while each person living in China and India contributed 7.73 and 1.87 tons on average, respectively. China still emits the most overall because its population is almost 1.4 billion people, while nearly 325 million live in the U.S. More than 1.3 billion people live in India.
+People living in Qatar emitted more than any other country by a long shot at 39.74 tons per capita. The U.S., China and India ranked 12th, 38th and 123rd, respectively, in emissions per capita.
+As for the Paris Accord, both China and India have pledged to take steps to meet emission reduction goals by 2030.
+Entered into force on Nov. 4, 2016, the Paris Accord primarily aims to keep global average temperature “well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels,” with efforts “to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C” above pre-industrial levels. The planet has warmed about 1 degree Celsius already, according to NASA.
+All participating countries are asked to submit “nationally determined contributions,” which outline how they will contribute to achieving the accord’s primary aim. Though there is no penalty for not meeting the countries’ individual goals, the accord requires countries to improve their efforts over time and to regularly report their progress.
+The accord also states that developing and developed countries shouldn’t be held to the same standards, given their “different national circumstances.” For example, developed countries are expected to undertake “economy-wide absolute emission reduction targets” now, while developing countries “should continue enhancing their mitigation efforts” with the aim of achieving economy-wide absolute reductions eventually.
+Let’s use the nationally determined contributions of the U.S. and China to illustrate the difference between these standards.
+Among other things, China, a developing country, says it will lower its emissions per unit of GDP within the range of 60 percent to 65 percent below the 2005 level by 2030. Whereas the U.S., a developed country, has pledged to achieve an “economy-wide target” of reducing its emissions within the range of 26 percent to 28 percent below its 2005 level by 2025.
+The United States’ contribution is an absolute amount, while China’s is a ratio of emissions to unit of gross domestic product, a measure of a country’s economic health and standard of living. This ratio considers China’s need to further develop, a side effect of which is that its total emissions will continue to increase. However, another one of China’s goals under the Paris Accord is to “achieve the peaking of carbon dioxide emissions around 2030,” with “best efforts to peak early.”
+As of 2014, China’s emissions per unit of GDP were 33.8 percent lower than the 2005 level, according to the country’s nationally determined contribution. The country has achieved this, in part, by amping up its renewable energy. China’s installed capacity for solar power in 2014 was 400 times its capacity in 2005, for example. Similarly, hydropower and wind power increased 2.57 times and 90 times, respectively, from 2005 levels.
+To meet its emission reduction goal, China also has said it will increase its share of non-fossil fuel energy to 20 percent above 2005 levels by 2030. The share was 11.2 percent above 2005 levels in 2014.
+In March 2015, when the U.S. submitted its goals to the Paris Accord, the Obama administration said that the rate of U.S. emission reduction would be 1.2 percent per year on average between 2005 and 2020. In order to reduce emissions by 26 percent to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, this rate would then have to increase to a range of 2.3 percent to 2.8 percent per year on average between 2020 and 2025, the White House said.
+Under the Obama administration, the U.S. enacted a host of regulations to meet its goal in 2025, including cutting carbon pollution from new and existing power plants and improving fuel economy standards for vehicles.
+However, it’s unclear whether the U.S. will continue to strive to meet its nationally determined contribution, since President Donald Trump has said he would “cancel the Paris Agreement.”
+On March 28, Trump also signed an executive order that directs all agencies to review and potentially rescind regulatory actions that may “burden the development or use of domestically produced energy resources, with particular attention to oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear energy resources.” Among those actions is the Clean Power Plan, one of President Obama’s main policies to combat climate change.
+While the order didn’t directly address the Paris Accord, “experts note that if the Trump program is enacted, it will all but ensure that the United States cannot meet its clean air commitments under the accord,” reported the New York Times.
+As for India, also a developing country, it has pledged to reduce its emissions per unit of GDP to within the range of 33 percent to 35 percent below the 2005 level in 2030. India already reduced its emissions per unit of GDP by 12 percent between 2005 and 2010, according to its nationally determined contribution. It has done so, in part, by expanding its use of renewable energy. For example, the country’s solar power installed capacity in 2015 was almost 1,100 times that of 2005.
+Another one of India’s goals under the accord is to increase its share of non-fossil fuel installed capacity to 40 percent, up from 30 percent in 2016. In fact, the country reports that it is set to exceed this goal at a earlier date. India’s Central Electricity Authority expects the country to increase its share of non-fossil fuel installed capacity to 46.8 percent by the end of 2022 and to 56.5 percent by the end of 2027.
+While the U.S. is being held to higher standards under the Paris Accord than China and India, Pruitt is still wrong to say that these two countries don’t “have to take steps until 2030.” They have already taken steps to address climate change, and they pledged to continue to do so in order to meet their goals by 2030.
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation.
+       Share The Facts    Scott Pruitt EPA Administrator          ""You know what was wrong with Paris [Accord] ... China and India got away, the largest producers of CO2 internationally, got away scot-free. They didn’t have to take steps until 2030.""   Interview on ABC's ""This Week."" – Sunday, March 26, 2017   Share Read More     Embed     Information on embedding in your site  oEmbed Link  https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/75b46d77-ce50-49b9-8b5d-930774acfb17"
+"4.1KThe head of the Environmental Protection Agency told CNBC that he “would not agree” that “human activity,” or carbon dioxide emissions, is the “primary contributor” to global warming. But climate scientists say it’s “extremely likely” that human activity, including CO2 emissions, is the main cause of warming since the mid-20th century.
+Scott Pruitt made his claim in an interview with CNBC’s Joe Kernen.
+Kernen, March 9: Do you believe that it’s been proven that CO2 is the primary control knob for climate? Do you believe that?
+Pruitt: No I, no I think that, that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact. So no, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the, to the global warming that we see. But we don’t know that yet, as far as, we, we need, we need to continue the debate, continue the review and the analysis.
+As we have written, Pruitt and others in President Donald Trump’s cabinet have taken the position lately that the climate is changing and humans have contributed, but they have said that scientists can’t measure or don’t understand human impact precisely. As we’ve said, scientists can measure that impact with varying levels of certainty and precision.
+This time Pruitt went a little further when he disagreed that “human activity,” or CO2 emissions, is a “primary contributor.” We asked the EPA if Pruitt was referring to human activity generally or just CO2 emissions, but EPA spokeswoman Julia Valentine declined to answer our question. So we’ll address both human activity’s contribution as a whole and CO2 emissions in particular.
+According to the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fifth assessment report, it is “extremely likely” (at least 95 percent probable) that more than half of the observed temperature increase since the mid-2oth century is due to human, or anthropogenic, activities.
+IPCC, 2014: Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have increased since the pre-industrial era, driven largely by economic and population growth, and are now higher than ever. This has led to atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide that are unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years. Their effects, together with those of other anthropogenic drivers, have been detected throughout the climate system and are extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.
+To be clear, increased anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions aren’t just caused by the burning of fossil fuels, and they don’t just include CO2. Other greenhouse gases include methane and nitrous oxide, and other sources include deforestation, decomposition of wastes in landfills and agriculture. Still, the report adds, “Emissions of CO2 from fossil fuel combustion and industrial processes contributed about 78% of the total GHG emissions increase from 1970 to 2010.”
+What about natural contributors to global warming?
+NASA explains that “carbon dioxide is released through natural processes such as respiration and volcano eruptions,” for example. The agency also says, “It’s reasonable to assume that changes in the sun’s energy output would cause the climate to change, since the sun is the fundamental source of energy that drives our climate system,” adding that “studies show that solar variability has played a role in past climate changes.”
+But when scientists who contributed to the IPCC report examined trends in global warming, they ruled out these natural factors as the primary cause. In fact, they are “virtually certain” (at least 99 percent probable) that natural climatic variability “alone cannot account for the observed global warming since 1951.”
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation.
+       Share The Facts    Scott Pruitt EPA Administrator          Says human activity, or carbon dioxide emissions, is not the “primary contributor” to global warming.   CNBC's ""Squawk Box"" – Thursday, March 9, 2017   Share Read More     Embed     Information on embedding in your site  oEmbed Link  https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/b73743b2-1a71-4c37-80e0-562c6cc991b7"
+"2.3K1
+The Line: Scientists cannot precisely measure climate change nor the impact of human activity on climate change.
+The Party: Republican
+In the past, some Republicans have denied that global warming and climate change are occurring — calling the former a “hoax” and the latter “pseudoscientific.” In recent months, a number of President Donald Trump’s cabinet members have taken a different stance: They acknowledge that the climate is changing and humans have contributed, but they’ve said that scientists can’t measure or don’t understand human impact precisely.
+But scientists can measure that impact with varying levels of certainty and precision.
+During his confirmation hearing on Jan. 18, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt said, “Science tells us that the climate is changing and that human activity in some manner impacts that change,” adding, “The ability to measure with precision the degree and extent of that impact, and what to do about it, are subject to continuing debate and dialogue, and well it should be.”
+Pruitt repeated this claim on Feb. 28 in an interview with CNN’S Wolf Blitzer and on Feb. 25 at the Conservative Political Action Conference. For example, he told Blitzer “we know that there is a warming or — a warming of the planet; climate change is occurring; and there’s some human contribution to that or human activity that contributes to that. How to measure that precisely is very challenging.”
+Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have made similar remarks.
+At his confirmation hearing on Jan. 11, Tillerson said, “The increase in the greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere are having an effect. Our ability to predict that effect is very limited.”
+While “precision” and “very limited” are subjective terms, scientists have differing degrees of confidence when linking different phenomena to increased atmospheric greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels.
+Scientists’ confidence in a particular theory corresponds to the number of times they’ve verified that theory using different lines of evidence: The more verification, the more confidence, the more likely it is that scientific estimations and predictions are and will be accurate.
+Confidence in one theory can also rely, in part, on confidence in another theory. In this case, the theory of climate change rests upon the accuracy of the theory of global warming, which depends on the theory of the greenhouse effect.
+From the Greenhouse Effect to Global Warming
+Scientists have the most confidence in the greenhouse effect — that carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases trap the sun’s heat — because they’ve verified it countless times since the physicist Joseph Fourier first proposed it in 1824.
+In fact, the design of heat-seeking missiles relies upon a precise understanding of the greenhouse effect.
+Because of their confidence in the greenhouse effect, scientists also are nearly certain that increased atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration from the burning of fossil fuels has led and will continue to lead to a warmer Earth.
+According to the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2013 assessment report, scientists are “virtually certain” (99 percent to 100 percent confident) that natural climatic variability “alone cannot account for the observed global warming since 1951.” The report concludes that it is “extremely likely” (95 percent to 100 percent confident) that more than half of the observed temperature increase since 1950 is due to human activities.
+This graph shows that the increase in average global temperature paralleled an increase in carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere.
+Since 2013, the trend has only continued.
+After independently analyzing temperature records dating back to the 1800s, NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.K.’s Met Office all concluded that 2015 and 2016 were likely the two hottest years on record.
+From Global Warming to Climate Change
+Multiple lines of evidence also suggest that global warming has changed and will continue to change climate and weather patterns around the world, namely by increasing sea levels and increasing the likelihood of extreme weather events. However, scientists have different confidence levels when attributing these various phenomena to global warming.
+Take sea level rise: Hundreds of scientists who collaborated on the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s 2014 report have “very high” confidence that global sea level has risen about 8 inches since 1880.
+“Very high” confidence means evidence comes from “multiple sources” that obtained “consistent results” using “well documented and accepted methods,” which led to “high consensus” within the scientific community.
+The authors also have “medium confidence that global sea level rise will be in the range of 1 to 4 feet by 2100” (see image below).
+“Medium” confidence means evidence comes from “a few sources” that used “emerging” methods and obtained “limited consistency,” which has led to “competing schools of thought” within the scientific community.
+Credit: J. Willis, Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This figure appears in chapter 2 of the Climate Change Impacts in the United States: The Third National Climate Assessment report (2014).
+To be clear, this doesn’t mean that global sea level won’t continue to rise — it will.
+Rather, scientists have some uncertainty about the when and the how much of sea level rise. Uncertainty results from difficulty in predicting “how ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica will react to a warming climate,” the authors explain. Given this uncertainty, “Some decision-makers may wish to consider a broader range of scenarios such as 8 inches or 6.6 feet by 2100 in the context of risk-based analysis,” the authors add.
+But in specific regions, the report authors had greater confidence. For example, the Southeast is particularly vulnerable to sea level rise. “New Orleans (with roughly half of its population living below sea level), Miami, Tampa, Charleston, and Virginia Beach are among those most at risk,” they write.
+Since sea level “is expected to continue to rise for several centuries, even if greenhouse gas emissions are stabilized,” the report’s authors have “very high” confidence that “[s]ea level rise poses widespread and continuing threats to both natural and built environments and to the regional economy” of the Southeast U.S.
+Measuring and Predicting Extreme Weather
+The level of certainty scientists have when attributing different kinds of extreme weather events to global warming comes from the robustness of their climate models and observational records. Their understanding of the physics behind particular events as related to climate change also influences their confidence levels, a 2016 report by the National Academies of the Sciences explains.
+Here’s a rule of thumb: The less directly related a type of extreme weather event is to temperature, the less confident scientists are when tying that type of event to human-induced global warming.
+The NAS report authors have high confidence when linking global warming to an increased likelihood of extreme heat events, which is directly related to temperature.
+Extreme heat also will impact regions differently.
+For example, the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s 2014 report states that “the majority of Maryland and Delaware, and southwestern West Virginia and New Jersey, are projected by mid-century to experience many more days per year above 90°F compared to the end of last century under continued increases in emissions.”
+The area around Washington, D.C., in particular is expected to see 60 to 70 days a year on average reaching 90 degrees Fahrenheit between 2041 and 2070, compared with 20 to 30 days above 90 F between 1971 and 2000 — and that’s for the lower emissions scenario (see image below).
+This image shows the historical and projected number of days per year over 90°F in the northeast U.S. Credit: NOAA NCDC / CICS-NC. This figure appears in chapter 16 of the Climate Change Impacts in the United States: The Third National Climate Assessment report (2014).
+According to the 2016 NAS report, scientists have medium confidence when attributing increased likelihood of droughts and extreme rainfall to global warming, in part, because those events are less directly related to temperature increases.
+Heavy rainfall, for example, “is influenced by a moister atmosphere, which is a relatively direct consequence of human-induced warming, though not as direct as the increase in temperature itself,” the report says.
+When it comes to specific regions, the northeast U.S. has “experienced a greater recent increase in extreme precipitation than any other region in the United States,” the 2014 Global Change report authors write.
+The 2016 NAS report states that tying increased frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones, or hurricanes, to global warming is more difficult than other extreme weather events. Why? Scientists have less data on hurricanes of the past, which limits their ability to make solid predictions. Still, they do have an understanding of the physical mechanisms that could bring about these storms. And recently, new modeling techniques have enhanced scientists’ confidence when linking hurricane activity to global warming.
+The 2013 IPCC report also points out that confidence when attributing tropical cyclones to human-caused global warming differs by region.
+For example, scientists are “virtually certain,” meaning at least 99 percent sure, that there’s been an “increase in the frequency and intensity of the strongest tropical cyclones since the 1970s” in the North Atlantic Ocean, which hugs the East Coast.
+Lastly, scientists have relatively low confidence when attributing increased likelihood of wildfires to global warming because numerous factors, including forest management, also play significant roles in increasing the likelihood of these events. Still, “many studies” have linked increased wildfires to global warming, the 2016 NAS report says.
+Scientists also have more confidence when linking global warming to the increased likelihood of wildfires in particular regions. For example, the 2014 Global Change report authors have “high” confidence that “increased warming” and climate change-related “drought, and insect outbreaks” have “increased wildfires” in the southwest U.S. “Fire models project more wildfire and increased risks to communities across extensive areas” in this region, they add.
+“High” confidence means that evidence comes from “several sources” that show “some consistency,” but “methods vary,” which has led to “medium consensus” in the scientific community.
+Overall, the level of precision and confidence scientists have when linking human activity to different changes in the global and local climates vary. Sometimes scientists can be very precise and have very high confidence in their conclusions. In other cases, it’s more difficult to be precise, which corresponds to lower levels of confidence in their estimations and predictions.
+Republicans who have said scientists cannot precisely measure climate change or the impact of human activity on climate change:
+EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, Feb. 28: I mean, as I indicated in my hearing, Wolf, I mean, we know that there is a warming or — a warming of the planet; climate change is occurring; and there’s some human contribution to that or human activity that contributes to that. How to measure that precisely is very challenging. (Source: CNN interview.)
+Pruitt, Feb. 25: That’s the difficulty with [climate change]. To measure with precision [human] impact is something that is very difficult to do. (Source: Conservative Political Action Conference interview.)
+Pruitt, Jan. 18: Science tells us that the climate is changing and that human activity in some manner impacts that change. The ability to measure with precision the degree and extent of that impact, and what to do about it, are subject to continuing debate and dialogue, and well it should be. (Source: Senate confirmation hearing remarks.)
+Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, Jan. 18: I will say that the climate is obviously changing. It’s continuously changing. The question from a scientific standpoint is what effect does human behavior and human activity have on that, and what we can do to mitigate that. And I believe that’s a question that needs to be studied and evaluated. (Source: Senate confirmation hearing remarks.)
+Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Jan. 17: First of all, the climate is changing. That’s undisputable. … The second thing is man has had an influence. I don’t think, I think that’s undisputable as well. So, climate is changing; man is an influence. I think where there’s debate on it is what that influence is; what can we do about it. … There’s no model today that can predict tomorrow. So, where we agree, is we need objective science to one, figure a model out, and two, determine what are we going to do about [climate change]. (Source: Senate confirmation hearing remarks at 58:13 and 2:26:06.)
+Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Jan. 11: The increase in the greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere are having an effect. Our ability to predict that effect is very limited. … I think what I said is the fact that we cannot predict with precision and certainly all of the models that are, that we discussed that day, none of them agree. Doesn’t mean that we should do nothing. (Source: Senate confirmation hearing remarks at 2:24:04 and 2:25:32.)
+Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Jan. 10: I don’t deny that we have global warming. In fact, the theory of it always struck me as plausible, and it’s the question of how much is happening and what the reaction would be to it. (Source: Senate confirmation hearing remarks.)
+Correction, March 7: We referred to NOAA as the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, but the agency’s full title is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. We corrected the article accordingly.
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation."
+"7.1KTop Republicans on the House science committee claim a former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist “confirmed” that his NOAA colleagues “manipulated” climate data for a 2015 study. But that scientist denies that he accused NOAA of manipulating data.
+Rep. Lamar Smith, the chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, and two subcommittee chairmen issued a Feb. 5 press release — “Former NOAA Scientist Confirms Colleagues Manipulated Climate Records” — as part of an ongoing dispute over the validity of a paper published in the journal Science in June 2015 by NOAA scientists.
+The NOAA study was one of several peer-reviewed studies published in recent years that found the so-called global warming “slowdown” did not occur. The studies countered the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2013 assessment report, which suggested a slowdown in global warming had occurred.
+The Republican press release was issued a day after John Bates, a former NOAA scientist not involved with the study, published a blog post that accused the paper’s lead author, Thomas R. Karl, former director of NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, of having “his ‘thumb on the scale’— in the documentation, scientific choices, and release of datasets—in an effort to discredit the notion of a global warming hiatus.”
+Prompted by Bates’ blog post, the press release issued by Republicans accused Karl and his co-authors of data manipulation. “I applaud Dr. Bates’s efforts in uncovering the truth of this data manipulation,” Illinois Rep. Darin LaHood, chairman of the oversight subcommittee, said in the press release.
+The committee also repeatedly tweeted about the incident, citing a misleading article published in the British tabloid the Daily Mail that made the same accusations, and retweeted similarly misleading articles by Fox News and the National Review (see update below).
+But in interviews with the Associated Press and E&E, an online energy and environmental news outlet, Bates said he had not accused his colleagues of data manipulation.
+Bates told the AP on Feb. 6 that there was “no data tampering, no data changing, nothing malicious” involved with his colleagues’ study. “It’s not trumped up data in any way shape or form,” he said.
+Rather, Bates claimed Karl and his group hadn’t followed NOAA protocol in “the way data was handled, documented and stored, raising issues of transparency and availability,” the AP reported, adding that Bates thought the study was rushed “to influence the December 2015 climate treaty negotiations in Paris.”
+During a Feb. 7 hearing on the use of scientific information at the Environmental Protection Agency, Smith repeated the accusations while questioning Rush Holt, the CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which publishes the journal Science.
+After Holt cited Bates’ statement to E&E — “The issue here is not an issue of tampering with data,” Bates said — Smith responded, “I encourage you to talk to Dr. Bates because everything I have read that he has said about the Karl report suggests to me that NOAA cheated and got caught.” Smith added, “They did falsify data to exaggerate global warming.” In his opening statement, Smith also said, “Science should retract the Karl study,” based on Bates’ accusations.
+We won’t get into whether Karl and his co-authors adhered to all of NOAA’s protocols or rushed their paper to publication. (We’ve written about the latter previously.)
+But we will explain why there’s no evidence to support the committee members’ accusations of data manipulation. We’ll also explain why, regardless of whether or not there was a slowdown in warming in the early 21st century, the long-term warming trend remains unabated.
+Update, Sept. 25: An organization that regulates the newspaper and magazine industry in the U.K. ruled in July that the Daily Mail article that was repeatedly shared on Twitter by the House Science Committee was inaccurate and misleading. The article portrayed Bates’ criticisms of NOAA scientists as providing “irrefutable evidence” that the paper had been grounded in “misleading, ‘unverified’ data,” which led to world leaders being “duped” about global warming. “These claims by the newspaper went much further than the concerns which Dr Bates had detailed in his blog or in the interview,” the Independent Press Standards Organisation, wrote on July 7. In a Sept. 16 statement on the ruling, the Daily Mail acknowledged, “In characterising Dr Bates’ claims in this way the newspaper had failed to take care over the accuracy of the article.”
+The ‘Most Accurate’ Ocean Data
+Karl and his co-authors’ 2015 analysis of surface temperature exhibited “more than twice as much warming as did the old analysis at the global scale” between 1998 and 2012, consequently discounting the IPCC report’s global warming “slowdown.”
+To come to this conclusion, the group published two reanalyzed sets of data in the 2015 paper — surface temperature data from the land and from the ocean — dating back to 1880. We’ll discuss the ocean data first.
+The researchers state in their paper that the doubling in warming was “clearly attributable” to the reanalysis of the ocean data. This is due, in part, to the fact that the oceans cover 71 percent of Earth’s surface, so changes in ocean temperature data analysis significantly impact the overall analysis of the global warming rate.
+But why did the data need to be adjusted?
+Since ocean temperature data used in the Science study came from two different sources — buoys and ships — the full data set needed to be adjusted to accommodate for differences in how each source measures temperature.
+Several studies have noted that “ship data are systematically warmer than the buoy data” and that buoy data are “more accurate,” the researchers write. Since buoys have increased in use over time and ships have decreased in use, there is a “time-dependent bias” in the global ocean temperature record, they explained.
+The previous analyses, including from the IPCC report, didn’t fully correct for this bias, which prompted the idea of a global warming “slowdown.” But with the corrections used in the Science study, the slowdown largely disappeared.
+Bates did not accuse his former colleagues of manipulating ocean temperature data. But he did argue that the group didn’t adhere to NOAA’s protocols involving the release and archiving of the ocean data.
+However, any purported protocol issues haven’t prevented other scientists from replicating the Science study’s analysis of ocean data.
+Zeke Hausfather, a data scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, and others replicated the NOAA scientists’ analysis of ocean data in a study published in the journal Science Advances in January.
+The researchers found that NOAA’s analysis “generally agree[s]” with other independent ocean temperature data sets, such as those compiled from satellite radiometers, Argo floats and other sources.
+This is important because the ability to verify NOAA’s analysis using different lines of evidence — in this case, ocean temperature data from various independent sources — suggests that it’s accurate, Hausfather told us over the phone.
+In fact, Hausfather and his group also compared ocean temperature records from other institutions, such as the U.K.’s Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Science and Services and the Japanese Meteorological Agency, to these independent data sets and found that NOAA’s analysis is the “most accurate” measure of global ocean surface temperate change among the different international agencies.
+In short, Hausfather and his colleagues’ study bolsters the Science study’s finding that previous analyses, used by the IPCC, for example, underestimated the rates of surface warming in the early 21st century.
+Land Data and the Long-term Trend
+As for the land temperature data, Bates did argue in his blog post that his colleagues used “experimental,” and thus, not fully verified, land temperature data.
+He mainly argued that his colleagues should have labeled their land data analysis “experimental” in their paper so that other researchers know it’s not a “routine, operational update” that would have fixed software “flaws.” In this way, his colleagues defied “NOAA scientific integrity guidelines,” Bates said.
+But Bates still didn’t accuse them of data manipulation, as the House science committee claimed.
+Regardless, Karl and his co-authors explain in their paper that, compared with the ocean data, their reanalysis of land temperature data showed relatively minor changes, and thus, contributed relatively little to changing the early 21st century warming trend.
+Karl and his group also note that when it comes to the overall long-term warming trend — that is, from 1880 to the present — their reanalysis had “essentially the same rate of warming as that of the previous analysis.”
+This means that in the large scheme of things, the rate of global warming remains unchanged, whether or not there was a “slowdown” in the rate of global warming in the beginning of the 21st century.
+To top it off, Karl and his co-authors point out that “it is also clear that the long-term trend would be significantly higher … without corrections” to the raw data. In other words, compared with the raw data, the adjusted data show less warming over the long-term.
+Why? Because ocean surface temperature data greatly impacts the overall global warming trend and a lot of 20th century ocean data comes from ships, which are systematically too warm. As a result, scientists have to actually adjust the long-term trend downward to accommodate for this bias.
+As Hausfather said when we spoke to him over the phone, “If scientists are cooking the books, they’re cooking them in the wrong direction.”
+
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation."
+"2.7KDuring his confirmation hearing for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson said “our ability to predict” the effect of increased greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere “is very limited.” That’s not entirely accurate.
+While “very limited” is subjective, scientists have differing degrees of confidence when attributing different phenomena to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
+For example, scientists are nearly certain that increased CO2 levels from the burning of fossil fuels have caused over half of the global temperature increase since 1950. They’re also relatively certain that global warming will lead to a rise in extreme heat waves and sea levels. But they are less certain when linking global warming to increased incidences of wildfires.
+Tillerson, the recently retired chairman and chief executive officer of ExxonMobil, is President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for secretary of state. While testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Jan. 11, Tillerson acknowledged that climate change is real, saying that “the risk of climate change does exist, and that the consequences of it could be serious enough that action should be taken.”
+But he added that, “The type of action seems to be where the largest areas of debate exist in the public discourse.” He then went on to question scientists’ ability to predict the effects of increased greenhouse gas levels.
+Tillerson, Jan. 11: The increase in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere are having an effect. Our ability to predict that effect is very limited.
+Scientists’ ability to make predictions based on a particular theory corresponds to the number of times they’ve verified that theory using different lines of evidence: The more verification, the more likely it is that their predictions will turn out to be accurate.
+To start, scientists have verified the theory of the greenhouse effect, which says that gases like CO2 trap the sun’s heat, time and again since the physicist Joseph Fourier first proposed it in 1824.
+In fact, Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State told us last February that “things as basic as the design of heat-seeking missiles rely upon an understanding of the greenhouse effect.”
+In short, scientists are nearly certain that increased CO2 levels from the burning of fossil fuels will lead to a warmer earth. This is no longer a matter of prediction.
+As we have written before, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fifth assessment report that was released in 2013 concluded that it is “extremely likely” that more than half of the observed temperature increase since 1950 is due to human activities.
+Scientists also have high confidence that global warming will lead to changes in the climate, including a rise in extreme weather events and sea levels. This is also no longer a matter of prediction.
+Take sea level rise: Hundreds of scientists who collaborated on the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s 2016 report have “very high” confidence that global sea level has risen during the past century, estimating about eight inches since 1880. Their evidence comes from 130 years of tide gauge records and 20 years of satellite observations.
+The authors also have “medium confidence that global sea level rise will be in the range of 1 to 4 feet by 2100.” However, since scientists have a relative “[l]ack of knowledge” about “how ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica will react to a warming climate,” some “decision-makers may wish to consider” a range of 8 inches to 6.6 feet by 2100, they add.
+Why does sea level rise matter?
+The report adds, “Nearly 5 million people in the U.S. live within 4 feet of the local high-tide level,” which means that in “the next several decades, storm surges and high tides could combine with sea level rise and land subsidence to further increase flooding in many of these regions.”
+Flooding during “king tides” has already occurred in Florida, Delaware and California, however. King tides are “the highest predicted high tide of the year at a coastal location,” according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. This flooding also will have economic impacts, says the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
+As for extreme weather, the level of certainty scientists have when attributing different kinds of events to global warming comes from the robustness of their climate models and observational records. Their understanding of the physics behind particular events as related to climate change also influences their confidence levels, a 2016 report by the National Academies of the Sciences explains.
+Here’s a rule of thumb: The less directly related a type of extreme weather event is to temperature, the less confident scientists are when tying that type of event to human-induced global warming.
+For example, the NAS report says scientists have high confidence when linking global warming to an increased likelihood of extreme heat events, which is directly related to temperature.
+But scientists have medium confidence when attributing droughts and extreme rainfall to global warming. Heavy rainfall, for example, “is influenced by a moister atmosphere, which is a relatively direct consequence of human-induced warming, though not as direct as the increase in temperature itself,” the report says.
+The NAS report adds that tying the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones, or hurricanes, to global warming is more difficult. Scientists have less data on hurricanes of the past, which limits their ability to make solid predictions. Still, they do have an understanding of the physical mechanisms related to climate change that could bring about these storms.
+Recently, new modeling techniques also have enhanced scientists’ confidence when linking cyclone activity to global warming. “Tropical cyclones are projected to become more intense as the climate warms,” the report’s authors write. They add, “There is considerable confidence in this conclusion, as it is found in a wide range of numerical models.”
+The 2013 IPCC report also points out that confidence when attributing tropical cyclones to human-caused global warming differs by region. For example, scientists are “virtually certain,” meaning at least 99 percent sure, that there’s been an “increase in the frequency and intensity of the strongest tropical cyclones since the 1970s” in the North Atlantic basin.
+However, scientists have relatively low confidence when attributing wildfires to global warming. Numerous factors, including forest management, also play significant roles in increasing the likelihood of these events, which is why scientists have a harder time teasing apart climate change’s contribution. Still, “many studies have linked an increase in wildfires to climate change,” the 2016 NAS report says.
+All of these extreme weather changes “will continue to affect human health, water supply, agriculture, transportation, energy, coastal areas, and many other sectors of society, with increasingly adverse impacts on the American economy and quality of life,” experts on the U.S. Global Change research program concluded.
+To be clear, Tillerson’s statement that scientists’ ability to predict the future impacts of increased greenhouse gas levels is “very limited” is subjective. It’s also worth noting that last October he said he supported a revenue-neutral carbon tax. This term refers to a tax directly linked to greenhouse gas emissions that doesn’t increase federal revenue because it’s offset by other tax reductions. The World Bank calls a carbon tax “an essential part of the solution” to combating climate change. Scientific predictions are also part of the solution.
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation."
+"1.4KSciCheck likely will have no dearth of false and misleading claims to cover next year, when a new Congress convenes and takes up the agenda of President-elect Donald Trump. The incoming president has vowed to reverse eight years of Democratic policies, and he has a Republican majority in Congress to help him accomplish his goals. 
+But, for now, here are some of the more questionable science-related claims from 2016 on topics such as climate change, Zika, GMOs, marijuana and the human mind.
+Climate Change
+Scientific Consensus: Both the president-elect and his nominee for the head of the EPA, Scott Pruitt, made two of the most common false claims about climate change — that scientists disagree about both the connection and extent of climate change that’s due to human activity. Trump made his claims in November and Pruitt back in May. Numerous surveys of thousands of climate scientists have found that about 97 percent of them believe global warming is real and human activity is the main cause. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change also concluded in its fifth assessment report, published in 2013, that it’s “extremely likely” that more than half of the global temperature rise since 1950 is due to human activities.
+Trump on Climate Change, Nov. 23
+The Facts on Trump’s EPA Nominee, Dec. 14
+Climate Science, Not Pseudoscience: Ted Cruz said in January that “climate change is the perfect pseudoscientific theory because it can never, ever, ever be disproven.” That’s false. For example, if researchers found strong evidence to suggest gases like carbon dioxide don’t trap the sun’s heat (the greenhouse effect), then climate change would be disproven. But the likelihood of this occurring is minute because the greenhouse effect has been verified time and again since it was first proposed in 1824. In fact, part of that verification includes the design of heat-seeking missiles, which relies on an understanding of the greenhouse effect.
+Cruz’s ‘Pseudoscientific’ Climate Claims, Feb. 1
+No Warming ‘Halt’: Rep. Lamar Smith, the chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, claimed in March that a study published in Nature Climate Change “confirms the halt in global warming.” That’s false. The authors of the paper write, “We do not believe that warming has ceased.” Scientists disagree over the extent of a potential slowdown in the rate of global warming, but there is no evidence for a full-on warming halt. Smith also made a similar claim last year.
+Smith Still Wrong About Warming ‘Halt,’ March 30
+The Zika Epidemic
+Blinded by Zika: Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid falsely claimed that Zika “affects everyone” because recent research found that it “causes people to go blind.” Temporary vision impairment is a symptom of Zika, a virus primarily spread by mosquito bite, but no adult has gone blind because of the virus. In fact, many people who contract Zika have little to no symptoms. However, it’s important to note that studies have shown that women who contracted Zika while pregnant have given birth to babies with severe vision impairment. Reid made his claim, and other similar claims, during a partisan battle over funding to combat the Zika epidemic.
+Does Zika Cause Blindness?, Sept. 20
+No U.S. Epidemic: In April, also during the debate over Zika funding, North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp warned about traveling in the U.S., claiming that the Zika virus will be transmitted “everywhere in the United States.” At the time, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention projected local clusters of Zika transmission on U.S. soil via mosquito bite, but not a widespread epidemic. As of Dec. 7, the CDC’s projections have held true. Puerto Rico primarily, but also the U.S. Virgin Islands, Florida, American Samoa and Texas have seen locally acquired cases, the CDC reports. Every state in the continental U.S. has seen travel-associated cases, however, which means those residents contracted the virus in areas of local transmission out-of-state.
+What Zika Means for Americans, May 6
+Marijuana
+Legalization: Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson said in August that “marijuana-related” traffic deaths, hospital visits and school suspensions in Colorado have “not significantly” increased since the state legalized the drug. Reports do show substantial increases, but data limitations make it impossible to know how many cases were directly caused by marijuana. On traffic accidents — unlike alcohol, a positive test for marijuana doesn’t entail intoxication at the time of an accident. The drug can stay in a person’s system longer than its effects. On hospital visits — medical billing codes for marijuana signify a “marijuana-related” hospital visit in reports. But these codes don’t prove the drug was the reason for the visit, and one Colorado doctor said they are often assigned arbitrarily. On school suspensions — the Colorado Department of Education collects data on drug-related suspensions in general, so it’s not clear that the increase was due solely to marijuana.
+Unpacking Pot’s Impact in Colorado, Aug. 19
+Medical Research: In April, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said that “you can’t do any research about” marijuana because it’s a Schedule I drug. That’s false. Schedule I classification makes it difficult to conduct research on a substance, but not impossible. For example, the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research, based out of the University of California, San Diego, says its mission is to coordinate “rigorous scientific studies to assess the safety and efficacy of cannabis and cannabis compounds for treating medical conditions.”
+Clinton on Marijuana Research, April 22
+Water Issues
+California’s Very Real Drought: Trump falsely suggested in May that “there is no drought” in California because the state has “plenty of water.” The state is in its fifth year of a severe “hot” drought, the type that’s expected to become more common with global warming. Trump also said water is being shoved “out to sea” to protect a “three-inch fish” at the detriment to farmers. But the state’s officials release fresh water from reservoirs primarily to avoid salt water contamination to agricultural and urban water supplies.
+Trump’s Dubious Drought Claims, June 9
+Fracking Fray: Sen. Jim Inhofe, chairman of the Senate environment committee, falsely claimed in November that a new report “confirms” that fracking “has not impacted drinking water” in Wyoming. The industry-funded report couldn’t reach “firm conclusions” due to a lack of water quality data before oil and gas exploration. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency also found numerous issues with the draft report, some of which weren’t resolved in the final version. For example, the report didn’t conclusively determine whether the sources of water contamination were naturally occurring or caused by humans in some cases. 
+More False Claims About Fracking, Dec. 2
+Ozone
+Trump and His Hairspray: In May, Trump falsely said that using hairspray in his apartment, “which is all sealed,” would prevent banned ozone layer-depleting chemicals from escaping into the environment. But these chemicals, chlorofluorocarbons, would still make their way out, multiple experts said. Trump made his claim while also arguing that “hairspray’s not like it used to be” due to the CFC ban. Experts also said these global bans didn’t effect the quality of hairspray. These global bans appear to be reversing damage done to the ozone layer. The ozone layer protects the Earth’s inhabitants from the sun’s ultraviolet radiation, which is linked to skin cancer and other problems. Located between 6 to 30 miles above the planet’s surface, the ozone layer differs from ground-level ozone.
+Trump on Hairspray and Ozone, May 17
+Ozone and Asthma: Louisiana Rep. Ralph Abraham claimed in June that “thousands of studies” refute the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that ground-level ozone exacerbates asthma attacks. That’s false. A link between ground-level ozone and asthma exacerbation is well-documented in the scientific literature, which both the American Lung Association and the World Health Organization acknowledge. Ground-level ozone is a component of photochemical smog, which is produced when sunlight reacts with various air pollutants. The sources of these pollutants include coal power plants, paint and cleaning products, and car exhaust.
+Distorting the Ozone-Asthma Link, July 6
+The Human Mind
+Ineffective Torture: Trump said both in February and July that enhanced interrogation, or torture, “works.” But scientists have shown that the stress and pain induced by techniques like waterboarding can impair memory, and, therefore, inhibit a person from recalling information. Stress causes the release of hormones like cortisol, which impair the function of brain regions vital to memory formation and recall, sometimes even resulting in tissue loss. Scientists also point out that it’s difficult to know whether the information provided is true. It is not clear what policy on torture Trump will support as president. His choice for defense secretary is James N. Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general. Trump said that Mattis told him he has never found torture to be useful, the New York Times reported in November.
+Trump on Torture, July 28
+Implicit Bias for All: Vice President-elect Mike Pence implied in October that Hillary Clinton was wrong when she cited the fatal shooting of a black man by a black cop as a case of implicit, or unconscious, bias. But research shows African Americans are not immune to implicit bias against members of their own racial group. Implicit bias refers to unconscious and automatic features of judgment, while explicit bias entails conscious judgments. Thus, a person could explicitly believe that white and black Americans should be treated equally, but implicitly judge situations counter to that explicit belief. A group of Harvard scientists found “even numbers of Black respondents showing a pro-White bias as show a pro-Black bias.”
+FactChecking the VP Debate, Oct. 5
+Other Notable Claims
+Ninth Month, Final Day: Trump claimed during the final presidential debate in October that under Clinton’s position on abortion, “you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month on the final day.” First off, Clinton had said she was open to restrictions on late-term abortions, with exceptions for cases involving the mother’s health issues. Second, abortions on the “final day” don’t occur. Daniel Grossman, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California, San Francisco told Politifact, “Nobody would talk about abortion on the woman’s due date. If the mother’s life was at risk, the treatment for that is delivery, and the baby survives.” Third, late-term abortions in general are rare, as only 1.2 percent of all the abortions in the United States occur after 20 weeks gestation, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
+FactChecking the Final Presidential Debate, Oct. 20
+Birds and Wind Farms: Trump said in May that wind farms in the U.S. “kill more than 1 million birds a year.” Reliable data are scarce, but current mean estimates range from 20,000 to 573,000 bird deaths per year. In his claim, Trump also misleadingly compared bird deaths at oil drilling operations with those at wind farms. But a 2012 Bureau of Land Management memo states that oil field production kills an estimated 500,000 to 1,000,000 birds a year. This suggests oil production alone (i.e. not including the production of coal or gas) can kill the same, if not more, birds per year than wind farms in the U.S. Even still, there are greater threats to birds than energy production, including cats and buildings.
+Trump’s Hot Air on Wind Energy, June 2
+Frankenfish: Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski said in March that she opposes federal approval of genetically engineered salmon “for the health of both consumers and fisheries.” But no scientific evidence suggests GE salmon will pose a significant risk to either. Scientists engineered GE salmon to grow faster than non-GE farm-raised salmon by inserting genes from two other fish into the genome of an Atlantic salmon. With these changes, the GE salmon remained nutritionally and physiologically comparable to non-GE salmon, so the Food and Drug Administration deemed GE salmon “safe to eat.” GE salmon have also been rendered sterile — meaning they can’t interbreed with wild salmon stocks. Geographical and physical confinement measures also limit the likelihood that the GE fish will escape, survive and impact wild fisheries.
+False Claims About Frankenfish, March 23
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation."
+"1.9KIn a Nov. 22 interview at the New York Times, President-elect Donald Trump said he had an “open mind” about climate change, but he went on to repeat some of the same false and misleading claims that have been used by those who reject mainstream climate science.
+Trump met with a group of Times reporters, editors and opinion writers for an on-the-record discussion. He made several points about climate change:
+
+Trump said “the hottest day ever was in 1890-something, 98.” Cherry-picking one day, or one year, isn’t evidence of a trend. In fact, the long-term trend for average global temperatures shows an increase over the past several decades.
+He said that climate change is a “very complex subject,” adding, “I’m not sure anybody is ever going to really know.” Surveys have found that the level of consensus that human activity is primarily responsible for global warming is as high as 97 percent among climate scientists.
+Trump said there is “some connectivity” between climate change and human activity, but it “depends on how much.” The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said it is “extremely likely” that human activity is the cause of over half of the observed temperature increase since 1950.
+The president-elect revived the now discredited claim that leaked emails — “horrible emails,” he called them — proved that climate scientists manipulated temperature data. But several independent investigations of the so-called “Climategate” found no such wrongdoing.
+
+Trump also said wind farms “don’t …. work at all without subsidy.” But, as we have written, wind energy globally and in the United States is now competitive with fossil fuel energy even without federal subsidies.
+Climate Change
+Here’s the bulk of the climate change exchange in Trump’s interview with the Times, edited slightly for length:
+
+Thomas L. Friedman, opinion columnist: Mr. President-elect, can I ask a question? One of the issues that you actually were very careful not to speak about during the campaign, and haven’t spoken about yet, is one very near and dear to my heart, the whole issue of climate change, the Paris agreement, how you’ll approach it. You own some of the most beautiful links golf courses in the world …
+[laughter, cross talk]
+Trump: [laughing] I read your article. Some will be even better because actually like Doral is a little bit off … so it’ll be perfect. [inaudible] He doesn’t say that. He just says that the ones that are near the water will be gone, but Doral will be in great shape.
+[laughter]
+Friedman: But it’s really important to me, and I think to a lot of our readers, to know where you’re going to go with this. I don’t think anyone objects to, you know, doing all forms of energy. But are you going to take America out of the world’s lead of confronting climate change?
+Trump: I’m looking at it very closely, Tom. I’ll tell you what. I have an open mind to it. We’re going to look very carefully. It’s one issue that’s interesting because there are few things where there’s more division than climate change. You don’t tend to hear this, but there are people on the other side of that issue who are, think, don’t even …
+But a lot of smart people disagree with you. I have a very open mind. And I’m going to study a lot of the things that happened on it and we’re going to look at it very carefully. But I have an open mind.
+Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher: Well, since we’re living on an island, sir, I want to thank you for having an open mind. We saw what these storms are now doing, right? We’ve seen it personally. Straight up. …
+Trump: I do have an open mind. And we’ve had storms always, Arthur.
+Sulzberger: Not like this.
+Trump: You know the hottest day ever was in 1890-something, 98. You know, you can make lots of cases for different views. I have a totally open mind.
+My uncle was for 35 years a professor at M.I.T. He was a great engineer, scientist. He was a great guy. And he was … a long time ago, he had feelings — this was a long time ago — he had feelings on this subject. It’s a very complex subject. I’m not sure anybody is ever going to really know. I know we have, they say they have science on one side but then they also have those horrible emails that were sent between the scientists. Where was that, in Geneva or wherever five years ago? Terrible. Where they got caught, you know, so you see that and you say, what’s this all about. I absolutely have an open mind. I will tell you this: Clean air is vitally important. Clean water, crystal clean water is vitally important. Safety is vitally important. …
+James Bennet, editorial page editor: When you say an open mind, you mean you’re just not sure whether human activity causes climate change? Do you think human activity is or isn’t connected?
+Trump: I think right now … well, I think there is some connectivity. There is some, something. It depends on how much. It also depends on how much it’s going to cost our companies. You have to understand, our companies are noncompetitive right now.
+
+And here’s where Trump strayed from the science:
+On hot temperatures. Trump said “the hottest day ever was in 1890-something, 98,” adding, “you know, you can make lots of cases for different views.” But one day — or even one year — doesn’t constitute a trend. Here’s the long-term global surface temperature trend from 1880 to 2015, from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies:
+
+The graphic depicts global surface temperatures relative to average temperatures for 1951-1980 — a departure from the average is known as the temperature anomaly. Gray circles show the annual average, while the black line represents five-year averages. The clear trend is a rise in global average temperatures.
+NASA says: “The 10 warmest years in the 134-year record all have occurred since 2000, with the exception of 1998. The year 2015 ranks as the warmest on record.”
+As we’ve explained before, picking the warmest year involves a margin of error, so there’s a chance that another year could be the warmest. But NASA said there was 94 percent certainty that 2015 was the new record, surpassing its previous estimate for the warmest year of 2014.
+We’ve seen other politicians cherry-pick the year 1998 to claim there hasn’t been hardly any warming since. But that year was unusually warm partly due to a very strong El Niño event. That year, the global average was .63 degrees Celsius above the 1951-1980 average, according to NASA, and 2015’s global average was .87 degrees Celsius above. Besides, climate scientists look at longer term trends, rather than variability compared with one year.
+As for the “hottest day ever,” in 2012, the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization awarded that distinction to Death Valley, California, on July 10, 1913. It topped 134 degrees Fahrenheit, or 56.7 degrees Celsius, that day. The WMO determined that a previous record, of 136.4 degrees, recorded at El Azizia, Libya, on Sept. 13, 1922, wasn’t valid.
+But this summer, in July, Kuwait recorded temperatures of 54 degrees Celsius, and the validity of the Death Valley measurement from 1913 also has been questioned by weather experts. The Guardian newspaper reported this summer that Kuwait’s high heat was “a record for the eastern hemisphere and possibly the entire planet.”
+On climate change consensus. Trump said that climate change is a “very complex subject,” adding, “I’m not sure anybody is ever going to really know” — casting doubt on the scientific consensus that climate change is real. But, as we’ve explained before, surveys of thousands of climate researchers have found that the level of consensus that human activity is primarily responsible for the warming climate is as high as 97 percent.
+A 2013 paper published in the journal Environmental Research Letters analyzed 4,014 papers that expressed a position on anthropogenic — human-caused — global warming. Of those papers, 97.1 percent endorsed the idea that humans are causing global warming. In addition to that finding, a second analysis in that same 2013 study asked 8,547 authors if they think their papers endorsed the consensus on warming. A total of 1,189 scientists responded, rating 2,142 individual papers. The results: 97.2 percent of the papers endorsed the consensus that humans are causing global warming.
+Those results were consistent with the findings of earlier surveys published in the American Geophysical Union’s Eos magazine in 2009 and in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2010.
+On human contribution to climate change. Trump later said that there is “some connectivity” between climate change and human activity, but it “depends on how much.” As we have written, the United Nations climate change research organization says that it is “extremely likely” that human activity is the cause of over half of the observed temperature increase since 1950.
+The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fifth assessment report in 2013 said: “It is extremely likely that human activities caused more than half of the observed increase in GMST [global mean surface temperature] from 1951 to 2010. This assessment is supported by robust evidence from multiple studies using different methods.”
+“Extremely likely,” according to the IPCC report, means that the likelihood of an outcome is between 95 percent and 100 percent certain.
+The IPCC added that “the best estimate of the human-induced contribution to warming is similar to the observed warming over this period.” That is, its best guess is that humans have caused essentially all of the warming that has occurred in that time.
+On “Climategate” emails. Trump referenced the “horrible emails” from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia that were stolen and made public during the so-called “Climategate” controversy, beginning in 2009. As we have written several times, those emails were investigated and no wrongdoing was found.
+Climate skeptics claimed that the leaked emails between many climate scientists around the world showed there was a coordinated effort to inflate the global warming signal in temperature data. But several independent investigations, including by the U.S. Department of Commerce Inspector General and the Environmental Protection Agency, found no such wrongdoing or manipulation.
+An international panel set up by the University of East Anglia concluded: “We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit and had it been there we believe that it is likely that we would have detected it. Rather we found a small group of dedicated if slightly disorganised researchers who were ill-prepared for being the focus of public attention.” In 2011, the National Science Foundation inspector general also found no evidence of research misconduct.
+Although critics of mainstream climate science have continued their attacks on researchers, the science has become even more solid. The IPCC’s fourth assessment report in 2007 said it was “very likely” (greater than 90 percent probability) that greenhouse gases had caused most of the warming. That assessment was upgraded to “extremely likely” in the report released in 2013.
+Wind Energy
+Trump also said “the wind is a very deceiving thing,” and went on to list some misperceptions about the cost of wind energy and its impact on birds.
+Trump: I mean, for the most part [wind farms] don’t work. I don’t think they work at all without subsidy, and that bothers me, and they kill all the birds. You go to a windmill, you know in California they have the, what is it? The golden eagle? And they’re like, if you shoot a golden eagle, they go to jail for five years and yet they kill them by, they actually have to get permits that they’re only allowed to kill 30 or something in one year. The windmills are devastating to the bird population, O.K. With that being said, there’s a place for them. But they do need subsidy. So, if I talk negatively. I’ve been saying the same thing for years about you know, the wind industry. I wouldn’t want to subsidize it.
+It is true that wind energy receives federal tax credits for production and investment and, as a result, the industry has grown substantially in recent years. In 2015, wind supplied more than 10 percent of electricity generation in 11 states, including nearly a third of the electricity in Iowa, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Wind now provides about 5.6 percent of the electricity in the U.S., more than double its share in 2010, EIA said.
+The increase of wind power in the U.S. is the result of a combination of technological changes, such as improved wind technology and increased access to transmission capacity, and policy changes, such as federal tax credits and state standards that require utilities to sell a certain amount of renewable electricity, EIA said.
+But, as we have written, wind energy is competitive with fossil fuel energy even without federal subsidies.
+Bloomberg New Energy Finance earlier this month provided us with the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) without government subsidies for natural gas, coal and wind for the second half of this year. The LCOE represents the per megawatt hour (MWh) cost of building and operating a generating plant over the life-cycle of the project. Natural gas is less expensive ($52 per megawatt hour) on average in the U.S. than onshore wind ($56 per MWh), but coal is more expensive than both at $65 per MWh.
+Similarly, the EIA projects that the average rate for new combined cycle natural gas-fired plants entering service in 2018 will be around $48 per MWh in the U.S. The unsubsidized rate for onshore wind farms for 2018 will be $51.9 per MWh. With subsidies, the rate for onshore wind drops to $34 per MWh. (See Appendix A of the EIA’s 2016 annual energy report.)
+A year ago, Bloomberg New Energy Finance found that electricity from wind was cheaper than coal and natural gas in both the United Kingdom and Germany. The levelized cost of wind globally has dropped 50 percent from 2009 to 2014, according to Bloomberg.
+As for the impact of wind farms on birds, we wrote that reliable data are scarce, but current mean estimates range from 20,000 to 573,000 bird deaths per year. Research also suggests oil production kills the same, if not more, birds per year than wind farms. And Trump is wrong about the penalty for shooting an eagle. The maximum civil penalty is one-year imprisonment or two for repeat offenders, not five years, and we found first-time violators are likely to serve little or no time in jail.
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation."
+"342Tim Kaine has misrepresented Mike Pence’s current stance on climate change, making it a regular talking point in his campaign speeches.
+Kaine, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, has repeatedly claimed that Pence, the Republican vice presidential nominee, “says ‘climate change is a myth.'” Pence did say that on his campaign website when running for the House in 2000. In a post titled “Global Warming Disaster,” Pence wrote: “Global warming is a myth.”
+But more recently, on Sept. 27, Pence said “there’s no question” that human activity has “some impact on climate.”
+Kaine has made similar claims on at least eight occasions between Oct. 10 and Nov. 2.
+In one instance, at a campaign rally in Davidson, North Carolina, on Oct. 12, however, Kaine correctly used the past tense, claiming, “Mike Pence said climate change is a myth.”
+But in many other cases, Kaine misleadingly claimed Pence currently says climate change is a myth.
+For example, on Nov. 2 in Dubuque, Iowa, Kaine said, “Donald Trump says, and this is a quote, ‘Climate change is a hoax created by the Chinese.’ And his running mate, Mike Pence, says, ‘It’s a myth.'”
+Trump did tweet on Nov. 6, 2012: “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive,” but later said it was a joke, as we wrote in our report on the first presidential debate. However, Trump also has a record of calling global warming a “hoax.”
+In an allusion to the 12-step program designed to help people recover from alcohol and other addictions, Kaine went on to say that the “first step is you have to admit you have a problem.” Kaine added that, “You’re not going to solve a problem if you don’t admit you have a problem.”
+However, Pence has acknowledged — on at least one occasion — that humans are affecting the climate.
+Pence told CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Sept. 27, “There’s no question that the activities that take place in this country and in countries around the world have some impact on the environment and some impact on climate.” He added, “Donald Trump and I say, let’s follow the science, but for heaven’s sakes let’s not go rushing into the kind of restrictions on our economy that are putting Americans out of work and, frankly, are driving jobs out of this country.”
+But Trump still doesn’t “follow the science.”
+Trump told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly on July 26 he “probably did” call climate change a hoax, adding “they’re saying [climate change is] man-made and I say it could have a minor impact, but nothing to what they’re talking about.”
+More recently, Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota on Sept. 27 that Trump believes that “global warming” and “climate change” are “naturally occurring” and not man-made.
+When we asked Hillary Clinton’s campaign for evidence more recent than 2000 to back-up Kaine’s claim, spokesperson Josh Schwerin pointed us to other past instances where Pence has questioned the validity of climate change — the most recent instance occurring in 2014.
+On Feb. 21, 2014, Pence told MSNBC’s Chuck Todd that he didn’t know if humans’ role in climate change “is a resolved issue in science today.” Todd then responded, “a lot of scientists out there” do believe humans are impacting the climate. Pence then said, “I know we’re talking about climate change. Just a few years ago we were talking about global warming. We haven’t seen a lot of warming lately. I remember back in the ’70s we were talking about the coming Ice Age.”
+We’ve addressed all three of Pence’s claims before.
+First, when Sen. Ted Cruz similarly claimed in January, “none of the alarmists say ‘global warming’ anymore — now it’s ‘climate change,’” we found that to be inaccurate. We explained, “Scientists still use both terms, but tend to use ‘climate change’ more often because, in addition to warming, it refers to phenomena such as sea-level rise and changes in precipitation patterns.”
+Second, in March 2016 and November 2015, we addressed Rep. Lamar Smith’s claim that data show there’s been a “halt” in global warming — it’s false. Some research has found that there’s been a warming “slowdown,” and other research suggested there hasn’t been. Still, no research supports “a halt in global warming,” as we wrote.
+Third, we wrote about the “global cooling” myth in March 2015, when Cruz cited an article on the topic published in Newsweek in 1975. That article did warn of “ominous signs” of a “cooling world,” but it has been criticized since then – including by its author, Peter Gwynne. 
+Writing for Inside Science in 2014, Gwynne wrote that “while the hypotheses described in that original story seemed right at the time, climate scientists now know that they were seriously incomplete. Our climate is warming — not cooling, as the original story suggested.” 
+The fact is, there was no scientific consensus in the 1970s about global cooling when Gwynne wrote his story in 1975, but today there is scientific consensus that human-caused climate change is real.
+Regardless of Pence’s past remarks, he more recently has admitted that humans play a role in climate change. However, Pence and his running mate have outlined no policies designed to specifically address climate change, and, in fact, the GOP ticket would undo steps President Obama has taken to reduce carbon emissions.
+For more information on both the Democratic and Republican candidates’ positions and policies regarding climate change, please see our article, “The Candidates on Climate Change.”
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation.
+       Share The Facts    Tim Kaine  Democratic Vice Presidential Nominee         Claims Mike Pence, the Republican vice presidential nominee, “says ‘climate change is a myth.'""   At a rally in Dubuque, Iowa – Wednesday, November 2, 2016   Share Read More     Embed     Information on embedding in your site  oEmbed Link  https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/89e07655-e77d-4bf7-a27b-af31816292e3"
+"4.3KSummary
+Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are worlds apart in their stances on human-caused climate change.
+Trump has repeatedly expressed doubt in the science behind climate change, and his policy proposals reflect that doubt.
+Clinton, on the other hand, has repeatedly said she agrees with the vast majority of scientists that human-caused climate change is real. Likewise, her proposed policies take measures to combat climate change.
+Below we’ll outline the candidates’ stances and claims about climate change generally, and specific related topics, including: extreme weather, the Paris Agreement, the Clean Power Plan, a carbon tax, fracking, renewable energy and green buildings. 
+In doing so, we’ll explain how each ticket plans (or plans not) to combat what the American Association for the Advancement of Science calls a “growing threat to society.”
+Analysis
+Global Warming: Real, Not a Hoax
+Trump, speech in Hilton Head, South Carolina, Dec. 30, 2015: Obama’s talking about all of this with the global warming and the — a lot of it’s a hoax, it’s a hoax. I mean, it’s a money-making industry, OK? It’s a hoax, a lot of it.
+Clinton, Democratic National Convention speech, July 28: I believe in science. I believe that climate change is real.
+During all three presidential election debates, which totaled 4.5 hours, less than six minutes was spent discussing the candidates’ policies related to climate change.
+But their differences on the subject are fundamental: Trump claims climate change is a hoax, and Clinton says it’s real.
+In addition to his remarks in Hilton Head, Trump also has called global warming a “hoax” and “bullshit” via Twitter.
+As Clinton rightly pointed out during the first presidential debate, Trump also tweeted back in 2012: “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”
+Trump’s denial of climate change has also led him to make false claims.
+For example, on July 26, 2016, Trump told Bill O’Reilly at Fox News that “people” at the Copenhagen conference in 2009 were “sending out emails, scientists practically calling it a hoax, and they were laughing at it,” adding that that’s why he “probably did” call climate change a hoax.
+Trump is referring to the “Climategate” scandal, which we’ve written about before. This controversy involved leaked emails and other documents of climate researchers at the University of East Anglia in England in November 2009, less than a month before the Copenhagen climate conference.
+The researchers did not call climate change a hoax in these emails. Climate skeptics claimed at the time that the emails revealed how climate scientists “deliberately destroyed records, manipulated data to ‘hide the decline’ in global temperatures, and tried to silence their critics by preventing them from publishing in peer-reviewed journals,” as former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin wrote in a Dec. 9, 2009, Washington Post op-ed.
+However, as we wrote in April 2010, an independent international investigation set up by the University of East Anglia found no such wrongdoing or manipulation. “We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit and had it been there we believe that it is likely that we would have detected it,” the investigative report said.
+Although he has denied the existence of climate change as a candidate, Trump has taken the position that global warming is real as a businessman.
+Politico reported in May that Trump International Golf Links Ireland applied for a permit to build a sea wall to protect the Irish golf course from “‘global warming and its effects.’” The permit “explicitly cites global warming and its consequences — increased erosion due to rising sea levels and extreme weather this century — as a chief justification for building the structure,” Politico adds.
+Clinton, on the other hand, has consistently claimed she believes climate change is real, as she did during the first presidential debate.
+Scientific evidence supports Clinton’s position that human-caused climate change is real. The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report states that human changes to the planet, especially the emissions of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels, “are extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.”
+Human-caused climate change is also considered real according to 97 percent of climate scientists, as we’ve written.
+“Multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals show that 97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree: Climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities,” says NASA.
+A team of more than 300 experts at the U.S. Global Change research program are among that 97 percent.
+“The burning of coal, oil, and gas, and clearing of forests have increased the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by more than 40% since the Industrial Revolution, and it has been known for almost two centuries that this carbon dioxide traps heat,” the team explains in the Third National Climate Assessment report. The report adds, “Multiple lines of independent evidence confirm that [these] human activities are the primary cause of the global warming of the past 50 years.”
+Trump’s Erroneous Claim About Extreme Weather
+Trump, CNN “New Day,” Sept. 24, 2015: You know, look, it’s weather, and we have bad floods. … And frankly, it’s been that way for so long … weather changes and you have storms, and you have rain, and you have beautiful days. But I do not believe that we should imperil the companies within our country.
+Clinton, speech in Miami, Oct. 11: Now, some will say, ‘We’ve always had hurricanes. They’ve always been destructive.’ And that’s true. But Hurricane Matthew was likely more destructive because of climate change.
+Clinton is again more accurate here.
+We always have had extreme weather such as destructive hurricanes, but scientists say global warming is expected to increase the magnitude and probability of cyclones, or hurricanes, and other extreme weather events.
+But the level of certainty scientists have for each type of extreme weather event differs, a 2016 report by the National Academies of the Sciences explains. Different confidence levels result from the capabilities of climate models, the quality and length of the observational record, and the understanding of physical mechanisms pertaining to specific extreme weather events.
+A rule of thumb: The more removed a type of event is from temperature changes, the less confident scientists are when tying that type of event to human-induced global warming.
+For example, scientists are most confident when linking human-caused climate change to extreme heat and cold waves. These are weather events that directly relate to temperature change, and scientists have the best models, observational record and understanding of the physics behind these events, the report explains.
+On the other hand, scientists have medium confidence when attributing droughts and extreme rainfall to climate change. Heavy rainfall, for example, “is influenced by a moister atmosphere, which is a relatively direct consequence of human-induced warming, though not as direct as the increase in temperature itself,” the report says.
+
+It’s more difficult still to tie the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones, or hurricanes, to climate change, the report adds. These storms are less directly related to changes in temperature. Scientists have less data on hurricanes of the past, which reduces their ability to make solid claims about long-term trends. But they do have some understanding of the physical mechanisms behind climate change that could bring about these storms.
+New modeling techniques also have improved scientists’ confidence when attributing cyclone activity to climate change. “Tropical cyclones are projected to become more intense as the climate warms. There is considerable confidence in this conclusion, as it is found in a wide range of numerical models,” the report authors write.
+As we explained in April 2015, the 2014 IPCC report points out that confidence when attributing tropical cyclones to human-caused climate change also differs by region. For example, “there is evidence for a ‘virtually certain’ — which means between 99 percent and 100 percent probability — ‘increase in the frequency and intensity of the strongest tropical cyclones since the 1970s’ in the North Atlantic basin,” we wrote.
+All of these extreme weather changes “will continue to affect human health, water supply, agriculture, transportation, energy, coastal areas, and many other sectors of society, with increasingly adverse impacts on the American economy and quality of life,” experts on the U.S. Global Change research program say.
+Poles Apart on the Paris Agreement
+Trump, speech in Bismarck, North Dakota, May 26: President Obama entered the United States into the Paris Climate Accords – unilaterally, and without the permission of Congress. This agreement gives foreign bureaucrats control over … how much [energy] we use right here in America. … We’re going to cancel the Paris climate agreement.
+Clinton, Sciencedebate.org response, Sept. 13: My plan will deliver on the pledge President Obama made at the Paris climate conference — without relying on climate deniers in Congress to pass new legislation.
+Like their claims on the reality of climate change, Trump and Clinton’s positions on the Paris Agreement are poles apart.
+The Paris Agreement aims to unify global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions such that global temperature rise stays “well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.”
+Among other policies, Trump’s “America First Energy Plan” includes canceling the Paris Agreement and stopping “all payments of U.S. tax dollars to U.N. global warming programs.”
+Trump also claimed that the Paris “agreement gives foreign bureaucrats control over … how much [energy] we use right here in America.” That’s false. Each country determines its own emission reduction targets.
+Trump could abandon U.S. involvement in the Paris deal in several ways, legal experts told Climate Central, an environmental news website.
+One option would be for Trump to wait until the very end of his first term to formally withdraw. The agreement will go into effect on Nov. 4, just four days before Election Day. After that, each country has to wait four years before officially pulling out of the deal.
+But countries aren’t penalized for failing to adhere to their proposed emission cuts, as these “nationally determined” emission cuts are “voluntary.” As a result, the international agreement couldn’t prevent Trump from proceeding with his plan to rescind Obama’s Climate Action Plan, approve the Keystone Pipeline and revoke “unwarranted” restrictions on new drilling technologies if elected president, for example.
+So Trump could also ignore the deal altogether. As the BBC reports, U.S. climate inaction could influence other major emitters, like China and India, to pull back on meeting their own emission reduction promises.
+Last, Trump could potentially withdraw the U.S. from the 1992 U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change without approval from Congress with only one year’s notice, experts told Climate Central. According to the Paris deal, this would also withdraw the U.S. from that agreement.
+However, Trump’s past position on the Copenhagen conference runs counter to his current claims about the Paris deal.
+Grist, an environmental news site, reported that Trump and three of his adult children – Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka – signed an open letter to President Obama urging the passage of legislation to combat climate change. The letter was published in the New York Times on Dec. 6, 2009, just before the climate conference in Copenhagen from Dec. 7 to Dec. 18, 2009.
+The letter states, “If we fail to act now, it is scientifically irrefutable that there will be catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet.” The letter adds that investing in clean energy “will spur economic growth, create new energy jobs, and increase our energy security all while reducing the harmful emissions that are putting our planet at risk.”
+Clinton, on the other hand, says she “will deliver on the pledge President Obama made at the Paris climate conference.”
+Obama pledged to reduce the U.S.’s emissions by 26 percent to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. Likewise, Clinton says she “will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 30 percent in 2025 relative to 2005 levels and put the country on a path to cut emissions more than 80 percent by 2050.”
+Clinton claims she can achieve these goals by defending the Clean Power Plan, expanding clean energy production on public land, cutting the tax subsidies for oil and gas companies, and decreasing methane emissions by reducing leaks from new and existing natural gas sources, among other measures. We’ll discuss some of these policies in more detail in the following sections.  
+Controversy Over the Clean Power Plan
+Trump, speech in New York, Sept. 15: I will eliminate all needless and job-killing regulations now on the books – and there are plenty of them. This includes … scrapping the EPA’s so-called Clean Power Plan.
+Clinton, 10th Democratic debate, April 14: I have laid out a set of actions that build on what President Obama was able to accomplish, building on the Clean Power Plan, which is currently under attack by fossil fuels and the right in the Supreme Court.
+Prior to the Clean Power Plan, no national legislation limited the amount of carbon dioxide power plants emitted into the atmosphere, which account for around 40 percent of the U.S.’s total emissions.
+On Aug. 3, 2015, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized the Clean Power Plan, which aims to reduce carbon emissions for existing power plants. When “fully in place in 2030, carbon pollution from the power sector will be 32 percent below 2005 levels,” says the EPA.
+According to the New York Times, the Clean Power Plan “gave Mr. Obama the leverage to negotiate the Paris Agreement.”
+However, on Feb. 9, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court placed a hold on the implementation of the plan based on requests of 27 states, including Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence’s home state of Indiana, as well as various companies.
+In fact, on June 24, 2015, as governor of Indiana, Pence wrote a letter to Obama stating “Indiana will not comply” with the Clean Power Plan unless there is “significant improvement in the final rule.” Pence criticized the rule because he argued it would “raise electricity costs” and “impede economic growth.”
+There is evidence to back up some of Pence’s claims.
+The nonpartisan Energy Information Administration found that “[r]etail electricity prices are higher when the CPP is in place than when it is not, as the fuel and capital costs of complying with the rule by shifting to natural gas-fired generation, or by building new renewable capacity, are passed through to retail prices.”
+Electricity prices will increase between 2 percent to 7 percent depending on region by 2030 if the plan is implemented compared with if it is not. By 2040, price levels range from 0 percent to 4 percent higher with the plan.
+If implemented, the EIA also found the plan will reduce carbon emissions from the U.S. electric power sector by 35 percent in 2030 compared with 2005 levels.
+But how do states meet the Clean Power Plan’s standards in the first place?
+If implemented, the EPA would set emissions goals individually for each state, and the states would then choose the routes they want to take to meet those goals. Some states might choose to invest more in renewable energy, natural gas or nuclear power, while others might concentrate more on improving energy efficiency, for example. States would have to submit “final complete state plans” no later than Sept. 6, 2018. Along the way, states will also have to report their progress to the EPA.
+“Targets differ across states because of each state’s unique mix of electricity-generation resources—and also because of technological feasibilities, costs, and emissions reduction potentials, all of which vary across the country,” explains the Union of Concerned Scientists.
+Overall, the plan offers states flexibility in how states can both meet and report progress toward their emissions goals.
+A Carbon Tax: Politically Lethal? 
+Trump, Twitter, May 13: I will not support or endorse a carbon tax!
+Clinton, when asked by Sen. Bernie Sanders if she supports a carbon tax, April 14: I want to do what we can do to actually make progress in dealing with the [climate change] crisis. That’s exactly what I have proposed. And my approach I think is going to get us there faster without tying us up into political knots with a Congress that still would not support what you are proposing.
+According to the World Bank, a carbon tax “refers to a tax directly linked” to greenhouse gas emissions that creates “incentives for emitters to shift to less greenhouse‐gas intensive ways of production and ultimately resulting in reduced emissions.”
+On Sept. 22, Trump told an audience in Pittsburgh, “The platform produced by Hillary Clinton’s party this year also calls for a ‘price on carbon.'”
+Trump is right. The Democratic Party’s platform does include a carbon tax. It says, “Democrats believe that carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases should be priced to reflect their negative externalities, and to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy and help meet our climate goals.”
+But Clinton’s own plan currently does not include a tax of greenhouse gas emissions.
+In fact, emails recently released by WikiLeaks may provide insight into why this is the case, as Vox reported. Though yet to be verified by Clinton’s campaign, the emails include an exchange between Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, and one of her advisers, Jake Sullivan, from January 2015.
+“Extensive polling” conducted by the campaign showed that, after hearing the pros and cons of a carbon tax, 46 percent of people supported a carbon tax, Podesta told Sullivan in an email. In other emails, Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, allegedly said he was “a bit nervous about rushing to say [Clinton would] never support such a tax,” but that supporting one could also be “lethal” to her chance at the presidency.
+Emails more recently released on Oct. 20 also showed the Clinton campaign considered “an aggressive carbon tax as a central pillar of her campaign’s climate agenda,” reported Environment & Energy Publishing.
+The emails included a March 2015 memo sent by Pete Ogden, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, to Podesta, which, among other things, considered a “GHG Pollution Fee” of $42 per ton of GHG emissions.
+The memo noted that household energy costs would rise by roughly $478 per year on average and gasoline prices may increase by around 40 cents per gallon between 2020 and 2030 with such a carbon tax. But it also said the revenues generated from the tax and converted into a rebate for taxpayers “more than cover the increase in energy costs for all households.”
+But a carbon tax may face roadblocks in Congress. Even with Democrats in control of Congress, a House-approved carbon cap-and-trade bill died in the Senate in 2010, when some Democrats broke with President Obama and the party’s congressional leaders.  
+Some Senate Democrats also have voted to approve an amendment “to protect the United States from an energy tax,” i.e. a tax on carbon emissions.
+The New York Times wrote that Podesta, “the architect of both the Obama and Clinton climate change plans,” crafted a plan for Clinton that seeks to reduce emissions without waiting for Congress to pass a carbon tax.
+As for Trump, there’s not much to say on the topic of a carbon tax. Trump’s energy plan promises to spur economic growth and create jobs by repealing current measures to cut GHG emissions, not add new ones. It maintains that Obama’s “onslaught of regulations has been a massive self-inflicted economic wound.”
+Fracking on Federal Land
+Trump, speech in Pittsburgh, Sept. 22: Clinton wants to put the coal miners out of work, ban hydraulic fracking in almost all places, and extensively restrict and ban energy production on public lands and in most offshore areas. … We need an America-First energy plan. … This means opening federal lands for oil and gas production, opening offshore areas and revoking policies that are imposing unnecessary restrictions on innovative new exploration technologies.
+Clinton, primary debate in Brooklyn, April 14: One of the bridge fuels [from coal to clean energy] is natural gas. … We want to cross that bridge as quickly as possible, because in order to deal with climate change, we have got to move as rapidly as we can.
+Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a method that recovers gas and oil from shale, a type of rock. The technique involves drilling into the earth and injecting water, sand and chemicals at high pressure, which releases oil and gas that would otherwise be difficult to reach.
+Fracking has caused a boom in oil and natural gas production in the U.S. But, when it comes to climate change, critics argue the expansion of fracking for natural gas has only postponed the move toward clean energy sources like wind and solar. Proponents say natural gas can act as a “bridge fuel” between coal and renewables.
+Natural gas when burned emits about half the amount of carbon as coal. However, the production of natural gas also can lead to leaks of methane, the main component of natural gas. Methane is 28 to 36 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide over a 100-year period.
+According to the Bureau of Land Management, “There are more than 100,000 oil and gas wells on federally managed lands. Of wells currently being drilled, over 90 percent use hydraulic fracturing.”
+Trump and Clinton actually agree on one aspect of fracking: They both think towns and states should be able to ban the technique in their areas.
+Trump, however, has criticized Clinton for claiming during the primary debate in Flint last March: “By the time we get through all of my conditions, I do not think there will be many places in America where fracking will continue to take place.”
+Clinton has said she doesn’t support fracking when (1) “any locality or any state is against it,” (2) “release of methane or contamination of water is present” and (3) fracking operations don’t “tell us exactly what chemicals they are using.”
+But Clinton herself has admitted that the president doesn’t have much authority to ban fracking.
+After the primary debate in Durham, New Hampshire, in February, a representative from 350 Action, an environmental group, asked Clinton, “With so much of the environmental community opposing fracking how do you expect to win over young people’s votes if you are still support fracking?”
+“The states have a lot of authority with fracking,” Clinton responded. “I don’t think the president does, but what the [federal] government does have the authority to do is to impose very strict regulations.”
+The questioner then asked her, “Perhaps banning extraction on public lands?” Clinton responded, “Yeah, that’s a done deal.” She added later, “That’s where the president is moving. No future extraction, I agree with that.”
+But Clinton could have trouble even imposing regulations on fracking and even just on federal lands, given roadblocks President Obama has experienced.
+In March, the Department of the Interior passed a final rule that addressed fracking well construction and chemical use on federal land. But the rule was overturned by one of Obama’s judicial appointees, Scott Skavdahl of the District Court of Wyoming, reported The Hill. “Congress has not delegated to the Department of Interior the authority to regulate hydraulic fracturing” on federal lands or otherwise, Skavdahl said.
+Still, the Clinton campaign states that Clinton would control fugitive methane emissions by ensuring “new natural gas pipelines are built to the highest standards” and repairing or replacing “thousands of miles of leaky pipes by the end of her first term,” if elected.
+Trump, on the other hand, told an audience in Pittsburgh in September that he would expand natural gas and coal production on federal lands, adding “we will end the war on coal.”
+But as the New York Times points out, it might be difficult for Trump to boost natural gas production while also saving the coal industry.
+Fracking technology has led to an upswing in natural gas production, which decreased demand for coal. Natural gas is currently around 20 percent cheaper than coal. In 2015, natural gas surpassed coal as the U.S.’s largest source of electricity.
+Robert N. Stavins, director of the environmental economics program at Harvard, also told the Times, “If the Trump administration wanted to help coal, it could ban fracking. But he can’t have it both ways.”
+Race to Renewables?
+Trump, speech in Bismarck, North Dakota, May 26: We will get the bureaucracy out of the way of innovation, so that we can pursue all forms of energy. This includes renewable energies and the technologies of the future. It does include nuclear and wind and solar – but not to the exclusion of other forms of energy, and other forms of energy that right now are working much better. The government should not pick winners and losers.
+Clinton, speech in Warren, Michigan, Aug. 11: Some country is going to be the clean energy super power of the 21st century and create millions of jobs and businesses. It’s probably going to be either China, Germany or America. I want it to be us.
+According to the Energy Information Administration, “U.S. power plants used renewable energy sources, including water, wind, biomass wood and waste, geothermal, and solar, to generate about 13% of the electricity produced in the United States during 2015.” Hydroelectric power made up the largest share, but wind and solar energy production have also increased substantially in the past few years. 
+Trump has said his “energy policy will make full use of our domestic energy sources, including traditional and renewable energy sources,” so long as it allows the U.S. to “accomplish a complete American energy independence.”
+While Trump has outlined policies to bolster fossil fuel production, he hasn’t specified any policies in favor of wind, solar or other renewable energies.
+He has also criticized both solar and wind energy on numerous occasions.
+For example, in November 2015 in Newton, Iowa – the state that produces the most wind energy, as a percentage of its total energy generation – Trump told an audience member he’s “fine with” a wind energy tax credit.
+Trump added, “wind is a problem” because it’s “a very expensive form of energy.” But, as we found earlier this year, wind energy is cheaper than coal- or gas-powered energy in some parts of the country, particularly Iowa and Texas. On average nationwide, wind was more expensive than coal and gas in the second half of 2015, when Trump made his comment in Iowa, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. But wind is now cheaper than coal, and more expensive than gas.
+Bloomberg New Energy Finance provided us with prices for the second half of 2016: Gas is less expensive at $52 per megawatt hour compared with onshore wind at $56 per MWh in the U.S. on average. But coal is at $65 per MWh. Those numbers do not include government subsidies.
+The EIA projects that the average rate for new combined cycle natural gas-fired plants entering service in 2018 will be around $48 per MWh. The unsubsidized rate for onshore wind farms for 2018 will be $51.9 per MWh. With subsidies, the rate for onshore wind drops to $34 per MWh.
+Trump also has claimed wind farms in the U.S. “kill more than 1 million birds a year,” as we also wrote in June.
+Reliable data are scarce, but current mean estimates range from 20,000 to 573,000 bird deaths per year. Research also suggests oil production kills the same, if not more, birds per year than wind farms.
+In Fresno in May, Trump also told an audience, “I know a lot about solar. I love solar,” but there are “a lot of problems with it. One problem is it’s too expensive.”
+Solar power is pricier than wind, and the EIA doesn’t project that the cost will go below natural gas in 2018. The EIA projects the cost for solar will be $71 per MWh without subsidies and $53.5 per MWh with subsidies in 2018. Bloomberg found that the cost of solar photovoltaic power in the U.S. on average was $72 or $79 per MWh in the second half of 2016, depending on whether the panels move to capture more sunlight.
+Solar power received 27 percent of government subsidies and support in 2013, according to the EIA. Wind energy received the largest portion at 37 percent. However, coal, natural gas and nuclear energy also received federal subsidies and support at 6 percent, 4 percent and 10 percent, respectively.
+
+Clinton’s plan for renewables has two major tenets: (1) install more than half a billion solar panels across the country by the end of her first term and (2) generate enough clean renewable energy to power every American home with 10 years of taking office.
+Daniel Cohan, a professor of environmental engineering at Rice University in Houston, wrote in The Hill that Clinton’s plan is “ambitious, but not implausible.”
+He explained that Clinton’s plan is beyond what the EIA currently projects for 2020, but its past predictions have “tended to underestimate solar growth.”
+He also noted that if a Clinton administration can achieve her 2020 solar goal, it “would likely put the 2027 renewable energy goal within reach,” her second tenet.
+Using the EIA’s numbers, Cohan points out that “residential electricity consumption will reach 1,400 billion kWh by 2027, with renewable energy generating 1,040 billion kWh if the Clean Power Plan is implemented.” If Clinton can manage to achieve her solar goal by 2020, that would “close about half of that gap, leaving seven years for more solar plus other sources like wind” to reach her 2027 target, which would be feasible, he said.
+But Cohan also writes “achieving the solar target will depend on a series of initiatives that are only vaguely described” in Clinton’s plan.
+These initiatives include grant funding for cities and states through her $60 billion Clean Energy Challenge, a Solar X-Prize for communities that “cut the red tape that slows rooftop solar installation times” and the expansion of renewable energy on public land and federal buildings.
+“Costs for renewable energy tend to drop as more capacity is installed,” Cohan added. “This reflects not only economies of scale but also advances in technologies to meet growing demand.”
+As evidence for this statement, Cohen cited a 2015 study published in the journal Energy Policy that found that solar costs drop roughly 23 percent each time capacity doubles. “Success can breed success,” he said.
+Building Green
+Trump, speech in Fresno, May 27: I have a friend, he went into an … all LEED building … in other words, environmentally unbelievable. And he said, “Donald I feel so good, I just signed a lease with an all LEED building.” … And I said, “how is your vision?” He said, “my vision is good.” I said, “in three years it won’t be because you won’t have enough light to see.” … Then I said, “do you mind being freezing in the winter and hot as hell in the summer?” “Of course I do.” I said, “you will freeze your ass off in the winter and in the summer you will be a disaster.”
+Clinton, HillaryClinton.com, as of Nov. 1: Inefficient buildings not only raise energy costs and increase pollution, but they are also less healthy to live in and less productive to work in. … As President, Clinton would set a goal to cut energy waste in American homes, schools, stores, municipal buildings, hospitals and offices by a third within ten years of taking office.
+In addition to obtaining more energy from renewable and clean sources, another way to address climate change is to increase the country’s energy efficiency. Buildings account for 39 percent of the U.S. total energy consumption, more than either transportation or industry, making them one potential target for improving efficiency.
+Clinton’s plan for advanced buildings includes various measures aimed at cutting “energy waste in American homes, schools, stores, municipal buildings, hospitals and offices by a third within ten years of taking office.” This goal will “help keep the United States at the forefront of tackling the climate challenge,” the campaign says.
+Some of these measures include phasing down “fuel oil and propane to heat homes and businesses over the long term,” working “with companies like Zillow and Trulia to make expected energy cost information easily available to prospective [home] buyers” and expanding the Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star program for appliances “to include a broader range of models and products.”
+As part of her $60 billion Clean Energy Challenge, Clinton says she will award grants to states, cities and rural communities to “overcome barriers” to improving energy efficiency in residential, public and commercial buildings. This could include adopting and enforcing better building energy codes, which have already reduced carbon “emissions by roughly 3 percent in terms of the projected national CO2 emissions in 2030,” says the U.S. Department of Energy.
+As for Trump’s claims about faulty temperature control and lighting, research has shown that occupants of LEED buildings have the same, if not greater, workplace satisfaction than occupants of conventional buildings when it comes to lighting and temperature.
+In 2013, National Research Council Canada published a paper in the journal Building Research & Information that compared the indoor environments of conventional and LEED-certified buildings in Canada and the U.S. The study found that there was “no difference” between the measured temperatures and “any physical measure” of lighting in LEED and conventional buildings.
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation.
+Sources
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+Hurley, Lawrence and Volcovici, Valerie. “U.S. Supreme Court Blocks Obama’s Clean Power Plan.” 9 Feb 2016.
+Pence, Michael R. Letter to President Obama. 24 Jun 2015.
+Martin, Laura and Jones, Jeffery. “Effects of the Clean Power Plan.” EIA. 20 Jun 2016.
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+The World Bank. “Putting a Price on Carbon with a Tax.” Accessed 1 Nov 2016.
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+“What is fracking and why is it controversial?” BBC. 16 Dec 2015.
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+"450Several claims from the first presidential debate are highlighted in this video from FlackCheck.org, our sister site for political literacy.
+
+For more information on these false and misleading statements, and others made during the debate between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump, see our full debate story, “FactChecking the First Debate.“
+Shorter videos of each individual claim can be found on our social media outlets, including Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.
+Our source for the video for these clips was the Internet Archive’s TV News Archive."
+"13.9KSummary
+LONG ISLAND, N.Y. — The first presidential debate between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump certainly kept fact-checkers busy. The less-than-accurate claims included:
+
+Clinton wrongly said that the only tax returns that anyone has seen from Trump “showed he didn’t pay any federal income tax.” Trump paid federal taxes in three out of five years in the 1970s.
+Trump was right in saying that Ford is moving its small-car division overseas, but wrong in claiming that as a result, thousands of jobs are leaving Michigan and Ohio. Ford’s CEO insists not a single job will be lost in the U.S.
+Trump left the false impression that the Obama administration failed to disclose the full amount paid to Iran in January to settle a long outstanding claim.
+Clinton said Trump thinks “climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.” Trump denied it. In 2012, he tweeted that the Chinese had created global warming but later said he was joking.
+Trump claimed without evidence that the Clinton campaign in 2008 was pushing “very hard” the false story that President Obama was born in Kenya, not in Hawaii.
+Trump claimed “the record shows” he was opposed to the Iraq War before it started, but there is no record of that.
+Trump said “murders are up” in New York City since ending stop-and-frisk policies, while Clinton said “crime, including murders” is down. Both are correct.
+Clinton claimed she had said she “hoped” the Trans-Pacific Partnership would be a “good deal,” when she originally supported it. But at the time, Clinton said it “sets the gold standard.”
+Clinton said “independent experts” concluded that Trump’s plans would cause a loss of 3.5 million jobs while hers would create 10 million jobs. But Trump has released a new tax plan since that report, and the projected job creation under Clinton is 3.2 million more than what would be added under current law.
+Clinton said Trump’s businesses had filed for bankruptcy six times; he said it was four. Clinton is right.
+
+And that’s not all. There were several other claims that we have fact-checked before — on trade, Iraq, ISIS and oil, and more.
+Note to Readers: Our director, Eugene Kiely, was at the debate at Hofstra University. This story was written with the help of the entire staff, based in the Philadelphia region and Washington, D.C. FactCheck.org plans to send one representative to each of the four debates. An annotated transcript of the Hofstra debate with our fact-checks can be found here.
+Analysis
+The debate was held at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, and was moderated by NBC News’ Lester Holt.
+Trump’s Tax Returns
+Clinton said that the only tax returns that anyone has seen from Trump “showed he didn’t pay any federal income tax.” That’s not correct.
+Clinton: Or maybe he doesn’t want the American people, all of you watching tonight, to know that he’s paid nothing in federal taxes, because the only years that anybody’s ever seen were a couple of years when he had to turn them over to state authorities when he was trying to get a casino license, and they showed he didn’t pay any federal income tax.
+Trump paid federal income taxes in three out of five years from 1975 to 1979, according to a report to the New Jersey Casino Control Commission, which viewed Trump’s tax returns when the Trump Plaza Corporation applied for a casino license in the state in 1981. (See page 37.)
+Although the returns were not disclosed, the report indicated that Trump paid $18,714 in taxes on $76,210 in income in 1975, $10,832 in taxes on $24,594 in income in 1976 and $42,386 in taxes on $118,530 in income in 1977. Trump reported income losses of $406,379 in 1978 and $3,443,560 in 1979, and thus paid no federal income tax for those years.
+Ford Jobs Leaving?
+Trump claimed that Ford is moving its small-car division overseas and that as a result, thousands of jobs are leaving Michigan and Ohio. Trump is half right. Ford is moving its small-car division to Mexico, but Ford’s CEO insists not a single job will be lost in the U.S.
+Trump: So Ford is leaving. You see that, their small-car division leaving. Thousands of jobs leaving Michigan, leaving Ohio. They’re all leaving. And we can’t allow it to happen anymore.
+Ford CEO Mark Fields confirmed on Sept. 16 that “[o]ver the next two to three years, we will have migrated all of our small-car production to Mexico and out of the United States,” the Detroit Free Press reported.
+The Free Press added that the “impact on Ford’s U.S. employment will be minimal in the near-term. … There is an expectation that Ford will build a new Ranger mid-size pickup truck in Wayne and possibly a new Bronco compact sport-utility. The automaker also still will make the Ford Mustang at its plant in Flat Rock, Michigan and will begin making the full-size Lincoln Continental there later this year. It also makes the full-size Ford Taurus in Chicago.”
+The Free Press article also states that last year, “the automaker made a commitment to invest $9 billion in U.S. plants and create or retain more than 8,500 jobs as part of a new four-year contract with the UAW. Of that, $4.8 billion goes to 11 facilities in Michigan.”
+In a Sept. 15 interview on CNN, Fields insisted no jobs would be lost in the U.S. as a result of moving the small-car division to Mexico.
+CNN’s Poppy Harlow asked if Trump was accurate that Ford will be “firing all of its employees in the United States.”
+“Will Ford cut any of its jobs as a result of this move? One? Any single one?” she asked.
+“Absolutely not. Zero,” Fields said. “And what we announced is that we’ll be moving our Focus out of Michigan so that we can compete more financially in that particular segment but at the same time, and that’s an agreement we have with the UAW and what we’ll be doing is we’ll be replacing those products with two very exciting new products so not one job will be lost. And most of our investment is here in the U.S. and that’s the way it’s going to continue to be.”
+Payment to Iran
+Trump left the false impression that the Obama administration failed to disclose the full amount paid to Iran in January to settle a long outstanding claim.
+Trump claimed $400 million paid to Iran in January “turned out to be wrong. It was actually $1.7 billion.” But the administration accurately described the total payment as $1.7 billion — $400 million in principle and $1.3 billion in interest — on the day it was announced.
+In criticizing the Iran nuclear deal during the debate, Trump referenced the $400 million payment to Iran. Trump described the payment as being “for the hostages,” because it was paid on the same day in January that Iran released U.S. prisoners. The Obama administration has insisted the U.S. did not pay Iran ransom for the prisoners’ release.
+Trump: One of the great giveaways of all time, of all time, including $400 million in cash. Nobody’s ever seen that before. That turned out to be wrong. It was actually $1.7 billion in cash, obviously, I guess for the hostages. It certainly looks that way.
+The $400 million was the first installment in a $1.7 billion payment to resolve a dispute that dates to 1979, when Iran paid the U.S. $400 million for military equipment it never received. The U.S. refused to provide the equipment after the Shah of Iran was overthrown during the Iranian Revolution in 1979.
+The agreement ended a claim that Iran had filed against the U.S. in an international tribunal in The Hague. President Obama announced it on Jan. 17 as part of a series of agreements involving Iran.
+Although the president did not get into details of the payment, Secretary of State John Kerry on that same day described it as a $1.7 billion agreement in a statement released by his office.
+Kerry, Jan. 17: Iran will receive the balance of $400 million in the Trust Fund, as well as a roughly $1.3 billion compromise on the interest. Iran’s recovery was fixed at a reasonable rate of interest and therefore Iran is unable to pursue a bigger Tribunal award against us, preventing U.S. taxpayers from being obligated to a larger amount of money.
+CNN reported at the time that the amount was $1.7 billion.
+Obama has been criticized for leaving the false impression in January that the payment was made after the prisoners were released. The Wall Street Journal in August reported new details on the January payment, and the administration was forced to acknowledge that it delayed paying Iran until the prisoners were released — fueling criticism that it was ransom.
+We will leave it up to readers to decide whether the payment was ransom or not, but Trump is wrong when he implies that the administration misled the public on the amount.
+Climate Change a Hoax?
+Clinton said Trump thinks “climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.” Trump denied it. He did tweet that the Chinese “created” the “concept of global warming,” but later said it was a “joke.” Trump has also called global warming a “hoax” repeatedly.
+In contrast to her opponent, Clinton said she thinks climate change is “real,” adding, “I think science is real.”
+On Nov. 6, 2012, Trump tweeted, “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”
+But on Jan. 18, 2016, when asked about the tweet, Trump told Fox News that he was joking.
+
+Trump, Jan. 18: Well, I think the climate change is just a very, very expensive form of tax. A lot of people are making a lot of money. … I often joke that this is done for the benefit of China. Obviously, I joke. But this is done for the benefit of China, because China does not do anything to help climate change. They burn everything you could burn; they couldn’t care less.
+
+Trump also has a record of calling global warming a “hoax.”
+For example, on Jan. 28, 2014, Trump tweeted, “Snowing in Texas and Louisiana, record setting freezing temperatures throughout the country and beyond. Global warming is an expensive hoax!”
+At a campaign rally in Hilton Head, South Carolina, on Dec. 30, 2015, Trump also said, “Obama’s talking about all of this with the global warming and the — a lot of it’s a hoax, it’s a hoax. I mean, it’s a money-making industry, OK? It’s a hoax, a lot of it.”
+And there are more and more examples.
+So Trump may have been joking about global warming being invented by the Chinese. Still, he has said time and again that global warming is a “hoax.” And Clinton is right — 97 percent of scientists say it’s “extremely likely” that human-caused global warming is real.
+Still Wrong on ‘Birther’ Claims
+Trump claimed without evidence that the Clinton campaign in 2008 was pushing “very hard” the false story that President Obama was born in Kenya, not in Hawaii.
+Trump, who on Sept. 16 finally acknowledged that “Obama was born in the United States,” had a long, somewhat rambling response when asked by the moderator why he continued to question that Obama was born in Hawaii even after the president produced his long-form birth certificate in 2011.
+Here is the exchange with Holt:
+Holt: Mr. Trump, for five years, you perpetuated a false claim that the nation’s first black president was not a natural-born citizen. You questioned his legitimacy. In the last couple of weeks, you acknowledged what most Americans have accepted for years: The president was born in the United States. Can you tell us what took you so long?
+Trump: I’ll tell you very — well, just very simple to say. Sidney Blumenthal works for the campaign and close — very close friend of Secretary Clinton. And her campaign manager, Patti Doyle, went to — during the campaign, her campaign against President Obama, fought very hard. And you can go look it up, and you can check it out.
+And if you look at CNN this past week, Patti Solis Doyle was on Wolf Blitzer saying that this happened. Blumenthal sent McClatchy, highly respected reporter at McClatchy, to Kenya to find out about it. They were pressing it very hard. She [Clinton] failed to get the birth certificate.
+When I got involved, I didn’t fail. I got him to give the birth certificate. So I’m satisfied with it. And I’ll tell you why I’m satisfied with it.
+Holt: That was…
+(CROSSTALK)
+Trump: Because I want to get on to defeating ISIS, because I want to get on to creating jobs, because I want to get on to having a strong border, because I want to get on to things that are very important to me and that are very important to the country.
+Holt: I will let you respond. It’s important. But I just want to get the answer here. The birth certificate was produced in 2011. You’ve continued to tell the story and question the president’s legitimacy in 2012, ’13, ’14, ’15 …
+Trump: Yeah.
+Holt: … as recently as January. So the question is, what changed your mind?
+Trump: Well, nobody was pressing it, nobody was caring much about it. I figured you’d ask the question tonight, of course. But nobody was caring much about it. But I was the one that got him to produce the birth certificate. And I think I did a good job.
+Secretary Clinton also fought it. I mean, you know — now, everybody in mainstream is going to say, oh, that’s not true. Look, it’s true. Sidney Blumenthal sent a reporter — you just have to take a look at CNN, the last week, the interview with your former campaign manager. And she was involved.
+It is simply false that Patti Solis Doyle, Clinton’s 2008 campaign manager, “was involved” in spreading the rumor of Obama’s birthplace. In fact, Solis Doyle said — in the CNN interview that Trump cites — that a “rogue volunteer coordinator” in Iowa was immediately fired when the campaign found out that the aide forwarded an email promoting the birther conspiracy.
+Solis Doyle said she called Obama campaign manager David Plouffe and apologized for the incident. “This was not the kind of campaign we wanted to run,” she said she told Plouffe.
+The Blumenthal case is more complicated, but it doesn’t provide clear evidence that the Clinton campaign was “pressing it very hard.”
+Blumenthal was a senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and he remained in close contact with Hillary Clinton after she became secretary of state, as Vanity Fair detailed in an article in July. So, Trump is right, when he says that Blumenthal is “a very close friend” of Hillary Clinton. In fact, Blumenthal left his position at Salon in 2007 to become a senior adviser to Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.
+Trump said “Blumenthal sent McClatchy, highly respected reporter at McClatchy, to Kenya to find out” if Obama was born in Keyna. Blumenthal didn’t send a reporter to Kenya. However, McClatchy’s respected former bureau chief James Asher said he had a meeting with Blumenthal during the 2008 campaign, and at that meeting Blumenthal encouraged McClatchy to chase the story of Obama’s birth.
+Shashank Bengali, who now works at the Los Angeles Times, said Asher told him to “look into everything about Obama’s family in Kenya,” according to Politico. Asher gave Politico an email that he received from Bengali that said, “I can’t recall if we specifically discussed the birther claim, but I’m sure that was part of what I researched.”
+Blumenthal denies urging Asher to investigate Obama’s birthplace, and Asher has nothing in writing — so there is no clear evidence to support Asher’s account.
+Iraq War, Again
+Trump got into a disagreement not only with Clinton, but also with the moderator, on whether Trump opposed the Iraq War before it started. Trump claimed “the record shows” he was opposed to it, but there is no record of it.
+Trump: Wait a minute. I was against the war in Iraq. Just so you put it out.
+Holt: The record shows otherwise, but why — why was…
+Trump: The record does not show that.
+Holt: Why was — is your judgment any…
+Trump: The record shows that I’m right. When I did an interview with Howard Stern, very lightly, first time anyone’s asked me that, I said, very lightly, I don’t know, maybe, who knows? Essentially. I then did an interview with Neil Cavuto. We talked about the economy is more important. I then spoke to Sean Hannity, which everybody refuses to call Sean Hannity. I had numerous conversations with Sean Hannity at Fox. And Sean Hannity said — and he called me the other day — and I spoke to him about it — he said you were totally against the war, because he was for the war.
+We asked the Trump campaign about the “numerous conversations” with Hannity, a Trump supporter and sometimes adviser. It responded with an email that said, “Sean Hannity Substantiates That He And Trump Had Many Private Conversations About Iraq.” It provided a link to a Sept. 19 column in the Washington Post, which included a tweet from Hannity saying he had arguments with Trump about the Iraq War after his show.
+The campaign provided no record of these private conversations, just the word of a Trump supporter.
+As for the Cavuto interview, we have already been over that several times, mostly after the NBC “commander-in-chief” forum. The interview was Jan. 28, 2003, before the Iraq War started in March of that year, but Cavuto does not ask Trump whether he supports or opposes invading Iraq. And Trump doesn’t say.
+Instead, Trump urged President Bush to make a decision on Iraq. “Either you attack or you don’t attack,” he told Cavuto.
+Trump, Jan. 28, 2003: Well, he has either got to do something or not do something, perhaps, because perhaps shouldn’t be doing it yet and perhaps we should be waiting for the United Nations, you know. He’s under a lot of pressure. He’s — I think he’s doing a very good job. But, of course, if you look at the polls, a lot of people are getting a little tired. I think the Iraqi situation is a problem. And I think the economy is a much bigger problem as far as the president is concerned.
+The record still doesn’t show Trump was opposed to the war before it started. (See “Donald Trump and the Iraq War” for our timeline of statements that Trump made before and after the war started.)
+Stop and Frisk
+Trump and Clinton dueled over whether ending stop-and-frisk police stops in New York City had been accompanied by more crime and killings.
+Clinton said “crime, including murders” is down, and Trump said “murders are up.” Turns out, both are correct.
+Trump: [S]top and frisk has a tremendous impact on the safety of New York City. Tremendous beyond belief. So when you say it has no impact, it really did, a very, very big impact.
+Clinton: It’s also fair to say, if we’re going to talk about mayors, that under the current mayor crime has continued to drop, including murders.
+Trump: (interrupting) No, you’re wrong. You’re wrong.
+Clinton: No, I’m not
+Trump:  Murders are up. All right. You check it. You check it.
+Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio was sworn in Jan. 1, 2014, after being elected on a promise to halt the stop-and-frisk practice. And during that first year in office, homicides did fall — by two — to 333, the lowest number on record. However, last year, the number of killings went up by 5.7 percent to 352 — the third lowest year on record, but still 17 more than in 2013.
+So far this year, the number is down once again. But if the current rate continues, the total for the year would still be slightly above where it was before De Blasio took office. According to the most recent weekly report issued by the city’s police department, 257 murders had been reported in 2016 as of Sept. 18, which is 4.3 percent below the same period in 2015. That’s just a little under one per day, but at that rate, 2016 (a leap year with 366 days) would end up with 345 killings, 10 more than the 335 recorded in 2013.
+Since Clinton said “crime, including murders” had fallen, we also looked at the broader category of murder and other major felonies. And despite the uptick in murders last year, the city did record the lowest number of major crimes on record in 2015.
+Furthermore, the total is currently running 2.67 percent lower so far this year, according to the NYPD’s most recent report.
+So Clinton was correct to say “crime, including murders” has fallen, and Trump was off base when he said she was “wrong.” On the other hand, Trump was correct to say “murders” are up — though not by much.
+Trans-Pacific Partnership
+Clinton attempted to rewrite the history of her past support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.
+Trump: You called it the gold standard of trade deals. You said it’s the finest deal you’ve ever seen.
+Clinton: No.
+Trump: And then you heard what I said about it, and all of a sudden you were against it.
+Clinton: Well, Donald, I know you live in your own reality, but that is not the facts. The facts are — I did say I hoped it would be a good deal, but when it was negotiated …
+Trump: Not.
+Clinton: … which I was not responsible for, I concluded it wasn’t. I wrote about that in my book …
+As we’ve written before, Clinton didn’t say she “hoped” it would be a “gold standard.” At the time, she said it was a gold standard.
+She said in 2012: “This TPP sets the gold standard in trade agreements to open free, transparent, fair trade, the kind of environment that has the rule of law and a level playing field,” Clinton remarked in Adelaide, Australia, on Nov. 15, 2012. “And when negotiated, this agreement will cover 40 percent of the world’s total trade and build in strong protections for workers and the environment.”
+Clinton came out against the TPP in October 2015, saying in a statement: “I appreciate the hard work that President Obama and his team put into this process and recognize the strides they made. But the bar here is very high and, based on what I have seen, I don’t believe this agreement has met it.”
+As for Clinton’s statement that “I wrote about that in my book,” it’s true that she wrote in her memoir “Hard Choices” that it makes sense to “reserve judgment” on the final product, which was then in negotiation. And while some of what she wrote about TPP was cut from the paperback edition, that caveat about reserving judgment appears in both hardcover and paperback editions.
+However, she also wrote that TPP was “important for American workers, who would benefit from competing on a more level playing field. And it was a strategic initiative that would strengthen the position of the United States in Asia.”
+Worth noting is that Clinton’s “gold standard” comment was in 2012, and her book came along two years later, as she was preparing another run for the White House.
+Analysis of Candidates’ Plans
+Clinton said “independent experts” have looked at the candidates’ economic plans and concluded that under Trump’s plan “we would lose 3.5 million jobs and maybe have another recession” and under Clinton’s plan “we will have 10 million more new jobs.” But that report relies on an outdated version of Trump’s tax plan, and Clinton exaggerates the impact of her ideas on job creation.
+Clinton: Independent experts have looked at what I’ve proposed and looked at what Donald’s proposed, and basically they’ve said this, that if his tax plan … were to go into effect, we would lose 3.5 million jobs and maybe have another recession. They’ve looked at my plans and they’ve said, OK, we can do this, and I intend to get it done, we will have 10 million more new jobs, because we will be making investments where we can grow the economy.
+As we have written before, Moody’s Analytics concluded that if Clinton were able to fully implement the plans she has outlined in her campaign, the economy would add 10.4 million jobs during Clinton’s presidency. But that’s 3.2 million more than it projects would be added under current law.
+Moreover, Moody’s Analytics doesn’t expect Clinton would likely be able to pass all of her proposals through a divided Congress. “Given the current political discord,” Moody’s expects Congress would put up “substantial roadblocks” to Clinton’s policy proposals, and under its “most-likely scenario,” a Clinton presidency would result in employment going just “a bit higher” than it otherwise would.
+Moody’s forecast that if Trump were able to implement all of his proposed policies, the economy would suffer an extended recession and result in 3.4 million job losses over the course of Trump’s presidency. But under its “most-likely scenario” under Trump — again assuming Congress would balk at many of his proposals — Trump’s outlook is not as dire. Moreover, the Trump analysis does not include Trump’s recently revised tax plan — which markedly reduced the tax cuts he proposed earlier in the campaign.
+Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, told us in August that he wasn’t sure how Trump’s “changes to his tax plan impact federal government deficits and debt and thus the economy’s performance.” Zandi, who has donated to Clinton’s campaign, said he thinks “the net impact of the changes will reduce the costs to the budget, but there is no way to know unless the campaign provides more information.”
+Six, Not Four, Bankruptcies
+Clinton said Trump has “taken business bankruptcy six times.” In response, Trump said the number was four. “On occasion, four times, we used certain laws that are there,” he said.
+Clinton is right: The correct number of bankruptcies is six.
+Trump first filed for Chapter 11 reorganization in 1991 after his Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City landed him with $900 million in personal liabilities. Two more Atlantic City properties, Trump Castle and Trump Plaza and Casino, followed the Taj Mahal into bankruptcy within a year. His fourth bankruptcy filing also occurred in 1992, this time for his Plaza Hotel in New York.
+There were two more bankruptcy filings from the 2000s. The parent company of his Atlantic City properties, Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts, filed for Chapter 11 protection in 2004. His sixth and last bankruptcy was Trump Entertainment Resorts, which was filed in 2009 amid the economic recession.
+Repeats
+There were a lot of claims that we have fact-checked before, including:
+Trump on Father’s Loan — Trump claimed his father gave him a “very small loan in 1975″ of $1 million, from which he built his real estate company. But Clinton claimed it was $14 million. Clinton was right and Trump was wrong. According to the Wall Street Journal, “a casino-license disclosure in 1985 … shows Mr. Trump taking out numerous loans from his father and his father’s properties near the start of his career in the late 1970s and early 1980s,” which totaled around $14 million. As Politico points out, that’s $31 million in today’s dollars. And as we wrote during the 11th GOP debate, these loans included more than $3 million illegally transferred to the Trump Castle Casino in Atlantic City in poker chips in 1990. To top it off, Trump’s father also co-guaranteed the construction loan on his first Manhattan project, the Grand Hyatt. So Trump sells his father’s contributions short by a long shot.
+Clinton on Trump and Equal Pay — Clinton claimed Trump said “women don’t deserve equal pay unless they do as good a job as men.” Trump claimed that he “didn’t say that.” As we’ve written, Trump doesn’t support equal pay legislation, but he has said that he believes in paying people based on performance, not gender.
+Trump on Trade Deficit — Trump said the U.S. has “a trade deficit with all of the countries that we do business with, of almost $800 billion a year.” Trump has made this claim over and over again, but it’s not true. The U.S. trade deficit was $531.5 billion in 2015. Trump’s $800 billion number involves a generous rounding-up and pertains to the trade deficit for goods only, which was $758.9 billion in 2015. The U.S. exports a lot in services.
+Trump on Tax Returns — In explaining why he has yet to release his tax returns, Trump claimed that “you don’t learn that much from tax returns.” But experts disagree. As we’ve written, tax returns could provide information on overseas income, foreign bank accounts, effective tax rates and charitable giving habits. Conflicts of interest could also be exposed, as well as how Trump’s individual tax policy squares with his proposals. Every major party nominee since the late 1970s has released tax returns before Election Day.
+Trump on NAFTA — Trump said that President Bill Clinton “approved NAFTA, which is the single worst trade deal ever approved in this country.” Actually, the North American Free Trade Agreement was negotiated and signed by President George H.W. Bush. President Clinton signed the legislation to implement the agreement. Trump also said NAFTA “was one of the worst things that ever happened to the manufacturing industry.” Actually, economic studies say NAFTA’s impact on U.S. jobs has been small.
+Trump on Withdrawal from Iraq — Trump said “President Obama and Secretary Clinton created a vacuum the way they got out of Iraq, because they got out — what, they shouldn’t have been in, but once they got in, the way they got out was a disaster.” Later, Trump scoffed, “Not only that, you named the day. They couldn’t believe it.” As we’ve said before, the final date to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq — Dec. 31, 2011 — was set when President George W. Bush signed the Status of Forces Agreement on Dec. 14, 2008. The Obama administration was then unsuccessful in renegotiating the deal to leave a residual American troop force of up to 10,000.
+Trump on ISIS and Oil in Libya — Trump said that ISIS has “oil all over the place, including … a lot of the oil in Libya, which was another one of [Clinton’s] disasters.” That’s wrong. Claudia Gazzini, a senior analyst for Libya with the International Crisis Group, told us there’s no evidence that the Islamic State is producing or selling oil out of that country. The Islamic State’s strategy thus far has largely been to disrupt oil operations in Libya rather than to try and make a profit off of them, she said.
+Trump on Chicago Murders — Trump claimed that “almost 4,000 have been killed [in Chicago] since Barack Obama became president.” That’s missing context. Like the nation overall, Chicago has seen a drop over the last several decades in the number of homicides, as we wrote in July. According to the Chicago Police Department’s CLEAR (Citizen Law Enforcement Analysis and Reporting) system, there were 3,176 homicides from 2009 to 2015, during Obama’s presidency. That’s a drop from the 3,606 homicides in the previous seven-year period, from 2002-2008.
+Sources
+New York City Police Department. “Citywide Seven Major Felony Offenses 2000-2015.” Undated. Accessed 27 Sep 2016.
+New York City Police Department. “Compstat; Report Covering the Week 9/12/2016 Through 9/18/2016.” Undated. Downloaded 27 Sep 2016.
+CBS New York. “Police: Overall Crime Hits Record Low For 2015, But Murders, Other Categories Up” 4 Jan 2016.
+FactCheck.org “Fact Checking the Democratic Debate” 14 Oct 2015.
+Hillary Rodham Clinton. “Remarks at Techport Australia.” U.S. Department of State. 15 Nov 2012.
+Tang, Ming Ming Chun. “Hillary Clinton’s Memoir Deletions, in Detail.” The Americas Blog; Center for Economic and Policy Research. 26 May 2016.
+New Jersey Department of Law and Public Safety. Division of Gaming Enforcement. Report to the Casino Control Commission. 16 Oct 1981.
+Yee Hee Lee, Michelle. “What we know about Donald Trump and his taxes so far.” Washington Post Fact Checker. 1 Aug 2016.
+Farley, Robert. “Trump on Birtherism: Wrong, and Wrong.” FactCheck.org. 16 Sep 2016.
+Scott, Eugene. “Clinton’s ’08 campaign chief: We didn’t start ‘birther’ movement.” CNN. 16 Sep 2016.
+Warren, James. “The Hillary Confidant You Can’t Escape.” Vanity Fair. 5 Jul 2016.
+Walsh, Joan. “Sidney Blumenthal departs.” Salon. 15 Nov 2007.
+Hounshell, Blake. “Did Sid Blumenthal really push birtherism?” Politico. 19 Sep 2016.
+Rutenberg, Jim. “Sean Hannity turns adviser in the service of Donald Trump.” New York Times. 21 Aug 2016.
+Wemple, Erik. “Donald Trump says he voiced his Iraq War opposition to Sean Hannity.” Washington Post. 19 Sep 2016.
+Kiely, Eugene et al. “FactChecking the NBC Forum.” FactCheck.org. 7 Sep 2016.
+Kiely, Eugene. “Donald Trump and the Iraq War.” FactCheck.org. 19 Feb 2016.
+Toosi, Nahal. “Iran releases 5 detained Americans, including Washington Post reporter.” Politico. 16 Jan 2016.
+Tully, Shawn. “5 Things You Need to Know About the $400 Million America Sent to Iran.” Fortune. 5 Aug 2016.
+White House. “Statement by the President on Iran.” 17 Jan 2016.
+U.S. Department of State. “Hague Claims Tribunal Settlement.” Press statement. 17 Jan 2016.
+Koran, Laura. “U.S. to pay Iran $1.7 billion in legal settlement.” CNN. 17 Jan 2016.
+Solomon, Jay and Carol E. Lee. “U.S. Sent Cash to Iran as Americans Were Freed.” Wall Street Journal. 3 Aug 2016.
+Sanger, David. “U.S. Concedes $400 million payment to Iran was delayed as Prisoner ‘Leverage.’” New York Times. 18 Aug 2016.
+Berzon, Alexandra and Rubin, Richard. “Trump’s Father Helped GOP Candidate With Numerous Loans.” Wall Street Journal. 23 Sep 2016.
+
+Arnsdorf, Isaac. “Clinton is right about Trump’s ‘very small’ $14 million loan.” Politico. 26 Sep 2016.
+Farley, Robert, Kiely, Eugene and Gore, D’Angelo. “Clinton’s Economic Speech.” FactCheck.org. 11 Aug. 2016.
+Moody’s Analytics. “The Macroeconomic Consequences of Secretary Clinton’s Economic Policies.” Jul 2016.
+Moody’s Analytics. “The Macroeconomic Consequences of Mr. Trump’s Economic Policies.” Jun 2016.
+Farley, Robert. “Clinton Plays Partisan Game.” FactCheck.org. 17 Aug 2016.
+Gardner, Greg and Snavely, Brent. “Ford shifting all U.S. small-car production to Mexico.” Detroit Free Press. 16 Sep 2016.
+CNNMoney. “Ford CEO: Trump is wrong on U.S. jobs.” 15 Sep 2016.
+Kiely, Eugene. “Clinton’s Equal Pay Claim.” FactCheck.org. 23 Jun 2016.
+Trump, Donald. “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” Twitter.com. 6 Nov 2012.
+Fox & Friends. “Donald Trump slams Iran deal.” 18 Jan 2017.
+Trump, Donald. “Snowing in Texas and Louisiana, record setting freezing temperatures throughout the country and beyond. Global warming is an expensive hoax!” Twitter.com. 28 Jan 2016.
+Trump, Donald. “Transcript of Donald Trump’s Dec. 30 speech in Hilton Head, S.C.” The Kansas City Star. 20 Jan 2016.
+Trump, Donald. “NBC News just called it the great freeze – coldest weather in years. Is our country still spending money on the GLOBAL WARMING HOAX?” Twitter.com 25 Jan 2014.
+Trump, Donald. “An America First Energy Plan.” donaldjtrump.com. 26 May 2016.
+NASA. “Scientific consensus: Earth’s climate is warming.” Accessed 26 Sep 2016.
+“Groundhog Friday.” FactCheck.org. 9 Sep 2016.
+“Groundhog Friday.” FactCheck.org. 16 Sep 2016.
+Robertson, Lori and Farley, Robert. “Trump’s Tax Returns.” FactCheck.org. 12 May 2016.
+“FactChecking the 11th GOP Debate.” FactCheck.org. 4 Mar 2016.
+New Jersey Department of Law and Public Safety. Division of Gaming Enforcement. Report to the Casino Control Commission. 16 Oct 1981.
+Yee Hee Lee, Michelle. “What we know about Donald Trump and his taxes so far.” Washington Post Fact Checker. 1 Aug 2016."
+"773Green party presidential candidate Jill Stein cherry-picked the findings of a disputed study when she claimed that global warming would cause sea levels to rise on average “not one yard but many yards” in as soon as 50 years. Scientific consensus says a more realistic rise is 0.33 to 1.33 yards above current levels by 2100.
+Stein made her claim in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 23 during a press conference in which she discussed her Aug. 21 visit to flooded areas in Louisiana and the natural disaster’s link to climate change.
+According to a 2016 report by the National Academies of Sciences, global warming is expected to lead to more moisture in the atmosphere. This, in turn, can increase the frequency of extreme rainfall events like the one that recently took place in Louisiana.
+Primarily affecting regions around Baton Rouge and Lafayette, the flood damaged tens of thousands of homes and killed 13 people, reported NPR. The Red Cross also called the flood “likely the worst natural disaster in the United States since 2012’s Superstorm Sandy.”
+Stein did accurately state, “Any one storm cannot be definitively pegged to climate change, but when you see so many at such extreme levels, there’s no question, according to the scientists, that this is a consequence of warmer air that holds much more water.” But then she moved on to exaggerate the extent of projected sea level rise.
+Stein, Aug. 23: There are these growing warnings about sea level rise, according to James Hansen, the foremost climate scientist … he is predicting meters-worth, that is yards-worth — not one yard but many yards worth — of sea level rise as soon as 50 years from now. And that of course would be an absolutely devastating sea level rise that would essentially wipe out coastal population centers, including the likes of Manhattan, and Florida and so on, and actually all over the world, the entire country of Bangladesh.
+This isn’t the first time Stein has exaggerated the extent of projected global sea level rise. But it is the first time she has cited Hansen’s work while making her claim.
+Scientific Consensus on Sea Level Rise
+Hansen, a climate scientist at Columbia University, and colleagues did conclude, “Continued high fossil fuel emissions this century are predicted to yield … sea level rise, reaching several meters over a timescale of 50–150 years” in a study published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics in March 2016.
+However, reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which are both collaborations of hundreds of scientists, project a much smaller rise over a longer period than Hansen.
+The 2013 IPCC report predicts an average rise of between 0.26 to 0.98 meters (1 meter = 1.09 yards) in the global sea level by 2100, with the higher end entailing a high greenhouse gas emissions scenario.
+The 2016 Global Change report similarly projects a 1 to 4 feet (3 feet = 1 yard) rise by 2100. However, the report also states, “In the context of risk-based analysis, some decision makers may wish to use a wider range of scenarios, from 8 inches to 6.6 feet by 2100.” Still, 6.6 feet translates to 2.2 yards, which is not “many” yards, and it also would not occur in “as soon as 50 years.”
+In his paper, Hansen and colleagues argue that ice covering the North and South poles will melt at rates much faster than predicted by the IPCC and others. Instead of a linear rate, the researchers argue the rate will grow exponentially, doubling every 10, 20 or 40 years. This will lead to “multi-meter” global mean sea level rise in about 50, 100 or 200 years, respectively, the authors conclude.
+But the group also admits that, while the data they analyzed are “consistent with” a multi-meter sea level rise in around 50 years, they “cannot exclude slower responses.” This is why the researchers give a timescale of 50 to 150 years to reach several meters of sea level rise.
+In an email to us, Hansen also explained, “If we stay on business-as-usual high emissions, I would say that several meters [of sea level rise] is unlikely in 50 years, though possible. In 100 years it is likely, and I can’t see how it could be avoided in 200 years.”
+But back in March, Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University and a lead author on a chapter of the IPCC’s third report, told The Guardian: “I’m always hesitant to ignore the findings and warnings of James Hansen; he has proven to be so very prescient when it comes to his early prediction about global warming. That having been said, I’m unconvinced that we could see melting rates over the next few decades anywhere near his exponential predictions, and everything else is contingent upon those melting rates being reasonable.”
+In 1988, Hansen, then a NASA scientist, testified before Congress on the dangers of global warming. His testimony instigated broader awareness of the issue, which has led some to call him the “father of climate change awareness.”
+Steven Goodbred Jr., an environmental scientist at Vanderbilt University and expert on sea level rise in Bangladesh, agrees with Mann that Hansen’s warnings should be heeded, but also said Hansen’s latest findings are over the top. “Meters of sea level rise would require major collapse of Greenland or East Antarctic ice sheets,” Goodbred told us by email. “While improbable, the evidence that Hansen et al put forth warns us not to think impossible.”
+Not as Simple as Sea Level Rise
+Goodbred also told us issues in Bangladesh, which Stein mentioned specifically, can’t be boiled down to sea level rise. The Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers, which flow from China and India to Bangladesh, together “deliver the largest sediment load on earth” at around 1 billion metric tons per year, he explained. “That sediment distributed across Bangladesh’s low-lying coastal region could keep pace” with the current rate of sea level rise, “perhaps with relatively limited consequences (though certainly not none).”
+Along these lines, “any reduction in that supply would harm the system’s ability to respond to sea level rise,” added Goodbred. “Threats to sediment delivery (that are more probable than Hansen et al scenarios) include dam construction, water diversion, and increased irrigation/water extraction in upstream areas of India and China.” Many of these modifications to the river systems are already planned or ongoing, he said, and represent as much of a threat to Bangladesh as sea level rise does.
+Mann told us the situation in Florida and Manhattan, which Stein also pointed to specifically, can’t be reduced to sea level rise either. “Even 5-6 m of sea level rise would not submerge New York City, or most of Florida,” he said.
+“Due to the threat to our coastlines from the combined effect of sea level rise and potentially more potent hurricanes, we might indeed be looking at managed retreat from coastal regions like Miami and New York City on a timeframe of 50 years,” he added. “But it wouldn’t be because of inundation of these regions. It would be because the cost to insure property would become prohibitive given the greatly increased coastal risk.”
+In other words, Miami and Manhattan probably won’t be completely underwater in 50 years, but it may become too expensive for many to live there due to increased property insurance costs.
+Stein was on the mark when she said warmer air, which can hold more water, has the potential to bring about more extreme weather events, such as the one in Louisiana.
+But her claim that global warming would cause sea levels to rise on average “not one yard but many yards” in as soon as 50 years is “an example of a greatly exaggerated version of reality that has a kernel of truth to it,” Mann told us.
+Current scientific consensus puts the likely global mean sea level rise at a maximum 1.33 yards above current levels by 2100. And for Manhattan, Florida and Bangladesh in particular, issues go above and beyond sea level rise.
+
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation.
+       Share The Facts    Jill Stein  Green party presidential nominee          Claims that global warming would cause sea levels to rise on average “not one yard but many yards” in as soon as 50 years.   National Press Club – Tuesday, August 23, 2016   Share Read More     Embed     Information on embedding in your site  oEmbed Link  https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/39f9cc08-1151-4828-9ed6-823ce98a878a"
+"3.7KDuring a campaign rally in Fresno, Donald Trump made two misleading claims about California’s drought and water issues:
+
+Trump suggested “there is no drought” in California because the state has “plenty of water.” But California is in its fifth year of a severe “hot” drought, the kind that’s expected to become more frequent with global warming.
+He also said water is being shoved “out to sea” to protect a “three-inch fish” at the expense of farmers. But officials release fresh water from reservoirs primarily to prevent salt water from contaminating agricultural and urban water supplies.
+
+On May 27, Trump met with farmers for a private half-hour meeting before his rally in Fresno, as reported by the Los Angeles Times. During his speech, Trump references this meeting, stating, “I just left 50 or 60 farmers in the back and they can’t get water. And I say, ‘How tough is it? How bad is the drought?’ ‘There is no drought. They turn the water out into the ocean.’” Earlier in this speech, he made similar claims:
+Trump, May 27: You have a water problem that is so insane. It is so ridiculous, where they’re taking the water and shoving it out to sea. And I just met with a lot of the farmers, who are great people, and they’re saying, “We don’t even understand it” … I’ve heard it from other friends of mine in California, where they have farms up here and they don’t get water. And I said, “Oh that’s too bad. Is there a drought?” “No, we have plenty of water.” I said, “What’s wrong?” “Well, we shove it out to sea.” And I said, “Why?” And nobody even knows why. And the environmentalists don’t know why. Now, they’re trying to protect a certain kind of three-inch fish.
+Trump also told his audience in Fresno that if he wins the election, “Believe me, we’re going to start opening up the water, so that you can have your farmers survive.” He added, “We’re going to get it done quick. Don’t even think about it. That’s an easy one.”
+According to the New York Times, Trump is right that some farmers believe the preservation of fish species has caused the state’s water issues. In June 2015, the newspaper reported that, “Farmers in the Central Valley call it a ‘man-made drought,’ complaining that water needed for crops is going to fish instead.” Carly Fiorina, previously Hewlett-Packard’s CEO and a GOP candidate, also made similar claims when she was considering running for president last year.
+But California’s water issues can’t be reduced to the preservation of a threatened fish species. Experts told us water management practices, the state’s natural climate and global warming have all contributed to the state’s current drought and water issues.
+California’s De Facto Drought 
+California’s current drought began in late 2011. By Jan. 17, 2014, Gov. Jerry Brown declared the drought a state of emergency.
+California’s current drought has meteorological, hydrologic and agricultural elements.  The U.S. Geological Survey calls the dry conditions that often develop after below average amounts of precipitation a “meteorological drought.” These conditions can then cause a “hydrologic drought,” where the flows and levels of streams, rivers, lakes and reservoirs decline. Drought also affects farmers by reducing soil moisture, hindering crop growth, which the USGS calls an “agricultural drought.”
+Most of California’s precipitation falls between October and April. As a result, the state’s ecosystems are accustomed to seasonal drought outside of those months. Droughts lasting multiple years are also a regular characteristic of California’s climate.
+However, California’s current drought is “unique” when compared with past years, write Jeffery Mount and others at the Public Policy Institute of California in an August 2015 report called, “What If California’s Drought Continues?”
+“Taken together, the past four years have been the driest since record keeping began in the late 1800s,” write Mount, a watershed scientist, and colleagues. In other words, the state has experienced the low levels of precipitation characteristic of a meteorological drought.
+But the current drought is especially different because 2015 and 2014 were also the two warmest years on record in the state (and it’s likely globally as well). Scientists call the combination of dry and hot conditions a “hot” drought.
+Record heat contributed to California’s current meteorological drought, in part, by reducing snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains. During the dry season (May to September), this snowpack melts and provides about one-third of the state’s farms and cities with fresh water.
+On April 1, 2015, California’s Department of Water Resources estimated the snowpack of the Sierras to be at 5 percent of the average for that time of year – lower than any year in records since 1950. And this is a period when snowpack is supposed to be at its peak.
+In addition to receiving less precipitation during winter, warmer temperatures caused what snow had accumulated “to melt faster and earlier, making it more difficult to store and use,” according to California’s water resources department.
+While El Niño did bring more precipitation during the following winter (2015 to 2016), and thus more snowpack, it wasn’t enough to end the drought. El Niño changes global atmospheric circulation such that some regions receive more rainfall and others less.
+With less precipitation and less water from snowpack, the flow and level of ground and surface water reservoirs also declined in the state, leading to a hydrologic drought.
+And with less water in reservoirs, there’s less water for urban and agricultural use. Not to mention that record heat in California also dried up soils and stressed crops, which, in turn, led to a greater need for irrigation (i.e. an agricultural drought).
+Mount and his colleagues call California’s current drought a “drought of the future” because the state is more likely to experience such conditions as the region’s climate warms in the coming decades.
+“The drought revealed our weaknesses in how we manage water for all sectors,” Mount told us in an email.  “It gave us an unwelcome … glimpse into the future as conditions warm in California and competition for water becomes more intense.”
+In short, California’s drought is very real and the state does not have “plenty of water,” as Trump suggested. California’s water issues go far beyond preserving a “three-inch fish,” as we’ll explain in the next section.
+Water Wars
+Water management practices, along with the drought, have contributed to difficulties for farmers in parts of California.
+To start, not only does California receive the majority of its precipitation between October and April, but it also primarily rains and snows in the northern parts of the state.
+This creates a water management “problem” because most of the demand is from farms in the San Joaquin Valley and coastal urban areas, such as Los Angeles, Peter Moyle, a fish biologist and associate director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California, Davis, told us in an email.
+The San Joaquin Valley makes up the southern two-thirds of California’s Central Valley. The northern one-third is known as the Sacramento Valley. The San Joaquin Valley is divided into the San Joaquin Basin and the Tulare Basin. Fresno, where Trump gave his speech, lies in the Tulare Basin, the southernmost section of the Central Valley.
+“Massive water projects … have turned essentially desert areas into places where people can live and farm,” Moyle told us.
+As the New York Times reported, these projects include giant pumps that transport water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to the Central Valley and to cities in southern California, such as Los Angeles. The water flowing into the Delta originally comes from farther north, including from the Sierra Nevada mountains.
+However, “During long droughts there is a natural tendency to keep in the north the water that has been produced there, assisted by very old and sacred water rights,” Moyle told us. “Many farmers in the south not only have a very limited indigenous supply of water, but they have very junior water rights to use both local rivers and imported water.”
+This creates competition for water between northern and southern farmers, but also exacerbates issues between Central Valley farmers and environmentalists, Moyle said.
+With less water in general due to drought and fewer rights to the water that is available, Central Valley farmers argue the current drought is man-made because water is being “wasted to the ocean” to preserve fish species, Moyle added.
+So how is available water actually distributed in California? Back in July 2014, Mount and colleagues at the Public Policy Institute of California broke down water use in the state into three sectors: 50 percent environmental, 40 percent agricultural and 10 percent urban.
+But “environmental�� water usage is only partly used for preserving fish species, such as the delta smelt and Chinook salmon.
+For one, “More than half of California’s environmental water use occurs in rivers along the state’s north coast,” write Mount and colleagues. Farmers in the Central Valley and elsewhere can’t access most of this water because it’s largely isolated from the state’s water management infrastructure (i.e., the Delta pumps).
+Many of the rivers of northern California are designated as wild and scenic, which means they can’t be dammed without an act of Congress. In a blog post, Mount writes, “Most of the volume that flows down Wild and Scenic Rivers is in the North Coast and includes flood flows, where there is no practical way to recover it for either agricultural or urban use.”
+In areas where water is shared by all three sectors, agricultural use dominates at 53 percent, compared to 33 percent environmental use and 14 percent urban use, according to Mount and his colleagues.
+Even still, some environmental water use benefits farmers, as it’s needed to maintain water quality for agricultural and urban use.
+How so? As previously mentioned, the current drought has reduced surface water levels and flows, which left the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta more susceptible to salt water intrusion from the ocean. And when salt water infiltrates fresh water supplies, it can’t be used for urban and agricultural purposes.
+To solve this problem, officials release water from reservoirs to prevent salt water from contaminating fresh water in the Delta.
+Reservoir water also needs to be released because the state’s water infrastructure itself, which directs water north to south, disrupts the Delta’s natural ability to flush salt water out to sea (an east to west flow), Mount told us.
+But these releases also help keep the Delta’s water fresh for threatened species, such as the delta smelt. The state is mandated by law to protect this fish, the Chinook salmon and other species under the Endangered Species Act.
+During his rally, Trump was most likely speaking about the delta smelt when he referred to a “certain kind of three-inch fish.” We reached out to Trump’s campaign for clarification, but have yet to hear back.
+The Chinook salmon “has equal or greater impact on water supplies” compared to the delta smelt, Mount also told us. “The reason is that salmon do not just need flow, but they need cold water.”
+The state’s water infrastructure, which includes dams in addition to pumps, has “cut off more than 85% of the historic spawning habitat for salmon,” primarily in the Central Valley, added Mount.
+To make up for the loss of spawning habitat, “we have to reserve cold water, which collects at the bottom of reservoirs, to release for salmon, particularly winter- and spring-run Chinook which are teetering on the brink of extinction,” said Mount. “This causes a delay in the release of water until late in the irrigation season, which directly impacts supplies to farms.”
+However, Mount and colleagues estimated that in 2014, 71 percent of “ocean outflow,” or released fresh water from reservoirs, was needed for urban and farm water salinity control, while 18 percent was required to preserve fish habitat.
+So despite what the Fresno farmers may have told Trump, California’s water issues go far beyond protecting “a certain kind of three-inch fish.”
+First, delta smelt are not the only fish that require preservation. Chinook salmon and other species also benefit from the release of fresh water from reservoirs. Second, most of the water that is being flushed out to sea is needed to prevent salt water from infiltrating agricultural and urban water supplies. And lastly, the infrastructure that was developed to deliver water to farmers in the Central Valley has itself disrupted the Delta’s natural ability to flush salt water out to sea, contributing to the need to release fresh water from reservoirs.
+Overall, it’s unlikely the solution to California’s water wars will be “quick” and “easy,” as Trump said.  “Water management issues are never black and white,” Mount told us.
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation.
+Clarification, June 9: We changed Peter Moyle’s title from “wildlife ecologist” to “fish biologist”  at the request of UC Davis.
+       Share The Facts    Donald Trump Presidential candidate         Suggests ""there is no drought” in California because the state has “plenty of water,” and promises ""to start opening up the water.""   At a rally in Fresno, Calif. – Friday, May 27, 2016   Share Read More     Embed     Information on embedding in your site  oEmbed Link  https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/c768eae0-94b6-49ad-a208-7e384a5efacb"
+"2.2KFor at least five years, Donald Trump has been making false claims about hairspray and its impact on the ozone layer. Most recently, the likely Republican presidential nominee made comments at a campaign rally in West Virginia:
+
+Trump said ��hairspray’s not like it used to be” because chemicals in it that affect the ozone layer have been banned. Many countries began phasing out the ozone-depleting substances in hairspray in the late 1980s, but these regulations wouldn’t affect the quality of hairspray.
+He also said using hairspray in his apartment, “which is all sealed,” would prevent any ozone-depleting substances from escaping into the environment. But these chemicals would still make their way out, multiple experts told us.
+
+Hairspray is made up of chemicals that make hair stiff and a propellant. Hairspray and many other aerosols used chlorofluorocarbons as propellants until many major countries began phasing out these chemicals after the signing of the Montreal Protocol in 1987. CFCs are potent ozone-depleting substances.
+In the place of CFCs, many countries started using hydrochlorofluorocarbons and hydrofluorocarbons as propellants in aerosols. CFCs, HCFCs and HFCs are all potent greenhouse gases. But HCFCs are about 5 percent to 10 percent as potent at depleting ozone as CFCs, while HFCs are generally not thought of as ozone-depleting substances. Though still used in other forms, HCFCs were phased out of aerosols in the United States in 1994, while HFCs still remain in use.
+Trump has made claims about hairspray and the ozone layer at least three times. Back in 2011 in Sydney, he implied the “eight-inch concrete floors” and “eight-inch concrete walls” of Trump Tower would prevent hairspray from “destroying the ozone that’s 400 miles up in the air.” In December 2015, at a campaign rally in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, Trump also said he doesn’t “think anything gets out” of his “sealed” apartment when he uses hairspray.
+On May 5, 2016, at a campaign rally in Charleston, Trump implied that the regulations on hairspray and coal mining are both unwarranted. At the rally, an official from the West Virginia Coal Association endorsed Trump and presented him with a hard hat. Trump tried on the hat, which prompted him to talk about his hair:
+Trump, May 5: Give me a little spray. … You know you’re not allowed to use hairspray anymore because it affects the ozone, you know that, right? I said, you mean to tell me, cause you know hairspray’s not like it used to be, it used to be real good. … Today you put the hairspray on, it’s good for 12 minutes, right. … So if I take hairspray and I spray it in my apartment, which is all sealed, you’re telling me that affects the ozone layer? “Yes.” I say no way folks. No way. No way. That’s like a lot of the rules and regulations you people have in the mines, right, it’s the same kind of stuff.
+We contacted Trump’s campaign for comment, but it hasn’t responded. If someone does get back to us, we will update this report accordingly. In the next sections, we’ll outline how and why many countries agreed to phase out CFCs and replace them with HCFCs and HFCs. We’ll also explain why using hairspray inside wouldn’t prevent ozone-depleting substances from reaching the atmosphere, as Trump claimed.
+Countries Agree to Ban CFCs
+First developed in the 1930s under the trade name Freon, CFCs were originally assumed to be safe for the environment. For this reason, CFCs made their way into a slew of household items, from the coolants used in refrigerators to Styrofoam to aerosols like hairspray.
+But in the 1970s researchers began questioning the safety of these chemicals. Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina, chemists at the University of California, Irvine at the time, discovered that CFCs were capable of depleting the ozone layer — winning the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1995 for their work.
+Then in the 1980s, scientists realized the ice particles in clouds over the Artic and Antarctic sped up the process Molina and Rowland originally discovered. Joseph Farman, a geophysicist at the British Antarctic Survey at the time, and researchers at NASA found a hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica that was roughly the size of the United States.
+How do CFCs deplete the ozone layer? When a CFC molecule makes it to the stratosphere, solar radiation breaks it down, leaving behind a lone chlorine atom. The chlorine atom (Cl–) then reacts with an ozone molecule (O3), leaving behind chlorine oxide (ClO) and oxygen (O2). In fact, Molina discovered that one chlorine atom could start a chain reaction that would lead to the break up of around 100,000 ozone molecules.
+First off, a CFC molecule doesn’t have 400 miles to travel to reach the ozone layer, as Trump claimed in 2011. About 90 percent of the ozone layer can be found between 6 to 10 miles above the earth’s surface, with the last 10 percent of the ozone layer extending as far as 30 miles above the surface. The stratosphere spans 5.5 to 30 miles above the earth’s surface.
+Second, a depleted ozone layer is no small matter. A weakened ozone layer leads to an increase in ultraviolet radiation, which then brings about higher rates of skin cancer, cataracts and immune system problems in human populations. Increased UV radiation can also disrupt vital processes in plants and marine ecosystems.
+The gravity of the issue prompted policymakers globally to sign the Montreal Protocol on Sept. 16, 1987. The agreement took effect on Jan. 1, 1989, and aimed to reduce the production and use of CFCs and other ozone-depleting substances. However, the protocol has been amended six times to take into consideration new scientific information and accelerate reductions in CFC and HCFC use. First signed by 46 countries, the protocol now has close to 200 signatories, including the United States.
+In 2014, five international entities, including the United Nations Environmental Program and NASA, published a report that found actions “taken under the Montreal Protocol have led to decreases in the atmospheric abundance of controlled ozone-depleting substances (ODSs), and are enabling the return of the ozone layer toward 1980 levels.” In fact, the report states the recovery of the ozone layer is “expected to occur before midcentury in midlatitudes and the Arctic, and somewhat later for the Antarctic ozone hole.”
+In short, the propellants used in hairspray and other substances, CFCs in particular, have been banned. But the chemicals that make hair stiff weren’t subject to these regulations. And CFCs were banned for good reason, despite Trump’s implication. Regulations implemented with the Montreal Protocol appear to be reversing the damage done to the ozone layer by CFCs in hairspray and other substances.
+HFCs: For Better and For Worse
+While hairspray no longer uses CFCs to propel the stiffening agent out of the can, it does use other chemicals as propellants that are potent greenhouse gases — namely HFCs.
+In fact, the aforementioned 2014 report also found that “climate benefits of the Montreal Protocol could be significantly offset by projected emissions of HFCs used to replace” ozone-depleting substances.
+Today HFC use (in hairspray and otherwise) “makes a small contribution” to greenhouse gas emissions each year, explain the report authors. But emissions from HFCs “are currently growing at a rate of about 7% per year” and increasing demand could result in HFC emissions reaching levels “nearly as high as the peak emission of CFCs” by 2050.
+To be clear, CFCs are detrimental to the environment for at least two reasons — they efficiently deplete ozone and they are potent greenhouse gases. That is, they contribute to global warming. HFCs, on the other hand, do not contribute to ozone depletion directly and efficiently like CFCs. But they still negatively impact the climate as greenhouse gases.
+Margaret M. Hurwitz, an atmospheric scientist at NASA, and others found that HFCs may indirectly contribute to ozone depletion by modifying atmospheric temperatures and circulation.
+Speaking about her Oct. 22, 2015, study published in Geophysical Research Letters, Hurwitz told Phys.org that her results don’t suggest “HFCs are an existential threat to the ozone layer.” Still, “HFCs are, in fact, weak ozone-depleting substances,” she said.
+Hurwitz also explained to us by email that “[p]er unit mass, CFC-11 causes about 400 times more depletion of the protective stratospheric ozone than the HFCs, while HCFC-22 causes 8 times more ozone depletion” than HFCs, for example. So the effect of HFCs on the ozone layer is significantly less than that of CFCs, but it’s not zero.
+In addition, Steve Montzka, a chemist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, reiterated to us by email, “It was never the stiffening agent in the spray that caused the problem [with the ozone layer], it was the propellant.” We can’t comment on whether “hairspray’s not like it used to be,” as Trump claimed. But we can say changes in hairspray quality wouldn’t be a result of the replacement of CFCs with HFCs due to regulations on the former.
+Trump’s Not-So-Sealed Apartment
+We also asked Montzka whether using hairspray inside would prevent CFCs or HFCs from having an effect on the ozone layer compared with using it outside, as Trump claimed. “It makes absolutely no difference!” he said. If you spray these chemicals “inside your house or apartment, it will eventually make it outside.”
+“These gases cannot and are not confined to the kitchen or bedroom; they mix, diffuse, and are moved out of the local release area to be transported throughout the lower atmosphere (over months) before they are transported upward to the stratosphere,” where the ozone layer is located, David Fahey, a physicist at NOAA, told us in an email.
+In sum, the “eight-inch concrete floors” and “eight-inch concrete walls” of Trump Tower wouldn’t prevent the propellants in hairspray from reaching the ozone layer, which is 6 to 30 miles, not 400 miles, above the earth’s surface. This means Trump’s hairspray use over the years has either directly (through CFCs) or indirectly (HFCs) contributed to the depletion of the ozone layer, albeit to a very small extent, despite what he has claimed.
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation.
+       Share The Facts    Donald Trump Presidential candidate         Says there's ""no way"" that hairspray used over the years ""in my apartment ... affects the ozone layer.""   Campaign rally in Charleston, West Virginia – Thursday, May 5, 2016   Share Read More     Embed     Information on embedding in your site  oEmbed Link  https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/6af2c285-aaa5-474f-80f0-22e5d81b5481"
+"10.5KFormer Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin falsely said she is “as much a scientist” as Bill Nye, best known for his children’s show, “Bill Nye the Science Guy.” Nye has multiple credentials that make him more of a scientist than Palin, including a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering from Cornell, experience working with NASA and various patents.
+According to multiple news sites, Palin made this statement on April 14 during the Capitol Hill premiere of “Climate Hustle,” a film produced by the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow that challenges the scientific consensus that greenhouse gases are responsible for global warming.
+Palin questioned Nye’s qualifications because she argued he is “using his position of authority to harm children by teaching them that climate change is real and man-made,” reported The Hill. Conversely, according to The Hill, she urged parents to “teach their children to doubt climate change and to ‘ask those questions and not just believe what Bill Nye the Science Guy is trying to tell them.’ ”
+But it’s not just what Bill Nye is telling them. As we’ve written before, several surveys and scientific literature analyses show that roughly 97 percent of climate scientists believe human-caused climate change is occurring.
+On April 13, an international team published another literature survey study in the journal Environmental Research Letters that concluded that “the finding of 97% consensus in published climate research is robust and consistent with other surveys of climate scientists and peer-reviewed studies.”
+This is not the first time Nye’s scientific knowledge has been challenged. In 2013, conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh said, “Bill Nye is not a scientist.” Nye responded by saying, “Rush, I think you got it wrong. … What am I if I’m not a scientist?”
+In a debate with creationist Ken Ham in 2014, Nye described himself as part of the “scientific community.” Since his background is in engineering, during that debate, he explained, “engineers use science to solve problems and make things.” (Starting at 1:35:38 of the video.)
+Merriam-Webster’s definition of “engineer” is not far from Nye’s: “a person who has scientific training and who designs and builds complicated products, machines, systems, or structures.”
+Likewise, Ginger Pinholster, chief communications officer at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, told us that AAAS considers engineering a “bona fide applied science.”
+So how do Nye and Palin’s scientific credentials compare?
+Palin has none. She has a bachelor’s in communications-journalism from the University of Idaho. She has spent her career in politics. In addition to serving as governor of Alaska from 2006 to 2009, she was chairperson for the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission between 2003 and 2004 and Republican vice presidential candidate in the 2008 election, among other posts.
+Nye has a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Cornell. He also has six honorary doctorate degrees, including Ph.D.s in science from Goucher College and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
+He held various positions as an engineer between 1977 to 2009, such as contributing to the designs of 747 planes for Boeing and the designs of equipment used to clean up oil spills.
+From 1999 to 2009, Nye worked with a team at the NASA and California Institute of Technology’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to design and create the MarsDial, a sundial and camera calibrator attached to the Mars Exploration Rover. 
+Nye also holds three patents: a redesigned ballet toe shoe, a digital abacus (a kind of calculator) and an educational lens.
+Nye has written books on science, including “Undeniable” and “Unstoppable,” which cover evolution and climate change, respectively.
+This is all in addition to decades of work in science advocacy and education, including acting as CEO of The Planetary Society and teaching as a professor at Cornell.
+To sum up, Nye has a degree and experience working in engineering, which is the application of science. He has also spent much of his career working with and for the scientific community. Thus, his credentials make him more of a scientist than Palin.
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation."
+"360In a recent “fact sheet” on the threat climate change poses to human health, the White House cherry-picked data on the estimated number of premature deaths due to future extreme temperatures:
+
+The White House cited a nationwide model that predicts roughly 11,000 deaths in 2030 and more than 27,000 deaths in 2100 from extreme heat exposure compared with a 1990 baseline. But it ignores another model from the same study that predicts significantly fewer premature deaths – 6,950 in 2030 and 19,509 in 2100.
+The White House also ignored that the study predicts a decrease in the number of premature deaths from extreme cold temperatures. The net number of additional deaths from extreme temperatures in the model cited by the White House are 4,665 in 2030 and 9,632 in 2100.
+The White House makes no mention of the role that future adaptation could play in reducing deaths from extreme heat, such as greater accessibility to air conditioning and increased vegetation in cities.
+
+The April 4 fact sheet announced the Obama Administration’s release of a new report from the U.S. Global Change Research Program called “The Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health in the United States.” Established in 1989 and mandated by Congress in 1990, the USGCRP is a “confederation” of research teams from 13 federal departments and agencies, including NASA and the Environmental Protection Agency.
+We’ll first address the observed trends in premature deaths due to temperature extremes. We’ll then explain what the two models cited by the USGCRP report predict for the 21st century and what scientists know about how future adaptation could reduce the number deaths due to extreme heat.
+ Observed Trends
+As the USGCRP’s report explains, the “U.S. average temperatures have increased by 1.3°F to 1.9°F” since 1895 due to elevated greenhouse gas emissions. Accordingly, “heat waves have become more frequent and intense, and cold waves have become less frequent across the nation.” With a 3°F to 10°F increase by 2100, scientists predict these trends will continue into the future.
+Temperature extremes can lead to a greater number of premature deaths “by compromising the body’s ability to regulate its temperature,” the report says. In addition to directly causing death through hyperthermia and hypothermia, temperature extremes can also indirectly lead to death by worsening chronic conditions, such as cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.
+There are two ways to quantify the number of deaths from extreme temperatures – direct attribution in medical records and statistical analysis, which correlate trends in temperature, death and other records. Medical records tend to underestimate the number deaths, while statistical techniques may overestimate mortality rates, though to a lesser degree, according to the report authors.
+For example, death records from 2006 to 2010 show roughly 1,300 deaths per year from extreme cold and 670 deaths per year from extreme heat in the U.S., according to the report (pages 47, 49). However, statistical approaches have estimated more than 1,300 deaths per year in the U.S. due to extreme heat from 1975 to 2004.
+Studies have also shown that Americans have been adapting to temperature extremes over time. One paper, published online in the journal Natural Hazards on June 27, 2010, looked at U.S. Census and temperature data from 1975 to 2004 and found that extreme heat-related death rates have declined since 1996.
+David M. Mills, an environmental analyst at Abt Associates and one of the USGCRP report authors, and his colleagues on the 2010 paper, hypothesized that improvements in extreme heat event forecasting, notification, and response measures could be behind these reduced rates. Additional studies have pointed to other adaptations, such as increased use of air conditioning and improved health care, to explain the reduction since the 1980s and 1990s.
+But adaptation has it limits. “While historically adaptation has outpaced warming, most studies project a future increase in mortality even when including assumptions regarding adaptation,” write the report authors. In the next section we’ll outline what the two abovementioned models predict for the future.
+Projected Trends
+Scientists predict an increase in the “frequency and severity of future extreme heat events while also resulting in generally warmer summers and milder winters,” says the USGCRP report. One of the report’s key findings points to the effects these temperature changes will have on human health:
+USGCRP, April 4: Based on present-day sensitivity to heat, an increase of thousands to tens of thousands of premature heat-related deaths in the summer … and a decrease of premature cold-related deaths in the winter … are projected each year as a result of climate change by the end of the century. Future adaptation will very likely reduce these impacts … The reduction in cold-related deaths is projected to be smaller than the increase in heat-related deaths in most regions.
+Thus, in its fact sheet, the White House correctly states: “Extreme heat can be expected to cause an increase in the number of premature deaths, from thousands to tens of thousands, each summer, which will outpace projected decreases in deaths from extreme cold.”
+But the White House then goes on to cherry-pick data from one model discussed in the report: “One model projected an increase, from a 1990 baseline for more than 200 American cities, of more than an additional 11,000 deaths during the summer in 2030 and more than an additional 27,000 deaths during the summer in 2100.”
+The USGCRP report cites two models from a study published online in Environmental Health on Nov. 4, 2015. Compared to a 1990 baseline, one model predicts an increase of 11,646 premature deaths from extreme heat and a reduction of 6,981 deaths from extreme cold in 2030, bringing the net number of deaths due to extreme temperature to 4,664. For 2100, this model predicts an increase of 27,312 deaths from extreme heat and a reduction of 17,680 deaths from extreme cold, with the net number of deaths at 9,632.
+The White House would have been more accurate if it cited this model’s net number of deaths due to extreme temperatures. But it still wouldn’t account for the second model’s less severe predictions.
+The second model predicts an increase of 6,950 premature deaths from extreme heat and a decrease of 5,207 deaths from extreme cold for 2030. This brings the net number of deaths from extreme temperatures to 1,743 compared with a 1990 baseline. For 2100, the second model projects an increase of 19,509 deaths from extreme heat and a decrease of 16,468 from extreme cold, with the net number of deaths at 3,042.
+It is worth noting that the USGCRP report states scientists have “high confidence” that heat deaths will increase in the future, based on agreement among “a large number of studies as well as consistency across scenarios and regions.” Since fewer studies have looked at winter mortality and some research suggests “winter mortality is not strongly linked to temperatures,” scientists have “medium confidence” that cold-related deaths will decrease in the future.
+Future Adaptation
+Even still, this study’s authors repeatedly note that the projections don’t account for future adaptation. And this is no small point. One of the USGCRP report’s key findings was that there is “strong evidence” to suggest that adaptation “will reduce the projected increase in deaths from heat.” Yet the White House makes no mention of this finding in its fact sheet.
+However, quantifying this future reduction has proved difficult because scientists aren’t sure what kind of adaptations have the largest effect, among other factors. Though the USGCRP cites no national level predictions, some studies have looked at how certain regions or cities could adapt to increase temperatures.
+One study, published online in Climatic Change on March 23, 2012, found that adaptation may reduce heat-related mortality by 37 percent to 56 percent in nine regions across California in the 2090s. The study, conducted by Laurence S. Kalkstein, a public health expert at the University of Miami, and others, cites both physiological and behavioral adaptations, including the body’s ability to adjust to gradual increases in temperature over time and increased access to air conditioning, respectively.
+Another study, published online in PLOS ONE on June 25, 2014, found that different combinations of land surface changes, including increased vegetation and albedo (i.e. cool, reflective) building materials, could potentially “offset projected increases in heat-related mortality by 40 to 99%” in Atlanta, Philadelphia and Phoenix in 2050.
+Conducted by Brian Stone Jr., an urban environmental planning expert at Georgia Tech, and others, the study notes that “heat management strategies most effective in offsetting mortality vary by region.” For example, “vegetative strategies” had “protective benefits greater than or comparable to albedo enhancement in Atlanta and Philadelphia, while albedo enhancement was found to be more protective in Phoenix.” The reason: It’s harder to maintain vegetation in Phoenix’s arid climate.
+USGCRP report also notes how America’s varied climate can effect projections on premature deaths due to extreme temperatures in the future. Both above-cited models found that some “individual cities show a net reduction in future deaths due to future warming, mainly in locations where the population is already well-adapted to heat but poorly prepared for cold (like Florida).”
+To sum up, the White House cherry-picked data on premature deaths from extreme temperatures in the future. Not only did its “fact sheet” on the subject solely cite results from the more extreme model, but it also failed to note future decreases in premature deaths due to milder winters and adaption.
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation."
+"1.9KRep. Lamar Smith at a recent hearing claimed a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change “confirms the halt in global warming.” It doesn’t. In fact, the authors of the paper write, “We do not believe that warming has ceased.”
+Smith, chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology and longtime climate change skeptic, used the Nature study as ammunition against the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in an ongoing battle over the validity of a paper that NOAA researchers published in the journal Science last June.
+While the Nature study, published online in late February, claims there was a “slowdown” in the rate of global warming in the early 21st century, the Science paper argues there was not. But the studies compared different time periods. Both studies agree that there was no complete halt in global warming and the long-term warming trend remains unabated.
+At the March 16 House hearing, Smith also continued to criticize the Science paper. He said the paper was “prematurely published,” but the editor-in-chief of Science told us Smith’s claim is “baseless and without merit.” Smith also said that the NOAA researchers used “controversial methods” in their study, but the authors of the Nature paper cited by Smith said this wasn’t the case. In fact, they cite the Science paper as having “high scientific value.”
+Overall, each study asked different scientific questions, the answers to which can both remain valid and correct, according to the Nature authors themselves.
+Smith vs. NOAA
+This is not the first time Smith, a Republican from Texas, has made false statements about climate science and the so-called “Karl study,” named after Thomas R. Karl, director of NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information and the Science paper’s lead author.
+As we’ve written before, Smith claimed in October 2015 that “climate data has clearly showed no warming for the past two decades” and that NOAA scientists “altered the data” to get the results they presented in the Science study.
+Motivated to quell what he considers the NOAA and Obama administration’s “extreme climate change agenda,” Smith used the House science committee’s subpoena power on Oct. 13 to obtain internal communications at NOAA regarding the Karl study. NOAA has provided the committee with some documents and emails, though Smith continues to request more information.
+In the battle’s latest episode, NOAA Administrator Kathryn Sullivan testified before the House science committee on March 16 on NOAA’s 2017 budget. Again, Smith brought up the Karl study, claiming it was “prematurely published” and used “controversial new methods,” among other things.
+During the hearing, Sullivan countered by stating that the final timing of any publication is “at the discretion of the publication itself.” She also said Science “scrubbed this paper with extra diligence” due to the “interest in this matter.”
+According to Marcia McNutt, editor-in-chief at Science, Smith is wrong and Sullivan is right. In fact, McNutt told us by email, “Any suggestion that the review of this paper was ‘rushed’ is baseless and without merit.”
+McNutt added that “knowing that this report’s results disputed the existence of a 21st century global warming slowdown described in previous studies, Science took extra care to assure even more rigorous review and evaluation than normal.”
+When asked to provide evidence that NOAA had prematurely published the Karl study, a committee aide for Smith pointed us to a Nov. 23, 2015, Washington Post article. In that article, Thomas Peterson, an author of the Science study and retired NOAA climate scientist, describes “internal tensions” between NOAA scientists and engineers over delays related to the programs used to process the climate data. But in the same piece, Peterson is quoted as stating that the research was not rushed. “Indeed just the opposite is true,” he told the Post.
+Smith made a few new claims during the March 16 budget hearing as well. He said, “A new peer-reviewed study, published in the journal Nature, confirms the halt in global warming. According to one of the study’s lead authors, it ‘essentially refutes’ NOAA’s study.” Smith also repeatedly asked Sullivan to side with either the Science or the Nature study’s findings because he claimed both can’t be “correct” or “valid.”
+First off, the two papers’ disagreement was on whether the rate of warming has slowed in the first 15 years of the 21st century, not whether warming has halted, as Smith claimed.
+Second, John Fyfe, lead author of the Nature paper, told us in an email that Smith took his comment during an interview with the website Climate Central out of context. “It would be incorrect to interpret [the ‘essentially refutes’] quote as indicating that Fyfe et al. refuted the Karl et al. study in its entirety.” He said, “As we said in our Commentary we view the Karl et al. study as being of ‘high scientific value.’ ”
+Third, according to McNutt and the Nature authors, both papers could, in fact, remain valid and correct. For example, Gerald Meehl, an author on the Nature paper and climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, pointed us to a segment of an article with Environment & Energy Publishing, which states “both comparisons are valid … and provide answers to different questions.”
+In the following section we’ll explain the similarities and differences between the two papers’ methods and results and why both can remain valid.
+ Science vs. Nature
+Both the Science and the Nature papers begin by mentioning the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s description of a surface warming slowdown between 1998 and 2012 in its Fifth Assessment Report. Both papers also note that researchers use “hiatus” to describe this slowdown in the scientific literature — a point Smith’s committee aide made to us. But technically the rate of global warming never completely halted during this period, as both papers state.
+For this reason, the authors of the Nature paper write that it’s “unfortunate” that the 21st century warming trend has been framed as having “stalled,” “stopped,” “paused” or “entered a ‘hiatus.’ ” While “[j]ust exactly how such changes should be referred to is open to debate,” the authors suggest “reduced rate of warming,” “decadal fluctuation” and “temporary slowdown” as some possibilities.
+Both papers diverge when it comes to the specific questions the researchers asked, and, accordingly, how they quantified the slowdown.
+The authors of the Science paper compared the rate of warming during the period between 2000 and 2014 with that of 1951 to 1999, though they also investigated trends in warming dating back to 1880.
+The Nature authors, alternatively, compared the warming rate of 2001 to 2014 with a shorter period — 1972 to 2001.
+The rationale for using different time periods is tied, at least in part, to the ultimate aim of each study.
+The Science study was designed to determine if the global warming trend for “the first 15 years of the 21st century is at least as great as the last half of the 20th century.” It found there was no “slowdown” in global warming compared with this 50-year period.
+The Nature study, on the other hand, strove to figure out whether the rates of global warming fluctuate every few decades, so the authors compared the first 15 years of the 21st century with a shorter time period. They reported that the rate had slowed down from 1950 to 1972, then sped up from 1972 to 2001, and then slowed again from 2001 to 2014. “A warming slowdown is thus clear in observations; it is also clear that it has been a ‘slowdown’, not a ‘stop,’ ” the study concluded.
+Meehl told us by email that it was mainly the Karl study’s “interpretation of different trend lengths [discussed above] that we took issue with.”
+However, Meehl said he did not find the Karl study’s methods to be “controversial.” The adjustments the NOAA scientists made to their data, which Smith has criticized, “were fairly minor,” added Meehl, and involved calibrating different sets of data to each other.
+For example, data on sea surface temperatures alone can come from buoys, ship engine-intake systems and buckets dropped off the side of a ship. As the Science study states, “ship data are systematically warmer than the buoy data,” so adjustments need to be made to calibrate them to each other.
+The same inconsistencies occur when data are collected from different land stations. In fact, the Nature paper describes the Karl study’s identification and correction of these data “errors and inhomogeneities” as “of high scientific value.”
+Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State University and an author on the Nature paper, wrote Smith an open letter on March 3, which directly addressed the chairman’s false claims.
+In his letter, which was posted on Facebook, Mann wrote: “Please don’t misrepresent our recent Nature Climate Change commentary. Our study does NOT support the notion of a ‘pause’ in global warming, only a *temporary slowdown*, which was due to natural factors, and has now ended.”
+In sum, based on their different questions and correspondingly different time period comparisons, the Science and Nature studies came to different, though equally valid, conclusions about the warming rate in the early 21st century. Regardless, neither paper supported a halt in global warming, as Smith claimed.
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation."
+"3.6KSummary
+The four GOP presidential candidates debated in Miami and stretched the facts:
+
+Businessman Donald Trump wrongly claimed that the Obama administration isn’t “knocking out the oil” controlled by the Islamic State in Syria, because of climate change concerns. The administration, which stepped up attacks on oil facilities, hasn’t cited climate change. Instead, it has cited concern about long-term economic harm and local environmental damage.
+Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz disagreed over whether Cruz had waffled on his opposition to ethanol mandates. Trump was wrong, and Cruz was right.
+Cruz claimed that President Obama sent a bust of Winston Churchill back to the United Kingdom when he took office. The bust had been loaned to President George W. Bush, and a replica is still at the White House.
+Sen. Marco Rubio dismissed a question about man-made climate change, saying, “The climate has always been changing.” But scientists say there is ample evidence that humans are contributing to climate change. Rubio also falsely claimed that passing policies like the Clean Power Act would have “zero” impact on the environment.
+Trump incorrectly referred to Common Core as “education through Washington, D.C.” and claimed Common Core has been “taken over by the federal government.” The education standards were developed by the states, and the curriculum will continue to be managed at the state and local level.
+Trump wrongly said the U.S. gross domestic product was at “zero, essentially.” Real GDP grew at a rate of 2 percent in the third quarter of 2015 and 1 percent in the fourth quarter.
+Trump, Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich repeated several claims we’ve checked before — including Trump’s claim to be self-funding his campaign (he’s taken $7.5 million in donations); Kasich’s boast on job creation (Ohio’s growth trails the national rate); Cruz’s claim about welfare benefits for immigrants in the country illegally (they’re already barred from most government benefits); and more.
+Trump also said that the 1,237 delegate count needed to secure the party’s nomination was “a very random number.” It’s actually a simple majority of the total available delegates, 2,472.
+
+Analysis
+The debate, hosted by CNN, was held March 10, days before Florida’s primary.
+Trump on Oil and Carbon Footprint
+Trump falsely claimed that the Obama administration isn’t “knocking out the oil” controlled by the Islamic State in Syria, “because of what it’s going to do to the carbon footprint.”
+Administration officials have not cited climate change as a reason for not attacking oil controlled by the Islamic State. Instead, they have expressed concern that air strikes against oil and natural gas facilities will cause long-term economic and local environmental damage that could hurt Syria’s post-war recovery.
+Even so, the military stepped up attacks on oil facilities controlled by the Islamic State when it launched “Operation Tidal Wave II” on Oct. 21, 2015.
+Trump made his remark when he was asked whether he would send ground troops to fight the terrorist group, which is also known as ISIS.
+Trump: We’re not knocking out the oil because they don’t want to create environmental pollution up in the air. I  mean, these are things that nobody even believes. They think we’re kidding. They didn’t want to knock out the oil because of what it’s going to do to the carbon footprint.
+Trump has been a vocal proponent of bombing the oil fields, since his campaign began in June. As we wrote in November, the administration initially had been cool to his call to “attack the oil” controlled by ISIS. But it was disclosed in a New York Times story on Nov. 12 — a day before the terrorist attacks carried out by ISIS in Paris — that the U.S. military launched “Operation Tidal Wave II” to increase the intensity of attacks on ISIS-controlled oil.
+Col. Steve Warren, a Defense Department spokesman, said at a Nov. 13, 2015, press conference, that the strikes against ISIS-controlled oil infrastructure until mid-October had been largely ineffective because damages were minor and quickly repaired. But that changed with the start of Operation Tidal Wave II, which was designed to inflict damage for one year, not just a few days.
+Warren explained the difficulty of inflicting enough damage to cut off ISIS’ oil revenues without causing long-term damage that could hurt a post-war recovery in Syria.
+“So we don’t want to completely and utterly destroy these facilities to where they’re irreparable,” Col. Warren said at the Nov. 13 press briefing. “So what we’ve done is we’ve used very precise carving, a very detailed analysis to strike certain parts of these facilities that will cause them to shut down for an extended period of time.”
+Warren said the U.S. needs “to be cognizant that there will be a time after the war — the war will end,” and oil revenues will be needed to rebuild the war-torn nation.
+
+A month later, the Defense Department held a background briefing on the strikes against the oil and natural gas infrastructure controlled by ISIS. A senior department official also spoke about the need to deprive ISIS of oil revenue in the short-term without doing long-term damage to the people and nations in that region. The official mentioned the local environment.
+“You have to look at what does this do to the population, what does this do from a humanitarian perspective, from an environmental perspective, from a cost of reconstruction — post-conflict reconstruction costs,” the senior official, who was not identified, said at the Dec. 15, 2015, briefing.
+So where did Trump get the idea that the administration won’t “knock out the oil because of what it’s going to do to the carbon footprint”? We suspect it is from a widely reported — and since distorted — interview that former CIA Director Michael Morell gave to Charlie Rose on Nov. 24, 2015.
+In that interview, Morell said: “There seemed to have been a judgment that, look, we don’t want to destroy these oil tankers because that’s infrastructure that’s going to be necessary to support the people when ISIS isn’t there anymore, and it’s going to create environmental damage.”
+Although Morell mentioned the same economic and environmental concerns expressed by Defense Department officials, news accounts focused on the environmental concerns. Typical was this headline in the Hill newspaper: “Ex-CIA chief: Fear for environment stays US hand on ISIS oil wells.” Similarly, the Daily Caller headline read, “Former CIA Deputy Director: Obama Didn’t Attack ISIS Oil Because Of The Environment.”
+But Morell wasn’t talking about climate change, and neither were Defense Department officials.
+Trump vs. Cruz on Ethanol
+Cruz said he bravely opposed ethanol mandates in Iowa where they are popular with corn growers, but Trump accused him of waffling on that issue.
+Cruz: When I went to Iowa and campaigned against ethanol mandates, everyone said that was political suicide. You can’t take on ethanol in Iowa. …
+Trump: If you look back to Iowa, Ted did change his view and his stance on ethanol quite a bit. He did and — at the end. Not full on, but he did change his view in the hopes of maybe doing well. … It was a front page story all over the place, and he did make a change.
+Trump is wrong about this.
+During the run-up to Iowa’s first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses, Cruz publicly defended his long-standing opposition to the federal requirement that increasing amounts of ethanol be blended into gasoline sold at the pump.
+In 2013, Cruz was one of 18 cosponsors of a bill to repeal immediately the so-called “renewable fuels standard” — a bill fiercely opposed by corn growers. The following year Cruz sponsored his own broader energy bill, which would phase out the RFS over five years rather than repealing it instantly.
+It’s true that at one point along the Iowa campaign trail, Cruz gave an artfully worded response to an ethanol investor, expressing support for the RFS through 2022. That led to some reports that Cruz had changed his position and was now supporting the ethanol mandate, effectively caving in to the corn lobby.
+But in fact, Cruz was simply soft-pedaling his call for a phase-out of the mandate, and at least one reporter then corrected himself. Cruz quickly reiterated his opposition to the ethanol mandate in a Jan. 6 op-ed piece in the Des Moines Register, saying, “We should phase out the Renewable Fuel Standard, end all energy subsidies, and ensure a level playing field for everyone.”
+To be sure, Cruz dressed up his call for ending the RFS under a headline that said, “I’m fighting for farmers against Washington.” But the position he stated was the same as laid out in his 2014 legislation.
+On this one, Trump is wrong, and Cruz is correct.
+Cruz on Churchill Bust
+Cruz said that one of Obama’s first acts as president was to return a bust of former U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Yes, that happened. But the bust had only been loaned to President George W. Bush by former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair.
+Cruz: This administration started with President Obama sending back the bust of Winston Churchill to the United Kingdom within the opening weeks.
+William Allman, who became the White House curator in 2002 under Bush, told CBS News in January 2010 that the Churchill bust, which had been displayed in the Oval Office throughout Bush’s presidency, “was already scheduled to go back” before Obama became president.
+President Obama shows U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron a bust of Winston Churchill in the White House residence in July 2010. Source: White House.
+The Churchill bust and other items were removed as part of the redecoration of the Oval Office at the beginning of Obama’s first term. However, a replica of the original Churchill bust designed by Sir Jacob Epstein had been a part of the White House’s art collection since the 1960s, and it remains on display in the White House residence, where the first family lives, according to a 2012 statement from Dan Pfeiffer, a former assistant and senior adviser to Obama.
+The British Embassy, which took possession of the bust that had been in the White House on loan, confirmed this in a statement to Mediaite in 2012:
+British Embassy statement to Mediaite, July 27, 2012:  The bust of Sir Winston Churchill, by Sir Jacob Epstein, was lent to the George W Bush administration from the UK’s Government Art Collection, for the duration of the Presidency. When that administration came to an end so did the loan; the bust now resides in the British Ambassador’s Residence in Washington D.C. The White House collection has its own Epstein bust of Churchill, which President Obama showed to Prime Minister Cameron when he visited the White House in March.
+Rubio on Climate Change
+Rubio misleadingly dismissed a question about man-made climate change, saying, “The climate has always been changing.” But scientists say there is ample evidence that humans are contributing to climate change.
+Rubio also falsely claimed that passing policies like the Clean Power Act would have “zero” impact on the environment. While the U.S. cannot solve the problem of climate change alone, scientists say it could slow global warming a bit.
+Back in January, Cruz made a statement very similar to Rubio’s first claim, and we wrote about it. Cruz said, “The climate has always changed since the beginning of time.” However, in 2014, the U.S. Global Change Research Program put out its third National Climate Assessment, which concluded that rapid warming is “due primarily to human activities”:
+U.S. Global Change Research Program, May 2014: Long-term, independent records from weather stations, satellites, ocean buoys, tide gauges, and many other data sources all confirm that our nation [the United States], like the rest of the world, is warming. Precipitation patterns are changing, sea level is rising, the oceans are becoming more acidic, and the frequency and intensity of some extreme weather events are increasing. Many lines of independent evidence demonstrate that the rapid warming of the past half-century is due primarily to human activities.
+The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fifth assessment report also found evidence to support human-induced climate change. For example, the U.N. panel writes (see page 2): “Human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history. Recent climate changes have had widespread impacts on human and natural systems.”
+Rubio also said passing policies like the Clean Power Act would have “zero” impact on the environment “because China is still going to be polluting and India is still going to be polluting at historic levels.” That’s false. The U.S. is the world’s second-biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, and a reduction in its greenhouse gas emissions could slow global warming.
+We wrote about this in January 2015 when Rick Santorum, the former Republican presidential candidate, said U.S. policies aimed at reducing GHG emissions “will have zero impact” on climate change.
+Santorum and Rubio are correct that the U.S. can’t solve the problem of global warming all by itself. But that doesn’t mean U.S. policies will have “zero” impact on climate change.
+In recent years the U.S. has been responsible for about 16 percent of all global emissions. In 2013, the U.S. emitted more than 6.6 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide and other GHGs.
+Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann told us back in January 2015 that if the U.S. continues to emit GHGs at that level, it alone would cause about half a degree Celsius warming by the end of the century (just under 1 degree Fahrenheit) in addition to the about 1 degree Celsius of warming we have already seen since the start of the Industrial Revolution.
+“That is hardly ‘zero impact,’ ” Mann told us.
+Rubio also said, “If you took the gift list of all of these groups that are asking us to pass [climate mitigation] laws and did every single one of them, there would be no change in our environment. Sea level would still rise.”
+Sea level rise is of particular concern to Florida, a state with more than 1,200 miles of coastline and a maximum elevation of less than 400 feet above sea level.
+According to the Florida Oceans and Coastal Council: “Global sea level will continue to rise long after 2100 even if greenhouse gas concentrations are stabilized well before the end of the century.”
+
+
+
+Still, this doesn’t mean U.S. climate policies would have “zero” impact on mitigating climate change.
+
+
+
+Trump on Common Core
+Trump incorrectly referred to Common Core as “education through Washington, D.C.” and also wrongly claimed Common Core has been “taken over by the federal government.”
+The Obama administration provided advantages to states that adopted the education standards when competing for Race to the Top grants, and federal money has been used to develop the standardized tests that students will take. But the standards were developed by state governors and education officials and voluntarily adopted by states, and the curriculum is and will continue to be set by state and local school officials.
+The Common Core State Standards are a set of standards developed by the states for what children from kindergarten through 12th grade should know in mathematics and English language arts/literacy.
+During the debate, Trump was asked about his objections to Common Core.
+“Education through Washington, D.C., I don’t want that,” Trump said. “I want local education. I want the parents, and I want all of the teachers, and I want everybody to get together around a school and to make education great.”
+CNN’s Jake Tapper, one of the debate moderators, noted that “the Common Core standards were developed by the states, states and localities voluntarily adopt them, and they come up with their own curricula to meet those standards.”
+“So when you say ‘education by Washington, D.C.,’ what do you mean?” Tapper asked.
+“You’re right, Jake,” Trump said. “But it has been taken over by the federal government. It was originally supposed to be that way. And certainly sounds better that way. But it has all been taken over now by the bureaucrats in Washington, and they are not interested in what’s happening in Miami or in Florida, in many cases. Now in some cases they would be. But in many cases they are more interested in their paycheck and the big bureaucracy than they are taking care of the children.”
+In fact, the federal government has no role in developing the Common Core standards.
+As the Common Core State Standards Initiative explains on its website, on a page called “Myths vs. Facts,” Common Core is and will remain a state-led effort.
+
+Common Core State Standards website: The federal government will not govern the Common Core State Standards. The Common Core was and will remain a state-led effort. The NGA Center and CCSSO are committed to developing a long-term governance structure with leadership from governors, chief state school officers, and other state policymakers to ensure the quality of the Common Core and that teachers and principals have a strong voice in the future of the standards. States and local school districts will drive implementation of the Common Core.
+
+As we noted when two Republican candidates wrongly referred to Common Core as “national curriculum” in early 2015, the standards were developed by high-ranking state officials through the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers. The federal government was not involved in the development of the standards, and adoption of the standards is voluntary, as explained on the NGA’s Common Core website:
+Common Core State Standards website: The Common Core is a state‐led effort that is not part of No Child Left Behind or any other federal initiative. The federal government played no role in the development of the Common Core. State adoption of the standards is in no way mandatory. States began the work to create clear, consistent standards before the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which provided funding for the Race to the Top grant program. It also began before the Elementary and Secondary Education Act blueprint was released, because this work is being driven by the needs of the states, not the federal government.
+The Obama administration does support the standards, and as we said, federal money has been used to develop the standardized tests that students will take. In addition, Race to the Top, a competitive education grant program that was created as part of the economic stimulus in 2009, rewarded states that adopted Common Core or other college and career education standards. As the Washington Post noted, that kind of federal promotion of Common Core “led critics from both ends of the political spectrum to decry the new standards as a federal overreach into local affairs.”
+Nonetheless, that is far short of a federal takeover of Common Core, as Trump suggested.
+Trump on GDP
+Trump falsely claimed that U.S. economic growth was at “zero, essentially.”
+Trump: GDP was zero essentially for the last two quarters. If that ever happened in China you would have had a depression like nobody’s ever seen before. They go down to 7 percent, 8 percent, and it’s a — it’s a national tragedy. We’re at zero, we’re not doing anything.
+In fact, real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 2 percent in the third quarter of last year and an estimated 1 percent in the final quarter, according to the most recent release from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis on Feb. 26.
+That could be considered sluggish, to be sure. During the 1980s and 1990s, real GDP averaged annual growth of more than 3 percent per year. But 2 percent and 1 percent are not “zero.”
+More of the Same
+And the candidates repeated many claims we’ve fact-checked before:
+
+Trump repeated his exaggerated boast that he is “self-funding” his campaign: “I’m self-funding my campaign. Nobody is going to be taking care of me. I don’t want anybody’s money.” Not quite. In fact, Donald J. Trump for President Inc. — his campaign committee — reports that it had received $7,497,984 in individual contributions through the end of January. That amounts to 29 percent of the committee’s total receipts, which totaled $25,526,319.
+Furthermore, only $250,318 of what Trump has put into his campaign has come in the form of an outright contribution. He has made $17,534,058 in loans to the campaign — loans which could legally be repaid to him at a later date, should Trump decide to accept more in donations.
+This time, Trump did acknowledge that got “small donations” but said “it’s not a large amount.” Whether $7.5 million is “not a large amount” is a matter of opinion. But to be accurate, Trump should say his campaign is “mostly” self-funded — so far.
+Cruz again suggested that “Iran released our hostages the day Ronald Reagan was sworn into office” in 1981 because President Carter was perceived as “weak.” We interviewed several experts on the Iran hostage crisis, and they told us the hostages were released that day as a final insult to Carter, whom the hostage-takers despised. Experts also cited Iran’s need to focus on a war with Iraq, the hostage-takers having achieved their goal of smearing political opponents, fear of having to restart the negotiation process, and being tired of holding the hostages (the crisis lasted 444 days).
+Trump vastly exaggerated the trade deficit with China for the second time in a week, claiming, “we have a $505 billion trade deficit right now.” As we said after the last debate, the trade deficit with China for 2015 is $366 billion, according to official Census Bureau figures. Trump’s $505 billion figure is close to the $532 billion net trade deficit with all countries in 2015.
+Cruz also said that after President Obama took office, “he proceeded to go on a worldwide apology tour apologizing for the United States of America,” a claim we first checked in 2012, when Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney made it. As we said then, we reviewed all of the speeches Romney pointed to in his book “No Apology” to support his claim, and we didn’t find that any of them amounted to an actual apology.
+Kasich repeated one of his standard talking points, saying that in Ohio “[w]e’re up 400,000 jobs.” As we’ve said several times now, Ohio did gain 400,700 private-sector jobs while Kasich has been governor, but the growth rate of 9.3 percent has lagged behind the national rate of 11.7 percent.
+Cruz again said that “[w]e’re going to end welfare benefits for anyone who is here illegally,” despite the fact that immigrants who are in the country illegally are already not eligible for most government benefits, including food stamps and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
+Trump again boasted of beating Hillary Clinton in polls, saying, “I beat Hillary, and I will give you the list, I beat Hillary in many of the polls that have been taken.” Clinton leads Trump in five of the six most recent polls listed on Real Clear Politics, and Trump leads by 2 points, within the margin of error, in the sixth poll. In fact, Trump has been ahead in only five out of 49 polls on the hypothetical general election match-up going all the way back to last May.
+Trump claimed that Cruz “was in favor of amnesty. So there’s no question about that.” We’ve written about a similar claim from Rubio — that Cruz supported the legalization of immigrants who are in the country illegally. Cruz did offer an amendment to a Senate immigration bill that would have stripped the legislation of a path to citizenship but would have made legalization a possibility. But Cruz says that he never actually supported legalization and was instead bluffing to show that the real aim of the bill’s supporters was a path to citizenship.
+
+Not So Random
+Trump also said that the 1,237 delegate count needed to secure the party’s nomination was “a very random number.”
+Trump: I think whoever gets to the top position as opposed to solving that artificial number that was by somebody, which is a very random number, I think that whoever gets the most delegates should win.
+It’s actually a simple majority of the total available delegates, 2,472.
+— by Eugene Kiely, Brooks Jackson, Lori Robertson, Robert Farley, D’Angelo Gore and Vanessa Schipani
+Sources
+Kiely, Eugene. “Trump on Bombing ISIS Oil Fields.” FactCheck.org. 17 Nov 2015.
+U.S. Department of Defense. “Department of Defense Press Briefing by Col. Warren via DVIDS from Baghdad, Iraq.” Press briefing. Department of Defense. 13 Nov 2015.
+U.S. Department of Defense. “Background Briefing on Interagency Efforts to Target ISIL’s Energy Assets.” Press briefing. 15 Dec 2015.
+Guest, Steve. “Former CIA Deputy Director: Obama Didn’t Attack ISIS Oil Because Of The Environment.” Daily Caller. 25 Nov 2015.
+Richardson, Bradford. “Ex-CIA chief: Fear for environment stays US hand on ISIS oil wells.” The Hill. 25 Nov 2015.
+Gordon, Michael R. and Eric Schmitt. “U.S. Steps Up Its Attacks on ISIS-Controlled Oil Fields in Syria.” New York Times. 12 Nov 2015.
+Henderson, O. Kay. “Cruz says the RFS is not the ‘holy grail’ for Iowa corn farmers.” Radio Iowa. 6 Jan 2016.
+S. 1195, 113 Cong. Print. “S.1195 – Renewable Fuel Standard Repeal Act.”
+S. 2170, 113 Cong. Print. “S.2170 – American Energy Renaissance Act of 2014.”
+America’s Renewable Future, Inc. “Senator Ted Cruz listens to Iowa farmers, supports Renewable Fuel Standard through 2022.” 6 Jan 2016.
+Carney, Timothy P. “CORRECTED: Cruz still favors slashing ethanol mandate every year for five years.” Washington Examiner. 7 Jan 2016.
+Cruz, Ted. “Cruz: I’m fighting for farmers against Washington.” Des Moines Register. 6 Jan 2016.
+U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. “National Income and Product Accounts: Gross Domestic Product: Fourth Quarter and Annual 2015 (Second Estimate).” News release. 26 Feb 2016.
+U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. “Table 1.1.1. Percent Change From Preceding Period in Real Gross Domestic Product.” Data downloaded 11 Mar 2016.
+U.S. Federal Election Commission, Candidate and Committee Viewer. “Details for Committee ID : C00580100.” Data downloaded 11 Mar 2016.
+Schipani, Vanessa. “Cruz’s ‘Pseudoscientific’ Climate Claims.” FactCheck.org. 1 Feb 2016.
+U.S. Global Change Research Program. “Third National Climate Assessment.” May 2014.
+Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “Fifth Assessment Report.” 2015.
+Levitan, Dave. “Distorting Climate Change Threats, Solutions.” FactCheck.org. 28 Jan 2015.
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+Olivier, Jos G.J. et al. “Trends in Global CO2 Emissions.” PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. 2012.
+U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions. EPA. June 2015.
+CO2 time series 1990-2014 per region/country. EDGAR, Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research. Accessed 11 Mar 2016.
+University Corporation for Climate Research. “How Much Has the Global Temperature Risen Since 1880?” Accessed 11 Mar 2016.
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+The Florida Oceans and Coastal Council. “Climate Change and Sea-Level Rise in Florida: An Update of the Effects of Climate Change on Florida’s Ocean & Coastal Resources.” Dec 2010.
+U.S. Department of Education website. “U.S. Secretary of Education Duncan Announces Winners of Competition to Improve Student Assessments.” 2 Sep 2010.
+Common Core State Standards website. “Myths vs. Facts.”
+Kiely, Eugene. “FactChecking CPAC.” FactCheck.org. 27 Feb 2015.
+Council of Chief State School Officers. “College- and Career-Ready Standards.”
+U.S. Department of Education website. “Duncan Pushes Back on Attacks on Common Core Standards.” 25 Jun 2013.
+Brown, Emma. “Fact-checking Trump’s new anti-Common Core video.” Washington Post. 27 Jan 2016.
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+Pfeiffer, Dan. “Fact Check: The Bust of Winston Churchill.” WhiteHouse.gov. 27 Jul 2012.
+CBS News. “Obama Has Made the Oval Office His Own.” 5 Jan 2010.
+Rothman, Noah. “British Embassy Confirms Krauthammer Right, White House Wrong: Churchill Bust Returned in 2009.” Mediaite.com. 27 Jul 2012."
+"3.5KSummary
+We found several false and misleading claims in the debate between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders.
+
+Sanders claimed Clinton called Barack Obama “naive” in 2007 because he “thought it was a good idea to talk to our enemies.” That lacks context. Clinton objected not to meeting with enemies, but to Obama’s statement that he would do so without preconditions.
+Sanders claimed that NAFTA and other trade deals have cost “millions” of U.S. jobs, but independent economists have said the impact on the economy was small.
+Clinton revised history in discussing her opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership. She supported the trade deal as secretary of state.
+Sanders mixed and matched two different sets of data to claim that “millions of Americans … are working longer hours for low wages.”
+Sanders said that his campaign “did not suggest that we had the endorsement” of the Nashua Telegraph in a new TV ad running in New Hampshire. In fact, the ad leaves that false impression.
+Clinton said “the Wall Street guys are trying so hard to stop me.” But Clinton and PACs that support her have raised millions from Wall Street interests.
+Sanders said that his campaign could better deliver a large voter turnout, the key to a Democrat winning the White House in November. But statistics on voter turnout in presidential elections don’t show such a clear partisan trend.
+Sanders wrongly claimed that “not one Republican has the guts to recognize that climate change is real.” Two of the Republican presidential candidates, not to mention more Republicans in Congress, have said climate change is real and humans contribute to it.
+While discussing the Trans Pacific Partnership, Sanders ascribed a misleading figure for the minimum wage in Vietnam.
+Sanders claimed that the United States has “the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on earth.” But the childhood poverty rate is higher in several industrialized economies.
+
+Analysis
+The Feb. 4 debate, held in Durham, New Hampshire, was hosted by MSNBC a few days ahead of the Feb. 9 New Hampshire primary.
+Did Clinton Call Obama ‘Naive’?
+Sanders left out an important piece of context when he reminded voters that Clinton once called President Obama “naive” on foreign policy. Sanders claimed Clinton said Obama was naive “because he thought it was a good idea to talk to our enemies.” Clinton responded that she wanted to “correct the record” to reflect that her comment in 2007 was not simply that Obama said he would meet with enemy leaders, but that he would do so without preconditions. The record is in Clinton’s favor on this one.
+Sanders: And I would say if I might, madam secretary — and you can correct me if I’m wrong. When you ran against Senator Obama you thought him naive because he thought it was a good idea to talk to our enemies. I think those are exactly the people you have to talk to and you have to negotiate with.
+Clinton: Well senator, let me just correct the record if I can. You know — let me correct the record. As I certainly recall, the question was to meet with without conditions. And you’re right, I was against that. I was against it then I would be against it now.
+Part of diplomacy, the hard work of diplomacy is trying to extract whatever concessions you can get, and giving something the other side wants. Of course you’ve got to try to make peace with, and work with those who are your adversaries, but you don’t just rush in, open the door, and say, “Here I am. Let’s talk and make a deal.” That’s not the way it works.
+This is not the first time Sanders has made this claim. Our fact-checking colleagues at PolitiFact weighed in when Sanders characterized Clinton’s comment in a similar way during a Jan. 17 interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
+Let’s rewind the tape back to July 2007, at a different Democratic presidential debate. During the CNN/YouTube debate, the question was posed, “Would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?”
+Then-candidate Obama responded, “I would. And the reason is this, that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them — which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration — is ridiculous.”
+Clinton offered a more nuanced answer.
+“Well, I will not promise to meet with the leaders of these countries during my first year,” Clinton said. “I will promise a very vigorous diplomatic effort because I think it is not that you promise a meeting at that high a level before you know what the intentions are. I don’t want to be used for propaganda purposes. I don’t want to make a situation even worse. But I certainly agree that we need to get back to diplomacy, which has been turned into a bad word by this administration. And I will purse very vigorous diplomacy. And I will use a lot of high-level presidential envoys to test the waters, to feel the way. But certainly, we’re not going to just have our president meet with Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez and, you know, the president of North Korea, Iran and Syria until we know better what the way forward would be.”
+In an interview the following day with the Quad-City Times, Clinton sharpened her attack, calling Obama’s comment “irresponsible and frankly naive.”
+“I think it is wrong for any president to say that he or she will not talk to people because they’re bad or they’re evil,” she said. “But the question was very specific, as to whether either of us would talk to a list of leaders of five countries with which the United States has serious difficulties within the first year of becoming president, and I thought that was irresponsible and frankly naive to say that he would commit to meeting with Chavez and Castro and others within the first year. As I said last night, there needs to be a lot of diplomatic effort.”
+So Clinton wasn’t saying Obama was naive simply “because he thought it was a good idea to talk to our enemies,” as Sanders put it. To the contrary, Clinton said she would support “vigorous diplomacy” with the envoys of enemy countries. In the very interview in which Clinton made the “naive” comment, she began by saying that “it is wrong for any president to say that he or she will not talk to people because they’re bad or they’re evil.” But she cautioned against the president meeting with the leaders of rogue nations until the legwork of diplomacy has been well-established.
+Old NAFTA Claim Still Wrong
+Sanders claimed that the North American Free Trade Agreement and subsequent international trade deals have cost “millions” of U.S. jobs.
+Sanders: [T]he current trade agreements over the last 30 years were written by corporate America, for corporate America, resulted in the loss of millions of decent-paying jobs, 60,000 factories in America lost since 2001, millions of decent-paying jobs.
+The fact is, the U.S. has gained nearly 31 million jobs since the month before NAFTA took effect on Jan. 1, 1994. And economists have been debating whether more or fewer jobs would have resulted in the absence of the landmark trade deal among the U.S., Canada and Mexico.
+As we wrote in 2008: “Nearly all economic studies say NAFTA’s net effect on jobs was negligible.” Back then, it was then-Sen. Barack Obama attacking Hillary Clinton, claiming that “1 million jobs have been lost because of NAFTA” (which her husband, Bill Clinton, lobbied for and signed).
+We reported then that “those figures are highly questionable and from an anti-NAFTA source. Other economic studies have concluded the trade deal resulted in much smaller job losses or even a small net gain.”
+The passage of time hasn’t changed the consensus view of independent economists. A 2015 report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service stated: “The overall net effect of NAFTA on the U.S. economy has been relatively small.”
+CRS, April 16, 2015: In reality, NAFTA did not cause the huge job losses feared by the critics or the large economic gains predicted by supporters. The net overall effect of NAFTA on the U.S. economy appears to have been relatively modest, primarily because trade with Canada and Mexico accounts for a small percentage of U.S. GDP.
+Clinton’s Revisionist History
+Clinton revised history when she discussed the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal recently signed by 12 nations, including the United States.
+Clinton: I said that I was holding out that hope that it would be the kind of trade agreement that I was looking for. I waited until it had actually been negotiated because I did want to give the benefit of the doubt to the administration. Once I saw what the outcome was, I opposed it.
+That was her position as a presidential candidate, when she was under pressure from labor unions to come out against the trade agreement. But before that, as secretary of state, Clinton supported the pact, as mentioned by moderator Chuck Todd.
+Speaking in Australia, on Nov. 15, 2012, Clinton called the TPP “the gold standard in trade agreements.” In Singapore two days later, Clinton said the pact will “establish strong protections for workers.”
+“Better jobs with higher wages and safer working conditions, including for women, migrant workers and others too often in the past excluded from the formal economy will help build Asia’s middle class and rebalance the global economy,” she said in Singapore.
+On Jan. 18, 2013, Clinton met with Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida. At a press conference after the meeting, Clinton said they discussed the TPP, which she said “holds out great economic opportunities to all participating nations.”
+Clinton left office a few weeks later on Feb. 1, 2013.
+Longer Hours for Less Pay?
+Sanders repeated his talking point that “millions of Americans … are working longer hours for low wages.” (Typically, he says “lower wages,” as he did in a Dec. 29, 2015, Facebook post, a Jan. 14 tweet, and a campaign ad that began airing in November.)
+Sanders: Millions of Americans are giving up on the political process. And they’re giving up on the political process because they understand the economy is rigged. They are working longer hours for low wages. They’re worried about the future of their kids, and yet almost all new income and wealth is going to the top 1 percent.
+Let’s look at the official figures. The average weekly hours of production and nonsupervisory employees in the private sector have declined — from a high point of 38.8 hours a week in May 1965 to 33.7 hours a week in December 2015, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The average weekly hours dropped to a low of 33 in June 2009, at the official end of the Great Recession, and have gone up a bit to 33.7, where weekly hours also were in January 2008.
+For all employees in the private sector, BLS data are only available since 2009, showing a small increase in weekly hours from 33.8 hours to 34.5 hours on average.
+At the same time that average weekly hours for production and nonsupervisory employees were going down, the average weekly earnings also declined. BLS numbers show average weekly earnings for those employees in May 1965 were $320.69, in 1982-84 dollars, compared with $307.94 in December 2015. That’s a drop in inflation-adjusted earnings of 4 percent, during a time period in which the hours worked declined 13 percent.
+So that’s lower earnings for fewer hours worked.
+Average weekly earnings for all workers, adjusted for inflation and seasonal factors by BLS, have gone up 4.2 percent from March 2009 to December 2015, during that small increase in weekly hours. Hourly earnings are up, too, over that time period, by 2.1 percent, adjusted for inflation.
+Full-time workers polled by the Gallup organization report working more hours than the BLS numbers show, but over time that figure has held steady, not increased. The 2013-14 Gallup survey found the average week for full-time workers was 46.7 hours. “The amount of hours that all U.S. full-time employees say they typically work each week has held fairly steady over the past 14 years, except for a slight dip to just under 45 hours in Gallup’s 2004-2005 two-year average,” Gallup wrote of its most recent poll. “Part-time workers have averaged about 20 hours per week less than full-timers, although the precise figure shifts more for part-timers. This is partly due to the lower sample size of this group, resulting in greater volatility in the measure.”
+So how does Sanders support his claim that “millions of Americans” (or the “average person,” as he claimed on Twitter) are working longer hours for lower wages? By comparing apples to oranges.
+The campaign pointed to a chart from the Pew Research Center that used BLS data on hourly wages for production and nonsupervisory employees. That chart shows a slight increase in inflation-adjusted hourly wages, of about $1.50, from 1964 to 2014.
+But the campaign points to a slight decrease in hourly wages if measured from 1975 to 2014. Of course, those production and nonsupervisory employees’ average weekly hours went down over that time period, from 36.1 hours in January 1975 to 33.8 hours in December 2014. That’s lower wages for fewer hours.
+Why start the clock in 1975? Because the Sanders camp points to a different set of data to claim that the hours worked went up.
+The campaign cites a 2011 Brookings Institution report that found the number of total hours worked by two-parent families in the middle 10 percent (in terms of earnings) had gone up since 1975 — mainly because more women entered the workforce.
+“In 2009, for instance, the typical two-parent family worked 26 percent longer than the typical family in 1975,” the Brookings report says. “The 26 percent increase in hours worked mainly reflects increases in work outside of the home among women. In fact, among two-parent families with median earnings, the hours of men were relatively constant over time, while hours worked by women more than doubled from 1975 to 2009.”
+So, these individuals in the two-parent family — mom and dad — weren’t each working longer hours for lower pay. Instead, the family as a whole posted longer hours because women worked more hours outside the home. Dads’ hours remained constant.
+And while these families’ median hours increased 26 percent, their median wages earned went up 23 percent.
+Brookings did find a “dramatic” increase in the hours worked by single-parent families (53 percent since 1975) but also an even larger corresponding percentage increase in earnings (about 69 percent). The reason again was pegged to an increase in women’s participation in the labor force and increases in their wages.
+To sum up: The Sanders campaign cites BLS data showing hourly wages went down slightly over a time period in which average weekly hours also went down. And then it cites Brookings data on a subset of families showing that hours worked went up over a time period in which wages also went up.
+Sanders’ claim relies on mixing and matching two different sets of data. By the same logic, one could also wrongly claim that Americans are working fewer hours, using the BLS data, for higher wages, using Brookings’ report.
+As for Sanders’ claim that “almost all new income and wealth is going to the top 1 percent,” he has cited the work of economists Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley, and Gabriel Zucman of the London School of Economics and Political Science for such claims in the past. We wrote in July that he exaggerated in saying that “almost all of the wealth rests in the hands of the few,” even by the Saez-Zucman study, which some economists have disputed. That study found that the top 1 percent held 41.8 percent of the nation’s wealth in 2012. That’s not “almost all.”
+The June 2015 update of the Saez-Zucman study on income says that 55 percent of real income growth from 1993 to 2014 went to the top 1 percent (see Table 1, page 8). Even more recently, from 2009 to 2014, during the economic recovery, 58 percent of real income growth went to the top 1 percent. That’s a majority, but also not “almost all.”
+Sanders’ Endorsement Ad
+Sanders went too far when he said “we did not suggest that we had the endorsement” of the Nashua Telegraph in a new TV ad running in New Hampshire.
+MSNBC moderator Rachel Maddow asked Sanders if he was “losing control” of his campaign. She said, for example, “the Nashua Telegraph has complained recently that you falsely implied in an advertisement that they had endorsed you when they did not.”
+Sanders denied that the ad made any such an implication.
+Sanders: [A]s I understand it, we did not suggest that we had the endorsement of a newspaper. Newspapers who make endorsements also say positive things about other candidates, and to the best of my knowledge, that is what we did. So we never said, never said that somebody, a newspaper endorsed us that did not. What we did say is blah blah blah blah was said by the newspaper.
+As we wrote, however, that ad leaves the false impression that Sanders was endorsed by the Nashua Telegraph and the Valley News. Neither paper has made an endorsement.
+The campaign titled the TV ad “Endorsed.” It starts with the narrator saying, “From postal workers to nurses, he has been endorsed for real change, Bernie Sanders.” The ad shows quotations and/or logos from five organizations that have endorsed Sanders, and then adds at the end favorable quotes from the two newspapers.
+Roger Carroll, executive editor of the Nashua Telegraph tweeted, “For the record, despite @BernieSanders deceptive ad to the contrary, @NashuaTelegraph has not endorsed any Dem prez candidate.”
+Wall Street Contributions
+Clinton said “the Wall Street guys are trying so hard to stop me.” But Clinton and PACs that support her have raised millions from Wall Street interests.
+According to Opensecrets.org, Clinton’s campaign collected nearly $3 million from people working in the “securities and investment” industry and about $600,000 from those working for “commercial banks.” The “securities and investment” industry ranks fourth among her top donors.
+The nonpartisan watchdog group, which codes and tallies individual donations based on employers, defines Wall Street as “the securities and investment and commercial banking industries” — which means that Clinton has raised about $3.6 million from Wall Street employees.
+That’s only contributions directly to her campaign. If that total is combined with donations to super PACs that support her, Clinton has the financial support of more than $17 million from Wall Street workers.
+A Washington Post analysis of campaign finance reports filed by Clinton and pro-Clinton super PACs found that “donors at hedge funds, banks, insurance companies and other financial services firms had given at least $21.4 million to support Clinton’s 2016 presidential run — more than 10 percent of the $157.8 million contributed to back her bid.”
+Sanders, by contrast, received $55,000 from the “securities and investment” industry, and the commercial banks industry was not among his top 20 donors, Opensecrets.org data show. There is no single-candidate super PAC supporting Sanders.
+
+Among all candidates in both parties, Clinton ranks No. 1 in contributions from workers in the securities and investment and the hedge funds and private equity industries.
+Voter Turnout and a Democratic Victory
+Sanders made the case that large voter turnout is the key to a Democrat winning the White House in November, and argued that his campaign is better equipped to create the public enthusiasm necessary to drive a large turnout.
+But the statistics on voter turnout in presidential elections don’t draw as clear a partisan trend as Sanders suggested.
+Sanders: Democrats win when there is a large voter turnout; when people are excited; when working people, middle class people and young people are prepared to engage in the political process. Republicans win when people are demoralized and you have a small voter turnout, which by the way is why they love voter suppression. 
+So is it true that Democrats win the White House when voter turnout is high? The trend is not as linear as Sanders claimed.
+We looked at data from the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara, on the percentage of turnout among the voting age population during presidential elections.
+Voter turnout has been on a general decline for decades. So it is difficult to compare turnouts in races in, say, the 1800s to the 2000s, because almost all of the turnout percentages were higher in the 1800s. Just looking at the last 14 presidential elections going back to 1960 — seven won by Democrats and seven won by Republicans — there are examples of Republicans winning with both high and low voter turnout, and of Democrats winning with high and low voter turnout.
+Over that stretch, the highest turnout rates were in 1960 (62.77 percent) and 1964 (61.92 percent), elections won by Democrats John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. But the third highest percentage in that period was 60.84 in 1968, won by Republican Richard Nixon. Obama won with a relatively high voter turnout percentage of 58.23 in 2008. But he also won reelection with a below average voter turnout (54.87 percent) in 2012.
+Democrat Bill Clinton won with a turnout of 55.24 percent in 1992, but that was a lower turnout than in 2004 (56.7 percent) when Republican George W. Bush won. And Clinton’s reelection in 1996 saw the lowest voter turnout percentage (49 percent) since 1924.
+The Sanders campaign pointed to research from the Pew Research Center that shows nonvoters tend to be more liberal than voters, and that while nonvoters tend to have weak partisan ties, a higher percentage of them identify as Democrats than Republicans. That may be, but as we can see from past presidential election turnouts, it’s not simply a matter of turnout, but who you get to turn out.
+Republicans on Climate Change
+While discussing the influence of political donations, Sanders said: “Not one Republican has the guts to recognize that climate change is real.” That’s false.
+It’s true that several of the remaining Republican presidential candidates have said that they do not believe human activity contributes to climate change. But some believe it does.
+Those who have said they don’t believe in climate change, or doubt the science behind it, include Ben Carson, Sen. Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. Those who have said that climate change is real include former Gov. Jeb Bush and Gov. Chris Christie.
+For example, during an interview with Bloomberg BNA on July 30, 2015, Bush said: “The climate is changing; I don’t think anybody can argue it’s not. Human activity has contributed to it. I think we have a responsibility to adapt to what the possibilities are without destroying our economy, without hollowing out our industrial core.”
+Likewise, on Dec. 1, 2015, on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Christie said: “We cannot say that our activity doesn’t contribute to changing the climate.”
+“Listen, there are a lot of scientists that agree with me that climate change is real, occurs, and that men and women contribute to it,” Christie said. However, he added that the changing climate is “not a crisis.”
+We contacted Sanders’ campaign to ask if “Republicans” was a reference to the 2016 presidential candidates or Republicans in general, but the campaign did not clarify the senator’s statement.
+There are other Republicans in Congress who have said that human activity contributes to climate change.
+In fact, Sen. John McCain, the party’s 2008 presidential nominee, ran TV ads during that campaign touting his willingness to buck his party and sponsor legislation to address climate change, as we wrote at the time.
+McCain, for example, sponsored a cap-and-trade bill with Sen. Joe Lieberman. “McCain and Lieberman first introduced their climate change bill in 2003, and it didn’t go over well with McCain’s fellow Republicans,” we wrote.
+More recently, on Jan. 21, 2015, McCain voted for an amendment to legislation approving the Keystone XL pipeline that definitively stated that “[c]limate change is real; and human activity contributes to climate change.”
+In addition to McCain, 14 other Republicans voted for that amendment, which failed to obtain the 60 votes it needed to pass.
+Vietnam’s Minimum Wage
+Sanders used a misleading figure about wages in Vietnam, one of the countries covered by the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, which he opposes.
+Sanders: [T]he TPP is, it’s to say to American workers, hey, you are now competing against people in Vietnam who make 56 cents an hour minimum wage.
+It’s true that the minimum wage in Vietnam is a fraction of the $7.25 hourly federal minimum wage in the U.S., but for most Vietnamese workers it’s higher than Sanders claimed.
+According to the Wageindicator Foundation of the University of Amsterdam, Vietnam increased its minimum wage this year by 13 percent — from a low of $107 per month (stated in U.S. dollars) to a high of $156, depending on which of four regions of the country a worker is employed.
+Vietnam does not set an hourly wage, but the law there does permit a 48-hour normal work week. So on that basis, the minimum wage could indeed be as low as 56 cents per hour — in Region IV. But that is the least developed portion of the country. In Region I, which includes Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Hai Phong and several of the country’s other most populous cities, the minimum wage figures out to 81 cents an hour based on a 48-hour work week.
+Furthermore, Sanders failed to mention that U.S. workers already compete with Vietnamese workers — and will continue to do so with or without the TPP. The U.S. imported $3.2 billion in goods from Vietnam in November, and nearly $35 billion in the first 11 months of last year, according to most recent figures from the U.S. Census Bureau. That made Vietnam this country’s 13th largest trading partner in terms of imports for 2015.
+Correction, Feb. 8: In our original article, we said the minimum wage in Vietnam was higher than 56 cents an hour in all regions. We based that on a 40-hour work week, failing to note that Vietnam allows a normal 48-hour work week. We regret the error, and thank the alert reader who brought it to our attention.
+Childhood Poverty
+Sanders repeated the claim that the United States has “the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on earth.” As we have written, the childhood poverty rate is higher in several industrialized economies.
+When Sanders made a similar claim in the second debate, his campaign referred us to a report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which showed that nearly 21 percent of children up to the age of 17 were living in “relative poverty” in the U.S. in 2012.
+“Relative poverty” is a measure of household disposable income relative to other residents of that country.
+By that measure, the U.S. ranked seventh among 38 countries. Turkey, Israel, Mexico, Greece, Romania and Bulgaria all had higher rates of child poverty than the U.S., in the OECD’s ranking.
+The official poverty rate for children under 18 in the United States was 21.1 percent in 2014, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. An alternative measure called the Supplemental Poverty Measure put the childhood poverty rate at 16.7 percent in 2014, the Census Bureau says.
+The SPM was developed in 2011 to account for many of the government programs assisting low-income families and individuals that are not included in the current official poverty measure, the bureau explains on its website.
+— by Eugene Kiely, Brooks Jackson, Lori Robertson, Robert Farley, D’Angelo Gore and Vanessa Schipani
+Sources
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+U.S. Department of State. “Clinton on Delivering on the Promise of Economic Statecraft.” 17 Nov 2012.
+U.S. Department of State. “Remarks With Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida After Their Meeting.” 18 Jan 2013.
+Jackson, Brooks et al. “FactChecking the Second Democratic Debate.” FactCheck.org. 15 Nov 2015.
+Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. “Chart CO2.2.A. Child income poverty rates, 2012.” Data accessed 5 Feb 2016.
+U.S. Census Bureau. “Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2014.” Press release. 16 Sep 2015.
+U.S. Census Bureau. “What is the Supplemental Poverty Measure and How Does it Differ from the Official Measure?” 8 Nov 2013.
+Carroll, Lauren. “Sanders: Obama was right, Clinton was wrong on Iran.” PolitiFact. 17 Jan 2016.
+CNN Politics. “Part I: CNN/YouTube Democratic presidential debate transcript.” 24 Jul 2007.
+Tibbetts, Ed. “Clinton, Obama trade barbs in Quad-City Times interviews.” Quad-City Times. 24 Jul 2007.
+Woolley, John and  “Peters, Gerhard. “Voter Turnout in Presidential Elections: 1828 – 2012.” The American Presidency Project, University of California, Santa Barbara. 
+Pew Research Center. “The Party of Nonvoters.” 31 Oct. 2014.
+DeSilver, Drew. “For most workers, real wages have barely budged for decades.” Pew Research Center. 9 Oct 2014.
+Greenstone, Michael and Adam Looney. “The Great Recession May Be Over, but American Families Are Working Harder than Ever.” Brookings Institution. 8 Jul 2011.
+Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National).” data extracted 5 Feb 2016.
+McCormick, John. “Ben Carson Not Convinced on Global Warming.” Bloomberg Politics. 26 Nov 2014.
+Schipani, Vanessa. “Cruz’s ‘Pseudoscientific’ Climate Claims.” FactCheck.org. 1 Feb 2016.
+Haddon, Heather. “Donald Trump: ‘I Don’t Believe in Climate Change.’ ” The Wall Street Journal. 24 Sept 2015.
+Adragna, Anthony. “Jeb Bush Takes Positions on Climate Change, EPA Rules, Other Energy Issues.” Bloomberg BNA. 30 July 2015.
+Real Clear Politics. “Christie: Obama ‘Focused On the Wrong Climate Change.’ ” Transcript. MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” 1 Dec 2015.
+Bank, Justin. “McCain’s Power Outage.” FactCheck.org. 20 Jun 2008.
+U.S .Senate. Roll Call Vote 11. 21 Jan 2015.
+“The Trans-Pacific Partnership.” Office of the United States Trade Representative. Accessed 5 Feb 2016.
+“Minimum Wage.” U.S. Department of Labor. Accessed 5 Feb 2016.
+“Vietnam to Increase Minimum Wage for 2016 – November 26, 2015.” wageindicator.org. Accessed 5 Feb 2016.
+U.S. Census Bureau. “Top Trading Partners – November 2015.” Accessed 5 Feb 2016.
+U.S. Census Bureau. “Trade in Goods with Vietnam.” Accessed 5 Feb 2016.
+Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National); Total Nonfarm Employment, Seasonally Adjusted.” Data extracted 5 Feb 2016.
+Jackson, Brooks. “NAFTA’s Impact on Employment.” FactCheck.org. 7 Jul 2008.
+Villarreal, Angeles and Ian F. Fergusson. “The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).” Congressional Research Service. 16 Apr 2015."
+"25Political leanings: Democratic/liberal 
+Spending target: Unknown 
+NextGen Climate Action is an environmental advocacy organization founded by San Francisco billionaire Tom Steyer. According to its mission statement, the group seeks to “prevent climate disaster and promote prosperity for all Americans.” It’s also “committed to supporting candidates, elected officials, and policymakers across the country that will take bold action on climate change.”
+Steyer, who ran the hedge fund Farallon Capital for more than 20 years, sold his stake in the company and transitioned to environmental advocacy. He launched NextGen Climate Action in 2013 as a 501(c)(4) organization, which is not required to disclose its donors. A NextGen Climate Action Committee also registered July 22, 2013, with the Federal Election Commission as a super PAC, which must disclose its donors.
+In July 2015, in an interview with the New York Times, Steyer said that in order to get the advocacy group’s support, a candidate would have to propose an environmental plan ensuring that half of the nation’s electricity is generated from renewable or zero-carbon energy sources by 2030, and that the entire country used only clean energy by 2050.
+Steyer, who has an estimated net worth of more than $1.6 billion, declined to comment to the Times on how much he anticipated spending during the 2016 campaign, but a spokeswoman for NextGen Climate Action said he planned to “double down.” That would be huge since Steyer and his wife, Kathryn, donated more than $75 million total to Democratic candidates or groups during the 2014 cycle, ranking them first on the list of top individual federal contributors compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. The couple gave more than $68 million to the NextGen super PAC.
+In 2015, NextGen Climate Action Committee received $13.5 million in contributions — nearly all from Steyer — and spent about $15 million, according to the 2016 Federal Election Commission summary. The group had contributed $250,000 to the liberal American Bridge 21st Century super PAC. The vast majority of the group’s spending for 2015 — more than $13 million — was on operating expenses."
+"4.2K1While on the campaign trail in New Hampshire, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz gave a speech to local residents that contained inaccurate and misleading claims about climate science and its terminology:
+
+Cruz claimed “none of the alarmists say ‘global warming’ anymore — now it’s ‘climate change.’ ” That’s inaccurate. Scientists still use both terms, but tend to use “climate change” more often because, in addition to warming, it refers to phenomena such as sea-level rise and changes in precipitation patterns.
+Cruz also said “climate change is the perfect pseudoscientific theory because it can never, ever, ever be disproven.” This is false. It could be, but the chances are slim. Climate change rests on the veracity of the greenhouse effect, a theory which has been repeatedly verified since it was first proposed in 1824.
+Cruz says “if it gets hotter or colder, wetter or drier — the climate has always changed since the beginning of time.” That’s misleading. The climate fluctuates due to natural causes, but it’s unlikely that these phenomena alone account for some more recent changes. The models do not predict uniform warming or cooling. Some places may be cooler, but overall warming is expected.
+
+Cruz made his remarks in Conway, New Hampshire, on Jan. 19, the day before the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA released findings that strongly suggest 2015 was the hottest year on record by a long shot.
+Cruz, Jan. 19: Has anyone noticed in the past couple of years, the theory has magically changed a third time? Now none of the alarmists say ‘global warming’  anymore — now it’s ‘climate change.’ … If you are a big government politician, if you want more power, climate change is the perfect pseudoscientific theory. How many of y’all remember high school biology? Remember the scientific method? You start with a hypothesis and then you use evidence to try to disprove the hypothesis, to test it to see if it’s true. Climate change is the perfect pseudoscientific theory because it can never, ever, ever be disproven. If it gets hotter or colder, wetter or drier — the climate has always changed since the beginning of time. It will continue to change till the end of time.
+This isn’t the first time during the presidential campaign that Cruz has called climate change “pseudoscientific.”
+On Dec. 8 2015, Cruz, in an NPR interview, said: “Climate change is the perfect pseudoscientific theory for a big government politician who wants more power. Why? Because it is a theory that can never be disproven.”
+Climate Change vs. Global Warming 
+First of all, since “alarmists” include scientists, Cruz’s claim that “none of the alarmists say ‘global warming’ anymore — now it’s ‘climate change’ ” is inaccurate. Scientists still use both terms. “Climate change” has also been around in the scientific literature longer than “global warming,” though it didn’t always refer to both anthropogenic and natural climate change as it does today.
+According to NASA and NOAA, “climate change,” “global warming” and the related term “greenhouse effect” can refer to both natural and human influences on the planet. Scientists at these organizations and others, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, tend to tack on adjectives like anthropogenic or enhanced when referring specifically to human-influenced atmospheric and climatic changes. But for the sake of simplicity, instances of these three terms will refer to human-related changes here, unless stated otherwise.
+Michael Mann, a climatologist and geophysicist at Pennsylvania State University, also told us by phone that, to scientists, “climate change,” “global warming” and the “greenhouse effect,” refer to different, albeit closely-related, phenomena. As a result, scientists use all of these terms (and many more) to explain the phenomena they observe.
+However, Mann did say (as does NASA — see entry for “climate change”) that scientists prefer the term “climate change” because it encompasses global warming as well as other phenomena, like sea-level rise and changes in precipitation patterns.
+There is general consensus in the scientific community regarding the definitions of these three terms (compare NASA and NOAA‘s definitions, for example). The “greenhouse effect” is the process by which gases including carbon dioxide and methane act as a blanket over the planet, trapping the sun’s radiation, or heat. “Global warming” refers to an increase in the Earth’s average surface temperature because of rising greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels. Global warming then leads to other changes in the global climate, including those related to precipitation, the seasons and sea levels — a collection of phenomena, which, among others, fall under the title “climate change.”
+In a nutshell, says Mann, the greenhouse effect facilitates global warming, which leads to climate change.
+In a phone interview, Erik Conway, a historian at NASA since 1998, told us that the first usage of the term “global warming” in the scientific literature most likely occurred in 1975, when the journal Science published the geochemist Wallace Broecker’s paper “Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?”
+“Climate change,” on the other hand, probably dates back to the 19th century, said Conway, but for decades scientists used it to refer to natural changes in the climate, like ice ages. For this reason, pinpointing when the exact term was first used in an anthropogenic sense is tricky, he said.
+However, the physicist Gilbert N. Plass did use the term “climatic change” — similar to “climate change” — in an anthropogenic sense in his 1956 paper titled “The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climatic Change.” Plass’ paper discusses how the “extra CO2 released into the atmosphere by industrial processes and other human activities may have caused the temperature rise during the present century.”
+For most of the 1970s, scientific publications regularly used the phrase “inadvertent climate modification” to describe human impact on the climate, Conway wrote on NASA’s website in 2008. At the time, scientists weren’t sure how increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would affect the global climate, so they used this more neutral term to describe their findings.
+But in the 1979 document often called the Charney Report for its chairman, Jule Charney, the phrase “inadvertent climate modification” was dropped for the terms “global warming” and “climate change.” “When referring to surface temperature change, Charney used ‘global warming.’ When discussing the many other changes that would be induced by increasing carbon dioxide, Charney used ‘climate change,’ ” much like scientists use the terms today, explains Conway.
+Conway also writes that the usage of “global warming” “exploded” in the popular media in June 1988 when James E. Hansen, a prominent NASA scientist, used the term during testimony to Congress about the subject. Hansen said, for example: “Global warming has reached a level such that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship between the greenhouse effect and the observed warming.”
+In emails to us, both Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, and Harvard historian Naomi Oreskes said Republican strategist Frank Luntz popularized the phrase “climate change” — at least among some politicians.
+Prior to the 2002 midterm elections, Luntz wrote a then-confidential memo to the Bush administration urging it to avoid the “frightening” phrase “global warming,” and instead use the term “climate change.” In the memo Luntz wrote, “while global warming has catastrophic communications attached to it, climate change suggests a more controllable and less emotional challenge.”
+Luntz’s advice did appear to have an effect on which terms the Bush administration used. Back in 2003 both the New York Times and the Guardian reported that while “global warming” appeared regularly in President Bush’s speeches on the environment in 2001, the term nearly disappeared during 2002 to be replaced by “climate change.”
+Overall, Cruz’s claim that “none of the alarmists say ‘global warming’ anymore — now it’s ‘climate change’ “ is inaccurate. Scientists still use both terms, but tend to use “climate change” more often because it refers to more phenomena. And it was Republican strategist Luntz who encouraged members of his party to use the term “climate change” over “global warming.”
+Can Climate Science ‘Never, Ever’ Be Disproved?
+As for Cruz’s claim that “climate change is the perfect pseudoscientific theory because it can never, ever, ever be disproven,” Mann told us that “absolutely” climate change could be disproved. “That’s true in any area of science,” he said. “It’s true in physics. It’s true in biology. It’s true in climate change.” As he explained above, the theory of climate change rests upon the accuracy of the theory of global warming, which, in turn, depends on the theory of the greenhouse effect.
+One way to disprove climate change might be to disprove the greenhouse effect, Mann told us. This would entail finding strong evidence that suggests gases like carbon dioxide don’t trap the sun’s heat. But the likelihood of this occurring is slim to none, as the theory has been verified time and again since it was first proposed by the physicist Joseph Fourier in 1824.
+In fact, Mann says, “things as basic as the design of heat-seeking missiles rely upon an understanding of the greenhouse effect.”
+Another way to disprove climate change would be to challenge the theory of global warming, adds Mann. Since global warming can be thought of as an enhanced greenhouse effect (see NASA’s definition of the term here), this method of falsification would be related to — though different from — disproving the greenhouse effect.
+In other words, instead of finding strong evidence that suggests carbon dioxide, for example, doesn’t trap the sun’s heat point blank, scientists would have to show that higher average global temperatures aren’t the result of increased levels of greenhouse gases. But scientists have found no evidence to support this claim.
+Alternatively, if over the past few decades the planet hadn’t warmed on average as much as scientists thought it would, this would also have given them cause to reevaluate their current understanding of both global warming and climate change. For example, Mann says that if James Hansen’s predictions back in 1988 had been wrong, scientists would have reevaluated their theories.
+But Hansen’s predictions, which concerned how much the planet would warm on average based on three scenarios for fossil fuel emissions (and about which he spoke to Congress in 1988), were “more or less spot on,” Mann told us.
+As we have written before, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fifth assessment report that was released in 2013 concluded that it is “extremely likely” that more than half of the observed temperature increase since 1950 is due to human activities.
+Cruz is off the mark when he says climate change “can never, ever, ever be disproven.” It could be, but it becomes less and less likely each time scientists verify the greenhouse effect, global warming and global warming’s effect on climatic patterns around the planet.
+Is Climate Change Human-Caused? Is it a Fallacy?
+
+Cruz’s claim that “if it gets hotter or colder, wetter or drier — the climate has always changed since the beginning of time” can be examined in two ways: Can natural phenomena alone explain changes to today’s climate, like an increase in extreme weather events? And does the theory of climate change entail a fallacy? A “fallacy” is a general term that refers to an error in reasoning. In this case, the fallacy is unfalsifiability.
+Regardless, Cruz’s claim is misleading at best and inaccurate at worst.
+Can natural phenomena explain all of today’s climatic changes? Scientists have found strong evidence that suggests anthropogenic causes, like the burning of fossil fuels, contribute to changes in our climate in addition to natural causes.
+In 2014 the U.S. Global Change Research Program put out its third National Climate Assessment, which stated:
+U.S. Global Change Research Program, May 2014: Long-term, independent records from weather stations, satellites, ocean buoys, tide gauges, and many other data sources all confirm that our nation [the United States], like the rest of the world, is warming. Precipitation patterns are changing, sea level is rising, the oceans are becoming more acidic, and the frequency and intensity of some extreme weather events are increasing. Many lines of independent evidence demonstrate that the rapid warming of the past half-century is due primarily to human activities.
+The 2014 National Climate Assessment was produced by “a team of more than 300 experts guided by a 60-member Federal Advisory Committee” and reviewed by “the public and experts, including federal agencies and a panel of the National Academy of Sciences.”
+The IPCC’s fifth assessment report also found evidence to support the existence of human-induced climate change. For example, the U.N. panel writes (see page 2): “Human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history. Recent climate changes have had widespread impacts on human and natural systems.”
+NASA’s website also cites collective and individual statements from a number of American and international scientific societies, academies and government agencies that all agree global warming and climate change are due, in part, to human actions. For example, in 2006 the Board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, publisher of the journal Science, said: “The scientific evidence is clear: global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now, and it is a growing threat to society.”
+In short, when Cruz said “if it gets hotter or colder, wetter or drier — the climate has always changed since the beginning of time,” he implied climate change is only due to natural causes. This is inaccurate. Scientists have found plenty of evidence to suggest that humans have been contributing to climate change since the Industrial Revolution.
+Lastly, Cruz implies that the theory of climate change entails a fallacy when he juxtaposes the line “if it gets hotter or colder, wetter or drier” with his claim that the theory can never be proved wrong. This is misleading. Scientists have found evidence that suggests climate change includes an increase in both wetter and drier, hotter and colder conditions — including more extreme weather events — and this evidence doesn’t entail a fallacy.
+Along with large-scale reports like those of the IPCC, independent studies have also found that human-induced global warming is the likely cause of changes to the global climate, such as an increase in extreme weather events. In April 2015, for example, Nature Climate Change published a paper that found that extreme heat waves and heavy rainfall may already be occurring with increasing frequency due to anthropogenic causes.
+Back in April 2015 we also wrote about the relationship between global warming and extreme weather when we fact-checked claims made by Lamar Smith, a Republican from Texas and chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.
+To be clear, scientists do not claim that climate change is at the root of every recent drought, flood, heatwave and snowstorm. In December of last year, the American Meteorological Society published a collection of 32 studies that examined 28 extreme weather events in 2014. Collectively, the researchers found that whether climate change plays a role in extreme weather depends on the region and meteorological phenomenon of interest.
+“When you start talking about individual regions, forecasts become much more uncertain,” Mann told us. But “when you talk about some of these more general principles, those are pretty rock solid.”
+By “general principles” Mann is referring to the many different mechanisms underlying fluctuations in the planet’s climate. To explain why climate change doesn’t entail a fallacy, we will outline how one of those mechanisms relates to extreme weather, namely floods and droughts.
+One way to understand the relationship between global warming and climate change, relies on how H2O reacts to heat. When H2O in the form of water is heated it evaporates and turns into water vapor. When H2O in the form of ice is heated, it melts and turns into water. So in areas where there are mountains with snow pack, global warming may lead to increased flooding, Mann told us. Whereas in areas where there are lakes or moisture in the soil, global warming may lead to more droughts. Again, this explanation is simplified, and many more mechanisms contribute to increased flooding and prolonged droughts, among other extreme weather events.
+There are mechanisms to explain how on a global level climate change can entail both droughts and floods simultaneously. As a result, Cruz was misleading when he juxtaposed the line “if it gets hotter or colder, wetter or drier” next to his claim that the theory can never be proved wrong.
+To sum up, Cruz’s speech in Conway on Jan. 19 included both inaccurate and misleading claims.
+First, he said “none of the alarmists say ‘global warming’ anymore — now it’s ‘climate change.’ ” Scientists still use both terms. Next, he claimed climate change “can never, ever, ever be disproven.” This is false. It could be, but the chances are slim. Third, he misled when he said “if it gets hotter or colder, wetter or drier — the climate has always changed since the beginning of time.” Natural causes influence the climate, but it’s unlikely these phenomena alone account for some more recent changes. And given the global climate’s spatial and temporal complexity, scientists expect that some areas of the planet will change differently from others. So there’s nothing fallacious about the theory of climate change entailing more weather extremes, for example.
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation."
+"29.6K1Summary
+It’s been a banner year for political whoppers — and for one teller of tall tales in particular: Donald Trump.
+In the 12 years of FactCheck.org’s existence, we’ve never seen his match.
+He stands out not only for the sheer number of his factually false claims, but also for his brazen refusals to admit error when proven wrong.
+He is by no means the only one telling whoppers, of course. Once again this year there are plenty of politicians, in both parties, who hope voters will swallow their deceptive claims. Hillary Clinton, for one, said she was “transparent” about her use of a private email server, when in fact she wasn’t. That was one of the bogus claims she made about her unusual email arrangement while secretary of state.
+But Trump topped them all when he claimed to have seen nonexistent television coverage of “thousands and thousands” of Muslims in New Jersey cheering the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on 9/11 — and then topped himself by demanding that fact-checkers apologize for exposing his claim as fantasy. And that’s only one example.
+Here we’ve assembled, as we do every year at this time, a generous sampling of the most far-fetched, distorted or downright fallacious claims made during 2015.
+In past years, we’ve not singled out a single claim or a single person, and have left it to readers to judge which whoppers they consider most egregious.
+But this year the evidence is overwhelming and, in our judgment, conclusive. So, for the first time, we confer the title “King of Whoppers.”
+Note: This week’s video in our fact-checking collaboration with CNN’s Jake Tapper is on the Whoppers of the Year and can be found on CNN.com. 
+Analysis
+Trump’s Falsehoods
+
+We won’t get into Trump’s controversial policy positions; it’s not a fact-checker’s role to offer opinions on whether it’s a good idea or a bad idea for the federal government to bar Muslims from entering the United States or to kill the families of terrorists, for example. What we focus on here are some of the many cases where he’s just wrong on the facts.
+We start with his Nov. 21 claim to have watched on television as “thousands and thousands” of Muslims in New Jersey were “cheering” the fall of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Multiple news organizations and the New Jersey attorney general’s office searched for evidence of public celebrations at the time of 9/11 and found none.
+“Never happened,” former state Attorney General John J. Farmer, a Republican appointee who later served as a senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission, wrote in response to Trump.
+In a tweet, Trump demanded an apology, citing as evidence one news story about an alleged incident that was unattributed, unverified and not televised. One of the reporters on that story said he visited the “Jersey City building and neighborhood where the celebrations were purported to have happened,” but he could “never verify that report.”
+And Trump’s false claim about “thousands and thousands” of Muslims is just part of a pattern of inflammatory claims with little or no basis in fact. Here are some more — and it’s not an exhaustive list.
+
+Trump boasted that he “predicted Osama bin Laden.” Nope. The book Trump published in 2000 mentioned bin Laden once, and predicted nothing about bin Laden’s future plans.
+Trump “heard” that Obama is “thinking about signing an executive order where he wants to take your guns away.” If so, he misheard. What Obama reportedly considered was requiring large-volume private gun dealers to conduct background checks, not confiscating firearms from those who own them.
+Trump said he “heard” the Obama administration plans to accept 200,000 Syrian refugees — even upping that wildly inaccurate number to 250,000 in another speech. Nope and nope. The number is about 10,000.
+Trump said he got to know Putin “very well” while the two were on CBS’ “60 Minutes.” Nope. The two men were interviewed separately, in different countries thousands of miles apart.
+Trump claimed his campaign is “100 percent” self-funded. Nope. At the time, more than 50 percent of his campaign’s funds had come from outside contributors.
+Trump said his tax plan is revenue neutral. Nope. The pro-business Tax Foundation estimated the Trump plan would reduce revenues to the Treasury by more than $10 trillion over 10 years, even assuming his plan would create economic growth.
+Trump told the story of a 2-year old who got autism a week after the child got a vaccine. But there’s no evidence of such a link. The study that claimed to have found a link between vaccines and autism has been exposed as an “elaborate fraud.” It was retracted five years ago by the journal that published it, and the author was stripped of his license to practice medicine in Britain.
+Trump said Mexico doesn’t have a birthright citizenship policy. It does.
+Trump claimed credit for getting Ford Motor Co. to move a plant from Mexico to Ohio. Ford says that’s baloney; it made the decision years before Trump even announced his run for president.
+Trump denied that he ever called female adversaries some of these things: “fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals.” He used all of those terms.
+Trump said in June “there are no jobs” to be had, when official statistics were showing 5.4 million job openings — the most in 15 years.
+Trump claimed economic growth in the U.S. has “never” been below zero — until the third quarter of 2015. “Who ever heard of this?” he asked. Except it’s not unheard of. Economic growth has been below zero 42 times since 1946.
+
+Trump, Carson on 9/11 ‘Celebrations,’ Nov. 24
+Trump’s bin Laden ‘Prediction,’ Dec. 2
+Trump ‘Hears’ Obama Wants to Take Guns, Oct. 22
+Trump Gets Refugee Numbers Wrong, Oct. 4
+Facts about the Syrian Refugees, Nov. 23
+Trump vs. Fiorina: Who Knows Putin Best? Nov. 11
+FactChecking the CNBC Debates, Oct. 29
+Is Trump’s Tax Plan Revenue Neutral? Oct. 1
+FactChecking the CNN Republican Debate, Sept. 17
+Trump on Birthright Citizenship, Aug. 25
+Trump’s Bogus Boast on Ford, Oct. 26
+Trump’s Amnesia, Aug. 11
+Trump Tramples Facts, June 16
+This is just a sampling of the falsehoods and exaggerations that lead us to award our “King of Whoppers” title to Trump. See our full and up-to-the-minute file on him for more.
+Clinton’s Whoppers
+
+But enough about the Republican front-runner. Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton has told some whoppers, too.
+Her Private Email Account: Several of them regard the former secretary of state’s problematic use of a private email server for both her personal and official communication.
+
+Clinton said in July that she “had done what other secretaries of state have done.” That’s not so. The State Department in October 2014 sent letters to three other previous secretaries: Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. Only Powell used personal email for official business. None of them had their own servers.
+Clinton later said her personal email account was “allowed by the State Department.” Federal rules permitted the practice if work emails were preserved before she left office. But Clinton did not turn over her emails until 21 months after she left office.
+Clinton said “turning over my server” to the government shows “I have been as transparent as I could” about her emails. But she did so in August — after the FBI opened an investigation into possible mishandling of classified information. Months earlier — in March — she had rejected calls to turn over the server to a neutral party, saying “the server will remain private.”
+Clinton said “everybody in government with whom I emailed knew that I was using a personal email.” Perhaps so. But even President Obama said he did not know that she conducted all her government business using her personal email account and private server.
+
+Clinton Spins Immigration, Emails, July 8
+More Spin on Clinton Emails, Sept. 8
+Phantom ISIS Videos: Clinton also made up a claim about terrorists using Trump in recruiting videos. During the Dec. 19 Democratic debate, she said that Islamic State recruiters were “going to people showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims,” but her campaign could produce no evidence that any such videos exist.
+The best that her campaign aides could do was to cite an NBC News article quoting an expert as predicting that Trump’s remarks would “surely” show up in Islamic State social media. The article, however, contained no evidence that it has happened and made no mention of any video. Spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri later conceded that Clinton was “not referring to a specific video.” ABC News quoted White House and National Security Council aides as saying they are unaware of any examples of the Islamic State group using Trump in videos.
+FactChecking the Third Democratic Debate, Dec. 20
+Benghazi: On a subject intensely scrutinized by Republicans, Clinton said in October that all of the government investigations into the terrorist attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi concluded that “nobody did anything wrong.” Not quite. An accountability board that Clinton herself appointed found “systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels.” On the day the report came out, four State Department employees were placed on administrative leave, and all four were later reassigned.
+Clinton and the Benghazi Reports, Oct. 7
+Charter Schools: Clinton said “most charter schools … don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids. Or if they do, they don’t keep them.” But her campaign could not provide any evidence for such a sweeping claim. In fact, the campaign cited a Washington Post article about the rate of expulsions in Washington, D.C., but the Post wrote: “Many charter schools — 60 out of 97 campuses — did not expel students in 2011-12.” That not only doesn’t support Clinton’s claim, it is evidence that helps to refute it.
+Clinton’s Charter School Exaggeration, Nov. 12
+Other Democratic Whoppers
+Clinton’s Democratic rivals for the 2016 presidential nomination weren’t innocent, either.
+Sanders on Social Security: Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont dusted off a shopworn Democratic whopper when he insisted in October that Social Security hasn’t contributed “one penny” — or “one nickel” — to the deficit. In fact, it contributed $73 billion to the deficit in 2014.
+Sanders Misleads on Social Security, Oct. 12
+Sanders on Inequality: Sanders said in May that “in America we now have more income and wealth inequality than any other major country on earth.” Actually, the World Bank estimated that at least 41 countries had greater income inequality than the U.S. As for the share of wealth held by the top 1 percent, the U.S. ranked 16th out of 46 economies included in the Global Wealth Databook.
+Sanders Exaggerates Inequality, May 28
+Sanders on Climate Link to Terrorism: Sanders said “climate change is directly related to the growth of terrorism.” The Department of Defense has referred to climate change as a “ ‘threat multiplier’ — because it has the potential to exacerbate many of the challenges we are dealing with today – from infectious disease to terrorism.” As for the current rise in terrorism, one study concluded that climate change likely worsened a drought in Syria and contributed to instability there. But the report stopped short of drawing a direct causal link between climate change and the Syrian civil war, let alone between climate change and terrorism.
+Sanders on Climate Link to Terrorism, Nov. 17
+O’Malley on Wages: In October, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley claimed that “70 percent of us are earning the same, or less than we were 12 years ago.” Not true. Average weekly earnings for rank-and-file workers are up 5.8 percent, according to Labor Department statistics.
+FactChecking the Democratic Debate, Oct. 14
+Other Republican Whoppers
+
+Fiorina on Planned Parenthood Video: Carly Fiorina falsely claimed that Planned Parenthood videos released by an anti-abortion group showed “a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.” But that scene isn’t in any of the videos. She continued to insist that she had “seen the footage” after her vivid description was shown to be false.
+Fiorina on Job Losses: Fiorina claimed that 92 percent of the job losses in President Obama’s first term belonged to women, but women — and men — gained jobs by the end of Obama’s first term. After initially sticking by the claim the day after the debate, Fiorina relented and admitted she had “misspoken.” She said, “Well, in this particular case the fact-checkers are correct.”
+FactChecking the CNN Republican Debate, Sept. 17
+Doubling Down on Falsehoods, Sept. 22.
+FactChecking the CNBC Debates, Oct. 29
+Cruz on Refugees: Sen. Ted Cruz falsely claimed the 2013 immigration bill Sen. Marco Rubio cosponsored “would have dramatically expanded President Obama’s authority to admit Syrian refugees with no background checks whatsoever.” Not so. The bill would have made it easier for members of certain groups designated by the president to qualify as refugees, but they would still be subject to the required background checks before they could come to the U.S.
+Cruz on Hispanic Unemployment: Cruz said “Hispanic unemployment has gone up” under Obama. Actually, it’s the reverse. The number and the rate of unemployed Hispanics are both down.
+Cruz Attacks Rubio on Refugees, Dec. 10
+Cruz Off on Hispanic Unemployment, July 9
+Carson on Choosing to Be Gay in Prison: Ben Carson claimed that being gay is “absolutely” a choice, and as proof he said “a lot of people” go into prison and change their sexual orientation while incarcerated. There is no evidence to support these claims.
+Carson on Illegal Immigration: Carson said that “a lot” of the people captured crossing the U.S. border and then released are from Iraq, Somalia and Russia. He’s wrong. Federal statistics show that number is less than 1 percent.
+Carson on Syrian Refugees: Carson said that the majority of Syrian refugees are “young males.” But the United Nations’ figures showed that women outnumber men, and children 11 years old and younger, male and female, account for 38.5 percent of all refugees.
+Carson’s Missteps on Sexual Orientation, March 6
+Carson on Border Apprehensions, Oct. 2
+Stretching Facts on Syrian Refugees, Sept. 15
+Bush on Climate Change: Jeb Bush claimed that the science is unclear as to how much humans contribute to global warming. The United Nations climate change research organization, however, said it was “extremely likely” that more than half of the warming since 1950 is due to human activities.
+Jeb Bush Off on Contributions to Warming, May 22
+For fact-checkers, 2015 has been a whopper of a year. We hope we won’t see another like it, or feel compelled to name another King of Whoppers, for a long time.
+— by Brooks Jackson, Eugene Kiely, Lori Robertson, Robert Farley and D’Angelo Gore"
+"169In this video, FlackCheck.org reviews some of the false and misleading claims about climate change that we have written about for FactCheck.org’s SciCheck feature.
+The topics covered include: “global cooling,” glacier growth in Alaska, the impact of human activity on climate change, the connection between climate change and severe weather patterns, and black bear hibernation in the Sierra Nevada mountains.
+For more on each claim in the video, see our “Climate Change Review” from Dec. 14.
+
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation."
+"4.1KAt the United Nations’ Conference of the Parties in Paris, 195 countries approved an agreement that commits nearly every country to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to slow global warming. The nations pledged to take action designed “to hold global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius,” as United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced on Dec. 12.
+The agreement had been six years in the making, since the collapse of climate change talks in Copenhagen in 2009. Prior to reaching a final accord, 186 countries already had submitted mitigation contribution plans to the U.N. Under the new agreement, all countries will update those plans by 2020 and revise them every five years thereafter to meet the global climate change goals.
+With the climate change announcement, we provide here a recap of false and misleading claims about climate change that we have fact-checked in recent years.
+
+The ‘Hiatus’
+Those who reject mainstream climate science often claim that there has been no warming for 17 years — a claim that relies on cherry-picked data, as we have written about before. By starting with 1998, a particularly warm year, the amount of warming over that time period appears smaller than starting with 1997 or 1999. The far more relevant long-term trend, however, is unequivocal: Fourteen of the 15 hottest years ever recorded have occurred this century, and 2014 was likely the warmest year on record. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says 2015 is “extremely likely” to supplant it.
+As explained by NOAA, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded in 2012 that the “global surface temperature trend from 1998­­-2012 was markedly lower than the trend from 1951-2012.” However, a new report published in the journal Science by NOAA scientists has called that conclusion “no longer valid.”
+The researchers updated temperature data sets to better reflect the readings taken from ships and floating buoys, as well as from land-based temperature stations. They found that the warming trend from 2000 to 2014 was 0.116 degrees C per decade – a number that is “virtually indistinguishable” from the earlier and longer period from 1950 through 1999 (0.113 degrees C per decade). Even if they shifted the more recent trend to 1998 through 2014, which features a very warm starting year, the trend was similar — 0.106 degrees C per decade.
+“Cruz on the Global Cooling Myth and Galileo,” March 27, 2015
+Satellite Data
+Rep. Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, claimed that satellite data in particular “has clearly showed [sic] no warming for the past two decades.” In a Dec. 9 interview on National Public Radio, Sen. Ted Cruz made a similar claim, saying “[f]or the last 18 years, the satellite data … that actually measure the temperature showed no significant warming whatsoever.” This is misleading.
+There have been discrepancies between surface and satellite data — but that does not “invalidate the fact that surface temperatures are rising” and global warming is occurring, as NOAA explains on its FAQ Web page.
+Satellites have been taking measurements since 1979. The various satellite data sets of the temperature in the troposphere (the lowest atmospheric layer) — including from NOAA, from a research company called Remote Sensing Systems and from a research group at the University of Alabama in Huntsville — disagree. But the UAH data set is the only one to show a lack of warming. Though there is some disagreement on the best ways to adjust and interpret satellite data, studies have indicated that correcting the UAH data in certain ways (specifically, removing a particular source of satellite error known as diurnal drift) would yield similar results to other data sets, indicating more warming.
+NOAA says the corrections of “some measurement and calibration problems” bring the satellite record “into better agreement with surface measurements.”
+“Smith Misfires on Climate Science,” Nov. 5, 2015
+Bears and Climate Change
+Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid in August made the claim that climate change is causing bears in the Sierra Nevada mountains to change their hibernation patterns. But there is no evidence that climate change is actually having such an effect.
+We could find no published evidence regarding changes to black bear hibernation, and biologist Jesse Garcia of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife told us that “we have no data or specific evidence” that black bears in the Sierras have changed their hibernation patterns. Black bears are not “true” hibernators and they “will often display some mid-winter activity,” Garcia said.
+“The Bear Facts,” Aug. 14, 2015
+Climate Consensus
+Sen. Rick Santorum in September criticized the oft-cited fact that 97 percent of scientists agree that human activity is primarily responsible for warming, saying that figure is “bogus” and comes from a single study. Several surveys involving thousands of researchers have all found that the level of consensus is about 97 percent.
+The 97 percent number comes from several distinct sources. The first was a 2009 survey published in the American Geophysical Union’s Eos magazine. A year later, another study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found a similar result.
+Most recently, a 2013 paper published in the journal Environmental Research Letters analyzed 11,944 journal article abstracts published from 1991 to 2011 that matched the search terms “global climate change” or “global warming.” From that list of papers, the study authors identified which ones expressed a position on anthropogenic — human-caused — global warming. Of the 4,014 papers that took a position, 97.1 percent endorsed the idea that humans are causing global warming. A second analysis in that same study asked 8,547 authors to rate their papers. Did they think their papers endorsed the consensus on warming? A total of 1,189 scientists responded, rating 2,142 individual papers. The results: 97.2 percent of the papers endorsed the consensus that humans are causing global warming.
+“Santorum’s Climate Consensus Claims,” Sept. 2, 2015
+Glaciers Growing?
+In September, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin questioned the scientific evidence that human activity causes global warming, and cited the fact that some glaciers in Alaska are expanding. But an individual glacier’s growth does not disprove the existence or causes of global warming. In fact, the vast majority of glaciers in Alaska and around the world are losing ice rapidly.
+In a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters in July, researchers from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Washington in Seattle measured the “mass balance” of 116 glaciers in Alaska — of 616 named and many thousands of unnamed glaciers, representing 41 percent of the total glacial area — and extrapolated the results to the rest of the state. They found that Alaska’s glaciers are losing 75 gigatons of ice every year. A gigaton is equal to 1 billion metric tons of ice.
+“Palin Off on Glaciers and Global Warming,” Sept. 9, 2015
+Volcanoes vs. Human Activity 
+Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in July said a single volcanic eruption “will contribute more than 100 years of human activity” toward global warming. Actually, it is estimated that humans pump upward of 100 times as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year than all the world’s volcanoes combined.
+According to a summary of evidence by the U.S. Geological Survey, the entire collection of volcanoes around the world emits an average of 0.26 gigatons of CO2 per year. (Again, a gigaton is equal to 1 billion metric tons.) Humans today, on the other hand, emit more than 30 gigatons every year, from power plants and factories, cars and airplanes, agriculture, and other activities. According to the Energy Information Administration, humans worldwide emitted 32.3 gigatons of CO2 in 2012, the most recent year for which complete data are available.
+So that means humans collectively are responsible for nearly 125 times as much CO2 entering the atmosphere every year as volcanoes.
+“Huckabees’ Hot Air on Volcanoes,” July 29, 2015
+U.S. Carbon Dioxide Emissions
+In his State of the Union address in 2014, President Obama boasted that the U.S. “reduced our total carbon pollution more than any other nation on Earth.” That’s accurate in terms of sheer tonnage of emissions reduced, but the U.S. is the second-largest emitter of carbon dioxide emissions. Dozens of countries reduced their emissions by a larger percentage than the U.S.
+On ABC’s “This Week” on Dec. 13 — as well as in a press conference on Dec. 12 — Secretary of State John Kerry repeated the president’s claim. “And the fact is, the United States of America has already reduced its emissions more than any other country in the world,” Kerry said on “This Week.”
+However, even with the benefit of another year of data, our conclusion remains the same. While the U.S. is the biggest reducer in terms of overall tonnage, there are other countries with a higher percentage reduction than the U.S.
+A State Department official told us Kerry was looking at the change between 2003 and 2012, the latest data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration available for international comparison (even though in the press conference Kerry referred to the effect of “President Obama’s plans,” which obviously did not take effect until 2009). Nonetheless, by that measure the U.S. reduced emissions by 583 million metric tons, more than any other country. But that was a 10 percent reduction, while, for example, France (10.7 percent) and the United Kingdom (12.9 percent) saw larger percentage reductions. And while international data are not yet available beyond 2012, EIA data for the United States show emissions increased 2.5 percent in 2013 and 0.9 percent in 2014, mostly due to an increase in the gross domestic product as the country recovers from the Great Recession.
+“Facts of the Union,” Jan. 29, 2014
+‘Zero Impact’?
+Santorum falsely claimed in January that U.S. policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions “will have zero impact” on climate change. The U.S. is the world’s second-largest emitter of carbon dioxide, after China, and while it’s true that the U.S. can’t solve the problem of global warming by itself, emissions reductions by the U.S. could indeed play a role in slowing the rise of global temperatures.
+For example, in August 2012, the Obama administration finalized rules that will increase fuel-economy standards for vehicles to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. The administration estimated that the new fuel standards could reduce oil consumption by 12 billion barrels through 2025, which would mean a reduction of 5.16 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide through the life of the program.
+A study published in the journal Nature suggested that to avoid catastrophic warming, about one-third of all the remaining oil reserves (and higher percentages of coal and natural gas) needs to stay in the ground. A single U.S. policy — such as increasing fuel-economy standards to 54.5 mpg — would represent almost 5 percent of that amount.
+The U.S. also could have an indirect impact, climate scientists told us, because its leadership on the issue could spur a global movement to cut down on the carbon dioxide emissions that are warming the planet. The climate agreement struck in Paris may be an example of that, depending on how the U.S. and future governments comply with the agreement and to what extent the agreement is effective in slowing global warming.
+“Distorting Climate Change Threats, Solutions,” Jan. 28, 2015
+Temperature Data ‘Falsified’?
+Rep. Gary Palmer, a Republican from Alabama, falsely claimed in February that temperature data used to measure global climate change have been “falsified” and manipulated.
+Palmer cited the so-called Climategate episode of six years ago, in which emails written by climate scientists purportedly showed evidence of data manipulation, and a more recent accusation of climate scientists tampering with data from temperature monitoring stations. The Climategate scandal has been subject to several separate investigations, all of which exonerated all scientists involved from any wrongdoing. And the latest data manipulation charges are a mischaracterization of standard, well-validated and peer-reviewed methods for adjusting temperature records to eliminate factors that could produce inaccurate readings.
+Palmer’s claim that “we are building an entire agenda on falsified data” has no basis in evidence. Even as these claims of data manipulation have resurfaced, there is now a general consensus that 2014 was likely the hottest single year since temperature record-keeping began. This same conclusion has been reached by NOAA and NASA, the Japan Meteorological Agency, and the World Meteorological Organization. According to NASA, nine of the 10 warmest years have all occurred since 2000, with 1998 the lone exception.
+“Nothing False About Temperature Data,” Feb. 12, 2015
+Was 2014 the ‘Warmest Year’?
+In April, President Obama said that 2014 was “the planet’s warmest year on record.” Several major climate monitoring organizations have found that 2014 is more likely than any other year to have been the warmest. But statistical uncertainties inherent to calculating global temperatures make the president’s definitive claim problematic.
+Given the margin of error associated with global average temperature calculations, it is possible that 2005 and 2010 were warmer. The president would have been on firmer ground had he said 2014 was “most likely” the planet’s warmest year on record.
+“Obama and the ‘Warmest Year on Record,’ ” April 20, 2015
+Climate Change and Severe Weather
+In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Rep. Lamar Smith wrote that a connection between worsening storms and climate change has been “widely debunked,” and that the United Nations doesn’t believe that warming is related to “more severe weather disasters.” Both claims are incorrect. There is some evidence linking climate change to worsening hurricanes, droughts and other disasters.
+We asked Smith’s office for supporting evidence, and his office sent us a number of links to and quotes from various documents from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations body that releases periodic reports on the entirety of climate change science. Smith’s citations were generally cherry-picked lines from very long and complicated reports. The list ignored other lines from the same reports, as well as evidence published elsewhere.
+A 2014 summary published jointly by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and its British equivalent, the Royal Society, agrees that the science on hurricanes in general is not settled, but that hurricanes are likely to become larger and more powerful as the world warms. There is also evidence that warming will make hurricanes more intense, and extreme weather events — like droughts and heavy precipitation events — worse.
+“The Extreme Weather-Warming Connection,” April 30, 2015
+‘Significant Shortcomings’ in U.N. Climate Reports?
+In his op-ed, Smith also misrepresented an InterAcademy Council report as saying the U.N.’s climate reports had “significant shortcomings in each major step” of the U.N.’s assessment process.
+The InterAcademy Council is a group made up of major science academies from around the globe — including the U.S. National Academy of Sciences — that provides advice to international bodies such as the United Nations. Its 2010 report did find problems with the methods and structure in U.N. climate reports. But Smith was cherry-picking. The council’s general assessment was that “[t]he Committee found that the IPCC assessment process has been successful overall.”
+“The Extreme Weather-Warming Connection,” April 30, 2015
+Human Contribution to Global Warming
+Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush claimed that the science is unclear as to how much humans contribute to global warming. In fact, the United Nations climate change research organization says it is “extremely likely” that more than half of the observed temperature increase since 1950 is due to human activities.
+In response to a question about climate change during an event in New Hampshire, the former Florida governor said that while climate change is occurring, “I don’t think the science is clear of what percentage is man-made and what percentage is natural. I just don’t — it’s convoluted. And for the people to say the science is decided on this is just really arrogant, to be honest with you.”
+According to the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fifth assessment report that was released in 2013, it is “extremely likely” (meaning between 95 percent and 100 percent certain), that human activities caused more than half of the observed global warming between 1951 to 2010. In its summary for policymakers, the IPCC stated, “The best estimate of the human-induced contribution to warming is similar to the observed warming over this period.” In other words, the best guess is that humans have caused essentially all of the warming that has occurred.
+“Jeb Bush Off on Contributions to Warming,” May 22, 2015
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation.
+— compiled by Eugene Kiely and Robert Farley"
+"8641In dueling TV ads, foes of the federal ethanol mandate claim that it “doubles greenhouse gas emissions,” while the ethanol lobby says that “the oil industry is lying” and the mandate will lead to lower emissions.
+In fact, the scientific jury is still out on whether requirements to blend ethanol with gasoline lead to the lower carbon emissions that Congress intended when it made those requirements law. A 2011 report by the National Research Council, which is part of the U.S. National Academies, found that it may do just the opposite, and the matter is under official review by the Environmental Protection Agency’s internal watchdog.
+Furthermore, the ethanol lobby misleads viewers by suggesting that only “big oil” is opposed to the mandate. Several environmental groups oppose it as well. So does a wide coalition that includes restaurant owners concerned about upward pressure on food prices and boat manufacturers upset at the problems that ethanol can cause in marine engines.
+
+Two ads have been running heavily in the Washington, D.C., market and in some other markets in advance of a Nov. 30 deadline for the EPA to finalize requirements for the total volume of ethanol to be put into gasoline, and for other renewable fuels.
+An ad by the anti-ethanol group “Smarter Fuel Future” says: “Mandating corn for ethanol doubles greenhouse gas emissions compared to gasoline, over 30 years.”
+That indeed was the finding of one study, published in Science magazine in 2008, by a team headed by Timothy Searchinger, a Princeton University research scholar. Projecting worldwide effects of converting large amounts of U.S. farmland to producing corn for fuel rather than for food, the study said that “we found that corn-based ethanol, instead of producing a 20% savings [the reduction required by law], nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years and increases greenhouse gases for 167 years.”
+And a 2009 study led by Robert Jackson, who at the time was the Nicholas Professor of Global Environmental Change at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, concluded that plowing up untilled land to grow more corn for ethanol fuel is “an inefficient and expensive greenhouse gas mitigation policy.” The authors added, “[O]ur analysis shows that carbon releases from the soil after planting corn for ethanol may in some cases completely offset carbon gains attributed to biofuel generation for at least 50 years.”
+
+But those studies conflict with government-sponsored research that concludes that the ethanol mandate will reduce greenhouse gas emissions as the law requires. For example, a 2012 study headed by Michael Wang of the Argonne National Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy projected that the corn-based ethanol found at practically all U.S. fuel pumps would cut carbon emissions by around 34 percent in 2015 (Table 7), even when considering changes in land use.
+All such “life cycle” studies attempt to estimate all the carbon emissions created by producing and burning ethanol, including carbon released from soil by plowing and from fuel burned in planting, harvesting and refining.
+But the studies don’t agree, and each side cites the science that supports its position.
+The ethanol lobby’s “Fuels America” coalition cites the Wang study in its ad. But it misleads by saying in a graphic that ethanol produces “34-88% lower carbon than gasoline today.” That’s not true of the ethanol in use today. The 88 percent figure is what the Wang study concluded would be accomplished by ethanol made from switchgrass, which holds greater promise of greenhouse gas reduction than corn-based ethanol, but isn’t yet being produced in large quantities.
+So far, practically all ethanol in U.S. gasoline comes from corn. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that only 20,000 gallons of ethanol was produced from non-food, “cellulosic” sources in 2012. The first U.S. plant designed to produce cellulosic ethanol in commercial quantities opened for startup operations in 2014.
+A Fog of Uncertainty
+The conflicting projections and estimates have left scientists and independent experts in a fog of uncertainty about whether mandating corn-based ethanol leads to higher or lower carbon emissions.
+An independent panel of academic scientists for the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences — reviewing the conflicting work of Searchinger, Wang and several others — concluded in a 2011 report that “corn-grain ethanol might not have lower [greenhouse gas emission] values than petroleum-based gasoline.” It cited “plausible scenarios in which GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions from corn-grain ethanol are much higher than those of petroleum-based fuels,” and questioned the method by which EPA determined that ethanol would produce 21 percent less emissions.
+National Research Council: [A]ccording to EPA’s own estimates, corn-grain ethanol produced in 2011, which is almost exclusively made in biorefineries using natural gas as a heat source, is a higher emitter of GHG than gasoline.
+Similarly, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office issued a report on the subject in June 2014, finding “only limited potential” for reducing greenhouse gas emissions through use of corn-based ethanol in the future:
+CBO: Estimates of those emissions are uncertain, and researchers’ predictions vary considerably. However, available evidence suggests that replacing gasoline with corn ethanol has only limited potential for reducing emissions (and some studies indicate that it could increase emissions).
+In the midst of such uncertainty, on Oct. 15 the EPA’s Office of Inspector General announced it would conduct an independent inquiry into whether the agency properly updated its own life cycle analysis in light of the 2011 National Academy of Sciences study.
+It’s Not Just ‘Big Oil’
+The ethanol lobby’s ad shows President Obama with a devil on one shoulder and a figure with a halo on the other, saying he must choose to listen to his “own experts” or to “the oil industry,” which it says “is lying about biofuels.” That’s a common deceptive technique known as the “false dilemma.” In fact, environmental groups oppose the ethanol mandate, too.
+
+Environmental Working Group: The Environmental Working Group has crusaded against the ethanol mandate for years, calling it “a disaster for the climate.“
+Sierra Club: The Sierra Club’s “Guidance on Biofuels” states: “The Club opposes further deployment of corn-based ethanol based on its extremely dubious net carbon benefits and its unresolved direct and indirect environmental impacts.”
+Friends of the Earth: FOE states that “corn ethanol seriously damages the environment by negatively impacting soil, air, water, land, and producing more greenhouse gas emissions than traditional gasoline.”
+
+The current anti-ethanol ad is sponsored by a wide coalition. The “Smarter Fuel Future” group does include the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers among its many members. But others include: the National Council of Chain Restaurants (which says “diverting corn to fuel unfairly drives up food prices for chain restaurants and their customers”); the National Marine Manufacturers Association (which says requiring a 15 percent ethanol blend in gasoline could damage boat engines); as well as poultry producers; cattlemen and dairy farmers concerned about higher feed prices; motorcyclists; and makers of chain saws, lawn mowers and other outdoor power equipment.
+And — as mentioned in the anti-ethanol ad — even former Vice President Al Gore has called the federal requirement for adding corn-based ethanol to gasoline “a mistake.” In a 2010 address in Athens, Greece, Gore said he had come to conclude that burning ethanol had helped increase food prices, and that he had erred in backing the requirement as a presidential candidate in 2000.
+Gore, November 2010: One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president.
+And who lobbies for ethanol? The pro-ethanol “Fuels America” group includes grain farmers (who profit from higher demand for corn), Monsanto (which sells hybrid seed corn), and distillers of ethanol including Archer Daniels Midland and DuPont (which just opened a cellulosic ethanol plant in Iowa).
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation."
+"1.8KSen. Bernie Sanders went too far with his debate claim that “climate change is directly related to the growth of terrorism.” One study concluded that man-made climate change likely worsened a drought in Syria and contributed to instability there. But the report stops short of drawing a direct causal link between climate change and the Syrian civil war, let alone between climate change and terrorism.
+As the study’s lead author told us via email, the research “doesn’t deal with terrorism.”
+In the Democratic debate on Nov. 14, CBS News political director John Dickerson asked Sanders if he stuck by his previous claim that the greatest threat to national security was climate change, given that Sanders has said he wants to “rid the planet of ISIS.”
+“Absolutely,” Sanders said. “In fact, climate change is directly related to the growth of terrorism. And if we do not get our act together and listen to what the scientists say you’re gonna see countries all over the world– this is what the C.I.A. says, they’re gonna be struggling over limited amounts of water, limited amounts of land to grow their crops. And you’re gonna see all kinds of international conflict.”
+On CBS’ “Face the Nation” the following day, Dickerson asked Sanders to expand on his statement that “climate change in fact is related to terrorism.”
+Sanders, Nov. 15: Well, that’s not only my observation, John. That is what the CIA and the Department of Defense tells us. And the reason is pretty obvious. If we are going to see an increase in drought and flooding and extreme weather disturbances as a result of climate change, what that means is that peoples all over the world are going to be fighting over limited natural resources.
+If there is not enough water, if there is not enough land to grow your crops, then you’re going to see migrations of people fighting over land that will sustain them. And that will lead to international conflicts.
+I think, when we talk about all of the possible ravages of climate change, which, to my mind, is just a huge planetary crisis, increased international conflict is one of the issues that we have got to appreciate will happen.
+Dickerson: But how does drought connect with attacks by ISIS in the middle of Paris?
+Sanders: Well, what happens, say, in Syria, for example — and there’s some thought about this — is that, when you have drought, when people can’t grow their crops, they’re going to migrate into cities. And when people migrate into cities, and they don’t have jobs, there’s going to be a lot more instability, a lot more unemployment. And people will be subject to the types of propaganda that al Qaeda and ISIS are using right now. So, where you have discontent, where you have instability, that’s where problems arise. And, certainly, without a doubt, climate change will lead to that.
+Some on the right scoffed at Sanders’ statements. On “Face the Nation” following Sanders’ appearance, the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan said Sanders’ comments made him “look slightly daffy, like someone who doesn’t understand what the real subject is.”
+But Sanders’ summary of the position of the CIA and Department of Defense was accurate. They have been warning for years that extreme weather caused by climate change is likely to worsen instability around the world and cause security problems.
+As we wrote in January, the Department of Defense referred to climate change as a ” ‘threat multiplier’ — because it has the potential to exacerbate many of the challenges we are dealing with today – from infectious disease to terrorism. We are already beginning to see some of these impacts.” Those threats are outlined in a report titled “2014 Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap.”
+Department of Defense, Adaptation Roadmap, 2014: The impacts of climate change may cause instability in other countries by impairing access to food and water, damaging infrastructure, spreading disease, uprooting and displacing large numbers of people, compelling mass migration, interrupting commercial activity, or restricting electricity availability. These developments could undermine already-fragile governments that are unable to respond effectively or challenge currently‐stable governments, as well as increasing competition and tension between countries vying for limited resources. These gaps in governance can create an avenue for extremist ideologies and condition that foster terrorism.
+As we also have written before, despite some claims to the contrary, there is some evidence that climate change is linked to more severe hurricanes, droughts and other weather disasters. Specifically, a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that “there is medium confidence that some regions of the world have experienced more intense and longer droughts.”
+This is the first link in the chain of logic that provides the basis of Sanders’ claim. In regard to climate change being “directly related” to Islamic State terrorism, the Sanders campaign points, in part, to a report called “Climate change in the Fertile Crescent and implications of the recent Syrian drought,” published in March in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
+The authors analyzed the severity and frequency of droughts in the region and concluded that a severe drought in the Fertile Crescent region in 2007-2010 — just prior to the Syrian uprising — would not have been as severe or lasted as long absent a “century-long drying trend.” That trend, the authors contend, is the result of “human interference with the climate system.” In other words, the authors found that human-caused climate change “increased the probability” of the severe drought. The drought resulted in widespread crop failure and led to mass migration of farming families to urban centers, causing conflicts.
+“We conclude that human influences on the climate system are implicated in the current Syrian conflict,” the authors wrote.
+However, they cautioned, “civil unrest can never be said to have a simple or unique cause. The Syrian conflict, now civil war, is no exception.”
+As for Sanders’ comment, lead author Colin Kelley told us via email, “My research doesn’t deal with terrorism.
+“I would say climate change contributes to food and water insecurity, which in highly vulnerable nations (for many reasons) can lead to conflict,” Kelley said. “Beyond that I think it is fair to say that chaotic situations such as the civil war in Syria can allow extremism to flourish.”
+So is climate change “directly related” to a growth in terrorism?
+“In my opinion there is likely a causal relationship but that it isn’t necessarily a ‘direct’ one,” Kelley told us. “There are a lot of factors that contributed to the origination of the conflict and there are multiple steps between climate change and terrorism/extremism.”
+Francesco Femia and Caitlin Werrell, codirectors of the Center for Climate and Security, told us via email that there is “certainly an indirect link” between climate change and terrorism.
+Femia and Werrell, Nov. 16: The U.S. Department of Defense labels climate change a “threat multiplier.” Its impacts on food, water and energy security can create conditions that may increase the likelihood of state instability. And in ungoverned spaces, given the right political, economic, social and environmental conditions, terrorism can thrive, as we see in Syria. In other words, climate change could drive a less stable world, and non-state actors may exploit that. So it’s certainly an indirect link, which should not be oversimplified. This is not just our perspective. It comes from intelligence and defense communities here in the United States, and around the world, who are increasingly concerned about these dynamics.
+But in a blog post and a Washington Post interview, they warned not to assign a direct causal link between the drought and the Syrian civil war, because the underlying dynamics of the Syrian crisis are too complex.
+Femia and Werrell, Nov. 16: What is the biggest national security threat? Is climate change the biggest national security threat? We, and the current U.S. presidential candidates, get these questions quite a bit. They are not good questions. These questions confuse the nature of today’s security threats, and more specifically, obscure the complex way in which climate change affects the broader security landscape. Climate change is not an exogenous threat, hermetically sealed from other risks. It is, as the CNA Corporation first stated in 2007, a “threat multiplier.” The impacts of climate change interact with other factors to make existing security risks – whether it’s state fragility in the Middle East, or territorial disputes in the South China Sea – worse.
+The Sanders campaign pointed to a 2003 Pentagon report that warned climate change “could contribute materially to an increasingly disorderly and potentially violent world.”
+“The continuous violence, political disintegration, and massive migration we’re seeing in Syria and neighboring countries right now is precisely what the Pentagon warned us about over a decade ago,” a Sanders campaign spokesman related via email. “And it is exactly the kind of environment in which extremist groups like ISIS, al-Qaeda, and Hezbollah flourish. … Climate change is making terrorist threats … much worse.”
+Indeed, a 2012 study by the National Research Council, commissioned by the CIA to evaluate the evidence on possible connections between climate change and U.S. national security concerns (summarized in the New York Times), concluded, “It is prudent to expect that over the course of a decade some climate events—including single events, conjunctions of events occurring simultaneously or in sequence in particular locations, and events affecting globally integrated systems that provide for human well-being—will produce consequences that exceed the capacity of the affected societies or global systems to manage and that have global security implications serious enough to compel international response.”
+Similar sentiments have been expressed by the White House, the director of national intelligence and various military leaders.
+In other words, Sanders has broad support for his claim that climate change is a factor in the terrorism equation, that it can contribute to and worsen tensions in some regions and lead to instability that poses security threats. But there is a complex web of causal factors behind the Syrian conflict and the Islamic State terrorism that has emerged from it. A study concluded that global warming “increased the probability” of a severe drought, a drought which contributed to displacement and mass migration, which contributed to instability, which may have contributed to violent conflict. But increasing the probability of a possible factor in a conflict isn’t the same as being a “directly related” cause for terrorism. The evidence so far does not support Sanders’ claim.
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation."
+"4.1K1Rep. Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, has made several inaccurate or misleading claims about climate science in an ongoing battle with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
+Smith, who has long rejected mainstream climate science, is using the committee’s subpoena power in an attempt to obtain internal communications at NOAA regarding a June study published in the journal Science. In his statements on this issue, Smith has claimed that “climate data has clearly showed [sic] no warming for the past two decades,” and that NOAA has “altered the data to get the results they needed to advance this administration’s extreme climate change agenda.”
+In fact, there has been substantial warming over the past two decades, and NOAA’s adjustments to its data are well-studied, publicly available, peer-reviewed methods for obtaining the best possible temperature readings.
+Has Warming Slowed?
+At issue is a study led by NOAA scientist Thomas Karl. It is one of several recent peer-reviewed studies showing the so-called global warming “hiatus” (also known as the “pause” or “slowdown”) did not actually occur. Karl and his colleagues updated the global temperature data sets using the most up-to-date readings and analysis; this included more data from ocean buoys and from ship engine intake thermometers, and from an increasing number of land-based weather stations. They concluded: “Newly corrected and updated global surface temperature data … do not support the notion of a global warming ‘hiatus.'”
+The other studies have come to similar conclusions.
+Publishing in Climatic Change, a group of Stanford researchers led by Bala Rajaratnam wrote: “We find compelling evidence that recent claims of a ‘hiatus’ in global warming lack sound scientific basis.” Another group from universities in the U.K and Australia, as well has from Harvard, writing in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, concluded: “We show that there are frequent fluctuations in the rate of warming around a longer-term warming trend, and that there is no evidence that identifies the recent period as unique or particularly unusual.”
+According to a letter sent to Smith by Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas, the ranking Democrat on the committee, Smith had previously requested information about Karl and NOAA’s research three separate times (on July 14, Sept. 10, and Sept. 25), before issuing the subpoena for internal communications on Oct. 13.
+NOAA, which according to reporting by Nature has provided the publicly available data and has briefed the committee on the study, has refused the subpoena for internal communications. NOAA said that “confidentiality of these communications … is essential to frank discourse among scientists,” and noted that it is “a long-standing practice�� to keep such communication confidential.
+In a statement provided to Nature and Ars Technica, Smith accused NOAA of altering temperature data for political purposes:
+Smith, Oct. 28: It was inconvenient for this administration that climate data has clearly showed no warming for the past two decades. The American people have every right to be suspicious when NOAA alters data to get the politically correct results they want and then refuses to reveal how those decisions were made. NOAA needs to come clean about why they altered the data to get the results they needed to advance this administration’s extreme climate change agenda. The agency has yet to identify any legal basis for withholding these documents. The Committee intends to use all tools at its disposal to undertake its Constitutionally-mandated oversight responsibilities.
+He made similar claims in an email to us on Nov. 3. Smith is incorrect about the lack of warming, even before Karl’s and other studies debunked the notion of a hiatus — the global warming hiatus referred to a reduction in the rate of warming, rather than a lack of any warming whatsoever, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In other words, the world was warming, only more slowly than in years prior. And again, the recent studies have shown that no such reduction in the rate of warming occurred; the planet has, in fact, continued to warm at about the same pace as previous decades.
+Those who reject mainstream climate science often claim that there has been no warming specifically for 17 years, a claim that relies on cherry-picked data, as we have written about before. By starting with 1998, a particularly warm year, the amount of warming over that period appears smaller than starting with 1997 or 1999. The far more relevant long-term trend, however, is unequivocal; 14 of the 15 hottest years ever recorded have occurred this century, 2014 was likely the warmest year on record, and NOAA says 2015 is “extremely likely” to supplant it.
+Satellites vs. Surface Data
+In an email, Smith told us that satellite data in particular “has clearly showed [sic] no warming for the past two decades.” This is another common misrepresentation of the facts.
+There are multiple satellite data sets of the temperature in the troposphere (the lowest atmospheric layer) — for example, from NOAA, from a research company called Remote Sensing Systems, and from a research group at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. The data sets disagree, and the last of those is the only one to show a lack of warming. Though there is some disagreement on the best ways to adjust and interpret satellite data, studies have indicated that correcting the UAH data in certain ways (specifically, removing a particular source of satellite error known as diurnal drift) would yield similar results to other data sets, indicating more warming.
+Furthermore, even researchers who work on satellite temperature data say that the surface measurements used by NOAA and others are the more reliable data sets. Carl Mears, a senior research scientist at Remote Sensing Systems, told the Washington Post he would “trust the surface data a little more.”
+Mears, March 24: All datasets contain errors. In this case, I would trust the surface data a little more because the difference between the long term trends in the various surface datasets (NOAA, NASA GISS, HADCRUT, Berkeley, etc) are closer to each other than the long term trends from the different satellite datasets. This suggests that the satellite datasets contain more “structural uncertainty” than the surface dataset.
+“Structural uncertainty” refers to the level of confidence that scientists have in the tools and calculations used to arrive at their conclusions. There is more of this uncertainty with the satellite data than with the surface temperature measurements.
+Smith also told us that “[r]eanalysis data sets from the numerical weather prediction centers, both NOAA and the European ECMWF, also clearly show a surface temperature warming hiatus.” Reanalysis is a specific type of climate data analysis. The European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts does do this type of analysis, but Smith is incorrect about its findings. In an email, an ECMWF spokeswoman, Silke Zollinger, told us that its data “shows substantial variations between years in global-mean surface air temperature, but no persistent hiatus in global warming.” We have asked NOAA if its “reanalysis” data sets show a hiatus, and will update this post if we hear back.
+As for NOAA’s alteration of data, Smith again misunderstands the science. As we have written before, temperature data often require adjustment in order to paint the most accurate picture of the global climate. The methodology behind the recent updates and adjustments is publicly available, and the published studies were peer-reviewed.
+Committee Subpoena Controversy
+Smith defended his use of subpoena in an email to us:
+Smith, Nov. 3: Despite what some critics claim, the subpoena is not only about scientists. Political operatives and other NOAA employees likely played a large role in approving NOAA’s decision to adjust data that allegedly refutes the hiatus in warming… The Committee needs to understand the full context of NOAA’s decision-making process.
+He also claimed that NOAA “conveniently” timed the news release on Karl’s study to coincide with the Obama administration’s announcement of “its extensive climate change regulations.” That’s speculation. Though the White House is engaged in a number of climate change-related efforts, the most significant regulation issued recently is the Clean Power Plan, designed to lower emissions from power plants. The NOAA news release in question was on June 4; the unveiling of the final Clean Power Plan by Obama was on Aug. 3, though the plan was proposed and under discussion for more than a year before that.
+A spokeswoman for NOAA, Ciaran Clayton, defended the subpoena refusal to Nature: “We stand behind our scientists, who conduct their work in an objective manner. We have provided all of the information the Committee needs to understand this issue.”
+In her letter to Smith, Johnson accused him and the committee of creating a “baseless conflict.” She wrote:
+Johnson, Oct. 23: By issuing this subpoena, you have instigated a Constitutional conflict with an inquiry that seems more designed to harass climate scientists than to further any legitimate legislative purpose. This is a serious misuse of Congressional oversight powers.
+The committee’s rules on issuing subpoenas were changed in January, over the objections of the Democratic members. Previously, consent of the ranking member was required, but the changes gave unilateral subpoena power to the committee chairman. Johnson also noted that the committee under Smith’s leadership has issued six subpoenas, more than were used in its previous 54-year history.
+We have found Smith cherry-picking data before that supports his claims regarding climate science. In this case again, there is no scientific basis for his claims.
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation."
+"864Former Vice President Al Gore said there has been an “88 percent growth in green jobs, year over year, over the past year.” That’s misleading. Gore cited data on job openings, not actual jobs, and the data was for two quarters, not a full year, and more than a year old.
+More recent data from Gore’s source — a for-profit trade school — show that green job openings increased 5.6 percent in 2014 compared with the year before.
+The former vice president, who shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to increase knowledge about climate change, is now an environmental activist. He is the founder and chairman of the Climate Reality Project.
+In an interview with Chris Hayes of MSNBC’s “All In,” Gore criticized Republican presidential candidates who say taking action on climate change will hurt the economy and cost jobs.
+Gore, Sept. 29: There are tens of millions of jobs in this, and it’s one of the few areas in our economy where the jobs are growing in number fairly rapidly. Eighty-eight percent growth in green jobs year over year over the past year.
+We asked the Climate Reality Project for the source of the 88 percent increase. Deb Greenspan, a spokeswoman for Gore’s group, sent us a link to an Aug. 13, 2014, trade publication article that said there were “two million job postings in the first half of 2014 alone, which amounts to an 88% increase over the same period a year earlier.” The article cited as its source a press release issued that day by Ecotech Institute, a private for-profit trade school in Colorado that purchases the data to use as a marketing tool. (A graphic on the school’s website boasts: “American Clean Jobs are Up 88%.”)
+We cannot verify the accuracy of the green job openings. Ecotech Institute says it gets the data from Burning Glass Technologies, a private jobs market analytics firm, and uses a definition of “green jobs” developed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (That definition, by the way, has been criticized by conservatives as overly broad because it includes bus drivers, subway car operators and other traditional jobs. BLS has said there were 3.4 million green jobs in 2011, representing 2.6 percent of all jobs at that time, but it has stopped keeping track due to funding cuts.)
+BLS does not track the number of green job openings. It does provide monthly job opening figures for all sectors, and there were 5.8 million total job openings as of the last business day in July — the highest the measure has been since BLS began keeping track in December 2000. But we cannot say how many of the 5.8 million job openings in July were “green jobs” as defined by the bureau.
+Setting aside the debate over the definition of green jobs, Gore’s 88 percent figure is outdated and misleading.
+In April, Ecotech posted a graphic on its website that says there were 3.8 million green job openings in 2014. If true, that is only 5.6 percent more than the 3.6 million job openings that it reported in 2013. We note that the April graphic says there was a 13 percent increase in 2014, but that graphic does not provide a number for 2013, which we found elsewhere on the website as 3,599,022. That works out to be a 5.6 percent increase.
+But Gore didn’t cite the more recent figures and instead cherry-picked data from more than a year ago to support his argument.
+— Eugene Kiely"
+"45.7K1Summary
+The Republican presidential candidates met for their second debate on Sept. 16, this one hosted by CNN at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in California. We found they strayed from the facts on numerous issues, including:
+
+Donald Trump told a story linking vaccination to autism, but there’s no evidence that recommended vaccines cause autism. And Sen. Rand Paul suggested that it would be safer to spread out recommended vaccines, but there’s no evidence of that, either.
+Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said Trump donated to his gubernatorial campaign to get him to change his mind on casino gambling in Florida. But Trump denied he ever wanted to bring casino gambling to the state. A former lobbyist says he did.
+Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said that Hillary Clinton was “under investigation by the FBI” because she “destroyed government records.” Not true. She had the authority to delete personal emails.
+Trump said that “illegal immigration” cost “more than $200 billion a year.” We couldn’t find any support for that. Actually, it could cost taxpayers $137 billion or more to deport the 11 million immigrants in the country illegally, as Trump proposes.
+Trump again wrongly said that Mexico doesn’t have a birthright citizenship policy like the United States. It does.
+Carly Fiorina said that the Planned Parenthood videos released by an anti-abortion group showed “a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.” But that scene isn’t in any of the videos.
+Fiorina repeated familiar boasts about her time at Hewlett-Packard, saying the size of the company “doubled,” without mentioning that was due to a merger with Compaq, and she cherry-picked other statistics.
+Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said that U.S. policies to combat climate change would “do absolutely nothing.” The U.S. acting alone would have a small effect on rising temperatures and sea levels, and experts say U.S. leadership on the issue would prompt other nations to act.
+In the “happy hour” debate, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham glossed over the accompanying tax increases when he said only that Ronald Reagan and then-House Speaker Tip O’Neill “found a way to save Social Security from bankruptcy by adjusting the age of retirement from 65 to 67.”
+
+Analysis
+Wrong on Vaccines
+Several candidates made false or misleading statements about vaccines. Donald Trump told a brief story linking vaccination to autism, but there is no evidence that recommended vaccines cause autism.
+Trump: Just the other day, 2 years old, 2 and a half years old, a child, a beautiful child went to have the vaccine, and came back, and a week later got a tremendous fever, got very, very sick, now is autistic.
+The fact is, the link between childhood vaccinations and autism has no scientific basis — a point that was made by one of Trump’s rivals, Dr. Ben Carson, who said “there have been numerous studies, and they have not demonstrated that there is any correlation between vaccinations and autism.”
+A link was first suggested by a paper published in 1998 in the journal The Lancet and retracted in 2010. Its author, Andrew Wakefield, had his medical license in the United Kingdom stripped. In fact, an investigation by the British Medical Journal found that Wakefield perpetrated an “elaborate fraud.”
+Many studies have since examined a potential link between the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, on which Wakefield’s paper focused, and found no such connection. In 2011, the Institute of Medicine released a report summarizing vaccine safety in general, and found sufficient evidence to reject the link between the MMR vaccine and autism.
+Trump began his point by saying that “[a]utism has become an epidemic.” Though diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders has indeed risen, recent research has pinned the blame for this on changes to diagnostic and reporting criteria, and not to vaccines or any other medical therapy.
+We covered related vaccine issues in February, when Sen. Rand Paul claimed that he had heard of “many” children that developed “profound mental disorders” after receiving vaccinations. Paul, a physician by training, again erred on vaccine science during the debate. Paul, Trump and Carson said that vaccines should be spread out more or that parents should have a choice to do so, suggesting it would be safer.
+Paul: So I’m all for vaccines. But I’m also for freedom. I’m also a little concerned about how they’re bunched up. My kids had all of their vaccines, and even if the science doesn’t say bunching them up is a problem, I ought to have the right to spread out my vaccines out a little bit at the very least.
+Paul is right that “the science doesn’t say” this is an issue. There is no evidence that the vaccine schedule recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention actually raises risk of any complications. Earlier this year, University of California professor of pediatrics and vaccine expert James Cherry told us this idea of spreading out vaccines is “stupid. … [T]hat will allow these illnesses to occur.”
+Several studies have addressed this issue. One found that there is no increased risk of autism spectrum disorders with increasing exposure to the compounds in vaccines. Another found that there were no adverse neuropsychological effects in children who were vaccinated according to the CDC schedule, and in fact those who had delayed vaccinations performed worse on some measures. Another, similarly, found that delaying the MMR vaccine increased the risk of seizures.
+Trump’s Bid for Florida Casinos
+In a spirited back and forth between former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Trump, Bush claimed that Trump donated generously to his campaign for governor in order to get Bush to change his mind about casino gambling in Florida. Trump did not contest that he had raised money for Bush, but denied that he ever tried to get casino gambling in Florida. A former state Senate president once testified that Trump did.
+“The one guy that had some special interests that I know of that tried to get me to change my views on something — that was generous and gave me money — was Donald Trump,” Bush said in the debate. “He wanted casino gambling in Florida.”
+“I didn’t,” Trump said.
+“Yes you did,” Bush said.
+“Totally false,” Trump said.
+“You wanted it and you didn’t get it because I was opposed to casino gambling before during and after,” Bush said. “And that’s not — I’m not going to be bought by anybody.”
+Had he wanted it, Trump said, “I promise I would have gotten it.”
+Bush reiterated the point moments later, saying, “When he asked Florida to have casino gambling, we said no.”
+“Wrong,” Trump interjected.
+“We said no. And that’s the simple fact. The simple fact is –” Bush said.
+“Don’t make things up. Jeb, don’t make things up. Come on,” Trump said.
+Despite Trump’s protestations, CNN reported on Sept. 1 that in the late 1990s, Trump had hoped to build a multimillion dollar casino with the Seminole Tribe of Florida. In 2005, Bloomberg Business reported that a former state Senate president, Mallory E. Horne, was hired by Trump to lobby to increase the types of gambling allowed in the state, something Bush opposed. In a court affidavit obtained by Bloomberg, Horne testified that after Bush’s election in 1998, he told Trump that state officials wouldn’t budge on the issue and Trump replied, “That’s the end of it.”
+CNN noted that Trump hosted a fundraiser for Bush’s gubernatorial campaign in 1997, and that he donated $50,000 to the Florida Republican Party in 1998, all at the time Trump was pursuing the casino project. CNN added, however, that it was “not clear that Trump’s political contributions were aimed at needling Bush and Republican lawmakers toward a more flexible posture toward the gaming industry.” And a Bush aide told CNN that Trump did not personally lobby Bush on the gambling issue. So whether Trump’s fundraising efforts were an attempt to change Bush’s mind on casino gambling cannot be settled definitively. But Trump’s denial that he was ever interested in bringing casino gambling to Florida is contradicted in a legal affidavit by a former Senate president who says he was hired by Trump to do just that.
+Huckabee on Clinton Emails
+At the outset of the debate, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee made an inaccurate remark about an ongoing investigation into Hillary Clinton’s personal server and her use of a personal email account while secretary of state.
+Huckabee made his comment while favorably comparing the Republican candidates to the top two candidates for the Democratic nomination, Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders.
+Huckabee: None of us are a self-professed socialist. None of us on this stage are under investigation by the FBI because we destroyed government records, or because we leaked secrets.
+Clinton is not being investigated because she “destroyed government records.” As we have written, Clinton had more than 60,000 emails on her personal server, and she determined about half of them were work related. So she turned them over to the State Department at the department’s request. She deleted the rest, which she described as personal. But the Justice Department said in a recent court filing that she had the authority to delete personal emails.
+In a Sept. 11 story, the New York Times quoted from the court filing: “There is no question that former Secretary Clinton had authority to delete personal emails without agency supervision — she appropriately could have done so even if she were working on a government server,” the filing said. “Under policies issued both by the National Archives and Records Administration and the State Department, individual officers and employees are permitted and expected to exercise judgment to determine what constitutes a federal record.”
+Huckabee is referring to a “security referral” that was made to the Justice Department by I. Charles McCullough III, the inspector general for the intelligence community, after he discovered that some of Clinton’s emails contained unmarked classified material. The inspector general stressed that it was not a “criminal referral.” The referral was made to determine if there were any “potential compromises of national security information,” McCullough said.
+Trump’s $200 Billion Immigration Claim
+Trump twice made an unsupported claim that the cost of unauthorized immigration is $200 billion annually:
+Trump: I will say this. Illegal immigration is costing us more than $200 billion a year just to maintain what we have.
+And again a few minutes later:
+Trump: As I said, we are spending $200 billion — we are spending $200 billion a year on maintaining what we have.
+We cannot find any support for Trump’s claim. Quite the opposite, it could cost taxpayers $137 billion or more to do what Trump proposes: deport all of the estimated 11 million immigrants who are currently in the U.S. illegally, based on the current $12,500 cost of deporting a single individual.
+Back in 2009, we debunked a false but widely circulated chain email claiming that those here illegally cost exactly $338.3 billion annually. That was clearly wrong — the cited numbers didn’t even add up to the claimed total.
+The most extreme estimate we found was a 2010 study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which lobbies for less immigration. It estimated that the net cost of illegal immigration on the federal and state and local levels was $99 billion a year — half the sum Trump claimed.
+A more neutral source is a 2007 report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which examined 29 reports on state and local costs published over 15 years and concluded that while it is “difficult to obtain precise estimates of the net impact of the unauthorized population on state and local budgets,” the impact “is most likely modest.”
+CBO didn’t put a number on such costs nationwide, saying: “No agreement exists as to the size of, or even the best way of measuring, that cost on a national level.”
+And it should be noted that these are estimates for costs of keeping the status quo. Granting legal status to immigrants living in the U.S. illegally potentially would bring some benefits to the economy, such as increasing the workforce and the number of taxpayers.
+In 2013 the CBO estimated that a bipartisan bill to do just that for many who lack legal status — which passed the Senate by a vote of 68 to 32 only to die in the House — would have boosted economic output by 3.3 percent in 2023 and by 5.4 percent in 2033, compared with current projections.
+Taking that into consideration, CBO estimated that “the legislation would decrease federal budget deficits by $197 billion over the 2014–2023 period and by roughly $700 billion over the 2024–2033 period.” That’s the opposite of what Trump claimed.
+Trump on Birthright Citizenship
+Asked about his opposition to birthright citizenship, Donald Trump repeated the incorrect assertion that Mexico does not have such a policy. It does.
+Trump also said “almost every other country anywhere in the world doesn’t have” a birthright citizenship policy. While the majority of countries do not have such a policy, at least 30 of them do, including Canada and a number of other countries in Central and South America.
+Trump argued that the 14th Amendment — which holds that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside” — does not guarantee birthright citizenship to immigrants in the country illegally.
+“And by the way Mexico and almost every other country anywhere in the world doesn’t have that,” Trump said, referring to birthright citizenship. “We’re the only ones dumb enough, stupid enough to have it.”
+As we noted when Trump made a similar claim at a rally in Alabama in August, the U.S. and Mexico use different terminologies, but the two countries’ policies are actually very similar. According to Article 30 of the Mexican Constitution, “The Mexican nationality” is acquired by birth if someone is born within Mexican territory, “whatever their parents’ nationality might be.”
+Technically, according to the Mexican Constitution, people don’t become “citizens” of Mexico until they turn 18, at which point they can vote, be elected to public office and join the military. That’s true even of babies born in Mexico to Mexican parents.
+As for Trump’s claim that “almost every other country anywhere in the world doesn’t have” a birthright citizenship policy, it’s true that America’s policy is in the minority in the international community.
+According to a 2010 analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that advocates for lower immigration, at least 30 of the world’s 194 countries grant automatic birthright citizenship to the children of immigrants in the country illegally. The U.S. and Canada are the only ones among those 30 countries that have advanced economies as defined by the International Monetary Fund. Outside North America, most of the 30 countries that have birthright citizenship policies are in Central and South America. No country in Europe has such a policy.
+Fiorina on Planned Parenthood
+Carly Fiorina spoke out against Planned Parenthood regarding the controversial videos released over the last few months. The scene she described, though, does not exist in any of the videos.
+Fiorina: I dare Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama to watch these tapes. Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.
+We are aware of no video showing such a scene. The videos, released by the Center for Medical Progress beginning on July 14, have focused on fetal tissue being collected for research and have shown some aborted fetal tissue. As we wrote before, the use of donated fetal tissue has been important in several areas of scientific research.
+Fiorina’s description matches up with one of the videos in a series the Center for Medical Progress has called “Human Capital” — but only with regard to how an interviewee describes her experience. Holly O’Donnell, an “ex-procurement technician” for StemExpress, a company that procures fetal tissue from Planned Parenthood clinics, relates a story of an intact fetus. She says that a Planned Parenthood doctor “taps the heart and it starts beating,” and then instructs her to remove its brain for collection.
+The video does contain images of what appear to be intact fetuses, but they don’t fit Fiorina’s description. In one, where a fetus does appear to move, there is a caption saying that the footage is from the pro-life Grantham Collection and Center for Bio-Ethical Reform; there is no indication as to where the footage was shot. In the other, it was revealed after the video’s release that the image was of a stillborn baby, rather than an aborted fetus.
+Though we cannot verify if part or all of O’Donnell’s story is true, the scene Fiorina “dares” others to watch is not present in any of the Planned Parenthood videos.
+Trump on Polls
+Trump boasted at one point that he is “number one in every polls (sic) by a lot.” Not in every poll, at least not lately.
+Trump has held a double-digit lead in the national polls for several weeks, but a CBS News/New York Times poll released Sept. 15 shows Trump and Carson are in a virtual tie. Trump leads Carson by 4 percentage points, 27 to 23, but that is within the margin of error.
+Also, Carson pulled even with Trump in Iowa, according to a Monmouth University Poll released Aug. 31.
+Trump on Wisconsin Budget
+In a sharp exchange between Trump and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, the billionaire businessman falsely claimed that Wisconsin under Walker has “a huge budget deficit.”
+Trump: So, look, we brought it out, you were supposed to make a billion dollars in the state. You lost 2.2 — you have right now, a huge budget deficit. That’s not a Democratic point. That’s a point. That’s a fact.
+That is not a fact.
+As we have written before, Wisconsin had a projected $2.2 billion shortfall based on budget requests submitted by state agencies. But those budget requests were pared back, and Walker signed a two-year balanced budget into law on July 12. Wisconsin, like most states, requires that the governor submit and the Legislature pass a balanced budget.
+Fiorina’s HP Boasts
+Carly Fiorina repeated one of her standard talking points about her rocky tenure as CEO of Hewlett-Packard. Fiorina, who was fired in 2005 after nearly six years as head of the company, said, “[W]e doubled the size of the company, we quadrupled its topline growth rate, we quadrupled its cash flow, we tripled its rate of innovation.” She neglects to mention that the increase in revenue (or size) came after HP acquired Compaq and was accompanied by a decrease in net earnings. And she uses a different time frame to come up with a quadrupling of the growth rate and cash flow.
+We wrote about these claims in May. Fiorina compares the fiscal 1999 revenue of $42.4 billion with the fiscal 2005 revenue of $86.7 billion, though fiscal 2004 ($80 billion) would better align with Fiorina’s time at the company. That’s close to a doubling. But a controversial merger with Compaq in May 2002 was a major reason for the increase.
+HP’s revenue in 2001 was $45.2 billion and Compaq’s was $33.6 billion. In the first full fiscal year after the merger, 2003, HP’s revenue totaled $73 billion.
+It’s worth noting that while revenues doubled, net earnings declined over Fiorina’s time at HP, from $3.1 billion in 1999 to $2.4 billion in 2005, the same time period Fiorina used for her claim on revenues.
+Fiorina has repeatedly touted a quadrupling of the “growth rate,” specifically saying in the past that it went from 2 percent to 9 percent. She’s talking about revenue, but instead of using fiscal 1999 and 2005, as she does for the size of the company, her super PAC told us it compared the second quarter of 1999 to all of 2005.
+Using the same comparison as Fiorina’s “doubled” claim, we see the growth didn’t come anywhere close to quadrupling. Instead, it went from 7.5 percent in 1999 to 8.5 percent in 2005. Plus, the revenue growth in 2005 was only 6 percent on a constant currency basis, which is an adjustment due to foreign currency fluctuations. Over her six years, revenue growth year-to-year fluctuated significantly.
+Fiorina again uses a different time frame to claim a quadrupling of “cash flow.” Her super PAC told us she was comparing cash and short-term investments from Oct. 31, 1998 to Oct. 31, 2005. But the figures increased by 150 percent (more than a doubling) if we use 1999 as the starting point, as she did for her “doubled” revenue claim.
+Finally, Fiorina said HP “tripled its rate of innovation,” and there’s support for that in terms of the rate of obtaining patents in 1999 compared with 2004. But the Compaq merger again had an impact on that, as it did for other financial indicators.
+Rubio on Climate Change
+Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said that U.S. policies to combat climate change would “do absolutely nothing.” Though the U.S. acting alone would have a relatively small effect on rising temperatures and sea levels, Rubio went too far:
+Rubio: We are not going to make America a harder place to create jobs in order to pursue policies that will do absolutely nothing, nothing to change our climate, to change our weather, because America is a lot of things, the greatest country in the world, absolutely. But America is not a planet.
+Rubio is correct that “America is not a planet,” of course, but that does not mean that policies at the national level will have absolutely no effect on the climate. When we covered this issue in January, an expert told us that U.S. emissions alone, if left unchanged, would cause about half a degree Celsius of warming by the end of the century. Efforts to cut these emissions, including the recently released Clean Power Plan, which would limit emissions from power plants, and other policies such as fuel efficiency standards, will have a small but non-zero effect on that temperature change, and related sea level rise.
+Furthermore, many experts say that U.S. leadership on climate is important in convincing other nations to also cut their carbon pollution. In both senses, Rubio is wrong that cutting emissions will do “absolutely nothing” to fight climate change.
+FactChecking the ‘Happy Hour’ Debate
+We found some missteps among the four Republican presidential candidates who didn’t make the cut for the prime-time debate, and instead participated in the so-called “happy hour” debate.
+
+South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham oversimplified when he said Ronald Reagan and then-House Speaker Tip O’Neill “found a way to save Social Security from bankruptcy by adjusting the age of retirement from 65 to 67.” In fact, much more was required. The 1983 law to which Graham referred also provided for increases in the payroll tax, and broadened the tax base by requiring employees of nonprofits and new federal employees to be covered and pay into the system. And it made a portion of Social Security benefits subject to federal income tax for the first time, for certain high-income people.
+Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said, “Every Republican says they will shrink the size of the government. I’m the only one that has done it. Cut our budget 26 percent.” As we have written before, the 26 percent “cut” reflected a decline in federal aid. The Times-Picayune wrote that the 26 percent cut “is explained by waning hurricane recovery appropriations and the end of federal stimulus aid.”
+Former Sen. Rick Santorum said legislation he sponsored that would have codified sanctions against Iran failed by four votes. “The four people who opposed on the floor: Joe Biden, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama,” he said of the 2006 vote. That’s true, but the Bush administration lobbied against Santorum’s bill, and 14 Republican senators also voted against it, as we have written before. The bill passed three months later after a compromise was worked out with the Bush administration, which opposed the bill because it was negotiating with Iran at the time.
+
+— by Eugene Kiely, Brooks Jackson, Lori Robertson, Robert Farley and Dave Levitan
+Sources
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+CNN Wire Staff. “Retracted autism study an ‘elaborate fraud,’ British journal finds.” CNN. 5 Jan 2011.
+Fiona Godlee, et al. “Wakefield’s article linking MMR vaccine and autism was fraudulent.” British Medical Journal. 6 Jan 2011.
+Institute of Medicine. “Adverse Effects of Vaccines: Evidence and Causality.” 25 Aug 2011.
+Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Autism Spectrum Disorder: Data & Statistics.” Last updated 12 Aug 2015.
+Hansen SN et al. “Explaining the Increase in the Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorders.” JAMA Pediatrics. Jan 2015.
+Levitan, Dave. “Paul Repeats Baseless Vaccine Claims.” FactCheck.org. 3 Feb 2015.
+Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Recommended Immunization Schedules for Persons Aged 0 Through 18 Years.” Updated for 1 Jan 2015.
+DeStefano, F. et al. “Increasing Exposure to Antibody-Stimulating Proteins and Polysaccharides in Vaccines Is Not Associated with Risk of Autism.” The Journal of Pediatrics. 1 Apr 2013.
+Smith MJ et al. “On-time Vaccine Receipt in the First Year Does Not Adversely Affect Neuropsychological Outcomes.” Pediatrics. 24 May 2010.
+Hambidge SJ et al. “Timely Versus Delayed Early Childhood Vaccination and Seizures.” Pediatrics. 19 May 2014.
+Center for Medical Progress. “Planned Parenthood Uses Partial-Birth Abortions to Sell Baby Parts.” 14 July 2015.
+Levitan, Dave, and Robertson, Lori. “Unspinning the Planned Parenthood Video.” FactCheck.org. 21 July 2015.
+Center for Medical Progress. “Human Capital — Episode 3: Planned Parenthood’s Custom Abortions for Superior Product.” 19 Aug 2015.
+Ferris S. “Anti-abortion video showed stillborn baby — not fetus.” The Hill. 21 Aug 2015.
+Levitan, Dave. “Distorting Climate Change Threats, Solutions.” FactCheck.org. 28 Jan 2015.
+Environmental Protection Agency. “Clean Power Plan for Existing Power Plants.” Last updated 20 Aug 2015.
+National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. “Corporate Average Fuel Economy.”
+Diamond, Jeremy. “Jeb Bush: The man who killed Trump’s casino dreams.” CNN. 1 Sep 2015.
+Javers, Eamon. “Trump’s Angry Apprentice.” Bloomberg Business.” 11 Dec 2005.
+14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Cornell University Law School.
+Farley, Robert. “Trump on Birthright Citizenship.” FactCheck.org. 25 Aug 2015.
+The Political Constitution of the Mexican United States. Universidad Nacional Autonoma De Mexico. 2005.
+Feere, John. “Birthright Citizenship in the United States: A Global Comparison.” Center for Immigration Studies.  Aug 2010.
+Securities and Exchange Commission. Form 10-K Hewlett-Packard Company. 1999 – 2005.
+Murray, Mark. “Donald Trump’s deportation plan would cost $100-200 billion.” MSNBC.com. 17 Aug 2015.
+Rahman, Mizanur. “ICE reveals cost for deporting each illegal immigrant,” Houston Chronicle. 27 Jan 2011.
+
+Bank, Justin.  Cost of Illegal Immigrants.” FactCheck.org. 6 Apr 2009.
+Martin, Jack and Eric A. Ruark. “The Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on U.S. Taxpayers.” Jul 2010, revised Feb 2011.
+U.S. Congressional Budget Office. “The Impact of Unauthorized Immigrants on the Budgets of State and Local Governments.” 6 Dec 2007.
+U.S. Congressional Budget Office. “The Economic Impact of S. 744, the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act.” 18 Jun 2013.
+U.S. Social Security Administration, Office of the Historian “Social Security Amendments of 1983.” accessed 17 Sep 2015.
+Kiely, Eugene. “Clinton’s Email and the Privacy ‘Privilege.‘” FactCheck.org. 12 Mar 2015.
+“Statement from the Inspectors General of the Intelligence Community and the Department of State Regarding the Review of Former Secretary Clinton’s Email.” Office of Inspector General of the Department of State. 24 Jul 2015.
+Schmidt, Michael. “Justice Dept. Says Hillary Clinton Had Authority to Delete Certain Emails.” New York Times. 11 Sep 2015.
+“2016 Republican Presidential Nomination Polling Data.” Real Clear Politics. Accessed 17 Sep 2015.
+Salvanto, Anthony et al. “CBS/NYT Poll: GOP race – Donald Trump maintains lead, but Ben Carson gains.” CBS News. 15 Sep 2015.
+“Iowa: Carson, Trump Tie For Lead.” Press release. Monmouth University Poll. 31 Aug 2015.
+Gore, D’Angelo. “Wisconsin’s Trumped Up Deficit.” FactCheck.org. 29 Jul 2015.
+O’Brien, Brendan. “Wisconsin lawmakers pass state budget, partial repeal of prevailing wage law.” Reuters. 9 Jul 2015.
+“NCSL Fiscal Brief: State Balanced Budget Provisions.” National Conference of State Legislatures. Oct 2010.
+Kiely, Eugene et al. “FactChecking the GOP Candidate Forum.” FactCheck.org. 3 Aug 2015.
+Barrow, Bill. “Gov. Bobby Jindal says he’s ‘beginning to turn this state around’.” Times-Picayune. 12 Oct 2011.
+U.S. Senate. S.Amdt 4234 to S. 2766, roll call #172. 15 Jun 2006.
+Kiely, Eugene. “Santorum’s Puffery on Iran.” FactCheck.org. 13 May 2015."
+"4.3KSarah Palin says man isn’t to blame for climate change, citing the fact that some glaciers in Alaska are expanding. But an individual glacier’s growth does not disprove the existence or causes of global warming. In fact, the vast majority of glaciers in Alaska and around the world are losing ice rapidly.
+Palin, the former Alaska governor and 2008 vice presidential nominee, appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” (at the 2:25 mark). Host Jake Tapper asked if she takes climate change seriously, and Palin responded:
+Palin, Sept. 6: I take changes in the weather, the cyclical changes that the globe has undergone for — since the beginning of time, I take it seriously, but I’m not going to blame these changes in the weather on man’s footprint. Obama was up here looking at, say, the glaciers and pointing out a glacier that was receding. Well, there are other glaciers, though, that are growing up here. And he didn’t highlight that, but he used glaciers as an example.
+Palin may not blame climate change on humans, but science does; we have covered before how scientists say it’s extremely likely that most of the observed temperature rise has been caused by human emissions. Her claim that some glaciers are growing in Alaska is true, but this isn’t a reason to question human-caused climate change. Regional variations in precipitation patterns may cause some glaciers to grow, but most glaciers around the world are losing ice as the climate warms.
+President Obama did indeed point out a receding glacier during his trip to Alaska from Aug. 31 to Sept. 2. He visited the Exit Glacier and called it “as good of a signpost as any when it comes to the impacts of climate change.” That glacier has retreated about 1.25 miles over 200 years, according to the National Park Service. Though a single receding glacier also does not provide any proof of climate change, the president talked about the wider trend. During his speech to the GLACIER conference in Anchorage, Obama said that a recent study found Alaska’s glaciers are losing 75 billion tons of ice every year. That’s accurate.
+The study in question was published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters in July. Researchers from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Washington in Seattle measured the “mass balance” of 116 glaciers in Alaska — of 616 named and many thousands of unnamed glaciers, representing 41 percent of the total glacial area — and extrapolated the results to the rest of the state. They found that Alaska’s glaciers are losing 75 gigatons of ice every year. A gigaton is equal to a billion tons of ice; one scientist has explained a gigaton this way: “If you took the whole National Mall, and covered it up with ice, to a height about four times as high as the [Washington] monument. … All the way down from the Capitol steps to the Lincoln Memorial.”
+Glaciers normally grow through snow accumulation in the winter, and then recede by melting in the summer. But lower levels of snow accumulation or higher temperatures will lead to an imbalance in that process, and the glacier will retreat and lose mass over time.
+But Palin pointed out that not all glaciers are losing ice. In a post on the opinion website IJ Review, she highlighted the Hubbard Glacier in Alaska. According to NASA, the Hubbard has indeed been advancing since measurement of the glacier began in 1895, at rates ranging from 13 meters to 36 meters per year. Here is how Leigh Sterns, a glaciologist at the University of Kansas, explained the glacier’s growth for NASA: “Hubbard’s advance is due to its large accumulation area; the glacier’s catchment basin extends far into the Saint Elias Mountains. Snow that falls in the basin either melts or flows down to the terminus, causing Hubbard to steadily grow.”
+In short, regional variations and increasing snowfall thanks to climate change could cause some glaciers around the world to grow, even as global temperatures rise. In fact, the pace of the Hubbard Glacier’s advance has increased since 1984, which coincides with a period of increased precipitation rates.
+Just as overall global temperatures are more relevant than what happens in individual areas, the overall trend for glaciers is more relevant, too. The global and Alaskan glacial trends are toward massive loss of ice as the world has warmed. The World Glacier Monitoring Service, which runs under the auspices of the United Nations Environment Programme, the World Meteorological Organization and other partners, reports that the latest data continue “the global trend in strong ice loss over the past few decades.” This general trend is apparent in the chart below, from the WGMS.
+
+On CNN, Tapper pushed back at Palin, saying that “90 percent of glaciers, according to scientists, 90 percent of them are — are shrinking, are melting.” According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, based at the University of Colorado at Boulder, that’s true for alpine glaciers, which are most susceptible to retreat: “Over 90 percent of the measured alpine glaciers in the world are retreating, in almost every major glaciated region.” The NSIDC explains that the causes are “varied,” but “the underlying primary causes are a warming climate and the effects of increased soot and dust in areas of higher agricultural and industrial activity.” Both the Exit and Hubbard glaciers are alpine, of differing types — the former is a valley glacier, with its flow confined by valley walls, and the latter is a tidewater glacier, which terminates into the ocean.
+According to the most recent WGMS data, only 22 of the 126 glaciers it analyzed were adding mass, while 104 — about 83 percent — were losing mass.
+In spite of that trend, a minority of glaciers, such as the Hubbard, will likely continue to expand even with warmer temperatures. For example, a study published in 2014 in Nature Geoscience described the stable or growing glaciers of the Karakorum region in Asia. The reason for those glaciers’ deviation from the global trend has to do with localized changes to winter precipitation — snowfall, essentially, helps the glaciers stay stable or grow. The authors concluded that “[o]ur findings suggest a meteorological mechanism for regional differences in the glacier response to climate warming.” In other words, local weather patterns play a role in how glaciers respond to climate change.
+Most glaciers in Alaska and around the world are losing ice as the world warms. Palin suggested that Obama was cherry-picking his glacier to make a point, but she was guilty of that trick herself.
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation.
+– Dave Levitan"
+"6KRick Santorum made two false claims regarding the scientific consensus on climate change:
+
+He said 57 percent of climate scientists “don’t buy off on the idea that CO2 is the knob that’s turning the climate.” This is based on a flawed reading of a survey of 1,868 scientists; one of that survey’s authors has called Santorum’s claim “absolutely false.”
+He called the oft-cited 97 percent consensus figure “bogus,” and said it was based on a survey of only 77 scientists. In fact, several surveys involving thousands of researchers have all found that the level of consensus that human activity is primarily responsible for warming is as high as 97 percent.
+
+Survey Says …
+
+Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania and 2016 Republican presidential candidate, appeared on Bill Maher’s show on HBO. Maher said that Santorum does not believe climate change is a real problem, to which Santorum responded:
+Santorum, Aug. 28: And I’m not alone. The most recent survey of climate scientists said about 57 percent don’t agree with the idea that 95 percent of the change in the climate is being caused by CO2. … There was a survey done of 1,800 scientists, and 57 percent said they don’t buy off on the idea that CO2 is the knob that’s turning the climate. There’s hundreds of reasons the climate’s changing.
+Santorum’s campaign did not respond to a request for clarification, but he is likely referring to a survey conducted in 2012 by researchers in the Netherlands and Australia. The results of that survey were published in 2014 in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, and a more thorough examination of the survey was published in April 2015 by the Netherlands’ Environmental Assessment Agency.
+The numbers Santorum cited come from an analysis of this survey by bloggers at Fabius Maximus, a website whose authors include several retired military personnel, others with experience in finance and anonymous contributors. Santorum misstated the bloggers’ analysis, though — understandably, because this is confusing. The bloggers claimed that 57 percent of climate scientists disagreed with the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest assessment that there is a 95 percent chance that humans have caused more than half of observed global warming.
+Bart Verheggen, one of the authors of the survey in question, told Peter Sinclair of Climatecrocks.com in a videotaped interview that Santorum did not accurately represent his study’s findings:
+Verheggen, Aug. 31: We concluded that the level of consensus is somewhere between 79 and 97 percent, depending on whether you take the whole group or whether you zoom into those with more expertise. …. Rick Santorum said that the percentage [who disagreed] was in excess of 50 percent, which is absolutely false and doesn’t correspond to our findings. … What we did find is the more expertise respondents had, the more they agreed with the human dominance of global warming.
+To understand why the Fabius Maximus analysis and Santorum’s claim are wrong, it is helpful to understand precisely how that survey worked and what it found.
+The authors sent emails to 7,555 individuals gathered from a few similar sources: those who had published papers or assessment reports that included the keywords “global warming” or “global climate change” during the period from 1991 to 2011, a separate database of actively publishing climate scientists, and a separate review of climate science papers from 2009 to 2011. A total of 6,550 people were successfully contacted, and 1,868 questionnaires were returned, resulting in a response rate of 29 percent.
+The survey’s first question asked these scientists “[w]hat fraction of global warming since the mid-20th century can be attributed to human induced increases in atmospheric GHG [greenhouse gas] concentrations?” There were several possible answers, allowing respondents to choose a specific range of contribution to warming. The combined group that pegged the contribution as above 50 percent — meaning, greenhouse gases have accounted for more than half of the observed warming — was considered to agree with the consensus. A total of 1,231 people agreed with the consensus, or 65.9 percent of the 1,868 respondents.
+But Verheggen said the authors found a consensus of between 79 percent and 97 percent. How did he arrive at that range? Two of the possible responses to the first question were “unknown” and “I don’t know,” which the authors called “undetermined” responses. A large number of people selected these options: 9.9 percent said “unknown,” and 8.8 percent said, “I don’t know.” But undetermined responses do not mean the respondents don’t believe humans are the primary driver of climate change. Pinpointing the specific amount of human contribution is a difficult task.
+The study authors argue that these answers should not be included in the analysis of the consensus, resulting in Verheggen’s range. The lowest possible value after excluding undetermined responses was 79 percent (see table S3 of supplemental information), among 278 respondents who had published only zero to three papers on climate science. The highest possible value was 97 percent, among 142 respondents who were authors on the IPCC’s scientific report published in 2007. Among all 1,868 respondents, the rate was 84 percent that agreed with the consensus.
+So how did Fabius Maximus writers arrive at 57 percent disagreeing with the consensus? The short answer is, by using faulty logic and inaccurate assumptions.
+The bloggers combined the responses to that first question (question 1a) with a follow-up (question 1b) that asked: “What confidence level would you ascribe to your estimate that the anthropogenic GHG contribution is more than 50%/less than 50%?”
+Of 1,222 scientists who responded to question 1a that the contribution exceeded 50 percent, 65.2 percent said it was either “virtually certain” or “extremely likely” that this was the case. The IPCC considers “virtually certain” to mean more than 99 percent probability, and “extremely likely” to mean more than 95 percent probability.
+Fabius Maximus took that 65.2 percent of 1,222 — 797 individual respondents — and divided it into the full 1,868 survey cohort, to arrive at 43 percent who, they wrote, agree (and 57 percent who disagree) with the idea that it is “extremely likely” that humans have caused more than half the observed warming.
+There are multiple problems with this method. First, Fabius Maximus did not exclude the undetermined responses, as the study authors did. Including those answers in the final percentage assumes that all those respondents do not think human emissions are the primary driver of climate change, when again, it could mean that they find it difficult to pinpoint the amount of warming GHGs have caused.
+Second, the Fabius Maximus authors counted only those who answered “virtually certain” or “extremely likely” — arguing that the IPCC itself said it was “extremely likely” that GHGs have caused more than half the warming, so that should be considered the consensus.
+But that ignores an important point: The survey was done in 2012, when the Fifth Assessment Report from IPCC had not yet been released.
+At the time of the survey, the IPCC’s official position — as stated in the Fourth Assessment Report — was that it was “very likely” (greater than 90 percent probability) that GHGs had caused most of the warming. That assessment was only upgraded to “extremely likely” in the report released in 2013. Thus, respondents who said “very likely” — another 24.1 percent of 1,222 — also should have been included as part of the consensus.
+And further, another question in the survey asked respondents to “characterize the contribution” of various factors to the observed warming since before the Industrial Revolution. More than 80 percent characterized greenhouse gases’ contribution as either “strong warming” (more than 60 percent of respondents) or “moderate warming,” and this rose to more than 90 percent when “slight warming” was included.
+Clearly, 57 percent of climate scientists do not disagree that “CO2 is the knob that’s turning the climate,” as Santorum put it.
+There is also evidence that the more expertise a scientist has in the field of climate science, the more likely he or she is to say humans are causing most of the observed warming. The authors divided the survey respondents into four groups based on how many peer-reviewed papers they had published in climate science fields. As the number of publications increased, so too did the agreement that human-caused GHG emissions have had a “strong warming” effect (see chart).
+Is the 97 Percent ‘Bogus’?
+Santorum’s second claim was in regard to perhaps the most commonly cited figure regarding scientific consensus of climate change, that 97 percent of scientists in the field agree that human activity is primarily responsible for the observed warming:
+Santorum: Number two, the 97 percent figure that’s thrown around, the head of the UN, IPC [sic], said that number was pulled out of thin air. It was based on a survey of 77 scientists – not even 97 scientists responded to that survey. Let’s talk about facts: And the fact is, lots of things cause climate change. …
+Maher: Ninety-seven percent of all scientists believe —
+Santorum: It’s a bogus number.
+Santorum’s claim that the 97 percent figure is a “bogus number” because it is based on only 77 scientists is wrong. Several surveys involving thousands of researchers have all found that the level of consensus is about 97 percent. (We also can find no specific quote attributed to the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, as Santorum claimed. We have asked his campaign for a source on that, and for any other comment on these issues, and we will update this post if we get a response.)
+The 97 percent number comes from several distinct sources. The first was a 2009 survey published in the American Geophysical Union’s Eos magazine. A total of 3,146 Earth scientists responded to two questions regarding whether Earth’s temperature has “risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant” since before 1800, and whether human activity is a “significant contributing factor to changing mean global temperatures.” In the full study, 90 percent answered “risen,” and 82 percent said yes to the human impact question.
+The authors drilled down to those with more expertise: 79 researchers listed climate science as their specific area of expertise and had published more than half their recent peer-reviewed papers on climate science topics. Of those, 96.2 percent said “risen” to the first question, and 97.4 percent of 77 of them who responded said “yes” to the second question (this is likely where Santorum’s claim regarding 77 scientists originates).
+A year later, another study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found a similar result. The authors in this case set a specific criterion for expertise: All included must have authored a minimum of 20 peer-reviewed publications on climate science. Among a group of 908 such researchers, evidence from the publications themselves “show[s] that 97-98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field surveyed here support the tenets of [anthropogenic climate change] outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.” The authors also pointed out that the “relative climate expertise” of researchers who are “unconvinced” by those tenets is “substantially below” that of those who are convinced.
+Finally, a 2013 paper published in the journal Environmental Research Letters has garnered perhaps the most attention for its consensus findings. That paper analyzed a total of 11,944 journal article abstracts published from 1991 to 2011 that matched the search terms “global climate change” or “global warming.”
+From that list of papers, the study authors picked out which ones actually expressed a position on anthropogenic — human-caused — global warming, and which ones took no position. A total of 4,014 papers (33.6 percent) took a position, and of those, 97.1 percent endorsed the idea that humans are causing global warming.
+A second analysis in that same study asked 8,547 authors to rate their papers. Did they think their papers endorsed the consensus on warming? A total of 1,189 scientists responded, rating 2,142 individual papers. The results were similar to the first part of the study: 97.2 percent of the papers endorsed the consensus that humans are causing global warming.
+The authors concluded: “The number of papers rejecting AGW [anthropogenic global warming] is a miniscule proportion of the published research, with the percentage slightly decreasing over time.”
+The authors of the paper address the fact that a majority of papers — 66.4 percent — took no position. They note that “the fundamental science of AGW is no longer controversial among the publishing science community.” In other words, there is no need to state a position on a topic that has largely been settled; a paper on some specific aspect of evolutionary biology likely would not state support for Darwinian evolution by natural selection — that is settled science.
+The authors of the Environmental Research Letters paper support this finding by pointing out that more than half of the papers in the second part of the study that were self-rated by their authors as endorsing the consensus did not express a position in the abstracts. In other words, even though their papers didn’t state an explicit position, most of those authors say their papers implicitly endorse human-caused warming.
+The Problem with Surveys
+Calculating a number of scientists in the world who agree on a certain thing is a difficult task, as challenges to some of these consensus studies show.
+The complication comes from two sources: the wording of the questions and the people responding. The survey discussed above, involving more than 1,800 scientists, asked the respondents to describe their field of study. The answers ranged from “climate impacts” and “climate modeling” to more general or less related fields, such as “geology,” “computer science” and “solar physics.”
+This is why the separation of respondents based on the number of global-warming-related papers published produces a more valid result: The more work a scientist has done on a topic, the more we can expect that scientist to understand the field of study. A computer scientist who published a single paper on some aspect of climate modeling 10 years ago clearly does not have the same level of expertise as a scientist who has published dozens of papers on how the climate is changing.
+As Verheggen said, with increasing expertise comes an increasing consensus that humans are the dominant force behind the changing climate.
+The wording of the questions is also at issue in this study. A survey would produce very different numbers if it simply asked: “Are humans the primary cause of climate change?” Instead, this survey posed a nuanced question with many possible answers about the degree to which humans are causing the climate to change, and how incrementally certain one is of that human influence. It is easier to distort a study with several possible answers than it is to twist a study with “yes” or “no” questions.
+According to both a careful reading of the study and to the author himself, though, Santorum is not correct that 57 percent of climate scientists don’t agree with the prevailing consensus on climate change. There is, in fact, a fairly large consensus — as high as 97 percent based upon multiple studies of varying size, composition and method — that human emissions have been the primary driving force behind observed changes to the climate.
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation.
+– Dave Levitan"
+"1.1KSenate Minority Leader Harry Reid has said at least twice that climate change is causing bears in the Sierra Nevada mountains to change their hibernation patterns. There is no evidence that climate change is actually having such an effect.
+On July 29, Reid, a Democrat from Nevada, spoke on the Senate floor (at the 5:30 mark) about some of the damaging effects of a warming climate:
+Reid, July 29: The drought that’s affecting all across America, but especially in the West. It’s so bad, Mr. President, so bad in the West that in the Sierras there are hot bears who don’t even hibernate anymore. It’s not cold enough.
+In another Senate floor speech on July 15, he made a similar claim: “We have things happening that have never been recorded before. In the Sierras some bears are not hibernating.”
+We could find no published evidence regarding changes to black bear hibernation, and biologist Jesse Garcia of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife told us that “we have no data or specific evidence” that black bears in the Sierras have changed their hibernation patterns.
+Black bears are not “true” hibernators, in that their metabolism and body temperature do not drop as dramatically as those of other animals, such as chipmunks and squirrels, according to the CDFW. And in spite of the ongoing drought and recent extremely warm years, Garcia told us in an email that black bears’ activity has not changed:
+Garcia, Aug. 13: We have no reason to believe that the drought or climate change is significantly changing hibernation behavior in California black bear populations. This statement is mainly due to the fact that we observe great variability of black bear denning or hibernation chronology throughout different regions of our vast state. And even in specific areas (such as around Lake Tahoe), black bears will often display some mid-winter activity even during non-drought years.
+He explained further that black bear hibernation patterns vary based on location, with some hibernating for up to eight months in the far northern parts of the continent and others in more southern areas not hibernating at all. “For hibernating sub-adults and adults,” Garcia explained, “if the winter is mild enough, they may wake up and forage for food.”
+There is no specific data, however, showing bears are waking up more in recent years than they had in the past. A spokeswoman for Reid sent us two news articles as support for the claim, but neither offers more than anecdotal evidence of any particular increase in winter bear activity.
+Though evidence is lacking on any changes to hibernation for bears in the Sierras, there are studies indicating climate change is having an effect on other hibernating animals. For example, a 2000 paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that yellow-bellied marmots in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado emerged from hibernation an average of 38 days earlier than 23 years before, “apparently in response to warmer spring air temperatures.”
+Climate change can have unexpected effects on specific areas and species. A 2012 paper published in the journal Nature showed that Columbian ground squirrels living in Alberta, Canada, actually emerged from hibernation later over a period of 20 years, by an average of 0.47 days per year. The researchers still blamed this on climate change: There was no particular trend in the region with regard to temperature, but there was an “increasing likelihood of late-season snowstorms” and thus delayed snowmelt. The squirrels wait for the melt before emerging.
+In Reid’s July 29 speech, he got a lot of things right about climate change: Arctic ice caps are indeed melting; wildfire seasons, such as the one currently devastating Alaska, are indeed getting worse; and moose in New Hampshire are suffering thanks to changes to the tick population. The evidence on the bears of the Sierras, though, doesn’t measure up.
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation.
+– Dave Levitan"
+"14Readers sent us letters regarding the contributions of human-caused and volcanic emissions of sulfur dioxide, or SO2.
+In the FactCheck Mailbag, we feature some of the email we receive. Readers can send comments to editor@factcheck.org. Letters may be edited for length.
+Human SO2 Emissions and Cooling
+I just read Dave Levitan’s article regarding Mike Hukabee’s claim regarding man’s CO2 emissions vs. volcanoes’ [“Huckabee’s Hot Air on Volcanoes,” July 29]. Even before MH’s claim, I was always curious whether our efforts to curtail CO2 emissions were offset by a volcano, but hadn’t before found much info comparing the two. I also had heard about the cooling potential of SO2. It was thus with interest that I read the actual number comparisons provided by Dave. However the numbers on SO2 don’t make sense and Dave didn’t clarify further.
+Dave writes, “The eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991 released an enormous cloud of SO2 — about 20 million tons. This caused the world to cool, not warm, by about half a degree Celsius. Still, though, this can’t match human emissions of SO2, which also comes from smokestacks and other sources. Though emissions have been declining in recent decades, humans still annually emit about 100 million tons of SO2, according to a 2013 study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.”
+If 20 million tons of SO2 from Mount Pinatubo cooled the earth 0.5 degrees Celsius, then man putting five times [that much] SO2 in the atmosphere annually should cool the earth 2.5 degrees annually. Obviously this doesn’t happen. I think Dave should have followed up with an explanation why, if the numbers are correct, this doesn’t happen.
+Though I believe man is causing warming, this discrepancy causes Dave’s other statements and conclusions to be suspect.
+Jay Carldon
+Westfield, New Jersey
+ 
+Do you realize what your article said??
+You wrote that Mt. Pinatubo actually cooled the planet, not warmed it, because it blew out 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide besides the 50 million tons of carbon dioxide. Cooled by a half degree C, or about .9 degrees F.
+Let’s assume your facts are accurate (I have no reason to believe they aren’t).
+You also said that man releases 100 million tons of sulfur dioxide every year. That’s five times as much as Mt. Pinatubo. And Mt. Pinatubo cooled the planet that year even though mankind released its usual quota of 30 billion (with a b) tons of carbon dioxide into the air. So, if 120 million tons (total) of SO2 lowers the worldwide temperature a half a degree, how much will a mere 100 million tons lower the temperature? I don’t know the answer to that, but my first guess would be to take the rise that is supposed to happen each year based on CO2 increases alone (I haven’t been able to find that exact number), find the difference between that number and -0.5, then calculate 80% of the result. So the question almost asks itself: Is man-generated SO2 cooling the whole planet as much as CO2 should be warming it? Is that a possible reason why there has been no significant rise in global temperature for the past 10 or 15 years?
+I’m not grinding an ax, here. My question is solely based on what I read in your article.
+Any comments?
+Dean Kennedy
+Minerva, Ohio
+ 
+FactCheck.org responds: The idea that the 100 million tons humans emit should elicit a similar effect to that of a large volcanic eruption sounds logical, but it is not in fact correct.
+Though human-caused emissions do indeed have a cooling effect on the world, they do not function in exactly the same fashion as volcanic emissions. Volcanic SO2 emissions rise into the stratosphere (which begins between about 30,000 and 50,000 feet above sea level), while most emissions from human sources stay much closer to the ground, as the Union of Concerned Scientists explains. Those stratospheric volcanic SO2 particles can stay airborne for several years, reflecting sunlight back into space and cooling the planet beneath; the human-caused emissions at lower altitudes, meanwhile, will only remain aloft for a very short period, and have a much lesser cooling effect.
+More generally, the cooling effect of human SO2 emissions is far overshadowed by the warming effect of human CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions. The image below from the Met Office in the United Kingdom illustrates this point. Without human SO2 and other aerosol emissions, the world would be warming even faster."
+"12KMike Huckabee claimed that a single volcanic eruption “will contribute more than 100 years of human activity” toward global warming. This is far from accurate. Humans actually pump upward of 100 times as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year than all the world’s volcanoes combined.
+In an interview with Katie Couric of Yahoo News (beginning at the 5:14 mark), the former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate said he thinks “the climate’s been changing over the entire history of the earth.” Couric asked him if he believes that man contributes to global warming. He responded:
+Huckabee, July 28: He probably does, but a volcano, in one blast, will contribute more than 100 years of human activity. So when people are worried about it — you know?
+Huckabee gives volcanoes far too much credit.
+According to a summary of evidence by the U.S. Geological Survey, the entire collection of volcanoes around the world emits an average of 0.26 gigatons of CO2 per year. (A gigaton is equal to one billion metric tons.) Humans today, on the other hand, emit over 30 gigatons every year, from power plants and factories, cars and airplanes, agriculture, and other activities. According to the Energy Information Administration, humans worldwide emitted 32.3 gigatons of CO2 in 2012, the most recent year for which complete data is available.
+So that means, humans collectively are responsible for nearly 125 times as much CO2 entering the atmosphere every year as volcanoes.
+Among several published studies that yielded the 0.26 gigaton average, the absolute highest possible value was 0.44 gigatons per year, according to the USGS. Even at that extreme end of the range, humans emit more than 73 times as much as volcanoes.
+But Huckabee said “in one blast,” so what about when there is a single, large eruption?
+The 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, in the Philippines, was one of the largest in modern history. According to the USGS, this eruption released 0.05 gigatons of CO2, or about 50 million metric tons. Again, humans emit more than 30 billion tons of CO2 every year, let alone every 100 years.
+Another famously large eruption, the 1980 explosion of Mount St. Helens in Washington, released even less CO2 than Pinatubo, in spite of its fearsome and deadly local impacts. That eruption released only about 0.01 gigatons of CO2, according to the USGS.
+As the USGS says (using 2010 CO2 emissions), you would need 700 Pinatubo’s or 3,500 Mount St. Helens’ eruptions, to match a single year of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions. To get to 100 years of human emissions, as Huckabee said? That would take 70,000 Pinatubo or 350,000 Mount St. Helens eruptions.
+We asked Huckabee’s campaign if he could provide evidence for his claim; we will update this post if we receive a response.
+Though the volcanoes of the world do contribute a reasonable amount to the CO2 in the atmosphere — about the equivalent of New Zealand’s contribution or about half that of the Philippines (its people, not its volcanoes) — their more important contribution in terms of global climate is sulfur dioxide, or SO2. This molecule acts as an aerosol and reflects sunlight away from the earth, helping cool it down.
+In other words, Huckabee has it backward: volcanoes actually act to tamp down human-caused warming, not to exacerbate it.
+The eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991 released an enormous cloud of SO2 — about 20 million tons. This caused the world to cool, not warm, by about half a degree Celsius. Still, though, this can’t match human emissions of SO2, which also comes from smokestacks and other sources. Though emissions have been declining in recent decades, humans still annually emit about 100 million tons of SO2, according to a 2013 study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.
+Volcanic eruptions can be powerful events. They certainly can change the world’s climate — in the cooling direction — in extreme cases. But Huckabee’s claim about their contribution to global warming is little more than hot air.
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation.
+– Dave Levitan
+Update, Aug. 11: We responded to readers’ questions about volcanic versus human-caused SO2 emissions in our Aug. 11 Mailbag."
+"8SciCheck writer Dave Levitan of FactCheck.org was interviewed by Ira Flatow for a segment on Science Friday about the 10th International Conference on Climate Change.
+Levitan and Flatow discussed a claim from Sen. James Inhofe about the polar bear population, as well as claims from Rep. Lamar Smith about global temperatures and the influence of climate change on extreme weather patterns.
+Levitan’s segment begins at the 5:15 mark and ends at 10:25:
+
+Audio Playerhttps://cdn.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/scifri201506126.mp300:0000:0000:00Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume.
+SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation."
+"22Jeb Bush officially entered the presidential race on June 15. This “Campaign Watch” video reviews some of the claims we have fact-checked from the former Florida governor.
+Read more about the claims reviewed in the video in our “FactChecking Jeb Bush” article."
+"3.2KJeb Bush, the brother of one president and son of another, plans to join the 2016 presidential campaign today. It is the first time he has run for national office, so our file on him isn’t as robust as those for some other candidates. But it’s early.
+Here are some statements made by the two-term Florida governor that we have checked:
+Climate change: Bush claimed in May that the science is unclear as to how much humans contribute to global warming. The United Nations climate change research organization, however, said it was “extremely likely” that more than half of the warming since 1950 is due to human activities. (“Extremely likely” means that the likelihood of an outcome is between 95 percent and 100 percent certain.)
+The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fifth assessment report released in 2013 estimated the causes of observed warming since 1951. In its Summary for Policymakers, IPCC said: “The best estimate of the human-induced contribution to warming is similar to the observed warming over this period.” In other words, the IPCC estimates that humans have caused essentially all of the warming that has occurred.
+Public education: In 2013, Bush repeatedly — and falsely — claimed that the United States spends “more per student than any country in the world.” Bush’s office provided us with data, however, that showed Luxembourg and Switzerland spent more than the U.S. on elementary and secondary education. Luxembourg, at $16,909 per student, was 54 percent higher than the U.S. rate of $10,995.
+Also, the data provided by Bush’s office was incomplete. It was based on a 2012 Department of Education report (table A-22-1 on page 200) that showed Norway, too, spent more per student on elementary and secondary education than the United States. The DOE report contained spending data on elementary and secondary education for 32 countries.
+Economy: In a 2013 op-ed, Bush said U.S. manufacturing was enjoying a “renaissance” because of “conservative, pro-growth” policies in Southeast states under Republican control. “The Southeast is leading a renaissance in American manufacturing,” he wrote. But that was not so.
+We analyzed Bureau of Labor Statistics data for manufacturing jobs from February 2010, when U.S. manufacturing jobs hit a low point at 11,460,000 jobs, until March 2013, the most recent jobs report available at the time. We found that the Midwest had experienced a 9 percent increase in manufacturing jobs during that time — double the 4.5 percent growth in the Southeast states.
+We also found that the Southeast state that saw the biggest manufacturing jobs gain was Kentucky, which had a Democratic governor and a split Legislature during this time.
+We will review Bush’s announcement speech and follow his campaign appearances in the coming months, as we will for all presidential candidates. So bookmark our “Presidential Election 2016” page and visit it frequently.
+— Eugene Kiely"
+"5.2K1Jeb Bush claimed that the science is unclear as to how much humans contribute to global warming. The United Nations climate change research organization, however, has deemed it “extremely likely” that more than half of the observed temperature increase since 1950 is due to human activities.
+At an event in New Hampshire, Bush was asked about climate change. He acknowledged that climate change is occurring, but questioned its causes.
+Bush, May 20: I don’t think the science is clear of what percentage is man-made and what percentage is natural. I just don’t — it’s convoluted. And for the people to say the science is decided on this is just really arrogant, to be honest with you.
+This suggests that the relative contributions to global warming from humans and from natural causes are unknown. Though absolute certainty on this issue is impossible, much research has gone into the question, and relatively good answers are indeed available from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fifth assessment report that was released in 2013.
+IPCC, 2013: It is extremely likely that human activities caused more than half of the observed increase in GMST [global mean surface temperature] from 1951 to 2010. This assessment is supported by robust evidence from multiple studies using different methods.
+“Extremely likely” means that the likelihood of an outcome is between 95 percent and 100 percent certain. The IPCC added that it is “virtually certain” — which means 99 percent to 100 percent probability — “that internal variability alone cannot account for the observed global warming since 1951.” In the IPCC’s Summary for Policymakers, the authors summarize clearly: “The best estimate of the human-induced contribution to warming is similar to the observed warming over this period.” In other words, the best guess is that humans have caused essentially all of the warming that has occurred.
+The fifth assessment report goes into more detail on specific amounts of warming. Over that 1951 to 2010 period, there was a total rise in temperature of 0.6 degrees Celsius, or about one degree Fahrenheit. Human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide “likely” (66 percent to 100 percent probability) caused between 0.5 and 1.3 degrees C of warming in total. Other human activities such as the release of aerosols have had more of a cooling effect, because they scatter and block sunlight as it reaches the atmosphere; this effect totaled between -0.6 and 0.1 degrees C.
+Natural influences, including things like changes in the sun’s output and volcanic eruptions, have had little effect — between -0.1 and 0.1 degrees C. Internal variability, which refers to natural fluctuations in temperature, also only accounted for a change between -0.1 and 0.1 degrees C.
+Here’s a visual version of these numbers, from the IPCC’s report.
+
+The top bar represents the observed warming since 1951 — how much hotter it has actually become, according to the planet’s numerous weather stations. Below that in green is the warming due to greenhouse gas emissions; the yellow bar represents other anthropogenic — human-caused — activities like aerosol emissions, and the orange bar combines those two human sources. At the bottom are the relatively small contributions from natural sources like the sun and volcanos, and internal variability.
+To be clear, all these results have uncertainty associated with them — that’s what the lines with brackets on each bar represent. But even with that uncertainty, the human contribution to warming clearly is far larger than that of natural sources.
+How do scientists attribute warming to one source over another? One method is to compare what has happened to what scientists expect would happen under certain circumstances. To do this, scientists use computer models: They simulate what would happen without human activity like burning fossil fuels, then add in that activity, and see how the simulation results differ. If the actual, observable trends — that 0.6 degrees C rise in temperature, in this case — mirror what happens in the model with human activity but not without it, then that means human activity is likely responsible for the trend.
+Here’s how the IPCC describes this idea:
+IPCC, 2013: If observed changes are consistent with simulations that include human influence, and inconsistent with those that do not, this would be sufficient for attribution. …
+Here is a visual representation (see page 875) of what the models say would happen with and without human activities compared with the observed temperature trend. (This is a simplified, or “idealized,” version of reality for visualization purposes, according to the IPCC, but more complete studies have used this method to arrive at the results mentioned above.)
+
+The blue line represents what multiple climate models say would have happened over more than 100 years with only natural variability — basically, only a small change in temperature would have been expected. The orange line is the same models’ guess at how the climate would react to human activities like burning fossil fuels. And all those dots, and the black line fitted to them, are what actually happened. The close link between the observed trend and the models’ guess suggests that human activity is indeed causing the planet to warm up.
+This sort of analysis has been repeated and confirmed in several published studies, which the IPCC used in its synthesis of the evidence. For example, a study by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists published in the Journal of Climate in 2013 found there were “detectable anthropogenic warming components” over most of the surface of the world for temperatures between 1901 and 2010, and in most cases the amount of warming was consistent with the models as well.
+Another 2013 paper published in the journal Climate Dynamics used a different type of analysis and found that “the expected warming due to all human influences since 1950 (including aerosol effects) is very similar to the observed warming.” Yet one more, from 2011 in Nature Geoscience, found very similar results — human emissions caused 0.85 degrees C of warming, half of which was offset by aerosol emissions. This paper as well concluded that “human-induced causes dominate the observed warming.”
+Other studies, included in the IPCC analysis, have found that human influence is likely the major contributor to warming over every specific part of the world with the exception of Antarctica. There are a number of other lines of evidence as well, regarding the global water cycle, the warming of the oceans and other pieces of the climate puzzle. In all, the totality of this evidence led the IPCC to make a firm conclusion:
+IPCC, 2013: Taken together, the combined evidence increases the level of confidence in the attribution of observed climate change, and reduces the uncertainties associated with assessment based on a single climate variable. From this combined evidence it is virtually certain that human influence has warmed the global climate system.
+Again, “virtually certain” means between 99 percent and 100 percent probability. Bush is correct if he means that researchers are unlikely to ever have an exact number for how many degrees are caused by humans — scientific calculations always have a certain amount of uncertainty. But that doesn’t mean that nothing at all is known on the topic. In this case, the science says that humans “dominate” the causes of global warming.
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation.
+– Dave Levitan"
+"15Was 2014 “the planet’s warmest year on record,” as President Obama has said? This FlackCheck video uses an April 20 report from our SciCheck feature to examine that claim."
+"1.6KThe Republican presidential field has three new contenders. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson all announced their intention to seek the Republic nomination.
+We present here some of the past claims from each candidate that we have reviewed on our site.
+Mike Huckabee
+Huckabee plans to announce his candidacy in a speech on May 5 in Hope, Arkansas. The former governor, who unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination in 2008, is the only one of the three candidates who has run for national office before. As such, our file on him is the most substantial.
+
+In a Feb. 9 appearance on Fox News, Huckabee said President Obama went back a thousand years to “somehow blame Christians for the burning of a Jordanian pilot, for the cutting off of the heads of children who are Christians.” Obama did not “blame Christians” for either atrocity. Obama’s National Prayer Breakfast speech denounced terrorist acts by the Islamic State and spoke of humanity’s struggle to reconcile the good and evil that has been done in the name of religion, including Christianity. Obama said this perversion of religion is “not unique to … one religion.”
+In January, Huckabee dismissed the potential impact of climate change, joking that it threatens to give Americans “a sunburn.” But his joke was both a drastic understatement of global warming’s potential impacts and simply wrong. Sunburn is related to increased sun exposure, rather than to warming temperatures. Huckabee’s comment also ignored the well-documented threats posed by climate change.
+In 2010, Huckabee denied ever supporting a mandatory cap-and-trade system to reduce carbon emissions, but there is ample evidence that he supported mandatory cap-and-trade bills that were before Congress in 2007 and 2008.
+During his 2008 presidential bid, Huckabee ran a TV ad that claimed he “brought Arkansas’ crime rate down,” and that he “cut taxes over 90 times as governor.” In fact, the violent crime rate was higher at the end of his tenure than it was the year he took office. And the tax cuts he claims credit for were minor compared with the large increases he approved. The total net tax increase under Huckabee was an estimated $505.1 million.
+
+Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson
+Fiorina and Carson officially declared their candidacies on May 4.
+Both are new to the presidential stage, so our files on the two are relatively thin. Though Carson has never before run for office, Fiorina was the 2010 Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in California, losing to incumbent Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer.
+
+During her 2010 Senate campaign, Fiorina exaggerated by claiming that President Obama “defunded” border protection. Obama asked for a little more than $9.8 billion in discretionary spending for customs and border protection in his proposed budget for the 2011 fiscal year — down about 3 percent from the roughly $10.1 billion he requested for customs and border protection for the 2010 fiscal year.
+In a 2010 campaign ad, Fiorina attacked her Democratic opponent for claiming climate change is an important national security issue. “Terrorism kills,” Fiorina says. “And Barbara Boxer’s worried about the weather.” As we wrote then, and have written several times since then, climate change poses well-documented national security threats.
+In March, Carson claimed that being gay is “absolutely” a choice, and as proof he said “a lot of people” go into prison and change their sexual orientation while incarcerated. There is no evidence to support these claims. Carson apologized for his remarks, but in doing so made another error by claiming that “we do know, however, that we are always born male and female.” That’s not entirely accurate. Disorders of sex development, also known as intersex disorders, occur in about one in 4,500 births and have raised questions about the male-female gender dichotomy.
+
+Our full files for Huckabee, Fiorina, and Carson are all available. As the presidential field continues to grow larger, we will keep monitoring statements made by these and all other potential 2016 candidates.
+— Alexander Nacht, with Eugene Kiely"
+"1.2KRep. Lamar Smith made several incorrect claims in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece regarding connections between climate change and severe weather.
+
+Smith wrote that a connection between worsening storms and climate change has been “widely debunked,” and that the United Nations doesn’t believe that warming is related to “more severe weather disasters.” Both claims are incorrect. There is some evidence linking climate change to worsening hurricanes, droughts and other disasters.
+He mentioned an oft-repeated claim that there has been a “lack of global warming over the past 15 years.” Though the rate of warming has slowed, the world does indeed continue to warm, and cherry-picked data underlie the claims that warming has stopped. See update below.
+Smith quoted an InterAcademy Council report as saying the U.N.’s climate reports had “significant shortcomings in each major step” of the U.N.’s assessment process. That’s misleading. The report found that though there is certainly room for improvement, the U.N.’s process has been “successful overall.”
+
+Climate and Weather Extremes
+In an op-ed titled “The Climate-Change Religion,” Smith, a Republican from Texas and chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, criticized the Obama administration’s recent focus on combating climate change, writing that “the worsening-storms scenario has been widely debunked.” Smith mentioned this issue several times, including in this paragraph:
+Smith, April 23: The White House’s Climate Assessment implies that extreme weather is getting worse due to human-caused climate change. The president regularly makes this unsubstantiated claim – most recently in his Earth Day proclamation, citing “more severe weather disasters.”
+The relationship between increasing severe weather events and climate change is more complicated than Smith reports. We asked Smith’s office for clarification, and a spokesman, Zachary Kurz, sent us a number of links to and quotes from various documents from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations body that releases periodic reports on the entirety of climate change science. The citations Kurz sent were generally cherry-picked lines from very long and complicated reports. His list ignored other lines from the same reports, as well as evidence published elsewhere.
+There is, in fact, some evidence that climate change is linked to more severe hurricanes, droughts and other weather disasters.
+First, the “worsening-storms scenario” has not in fact been debunked. Kurz pointed us to the IPCC’s 5th Assessment Report and noted that hurricane frequency and intensity has shown no trend over time. This is misleading.
+The IPCC did find that there is “low confidence” regarding “increases in tropical cyclone activity” over the past 100 years, but evidence is stronger regarding increases in the strongest storms in certain regions. According to the same chapter of the IPCC report, there is evidence for a “virtually certain” — which means between 99 percent and 100 percent probability — “increase in the frequency and intensity of the strongest tropical cyclones since the 1970s” in the North Atlantic basin.
+This is an important point in climate science: The changes due to warming are and will continue to be varied across different parts of the world. For example, as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has described, the Arctic is warming at twice the rate of other parts of the world. Just because the global trend in tropical cyclones is generally flat, that does not mean that there can’t be “worsening storms” in certain specific areas.
+Smith is correct that the White House’s Climate Assessment “implies that extreme weather is getting worse due to human-caused climate change.” As the assessment notes, “There has been a substantial increase in most measures of Atlantic hurricane activity since the early 1980s, the period during which high-quality satellite data are available. … These include measures of intensity, frequency, and duration as well as the number of strongest (Category 4 and 5) storms.”
+Smith went too far when he called the White House assessment of human-caused extreme weather “unsubstantiated.” It’s true that some studies have found that natural variability in the climate system may be responsible, but others have indeed found that anthropogenic — human-caused — warming is at root. This view was endorsed in a 2014 summary published jointly by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and its British equivalent, the Royal Society:
+NAS & Royal Society, February 2014: Earth’s lower atmosphere is becoming warmer and moister as a result of human-emitted greenhouse gases. This gives the potential for more energy for storms and certain severe weather events. Consistent with theoretical expectations, heavy rainfall and snowfall events (which increase the risk of flooding) and heatwaves are generally becoming more frequent. Trends in extreme rainfall vary from region to region: the most pronounced changes are evident in North America and parts of Europe, especially in winter.
+That report agrees that the science on hurricanes in general is not settled, but that hurricanes are likely to become larger and more powerful as the world warms.
+Looking ahead, evidence supports the president’s concern about increasing storm severity. According to NOAA, human-caused global warming likely will make hurricanes more intense by between 2 percent and 11 percent by the end of this century; there are also “better than even odds” that there will be an increase in “the numbers of very intense hurricanes in some basins.” A study published in the journal Science in 2010 projects “nearly a doubling” of category 4 and 5 hurricanes by 2100, though an overall decrease in the frequency of all tropical cyclones.
+For other types of extreme weather events, there is also some degree of support for the idea that climate change is making things worse. For example, the IPCC report says that “there is medium confidence that some regions of the world have experienced more intense and longer droughts” — this is true in areas like Europe and West Africa, though not true in parts of North America and Australia. A 2013 Nature Climate Change paper, written by experts with the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science in Zurich, found that “severe and widespread droughts” are likely over the next 30 years to 90 years in many parts of the world.
+According to the IPCC, there is also “medium confidence” that human influence has caused increases in extreme precipitation events, and “[t]here are likely [66 percent to 100 percent] more land regions where the number of heavy precipitation events has increased than where it has decreased.” A study published on April 27 in Nature Climate Change attributed 18 percent of current “moderate precipitation extremes” and 75 percent of “moderate hot extremes” to human-caused warming, and warned that the contribution to these severe events will increase dramatically as the world continues to warm.
+Extreme Events or Economic Losses?
+Smith also mischaracterized a United Nations report. In his op-ed, he wrote that “[e]ven the UN doesn’t agree” with this statement from Obama’s Earth Day proclamation: “The costs of more severe weather disasters can be measured in lost lives and livelihoods and in billions of dollars of emergency services, and the costs will only increase with time.”
+Smith cited the IPCC’s 2012 Special Report on Extreme Events, claiming that it found “high agreement” that “long-term trends in weather disasters are not attributable to human-caused climate change.” But that’s not the case.
+Kurz told us that Smith was actually basing this claim on a statement in the IPCC report regarding not weather disasters themselves but rather “long-term trends in normalized losses” resulting from those disasters. There’s a big difference. The report actually does say that human-caused warming has led to changes in some examples of extreme weather. The IPCC says, “There is evidence that some extremes have changed as a result of anthropogenic influences.”
+The IPCC’s extreme events report did note that studies are split on whether one can attribute increasing monetary losses from weather disasters to climate change, or solely to socioeconomic changes. (A hurricane that hit a major city in 2015 will cause far greater economic losses than one that hit in 1915 — there are more buildings to fall down, more people to be injured and so on.) That does not mean that “even the UN doesn’t agree” with Obama’s proclamation, as Smith claimed. In fact, the IPCC’s report concludes on this issue: “[M]any studies underline that both factors need to be taken into account, as the factors do in fact amplify each other, and therefore need to be studied jointly when expected losses from climate change are concerned.”
+The 15-Year Pause, Redux
+Smith also wrote that “[c]limate alarmists have failed to explain the lack of global warming over the past 15 years.” This is misleading for two reasons: Though the rate of warming has slowed, there has indeed been warming in that period, and climate “alarmists” – scientists, actually – have indeed managed to explain that slowdown.
+As we have written before, claims regarding a lack of warming over the past 15 to 17 years often rely on the use of 1998 as a starting point. That year was particularly warm, and thus comparing it with more recent years will yield little or no warming. Choosing another year surrounding 1998, however, would show significant warming – both methods are examples of cherry-picking, though, and the long-term trends tell us more about what is happening to the climate.
+Kurz quoted the IPCC’s 5th Assessment report, which refers to “the recent hiatus in global mean surface temperature rise.” But as that report explains in detail, the “hiatus” does not mean warming has stopped. For example, it acknowledges that the rate of warming from 1998 to 2012 — 0.05 degrees Celsius per decade — was smaller than the trend since 1951 (0.12 degrees C per decade). However, “[t]rends for short periods are uncertain and very sensitive to the start and end years. For example, trends for 15-year periods starting in 1995, 1996, and 1997″ are 0.13, 0.14 and 0.07 degrees C per decade. In other words, one can make the hiatus nearly disappear, in relation to the longer-term trend, just by shifting by one or two years.
+Furthermore, even though there has been a slowdown in warming — not a pause in total, but a decrease in the rate at which the Earth is warming up — scientists have offered explanations for it. For example, a paper published in Science in February of this year found that the slowdown was caused by ocean cycles in the Atlantic and Pacific (known as the multidecadal oscillations) — and that this trend “will likely reverse” and add significantly to warming in the coming decades.
+Though again, single data points in either direction are less important than the trend, 2014 was likely the warmest year since record-keeping began, and January to March of this year was likely the warmest such period on record as well.
+Update, June 5: Though the IPCC concluded in 2012 that a “hiatus” in warming occurred from around 1998 through recent years, a new report published in the journal Science by National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration scientists has called that conclusion “no longer valid.”
+The researchers updated temperature data sets to better reflect the readings taken from ships and floating buoys, as well as from land-based temperature stations. They found that the warming trend from 2000 to 2014 was 0.116 degrees C per decade – a number that is “virtually indistinguishable” from the earlier and longer period from 1950 through 1999 (0.113 degrees C per decade). Even if they shifted the more recent trend to 1998 through 2014, which features a very warm starting year, the trend was similar — 0.106 degrees C per decade.
+In other words, as the study’s lead author told the Associated Press, “the reality is that there is no hiatus.” The world has continued to warm in recent years, at about the same rate as in decades prior.
+Spinning a Critique of the IPCC
+Smith also engaged in a bit of spin in his op-ed in his citation of the InterAcademy Council. This is a group made up of major science academies from around the globe — including the U.S. National Academy of Sciences — that provides advice to international bodies such as the United Nations. Smith mentioned the council’s review of the IPCC’s 2008 Fourth Assessment Report:
+Smith, April 23: The InterAcademy Council, a multinational scientific organization, reviewed the report in 2010 and identified “significant shortcomings in each major step of [the U.N.] assessment process.”
+Though Smith did quote the council correctly, he took those words out of context. Here is the full quote from the InterAcademy Council’s report, in a chapter titled “Evaluation of IPCC’s assessment process:”
+InterAcademy Council, 2010: This chapter identifies and recommends ways to address the most significant shortcomings in each major step of IPCC’s assessment process, based on the Committee’s analysis of current IPCC practices, of the literature on assessments, and community input.
+The drastically negative tone of Smith’s version is not present in the actual document. Here is how that report’s executive summary characterized its primary findings: “The Committee found that the IPCC assessment process has been successful overall.”
+To be clear, the report did find problems with IPCC’s methods and structure, and added that changing circumstances underlying both climate science and the political atmosphere surrounding this issue are important. “The IPCC must continue to adapt to these changing conditions in order to continue serving society well in the future,” the report’s authors wrote.
+Though the council clearly believes there are issues to be fixed with IPCC, Smith’s version suggests an unequivocal condemnation — a twisting of a more nuanced message.
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation.
+– Dave Levitan"
+"2.2KPresident Barack Obama says that 2014 was “the planet’s warmest year on record.” But that’s not entirely accurate.
+Several major climate monitoring organizations have found that 2014 is more likely than any other year to have been the warmest. But statistical uncertainties inherent to calculating global temperatures make the president’s definitive claim problematic.
+Most recently, Obama remarked on the 2014 temperature data in his April 18 weekly address to the nation, when he said “2014 was the planet’s warmest year on record.”
+
+This sounds like an undisputed fact, but it is not. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA and the Japan Meteorological Agency all did report that 2014 was the warmest year since record-keeping began in the late 1800s, but there are uncertainties to that finding.
+For example, NOAA reported that the global average temperature for 2014 was 0.69 degrees Celsius (1.24 degrees F) above the 20th century average. This departure from the average is known as the temperature anomaly. The 2014 temperature anomaly (0.69 degrees C) ranks first among all years dating back to 1880. However, that finding has a margin of error of 0.09 degrees C — which means there is a 95 percent chance that 2014’s temperature anomaly falls between 0.60 degrees C and 0.78 degrees C.
+The anomaly for both 2005 and 2010 was 0.62 degrees C. This falls inside the 0.60 to 0.78 range for 2014’s 95 percent margin of error, which means there is a chance that other years were warmer than 2014. The United Kingdom’s Met Office, which studies climate as well, found that the uncertainties did not allow 2014 to take the definitive top spot in the rankings. It said 2014 was statistically tied with 2010.
+The reason for this range of uncertainty lies in the methods used to determine a global average temperature. As NOAA explains:
+NOAA: Evaluating the temperature of the entire planet has an inherent level of uncertainty. The reported global value is not an exact measurement; instead it is the central value within some range of possible values. The size of this range depends on the method used to evaluate the global temperature anomaly, the number and placement of the stations used in the analysis, and so on.
+These uncertainties are reflected in the NOAA/NASA presentation “Annual Global Analysis for 2014.” The agencies prepared the following chart, which shows the likelihood of certain years being the warmest since record-keeping began:
+
+As the chart shows, NOAA found that the likelihood of 2014 being the warmest year was approximately 48 percent. NOAA considers anything between 33.3 percent and 50 percent to be “more unlikely than likely,” so 2014 was more unlikely than likely to be the warmest year on record. Between 50 percent and 66.7 percent would be deemed “more likely than not,” and 66.7 percent to 90 percent would achieve “likely” status.
+Even with the “more unlikely than likely” designation, that 48 percent number means that 2014 was far more likely — more than 2.5 times as likely — than 2010 to be the warmest year ever recorded. NASA is slightly less confident, but 2014 still ranks as more likely than any other year to have had the highest global average temperature. While NOAA can only say that 2014 has a 48 percent chance of being the warmest recorded, it has far more confidence that 2014 was one of the 10 hottest on record — a 99.2 percent level of confidence, to be exact, which qualifies as “almost certain.”
+Obama would be accurate if he were to say that 2014 is “probably” or “most likely” the warmest year on record. A NOAA climate scientist, Deke Arndt, told Andrew Revkin of the New York Times in January that 2014 is “easily the most likely warmest year on record.”
+Arndt, Jan. 21: This may seem pedantic, but it’s an important point: there is a warmest year on record. One of the 135 years in that history is the warmest. 2014 is clearly, and by a very large margin, the most likely warmest year. Not only is its central estimate relatively distant from (warmer than) the prior record, but even accounting for known uncertainties, and their known shapes, it still emerges as easily the most likely warmest year on record.
+Though the question of “warmest on record” is hotly debated, the long-term trend is more important to understanding the climate than the temperature of any given year — another point Obama made in his weekly address.
+Obama, April 18: Fourteen of the 15 hottest years on record have all fallen in the first 15 years of this century.
+That long-term data is unequivocal, and shows a significant warming trend, as NOAA’s chart below shows.
+
+Though the president is on the right track regarding 2014’s temperatures, the addition of “most likely” to this talking point would put him on stronger ground.
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation.
+– Dave Levitan"
+"13.3KSen. Ted Cruz cited a 1975 Newsweek article on “global cooling” to question the evidence of global warming, and in the process made several incorrect and unsubstantiated claims.
+
+The Newsweek story, which did warn of a “cooling world,” has been criticized and largely debunked — by its own author. Cruz’s claim that “advocates of global cooling suddenly shifted to global warming” ignores the fact that there was no scientific consensus in the 1970s about global cooling.
+Cruz said that “satellite data demonstrate that there has been no significant warming whatsoever for 17 years.” This is misleading. Though the trend line in recent years has been relatively flat, Cruz cherry-picks a particularly warm year (1998) to deny the clear longer term warming trend. There have now been 360 consecutive months when the global temperature was above the 20th century average.
+Cruz compared “global warming alarmists” to “flat-Earthers” and himself to Galileo, saying “this heretic named Galileo was branded a denier” for insisting the Earth was round. This is wrong. Galileo’s troubles with the church stemmed from his belief that the Earth orbits the Sun. The fact that the planet is round was accepted before Galileo was born.
+
+In an interview with the Texas Tribune (at the 14:24 mark), Cruz, who recently announced his candidacy for president, told reporter Jay Root that the 1975 global cooling story in Newsweek is evidence that “alarmists” simply want the government to control the energy sector.
+Cruz, March 24: I read this morning a Newsweek article from the 1970s talking about global cooling. And it said the science is clear, it is overwhelming, we are in a major cooling period and it’s going to cause enormous problems worldwide. … Now, the data proved to be not backing up that theory. So then all the advocates of global cooling suddenly shifted to global warming.
+The article in question was a single-page story published on April 28, 1975, by journalist Peter Gwynne. It did indeed paint an ominous picture of a cooling world, with particular concern regarding reductions to crop yields with cooler temperatures. The article, however, was criticized decades later, in May 2014, by its author.
+“Here I must admit mea culpa,” Gwynne wrote last year for Inside Science. “In retrospect, I was over-enthusiastic in parts of my Newsweek article.” He specifically cited both the scare over food production declines “that had scant research to back it,” and a connection between cooling and increases in tornado frequency that also was unsupported by evidence.
+His primary point was simply that science progresses as time passes; though there were some in 1975 who believed cooling temperatures were on the horizon, climate science has improved dramatically since then. “Those that reject climate science ignore the fact that, like other fields, climatology has evolved since 1975,” Gwynne wrote. “The certainty that our atmosphere is indeed warming stems from a series of rigorous observations and theoretical concepts that fit into computer models and an overall framework outlining the nature of Earth’s climate.”
+According to a 2010 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “97-98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field” support the primary findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: “that it is ‘very likely’ that anthropogenic [human-caused] greenhouse gases have been responsible for ‘most’ of the ‘unequivocal’ warming of the Earth’s average global temperature.”
+In the 1970s, though, scientists had not yet determined the relative impacts of two factors on climate: greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, and aerosols, such as those that are spewed out by volcanic eruptions and burning of forests. Some papers in the early part of the decade predicted that increasing aerosol emissions could lower temperatures enough to trigger an ice age, but these conclusions were disputed. By the late 1970s, research had established that the warming associated with greenhouse gases was dominant over the cooling effect of aerosols.
+And in fact, reviews of research from that era have shown that even around the time of Newsweek’s 1975 article, a warming climate was of more concern than a cooling one. A study published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society by climate scientists and a journalist in 2008 said there was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the world was cooling.
+Bulletin of the AMS, September 2008: An enduring popular myth suggests that in the 1970s the climate science community was predicting “global cooling” and an “imminent” ice age, an observation frequently used by those who would undermine what climate scientists say today about the prospect of global warming. A review of the literature suggests that, on the contrary, greenhouse warming even then dominated scientists’ thinking as being one of the most important forces shaping Earth’s climate on human time scales.
+Peterson et al, Bulletin of the AMS, 2008
+The survey of the peer-reviewed literature between 1965 and 1979 found only seven papers “indicating” global cooling compared with 44 papers indicating warming (see chart).
+The researchers pointed to a 1979 report from the National Research Council, part of the National Academies, that warned about the dangers of continuing to emit carbon dioxide by burning fossil fuels and associated warming. “A wait-and-see policy may mean waiting until it is too late,” the report noted. The Bulletin of the AMS paper concluded: “Clearly, if a national report in the 1970s advocates urgent action to address global warming, then the scientific consensus of the 1970s was not global cooling.”
+The 17-Year Cherry-Pick
+Cruz also said there has been “no significant warming” in the last 17 years, repeating a claim often made by those who dispute evidence of climate change:
+Cruz, March 24: The satellite data demonstrate that there has been no significant warming whatsoever for 17 years.  Now that’s a real problem for the global warming alarmists because all of the computer models on which this whole issue is based predicted significant warming, and yet the satellite data show it ain’t happening.
+Cruz cherry-picks data to arrive at a spurious conclusion.
+Seventeen years ago was 1998, one of the hottest years since recording began. That year was unusually warm thanks in part to a very strong El Niño event, an ocean-atmospheric phenomenon marked by warm ocean surface temperatures in the Pacific. That year, the average global temperature was 0.62 degrees Celsius above the 20th century average, according to NASA (the agency that produces that “satellite data” Cruz mentioned). In 2014, considered by several research organizations including NOAA and NASA as the most likely candidate for warmest on record, the temperature was 0.68 degrees above average, suggesting very little warming between those two data points.
+It would be just as easy, however, to pick out much cooler years as a starting point to show a sharp increase in temperatures. Starting one year earlier or later — at 1997 (0.46 degrees above the 20th century average) or 1999 (0.41 degrees) — would yield between one-fifth and one-quarter of a degree of warming. This would represent as much as 31 percent of all warming the world has seen since 1880, when record keeping began.
+Choosing 1997 or 1999 as a starting point, however, would be just as misleading as choosing 1998.
+Climate researchers look to longer term trends to determine warming, as there is too much natural variability within any given year. And that long-term trend is unequivocal (see NASA chart below): The world has now gone 30 consecutive years — 360 straight months — where every month has been above the 20th century average, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Though it may be difficult for many who live in the northeastern U.S. to believe, this winter (December – February) was globally the warmest ever recorded. Nine of the 10 hottest years on record have occurred since 2000, with 1998 the only exception.
+Cruz said “[i]f you look at global warming alarmists, they don’t like to look at the actual facts and the data.” The facts and data actually support the scientific consensus on global warming.
+Global temperature trend, 1880-2014, NASA
+Update, June 5: Though the IPCC concluded in 2012 that a “hiatus” in warming occurred from around 1998 through recent years, a new report published in the journal Science by National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration scientists has called that conclusion “no longer valid.”
+The researchers updated temperature data sets to better reflect the readings taken from ships and floating buoys, as well as from land-based temperature stations. They found that the warming trend from 2000 to 2014 was 0.116 degrees C per decade – a number that is “virtually indistinguishable” from the earlier and longer period from 1950 through 1999 (0.113 degrees C per decade). Even if they shifted the more recent trend to 1998 through 2014, which features a very warm starting year, the trend was similar — 0.106 degrees C per decade.
+In other words, as the study’s lead author told the Associated Press, “the reality is that there is no hiatus.” The world has continued to warm in recent years, at about the same rate as in decades prior.
+Galileo and Flat-Earthers
+Cruz also compared “global warming alarmists” to “flat-Earthers,” and mistakenly cited the Renaissance-era scientist Galileo in connection to that issue:
+Cruz, March 24: On the global warming alarmists, anyone who actually points to the evidence that disproves their apocalyptical [sic] claims, they don’t engage in reasoned debate. What do they do? They scream, “You’re a denier.” They brand you a heretic. You know, it is, today the global warming alarmists are the equivalent of the flat-Earthers. You know, it used to be, it is accepted scientific wisdom the Earth is flat, and this heretic named Galileo was branded a denier.
+Galileo’s struggle against the Catholic Church had nothing to do with debate over the shape of the planet. In fact, he was persecuted for supporting the idea of a Copernican system, which posited that the sun was the center of the universe and the Earth revolved around it. At the time of this struggle with the church, in the early 17th century, it had long been accepted that the planet is in fact round. Explorer Ferdinand Magellan’s crew completed the first circumnavigation of the globe in 1522 — 42 years before Galileo was born.
+Whether he meant flat-Earthers or geocentrists, Cruz is wrong to compare those he casts as “global warming alarmists” to those who denied science. Galileo used the most modern of scientific technology and techniques, which he himself helped develop, assessed the available evidence, and came to conclusions about the world. Modern science, including climate science, is engaged in exactly that process today.
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation.
+– Dave Levitan"
+"3.5KDuring his critique of NASA’s spending on earth and atmospheric sciences at a recent committee hearing, Sen. Ted Cruz made some misleading claims regarding the agency’s budgets and the science that it conducts.
+
+Cruz said there has been a “disproportionate increase” since 2009 in funding of earth sciences. There has been an increase — and it is larger than some other NASA areas — but spending on earth sciences is lower now as a percentage of NASA’s budget than it was in fiscal 2000. And the increase reflects an effort to restore funding that had been cut.
+Cruz also suggested that the “core mission” of NASA does not include earth sciences. In fact, studying the Earth and atmosphere has been central to NASA’s mission since its creation in 1958.
+In criticizing NASA’s spending on earth sciences, Cruz also said the agency needs to “get back to the hard sciences” — meaning space exploration and not earth and atmospheric research. The term “hard sciences” refers to fields including physics and chemistry, which are central to the research being done as part of NASA’s earth science programs.
+
+Budget Priorities
+Cruz, a potential 2016 presidential candidate who chairs the Senate Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness, held a March 12 hearing on the fiscal year 2016 budget request for NASA. During the hearing, he said that the agency spends too much money and effort on earth sciences.
+Cruz, March 12: As we begin the process of putting together a roadmap for the future of NASA, there is one vital question that this committee should examine: Should NASA focus primarily inwards, or outwards beyond lower Earth orbit. Since the end of the last administration we have seen a disproportionate increase in the amount of federal funds that have been allocated to the earth science program at the expense of and in comparison to exploration and space operations, planetary science, heliophysics and astrophysics, which I believe are all rooted in exploration and should be central to the core mission of NASA. … I am concerned that NASA in the current environment has lost its full focus on that core mission.
+Cruz is entitled to his opinion, but his version of NASA’s recent budget history fails to tell the whole story. It ignores deep budget cuts that were made in NASA’s earth sciences funding under the Bush administration that caused concern within the scientific community and that prompted specific recommendations to restore that funding.
+To illustrate his point on inward versus outward focus, Cruz showed a chart comparing the agency’s 2009 budget with the president’s proposal for fiscal year 2016. His chart correctly showed that the earth sciences budget would increase by 41 percent during that seven-year time span, from $1.38 billion to a requested $1.95 billion. Using inflation-adjusted dollars, the increase is 30 percent.
+Though Cruz is correct that spending on earth sciences has increased during the Obama administration, his statement that it is a “disproportionate increase” does not fully reflect NASA’s budget history. In fact, NASA’s spending on earth sciences in the past has been higher as a percentage of the total budget.
+In 2000, for example, the enacted budget for earth sciences was $1.69 billion, which is equal to $2.29 billion in today’s dollars when adjusted for inflation — more than the 2016 request. In 2000, that amount represented about 12.4 percent of the total enacted NASA budget; in the 2016 request, that proportion is 10.5 percent.
+Cruz’s comments ignore a debate over earth sciences funding dating back to the early days of the George W. Bush administration. Earth sciences funding was cut approximately 37 percent from fiscal year 2001 through fiscal year 2006, as documented in a 2008 report by the NASA Office of Inspector General. A 2005 report from the National Research Council, which is part of the U.S. National Academies, criticized those cuts. “Today the nation’s Earth observation program is at risk,” wrote the authors, which included experts from many universities around the country. “Opportunities to discover new knowledge about Earth are diminished as mission after mission is canceled, descoped, or delayed because of budget cutbacks, which appear to be largely the result of new obligations to support flight programs that are part of the Administration’s vision for space exploration.”
+In 2007, the National Research Council of the National Academies said there was an urgent need to increase funding in order for the agency to “restore its leadership in Earth science and applications.” The increase in recent years reflects an effort to follow that recommendation.
+NASA’s Decadal Survey, a periodic effort by scientists to prioritize research for the next 10 years, found in 2007 that “[t]he U.S. government … should renew its investment in Earth-observing systems and restore its leadership in Earth science and applications.”
+In a 2012 assessment of NASA’s earth science division, a NASA advisory committee chaired by Dennis Hartmann, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington, concluded that earth sciences funding should be restored to the level of $2 billion in fiscal 2006 dollars. Despite the increases in recent years, NASA remains more than $300 million short of that goal.
+Raymond Schmitt, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution specializing in oceanography, sits on NASA’s Earth Science Subcommittee, an advisory panel. He told us that the hope in 2011 was that NASA’s earth sciences budget would reach about $2.3 billion by 2015. “What I have seen of the earth science budget strikes me with how depressingly flat it is,” he said, adding that the “notional,” or projected requests, for years beyond 2016 rise only slightly, and not at all when inflation is factored in.
+Schmitt said that in his opinion, the budget should be at $2.3 billion for earth sciences. That’s his opinion and he’s entitled to it, just as Cruz is entitled to his. But Cruz isn’t telling the whole story when he says there has been a “disproportionate increase” in the earth science programs since 2009.
+Mission to Earth
+Cruz also said that “[i]n my judgment, this does not represent a fair or appropriate allocation of resources, that it is shifting resources away from the core function of NASA to other functions.”
+Again, Cruz is entitled to his opinion on how NASA’s money should be spent, but in expressing his opinion he leaves a false impression that earth and atmospheric science is not a core function. We reviewed documents from the early days of NASA, and found that a focus on earth and atmospheric science is in fact fundamental to NASA’s mission.
+The National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, which created NASA, listed its first objective as: “The expansion of human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere and space.” Under “functions of the administration,” the original law says NASA’s mission should include monitoring what goes on below as well as above the Earth. The law directs NASA to “[a]rrange for participation by the scientific community in planning scientific measurements and observations to be made through use of aeronautical and space vehicles, and conduct or arrange for the conduct of such measurements and observations.” This language is preserved in the 2010 NASA reauthorization act, which passed Congress and was signed into law. The 2014 version passed the House but not the Senate.
+The 2007 Decadal Survey’s recommendation to recommit to earth sciences research is consistent with longstanding agency goals. Though exact dollar amounts are difficult to compare because of differences in categorization, even earlier years’ budgets available on the NASA HQ Library illustrate that NASA always had a strong focus toward Earth as well as away from it.
+In the FY 1965 budget estimate, a summary of the geophysics and astronomy program outlined the importance of these areas of research (on page RD 17):
+NASA, 1964: The fundamental objective of the Geophysics and Astronomy Program is to increase our knowledge and understanding of the space environment of the Earth, the Sun and its relationships to the Earth, the geodetic properties of the Earth, and the fundamental physical nature of the Universe.
+Knowledge of these areas is basic, not only to our understanding of the problems of survival and navigation in space, but also to the improvement of our ability to make technological advances in other fields. The understanding of the Earth’s atmosphere is important for advancement of weather forecasting, for solution of spacecraft reentry problems and for study of the atmospheres of other planets.
+Moving ahead a decade, the 1975 budget estimate put the study of Earth as the first of NASA’s achievements. NASA’s programs, it says, “extend man’s knowledge of the earth, its environment, the solar system, and the universe.” (See page AS 1.) The overall research and development program was intended to use “ground, air, and space systems to demonstrate space techniques to benefit mankind in such areas as weather and climate, pollution monitoring, earth resources survey, earth and ocean physics, communications, and space processing.” (See page SUM 1.)
+The same was true in 1990. The 1990 budget estimate’s first stated goal for NASA’s research program is to “[a]dvance our scientific knowledge of Earth and of the forces and systems that shape our planet.” (See page AS 3.)
+There appears to have been no point in NASA’s history when better understanding of the Earth was not considered a central project of the agency.
+Space Exploration and Flooded Launch Sites
+The decrease in funding for exploration and space operations — which Cruz put at 7.6 percent since 2009 — is actually larger than the Texas senator stated. It dropped from $9.27 billion to a requested $8.51 billion, an 8.2 percent decrease. In inflation-adjusted dollars, the decrease is 15.7 percent.
+But to claim that this shows a decreasing focus on space exploration is misleading. In 2009, NASA still maintained the space shuttle program, at a cost of $2.98 billion. That has been entirely wiped from the books now with the official retirement of that program in 2012, accounting for a significant change to the overall budget picture. That line item has been replaced with others, however, representing new efforts to continue outward space exploration.
+The $2.86 billion requested for “exploration systems development,” for example, provides funding for the Space Launch System rocket program and Orion, along with associated programs. Together, these projects will eventually combine to hopefully take humans all the way to Mars, a goal Cruz has repeatedly highlighted. There is also more than a billion dollars for contracts with private space exploration companies, such as SpaceX, another step forward that Cruz has touted in the past, and an expenditure that did not exist in 2009.
+Furthermore, in his response to a question from Cruz, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said the decrease in budget for exploration and space operations represents an effort to reduce the costs of sending humans into space. “That decrease is actually a little bit of what we were trying to do, get the cost of flying humans into space down,” he said. “That’s what’s driving the market, is reducing launch costs.”
+Cruz’s objection to focusing inward toward Earth is in line with his stance on global warming — he incorrectly claims it is not supported by evidence. NASA is a central figure in helping to measure and understand the ongoing changes to climate. Along with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA found that 2014 was likely the warmest year since recording began in 1880, and that nine of the 10 warmest years (the exception being 1998) have occurred this century.
+In one of his responses, Bolden referenced NASA’s climate change research and its importance with regard to space exploration:
+Bolden, March 12: We can’t go anywhere if the Kennedy Space Center goes under water and we don’t know it. That’s understanding our environment. … It is absolutely critical that we understand Earth’s environment, because this is the only place that we have to live.
+The Kennedy Space Center is in Cape Canaveral, on the coast of Florida. In a 2014 paper published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, NASA and Columbia University researchers analyzed the climate-related resilience of NASA facilities. They found that the sea at Kennedy Space Center has risen between 1913 and 2008 at a pace of about 22.6 millimeters per decade. A rise in sea level is a global trend that is almost certainly accelerating, according to recent research published in Nature.
+The coastal flood events at Kennedy that now happen on average once every 10 years will occur between two and three times more frequently by 2050, according to the Bulletin of the AMS paper. According to the U.S. National Climate Assessment, sea level rise could approach four feet by 2100, which could prove to be a major issue for Kennedy, a facility that “would cost more to replace than at any other NASA site.”
+Hard Sciences
+Climate science is only one focus of the earth sciences program at NASA. The agency studies the atmosphere, oceans, ice, ecosystems and how all of these interact. NASA’s satellites advance understanding of how storms form and how land use is changing around the world, and they help predict food shortages in developing countries.
+By any possible definition, these types of programs fall under the category of “hard sciences.” Yet, Cruz suggested they are not when he criticized NASA for increasing spending on earth science programs by 41 percent since 2009.
+Cruz, March 12: That in my view is disproportionate, and it is not consistent with the reason so many talented young scientists have joined NASA. And so it’s my hope that this committee will work in a bipartisan manner to help refocus those priorities where they should be, to get back to the hard sciences, to get back to space, to focus on what makes NASA special.
+According to a definition from Dictionary.com, “hard science” is “any of the natural or physical sciences, as chemistry, biology, physics, or astronomy, in which aspects of the universe are investigated by means of hypotheses and experiments” — central components and methods of NASA’s earth sciences program. The term “soft sciences” generally refers to social science, such as psychology or anthropology. Cruz’s office did not respond to requests for clarification regarding the senator’s reference to “hard sciences.”
+The day after the NASA budget hearing, Christine McEntee, the executive director and CEO of the American Geophysical Union, which represents more than 60,000 Earth and space scientists, sent Cruz a letter saying that earth sciences “constitute hard sciences.”
+AGU, March 12: Earth sciences are a fundamental part of science. They constitute hard sciences that help us understand the world we live in and provide a basis for knowledge and understanding of natural hazards, weather forecasting, air quality, and water availability, among other concerns.
+The letter cited NASA’s ability to help coordinate response to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, to track dangerous algal blooms, and to aid in flood prediction, earthquake response and storm tracking.
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation.
+— Dave Levitan"
+"295The head of the Environmental Protection Agency told Congress her agency’s proposed rules governing carbon dioxide emissions from power plants will not affect the reliability of electricity service. That’s debatable.
+Various analyses have arrived at differing conclusions on this issue, and some electricity grid operators say there is a potential for service disruption under the Clean Power Plan.
+The EPA unveiled the Clean Power Plan in June 2014, with hopes it will be implemented beginning in the summer of 2015. It is designed to cut carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector by 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. The agency says that this will improve public health while also significantly cutting the country’s contribution to global warming.
+In an exchange during the House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on the EPA budget (at the 1:33:11 mark), Rep. Bob Latta, a Republican from Ohio, asked EPA administrator Gina McCarthy whether states might be able to receive waivers or another exemption if reliability of electricity delivery is a concern. McCarthy responded:
+McCarthy, Feb. 25: EPA does not see the rule as it has currently been proposed to have an impact on reliability.
+Reliability refers to the electricity grid’s ability to avoid disruptions to electricity supply — in short, a reliable grid is one that doesn’t have a lot of power outages. This depends on a number of factors, and the concerns regarding reliability and the Clean Power Plan stem primarily from the fact that certain power plants will likely be forced to close earlier than otherwise planned.
+
+There is no one simple answer as to whether the Clean Power Plan will negatively impact reliability of electricity delivery, in part because the plan does not prescribe exactly how the cuts in emissions should be achieved. Each state can decide how to arrive at the goals, through energy efficiency improvements, cutting pollution from existing power generation facilities, and through installing new cleaner facilities including renewable energy as well as natural gas power plants.
+There is nothing in the plan specifically forbidding coal-fired power generation, but the EPA estimates that “[t]he use of coal by the power sector will decrease by roughly 30 to 32 percent by 2030.” Coal plants emit more carbon dioxide than natural gas plants, and other sources including hydroelectric, solar, wind and nuclear emit no carbon dioxide. In 2013, coal accounted for 39 percent of U.S. power production, followed by natural gas (27 percent) and nuclear power (19 percent).
+Because there are varying paths available to achieve the Clean Power Plan’s targets, the grid’s resulting reliability is hard to predict. An EPA spokeswoman pointed us toward several documents containing EPA analyses of reliability, all of which found little cause for concern. For example, EPA estimates a reduction in total “operational capacity” — how much electricity generation is available — of 3.5 percent in 2020, mostly due to coal plant retirements. The details and the amount of that reduction, EPA says, means the rule will “have little overall impact.”
+Still, several of the organizations responsible for moving electricity around the country and maintaining the grid (known as ISOs — independent system operators — and RTOs — regional transmission organizations) have expressed concerns. These groups are nonprofit organizations that do not take policy positions.
+For example, the Midcontinent ISO, which covers parts of 15 states from North Dakota down to Louisiana, released its preliminary findings on reliability in November 2014, and noted some “reliability concerns” regarding the timing of the Clean Power Plan rules. Because the rules would lead to retirement of power plants before otherwise planned, MISO’s CEO said that “[b]uilding new generation, natural gas infrastructure and transmission facilities necessary to support electric system reliability will take more time than the interim performance period allows.” If the rule goes into effect largely as proposed, states would be expected to start “to make meaningful progress toward reductions by 2020.”
+Similarly, in comments filed with the EPA, the New York ISO wrote that “the Clean Power Plan presents potentially serious reliability implications for New York.”
+The Southwest Power Pool, which covers Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and parts of several other states, has expressed similar concerns: “Unless the proposed CPP is modified, the SPP region faces serious, detrimental impacts on reliable operation of the bulk electric system — introducing the very real possibility of rolling blackouts or cascading outages that will have significant impacts on human health, public safety, and economic activity.”
+Again, this is due to the retirement of power generating facilities. SPP estimated that its “reserve margin,” essentially how much electricity is available to meet periods of high demand, would drop well below its required minimum of 13.6 percent down to 4.7 percent in 2020 and below zero in 2024. Though building new generation could change these numbers, SPP says there won’t be enough time to complete such construction.
+Some other ISOs and RTOs continue to study the issue but have not issued specific findings. PJM Interconnection, for example, which coordinates electricity in parts of 13 states and Washington D.C., told us in an email that a full analysis will be completed this spring.
+“Our preliminary review suggests that power plant retirements that would result from CPP likely would occur over time, potentially making the retirements more manageable … assuming that transmission upgrades are made in a timely manner,” said PJM’s Ray Dotter.
+A collective group of the grid operators called the ISO/RTO Council has suggested that the Clean Power Plan would benefit from a “reliability safety valve.” This would essentially build in reviews of grid reliability to the final rule, and allow for some “enforcement flexibility” to help lessen any damaging impacts.
+Outside of the grid operators, there are conflicting studies on how the Clean Power Plan and the related retirement of power plants might affect reliability. A report from the nonprofit North American Electric Reliability Corp. (which is overseen by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) from November 2014 expressed concern about the plan, noting that “Essential Reliability Services may be strained by the proposed CPP” and that more time for the plan’s implementation might be necessary in order to ensure grid reliability.
+Two studies funded by advocates for clean energy found otherwise. One was a report from the Analysis Group, an economic consulting firm: “These two responsibilities — assuring electric system reliability while taking the actions required under law to reduce CO2 emissions from existing power plants — are compatible, and need not be in tension with each other as long as parties act in timely ways.” This analysis was supported by the Energy Foundation, which works to promote energy efficiency and renewable energy.
+Another consulting firm, the Brattle Group, also found that “compliance with the CPP is unlikely to materially affect reliability.” This report was commissioned by the Advanced Energy Economy Institute, a nonprofit that promotes “advanced” energy and describes the proposed EPA rule as “an opportunity to be embraced.”
+The array of seemingly opposite conclusions has much to do with the fact that the Clean Power Plan is not yet in its final form, and that parties disagree about how quickly new generation facilities might be constructed. According to the Brattle Group report, North American Electric Reliability Corp. did not consider a wide variety of solutions to reliability concerns, including increasing uptake of energy storage technology and market incentives to improve performance. It is clear, though, that McCarthy’s statement is an oversimplification of a complicated topic.
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation.
+– Dave Levitan"
+"57FlackCheck.org, our sister website for political literacy, recaps the recent work of SciCheck, our new feature on false and misleading scientific claims that are made by partisans to influence public policy.
+This video looks at Sen. Rand Paul’s claim that “many” children have developed “profound mental disorders” after vaccinations, Rep. Gary Palmer’s assertion that temperature data used to measure global climate change have been “falsified,” and President Barack Obama’s claims about the Human Genome Project’s return on investment and the cost of sequencing a single person’s full genetic code.
+For more on these topics, see our full articles: “Paul Repeats Baseless Vaccine Claims,” Feb. 3; “Nothing False About Temperature Data,” Feb. 12; and “Obama Juices the Genome Numbers,” Jan. 30.
+SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation."
+"7.1KRep. Gary Palmer falsely claimed on a radio show that temperature data used to measure global climate change have been “falsified” and manipulated.
+Palmer, a Republican from Alabama, cited the so-called Climategate episode of five years ago, in which emails written by climate scientists purportedly showed evidence of data manipulation, and a more recent accusation of climate scientists tampering with data from temperature monitoring stations. The Climategate scandal has been subject to several separate investigations, all of which exonerated all scientists involved from any wrongdoing, and the latest data manipulation charges are a mischaracterization of standard and well-validated methods for adjusting temperature records to eliminate factors that could produce inaccurate readings.
+‘Manipulating Data’
+Radio host Matt Murphy in Birmingham, Alabama, asked for Palmer’s thoughts on the snowstorms in the Northeast and climate change:
+Palmer, Feb. 10: I think it might be a matter of the report that came out last week about the government manipulating data and misleading people a little bit. But two feet of snow ought to get their attention. … It’s not the first time. I mean, I wrote about this a couple of years ago, when it came out that the scientists at East Anglia University in England had done this, and that was the data that the United Nations report was based on. It was a huge scandal, there were emails going around where they were, the scientists were literally talking about how they were going to change the data. We are building an entire agenda on falsified data that will have an enormous impact on the economy.
+The “report” to which Palmer referred was actually a series of blog posts, written by climate change denier Paul Homewood, which were then highly publicized in two stories by Christopher Booker in the Daily Telegraph in London. Both writers focused on the adjustments made to temperature readings at certain monitoring stations around the world, and claimed that those adjustments throw the entire science of global warming into question. This is not at all the case, and those adjustments are a normal and important part of climate science.
+The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. agency responsible for monitoring national and global temperature trends, has addressed these types of adjustments several times before. NOAA addresses the subject in a Q&A on its website:
+Q: What are some of the temperature discrepancies you found in the climate record and how have you compensated for them?
+Over time, the thousands of weather stations around the world have undergone changes that often result in sudden or unrealistic discrepancies in observed temperatures requiring a correction. For the U.S.-based stations, we have access to detailed station history that helps us identify and correct discrepancies. Some of these differences have simple corrections.
+NOAA maintains about 1,500 monitoring stations, and accumulates data from more than a thousand other stations in countries around the world (many national and international organizations share this type of data freely). There are actually fewer monitoring stations today than there used to be; modern stations have better technology and are accessible in real time, unlike some older outposts no longer in use. The raw, unadjusted data from these stations is available from many sources, including the international collaboration known as the Global Historical Climatology Network and others.
+As the years go by, all those stations undergo various types of changes: This can include shifts in how monitoring is done, improvements in technology, or even just the addition or subtraction of nearby buildings.
+For example, a new building constructed next to a monitoring station could cast a shadow over a station, or change wind patterns, in such ways that could affect the readings. Also, the timing of temperature measurements has varied over time. And in the 1980s, most U.S. stations switched from liquid-in-glass to electronic resistance thermometers, which could both cool maximum temperature readings and warm minimum readings.
+Monitoring organizations like NOAA use data from other stations nearby to try and adjust for these types of issues, either raising or lowering the temperature readings for a given station. This is known as homogenization. The most significant adjustment around the world, according to NOAA, is actually for temperatures taken over the oceans, and that adjustment acts to lower rather than raise the global temperature trend.
+The homogenization methods used have been validated and peer-reviewed. For example, a 2012 paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research confirmed the effectiveness of the homogenization processes for NOAA’s network of stations, and even noted that “it is likely that maximum temperature trends have been underestimated.” In other words, there may have actually been more warming than NOAA has reported.
+Another paper, from 2010, looked into the siting of U.S. monitoring stations in particular, and again found no problem with the homogenization methods. “[T]he adjusted [U.S. Historical Climatology Network] temperatures are extremely well aligned with recent measurements. … In summary, we find no evidence that the [conterminous United States] average temperature trends are inflated due to poor station siting.”
+Berkeley Earth, a climate science nonprofit founded in early 2010 by scientists expressing skepticism at the time about global warming, has also found no undue manipulation of temperature data in its own analyses. Its page specifically on the Paraguayan Puerto Casado station that Homewood mentioned shows the adjusted readings do in fact show a rise in temperature over time.
+An October 2011 paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research provides an overview of the entire Global Historical Climatology Network’s temperature data set, including detailed information about adjustments. In total, at least one “bias correction” was applied to 3,297 of the 7,279 stations in use at some point since 1801, though most of these occurred from the 1950s through the 1980s. As the chart below shows, there are approximately equal numbers of adjustments in the positive and negative directions.
+Lawrimore et al, Journal of Geophysical Research
+A spokesman for Palmer told us in an email that “it’s very apparent that some of the temperature records have been mangled by the computer in an attempt to make them conform to certain standards.” As the research we describe above shows, no such “mangling” or other manipulation is at all apparent. The spokesman cited a 2007 paper by an economist at the University of Guelph and a scholar at the Cato Institute that found that correlations between temperature readings and socioeconomic data call into question the overall global temperature trend. A subsequent paper by a NASA climate scientist highlighted the problems with this finding, most notably a very limited set of correlations (primarily the U.S., Japan and Western Europe). He concluded that “there is no compelling evidence from these correlations of any large-scale contamination.”
+Scientists have criticized the Telegraph’s Booker (and by extension Homewood) for spreading misinformation on climate science. In a post on RealClimate.org, Norwegian Meteorological Institute senior researcher Rasmus Benestad quickly debunked the details of Booker’s and Homewood’s claims. He said of the Telegraph story, “a person who writes such a misleading story shows little respect for his readers.”
+Climategate Revisited
+The supposed manipulation of data by East Anglia and other scientists in the Climategate affair also proved to be completely unfounded, as we have written twice before.
+Climate skeptics claimed that leaked emails between many climate scientists around the world showed there was a coordinated effort to inflate the global warming signal in temperature data. But several separate investigations, including by the U.S. Department of Commerce Inspector General and the Environmental Protection Agency, found no such wrongdoing or manipulation.
+According to one independent international investigation, known informally as the Oxburgh Report: “We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit and had it been there we believe that it is likely that we would have detected it.” Palmer’s spokesman said the congressman had no comment on the repetition of this claim in spite of the repeated exonerations.
+Palmer’s claim that “we are building an entire agenda on falsified data” has no basis in evidence. Even as these claims of data manipulation have resurfaced, there is now a general consensus that 2014 was the hottest single year since temperature record keeping began. This same conclusion has been reached by NOAA and NASA, the Japan Meteorological Agency, and the World Meteorological Organization. The United Kingdom’s Met Office said that 2014 was among the warmest along with 2010, but it is impossible to say for sure that 2014 was hotter. According to NASA, nine of the 10 warmest years have all occurred since 2000, with 1998 the lone exception.
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation.
+– Dave Levitan"
+"3.2KTwo potential Republican candidates for president distorted the facts about climate change and casually dismissed well-established threats and potential solutions:
+
+Rick Santorum falsely claimed that U.S. policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions “will have zero impact” on climate change. The U.S. is the world’s second-biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, and a reduction in its GHG emissions could slow global warming.
+Santorum claimed that even those who accept the science on climate change agree that U.S. action will accomplish nothing, which is also inaccurate.
+Mike Huckabee said Islamic extremism poses a greater threat than climate change. That’s his opinion. But in expressing it, he grossly understated the potential impact of climate change by saying it threatens to give Americans “a sunburn” — an issue almost entirely unrelated to climate change. Military leaders have long warned that climate change poses a national security threat.
+
+Santorum’s ‘Do-Nothing’ Plan
+Santorum, a former Republican senator from Pennsylvania who ran for president in 2012 and is preparing to run again in 2016, appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Jan. 25. Michael Smerconish, the show’s host, asked Santorum how he would have voted on a “sense of the Senate” amendment to the Keystone XL Pipeline Act that declared “climate change is real and not a hoax.” The measure overwhelmingly passed, with only Sen. Roger Wicker, a Republican from Mississippi, voting against it.
+Smerconish, Jan. 25: The Senate voted this week 98 to 1 that climate change is not a hoax. If Rick Santorum were still in the Senate, would you have supported that?
+Santorum: Is the climate warming? Clearly over the past, you know, 15 or 20 years the question is yes. The question is, is man having a significant impact on that, number one.
+And number two, and this is even more important than the first, is there anything we can do about it? And the answer is, is there anything the United States can do about it? Clearly, no. Even folks who accept all of the science by the alarmists on the other side, recognize that everything that’s being considered by the United States will have almost — well, not almost, will have zero impact on it given what’s going on in the rest of the world.
+Smerconish: So, is your answer do nothing?
+Santorum: Again — well, the answer is do something. If it has no impact, of course do nothing. Why would you do something and with the — with people admitting that even if you do something, it won’t make a difference?
+Santorum’s larger point is correct. The U.S. can’t solve the problem of global warming all by itself. President Obama himself agrees with that.
+In a Jan. 27 speech in India, Obama urged collaborative action: “Even if countries like the United States curb our emissions, if countries that are growing rapidly like India — with soaring energy needs — don’t also embrace cleaner fuels, then we don’t stand a chance against climate change.”
+But that doesn’t mean U.S. policies will have “zero impact” on global warming.
+Emissions reductions by the U.S. could indeed play a role in slowing the rise of global temperatures. The U.S. could also have an indirect impact, because its leadership on the issue could spur a global movement to cut down on the carbon dioxide emissions that are warming the planet.
+The U.S. is the second-biggest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world, after China. In recent years the U.S. has been responsible for about 16 percent of all global emissions. In 2012, the U.S. emitted about 6.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide and other GHGs. Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann told us that if the U.S. continues to emit GHGs at that level, it alone would cause about half a degree Celsius warming by the end of the century (just under 1 degree Fahrenheit) in addition to the about 1 degree Celsius of warming we have already seen since the start of the Industrial Revolution. “That is hardly ‘zero impact,’ ” Mann said.
+The Obama administration has taken several steps and is working on others to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed rules in June 2014 that would cut power plant emissions by 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. The power sector is the biggest source of GHG emissions in the U.S. at 32 percent, so a reduction of that size would have an impact. EPA estimates the proposal would cut about 730 million metric tons of carbon pollution per year.
+The administration also finalized rules in August 2012 that will increase fuel-economy standards for vehicles to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. The administration projects this will cut in half greenhouse gas emissions from affected vehicles throughout the program’s life, and transportation is second only to electricity in terms of sources of carbon dioxide emissions. The administration estimated that the new fuel standards could reduce oil consumption by 12 billion barrels through 2025. A simple calculation shows that would mean a reduction of 5.16 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide through the life of the program, more than all of Europe emits in a single year.
+A recent study published in the journal Nature suggested that to avoid catastrophic warming, about one-third of all the remaining oil reserves (and higher percentages of coal and natural gas) needs to stay in the ground. The Middle East, for example, alone would need to leave 260 billion barrels unused. A single U.S. policy — increasing fuel-economy standards to 54.5 mpg — would represent almost 5 percent of that amount.
+Santorum is also wrong when he says “even folks who accept all of the science by the alarmists on the other side” agree that U.S. policies will have “zero impact,” although Ken Caldeira, a professor at the Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford University in California, described the direct impact as “rather minor.”
+“Unfortunately, Santorum is largely correct that U.S. policies in place will have rather minor direct effects on global climate,” Caldeira said.
+Minor, of course, is still some impact, and implementing more aggressive policies to cut emissions, of course, could change that.
+In addition to direct impact, Caldeira and all climate scientists we interviewed agreed that leadership on the issue is crucial from the United States.
+“It is a little bit like littering,” Caldeira said. “Would Rick Santorum say that it is okay to litter because my bit of littering is not going to make a big difference in the total amount of litter that is produced each year? Or would he say that littering is wrong, and good, responsible people should not litter. … If we are littering, we cannot compellingly ask others not to litter.”
+NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt also said that Santorum ignores the potential for this country’s leadership to affect change abroad.
+“Indeed, efforts to reduce climate change have to include all major emitters,” Schmidt wrote to us in an email. “However, the implied conclusion that nothing need be done is a fallacy. … If the U.S. starts credibly reducing emissions, that sends a signal to others (i.e., China, Europe, etc.) and prevents them from using the U.S. lack of action for theirs.”
+This has been borne out in recent months when Obama announced a climate deal with China and a “personal commitment,” as the president called it, to work on global warming with India, which is the world’s third-largest emitter of GHGs. Though it has been criticized by some as too timid, the China deal illustrates how pressure from some of the biggest emitters can have an impact.
+Santorum also questioned whether “man [is] having a significant impact“ on climate change. The answer from the scientific community, as we have written before, is “yes.”
+In its latest report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that human influence on climate is clear. “It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century,” according to the report. “Extremely likely” means the issue in question has a probable outcome of between 95 percent and 100 percent.
+Huckabee Mischaracterizes Threats
+In his speech to the Iowa Freedom Summit, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee criticized the president’s State of the Union call to combat climate change.
+Huckabee, Jan. 24: When [Obama] said, “the greatest threat this nation faces … is climate change.” Not to diminish anything about the climate at all, but Mr. President, I believe that most of us would think that a beheading is a far greater threat to an American than a sunburn.
+Huckabee is certainly entitled to his opinion that the Islamic State, the terrorist group responsible for the beheading of American hostages, is a far greater threat to America than climate change.
+But his joke about a sunburn is both a drastic understatement of global warming’s potential impacts and simply wrong. Sunburn is related to increased sun exposure, rather than to warming temperatures. Huckabee may have been confusing climate change with depletion of the ozone layer, which could in fact raise the risk of sunburns. The gases primarily responsible for ozone depletion, such as the chlorofluorocarbons previously found in refrigerants, spray cans and elsewhere, are also potent greenhouse gases that can contribute to warming. The increased sunburn risk related to ozone depletion, however, is entirely unrelated to warmer global average temperatures.
+The threats posed by a warming climate have been well-documented. These include national security threats about which Huckabee expressed concern.
+In a report released in October 2014, the Pentagon wrote that “rising global temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, climbing sea levels, and more extreme weather events will intensify the challenges of global instability, hunger, poverty, and conflict. They will likely lead to food and water shortages, pandemic disease, disputes over refugees and resources, and destruction by natural disasters in regions across the globe.”
+The report calls climate change a “threat multiplier,” meaning it could exacerbate many problems apparent today. Notably, the report includes terrorism among those threats that climate change could worsen, by creating “gaps in governance” that might allow extremist ideologies to spread.
+The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report included a section on “human security,” and concluded that: “Climate change will have significant impacts on forms of migration that compromise human security.” Though the IPCC notes that “there are no robust global estimates of future displacement” due to climate change — in other words, exactly how many climate refugees we may see — the United Nations Refugee Agency wrote in a September 2014 report that the “vast majority” of 51.2 million “persons of concern” to the agency — which includes refugees, stateless persons and others — are in climate change hot-spots.
+The threats to national security are not a new revelation.
+In 2007, the federally funded Center for Naval Analyses (which provides research and analysis to military and other government agencies) released a report led by 11 retired three- and four-star admirals and generals; among its primary findings was the assertion that “projected climate change poses a serious threat to America’s national security.” That report as well highlighted the issue as a threat multiplier, and added that “projected climate change will add to tensions even in stable regions of the world.”
+Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation.
+— Dave Levitan"
+"14.4KSummary
+President Barack Obama largely stuck to the facts in his State of the Union address, although he did cherry-pick data and exaggerate at times to put the best spin on his accomplishments.
+Some highlights:
+
+Obama made the inflated claim that “more than half of manufacturing executives have said they’re actively looking to bring jobs back from China.” A survey showed most “expressed interest” in it, but are not “actively looking” at doing it.
+Obama exaggerated when he said the U.S. is “the only advanced country on Earth that doesn’t guarantee paid sick leave.” Canada and Japan also don’t mandate paid short-term sick leave, which is what Obama is seeking for the U.S.
+The president boasted that the U.S. has gained 11 million private sector jobs in five years. Yes, but that ignores his first 13 months in office and a net loss of public sector jobs. Total employment growth during his time in office is about 6.4 million.
+Obama also boasted that “more of our people are insured than ever before.” But that’s based on an administration analysis that compares the second quarter of 2014 to years past. We don’t have the full 2014 federal numbers yet.
+
+Analysis
+The president delivered his sixth State of the Union address at a joint session of Congress on Jan. 20. But it was his first under a Congress controlled by Republicans. Much of his speech was devoted to the improving economy.
+
+Manufacturing Jobs
+Obama made the inflated claim that “more than half of manufacturing executives have said they’re actively looking to bring jobs back from China.”
+The president was referring to an August 2014 survey of 252 senior manufacturing executives in the U.S. conducted by the Boston Consulting Group. But the survey’s findings don’t exactly back up the president’s claim.
+While 54 percent of those surveyed “expressed interest in reshoring,” only 16 percent said they are “already bringing production back from China to the United States,” a 20 percent increase from the 2013 survey. And 20 percent of those polled said that “they would consider returning production in the near future,” up 24 percent from 2013.
+Obama also said that since 2010 “[o]ur manufacturers have added almost 800,000 new jobs.” That’s true enough, but there has been a net loss of manufacturing jobs during the president’s time in office.
+Since January 2010, the time frame used by the president, the U.S. has seen an increase of 777,000 manufacturing jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But since January 2009, when Obama took office, the U.S. has seen a net decline of 321,000 manufacturing jobs, the same BLS data show.
+In a recent study, the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation rejected talk of a “manufacturing renaissance,” calling it a “myth,” and noting there still is a long way to go. Even with the recent increase in manufacturing jobs, there are still nearly 1.8 million fewer manufacturing jobs than there were in January 2007, BLS figures show.
+“Much of the growth since 2010 appears to be caused by a cyclical recovery as demand, particularly for motor vehicles and other durable goods, returns,” the ITIF report said.
+Economic Growth
+The president fudged a bit when he said economic growth and job gains are the best in 16 years.
+Obama: Tonight, after a breakthrough year for America, our economy is growing and creating jobs at the fastest pace since 1999.
+Not quite.
+As for how fast “our economy is growing,” official figures from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis put the gain in real gross domestic product at an annual rate of 5.0 percent in the third quarter of last year. Those are the most recent figures available, and they represent the best quarterly gain in some time. But not since 1999.
+The BEA’s figures show real GDP grew at a rate of 6.9 percent in the third quarter of 2003, and at 7.8 percent in the second quarter of 2000.
+And as for “creating jobs,” the White House has pointed to a preliminary figure of 2.95 million jobs gained in 2014, which is the best since 1999 if it holds up when the BLS completes its normal revisions of job figures, which could go up or down.
+But the president spoke in present tense — saying the economy “is … creating jobs” at the fastest clip since 1999. And by more immediate measures the pace is not quite the most rapid since 1999. BLS puts the gain in total nonfarm employment during the most recent three-month period (ending in December) at 866,000 jobs. That’s a respectable number, but not the best three-month gain since 1999.
+The BLS figures show other three-month stretches in 2010, 2006, 2004 and 2000 when even more jobs were added.
+
+3-Month Net Change (in thousands)
+Total Nonfarm Employment, Seasonally Adjusted
+Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
+Sick Pay
+Obama exaggerated when he said the United States was “the only advanced country on Earth that doesn’t guarantee paid sick leave.”
+While Canada and Japan have social insurance programs that would cover an extended leave for cancer treatment, they don’t have guaranteed paid leave for an illness that lasts a few days. And Obama made the claim in calling for “a bill that gives every worker in America the opportunity to earn seven days of paid sick leave.”
+A 2009 report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a group funded by various labor groups and foundations, examined policies in 22 countries “ranked highly in terms of economic and human development.” It says in the first paragraph that the U.S. is “the only country that does not guarantee that workers receive paid sick days or paid sick leave,” but it goes on to say that neither Canada nor Japan has a policy for financial support for short-term leave, for an illness such as a five-day flu. Those countries do have social insurance that would cover some of the pay for an employee needing 50 days off for cancer treatment. Those are the two scenarios examined in the study.
+The report says that 11 countries guaranteed full pay for an illness requiring five sick days. Others paid for some missed time, but not all five days (and in a few cases not even one full day), because of waiting periods before the financial support would kick in.
+Obama also said that the U.S. was the “only advanced country on Earth that doesn’t guarantee … paid maternity leave to our workers.” A 2014 report from the United Nation’s International Labour Organization found: “Only two out of 185 countries and territories currently provide no statutory cash benefits during maternity leave.” The two countries were Papua New Guinea and the United States, both of which provide some kind of maternity leave but no requirement for paid leave.
+The U.S. Family and Medical Leave Act requires 12 weeks of unpaid leave for new mothers who have worked for one year for employers with more than 50 workers. Employers may require a substitution of paid sick or vacation days for the FMLA leave.
+However, the International Labour Organization report went on to say that the benefits in more than half of those 185 countries “were neither generous nor sufficiently long-lasting.” It calls for 14 weeks of pay equal to two-thirds of previous earnings, a standard met by 85 percent of developed countries.
+And not all women are eligible for benefits. “Only 28.4 per cent of employed women worldwide would receive cash benefits in case of maternity,” the report said.
+Private Sector Job Growth
+The president was correct when he said the U.S. has gained 11 million private sector jobs in the past five years.
+Obama: And over the past five years, our businesses have created more than 11 million new jobs.
+That’s true as far as it goes. The economy gained 11,215,000 private sector jobs between February 2010 and the preliminary figures for December of last year.
+Of course, the president said nothing of the 4,210,000 private sector jobs that were lost during the first 13 months of his tenure as president, due to the savage recession that was raging at the time he took office.
+Overall, since Obama took office, the net gain in private sector employment is just over 7 million. And the gain in total employment during his time in office is lower than that — just under 6.4 million. That’s because of a net loss in government jobs, particularly in local school systems.
+ Abortion and Teen Pregnancies in Decline
+Obama was right when he said “teen pregnancies and abortions are nearing all-time lows.”
+Obama: We still may not agree on a woman’s right to choose, but surely we can agree it’s a good thing that teen pregnancies and abortions are nearing all-time lows, and that every woman should have access to the health care she needs.
+The rate of teen pregnancies in the U.S. has been on the decline for decades, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Vital Statistics. In 2013, there were 274,641 babies born to females aged 15 to 19, a rate of 26.6 births for every 1,000 teen mothers. That was a 10 percent decline from 2012 and “the lowest number of teen births ever reported for the United States.” According to CDC, it was also 57 percent lower than in 1970, the peak year for teen births.
+However, despite this progress, teen pregnancies in the U.S. still outpace many other developed countries including Canada and the United Kingdom, according to United Nations statistics.
+As for abortions, the Guttmacher Institute reported in July 2014 that the rate of abortions in 2011 was the lowest since 1973. In 2011, “1.06 million abortions were performed, down 13 percent from 1.21 million in 2008.”
+ China’s ‘Commitment’ on Emissions
+In a section of his speech dealing with efforts to address climate change, Obama touted a recent agreement with China.
+Obama: In Beijing, we made an historic announcement – the United States will double the pace at which we cut carbon pollution, and China committed, for the first time, to limiting their emissions.
+Committed? Not exactly.
+In a joint announcement on Nov. 12, 2014, both the U.S. and China said they “intend to achieve” emissions targets. For its part, the U.S. said it “intends to achieve an economy-wide target of reducing its emissions by 26%-28% below its 2005 level in 2025 and to make best efforts to reduce its emissions by 28%.” China, meanwhile, said it “intends to achieve the peaking of CO2 emissions around 2030 and to make best efforts to peak early and intends to increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 20% by 2030.”
+The agreement was hailed by the Natural Resources Defense Council as “a turning point in the fight against global warming.” But the deal was derided by many Republican leaders, including Sen. Jim Inhofe, a Republican senator from Oklahoma and new chair of the Senate Environment Committee, who released a statement condemning the deal as a “non-binding charade.”
+As we wrote in a story about the climate deal with China, it’s true, as Inhofe said, that the deal is not a legally binding treaty, which would need Senate ratification. As the language in the announcement makes clear, the countries said they “intend to achieve” specific targets, but that’s not quite a binding commitment.
+Health Insurance 
+Obama’s boast about the decline in the uninsured is supported by early estimates from inside and outside his administration.
+Obama: And in the past year alone, about 10 million uninsured Americans finally gained the security of health coverage.
+That figure is echoed by a quarterly survey conducted by the Urban Institute and a report by researchers with the Department of Health and Human Services and Harvard School of Public Health.
+But we don’t yet know if Obama can claim that “more of our people are insured than ever before,” as he said earlier in his speech. An analysis of the percentage of uninsured by the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers shows that, but compares the second quarter of 2014 to years past. We don’t have the full 2014 federal numbers yet.
+The Urban Institute’s Health Reform Monitoring Survey says the number of the uninsured dropped by 10.6 million nonelderly adults between September 2013 and September 2014. (The Affordable Care Act’s first open enrollment period for policies purchased by individuals was from Oct. 1, 2013, through March 31, 2014.)
+An earlier estimate from researchers with the Department of Health and Human Services and Harvard School of Public Health put the decline of the uninsured at 10.3 million adults from January 2012 through June 2014. Their report, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, noted that “depending on the model and confidence intervals, our sensitivity analyses imply a wide range from 7.3 to 17.2 million adults.”
+Estimates from the most recent National Health Interview Survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics show a drop of 6.8 million people (of all ages) who were without health insurance at the time they were interviewed in the first six months of 2014, compared with 2013 (see Table 2). Those numbers were just released in December, so we won’t have a fuller look at the changes between 2013 and 2014 overall for some months.
+Obama cited a statistic from his own Council of Economic Advisers in saying that “more of our people are insured than ever before.” The CEA used National Center for Health Statistics data and estimated that “the nation’s uninsured rate is now at or near the lowest level recorded across five decades of data.”
+The data go back to 1963, and CEA had to make some adjustments due to changes in survey construction over the years. As we said, figures for all of 2014 aren’t yet available, so CEA compares the percentage of uninsured for the second quarter of 2014 (11.3 percent) to figures from past years. That’s the lowest rate in CEA’s chart, but only 0.1 percentage points below the rate in 1974, 1978 and 1980 (see the table on page 11).
+The figure for the first six months of 2014, not just the second quarter, is higher, however, at 12.2 percent (see Table 1). It remains to be seen how 2014 as a whole will compare to the past.
+The National Center for Health Statistics’ trend numbers for those without health insurance under age 65 (see Table 3) show that the first six months of 2014 had a lower percentage of uninsured than most of the past years — but not all. The percentage of the uninsured under age 65 was lower in 1974, 1978, 1980 and 1982.
+Deficits
+In ticking off his accomplishments, Obama listed this one: “our deficits cut by two-thirds.” That’s accurate, but as we have written before, the deficits have fallen from high levels and are on pace to return to high levels.
+When Obama took office in January 2009, the federal deficit for fiscal year 2009 was already on pace to be $1.2 trillion and topped $1.4 trillion by the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, 2009. Annual deficits remained above $1 trillion for three more years before dropping to $680 billion in fiscal 2013.
+The U.S. finished the most recent fiscal year with a deficit of $483 billion — roughly down two-thirds from what it was in fiscal 2009, as the president said.
+But, as we noted in  our quarterly report on Obama’s presidency, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that annual deficits will soon rise again if Congress doesn’t act. In a report it issued in August, CBO projected that under current law the deficit will rise above $500 billion in fiscal 2016 and hit nearly $950 billion by 2022.
+Drones
+Obama said his administration has “worked to make sure our use of new technology like drones is properly constrained.” Whether the use of drones has been “properly constrained” is a subjective matter. The Stimson Center, a global security think tank, for one, warned in 2014 that heavy reliance on drones “risks increasing instability and escalating conflicts.”
+But as a matter of independent analysis, Obama has ordered many more drone strikes than his predecessor, George W. Bush.
+Obama: As Americans, we respect human dignity, even when we’re threatened, which is why I’ve prohibited torture, and worked to make sure our use of new technology like drones is properly constrained.
+No official figures are available, and for a time the Obama administration would not even publicly admit that such CIA-controlled attacks were taking place. But independent reports have found a dramatic increase in the use of covert, remote-controlled drones and missiles to attack targets in Pakistan and Yemen.
+An independent estimate by the nonpartisan New America Foundation, based on what it deems to be “credible news reports,” puts the number of attacks at more than 450 since Obama took office, more than nine times as many as took place while Bush was in office. In Pakistan, the group concludes, somewhere between 1,838 and 3,041 people were killed by drones approved by Obama. Most of them were militants, the report states, but about 150 of them were civilians. As we noted in a story in April 2013, estimates by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in Britain, while slightly different, give a similar picture.
+— by Eugene Kiely, Brooks Jackson, Lori Robertson, Robert Farley, D’Angelo Gore, Carolyn Fante and Eden Everwine
+
+Sources
+Boston Consulting Group. “U.S. Executives Remain Bullish on American Manufacturing, Study Finds.” Press Release. 24 Oct 2014.
+White House. “Year in Review: Creating Economic Opportunity for All Americans in 2014.” Press Release. 18 Dec 2014.
+U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. “Table 1.1.1. Percent Change From Preceding Period in Real Gross Domestic Product” 1999-2014. 23 Dec 2014. Data extracted 21 Jan 2015.
+Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National); Total Nonfarm Employment, Seasonally Adjusted” 3-month net change 1999-2014. Data extracted 21 Jan 2015.
+Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National); Total Private Nonfarm Employment, Seasonally Adjusted.” Data extracted 21 Jan 2015.
+Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National); Total Nonfarm Employment, Seasonally Adjusted.” Data extracted 21 Jan 2015.
+Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National); Total Nonfarm Government Employment, Seasonally Adjusted.” Data extracted 21 Jan 2015.
+Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National); Total Nonfarm Local Government Education Employment, Seasonally Adjusted.” Data extracted 21 Jan 2015.
+Furman, Jason. “The Employment Situation in December” White House Council of Economic Advisers. 9 Jan 2015
+Stimson Center. “Recommendations And Report of the Task Force on U.S. Drone Policy.” June 2014.
+New America Foundation. “Drone Wars Pakistan: Analysis.” Accessed 21 Jan 2015.
+Jackson, Brooks. “Obama’s Numbers (Quarterly Update).” FactCheck.org. 16 Apr 2013.
+Bureau of Investigative Journalism. “Covert Drone War.”
+Martinez, Michael E. and Robin A. Cohen. “Health Insurance Coverage: Early Release of Estimates From the National Health Interview Survey, January–June 2014.” Dec 2014.
+Long, Sharon K. et. al. “Taking Stock: Health Insurance Coverage under the ACA as of September 2014.” Health Reform Monitoring Survey. Urban Institute. 3 Dec 2014.
+Sommers, Benjamin D. et. al. “Health Reform and Changes in Health Insurance Coverage in 2014.” New England Journal of Medicine. 28 Aug 2014.
+International Labour Organization. “Maternity and Paternity at Work: Law and practice across the world.” 2014.
+Heymann, Jody et. al. “Contagion Nation: A Comparison of Paid Sick Day Policies in 22 Countries.” Center for Economic and Policy Research. May 2009.
+Furman, Jason and Fiedler, Matt. “2014 Has Seen Largest Coverage Gains in Four Decades, Putting the Uninsured Rate at or Near Historic Lows.” Council of Economic Advisers. 18 Dec 2014.
+Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Trends in Health Care Coverage and Insurance for 1968-2011.” page updated 15 Nov 2012.
+Stimson Center. “Recommendations And Report of the Task Force on U.S. Drone Policy.” June 2014.
+New America Foundation. “Drone Wars Pakistan: Analysis.” Accessed 21 Jan 2015.
+Jackson, Brooks. “Obama’s Numbers (Quarterly Update).” FactCheck.org. 16 Apr 2013.
+Bureau of Investigative Journalism. “Covert Drone War.”
+National Vital Statistics Reports. Births: Preliminary Data for 2013. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 29 May 2014.
+United Nations Statistics. “Live births by age of mother and sex of child, general and age-specific fertility rates: latest available year, 2003 – 2012.”
+Guttmacher Institute. “Fact Sheet: Induced Abortion in the United States.” July 2014.
+White House Website. “U.S.-China Joint Announcement on Climate Change.” 11 Nov 2014.
+Natural Resources Defense Council Staff Blog. Frances Beinecke’s Blog:  “Historic Announcement Shows US and China Are Serious about Fighting Climate Change.” 12 Nov 2014.
+Sen. James Inhofe Website. “Press release: Inhofe: U.S.-China Climate Deal a Non-Binding Charade.” 12 Nov 2014.
+Farley, Robert. “Checking Inhofe’s Energy Statistics on China.” FactCheck.org. 14 Nov 2014.
+Farley, Robert. “Deficits Falling (From Way Up).” FactCheck.org. 1 Aug 2013.
+Jackson, Brooks. “Obama’s Numbers (January 2015 Update)” FactCheck.org. 9 Jan 2015.
+Department of Treasury Bureau of the Fiscal Service. “Monthly Treasury Statement.” 13 Nov 2014.
+Congressional Budget Office. “An Update to the Budget and Economic Outlook: 2014 to 2024.” 27 Aug 2014.
+Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National).” Data extracted 20 Jan 2015.
+Nager, Adams and Robert D. Atkinson. “The Myth of America’s Manufacturing Renaissance: The Real State of U.S. Manufacturing.” The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation. 12 Jan 2015."
+"2.7KRick Santorum, who finished a distant second in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, has announced that he will run again for president in 2016.
+We welcome the former Pennsylvania senator to the race, as we will others in the future, with a summary of our work on statements he has made over the years.
+Our file on Santorum was quite slim when he announced in June 2011, but it has grown considerably since then. We can’t summarize all of our work on him — he’s tagged in at least 40 stories since 2011 — so we will focus here on remarks he has made on some of the major issues of the day.
+Climate Change
+At a campaign event in February 2012, Santorum called climate change a “hoax,” saying “man-made global warming” and the remedy for it were “bogus.” As we said at the time, climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that global warming is real and human activities are making it worse. A paper published in 2010 by the National Academy of Sciences found that 97 percent to 98 percent of climate researchers “most actively publishing in the field” agreed that climate change was occurring and humans were responsible for “most” of it.
+More recently, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change finalized a report on Nov. 2 that said it’s “extremely likely” that human activity is “the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.” At the time of Santorum’s remarks, the IPCC said human activity was “very likely” the main reason for global warming. (“Extremely likely” means that there’s a 95 percent to 100 percent probability that humans are the main cause of climate change, while “very likely” places the odds at between 90 percent and 95 percent, as explained in a Sept. 27, 2013 IPCC press release on the report’s draft findings.)
+Immigration
+Santorum made two statements on legal and illegal immigration this year that caught our attention.
+The senator falsely claimed in July that the U.S. is “accepting more legal immigrants than we ever have.” We found that the number of people granted lawful permanent resident status decreased consecutively for two fiscal years. In 2013, there were 990,553 foreign-born individuals who became lawful permanent residents, down from 1,031,631 in 2012 and 1,062,040 in 2011, according to the Department of Homeland Security. The historical high for lawful immigration was in 1991, when 1,826,595 people obtained permanent resident status, which DHS attributes to the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 signed into law by then-President Ronald Reagan.
+He also said in November that there were “more people living in this country who were not born here than at any other time in the history of the country.” That’s true in raw numbers, as we wrote, but a greater percentage of the population was foreign-born from 1860 to 1920. In 2010, 12.9 percent of the country’s population was foreign-born, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The peak was in 1890, when 14.8 percent of the population was born outside the United States.
+Abortion
+The senator, who opposes abortion, got several facts wrong during a New Hampshire radio talk show in 2011. While blaming abortions for “causing Social Security and Medicare to be underfunded,” Santorum incorrectly claimed that “one in three pregnancies end in abortion” in the United States. It’s actually fewer than one in four, according to a March 2011 report by the Guttmacher Institute.
+During the same show, Santorum also wrongly claimed that “our birthrate is now below replacement rate for the first time in our history.” As we said at the time: The total fertility rate, not the birthrate, is used to determine the stability of a nation’s population, and the U.S. total fertility rate was below its replacement rate from 1972 to 2005, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
+Safety Net Programs
+During the 2012 campaign, Republicans attacked President Obama for increasing the poor’s dependency on government programs, particularly food stamps and welfare.
+In August 2012, Santorum blamed Obama for creating “a nightmare of dependency” that resulted in “almost half of America receiving some sort of government assistance.” But we found Santorum’s figures included senior citizens on Social Security and Medicare who paid into those government programs.
+The Census Bureau’s income and program participation surveys estimate the number of Americans who are enrolled in at least one government program. The four largest programs — those with at least 40 million recipients — are Medicaid, Social Security, food stamps and Medicare. At the time of his remarks, the Census Bureau reported that 49 percent of Americans were enrolled in at least one government program, up from 44.4 percent of Americans in the third quarter of 2008 when George W. Bush was president.
+In fact, the Census Bureau echoed Santorum’s language to describe program participation in 2008, saying “nearly half of U.S. residents live in households receiving government benefits.”
+Education 
+Appearing on a Sunday talk show in February 2012, Santorum discussed the need to improve the nation’s education system. But, in doing so, he wrongly claimed that “one of three children drop out of school” in the U.S.
+As we wrote in “Santorum Exaggerates Dropout Rate,” the “status dropout rate” — the percentage of those ages 16 to 24 who were not in school or had not obtained a GED — was 8.1 percent in 2009. The 2009 rate — the most recent data available at the time — was slightly higher than it was in 2008, but it was down significantly from the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and even early 2000s, according to the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics. The center’s most recent report says the status dropout rate was 6.6 percent in 2012.
+The center also measures the “event dropout rate,” which is the percentage of public school students in grades 9 through 12 who dropped out of school “between one October and the next.” In 2007-2008, that rate was 4.1 percent.
+— Eugene Kiely
+Update, Dec. 13: This item was updated to include the most recent data on the status dropout rate."
+"1.3KSen. Jim Inhofe scoffed at the suggestion that China could shift 20 percent of its energy to non-fossil fuels by 2030, in part, he said, because China “has no known reserves of natural gas.” But Inhofe is wrong about that.
+China ranks 12th in the world with just under 2 percent of the world’s known natural gas reserves. And it intends to use natural gas to meet 10 percent of its energy needs by 2020.
+Whether China can meet the targets promised in a climate change agreement reached between President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping remains to be seen, of course, and Inhofe was on target with other claims related to China’s increasing reliance on coal-fired power.
+Shortly after the China-U.S. deal was reached, Inhofe, a Republican senator from Oklahoma who is in line to take control of the Environment and Public Works Committee in January, released a blistering statement condemning the deal as one-sided and a “non-binding charade.”
+Inhofe, Nov. 12: In the President’s climate change deal, the United States will be required to more steeply reduce our carbon emissions while China won’t have to reduce anything. It’s hollow and not believable for China to claim it will shift 20 percent of its energy to non-fossil fuels by 2030, and a promise to peak its carbon emissions only allows the world’s largest economy to buy time. China builds a coal-fired power plant every 10 days, is the largest importer of coal in the world, and has no known reserves of natural gas. This deal is a non-binding charade.
+It’s true, as Inhofe said, that the deal is not a legally binding treaty, which would need Senate ratification. Rather in a “U.S.-China Joint Announcement on Climate Change” released on Nov. 11, the two sides said they “intend to achieve” specific targets.
+U.S.-China Joint Announcement on Climate Change, Nov. 11: The United States intends to achieve an economy-wide target of reducing its emissions by 26%-28% below its 2005 level in 2025 and to make best efforts to reduce its emissions by 28%. China intends to achieve the peaking of CO2 emissions around 2030 and to make best efforts to peak early and intends to increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 20% by 2030.
+Indeed, in the joint announcement, the two sides pledged to “work together, and with other countries, to adopt a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention applicable to all Parties at the United Nations Climate Conference in Paris in 2015.”
+While many Republicans criticized the deal, White House officials told the Washington Post they believe Obama — and future presidents — can reach the targets “without additional authorization from Congress.”
+As for Inhofe’s claim that as part of the deal, “China won’t have to reduce anything,” that’s true, but it doesn’t mean China doesn’t have a lot of work to do to meet its end of the deal. According to the Washington Post, China “must add 800 to 1,000 gigawatts of nuclear, wind, solar and other zero-emission generating capacity by 2030 — more than all the coal-fired power plants that exist in China today and close to the total electricity generating capacity of the United States.”
+We were particularly curious about Inhofe’s three-part claim: “China builds a coal-fired power plant every 10 days, is the largest importer of coal in the world, and has no known reserves of natural gas.”
+We’ll start with the one that is wrong, that China “has no known reserves of natural gas.” In fact, it does have known reserves of natural gas, and it is intending to rely more heavily on those reserves in coming years.
+In an analysis of China’s energy use, the U.S. Energy Information Administration states that, according to the Oil and Gas Journal, China “held 155 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of proven natural gas reserves as of January 2014, 14 Tcf higher than reserves estimated in 2013 and the largest in the Asia-Pacific region.” The report goes on to say that China has tripled natural gas production between 2002 and 2012, and plans to produce even more in the future.
+EIA, Feb. 4: The Chinese government anticipates boosting the share of natural gas as part of total energy consumption to around 8% by the end of 2015 and 10% by 2020 to alleviate high pollution resulting from the country’s heavy coal use.
+OPEC, BP and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency all state proven natural gas reserves in cubic meters (instead of cubic feet), and they all put China’s proven natural gas reserves at about 3.2 trillion cubic meters, representing 1.8 percent of the total global share and ranking China 12th in the world.
+Inhofe also claims that “China builds a coal-fired power plant every 10 days.” The statistic first appeared in a New York Times article in 2006, and the statistic was repeated by the Washington Post this year.
+New York Times, June 11, 2006: Every week to 10 days, another coal-fired power plant opens somewhere in China …
+Washington Post, Nov. 12: China completes a new coal plant every eight to 10 days …
+We could not independently confirm this statistic precisely with the EIA. But it may be accurate, based on a World Resources Institute report in November 2012 that said China had proposed 363 new coal-fired power plants (India proposed 455). World Coal reported in August that coal-fired plant installations in China slowed to 42 gigawatts in 2013, but were expected to have a “mini renaissance” in 2014 and 2015 “before starting back on the overriding long-term downward trajectory.”
+As for Inhofe’s claim that China “is the largest importer of coal in the world,” that’s true by quite a large margin. As EIA put it in February, “China is the world’s top coal producer, consumer, and importer and accounted for about half of global coal consumption.”
+Update, Nov. 19: During a speech from the Senate floor on Nov. 18, Inhofe said he was misinformed and corrected his statement about China having “no known natural gas reserves.”
+Inhofe, Nov. 18: I made a speech last week, I said that China has no known reserves of natural gas. And I was wrong. I was wrong due to some misinformation we got. The fact that they are not able to realize these reserves is very significant. And that shouldn’t distract from the fact that China has a difficult road ahead in developing affordable sources of fuel to meet its energy demands.
+Inhofe went on to talk about some of the problems China has had with natural gas extraction, and reiterated his larger point that it will be “impossible” for China to accomplish its stated goal of capping CO2 emissions around 2030 “because of its current domestic energy mix and heavy reliance on coal for affordable electricity to its power.” 
+Inhofe’s office also issued a corrected press statement.
+— Robert Farley"
+"1.1KCrossroads GPS claims that Colorado Sen. Mark Udall “voted to enact a carbon tax.” Udall did no such thing. Republican Thom Tillis claims that Sen. Kay Hagan “supported a carbon tax” that would destroy “up to 67,000 jobs in North Carolina over the next ten years.” That’s not accurate, either.
+In fact, Congress has never voted on a specific carbon tax proposal. Udall couldn’t have voted to enact such a tax even if he wanted. And the figure on North Carolina jobs comes from a scenario presented by a group opposed to such a tax.
+To make these claims, Crossroads and Tillis twist the senators’ votes on amendments to a nonbinding budget resolution. We saw similar distortions early this year, when Americans for Prosperity ran an ad saying Sen. Mark Begich “is on record supporting a carbon tax … that will cost the average family over $2,000 annually.” Begich hasn’t backed a carbon tax proposal, and the $2,000 figure is based on general assumptions, not any specific plan. That figure has been used to attack Hagan, too, in an ad from the conservative advocacy group American Energy Alliance.
+No Vote to ‘Enact a Carbon Tax’
+Crossroads points to Udall’s March 22, 2013, vote for a budget resolution amendment to require any possible future carbon tax to be revenue neutral, with the money the government would receive from the tax being returned to the American people. In other words, Udall voted to support making a hypothetical tax revenue neutral.
+
+Also, the amendment was to a nonbinding budget resolution, which sets spending and budget guidelines but doesn’t carry any force of law. The amendment was incapable of enacting anything, and at any rate, it didn’t call for the enactment of a carbon tax plan, which would be a direct tax on the carbon content of fossil-fuel energy, such as coal, oil and gas. The goal of such a tax — like other pollution-reduction strategies — would be to lower the amount of carbon dioxide released into the environment.
+The amendment, which was defeated by a 41-58 vote, was written by Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, who, along with three other Democratic lawmakers, had previously released a “discussion draft” of a carbon tax, asking for comment on how a tax should be priced and structured, and how revenue could best be returned to the public. Whitehouse’s amendment said that all revenue from a “fee on carbon pollution” should be “returned to the American people in the form of federal deficit reduction, reduced federal tax rates, cost savings, or other direct benefits.” So, if such a tax were to exist, the Whitehouse amendment called for the revenue to be returned to the public in some form.
+The Crossroads ad, however, goes on to wrongly say that Udall voted for a carbon tax proposal that “could have led to higher electricity prices, squeezing middle-class budgets,” vaguely adding: “A carbon tax could squeeze local businesses and hurt Colorado employment.”
+Such a tax could do those things, depending on how it was structured. But, again, Udall didn’t vote on a specific proposal.
+In general, a fee on carbon is designed to raise the price of fossil fuels, prompting consumers to switch to renewable energy options and consume less energy, and leading businesses to develop new energy-reducing products and technology. But whether that would lead to “squeezing middle-class budgets” or businesses and by how much depends on many details that would have to be addressed in carbon tax legislation.
+And such legislation faces a steep uphill battle amid much political opposition. As Charles Komanoff, director of the Carbon Tax Center, told us in February, “To my knowledge, there has never even been a hearing, even just an informational hearing on anything that is or resembles a carbon tax bill.”
+The most recent Senate legislation was introduced by Sens. Bernie Sanders and Barbara Boxer and referred to committee on Feb. 14, 2013. The bill, which called for a $20-per-ton carbon fee with 60 percent of the revenue returned to households, has no other cosponsors and hasn’t moved since. In the House, Rep. Jim McDermott introduced a carbon tax bill on May 28 of this year. It, too, was referred to committee with no action since. McDermott introduced the same bill in 2012, and it died in committee. In addition to the lack of traction of such bills, the White House opposes a carbon tax.
+The Crossroads ad cites a study released in February 2013 by the anti-carbon-tax National Association of Manufacturers, which looked at two hypothetical scenarios, finding they would reduce productivity, lower wages and increase the price of fossil fuels. NAM’s scenarios use the revenue from a tax to reduce the debt and personal income tax rates. But the revenue from the tax could also be used to give households rebates, as the Sanders-Boxer bill proposed, or lower corporate tax rates to ease the impact on businesses.
+“The ultimate economic effects of a carbon tax, however, would depend on how the revenues from the tax were used,” said a May 2013 Congressional Budget Office report, with deficit or tax-rate reduction lowering the total cost to the economy and other methods directing relief to consumers or businesses.
+But, again, Udall didn’t vote to enact a carbon tax — or even to support a specific proposal.
+ False Attacks on Hagan, Too
+Hagan’s Republican opponent, Tillis, twists another vote on an amendment to the 2013 budget resolution to wrongly claim on his website that the Democratic senator “has supported a carbon tax that would cause gas prices and utility bills to skyrocket, while destroying up to 67,000 jobs in North Carolina over the next ten years.” Tillis’ site refers to “Hagan’s carbon tax” and call this her “energy policy.” But simply reading that Web page shows Tillis doesn’t have support for such claims.
+The American Energy Alliance, a conservative group that doesn’t disclose its donors but has been linked to the Koch brothers by Politico, also launched an ad early this month that uses the same supposed evidence to claim that Hagan wasn’t telling the truth when she said she opposed a carbon tax and that she had “worked to make it a priority.”
+
+Both the Tillis camp and AEA point to Hagan’s March 2013 vote against an amendment sponsored by Republican Sen. Roy Blunt to require 60 votes to approve any potential carbon tax in the future. The amendment failed. It wasn’t a vote for a carbon tax; it was a vote against a nonbinding resolution requiring a high threshold for passing such a tax at some unknown point in the future.
+There was no proposal that would have “destroy[ed] up to 67,000 jobs in North Carolina” over a decade, as the campaign says. Instead, that number comes from the NAM analysis of two scenarios, and it’s the upper-most estimate for NAM’s high-end scenario. Technically, NAM didn’t say up to 67,000 jobs would be lost. Its figure is for reduced labor income. NAM notes: “This does not represent a projection of the number of workers who may need to change jobs and/or be unemployed, as some or all of the lost labor could be spread across workers who remain employed.”
+AEA’s ad also claims that Hagan supported a tax that “could cost the average family over $2,000 a year,” but that figure comes from a January 2013 Heritage Foundation analysis of carbon-tax scenarios presented in the Energy Information Administration’s 2012 Annual Energy Outlook. Heritage’s maximum-impact scenario estimated a cut in income for a family of four of $1,900 in 2016. The scenarios didn’t include any method of returning revenue to the public.
+But that’s all a moot point anyway. Hagan didn’t support — or decline to oppose — any specific carbon tax plan with her 2013 vote.
+The Tillis camp and AEA provide another weak link to a carbon tax, mentioning a letter Hagan and other freshman Democratic senators (including Begich and Udall) wrote to the Senate majority leader in July 2010, a few months after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The letter expressed support for comprehensive energy legislation that would include “making polluters pay through a price on greenhouse gas emissions.”
+As the Tillis camp acknowledges on its site, the letter didn’t provide any specifics as to whether that policy should be a carbon tax, cap-and-trade or some other method of penalties and incentives. The letter gives general ideas of what energy legislation should include, such as “tax incentives, grants, loans and other assistance to help American manufacturers create jobs, cut their energy consumption, retool for a clean energy economy and remain competitive in the global market.”
+For the record, Hagan voted against the Whitehouse amendment, a vote her campaign cited last fall as evidence of her opposition to a carbon tax. The Hill newspaper quoted Hagan campaign spokeswoman Sadie Weiner as saying: “She opposes it (as evidenced by the act she voted against it).” But The Hill noted, as we have, that the “vote was largely symbolic, as the underlying bill was nonbinding. The Whitehouse amendment also didn’t exactly address the concept of carbon tax directly.”
+Neither of the votes cited by these groups would have enacted a carbon tax, or even demonstrated support for a certain plan. The votes are distorted in these attacks and then linked to conservative analyses of general scenarios, not proposals that the Democratic senators actually had supported.
+— Lori Robertson"
+"450A Web ad from Republican Senate candidate Terri Lynn Land claims her opponent, Rep. Gary Peters, backed “carbon taxes” that would have “killed up to 96,000 Michigan jobs.” But Peters didn’t support a carbon tax – which has never advanced to a vote in Congress.
+Peters actually supported cap-and-trade legislation that independent analyses said would cause a small reduction in employment.
+The 96,000 figure comes from the National Association of Manufacturers’ analysis of two possible carbon taxes, which are direct taxes on the carbon content of fuels such as coal, oil and gas. But the ad cites Peters’ vote for the 2009 American Clean Energy and Security Act, which wasn’t a carbon tax. Instead, the legislation Peters supported would have set a limit on carbon dioxide emissions and given companies the ability to buy and sell allowances, or permits, for their emissions. Peters says he prefers cap-and-trade.
+
+Land’s online-only video begins with an ominous warning: “It’s a war on American jobs and paychecks. Who’s waging it? Gary Peters.” On screen, we see a citation for 2009’s H.R. 2454 as the narrator says: “Peters supported carbon taxes that would have hiked utility bills, raised gas prices by 20 cents a gallon and killed up to 96,000 Michigan jobs.”
+And the campaign has continued to push the 96,000-jobs claim. Land spokeswoman Heather Swift wrote on the campaign website: “If Congressman Peters is successful in passing his radical agenda, it would kill 96,000 blue-collar jobs right here in Michigan.”
+Even the NAM analysis of carbon taxes doesn’t say that type of emissions-reduction strategy would “kill 96,000 blue-color jobs.” Instead, the figure is a loss of worker income expressed as an approximation of jobs, and the report notes its number “does not represent a projection of the number of workers who may need to change jobs and/or be unemployed.” And again, NAM’s report didn’t analyze the legislation Peters supported.
+H.R. 2454 is known as the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill for its sponsors, Democratic Reps. Henry Waxman and Edward Markey. It passed the House in 2009 — and yes, Peters voted for it. But the bill died in the Senate. Instead of calling the bill what it is — a cap-and-trade plan — Land’s campaign uses the more politically toxic term “carbon taxes.”
+An actual carbon tax, however, is so politically toxic it hasn’t even made it out of a committee. When Alaska Sen. Mark Begich was wrongly accused of supporting a carbon tax earlier this year, Charles Komanoff, director of the Carbon Tax Center, told us: “To my knowledge, there has never even been a hearing, even just an informational hearing on anything that is or resembles a carbon tax bill.”
+There was a carbon tax bill introduced in 2009. It died in committee, and Peters did not sign on as a co-sponsor. That bill would have changed the tax code to put a direct excise tax on carbon — meaning producers of fossil fuels such as coal and oil would have paid it — and provided tax rebates or credits to individual taxpayers.
+Peters recently confirmed his support for cap-and-trade legislation, drawing a distinction from a carbon tax and calling cap-and-trade a “market-based solution” that’s “certainly something to take a look at” in a radio interview on “Michigan’s Big Show” on May 28.
+There are similarities and differences in the two policy approaches, as a March 2009 Congressional Research Service report explains: “Both a carbon tax and a cap-and-trade system would place a price on carbon. Both a carbon tax and cap-and-trade system are intended (and expected) to increase the price of coal, oil, and natural gas. Under either program, these price increases would ultimately be borne by energy consumers, both businesses and households.” The price increases lead to a change in behavior — lower usage of fossil-fuel energy and increased use of clean energy and more efficient energy. But, CRS explains, a carbon tax controls price, while cap-and-trade controls emissions quantity. With a carbon tax, the price is set, but emissions may fluctuate or be more difficult to control. With cap-and-trade, the reverse is the case: Emissions are controlled; the price of allowances, or emissions permits, fluctuates.
+And there are many different ways to structure either method, making a comparison of such climate policies without specific details difficult, if not impossible: “The policy continuum demonstrates that a comparison between a carbon tax and an emissions cap is not a straightforward exercise,” the CRS report says. “Design details are critical for an appropriate comparison.”
+(The Land campaign claims Peters is “on record” supporting a carbon tax because he voted against an amendment this year to deem a carbon tax a “major rule” by an executive agency that would require congressional approval. But that’s not clear support for such a tax — which the White House doesn’t back either — and the amendment was to a bill requiring congressional approval of “major rules,” including any rule made under the Affordable Care Act. Not surprisingly, the votes fell largely along party lines.)
+Waxman-Markey would have required polluters to have allowances, or permits, in order to emit carbon dioxide. Unused allowances could be banked and used in the future or sold, and the money the government reaped from the permits would be used to offer rebates and other price protections to consumers, aid industries at risk, and invest in clean energy programs. Electric utilities and oil refiners would face caps on their emissions, with a system of trading allowances and offsets that could be purchased to go beyond the caps. Hence the name, cap and trade.
+The plan Peters supported would have led to the loss of some jobs. We looked at Waxman-Markey back in 2009 when Democrats and supporters of the bill were claiming it would create jobs in clean energy industries and Republicans and opponents said it would kill jobs. Our finding: The bill would have caused a loss of jobs, but opponents — including the National Association of Manufacturers — were exaggerating the likely impact. Independent experts said the cap-and-trade legislation would have led to a small loss of jobs.
+At that time, NAM claimed in an ad that the bill “will cost up to 2.4 million U.S. jobs,” a number that came from the most pessimistic of 11 scenarios analyzed by the Energy Information Administration. EIA said that worst-case scenario was based on assumptions that were “inherently less likely” than its other cases. EIA’s most optimistic case showed a loss of 388,000 jobs 20 years in the future, compared with what would have happened without the law. And its “basic” case found a loss of 597,000 jobs nationwide. So back then, NAM picked the most negative and “inherently less likely” number to tout in TV ads.
+Meanwhile, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said there would be “a little” job reduction, but didn’t put a number on it.
+“[C]limate legislation would cause permanent shifts in production and employment away from industries that produce carbon-based energy and energy-intensive goods and services and toward industries that produce alternative energy sources and less energy-intensive goods and services,” CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf said at the time. “While those shifts were occurring, total employment would probably be reduced a little compared with what it would have been without such a policy, because labor markets would most likely not adjust as quickly as would the composition of demand for final outputs.”
+A 2010 CBO report reviewed other research on the impact of policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and also concluded that “total employment during the next few decades would be slightly lower than would be the case in the absence of such policies.”
+And John Reilly at the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology told us in 2009 MIT’s modeling showed the Waxman-Markey legislation would cause a “small net reduction in total employment – but quite small.”
+The 96,000-jobs figure used by the Land campaign comes from NAM again, but this time, it’s a 2013 analysis of two hypothetical carbon tax proposals, not Waxman-Markey. When NAM released the report, the group’s president, Jay Timmons, was quoted by Reuters as saying the manufacturers group wanted to show the negative effects of a carbon tax so it “never sees the light of day in Congress.” In fact, as we said earlier, it hasn’t.
+NAM found that its two scenarios would lead to a “loss of worker income equivalent to 22,000 to 33,000 jobs in 2013 and 75,000 to 96,000 by 2023” in Michigan. And that high-end scenario had one thing in common with Waxman-Markey: It targeted a similar reduction in emissions, an 80 percent reduction from 2005 levels by 2053. But the NAM analysis makes clear there are differences between its carbon tax scenarios and Waxman-Markey, namely that the cap-and-trade legislation would have included offsets and the ability to bank allowances. Another difference: NAM’s scenarios use the carbon-tax revenue to reduce the debt and personal income tax rates, while Waxman-Markey called for using allowance revenue for consumer price protections, investments in clean energy projects and aid to industries affected by the bill.
+As a May 2013 Congressional Budget Office report says: “The ultimate economic effects of a carbon tax, however, would depend on how the revenues from the tax were used,” with deficit or tax-rate reduction reducing the total cost to the economy and other methods directing relief to those who are disproportionately affected.
+For a comparison, the NAM analysis said its high-end carbon tax would cause a loss of worker income equivalent to 2.8 million jobs nationwide in 2023, while the worst-case-scenario number it used in 2009 for Waxman-Markey was 2.4 million jobs in 2030. EIA’s basic case estimate, meanwhile, was a nationwide loss of 597,000 jobs under Waxman-Markey in 2030.
+Another technical note: NAM’s figure is for reduced labor income, which it says will come because companies will have “higher costs and lower labor productivity.” (CBO says an increase in fossil-fuel costs, and subsequently goods and services, would “diminish the purchasing power of people’s earnings — that is, real wages would fall.” And that would cause people to work less, “reducing the overall supply of labor.”) NAM’s analysis divides the total reduction in income by the average annual income per job to come up with “job equivalents.” But it notes that’s not a direct loss of jobs: “This does not represent a projection of the number of workers who may need to change jobs and/or be unemployed, as some or all of the lost labor could be spread across workers who remain employed.”
+Again, the NAM analysis — and the 96,000 jobs figure used by the Land campaign — doesn’t pertain to the cap-and-trade bill Peters supported. Independent experts did find the 2009 bill Peters did back would likely lead to a small loss of jobs. But we don’t know how a future cap-and-trade bill would be structured, details that would figure into any analysis of its potential impact on jobs.
+When we asked the Land campaign about the 96,000 figure and the fact that it wasn’t from an analysis of Waxman-Markey, the campaign pointed to another study, from The Beacon Hill Institute, a conservative think tank at Suffolk University, that estimates a much lower loss of Michigan jobs — 28,384 in 2020. (NAM’s figure pertains to 2023.) The study converts Waxman-Markey into an “equivalent carbon tax” based on the emissions targets of the cap-and-trade legislation.
+The campaign also pointed to a much higher job-loss estimate from the conservative Heritage Foundation, which said Michigan would lose 99,271 jobs in 2035. Heritage’s nationwide job loss estimate of 2.5 million by 2035 mirrors EIA’s “inherently less likely” scenario.
+Michigan currently has 4.1 million jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
+Electricity Bills and Gas Prices
+As for the Land campaign’s claim that the policy Peters actually did support “would have hiked utility bills, raised gas prices by 20 cents a gallon,” there’s support for that.
+Increasing the cost of fossil fuels would indeed increase the cost of items like coal-powered electricity and gasoline, leading to lower usage of such fuels and increased demand for clean energy products or energy conservation materials, such as insulation. Even with returning some of the government revenue to individuals to lessen the impact, costs were expected to increase under the Waxman-Markey bill.
+The CBO estimated the cost to households would be $175 in 2020, nearly three times the Environmental Protection Agency’s estimate for that year. As for gas, the EPA estimated prices would go up $0.25 in 2030, and the Energy Information Administration said gas would cost about 20 cents more per gallon sooner than that — in 2020, according to its “basic case” scenario.
+The Land ad also says: “It was called the largest tax increase in American history. And Gary Peters voted for it.” It was called that by the conservative editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, which said in 2009: “Americans should know that those Members who vote for this climate bill are voting for what is likely to be the biggest tax in American history.”
+Land’s ad says Peters is “bankrolled by billionaire radical Tom Steyer.” A climate-change activist, Steyer, through his NextGen Climate Action group, has vowed to spend $100 million or more in the 2014 elections, focusing on seven races, including the Michigan Senate race. On the Republican side, meanwhile, the conservative Americans for Prosperity, backed by the billionaire Koch brothers, has repeatedly attacked Peters in TV ads.
+— Lori Robertson"
+"5.5KSummary
+After more than five years of claims and counter-claims about the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, President Obama is expected to make his final decision soon. So we thought it was a good time to sift through the disinformation and lay out some basic facts.
+
+Building the pipeline will create jobs in the U.S., but not as many as supporters have claimed, and only for a year or two. The U.S. State Department estimates that 42,100 jobs would be added during construction, but that only 50 workers would be required to operate the pipeline.
+Oil from Canadian bitumen deposits — which the Keystone would carry from Alberta to the U.S. for refining — results in 14 percent to 20 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than oil typically consumed in the U.S. at present.
+But that doesn’t mean that stopping the pipeline would prevent Canadians from extracting their crude and getting it to market to be burned, either in the U.S. or other countries. “Such a change is not likely to occur,” State concluded.
+In fact, much of that oil is reaching the U.S. already — by rail — and more tank-car capacity is being added quickly. Canadians also are proposing two other pipelines to tanker ports on the Pacific coast, and a third project to nearly double the effective capacity of an existing line to the U.S.
+Pipelines are dangerous, but tanker cars are more so. Rail accidents spilled more oil in the U.S. last year than in all the previous years on record combined. And in Canada, 47 people died in one fiery tanker-train disaster in Quebec last year.
+
+Analysis
+The pipeline would be built by TransCanada Corp. and would run 1,179 miles from Hardisty, Alberta, to Steele City, Neb., where it would connect with existing pipelines to refineries on the Gulf Coast. The U.S. segment would be 875 miles long, running through Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska. The 36-inch diameter line could carry up to 830,000 barrels (nearly 35 million gallons) of oil per day.
+Because it would cross the U.S.-Canadian border, it would require a finding by the Obama administration that building it is in the national interest. The State Department, after lengthy review, submitted its Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement on Jan. 31, and said it would receive public comments until March 7. No date has been announced for a final decision.
+The debate over the project has pitted environmentalists — who hope to block the project on grounds that it would worsen global warming and result in hazardous oil spills — against the president’s critics on the right — who say he should have approved it long ago to create jobs and lessen U.S. dependence on oil from less friendly countries.
+Jobs
+Any big construction project requires workers to build it. How many? The U.S. State Department’s analysis says 3,900 would be employed directly if the job is done in one year, or 1,950 per year if work is spread over two. TransCanada Corp. puts the number higher, saying the project would support 9,000 construction jobs directly.
+There would be additional, “indirect” work for companies supplying goods and services, including concrete, fuel, surveying, welding materials and earth-moving equipment required for the project, and “induced” jobs resulting from money spent by workers and suppliers, such as ranchers providing beef for restaurants and construction camps. Counting up everything, the State Department estimates a total of 42,100 jobs could be created. TransCanada has accepted the 42,100 figure for total employment.
+Whatever the number, these jobs are temporary, lasting only for the year or two that it would take to complete the project. The number of permanent jobs is much lower. “The proposed Project would generate approximately 50 jobs during operations,” according to State’s analysis.
+House Republicans are still claiming the project would create 120,000 jobs. But that’s based on outdated information. The House Energy Committee’s GOP majority website extrapolates from figures given by TransCanada two years ago — for a much longer pipeline than is now proposed.
+That was before President Obama initially rejected the original Canada-to-Texas project pending changes in the route. Since then, TransCanada has completed a 485-mile segment of the original project — running from Cushing, Okla., to refineries in Texas — which did not require presidential approval because it did not cross an international border. Now named the “Gulf Coast Pipeline Project,” construction began in August 2012 and was completed this year. It went into operation on Jan. 22.
+The current Keystone XL project includes 875 miles within the U.S. And, as noted, even TransCanada says it would create about 42,000 temporary jobs, not 120,000.
+Environment
+Critics of the pipeline are fond of saying it would carry “the dirtiest oil on the planet,” and there is no question that the oil is significantly “dirtier” than most in the sense that it results in more greenhouse gas emissions.
+It comes from Alberta and parts of Saskatchewan, in what the industry calls “oil sands” and environmentalist critics call “tar sands.” By either name, they are vast deposits of bitumen — a form of petroleum so dense that at a temperature of 52 degrees Fahrenheit it is “hard as a hockey puck,” according to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. It must be heated or diluted to be made to flow through pipes.
+The bitumen is found mixed with sand and clay. Extracting it requires a good deal of energy — either through open-pit mining from surface deposits or by injecting steam into deeper, “in situ” (in place) sites. Refining it into useful fuels also requires more energy — and hence more emissions — than lighter forms of petroleum.
+How much “dirtier” is it? The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service surveyed published scientific literature on the subject, and those studies found variously that getting Canadian bitumen produced and processed into fuel produces between 70 percent and 110 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than the weighted average of transportation fuels now used in the U.S. That’s what’s called a “well-to-tank” figure, the measure preferred by critics.
+However, once it is in the tank, gasoline or diesel fuel that comes from Canadian bitumen is no different than fuel from any other form of petroleum. And burning the fuel in car and truck engines produces a lot more emissions than producing it and getting it to the pump.
+So over the entire “life cycle” of a fuel — from in the ground to out the tailpipe — burning a gallon of fuel from the Canadian oil results in 14 percent to 20 percent more greenhouse gas emissions, on average, than burning a gallon of currently available fuel, according to the CRS study. That’s called a “well to wheel” figure. The State Department’s final environmental report put the well-to-wheel figure at 17 percent — squarely in the middle of the published studies surveyed by CRS.
+CRS estimated that oil flowing through the Keystone pipeline would result in an increase in U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases equivalent to adding somewhere between 770,800 and 4.3 million passenger vehicles. But whether that would mean any increase at all in global emissions “remains uncertain,” CRS said. And the State Department said “such a change is not likely to occur.”
+State said Canadian oil will probably end up being produced and burned anyway, even if the Keystone is not built. It said new data and analysis indicate that “rail will likely be able to accommodate new production if new pipelines are delayed or not.”
+Last year the Environmental Protection Agency officially questioned a similar conclusion contained in an earlier draft of the report, and said State should “provide a more careful review of the market analysis” that supported it. State did so, conducting economic modeling of 16 different sets of supply-demand assumptions and pipeline constraints, which it said showed that “cross-border pipeline constraints have a limited impact on crude flows and prices.”
+And meanwhile, more and more Canadian oil is already coming to the U.S. in tanker cars, just as State predicted.
+Alternatives
+Railroad Tank Cars: A substantial amount of Canadian oil is already entering the U.S. by rail, in tank cars, and the amount carried this way is rising sharply. No White House approval is required.
+
+Rail shipments have skyrocketed since the time the White House rejected the original Keystone route, when the shipments were less than 20,000 barrels per day. The State Department’s final environmental report estimated that 180,000 barrels per day were already being transported by rail from the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin, amounting to nearly 22 percent of the volume that the Keystone could carry (830,000 barrels per day). And the industry is adding new rail capacity rapidly.
+For example, on Dec. 20, plans for a new loading facility in Edmonton (Alberta’s capital) were announced. It is projected to be in operation by the end of 2014, with an eventual capacity to load 250,000 barrels per day for shipment to North American refineries. Another new rail terminal is planned for Hardisty (where the Keystone pipeline would originate) with a capacity of 140,000 barrels per day, to begin operations early this year. The international information company IHS estimates that as much as 450,000 barrels per day could be moving by rail by the end of 2014, according to CNBC.
+Other Pipelines: Besides the Keystone, three other pipeline projects are being proposed to carry Alberta crude oil to market. Two would carry it across the mountains of British Columbia to ports on Canada’s Pacific coast, to be loaded on tankers and shipped mostly to China and other Asian markets (and with some going to California), while a third would nearly double the effective capacity of an existing line to the U.S. 
+Kinder Morgan proposes to nearly triple the capacity of its existing Trans Mountain Pipeline to carry an additional 690,000 barrels per day. The company filed its formal application with Canada’s National Energy Board on Dec. 16, and says that if approved the expanded pipeline could be operational by late 2017. The project faces a long review, but the company says 73 percent of the expansion would be built on existing right-of-way.
+Opinion in British Columbia is narrowly divided. A Jan. 22 poll by the Canadian polling company Insights West found that 48 percent said they favored the project, while 43 percent said they opposed it. The poll also showed that support has grown since another poll the previous year, when the pipeline proposal was in a preliminary phase. Insights West said that between the two polls, those favoring the project jumped by 10 percentage points, while those opposing it dropped by 14 points.
+Enbridge Inc. proposes to construct an entirely new Northern Gateway pipeline to carry 525,000 barrels per day to the coast, and it has already cleared a major regulatory hurdle. A review panel of Canada’s regulators recommended approval of the project on Dec. 19, finding that it would be “in the public interest” provided that Enbridge complied with 209 conditions, which Enbridge says it is “working hard” to meet. Canada’s natural resources minister, Joe Oliver, says the government will make its final decision by mid-June.
+A Jan. 25 poll conducted for a Canadian news agency found the country’s public more likely to support the project (38 percent) than to oppose it (29 percent). And in British Columbia, a Jan. 5 survey by the polling company Ipsos showed 48 percent of British Columbia residents supported the project, while 32 percent opposed.
+That could change, of course. A later poll commissioned by environmental groups found that 64 percent of British Columbia residents opposed “allowing crude oil supertankers through B.C.’s northern inside coastal waters” to load oil carried by the proposed pipeline. But the same poll found that 64 percent also said they “believe Enbridge will succeed in building its pipelines and tanker proposal,” while only 12 percent thought it would fail.
+Enbridge also proposed March 3 to lay new and larger pipe along its 46-year-old “Line 3” cross-border pipeline from Hardisty, Alberta, to Superior, Wisc. The company said this would have the effect of “restoring” the line’s effective capacity to 760,000 barrels per day from its current operating limit of 390,000.
+The company said this would not require a new presidential permit, prompting an objection from the Sierra Club. Enbridge said the $7 billion project would be the largest in its history, and that it hopes to have it completed by 2017.
+Safety
+Pipelines can be hazardous. An average of 97,376 barrels (4.1 million gallons) of petroleum and other “hazardous liquids” have been spilled each year in pipeline incidents over the last decade, according to the Department of Transportation’s Pipeline & Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. These incidents have claimed an average of two lives per year, and resulted in more than $263 million in annual reported property damage as well.
+Those figures include the most expensive onshore oil pipeline spill in U.S. history, caused when 30-inch pipe operated by Enbridge ruptured on July 26, 2010, near Marshall, Mich. That dumped more than 1 million gallons of Canadian diluted bitumen — the same material that would be carried in the proposed 36-inch Keystone pipeline — into the Kalamazoo River. Enbridge is still struggling to complete the cleanup, having failed to meet a Dec. 31 Environmental Protection Agency deadline for dredging remaining oil residue that settled on the bottom of the river. Although Enbridge initially put the spill at about 840,000 gallons, the EPA said last year that 1.15 million gallons had been recovered and 350,000 cubic yards of contaminated river sediment remained to be recovered. Enbridge said in August 2013 that it had spent more than $1 billion on the cleanup and remediation to date, and the figure continues to rise.
+A spill from the Keystone could potentially have similar effects. The Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality, in its final evaluation report on the project, found that the properties of the diluted forms of bitumen that would flow through the state in the Keystone pipeline “are similar in many respects to other heavy sour crude oils.” For what it’s worth, TransCanada says it plans to make the Keystone “the safest pipeline ever constructed in the U.S.,” adding more remote shut-off valves and inspections and burying the pipe more deeply than with other pipelines.
+Quebec Oil Train Disaster
+Rail transport is even more hazardous than pipelines, however. Last July, 47 people died in a single disaster when an unattended train including 72 tanker cars loaded with crude oil rolled downhill, exploded and burned in the Canadian town of Lac-Mégantic in Quebec province. Forty buildings were demolished, and an estimated 5.6 million liters (1.5 million gallons) of crude oil spilled or burned.
+And that calamity is by no means an isolated incident.
+
+On Oct. 19, four rail cars carrying crude oil and nine carrying liquified petroleum gas derailed in Alberta, causing a fire that burned for days and forcing evacuation of the nearby hamlet of Gainford.
+Another crude-oil tanker train derailed on Nov. 8 and burned near Aliceville, Ala., releasing up to 750,000 gallons of oil.
+And on Dec. 30, 20 cars in a mile-long train carrying crude oil ignited and burned after colliding with a derailed grain train near Casselton, N.D., sending up a giant fireball and spilling what federal investigators later estimated to be 476,000 gallons of oil.
+
+The tempo of oil-train accidents has increased along with the sharp rise in tanker shipments, as has the amount of oil discharged. Soon after the Casselton spill, an investigative news report by the McClatchy news agency concluded, based on federal data, that last year more oil spilled in the U.S. from rail tank cars than in all the nearly 40 previous years on record combined.
+The incidents continue. On Feb. 13, several cars of a train carrying heavy Canadian crude derailed in Western Pennsylvania. This time only a few thousand gallons leaked out, and there was no fire or explosion.
+But later that month, on Feb. 26, a representative of the National Transportation Safety Board, Robert L. Sumwalt, told a congressional hearing that incidents such as the Casselton explosion have become an “increasingly commonplace story.” He said continued use of tanker cars built to meet current federal standards poses “an unacceptable public risk.”  Meanwhile, the Association of American Railroads is pressing the federal government to impose “more rigorous standards for tank cars carrying flammable liquids, including asking for retrofitting tank cars to meet the higher standards or phasing those that cannot be made safer.”
+Based on relative safety records to date, the State Department estimated that an average of six deaths per year would result if the Keystone isn’t built and the same amount of oil is shipped by rail instead. More than twice as much oil is likely to be spilled as well, State estimated.
+Gasoline Prices
+Some proponents have claimed the Keystone project would hold down gasoline prices for U.S. motorists, while foes have claimed that it would do the opposite, at least for Midwestern motorists. We find that neither claim is valid.
+The State Department’s analysis concluded that either way, the Keystone project would have “little impact on the prices that U.S. consumers pay for refined products such as gasoline.” That’s because Gulf Coast refineries that process heavy crude could continue to get it from Venezuela or the Middle East, as they do now, if they can’t get it from Canada, the report said. And even if the Keystone isn’t built, Canadian crude still “could reach U.S. and Canadian refineries by rail.”
+Other independent experts have said essentially the same thing. Curt Launer, a managing director at Deutsche Bank, has been quoted as saying, “Keystone wouldn’t have a significant impact either way on overall North American energy prices.” Another expert, Morningstar analyst David McColl, was quoted in the same article saying the Keystone would have “no material impact” on gasoline or diesel prices. And even TransCanada doesn’t include lower gasoline prices in its list of the “economic benefits” it claims would result from building the pipeline.
+Critics have argued, on the other hand, that Midwestern prices would actually increase, but there’s little support for that idea.
+The critics have pointed to an unusual market situation in which crude oil was selling in Oklahoma — as measured by the West Texas Intermediate benchmark price — at far below the world price as measured by the North Sea Brent benchmark. That was due in part to a pipeline bottleneck at Cushing, Okla., that allowed a glut of oil to build up from booming production in the Dakotas and Canada. In 2012, the price for WTI averaged $18 per barrel less than the average world price, according to the most recent report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. But that “discount” fell below $4 per barrel in July 2013. It rebounded to $14 per barrel in January, and EIA projected that it would average $11 per barrel for all of 2014.
+But even when the discount was greater, the lower price of crude oil in the Midwest never translated into consistently lower prices at the pump. A look at EIA’s weekly figures shows that since the start of 2011 the average price of regular gasoline in the Midwest has been only 4 cents a gallon less than the national average, and has ranged anywhere from 20 cents a gallon less to 21 cents a gallon higher. Those who assumed that refiners were passing on their lower costs to consumers were simply wrong.
+The State Department analysis came to the same conclusion, finding no correlation between wholesale gasoline prices in the Midwest and the average WTI discount. (See section 1.4.6.1 in the “Market Analysis” section.) In a footnote (number 10), the analysis commented that the cheaper Midwestern crude oil “benefited … refiners,” not motorists.
+So, while building the pipeline would undoubtedly provide consumers with some measure of insurance against supply interruptions, as would any additional supply route, there’s simply no evidence that it would have any noticeable effect on prices at the pump, either up or down.
+Alleged Conflicts
+Foes of the pipeline say the State Department report reflects a pro-industry bias because of an alleged conflict of interest by a firm hired to assist in its preparation. The Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth accused the consultant, Environmental Resources Management, of having ties to the oil industry and hiding a previous connection to TransCanada.
+For example, “ERM and TransCanada have worked together at least since 2011 on another pipeline project in Alaska,” Friends of the Earth stated in a July 10, 2013, news release. But ERM said that was wrong. “ERM’s affiliates performed services on the Alaska Project only on behalf of a company other than TransCanada,” the company said in a July 17, 2013, letter to the State Department.
+Indeed, the State Department’s Office of Inspector General investigated, and confirmed that work was done for URS Corp., which was hired by Exxon Mobil Corp. The Alaska project was a joint venture between TransCanada and ExxonMobil, but it was ExxonMobil that paid URS, which in turn paid ERM’s affiliates. The inspector general found this didn’t violate any conflict of interest rules, and cleared the department of any wrongdoing in a report released Feb. 26.
+Another issue raised by critics is that ERM employees working on the Keystone evaluation had previously worked on projects for TransCanada, and one had formerly been a TransCanada employee. But the inspector general found that didn’t violate any conflict-of-interest rules. The inspector general said the department had substantially followed all regulations for vetting consultants for conflicts of interest, and at times had been even “more rigorous” than required. Overall, the inspector general found that “the Department’s conflict of interest review was effective and that the review’s conclusions were reasonable.”
+The Sierra Club and other environmental groups vowed to fight on regardless of the OIG report. On March 3, several hundred people were arrested in student-led protests in Washington, D.C., where some secured themselves to the White House fence with plastic zip ties.
+— by Brooks Jackson
+Sources 
+U.S. Department of State. “Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for the Keystone XL Project.” 31 Jan 2014.
+“Keystone XL Pipeline — Overall route map.” TransCanada Corp. website. Accessed 7 Mar 2014.
+“Jobs and Economic Benefits; Keystone XL Means Jobs.” TransCanada Corp. website. Accessed 7 Mar 2014.
+“Keystone XL: #TimeToBuild.” U.S. Congress; House Energy and Commerce Committee, Republican majority website. Accessed 7 Mar 2014.
+“Media Advisory – TransCanada Releases Detailed Keystone XL Job Creation Data.” TransCanada Corp. news release. 10 Jan 2012.
+“Obama rejects Keystone oil pipeline.” NBC News. 18 Jan 2012.
+“Gulf Coast Pipeline Project.” TransCanada Corp. website. Accessed 7 Mar 2014.
+Transportation Board of Canada. “Railway Investigation R13E0142: Train derailment and fire in Gainford, Alberta.” Website accessed 7 Mar 2014.
+“Stopping the Keystone XL Pipeline.” National Resources Defense Council website. Accessed 7 Mar 2014.
+“What Are Oil Sands?” Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers website. Accessed 7 Mar 2014.
+“What are the Tar Sands?” Rainforest Action Network website. Accessed 7 Mar 2014.
+“Recovering the Oil; Oil Sands Today.” Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers website. Accessed 7 Mar 2014.
+Lattanzio, Richard K. “Canadian Oil Sands: Life-Cycle Assessments of Greenhouse Gas Emissions.” Congressional Research Service. 15 Mar 2013.
+Giles, Cynthia. Letter to U.S. Department of State officials from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency commenting on Keystone XL project review. 22 Apr 2013.
+Lamphier,Gary. “Kinder Morgan, Imperial announce $270M rail terminal for Strathcona County.” Edmonton [Alberta] Journal. 20 Dec 2013.
+“Gibson Energy Announces Hardisty Rail Terminal To Transport Crude (UPDATE).” Huffington Post. 7 Aug 2013.
+Domm, Patti. “Canadian oil rides south even without Keystone pipeline.” CNBC. 4 Nov 2013.
+Kinder-Morgan Canada. “Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion Project.” Company website. accessed 7 Mar 2014.
+Williams, Nia. “UPDATE 2-Kinder Morgan applies to expand Trans Mountain pipeline.” Reuters. 16 Dec 2013.
+Insights West. “Kinder Morgan Expansion Still Splits Views in British Columbia.” 22 Jan 2014.
+Enbridge Inc. “Project at a glance – Northern Gateway.” Company website. accessed 7 Mar 2014.
+“Northern Gateway pipeline decision expected by mid-June.” Reuters. 25 Feb 2014.
+Government of Canada: Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline Project – Joint Review Panel. “Joint Review Panel recommends approving the Enbridge Northern Gateway Project.” news release. 19 Dec 2013.
+Proussalidis, Daniel. “Northern Gateway backers have upper hand: Poll.” Toronto Sun. 25 Jan 2014.
+Kaufmann, By Bill. “B.C. residents favour Northern Gateway pipeline: Poll.” Toronto Sun. 5 Jan 2014.
+Justaston Market Intelligence, Vancouver  BC. “Oil Tanker Traffic in BC; The BC Outlook Omnibus: A Survey of British Columbia Residents.” Poll conducted for the Dogwood Initiative. Jan 2014.
+Enbridge Inc. “Enbridge to Undertake $7 Billion Mainline Replacement Program.” News release. 3 Mar 2014.
+“Edited Transcript: Enbridge Inc Conference Call to Discuss $7 Billion Mainline Replacement Program.” Thompson Reuters. 4 Mar 2014.
+Jones, Jeffrey. “Enbridge bypasses U.S. permit process for $7-billion pipeline upgrade.” Toronto Globe and Mail. 4 Mar 2014.
+Hayes, Doug. “Statement on Enbridge Line 3 Tar Sands Pipeline Expansion Plan.” Sierra Club news release. 4 Mar 2014.
+U.S. Department of Transportation:Pipeline & Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. “All Reported Pipeline Incidents:Hazardous Liquid.” Online database accessed 5 Mar 2014.
+McGowan, Elizabeth and Lisa Song. ” ‘Keystone Kops’ Bungling Led to Costliest U.S. Pipeline Spill” Bloomberg News.  24 Jul 2012.
+Smith, Lindsay. “Enbridge unveils new plans to dredge oily sediment from Kalamazoo River.” Michigan Radio. 13 Feb 2014.
+U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Enbridge Begins New Dredging Project on Kalamazoo River to Comply With EPA Order.” News release. 30 Jul 2013.
+Linnitt, Carol. “Official Price of the Enbridge Kalamazoo Spill, A Whopping $1,039,000,000.” DeSmog Canada. 26 Aug 2013.
+Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality. “Nebraska’s Keystone XL Pipeline Evaluation: Final Evaluation Report.” 4 Jan 2014.
+“Keystone XL will be the safest pipeline ever constructed in the United States.” TransCanada Corporation website. Accessed 7 Mar 2014.
+Giovannetti, Justin and Grant Robertson and Jacquie McNish “As Lac-Mégantic death toll reaches 47, safety board calls for immediate rail-safety changes.” Toronto Globe and Mail. 19 Jul 2013.
+Beaudin,Monique .”Lac-Mégantic oil spill even worse than first feared, investigation shows.” Montreal Gazette. 22 Oct 2013.
+Commisso, Christina. “Train derailment fire will have to burn itself out before residents can go home.” CT News. 19 Oct 2013.
+Salz,Allison. “Evacuation lifted after train derailment in Gainford, Alberta.” Edmonton Sun. 23 Oct 2013.
+Detrhage, Stephen. “Flyover by Hurricane Creekkeeper shows extent of damage in Aliceville train derailment and oil spill (photos).” Alabama Media Group. 20 Nov 2013.
+Silva, Daniella. “Mile-long train carrying crude oil derails, explodes in North Dakota.” NBC News. 30 Dec 2013.
+Sumwalt, Robert. On Behalf of the National Transportation Safety Board, “Testimony Before the Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure United States House of Representatives Hearing on Oversight of Passenger and Freight Rail Safety.” 26 Feb 2014.
+Tate, Curtis. “More oil spilled from trains in 2013 than in previous 4 decades, federal data show.” McClatchy Washington Bureau. 20 Jan 2014.
+Gibbons, Robert and Elizabeth Diltz. “Train carrying Canadian oil derails, leaks in Pennsylvania.” Reuters. 13 Feb 2014.
+Association of American Railroads. “Transportation of Crude Oil by Rail: Advocating for Safer Tanks.” Website accessed 7 Mar 2014.
+“GOP says Keystone XL would lower gas price.” UPI. 21 Feb 2013.
+Steyer, Tom. “Keystone XL Pipeline Will Raise Gasoline Prices, Not Just Environmental Concerns.” Huffington Post. 16 Jul 2013.
+Molon, Adam. “Will Keystone affect gas prices? No, not really.” CNBC. 26 Oct 2013.
+U.S. Energy Information Administration. “WTI-Brent crude oil price spread has reached unseen levels.” 28 Feb 2011.
+U.S. Energy Information Administration. “Short Term Energy Outlook.” Feb 2014.
+U.S. Energy Information Administration. “Full History; U.S. All Grades, Areas and Formulations.” Data downloaded 4 Mar 2014.
+“Keystone XL Report Contractor Tied to TransCanada: Evidence Mounts in Ongoing Conflict of Interest Inquiry.” Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth. Joint news release. 12 Feb 2014.
+“Conflict of interest: State Department contractor on Keystone XL study lied about ties to TransCanada & oil industry.” Friends of the Earth. News release. 10 July 2013.
+Environmental Resources Management letter to U.S. Department of State. 17 Jul 2013.
+Mufson, Steven. “IG: State Department did not break rules when hiring consultant for Keystone report.” Washington Post. 26 Feb 2014.
+U.S. Department of State; Office of Inspector General. “Compliance Follow-up Review: The Department of State’s Choice of Environmental Resources Management, Inc., To Assist in Preparing the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement.” 26 Feb 2014.
+“State Department Inspector General Releases Findings on Keystone XL Assessment.” Statement by Sierra Club. 26 Feb 2014.
+Buford, Talia. “Hundreds arrested at White House Keystone protest.” Politico. 2 Mar 2014."
+"1.9KThe conservative Americans for Prosperity claims Democratic Sen. Mark Begich “is on record supporting a carbon tax … that will cost the average family over $2,000 annually.” Not true. Begich hasn’t backed a carbon tax proposal, and the $2,000 figure is based on general assumptions, not any specific plan or piece of legislation.
+In fact, what Begich has clearly supported is an amendment requiring any potential, but currently nonexistent, carbon tax revenue to be returned to the American people in some way. It was a vote to make a hypothetical tax revenue neutral, a factor that was not part of the “over $2,000” calculation.
+In reality, there is no legislation currently being debated in Congress that would institute a carbon tax, which would be a direct tax on the carbon content of energy sources including coal, oil and gas. Last year, Sens. Bernie Sanders and Barbara Boxer introduced a bill that would enact a $20-per-ton carbon fee and return 60 percent of the revenue to households. The bill was introduced and referred to committee on Feb. 14, 2013, and it hasn’t gone anywhere since. A group of four Democratic lawmakers also released a “discussion draft” of a carbon tax in March 2013, asking for comment on how a tax should be priced and structured, and how revenue could best be returned to the public.
+“There’s nothing really on the table,” Charles Komanoff, director of the Carbon Tax Center, told us. “To my knowledge, there has never even been a hearing, even just an informational hearing on anything that is or resembles a carbon tax bill.”
+Komanoff’s group, a nonprofit launched in 2007, supports a revenue-neutral carbon tax to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Begich isn’t listed on the group’s website among the politicians voicing support for a carbon tax, and Komanoff said he wasn’t aware of the Alaska senator backing the idea.
+The citations in the AFP ad don’t show Begich supporting a carbon tax, either.
+Vague Ties to Carbon Tax
+The AFP ad says Begich “is on record supporting a carbon tax, and even pushing Harry Reid to make it a priority.”
+
+But neither of those statements are clearly supported by Begich’s votes and actions. The ad points to his March 2013 vote against an amendment to a Democratic budget resolution by Republican Sen. Roy Blunt to require 60 votes to approve a potential carbon tax in the future. AFP and other organizations wrote Blunt a letter, expressing support for the amendment, which, the letter said, would “create a procedural barrier against carbon taxes or fees in the future.”
+Carbon tax opponents certainly would have appreciated Begich, and any other senator for that matter, voting for the Blunt amendment. But voting against a resolution to require a high-threshold for such a tax to pass the Senate at some unknown point in the future is not the same as voting in favor of the tax itself.
+On the same day, Begich voted in favor of an amendment from Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse — who had introduced the “discussion draft” on the carbon tax with other lawmakers. Whitehouse’s amendment would have required any possible future carbon tax to be revenue neutral, with the money the government would receive from the tax being returned to the American people. That’s not a vote for a carbon tax, either.
+The Carbon Tax Center certainly doesn’t count it as a show of support. James Handley, the group’s senior policy analyst, told us that the claim that Begich supported a carbon tax is “totally spurious.” Whitehouse’s resolution, Handley said, “would take the sting out of any carbon tax by shifting taxes off workers and onto polluters. Begich seemed to be saying ‘no’ to additional tax burdens, but ‘maybe’ to a tax shift.”
+Neither the Blunt nor the Whitehouse amendment passed.
+As for “pushing Harry Reid,” AFP highlights a letter Begich and other freshman Democratic senators wrote to the Senate majority leader in July 2010, a few months after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The letter expresses support for comprehensive energy legislation, but it doesn’t say anything about a “carbon tax.” Instead, it says comprehensive legislation should include “making polluters pay through a price on greenhouse gas emissions.” That could mean a carbon tax, or it could be cap-and-trade, or it could mean another form of incentives or penalties. The letter doesn’t specify.
+It goes on to say: “While each of us has individual priorities and concerns for our states and regions, we believe that the framework outlined above should guide energy legislation on the floor this year.”
+Begich wrote another letter to Reid earlier that year saying that “none of the various proposals for economy-wide legislation sufficiently addresses Alaska’s unique situation,” according to a March 28, 2010, article in Petroleum News, a weekly based in Anchorage. Begich said in the letter that Alaska’s priorities for energy legislation would include increasing incentives for bringing Alaska’s natural gas to market, state sharing of offshore oil and gas revenues, funding for communities dealing with climate change effects such as town relocations, and more funding for government research of Arctic and climate issues.
+We contacted Begich’s campaign to ask about his position, and spokesman Max Croes told us via email that Begich “does not support a Carbon Tax” and that the claim in the ad is “flat-out false.”
+Last year, Begich released a radio ad, in response to robocalls from the National Republican Senatorial Committee that claimed he was a carbon-tax supporter. In the ad, Begich says: “I’m fighting against the carbon tax.” AFP uses that clip in its ad. The Begich campaign’s support for the radio ad doesn’t back up the claim that he’s “fighting against the carbon tax” — instead the campaign points to articles on Begich standing up for Alaska’s needs and taking divergent views from Democrats on oil issues.
+As the 2010 letters to Reid show, Begich is in favor of energy legislation that addresses climate change. He told The Hill newspaper in August 2013 that “there’s no debate on the science.” He has supported renewable energy, and also increased oil and gas exploration in Alaska.
+Analysis of a Phantom Bill
+The AFP ad goes on to say the carbon tax that Begich supposedly supported “will cost the average family over $2,000 annually,” citing a Heritage Foundation analysis from January 2013. The implication is that Begich supported a plan that would have this impact on families, but Begich didn’t sign on to any specific proposal. In fact, there is no active legislation to which Begich could sign on, even if he wanted to. And the Heritage Foundation wasn’t analyzing any specific proposal, either.
+Instead, Heritage developed its estimate using carbon-tax scenarios presented in the Energy Information Administration’s 2012 Annual Energy Outlook, which gives various metrics for energy demand and supply.
+EIA considered the impact of imposing carbon taxes at two levels ($15 per metric ton and $25 per metric ton). It also considered a scenario in which companies make no capital investments in anticipation of greenhouse gas-reducing legislation. And the EIA presented a reference case, or “business-as-usual,” which assumes companies would make capital investments in anticipation of GHG legislation. Specifically, “the cost of capital for investments in GHG-intensive technologies … is increased by 3 percentage points to reflect the behavior of utilities, other energy companies, and regulators concerning the possible enactment of GHG legislation that could require owners to purchase emissions allowances” or invest in other emissions-reducing or offsetting measures, EIA said.
+Heritage took the higher of the two carbon tax scenarios (the $25 tax) and compared that with the scenario in which companies wouldn’t make any adjustments in capital costs in anticipation of legislation. Using this maximum impact under the EIA scenarios, Heritage says a carbon tax would “cut the income of a family of four by $1,900” in 2016 and cause “average losses of $1,400 per year through 2035.” It also would “raise the family-of-four energy bill by more than $500 per year.”
+But Begich hasn’t backed any carbon tax proposal — let alone one that includes these specifics.
+Also, the EIA carbon tax scenarios don’t account for any offsets, such as returning revenue gained from a carbon tax to the public, an idea Begich indicated he supported by voting for the Whitehouse amendment. If revenue were returned to the public, such as in the form of credits or other tax decreases, the impact on families’ bottom lines could be much different. The authors of the Heritage article argue that a revenue-neutral tax is politically impossible in Washington, but that’s speculation, of course.
+In the end, the Heritage analysis — along with the ad’s other claims about a loss of Alaskan jobs and little help for the environment —  has nothing to do with Begich. He hasn’t signed on to any carbon tax plan.
+— Lori Robertson"
+"132Political leanings: Democratic/liberal
+
+Spending target: $100 million
+
+San Francisco billionaire and climate-change activist Tom Steyer spent millions in three high-profile 2013 elections, and his NextGen Climate Action group was reportedly ready to spend as much as $100 million or more in 2014. It is a fierce opponent of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline project.
+Steyer said in a Feb. 17 New York Times interview that $100 million would be a “really cheap price” to pay to influence policy toward what he called the “generational challenge of the world.” In May, he confirmed that his group’s goal is indeed $100 million and announced that the group would target races in seven states. His NextGen Climate Action group states that its mission is “to avert climate disaster and preserve American prosperity.”
+NextGen reported spending $57 million as of Oct. 25, 2014.
+In 2012 Steyer, who is reported to be worth $1.5 billion, sold the San Francisco-based hedge fund he had founded in 1986 and turned to philanthropy and political action. NextGen Climate Action says it was incorporated in early 2013 as a 501(c)(4) advocacy organization.  A NextGen Climate Action Committee also registered July 22, 2013 with the Federal Election Commission as a super PAC, making only independent expenditures. As of Oct. 25, Steyer had personally contributed $66.9 million over two years to the super PAC in the 2014 cycle, and an unknown amount to the 501(c)(4), which is not required to disclose its donors.
+In all, Steyer and his wife, Kathryn, had contributed nearly $74 million this campaign cycle, based on data released by the FEC on Oct. 25 and the IRS on Aug. 4, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That puts them atop the Center for Responsive Politics’ list of individual political donors for the 2014 campaign cycle.
+Steyer poured an astonishing $8 million into the 2013 contest for governor of Virginia. Among other things, NextGen Climate Action Committee paid for a TV ad attacking Republican candidate Ken Cuccinelli as a “climate change denier” who (as state attorney general) had engaged in a taxpayer-funded “witch hunt” against a University of Virginia professor whose research on climate change he opposed. On its website, the group claims credit for helping defeat Cuccinelli through a “a massive integrated effort” that also including door-to-door canvasing and targeted online ads.
+Also in 2013, a sister group funded by Steyer, the CE Action Committee, spent about $1 million supporting Democratic Rep. Ed Markey and attacking his primary and general election opponents in a special race to fill the Senate seat formerly held by Secretary of State John Kerry. In 2009, Markey co-authored an ambitious cap-and-trade bill to address climate change. It passed the House (then under Democratic control) only to die later in the Senate. Markey won the special election.
+Steyer’s group was less successful in a pivotal special election to fill a Washington state Senate seat. According to local news reports, Steyer spent more than $500,000 attacking Republican state Rep. Jan Angel in her successful bid to unseat the incumbent Democrat, state Sen. Nathan Schlicher, who had been appointed to fill a vacancy. It was the most expensive state Senate race in state history. Steyer’s money helped fund TV ads attacking Angel for legislation to “reduce access to mammograms” and “eliminate funding for cancer screenings.”  But she won anyway, and her victory padded the margin of the ruling majority coalition to 26-23. The coalition is made up of Republicans, plus two Democrats who caucus with the GOP.
+According to the New York Times story in February, the group intends to use “a hard-edge campaign of attack ads against governors and lawmakers” in 2014, trying to pressure them to enact measures to address climate change. The organization announced in May that it would focus on races in seven states: Senate races in Iowa, New Hampshire, Colorado and Michigan, and governors’ races in Pennsylvania, Florida and Maine. None of the targeted candidates is a Democrat.
+The Senate candidates are Cory Gardner of Colorado, Joni Ernst of Iowa, Scott Brown of New Hampshire and Terri Lynn Land of Michigan. The gubernatorial targets are all incumbents: Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett, Florida Gov. Rick Scott and Maine Gov. Paul LePage. The super PAC had spent more than $9 million attacking their targeted GOP Senate candidates.
+In addition to the money spent on independent expenditures, this figure also includes contributions to other Democratic-leaning outside spending groups, including $5.5 million to the Senate Majority PAC; $200,000 to American Bridge 21st Century; and $150,000 to the League of Conservation Voters Victory Fund.
+Update, Nov. 5: NextGen-backed candidates won three of the seven races, winning in New Hampshire, Michigan and Pennsylvania and losing in Colorado, Iowa, Florida and Maine.
+Fact-checking NextGen Climate Action:
+Stretching Cuccinelli’s Record, Sept. 19, 2013
+The Messy Facts in Virginia, Aug. 23, 2013
+Florida Surrogates Go Nuclear, Aug. 18, 2013
+Florida Fracking Fracas, Aug. 14, 2014"
+"2.1KArguing against White House efforts on climate change, Rep. Marsha Blackburn mangled the facts and misrepresented the words of EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy.
+Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee, claimed “even Director McCarthy … said reaching all of the 26 U.S. goals is not going to have an impact globally.” But the “goals” cited by Blackburn aren’t goals at all — they are 26 “climate change indicators” that the department tracks to measure the effect of the changing climate. McCarthy said it is “unlikely that any specific one step” can have an impact on those indicators, but she also said the idea is to coordinate “a broader array of actions” with other countries to make a meaningful global impact.
+Blackburn’s comment came in a back-and-forth with Bill Nye “The Science Guy” on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” They discussed whether any single weather event can be tied to global warming.
+Nye, Feb. 16: Well, I’ve got to say once again, what people are doing is introducing the idea that scientific uncertainty, in this case about cold weather events in what we call back east, are — is the same as uncertainty about the whole idea of climate change. And this is unscientific. It’s not logical. It is a way apparently that the fossil fuel industry has dealt with our politics. And this is not good. Everybody — you don’t — this is not– you don’t need a Ph.D. in climate science to understand what’s going on. That things — that we have overwhelming evidence that the climate is changing. That you cannot tie any one event to that is not the same as doubt about the whole thing. …
+Blackburn: Let’s say everything that Bill says is wrong is wrong. Let’s just say that. Then you say what are you going to do about it? What would the policy be? And will that policy have an impact? Now, even Director McCarthy from the EPA in answering questions from Congressman Pompeo before our committee, said reaching all of the 26 U.S. goals is not going to have an impact globally. And, David, what we have to look at is the fact that you don’t make good laws, sustainable laws when you’re making them on hypotheses or theories or unproven sciences.
+Blackburn went on to make the point that policies ought to be based on a “cost benefit analysis.” But she badly botched the facts with her claim that the EPA administrator said “reaching all of the 26 U.S. goals is not going to have an impact globally.”
+She was referring to a discussion between Republican Rep. Mike Pompeo of Kansas and EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy during a House Energy & Commerce Committee hearing on Sept. 18, 2013. The hearing was to discuss “The President’s Climate Action Plan,” which Obama introduced during a speech at Georgetown University on June 25, 2013. Among the proposals in the president’s action plan were “activities that range from new standards for power plants and trucks, to a 30 percent increase of funding across federal agencies for research, development and deployment of ‘clean energy’ technologies, to restrictions on financing of fossil-fuel projects abroad.”
+In the committee hearing, Pompeo zeroed in on an EPA report titled “Climate Change Indicators in the United States, 2012” and repeatedly asked how White House policies might impact those indicators, as a way to assess the performance of the past and proposed environmental regulations. (The exchange begins at the 2:16:00 mark.) One of the indicators noted by Pompeo was heat-related deaths. Other indicators include atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, tropical cyclone activity, sea levels, the decrease of Arctic sea ice and snowfall.
+Pompeo, Sept. 18, 2013: Do you think it would be reasonable to take the regulations you promulgated and link them to those 26 indicators that you have on your website? That this is how they impacted us?
+McCarthy: It is unlikely that any specific one step is going to be seen as having a visible impact on any of those impacts — a visible change in any of those impacts. What I’m suggesting is that climate change [policy] has to be a broader array of actions that the U.S. and other folks in the international community take that make significant effort towards reducing greenhouse gases and mitigating the impacts of climate change. … They are indicators of climate change, they are not directly applicable to performance impacts of any one action. … What we’re attempting to do is put together a comprehensive climate plan, across the administration, that positions the U.S. for leadership on this issue and that will prompt and leverage international discussions and action.
+When Pompeo suggested there was “literally no connection between the activities you’re undertaking” and the 26 indicators, McCarthy emphatically replied, “I did not say that.”
+McCarthy said the indicators are “broad global indicators of impacts associated with climate change. They are not performance requirements or impacts related to any particular act. … They indicate the public health associated with climate change.”
+Despite McCarthy’s repeated rejection of the premise that the proposed environmental rules are not meeting expectations if they do not measurably impact the indicators, Blackburn cited this exchange as evidence that “even Director McCarthy from the EPA in answering questions from Congressman Pompeo before our committee, said reaching all of the 26 U.S. goals is not going to have an impact globally.” We reached out to the EPA to respond to Blackburn’s comment, and EPA spokeswoman Enesta Jones released a statement reiterating that the 26 climate change indicators “are not Agency goals.”
+
+Jones, Feb. 18: The 26 climate change indicators are not Agency goals, but instead are a compilation of evidence from peer-reviewed sources that shows that the composition of the atmosphere and many fundamental measures of climate in the United States are changing, with effects already being observed across the U.S. The fact that the effects of climate change are already being observed in the U.S., only reinforces the need for continued, sensible steps to address emissions of GHGs. The indicators are not intended to describe the effect of any one program or action to address climate change since climate change is driven by global concentrations of GHGs.
+
+We spoke to several climate scientists, who told us Blackburn’s comment, and overall point, is misinformed.
+
+“Goals and indicators are different concepts,” said Reto Ruedy, a climate scientist with the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. “There is only one goal: Stabilizing our climate at a level that keeps this planet habitable. To do that we have to stabilize greenhouse gas concentration. Needless to say, this requires a global effort. … It is true that the actions of a single country cannot achieve this goal. However, it seems reasonable that the industrialized countries most responsible for the current atmospheric composition take the first steps.”
+Richard C. J. Somerville, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said Pompeo and Blackburn have both confused “goals” and “indicators.” Besides, he said, the first four “indicators” on the EPA list “could certainly be impacted by U.S. policies.” They are: U.S. greenhouse gas emissions; global greenhouse gas emissions; atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases; and climate forcing.
+“The misleading aspect of the language used by Rep. Blackburn is the implication that, because U.S. actions alone cannot solve the global problem, U.S. policy will not have any impact at all,” Somerville said. “That is simply wrong. First, U.S. reductions of GHG emissions will have a direct impact on global emissions, hence on concentrations and forcing, because the U.S. is responsible for more emissions than any country other than China. Second, the failure of the U.S. thus far to set and meet serious GHG emissions reductions targets has clearly been a factor in the failure to get international agreement and action. More positively, if the U.S. decides to act energetically, its example, its technical abilities, and its influential superpower status can greatly increase the chance of other countries also acting. This is exactly what happened, for example, in the successful global effort to stop the production of chemicals such as CFCs that cause the ozone hole.”
+John Nielsen-Gammon, Texas’ state climatologist, likened climate change mitigation to recycling.
+“Assume that if everybody recycled their aluminum cans, it would greatly benefit the environment,” Nielsen-Gammon told us. “However, if only one person recycled his or her aluminum cans, it would have no measurable effect on the environment. Should a person recycle aluminum cans or simply throw them away? Blackburn’s argument is equivalent to saying that no intelligent person should recycle, because they should know that their own recycling will not affect the problem of aluminum mining. However, most of us do not think or behave that way. Instead, we tend to follow the Golden Rule: do what you would have others do.”
+The climate scientists also took issue with Blackburn’s comment about basing laws on “hypotheses or theories or unproven sciences.” As we have noted before, there is overwhelming consensus among climate scientists that greenhouse gases are responsible for an overall warming of global temperatures. A paper published in 2010 by the National Academy of Sciences found that 97 percent to 98 percent of climate researchers “most actively publishing in the field” agreed that climate change was occurring.
+Blackburn’s comment “exploits the common use of ‘theory’ to connote hunch or conjecture, which is not what that word means in science,” Somerville said. “And it implies that mainstream climate change science is not sound or well-founded or trustworthy enough to serve as a useful input or basis for policy.” Somerville said that may be the view of many people, including some Republican leaders, “but it is emphatically not the view of some 97% of the scientists most actively publishing research on climate change.”
+— Robert Farley"
+"176The League of Conservation Voters misuses a quote by a Republican congressman to portray him as “extreme” on climate change.
+The environmental group quotes Rep. Rodney Davis in a TV ad as saying “global warming has stopped 16 years ago.” But the Illinois freshman actually said, “They say that global warming has stopped 16 years ago.” He went on to say, “But climate change is real.”
+The TV ad, titled “Sixteen Years Ago,” is part of a nearly $2 million ad campaign targeting four Republican members of Congress for their views on climate change. About halfway into the ad, the narrator says, “Congressman Davis is so extreme that he denies climate change science, suggesting” — and then Davis is heard saying — “global warming has stopped 16 years ago.”
+On the screen, viewers see “Congressman Davis. ‘Global Warming Stopped 16 Years Ago.’ ”
+
+That’s not what Davis said. The quote is lifted from an October 2012 radio interview that Davis did on a call-in show with Illinois Public Media during last year’s congressional campaign. Here is a partial transcript of an exchange between Davis and a caller named “Bob” (starts at about the 42:15 mark):
+Bob: I have a question about climate change. The scientific consensus about climate change has been strengthening over the last decade. The forecast, which of course depend on what we do, show that the climate of Illinois will become more like Oklahoma and Texas over this century than what we’re used to, and droughts will become more common. I’m just wondering what your plan on dealing with climate change is.
+Davis: Ironically, if you listen to recent reports, they say that global warming has stopped 16 years ago —
+Bob: That’s absolutely wrong.
+Davis: Yeah, I was just about —
+Bob: You are absolutely off base —
+Davis: Hey, Bob, Bob, I was just about to make a comment that I would love to see more stats than what’s just been reported on a couple stations. But climate change is real. The debate is over whether or not it’s man-made or natural, and what can we do about it. The key is —
+Bob: We have a Nobel Prize winner here at the University of Illinois. I suggest you call him up.
+Davis: OK. Great.
+As the transcript makes clear, Davis said, “They say that global warming has stopped 16 years ago,” but the edited version leaves out the words “they say that.” The fact that Davis made a reference at all to “recent reports” about global warming stopping (reports that had been widely debunked by climate scientists) obviously troubled the caller, who cut off Davis’ response. But Davis did not say he agreed with those who say climate change had stopped, and, in fact, he said “climate change is real,” when given the chance to resume speaking.
+He also did not express an opinion in the radio interview on whether climate change is man-made, although he acknowledges that there is a debate about it. So does Davis deny that climate change is caused by human activity? Well, that same month the News-Gazette published a candidate questionnaire, and one of the questions that Davis answered was on climate change:
+Question: Do you believe in climate change/global warming, and if so would you vote for legislation that would mandate reductions in levels of global warming pollution by 2020 or 2025?
+Davis: Many factors contribute to changes in climate, both man-made and natural. Regardless of your views on global warming, we should all agree that reducing our dependence on foreign oil and cutting air pollution without doing economic harm to our citizens will benefit our national security, environment and public health.
+We couldn’t find any instances of Davis denying that climate change exists or that man isn’t at least partially to blame for it. We asked the League of Conservation Voters for such evidence, but the group’s response didn’t include any more information. We also contacted Davis’ congressional office and asked if Davis believes that climate change is caused by man. His spokesman, Andrew Flach, told us: “It is one of the contributing factors, yes, but to what extent is open to debate and further research.”
+Flach’s response is no doubt unsatisfactory to those, including the League of Conservation Voters, who want Congress to act immediately on climate change based on the scientific evidence. As we have written before, the National Academy of Sciences published a paper in 2010 that found 97 percent to 98 percent of climate researchers “most actively publishing in the field” agreed that climate change was occurring. And the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in a 2007 report that human activity is “very likely” the cause of “most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century.”
+There also is no question that Davis, a Republican, opposes environmental regulations that he views as anti-business — including those aimed at reducing greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. That, too, rankles the League. The TV ad says Davis “even opposes common sense efforts to reduce carbon pollution.” That’s a reference to an amendment Davis supported earlier this month that would require Congress to approve any regulations to tax carbon emissions. The sponsor of the amendment, Rep. Steve Scalise, said it was in response to President Obama’s climate change speech in which the president proposed bypassing Congress by using his executive powers and taking regulatory steps to reduce the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.
+We take no position on whether Davis’ views on climate change are “extreme” or if the president has a “common sense” plan. But the League of Conservation Voters went too far when it edited an audio clip of Davis to make it sound as if he said something that he didn’t.
+— Eugene Kiely
+Update, Aug. 16: We originally wrote that we did not receive a response from the League of Conservation Voters. The group did send us an email that wasn’t successfully delivered to our inbox."
+"145President Barack Obama’s climate change plan had both sides busy spinning data:
+
+Rep. Eric Cantor, in warning that the president’s plan would hurt the economy, said Americans are increasingly “losing faith in their economy.” But the Consumer Confidence Index, released a day before Cantor spoke, showed consumer confidence “is now at its highest level since January 2008.”
+Obama said that “since 2006, no country on Earth has reduced its total carbon pollution by as much as the United States of America.” That’s accurate in terms of the amount of emissions reduced. But dozens of nations have reduced their carbon dioxide emissions by a larger percentage than the U.S., which is second only to China in total emissions.
+
+The president gave a major speech on climate change on June 25, outlining a broad plan to use his executive powers to reduce greenhouse gases. A day later, House Republican leaders — including Cantor, the House majority leader — held a press conference to denounce the potential economic impact of the plan.
+Cantor, June 26: Increasingly, the American people are losing trust in their government and losing faith in their economy, and these are the problems that House Republicans are trying to address and trying to fix. But … yesterday, the president took time out to announce that he will unilaterally introduce new rules and regulations that will impose higher energy costs on our small businesses and our working families, depressing growth in our economy.
+Cantor ignores the most recent results from the Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index.
+The Conference Board, an independent economic research organization founded in 1916, produces monthly reports that are closely watched by businesses and economists and widely reported by business media. The board released its June report a day before the GOP press conference. The results were positive, with the index increasing to 81.4 from 74.3 in May:
+Lynn Franco, director of economic indicators at the Conference Board, June 25: Consumer Confidence increased for the third consecutive month and is now at its highest level since January 2008 (Index 87.3). Consumers are considerably more positive about current business and labor market conditions than they were at the beginning of the year. Expectations have also improved considerably over the past several months, suggesting that the pace of growth is unlikely to slow in the short-term, and may even moderately pick up.
+Days before the release of the most recent CCI, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke cited “increases in consumer confidence” as a reason that the Fed may start to slow its bond buying program — an announcement that immediately drove down the markets. Canadian Business magazine reported that Bernanke “returned to that theme” — of consumer confidence — “several times” in his June 19 press conference.
+Canadian Business, June 19: The chairman returned to that theme several times again during Wednesday’s press conference. He cited the latest reading on the University of Michigan Survey of Consumer Sentiment, which showed that Americans haven’t felt so good since July 2007.
+We contacted Cantor’s office for data supporting his statement. His spokeswoman, Megan Whittemoore, directed us to the June 18 Gallup Economic Confidence Index (a weekly poll) and the June 26 Rasmussen Consumer Index (a daily survey). The Rasmussen Consumer Index, as of June 26, was 100.4 — a drop of 11 points from a six-year high of 111.3 recorded on June 19. Gallup’s June 18 report showed a dip of two points, from -7 to -9, from the previous week. The most recent Gallup report, which was published June 25, showed economic confidence edged up 1 point from the report Whittemoore cited.
+Both the June 25 Gallup report and the June 26 Rasmussen Consumer Index report noted that consumer confidence remains relatively high. Rasmussen said it remained “unchanged from three months ago,” despite the recent dip. Gallup reported, “Confidence remains on the higher end of what Gallup has measured the last five years,” as is partly illustrated in the chart below that was included in Gallup’s recent report.
+
+Despite improvements, the surveys do show that most Americans are not optimistic about the economy. Negative Gallup scores “indicate Americans are more negative than positive” about the economy. That’s true, too, of the Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index, which showed more consumers believe business conditions are “bad” than “good.”
+Conference Board, June 25: Consumers’ assessment of current conditions continued to improve in June. Those stating business conditions are “good” held steady at 19.1 percent, while those saying business conditions are “bad” decreased to 24.9 percent from 26.0 percent. Consumers’ appraisal of the job market was also more positive. Those claiming jobs are “plentiful” increased to 11.7 percent from 9.9 percent, while those claiming jobs are “hard to get” edged up to 36.9 percent from 36.4 percent.
+In short, data from multiple sources suggest consumers feel the economy is not good, but getting better — contrary to Cantor’s claim that “increasingly” Americans are “losing faith in their economy.”
+U.S. Leader in CO2 Reductions?
+In the speech that triggered Cantor’s remarks, Obama did some spinning of his own.
+The president’s remark that “no country on Earth has reduced its total carbon pollution by as much as the United States of America” since 2006 is supported by a May 2012 news release from the International Energy Agency on global carbon dioxide emissions in 2011. While global emissions edged up, U.S. emissions went down.
+IEA, May 24, 2012: CO2 emissions in the United States in 2011 fell by 92 Mt, or 1.7%, primarily due to ongoing switching from coal to natural gas in power generation and an exceptionally mild winter, which reduced the demand for space heating. US emissions have now fallen by 430 Mt (7.7%) since 2006, the largest reduction of all countries or regions.
+However, it should be noted that there are few countries that even come close to emitting the amount of carbon dioxide that the U.S. does. The results are different when the reduction amount is calculated as a percentage.
+In 2011, the U.S. emitted 5,490.63 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. That was second only to China, which emitted 8,715.31 million metric tons. In fact, the U.S. carbon dioxide emissions reduction of over 430 million metric tons since 2006 is more than most countries emit in a single year. Only 14 countries, including the U.S. and China, emitted more than that amount of carbon dioxide in 2011.
+The U.S. wouldn’t be tops if emissions reductions were measured by the percentage change.
+The U.S. reduced its CO2 emissions by 7.32 percent from 2006 to 2011, according to the most recent data from the Energy Information Administration. The EIA cited “slower economic growth, weather,” higher gasoline prices and an increasing shift from coal to natural gas as reasons for the emissions decline in 2011.
+But more than 40 nations had a larger percentage reduction than the U.S., including France (10.10 percent), Germany (12.01 percent), Italy (14.24 percent), Spain (14.41 percent) and the United Kingdom (15.15 percent) — all of which committed to reducing emissions under the Kyoto Protocol that took effect in 2005 and has since been extended through 2020.
+The EU-15 countries — the 15 countries that were members of the European Union before 2004 — were “committed to reducing their collective emissions to 8% below 1990 levels by the years 2008-2012,” the EU says on its “climate action” website. The United States did not ratify the treaty.
+The nation with the largest reduction as a percentage since 2006 is the Republic of Tajikistan, which reduced its emissions by 64.71 percent. Its emissions dropped from 7.418 million metric tons in 2006 to 2.618 million metric tons in 2011.
+– Madeleine Stevens, D’Angelo Gore and Justin Cohen"
+"196A Democratic video says 240 House members “voted in 2011 that climate change was a ‘hoax.’ ” Not exactly. The 2011 vote was ultimately a referendum on who should set climate change policy — the Environmental Protection Agency or Congress. It was not a vote on whether climate change is a “hoax.”
+Organizing for Action, a nonprofit political group that advocates for President Obama’s policies, unveiled the climate change video on April 25. It is a compilation, for the most part, of Republicans talking dismissively about climate change. One clip shows Rep. John Boehner, who was minority leader at the time, downplaying the environmental harm caused by carbon dioxide — noting that it is emitted by humans exhaling and cows “doing what they do.” We corrected some of the misstatements Boehner made in that 2009 TV interview in a piece titled “Hot Air on ‘This Week.’ ”
+But the Democratic video goes too far in its text and images when it says, “Number of House members who voted in 2011 that climate change was a ‘hoax’: 240.” That is immediately followed by a video clip of GOP Rep. Paul Broun calling climate change a “hoax” in a floor speech — which implies that Broun was speaking on the 2011 legislation mentioned in the video.
+We asked OFA about that 2011 vote. We were referred to an April 6, 2011, vote on a Democratic amendment to a GOP-backed bill that would have prohibited the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases. The amendment, which was defeated 184-240, did not use the word “hoax.” Broun did not speak on the amendment during the debate, and, in fact, none of the Republicans who spoke against it called climate change a “hoax.”
+Also, not all of the 240 who voted against it were Republicans; three were Democrats.
+The full text of the amendment, which was sponsored by Rep. Henry Waxman of California, reads: “Congress accepts the scientific findings of the Environmental Protection Agency that climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for public health and welfare.”
+The underlying bill — H.R. 910, Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011 — was the Republican response to an EPA finding that greenhouse gases are a public health threat, which cleared the way for the agency for the first time to regulate carbon dioxide and other gases that contribute to global climate change. The official House Republican position on the bill was that climate change should be addressed by Congress, not the EPA. In its analysis of the bill, the Republican leadership said: “H.R. 910 would prevent the ever expanding EPA regulations of stationary sources and return climate change policymaking responsibility to Congress.”
+In other words, the Republicans did not want to approve an amendment accepting the EPA findings on climate change, because they did not want to give the EPA congressional approval to regulate greenhouse gases. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner expressed that concern in his floor speech, when he said the amendment “gives the proxy to the EPA to make determinations that will have vast impact on our economy without going through the usual legislative process.” He said this is “not a debate on the underlying science of climate change.”
+Sensenbrenner was one of two Republicans who spoke against the amendment during a brief debate. The other, then-Rep. Robert Dold, said: “I believe in science. I also know that the Earth has been warming for some time. … I believe that human activity is also playing a role.” But Dold said he was not willing to “only accept the scientific findings of the EPA.”
+Broun did not speak on the amendment. The clip in the video of him calling climate change “a hoax” came from a floor speech two years earlier on June 26, 2009.
+Let’s be clear: Broun is off base. As we wrote when GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum called climate change a “hoax,” climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that global warming is real and human activities are making it worse. A paper published by the National Academy of Sciences in 2010 found that 97 percent to 98 percent of climate researchers “most actively publishing in the field” agreed with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change finding in 2007 that human activity is “very likely” the cause of “most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century.”
+But OFA, too, is off base in saying that every House member who opposed the Waxman amendment in 2011 voted “that climate change was a ‘hoax.’ ”
+In fact, four of the Republicans who voted against the Waxman amendment in 2011 voted for Waxman’s climate change legislation in 2009 that would have created a cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. (Waxman’s bill — the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 — narrowly passed 219-212, and it would not have passed without eight Republican votes, since 44 Democrats voted against it.)
+In supporting Waxman’s cap-and-trade bill in 2009, GOP Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey cited the scientific evidence of climate change and the need to address it.
+“While not a unanimous outlook, the concerns and warnings about the impacts of global climate disruption are the predominant views of the scientific community,” Smith said.
+Smith quoted from a National Academies report that concluded “the scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to begin taking steps to prepare for climate change and to slow it.” Smith then added, “With this in mind, I will continue to gather as much data as I can in order to fully assess the best and most accurate scientific opinion and identify the most reasonable, balanced government response to address environmental issues and concerns.”
+As Smith’s comments suggest, there is a range of opinion on global warming and how to address it. There are those, such as Broun, who say climate change is a hoax. There are others, including Dold, who say climate change is occurring and humans do play a role, but question how much human activities contribute to it. There are still others who believe climate change is happening and that humans are mostly to blame, but who are concerned that unilateral actions by the U.S. will not do enough good to outweigh the impact on the economy.
+In Smith’s case, he thought the Waxman cap-and-trade bill in 2009 was a “balanced government response,” but two years later, he voted against the Waxman amendment. Does that make Smith a “climate denier,” as OFA puts it? We don’t think so.
+Organizing for Action would have been correct to say that 237 Republicans opposed an amendment accepting “the scientific findings of the Environmental Protection Agency that climate change is occurring” and “caused largely” by humans. But that’s not the same thing as calling climate change a “hoax.”
+— Eugene Kiely"
+"69An ad running in San Diego and on MSNBC claims immigration will cause a rise in U.S. population equal to that of the American West within 30 years. That’s not true. The increase is projected to be substantial, but nowhere near that high, even counting the children and grandchildren of newly arriving immigrants, legal or illegal.
+
+A group called Californians for Population Stabilization began running the ad April 17, pegging it to Earth Day, which is April 22. It argues that because the average U.S. resident uses more energy and generates more carbon emissions than residents of less-developed countries, controlling immigration is “part of the solution” to global warming.
+That’s a matter of opinion, which we won’t debate one way or the other. It’s based on a 2008 study from the Center for Immigration Studies, which in turn is based on figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Those show that U.S. residents, per person, produce more tons of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels than the less-developed nations from which many U.S. immigrants arrive.
+The ad makes one factual claim that is badly wrong, however.
+CAPS narrator: Left alone, immigration will drive a population increase equal to the entire American West in just 30 years.
+Different people have different ideas about which states are part of the “American West,” but the CAPS narrator holds a map showing 18 states (including Texas and Louisiana). The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that the population of those 18 states was 111,030,138 as of July 1 last year.
+Will immigration really produce such a large increase in just 30 years? It won’t, according to the very population expert whose research CAPS cites in support of its claim. Jeffrey Passel of the Pew Research Center co-authored a 2008 study projecting that 82 percent of U.S. population growth between 2005 and 2050 will be accounted for by newly arriving immigrants and their descendants. It projected that immigration would add 117 million people to the population, including 67 million immigrants, 47 million children and 3 million grandchildren.
+That’s a lot, surely. And the 117 million total exceeds the current population of the 18 states shown in the ad. But Passel estimates it would take 45 years — not 30 — to reach that figure. “It makes a big difference,” Passel told us in a telephone interview. “A lot of the additional population is children and grandchildren of the new arrivals.” Allowing 15 years less time for bearing children and grandchildren produces “a lot smaller number,” he said.
+At our request, Passel calculated the same figures for a 30-year period, starting in 2005. He figured that the growth would be 66 million, including 23 million children and grandchildren of new arrivals. That’s a large increase to be sure — but not as dramatic or shocking as the CAPS ad would have you believe.
+And even that 66 million figure may be too large. Passel said in a message to us: “It’s also worth noting in passing, that for the first 7 years of the projection, 2005-2011, the actual levels of immigration have fallen short of what was projected (largely because of the Great Recession).  A new projection for 2050 would likely be a bit short of what we previously projected.”
+— Brooks Jackson"
+"94Likely GOP presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty's views on cap and trade aren't what they used to be.
+Pawlenty told ""Fox News Sunday"" on Jan. 16 that he ""never did sign a bill relating to cap and trade"" when he was governor of Minnesota, but that's not true. He also said: ""I've opposed cap and trade."" However, that's been the case only since 2009.
+In fact, the bill he signed in 2007 specifically required a task force to ""recommend how the state could adopt"" a cap-and-trade system. Furthermore, he also signed a regional compact with other Midwestern governors agreeing to ""jointly endeavor"" to ""develop a market-based and multi-sector cap-and-trade mechanism.""
+This isn't the first time we've found a Republican who might make a run for the 2012 nomination trying to bury his earlier views on this subject. In December, we wrote that former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee had pretty clearly backed just the sort of cap-and-trade system for cutting carbon emissions about which he recently said, ""I never did support and never would support it – period.""
+Here's how Pawlenty tried to paint the picture on Fox:
+
+Host Chris Wallace, Jan. 16: Back in 2007, you also signed a bill to begin a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Have you flipped on that? Pawlenty: I didn't — I signed a bill in Minnesota on dealing with greenhouse gas emissions, only to the extent of taking steps on renewable energy. We never did sign a bill relating to cap and trade or putting that into Minnesota or regional. We studied it. I looked at it. I've subsequently decided and wrote to the Congress two years ago. Don't do this. It's a bad idea. It will be burdensome on the economy. And I've opposed cap and trade.
+
+But the Next Generation Energy Act of 2007 didn't ""only"" take ""steps on renewable energy,"" as Pawlenty said. It established strict statewide greenhouse gas reduction targets of 15 percent below 2005 levels by 2015 and 80 percent below those levels by 2050. And the law required a group of state agencies to develop a plan to meet those goals. According to the law, the plan had to recommend how Minnesota could adopt cap and trade, not just the feasibility of such a plan (see page 34):
+
+Next Generation Energy Act of 2007, sec. 216H.02: The plan must determine the feasibility, assess the costs and benefits, and  recommend how the state could adopt a regulatory system that imposes a cap on the aggregate air pollutant emissions of a group of sources, requires those subject to the cap to own an allowance for each ton of the air pollutant emitted, and allows for market-based trading of those allowances.
+
+On the day he signed the act, Pawlenty was quoted saying:
+
+Pawlenty, May 25, 2007: The best time to have taken action on energy issues would've been 30 years ago. The second best time is right now. The nation has been asleep at the switch, but here in Minnesota we are kick-starting the future by increasing our nation-leading per capita renewable fuel use, boosting cost saving measures and tackling greenhouse gas emissions.
+
+Also in 2007, Pawlenty signed the Midwestern Greenhouse Gas Reduction Accord, along with five other Midwestern governors. The pact said that ""the effects of climate change present growing economic, social and environmental risks."" It stated flatly that ""we know enough to act on climate change, and there is sufficient scientific certainty that we must begin to take action now."" And it said that ""government has the obligation to establish a policy framework for reducing emissions of the six recognized greenhouse gases.""
+Furthermore, the accord said those who signed would ""jointly endeavor"" to ""develop a market-based and multi-sector cap-and-trade mechanism"" to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. On the day it was signed, Pawlenty praised the accord:
+
+Pawlenty, Nov. 15, 2007: Today's agreement is an important milestone toward achieving a cleaner, more secure energy future. The Midwest is well positioned to help lead the energy revolution that our nation needs to stay competitive and strong. Working together, states can build a de facto national energy policy that will create good jobs and build a cleaner and safer world.
+
+By June of 2009, Pawlenty's views had become more closely aligned with Republican orthodoxy on climate change, at least as he expressed them in a letter he sent to his state's delegation on Capitol Hill. He wrote that a pending federal cap-and-trade bill's provisions were ""overly bureaucratic, misguided"" and ""burdensome on our economy.""
+His course reversal was clear in an interview several months later with NBC's David Gregory, when he said that cap and trade would be ""a disaster"" for the economy, and questioned how much of the climate change that is occurring is caused by human activity. Pawlenty said he favored instead technology-based solutions, including more reliance on nuclear power, fuel cells and ""clean coal"":
+
+
+Pawlenty, Feb. 21, 2010: The climate is obviously changing, David. The more interesting question is how much of it is man-made and how much is as a result of natural causes and patterns. Of course, we have seen data manipulation and controversy, or at least debate within the scientific community. … And the way you address it is we should all be in favor of reducing pollution. We need to do it in ways that don’t burden the economy. Cap and trade, I think, would be a disaster in that regard.
+
+Pawlenty's and Huckabee's reversals on the climate issue may get them a warmer reception from the Republican faithful, if not from us. Meanwhile, we'll be watching for other such course corrections by 2012 Oval Office hopefuls."
+"10The Father’s Day political talk shows contained a stretch here, an exaggeration there, misimpressions left everywhere. Here’s what we found.
+All Studies Don’t Agree
+On CNN’s ""State of the Union,"" Sen. Joe Lieberman, an Independent, bragged about the supposed benefits of the climate-change bill he has introduced with Democratic Sen. John Kerry:
+
+Lieberman: And, look, our comprehensive bill, according to all of the independent studies will create half a million new jobs a year, break our dependence on foreign oil by 40 percent, 2 million barrels a day, and clean up the air.
+
+Gosh, who could be against that? But wait. In his enthusiasm, Lieberman made it sound as though all of the studies that have been done show the American Power Act would do all of those things: create hundreds of thousands of new jobs, significantly cut oil imports and bring cleaner air. We asked Lieberman’s office which studies he was referring to, and a spokesman sent four of them: one from the Environmental Protection Agency, one from the World Resources Institute, one from the ClimateWorks Foundation and one from the Peterson Institute for International Economics. The WRI document turned out to be a summary of the bill, not an analysis.
+However, EPA’s analysis, completed earlier this month, does indeed show that CO2-equivalent concentrations would diminish globally (see page 21) as well as domestically if the APA were to be adopted. Other studies agree; that is, after all, the central goal of the bill.
+But breaking “our dependence on foreign oil by 40 percent”? Only one of the studies shows that, and that’s the high end of a range; also, it’s not a comparison with what the number would be if no legislation were passed. According to the Peterson Institute policy brief, U.S. oil imports could be reduced 33 percent to 40 percent below 2008 levels under APA, and by 9 percent to 19 percent below a business-as-usual scenario by 2030.
+And as for the legislation’s estimated effect on employment, the ClimateWorks Foundation’s report does indeed show a net increase under the Kerry-Lieberman bill of 440,000 jobs per year from 2012-2020 compared with the business-as-usual model, and 540,000 jobs per year from 2012-2030 (see page 5). ClimateWorks, which says it ""supports public policies that prevent dangerous climate change"" and used a McKinsey & Co. model for its analysis, has the highest jobs numbers we’ve seen. The Peterson Institute’s report, which we’ve cited before, estimates a net average annual gain in jobs of 203,000 above business-as-usual from 2011-2020, but that falls to just 6,300 per year more than business-as-usual if one takes a longer view, 2011-2030. (ClimateWorks attributes the difference in findings between the two organizations to more aggressive energy efficiency assumptions in the McKinsey model than in the Energy Information Administration model used by the Peterson authors.)
+Lieberman is off-base to say that ""all of the independent studies"" show all the things he’s claimed. And yet to weigh in is the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which is looking at the bill.
+Government Shares Blame on Oil Spill Estimates
+On NBC’s ""Meet the Press,"" Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts blamed BP for providing inaccurate estimates of how much oil was spilling into the Gulf of Mexico. The federal government, however, deserves some of the blame, too. Here is what he said: 
+
+Markey: So again, right from the beginning, BP was either lying or grossly incompetent.  First they said it was only 1,000 barrels, then they said it was 5,000 barrels, now we’re up to 100,000 barrels.  It was their technology, it was their spill camp, they’re the ones that should have known right from the beginning; and either to limit their liability or because they were grossly incompetent, they delayed a full response to the magnitude of this disaster.
+
+The government, not BP, estimated the spill at 5,000 barrels per day — a figure that would later prove to be wrong. Rear Adm. Mary E. Landry of the Coast Guard said at an April 28 press conference that a NOAA scientist estimated the leak at 5,000 gallons per day, based on aerial observations. At his May 27 press conference, Obama said BP ""wasn’t fully forthcoming"" and the government had to rely on aerial photos, even though BP had an on-site camera that ultimately allowed scientists to more accurately estimate the spill.
+A GOP ‘Philosophy’?
+On ABC’s ""This Week,"" White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel criticized Rep. Joe Barton’s recent characterization of the BP-White House deal to put $20 billion of company money into escrow. Barton called the escrow, to be used to pay damages related to the oil spill, a ""shakedown,"" and Emanuel said that comment represented the GOP’s ""philosophy.""
+
+Emanuel: That’s not a political gaffe, those were prepared remarks. That is a philosophy. That is an approach to what they see. They see the aggrieved party here is BP, not the fishermen. And remember, this is not just one person.
+
+Barton was not the only Republican to object to the deal requiring BP to establish the escrow fund. Rep. Tom Price, chairman of the Republican Study Committee, issued a statement on June 16 labeling the White House-BP agreement a ""Chicago-style shakedown."" The statement said: “BP’s reported willingness to go along with the White House’s new fund suggests that the Obama Administration is hard at work exerting its brand of Chicago-style shakedown politics.""
+But not all Republicans feel the same way. Key House and Senate Republican leaders have distanced themselves from Barton’s statement. House Minority Leader John Boehner, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor and House Republican Conference Chair Mike Pence issued a statement on June 17 calling Barton’s comments ""wrong."" (Cantor and Pence are also members of the Republican Study Committee.) Barton was reportedly threatened with the loss of his ranking member status on the House Energy Committee if he didn’t back down. And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the June 20 edition of ""Fox News Sunday"" that he ""couldn’t disagree with Joe Barton more.""
+More Slippery Spill Statistics
+On CBS’ ""Face the Nation,"" Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer of California and Bill Nelson of Florida offered some claims that could use context.
+Boxer downplayed Exxon’s financial liability for the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill:
+
+Boxer: You know, the Exxon Valdez, this is unbelievable. They fought in the courts, Exxon did. And at the end of 20 years, they were still fighting to re– they didn’t want to reimburse the fishermen and all the folks there. They finally settled at 15,000 average per claim.
+
+That was true initially — after several appeals and a 20-year court battle, Exxon was only ordered to pay out $507.5 million. But the 9th Circuit Court later held the company responsible for interest fees that significantly increased compensation to victims. Exxon was eventually liable for a total of $987.5 million, or about $31,000 for each of the 32,000 plaintiffs.
+And Nelson said that BP is ignoring scientific evidence about the presence of subsurface oil, also called oil plumes:
+
+Nelson: BP says there’s not the underwater  plumes. That is not borne out by scientific research.
+
+Nelson is correct to say that, contrary to BP chief executive Tony Hayward’s claim that ""there aren’t any plumes,"" scientific investigators have found clear evidence of subsurface oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Samantha Joye, a researcher from the University of Georgia, first found evidence of plumes back in May. An expedition from the University of South Florida found subsurface oil as well, and those results were confirmed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But NOAA reported that it could not conclusively link that oil to the Deepwater Horizon spill. In fact, samples from one station 142 miles from the wellhead were found to be inconsistent with the BP oil spill source. At closer stations, the oil was too diluted to identify, and only the surface samples were highly concentrated enough to determine the source with certainty.
+University of South Florida researchers say that they are continuing analysis on the samples. Meanwhile, Joye and other scientists have not shied away from implying, when talking to the press, that the subsurface oil is clearly from this spill. Nelson is correct about general scientific opinion, but not about confirmed research.
+In Their Opinion
+On ""Fox News Sunday,"" Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell misstated the results of a recent public opinion poll.
+
+McConnell: [A]n NPR poll just came out this week taken by a prominent Democrat and Republican pollster indicated Americans preferred Republicans over Democrats, what’s called a party generic ballot question, by eight points.
+
+Not quite. He referred to a poll released by National Public Radio on June 15. It did show that “voters are choosing Republicans over Democrats 49 percent to 41 percent,” but only in the 70 House districts experts regard as most likely to oust incumbents or go to the party not in state power this fall. While NPR reported that’s “grim news for Democrats,” the sentiment doesn’t apply to “Americans” as a whole."
+"15Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina has been attacking incumbent Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer since well before June 8, when Fiorina hoped to lock up the Republican Senate nomination in California. Her latest ad went up just a few days before the primary and falsely accuses Boxer of neglecting terrorism in favor of the weather report.
+
+""One of the very important national security issues we face, frankly, is climate change,"" Boxer says in a 2007 clip shown in the ad. Cut to Fiorina. ""Terrorism kills,"" she says. ""And Barbara Boxer’s worried about the weather.""
+Well, no, she’s worried about climate change, which is different, although the daily weather can certainly be affected by the larger phenomenon. But the bigger problem with Fiorina’s belittling comment is that Boxer has plenty of serious-minded company that agrees with her. Type ""climate change and national security"" into Google and up come a bunch of reports and news stories, including one from the Navy. ""Climate change will affect the type, scope, and location of future Navy missions,"" said Rear Admiral Dave Titley, director of the Navy’s Task Force Climate Change. The topic occupies a section of the most recent Quadrennial Defense Review, released in February. And here’s what a Council on Foreign Relations report says:
+
+Joshua Busby, November 2007: Climate change presents a serious threat to the security and prosperity of the United States and other countries. Recent actions and statements by members of Congress, members of the UN Security Council, and retired U.S. military officers have drawn attention to the consequences of climate change, including the destabilizing effects of storms, droughts, and floods. Domestically, the effects of climate change could overwhelm disaster-response capabilities. Internationally, climate change may cause humanitarian disasters, contribute to political violence, and undermine weak governments.
+
+Fiorina notes in the ad that she ""chaired the external advisory board for the CIA."" But she must have missed the agency’s announcement last September of its new Center on Climate Change and National Security."
+"66In November 2009, private e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia were stolen and made public. Climate change disbelievers called it “Climategate,” saying that the e-mails proved collusion and conspiracies that would discredit man-made global warming. We found that there was no solid evidence of wrongdoing in the e-mails, but noted that a detailed investigation by the university was underway.
+As it turns out, this investigation came to more or less the same conclusion we did. The report reads, in part: “We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit and had it been there we believe that it is likely that we would have detected it. Rather we found a small group of dedicated if slightly disorganised researchers who were ill-prepared for being the focus of public attention.” Researchers should have worked more closely with professional statisticians, the university said, but the investigation did not find evidence that they were using misleading statistical methods.
+This follows a Parliamentary hearing of former CRU head Phil Jones, in which the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee said that climate scientists should be more forthright in publishing data and methodologies, but concluded that Jones should be allowed to return to his post at CRU. Jones had stepped aside after the e-mails came to light. The committee found no evidence for unusual obstructionism or peer review mishandling on the part of Jones:
+Committee Report: We believe that the focus on CRU and Professor Phil Jones, Director of CRU, in particular, has largely been misplaced. …
+In the context of the sharing of data and methodologies, we consider that Professor Jones’s actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community. It is not standard practice in climate science to publish the raw data and the computer code in academic papers. …
+We are content that the phrases such as “trick” or “hiding the decline” were colloquial terms used in private e-mails and the balance of evidence is that they were not part of a systematic attempt to mislead. Likewise the evidence that we have seen does not suggest that Professor Jones was trying to subvert the peer review process. Academics should not be criticised for making informal comments on academic papers.
+There is another investigation pending, this one an independent review led by civil servant Sir Muir Russell. Russell, who is not a scientist, was appointed by the university to look into allegations that CRU manipulated or suppressed data. His report is due next month."
+"58In our article on Climategate, we cited overwhelming scientific consensus — represented in part by the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — pointing to a global rise in temperatures. But the IPCC’s credibility has been challenged since we wrote that article, with several situations coming to light in which the panel reproduced erroneous results from non-peer-reviewed literature.
+Himalayan Glaciers: The IPCC’s 2007 Working Group II report misrepresented the melt rate of the Himalayan glaciers, saying they could be gone by 2035. The IPCC has admitted this alarming claim is untrue.
+A letter in the journal Science traced the incorrect data to a report from the advocacy group World Wildlife Fund that cited a decade-old article from the magazine New Scientist, which had quoted Indian scientist Syed Hasnain. The scientist now says he was  ""misquoted"" and that his research indicates that only small glaciers could disappear entirely.
+Despite this retraction, the IPCC says that it still stands behind the synthesis report, which collects the conclusions of three different working groups, and which does not repeat the 2035 error. Working Group II’s subject is the potential effects of climate change on the natural and human environment. The physical basis for climate change is covered by Working Group I — no errors have been uncovered in that report.
+Amazon Rain Forests: There have been other examples of sloppy citation and fact-checking unearthed in the WGII report, which runs to more than 900 pages. For instance, a claim that ""up to 40 percent of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation"" was backed up with a citation of another WWF report. The claim actually has support in peer-reviewed data, but IPCC’s citation to an environmental advocacy group has given skeptics grounds to attack its objectivity and credibility.
+Netherlands Flood Risk: The IPCC also has admitted that the report misstates how much of the Netherlands is below sea level. The 55 percent it claimed is actually the portion of the country that’s ""at risk of flooding."" Only 26 percent is below sea level.
+Conflict of Interest? Critics have also raised concerns that panel head Dr. Rajendra Pachauri may have financial conflicts of interest. According to journalists Christopher Booker and Richard North, Pachauri stands to gain from overstating the danger of climate change because he serves as an advisor on sustainability to a number of banks. Booker and North offer no proof that Pachauri has profited from his advising work, but they speculate that his remuneration ""must run into millions    of dollars."" Pachauri says that his payments go to the Energy Resources Institute, his research foundation in Delhi — but Booker and North also question that organization’s integrity, saying that it is ""closely linked"" with a company that invests in, among other projects, renewable energy and carbon trading. Booker, it should be noted, is a skeptic who claims man-made global warming has been ""disproved.""
+We’ll leave it to our readers to judge how much these mistakes undermine the credibility of the IPCC, or of climate scientists generally."
+"182Summary
+On Dec. 9, an op-ed by Sarah Palin on climate change ran in the Washington Post. Al Gore responded to Palin’s piece and made some fresh claims of his own later that day in an interview with MSNBC. We find that both engaged in some distortions and have been rightly called out by experts in the field.
+
+Gore said that 40 percent of the polar ice cap is already gone. That’s an outdated figure — it has recovered in the last two years, and is now about 24 percent smaller than the 1979-2000 average.
+Gore’s claim that all Arctic ice would ""go completely"" over the next decade is greatly exaggerated. The scientist he is citing was actually talking about nearly ice-free conditions, and only in the summer months.
+Gore and Palin both left out information when discussing the economic impact of climate legislation. Gore dodged a question about job losses, and Palin ignored the potentially severe effects of doing nothing.
+Palin misrepresented the contents of the leaked e-mails from the Climate Research Unit, saying that they show ""fraudulent scientific practices."" That’s not the case.
+
+Analysis
+The original Inconvenient Truther and the oil pipeline proponent actually had some common ground — both agreed that global warming was real. However, they differed on almost every other point, starting with whether that warming has anything to do with human activity.
+A Convenient Exaggeration
+
+Gore offered some stale scientific data and some overly grim predictions when he said the ""entire north polar ice cap, which has been there for most of the last 3 million years, is disappearing before our eyes. Forty percent is already gone. The rest is expected to go completely within the next decade.""
+The north polar ice cap is melting at rates that are certainly cause for concern. But it’s not going quite as fast as Gore says. Gore’s 40 percent figure is outdated. Arctic ice levels, as measured by the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder, were 40 percent lower at the end of the summer of 2007 than the average observed from 1979 to 2000. But the totals have actually increased for two consecutive years since. According to a release from the group, the average ice cover was 5.36 million square kilometers for the month of September 2009, compared with the 1979 to 2000 September average of 7.04 million square kilometers. That’s a difference of about 24 percent, nearly half what Gore said.
+And Gore was wildly off the mark when he predicted that all Arctic ice would ""go completely within the next decade.""
+We should point out that ice levels in the Arctic region change seasonally. During the summer months some ice melts, and then waters freeze again in winter as the temperature goes down. The levels of summer melting have been going up for a number of years, and this could eventually lead to very minimal ice coverage during the summer.
+One researcher, Wieslaw Maslowski of the Naval Post-Graduate School, made a projection in 2007 that a nearly ice-free arctic summer might occur as early as 2013, though he recently moved that back to 2020. But saying the north polar ice cap will be entirely gone is hyperbole. Even the most dramatic projections, such as Maslowski’s, do not say the ice would be gone during the winter months.
+Gore noted these caveats himself a few days later while presenting at the U.N. Climate Summit in Copenhagen when he said:
+
+Gore: Some of the models suggest that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap during some of the summer months will be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years.
+
+Even here, Gore was being a bit aggressive with his claims of ""ice free"" summers. In fact, Maslowski, whose work Gore cited, complained to the U.K. Telegraph that ""I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this. … I was very explicit that we were talking about near-ice-free conditions and not completely ice-free conditions in the northern ocean.”
+Environment and Economy
+Gore and Palin both made some roughly factual statements about the effect of climate change proposals on the economy. Palin said that proposed “cap-and-tax” [sic] plans will result in job losses, and she’s right. Gore, by contrast, said that ""the response to global warming can bring jobs back"" — and he’s right, too. Overall, nonpartisan experts, including Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf, agree that proposed cap-and-trade legislation will kill some jobs, create others and ultimately have a small but negative effect on employment – probably.
+But neither combatant gave the full picture here. Gore, when asked about the economic effect of climate proposals, responded: ""I think that the losses of jobs started a long time ago with the outsourcing to other countries for a variety of reasons, including the cheaper labor costs,"" he said. ""It’s not — not because of the response to global warming."" That’s called dodging the question.
+Palin, meanwhile, presented potential job losses and tax increases as evidence that “any potential benefits of proposed emissions reduction policies are far outweighed by their economic costs.” But if scientists are correct, the potential cost of doing nothing could be severe. The Congressional Budget Office said earlier this year:
+
+CBO, September 2009: A strong consensus has developed in the expert community that, if allowed to continue unabated, the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will have extensive, highly uncertain, but potentially serious and costly impacts on regional climates throughout the world. Those impacts are expected to include widespread changes in the physical environment, changes in biological systems (including agriculture), and changes in the viability of some economic sectors.
+
+Palin Jumps the Gun
+
+In her op-ed, Palin said that stolen e-mails between scientists at the Climate Research Unit of the U.K.’s University of East Anglia show that we lack “trustworthy science” on the subject of climate change, and she argued that President Obama should have boycotted the U.N.’s Copenhagen summit as a protest against the ""fraudulent scientific practices"" the e-mails expose. But her catastrophic conclusions about the e-mails are not supported by the evidence.
+Palin wrote: “The e-mails reveal that leading climate ‘experts’ deliberately destroyed records, manipulated data to ‘hide the decline’ in global temperatures, and tried to silence their critics by preventing them from publishing in peer-reviewed journals.” As we said in our article on this subject, though, there are two ongoing investigations, but so far there’s no evidence that deception or blacklisting actually occurred.
+The “decline” under discussion is well-represented in the scientific literature, not covered up. The e-mail in question refers to supplementing tree-ring data with direct temperature readings in order to avoid an artificial dip where the two diverge; the divergence is not fully understood, but it has clearly not been buried. And while it’s true that a few of the e-mails discuss the feasibility of barring skeptics from editorial positions, there’s so far no evidence that this actually occurred.
+Palin also said that “the documents show that there was no real consensus even within the CRU crowd.” It is certainly fair to say that experts are not of a single mind about climate science. Groups of experts – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the national academies of science of 13 countries including the U.S., the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Meteorological Society and others — agree that the planet is warming due to increased levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and that human activity is in no small part responsible for the increases. But the specifics are, as in any science, a matter of study, research and debate.
+One e-mail exchange between Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory scientist Edward Cook and University of Virginia scientist Michael Mann shows what scientific debate can look like in the climate field. After some back-and-forth about Cook’s temperature reconstruction and his conclusions about the medieval warming period, Mann writes: “Lets figure this all out based on good, careful work and see what the data has to say in the end. We’re working towards this ourselves, using revised methods and including borehole data, etc. and will keep everyone posted on this.” Cook sums up:
+
+I am quite happy to work this stuff through in a careful way and am happy to discuss it all with you. I certainly don’t want the work to be viewed as an attack on previous work such as yours. Unfortunately, this global change stuff is so politicized by both sides of the issue that it is difficult to do the science in a dispassionate environment. I ran into the same problem in the acid rain/forest decline debate that raged in the 1980s. At one point, I was simultaneous accused of being a raving tree hugger and in the pocket of the coal industry. I have always said that I don’t care what answer is found as long as it is the truth or at least bloody close to it.
+
+Palin is right that not all climate scientists agree on everything. But she’s wrong to imply that this invalidates the field or undermines the conclusions on which they do agree.
+— by Jess Henig and Justin Bank
+Sources
+Palin, Sarah, ""Sarah Palin on the politicization of the Copenhagen climate conference,"" The Washington Post. 9 Dec 2009.
+""Transcript: NBC’s Mitchell interviews Al Gore,"" MSNBC. 9 Dec 2009.
+Press Release, ""Arctic sea ice extent remains low; 2009 sees third-lowest mark,"" National Snow and Ice Data Center. 6 Oct 2009.
+Amos, Jonathon, ""Arctic summers ice-free ‘by 2013,’"" BBC News. 12 Dec 2007.
+Hanley, Charles J., ""Gore: Polar ice may vanish in 5-7 years,"" Associated Press. 15 Dec 2009.
+Wardrop, Murray, ""Copenhagen climate summit: Al Gore condemned over Arctic ice melting prediction,"" Daily Telegraph. 15 Dec 2009.
+""The Economic Effects of Legislation to Reduce Greenhouse-Gas Emissions,"" Congressional Budget Office. Sept 2009
+""G8+5 Academies’ joint statement: Climate change and the transformation of energy
+technologies for a low carbon future,"" accessed at the National Academies website 18 Dec 2009.
+Seitter, Keith L., ""Impact of CRU Hacking on the AMS Statement on Climate Change,"" American Meteorological Society.
+""North Pole Ice Cap Melting Faster Than Ever,"" Agence France-Presse. 27 Aug 2008."
+"4This week’s political tidbits range from a new iPhone app to 17th century scientists’ correspondence.
+There’s an App for That
+OMG! We thought we’d seen it all. But an iPhone app designed to test your knowledge about the overhaul of the health care system? Seriously?
+To play ""Death Panel,"" the new game from People Operating Technology, players assume the role of a local official who must answer questions about health care. According to the creators, the game features ""hundreds of questions about health care reform"" based on information pulled from government and third party sources including WhiteHouse.gov, StateHealthFacts.org (a project of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation), NCHC.org (the Web site of the bipartisan National Coalition on Health Care), and yours truly, FactCheck.org.
+The name of the game was inspired by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (and others) who advanced one of the biggest falsehoods about proposed health care changes when she claimed that President Obama’s plan included a ""death panel"" of bureaucrats in charge of deciding who receives health care and who doesn’t. The company says it would like users to post their scores online via Twitter and Facebook ""in hopes of driving awareness and comprehension to the most important social and economic issue today.""
+A few caveats: Its maker says the game is ""100% nonpolitical, nonpartisan,"" but some of the questions suggest a pro-""reform"" bent. Also, we’ve had issues with a few of the game’s answers, such as ""every 30 seconds, someone files for medical bankruptcy."" We’re not positive what ""medical bankruptcy"" is, but if it’s supposed to mean bankruptcy due to high medical bills, we have found that to be at least double the true number. And some questions don’t really allow for factual responses, like: ""Republicans and Democrats don’t want the same things?"" The game says that’s ""true,"" but we’d say it depends on the subject.
+On the other hand, you’ve just caught us fact-checking an iPhone app. We apologize and promise to crawl back to the dork factory from whence we came.
+
+ 
+The Lighter Side of ""Climategate""
+The furor over scientists’ rude and dismissive comments in the ""Climategate"" e-mails has inspired a few observers to hack into historical writings and expose some unnoble acts by scientists from eras past. One science blogger mined the correspondence of Isaac Newton and his contemporaries to reveal the physicist’s scientific malfeasance.
+
+Knowingly publishing scientific fraud:
+You need not give yourself the trouble of examining all the calculations of the Scholium. Such errors as do not depend upon wrong reasoning can be of no great consequence & may be corrected by the reader.
+Newton to [Roger] Cotes June 15 1710
+Suppression of evidence:
+Mr. Raphson has printed off four or five sheets of his History of Fluxions, but being shew’d Sr. Is. Newton (who, it seems, would rather have them write against him, than have a piece done in that manner in his favour), he got a Stop put to it, for some time at least.
+[William] Jones to Cotes, 17 September 1711
+
+And this video from the San Francisco Chronicle does the same for Galileo, Kepler and Einstein (and Newton, too).  Apparently, we have a lot to rethink.
+
+ 
+The Norwegian Blue Is Dead 
+When we got an e-mail about a ""spectacular blue light over Norway,"" which claimed that ""this luminaries are heralding the appearance of the World Teacher for all of humanity,"" we figured it was not really our department. We’ll wade into spurious e-mail rumors, but this is X-Files stuff. Pass!  Imagine our surprise when it turned out that the ""spectacular blue light"" had a perfectly mundane explanation. The Russian Ministry of Defence has confirmed that the light came from a failed Bulava missile launch. No World Teachers for humanity, just weapons testing — everyone can relax now!"
+"2.7KSummary
+In late November 2009, more than 1,000 e-mails between scientists at the Climate Research Unit of the U.K.’s University of East Anglia were stolen and made public by an as-yet-unnamed hacker. Climate skeptics are claiming that they show scientific misconduct that amounts to the complete fabrication of man-made global warming. We find that to be unfounded:
+
+The messages, which span 13 years, show a few scientists in a bad light, being rude or dismissive. An investigation is underway, but there’s still plenty of evidence that the earth is getting warmer and that humans are largely responsible.
+Some critics say the e-mails negate the conclusions of a 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but the IPCC report relied on data from a large number of sources, of which CRU was only one.
+E-mails being cited as “smoking guns” have been misrepresented. For instance, one e-mail that refers to “hiding the decline” isn’t talking about a decline in actual temperatures as measured at weather stations. These have continued to rise, and 2009 may turn out to be the fifth warmest year ever recorded. The “decline” actually refers to a problem with recent data from tree rings.
+
+Analysis
+Skeptics claim this trove of e-mails shows the scientists at the U.K. research center were engaging in evidence-tampering, and they are portraying the affair as a major scandal: “Climategate.” Saudi Arabian climate negotiator Mohammad Al-Sabban went so far as to tell the BBC: “It appears from the details of the scandal that there is no relationship whatsoever between human activities and climate change.” He said that he expected news of the e-mails to disrupt the U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen this month. An article from the conservative-leaning Canada Free Press claims that the stolen files are proof of a “deliberate fraud” and “the greatest deception in history.”
+Missing the Mark
+We find such claims to be far wide of the mark. The e-mails (which have been made available by an unidentified individual here) do show a few scientists talking frankly among themselves — sometimes being rude, dismissive, insular, or even behaving like jerks. Whether they show anything beyond that is still in doubt. An investigation is being conducted by East Anglia University, and the head of CRU, Phil Jones, has “stepped aside” until it is completed. However, many of the e-mails that are being held up as “smoking guns” have been misrepresented by global-warming skeptics eager to find evidence of a conspiracy. And even if they showed what the critics claim, there remains ample evidence that the earth is getting warmer.
+Even as the affair was unfolding, the World Meteorological Organization announced on Dec. 8 that the 2000-2009 decade would likely be the warmest on record, and that 2009 might be the fifth warmest year ever recorded. (The hottest year on record was 1998.) This conclusion is based not only on the CRU data that critics are now questioning, but also incorporates data from the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). All three organizations synthesized data from many sources.
+Some critics claim that the e-mails invalidate the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world scientific body that reaffirmed in a 2007 report that the earth is warming, sea levels are rising and that human activity is “very likely” the cause of “most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century.” But the IPCC’s 2007 report, its most recent synthesis of scientific findings from around the globe, incorporates data from three working groups, each of which made use of data from a huge number of sources — of which CRU was only one. The synthesis report notes key disagreements and uncertainties but makes the “robust” conclusion that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal.” (A robust finding is defined as “one that holds under a variety of approaches, methods, models and assumptions, and is expected to be relatively unaffected by uncertainties.”)
+The IPCC has released a statement playing down the notion that CRU scientists skewed the world body’s report or kept it from considering the views of skeptical scientists:
+Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: The entire report writing process of the IPCC is subjected to extensive and repeated review by experts as well as governments. Consequently, there is at every stage full opportunity for experts in the field to draw attention to any piece of literature and its basic findings that would ensure inclusion of a wide range of views. There is, therefore, no possibility of exclusion of any contrarian views, if they have been published in established journals or other publications which are peer reviewed.
+The facts support this assertion. In one 2004 e-mail that’s come under much scrutiny, Jones wrote of two controversial papers that “Kevin and I will keep them out [of the IPCC report] somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!” But both papers under discussion, Kalnay and Cai (2003) and McKitrick and Michaels (2004), were cited in one of the three working group reports from which the 2007 IPCC report is synthesized.
+Mixed Messages 
+The 1,000-plus e-mails sometimes illustrate the hairier side of scientific research. Criticisms of climate change are sometimes dismissed as “fraud” or “pure crap,” as in this 2005 e-mail from CRU Director Phil Jones. Other messages, like a 2007 e-mail from Michael Mann of Penn State University, show indignation at being the target of skeptics’ ire. Some of the e-mails are in bad form; for instance, climate scientist Benjamin Santer of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory makes a crack about “beat[ing] the crap out of” opponent Pat Michaels.
+Claims that the e-mails are evidence of fraud or deceit, however, misrepresent what they actually say. A prime example is a 1999 e-mail from Jones, who wrote: “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e., from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” Skeptics claim the words “trick” and “decline” show Jones is using sneaky manipulations to mask a decline in global temperatures. But that’s not the case. Actual temperatures, as measured by scientific instruments such as thermometers, were rising at the time of the writing of this decade-old e-mail, and (as we’ve noted) have continued to rise since then. Jones was referring to the decline in temperatures implied by measurements of the width and density of tree rings. In recent decades, these measures indicate a dip, while more accurate instrument-measured temperatures continue to rise.
+Scientists at CRU use tree-ring data and other “proxy” measurements to estimate temperatures from times before instrumental temperature data began to be collected. However, since about 1960, tree-ring data have diverged from actual measured temperatures. Far from covering it up, CRU scientists and others have published reports of this divergence many times. The “trick” that Jones was writing about in his 1999 e-mail was simply adding the actual, measured instrumental data into a graph of historic temperatures. Jones says it’s a “trick” in the colloquial sense of an adroit feat — “a clever thing to do,” as he put it — not a deception. What’s hidden is the fact that tree-ring data in recent decades doesn’t track with thermometer measurements. East Anglia Research Professor Andrew Watson explained in an article in The Times of London:
+Watson: Jones is talking about a line on a graph for the cover of a World Meteorological Organisation report, published in 2000, which shows the results of different attempts to reconstruct temperature over the past 1,000 years. The line represents one particular attempt, using tree-ring data for temperature. The method agrees with actual measurements before about 1960, but diverges from them after that — for reasons only partly understood, discussed in the literature.
+Other quotes that skeptics say are evidence of “data manipulation” actually refer to how numbers are presented, not to falsifying those numbers. For instance, in one e-mail climate scientist Tom Crowley writes: “I have been fiddling with the best way to illustrate the stable nature of the medieval warm period.” Crowley is referring to the best way to translate the data into a graphic format. We’re the first to admit that charts and graphs can give a false or misleading impression of what data actually show. In the past, for instance, we’ve criticized a pie chart used by some liberals to make military spending look like a much larger slice of the federal budget than it really is. In fact, it’s been a major contention of climate change skeptics that a so-called “hockey stick” chart, so named because it shows a steep climb in temperatures in the last few decades, exaggerates the true extent of warming. That claim is contradicted by climate scientists, including the creator of one of the most contended “hockey stick” charts, and we make no judgment about that dispute here. We simply note that “fiddling” with the way data are displayed — even in a way that some may see as misleading — is not the same thing as falsifying the numbers.
+Much has also been made of the scientists’ discussion of Freedom of Information Act requests for their raw data. In fact, the vast majority of CRU’s data is already freely available. According to the University of East Anglia, a small amount of the data is restricted by non-publication agreements. Discussion of British FOIA requests in the stolen e-mails show scientists bristling at demands that they supply records of their own correspondence, computer code and data to people whose motives they question. In one e-mail about a request for data and correspondence, Santer writes critically of Steven McIntyre, a Canadian science blogger who runs the Climateaudit.org Web site:
+Ben Santer e-mail, Nov. 12, 2009: My personal opinion is that both FOI requests [for data related to a 2008 paper and for correspondence dating back to 2006] are intrusive and unreasonable. Steven McIntyre provides absolutely no scientific justification or explanation for such requests. … McIntyre has no interest in improving our scientific understanding of the nature and causes of climate change. He has no interest in rational scientific discourse. He deals in the currency of threats and intimidation. We should be able to conduct our scientific research without constant fear of an “audit” by Steven McIntyre; without having to weigh every word we write in every email we send to our scientific colleagues.
+It’s clear from the e-mails that there are people with whom the scientists would rather not share. What’s less clear is whether any deliberate obstruction actually occurred — that’s one of the subjects of the East Anglia investigation. Some e-mails refer to long discussions with lawyers and university officials about what the scientists may, or must, make available and to whom. In others, scientists let their critics know directly that data are freely accessible, or mention that they’ve already sent the information along, though they may not fulfill their opponents’ every informational wish.
+Climate change skeptics also say that the e-mails prove they’ve been excluded from peer review. In one e-mail, for example, climate scientist Tom Wigley of the University Corporation for Academic Research writes: “If you think that [Yale professor James] Saiers is in the greenhouse skeptics camp, then, if we can find documentary evidence of this, we could go through official AGU channels to get him ousted.” Saiers later departed from the journal in question (Geophysical Research Letters, or GRL). However, Saiers says he isn’t a warming skeptic and that Wigley had nothing to do with his departure. When another professor (and blogger) asked Saiers about the Wigley e-mail, Saiers responded: “I stepped down as GRL editor at the end of my three-year term. … My departure had nothing to do with attempts by Wigley or anyone else to have me sacked.”
+Investigators are still sifting through 13 years’ worth of CRU e-mails looking for evidence of impropriety. But what’s been revealed so far hasn’t shaken the broad scientific consensus about global warming. In an open letter to Congress posted on Climate Science Watch and other sites, 25 leading climate scientists (including eight members of the National Academy of Science) wrote:
+Letter to Congress from U.S. scientists, Dec. 4: The body of evidence that human activity is the dominant cause of global warming is overwhelming. The content of the stolen emails has no impact whatsoever on our overall understanding that human activity is driving dangerous levels of global warming. … Even without including analyses from the UK research center from which the emails were stolen, the body of evidence underlying our understanding of human-caused global warming remains robust.
+Confusing the Public
+News coverage of the e-mails and the various claims about what they supposedly show may have contributed to public confusion on the subject. A Dec. 3 Rasmussen survey found that only 25 percent of adults surveyed said that “most scientists agree on global warming” while 52 percent said that “there is significant disagreement within the scientific community” and 23 percent said they were not sure. The truth is that over the 13 years covered by the CRU e-mails, scientific consensus has only become stronger as the evidence for global warming from various sources has  mounted. Reports from the National Academies and the U.S. Global Change Research Program that analyze large amounts of data from various sources also agree, as does the IPCC, that climate change is not in doubt. In advance of the 2009 U.N. climate change summit, the national academies of 13 nations issued a joint statement of their recommendations for combating climate change, in which they discussed the “human forcing” of global warming and said that the need for action was “indisputable.”
+Leading scientists are unequivocally reaffirming the consensus on global warming in the wake of “Climategate.” White House science adviser John Holdren said at a congressional hearing on climate change: “However this particular controversy comes out, the result will not call into question the bulk of our understanding of how the climate works or how humans are affecting it.” The American Association for the Advancement of Science released a statement “reaffirm[ing] the position of its Board of Directors and the leaders of 18 respected organizations, who concluded based on multiple lines of scientific evidence that global climate change caused by human activities is now underway, and it is a growing threat to society.” The American Meteorological Society and the Union of Concerned Scientists have also reiterated their positions on climate change, which they say are unaffected by the leaked e-mails.
+— by Jess Henig
+Correction, Dec. 22: We originally wrote: “There are two investigations underway, by the U.K.’s Met Office and East Anglia University.” But the Met Office is not conducting an investigation. The Times of London had reported that the Met Office would reexamine its data, but that article was incorrect. A spokesperson for the office told us that there were no plans to do so. The Met Office does plan to release the station temperature records publicly, but not to reevaluate them. The university investigation is continuing. 
+Sources
+Walsh, Bryan. “Has ‘Climategate’ Been Overblown?” TIME. 7 Dec 2009.
+Black, Richard. “Climate e-mail hack ‘will impact on Copenhagen summit.’” BBC News. 3 Dec 2009.
+Ball, Tim. “The Death Blow to Climate Science.” Canada Free Press. 21 Nov 2009.
+Webster, Ben. “Met Office to re-examine 160 years of climate data.” The Times of London. 5 Dec 2009.
+BBC News. “Chair for climate e-mail review.” 3 Dec 2009.
+Satter, Raphael G. “Climate-unit chief steps aside amid probe.” Associated Press. 2 Dec 2009.
+Sandell, Clayton. “Climate: 2009 Caps Hottest Decade on Record.” ABC News. 8 Dec 2009.
+World Meteorological Association. “2000-2009, The Warmest Decade.” Press release. 8 Dec 2009.
+Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “Statement on News Reports Regarding Hacking of the East Anglia University Email Communications.” 4 Dec 2009.
+Pachauri, R.K. and Reisinger, A., eds. “Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report.” Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007.
+Solomon, S. et al. “Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis.” Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007.
+Briffa, K.R. et al. “Trees tell of past climates: but are they speaking less clearly today?” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B 1998.
+D’Arrigo, Rosanne et al. “On the ‘Divergence Problem’ in Northern Forests: A review of the tree-ring evidence and possible causes.” Global and Planetary Change 2007.
+Watson, Andrew. “Climate change e-mails have been quoted totally out of context.” The Times of London. 8 Dec 2009.
+McIntyre, Stephen and Ross McKitrick. “Corrections to the Mann et. al. (1998) proxy data base and northern hemispheric average temperature series.” Energy and Environment. 2003.
+Rutherford, S. et al. “Proxy-based Northern Hemisphere Surface Temperature Reconstructions: Sensitivity to Method, Predictor Network, Target Season, and Target Domain.” Journal of Climate. 2004.
+East Anglia University. “CRU Update 2.” Press release. 24 Nov 2009. Archer, David et al. “Open Letter to Congress from U.S. Scientists on Climate Change and Recently Stolen Emails.” 4 Dec 2009.
+Rasmussen Reports. “Americans Skeptical of Science Behind Global Warming.” 3 Dec 2009.
+National Research Council. “Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years.” National Academies Press, 2006.
+U.S. Global Change Research Program. “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States.” Cambridge University Press, 2009.
+G8+5 Academies. “G8+5 Academies’ joint statement: Climate change and the transformation of energy technologies for a low carbon future.” May 2009.
+Harris, Richard. “Stolen Climate E-Mails Cause A Ruckus In Congress.” NPR. 2 Dec. 2009.
+American Association for the Advancement of Science. “AAAS Reaffirms Statements on Climate Change and Integrity.” 4 Dec 2009.
+Seitter, Keith. “Impact of CRU Hacking on the AMS Statement on Climate Change.” American Meteorological Society. 25 Nov 2009.
+Frumhoff, Peter. “Contrarians Using Hacked E-mails to Attack Climate Science.” Union of Concerned Scientists. 23 Nov 2009."
+"9It’s that spooky time of year, and legislation pending in Congress to curb carbon emissions is really giving the American Energy Alliance the willies.
+What’s haunting us is the group’s misuse of statistics in a new ad attacking Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina for his support of the cap-and-trade approach that’s central to the major House and Senate bills.
+
+According to the narrator: ""This frightening tax will further hurt our economy, costing millions of American jobs, driving up prices at the pump and hiking our electricity bills by over 50 percent."" The on-screen graphics read, in turn: ""Costing 2.4 million American jobs""; ""Gas prices will increase 26%""; then ""Electricity bills jump 50%."" AEA, a nonprofit organization that says it believes in ""freely-functioning energy markets,"" attributes its figures to a study done for two pro-industry groups, the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Council for Capital Formation.
+Actually, as we said in our recent article about the impact of cap-and-trade on employment, official figures from the government’s Energy Information Administration show that under the House cap-and-trade bill, future job growth might be constrained by between 388,000 and 2.3 million jobs – in the year 2030. The agency drew up 11 different scenarios based on varying sets of assumptions, and the 2.3 million figure was attached to the case in which nothing goes right. But EIA also said that this scenario’s unrelentingly gloomy assumptions are ""inherently less likely"" than the mixed positive and negative developments assumed in all but one of its other scenarios.
+As for energy prices, once again it would take many years and dire circumstances for the cost of gasoline to jump by 26 percent, as the ad says it ""will"" do. According to EIA, in 2020 gas prices could be between 3 percent and 18 percent higher than they would be without the legislation, depending on whether reality matched the rosiest of six sets of conditions the agency sketched out or the most dismal. In 2030, the highest possible increase is estimated at 33 percent, with the lowest being 5 percent.
+Electric bills? EIA’s numbers put the possible hike at somewhere between 3 percent and 15 percent in 2020, not even close to the ad’s 50 percent forecast. By 2030, EIA’s numbers range between 10 percent and 77 percent. But the 77 percent figure is an outlier – none of the other five scenarios produce an increase higher than 29 percent.
+Unlike the National Association of Manufacturers’ ad we discussed in our piece on cap-and-trade’s impact on jobs, this one uses no qualifiers. Where the NAM ad said the bill could cost ""up to 2.4 million"" jobs, AEA’s spot is absolute: ""Costing 2.4 million American jobs""; ""Gas prices will increase 26%""; and ""Electricity bills jump 50%."" That, along with the group’s silence on how long it would take, and what circumstances would be required, for its predictions to come anywhere close to bearing out, lead us to find the ad highly misleading.
+If the AEA wants to see banshees and goblins down every legislative corridor, of course, we can’t stop it. But we can call in some ghostbusters for the rest of us."
+"In a post announcing the launch of a video news release questioning the priorities of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the Office of the Republican Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia says that the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which Pelosi helped usher through the House of Representatives, “will impose a national energy tax of up to $3,100 on all Americans and slam small businesses with higher energy bills, causing the loss of millions of jobs.”
+
+The video, titled “Number One Priority,” says that “in a time of economic uncertainty, when unemployment is nearing 10 percent … and spending by the president and Democrat Congress are out of control,” Pelosi’s top priority is “creating a national energy tax.” The bill the video refers to, sponsored by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.), passed two days after the video’s release, and it would cap greenhouse gas emissions at 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent below 2005 levels by 2050.  But the $3,100 figure mentioned in the post has been questioned repeatedly.
+As we previously wrote in our article “Cap and Trade Cost Inflation,” the $3,100 price tag that Republicans have been citing was calculated using a 2007 study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But one of the study’s coauthors called the GOP’s use of the study “simplistic and misleading” and calculated, based on the same study, that the true cost of a cap-and-trade system to American households would be closer to $800 per year. The study’s coauthor also noted that the report was based on a past cap-and-trade proposal — not the Waxman-Markey bill, or even what Obama proposed in general as a part of his budget back in February.
+And Cantor’s claim of a $3,100 “national energy tax” took another hit recently with the release of an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which found the cost of the bill making its way through Congress to be a lot less than advertised by Republicans. According to the CBO, the bill would cost American households an average of $175 in 2020, at the point when the legislation would have been in affect for eight years:
+
+CBO, June 19: [T]he Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the net annual economywide cost of the cap-and-trade program in 2020 would be $22 billion — or about $175 per household. That figure includes the cost of restructuring the production and use of energy and of payments made to foreign entities under the program, but it does not include the economic benefits and other benefits of the reduction in GHG emissions and the associated slowing of climate change.
+
+CBO notes, however, that the $175 average cost does “not reveal the wide range of effects that the cap-and-trade program would have on households in different income brackets.” According to CBO, “households in the lowest income quintile [lowest one-fifth] would see an average net benefit of about $40 in 2020, while households in the highest income quintile would see a net cost of $245.” In addition, the report says “[h]ouseholds in the second lowest quintile would see added costs of about $40 on average, those in the middle quintile would see an increase in costs of about $235, and those in the fourth quintile would pay about an additional $340 per year.” Additionally, the CBO says that its analysis does not include the benefits, economic or otherwise, of reducing greenhouse gas emissions — which can be difficult to quantify.
+The CBO analysis also says it does not include certain features of the bill, such as “federal efforts to speed the development of new technologies and to increase energy efficiency by specifying standards or subsidizing energy-saving investments,” which may increase costs. CBO notes that “[t]he incidence of gains and losses would be considerably different once the free allocation of allowances had mostly ended.”
+The Wall Street Journal published a critical editorial saying that the analysis leaves out other important factors. For example, the report says that the “resource cost,” which was included in the CBO’s calculation of the net cost, “does not indicate the potential decrease in gross domestic product (GDP) that could result from the cap.” And the estimate is for 2020 only, before some of the bill’s tougher restrictions would become a factor.
+According to the Journal, “[t]he reality is that cost estimates for climate legislation are as unreliable as the models predicting climate change.” While we won’t agree or disagree with that statement, we can say that the cost to American households as a result of implementing a cap-and-trade program is anything but certain. And even the CBO’s estimate of the potential costs is subject to change as the bill now makes its way to the Senate, where key details about the way the bill would work may be altered."
+"10House Republican Minority Leader John Boehner was a guest on ABC’s ""This Week with George Stephanopoulos"" on Sunday, and he made a remark that could use some clarification and correction.
+A conversation about climate change included the following exchange:
+Stephanopoulos: What is the Republican plan to deal with carbon emissions, which every major scientific organization has said is contributing to climate change?
+Boehner: George, the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, you know, when they do what they do, you’ve got carbon dioxide.
+To start, we haven’t noticed environmental groups, or anyone else for that matter, labeling CO2 a ""carcinogen."" According to the American Cancer Society, carcinogens are ""substances and exposures that can lead to cancer."" Carcinogens are harmful to people, not necessarily the environment, so how they relate to a conversation on climate change is unclear. But, for the record, CO2 is not listed as a carcinogen by any of the national or international organizations the ACS monitors.
+Furthermore, Boehner’s comment that CO2 isn’t ""harmful to our environment"" runs counter to the scientific consensus on climate change. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and there’s widespread scientific agreement, as Stephanopoulos noted, that carbon dioxide emissions from factories and exhaust pipes across the country are a cause of global warming. (There’s not concern about the CO2 humans exhale.) As we’ve pointed out before, the U.N’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that ""the primary source of the increased atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide since the pre-industrial period results from fossil fuel use."" And last week, the Environmental Protection Agency said CO2 emissions could be regulated under the Clean Air Act.
+Finally, while it’s true that when every cow (and other types of livestock) ""do what they do, you’ve got carbon dioxide,"" as Boehner described it, that’s not the relevant issue in the climate change debate. The bigger concern is the methane gas that is released with livestock excrement, flatulence and burping. Methane is ""23 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere,"" according to the EPA."
+"9Americans For Prosperity, a conservative group, has found a unique way to attack Democrats for the recently passed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: global warming alarmism.
+The group notes that the stimulus package calls for “spending billions of dollars” for “green energy.” That much is certainly true. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the bill did include $16.8 billion for energy efficiency and renewable energy, and as we’ve previously discussed there was an additional $11 billion for a so-called smart grid.
+But when the group argues that money is being wasted because global warming is a “hoax,” it ignores overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The consensus in the scientific community is the opposite. The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that there was a “very high confidence” of man-made warming in its 2007 report. Even the long-skeptical Bush administration released a report in May 2008 that said “it is likely that there has been a substantial human contribution to surface temperature increases in North America.”
+AFP says it is spending $140,000 on airtime for the ad in Virginia and on Fox News.
+The first ad shows an actor portraying an arrogant man named “Carlton the wealthy eco-hypocrite”:
+
+And the other features an actor portraying an angry man:
+
+The second ad sums up the group’s campaign succinctly by saying that Global Warming is a “hoax.”"
+"4Dipping one more time into last night’s Gibson/Palin interview, we found another misleading claim, this time on climate change. When Gibson accused Palin of flip-flopping her stance on the causes of global warming, Palin denied her position had changed on whether humans are partially responsible. But that doesn’t quite jibe with what she’s said in the past:
+
+Gibson: Do you still believe that global warming is not man-made?
+Palin: I believe that man’s activities certainly can be contributing to the issue of global warming, climate change. . . .
+Gibson: [C]olor me a cynic, but I hear a little bit of change in your policy there. When you say, yes, now you’re beginning to say it is man-made. It sounds to me like you’re adapting your position to Sen. McCain’s.
+Palin: I think you are a cynic because show me where I have ever said that there’s absolute proof that nothing that man has ever conducted or engaged in has had any affect, or no affect, on climate change.
+
+We can’t show that Palin has ever said there is “absolute proof” than humans aren’t responsible to any degree for global warming, but that’s not what Gibson was asking. In fact, it wasn’t even that long ago that she was saying human activity isn’t to blame. In an Aug. 29 Q&A interview with Newsmax, Palin was asked, “What is your take on global warming and how is it affecting our country?” Her reply:
+
+Palin (Aug. 29): A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I’m not one though who would attribute it to being man-made.
+
+She told the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner pretty much the same thing in 2007:
+
+Palin (Dec. 4, 2007): I’m not an Al Gore, doom-and-gloom environmentalist blaming the changes in our climate on human activity, but I’m not going to put my head in the sand and pretend there aren’t changes.
+
+We don’t begrudge politicians the right to change their minds, particularly on scientific questions where new data can sometimes fundamentally alter scientific consensus. But Palin was wrong to imply that her public stance hasn’t changed."
+"Summary
+A new ad from the Republican National Committee claims Barack Obama proposes ""no new solutions"" for the energy and climate crises. In fact, the Illinois senator has proposed $150 billion in spending over 10 years for biofuels, plug-in hybrids, low-emission coal plants and the rapid commercialization of other new, clean energy technologies. The ad also recycles the misleading claim that Obama has said ""no"" to nuclear. Obama said he is open to nuclear if it is clean and safe.
+And while the ad correctly says that Obama is against lifting the gas tax and against more production ""here at home"" (read: lifting the federal ban on more offshore oil drilling), neither of those steps is likely to be a ""solution"" for the problems at hand.
+Analysis
+The RNC made a $3 million buy for its ad, titled ""Balance,"" which is airing in the battleground states of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. It began airing July 5 and is scheduled to run through July 15. 
+
+
+
+
+[TET ]
+RNC Ad: ""Balance""
+Announcer: Record gas prices. A climate in crisis. John McCain says solve it now with a balanced plan: Alternative energy, conservation, suspending the gas tax and more production here at home. He’s pushing his own party to face climate change. But Barack Obama? For conservation, but he just says no to lower gas taxes, no to nuclear, no to more production. no new solutions. Barack Obama: Just the party line. The RNC is responsible for the content of this message.[/TET]
+“No New Solutions”?
+The ad’s most misleading claim is that Obama proposes ""no new solutions"" to the intertwined climate change and energy crises. In fact, Obama has an entire Web page dedicated to his proposals for the future of energy policy. One is a 10-year, $150 billion spending plan that would go toward clean coal technology; further development of plug-in hybrid cars; and commercialization of wind, solar and other renewable fuels. The RNC and McCain may not like all of Obama’s ideas, just as Obama may not support all of McCain’s, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. While McCain recently proposed The Lexington Project, which includes spending $2 billion annually toward clean coal technology advancement, McCain doesn’t have a plan comparable to Obama’s in scale of spending. In addition, Obama’s spending proposal predates McCain’s Lexington Project by over six months.
+No to ""Nuclear""?
+We’ve been through this. Obama has not said a flat-out ""no"" to nuclear, as the ad claims. Instead he has said he is in favor of nuclear energy if it is clean and safe, saying in his energy plan that ""it is unlikely that we can meet our aggressive climate goals if we eliminate nuclear power from the table."" But it’s true McCain is more aggressive in his support of nuclear power, giving it a prominent place in his energy plan, with the goal of creating 45 new nuclear power plants by 2030 and as many as 100 total. Obama’s energy plan contains no such initiative.   
+No to ""Lower Gas Taxes""?
+The ad claims Obama is against lowering the gas tax, which is true enough. However, McCain’s original proposal to eliminate the federal tax for consumers would only have covered a portion of this year – from Memorial Day to Labor Day – and much of that period is already past. Obama and many independent analysts have argued that such a plan would do little to lower costs for average consumers and, if it did, would only lead to higher demand, leading in turn to higher prices down the road. 
+
+No to ""More Production""?
+It’s also true Obama is against lifting the ban on increasing drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf, and it’s worth noting that both McCain and Obama oppose drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).  As for the Outer Continental shelf, more drilling could indeed produce more oil, but not right away. The Energy Information Administration says that there are ""substantial resources of crude oil"" offshore. However, it also notes that both time and money would be required to produce any oil from areas that are currently off-limits. Specifically, it estimates that no production would begin until 2017 and that it would take until 2030 to reach peak production, increasing total domestic production by 3 percent.
+And even then, the EIA study says, ""Because oil prices are determined on the international market, however, any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant.""
+Any notion that drilling could start more quickly than EIA estimates should be weighed against the fact that there is a shortage of drill ships. According to a New York Times article published last month, existing rigs are booked solid for the next five years. While shipyards have begun work on new ships, it will be some time before there are enough to accelerate the pace of offshore exploration, whether or not new areas are opened.
+McCain’s ""Pushing"" on Climate Change
+The ad’s right when it says McCain is ""pushing his own party to face climate change."" His efforts date back to 2000, when he first acknowledged that he was concerned by the ""mounting evidence"" presented by members of the scientific community. In 2003 he joined with Sen. Joe Lieberman, then a Democrat, to introduce a bill to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions.
+-–by Emi Kolawole
+Sources
+""Climate Change: McCain Expresses Global Warming Worries."" Greenwire, 18 May 2000.
+Cohn, Peter. ""McCain Sets Three Hearings for First Week of New congress."" Congressional Quarterly Daily Monitor, 23 Dec. 2002.
+""McCain, Lieberman Introduce Plan to Cut Greenhouse Emissions."" The Bulletin’s Frontrunner, 9 Jan. 2003.
+Republican Party ad assails Obama on energy. 6 Jul. 2008. The Associated Press, 8 Jul. 2008.
+Mouwad, Jad. Economists Weigh McCain’s Gas-Tax Plan. 37 Apr. 2008. The Caucus: The New York Times Politics Blog, 8 Jul. 2008.
+Impact of Increased Access to Oil and Natural Gas Resources in the Lower 48 Federal Outer Continental Shelf. The Energy Information Administration, 2007."
+"2Summary
+Two new Public Service Announcements released by the Ad Council say global warming could produce irreversible changes as soon as 30 years from now, and they urge individual citizens to take action.
+The ads correctly summarize the bulk of scientific opinion, which holds that the earth will warm by 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) sometime in the next 20 to 54 years, and that this warming will be accompanied by severe weather events. It’s not so clear what the ad’s viewers can do about that.
+ 
+Analysis
+On March 23, 2006, the Ad Council and Environmental Defense announced the start of a new public service campaign to raise awareness of global warming and educate individuals on what they can do to help.
+Environmental Defense is a non-profit environmental advocacy group that has focused on the issue of global warming for several years. The Ad Council is a non-profit public service group that helps coordinate advocacy campaigns with various sponsors. Past campaigns have targeted such things as drunk driving and forest fires with the “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk” and “Smokey Bear” ads.
+Is the Globe Warming?
+The central message for the campaign, as explained on the Ad Council’s Web site, is that “The most respected scientific organizations have stated unequivocally that global warming is happening , and people are causing it by burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests.” That is correct.
+Indeed, that conclusion is supported both by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the top science advisers of 11 leading industrial nations, including the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
+The IPCC is a UN organization which connects experts from around the world to study climate change, and includes the work of hundreds of contributors for its reports. Their most recent report, released in 2001, stated that the earth has warmed 0.6 degrees Celsius (1.1 degrees Fahrenheit) during the 20th century and that there was “new and stronger evidence” that human activity was the cause.
+The U.S. National Academy of Sciences is a society of scholars chartered by Congress in 1863 to advise the government. In 2001 the NAS, in a report requested by the Bush White House, said:
+
+National Academy of Sciences, 2001: Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth’s atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise.
+
+In June 2005, the science academies of 11 leading industrial nations (including the NAS) issued a joint statement urging prompt action on climate change:
+
+Joint Statement, 2005:  There is now strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring … It is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities.
+
+Together, the two ads say that within 30 years the planet could see irreversible changes bringing severe weather events including heat waves, droughts and hurricanes. They also urge viewers to visit a Web site to learn what to do.
+“Consequences are Only 30 Years Away.”
+The ad “Train” states, “Some say that irreversible consequences are only 30 years away.” That’s a fair characterization; mainstream scientific opinion holds that big changes could happen that soon.
+
+
+Ad Council Ad: “Train”
+(On Screen: Camera cuts between images of trees, grass and the outdoors)
+Man: Global Warming.
+(On Screen: A speeding train)
+Man: Some say irreversible consequences are 30 years away.
+(On Screen: Camera cuts between grass and train)
+Man : 30 years? That won’t affect me.
+(On Screen: Train rushes forward behind man.  He steps out of the way to reveal a child behind him and in the way of the train)
+(On Screen: The words “There’s still time. Fight Global Warming.)
+
+All of the studies cited by the ad’s sponsors warn of irreversible consequences based on a prediction that temperatures will rise an additional 1.3 Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit). The IPCC report predicts that will happen sometime between 2026 and 2060, depending.
+
+IPCC Report, 2001: Results from coupled ocean-atmosphere climate models driven by a variety of GHG (greenhouse gas) emission scenarios indicate that the Earth will have warmed by 2 degrees Celsius relative to the ‘pre-industrial’ era (and by 1.3 degrees Celsius relative to the present) sometime between 2026 and 2060. Much of this range is caused by uncertainties in future GHG emissions. To the extent that the global community continues to follow a “business-as-usual” path with a heavy reliance on fossil fuels and does not seek to limit GHG emissions, the climate will pass the 2 degree Celsius threshold sooner rather than later.
+
+That’s not a unanimous conclusion, however. The IPCC report notes reservations of some experts who think the science is not definitive enough to say temperatures will rise that quickly. One such dissenter is J. Patrick Michaels, a past president of the American Association of State Climatologists as well a contributing author of the IPCC report. He also maintains the World Climate Report blog, and is a  fellow at the free-market, libertarian Cato Institute.
+“Massive Heat Waves . . . Severe Drought . . . Devastating Hurricanes”
+The “Tick” ad projects the message that today’s children will grow up to be confronted by “massive heat waves,” “severe drought” and “devastating hurricanes” as a result of man-made global warming.
+
+Ad Council Ad: “Tick”
+(Camera cuts to different children to say each word with the “ticking” sound of a clock in the background.)
+Children: Tick ..Tick…Tick…Tick… Tick… Tick… Tick…Massive Heatwaves…Tick… Tick…Tick… Severe Droughts…Tick…Tick…Tick… Tick…Tick… Tick…Tick… Devastating Hurricanes…Tick…Tick… Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick… And the worst…Tick…Tick…Tick… Tick… is yet…Tick…Tick…Tick… to come…Tick.
+Announcer : What kind of world are you leaving us?
+(FightGlobalWarming.Com appears on a black screen)
+Announcer: Learn what you can do, while there’s still time.
+To document these threats the Ad Council provides several peer-reviewed papers  from science journals. The IPCC report stated:
+
+IPCC Report: Some extreme events are projected to increase in frequency and/or severity during the 21st century due to changes in the mean and/or variability of climate, so it can be expected that the severity of their impacts will also increase in concert with global warming.
+However, the IPCC consensus also noted some degree of uncertainty:
+
+IPCC Report: The potential for large scale and possibly irreversible impacts poses risks that have yet to be reliably quantified.
+
+Another view is offered by Roger Pielke Jr., who says perceptions regarding hurricanes are skewed by recent major storms. He adds:
+
+Pielke: Claims of linkage between global warming and hurricane impacts are premature . . . (and) any future changes in hurricane intensities will likely be small in the context of observed variability.
+
+Pielke directs the University of Colorado’s Center for Science and Technology Policy Research and maintains the Prometheus science policy web log.
+“There’s still time,”  “Our Future is Up to You.”
+Both television ads follow up with calls to action. The campaign’s Web site has a section where individuals can calculate the amount of carbon dioxide they produce and see tips on “cutting the carbs,” such as using energy-efficient light bulbs and programmable thermostats, planting trees, washing clothes in cold water, driving less aggressively and less often, keeping tires properly inflated and turning off car air conditioners and “cracking the window” instead.
+It’s not clear what this would accomplish, however, even if a majority of Americans began following such advice. Many scientists say far more drastic reductions in emissions are needed. A Dutch report cited by sponsors says, for example,  “Industrialized countries will need to reduce their emissions by 15-30% below 1990 levels in 2020.”
+Dissenters argue that drastic changes are not worth the effort. Michaels summarizes this point of view in a recent web post:
+Michaels: Atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions are going to continue to grow until major technological advancements take place—advancements that are, at the very least, decades away. So whether or not the climate changes we are observing now are reversible is a non-issue. There is nothing substantive that can be done about it anyway.
+However, the more widely held scientific opinion is that massive change is needed soon. The IPCC summary for policymakers urged nations to adopt a wide “portfolio” of painful and politically controversial actions, including taxes and regulations:
+
+IPCC: The portfolio may include – according to national circumstances -emissions/carbon/energy taxes, tradeable or non-tradeable permits, land-use policies, provision and/or removal of subsides, deposit/refund systems, technology or performance standards, energy mix requirements, product bans, voluntary agreements, government spending and investment, and support for research and development.
+
+Update April 5 – Several readers wrote to point out that the Ad Council campaign mascot’s proper name is actually “Smokey Bear,” and not “Smokey the Bear” as our article originally had it. “Smokey the Bear” was a popular 1952 song, adding “the” to make the rhythm work.  Some of us still can’t keep the beat out of our heads.
+Clarification, April 6: We originally characterized Roger Pielke as a “dissenter from the consensus view.” Prof. Pielke says that was wrong, and that “there is no present consensus” on hurricanes and climate change.
+-by Justin Banks & Brooks Jackson
+ 
+Media
+Watch Ad Council Ad: “Train”
+
+Watch Ad Council Ad: “Tick”
+
+Sources
+den Elzen, M & M Meinshausen. “Multi-gas emission pathways for meeting the EU 2°C climate target,” Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change. Cambridge University Press. 2005.
+Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,   Climate Change 2001: Synthesis Report, Cambridge University Press. 2001.
+Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2001: Synthesis Report: Summary for Policy Makers.
+Joint Statement of Science Academies: Global Response to Climate Change, 2005
+Michaels, Patrick J. “Non-Linear Climate Change,” World Climate Report. 9 Aug 2004.
+Michaels, Patrick J. “Observations, Not Models,” World Climate Report.  14 April 2004.
+Michaels, Patrick J. “Hot Tip: Post Misses Point,” World Climate Report.  31 Jan 2006.
+National Acadamies of Science.  “Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions,” The National Academies Press. 2001.
+Pielke, Jr., R. A., C. Landsea, M. Mayfield, J. Laver and R. Pasch. “Hurricanes and Global Warming,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. Nov 2005."
+"With passage by Democrats of a new measure aimed squarely at tackling climate change, the issue is taking on a new urgency in the fall election. Those who opposed the measure, including U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., are being targeted by environmental groups and others. That includes the claim of using an expletive to dismiss climate change, and pulling in campaign money from oil and gas companies. In an Aug. 13, 2022, tweet, the League of Conservation Voters took aim at Johnson, saying he ""called climate change ‘bull - - - -’ during a record heatwave"" and ""raked in over $700k in fossil fuel cash."" Let’s take a closer look at both parts of that claim. Caught on camera So did Johnson make light of climate change? While speaking to the Republican Women of Greater Wisconsin on June 5, 2021, Johnson’s speech did, in fact, turn to climate change. ""I don’t know about you guys, but I think climate change — as Lord Monckton said — bull - - - -,"" Johnson said, based on a video of the luncheon. He was referring to Lord Christopher Monckton, a noted British climate change skeptic, and mouthed the expletive before adding aloud: ""By the way, it is."" Legions of scientists have researched climate change and determined it is real, with its impact seen in heat waves and drought in some areas, and rising sea levels in others. When asked later about his comments by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Johnson tried to soften the remark a bit, saying that he is not a climate change denier, nor is he a climate change alarmist. ""Climate is not static,"" he said. ""It has always changed and always will change."" But the bottomline: Yes, Johnson was caught on video referring to climate change that way. So, what about the second part of the tweet? Exactly how much has Johnson gotten from the oil and gas industry? When we asked for backup for the claim, David Willett, senior vice president of communications for the League of Conservation Voters, said the information came from OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan nonprofit research group that tracks money in politics. According to OpenSecrets, Johnson has taken $753,247 from the oil and gas industry since 2009. That period covers Johnson’s entire tenure in office, since he first won election in 2010. The site does not further break down how that money was spent on Johnson. It doesn’t say whether the money was directly contributed to Johnson’s campaign or whether other groups spent it on his behalf, such as for ads against opponents during an election. Included in the donors to Johnson is Koch Industries, which does some work in the oil and gas industry. Donors affiliated with the company have contributed about $67,000. As a point of reference, Johnson is far from the top recipient of donations by the industry. U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, has received more than $8 million in donations during his time in office, while U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, has taken over $4.1 million. In fact, Johnson doesn’t even crack the top 20 recipients in Congress of oil and gas industry donations, according to OpenSecrets. Neither is the oil and gas industry the largest contributor to Johnson, according to OpenSecrets. Over the years, securities and investment, real estate and manufacturing have been some of the largest industry donors. The League of Conservation Voters claimed Johnson ""called climate change ‘bull - - - -’  during a record heatwave"" and ""raked in over $700k in fossil fuel cash."" Both parts of the claim check out, from a much-publicized comment made at a luncheon in 2021 to publicly available campaign contributions, as organized and analyzed by a reputable nonpartisan group. Indeed, Johnson has actually received more than $750,000 from the oil, gas and energy industry since the 2010 election, though it’s far from his biggest source of money — and he’s far from the top recipients in Congress. We rate this claim True.  "
+"In 2018, 15-year-old Greta Thunberg sparked a worldwide movement to meet carbon emissions targets when she protested outside the Swedish parliament holding a sign saying ""School Strike for Climate."" That protest inspired students across the globe to hold similar demonstrations demanding action from their governments on climate change. The issue remains at the forefront, though measures to address climate change are stalled in Congress. Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman, R-Wisconsin, took to the floor of Congress to stake out a view that he says is rarely heard – that the United States is already doing a better job than the rest of the world at addressing the issue. In a Feb. 3, 2022 tweet that included a snippet of the floor speech, Grothman made this claim: ""The US has made strides in reducing carbon emissions that other parts of the world have not. Meanwhile, @POTUS is trying to send taxpayer dollars to manufacturers overseas that do not abide by the same standards we do at home."" In an email to PolitiFact Wisconsin, Grothman expanded on the comment. ""I feel that many young people are being misled into thinking our country is polluting more than it ever has,"" Grothman said. ""In reality, air and water pollution have decreased significantly in the last 40 years. I also feel that given the growth of the Chinese and Indian economies, people in the U.S. have to be conscious that changes in our laws can inadvertently push jobs to these other countries who do not have the same environmental standards we do."" Both parts of Grothman’s claim caught our attention. We took a look at the overseas manufacturers claim and rated it Half True. But what about the claim on carbon emissions and progress. The claim is that the U.S. is ahead of ""other parts of the world"" in terms of the strides it has made. Admittedly, the ""other parts of the world"" is a bit vague, but we interpret it to mean the US is doing better than many other countries that – like it – are among the largest emitters of greenhouse gases. When asked for backup, Grothman staffers pointed to a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report titled ""Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990–2020."" The report said that CO2 – carbon monoxide – emissions from fossil fuel combustion fell by 8.4% in that 30-year period. Looking at just the 15-year period of 2005 to 2020, they fell 24.7%. (In the final year covered, from 2019 to 2020, the figure was 10.7%) So, U.S. emissions have fallen, but Grothman stated that as a comparison to other parts of the world, so we need to look broader. Researchers with the Rhodium Group, an independent research firm focused on global trends, have tracked that data back decades. Their data puts China as the world’s top emitter, followed by the United States. The data groups the European Union as one, in addition to listing its individual nations such as Germany. According to the data provided, here are the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters for the years 2010 and 2019, with total net emissions in million metric tons of CO2e (bundles of greenhouse gases): 2010           2019           Percent change China                         11,235        14,093          +25.4% U.S.                              6,241         5,724           -8.2% India                             2,504          3,422           +36.6% European Union           3,868         3,334           -13.8% Brazil                            2,124         1,458          -31.3% Indonesia                      1,113          1,765         +58.5% Russia                           1,335           1,619          +21.2% Japan                             1,232           1,142          -7.3% Germany                           923               771         -16.4% Canada                             665               707         +6.3% So when compared to the world’s top greenhouse gas emitters, the United States has made progress, decreasing emissions 8.2% from 2010 to 2019. China and India saw the biggest increases among those countries, 25.4% and 36.6%. Of note: Brazil made the most progress for that time period among the top 5 emitters, with a decrease of 31.3%. However, by 2020-2021, as The New York Times reported Nov. 2, 2021, Brazil’s progress has stalled and the country is now seeing increasing emission levels, largely driven by a surge in deforestation. Grothman said ""The US has made strides in reducing carbon emissions that other parts of the world have not."" When compared to the world’s other top greenhouse gas emitters, the United States has made progress – its emissions falling 8.2% from 2010 to 2019. While the US is not tops in terms of decreases, Grothman’s claim was a relative one. And China and India are among countries that have seen increases, not decreases. For a statement that is accurate with nothing significant missing, our rating is True. "
+"Conservative media outlets have circulated articles claiming that President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign is selling plastic straws with the president’s name on them. ""Triggering leftists, Trump's reelection campaign is selling plastic straws,"" reads a headline from one of the outlets, PJ Media, on July 20, 2019. One website, PoliticalCowboy.com, praises the merchandise as ""brilliant, hilarious and timely"" and mentions that ""bans on single-use plastics (especially drinking straws) are all the rage in leftist circles today."" LouderWithCrowder.com described Trump’s ""troll game"" as ""top notch."" These posts were flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) We wondered if the headlines were really true. Yes, it is. Red straws etched with the white lettering of ""Trump"" are available in a pack of 10 on the Trump 2020 online collection of campaign merchandise. ""Liberal paper straws don’t work. STAND WITH PRESIDENT TRUMP and buy your pack of recyclable straws today,"" reads the description of the straws. The campaign told PolitiFact that the straws were added to the online store last week. Local and state governments, such as Seattle and California, have enacted restrictions on single-use plastic straws. Alternative straws, such as paper ones, are being sold in affected areas like San Francisco. The stories shared on Facebook follow a July 18 tweet from Brad Parscale, Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign manager, about paper straws.  I’m so over paper straws. #LiberalProgress This is exactly what they would do to the economy as well. Squeeze it until it doesn’t work. pic.twitter.com/zKfiZiSHV5 The Trump straws sold out on July 19, according to a tweet from Elizabeth Harrington, national spokesperson for the Republican National Committee. Parscale tweeted later that day that they were ""once again available."" Parscale also tweeted July 22 that the campaign had raised more than $200,000 from the Trump straws.  We have sold more than 140,000 straws. That is over $200,000 raised.More than half of all Straw purchasers were BRAND NEW small dollar donors.Amazing! The Trump campaign is selling plastic straws. They are advertised as reusable. We rate this headline True."
+"In a Feb. 24 article published by St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Maxine Lipeles, director of Washington University’s Interdisciplinary Environmental Clinic, made a jarring statement about the condition of Missouri’s groundwater as a result of coal ash contamination. ""All the ponds in Missouri for which we have data are causing groundwater contamination...This is a statewide issue,"" Lipeles said. Lipeles is specifically referencing coal ash ponds, engineered ponds used for the disposal of coal ash waste, in her statement. Lipeles was responding to an effort by the Missouri legislature to shift oversight of coal ash disposal from the federal level to the state level. According to the Energy Information Administration, coal fueled 81 percent of Missouri's electricity generation in 2017, and more coal is consumed for electricity generation in Missouri than in all but two other states. Coal ash is the resulting waste when coal is burned for electricity. Currently, there are 16 coal-fired power plants and 41 coal ash ponds in Missouri, according to a 2019 Washington University Law report. Lipeles’ statement may have you second-guessing yourself anytime you reach for your kitchen faucet. We checked Lipeles’ claim to see if it, in fact, holds water. We reached out to Lipeles to understand the data on which her statement was founded on. Lieples directed us to the utilities’ 2017 annual groundwater monitoring reports to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from January 2018. The utilities are required by the EPA to report groundwater monitoring data each year. The EPA first required the reports beginning in 2017. The 2018 reports were recently added, but Lipeles told us she has not reviewed the latest reports. The EPA also required that plants share their coal combustion residuals, as required by the Disposal of Coal Combustion Residuals Rule of 2015. The EPA’s list was last updated on May 15, 2018. Upon examination of the reports posted on EPA’s list, we found that every groundwater monitoring report posted for every utility company did appear to show the presence of at least one contaminant. The reports often emphasize corrective action plans and also try to prove that an extraneous source could be causing the groundwater contamination. We reached out to Patricia Schuba, president of the Labadie Environmental Organization and a trained biologist, for a second opinion on Lipeles’ claim. ""It's a truthful statement that every [plant] that has to report under the coal ash rule for Missouri shows contamination,"" Schuba said. ""I think there's only a few that there's one contaminant, but arsenic stands out as the primary contaminant that's showing up in Missouri testing as well as molybdenum."" Schuba also stressed the risk of groundwater contamination beyond drinking water. ""There's this big concern that we don't realize that this stuff is so dangerous and we're putting it in a water environment where it can become soluble and move into plants, animals, fish...it can bioaccumulate in the rivers,"" Schuba said. ""It is contaminating a huge economic resource for the state, and I think the risk of that is totally underappreciated."" Abel Russ, a senior attorney for the Environmental Integrity Project, also agreed with Lipeles’ claim. Having formerly worked in the field of human health risk assessment as a research associate and toxicologist, Russ provided us with an 80-page report that included evaluations for groundwater contaminant present at every power plant in Missouri that provided groundwater monitoring data in March 2018 according to the Disposal of Coal Combustion Residuals Rule of 2015. ""We were trying to determine whether each location had unsafe levels of groundwater contamination that could be attributed to regulated coal ash ponds or landfills,"" Russ said via email. ""Specifically, we counted a pollutant as being present at unsafe levels if (a) it exceeded health-based standards, and (b) the levels in downgradient wells were equal to or greater than the levels in upgradient wells."" According to the report, the only plant in Missouri that didn’t clearly appear to be causing groundwater contamination was the Sikeston power plant. ""For Sikeston, however, I should note that there are elevated levels of coal ash indicator pollutants like boron and sulfate in wells downgradient of the ash pond,"" Russ said. ""This tells me that the Sikeston ash pond is leaking. We didn’t flag it in our report because the levels in groundwater, even though they are elevated above background, do not exceed health-based standards."" For final confirmation, we did an online search to find documents that could add support for Lipeles’ claim. After reviewing the 2019 Washington University Law report on coal ash ponds, the data clearly supports her claim that ""all the ponds in Missouri for which we have data are causing groundwater contamination."" Sixteen Missouri coal-fired power plants were included in the report, analyzing a total of 41 coal ash ponds. For every plant listed, their respective coal ash ponds showed groundwater samples that exceeded the federal drinking water standards for boron, arsenic and/or sulfate. The only coal ash ponds included in the report that did not show groundwater contamination were those operated by plants that did not have groundwater monitoring data listed on their CCR compliance website. Those plants include but aren’t limited to Columbia Municipal Power Plant, Missouri City Generating Station and Blue Valley Generating Station. It should be noted that some plants that haven’t listed groundwater monitoring data on their CCR compliance website have coal ash ponds that have been closed and are currently inactive. However, the closure of a coal ash pond does not always mean that it has been decontaminated. Lipeles’ said every Missouri coal ash pond for which there is data is causing groundwater contamination. After analyzing, Washington University’s data and the utility reports listed by the EPA, every coal ash pond in Missouri that has published data is either causing at least one type of chemical contamination for groundwater or showing signs that it has potential to cause contamination in the near future. Given the data in the context of Lipeles’ claim, we rate her statement True."
+"Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has made confronting California’s contaminated drinking water a top priority early in his term in office. In his first week, he took his cabinet on a road trip to meet with Central Valley residents who, for years, have had to rely on bottled water for drinking and cooking. In his budget, he called for a tax on drinking water to help disadvantaged communities clean up contaminated water. Then he signed one of his first pieces of legislation to provide assistance to communities with unsafe water, including $10 million for emergency drinking water projects. During his State of the State Address, Newsom called California’s safe drinking water crisis ""a moral disgrace and a medical emergency."" He added this assertion: ""Just this morning, more than a million Californians woke up without clean water to bathe in or drink."" Is the problem this widespread? We decided to fact-check Newsom’s claim. Our research Clean drinking water advocates and researchers told us Newsom’s statement is correct, but noted it’s an estimate based on incomplete data, and that the actual number could be higher. ""It’s worse,"" said Jonathan London, a UC Davis professor who’s written about contaminated drinking water. The professor said one million would be ""an underestimate."" In the San Joaquin Valley alone, there were nearly 100,000 residents living without access to clean drinking water, according to a February 2018 UC Davis study London co-authored. ""Unfortunately, (Newsom’s) number is true,’ added Kelsey Hinton, spokesperson for the Community Water Center, a San Joaquin Valley nonprofit that advocates for clean drinking water. As evidence, both London and Hinton pointed to a 2017 drinking water compliance report by the State Water Resources Control Board, which regulates water quality. The report shows that an estimated 592,000 Californians lived in a public water district that received a water quality violation in 2017. But that doesn’t include people living in private, unregulated districts. London said some of the violations are worse than others, such as those involving arsenic, nitrates or uranium contaminates. Some of the violations, he added, could be less severe. ""All violations have some kind of health risk associated,"" he added.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom delivered his first State of the State Address on Feb. 12, 2018. AP photo. Not everyone is counted Hinton said on top of those living in regulated districts, there are many thousands more who live in small, rural communities that rely on unregulated private wells. Some of those wells also experience contamination, but aren’t counted in the water board report. A McClatchy investigation published in June 2018 found at least 6 million Californians are served by water providers that have been in violation of state standards at some point since 2012. Darrin Polhemus, deputy director for the water board's division of drinking water, said Newsom’s figure is accurate based on a tally this month of the regulated, public water systems alone. That report includes violations for an additional contaminant, the cancer-causing man-made chemical Trichloropropane, referred to as 1,2,3,-TCP. The addition of that contaminant boosts the number of people living in a regulated district to ""now over one million people,"" he said. ""The estimated population … of the public water systems regulated by the State Water Board that are currently out of compliance is 1,081,328,"" Polhemus said in an email. ""This number increased recently because we added those systems that are now out of compliance with our 1,2,3-TCP Maximum Contaminant Level."" Our ruling Gov. Gavin Newsom claimed ""more than a million Californians"" don’t have ""clean water to bathe in or drink."" A group that advocates for clean drinking water and a UC Davis researcher agreed with Newsom’s figure, with the researcher saying the number is significantly higher than one million. They pointed to a state water board report showing nearly 600,000 people lived in a regulated public water district that received a water quality violation in 2017. They noted that many thousands more people live in districts with unregulated and contaminated private wells but are not counted on the water board’s tally. The deputy director of the water board’s drinking water division added that a report from this month, which adds violations for a new cancer-causing contaminant, boosts the number of people in regulated water districts alone to more than one million people. Based on this information, we rated Newsom’s statement True. TRUE – The statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check."
+"Despite’s Austin’s ""zero-waste"" commitment, an advocacy group says that nearly every city park lacks recycling. We wondered about that declaration by the Texas Campaign for the Environment, which describes itself as the state’s largest environmental group organizing support through door-to-door canvassing. An April 2018 handout from the group notes that the city adopted a zero-waste commitment in 2011 requiring businesses and landlords to provide recycling. The city has a goal of reducing trash sent to landfills by 90 percent by 2040. ""Unfortunately,"" the TCE handout says, the ""zero-waste"" requirement ""does not apply to city government operations"" and parks rank among big missed opportunities. ""As many as 293 out of 300 parks have no recycling, including almost every neighborhood park,"" the handout says. There’s also good news, the handout says, in that the city has launched recycling in every recreation and cultural center and in most of Austin’s biggest parks. Still, 293 of 300 parks, including nearly every neighborhood park, have no recycling? By email, Andrew Dobbs, the group’s Central Texas program director, said he based his statement on an April 2018 city staff presentation to Austin’s Parks and Recreation Board. A slide in the presentation says the city has 300 parks. Two subsequent slides say a pilot program has introduced recycling to Zilker, Town Lake, Walnut Creek, Bull Creek and Ramsay parks plus Walsh Boat Landing. Other slides say recycling also has been added to more than five city swimming pools, five of six city golf courses and two softball complexes. Dobbs told us the campaign knows of one other park with recycling bins thanks to a neighborhood association. The group’s handout, Dobbs said, says ""as many as 293 out of 300"" parks have no recycling ""because we aren’t 100% certain if other parks might have recycling added on an ad hoc basis."" Records show Austin’s Parks and Recreation Department made the recycling presentation to two city boards. By phone, we separately confirmed TCE’s count of parks without recycling from Charles Vaclavik, a parks department official, who told us that plans are in motion next to expand recycling mostly along the south side of Lady Bird Lake through Roy G. Guerrero Colorado River Park. Vaclavik said Austin’s parks-with-recycling count would be higher if the department had started its pilot recycling program in 2017 by concentrating on small neighborhood parks rather than installing recycling bins in large ""metropolitan"" parks the city’s jewel, 351-acre Zilker Park. ""We concentrated (instead) on the activity centers that have the most people,"" Vaclavik said, seeking a ""bigger bang for the buck."" To date, he said, the recycling pilot has diverted about 35 percent of materials previously destined to move from trash cans to a landfill. Another factor: The city has yet to budget for recycling in its parks. Liana Kallivoka, the department’s assistant director, told the city’s Zero Waste Advisory Commission at its April 11, 2018, meeting that department officials were drafting a request for $250,000 in recycling-specific funding in the next city budget. If approved by the Austin City Council, Kallivoka said, the money would fund a program coordinator and hundreds of pairs of waste-recycling receptacles with tops, which run $1,100 each, to follow on 150 pairs already installed in park facilities and outdoors. Shelley Parks, a city spokeswoman, told us by phone that the cost of the installed bins was covered largely by donors including the Austin Parks Foundation, the Trail Foundation, neighborhood associations and the office of City Council Member Alison Alter, who represents District 10. Generally, Kallivoka told the commission, the department’s goal is to extend recycling to all parks and facilities in three phases wrapping up with the addition of recycling to neighborhood parks. Commission members approved a resolution calling for the city to create a Parks & Recreation Recycling Task Force. The resolution says, in part, that ""approximately 4 of 300 City of Austin parks and 14 of 51 City of Austin aquatic facilities currently provide recycling opportunities."" Austin’s Parks and Recreation Board voted to urge creation of the same task force at its April 24, 2018, meeting. Dobbs also spoke to the commission, saying: ""The good news is that we’re at a point where everybody wants to do this."" Our ruling TCE’s handout says that most of Austin’s biggest parks have recycling though as ""many as 293 out of 300"" Austin city ""parks have no recycling, including almost every neighborhood park."" City figures support this analysis. The city hasn’t funded a parks recycling program. We rate the statement True. TRUE – The statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check."
+"Gwen Graham, a former Democratic congresswoman running for Florida governor, said state leaders need to do more to prepare for the next hurricane, especially in the face of climate change. In an opinion-editorial for the Tampa Bay Times, Graham specifically focused on the state’s significant problem with infrastructure. ""Our coastal and stormwater infrastructure are not prepared to handle climate change,"" Graham wrote. ""They're two of the most critical areas during a storm, and received D-plus and D ratings, respectively, by the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2016."" We wondered about these grades as well as Graham’s larger point about climate change preparedness. Every four years since 2008, the Florida Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers has issued a report card outlining the condition of Florida’s infrastructure. The organization was founded in 1852 and represents more than 150,000 members of the civil engineering profession in 177 countries, making it the oldest engineering society in the country. A committee of civil engineers updates the card and gives out 11 grades on different sectors of infrastructure, including bridges, energy and school facilities, to create an an average grade. (Florida’s grade point average was a C in 2016.) Florida’s highest marks were in ports (B-minus), aviation (B-minus) and bridges (B) in the group’s 2016 report card. As Graham said, coastal and stormwater infrastructure scored poorly. The worst grade, F, is given out to infrastructure with ""widespread advanced signs of deterioration,"" and designates that the infrastructure is unfit for what it’s supposed to do. Getting a D isn’t much better: ""The infrastructure is in poor to fair condition and mostly below standard, with many elements approaching the end of their service life. A large portion of the system exhibits significant deterioration. Condition and capacity are of serious concern with strong risk of failure."" The section about coastal areas takes a close look at the Sunshine State's 825 miles of beaches. That area received a D-plus grade in 2016, jsut like Graham said. According to the organization, almost 61 percent of Florida’s beaches are eroding and need ""ongoing maintenance"" to fight the trend. The group put some of the fault on state policymakers, adding that ""over the last 10 years, the average difference between requested and state appropriated funds exceeded $40 million per year."" It shouldn’t come as a surprise that hurricanes and major storm events can really mess up coastal areas and beaches. During periods of extreme rain, the chance for flooding increases. Flooding combined with wind, leads to beach erosion and jeopardizes the integrity of important infrastructure, like power plants, along the coast. Florida’s stormwater infrastructure, which include the drains that capture excess rain water and transport it for cleaning, received a D. Based on the ASCE’s assessment, Florida needs about $1.1 billion through 2019 to update its stormwater infrastructure. However, as needs for improvement have increased, utility fees to upkeep the systems have decreased since 2011. Stormwater infrastructure is put into overdrive during storms and hurricanes. Increasing the amount of water compromises the natural ability of the ground to absorb water, making stormwater systems function worse. There’s no doubt that stormwater and coastal area infrastructure are critical when a storm hits, and experts agreed that the ASCE’s assessment is right on track. Experts said that coastal infrastructure does not work well under ""king"" tides, heavy storms, or heavy rains in part because of the state's low elevation, lack of pumping of water and some lack of attention. ""Stormwater (issues), like water and sewer, are not very glamorous and are therefore often ignored until they hit crisis mode,"" said Fred Bloetscher, an American Society of Civil Engineers member and a civil, environmental and geomatics engineering professor at Florida Atlantic University. Experts also agreed that the crux of Graham’s claim — that Florida's coastal and stormwater infrastructure is not prepared to handle climate change — is also accurate. That’s in part because the state isn’t taking preventative measures to better prepare. For example, experts said a starting point for Florida would be to tighten building codes and increase the number of ""disaster reduction structures."" Experts at the University of South Florida pointed to the ""monolithic concrete dome home"" that easily withstands hurricane winds and flooding events. ""We wonder why we don't see more of these,"" said T.H. Culhane, the director of climate change and sustainability at the University of South Florida. But not all hope is lost, according to Dave Randle, USF's director of sustainable tourism. ""It might be too late for the next hurricane but the sooner we start the more we could prevent damage in the future,"" Randle said. Graham said that Florida’s coastal area and stormwater infrastructure are not prepared to handle climate change, adding that the state ""received D-plus and D ratings, respectively, by the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2016."" Graham is accurately citing a report card given out by the oldest engineering society in the country and experts vouched for the group’s assessment and Graham’s larger point. Florida has failed to take preventative measures in the past and it needs to update its existing infrastructure to prepare for climate change. We rate this claim True."
+"There were a number of head-scratching exchanges in President Donald Trump’s interview with The Economist posted on May 11, including Trump’s claim -- easily debunked -- that he had coined the phrase ""prime the pump."" But one line that raised our eyebrows was about tax deductions for birds. ""I get more deductions,"" Trump said. ""I mean I can tell you this, I get more deductions. They have deductions for birds flying across America. They have deductions for everything."" At first, we were mystified at what Trump was talking about. But as it turns out, he’s on target -- and as a golf course owner, he has reason to know about this obscure part of the federal tax code. We’ll walk you through it. The tax deductions in question involve what are known as ""conservation easements."" A conservation easement for a parcel of land is an agreement by which the landowner pledges to forgo future development. This way, the land remains in its natural state and, among other things, can provide habitat for animals, including migratory birds. In typical easements, the landowner continues to own the land itself, but the right to develop it is donated to a nonprofit organization that promises not to build on it. The difference between the pre-donation value of the land and the post-donation value of the land can be deducted on the landowner’s tax returns as a gift, said Steven Barshov, a land-use and environmental-law attorney at the firm Sive, Paget & Riesel, P.C. The exact loss in land value is determined by an appraiser. For large or expensive parcels of land, the tax break can be substantial -- it can eliminate up to half of the taxpayer’s adjusted gross income (or all of it, if they are a farmer or a rancher). And if the amount of the gift is greater than one year’s adjusted gross income, the balance can be carried over through up to 15 future tax years until the value of the donation is exhausted. Compared to popular tax deductions like those for the interest on home mortgages, deductions for conservation easements are relatively small. Still, they add up: Bloomberg reported that in 2010, almost 3,000 taxpayers used conservation easements to deduct $766 million from their tax returns, according to IRS data. As recently as 2007, that amount was as high as $2.2 billion. Where they have come in for criticism is for disproportionately benefiting the ultra-rich. Indeed, for a time, the administration of President Barack Obama tried to get rid of the tax break. ""They’re overwhelmingly for high-end individuals and provide little to no benefit to the public,"" Dean Zerbe, who examined easement donations as a Republican aide on the Senate Finance Committee, told Bloomberg. ""I don’t know if I could design a tax break that’s more targeted toward the millionaire set."" This may explain why this particular tax deduction popped into Trump’s head during the Economist interview. Forbes noted that when Trump gave the Associated Press a 94-page list of $102 million in charitable donations he had made since 2010, one of the entries was $63.825 million for ""various conservation easements."" The White House did not respond to a request for information about easements, but according to Forbes, Trump has donated easements for land on the Trump National Golf Club in Los Angeles and the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J. Beyond the golf-course easements, Trump has also donated easements for his personal estate in Westchester County, N.Y., as well as his Mar-a-Lago property in Palm Beach, Forbes reported. Easements for golf courses have been particularly controversial, but they have been upheld in the courts, albeit with some restrictions. In one case, the U.S. Tax Court denied a deduction for an easement because the golf course used chemicals that rendered the land unsuitable for wildlife habitat. But in a 2009 case, the Kiva Dunes golf course in Alabama won its case to claim the deduction after demonstrating that it was used by 46 species of neotropical birds that migrate across the Gulf of Mexico. The court’s only quibble was the valuation; the donation’s value was reduced from $30.6 million to $28.7 million. ""Protection of significant wildlife habitat is a conservation purpose qualifying a conservation easement for a charitable deduction,"" David Wooldridge, the Alabama attorney who represented the golf course, told PolitiFact. There’s at least one other provision of the tax code where migratory bird habitat could qualify a landowner for tax deductions. ""In general, farm landowners and tenants can deduct expenses related to soil or water conservation, farmland erosion prevention, or endangered species recovery from their federal taxes, where otherwise these would be considered capital expenses,"" according to a guide for land conservation published by Texas A&M University. To qualify for this deduction requires a nearby endangered species and a conservation plan approved by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. For the record, neither tax benefit applies only or specifically to birds. Our ruling Trump said the federal tax code includes ""deductions for birds flying across America."" He’s right -- conservation easements to protect wildlife, including but not limited to migratory birds, can be used as tax deductions.  And Trump should know -- by all indications, he’s saved millions in tax payments on the backs of these little creatures. We rate the statement True."
+"On the anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill, Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., attacked President Donald Trump for his stance on drilling and portrayed Congress as doing nothing in the aftermath of the 2010 explosion. ""Trump looking to open up E Coast & new areas for offshore oil drilling when Congress has passed no new safety standards since BP,"" Markey tweeted April 20. We wanted to know what Trump’s plans were and if Congress has done nothing since the explosion. The April 20, 2010, explosion of BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig was the worst offshore drilling catastrophe in U.S. history. The explosion killed 11 workers, and 134 million gallons of oil were released into the Gulf of Mexico. We emailed a spokesman for Trump and did not get a reply; however, a spokesman for the Bureau of Ocean Management sent information about the reorganization of federal agencies that oversee drilling during the Obama administration. Trump on drilling In 2006, Congress passed a bill to ban oil drilling within 125 miles off much of Florida’s coast and up to 235 miles at some points. The ban is set to expire in 2022. There have been efforts by some Republicans to expand offshore drilling, but so far they have failed. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La, sponsored The American Energy and Conservation Act of 2016 to allow drilling 50 miles off Florida’s Gulf Shores, but the Senate rejected moving ahead on it in November. In response, Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., filed a bill to extend the ban by five years, but the Senate hasn’t voted on his bill. During the campaign, Trump generally spoke favorably of expanding oil drilling, although he sounded skeptical about a proposal to allow offshore drilling closer to the Florida beaches in an interview with the Tampa Bay Times, PolitiFact’s parent company, in February 2016. ""They've already got plenty in the Gulf,"" Trump said. ""It would be a little bit of a shame (to expand drilling closer to Florida), because there's so much fracking, and there's so much oil that we have now that we never thought possible. That's an issue I'd absolutely study and do the right thing."" But later in the campaign Trump endorsed more drilling and promised to ""accomplish a complete American energy independence. Complete. Complete."" Trump’s America First Energy Plan called for opening up onshore and offshore leasing on federal lands. A couple months into his administration in March, Trump’s Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke proposed leasing 73 million acres offshore Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida for oil and gas exploration and development starting in August 2017. That was similar to the Obama administration plan. As he was leaving office, President Barack Obama banned drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans for the next five years, but allowed it in the gulf primarily in areas other than Florida. But despite Trump’s rhetoric, the industry hasn’t shown much interest in expanding drilling due to low oil prices, said Athan Manuel, who directs Sierra Club’s Lands Protection Program. ""Ideologically the Trump administration wants to push drilling everywhere, but companies are being cautious right now because the cost so low,"" he said. On March 28, Trump issued an executive order that called for a review of agency actions that ""potentially burden the safe, efficient development of domestic energy resources,"" including oil. Regulations following explosion After BP’s Deepwater Horizon explosion, lawmakers couldn’t agree on safety standard legislation. In 2010, the House approved an overhaul of safety standards, but it never got the approval in the Senate. The Obama administration took some steps to tighten rules in an effort to avoid similar spills, although the rules took several years to develop, and some environmentalists have criticized them as insufficient. In April 2015 -- five years after the explosion -- the administration unveiled a proposed rule to tighten safety standards for blowout preventers, devices that are designed to stop undersea oil wells from exploding. During the Deepwater Horizon explosion, the blowout preventer malfunctioned. The rule was finalized in March 2016. Bob Bea, an expert on risk management and a former Shell executive, told PolitiFact that little has changed in either the regulatory regime or the industrial regime in the United States. He repeatedly said during the Obama administration that the government hadn’t gone far enough in terms of risk assessment. ""Yes, new government 'rules' have been enacted, and new industry 'guidelines' have been issued, but either they have not been implemented or they have not been implemented properly,"" he said. The Government Accountability Office reported in March 2017 that the Interior Department has struggled to successfully implement key initiatives to improve offshore oversight. For example, a risk-based facility inspection initiative was halted due to concerns about its usefulness and unclear protocols. Our ruling Markey tweeted, ""Trump looking to open up E Coast & new areas for offshore oil drilling when Congress has passed no new safety standards since BP."" During the campaign, Trump frequently expressed support to open up more oil drilling. Since in office, his administration proposed leasing 73 million acres offshore starting in August 2017. After the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion, Congress couldn’t agree on safety standards. The Obama administration took some steps to improve safety standards, though some environmentalists say that the government didn’t go far enough. We rate this claim True."
+"The Zika outbreak in Miami has pointed out what Floridians and vacationers have known for years: There is no shortage of mosquitoes in the Sunshine State. White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters at an Aug. 3 briefing that the region’s experience in fighting the bloodsucking insects will help efforts to prevent the further spread of the virus. At last count, the state had 338 travel-related cases of Zika, but there have been at least 15 locally transmitted instances — 13 in Miami and two in Broward County. ""We know the mosquito population in South Florida is larger than it is in many other communities in the country,"" Earnest said. He added that prior experience dealing with other mosquito-borne diseases has established the expertise for how to deal with outbreaks like this one. As anyone who has ever attended an outdoor concert or Little League game can confirm, Florida sure does have a lot of winged menaces. But do we really have more than most other communities? PolitiFact Florida didn’t have to go camping in July to quickly learn that the answer is unequivocally yes, for many reasons. A vacation for vectors Zika is a virus named after the Zika Forest in Uganda, where it was first discovered in 1947. Several cases were documented in Africa and Asia over the decades until the disease made it to a couple of Pacific island nations in 2007 and 2013. The current pandemic took off in May 2015, when Brazil reported cases of Zika in connection with an increase in babies being born with abnormally small heads, a condition called microcephaly. With evidence that the disease can be spread both through sexual contact and via mosquito bites, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says there are more than 50 countries and territories with active Zika transmissions. The World Health Organization provides periodic updates of cases, and has tracked hundreds of thousands of confirmed and suspected infections in the Americas. Symptoms of the virus include fever, rash, joint pain and headaches or muscle pain, although almost four out of five infected people don’t show symptoms. There is no treatment or vaccine for the disease, so focus has been on prevention. The CDC has issued a travel warning for pregnant women and their partners to not travel to Wynwood, the neighborhood north of downtown Miami where the new cases appeared. About those mosquitoes A main culprit for the spread of the disease is mosquitoes, especially a species called Aedes aegypti. It is known for carrying tropical maladies like yellow and dengue fevers. Aegypti is not a fan of cold, northern winters. It lives across the southern United States, where it can generally survive all year long. That means the insect is just as fond of Florida as the snowbirds and sunbelters it feasts upon. The White House did not specify to us whether Earnest meant Florida had the most mosquitoes or the most different kinds of mosquitoes, but experts told us that’s largely irrelevant. What Earnest said is that the mosquito population in South Florida is larger than many other places in the United States, and that’s undoubtedly correct. The Sunshine State is a veritable mosquito encyclopedia, with about 80 species found here. American Mosquito Control Association technical adviser Joe Conlon, a retired Navy entomologist, pointed out Texas has 85 species, but ""when you’re talking about 80 versus 85, it doesn’t matter; it’s a lot."" Exactly how many individual mosquitoes are in any one place is an uncountable number. There’s no way to take a comprehensive mosquito census, although there are ways to get a rough idea. Various traps can count eggs and larvae in standing water, or the number and species of captured adult mosquitoes and extrapolate from there. Florida’s 61 mosquito control programs regularly conduct such surveys to determine if they need to spray or raise public awareness about preventing mosquito populations from growing. Of course, aegypti is an especially sneaky species that is notoriously difficult to count, Conlon said. Individuals can breed in multiple places, and adults tend to avoid traps. (Note: Only female mosquitoes bite.) If you’re wondering whether Florida is the most popular home for the particular aegypti species, there’s just no way to know that. New Orleans, for example, historically has more aegypti in terms of sheer numbers. That city and Memphis, Tenn., have experienced major mosquito-borne outbreaks in the past. That’s because mosquitoes flourish in hot climates with lots of standing water. Florida’s heat, humidity, rainfall and topography combine to make the state a garden spot for more than just New Yorkers escaping state income taxes. With salt marshes, the Everglades and plenty of man-made pools of water, South Florida faces an even bigger threat. ""Indeed, they have some of the worst mosquito problems on Earth there,"" Conlon said. Even if there were a way to take a comprehensive count of mosquitoes in an area, that number would never remain constant. ""Mosquito populations fluctuate over time and at any given point in time the mosquito population in Newburyport, Mass., may be greater than that in North Miami,"" University of Florida Entomologist Jonathan Day, of the Florida Medical Entomology Laboratory in Vero Beach, told us in an email. ""However, over the long run (for example, an entire year), South Florida mosquito populations are likely consistently higher than those observed in other communities in the country."" Our ruling Earnest said, ""The mosquito population in South Florida is larger than it is in many other communities in the country."" There’s little doubt about that. Mosquito populations can go up or down anywhere, but experts said the conditions in South Florida sustain a large and diverse collection of the insects essentially all year long. Be safe out there, and don’t forget the DEET. This may not be a biting revelation, but we rate it True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/93f73910-214f-40e5-9e4d-b76af85889a8"
+"Even if Georgia were, ahem, flush with water, the number would have looked impressive. The Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District recently celebrated its rebate program that has helped homeowners replace 100,000 older model toilets with water efficient models across the 15-county metro Atlanta region. The total savings: 2.4 million gallons of water every day. ""One of the beautiful things about changing out a toilet is you get a rebate, but you also permanently save on your water bill,"" said Katherine Zitsch, the water district’s director. ""It’s not behavior based. You do what you normally do and you get those savings for as long as the toilet lasts."" And considering the water saved would fill the Georgia Aquarium 90 times a year – clearly nothing to poo poo – PolitiFact Georgia decided to dive in. Going with the flow Today’s toilet regulations date back to the 1992 Energy Policy Act, which required toilets to use 1.6 gallons of water per flush, versus the then-common 3.5-gallon models (and even older models that used as much as 8-gallons for every push of the handle). Early savings didn’t materialize because manufacturers did little more than halve the water used in a flush. Irate homeowners in news stories from the mid-Clinton years griped about having to flush multiple times to get the job done. ""Plumbers were installing and changing out toilets and handing people plungers,"" said Ellen Whitaker, executive director of the Plumbing and Mechanical Association of Georgia. ""It was as bad as it sounds. It just didn’t work. We don’t see those complaints anymore."" Technology wiped out those early problems. High-pressure gadgets, and even vacuum toilets with suction that rivals airplane lavatories, have made it possible for high-efficiency models to use just 1.28 gallons per flush. That lower number qualifies commodes for the WaterSense designation. The privately verified seal, similar to Energy Star ratings for electrical appliances, confirms toilets, faucets and showerheads are the most water-efficient on the market. Exchange of Thrones The water planning district started its toilet rebate program in 2007, well into the era of high-tech toilets but also in the midst of back-to-back droughts in Georgia. Local water utilities fund and run the program, rebating $100 on water bills when homeowners show they have replaced an older toilet with a water-efficient model. Most utilities will offer rebates for up to two toilets, though some will rebate three. The planning district has kept track of the number of toilets – as well as whether the new models are the 1.28-gallon or 1.6-gallon model.. But the district has been conservative in estimating the water saved, counting only one toilet per household, even in situations where records show more than one throne was exchanged. The district then multiplies the water saved per toilet by what its partner, the Atlanta Regional Commission, shows is the average household size in a community. Using a small jurisdiction like Bartow County, which exchanged WaterSense toilets in 49 homes, the math looks like this: Step 1: 3.5 gallon minus 1.28 gallon = 2.22 gallons per toilet. Step 2: 2.22 gallons times 49 households = 108.78 gallons Step 3:  108.78 gallons times 5 flushes = 543.9 gallons per day Step 4: 2.71 average home size times 543.9 gallons = 1,474 gallons per day Bartow also had one home that received a 1.6 gallon toilet. Using the same formula, that translates into 25 gallons a day. The water district rounded up, showing 1,500 gallons per day of savings in Bartow. Similar calculations were done across the region, to arrive at the 2.4 million gallons total, said Paul Donsky, spokesman for the ARC. Cobb and DeKalb counties, which account for 15 percent and 20 percent of the totals exchanged, run their own programs and calculate the totals slightly differently. DeKalb, for instance, assumes 10 flushes per day per toilet, not per person. That translates into more gallons but overall, fewer flushes. The Environmental Protection Agency’s WaterSense calculator uses yet another similar but not quite exact formula for its estimates. That calculator factors in 5.05 flushes per day, showing that a two-person home that switches to a WaterSense model, would save 8,200 gallons of water annually. The water planning district’s math is more conservative. Using the formula, the district arrives an estimate of annual savings of 8,103 gallons. ""They are all estimates but show our effort to reduce water use,"" said Jennifer Colaizzi, the EPA’s WaterSense spokeswoman. ""We want to encourage people to use water more efficiently."" To that end, the water district notes there has not been a slowdown in the number of people seeking and getting the toilet rebate. The program is expected to continue until most homes use the newer, water-sipping flushes. Our ruling The Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District recently touted that the region saves 2.4 million gallons of water every day, based on its toilet rebate that has replaced 100,000 commodes with more efficient models. That’s enough to fill 1,363 Olympic-size swimming pools every year. But the district’s own math backs it up. And a comparable federal calculator shows that the district is being conservative in estimating the region’s move toward water efficiency. We rate the claim True."
+"The bad news regarding water in Georgia is legion. No major reservoir has been built since the 2007-2008 drought to insulate metro Atlanta from future water shortages. Water/sewer rates have gone up in several counties to cover everything from federally mandated upgrades to increased material costs. Then there is the so-called ""water war"" with Alabama and Florida, a multi-year battle of lawsuits over how to meet the water needs across the states. So it was a surprise to read the recent headline in the Athens Banner-Herald: ""Water use in Georgia declines, even as population grows."" The trend, the May 10, 2015 story said, was a 30 percent drop in water usage in the three decades between 1980 and 2010, the last year that federal data was available. Suffice it to say the claim whet our appetite – we save wetting our whistle for after-hours – for the numbers and what might be going on. We reached out to the U.S. Geological Survey, which has a mandate to file a water usage report for the nation every five years. In concert with that work, the agency encourages states to conduct their own reports. Georgia has compiled a report every five years since 1975, in a bid to provide information about the precious resource in a state without a single natural lake. The 1980 report shows that year, Georgia sucked 6.7 billion gallons of water from Georgia rivers and aquifers every day. In 2010, it sipped 4.7 billion gallons every day. While the reports in that overall span show some increases – including a 21 percent jump in daily use during the 1990s – water usage has plunged 30 percent when looking at the three decades. Census figures show the number of people living in Georgia over that period exploded, from 5.46 million in 1980 to 9.69 million in 2010. That’s a 77 percent increase. Given the well-known water woes in the Peach State, how is that possible? Conservation plays some role, which we will get into in a moment. But the biggest factor was the change in how thermoelectric plants across the state operated. Several of the facilities were decommissioned between 2000 and 2010 – during the worst of the drought years and the decade that saw usage plunge nearly 28 percent, said Steve Lawrence, a hydrologist with the USGS in Atlanta. Several other plants converted from coal-fired, which needs plenty of water to cool it as an energy source, to natural gas, Lawrence said. ""Thermoelectric withdrawals account typically for a third of withdrawals, so all water withdrawals decrease when such a large user drops its share,"" Lawrence said. Data is not available for 1980 for the per capita usage in Georgia. But 1985 and 2010 figures mirror the overall trend. Every Georgian used about 860 gallons of water daily in 1985 but only 470 gallons daily in 2010, Lawrence said. Those totals include a person’s share of water that a utility, say Georgia Power, uses to provide electricity. It’s unclear what the per person usage would be in 1985, if the water used by agriculture, industry and utilities are removed. But in 2010, it was an estimated 75 gallons a day per person to bathe, cook and clean, Lawrence said. ""That’s a good number, one you see with the push for water-efficient fixtures and conservation efforts like tiered pricing,"" Lawrence said. Local water providers, however, don’t always follow the statewide trend. The Cobb County Water System can provide daily usage dating back to 1986, when the then-small county used just 38.6 million gallons countywide. In 1990, when the county had about 451,000 people, average daily use was 42.5 million gallons countywide. In 2010, about 688,000 people lived in Cobb, and daily usage was 57.1 million gallons for the county. That’s a 53 percent jump in population, and a 34 percent increase in daily usage. Although the daily usage did not keep pace with the population increase, the jump itself bucks the state trend. However, water system officials point out that Cobb saw usage drop 14 percent countywide between 2006 and 2014, during the worst of the recent droughts. The 2014 daily usage, of 104 gallons per person, also is down 15 percent from the 122 gallons per person in 2005, when the county began looking at per capita usage. ""You can see very clearly the impact of our water conservation efforts, which became much more aggressive in 2008,"" county spokeswoman AikWah Leow said. Our ruling News reports claimed that Georgia has seen its water usage drop over the past three decades, in the same period that the population mushroomed. Federal reports confirm that unlikely shift, largely due to a change from coal-fired electric plants to facilities powered by natural gas. Conservation efforts also have made an impact, even if local water systems don’t show quite the same drop in usage. But the statewide trend is clear. We rate the statement True."
+"A bill before the General Assembly would prohibit smoking on public beaches; the Senate Judiciary Committee took testimony on the proposal Feb. 12. There were only two speakers. One was Steven Brown, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union,’s Rhode Island chapter, who objected to the provision calling for violators being charged with a misdemeanor. The other was Karina Wood of the American Lung Association, who cited the health dangers of secondhand smoke. But she also talked about another aspect of the issue -- the environmental problems posed by beach butts (the cigarette kind, not the anatomical variety). ""Environmentally, cigarette butts are unsightly. They are the number one polluting litter on our beaches,"" she said. ""I've been involved in beach cleanups myself with my kids and you'll be amazed, or maybe you won't, at how many of those butts are littering our beaches. And they're dangerous to animals -- wildlife, birds."" ""And also they poison babies and small children because of the nicotine in them."" We've heard plenty of reports over the years that cigarette butts are the biggest source of beach pollution in Rhode Island. But we wondered whether they are really poisoning children, especially babies, whom we think of as not being able to get around on their own. It turns out that Wood was talking about the risks to children of eating discarded butts. When we contacted her to ask for some documentation, she sent us to a few pieces of research. We also sought our own information on the toxicity of nicotine. Common blends of tobacco contain roughly 15 to 25 milligrams per cigarette. The amount of nicotine in a cigarette butt could vary but just a milligram or two can be enough to produce poisoning symptoms in a child. Those symptoms include ""agitation, headache, sweating, dizziness, auditory and visual disturbances, confusion, weakness and lack of coordination,"" according to safety guide for various chemicals on the International Programme on Chemical Safety’s website. That database says the mean lethal dose for children who consume nicotine is about 10 milligrams, although we found another source that reported that the fatal dose was 40 mg to 60 mg for children. Nicotine, a neurotoxin, can kill by causing lung failure or by paralyzing the muscles that control breathing. How common is nicotine poisoning among babies or children? Wood pointed us to two studies. The first was published in the September 2009 edition of the journal Public Health by Jeffrey T. Quirk of the Erie County Department of Health in Pennsylvania. Using a national database covering about 100 U.S. hospitals, it estimated that there were 3,616 cases of cigarette poisonings and 756 cases of cigarette ingestion among children in the United States from 2002 to 2007. That's two a day, typically involving a child age 2 or younger.. Because Quirk only tallied injuries that received or required hospital treatment and didn't include children who might have been treated in homes or doctor's office, ""the actual number of children's cigarette-related injuries may be much greater,"" he concluded. Although they were mostly ""generally minor injuries, these events have the potential to induce serious complications,"" he said. The second study was done, coincidentally, in Rhode Island. For the 31-month period that began in January 1994, the state's Poison Control Center logged 146 cases in which children age 24 months or younger had ingested cigarettes or cigarette butts. Only one case occurred outside a residence -- in this instance it was a public park. In one third of the cases, the child vomited, often more than once. Two thirds of the children had no symptoms.There were no fatalities and the children generally recovered within 12 hours. Once again, that number probably underestimates the actual number of cases, the researchers said, because many parents might not have thought to call poison control. The youngest children in the study, age 6 to 12 months, accounted for 75 percent of the cases. Finally, we found a 2011 review article in Tobacco Control, a journal from the publishers of the British Medical Journal (now BMJ), which reports on 1,289 additional cases that appeared in the medical literature, 239 of which produced symptoms. ""We found that severe poisoning by cigarette butts among young children was rare but possible,"" the researcher said. ""It is clear that smokers must treat cigarette butts as toxic waste products and take more care in discarding them; children will mimic parental behaviour by putting these items into their mouths and sometime consume them in quantities sufficient to be toxic."" Finally, we asked Wood if she meant to include babies in her statement. After all, most babies -- before they become toddlers -- can only eat what people feed them. She pointed out that older babies find plenty of stuff on the floor when they're learning to crawl. ""By way of a personal anecdote, I observed my own daughter, when she was a baby of 11 or 12 months old and crawling, pick up a discarded cigarette butt on the beach and bring it to her mouth,"" Wood said. Dr. William Lewander, coauthor of the 1994 study and current director of pediatric emergency medicine at Hasbro Children's Hospital, said another child who picks up a butt might offer it to a baby and ""once they start crawling, if a cigarette butt is dropped on the floor it's possible"" for poisoning to occur. ""A toddler running around is probably most at risk,"" said Dr. Thomas Novotny, of San Diego State University, coauthor of the 2011 study. For younger children ""it's possible they would crawl around in the sand and put something in their mouth. If a 1 year old were to eat a few butts, they likely would have nicotine toxicity -- increased heart rate, irritability - and there have been some reports of seizures in the past."" In sum, the scientific literature shows that it's not a rare event for doctors and poison control centers to have to deal with young children -- who tend to put just about anything in their mouths -- who have consumed cigarettes or cigarette butts. It's seldom fatal, but it can qualify as a medical emergency, and it doesn't take much to give a child symptoms of poisoning. We rate the claim True. (If you have a claim you’d like PolitiFact Rhode Island to check, email us at [email protected] And follow us on Twitter: @politifactri.)"
+"The  seasons may change, the weather may shift, but U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse keeps trying to get his colleagues to, as he puts it, wake up to the threat of climate change. As naysayers insist that global temperatures haven't warmed since around 1997, a claim that has validity only because the time around 1997 was an exceptionally warm year, Whitehouse took to the floor of the Senate on Dec. 17 to report that 2014 was shaping up as the warmest in modern history. ""January through November 2014, the year so far, were the hottest first 11 months of any year recorded. So unless something dramatic changes in December, 2014 is on track to be the hottest year since we began keeping records back in 1880. That would mean that 14 of the warmest 15 years on record are the 14 years of this century."" PolitiFact usually doesn't deal with predictions, but we thought we’d see if the 11-month numbers for 2014 were as Whitehouse described. When we contacted his office, spokesman Seth Larson sent us to the November ""State of the Climate"" report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). In addition to monthly data, it looks at figures from the past three months, the year to date and levels of both Arctic and Antarctic sea ice. It reports, ""The first 11 months of 2014 was the warmest such period on record, with a combined global land and ocean average surface temperature of 1.22 degrees F. (0.68 degrees C.) above the 20th century average of 57.0 degrees F. (13.9 degrees C.)."" That's a land-ocean surface average of 58.22 degrees F. (The margin of error for these measurements is plus or minus 0.18 degrees F., which means the actual temperature could be as high as 58.4 or as low as 58.04. The previous record -- 58.02 degrees F. -- was set in 2010. The biggest reason wasn't the surface land temperatures, but it was the increase in the surface temperatures in the oceans, where the first 11 months of 2014 were the warmest on record. Many scientists say that a lot of excess heat from heat-trapping carbon dioxide is being stored in the oceans. NOAA hasn't released its December temperature numbers yet, but the Japan Meteorological Agency has. It has concluded that 2014 broke all records going back as far as 1891.  It may not feel like global warming is a problem when below average cold is sending a collective shiver through much of the United States. But the U.S. makes up only 6 percent of Earth's land mass and less than 2 percent of its surface area. Whitehouse reported the data accurately. We rate his claim as True. (If you have a claim you’d like PolitiFact Rhode Island to check, email us at [email protected] And follow us on Twitter: @politifactri.)"
+"For more than a year, U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse has delivered weekly Senate speeches about the dangers of climate change. He frequently denounces climate-change deniers, and urges growth of green jobs and technologies to reduce America’s reliance on foreign fossil fuel. In a May 27, 2014 commentary in The Providence Journal, Whitehouse argued for a nationwide price on carbon pollution. And he expressed hope for a prosperous, clean-energy future and faith that ""there is more economic security in our own American know-how than in corrupt foreign fossil fuel countries."" To that end, Whitehouse noted that there ""are already more American jobs in the solar industry than in coal mining."" This claim is reminiscent of his November 2012 statement that ""we have more people working in clean and green energy than in oil and gas in this country."" (PolitiFact Rhode Island ruled that claim as True.) The solar industry has seen tremendous growth.  But have solar industry jobs actually eclipsed the number of coal-mining jobs? Whitehouse communications director Seth Larson cited two sources to back up the senator’s claim. The first is a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report issued in May 2013 that counts an estimated 80,030 jobs for all occupations within the coal-mining  industry -- a sector of the coal industry as a whole. For solar jobs, Larson cited The Solar Foundation’s ""National Solar Jobs Census 2013,"" which states that the solar industry ""employs 142,698 Americans as of November 2013."" First, let’s look at coal-mining jobs. We checked with the Bureau of Labor Statistics and found that Whitehouse had quoted the May 2013 number correctly. (The more recent April 2014 BLS month survey counted  78,500 coal-mining jobs. Neither of those include self-employed contractors.) BLS press officer Gary Steinberg said its estimated numbers are drawn from ""an annual survey of employers, by occupation,"" based on data sent by businesses. They reflect jobs, not people. We also found three other sets of coal-mining numbers. Spoiler alert: they are not all apples-to-apples. They use different methodologies and different definitions. But they provide an overall picture. A 2013 report from the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration cited 123,227 jobs -- substantially more than the BLS, but still less than the number of solar jobs Whitehouse cited. MHSA surveys the mines themselves as opposed to the companies, and therefore includes contractors as well as regular workers. SNL Energy, a leading energy data provider, analyzes MSHA data to capture ""snapshot"" industry trends. Its June 2014 report, ""U.S. coal miner employment sustains free fall beyond 2nd year,"" cites an 8.3% drop in  the one-year period ending March 31, to 79,658 employees. That excludes contractors and 33 not-yet-reported mines. By contrast, the National Mining Association, a trade group, counted 195,494 coal-mining jobs in 2012. The breakdown: miners (including contractors): 137,650; support activities: 6,930; transportation: 50,914. That’s nearly 53,000 more than Whitehouse’s solar jobs number. Spokeswoman Nancy Gravatt said the NMA maintains that the additional support services ""should be included because all of these activities are integral to the daily work in the mines."" But the NMA’s definition of coal-mining jobs goes far beyond those used by the federal agencies, including such transportation workers as railroad engineers and seamen on coal freighters. In other words, data from three sources supports Whitehouse’s claim. The NMA count does not. Now let’s check out the solar data. Larson cited The Solar Foundation’s ""National Solar Jobs Census 2013,"" which states that the solar industry ""employs 142,698 Americans as of November 2013."" The Solar Foundation is an independent, national 501(c)(3) nonprofit, non-lobbying group, that strives ""to increase the widespread adoption of solar energy through educational outreach, policy research, and market transformation."" Their data is considered ""the most authoritative"" by the Congressional Research Service. Its report defines ""solar workers"" as those who spend ""at least 50 percent of their time supporting solar-related activities."" According to its 2013 census, ""approximately 91 percent of those who meet our definition of a solar worker spent 100 percent of their time working on solar."" Andrea Luecke, the foundation’s executive director, said the foundation surveys the ""known universe"" of self-identified solar companies, of which there are about 6,000 nationwide. ""We go out directly to those companies. This year, we made 74,000 phone calls and sent 11,000 emails,"" over the course of one month. The foundation also surveys companies ""that help supply the ‘known universe’ with raw materials,"" Luecke said. ""It’s a census approach, so we’re doing a direct count and extrapolate to get national numbers, which is how the BLS does it."" Luecke said by the census report’s measure, ""the solar industry is outpacing coal mining."" But she noted, ""You have to understand that coal-mining is one aspect of the coal industry - whereas we’re talking about the whole solar industry."" If you add in other coal industry categories, ""it’s more than solar, for sure. But the coal-mining bucket is less, for sure."" Our ruling: Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said that solar industry jobs have now outpaced coal-mining jobs. The most recent data from three objective sources support his claim. The one source that offered a contrary view, the National Mining Association, cited two-year-old numbers and counted categories such as off-site transportation workers on coal barges and ocean freighters. Because Whitehouse’s statement was specifically about coal-mining jobs, we rule it True. (If you have a claim you’d like PolitiFact Rhode Island to check, email us at [email protected] And follow us on Twitter: @politifactri.) (Correction: The original version of this item misspelled the last name of Andrea Luecke, president of The Solar Foundation, and incorrectly reported the name of the Congressional Research Service.)"
+"A new ad from a coalition of environmental groups tries to paint Iowa’s Republican Senate candidate Joni Ernst as too extreme. The groups, which include the League of Conservation Voters, the Sierra Club, and the Environmental Defense Action Fund, kicked off a nearly $1 million campaign with a 30 second TV spot on June 23, 2014. The ad raises concern over Ernst’s promises ""to shut down the Department of Education and abolish the EPA.""  It claims that these promises are ""why extremist Sarah Palin and the billionaire Koch brother want Ernst in Washington."" All in all, the ad concluded that Ernst is ""Too extreme for Iowa."" It’s not unusual for political ads to distort candidate’s positions. Does Ernst really call for the abolition of the U.S. Education Department and the Environmental Protection Agency? Our research showed that the ad was right on track. Ernst called for the closure of both agencies in April. Will she do away with the Education Department? Ernst is a state senator who won the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. She’s running against the Democratic nominee, U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley. Ernst brought up both the Education Department and the EPA in the Republican primary debate on April 24, 2014. One of the moderators asked candidates how they would fund repairs for the nation’s ""crumbling road and transportation systems."" Ernst suggested cutting the federal budget to free up funds. ""I do believe that we can make the cuts necessary within our federal government,"" Ernst said. She called for ""closing the doors to the Department of Education at the federal level. And not just because it would save taxpayer dollars, but because I do believe our children are better educated when it’s coming from the state."" We ran those comments by Ernst spokeswoman Gretchen Hamel, who said that Ernst wants to see power taken from Washington and put back in the hands of Iowans. She is ""about state-driven policy,"" Hamel said. According to the Education Department’s website the ""federal role in education is limited."" States handle almost all education policy and issues. But, at the federal level, the Education Department takes on many tasks such as conducting research and overseeing state policy to prevent discrimination. It also awards and distributes federal financial aid in the form of loans and grants. The ad says that if Ernst is elected, 213,000 Iowa students would lose their federal Pell Grants. According to federal numbers, that is the number of Iowans who received Pell Grants in 2011-12. We asked the Ernst campaign what her plan for Pell Grants is, but we didn’t get a response. What about the EPA? While answering the same question that prompted her Education Department response, Ernst also mentioned the EPA. ""Let’s shut down the EPA,"" she said. Ernst gave the same rationale for this slash in government, saying, ""The state knows best how to protect resources."" So, the ad is on solid ground. Ernst did say that she would shut down the EPA. Agriculture and manufacturing are two of Iowa’s key industries, and they are both heavily affected by EPA regulation. Hamel, Ernst’s spokeswoman, said that ""Joni wants to have Iowa make its own decisions."" The ad also refers to the Clean Air Act. This raises the question of how states would deal with national issues, like air pollution. Unlike the Education Department, where the states already play a huge role, this could be more complicated for the EPA. Two experts on environmental law told us that abolishing the EPA would dramatically reduce regulations on industry. ""Nearly all states have seen significant cuts in the budgets of their state environmental agencies in recent years,""  said one of them, Joel A. Mintz, a law professor at Nova Southeastern University who specializes in environmental law. ""Although some states may have the expertise, resources and political will to subsume EPA’s responsibilities, many — probably most — do not."" Our ruling An attack ad aired by the League of Conservation Voters said that Ernst wants to ""shut down the Department of Education and abolish the EPA."" In an April debate, Ernst called for the closure of both federal agencies, and her campaign didn’t dispute that. We rate this claim True."
+"U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith has long blamed regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency for the decline of the coal industry across the nation and in his Southwest Virginia district. Griffith, R-9th, introduced a bill to cut 15 percent of the EPA’s budget, saying the agency has grown ""out of control."" ""From 1972 until 2011, the number of EPA employees increased by 107 percent while the number of total federal personnel decreased by 15 percent,"" he said on March 25 during testimony before the House Budget Committee. We wondered whether Griffith’s figures are correct. His spokeswoman, Andrea Pivarunas, sent us sources for the numbers. The EPA had a staff of 8,358 in 1972 and it grew to 17,359 in 2011, according to data from the agency. That’s an increase of 107.7 percent -- matching what Griffith said. We should note that EPA dropped to 15,913 employees last year as many cashed in on an early retirement incentive offered to federal workers. So if Griffith had used the the most current data available, the increase since 1972 would have translated to 90.4 percent. The total number of federal employees was 5.2 million in 1972 and 4.4 million in 2011, according to the federal Office of Personnel Management. That’s a decrease of 15.4 percent -- again, what Griffith said. The federal workforce figure requires elaboration because it includes civilians and uniformed military personnel, which have experienced different trends since 1972. Executive branch civilian employees numbered 2.82 million in 1972 and 2.76 million in 2011, a drop of 2.1 percent. Meanwhile, uniformed military personnel numbered 2.36 million in 1972 and 1.58 million in 2011, a decrease of 33.1 percent. So the reduction in federal employees has more to do with a smaller fighting force than with a shrinking bureaucracy. Now, let’s return to the EPA. What accounted for its sharp rise in employment? The answer is that the agency was barely out of infancy in 1972 when Griffith begins his timeline. The EPA was created on Dec. 2, 1970, to consolidate environmental quality programs in several federal departments. For example, the Interior Department worked on water quality and pesticides, while the Department of Health, Education and Welfare worked on air pollution, and the Food and Drug Administration conducted pesticides research. In areas where the federal government didn’t have oversight, state or local governments were left to fill in the gaps. Congress passed a number of laws in the 1970s that expanded the EPA’s authority: Clean Air Act to set national air quality, automobile emission and anti-pollution standards Lead-Based Paint Poisoning Prevention to to restrict lead-based paints in government-subsidized housing, cribs and toys Clean Water Act to control discharges of pollution in surface water Dumping Act to control dumping chemicals and material in the ocean waters Safe Drinking Water Act to regulate public drinking water Resource Conservation and Recovery Act to control hazardous waste from creation to disposal Toxic Substances Control Act to cut health risks from synthetic and organic chemicals Superfund Act to identify those responsible for chemical contamination of land and compel them to clean up the contamination ""The 1970s is known as the environmental decade because so much happened so quickly,"" said Daniel Fiorino, director of American University’s Center for Environmental Policy and a former EPA official. The agency started with 4,084 employees in 1970 and grew to 13,078 in 1980. Employment tapered in the early 1980s, but grew again in the 1990s with a sweeping expansion of the Clean Water Act and as concerns emerged about global warming. The EPA peaked in 1999, with 18,110 employees. From 1980 to 2011, employment at the EPA grew by 32.4 percent while the total number of federal employees -- military and civilian -- dropped by 11.3 percent. Our ruling Griffith said, ""From 1972 until 2011, the number of EPA employees increased by 107 percent while the number of total federal personnel decreased by 15 percent."" There are a few minor issues with Griffith’s choice of dates and numbers, but we won’t quibble. The EPA increase would have dipped below 100 percent if Griffith had used the most current employment figures from 2013. On the other had, Griffith could have made the growth sound more dramatic if he had started his comparison in 1970, when the EPA was born. We rate Griffith’s statement True."
+"When a billionaire speaks, people listen, especially when that billionaire is Charles Koch. Koch, along with his brother David, has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to get the low-tax, low-regulation government he wants. He’s backed the tea party-funded campaign ads to topple Democrats and deployed scores of lobbyists. Koch’s spirited defense in the Wall Street Journal of himself and Koch Industries was everything the talking heads on Fox News’ The Five could have asked for. The resident Democrat, Bob Beckel, set out to skewer the Koch brothers. The rest of the panel, like Greg Gutfeld and Kimberly Guilfoyle, praised them for their philanthropy and business success. Beckel was unimpressed. Beckel: ""The Koch brothers are one of the biggest polluters in the country."" Gutfeld: ""They pollute us with money."" (While this could be taken differently, this was praise.) Beckel: ""They pollute this country."" Guilfoyle: ""You don’t have any evidence to substantiate that."" Beckel: ""Yes, I do."" We tried to reach Beckel to hear about his evidence, but we got no response. What we found in its place was a report from the left-leaning Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Last year, the institute released two lists of the 100 firms with the most significant emissions in the nation. One list is for air and the other is for water. On the first, Koch Industries ranked 14th. On the second, it ranked 30th. Some of the companies ranking high on both lists include ExxonMobil, BASF, Bayer Group and Dow Chemical. Behind these rankings is data reported by companies to the Environmental Protection Agency and compiled in something called the Toxics Release Inventory. The Toxics Release Inventory provides the numbers of pounds of waste chemicals released into the environment by each facility. Every facility operates under a permit from the EPA. The EPA then takes this release information and runs it through a computer model that factors in the toxicity of the chemicals, how they get moved around and how close they are to population centers. What emerges is a score. (The technical name is the Risk Screening Environmental Indicator.) This score is a measure of risk. It doesn’t mean that a facility actually poses a threat to health, but a score that is 10 times higher than another means the ""the potential for risk is 10 times higher,"" according to the EPA. This method has been around since 1991 and been reviewed and refined several times since then. It’s important to remember that this information is just for each particular plant. What the researchers at Amherst do is tie each plant to its corporate owner and come up with a total score for a company. ""The match of facilities to the companies that own them is a substantial effort for us,"" said Michael Ash, chair of the economics department at UMass-Amherst and head of the project. To repeat, it’s by this measure that Koch Industries ranks 14th in the country in terms of companies sending emissions into the air and 30th in sending emissions into the water. The top air polluter, according to the analysis, is Precision Castparts. The top water polluter is Ohio Valley Electric. We wanted to know if there is anything analytically wrong with adding up the scores the way Ash's group does. We found that the business magazine Forbes has reported these results without challenging them. An environmental economist, Nicolaas Bouwes, who helped develop the Risk Screening Environmental Indicator at the EPA, told PunditFact that there is ""no problem aggregating the numbers."" ""The point of the model was to identify problem actors,"" Bouwes said. ""If you are at #14, there are issues to look into."" Koch Industries did not dispute the findings. ""Koch’s TRI (Toxic Release Inventory) number is what it is because we have a large number of U.S. manufacturing sites and we're a U.S.-based company,"" said spokesman Rob Tappan. Tappan is correct that Koch Industries has a large number of plants. It operates over 100 facilities that produce everything from plywood, to asphalt, to jet fuel. One of its companies makes Brawny paper towels. That water you bought at the store might come in a bottle made of plastic from a Koch Industries plant. The company runs nearly twice as many sites as the corporation with the next-largest number of plants, Honeywell, which has about 60. You would expect that releases would go up with each additional facility. On the other hand, when we dipped into the EPA’s data (using the database on the Right To Know Network), we found that on average, each Koch plant generated about five times as much as each Honeywell plant. Roughly speaking, the comparison was about 500,000 pounds of chemical releases compared to about 100,000. So the number of plants alone doesn’t explain the Koch brothers’ high numbers. Tappan underscored that the Political Economy Research Institute (the University of Massachusetts-Amherst group) has ""radical"" roots. Ash, he noted is a member of the Union for Radical Political Economics. That organization's website proclaims that it ""presents a continuing critique of the capitalist system and all forms of exploitation and oppression while helping to construct a progressive social policy and create socialist alternatives."" While that perspective is not mainstream, that by itself does not invalidate the institute’s findings. Tappan also notes that ""our manufacturing emissions meet all EPA standards, and we work hard to exceed them."" However, Koch Industries paid a $30 million civil fine in January 2000 for its role in more than 300 spills from oil pipelines and facilities in six states. At the time, the fine was the largest civil fine levied under any environmental law, according to the EPA. And last month, leaks at a Texas chemical plant cost the company a $350,000 fine with the promise to invest $45 million in equipment upgrades. Our ruling Beckel said that the Koch brothers are one of the country’s biggest polluters. In this fact-check, we're talking about the Kochs' company, Koch Industries. Koch Industries operates over 100 plants across the country. According to one ranking, it is not responsible for the most significant releases but it does land within the top 30 on one list and the top 15 on another. Most people would count that as ""one of the biggest."" Most of those releases are legal under EPA permits. The EPA does not consider this level of pollution to pose a health risk in and of itself. However, it is still pollution. We rate the claim True."
+"A good way to get an argument roaring louder than a chain saw is to bring up Northwest forest policy. Topics ranging from clear-cutting to what constitutes ""old growth"" are bound to spark tussles. Forestry issues are again in the news as U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and other members of the state’s congressional delegation pitch plans to increase harvest levels from the so-called O&C lands -- 2.4 million acres of federally owned forestlands sprawled across 18 western Oregon counties. Many are watching closely, knowing decisions coming out of Washington, D.C., could have controversial implications for Oregon. Among those following the debate are Aaron Jones’ three daughters. Jones opened his Seneca Jones sawmill in Eugene more than 60 years ago. Becky, Kathy and Jody Jones are taking out newspaper ads touting the benefits of ""forestry stewardship,"" among other things. An ad that ran in Oregon newspapers, including The Oregonian, on March 2, 2014, presses for more timber harvests and seeks to allay fears that old growth will be cut. It says mills are now focused on second-generation trees, and claims: ""Do you know that most all mills in Oregon have retooled over the past 20 years?"" We revved up our saw and checked. We called Kathy Jones. She said the ads are aimed at influencing the debate over O&C lands, which could yield increased timber for Oregon sawmills. ""Some people keep saying we are ruining the forests, that we are cutting old growth at every opportunity,"" Jones said. ""It’s just not true. What is true is that almost every mill still operating in Oregon has retooled to accept second-growth logs. ""And I’m fine with that. I love those big cathedral forests. They should stay just as they are."" Jones said her definition of old growth begins when a tree’s diameter reaches 48 inches. The logs Seneca accepts average about 30 inches, she said. As for Seneca’s own retooling efforts, Jones said lasers now scan all incoming logs. Computers tell operators what sizes of studs and other lumber are most in demand at the moment, and the cutting begins. ""We have almost as many computer operators as we do people out on the floor,"" Jones said. ""That’s how this industry operates these days."" We called Paul Barnum, executive director of the Oregon Forest Resources Institute. The Legislature created the group in 1991 to bring forest scientists, public agencies, forest landowners and community and conservation groups together. Barnum referred us to a 2012 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Pacific Northwest Research Station. A chapter assessing Oregon’s sawmill sector said, in part, ""Technological improvements have made Oregon mills more efficient in numerous ways. Log size (diameter and length) sensing capabilities linked to computer determine the best sawing pattern for logs to recover either the greatest volume or greatest value from each other."" We asked Barnum about the Seneca Jones claim. ""There may be three or four mills that still process old-growth timber, which comes pretty much from private forestlands,"" he said. ""The mills still operating have retooled to concentrate on getting more value from second- and third-generation timber."" Barnum also passed along a report from Paul F. Ehinger & Associates, which said that in 2010 -- the last time the numbers were updated -- Oregon had 106 operating sawmills. For another view, we called Steve Pedery, conservation director at Oregon Wild. The group has long fought clear-cutting and old-growth harvesting, but has won U.S. Forest Service awards in recent years for helping design timber-restoration sales. Pedery passed along an Oregon Wild report detailing nine westside mills that still accept large logs. ""What this highlights,"" he said, ""is that there is still an appetite for old growth out there. If they could get it, they would."" Regarding the retooling claim, he said: ""Saying ‘most’ misses the point of the policy debate. There are still mills looking for large-diameter trees and they are all in southwest Oregon, where the remaining big trees are."" One of the mills in the report, D.R. Johnson Lumber in Riddle, is currently mothballed, according to both the report and an employee who answered our call there. Another listed as accepting large-diameter logs is Rough & Ready Lumber Co. in Cave Junction. Coincidentally, that operation announced this month that it will soon reopen a retooled small-log mill that’s been closed since last year. ""Unless you are a real niche operation looking for the occasional large log that comes along, you’ve retooled,"" said co-owner Jennifer Phillippi, whose grandfather founded Rough and Ready 92 years ago. ""You wouldn’t still be in business otherwise."" The ruling The owners of Seneca Jones sawmill in Eugene want harvest levels from federally managed O&C lands increased but with primarily second- and third-generation trees. They say the timber industry agrees, adding, ""Most all mills in Oregon have retooled over the past 20 years"" to accept smaller trees. A key environmental group maintains that old-growth cutting would commence if rules pertaining to federal lands are changed. The ongoing debate over timber policy in Washington, D.C., will determine whether they are. But we can look at the numbers, which show that of the 106 or so mills in Oregon, only a handful have not retooled and still look to buy large-diameter logs. The overwhelming majority, according to a forestry group created by the Legislature, use machinery that’s been added in recent years to accept smaller logs. It bears out the assertion that ""most all"" sawmills have retooled. We rate the claim True. Return to OregonLive.com/politics to comment on this ruling."
+"March 7 is the last day the U.S. Department of State will hear public comments on Keystone XL, a proposed pipeline that would carry diluted oil sands from Western Canada to Nebraska and then to refineries on the Gulf Coast. With the closing of the 30-day comment period, six years of contentious debate between environmentalists and pipeline supporters is expected to come to a head when President Barack Obama makes a final decision on whether to proceed. In an attempt to sway public opinion, the American Petroleum Institute relaunched an ad campaign backing the pipeline. The 30-second spot, which is airing in the District of Columbia, Montana, New Mexico and North Carolina, claims that in the land of deadlock, the pipeline is one of few projects to win support from both sides of the spectrum. ""Washington. It’s gridlock, division, bitter partisanship,"" the ad says. ""But one jobs plan brings both sides together. Bill Clinton and George (W.) Bush both say build the Keystone XL."" A ringing endorsement of the Keystone pipeline from 42 and 43? That sounds like something worth looking into. Bush backs it The American Petroleum Institute ad clearly identifies sources backing up their claim for viewers. For Bush, the ad references an article from Bloomberg published in March 2012, in which the former Republican president calls the pipeline ""a no-brainer,"" according to the report. ""The clear goal ought to be how to get the private sector to grow,"" Bush said. ""If you say that, then an issue like the Keystone pipeline becomes an easy issue."" We weren’t surprised Bush supports the plan. Republicans have been overwhelmingly supportive of the proposal and Bush has ties to the oil industry. Heck, he made the aforementioned remarks during the keynote speech of the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers conference. But what about Clinton? Clinton’s backing of Keystone did cause us to raise an eyebrow. The ad points to a Feb. 29, 2012, article from Politico. In it, Clinton calls for Americans to ""embrace"" the pipeline. We tracked down the original speech. It was given at the 2012 ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit, a conference held by the U.S. Department of Energy. Here’s what Clinton had to say: ""One of the most amazing things to me about this Keystone Pipeline deal is that they ever filed that route in the first place since they could've gone around the Nebraska Sandhills and avoided most of the danger, no matter how imagined, to the Ogallala (aquifer) with a different route, which I presume we'll get now, because the extra cost of running it is infinitesimal compared to the revenues that will be generated over a long period of time. ""So, I think we should embrace it and develop a stakeholder-driven system of high standards for doing the work modeled on what was done with auto mileage agreement."" Clinton’s remarks are somewhat hard to follow. But he seems to say that Americans should ""embrace"" the Keystone pipeline and the government should work with the oil industry and environmentalists to develop standards for implementing and overseeing the project, similar to how all the stakeholders got together to develop higher standards for gas mileage in new vehicles. That’s how media reports characterized his comments, and Clinton made no attempt to correct them in the two years since. Within a year, Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman approved a new route for the pipeline that largely avoided the Nebraska Sandhills, as Clinton predicted. If he was not placated by the route change, Clinton never said so publicly. In fact, we couldn’t find any more public statements by Clinton regarding the Keystone XL pipeline. Several environmental groups we contacted said they had no recollection of Clinton speaking on the issue since 2012. We reached out to Clinton through the Clinton Global Initiative to see if his position had changed or could be affirmed for us. We didn’t hear back. Putting Clinton’s speech in context So we’re left with one public comment made two years ago. But we can deduce a few things based off what he said. First, in his remarks, Clinton was largely endorsing an all-of-the-above energy approach that focused on greener and sustainable methods. And while he expressed support for the Keystone project, he also said that tapping into homegrown natural resources was not a panacea. ""There are some hazards to the innovation project, right now,"" Clinton said. ""We have massive new recovery technologies in oil and gas which could lead us down the primrose path of thinking we don't have to keep using less energy and developing clean energy and technologies."" But Clinton’s call to ""embrace"" the pipeline also came as the U.S. State Department was deciding whether to recommend the project’s approval. The State Department, at that time, was headed by his wife. Indeed, not hours after Clinton gave his speech in 2012, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was testifying before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, where she fielded questions about the State Department’s oversight of the pipeline proposal. In the hearing, Secretary Clinton was even asked about her husband’s comments from earlier that day. Rep. Connie Mack, R-Fla., noted, ""Even the former President, Bill Clinton, says, ‘Embrace it and we need to move forward with the Keystone XL pipeline.’ "" Clinton respond, ""He is a very smart man,"" inciting laughter. She then added, ""But unfortunately he is not bound by the laws and regulations and longer of the United States to make decisions that follow a certain procedure. And that is what we have to do."" ""So is it a mistake for the former president to say, ‘embrace it’?"" Mack then asked. ""Of course not,"" Clinton replied. ""This is America. People say they embrace it, people say they hate it. Our job is to take a very clear-eyed look at what the facts are."" So not only did Bill Clinton come out in favor of the pipeline in 2012, he did so during a public speech hosted by the U.S. Energy Department just hours before his wife, who oversaw the administration’s review of the pipeline, was set to testify in front of a Republican-controlled House committee. For her part, Hillary Clinton has gone back and forth on the pipeline. In 2010 she said she was ""inclined"" to approve the project. But under her command, the State Department also recommended Obama deny approval of the pipeline in 2012 after congressional Republicans forced a decision from the White House within 60 days. At the time, Clinton said the window was too short to review the environmental impact of the project. Our ruling The American Petroleum Institute ad says, ""Bill Clinton and George Bush both say build the Keystone XL"" pipeline. While their evidence is two years old, it’s not fabricated. Since voicing support of the pipeline in 2012, Clinton has not publicly weighed in on the controversy. But his backing of the project was not an offhand comment. It came during a publicized energy speech on the same day his wife was testifying before Congress. It seems unlikely he would endorse the proposal on such an occasion if he did not mean it. We rate the statement True."
+"If couples in Central Oklahoma felt the earth move on Valentine’s Day, it might not have been passion. Five earthquakes hit the area last Friday, followed by a sixth the next day. The quakes weren’t big. The strongest measured 3.5 on the Richter scale, but all of them were over the threshold to get residents’ attention. Rachel Maddow noticed as well. The MSNBC host linked the flurry of seismic activity to the region’s sizeable number of wells used to dispose of waste from oil and gas hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Oklahoma has about 6,000. There are many clustered in the county where the quakes took place. Maddow suggested that Central Oklahoma take a tip from Texas. ""When the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport needed to stop its earthquake spike a few years ago,"" Maddow said, ""they temporarily shut down the wells that were injecting fracking fluid into the ground at high pressure on the airport property, and lo and behold, those earthquakes stopped."" A reader asked us to see if that is true. We can report that it is. ""It’s an accurate assessment,"" said Dave Magana, the senior manager for public affairs at the airport. In fracking, operators pump water and chemicals into the ground to release oil and natural gas. When those fluids come back to the surface, the wastewater is moved to a disposal well where it is pumped back deep into the Earth. In 2008, the airport had leases with the Chesapeake Energy company for two such wells. One of them was near an old inactive fault line. The wells became active in September 2008 and the first earthquake came in October of that year. Brian Stump, a seismologist at Southern Methodist University, was part of a team that studied what was going on. ""Based on the timing and the location of the earthquakes, there was a plausible linkage,"" said Stump. Dallas-Fort Worth managers took Stump’s report to heart. ""The airport asked Chesapeake to close the well, and they did,"" Mangana said. The earthquakes stopped. The well in question has remained inactive, although a second well on airport land continues to operate. Fracking and its environmental impacts are a contentious issue. A study from the National Academy of Sciences did not find that getting natural gas this way led to ""induced seismic activity."" However, it did conclude that disposal of wastewater ""does pose some risks."" Our ruling Maddow said, ""When the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport needed to stop its earthquake spike a few years ago, they temporarily shut down the wells that were injecting fracking fluid into the ground ... (and) those earthquakes stopped."" An airport official confirms Maddow's story, aside from the fact that it was one well. Officials at the airport asked that a well be shut down, and after it was, the earthquakes eventually stopped. Seismologists linked the well to the earthquakes. We rate the claim True. Update: This item was updated on Feb. 24, 2014, to make clear that airport officials asked Chesapeake Energy to shut down the well."
+"Severe cold snaps followed by snowstorms and then another blast of cold. For many, this Wisconsin winter can’t end soon enough. So when U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Madison, took to the floor of the House of Representatives on Jan. 16, 2014, a speech about global warming was the last thing many folks wanted to hear. Pocan, a member of the House’s Safe Climate Caucus, spent his one-minute speech ticking off what he said were clear signs of climate change. This claim caught our attention: ""Ice fishermen are already noticing fewer days they can be out on our ice covered lakes."" It feels like Wisconsin has been frozen solid for months, and many folks wouldn’t be surprised to see ice fishermen tromping around on Memorial Day. But Pocan’s claim is about more than this winter. His statement is about long-term trends and what is driving them. Is he right about climate change and fewer days on ice-covered lakes? When we asked Pocan for backup for the claim, his staff pointed us to Climatewisconsin.org, a web site that highlights research and reports prepared by environmental groups. The site includes interactive features that focus on the two largest lakes in Madison -- Mendota and Monona. It includes the amount of time they have been covered by ice in past years. ""The records show significant year-to-year variability in the length of the ice-cover season, but there is a clear trend of fewer ice-cover days over time,"" the site says. ""Overall, the average number of days of ice cover on the Madison lakes has decreased by around 29-35 days over the past 150 years. Significantly, the longest ice seasons on record are all clustered in the first few years of the record, while most of the shortest seasons fall towards the end of the record."" The site also includes this statement, which is pretty similar to that made by Pocan: ""With climate change models predicting warmer temperatures, we can expect to see a trend towards fewer days of ice-covered lakes as each year passes. In fact, with the aid of a remarkable dataset from Madison’s lakes, scientists infer that a change in ice duration has already taken place."" Information posted on the site comes, at least in part, from the work of John J. Magnuson, Emeritus Professor of Zoology and Limnology, who has been at UW since the late 1960s and helped found the UW-Madison Center for Limnology in the early 1980s. Limnology is the study of freshwater lakes, and the UW center says it’s the birthplace of the field of study, dating back to the 1870s. Magnuson is an expert on the effects of climate change on freshwater lakes, and has published numerous academic papers on the effect of climate change on lakes and fish. In an interview, Magnuson said researchers around the world, including Canada, Finland, Sweden, Russia, Japan and Madison, have studied lake ice for years. Researchers note the day lakes freeze and the day the ice goes out. It’s a more official version of what is waged in a less academic way by lakefront bars that stage ice-out guessing contests. Madison researchers have records for Mendota and Monona that go back to 1855. The long term trend for Lake Mendota is that, on average since 1855, there are 29 fewer days that the lake is covered with ice, according to Magnuson. Six of the shortest seasons for Mendota have been in the years since 1980. Five have been since 1995, including the two shortest seasons ever -- 21 days in the winter of 2001-02 and 47 days in 1997-98. Lake Monona has seen on average of 35 fewer ice-covered days, and also has seen a cluster of shorter seasons in recent years. ""The breakup of the ice is occurring, on average, two weeks earlier. And the freezing of the lakes have come two weeks later, on average,"" Magnuson said. ""The result is that four months of ice is reduced to about three months."" To be sure, Wisconsin has some 15,000 lakes, and we cannot check each one. ""This is highly variable with every water body having different characteristics, and is obviously very weather dependent as well,"" said Thomas Van Haren, of the state Department of Natural Resources Bureau of Law Enforcement. But it seems reasonable to focus on Lake Monona and Mendota given their size and because they are in Pocan’s district. So what about this throwback winter? Magnuson said it’s a statistical blip. Some years the ice stays around longer than others, but over time the trend has been toward shorter ice seasons. ""The variability is very high"" in terms of the length of the seasons, he said. ""Not only does lake ice respond to the warming climate, it also responds to local weather."" Lake Mendota iced over Dec. 16, 2013 -- about a month earlier than the previous year and four days earlier than the median date. Lake Monona froze Dec. 10, 2013, compared with Dec. 31 the previous year and a median date of Dec. 15. National Weather Service records from the weather office in Sullivan indicate this was the 9th coldest winter on record, so far, in Madison, and the coldest in 35 years. The average temperature was 15.8 degrees below normal. ""This is the sort of winter that’s typical of 50 or 100 years ago,"" Magnuson said. Going global So what about the connection Pocan made between shorter ice fishing seasons and climate change? Magnuson said the shorter seasons are a symptom of global warming -- one consistent with many others, such as changed bird and butterfly migration patterns, plants that bloom earlier, and disappearing glaciers. ""We can’t take this ice data and say ‘therefore we say greenhouse gas is causing this,’"" he said. ""That’s a question for the atmospheric physicists. Our data is consistent with what other people are finding, with the kind of things that atmospheric scientists are seeing from C02."" He added: ""There’s abundant evidence that it’s getting warmer and that spring is coming sooner."" Unfortunately, he’s talking about long-term trends. Not what is going to happen this year. Our rating It’s been a longer and colder winter than in recent years. But that doesn’t erase a trend that’s been well-established. The number of days that the lakes have ice on them -- making them safe for ice fishing -- has declined. We rate Pocan’s statement True."
+"The notion of counting the number of ""green"" jobs in America made us think, oddly enough, of a middle-age guy trying for cool by pairing a sport coat with blue jeans. Not easy. Yet quite matter-of-factly, while touting a clean energy jobs bill she introduced, U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin made the following statement Jan. 22, 2014: ""Over 3 million Americans are employed in the growing green-collar workforce, including in clean energy and sustainability, which is more than the amount of people working in the fossil fuel industry."" When we put the Wisconsin Democrat’s claim to Daniel Kish at the Institute for Energy Research, he told us that both green and fossil fuel industry job numbers are sometimes thrown around with abandon. ""This gets really dicey real quick,"" he said. ""Everybody’s got their dueling banjos."" That’s PolitiFact Wisconsin’s kind of music. Baldwin’s evidence To back his boss’ claim, Baldwin spokesman John Kraus cited two reports. Both are from solid sources, though they mix sports coats and -- er, apples and oranges -- a bit. 1. Federal report In 2012, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics embarked on an annual tally of green jobs. The agency had the advantage of considering a definition of green jobs proffered a year earlier by the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C. think tank, which produced its own green jobs count. The Bureau of Labor Statistics surveyed 120,000 business and government establishments within 325 industries that were ""identified as potentially producing green goods or providing green services."" Those surveyed said whether they produced green goods and services and the percentage of their revenue or employment associated with that output. Green goods and services were defined as those that ""benefit the environment or conserve natural resources."" They fall into one or more of the following five groups: 1) Production   of  energy  from  renewable  sources; 2) energy efficiency; 3) pollution reduction and removal, greenhouse  gas reduction,  and  recycling  and  reuse;  4) natural   resources conservation;  and  5) environmental compliance,  education  and training, and public awareness. So, the list of green jobs is quite varied, including jobs in areas such as farming; home construction; electric, solar and other types of power generation; petroleum and coal products manufacturing; urban mass transit; newspaper publishing; advertising and public relations services; waste treatment and disposal; museums and zoos; and social advocacy organizations.
+ 
+The Bureau of Labor Statistics produced its second -- and, it turns out, final -- green jobs report in March 2013. It estimated that ""employment associated with the production of green goods and services"" -- full- and part-time jobs -- exceeded 3.4 million in 2011. Manufacturing, with 507,000 green jobs, was the largest sector. Goods produced by those jobs included air conditioning and refrigeration equipment meeting selected standards, hybrid cars and parts, and pollution mitigation equipment. Kish, who is senior vice president for policy at the industry-backed Institute for Energy Research, pointed out that 886,000 of the 3.4 million were government jobs -- not jobs, he said, in which people are ""making or installing windmills and solar panels."" ""Green,"" Kish said, is a ""political word, used by politicians and advocates, that is truly elusive."" Nevertheless, the Bureau of Labor Statistics is well-established as the official jobs counter for the federal government. The 2013 report, for the number of green jobs in 2011, remains the latest available. That report said that because of budget cuts, no more green counts would be done. 2. Think tank study The Brookings Institution report we noted above was produced in 2011, so it’s a little dated. Brookings estimated that in 2010, there were 2.7 million green jobs -- that is, jobs that ""directly contributed to the production of goods and services that had an environmental benefit."" Brookings didn’t do a count of fossil fuel industry jobs, but it did make a comparison using federal government tallies. Its report said that in 2010, there were 1.3 million jobs that directly supported ""the production of fossil fuel-based energy, derivative manufactured products and machinery."" If all wholesale and retail distributors, transporters and other workers -- such as gas station employees -- were included, the fossil fuel tally would be 2.4 million jobs, Brookings said. Brookings scholar Jonathan Rothwell told us some critics view the think tank’s definition of green jobs as too expansive. For example, some 350,000 public transportation jobs in the green tally include not only bus drivers but secretaries, janitors, executives and all other employees who work for bus companies, he said. Brookings' definition of green jobs ""was very broad and included any economic activity that has an environmental benefit -- from public transportation to waste management,"" Rothwell acknowledged, adding that because ""only a small portion of energy comes from green sources, fossil fuel employees are a much larger share of the energy sector's workforce."" But Rothwell noted that the Bureau of Labor Statistics adopted a similar definition when it did green jobs counts. And we note that BLS arrived at a roughly similar green jobs estimate. So, the most recent federal report backs the first part of Baldwin’s statement, that there are more than 3 million green jobs. The older think tank report she cites doesn’t say there were more than 3 million green jobs, but does say that green jobs outnumbered fossil fuel industry jobs as of 2010. Other views One thing to underline here is that counting green jobs is a different sort of animal. As CNN/Money observed when the first Bureau of Labor Statistics green jobs report came out in 2012, comparing ""green jobs to another singular sector isn't really fair. The green jobs survey took into account a wide variety of jobs in over 300 different industries."" As for the oil and gas industry itself, a July 2013 report was done by PricewaterhouseCoopers for the American Petroleum Institute, a trade association for the oil and natural gas industry, that was an update of a report done two years earlier. The later report said there were 2.59 million jobs in the oil and natural gas industry in 2011. PricewaterhouseCoopers said it utilized data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis and the U.S. Census Bureau for its study. The study noted that the oil and natural gas industry ""encompasses a number of activities that span separate industry classifications in government economic data."" For example, oil and natural gas exploration and production is included in the mining sector; and oil refining is part of the manufacturing sector. The study defined the oil and gas industry to include all such activities. The petroleum institute noted to us criticism of how the federal government defines green jobs, including an editorial in Investor’s Business Daily that called the annual count ""phony."" A final note: In November 2012, U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island, made a claim similar to but more broad than Baldwin’s, saying there were ""more people working in clean and green energy than in oil and gas in this country."" That was before the latest reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and American Petroleum Institute that estimated green and fossil fuel jobs for 2011. PolitiFact Rhode Island rated the statement True. Our colleagues noted that at the time, the number of green jobs as estimated by BLS exceeded the number of oil and gas jobs estimated by the petroleum institute. Our rating Baldwin said: ""Over 3 million Americans are employed in the growing green-collar workforce,"" which is more than the number ""of people working in the fossil fuel industry."" The latest estimates are for 2011. The federal government says there were 3.4 million green jobs, while a national oil and gas trade group says there were 2.59 million oil and gas jobs. We rate Baldwin’s statement True. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook."
+"The debate over whether President Barack Obama should approve the Keystone XL pipeline often turns to jobs, but should it? Liberal CNN Crossfire host Van Jones says the pipeline is not the jobs creator supporters talk it up to be. ""Every time we have a show, somebody says something ... about Keystone, and somehow Keystone is going to create all these jobs,"" Jones said in the Feb. 3 episode of Crossfire. ""Then it turns out, look at the actual numbers. It turns out the actual numbers are 3,900 temporary jobs in the construction sector and 35 permanent jobs."" Ralph Reed, a conservative activist who founded the Faith and Freedom Coalition, said Jones’ claim is unfair because a long-anticipated report by the U.S. State Department says the project will create 42,000 jobs. Reed went on to say the report cleared the main argument against the project, that it’s bad for the environment. We are fact-checking claims from each pundit about the project. Here, we’ll focus on Jones’ claim about the project creating ""35 permanent jobs."" The proposed Keystone XL pipeline would stretch 875 miles from Western Canada to Steele City, Neb., where it would connect with existing pipelines and usher up to 830,000 barrels of oil per day to refineries on the Gulf Coast. Because TransCanada’s project crosses international borders, the company had to file an application for a presidential permit. As part of the process, the president directs the Secretary of State to determine whether the project ""serves the national interest."" Secretary of State John Kerry has not yet issued a recommendation to Obama based on the study. Obama is under political pressure from all sides, with environmentalists and Democrats like Jones on one side who want him to shut it down and Republicans and some Democrats supportive of organized labor on the other who say it would strengthen the country’s energy independence and, yes, create jobs. When the State Department released its 11-volume report about the pipeline’s impact Jan. 31, 2014, the big headline in most news coverage centered on its finding that the pipeline project would not significantly contribute to carbon pollution. Some see that as giving Obama an opening for approval. With that backstory out of the way, let’s crack open the chapter on jobs. There’s plenty of debate over how many jobs the project would create during construction. The State Department report puts the total at 42,100 jobs, though the definition of a job in this sense is a position filled for one year. Much of the construction work would come in four- or or eight-month stretches. About 10,400 seasonal workers would be recruited for construction, the State Department said. When looked at as ""an average annual job,"" it works out to about 3,900 jobs over one year of construction or 1,950 jobs each year for two years. The rest of the jobs would be the result of spillover spending (formally called indirect or induced economic activity) as Keystone workers buy equipment and materials to complete the project and spend their money on an array of services, including food, health care, and arts and entertainment. As you might expect, it’s much harder to measure the widespread effect on job creation. There’s no doubting that most of the economic activity comes during construction. Jones honed in on jobs after construction, which aren’t really a source of sharp debate. ""There’s very few jobs operating pipelines,"" said Ian Goodman, president of the Goodman Group Ltd., an energy and economic consulting firm in Berkeley, Calif. ""That’s one of the reasons why pipelines are attractive to the oil industry. They’re relatively inexpensive to build and operate."" The report says the project would provide jobs for about 35 permanent employees and 15 temporary contractors. The full-timers would be ""required for annual operations, including routine inspections, maintenance and repair."" Some would work in Canada. The U.S. employees would work at pump stations along the pipeline route as well as a Nebraska office. The project’s impact on housing, property taxes and service industries once in operation? Not much. Not much is known about the contractors’ workload except they would provide additional specialized support. Still, arguments about the relatively small number of permanent jobs from the pipeline often belie the nature of construction jobs, which are comprised of temporary projects by definition, said Matt Dempsey, a spokesman for a coalition of pro-Keystone groups known as Oil Sands Fact Check. ""You build it, you move on,"" Dempsey said. Our ruling Jones said the Keystone pipeline will only result in 35 permanent jobs after construction. The numbers, as reported by the State Department, back him up, though that’s the nature of any big construction project, be it a highway or monument. Jones’ claim is True."
+"Nothing gets under people's skin like the government engaging in activity that is illegal for everyone else, such as when Congress passes laws and then exempts itself from them. On Jan. 12, 2014, in a letter to The Providence Journal, Richard August, co-host of the WHJJ radio show ""Lock, Stock and Daria,"" asserted that the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management would be doing exactly that if it carries out its plan to hire professional hunters to cull the deer population on Block Island. According to the plan, the hunters would use feeding stations to lure the deer. ""Baiting deer happens to be illegal in Rhode Island,"" August wrote. ""But I guess if you are the state, the laws don’t apply."" We wondered what the law actually said. First, some background. Block Island, officially known as New Shoreham, is overrun by deer -- an estimated 800 to 1,000 on the 9.5-square mile island. The town and the DEM have agreed on a plan to hire a Connecticut firm to reduce the population to 150 or fewer over the next four years. Corn bait will be used to lure deer to 15 to 20 sites on the southwestern part of the island. Sharpshooters perched on raised platforms will shoot the deer. Their goal for this winter is to kill about 200, beginning in the last week of February. The carcasses will be carved into venison using a mobile meat processing service based in Maine. The meat will be offered first to Block Island residents; the rest will be distributed to the Rhode Island Community Food Bank and other hunger programs. Going back to August's claim, the ""Deer Hunting"" section of state law says the DEM can adopt rules and regulations on deer hunting in Rhode Island but, ""In any event, the following prohibitions and restrictions shall always apply to deer hunting:"" Paragraph 6 says, ""No person shall make, set, or use any trap or snare, or salt lick or other device for the purpose of ensnaring, enticing, taking, injuring, or killing a deer."" When we asked the DEM about this, the department released a statement through spokeswoman Gail Mastrati saying that the rule only applies to ""recreational hunting."" That's not what the DEM would be doing, she said. ""The bait and shoot deer reduction project on Block Island, authorized under emergency regulations filed by DEM on Nov. 7, 2013, to address a serious problem on the island, is not a recreational hunting activity,"" her statement said. ""A bait and shoot deer reduction effort is very different from recreational hunting. The knowledge of animal behavior and the discipline and skills in marksmanship are more sophisticated and strategic than those necessary to be a successful recreational deer hunter."" The ""deer hunting"" section of state law does not make any distinction between recreational and non-recreational hunting. We asked the DEM about that. The department responded in an email: ""Hunting regulations do not apply to the deer culling operation because it is not a hunting activity. Rather, it is a wildlife management action authorized under DEM's statutory authority."" We'll leave it up to others to debate whether the culling of the island’s deer herd is really a hunt and, if so, whether the state’s hunting laws should apply to the DEM. (We should note, for example, that most of us have no problem with agents of the state, such as police officers, ignoring traffic signals or speed limits when chasing criminals.) But when Richard August asserts that state law makes it illegal for hunters to use bait to lure deer, which is what the DEM plans to do when it stages a mass shooting of deer, he is correct. We rate the claim True. (If you have a claim you’d like PolitiFact Rhode Island to check, email us at [email protected] And follow us on Twitter: @politifactri.)"
+"More than a dozen Senate Democrats called a news conference on Jan. 14, 2014, to draw attention to their efforts to curb climate change. One of those senators -- Chris Murphy, D-Conn. -- focused his remarks on the impact of public opinion on advancing an agenda on climate-change policy. Murphy said that advocates for policies to address climate-change ""have to convince Republicans -- and those who would stand against the action that we're proposing -- of the electoral consequences of continuing to ignore this issue. We have to tell Republicans that if they ultimately want to stop the hemorrhaging from young voters in this country, they need to start paying attention to this issue, because only 3 percent of voters 18 to 34 don't believe that climate change is really happening."" We wondered whether Murphy’s polling data was sound. Thanks to some previous reporting by our colleagues at PolitiFact Rhode Island, we quickly found a poll that appears to be the source for Murphy’s claim. It was commissioned by the League of Conservation Voters, an environmental group, and conducted by a polling team that included one Democratic firm and one Republican firm. The poll was taken between July 8 and July 10, 2013, with 600 respondents, all of whom were registered voters between 18 and 34 who voted in the 2012 general election. The poll asked, ""Which of the following best describes your view of climate change?"" Here are the responses: • Climate change is a severe threat that we must start addressing now: 55 percent • Climate change is an issue to address in the years ahead, but it's not urgent now: 11 percent • Climate change may be happening, but it's a natural event that humans can't affect: 27 percent • Climate change is not really happening: 3 percent • Don't know: 3 percent This appears to support Murphy’s claim. We should note a few quibbles. • The poll was paid for by an environmental group. We always believe it’s worth noting whenever someone cites a poll paid for by a group with a perspective and a stake in the issue. However, the fact that two polling firms, one from each party, were included makes the poll somewhat more credible. • On a subsequent question in the same poll -- ""When, if ever, will the consequences of climate change personally affect people like you?"" -- the number answering ""never"" was 6 percent. That’s higher than 3 percent, though both are small percentages in the larger scheme of things. • There’s one other poll that asks a similar question and finds different results. But they aren’t exactly comparable. The Pew Research Center -- an independent polling organization -- surveyed a national sample of 1,504 adults age 18 or older between Oct. 9 and Oct. 13, 2013. One of the questions Pew asked was: ""From what you’ve read and heard, is there solid evidence that the average temperature on earth has been getting warmer over the past few decades, or not?"" Among 18- to 29-year-olds, 73 percent said the earth is warming, and 18 percent said it was not warming -- quite a bit higher than the 3 percent from the other poll. The two polls use different age ranges, but if respondents up to age 34 were added in, that would likely increase the percentage of global-warming deniers further, since an even higher percentage of 30- to 49-year olds said there was no global warming -- 28 percent. Why such divergent responses? One factor could be the precise wording of each poll. But a bigger difference is likely the pool of respondents. The LCV poll only counted answers from ""registered voters … who voted in the 2012 general election,"" while the Pew poll simply asked ""adults."" This means the poll results aren’t comparable in an apples-to-apples fashion. This difference might have posed a problem for Murphy, but he was careful with how he worded his claim. He said ""3 percent of voters"" -- not ""3 percent of Americans."" So we don’t find fault on these grounds. ""Pollsters don’t ask about climate change very often,"" said Karlyn Bowman, a polling analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. ""Most polls show that most people believe global warming is real. The question for policy makers is what kind of priority it should be, and here, many pollsters show it not to be very high."" Our ruling Murphy said, ""Only 3 percent of voters 18 to 34 don't believe that climate change is really happening."" It should be noted that Murphy cited a poll that had been paid for by an environmental group. Still, we couldn’t find any poll with genuinely comparable data that clashed with Murphy’s carefully worded assertion. We rate his statement True."
+"During the Oregon Legislature’s most recent special session, one bill stuck out as an oddity. Four of the five bills dealt solidly with fiscal policy -- taxes and the Public Employees Retirement System. The fifth, though, addressed whether local governments could regulate genetically modified crops. The bill was thrown in as something of a bargaining chip. Gov. John Kitzhaber needed Republican support for his other four endeavors, and the GMO bill was one way to reach a compromise. This deal, however, rubbed environmentalists the wrong way. They began calling the bill the ""Oregon Monsanto Protection Act."" One of the bill’s critics was Rick North, the former project director of the Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility's Campaign For Safe Food. In a piece he wrote for BlueOregon, a liberal political blog, he called out two of the local -- and wholesome sounding -- groups that were big advocates of the legislation. ""Oregonians for Food and Shelter and the Oregon Farm Bureau, biotech puppets who have most state Republican legislators in their back pocket, jumped into action,"" he wrote. ""OFS proudly features board members from Monsanto and Syngenta and the Farm Bureau also receives funding from biotech companies."" We were curious about the board member and funding claims, so we decided to take a look. The first bit, that Oregonians for Food and Shelter has board members from those two leading biotech firms was easy to check. We simply went to the group’s website and found, listed along with 34 other voting members, these two names: Michael Diamond, the director of government affairs for Monsanto, and Danelle Farmer, who was most recently listed as a senior state government relations manager at Syngenta. The names aren’t difficult to find -- and they’re listed along with their corporate affiliations. Naturally, we reached out to Oregonians for Food and Shelter to see if they had extra information we might consider. Scott Dahlman, the executive director, said it is unabashedly the group’s position to defend ""the right to responsibly use pesticides and biotechnology."" Next we checked out the Oregon Farm Bureau funding statement. We started by speaking with the bureau’s spokeswoman, Anne Marie Moss. She said it was probably true because the group has a political action committee that accepts donations from any and all groups. Moss stressed, however, that the Farm Bureau is a largely grassroots organization that takes positions based on what county members -- all of whom are required to be involved in agriculture or ranching -- vote to take up on the state level. ""We have members on both sides of that issue as well, but it's like a democracy,"" Moss said. ""Majority rules."" Generally, she said, the group tries to support all sorts of agriculture, whether organic or genetically modified, but often members come down on the side of fewer restrictions. ""We believe in the whole big tent of agriculture, all types are welcome,"" she said. There is already ""a lot of regulation so, as a whole, we try to push back. We don't want our members regulated out of business."" We took a look at the campaign finance records for ourselves and found that both Monsanto and Syngenta had contributed a significant sum to the group. Since 2006, the Oregon Farm Bureau has reported receiving about $440,000 in cash contributions. Of that, Monsanto has contributed $103,500 and Syngenta has given more than $19,000. That means those two companies represent a combined 28 percent of the total reported cash contributions. This year, Monsanto donated $10,500 -- $4,500 in mid-September. During our conversation, Moss noted that while the money is appreciated, ""Monsanto couldn't come in and give us a command directive."" Indeed, we found donations from other sources, including individual farms and nurseries. For our final stab at due diligence, we called North to let him know we’d looked into his claims. We asked him why he thought this information was important given that both groups consider themselves to be grassroots. ""I don't know that it's anything more complicated than ‘Follow the money,’"" he said. In an opinion piece for BlueOregon, North said Oregonians for Food and Shelter ""proudly features board members from Monsanto and Syngenta and the (Oregon) Farm Bureau also receives funding from biotech."" We’ve checked out both claims and found them to be accurate. We rate this statement True. Tell us what you think, by heading over to Oregonlive and leaving us a comment."
+"A United Nations-supported panel of the world’s top climate scientists issued its latest assessment of the problem Friday, warning of potentially catastrophic consequences unless significant measures are taken to reduce greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide. Among other things, the report -- a summary of a longer study to be issued Monday -- warned that if emissions aren’t reduced, global sea levels could rise nearly three feet by 2100. Grover Fugate, executive director of Rhode Island’s Coastal Resources Management Council, expressed similar, and more dire, concerns during an interview on WPRI-Channel 12’s ""Newsmakers"" program, broadcast Aug. 23. Fugate warned then that some projections showed sea levels rising as much as six feet over the next 100 years. If that happened, he said, some of the state’s signature landscapes, such as Providence’s Waterplace Park and North Kingstown’s Wickford Village could be very different -- and smaller --  by 2100. ""The upper end of that range is now looking like, more like, six feet,"" Fugate said. ""Waterplace Park would essentially be gone … you look at places like Wickford, so the historic district in Wickford, a lot of that would be lost."" Waterplace Pond instead of Waterplace Park? Wickford swamped? Was that a deep thought or shallow reasoning? We decided to wade in. Friday’s report from the climate panel is just the latest of numerous reports and studies of the effect of climate change on sea levels. In December 2012,  the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Geological Survey, the Department of Defense’s Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program and the Army Corps of Engineers prepared a report called ""Global Sea Level Rise Scenarios for the United States National Climate Assessment."" The report said that an increasing number of studies have shown satellite measurements indicating polar ice, mostly from Greenland in the north and western Antarctica in the south, has been melting more rapidly than was previously thought, in turn making sea levels rise faster and higher than past projections. The NOAA report warned the melting would increase sea levels, but the range it gave was higher than that described in Friday’s IPCC report. ""We have a very high confidence (a better than nine in ten chance) that global mean sea level will rise at least 0.2 meters (8 inches) and no more than 2 meters (6.6 feet) by 2100,""  the 2012 multi-agency assessment said. Fugate said it was that ""upper end"" -- up to 6.6 feet -- that he was referencing. The University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography’s Sea Grant program has been interested in rising sea levels too. The program works with the state’s coastal municipalities to anticipate where sea levels may rise and how to cope with it. Jon Reiner, town planner in North Kingstown, said the Sea Grant staffers have analyzed what would happen in his community with the kind of sea-level rises Fugate cited. He said their analyses confirmed Fugate’s warning. A 6-foot sea level increase, Reiner said, would inundate more than 150 parcels of land in the Wickford area, as much as 5 percent of the town. Teresa Crean, a planner with the URI Sea Grant program, said the value of that lost land was about $80 million. In Providence, the effects of rising sea levels can be seen on a website of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration that shows the foot-by-foot effects of rising sea levels. The interactive map doesn’t include storm surges or runoff, only what increases in sea level would do. According to NOAA,  a 6-foot rise in sea level would submerge the walkway around the Waterplace Park pool and enough water would flow through the tunnel under Memorial Boulevard to put the Capital Grille and Bar Louie on their own waterfront. But according to the NOAA, Waterplace Park might be the least of the city’s worries. Even more vulnerable are the wharfs off Allens Avenue in the area between Sassafras Point and Henderson Street. Parts of the newly cleared Route 195 redevelopment area would flood, as well as the neighborhood around the Providence District Court Building. Our ruling Grover Fugate said Providence’s Waterplace Park and Wickford village would be flooded if sea levels rose six feet, ""the upper end"" of some climate change estimates. While Fugate’s high-end figure is double the estimate of the Intergovernmental Climate Change Committee, he was accurately quoting a figure that has been cited by four U.S.  agencies that deal with oceans and climate. And federal, state and local planners and agencies agree that a six-foot rise would swamp significant locations in Providence, Wickford and elsewhere in coastal Rhode Island, as Fugate said it would. We find his statement True"
+"On Aug. 14, 2013 -- more than three years before U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson could face re-election -- a national environmental group hit him with an attack ad. The first-term Wisconsin Republican responded by using the TV spot to solicit political contributions. We didn’t think we’d have to go into campaign mode yet for the 2016 elections. But we’re game. In the ad, the League of Conservation Voters alleges that Johnson ""has taken more than $100,000 from oil and gas and voted to let them keep spewing unlimited carbon pollution into our air."" Johnson has received $109,550 from oil and gas interests since his campaign for the 2010 election, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign contributions. So that is not really in dispute. Let’s see if he voted in favor of unlimited carbon pollution. Getting our bearings To be clear on terminology, we'll start with four points. 1. Global warming: The world’s leading science academies have long warned that the planet is warming. The pace has slowed in the past 15 years, although 2000 through 2009 was the warmest decade on record, according to NASA. In August 2013 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international panel of scientists, reiterated the role of human beings, saying in a draft report the odds are at least 95 percent that humans are the main cause of the warming in recent decades. 2. Greenhouse gases: The main human-caused producer of global warming is the emission of greenhouse gases, which trap the Earth's heat. 3. Carbon dioxide: Carbon dioxide makes up 84 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which has determined that greenhouse gases are a threat to humans. 4. Carbon pollution: Carbon dioxide -- or carbon pollution, the term used in the ad -- comes largely from burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas. Like Johnson, many congressional Republicans elected in 2010 have expressed doubt about the science of global warming and opposed regulation of climate-altering gases. The ad’s evidence The Washington, D.C.-based League of Conservation Voters is ""a liberal-leaning organization that raises money primarily in support of environmentally friendly public policy,"" according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In the 2011-2012 election cycle, the five candidates who received the most money from the league -- Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin among them -- all were Democrats. To back its claim against Johnson, the League of Conservation Voters cited three Senate votes, each an amendment to a bill; one was in 2011 and two were on the same day in 2013. Two of the votes were noted in the ad and the third was cited by the league as additional evidence. 1. EPA regulations, April 6, 2011 Johnson voted for a failed amendment to an unrelated small-business bill. The amendment would have prohibited the EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions and repealed the agency’s scientific finding that carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases are endangering human health and the environment. So, under Johnson’s vote, the EPA couldn’t regulate any carbon emissions, including those emitted in the extraction and refining of oil, or by gasoline-burning vehicles. 2. Global warming, March 22, 2013 Johnson voted for a failed amendment to the 2014 federal budget bill. The amendment would have prohibited ""further greenhouse gas regulations for the purposes of addressing climate change,"" which includes global warming. Like the earlier vote, Johnson supported the status quo: no federal limits on emissions of carbon dioxide, or carbon pollution, whether by oil and gas companies or other energy producers. 3. Carbon emissions, March 22, 2013 Johnson voted for another amendment to the budget to require a vote of 60 senators in order to enact a new federal tax or fee on carbon emissions.The amendment passed. This measure doesn’t regulate carbon emissions, per se, but does make it more difficult to tax emissions. Such a tax, arguably, could lead to less production of energy that results in carbon emissions. For our purposes, the third vote really isn’t necessary in evaluating the claim against Johnson. The intent of the other two votes is clear. Johnson spokeswoman Melinda Whitemarsh Schnell told us the three votes sought to stop President Barack Obama’s administration ""from passing regulations that Congress had earlier refused to enact."" She also called the ad misleading because it showed smokestacks that suggested the production of electricity, and said gas and oil companies are not responsible for the carbon emissions used to make electricity. But the question here is the effect of the measures Johnson voted for. Chip Knappenberger, assistant director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, told us that as a practical matter, the only way to reduce carbon pollution is to reduce the amount of fossil fuel produced. But he said Johnson's votes do preserve the status quo, which has no limits on greenhouse gas emissions. Our rating The League of Conservation Voters said Johnson voted to let oil and gas companies ""keep spewing unlimited carbon pollution into our air."" Johnson voted twice to prohibit the EPA from regulating any carbon emissions. We rate the statement True."
+"Want to burnish your conservative credentials in Texas? Doesn’t hurt to point out how many times you’ve sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Campaigning for attorney general, Railroad Commission head Barry Smitherman uploaded a video to YouTube on Aug. 5, 2013, in which he said that he’d ""sued Obama’s EPA seven times to protect Texas jobs and energy for our families."" PolitiFact Texas examined a related statement May 10, 2013, from the man holding the job Smitherman wants. State Attorney General Greg Abbott said he’d sued President Barack Obama’s administration 25 times, a claim we rated as True. Now running for governor, Abbott is highlighting his suits against the EPA (he’s up to 19). In many lawsuits, Abbott acts at the request of a department or branch of Texas state government. Spokeswoman Lauren Bean told us for that story, ""We file them on behalf of state agencies. We’re the lawyer, they’re the client."" That client capacity, Smitherman told us by phone, was the role he took in seven lawsuits spanning his time at the state Public Utilities Commission (2004-2011, became chairman in 2007), and Railroad Commission (2011-present, became chairman in 2012). The suits deal with greenhouse gases, cross-state air pollution and specific airborne toxins such as mercury. ""What we have seen with all of these,"" Smitherman said, ""is this EPA initiating rule-making that in my opinion is not backed up by law."" His spokesman, Allen Blakemore, emailed us a list and descriptions of the seven lawsuits that he said Smitherman had, either individually or on behalf of the commissions, referred to the attorney general. What action is involved in such a referral ""depends upon the case,"" Blakemore said. For example, in the two lawsuits that involved Smitherman’s role on the Railroad Commission, he said, ""the commission voted to request representation by"" Abbott. ""A letter was then written to the AG requesting that action be taken against EPA."" Here’s the top of one such letter, signed by Railroad Commission chairwoman Elizabeth Ames Jones and by railroad commissioners Smitherman and David Porter, dated Aug. 23, 2011:  We looked up the lawsuits on PACER, a federal service providing public access to records from U.S. district, bankruptcy and appellate courts. All originated after Obama’s first inauguration Jan. 20, 2009. Smitherman is personally named as a plaintiff in three cases in his capacity as head of the PUC. The other four cases list only the agencies’ names as plaintiffs, but going by their filing dates, Smitherman was PUC chairman when two were filed, a member of the Railroad Commission when one was filed and chairman of the Railroad Commission in the most recent case. Five lawsuits involving the PUC, Texas’ regulator of electrical and telecommunication utilities, challenged EPA restrictions on greenhouse gases that Blakemore said ""threatened the ability of electric utilities to receive permits, modifications or build new facilities."" The two suits involving the Railroad Commission, Texas’ regulator of oil and gas, addressed a cross-state air pollution rule and a restriction on airborne mercury and other toxins that, Blakemore said, adversely affected mining for lignite used in electricity generation. (Created in 1891 to oversee, well, railroads, the commission ooched into energy after getting jurisdiction in 1917 over pipelines transporting oil and gas.) We asked University of Texas Law School professor Charles Silver, whose specialties include the procedures and practices used in civil lawsuits, if it’s reasonable to say Smitherman ""sued"" the EPA in these cases. ""Seems fair to me,"" Silver told us via email. ""In ordinary conversations, people don’t make the sort of technical distinctions you identify"" -- such as being specifically named as a plaintiff vs. the commission being named -- ""even though they’re accurate."" Our ruling Smitherman said he ""sued Obama’s EPA seven times."" In the seven EPA lawsuits -- all during the Obama administration -- that his spokesman identified, either Smitherman or the commission he served on at the time is named as a plaintiff. We rate his statement as True.  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TRUE – The statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. "
+"U.S. Senate candidate Rush Holt set off a political firestorm last week with these three words tucked into a campaign ad about the dangers of climate change: ""Millions will die."" Holt, a Democratic congressman, defended that claim in the face of criticism from Republican U.S. Senate candidate Steve Lonegan, who dismissed Holt’s climate change assertions as ""silly hysteria."" In the Aug. 13 Democratic primary, Holt is running against Newark Mayor Cory Booker, U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone (D-6th Dist.) and Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver (D-Essex) to fill the U.S. Senate seat previously held by the late Frank Lautenberg. PolitiFact New Jersey cannot fact-check the ""millions will die"" claim -- since it’s a prediction -- but another statement made by Holt earlier in the July 22 campaign ad caught our attention. ""Every single month since 1985 has been warmer than the historic average,"" Holt (D-12th Dist.) said. ""All 12 of the warmest years on record have come in the last 15 years."" Those statements are accurate, according to data released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. First, let’s address the first part about monthly temperatures. Referring to global temperatures -- meaning land and ocean surfaces combined -- Jessica Blunden, a climate scientist with the NOAA, confirmed in a series of e-mails that ""since February 1985, every month has been warmer than the average of that month."" The NOAA compares each month’s global temperature against the average for that respective month for the period between 1901 and 2000, Blunden said. Since February 1985, the global temperature for every month has been above its 20th Century average, she said. For instance, the NOAA found that the global temperature in June was 1.15 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the average of all the months of June between 1901 and 2000. That measurement marked ""the 37th consecutive June and 340th consecutive month—that’s a total of more than 28 years—with a global temperature above the 20th-century average,"" according to a summary of the NOAA’s latest climate report. On the second point, it turns out that Holt's figure of the 12 warmest years on record occurring in the last 15 years was actually a conservative estimate. Based on NOAA data, the last 15 years -- from 1998 to 2012 -- have included the 14 hottest years on record since 1880 for global temperatures. The NOAA estimates that the hottest year was 2010. Using a different methodology, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies estimates that the last 15 years have included the 13 hottest years since 1880 for global temperatures. In a statistical tie, either 2010 or 2005 may be considered the warmest year on record, according to Reto Ruedy, a climate scientist with the institute. The institute has said 2012 was the ninth warmest year on record, while the NOAA estimates that 2012 was the tenth hottest year. ""The record dates back to 1880 because that is when there were enough meteorological stations around the world to provide global temperature data,"" according to a news release on the institute’s website. Our ruling In a campaign ad where he claimed ""millions will die"" from climate change, Holt cited two statistics about monthly and annual global temperatures. ""Every single month since 1985 has been warmer than the historic average,"" Holt said. ""All 12 of the warmest years on record have come in the last 15 years."" Both of those statistics are backed up by data released by scientists at the NOAA and NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The global temperature in every month since February 1985 has been above the 20th Century average for its respective month, according to the NOAA. As for the warmest years on record, NOAA scientists estimate that the last 15 years have included the 14 hottest years and NASA scientists have said that same time period included the 13 hottest years. We rate the statement True. To comment on this ruling, go to NJ.com."
+"Not long after President Barack Obama gave a speech outlining his plan for attacking climate change, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., appeared on Fox News to discuss the future of energy and the environment. ""We've had nine inches of sea-level rise since the 1920s,"" said Wasserman Schultz in a June 28, 2013, interview with Tucker Carlson. ""What that means is that communities like mine in South Florida and coastal communities all across the country are facing dangerous sea-level rise, which will ultimately cause homes to be under water in just a few short years."" In this item, we won’t analyze her projections for future sea-level rises; such estimates are based on a variety of theoretical models and come with lots of uncertainty attached. However, we did wonder whether Wasserman Schultz was correct about past changes -- specifically, whether South Florida has ""had nine inches of sea-level rise since the 1920s."" First, some background on sea-level rises. ""Sea level"" refers to the height of the ocean’s surface as measured either by a mechanical tide gauge (a method used since the 19th century) or, since the late 1990s, by satellite measurements. The kind of changes Wasserman Schultz mentioned are not short-term changes such as high tide and low tide, but rather average sea-level measurements taken over the course of many years. We located sea level data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for a variety of locations, including Miami Beach, Fla. Using tide gauge data from 1931 to 1981, NOAA found a change equivalent to 0.78 feet in 100 years. That's roughly nine inches since the 1920s. We checked with two scientists who specialize in sea-level measurements -- Gary B Griggs, director of the Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of California-Santa Cruz, and Gary Mitchum, a physical oceanographer at the University of South Florida -- and both agreed that the NOAA data was an appropriate source for Wasserman Schultz to rely on. Both scientists considered her claim to be accurate. We will, however, offer two notes of caution when thinking about sea-level rise. One complication for making these measurements is that the land-based reference point for a tide gauge is not as fixed as it would seem to the naked eye. In reality, the land itself may be rising or falling, masking changes in sea level. For instance, in some places, such as Alaska or Scandinavia, the land is rising because it’s still rebounding from the retreat of heavy glaciers. In other locations, the slow action of plate tectonics is pushing the land upwards. The effect of land rises can be strong: In places like Alaska, the rise in the land has been faster than the rise in sea level, meaning that sea level is actually dropping in relative terms. By contrast, in Louisiana, the land is sinking due to a variety of landscape changes made by humans. With sea levels rising and the land sinking, the relative change in sea level is especially dramatic. South Florida fits somewhere between these two extremes. But because of the variability in land rise from place to place, it’s not appropriate to assume that just because sea level has risen by nine inches in Miami Beach that it has risen by the same amount everywhere. The second caveat is that past changes in sea level are a whole lot clearer than future changes. In a 2011 paper, Mitchum estimated that sea level in South Florida would rise 32 inches by 2100, with a smaller possibility of a 40-inch rise. However, other estimates have varied, and Mitchum cautions against assigning too much certainty to long-term estimates of sea-level rise. Our ruling Wasserman Schultz said that in South Florida, ""we've had nine inches of sea-level rise since the 1920s."" That essentially matches the data collected by the National Oceantic and Atmospheric Administration. While there is considerable uncertainty about the future course of sea-level rises, Wasserman Schultz’s estimate of the historical rise appears to be on target. We rate her statement True."
+"Ohio’s northern shore along Lake Erie provides a coastal connection to the Great Lakes, a series of inland seas that collectively hold the greatest supply of freshwater in the world. So it got PolitiFact Ohio’s curiosity going when we heard a claim that state Sen. Kris Jordan, a Republican from Delaware County, made during budget debates in the Ohio Senate. ""Delaware County actually has more lakefront property and waterfront property than any other county in the state of Ohio,"" Jordan said. PolitiFact Ohio decided to see if Jordan’s claim held water. After all, Ohio’s north shore stretches hundreds of miles through eight different counties.  Delaware County, meanwhile, is landlocked in the center of the state. First, let’s put Jordan’s remark in context. The senator made his claim while speaking in support of some provisions in the budget bill that targeted the city of Columbus. Columbus maintains a buffer strip around two reservoirs that extend into Delaware County, and Jordan’s district, and supply water to the city. Adjacent property owners have, in the past, clashed with the city over use of the buffer strips. Some, for example, have been cited for mowing grasses that the city says help with filtration of runoff water that enters the reservoir. The budget bill included restrictions to bar the city from penalizing property owners for doing what Jordan described as ""basic maintenance of their property."" He urged they be left in the legislation. Those reservoirs are part of the reason Delaware County has the most shoreline, Jordan said. PolitiFact Ohio checked with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources to see what data it could provide. It has a website link with information about the Lake Erie shoreline that includes mileage for each of eight counties -- Ashtabula, Cuyahoga, Erie, Lake, Lorain, Lucas, Ottawa and Sandusky. Ottawa County, which includes most of the Lake Erie islands, has the most lakefront property among those eight, with total shoreline of 94 miles. Next was Erie County with 68 miles. Sandusky County had the least among the eight with just 13 miles of lakeshore. But Ottawa’s shoreline wasn’t nearly the greatest in Ohio. ODNR experts from the Division of Coastal Management and Division of Soil and Water Resources used data from geographic information systems to calculate shorelines for Ohio’s other counties, coming up with estimates that took into account waterfront along inland lakes and waterways. Ottawa cracked the top five at No. 4. The others in the top five are inland counties that are home to large lakes or reservoirs. And Delaware was indeed No. 1. It has about 140 miles of shoreline, according to ODNR. Delaware County is home to O’Shaughnessy and Hoover reservoirs, two large man-made lakes that are a key part of Columbus’ water supply. Alum Creek Lake and Delaware Lake, two other man-made bodies of water, also are in Delaware County. Each is home to a state park. Jordan’s claim was that Delaware County had more waterfront property than any other in the state of Ohio. ODNR’s experts, using computer data to prepare the estimates, would agree. On the Truth-O-Meter, his claim rates True."
+"If state Sen. Alberta Darling is correct, nearly one of every five acres of land in Wisconsin is owned by the federal, state or county government and is set aside for conservation. That’s open space for forests and parks, as well as for activities such as fishing, hiking, camping and snowmobiling. Darling, a suburban Milwaukee Republican, uttered the statistic in the context of: When is enough, enough? With the Legislature considering a reduction in what the state spends on such land acquisitions, it’s time for a conservation conversation. Joint Finance and stewardship Darling is co-chairwoman of the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee, a 16-member panel of Senate and Assembly members that reviews all state appropriations and revenue -- most notably the state budget. Inevitably, the committee makes changes in the governor’s biennial budget proposal before the Legislature adopts the budget and the governor signs it into law. On May 15, 2013, in the thick of reviewing Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s 2014-2015 budget, the GOP-controlled committee discussed whether to spend less on the state stewardship program, which is one way government buys land for conservation. The money comes from borrowing and is repaid with tax dollars. At one point during the discussion, Darling stated: ""We've had a lot of people around the state tell us, you know, the stewardship program's a great program. We have a lot of very precious lands. But we have 18 percent of our land in our state right now is either federally, state or county owned for conservation purposes. A lot of our constituents are saying, What is the endgame here?"" So, let’s see where the 18 percent claim comes from. (By the way, Walker’s budget proposal kept stewardship spending the same -- $120 million over two years. After its discussion, Joint Finance voted to reduce that amount by $18 million. The state budget is supposed to be finalized by July 1, 2013.) Darling’s evidence Darling spokesman Bob Delaporte cited two sources to back Darling’s statement. 1. A January 2013 report from the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau. It estimated that 5.89 million acres, or 16.95 percent, of Wisconsin’s 34.8 million acres were owned for conservation as of June 30, 2012. That includes the 1.5 million-acre Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest in the North Woods; state forests, such as the 232,000-acre Northern Highland American Legion State Forest in Iron, Oneida, and Vilas counties; as well as county parks and forests. 2. A March 2013 email from the Department of Natural Resources to the Joint Finance Committee co-chairs, which quotes a higher figure: 18.5 percent. That email noted Wisconsin’s rate is higher than Illinois’ and Iowa’s, which are both below 3 percent; but lower than Michigan’s 22 percent and Minnesota’s 25 percent. Darling’s spokesman told us the senator ""went with 18 percent"" during the finance committee discussion because that figure is between the fiscal bureau’s estimate, rounded up, of 17 percent and the DNR’s estimate of 18.5 percent. Indeed, either figure, if accurate, would essentially back Darling’s claim, given that they are estimates. We talked with the authors of the fiscal bureau report and the DNR’s email, as well as other officials. One reason the DNR figure is higher is that it included federally owned properties such as military installations. Another reason the DNR’s figure varies from the fiscal bureau’s figure is the estimates were done at different times. So, we came up with the following breakdown to provide the best figures available. The county and federal acreage numbers are from the fiscal bureau, which the DNR agreed is the most up to date. And the DNR provided us its current figures for state-owned conservation land. (One note: The state figure includes conservation land owned only by the DNR and the Board of Commissioners of Public Lands, not other agencies or the University of Wisconsin System.)  Unit of government Acres owned for conservation % of total acres in Wisconsin Counties 2,470,000 7.11 Federal 1,856,500 5.34 State 1,571,563 4.52 Total 5,897,816 16.97  So, rounding up, 17 percent is, in fact, the best available figure. To be sure, the total percentage of land in Wisconsin set aside for conservation is actually somewhat higher, because neither the fiscal bureau nor the DNR attempted to count how many acres of conservation land are owned by tribes, municipalities or private entities. But Darling’s claim was strictly on federal, state and county land. Our rating Darling said 18 percent of land in Wisconsin ""is either federally, state or county owned for conservation purposes."" The more up-to-date figure is 17 percent, but it is an estimate. We rate Darling’s claim True."
+"Here’s a typical workday for Texas’ attorney general: ""I go into the office, I sue the federal government and I go home,"" Greg Abbott was quoted as saying to a tea party group in an April 30, 2013, Associated Press news story. Speaking to FreedomWorks Texas in Austin on April 27, Abbott said, ""I’ve sued the Obama administration now 25 times, over the last four years."" Last fall, the Associated Press tallied two dozen: Abbott ""has filed 24 lawsuits against the federal government since Obama took office — litigation that has cost the state $2.58 million and more than 14,113 hours spent by staff and state lawyers working those cases,"" said a Sept. 9, 2012, news story. Abbott spokeswoman Lauren Bean emailed us an updated list of Texas’ lawsuits against the federal government: three during President George W. Bush’s tenure and 27 since President Barack Obama’s Jan. 20, 2009, inauguration. (Abbott himself was sworn in Dec. 2, 2002.) Outcomes of the 27 Obama-era lawsuits, by our count: five clear-cut ""wins,"" eight ""losses,"" four cases in which Texas agreed to dismiss its case when circumstances changed, nine cases in progress -- and one that could be called a partial win, perhaps: 2010’s 26-state challenge to Obamacare that ended with the Supreme Court declaring it was legal to tax individuals without health care, but states could not be required to expand Medicaid. Abbott’s staff, Bean said, would count eight ""wins"" during the Obama administration, including the Medicaid decision and two dismissals in which ""the state got what it wanted."" Bean noted all but one ""win"" are final (can no longer be appealed) and of the eight ""losses,"" she said, six are being appealed and one could be appealed. In our count of five ""wins,"" four lawsuits were against the Environmental Protection Agency and one against the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The EPA has appealed one ruling to the Supreme Court, and FERC filed for a clarification of the judgment in its case. In most of the 27 cases, Texas was the lead plaintiff or only plaintiff. These included lawsuits in which Abbott was acting at the request of a department or branch of Texas state government. Bean said, ""We file them on behalf of state agencies. We’re the lawyer, they’re the client."" Twice, Texas was originally listed among other states but not as the lead plaintiff, and in 11 cases Texas and other states or parties filed similar lawsuits that were bundled together by the courts sometimes resulting in Texas not being listed as the lead, or original, plaintiff. Both cases in which Texas was an original plaintiff but not the lead plaintiff involved challenges to Obamacare: the 2010 lawsuit by 26 states that ended with the Supreme Court declaring it was legal to tax individuals without health care and the 2012 case in which seven states sued over a requirement that religious employers offer insurance covering certain birth control methods. For perspective, we reached Stefanie Lindquist, associate dean for external affairs at the University of Texas Law School with a specialty in empirical legal studies. Lindquist told us by phone that she would not attach much significance to those circumstances when trying to determine whether Texas was itself suing the federal government agency. ""This is situations where they’re actually named parties in the suit,"" she said, rather than, for example, filing a brief lending support to one side. States’ attorneys general often join forces to challenge laws, she said, as in the Obamacare lawsuit that eventually included 26 states. (Texas was among 14 states listed as plaintiffs in the original suit, filed by Florida.) ""They’re lending resources, so it’s not that Texas is not a real litigant,"" Lindquist said. Even when later joining other plaintiffs, she said, ""I don’t think that means they’re not a plaintiff, I just think it means they’re one of many."" Democratic activist Matt Angle, whom we asked to weigh in, did object to Abbott’s inclusion of the two multi-state Obamacare lawsuits. But he raised a larger objection: the inclusion of two cases in which Texas sought preclearance under the federal Voting Rights Act for changes to its voting process. Angle, founder of the Washington, D.C.-based Lone Star Project, told us by email that in filing these suits, Abbott ""took action as a defensive and not offensive tactic. ... No way he should get credit in these two instances."" Under the Voting Rights Act, governments in certain jurisdictions (notably, several Southern states) where minority voter turnout was previously low must get federal clearance before changes in voting laws can take effect. To get that clearance, Lindquist said, ""you have a choice of two different avenues. One is you can request the preclearance of the election law change with the Department of Justice via letter. … Or, you can go to court to seek the preclearance"" by the action of filing a lawsuit. During the Obama administration, Texas has sought preclearance twice in high-profile cases -- in 2011, for redrawn legislative voting districts, and in 2012, for a measure requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls. In those cases, Lindquist said, ""to say yes, that the State of Texas sued the government, yes that’s true.""  But looking at the main purpose of such suits, she said, ""it’s not quite the same as suing the government to force the government to change its behavior. They’re suing the federal government to seek preclearance under a federal law, and they’re just going to a different forum to do it."" Our ruling Abbott said, ""I’ve sued the Obama administration now 25 times."" Since Obama became president, Texas has filed or been a party to 27 lawsuits against the federal government. This statement is True."
+"The size of the proposed Gogebic iron ore mine in northern Wisconsin dominated debate as a bill to relax state mining laws made it through the Legislature and to Gov. Scott Walker’s desk. Supporters said the new law would maintain the state’s environmental standards while making it easier for the company to open a mine and create thousands of jobs. Opponents argued lawmakers were moving too quickly for a project of its size. During the March 7, 2013 Assembly debate, state Rep. Evan Goyke (D-Milwaukee) noted the vastness of the proposed mine and tried to put it into context. ""The hole in the earth that’s going to be dug is bigger than my entire district,"" Goyke declared. That raised some eyebrows in Madison … and sent us to the plat books and the calculator. How big is this proposed mine? And how big is Goyke’s district? The project is proposed by Gogebic Taconite, a division of Florida-based Cline Resource and Development. The company first proposed the iron ore mine in Ashland and Iron counties in 2011. A bill sought by the company to modify state laws to make mine development easier died in 2012. A similar measure was approved in 2013 and signed by Gov. Scott Walker on March 11, 2013. The new law ""relaxes environmental protections for iron mining -- but not other forms of mining -- and provides more clarity to the state process of reviewing an iron ore mine application,"" according to the Journal Sentinel’s report on the bill signing. We dug into a similar claim once before. In January 2012, we rated Mostly Falsea claim by state Rep. Penny Bernard Schaber (D-Appleton), who said ""the central size""  of the mine ""could be about two-thirds the size of Lake Winnebago."" Size of the mine When it comes to the size, Gogebic and the state Department of Natural Resources officials have offered slightly different sizes. Gogebic president Bill Williams was quoted byPolitiFact Wisconsinin 2012 as saying that the mine would be about four miles long and a half mile wide. Williams gave a rough estimate and said the mine would need up to 5,000 acres.Williams didn’t respond to a request for a more precise estimate. A state DNR mine expert, Ann Coakley, said the mine might be 1.5 miles wide. At 4 miles long and at that width, the mine would be 6 square miles or 3,840 acres, according to a conversion calculator.  And that’s before you add in access roads, rail lines, processing facilities and other facilities. Size of the district So what about the 18th Assembly District, which Goyke represents? The district lies within the city of Milwaukee, and it contains roughly the same number of people as any other Assembly district -- 57,480. But it’s far smaller, geographically, than most because it’s an urban district. The 18th stretches from Capitol Drive to the north and roughly Interstate 94 to the south. The northern part is 14 blocks wide, between N. 49th and N. 35th streets, and it lies between 60th and 15th streets at the southern base. According to the nonpartisan Legislative Technology Services Bureau, the 18th District is 3,609 acres. Another way of visualizing the mine: It’s about 4.5 miles from Miller Park to the Milwaukee Art Museum. And the Menomonee Valley corridor is roughly a mile to 1.5 miles wide. The mine wouldn’t be a rectangular swath -- plans call for it to wrap down and around a ridge in an area known as the Penokee Range, but you get the idea. Let’s put the mine into the context of the North Woods. The vast 74th Assembly District that includes the mine site is 3.3 million acres. So, the mine represents about a tenth of 1 percent of it. Another yardstick: Iron County alone is 802 square miles, or 513,280 acres. Let’s power down our calculators. Goyke says the proposed Gogebic mine would be larger than his district. Using the smallest size estimates, the mine would cover 3,840 acres, or 231 acres more than the 18th Assembly district. Goyke got his numbers right. But he’s also got an advantage -- geographically, his densely populated district is the second smallest in the state, trailing only the 8th on Milwaukee’s south side. We rate Goyke’s statement True."
+"Critics of a $3.4 billion plan to replace the current Interstate 5 bridge connecting Portland and Vancouver say that tolling the bridge will send drivers elsewhere -- spreading the rush hour gridlock around instead of solving it. Backers are relying on money from tolling to help pay for a new bridge.
+
+That was the concern that Sen. Jackie Dingfelder, D-Portland, was channeling during a floor speech in opposition to House Bill 2800, which authorized the state to sell $450 million worth of bonds for the project, known as the Columbia River Crossing. The controversial bill has cleared both chambers and Gov. John Kitzhaber’s signature is expected Tuesday.
+
+In her speech, Dingfelder said she worried that toll-wary travelers would seek out refuge on Interstate 205, using the Glenn Jackson Bridge to cross the Columbia.
+
+""I-205, six miles of which runs through my district, already carries more traffic than I-5,"" Dingfelder said, so piling on more will hurt her neighborhood.
+
+We snapped to attention at her assertion that I-205 carries more traffic. Has I-205, completed in 1983 as a bypass corridor for I-5 traffic, surpassed its older sibling with regards to traffic over the bridges?
+
+We went to the Oregon Department of Transportation for the answer.
+
+The agency tracks how many vehicles pass at certain points along all of its freeways. Those records show that in 2011, 123,900 ""average daily trips"" were recorded on I-5 at the Interstate Bridge. On I-205, 138,700 trips were recorded at the Glenn Jackson Bridge. The trips include both northbound and southbound.
+
+So I-205 has 11 percent more traffic at the bridge. And we suppose that makes sense, since the Glenn Jackson Bridge is nearly twice as wide as the Interstate Bridge.
+
+Ruling: We don’t know how many motorists would head over to I-205 to avoid a toll, but we do know that Dingfelder’s right. More cars already travel across the I-205 bridge than the I-5 bridge. We rate this statement True."
+"During his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama touted the country’s progress in reducing carbon pollution emissions but added that recent advances in fuel efficiency and renewable energy have not done enough to curb climate change.
+
+""For the sake of our children and our future, we must do more to combat climate change,"" Obama said. ""Now, it’s true that no single event makes a trend. But the fact is, the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15. Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods – all are now more frequent and more intense.""
+
+In 2012, the country experienced severe weather threats including drought, a devastating Hurricane Sandy and severe thunderstorms. We decided to fact-check whether the 12 hottest years on record have all come since 1998.
+
+The White House directed us to NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which tracks global surface temperatures. The institute concluded that 2012 was the ninth-warmest year on record, with 2010 and 2005 being the all-time highs.
+
+For the contiguous United States, 2012 was the country’s warmest year yet. It beat the previous record by one degree Fahrenheit. (Science nerds can read more about how these temperatures are calculated here and here.)
+
+Reto Ruedy, a program manager at the Goddard Institute, told PolitiFact that the institute’s data produces the following ranking of hottest years. Items on the same line are statistically tied.
+
+1-2: 2010, 2005
+3-8: 2007, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2009
+9-12: 2012, 2011, 2001, 2004
+13: 2008
+14: 1997
+15: 1995
+
+This analysis shows that 13 of the warmest years have occurred in the past 15 years. Alternately, one could say that 12 of the warmest years came in the last 13.
+
+We see a few other issues to note.
+
+• The NASA data set isn’t the only one available. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also analyzes global surface temperatures using its own methodology. The two measurements diverge somewhat -- NOAA considers 2012 the 10th-warmest year on record since records began in 1880, rather than the ninth.
+
+However, NOAA’s data for land and ocean temperature anomalies shows that 14 of the past 15 years were the hottest on record.
+
+• There are other ways one could measure ""hottest years."" Kevin Trenberth, a scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research, agreed with the 13-of-15 calculation. But he added that the NASA and NOAA values refer to global mean surface temperature. ""One could define ‘hottest’ in other ways, such as by how much Arctic sea ice there is,"" he said.
+
+Our ruling
+
+Obama said, ""The 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15."" Data from NASA shows 13 of the hottest years on record have come in the last 15, and by a different data set produced by NOAA, 14 of the hottest years on record have come in the last 15. Obama was actually over-cautious in his statement, so we rate his statement True."
+"Two state senators urged the Lower Colorado River Authority to dispense water carefully in an opinion piece in the Austin American-Statesman on Dec. 31, 2012.
+
+""Our region is facing an emergency situation with the ongoing and ever-worsening drought: 2011 was the most severe year of drought ever recorded,"" wrote Sens. Kirk Watson and Troy Fraser.
+
+Statewide, 2011 was a record year -- specifically ""the worst single-year drought on record,"" according to a March 23, 2012, Statesman news story.
+
+In a Dec. 31, 2011, wrapup of the year’s biggest local news stories, Statesman editors put the drought at No. 2: Crops wilted, lake levels dropped, lawns turned brown, and wildlife went thirsty as Texas endured record drought. At one point in October, 88 percent of the state was deemed to be in exceptional drought, the most severe level. Austin received just less than 15 inches of rain, about half of its normal precipitation, and sweated through a record 90 days of triple-digit temperatures."" So not all areas suffered to the same degree. Was the drought as harsh here as elsewhere?
+
+First, we checked to make sure what region the senators meant. Watson spokesman Steve Scheibal told us by email that it would be fair to say they meant counties in the river authority's jurisdiction in and around the Austin area (Watson’s District 14 takes in Bastrop County and most of Travis County) and upriver in Fraser’s District 24.
+
+We figured that’s probably about the impression Statesman readers got from the words ""our region,"" given that the context was senators discussing the river authority.
+
+So we based our fact-finding on Travis, Williamson, Hays and Bastrop counties around Austin, plus Burnet, Blanco, Lampasas, Gillespie, Llano, San Saba and Brown counties upstream. We looked at 11 counties. Click to view larger map Scheibal sent us links to 2011-12 newsletters and reports from the river authority and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality that described record-setting drought across Texas and dry months in the Lower Colorado river basin.
+
+To get a closer look, we spoke via phone and email with state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon, an atmospheric science professor at Texas A&M University.
+
+Drought, he told us, can be defined by factors including lack of rainfall, length of time and impact on people and crops.
+
+Factoring in duration, for example, the most severe Texas drought remains the 1950-1957 drought, which an Aug. 14, 2011, Statesman news story said ""reshaped Texas, ruining thousands of farmers and ranchers and pushing rural residents to migrate out of the country and into the cities."" That was the worst extended drought since reliable state records began in the 1890s, though a 2011 study of Texas cypress tree rings showed several longer, harsher droughts over the past 500 years.
+
+To help us judge the ""most severe year of drought"" in the 11-county region, Nielsen-Gammon checked rainfall data recorded there for each ""water year"" back to 1893.
+
+Water years run from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30, he said, beginning with the period when most rainfall accumulates and ending after peak water use. The key is ""how much water you end up with at the end of the summer,"" he said.
+
+In rainfall, Nielsen-Gammon told us, 2011 was the second-worst ""water year"" (Oct. 1 to Sept. 30) in those 11 counties since 1893.
+
+The lowest rainfall came in 1956. But the drought was more severe in 2011, he said, because summer temperatures averaged 2 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit above those of 1956, ""increasing the need for water by plants while simultaneously evaporating water from reservoirs.""
+
+So, according to Nielsen-Gammon, the 2011 water year was the worst 12-month drought ever recorded in the 11-county region. The 2011 calendar year would also have been the worst recorded, he said, measured by the river authority’s records of water flowing into the Highland Lakes: Buchanan, Inks, LBJ, Marble Falls, Travis and Austin, of which lakes Buchanan and Travis are reservoirs supplying water customers.
+
+According to a Jan. 8, 2013, river authority report sent us by Scheibal, 2011 saw the lowest-ever recorded water flow (from creeks and other tributaries) into the Highland Lakes. We confirmed that with river authority spokeswoman Clara Tuma, who told us its records began in 1942, after the construction of Mansfield Dam created Lake Travis.
+
+Nielsen-Gammon told us that although it would take ""some sort of major rain"" to get the river authority’s water levels back up to normal, the rainfall picture for 2012 was better overall, with precipitation near or above normal levels. Forecasts for 2013 are a still a toss-up, both he and Tuma said. The river authority posted an update Jan. 9, 2012, with data and an interactive map from the National Drought Mitigation Service showing the region still in ""Severe Drought.""
+
+Our ruling
+
+Watson said 2011 was the worst drought year in ""our region."" In records dating to 1893 for the general area indicated, 2011 was the most severe single-year drought by rainfall combined with evaporation, and it also saw the lowest recorded water-flow into the Highland Lakes.
+
+Watson’s statement is True."
+"The General Assembly will consider a bill this winter that would end the state’s 31-year ban on uranium mining.
+
+If approved, the state will begin drafting regulations that will allow Virginia Uranium Inc. to develop a mining and milling operation on a 3,000-acre site in Pittsylvania County. Opponents say the operation poses long-term threats to the environment and the sources of drinking water for many, including those in Virginia Beach, the state’s largest city.
+
+Patrick Wales, project manager for Virginia Uranium, expressed confidence during a Dec. 6 symposium that the operation would be safe. He spoke enthusiastically about the project’s potential to provide jobs. And he said the abundance of uranium would produce a domestic energy source that far outstrips the oil reserves Virginia hopes to tap off its Atlantic coast.
+
+There’s ""over 20 times more energy in this property than there is in all the oil that’s estimated to be off Virginia’s coast,"" Wales said.
+
+That’s a big claim, so we decided to check Wales’ math.
+
+Wales said the mining and milling would result in 119 million pounds of U308, or uranium oxide, which is the product his company will sell to electric utilities. The estimate comes from a 2008 study of the project that was commissioned by Virginia Uranium and conducted by Behre Dolbear Group Inc., Chicago, a mining engineering company..
+
+No independent assessment of the uranium oxide yield exists. The 119 million pound estimate was cited and not questioned in a study of the risks of the mining enterprise conducted last year by the National Academy of Science.
+
+As for oil reserves, Wales turned to estimates made by the Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy when a section off the coast of Virginia was considered for a lease sale in 2008 and 2009. It was estimated that 165 million barrels of oil could be pumped from the beds. President Barack Obama eventually canceled the lease sale.
+
+The federal government, the governor and  Sen. Mark  Warner and Sen. Jim Webb used a slightly smaller figure in 2009 and 2010 -- 130 million barrels. Estimates of the oil resources are wide-ranging. As we reported in an earlier offshore drilling claim, the surveys of the seabed off the coast are 40 to 50 years old, so all estimates are speculative.
+
+Let’s look at the conversion from uranium and oil to the common measure for energy, the British thermal unit or Btu.
+
+A pound of uranium oxide contains the energy equivalent of 31 barrels of fuel oil, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency.
+
+Under those conversions, the 119 million pounds of uranium oxide would produce as much energy as 3.7 billion barrels of oil. That dwarfs the 130 million to 165 million barrels expected to come from offshore drilling.
+
+When we divide 3.7 billion by 165 million, we get 22.4 -- or the factor of how much more energy would come from the uranium than the estimated offshore oil.
+
+Wales said his company has received a more recent, and higher, estimate of the project’s output from engineering firms Lyntek Inc., Lakewood, Colo., and BRS Engineering, Riverton, Wyo., at about 133 million pounds, but like the oil reserves, this wouldn’t greatly affect Wales’ statement.
+
+Our ruling
+
+Wales, in advocating the need and potential of a uranium mine in Southwest Virginia, called attention to its energy-production possibilities. He said the mine will yield enough uranium oxide to produce more than 20 times the power that would come from oil the state hopes to tap off Virginia’s shore.
+
+The math works out for Wales with room to spare.  
+
+We caution that the claim is dependent both on an estimate from the uranium project developer’s consultant and the wide-ranging, unproven estimates of oil off Virginia’s coast. Wales’ statement is based on the best available information and, as such, we rate it True."
+"Supporters of environmentally compatible technology have been arguing of late that ""going green"" doesn’t only help preserve the environment, it adds to the nation’s employment rate.
+
+One of them is U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, who, in an interview published in The Providence Journal Nov. 18, said, ""We have more people working in clean and green energy than in oil and gas in this country.""
+
+To some, the green economy evokes images of people weaving rugs out of palm fronds, or growing their own vegetables. But an increasing number of studies are showing that developing environmentally sensitive products and services has become a growing and technologically sophisticated segment of the economy.
+
+But more jobs than Big Oil? We decided to drill down and see if Whitehouse was right.
+
+Whitehouse spokesman Seth Larson said the senator’s source was a July 2011 report, ""Sizing the Clean Economy,"" by the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, and the Battelle Technology Partnership Practice, a consulting firm that advises companies and governments on how to use new technologies to improve their operations.
+
+The study sought to calculate how many companies in the United States are involved in so-called green industries, how many people they employ and how much of an impact the field has on the national economy.
+
+In a summary of the report, Brookings said, ""the clean economy, which employs some 2.7 million workers, encompasses a significant number of jobs in establishments spread across a diverse group of industries. Though modest in size, the clean economy employs more workers than the fossil fuel industry …"" Brookings pegged the number of fossil fuel jobs at 2.4 million.
+
+The report noted that the ""clean economy"" is an emerging concept that can mean different things to different people. The Brookings report said it focused on firms that either sold products or performed services that provided a definable environmental benefit, such as companies that clean up hazardous waste or manufacture solar panels.  
+
+""No effort was made here to count companies that adopt internal environmental goals, reform their processes to make them more environmentally responsible or even contribute to general public knowledge about environmental issues,"" the report said.
+
+""This study measures only employment in establishments that directly produce goods and services with environmental benefits.""
+
+The survey began by taking an analysis from Dun & Bradstreet, which has developed a system to classify businesses on the basis of what they do or produce. Added to that database were similar lists developed the Pew Charitable Trust and the University of California at Berkeley.
+
+Brookings researchers then examined other sources, such as industry association membership lists, patent applications, lists of companies receiving grants, to refine the roster.
+
+It was a net that caught a wide swath of businesses, ranging from organic food farming to forestry, manufacturers of fuel cells and other types of energy conservation technology to mass transit, air and water purification to trash disposal to geothermal wind and solar power equipment manufacturers.
+
+Add up the employees in those businesses, the Brookings report said, and you get 2.7 million.
+
+In addition, a 2011 analysis by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics found that ""businesses that produce goods and services that benefit the environment or conserve natural resources"" accounted for 3.1 million jobs.
+
+But what about the other number in the comparison -- the number of employees in the fossil-fuel industry.
+
+Because that industry has been around for years, it has been widely studied and classified. Brookings got its 2.4 million number of oil industry jobs from a study by Moody’s Analytics, which counted jobs directly related to producing fossil-fuel based energy, and distributors and transporters, such as gas station employees.
+
+Now, if you watch any television these days, you’ve no doubt seen a commercial from the American Petroleum Institute that boasts of 9.2 million American jobs that are supported by the U.S. oil industry. That’s nearly four times the Brookings’ claim.
+
+But according to Petroleum Institute’s website, that includes not only people who work in the oil industry, but in industries that depend on petroleum to function. For example, because airlines need fuel to fly their jets, the Petroleum Institute counted pilots, flight attendants and ground crews as oil-related jobs.
+
+Counting only jobs directly connected to producing and distributing oil and natural gas, the Petroleum Institute came up with 2.2 million jobs -- 200,000 fewer than the Brookings count.
+
+Our ruling
+
+Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said more people in the United States work in green energy than in the petroleum industry.
+
+Whitehouse’s statement was based on a rigorous study by the Brookings Institution.  A similar analysis by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics found the number to be even greater.
+
+We rate his claim True."
+"There is a war on coal, Republicans are telling the public.
+
+The story line took center stage during a mid-August campaign stop for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in Belmont County. With coal miners standing behind him, Romney attacked the Obama administration saying the Democratic president was developing alternative energy at the expense of the coal industry and heavy-handed in regulating the energy resource.
+
+Charges that Democrats have hurt the coal industry have spread to Ohio Senate's race, too. During a U.S. Senate debate held by the City Club of Cleveland on Oct. 16, a questioner asked incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown how he could support jobs and cheaper energy in Ohio while backing a president that has declared war on coal.
+
+Brown fired back saying the ""war on coal"" rhetoric is empty.
+
+""There is no war on coal. Period. There are more coal jobs and more coal produced in Ohio than there were five years ago, in spite of the talking points and the yard signs,"" he told the audience.
+
+Has coal production and the number of coal mining jobs in Ohio really gone up during the time Obama has been in office? PoltiFact Ohio got out the pickaxes and started digging for facts.
+
+First, we turned to Brown's campaign to find out the source of Brown's information.
+
+Brown campaign spokesman Justin Barasky sent us some information from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources annual coal reports showing that production in 2010 was 28,364,000 tons compared to 22,283,072 tons in 2007. Those same ODNR-produced reports show the monthly employment average for coal mining jobs in Ohio in 2010 was 2,879, compared to a monthly average of 2,204 in 2007.
+
+With the 2011 state coal report due out any day, ODNR spokeswoman Heidi Hetzel-Evans was able to tell us that the 2011 report will show that Ohio produced about 27,929,089 tons of coal--a slight drop from the 2010 data that Brown was basing his comment on. Coal mining jobs in Ohio in 2011 were up over the previous year with an average of 2,995 a month, and obviously, both are well ahead of 2007 figures.
+
+PolitiFact Ohio also checked with the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which provided a second source of data with even more recent numbers. The EIA estimates coal production for every state on a weekly basis and the October 13 report showed Ohio coal production so far this year up about 1.9 percent over last year.
+
+For the most recent 12 months, from October 13, 2011, to October 13, 2012, Ohio has produced about 28,456,000 tons of coal. That matches up fairly closely with the ODNR reports and certainly shows that there hasn't been any fall off in coal production in Ohio in recent months.
+
+We also looked for a second source on the coal mining jobs numbers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics keeps a Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages which tracks job numbers in specific industries. For Ohio, the census data showed an average of 2,570 coal mining jobs statewide in 2011.
+
+That's almost 30 percent higher than 2007 when the bureau showed only 2,010 coal mining jobs in Ohio. Counted in those statistics are jobs related to the actual mining of coal as well as developing coal mining sites and preparing the coal such as cleaning and screening the coal to be sold.
+
+So why has production of Ohio's high-sulfur coal increased in the last few years?
+
+Coal industry analysts generally attribute the jump in coal production to an increase in exports to overseas markets such as China and India, which need coal for cheap energy and to use  in the steel-making process.
+
+So after mining for facts what are we left with?
+
+In defending the Democratic record on coal during a debate, Sherrod Brown said coal production and coal jobs in Ohio are up compared to five years ago. After consulting with state and federal statistics, it appears that jobs and coal production in Ohio have increased compared to 2007 levels by every measurement we could find.
+
+On the Truth-O-Meter, Browns' statement rates True."
+"Republican devotees who have traveled to Tampa, Fla. for their party’s national convention expect a week filled with activities aimed at unifying the GOP around the central policy and agenda messages as they nominate former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney for president.
+
+But as thousands of out-of-towners arrived and made their trek to the Tampa Bay Times Forum, the arena hosting the convention, they have been greeted by some well-placed advertisements featuring some prominent conservative leaders -- including Ohio Gov. John Kasich -- that are not quite in lock-step with the message Republicans have long touted.
+
+Kasich is prominently featured on a billboard outside the arena and on one at the most central interstate highway crossing in the city, as well as, on some placards adorning 40 city taxi cabs proclaiming his belief that global warming is real.
+
+""I am a believer – my goodness I am a Republican – I happen to believe there is a problem with climate change,"" reads a quote attributed to Kasich that appears next to a picture of the smiling Ohio governor.
+
+But wait, Kasich is still as staunch a conservative as ever, isn’t he? PolitiFact Ohio decided to check if the ad accurately reflects the governor’s position.
+
+The billboard was sponsored by the Florida Wildlife Federation, a private membership group with about 60,000 members who are hunters, fishermen and outdoorsmen with a keen interest in environmental issues. It told PolitiFact Ohio it partnered with the Evangelical Environmental Network, a Washington lobbying group, to place the advertisements.
+
+The Federation’s policy consultant, Jay Liles, said his group is desperate to get politicians to view climate change as a life-changing issue and not a partisan issue. They have skin in this game. And there it is true that some Republicans have staked out a position doubting that climate change is really a factor.
+
+In addition to Kasich, the federation also has sponsored similar ads with similar messages from similarly conservative leaders, such as, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former President George W. Bush.
+
+We checked with Kasich’s staff to see whether the quote was accurate. Rob Nichols, the governor’s spokesman, confirmed that it was taken from a speech Kasich made in May 2012 at a small energy conference in Columbus, Ohio, that was sponsored by The Hill, a Capitol Hill media organization.
+
+""What they have on the billboard is accurate,"" Nichols said, adding that Kasich has uttered similar comments four or five times during various private speeches, some of which were before Republican gatherings.
+ 
+But for context, Nichols said there is a little more to Kasich thoughts on global warming.
+ 
+""He has said this several times but what is usually omitted is what is on the back-end of what he has said,"" Nichols said. ""Each time he says it he has added, ‘How big is this? I don’t know. Should we overreact to this? No.’""
+ 
+In fact, The Hill published an article on May 2, 2012, about Kasich’s speech at the energy conference. The quote on the billboard came from that story, according to the Evangelical Environmental Network.
+ 
+The full quote is: ""I am a believer – my goodness I am a Republican – I happen to believe there is a problem with climate change. I don’t want to overreact to it, I can’t measure it all, but I respect the creation that the Lord has given us and I want to make sure we protect it.""
+ 
+Liles said the Federation was approached by the evangelical group and agreed to sponsor the Tampa advertisements to convince Republicans to stop viewing global warming through political lenses.
+ 
+""We believe at the core that people don’t treat our environment as a right or left issue, it is an issue that affects all of us. It is an issue that affects our pocketbooks,"" Liles said.
+ 
+""Whether it is addressed more through market driven means or through proposed regulatory means,"" he said, ""we believe somewhere in the middle is a road forward and they need to stop making this a partisan issue.""
+ 
+Alexei Laushkin, of the Evangelical Environmental Network, which paid for the advertisements said his group intentionally sought out key conservative leaders to push this agenda.
+ 
+""We in the evangelical community are tired of the politics of the issue and wanted to highlight conservatives who agree with us on this issue,"" Laushkin.
+ 
+For the most part, Republicans have doused talk of global warming saying Democrats are pushing it to enforce more government regulations on the energy industry.
+ 
+The Hill article notes that the Environmental Protection Agency has already begun to try to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and proposed carbon dioxide standards for new power plants to help mitigate the suspected effects of global warming. And that many scientists have long concluded climate change is real. But some Republicans have challenged the proposed EPA standards and questioned scientists conclusions.
+ 
+""We’re hoping at the end of the day it will be a bi-partisan issue, one party can’t solve the issue so we want to highlight conservative leadership on this,"" said Laushkin.
+ 
+Laushkin said he suspects that many Republican delegates who see the signs at the convention will be surprised.
+
+But as far as the quote from Kasich, his own staff confirms its accuracy. As long as Kasich’s comments aren’t used as a scare tactic to get others to believe in climate change then the governor is OK with how he is being portrayed, Nichols said.
+
+And that’s how the billboards convey the message. No scare tactics. Just Kasich saying he agrees climate change is a problem.
+ 
+On the Truth-O-Meter, the Florida Wildlife Federation’s claim rates True."
+"Even as coal advocates applied political pressure on Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee, the state’s senior senator stood his ground in refusing to join the fight to kill the Environmental Protection Agency’s planned implementation of clean air rules.
+
+Commercials by the group American Commitment, a conservative group recently focusing on boosting the coal industry,  branded him an ally of what it calls a ""war on coal"" by President Obama. The group asked people to call and write Alexander to make him switch his stance and vote for a resolution by Sen. James Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, to disapprove the EPA's new Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) for power plants.
+
+Alexander responded by saying he was ""standing up for Tennessee."" He cited the pollution created from ""dirty air"" blowing into Tennessee from other states causing smog in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and even pointed out that more Tennesseans work for companies that make pollution-control equipment required under the rule than work mining coal.
+
+At a Congressional field hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reforms Committee in Murfreesboro, Alexander also claimed that one result of  ""dirty air"" is that, in Tennessee, ""three of our cities are among the top five worst cities in the U.S. for asthma.""
+
+We decided to see if that was indeed true.
+
+A quick primer on asthma from the Mayo Clinic: It is ""a condition in which your airways narrow and swell and produce extra mucus. This can make breathing difficult and trigger coughing, wheezing and shortness of breath.""
+
+The Mayo Clinic says, ""It isn't clear why some people get asthma and others don't, but it's probably due to a combination of environmental and genetic (inherited) factors.""
+
+Alexander’s office said he was referring to the 2012 Asthma Capitals rankings released in May by the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA). The AAFA  describes itself as a non-profit founded in 1953 that ""is the leading patient organization for people with asthma and allergies, and the oldest asthma and allergy patient group in the world.""
+
+Sure enough, the rankings have Memphis at No. 1, Knoxville at No. 3 and Chattanooga at No. 5, with New Haven, Conn., at No. 2 and Pittsburgh, Pa., at No. 4. And it was apparently no fluke -- the 2011 rankings had those Tennessee cities ranked Nos. 2-4, though Knoxville was ahead of Memphis last year.
+
+Nashville, it’s worth noting, ranked No. 26 this year after coming in at No. 10 in 2011.
+
+It’s important to note that the AAFA emphasizes the rankings are an attempt to measure which cities ""are more challenging places to live"" for asthma sufferers, not necessarily just a listing of places with the highest prevalence of people suffering with asthma. The report also notes that air pollution is not the only factor it considers, with a total of 12 data sets that include the number of high-ozone days, pollen counts, medication utilization, poverty rates and public smoking laws.
+
+Our ruling
+
+Alexander wasn’t saying dirty air was the only reason Tennessee cities rank high on a list showing the most challenging cities in the country for asthma, just that the nation’s 17th-largest state placed three of its cities in the top five of those rankings.
+
+We rate that statement True."
+"Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker wants to make it easier for a proposed iron ore mine, said to be worth more than $1 billion and packing potentially thousands of jobs, to win state approval.
+
+The Republican governor, who made creating 250,000 private-sector jobs his signature campaign promise, mostly touts expected economic benefits. But, pointing to symbols on the state flag, he also argues that mining is central to Wisconsin’s history.
+
+In a Feb. 23, 2012 interview on WTMJ-AM (620) in Milwaukee, Walker expressed hope that the Legislature would pass a bill to ""streamline"" the mine approval process. Then he made a claim about the state animal that might surprise some of us in Wisconsin who weren’t paying attention in school.
+
+""If there's any state in America that should be able to"" adopt a mining bill that balances job creation and environmental safety, ""it should be the Badger State,"" Walker said.
+
+""Because we're called the Badgers not because the animals are abundant here, but because we got nicknamed the Badgers because, back before we were a state, our ancestors came here with the hopes of living the American dream by mining. We should be able to do it again here in Wisconsin in 2012 and beyond.""
+
+To be sure, the main issues involving the proposed mine are money and the environment. We found to be Mostly True a claim that the mine proposed for near Hurley in far northern Wisconsin could generate billions of dollars of economic activity over 100 years.
+
+Meanwhile, one Wisconsin conservation organization has said a mining bill pending in the Legislature would allow groundwater to be polluted and ""our most sensitive wetlands to be filled in with mining waste.""
+
+But given the governor’s new tack on promoting mining, we wondered whether Wisconsin, known more for brewing, milking and sausage making, got its Badgers nickname because of mining.
+
+Wisconsin mining origins
+
+Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie pointed us to a Wisconsin Historical Society article that explains the importance of mining in the state’s history.
+
+It said in part:
+
+""In the early nineteenth century, Wisconsin lead mining was more promising and attractive to potential settlers than either the fur trade or farming. Its potentially quick rewards lured a steady stream of settlers up the Mississippi River and into Grant, Crawford, Iowa, and Lafayette counties in the early nineteenth century. By 1829, more than 4,000 miners worked in southwestern Wisconsin, producing 13 million pounds of lead a year.""
+
+As for mining’s connection to the badger, Werwie cited the state symbols section of the 2011-2012 Wisconsin Blue Book. It says that images on the state flag include a ""yeoman (usually considered a miner) with a pick,"" a mining pick and shovel, and  13 lead ingots that represent ""mineral wealth,"" as well as a badger.
+
+The Blue Book continues:
+
+""History, rather than the law, explains Wisconsin’s unofficial nickname as the ‘Badger State.’ During the lead-mining boom that began just prior to 1830 in southwestern Wisconsin, the name was first applied to miners who were too busy digging the ‘gray gold’ to build houses. Like badgers, they moved into abandoned mine shafts and makeshift burrows for shelter. Although ‘badgers’ had a somewhat derogatory connotation at first, it gradually gained acceptance as an apt description of the hardworking and energetic settlers of the Wisconsin Territory.""
+
+The state historical society and the Blue Book are as solid as lead as sources on state history.
+
+We also found similar accounts about the connection between mining and the badger nickname in the historical society’s ""Dictionary of Wisconsin History"" and in a 1918 Milwaukee Sentinel article.
+
+Few miners ‘badgers’?
+
+But an article from the winter 1992-1993 edition of the historical society’s Wisconsin Magazine of History raised questions.
+
+Then-Marquette University history professor Karel Bicha wrote that proving the conventional wisdom about mining and the badger nickname ""leads the investigator along an evidentiary pipeline which is ludicrously tenuous."" That’s because the traditional understanding, he said, ""derives largely from ‘tradition’ rather than verifiable ‘history.’""
+
+""Tradition aside,"" Bicha continued, ""it is legitimate to wonder whether there were ever, in reality, any cave- or dugout-dwelling miners. If so, who first observed them in their natural or man-made hillside orifices and divined the inelegant nickname ‘badgers’ to refer to them?""
+
+He goes on to say there is plenty of evidence of large numbers of miners living in cabins and other dwellings, but little evidence that more than a small number lived as ""badgers,"" or that they stayed in their caves or dugouts for very long.
+
+Nevertheless, Bicha concludes:
+
+""Realistically, the importance of the sobriquet ‘badgers’ lies not in its origin but in its diffusion. The diffusion of the term undoubtedly occurred by the same rapid and undocumentable process of oral transmission characteristic of slang, argot and jokes.
+
+""Within two decades of its creation the expression had become divested of its specific association with both miners and the lead region. By the mid-1840s it made no difference whether the badger tradition was rooted in past reality or possessed no more inherent substance than the legend of William Tell. It was synonymous with Wisconsin and its people -- all of its people."" University of Wisconsin-Madison folklore professor James Leary, director of the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures, notes -- somewhat disturbingly -- that badgers had quite a different definition in the British volume known as the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. Badgers were ""a crew of desperate villains who robbed near rivers, into which they threw the bodies of those they murdered.""
+
+Yikes.
+
+But Leary reassured us that the origin of the badgers nickname in Wisconsin is from mining. ""There’s no doubt about that,"" he said.
+
+Our rating
+
+Walker said Wisconsin is called the Badger State because ""our ancestors came here with the hopes of living the American dream by mining."" At least one scholar suggests that the number of miners who lived like badgers was relatively small. But he and other authorities agree that the dwelling habits of at least some of the miners are what gave Wisconsin its nickname.
+
+We rate Walker’s statement True."
+"In a video ad, a super PAC promoting Gov. Rick Perry's presidential candidacy attacks two Perry rivals for the Republican nomination, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, suggesting that their records prove they are not conservatives. In the style of an old newsreel, the ad from Make Us Great Again, which was formed this year by Austin lobbyist Mike Toomey, a longtime Perry ally, highlights several criticisms that have been lobbed at the former U.S. House speaker and former Massachusetts governor. Among the charges the ad aims at Gingrich is that he joined U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., ""in support of global warming."" We take the wording to mean that Gingrich aligned with Pelosi on the issue of global warming, a pairing that has drawn renewed attention lately. A similar claim is also being heard in a television ad placed in Florida and Iowa this month by another super PAC, Restore Our Future, which is staffed and funded by supporters of Mitt Romney. The ad attacks Gingrich over ""a ton of baggage"" and includes the statement that Gingrich ""teamed with Nancy Pelosi and Al Gore on global warming."" PolitiFact National looked into that claim for a Dec. 21, 2011, fact-check. The Restore Our Future ad cites the website Newtfacts.com, which lays out a list of — you guessed it — more claims and citations about Gingrich, including this one: ""Gingrich shot an ad with Nancy Pelosi in 2008 calling for action on global warming."" It is followed by a link to the Pelosi-Gingrich spot, in which Gingrich sits on a couch next to Pelosi, who at that time was the House speaker but now is the minority leader. ""We don’t always see eye to eye, do we, Newt?"" Pelosi says. ""No,"" Gingrich answers, ""but we do agree: Our country must take action to address climate change."" Pelosi: ""We need cleaner forms of energy, and we need them fast."" Gingrich: ""If enough of us demand action from our leaders, we can spark the innovation we need."" The ad directs viewers to the website WeCanSolveIt.org, with the final words from Pelosi, ""Together, we can do this."" The ad was created by a Gore-founded organization that works to spread awareness and prompt action to address climate change. Formerly the Alliance for Climate Protection, it’s now known as the Climate Reality Project. WeCanSolveIt.org is the former name of the site now called ClimateRealityProject.org. In an interview with the online news show The Young Turks in December 2011, Gore said that he had asked Gingrich to do the ad with Pelosi. It was part of a larger campaign featuring "" 'unlikely pairs,' who disagree on many issues but appear together to help thwart climate change,"" according to a 2008 news story in the San Francisco Chronicle. During the current campaign season, Gingrich has expressed regret about making that ad. In a section of his campaign website devoted to ""answering the attacks,"" Gingrich is quoted as telling Fox News’ Brett Baier in November that making the ad with Pelosi was ""probably the dumbest single thing I've ever done."" It goes on to explain that Gingrich opposes cap and trade legislation (although PolitiFact has found he supported it in the past) and that he favors increased domestic oil drilling. Our sense is the super PAC's video accurately touches on Gingrich teaming with Pelosi against global warming. We rate this claim True."
+"With just two weeks until the Iowa caucuses, a new ad from a pro-Mitt Romney ""Super PAC"" is attacking Republican presidential front-runner Newt Gingrich over ""a ton of baggage"" from his past.
+
+""Barack Obama’s plan is working: Destroy Mitt Romney, run against Newt Gingrich,"" a voice says as images of Gingrich flash on the screen, interspersed with damning headlines. ""Newt has a ton of baggage. He was fined $300,000 for ethics violations and took $1.6 million from Freddie Mac, before it helped cause the economic meltdown. Newt supports amnesty for illegal immigrants, and teamed with Nancy Pelosi and Al Gore on global warming. Maybe that’s why George Will calls him the least conservative candidate. Check the facts at NewtFacts.com.""
+
+The ad, airing in December 2011 in Florida and Iowa, is paid for by a political action committee, which isn’t formally tied to any campaign but can spend money influencing elections. The one behind this ad is known as Restore our Future and is staffed and funded by many supporters of Mitt Romney.
+
+It goes after the former House speaker on several issues. Here, we’re focusing on the claim that Gingrich ""teamed with Nancy Pelosi and Al Gore on global warming.""
+
+The source
+
+The ad cites the website Newtfacts.com, which lays out a list of -- you guessed it -- more claims and citations about Gingrich, including this one:
+
+""Gingrich shot an ad with Nancy Pelosi in 2008 calling for action on global warming,"" followed by a link.
+
+In that now-famous ad, Gingrich sits on a couch next to Nancy Pelosi, then the speaker of the House.
+
+""We don’t always see eye to eye, do we, Newt?"" Pelosi says.
+
+""No,"" Gingrich answers, ""but we do agree: Our country must take action to address climate change.""
+
+Pelosi: ""We need cleaner forms of energy, and we need them fast.""
+
+Gingrich: ""If enough of us demand action from our leaders, we can spark the innovation we need.""
+
+The ad then directs viewers to the website WeCanSolveIt.org, with the final words from Pelosi, ""Together, we can do this.""
+
+About Al Gore
+
+The ad was created by a Gore-founded organization called the Alliance for Climate Protection that aims to spread awareness and prompt action to address climate change. It’s now known as the Climate Reality Project.
+
+WeCanSolveIt.org is the former name of the site now called ClimateRealityProject.org.
+
+""It is guided by one simple truth: The climate crisis is real and we know how to solve it,"" the site says. The group claims 5 million members worldwide.
+
+In an interview with the online news show The Young Turks in December 2011, Gore mentioned that he had asked Gingrich to do the ad with Pelosi and Gingrich agreed. It was part of a larger campaign featuring ""'unlikely pairs,' who disagree on many issues but appear together to help thwart climate change,"" according to a 2008 story in the San Francisco Chronicle.
+
+What they’re saying now
+
+Gingrich, now tied for the lead for the Republican nomination, has big regrets that he made the ad.
+
+The Gingrich campaign directed us to a section of its website devoted to ""answering the attacks."" In the climate change section, Gingrich is quoted as telling Fox News’ Brett Baier that making the ad with Pelosi was ""probably the dumbest single thing I’ve ever done.""
+
+It goes on to explain that Gingrich opposes cap and trade legislation (although PolitiFact has found he supported it in the past), and he favors increased domestic oil drilling.
+
+In the online news interview, Gore lamented Gingrich’s change of heart.
+
+""I appreciated him agreeing to my request that he do it and I don’t want to be ungracious now. I’m grateful that he did it, and I’m sorry that he’s changed his position,"" Gore said.
+
+Our ruling
+ 
+Restore Our Future’s ad says that Gingrich ""teamed with Nancy Pelosi and Al Gore on global warming.""
+
+In 2008, Gingrich filmed an ad with Pelosi calling for action on global warming, and he did it for Gore’s nonprofit group. Gingrich might regret it now, but the baggage is still there. We rate the statement True."
+"The story of OR-7, the young gray wolf who has settled in southwest Oregon after a 750-mile trek, has captured headlines around the world. He’s also reignited local debates about the place for wolves in rural communities, and their potential threat to people and livestock.
+
+In a recent article in The Oregonian, Michelle Dennehy, a spokeswoman for the state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife, spoke some about those risks.
+
+""Wolves have attacked and killed people in Canada and Alaska,"" Dennehy told The Oregonian. ""It is extremely rare and has never happened in the Rocky Mountain states, but we advise people to keep your distance from wolves and any wild animals.""
+
+Oregon is home to an estimated 24 wolves, a small population. But a 2010 reportby the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service puts the number of wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountain population (which includes Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and the eastern one-third of Washington and Oregon) at more than 1,650.
+
+This got us wondering whether it could be true that there have been no documented cases of run-ins with wolves in that fairly large area. Plus, we’re always looking for a change of pace.
+
+We started where we always start: the source. Dennehy pointed us to a 2002 report from the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research called ""The fear of wolves: A review of wolf attacks on humans.""
+
+Because ""the vast majority"" of global wolf research happens in North America, the report says, wolf attacks in Canada and the U.S. have been extremely well documented. That documentation -- and the fact that attacks are so rare -- allowed the authors to detail every attack in the past century.
+
+All told, the study’s authors found 18 wolf attacks in North America -- 12 in Canada and six in the U.S. Of the attacks in the U.S., four occurred in Alaska (as did an unspecified number of small incidents along a road where truckers had taken to feeding the wolves) and two in Minnesota, in which the victims weren’t injured. Two of the attacks in Alaska left the victim dead of rabies. Both of those happened in the 1940s.
+
+Dennehy also sent us a news clip from a paper up in Saskatchewan that detailed the 2005 deathof a young Ontario student who was on a walk near a Saskatchewan mining camp when he was attacked and killed. A sad story to be sure, but one that happened a ways away from the Rocky Mountains.
+
+We try to be thorough, so we also placed a call to the International Wolf Center, an organization that tries to advance the survival of wolves through education.
+
+We spoke to Jess Edberg, who is based in Ely, Minnesota. Minnesota has the most robust wolf population outside of Alaska.
+
+""Overall, in North America and around the world, a wolf attack on humans is very rare,"" Edberg said. ""In the lower 48, we haven't had any attacks on humans.""
+She added that many of the attacks that do occur often involve sick animals or animals who had been fed or allowed to become accustomed to humans.
+
+Edberg did point out the Alaska Department of Fish and Game had recently concluded that a woman found dead in 2010 on the Alaska Peninsula was killed by wolves.
+
+Finally, she sent us looking for two studies on wolves. One report, which shared an author with the first Norwegian report, looked at Scandinaviaand found that over the past 300 years, 94 people have been killed by wolves. All of those cases, the report found, were before 1882 and most were children under the age of 12.
+
+The second, more pertinent report, done in 2002, by Mark E McNay for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game looked at wolf attacks in Alaska and Canada and found that ""despite (a) large and widely distributed wolf population, no human deaths have been attributed to wild, healthy wolves since at least 1900, and biting incidents or bluff charges are rare enough to warrant publication in scientific journals.""
+
+Of course, that report was published before the two deaths we mentioned above.
+
+Still, the reports support Dennehy and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. There’s no evidence that a wolf has attacked a human in the Rocky Mountain states, let alone killed one. We rate this claim True. Want to comment on the ruling? Head back to Oregonlive and let us know what you think."
+"For the past several months, GOP Rep. Steve LaTourette has been weighted down in a congressional dispute over ballast water on the Great Lakes."
+"Ohio Gov. John Kasich has enthusiastically cheered the money-making prospects of hydraulic fracking, a technique used to extract oil and gas from underground shale.
+
+Eastern Ohio, with its energy-laden Utica and Marcellus shale formations, is high on the list of targeted areas where companies are looking buy up rights to drill for the lucrative resources below.
+
+But many have voiced environmental concerns over the process, which pumps millions of gallons of chemical-laced water and sand deep into horizontal wells under high pressure. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is studying hydraulic fracking’s effects on drinking water. And New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican whose pugnacious and conservative style is often compared with Kasich’s, last month ordered a one-year moratorium on the practice so more information can be gathered. Enter Ohio State Sen. Michael Skindell. Skindell, a Lakewood Democrat, this month introduced Senate Bill 213, which would institute a ban on hydraulic fracking until the EPA completes its study and lawmakers have time to digest it. A companion bill would require companies to disclose chemicals it uses when drilling. Both pieces legislation are aimed at what Skindell sees as a fracking bonanza. ""In the recent year, we have seen the oil and gas companies go to homeowners throughout Ohio and encourage them to sign leases and turn over mineral rights for this process,"" Skindell said during a Statehouse news conference to promote the two bills. ""And I understand that over a billion dollars worth of leases have been signed to date."" That billion-dollar figure caught PolitiFact Ohio’s attention, given the relatively fledgling fracking market. True, reports across Ohio have pegged the Utica shale formations in eastern Ohio as a new frontier of sorts. But $1 billion? We went to Skindell to learn his source. Skindell shared with us a web link to a March story published by the Dayton Daily News. The newspaper focused on one company, Chesapeake Energy Corp. of Oklahoma City. Chesapeake, the article noted, ""has reportedly spent $1 billion acquiring leases in Ohio without drilling a producing well, a figure reported by the Wall Street Journal on March 7."" By the time it left Skindell’s lips, it was a fact repeated at least third-hand. If it was a fact all. So off to the Wall Street Journal we went. The March 7 story attributed the $1 billion figure to Chesapeake. Journal reporter Ryan Dezember referred PolitiFact Ohio to earnings statements and other financial documents from the publicly held company. Mindful that the news at this point was 6 months old, Dezember theorized that the figure had likely grown. Sure enough, a transcript of a July 29 conference call between Chesapeake executives, investors and analysts and Chairman and Chief Executive Aubrey McClendon confirmed this. ""... We’ve spent between $1.5 billion and $2 billion acquiring leasehold in the Utica,"" said McClendon, referring to the shale in eastern Ohio. And of course, Chesapeake wouldn’t have invested that amount if executives weren’t convinced the resources could yield much more. In a financial report issued the day before the conference call, Chesapeake noted that officials believed the Utica shale play could add between $15 billion and $20 billion in value. Chesapeake is not the only party interested in Ohio shale. Clif Little, an Ohio State University extension educator in Guernsey and Noble counties, said more than 1,200 property owners have taken his ""leasing farmland for oil and gas"" classes this year. Drilling companies, small oil and gas companies, landowner associations and attorneys all are attempting to secure deep drilling rights, Little added. ""The $1 billion figure is an old figure,"" Little wrote in an email. ""The amount invested in the Utica and Marcellus would far exceed that number today, but I am no longer keeping track of investment figures."" Although he might not have been right on the money, Skindell was very much in the ballpark with respect to Chesapeake’s figures. If anything, he undersold the political point he was trying to make: that Ohio is on the cusp of a fracking boom. Skindell’s words were ""over a billion dollars worth of leases,"" and clearly that is the case. As a result, we rate Skindell’s statement True."
+"On Feb. 27, 2011, the Washington Post invited six new members of Congress to ""tell their tales in their own words."" Two of them were Floridians: Republican Rep. Allen West from District 22 and Rep. Frederica Wilson from District 17, both in Southeastern Florida.
+
+Wilson, the Miami Democrat who was elected to Congress for the first time in November, recalled how, when she was principal at Skyway Elementary in the Carol City neighborhood outside Miami, Miami-Dade County permitted a garbage plant to be built across the street from her school.
+
+The outcome, she said in the Washington Post article:  ""We closed that plant down. It was a $27 million-dollar plant, operating full steam, and we closed it down.""
+
+We knew Wilson had a long track record as an educator before turning to politics. But she had a hand in closing a multimillion-dollar plant? We had to check it out. 
+
+The plant in question was called Agripost and was built in November 1988 across the street from Skyway, the Carol City elementary school. Wilson, a veteran with the school system, was the principal.
+
+County Hall had hoped that Agripost would help solve Miami-Dade’s trash problems by turning household trash into compost through a process of shredding and fermenting. The plant was to use the composting technology to convert household garbage into a soil additive for agricultural use.
+
+""The county was looking for innovative ways to deal with the waste,"" Clerk of the Courts Harvey Ruvin, who then served as a commissioner, said in an interview.
+
+But it didn't turn out as planned.  
+
+After it opened, the plant at 20600 NW 47th Ave. emitted an odor that troubled Wilson and her students.
+
+""It was awful,"" Wilson said by telephone. ""It smelled like rotting eggs and dog poo.""
+
+And so the students made phone calls, wrote letters to government officials, and showed up at commission and school board meetings in red ""Skyway"" T-shirts. They stood on their tiptoes to reach the microphones.
+
+""She was very forceful on behalf of the children, as I recall,"" Ruvin said.
+
+Newspaper accounts credit Wilson for leading the charge.
+
+""What was the plant's biggest nemesis?"" a Wall Street Journal report asked in a December 1991 article. ""The Skyway Elementary School across the street. Principal Frederica Wilson is a self-proclaimed environmentalist. But she claimed a stench from the plant permeated school grounds, causing children to vomit or have nosebleeds, and she led a revolt against the plant.""
+
+The plant closed in January 1991, barely two years after it opened. One report in the Miami Herald, on Nov. 25, 1990, said Agripost spent $20 million to build the plant. Another, on Dec. 23, 1990, said it was a $25 million plant. Agripost appealed the commission's decision, and in 1994 sued the county for $140 million. According to a Miami Herald report on Oct. 4, 1994, the lawsuit claimed the company had invested $40 million in the plant and also sought $100 million in damages for the ""destruction of the company"" when county commissioners voted to revoke the company’s zoning authorization. The decision threw Agripost into bankruptcy.
+
+Wilson said, ""We closed that plant down. It was a $27 million-dollar plant, operating full steam, and we closed it down."" (As for the different estimates for the cost of the plant, Wilson said by phone: ""You know how long that’s been? I don’t remember everything."") But after 20 years, her memory in the Washington Post article was on target. We rate this True."
+"During a recent speech at a Tea Party rally, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli took plenty of shots at the Environmental Protection Agency.
+
+The Republican, an unabashed critic of global warming claims, called the EPA  ""the Employment Prevention Agency.""
+
+While discussing the EPA’s endangerment finding that greenhouse gasses ""threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations,"" Cuccinelli voiced contempt for new regulations that will limit tailpipe emissions.
+
+""It turns out that they believe, that if fully implemented with all the regulations that go with it, they will keep the temperature from rising nearly five one-hundredths of a degree Fahrenheit. By 2050.""
+
+As the crowd laughed and jeered, the attorney general added, ""I might not be able to see my breath by then.""
+
+Only 0.05 degrees by 2050? Is that really what the EPA was claiming these rules would do?
+
+Brian Gottstein, Cuccinelli’s director of communications, referred us to the EPA’s massive document on light-duty vehicle greenhouse gas emission standards. He pointed us to page 4-101, deep in the document. It said: ""EPA modeled the anticipated potential effect on climate change and found that in year 2100, the rule would reduce temperature increases by 0.006-0.015 degrees Celsius.""
+
+Those Celsius figures translate to a range from 0.011 to 0.027 degrees Fahrenheit.
+
+Cuccinelli had claimed there would be a 0.05 reduction in temperature increases by 2050. So he actually spoke in the EPA’s favor, overstating the expected reduction and saying it would happen 50 years faster than the agency claims.
+
+We also called the EPA and asked them to quantify any temperature reductions that could be expected under the new rules, which affect cars in model years 2012 through 2016. Spokeswoman Enesta Jones e-mailed us a response.
+
+""EPA estimated that the 2012-2016 light duty tailpipe standards would reduce the global mean temperature by 0.006 to 0.015 °C by 2100. The approach used to estimate changes in global mean temperature evaluates the impact of the rule’s emissions reductions in the context of global [greenhouse gas] emissions,"" she wrote. ""Although the projected reductions are small in overall magnitude by themselves, they are quantifiable and would contribute to reducing climate change risks.""
+
+The new EPA limits would establish in 2012 model cars the first-ever caps on carbon dioxide emissions by cars and light trucks. Over the next five years the limits would toughen by about 14 percent. The rules would also push fuel efficiency from 33.8 miles per gallon for passenger cars in the 2012 model year up to 39.5 miles per gallon in 2016.
+
+The agency says these new rules would add about $950 to the price of each new car but that the higher price would be offset by lower fuel costs over three to five years.
+
+Let’s review. The Virginia attorney general said the EPA’s new tailpipe emissions rules for cars and other light-duty vehicles would reduce temperature increases by 0.05 degrees Fahrenheit. He said this would occur by 2050.
+
+The EPA said the reductions would be between 0.011 degrees Fahrenheit and 0.027 degrees Fahrenheit and would occur by 2100. The agency’s claim is even more modest than Cuccinelli suggested.
+
+Speaking without notes at a cold outdoor rally, the attorney general came pretty close to hitting the actual EPA claim, and he actually erred in the agency’s favor by overstating the size of projected reductions. He also missed the date, but again erred in the EPA’s favor.
+
+Because his mistakes were minor and in the EPA’s favor, we rate his claim as True."
+"For years, Weaver’s Cove Energy, the company that wants to develop a liquefied natural gas terminal in Fall River, has battled critics in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, who have fought the project on several fronts.
+
+Opponents say the terminal -- and massive tankers making regular trips through Narragansett Bay -- would pose a serious safety risk to communities on Mount Hope Bay and cause widespread environmental damage. They also say the region already has enough natural gas and doesn’t need a new terminal.
+
+The four U.S. senators from the two states, who all oppose the terminal, cited the supply argument in a letter they sent in November to a key Senate appropriations committee, urging it to prohibit the Federal Regulatory Commission from using federal money to approve the terminal.
+
+With temperatures plummeting –– and the Weaver’s Cove project far from resolved –– we thought this was a good time to delve into the issue, focusing on the senators’ claim that New England has ample supplies of natural gas, and therefore doesn’t need the new terminal. We chose Sen. Jack Reed as the speaker for this item because he issued a news release about the letter.
+
+The senators cited an analysis by the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (DOER) that was summarized in a Nov. 16, 2009 letter the department sent to federal regulators: ""DOER asserts that it is unclear to what extent, if any, Weaver Cove’s LNG supply is needed to meet the region’s gas supply needs. . .""
+
+In the letter, the Massachusetts energy office staff reported that within the past year, two new or expanded LNG facilities were completed in the Northeast,  adding to the ""large excess supply already in the natural gas market.""
+
+They also cited other increased supplies and a drop in demand for natural gas. Those were among many changes in the region’s electricity and natural gas marketplace that occurred since the Weaver’s Cove project was first initiated in 2002, they said.  As a result, they said, ""it is unclear why there would be demand for additional LNG infrastructure.""
+
+We then found Damien Gaul, an analyst for the Energy Information Administration, a research arm of the U.S. Department of Energy. Gaul referred us to a recent administration projection showing natural gas demand nationally increasing from 23 trillion cubic feet in 2008 to 26.4 trillion cubic feet in 2035, a growth rate of .6 percent annually.
+
+""We don’t believe the U.S. has a need for more LNG deliveries,"" said Gaul, who emphasized his agency does not issue opinions on specific LNG proposals.
+
+""We currently have the capacity to handle five times the demand we have now. Does the U.S. need more LNG? Probably not. Does the Northeast need more? Probably not.""
+
+The natural gas supply issue also arose at a hearing for electric utility National Grid before the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission on Oct. 20, 2010.
+
+Elizabeth D. Arangio, U.S. director of gas supply planning for National Grid, said several new sources of gas have been created in the Northeast, with more to come soon. She concluded: ""So at this point, the market doesn’t technically need more supply in this area in addition to those projects ...""
+
+At the same hearing, Bruce Oliver, a consultant hired by the PUC, said the recession has reduced the demand for LNG. ""That is, the overall demand in the region has declined due to the economy and other factors, energy-efficiency activity, etc. That activity negates a lot of the factors that were driving the need for a Weaver’s Cove type of supply.""
+
+So why would Weaver’s Cove spend millions of dollars fighting to develop a project to deliver a product to a market that doesn’t need it?
+
+We asked Gordon Shearer, president of Hess LNG LLC, who has spearheaded the Weaver’s Cove project. He responded with a question: If New England has enough gas, he asked, why are prices for natural gas here much higher than in the rest of the country? (Gas prices vary widely across the country; the EIA finds prices in New England are generally several dollars higher per thousand cubic feet than the national average.) The high prices, Shearer said, show the region needs more gas.
+
+He also said the Massachusetts Energy Office used faulty arithmetic in its study and failed to note that existing pipelines don’t have enough capacity to handle much of the new LNG supplies. He also dismissed the federal reports, saying commercial forecasters tend to see a need for more imports.
+
+But documents Shearer provided told a mixed story. For instance, a report from Spectra Energy described the company’s efforts to pipe more gas to the Northeast, but it said nothing about the need for more gas from other sources.   
+
+Another report, the 2010 Statistical Guide by the Northeast Gas Association, reports that ""an era of abundant supplies appears to have arrived"" and that is having a positive impact on natural gas prices.
+
+The rapid development of shale gas supplies in New York and Pennsylvania are expected to  produce substantially more gas for the U.S. market, the report said. It noted that some proposed LNG projects, including one offshore of New Jersey, have been withdrawn recently because of the changing market conditions.
+ 
+To summarize: The Massachusetts and federal energy offices say there is an ample supply of natural gas. So does National Grid, the largest local utility.
+
+Weaver’s Cove contention -- that the region’s relatively high gas prices prove there’s not enough supply -- may make theoretical sense. But it hasn’t convinced the regulators so far. Nor us.
+
+We find the claim by Reed and the other senators to be True. Update: The original version of this item incorrectly reported that National Grid, a major supplier of electricity and natural gas, burns natural gas to produce electricity. National Grid buys and sells electricity but does not generate it."
+"On Dec. 1, 2010, Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar announced that the Obama administration would not allow oil and gas drilling through 2017 in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico.
+
+That decision reversed one by the administration weeks before the April 20, 2010, Deepwater Horizon explosion.
+
+December's announcement prompted cheers from U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat who represents Congressional District 20 in South Florida.
+
+In a Dec. 1 press release, Wasserman Schultz wrote:
+
+""A 5 percent increase in domestic production would increase the world supply by less than 1 percent and do almost nothing to our dependence on foreign oil. This would also have virtually no effect on the price of gas at the pump, which is something every consumer really cares about. Adding a fraction of a percent to the global oil supply will not lower gas prices and ignores the critical need to develop alternative energy supplies that finally break our addiction to fossil fuels.""
+
+The Truth-O-Meter has examined several claims about oil drilling and gas prices. But we wanted to know for this Truth-O-Meter, is Wasserman Schultz right? Would a 5 percent increase in domestic production increase the world supply by less than 1 percent, and why did she choose that 5 percent number anyway? Was she correct that such production would do almost nothing to our dependence on foreign oil and have virtually no effect on price at the pump?
+
+We pulled background about oil drilling and gas prices from a June 2008 Truth-O-Meter ruling on U.S. Sen. and then-presidential candidate John McCain, who used the high price of gas as part of his argument to expand drilling. PolitiFact ruled False on his claim: ""We must deal with the here and now and assure affordable fuel for America by increasing domestic production.""
+
+Background on drilling and gas prices
+
+PolitiFact wrote:
+
+The political momentum for offshore drilling has always risen and fallen along with gas prices. But while there are strong arguments that can be made in favor of offshore drilling, reducing the cost of gas ""here and now"" isn't one of them, according to oil experts and economists -- many of whom support the plan.
+
+For starters, the lead time for oil exploration takes years. Even if offshore drilling areas opened up tomorrow, experts say it would take at least 10 years to realize any significant production. And even then, they say, the U.S. contribution to the overall global oil market would not be enough to make a significant dent in the price of gas.
+
+""Drilling offshore to lower oil prices is like walking an extra 20 feet per day to lose weight,"" said David Sandalow, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and author of Freedom from Oil. ""It's just not going to make much difference.""
+
+It takes years to bring new oil wells online, said Mike Rodgers, a leading oil expert with PFC Energy in Washington. Companies need to drill exploratory wells, then discovery wells around the exploratory wells that show promise. Shipyards that build platforms, a two- to three-year job, are already booked solid. ""It's foolish to sell it as a short-term solution to high gas prices,"" Rodgers said. ""Opening off-shore drilling would have no impact whatsoever on gas prices today.""
+
+Warning! Math starts here
+
+Now back to Wasserman Schultz's claim. We asked her spokesman Jonathan Beeton for background information and he sent an e-mail with links to the documents Wasserman Schultz used. We're warning you now: This documentation includes lots of math.
+
+For starters, Beeton pointed us to a map from the U.S. Department of Interior attached to a March 31, 2010, press release which shows that drilling in the Eastern Gulf could increase production by .274 millions of barrels a day. The chart also states that in 2007, U.S. domestic production was about 5.07 million barrels of oil a day. That translates to about 5.4 percent increase -- that's why Wasserman Schultz uses a 5 percent increase.
+
+Beeton then turned to the Energy Information Administration, which provides statistics and analysis to the U.S. Department of Energy and Congress. The EIA showed that the U.S. consumes 19.5 million barrels per day as of 2008. EIA also states that global consumption of oil is about 85.46 million barrels a day (look for the world total on the bottom of the same chart for 2008.)
+
+Then Beeton did some math:
+
+Divide the amount that drilling in the Eastern Gulf could increase daily production -- .274 millions of barrels -- by global consumption of oil -- 85.46 million barrels a day -- and you get .32 percent increase to the world supply. That is less than 1 percent.
+
+With current U.S. production of 5.07 millions of barrels a day, and U.S. consumption of 19.5 millions of barrels a day, then we produce 26 percent of what we consume, Beeton wrote. Increasing production to 5.344 (5.07 + 0.274) millions of barrels a day, would increase that number to 27.4 percent -- or a decrease reliance on foreign oil by 1.4 percentage points.
+
+The experts weigh in
+
+We ran Wasserman Schultz's claim by Jamie Webster, a senior consultant with PFC Energy, which tracks oil production and demand globally and whose clients are governments, including the United States., and oil and gas companies. We also heard from Daniel J. Weiss, who has written extensively about oil prices and policy and is a senior fellow and director of climate strategy at the Center for American Progress, which describes itself as a progressive think tank. Both Webster and Weiss agreed with Wasserman Schultz.
+
+A 5 percent increase would produce around 200,000 to 300,000 barrels of oil a day while the world produced about 85 million barrels a day this year, Webster said.
+
+""An increase like that would be one-third of a percent,"" Webster said. ""It could feasibly back up some potential imports but it would be almost a rounding error.""
+
+As for prices at the pump, ""it wouldn't budge the market at all. We would still need to import gasoline; it would not have any impact. You wouldn't notice it at all.""
+
+Weiss pointed to a chart from the Energy Information Administration, which shows projections of gas and oil costs in 2020 and 2030.
+
+""Her point that it's going to make no difference in supply, no real difference in price, is correct,"" Weiss said.
+
+Let's review: Wasserman Schultz's math adds up -- Gulf drilling does indeed represent about 5 percent of current domestic production, and a 5 percent increase would barely register in terms of the world supply. And the experts we found for this Truth-O-Meter as well as ones cited in the past about McCain's claim agree that expanding drilling now would have little effect at the pump any time soon. We rate this claim True."
+"In hindsight, World Toilet Day came not a moment too soon.
+
+With a sputtering economy and high unemployment, Rhode Island has had precious few bright spots to brag about in recent years. But on Nov. 19, the Narragansett Bay Commission, which operates two major sewage-treatment plants, celebrated World Toilet Day by pointing with pride to some of the most dark and foul parts of our state: the sewers.
+
+""Think about it,"" Narragansett Bay Commission public affairs manager Jamie Samons said. ""We were one of the first states in the U.S. to build sewers, to bring the treatment plant on line, and now we’re tackling CSOs (combined sewer overflows). How lucky are we to know that we can flush reliably.""
+
+Truth be told, it’s been awhile since we’ve thought about that topic. But with World Toilet Day as our inspiration, we decided to give it some thought. So we set out to prove or disprove the claim that Rhode Island was ""one of the first states"" to build sewers and a sewage treatment plant.
+
+A 1990 Narragansett Bay Commission document, ""Reclaiming Our Resources: A History of The Providence Sewage Treatment System,"" sets the scene, taking us to the year 1854 when Providence, then the seventh largest U.S. city, faced its second cholera epidemic in five years. The city’s superintendent of health, Dr. Edwin Snow, describes the Moshassuck River as ""filthy as any common sewer,"" saying ""the stench arising from it at times pervades the whole neighborhood"" and ""at any time, dogs, cats and hogs may be seen in the water in every stage of decomposition.""
+
+But there’s good news: ""In the 1870s a sewer system was constructed which conveyed the city’s waste to be discharged through a series of 65 combined sewer overflows into the rivers and harbor,"" the document states. And in 1884, Providence sent City Engineer Samuel M. Gray to Europe to study the latest methods of treating household and industrial waste. He recommended a system to collect sewage at Field’s Point and treat it with a ""chemical precipitation method""  used in England.
+
+In 1901, the Providence Sewage Treatment system began operating, and the commission document says, ""The chemical precipitation plant, the third of its kind in the United States, was described as ‘The largest of its type ever built.’ ""
+
+So did that make us ""one of the first""?
+
+To begin with, America certainly wasn’t the first country to come up with this sewer idea. In the Mesopotamian empire (3500 to 2500 BC), some homes were connected to a stormwater drain system to carry away waste, and the Romans built the Cloaca Maxima (AKA the central sewer system) in about 800 BC, according to P.F. Cooper’s ""Historical Aspects of Wastewater Treatment.""
+
+Also, Rhode Island certainly wasn’t the first place in America with sewers. New York, Chicago and Boston battle it out over which had the first sewer system, says Jon Schladweiler, the Arizona Water Association historian who runs the sewerhistory.org website and a traveling exhibit on sewer history. But Providence wasn’t far behind the front runners, he says.
+
+Brooklyn began construction in 1857 of ""the first effective planned sewerage system in the country designed to remove sanitary wastes and stormwater,"" and Chicago began building ""the premiere sewer system of the time"" in 1859, according to Martin V. Melosi's ""The Sanitary City: Urban Infrastructure in America from Colonial Times to the Present.""
+
+In ""The Impact of Sanitary Reform,"" Jon A. Peterson says New York built about 125 miles of sewer lines between 1849 and 1865, and Boston installed about 100 miles of sewer lines between 1849 and 1873. He also mentions sewer projects under way in the 1850s in Chicago and Jersey City, N.J. And he says, ""In New England, where urbanization had advanced furthest, engineers devised major systems for Providence in 1869.""
+
+Providence also gets some love in a footnote found in ""American Sewerage Practice,"" a seminal 1914 text by Leonard Metcalf and Harrison P. Eddy. ""The sewerage system of Providence was declared in 1881 by Rudolph Hering, after a personal investigation of such work in our cities and in Europe, to be equal to anything abroad and much better than the work elsewhere in this country. The system was designed in 1869 by J. Herbert Shedd, then chief engineer of the water works and later city engineer.""
+
+And ""Mr. Shedd’s report of 1874 on these sewerage works was long a famous engineering document,"" Metcalf and Eddy say. ""It is only right to point out that the Providence sewers formed for some years the model American system.""
+
+You hear that, Connecticut? ""Model American system."" After a shout-out from Metcalf and Eddy, it’s safe to say Rhode Island enjoyed sewer All-Star status.
+
+But did we also have one of the first sewage treatment plants?
+
+Metcalf and Eddy say, ""The first extensive treatment plant utilized chemical precipitation and was built in Worcester, Mass., in 1889-1890."" Sewerhistory.org mentions an East Orange, N.J., treatment plant built in 1888 or 1889. And in ""Municipal Wastewater Treatment,"" Andrew Stoddard says, ""In 1886, the first wastewater treatment plant was constructed to protect beaches at Coney Island.""
+
+But, hot dog, Providence wasn’t far behind with its treatment plant starting to hum in 1901. And by 1909, there were still only 19 cities with more than 30,000 people treating their sewage, Joel A. Tarr notes in ""Goodbye to the Flush Toilet.""
+
+So after reviewing the claim that Rhode Island was ""one of the first states"" with sewers and a sewage treatment plan -- a phrase that leaves plenty of wiggle room -- we rate Samons' statement True.
+
+We should mention that in later years Providence’s sewage treatment became a disgrace. By the 1970s, the deteriorating plant was spewing nearly 65 million gallons of untreated or partially treated sewage each day into Rhode Island’s waters.
+
+But in 1980, voters approved an $87.7-million bond issue for improvements, the Narragansett Bay Commission was formed, and by 1995 the Environmental Protection Agency was naming the treatment plant best of its size in the nation.
+
+So next time World Toilet Day comes around, don't just sit there. Stand up and cheer."
+"Seeking re-election earlier this year, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples threw a wake-'em-up line at the Austin American-Statesman's editorial board: ""More people hunt and fish in Texas in a given year than attend the... games of the Dallas Cowboys, the Dallas Mavericks, the Houston Texans and the Houston Rockets combined.""
+
+We figured Thanksgiving (ahem, New Orleans Saints vs. Dallas Cowboys, mid-afternoon, Arlington) would be fitting for checking Staples' Aug. 31 comparison of hunting's appeal in Texas to the drawing power of several major sports franchises.
+
+Cody McGregor, Staples' campaign manager, told us via e-mail that Staples based his statement on statistics in a December 2007 report from the National Shooting Sports Foundation. He pointed us to a press release accompanying the report, which states: ""More people hunt and fish in Texas than attend Dallas Cowboys, Dallas Mavericks, Houston Texans and Houston Rockets games combined (2.68 million vs. 2.6 million).""
+
+And where did these figures come from?
+
+Lance Lemmonds, spokesman for the sportsmen's foundation, told us the hunting and fishing totals for Texas were drawn from a 2006 national survey for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Next, we learned from the agency's website that it commissions the survey every five years (the next one will be taken in 2011). According to the 2006 survey results, 2.64 million Texans went fishing or hunting in 2006.
+
+Lemmonds said an outside firm researched attendance totals for the four sports teams. He said he did not have additional information.
+
+That left us to search for attendance totals. And online, we found home-field attendance figures for each of the franchises for the time period on websites kept by ESPN, the sports cable TV network, and DatabaseBasketball.com, which posts many sports statistics. Anyway, the combined attendance for the franchises approached 2.6 million, a total we reached by adding up attendance for the Cowboys in 2006 (506,308), the Mavericks in 2006-07 (814,009), the Texans in 2006 (561,469) and the Rockets in 2006-07 (678,262). The basketball season extends from fall to summer, so attendance numbers for basketball franchises aren't limited to a single calendar year.
+
+This curve ball: The National Shooting Sports Foundation comparison leaves out attendance at professional baseball games. The Houston Astros drew nearly 2.8 million home fans and the Texas Rangers nearly 2.5 home fans in 2005, according to Baseball Almanac web posts. Swap in the Rangers, say, for the lowest attendance figure that we found (Cowboys, 506,308) and the four-franchise total would be about 4.5 million--far more than the Texans fishing or hunting in the state in 2006.
+
+Then again, in his first-blush response to us, McGregor of Staples' campaign counseled against taking franchise attendance figures at face value. ""The game attendance numbers count a ton of season ticket holders as 'people' attending a game each time they go to a game, but really you should only count a person one time if they attend multiple games of the same franchise in order to make it apples to apples with the hunt/fish number,"" his e-mail said.
+
+Regardless, it looks like a few years ago the state's hunting and fishing enthusiasts exceeded the combined home turnout for the four selected sports franchises.
+
+Next, we tried to corral updated numbers to see whether the statement still held true when Staples spoke to the Statesman.
+
+We added up the home attendance figures for the latest completed seasons for each of the franchises, getting 2.78 million. Next, we contacted the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department in search of an estimate of the people who went fishing or hunting in Texas more recently than the federal survey year of 2006. Harvey said there is no post-2006 count that the agency touts. With the agency's help, though, we divined a way toward a ballpark estimate for Texans who went hunting or fishing last year. First, we determined that the number of hunting and fishing licenses sold to Texans increased 11 percent from 2006 to the fiscal year that ended Aug. 31, 2010. We then multiplied that rate increase by the 2006 federal estimate of Texans who fished and hunted in the state (2.6 million) and added the result to the 2006 figure. Our calculation: More than 2.9 million Texans went hunting or fishing in the state last year.
+
+All told, it's risky business to stake a claim, as Staples did, on a nearly five-year-old federal survey. But more recent numbers suggest that the claim still holds true: More people hunted and fished in Texas than attended home games for the four selected Dallas and Houston sports franchises in their latest completed seasons.
+
+We rate the statement True."
+"The July 20, 2010, special session to consider a constitutional amendment banning oil drilling in state-controlled waters was full of drama and political theatrics, but ultimately little action. The session came and went in about two hours with the Republican-controlled House and Senate failing to even consider adding anti-drilling language to the November ballot. The House voted along party lines 67-44 to adjourn the session without action. The Senate voted 18-16 to adjourn.
+
+None of it, however, stopped political leaders from both major parties, and independent Gov. Charlie Crist, from trying to score political points.
+
+Among the near-constant volleys of accusations, name-calling and bickering, we found a statement from Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink particularly interesting.
+
+Speaking to reporters before the Legislature convened the noon session, Sink launched a pre-emptive attack against GOP legislators.
+
+""Today at noon, I expect to see the culmination of the complete failure of the Florida Legislature to be in tune with what's going on the real world of Florida,"" said Sink, a Democrat who is running for governor. ""In the same chamber, where House Republicans shoved through a proposal in just a few days to open state waters to oil drilling, those same Republicans will stand at their desks to claim they don't have enough time.""
+
+During the 51 minutes of House debate before legislators adjourned, we heard from several Republicans about the need to deliberately and methodically consider the impacts of an oil drilling ban. House Speaker Larry Cretul, for instance, suggested the Legislature should consider whether to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot in 2012 -- in the calm after the crisis. ""The fact remains that (Crist) has called us here at the last possible moment to consider a constitutional amendment for which he never proposed any language, and permitted far too little time for reflection and review,"" Cretul said. ""This is a terrible way to propose constitutional changes."" Was, as Sink suggested, that same line-of-thinking absent when legislators considered a proposal to allow drilling in state waters?
+
+Sink spokeswoman Kyra Jennings pointed us to the House's oil drilling legislation in 2009 as proof.
+
+That year, state Rep. Dean Cannon -- who is set to become Speaker -- filed a bill that would allow the governor and cabinet to award oil and natural gas leases in state waters between three and 10 miles offshore.
+
+The bill passed the House 70-43 but stalled in the Senate.
+
+From soup to nuts, how long did it take House legislators to consider and approve the measure?
+
+The state keeps a thorough log that follows the progress of legislation. PolitiFact Florida went back to track HB 1219, the Cannon oil drilling bill.
+
+The bill originally was filed on Feb. 26, 2009, but that's misleading. The original bill only asked the Department of Environmental Protection to develop a plan for the implementation of an oil and natural gas drilling program.
+
+Cannon, of Winter Park, didn't unveil the final oil drilling language until April 20 (a Monday night), hours before it was scheduled to be considered by a House Policy Council. The Orlando Sentinel called Cannon's language a ""surprise,"" when it was introduced. The Pensacola News-Journal reported that it ""caught opponents off guard."" In an editorial, the St. Petersburg Times called the act a ""shameful"" oil drilling ploy.
+
+The language, which was supported by oil drilling proponents such as the Associated Industries of Florida, passed out of the Policy Council 17-7. It was sent to the House floor the next day, a Wednesday.
+
+From the Times editorial:
+
+""Cannon sprang the radical idea to allow oil rigs within 3 miles of the coast in the eighth week of a nine-week legislative session. And he did it even as the House has failed to consider the governor's plan to foster renewable energy. Florida needs more than 10 days to consider changing a law that has protected its shores for decades, and the Senate and governor should reject it.
+
+""Clearly, Associated Industries of Florida has been working with Cannon for weeks to try to reverse a 20-year drilling ban -- though Cannon unveiled it just 12 hours before it passed a House council Tuesday. A pollster hired to do a survey, an industry expert from Texas and an Orlando economist touting potential revenue all testified. Cannon contended HB 1219 is merely an attempt 'to have a mature, thoughtful conversation about what we want to do about this.' So why is the public just now hearing about it?""
+
+Once on the House floor, HB 1219 was read three times as required. The first reading came on April 22 (a Wednesday), the second on April 24 (a Friday).
+
+The bill was read a third time, and amendments were considered on April 27 (the following Monday). The bill passed at 4:40 p.m.
+
+We should make clear that the Cannon legislation didn't directly allow oil and natural gas exploration in Florida waters; rather, it permitted the governor and cabinet to allow drilling. Another step would have been required.
+
+Regardless, the bill language was first made public on a Monday night and initially looked at by legislators the next morning. It passed the the following Monday. Total time in the hopper: Five working days.
+
+The special session to consider the oil drilling constitutional amendment was scheduled to last four days. Of course, it lasted just a few hours.
+
+In chastising Republican lawmakers, state CFO Alex Sink said the House ""shoved through a proposal in just a few days to open state waters to oil drilling."" It took House lawmakers just five working days from first seeing the bill to passing it. We rate Sink's statement True."
+"Seeking a seat on the Texas Railroad Commission, Houston lawyer Jeff Weems said the commission’s in charge of making sure a disaster like the BP oil spill doesn’t happen in Texas. The Democratic nominee went on to tell the United Auto Workers caucus at the party’s state convention June 25: ""Right now, there is one inspector for every 4,500 wells. You can’t do that job."" Understaffing in the extreme? We wondered if Weems got that right. In e-mails, Weems told us he heard there’s one field inspector for every 4,500 wells from Paul Whitehead, who works in a commission office in Midland. Weems said that's higher than the 1-for-3,300 ratio he got earlier from ProPublica, which describes itself as ""an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest."" ProPublica published an article in December 2009 saying the Texas commission had 83 field inspectors, ""meaning each person is responsible for almost 3,300 wells, many of them requiring several visits in a year."" It quotes Weems saying: ""It's one of the worst-kept secrets around the state that the wells that are ostensibly checked once a year aren't. They could double the number of inspectors and still be straining their staff to do their job."" Whitehead referred us to the commission’s Austin headquarters where spokeswoman Ramona Nye confirmed that of late, there are 86 inspectors for 394,365 oil and gas wells, including 282,150 active wells. As of May 28, 2010, these included 740 bay and 341 offshore wells in state waters, which extend about 10 miles offshore. Overall, that makes the inspector/wells ratio about 1-to-4,586. Agency charts show the number of wells under the commission's watch is up 11 percent from Jan. 24, 2003. The commission’s executive director, John Tintera, told us that the commission has sought additional inspectors, with mixed results. The Legislature nixed a request for seven inspectors in 2003, he said, but in 2009 it OK’d two new pipeline inspectors and authorized four more well inspectors, contingent on revenue from fees deposited in the state's Oilfield Cleanup Fund. However, the money needed to make the hires did not accumulate. Nye said the agency hasn't decided whether to request funding for more inspectors from the 2011 Legislature. In an e-mail, Weems was critical of the current staffing level: ""You cannot actively monitor that many wells - there is no way you can go by, inspect what is going on - check for leaks, condition of the premises, etc., except once every 3-5 years, and then only if you fly."" The commission's spokeswoman, Nye, said inspectors drive to well sites instead of flying. Tintera told us every well isn’t inspected every year; instead, inspectors focus on wells where there’s greater production or environmental sensitivity. He initially indicated the commission has enough inspectors to fulfill demands: ""What Texas needs is what we have."" Tintera later said the commission would ""welcome more resources, including inspectors. However, we recognize the budget constraints facing the state. Therefore the RRC prioritizes its inspections, uses outriders (inspectors who work from home) located near the oil fields they inspect to maximize efficiency, and has not included inspector positions in the hiring freeze that is currently at the agency."" All in all? Weems accurately recaps the number of oil wells per inspector in Texas. His statement is True."
+"The oil-services and infrastructure giant Halliburton is a favorite target for critics of former Vice President Dick Cheney, who used to be the company's CEO. During the presidency of George W. Bush, the company's Iraq War-related contracts attracted wide attention. Now, the company's role in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has brought Halliburton back into the headlines.
+
+During a May 20, 2010, appearance with Jay Leno on the Tonight Show, MSNBC host and political commentator Chris Matthews revived the Cheney-Halliburton connection while discussing the spill.
+
+At one point in the interview, Leno said, ""All right, a lot going on in politics with this BP thing. This is the one-month anniversary. Where are we? Who’s the lying scum here?""
+
+Matthews responded, ""Yeah, it’s the scariest thing I’ve ever seen, and, you know, I don’t know where to start. I mean, Halliburton. Sound familiar? Cheney. Cheney was head of Halliburton. When he got to be vice president, when he was signed for vice president, the oil company gave him a $34 million signing bonus to become vice president of the United States.""
+
+We'll grant Matthews some artistic license with his comment. We know he doesn't mean that Cheney literally got a signing bonus for becoming the vice presidential candidate, as a newly signed free agent would in baseball. But we thought it was worth checking whether Cheney did in fact end up with a $34 million payout when he stepped down as CEO to join Bush on the ticket in 2000. We looked at a personal financial disclosure form that Cheney signed on Sept. 1, 2000. This is the filing made once someone joins a national presidential ticket. It represents the candidate's holdings and income as of August. In the portion addressing Cheney's compensation from Halliburtion, the file lists the following categories and dollar amounts as of that date:
+
+• Salary/bonus (gross): $4,721, 947
+• Deferred salary: $1,042, 441
+• Senior executive deferred compensation contributions: $654,804
+
+Meanwhile, on May 15, 2001, Cheney also signed a second disclosure form that is supposed to update the August 2000 filing so that it covers the full year. In this filing, Cheney disclosed the following Halliburton income:
+
+• Salary/bonus (gross): $821,896
+• Elective deferred salary: $403,166
+• Stock equivalent unit bonus: $396,213
+• Senior executive deferred compensation contributions: $53,692
+• Elective deferred salary lump sum payout: $1,140,160
+• Restricted stock imputed income: $7,560,000
+• Nonqualified stock option income: $21,964,254
+• Senior executive deferred compensation payout: $2,797,128
+
+However, we were unclear about whether the totals from the May 2001 filing, which amount to $35.1 million, should be added to those from the August 2000 filing, which amount to $6.4 million, or whether the amounts in the two filings overlap somewhat. Experts we spoke to expressed uncertainty on this question as well. So we decided to take the most cautious approach and only use the numbers from the second filing, which covers the whole year.
+
+That still leaves a total of $35.1 million earned from Halliburtion reported on the May 2001 filing. Of that total, just over $800,000 represents salary and bonus, which Cheney would have earned regardless of whether he joined the ticket or not. Many of the other categories were subject to some calculation and/or negotiation, as would happen in the case of any CEO who left a position early, so it seems fair to call the rest of the income he received an exit package.
+
+So, if you subtract the salary and bonus from the larger amount, voila -- you get $34 million and change. So Matthews is right.
+
+A footnote: Cheney's timing was impeccable. As the disclosure forms indicate, he held a large number of stock options, which means he had been given the right to purchase shares of the company for an old (and, hopefully for the holder of the options) lower price than the current market value. When the holder chooses to exercise those options, they can buy the shares at the low price and then sell them at the market price, pocketing the difference.
+
+It's not clear when Cheney sold his stock options, but it likely was within weeks of his being named to the ticket -- a period when Halliburtion shares hit their 2000 peak, in the low-to-mid $50 range. By November 30, 2000, the stock had fallen to $33 a share. If he'd waited until then to sell, his payday would have been one-third lower, or roughly $14 million rather than $22 million.
+
+But Cheney does appear to have had timing on his side, so we find Matthews' statement -- that Cheney had a payday of $34 million -- to be accurate. If anything, it may have been a bit low. Either way, we give it a rating of True."
+"With a massive offshore oil spill threatening the ecosystems of Florida and other Gulf coast states, a liberal public interest group is attempting to use the environmental disaster in its fight against new drilling near Florida's shores.Progress Florida, a group based in St. Petersburg, is asking leading Florida legislative Republicans to abandon all plans for drilling in state waters, which are 3 to 10 miles off the coast.""Incoming House Speaker Dean Cannon and incoming Senate President Mike Haridopolos have said they plan to champion efforts next legislative session to allow oil rigs off Florida's coast,"" a news release said. The release included an open letter to Cannon and Haridopolos: For the past year, you've relentlessly championed efforts to allow oil rigs as close as three miles from our coast. The human, environmental and economic catastrophe happening now in our Gulf shows the folly of that effort. Although you've expressed new concerns in light of this tragedy, neither of you have publicly abandoned your effort to pass legislation next year that would sell off Florida's coastal waters to British Petroleum, Exxon, Chevron and other oil companies.It's been reported in the media that you want to further study what happened in the Deepwater Horizon accident, as if there is a possible cause that would make drilling in Florida's state waters still Okay? As many experts told you before this massive spill, it's not a matter of ""if"" there will be an oil spill catastrophe, but ""when."" As concerned Floridians, we demand to know, ""YES"" or ""NO"", do you still plan to allow oil drilling off Florida's coast? For this item, we decided to check Progress Florida's claim that Cannon and Haridopolos have said they plan to push drilling legislation when they come to power in the 2011 legislative session. So let's explore where the two incoming leaders stand on drilling.Cannon, R-Winter ParkIn 2009, Cannon filed a bill in the Florida House that would have permitted the state to lease drilling areas (at $1 million per application) that are 3 to 10 miles off Florida's coast. The bill passed the House but failed in the Senate.He brought the bill back in 2010 with provisions that would give the military veto power over drilling leases (it uses the Gulf of Mexico for training exercises) and would prevent, Cannon said, visual impact to Florida's beaches. But without support in the Senate, the bill again died.Before the spill, Cannon said he intended to try a third time in 2011, when he is speaker.On April 17, Cannon stopped the drilling discussion for the year, but said the bill would return. ""What we will do today is leave this issue in the best posture it can be -- in a position that reflects our collective work and our collective concerns,"" Cannon said. ""So when the time is right -- hopefully that is next year -- we take that issue up and deliberate further."" After the spill, however, Cannon called for a timeout.""Until we have all of the facts and all the answers about what happened and why, we shouldn't move forward,"" Cannon said on April 27.And on May 2: ""'I think it definitely is a game changer.""Haridopolos, R-Merrit IslandHaridopolos, the incoming Senate president, also has been a proponent of oil drilling in state waters. ""We will enhance Florida’s economic sovereignty by considering legislation that would allow the state’s Cabinet officials to open the waters off of Florida’s west coast to oil and natural gas production,"" Haridopolos wrote in an editorial published Sept. 24, 2009. ""Florida can no longer afford to sit idly by as competing Gulf Coast states, and even foreign nations, reap the Gulf’s economic benefits. We can’t count on Washington to understand our energy needs, and Floridians need to take steps to reclaim our economic independence.""Haridopolos published a pre-session constituent survey that he said found that 76.7 percent support legislation to allow offshore oil drilling on the Gulf Coast of Florida. The poll was unscientific.Haridopolos also filed legislation in the Senate in 2010 that would have allowed drilling in state waters. The only reason it didn’t move, the St. Petersburg Times/Miami Herald reported, was because of opposition from President Jeff Atwater. Like Cannon, Haridopolos has made offshore drilling a priority for Florida's 2011 session, hoping money from oil leases could bring new sources of revenue to Florida.That may not change, even in the wake of the spill.""Anytime you look at any exploration, whether it's energy or space, there are inherent risks,"" Haridopolos said in Florida Today on April 28. ""We just saw 29 miners killed in West Virginia, getting coal.""Next year, we want to know what happened in Louisiana -- was it sabotage, human error, how could it be prevented,"" Haridopolos said. ""This is a big change in policy and something like this gives us pause.""On the same day in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune Haridopolos said: ""One incident should not put the idea to death.""The ruling Florida Progress claims that both have said they plan to bring up oil drilling during the 2011 session, allowing drilling perhaps as close as 3 miles from Florida's shore. They have. We rate Progress Florida's claim True. UPDATE: On May 4, after this item was published, Cannon told the Orlando Sentinel that opening Florida waters to offshore drilling has been ""permanently tabled"" due to concerns over the gulf oil spill. Cannon said he will not push drilling during his two years as Speaker. “An accident like this hasn’t happened in my adult lifetime,” he said. “I doubt we’re going to get adequate answers [as to the cause] in two years, and as a matter of term limits, I’m done in two years. So as far as I’m concerned, it’s off the table.”"
+"Houston businessman Farouk Shami, running for governor, turned to his leading Democratic foe on Monday night and leveled a foul charge.
+
+In a televised debate, Shami told Bill White, the former Houston mayor: ""Our city is the third-most toxic city in the United States of America.""
+
+White didn’t take issue with Shami’s description, but it was news to us. We decided to check into the Bayou City’s ""ick"" ranking.
+
+Shami’s campaign said the candidate based his statement on a 2009 article in Forbes magazine putting Houston behind only Atlanta and Detroit for toxicity among major U.S. cities.
+
+The magazine said it based its rankings of the nation’s 40 largest metropolitan statistical areas on data provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
+
+""We counted the number of facilities that reported releasing toxins into the environment,"" the magazine said, ""the total pounds of certain toxic chemicals released into the air, water and earth, the days per year that air pollution was above healthy levels, and the number of times the EPA has responded to reports of a potentially hazardous environmental incident or site in each metro area's principal city.""
+
+Its article states Houston's residents live with with air that's far filthier than it should be.
+
+""Facilities in Houston released 88.7 million pounds of toxic chemicals in the environment in 2007,"" the magazine says, ""and the former site of a methanol fire and chemical explosion number among the city's 50 sites necessitating an EPA response. Factories that serve the local petrochemical industry emit benzene and 1-3 butabeine, toxins proven to be particularly harmful, that the area's intense sunlight and lack of wind keep trapped in the local area's atmosphere.""
+
+Jim Lester, vice president of the Houston Advanced Research Center, a Woodlands-based nonprofit group that studies and promotes sustainable development, is quoted saying Houston has become ""one of the favorite places in the world for doing air-quality science."" He saw that as a boon: ""The more people understand about it (air quality), the more changes are likely that will take us in a positive direction.""
+
+When we reached Lester, he revisited pollution levels reported by industries and posted online by the EPA. In 2007, Harris County industries reported either releasing or disposing of 36.1 million pounds of toxic chemicals, while industries around Detroit in Wayne County nearly matched that dubious achievement, reporting the disposal or release of nearly 30 million pounds of toxic pollutants.
+
+Shami correctly referred to a recent national comparison. We rate his statement as True."
+"On Day 2 of the climate talks in Copenhagen, Denmark, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin decided to weigh in.
+
+Her op-ed, published in the Dec. 9, 2009, edition of the  Washington Post  , enumerated her concerns about a series of e-mails that skeptics say show disagreement over the seriousness of climate change and President Barack Obama's plan to pledge to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels. We wrote  a separate story on the e-mails  . Here, we'll look at the emissions questions.
+
+Palin argues that developing countries, like India and China, should at least be equal partners in the effort to slow global warming; it's unfair for the United States to shoulder the burden. ""Unlike the proposals China and India offered prior to Copenhagen -- which actually allow them to increase their emissions -- President Obama's proposal calls for serious cuts in our own long-term carbon emissions,"" she wrote.
+
+Is that really what is happening? On Nov. 27, 2009, China announced it will lower emissions 40 to 45 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.
+
+That may sound like a lot, but it's important to read the fine print here. China is talking about lowering carbon intensity. It's a measurement of how much energy it takes to produce a given amount of economic output. Climate experts say this means emissions from China will likely continue to grow along with its economy, but not as quickly as they would have otherwise.
+
+""Let's say you commit to an intensity target of -6% per year in carbon/GDP,"" wrote climate scientist Jonathan Koomey, professor at Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. ""If your GDP grows at 10% per year, that means your carbon emissions will still grow 4% per year. So you're improving your carbon efficiency but absolute emissions are still increasing.""
+
+Indeed, China's GDP is growing rapidly. In the third quarter of this year, it grew 8.9 percent, likely bringing the total annual growth to 8 percent.
+
+On Dec. 4, India offered a similar proposal. Officials there say the country is prepared to cut carbon intensity from 20 to 25 percent by 2020. It's a landmark announcement for India; traditionally, the country has argued that it cannot afford to curb greenhouse gas emissions. But like China, India's economy is growing rapidly, and with it its carbon emissions.
+
+Obama, on the other hand, is arguing for a cut large enough that the United States would see an absolute reduction in emissions, explained Koomey. (Obama's plan to trim emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 is part of a cap-and-trade change bill pending in the House of Representatives. A Senate bill would require a 20 percent cut.) Koomey, like many climate scientists, say overall cuts -- even from developing countries -- are necessary to really slow down climate change. While the United States' proposed cuts are more stringent than those proposed by China or India, they're less aggressive than the 25 to 50 percent emissions reduction scientists say countries must adopt to hold global average temperature increases to about 2 degrees Celsius.
+
+So, where does that leave Palin's claim? She's correct that China and India's plans will allow them to increase emissions, while the United States would have to cut back. For this claim, Palin gets a True."
+"In her new book,  Going Rogue  , Sarah Palin said President Barack Obama's support for a cap and trade plan was ""misguided."" ""The president has already admitted that the policy he seeks will cause our electricity bills to 'skyrocket.' Sadly, those hit hardest will be those who are already struggling to make ends meet,"" she wrote. Here, we're looking at Obama's comments on electricity bills. First, though, here's a quick summary of cap and trade for those who aren't famliar with it: To slow climate change, the government would set a cap on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. To comply, companies such as electric utilities must either upgrade to cleaner technologies or buy credits — also known as allowances — to continue polluting. Companies can buy and sell the credits as necessary to conduct their business. We were familiar with Obama's original quote from his campaign for president. It came from a videotaped interview he did with the  San Francisco Chronicle  editorial board very early in the campaign in January 2008.
+
+""Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket,"" Obama told the  Chronicle  . ""Coal-powered plants, you know, natural gas, you name it, whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.""
+
+Obama also said the biggest challenge would be making sure voters understand why such a plan is necessary. ""The problem is, can you get the American people to say this is really important,"" Obama said. Obama was talking in general about cap and trade, but there is now a specific bill making its way through Congress, written by Reps. Henry Waxman and Edward Markey, Democrats from California and Massachusetts, respectively. Their goal is to lower carbon pollution by 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050. Under their plan, most pollution permits initially would be given out for free. But eventually, companies would have to buy those permits from the government. The latest version of the bill includes a number of measures to offset higher utility bills for consumers. Revenue from the permits would be passed to consumers through rebates or expanded efficiency programs, and an additional 15 percent of the revenue would go directly to low-income consumers. Legislators have opted to give 85 percent of the polluting permits away for free instead of putting them up for sale, as Obama pledged to do on the campaign trail. In theory, this approach should reduce costs to consumers. So how much would rates go up for consumers? It's hard to say. There has been much debate about the costs, and it's been difficult to come up with a reliable number because the bills have been changing as they move through the House and the Senate. Republicans have cited numbers as high as $3,000 per year, a claim that when it was combined with a falsehood on health care, earned our  Pants on Fire  rating. Recent estimates by the Congressional Budget Office and the Environmental Protection Agency are much lower — between $80 and $340 a year, depending on income. So the climate debate has changed substantially since Obama sat down with the  Chronicle  nearly two years ago.
+
+Despite those potential cost cuts, there's still little disagreement that consumers will pay for cap-and-trade, whether it's $3,100 a year or $340. Because that hasn't changed since Obama first said that utility rates would ""necessarily skyrocket,"" and because Palin got Obama's words right, we give Palin a True."
+"Responding to Republicans who have said a cap-and-trade bill could cost thousands of dollars a year for the average family, the Democratic sponsors of the bill are citing a new study from the Congressional Budget Office that they say shows their plan will be affordable.
+
+ 
+
+""For the cost of about a postage stamp a day, all American families will see a return on their investment as our nation breaks our dependence on foreign oil, cuts dangerous carbon pollution and creates millions of new clean-energy jobs that can't be shipped overseas,"" Rep. Edward Markey said in a June 22, 2009, news release jointly issued with the co-sponsor, Rep. Henry Waxman.
+
+
+Waxman and Markey, from California and Massachusetts respectively, are the authors of a bill that would set up a market for power companies and other polluters to buy and trade carbon credits. The goal is to force them to cut their harmful emissions and lower carbon pollution 83 percent by 2050. But critics say polluters will inevitably pass the cost of buying credits or cleaner technologies on to the consumer. 
+
+
+Putting a price tag on such a complex plan is tricky and controversial, as we note in our article
+
+Your Guide to the Cap-and-Trade Estimates
+
+. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, says that cap-and-trade could raise the average family's annual energy bill by $1,241. House Republicans have said that cap-and-trade could cost consumers up to $3,100, a figure they say came from a Massachusetts Institute of Technology report. But the writers of that report admonished the GOP for incorrectly interpreting their work; intially, the authors predicted it would cost consumers about $340 annually, and have since updated that estimate to $800.
+
+
+Waxman and Markey are relying on a June 19 Congressional Budget Office analysis of their bill. The CBO is a well-respected, independent arm of Congress, but we have found its findings are occasionally mischaracterized by members of Congress. So we wanted to check whether Waxman is correctly summarizing the CBO's findings.
+
+
+Indeed, the report cited by Markey and Waxman predicts the bill would have a net annual economywide cost of $22 billion — or about $175 per household — in 2020. Divide that number by 365 days, and you get about 48 cents. A first-class stamp costs 44 cents, so Waxman is close.
+
+
+The CBO's estimate includes several assumptions about important decisions that still must be made by Congress, such as how much energy companies will pay to buy and trade polluting credits. But it's worth reading the fine print on this one, because CBO notes that the actual cost per family will vary depending on income. For example, low-income consumers could expect to save $40 a year, while wealthy people will see a net increase for energy costs of $235 to $340 every year. And the analysis does not include the costs or benefits of other parts of the bill, such as government efforts to quickly develop new technology, wrote CBO director Douglas Elmendorf in a June 20 blog post.
+
+
+It's also important to note that the costs will vary year to year. As the bill stands, polluting allowances will initially be given away for free. But by 2035, about 70 percent of those allocations will be sold by the government. Supporters of the bill say federal revenue from the program would be used to pay for tax credits and rebates for the middle class. 
+
+
+CBO chose 2020 as a milestone for its analysis because it's a point at which the program would have been in effect for eight years, giving the economy and polluters time to adjust. But had CBO chosen a later date, the cost per family may have been higher because the government would gradually be charging polluters more.
+
+
+Waxman and Markey are clear about these variables and omissions in their press statement. They note that the poorest people will gain from the bill, and point out that the study does not include every element that could contribute to cap-and-trade's cost.
+
+
+But critics are more skeptical of the report. By not including all variables, the CBO report ""grossly underestimates costs of cap-and-trade,"" said a memo from the Heritage Foundation, which has published many articles opposing the proposal. Among other things, Heritage says the study is flawed because it doesn't address economic changes resulting from restricted energy use and potential job losses.
+
+
+For this Truth-O-Meter item, we are not addressing which study is best, but focusing on whether Markey correctly described the CBO's findings. He was close — off by just 4 cents — and he indicated it was an approximation because he said ""about a postage stamp a day."" So we find the statement True."
+"Al Gore startled a Senate committee with an optimistic scheme for harnessing the sun's energy. The former vice president sketched out the idea at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on climate change where he was the star witness. ""A technology called 'concentrating solar thermal' is now becoming very competitive,"" Gore said at the Jan. 28, 2009, hearing. ""
+
+Scientific American
+
+pointed out that if we took an area of the Southwestern desert 100 miles on a side, that would be enough, in and of itself, to provide 100 percent of all the electricity needs for the United States of America in a full year."" In January 2008,
+
+Scientific American
+
+published an influential article titled
+
+""A Solar Grand Plan."" A conservative writer immediately attacked Gore's claim. The
+
+Scientific American
+
+article ""did not say we needed an area 100 miles on each side, which is 10,000 square miles,"" William Tucker of the
+
+American Spectator
+
+
+wrote
+
+a day after Gore's testimony. ""The article stated, 'To meet the 2050 projection [of electrical demand], 46,000 square miles of land would be needed..."" Gore's spokeswoman, Kallee Kreider, said Gore had cited the wrong source — he intended to cite
+
+this report
+
+from Environment America, an advocacy group that promotes clean energy. That report in turn cites the U.S. Energy Department, which does indeed say on
+
+this Web page
+
+, ""The solar energy resource in a 100-mile-square area of Nevada [otherwise known as 100-miles-squared, or 10,000 square miles] could supply the United States with all its electricity using modestly efficient (10%) commercial photovoltaic modules."" That's a compelling source, but the apparent contradiction cited by Tucker made us wonder. So we called two of the authors of the
+
+Scientific American
+
+piece, James Mason and Ken Zweibel. They said that Gore was probably correct, and in fact their article — far from contradicting his claim — contains data that support it. Mason and Zweibel said that when they wrote that 46,000 square miles would be needed to meet the electricity demand in 2050, they were assuming electricity would provide a much greater portion of the country's energy than it does now — including, for example, 344 million plug-in hybrid vehicles. A 10,000-square-mile solar plant could well provide
+
+today's
+
+electricity needs, they said. Here's how (dense math ahead; proceed with caution): As graphics accompanying the print version of the 
+
+Scientific American
+
+piece indicate, the sun in parts of the Southwestern United States provides an average of about 6.5 kilowatt hours per square meter per day of solar radiation. Take that 6.5 kilowatt hours per square meter per day and multiply that by the 365 days in a year and you get 2,372 kilowatt hours per square meter per year. We'll round it to 2,400. Solar-electric systems could — optimistically — convert about 15 percent of that to electricity. That comes to 360 kilowatt hours per square meter per year. You can't cram solar panels close together, because they would cast shadows on each other. For every square meter of solar panel in the southwestern U.S., you need 2.5 square meters of space. Once you account for that (by dividing 360 by 2.5), you find each square meter of a solar installation could produce 144 kilowatt hours per year. There are 25.9 billion square meters in 10,000 square miles. Multiply that 25.9 billion by the 144 kilowatt hours that a square meter can produce in a year, and you get 3,729 billion kilowatt hours per year. The U.S. consumes about 3,900 billion kilowatt hours of electricity per year, according to the
+
+federal Energy Information Administration
+
+. So Gore's estimate was close enough considering the many uncertainties involved. ""I don't think you've found a serious blunder,"" said Zweibel, director of the Institute for Analysis of Solar Energy at George Washington University. ""Anywhere from 100 to 150 miles per side will easily produce all the electricity in the United States with any solar technology,"" said Mason, director of the American Solar Action Plan and the Renewable Energy Research Institute in Farmingdale, N.Y. That said, there are all sorts of reasons why building a 10,000-square-mile solar installation would be even more difficult than it sounds. For one, we would need a place to store the electricity so that it could be doled out in the dark night hours and on cloudy days. Mason and Zweibel suggest using the solar energy to compress air underground in caverns, old mines, aquifers and depleted natural gas wells. Then it could be released on demand to turn turbines that would generate electricity. Also, we would need a vast new system of transmission lines. To pay for that and other necessary improvements, Mason and Zweibel call for $420 billion of government subsidies. Even given all the challenges, they, like Gore, argue large-scale solar development makes sense when you consider the enormous amounts of land, energy and money we currently use to mine fossil fuels, produce electricity from them and control their pollution. Gore didn't exactly tell the whole story, since the 10,000-square-mile solar farm would not do the job ""in and of itself"" without other infrastructure improvements. But he was testifying on the broad issue of climate change, not delivering a lecture on building a solar plant. And his misattributing the claim to
+
+Scientific American
+
+is not a significant inaccuracy, since that article did contain statistics that support the claim. We find Gore's claim True."
+"During the second presidential debate, Sen. John McCain drew a distinction with President Bush on the issue of global warming. ""We have an issue that we may hand our children and our grandchildren a damaged planet,"" McCain said when environmental issues arose during the Oct. 7, 2008, debate. ""I have disagreed strongly with the Bush administration on this issue."" He went on to say he traveled all over the world looking at the effects of greenhouse gas emissions, and introduced legislation on the subject of global warming. But let's check the record – as we have
+
+in the past
+
+when McCain made similar claims on the campaign trail – and see if he was in fact at odds with Bush on global warming. McCain spoke up about global warming in January 2003. And as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, he held hearings on the issue several years before that. On Jan. 9, 2003, McCain and Sen. Joe Liberman introduced the Lieberman-McCain Climate Stewardship Act, which sought to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by capping them and allowing companies and utilities to sell or trade their emission rights. When he introduced the bill, McCain called it ""the first comprehensive piece of legislation"" in capping emissions. ""The U.S. is responsible for 25 percent of the worldwide greenhouse gas emissions,"" he said. ""It is time for the U.S. government to do its part to address this global problem, and legislation on mandatory reductions is the form of leadership that is required to address this global problem."" By contrast, the Bush administration has opposed cap-and-trade programs and preferred voluntary efforts on climate change. Manik Roy, director of congressional affairs for the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, said McCain had actually been working on the climate change bill in 2001, but it got delayed after the 9/11 attacks. The Lieberman-McCain bill ultimately failed in October 2003 by a 43-55 vote, but Roy said it was a key step in ""educating the Senate"" about how government could respond to global warming. ""It is absolutely correct that McCain stood up on this issue, forced the Senate to focus on this issue when nobody else thought it made sense and did it with strong opposition from the White House,"" Roy said. He called McCain ""a huge leader on this issue in the Senate."" And so we find McCain's statement to be True."
+"In a jarring television advertisement, the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund attempts to show a less friendly side of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin by noting how the Alaska governor championed an intensive predator management program. ""The more voters learn about Sarah Palin, the less there is to like. As Alaska governor, Sarah Palin actively promotes the brutal and unethical aerial hunting of wolves and other wildlife,"" the narrator says. ""Using a low-flying plane, they kill in winter, when there is no way to escape. Riddled with gunshots, biting at their backs in agony, they die a brutal death. And Palin even encouraged the cruelty by proposing a $150 bounty for the severed foreleg of each killed wolf. And then introduced a bill to make the killing easier,"" the narrator says. ""Do we really want a vice president who champions such savagery?"" For this item, we'll focus on this part of the ad: “And Palin even encouraged the cruelty by proposing a $150 bounty for the severed foreleg of each killed wolf.” “The cruelty” in question was a state-sanctioned hunt intended to thin out the wolf population. Indeed, Palin’s administration announced the $150 bounty for the “left forelegs of wolves” as part of a larger effort to reduce wolf populations in five areas of the state, according to a press release from the Alaska Department of Fish & Game dated March 21, 2007. The payments are made to volunteer pilots and shooters who are permitted to track and kill predators in the winter months. State biologists planned to use the forelegs as specimens to study the wolf population. Department spokesman Tim Barry said the idea came from state biologists and Palin’s office played a key role in developing the cash incentive program. Proposals of this nature ultimately are approved by the state’s Board of Game, which is appointed by the governor’s office. The release contends the payment isn’t a “bounty,” but that’s a matter of semantics. An Alaskan judge who later declared the payments illegal called it a “bounty, pure and simple” in his ruling. In fact, the Defenders of Wildlife Action, which made this ad, was among the conservation groups that took Alaska to court over the incentive program. What’s missing from the campaign ad is the context about wildlife management in Alaska, and the history of the program. Unlike other areas where wolves are protected, Alaska officials estimate the state’s vast wilderness holds 7,000 to 11,000 wolves. These elusive predators hunt moose and caribou, which are favorite targets for hunters seeking food and sport in Alaska. In 2003, then-Gov. Frank Murkowski initiated the program to manage the wolf population. In 2007, the state wanted to kill between 382 and 664 wolves, but the nearly 200 permitted hunters had shot only about 100 wolves as the hunting season neared its April 30 end. High fuel prices and limited snowfall made it hard to track the animals, so Palin’s administration offered the $150 per wolf as an extra incentive “to motivate permittees to redouble their efforts and to help offset the high cost of aviation fuel,” the release states. The organization behind the ad, along with other environmental groups, filed a lawsuit to stop the payments because wildlife bounties were outlawed in 1984. About 40 wolves were killed after the bounty was offered, but the payments were never made to hunters. The judge struck down the incentive program 10 days after it was announced, Barry said. The advertisement is intended to shock viewers by presenting Palin without the context of political life in frontier Alaska, where wildlife management is a high-profile government function. But the facts are right and the missing context has more to do with sensibilities than factual accuracy. We rate the attack True."
+"Produced by the political arm of the Defenders of Wildlife Action, a new television ad takes aim at Sarah Palin’s position on wildlife issues. The minute-long video starts by juxtaposing Palin’s darkened picture with majestic images of a bear and a wolf, while an announcer talks about her support for an aerial predator-control program. ""The more voters learn about Sarah Palin, the less there is to like. As Alaska governor, Sarah Palin actively promotes the brutal and unethical aerial hunting of wolves and other wildlife,"" the narrator says. ""Using a low-flying plane, they kill in winter, when there is no way to escape. Riddled with gunshots, biting at their backs in agony, they die a brutal death. And Palin even encouraged the cruelty by proposing a $150 bounty for the severed foreleg of each killed wolf. And then introduced a bill to make the killing easier,"" the narrator says. ""Do we really want a vice president who champions such savagery?"" The ad shows grisly video footage: low-flying aircraft with gunners leaning out the door shooting wolves and bears from the air. The plane later lands and the shooter finalizes the kill. In one picture, a wolf’s carcass hangs from one of the plane’s wing braces. For this item, we'll focus on the claim that Palin promotes ""aerial hunting of wolves and other wildlife."" Palin’s record on the issue is actually quite clear. As a candidate, and as governor, the Republican has endorsed wildlife management practices that include the controversial use of airplanes to thin out predator populations. But in Alaska, frontier politics look different than they do in the Lower 48. Alaska has vast populations of wolves, bears, caribou and moose, and sportsmen who hunt and sometimes live off those species. “If I am elected, I don’t want you to be surprised that I am a proponent of predator control in order to build those populations of moose and caribou,” Palin said, according to news reports from a gubernatorial debate in 2006. Alaska state officials take issue with the use of the phrase “aerial hunting,” preferring “aerial shooting.” “The predator-control program that we do — that isn’t hunting and we never claimed it is,” said Tim Barry, spokesman for the Alaska Department of Fish & Game. “It deliberately gives hunters an unfair advantage. That’s what we want.” It’s tougher to assess the ad’s subjective assessment that such practices are “brutal and unethical,” though many wildlife groups would agree. Defenders of Wildlife has filed lawsuits challenging Alaska’s wildlife management practices. President Rodger Schlickeisen said his group takes the view that any killing of animals, outside of a biological emergency, is unwarranted. In September 2007, more than 120 scientists signed a letter to Palin that questioned the biological basis for the state’s intensive predator management. Aerial hunting has been banned since 1972 in every state but Alaska, which gets around the federal law by claiming that predator population control is more important. The ad is missing an important note of context. Unlike other areas around the United States where wolf populations are smaller, Alaska officials count between 7,000 and 11,000 in the state. Wolf populations are managed in five parts of the state as part of a program that began in 2003 under former Gov. Frank Murkowski. In 2007, Palin’s administration proposed enhancements to encourage hunters to kill more wolves when it became clear that not enough wolves were being taken out of the population to meet the state’s goal for the year. Palin’s office announced a plan to pay hunters $150 for each wolf killed with the money to be paid when hunters turned in the left foreleg of dead wolves to state biologists. The program was axed by a judge who ruled it an improper bounty on wildlife. “I have said many times that my administration is committed to management of game for abundance, and to a proactive, science-based predator management program where appropriate,” the governor said in a news release at the time. We find her actions are adequate to support the statement that she promotes aerial shooting. But the environmental group’s categorization of the program is debatable and not putting it within the context of a state predator management program is a bit misleading. We find the claim is True."
+"A new TV ad from the McCain campaign portrays the Arizona senator as a leader in the fight against global warming. The ad begins with fast-paced music and horns honking. It shows black-and-white scenes of crowded freeways, smokestacks belching and a glacier collapsing. ""John McCain stood up to the president and sounded the alarm on global warming . . . five years ago,"" the narrator says. The stark black-and-white scenes are replaced by more pleasant color footage of a wind turbine against a bright blue sky and water flowing through a dam. ""Today, he has a realistic plan that will curb greenhouse gas emissions. A plan that will help grow our economy and protect our environment."" With images such as a newspaper headline that says ""McCain climate views clash with GOP,"" the ad portrays McCain as an independent voice on climate change. Indeed, the
+
+Congressional Record
+
+shows that McCain spoke up about global warming in January 2003. And as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, he held hearings on the issue several years before that. On Jan. 9, 2003, McCain and Sen. Joe Liberman introduced the Lieberman-McCain Climate Stewardship Act, which sought to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by capping them and allowing companies and utilities to sell or trade their emission rights. When he introduced the bill, McCain called it ""the first comprehensive piece of legislation"" in capping emissions. ""The U.S. is responsible for 25 percent of the worldwide greenhouse gas emissions,"" he said. ""It is time for the U.S. government to do its part to address this global problem, and legislation on mandatory reductions is the form of leadership that is required to address this global problem."" By contrast, the Bush administration has opposed cap-and-trade programs and preferred voluntary efforts on climate change. Manik Roy, director of congressional affairs for the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, said McCain had actually been working on the climate change bill in 2001, but it got delayed after the 9/11 attacks. The Lieberman-McCain bill ultimately failed in October 2003 by a 43-55 vote, but Roy said it was a key step in ""educating the Senate"" about how government could respond to global warming. ""It is absolutely correct that McCain stood up on this issue, forced the Senate to focus on this issue when nobody else thought it made sense and did it with strong opposition from the White House,"" Roy said. He called McCain ""a huge leader on this issue in the Senate."" And so we find McCain's statement to be True. "
+"While Republicans argue that the United States needs to do more drilling for oil and gas to deal with rising energy prices, Wisconsin U.S. Senate candidate Mandela Barnes, a Democrat, has a different perspective on the matter. During discussion of the transition to renewable energy in a recent primary debate, Barnes said: ""This is not a light switch. This is turning the dial. And the fact is, we have more oil and gas permits than ever before right now. We need to focus on that transition to renewable energy."" Let’s dial in on that third sentence. Do we really have more oil and gas permits than ever before? In response to a request for supporting information, the Barnes campaign shared a Yahoo News article from March reporting that oil and gas permitting in the United States has increased under President Joe Biden’s administration. The article relies upon a data dashboard of onshore oil and gas leasing and drilling under the Biden administration from the Center for Western Priorities, a nonpartisan conservation and advocacy organization focusing on the American West. The dashboard, originally published on March 8, 2022, was updated July 21. It mostly relies on data from the U.S. Department of Interior’s Office of Natural Resources Revenue and the department’s Bureau of Land Management, which is the agency responsible for approving oil and gas drilling permits on public land. Since Barnes said ""permits"" and not ""leases,"" we will focus on the former. For context, oil and gas companies must obtain a lease for land they want to drill on before applying for a permit. Permits usually expire after two years, but the agency can grant extensions. We’ll start by noting the earliest available permit data tracked by the BLM is from 2010 — so that provides a very limited window for a most-ever claim like the one Barnes made. We’ll also look at the data in two ways — permits that are approved but unused, and all permits. According to the dashboard, as of March 2022, companies held nearly 9,000 approved, but unused, drilling permits. A Bureau of Land Management spokesperson confirmed this, saying that the number of such permits peaked at the end of fiscal year 2021 at 9,623. (The fiscal year ended Sept. 30.) That is the highest total in the last decade. According to the BLM, the total number of approved but unused drilling permits was at 7,091 at the end of fiscal year 2020. As of May 2022, that total was at 8,920 permits. But what about the total number of existing permits, not just those that are currently unused? An analysis of data from the BLM’s online database shows the number of existing permits has dramatically increased since calendar year 2016, as more permits have been issued and the expiration dates of already issued permits have been extended. Indeed, the number of existing permits also peaked in 2021 at 16,096. Meanwhile, there are 14,427 overall permits so far in 2022, a number that could increase as the year continues. The above data only takes into account onshore oil and gas drilling – not any offshore operations, where oil and gas are extracted from below the Outer Continental Shelf. Offshore drilling is managed by the U.S. Department of Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which is responsible for leasing, and its Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, which is responsible for permitting. An analysis of that data, which goes back to 1996, shows the number of approved permits for new wells peaked in 2006 at 381. The number of approved permits has steadily declined since then — likely a result of legislative pressure at the state and federal level to restrict offshore drilling due to environmental concerns. So, the offshore data would have only a small impact on the overall picture. And that picture is one where Barnes is right on the current number, and may well be right on the historic one. But the data is too limited for him to make such a sweeping claim. During a debate, Barnes said ""we have more oil and gas permits than ever before right now."" The Bureau of Land Management confirmed that the number of approved but unused onshore drilling permits reached 9,623 at the end of fiscal year 2021, the highest it’s been in the past decade. The problem is there is no available earlier data, which would really be necessary to make such a sweeping claim. That puts an asterisk on what Barnes said, and means we’re nudging our rating down to Mostly True, which we define as: ""The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information."""
+"In July 2016, northern Wisconsin was battered by severe storms that devastated the area. The storms led to flash flooding, which overwhelmed small creeks and rivers and washed out roads. Culverts overflowed along rural roads, with the water damage leaving them no longer drivable. More than 80 boats were damaged or destroyed in Saxon Harbor, where the heavy rainfall caused flooding that almost washed away boat slips and trees, and pipes and cement culverts up from the ground, according to a July 2016 report from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Rainfall totals reached 14 inches in some parts of the Northwoods. A broad swath of destruction lingered for years in its path, according to a July 2021 report from the Wausau Daily Herald. In June 2018, heavy rains pummeled the Northwoods again, dropping 10 or more inches of rain in some areas, according to the National Weather Service. U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisconsin, cited the two storms in a Nov. 6, 2021 panel discussion at the United Nations Climate Change conference, highlighting how unusually  strong the storms have gotten in Wisconsin since she took office. ""Within two years, there were two 500-year events,"" she said. But were the storms really that strong? First, let’s take a look at what a 500-year storm is. It has nothing to do with five centuries of history. A 500-year storm is an event with a 1-in-500 chance of occurring, according to the United States Geological Survey, or an annual probability of occurrence of around .2%. That is, it’s just a way of defining the statistical probability of a severe storm. For instance, just because there were 11 inches of rain in one day in one year, doesn’t mean that Wisconsin won’t see 11 inches of rain in one day again for another 500 years. In theory, these types of events with such low statistical probabilities are rare, meaning that it might not make sense for cities, engineers and others to plan around the possibility of them happening -- though that is being rethought, as 500-year storms and floods are happening more often due to climate change, according to an August 2017 report from Vox. When we asked Baldwin’s team about her claim that the storms were both 500-year events, they sent a host of links from the National Weather Service with data from both events. According to the data, the 2016 storm did indeed reach the threshold for a 500-year storm in some places, including the community of Saxon Harbor. In other places, the storm reached even higher thresholds. The storms that pummelled the area in 2018 also reached similar thresholds, with some areas sustaining 500-year rainfalls or higher, according to the NWS. But the Northwoods aren’t the only area where severe storms have risen to the same 500-year level. Storms in southern parts of the state around the same time also met that definition. So, Baldwin is a bit off -- though in a way that actually reinforces the point she was making. Daniel Vimont, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said Madison received more than 11 inches of rain on August 21 2018. The threshold for a 500-year rainfall within 24 hours is 9.5 inches. Then on Aug. 28, 2018, Cashton received over 10 inches of rain within 24 hours, which again rose to the level of a 500-year storm. Baldwin claimed that since she took office, two ""500-year"" storm events occurred in northern Wisconsin. Data from the National Weather Service shows that 500-year storms did indeed strike the northernmost counties in Wisconsin in 2016 and 2018, overwhelming creeks and rivers. But storms in Cashton and Madison in 2018 lso rose to the same level, meaning that there have been more than two such storms within two years in the state. So Baldwin actually undershot the number of high-impact storms within the state between 2016 and 2018. We rate this claim Mostly True. "
+"On his first day in office, President Joe Biden signed an executive order revoking the March 2019 permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline. The pipeline was to carry crude oil from Alberta, Canada, to Steele City, Neb., where it would connect with another leg stretching to Gulf Coast refineries. The pipeline is opposed by environmental groups, but had won federal approval under then-President Donald Trump. Construction began in 2020, but only a mile or so of the pipeline had been completed before Biden’s action. His order cited a 2015 review by the Department of State and then-President Barack Obama, which found the pipeline would not serve the U.S. national interest. In the wake of the order, several Wisconsin politicians criticized the move as a job-killer for, yes, Wisconsin. That’s because two state-based companies had a contract to work on the project. (House Republicans introduced a bill to bring back the pipeline on Feb. 2, 2021). In a Jan. 21, 2021 post on Facebook, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, listed a series of things that would be lost with the end of the project, including ""10,000 union jobs (nearly 2,000 with Wisconsin companies)."" Let’s zero in on the last part. Would ending the pipeline cost nearly 2,000 union jobs with Wisconsin companies? In its November 2015 report, the State Department wrote that only 50 jobs would be required to maintain the pipeline after construction – 35 full-time jobs and 15 contractors. So the majority of the jobs for the Keystone pipeline would be short-term and construction-related. At the time, the report noted the pipeline would lead to 3,900 direct construction jobs. Of course, that number may have risen in the intervening five years, and in claims about the economic impact of projects, secondary-jobs are often considered. When asked for backup, Johnson’s office pointed to two online posts. One post, from Sept. 3, 2020, was by Michels Corporation, based in Brownsville, Wisconsin. The other, dated Jan. 5, 2021, was on the website for the Keystone XL Pipeline, run by TransCanada PipeLines Ltd. (TransCanada is an affiliate of Canada-based TC Energy Corporation, which was to own the pipeline with the Alberta government.) The Michels Corp. post said the company would employ more than 350 people on facilities projects during peak construction. The career page on the company’s web site says Michels offers both union and non-union jobs. The TransCanada/Keystone page includes a quote from Bobby Poteete, president of Precision Pipeline, an Eau Claire-based subsidiary of Florida-based MasTec, Inc.: ""We are extremely proud to put PPL employees and more than 1,600 American union members to work on completing this important infrastructure project…"" Later, that post includes, ""PPL will be responsible for hiring an estimated 1,600 union workers over the two-year construction period."" So over the course of construction, that will be a total of 1,950 jobs – or ""nearly"" 2,000 jobs– provided by Wisconsin companies. We reached out to Michels and Precision Pipeline, but neither responded. The Wisconsin companies were chosen alongside three Texas companies and a Montana company in October 2020 by TC Energy. Johnson’s claim could lead readers to believe the jobs would be permanent, or that 2,000 are already at risk. But the jobs involved are temporary, construction ones. And the total number would fluctuate over the course of the project. For instance, Michaels said it would be employing the 350 workers only when they reached peak construction. What’s more, the jobs would also likely be outside of Wisconsin, because the pipeline’s path is through Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska. So, that would lessen the impact on the state of any lost jobs -- and related spending power -- due to Biden’s action. Johnson said in a Facebook post that shutting down the construction of the Keystone pipeline would result in ""nearly 2,000 (union jobs lost) with Wisconsin companies"" Based on the information we could find, the number checks out. Two Wisconsin companies were among the six that have been awarded construction contracts, and roughly 2,000 jobs are involved. That said, readers could have easily understood Johnson to mean permanent jobs, when they would be only temporary. And the total represents a peak, not current jobs. We rate his claim Mostly True. "
+"Has Milwaukee’s position as Wisconsin’s largest city as well as a Democratic stronghold put Brewtown in the crosshairs of state Republicans? State Sen. Chris Larson, D-Milwaukee, alluded to the city’s treatment by Republicans about a week before the election, in an Oct. 26, 2020, tweet marking National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week: ""I'm so glad we have a Governor who cares and wants to help WI cities get to 0% lead piping. Sadly, in 2019, Republicans stripped $40 million from the budget for lead pipe replacement - because they thought it helped MKE too much."" That caught our attention. Did Republican lawmakers strip funding from the budget for lead pipe replacement because it would help Milwaukee too much? Under Evers' plan, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, state officials would have borrowed nearly $40 million over the two-year budget period to create a forgivable loan program for local governments to help pay for lead pipe replacements. The borrowing also would have created a separate grant program that would allow farmers to build infrastructure aimed at reducing pollution and help rid contaminants in the Milwaukee River and St. Louis River, which is in northwest Wisconsin. Evers' proposal would have paid for up to 50 percent of the cost of replacing a lead water service line in Milwaukee, if the city qualified for the state program. According to Milwaukee Water Works, there is no lead in the city’s drinking water when it leaves treatment plants. But there is a danger in the water -- especially in older homes -- because old service lines, which run to individual houses, and interior plumbing may contain lead, which can leach into the water. The most fundamental solution, in Milwaukee and elsewhere, is to replace the old pipes with copper ones, but other interim steps can make a difference, such as assuring at-risk homes have filters on their taps. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, even low levels of lead in blood have been shown to cause developmental delays and learning difficulties in children. Lead exposure also harms adults, who may suffer high blood pressure, joint pain, headaches and an increased risk of having a miscarriage or premature birth. As of Dec. 31, 2019, the Milwaukee Water Works reported 74,416 lead service lines within its service area, according to Department of Public Works spokesman Brian DeNeve. About 70,000 of those are residential. Those 70,000 residential lead service lines account for about 40% of the total statewide. The proposed $40 million in bonding could have led to the replacement of 9% of the state's 170,000 lead service lines still in use, the Evers administration estimated. When asked to provide backup for Larson’s statement, spokesman Justin Bielinski pointed to news articles detailing GOP objections in the wake of the Evers proposal. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said the plan was too expensive. ""I feel like the simple answer was to just say we're going to have government pay for all these lead lateral replacements,"" Vos said, according to an April 10, 2019, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article. ""But the number nationwide is trillions of dollars, which we will never have the ability — at least in Wisconsin — to be able to do things like that everywhere across the state."" In the same article, state Rep. John Nygren, R-Marinette, who co-chairs the Legislature’s budget-writing committee, singled out the Milwaukee funding. ""My understanding is that the proposal — a vast majority of it — is going to Milwaukee,"" Nygren said. ""We had targeted our response to the lead issue as a local opportunity for communities to get involved and provide assistance at the local level, rather than people from Marinette funding lead replacements in Milwaukee. I'm not sure that that's necessarily fair from a taxpayer standpoint."" Meanwhile, a  video titled ""Milwaukee Tries to Pass the Buck on Lead Lateral Replacement"" posted May 20, 2019 by the MacIver Institute to YouTube, shows Vos praising Madison’s efforts to replace lead laterals on its own, without a state mandate, and notes the laterals are owned by homeowners, not taxpayers. ""The City of Madison did a great job over the past dozen years getting rid of lead laterals on their own without a mandate from the state,"" Vos said. In the video, Vos says those who have already paid to upgrade their laterals should not have to now pay the cost of replacing laterals owned by others. In its description of the video, the MacIver Institute, a conservative think tank, describes this as a ""handout"" to the city from state taxpayers. In May 2019, the Legislature voted along party lines to remove many of Evers’ most significant proposals from his state budget, including the lead proposal. So, in short, before striking the money from the budget, several GOP leaders cited the fact too much of it would go to Milwaukee. But they also cited other factors, including questioning whether an effort financed by state taxpayers was an appropriate way to tackle the problem. In a tweet, Larson said ""In 2019, Republicans stripped $40 million from the budget for lead pipe replacement - because they thought it helped MKE too much."" At least two key leaders opposed the program, citing -- in part -- the amount of money that would go to the City of Milwaukee. But there were other factors cited as well. Our definition for Mostly True is ""The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information."" That fits here."
+"Paula Jean Swearengin, the Democrat who challenged Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., in 2020, took to Twitter to argue that their state needs to improve its standing in some key quality-of-life metrics. Swearengin was replying to a tweet by Andrew Yang, who ran in the Democratic presidential primary earlier this year. Yang had tweeted, ""America is 33rd in access to quality education, 33rd in child mortality and 31st in clean drinking water. But our stock market is up."" In her Sept. 10 reply tweet, Swearengin brought home those metrics for West Virginia voters. ""West Virginia is near last in the U.S. in these rankings. There are conditions in this state comparable to a 3rd world country. Our incumbents have done nothing but line their pockets with dark money while we suffer."" West Virginia is near last in the US in these rankings. There are conditions in this state comparable to a 3rd world country. Our incumbents have done nothing but line their pockets with dark money while we suffer. #NoMoore #WestVirginia https://t.co/Tx7XYj2M3Y We decided to check whether credible rankings show West Virginia to be ""near last in the U.S."" in all three areas. We’ll address them one by one. (Swearengin’s campaign did not respond to inquiries. She eventually lost the election to Capito.) Statistics for K-12 graduation rates differ somewhat, depending on how you measure them, and as we’ve reported previously, no measure is foolproof. Still, West Virginia performs well in a measure that analyzes the ""cohort"" of students entering school in a given year and then follows them to see whether they graduate, adjusting for students who move in and out of the state. By this measure, West Virginia was one of only seven states in the U.S. to reach a 90% graduation rate for the 2017-18 class. Another closely watched metric for K-12 education is the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a national test of scholastic achievement at various grades. In both fourth-grade and eighth-grade math, West Virginia ranked fourth from the bottom among the 50 states in 2019. In fourth-grade reading, West Virginia was ninth from the bottom, and fourth from the bottom among eighth graders. So West Virginia has uniformly poor rankings in national standardized testing. Independent analyses suggest a broadly similar picture. An analysis by U.S. News and World Report, using these statistics and a few others, ranked West Virginia 42nd in the nation overall on K-12 education. Another analysis, by the website WalletHub, used 33 metrics to evaluate schools by state. In the metrics for educational ""quality,"" West Virginia ranked 45th nationally. The metrics we cited above on education are ""reasonable ones to use,"" said David Bills, a professor at the University of Iowa College of Education. The Environmental Protection Agency measures the number of violations by public water systems per 1,000 residents in 2017. West Virginia ranked 46th among the 50 states on this metric that year. The only states ranking lower were Maine, Vermont, Montana and Alaska. According to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, West Virginia ranked fifth worst among the 50 states for child mortality in 2018. The only states with worse rates were South Carolina, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi. Swearengin said, ""West Virginia is near last in the U.S."" rankings of education, clean drinking water and child mortality. In standard federal government rankings of drinking water and child mortality, West Virginia does rank in the bottom five states. It also ranked no higher than ninth from the bottom in several common math and reading tests for the National Assessment of Educational Progress. But by one measure, the state’s high-school graduation rate is among the nation’s best. On balance, we rate the statement Mostly True."
+"As Floridians have returned to the beaches after shutdown orders were lifted, they have been leaving behind garbage. ""Beachgoers trash Florida beaches with 13,000 pounds of litter after beaches reopen,"" stated a headline on the Truththeory website and posted on Facebook May 12, 2020. The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) But in this case, the Facebook post has some truth to it. We found that the number of 13,000 pounds was correct, however it would have been more accurate to refer to the materials as ""garbage"" rather than ""litter"" because some of it was found in trash bins. Also, it was a reference to one specific beach in the state, as explained in the story. The Facebook post cites a May 9 article by Florida Today about the amount of garbage found on Cocoa Beach once restrictions were lifted. Starting in late March and then April, the city of Cocoa Beach posted rules that significantly limited use of the beach including the hours, parking and group sizes. But in recent weeks those rules were loosened -- and that’s when the garbage piled up. The city has a contract with Keep Brevard Beautiful to pick up litter on about a five-mile stretch of Cocoa Beach. Typically, they collect  between 30 and 50 bags per day, executive director Bryan Bobbitt told PolitiFact. Each bag weighs 40 to 50 pounds. On Friday, May 1, the organization collected about 33 bags. That grew to 122 bags on Saturday and 142 on Sunday. In total over that weekend, about 13,560 pounds of garbage was removed, City Manager James McKnight told PolitiFact. Most of the trash was in trash cans or bagged next to trash cans, he said, however a significant amount was picked up directly from the beach itself. The police department announced it would fine violators $250 for littering. A headline said ""beachgoers trash Florida beaches with 13,000 pounds of litter after beaches reopen."" That referred to the amount of garbage collected during the first weekend in May at Cocoa Beach. It was the amount of garbage collected from trash bins as well as from the beach, which means it wasn’t all improperly discarded litter. We rate this claim Mostly True."
+"As President Donald Trump’s negotiators were working with congressional leaders to assemble a coronavirus economic relief package, the president’s re-election campaign didn’t shy away from blasting one key Democratic leader, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. On March 24, Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale shared a video focused on the coronavirus bill Pelosi had released the day before. It named a half-dozen provisions in the Take Responsibility for Workers and Families Act that the Trump campaign considered outside the scope of the current crisis. On screen, the ad says: ""Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats clog their coronavirus relief bill with leftist wishlist. Democrat bill includes: tax credits for solar and wind energy … emissions standards and carbon offset requirements for airlines … policing racial makeup of corporate boards … retirement plans for community newspaper employees … $300 million for PBS … climate change studies for civil aviation and aerospace industries. Democrats don’t care about your health or the economy. They only care about politics"" Democratic officials acknowledge that most of those provisions are in the bill, which at the time the ad was launched was taking a back seat to negotiations over a Senate bill. However, one of the provisions cited by the Trump campaign’s ad is not in the bill. A still from a Trump campaign ad targeting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's coronavirus relief bill. Pelosi’s bill seeks to shape the behavior of any airlines that accept federal assistance to the benefit of their workers, customers and the environment. Carbon offsets are addressed in section 704 of the bill. Corporate board diversity, in the form of retrospective reporting requirements, is part of section 407, while the climate change study is in section 707. A statement provided by the Democratic leadership said that ""the extreme impacts that COVID-19 has had on corporate operations, the workforce, the lack of adequate contingency plans designed to protect worker interests and needs, and the impact this has had on the national economy highlights the need to have worker interests represented on corporate boards."" This language, in section 404, is largely drawn from H.R. 1916, a bill that has been introduced but not advanced. The bill would change rules for community newspapers’ defined-benefit pension plans. The Democratic leadership says this is part of an overall pension package to help cash flow for companies. This would be a supplemental appropriation for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds PBS and which is facing shortfalls due to the coronavirus, the Democratic leadership says. This is the one provision cited by the ad that is not actually in the House bill, despite pressure from the industry to include it. The campaign ad says that Pelosi’s coronavirus bill included provisions on ""tax credits for solar and wind energy … emissions standards and carbon offset requirements for airlines … policing racial makeup of corporate boards … retirement plans for community newspaper employees … $300 million for PBS … climate change studies for civil aviation and aerospace industries."" The ad is correct that five of those six provisions are in the House bill. The remaining provision, on tax credits for solar and wind, is not. We rate the statement Mostly True."
+"During a House committee hearing on President Donald Trump’s budget proposal, U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky questioned the White House’s acting budget director on major cuts Trump’s plan would make to the Environmental Protection Agency. ""Does this budget propose cutting funding for the Environmental Protection Agency?"" Schakowsky, an Evanston Democrat, asked Acting Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought. ""It proposes a cut to EPA by about 26% and we believe that we will still be able to fulfill the statutory responsibilities of clean air, clean water, clean —"" Vought said, before Schakowsky interjected with a claim that caught our attention: ""We’ve also seen in the time that he’s been president, an increase in carbon emissions going absolutely in the wrong way,"" she said. In 2018, PolitiFact rated Half True a claim from Trump’s EPA that greenhouse emissions were down under the president, finding that while emissions were continuing to fall, the rate of decline had slowed during Trump’s first year in office. The data at that time did not show emissions were rising. So we wanted to find out whether more recent figures support Schakowsky’s claim that emissions have increased under Trump, and whether the changes suggest a trend going ""in the wrong way."" Overall, emissions are indeed up from 2016 levels following a spike in 2018. After that, carbon emissions again began to decline. Experts interviewed say those incremental changes may have nothing to do with Trump policies. In response to our inquiry, a spokesman for Schakowsky’s office pointed to reports highlighting a 2018 spike in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions following three years of declines. A report published in May 2019 by the Rhodium Group, an independent research firm, estimated CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion rose 2.7% in 2018. It was the second-largest annual increase since 2000, the group reported, though somewhat smaller than an estimate it made earlier in the year based on preliminary data. The largest increase occurred in 2010 under then-President Barack Obama as the economy began its rebound from the recession, according to the group. In a draft report released this month, the EPA noted a similar uptick in 2018 CO2 emissions, which comprise the vast majority of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. So Schakowsky is correct there was a spike in carbon emissions on Trump’s watch. In 2019, however, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions fell again, according to several recent international reports. And that drop was not a surprise. Indeed, the preliminary Rhodium report for 2018 noted that while the pace of U.S. emissions decline had slowed since 2016, the group did not ""expect a repeat"" increase the following year. To address that point, Schakowsky’s office sent us a Scientific American article speculating the decline identified in one of the international reports could be ""overly optimistic"" and a Washington Post story highlighting the Rhodium Group’s lukewarm preliminary findings for U.S. emissions in 2019. While a significant decline in coal consumption last year helped drive the overall drop, Rhodium noted, the United States made little progress in other areas. By their accounting, net greenhouse gas emissions remained slightly higher in 2019 than at the end of 2016. ""There are low-cost technology solutions to reduce oil and gas methane emissions,"" the Rhodium report said. ""But their deployment at scale requires strengthening regulations that the Trump Administration instead has been weakening."" It’s also worth noting Rhodium did not attribute any of the emissions changes seen so far to the Trump administration, which has made eliminating federal environmental regulations a priority. Instead, both Rhodium and the federal government pegged the 2018 increase to fluctuations in weather, which drove up heating and cooling needs, and to increased economic growth. ""Overall there has indeed been an increase (or at best little or no change) in carbon emissions since Trump has been president,"" said John Nielsen-Gammon, a climatologist at Texas A&M University, in an email response. ""Whether Trump’s policies have had any significant positive or negative effect on U.S. carbon emissions is a separate question."" Schakowsky said that in the time Trump has been president, the nation has seen ""an increase in carbon emissions going absolutely in the wrong way."" Reports show U.S. carbon dioxide emissions did spike on Trump’s watch in 2018. They fell again last year, but greenhouse gas emissions overall remain higher than they were before he took office. We rate her claim Mostly True. MOSTLY TRUE — The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check."
+"When it comes to weather and climate change, there has been lots of talk about causes and consequences. In some areas of Wisconsin this winter, rapidly melting snow has overtaken roads and caused sewage to overflow, while flooding and its effects continue to be a concern. The National Weather Service in Green Bay indicated most rivers in northeastern Wisconsin have more than a 50% chance of flooding to some extent. Whether it be the toll on infrastructure or disrupting business operations, weather and climate change carries a monetary cost. On Dec. 10, 2019, the U.S. Senate Democrats’ Climate Committee sent out a tweet arguing Wisconsin roads and bridges are at risk of collapse from severe storms and flooding. That same day, U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., tweeted this about the national cost: ""Over the past two years, climate and weather disaster damage has cost the U.S. over $400 billion and our economy will lose over $500 billion annually from lost labor, crop failure and damages related to extreme weather if we don’t #ActOnClimate now."" Is Baldwin right about $400 billion-plus in damages? The source When asked for backup for the claim, Baldwin’s staff pointed to The Fourth National Climate Assessment, a 1,526-page document that examines the effects, risks and course of climate change in the United States. The Fourth National Climate Assessment is a cooperative effort between experts from academia and government agencies, such as the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Department of the Interior. On page 66, the report indicates NOAA estimates the United States incurred $400 billion in damages from weather and climate disasters from 2015 through April 6, 2018. But that figure is for different years and a longer time period (three-plus years) than Baldwin claimed. NOAA climatologist Adam Smith from the Center for Weather and Climate at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information in Asheville, N.C., noted the numbers in the report are also a bit dated. He pointed us to newer figures. Baldwin’s reference was to the ""past two years."" She made the statement in December 2019, so examining the two-year span immediately before that, her numbers are dramatically off. NOAA estimates the U.S. experienced $137.8 billion of economic damage from 2018 and 2019 when adjusted for the consumer price index, and $135.6 billion unadjusted. However, looking at the two most recent full years before Baldwin’s claim — 2017 and 2018 — Baldwin’s figures line up. NOAA estimates the inflation-adjusted damage in those calendar years was $411.7 billion. The NOAA calculation includes damage to buildings and public infrastructure, among other costs. The agency tracks damage from drought, flooding, freeze, severe storms, tropical cyclones, wildfires and winter storms. Smith said in an email NOAA uses data from agencies such as the National Weather Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the National Interagency Fire Center. There are some types of data they do not include due to inconsistencies. ""For example, our disaster cost estimates are actually somewhat conservative, as we don’t account for losses/damages to natural capital assets, mental and physical healthcare-related costs post-disaster, or incorporate all downstream economic impacts,"" Smith wrote. We checked with several experts from academia who agreed that the NOAA numbers are probably the best available for the United States. The agency’s data shows that the number of disasters that topped $1 billion in damages has increased each decade since the 1980s. There were 119 weather and climate disasters that topped that threshold during the 2010s, up from 59 in the 2000s, even after adjusting for inflation. Over the past three years (2017 through 2019), there was an average of nearly 15 disasters that topped $1 billion in damages. Our ruling Baldwin said ""Over the past two years, climate and weather disaster damage has cost the U.S. over $400 billion."" Her claim is on target for 2017 and 2018 -- though if  the two years were measured from the date of her claim, essentially covering 2018 and 2019, there was a much-lesser amount in damages. Our definition of Mostly True is ""The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information."" That fits here."
+"In the last debate before the Feb. 3 Iowa presidential precinct caucuses, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said the United-States-Mexico-Canada-Agreement (USMCA) did not go far enough to protect the environment or the rights of workers. Moderator: ""But, Sen. Sanders, to be clear, the AFL-CIO supports this deal [the USMCA]. Are you unwilling to compromise?"" Sanders: ""The AFL-CIO does. ""The Machinists Union does not (support the USMCA trade deal). And every environmental organization in this country, including the Sunrise Organization, who are supporting my candidacy, opposes it."" We found Sanders mostly correct in stating major organizations oppose the USMC, although stating that every major organization opposes it was a stretch. Plus, his claims about union support for the deal need some context. Responding to PolitiFact, the Sanders campaign pointed to a letter from a group of 10 high-profile environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club, the League of Conservation Voters, Greenpeace, and others, urging Congress to vote against the USMCA. The 10 groups signing the letter have a combined 12 million members. ""We do not get many opportunities to renegotiate trade deals. At this pivotal moment, we cannot afford to lock ourselves into a multi-decade deal that ignores climate change and helps corporate polluters,"" the letter stated. However, some large environmental groups did not take a stance on the USMCA. In an email to The Daily Iowan, representatives from the Environmental Working Group, a nonpartisan conservation nonprofit, said the group has no official stance on the USMCA. Likewise, the Union of Concerned Scientists said the USMCA is not an issue the organization is working on or following. The USMCA is the new agreement governing trade between the United States, Canada, and Mexico, updating the nearly 25-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement. The leaders of the three countries involved in the agreement agreed to the USMCA in November 2018. The USMCA passed the House of Representatives 385-41 on Dec. 19, 2019, and the Senate 89-10 on Jan. 17, 2020, with bipartisan support. Sanders was one of 10 senators to vote no on the agreement. Channing Dutton, a Des Moines-based attorney and member of Citizens Climate Lobby, said most environmental groups would oppose the agreement because the USMCA does not include provisions for climate change in its current form. ""It’s a safe bet that every responsible climate change organization would oppose any trade agreement that ignored the effects of climate change or allow easy modification of the agreement because of climate change impacts,"" Dutton said. Dutton, who has endorsed businessman Tom Steyer’s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, added that the agreement cannot be modified to adapt to worsening climate conditions, echoing the concerns environmental groups expressed that the deal cannot be altered to provide provisions for climate change after it becomes law. ""This is why he [Sanders] said he would not sign the deal without climate change considerations,"" Dutton said. ""They use the agreement to stop people, communities, states, and even nations from doing things such as adopting the carbon tax that Citizens Climate Lobby supports."" Sanders also brought up during the Des Moines debate the USMCA’s support among unions. Moderator Brianne Pfannenstiel, the chief politics reporter at the Des Moines Register, said the AFL-CIO, a federation of more than 55 national and international labor unions, supports the deal. The AFL-CIO announced in December 2019 its support for the deal, which it previously opposed, after negotiating with lawmakers to include more provisions for the deal it deemed to be labor-friendly. ""The USMCA is far from perfect. It alone is not a solution for outsourcing, inequality or climate change,"" the AFL-CIO said in a prepared statement. ""Successfully tackling these issues requires a full-court press of economic policies that empower workers, including the repeal of tax cuts which reward companies for shipping our jobs overseas."" During the debate, Sanders noted that the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace (IAM) workers, which has a membership of 600,000, opposes the USMCA. Although the machinist and aerospace union is part of the AFL-CIO, it issued a statement criticizing the USMCA, though it did not cite concerns over climate change. ""U.S. workers have been waiting over 25 years for a responsible trade deal that puts their interests ahead of corporations who are fleeing our shores,"" the machinists and aerospace union wrote in the statement. ""They are still waiting. The IAM will oppose NAFTA 2.0."" Responding to PolitiFact, the Sanders campaign cited the IAM statement, as well as statements from the National Family Farm Coalition, which has around 450,000 members, and the United Food and Commercial Workers, with 1.3 million members, as evidence of labor unions upset with the USMCA. While some unions are in opposition, other large unions have issued statements of support for the newest version of the USMCA. The Teamsters, a union consisting of truck drivers, mechanical workers and other trades with a membership of 1.4 million, supports the deal. Additionally, the United Steel Workers, with a membership of 860,000, supported the deal, while the United Auto Workers, membership 990,000, did not explicitly support the deal, but said the deal will need to be strictly enforced to prevent the further loss of U.S. auto industry jobs to Mexico. ""We will do all we can to vigilantly monitor the agreement to try to make sure multinational corporations live up to their end of the bargain, but we should have no illusion that our efforts alone will get the job done,"" United Auto Workers president Rory Gamble wrote in a prepared statement. Sanders said about supporting USMCA, ""The AFL-CIO does. The Machinists Union does not. Every environmental organization in this country, including the Sunrise Organization, who are supporting my candidacy, opposes it."" Sanders is correct in saying the Machinists Union does not support the USMCA trade deal, although some major unions support it. Not every single environmental group in the country opposed USMCA — some had no position. But most of the major groups were opposed, including 10 organizations with 12 million combined members who urged Congress not to support the USMCA. We were unable to find any major environmental group that endorsed the deal. We rate Sanders’ statement Mostly True."
+"When former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that he would spend $500 million on a Beyond Carbon initiative, West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice joined energy industry representatives at a press conference to denounce the effort. The project Justice criticized aspires to retire all coal use by 2030 while securing an economic future for fossil fuel-producing communities. In an op-ed announcing the effort, Bloomberg — who has since entered the Democratic presidential primary race — touted an existing partnership between Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Sierra Club that has ""shut down 289 coal-fired power plants since 2011."" The new initiative would build on this effort and also ""work to stop the construction of new gas plants,"" Bloomberg wrote. ""By the time they are built, they will be out of date because renewable energy will be cheaper."" Justice, a Republican whose state is a leading producer of coal and other carbon-based energy, said the effort could be ""catastrophic"" to West Virginia. (Justice himself also inherited a coal mining business and continues to own several mines.) At one point in the press conference, Justice was asked about the environmental impacts of fossil fuels. He responded by questioning the value of the United States cutting back if China is using carbon-based fuels on full blast. ""How does it make sense that in China, they’re burning seven to eight times the amount of coal that we’re burning in the United States?"" Justice asked. Is his comparison accurate? Justice’s ratio is not far from the reported data, though it’s worth noting that the reason for the discrepancy has a lot to do with the fact that China has a much larger population. (His office did not respond to inquiries for this article.) There’s little doubt that, as a whole, coal consumption by China is several times larger than it is in the United States. According to the 2019 BP Statistical Review of World Energy, China’s coal consumption was 1.91 billion tons of oil equivalent in 2018. In the same year, the United States consumed 317 million tons. That means China consumed about six times as much coal as the United States did. Another data source, the Global Energy Statistical Yearbook 2019 published by Enerdata, an energy intelligence and consulting firm, found a nearly identical difference — China was about six times larger than the U.S. in consumption of coal and lignite (a low-efficiency type of coal). Justice didn’t mention it, but another country, India, also consumes more coal than the United States does — 452 million tons of oil equivalent, according to the BP review. We’ll note that the difference in coal consumption between China and the United States is partially explained by the two countries’ difference in population — China has about 4.3 times higher in population than the United States. However, adjusting for population is less significant in this case than it often is, given Justice’s point. Justice is arguing that greenhouse gases do not stay within national borders; they spread everywhere in the atmosphere. So any decreases in carbon emissions made in the United States will be a relatively small factor compared to China in the global context — regardless of which country has a bigger population. Indeed, according to the BP data, China accounted for just over half of the world’s coal consumption in 2018. In addition, the same data shows that China’s coal consumption increased by 1.8% between 2007 and 2017, whereas U.S. coal consumption declined by 4.9%. Unlike the United States, which has a lot of economically competitive natural gas under development, China doesn’t, said Anna Mikulska, a nonresident fellow in energy studies at the Center for Energy Studies at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. ""China has to go against the economic calculus to retire at least some of the coal if it wants to lower emission levels,"" she said. ""This is why we see China still consuming so much."" Mikulska added that the current trade friction with China ""does not help, as China turns more to domestic or regional resources due to energy security concerns. One of them is coal."" That said, the Paris-based International Energy Agency, has projected that China’s coal consumption will indeed decline over the next two decades. ""This new direction will have consequences that are no less significant for China and the world than its earlier period of energy-intensive development."" Justice said that China today is ""burning seven to eight times the amount of coal that we’re burning in the United States."" The actual number is a little bit less than that — China consumes roughly six times the amount of coal as the United States does. But that’s pretty close. We rate the statement Mostly True."
+"Democratic-controlled California has been labeled the ""State of Resistance,"" in large part for challenging the Trump administration in federal court on issues ranging from the environment to immigration to the U.S. census. As of late September, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra had filed or joined 60 lawsuits against the Trump administration. His office has also filed friend of the court briefs in several additional cases against the administration. But is California really ""winning"" in court as Becerra and Gov. Gavin Newsom have confidently claimed? ""We are winning. The vast majority of the lawsuits have been adjudicated in favor of California,"" Newsom said at a news conference on Sept. 16 at the state Capitol. Becerra has been equally self-assured: ""Every time we go to court, for the most part, we win,"" Becerra claimed at a late August news conference where he announced one of California’s 14 lawsuits on immigration since the president took office. That suit seeks to block to block Trump administration rules that could indefinitely detain migrant children and their families. ""If I were a baseball player, my batting average would be the envy of the MLB,"" he quipped in a Mercury-News article in May. ""We’re proving that no one is above the law, including the president of the United States."" We set out to fact check Becerra’s claim: ""Every time we go to court, for the most part, we win."" Our research CalMatters, a nonprofit news organization, along with a Marquette University political science professor have separately tracked California’s lawsuits against the Trump administration. Records from both generally support Becerra’s claim that the state is winning in court, at least for the cases that have received rulings so far, though they also show the majority of lawsuits are still pending a final decision. The CalMatters database of 60 lawsuits showed the state had won 16 completed cases and lost two, while 38 are pending and another four were on hold, as of late September. California has scored some clear victories. In July, it prevailed in its effort to block the Trump administration from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the move and Trump abandoned his plan. The state also won a case against the administration’s attempt in 2017 to cut off certain federal funds for ""sanctuary"" jurisdictions. A district court ruled the move was unconstitutional. California again sued the administration last year after it withheld money for similar reasons. The state was also victorious in several cases where it sued to ensure federal energy and environmental regulations were implemented. In February, the state was dealt one of its few defeats following its lawsuit to stop the Trump administration from waiving environmental laws to speed up border wall construction of in California. A federal district judge and later an appeals panel ruled in favor of Trump. The state also lost a case it joined opposing Trump’s ban on travel from several predominantly Muslim countries. The first version of the ban was struck down by a lower court, while a second partially went into effect but then expired. The Supreme Court upheld a third version in June 2018. Earlier in Becerra’s August news conference, the AG offered a more nuanced and complete version of his statement about California winning in court. ""Unfortunately, close to 60 times now this administration has taken actions which would harm the people of the state of California. And in most of the cases that we’ve filed, we have been victorious so far in the rulings that we’ve secured,"" Becerra told reporters. A spokesperson for Becerra provided a list of the state’s cases against the Trump administration, along with information about the status of each, though not an explicit win/loss breakdown. ""Some have concluded, but many are ongoing,"" the spokesperson wrote in an email. ‘California has had great success in court’ Paul Nolette, the Marquette political science professor, is tracking all multi-state lawsuits against the Trump administration. His database includes the majority of cases filed by California against the administration, though not the 13 solo cases the state has filed against it. As of mid-September, Nolette said California had been successful on nearly 90 percent of the multi-state lawsuits that had received at least an initial judgment, though he cautioned that a majority of the cases are still awaiting a final ruling. ""California has had great success in court against the Trump administration, looking at both those completed cases as well as looking at those other cases that are still working their way up through the system,"" Nolette said. Here’s how the state has fared, based on Nolette’s data: • It is involved in 53 multi-state lawsuits against the Trump administration • Of those, 21 cases have been completed while 32 are pending a final ruling • Of the 21 completed cases, it has won 16 and lost three. Two were voluntarily dismissed Nolette said California’s record in the pending, multi-state cases is also good. ""In cases where there’s been some sort of court judgment or ruling, California is 10 and 0. And some of those cases may still be on appeal. So, they could still lose,"" he said. ""But, I think if you combine both of those together (the pending and completed cases), that’s a lot of wins: Really 26 clear wins in these cases, against only three losses."" California’s solo cases Like the multi-state cases, California has had some early success in cases it has brought independently against the Trump administration. The attorney general’s office described 13 of its 60 lawsuits against the Trump administration as ""California-only suits."" Among those cited by the AG’s office, the state has two clear victories and one loss, according to a review by PolitiFact California. Nine of the cases are still pending, while one seeking conflict of interest documents from former EPA Director Scott Pruit was settled with the EPA producing the documents when Pruitt resigned last year without admitting guilt. UC Davis Law School Dean Kevin Johnson agreed California has a successful record in court so far. ""I think generally it’s a fair statement,"" he said of claims California is ‘winning.’ ""It’s not as easy as saying whether a team won a football game, though. Some of these cases are far from completion. For example, in the cases challenging the president’s executive order on punishing and defunding sanctuary jurisdictions, the case isn’t over."" The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Our ruling California Attorney General Xavier Becerra claimed at an August news conference, ""Every time we go to court,"" against the Trump administration, ""for the most part, we win."" A Marquette political science professor and CalMatters, a nonprofit news organization, are separately tracking California’s lawsuits. Their records each show the state has won the vast majority of cases that have received at least an initial or completed ruling. But that doesn’t mean California has won ""every time we go to court,"" as Becerra put it, even acknowledging his qualifier ""for the most part."" Most cases are still working their way through the courts and have yet to receive final judgments, some of which could go against California. That important caveat is not reflected in Becerra’s claim. Becerra does, however, offer a more complete statement earlier in the press conference, saying ""in most of the cases that we’ve filed, we have been victorious so far in the rulings that we’ve secured."" Given this context and California’s early success in court, Becerra’s claim is generally accurate. We rate his claim Mostly True. MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check."
+"As part of Sen. Cory Booker’s presidential primary campaign, the New Jersey Democrat talks about ""environmental justice"" — which seems to mean addressing the environmental factors that disproportionately affect people who are low-income and from minority backgrounds. One issue he’s highlighting: the impact of so-called Superfund sites, hazardous waste sites that are especially prevalent in Booker’s home state, and usually located in the same neighborhoods as low-income residents, often African American or Hispanic. In an April 29 interview with MSNBC, Booker cast that issue not only as a challenge for social justice and equality but also as a public health problem. ""We now have longitudinal data that shows that children born around Superfund sites have dramatically higher rates of birth defects, dramatically higher rates of autism,"" he said. This isn’t the first time Booker has made this argument, and it likely won’t be the last. So, we decided to dig in and see how it stands up to scrutiny. First, the data Booker’s press team sent us two Superfund studies: a 2008 paper on the association between toxic landfills and autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) and a 2011 study probing that association regarding congenital anomalies (the ""birth defects"" Booker mentioned). In the autism paper, researchers mapped the location of New Jersey Superfund sites and almost 500 children diagnosed with ASD from 1998 to 2006, finding that cases appeared in higher frequency closer to the sites. Those researchers also checked for a relationship between higher numbers of Superfund sites in a state and frequency of ASDs. That analysis ""reveal[ed] considerable overlap"" between high Superfund rates and autism diagnoses — though the authors were quick to caution that a correlation didn’t mean one caused the other. The 2014 paper looked at births from 1989 to 2003, near Superfund sites in Florida, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Texas — all of which were cleaned up at some point in that time frame. Before a site was cleaned up, infants were, on average, 20% to 25% more likely to have a congenital birth defect. ""This does suggest that the Superfund sites caused birth defects,"" argued Janet Currie, a study author and professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University, in an email to KHN. Both of these are longitudinal studies, meaning the research was collected over time to track patterns and changes. Booker’s phrasing is quite deliberate – and that matters for his case We spoke to environmental health researchers unaffiliated with the studies. They said it would be very difficult to prove that being born near a Superfund site causes kids to be born with birth defects, or causes autism. It helps that in his statements Booker doesn’t try to make that case. One caveat, though, is that a casual listener could draw that conclusion. The studies he’s working with are ""fairly exploratory,"" said David Savitz, a professor of epidemiology at Brown University’s School of Public Health. While they support the idea of a link between autism and Superfund sites, or birth defects and such sites, they don’t go so far as to support a case for causality. Other factors could contribute, too. ""It’s not hard to imagine all the ways the communities proximal to waste sites may be different — a lot of ways other than just having the waste site,"" Savitz said. But Booker’s comments are rooted in legitimate data sources. Both those studies are peer-reviewed and suggest there could be some kind of relationship. So, the center of his claim — there is data that shows children near Superfund sites having higher rates of congenital abnormalities and autism — does, in fact, check out. Even so, environmental health experts said, much more work is needed to understand the nature of that claim. Risk factors for autism are still not well-identified. And congenital abnormalities can refer to a range of different problems — so research that lumps them together may gloss over important distinctions, especially when it comes to what might cause a specific birth defect. The bigger picture Booker is getting at a larger truth: Many chemicals found at Superfund sites are related to health problems, the experts said. And, those same experts added, his environmental justice framing is one that makes sense, too, given the demographics of those most often affected. From a policy standpoint, Savitz argued, Booker’s bigger point — that cleaning up Superfunds would improve health outcomes, in particular for marginalized people — is clearly true. The only real issue, some suggested, is his use of the word ""dramatically."" The data suggests potential correlation, but whether it’s ""dramatic"" is far from clear. ""Certainly there is evidence to back up his claim,"" said Amanda Bakian, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Utah, who studies environmental contributors to autism risk. ""There’s been work finding an association, but the relationship is modest. … We do need more research in this area."" Our rating Booker is correct in saying data shows that children born near Superfund sites have higher rates of birth defects and autism. In this statement, he doesn’t specifically say there is a causal relationship — which is important, because the data does not necessarily say Superfund proximity causes those issues, and more research would be needed to support that claim. The use of the word ""dramatically"" causes a bit of trouble, however. The datasets show statistically significant correlations. But that isn’t the same thing as a ""dramatically higher rate."" The statement is true, but could use more context. We rate it Mostly True. This fact check was reported and edited by Kaiser Health News. PolitiFact and KHN are partnering to fact-check claims about health care."
+"Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who’s made climate change the centerpiece of his 2020 Democratic presidential run, said he would use the U.S. military’s vast purchasing power to promote clean energy. Asked in an interview what the Inslee administration would do about global warming in the first 100 days, Inslee said he would make the Pentagon’s budget more eco-friendly, and argued that elements of that concept have already been shown to work. ""We have flown a Boeing 737 across the Atlantic Ocean on biofuels. We have flown F-18s,"" Inslee told Vox. ""So we can use the procurement power of the United States military to drive some of this clean energy."" Inslee was right about biofuels having powered a supersonic jet. We also found that aircraft similar to the 737 completed transatlantic flights on blended fuel, though we didn’t find instances where 737s had done so. Inslee is correct that the U.S. military has flown an F-18 on biofuel. Navy aviators made history in 2010 by flying an F-18 Super Hornet on a 50-50 blend of conventional jet fuel and biofuel—the first time this was attempted in a supersonic jet, according to the Washington Examiner. The 45-minute test flight took place on Earth Day at a Maryland naval base, the Navy’s media wing reported. The biofuel was derived from a plant called camelina, which is native to North America. Prior to the test flight, the Navy said, the Pentagon awarded a $2.7 million contract to a Montana-based renewable fuel company for 40,000 gallons of camelina-based fuel. The environmentally-friendly moves were part of then-Navy Secretary Ray Mabus’s initiative— known as the Great Green Fleet—a $510 million, three-year program to explore cleaner energy options. Under the program, the Navy certified warships and aircraft to operate on biofuels. But according to Todd Harrison, the director of defense budget analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, naval systems do not routinely use biofuels due to their high cost. Harrison seemed skeptical that the military would embrace a dramatic shift to the alternative energy source. ""It is possible that if the Navy started making regular, large-scale purchases of biofuels for its systems that it could help jump start this industry and bring down the price for other consumers,"" Harrison added. ""But that would be a significant investment on the part of the Navy for something that only tangentially benefits the military."" Mabus, for his part, told us he sees climate change and national security as inextricably linked. He argued that as one of the biggest energy consumers on the planet, the Defense Department’s role in combating climate change should not be overlooked. Bottom line: Inslee is right that F-18s have flown on biofuels. But what to make of his claim about 737s? Inslee didn’t specify who he claims flew a Boeing 737 across the Atlantic—and a Navy spokesman said that service branch had never flown this series aircraft on biofuels. We reached out to Inslee’s campaign, and they pointed us to a Boeing press release that described the company’s development of a fuel that blended petroleum fuel and ""bio-derived oils and waste animal fats."" The press release also mentions Boeing’s work with Virgin Atlantic on a 2008 bio-fueled test flight. But it doesn’t say anything about flying a 737 across the Atlantic Ocean on biofuels. (We reached out to Boeing directly but didn’t hear back.) That said, we did find numerous examples of transatlantic flights powered by biofuels. Boeing posted a clip on YouTube in 2011 of a 747-8 Freighter completing what the plane maker described as ""the first-ever transatlantic biofuel flight with a commercial jetliner."" A Lufthansa 747 made the first biofuel-powered transatlantic commercial flight to the United States in 2012, and two years later Finnair used a cooking oil-based biofuel to fly an Airbus A330 from Helsinki to New York. In 2018, United Airlines celebrated the ""longest transatlantic biofuel flight to date"" when a 787 Dreamliner flew from San Francisco to Zurich. Inslee said, ""We have flown a Boeing 737 across the Atlantic Ocean on biofuels. We have flown F-18s."" The Navy made history in 2010 when it flew an F-18 supersonic jet on biofuels. We found numerous transatlantic flights that have been powered by biofuels, too. We weren’t able to find instances where Boeing 737s had done so, but those are similar to other aircraft we documented. We rate this Mostly True."
+"If a picture is worth a thousand words, Rep. Joe Cunningham, D-S.C., may have proved that a one-second blast of sound is worth 2,000. At a March 7 U.S. House hearing about threats to whales posed by energy exploration, Cunningham pulled out an airhorn and, with permission, pulled the trigger. Cunningham's show-and-tell went viral. ""Was that disruptive?"" Cunningham asked Chris Oliver from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In November, the agency gave five companies permission to use high-powered acoustic seismic survey tools to scout for oil and gas pockets off the Atlantic coast from Delaware to Florida. Cunningham wanted to illustrate what high-powered means. ""It was irritating, but I didn't find it particularly disruptive,"" Oliver replied. Cunningham then pressed Oliver to compare the noise of the airhorn to the seismic airgun arrays used by the survey ships. Cunningham: ""How much louder do you think seismic airgun blasting sounds then this airhorn you just heard?"" Oliver: ""I honestly don't know."" Cunningham: ""Take a guess. Ten times?"" Oliver: ""At a distance of how far?"" Cunningham: ""Well, say say you're within a reasonable distance, say within a quarter-mile. Is it 10 times? 25 times?"" Oliver: ""I honestly don't know."" Cunningham: ""I mean, can you take a guess."" Oliver: ""No."" Cunningham: ""A hundred times? You think it's a thousand times times louder ? Oliver: ""I doubt it."" Cunningham: ""You doubt it. What if I were tell you it's 16,000 times louder than what you just heard here?"" Oliver wasn’t the only person surprised to hear that a seismic airgun array is 16,000 times louder than an airhorn. We decided to see if the number holds up. • In an apples-to-apples comparison of decibel levels, the seismic arrays emit sound waves that range from 19,000 to 10 million times more intense than Cunningham’s airhorn. • Short of the point where the force of sound waves blows out your eardrums or causes other physical harm, loudness is more a matter of human perception, rather than a measurable quantity that applies across species. • Comparing decibels, instead of loudness, is the approach marine biologists use. Oil and gas companies can get an idea of where to drill in the ocean by using ships that send sound waves toward the ocean floor and pick up the echoes to see what’s underneath. This government diagram shows the basic process:  Source: Bureau of Ocean Energy Management The airguns release a burst of high-pressure air into the water. The rippling bubble creates the sound waves. Notice that some of the sound waves head straight down and some head off at an angle. The way the arrays work, the more a sound wave deviates from straight down, the lower the decibel level. We factored that in when we ran the numbers below. Just before Donald Trump took office, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management cancelled permit applications for seismic surveys in the mid and south Atlantic coastal waters. The agency wrote the value of the surveys ""does not outweigh the potential risks of those surveys’ acoustic pulse impacts on marine life."" When Donald Trump became president, the government reversed course. At the end of November 2018, the permit applications cleared a key hurdle. Many coastal communities oppose drilling for fear of harm to the environment and tourism industry. Seeing seismic surveys as the first step before any wells are sunk, South Carolina and 16 municipalities — Cunningham represents several of them  — have sued the federal government to block both the surveys and offshore rigs. One of the arguments against the surveys is that they threaten marine ecosystems and the animals that live in them. The North Atlantic right whale is particularly vulnerable. Only 411 survive, about a 15 percent decline in eight years. The factors driving their decline are numerous. They include being vulnerable to disease; sustaining wounds from passing ships; and dying as calves after losing the care of their mothers. The sounds from the seismic airguns have been linked to killing the krill the whales feed on and causing breakdowns in the whales’ ability to communicate. Scott Kraus, senior science advisor at the New England Aquarium, who testified at the House hearing, told us that the low frequency sounds used in the surveys are particularly troubling. ""Low frequencies travel far with little attenuation, so seismic noise goes for hundreds of kilometers,"" Kraus said. ""Nearly all baleen whale communication occurs in the lower frequency bands, hence the concerns over disturbance, displacement, and cow/calf separations at great distances."" The government imposes a number of restrictions to minimize the impact on marine life. Scientists such as Kraus say those restrictions are wholly insufficient, given the intensity of the seismic surveys and the way sound travels through the ocean. Cunningham said seismic airgun blasting was 16,000 times louder than his airhorn. For context, an ordinary conversation is about 60 decibels (dB). A garbage disposal working hard is 80 dB. A jet taking off is about 140 dB. Cunningham's airhorn comes in at 120 dB. Cunningham's big number basically checks out, but there are issues. First off, loudness is subjective. Humans process sound one way, and whales, well, ""actually, we do not know about large whale perceptions of loudness,"" said Christopher Clark, a Cornell research professor, who specializes in whale acoustics and testified against the seismic surveys at the hearing. ""As bioacousticians working with animals, in this case whales, we do not talk about loudness, we use sound level in decibels."" Second, Cunninham's staff took the 120 dB blast of the airhorn and the maximum level of 260 dB for a seismic airgun and subtracted to find the difference. The problem is, one was measured on land and the other in the ocean. ""Comparing a sound in air with one in water, although based on a genuine interest in getting this loudness difference idea across to the public, is misdirected,"" Clark said. ""The way sound intensity is measured in air is not the same as the way sound intensity is measured in water."" Rebecca Drago, Cunningham’s spokeswoman, said he wasn’t aiming for technical accuracy. ""He wanted to illustrate to the people there in the room what this really loud sound would feel like,"" Drago said. ""Using decibels isn’t really effective for people to understand."" Fortunately, there's a simple conversion (abut 62 dB) to compare air and water decibel readings. On an apples-to-apples basis, we calculated the decibel level difference between Cunningham’s airhorn and the seismic airgun arrays. We corrected for the air-water factor, and we used three decibel levels for the airgun arrays, based on numbers from the NOAA Fisheries environmental assessment report, discussions with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and an independent analysis of seismic surveys. There are more than three levels, but we selected a range from high to low. The bureau used 230 dB in its environmental impact statement. The table’s lowest decibel level for an array corresponds to the steepest angle away from straight down under the ship. How much difference that actually makes for the whales and other ocean animals is a matter of debate. For this fact-check, it is enough to say that at the low end, an airgun array can be 19,000 times more intense than an airhorn. That is a little bit more than the 16,000-fold difference Cunningham said. Given the way the decibel system works (it’s logarithmic), a 60 dB change is a million times more intense, and a 70 dB change is 10 million times greater. At those levels, Cunningham greatly understated the acoustic difference between his airhorn and seismic airgun arrays. To be sure, sound in water has many nuances and it’s possible that a level less than 225 dB could be recorded. But the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management told us this is ""approximately"" the range they use, and we found no lower figure. Cunningham said that seismic airgun blasting ""is 16,000 times louder"" than an airhorn. We don't know exactly how whales process sounds, so louder is not the right term. But decibel levels can be compared. Given the range of decibel levels from the seismic arrays, Cunningham is pretty much on the money at the low end of the readings. Above that, Cunningham greatly understated the difference. His statement is largely correct, but it needs some additional context. We rate this Mostly True. Correction:  A previous version of this fact-check said that the survey permits had been issued. The fact-check now reflects that the NOAA Fisheries agency approved the incidental taking of marine life, a key step before final approval."
+"Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, one of the Democrats running for president in 2020, has made climate change the centerpiece of his days-old campaign. Shortly before making his run official, he discussed the importance of climate change in an interview and made this claim about the impact of fires on his state: ""The forest fires were so grotesque last year that we had the worst air in the world in Washington. We were choking. It’s a very personal thing for me."" A couple of days after launching his campaign, Inslee repeated the worst-air claim during another discussion about climate change. We wanted to know whether Washington really had worse air quality than in India or China in 2018. We also wanted to explore how much climate change had to do with it. As smoke from wildfires blanketed the area during the summer of 2018, Seattle news reports said Seattle had the worst air quality in the world on Aug. 21, 2018. The reports cited rankings that day from AirVisual, an air monitoring service. AirVisual spokeswoman Kelsey Duska told us that during at least some points of that day, Seattle had the worst air among 85 cities, generally with a population of more than 400,000, around the world. Washington fared a little better in a broader set of monitoring done by AirVisual. Duska said that for the entire month of August 2018, the air in Chelan, Wash., about 180 miles east of Seattle, ranked fifth-worst among 3,000 cities worldwide. Rob Jackson, a Stanford University earth system science professor, told us that AirVisual’s numbers are reliable. So, Inslee’s worst-air claim is correct — for one day of the year. As for Inslee’s larger point, experts told us that climate change played a role in making the wildfires, and thus air quality, worse, but that other factors did, too. Inslee’s campaign pointed us to an article posted on National Public Radio’s website in the wake of the news reports about Seattle’s worst-air ranking. It carried this headline: ""Why Seattle had the worst air quality in the world at some points this summer."" The article was a transcript of an interview with Cliff Mass, professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington. Maas said Seattle had had the worst air in 20 years — to the point that mountains and water around the city were not visible. Asked why the air was so bad, Mass cited the wildfires, adding that ""we had an atmospheric circulation that took the smoke directly from these nearby fires right over Seattle."" And Mass said he suspects that it would happen again in the future — but he pointed to forests, not climate change. ""Well, the big problem is our forests. We've suppressed fire now for almost a century,"" he said. ""A lot of the forests surrounding Seattle are in very bad condition. They're overgrown. They have a lot of slash, a lot of low bushes and trees. And they're completely unlike the forests that were here 150 years ago. And the problem is when they burn, they burn catastrophically. ""The question is how much of this is climate change. I suspect that only a small proportion of this is climate change. I think that the main problem is the forests, which are ready to burn. We have invasive grasses that have moved in that burn very easily. And human beings are increasingly starting fires with this huge number of people going in for recreation, other uses of the forested areas,"" he said.
+
+""Now, on the long term, as the planet warms up, we certainly would expect more fires. So climate change, global warming probably contributed a small amount to it, but probably the key thing is what we've done to the surface of the planet."" Other experts gave more weight to the role of climate change. Stanford’s Jackson and John Reilly, co-director of the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change at MIT, told us that climate change clearly is one factor in making the wildfires, and in turn air quality, worse. But they agreed that other factors, such as fire suppression, have also made the wildfires worse. Finally, Inslee’s campaign also pointed us to two other articles about wildfires and climate change: McClatchy news service reported on a federal study in November 2018 that said, ""California and the West have already witnessed an expansion of catastrophic blazes due to climate change and rising warming, with twice as much acreage burned by wildfire than would have occurred otherwise."" And Scientific American reported on an academic study that, according to the magazine, found that climate change not only is increasing the likelihood of wildfires, the ""wildfires are causing a spike in air pollution across the West."" However, Daniel Jaffe, a University of Washington professor of environmental chemistry, said in that article that while climate change makes wildfires worse, so does forest management. In discussing climate change, Inslee said, ""The forest fires were so grotesque last year that we had the worst air in the world in Washington."" By one measure, of 85 major cities across the globe, Seattle had the worst air quality in the world on Aug. 21, 2018, as wildfires pushed smoke into the area. That was for one day of the year. Experts said climate change is one factor in making the forest fires, and in turn air quality, worse; but other factors, such as fire suppression practices, have also made the fires worse. We rate Inslee’s statement Mostly True."
+"In his quest to win a U.S. Senate seat, Republican candidate Patrick Morrisey is touting a legal accomplishment that he said aided the state’s coal industry. A television ad by Morrisey says, among other things, that Morrisey ""beat (President Barack) Obama at the Supreme Court, saving coal jobs."" (An earlier ad made a similar claim as well.) FIRST TV AD: West Virginia deserves a Senator who will be an ally for @realDonaldTrump, who has a record of beating Obama to save coal jobs, and who will always defend our Second Amendment rights. Watch our first TV ad here --> #WVsen #WVpol pic.twitter.com/cpQ1AmFh7l  Is that correct? We took a closer look. This part of the claim refers to the February 2016 decision by five justices of the U.S. Supreme Court to issue a stay that blocked the Clean Power Plan from going into effect. The plan, developed by the Obama administration’s Environmental Protection Agency and initially released in 2014, would have set a standard for power plants’ emissions of carbon dioxide, which most scientists say are causing global warming. Critics of the plan included the coal industry, which would have suffered because coal has relatively high emissions of carbon dioxide. The stay put the proposal on hold, and it was officially scrapped under President Donald Trump. In October 2015, Morrisey was a key player in leading a coalition of 24 states in a lawsuit against the Clean Power Plan. The lawsuit came the same day as the rule was filed in the Federal Register — the first day the rule could be challenged in court. In an unusual move, the Supreme Court issued its stay only a few months later. Officially, the five justices who granted the stay referred to a related case, North Dakota vs. EPA. And because West Virginia was part of a coalition of two dozen other states, Morrisey did not accomplish this singlehandedly. That said, Morrisey was widely noted as a leader of the effort. ""He was very aggressive in bringing the early rounds of the litigation and trying to get a court order to stop EPA from even finalizing the rule,"" Jeff Holmstead, a former EPA air regulator who is representing a coal industry group in the lawsuit, told the Hill newspaper not long after the Supreme Court stayed the EPA program. ""He really has taken very much a leading role in the Clean Power Plan litigation."" The same month, the Associated Press singled out Morrisey for his role in the legal battle, in an article headlined, ""Rising GOP star in West Virginia fight for coal against EPA."" In 2015, the liberal Economic Policy Institute estimated that the Clean Power Plan could eliminate 63,838 coal mining-related jobs (though the same group estimated that the plan would increase the number of jobs overall by roughly 360,000). So, shelving the plan would be expected to save coal jobs. As it turns out, employment in coal mining has rebounded modestly since the plan was stayed. According to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, coal mining employment hit a low in July, August and September 2016. Since then, it’s been on a slight upswing.  In the two-year span since its low point in 2016, coal mining employment has risen by about 8.5 percent, or 4,200 jobs in all. That said, coal mining employment remains far below its mid-1980s peak, and even well below its pre-Great Recession level. An ad for Patrick Morrisey said he ""beat Obama at the Supreme Court, saving coal jobs."" Morrisey wasn’t the only legal player involved in the lawsuit that derailed the Clean Power Plan, but he was widely considered a key figure. And employment levels in the coal industry have recovered, though modestly, and have only returned to their levels from early 2016. The statement is accurate but needs additional context, so we rate it Mostly True."
+"Did Florida Gov. Rick Scott slash funding for the state’s water management oversight? That’s what a recent tweet by the Florida Democratic Party claimed. ""Rolled back safeguards and septic-tank inspections. Cut $700 million from water management. Appointed cronies who act on behalf of polluters. Banned the term ‘climate change.’"" ""This water crisis has a name, and it’s Rick Scott,"" it concludes. Scott, who is term-limited as governor, is challenging Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson.  ☣️ Rolled back safeguards and septic-tank inspections☣️ Cut $700 million from water management☣️ Appointed cronies who act on behalf of polluters☣️ Banned the term ""climate change""This water crisis has a name, and it's Rick Scott. #FlaPol https://t.co/i1V93SWoge We’ve taken a look at some claims regarding Scott’s record on the environment before. With fears about algae blooms and red tide recently hitting the headlines, we were especially curious if Scott had actually ""cut $700 million from water management."" Scott did cut $700 million in funding from water management in 2011. He also implemented changes to how water management districts are funded that affect their finances in the long-term. Counting up the cuts We began by reaching out to the Florida Democratic Party about its evidence for the claim. A party spokesperson sent us a 2018 Miami Herald column by Fabiola Santiago blaming Scott for dirty beaches, as well as a Palm Beach Post news article from 2011, near the end of Scott’s first year in office. That Palm Beach Post story begins with the line, ""The state's five water management districts have slashed their budgets by more than $700 million -- about 40 percent -- but Gov. Rick Scott, who initiated the cuts, wants a little more."" The state’s five districts have a variety of responsibilities, from water supply and quality management to flood and natural systems management. All five districts release their budgets on their websites annually. The districts release data for each financial year, which runs from Oct. 1 of the previous year to Sept. 30 of the named year. The first budgets that Scott had a say in came in the 2012 fiscal year, from Oct. 1, 2011, to Sept. 30, 2012. From the 2011 to 2012 fiscal years, the budgets of all five districts were cut across the board. The South Florida district suffered the most in cuts. Its FY 2011 budget was $1.07 billion while its FY 2012 budget was $576.1 million. That’s a reduction of $493.9 million, or 49 percent. Meanwhile, the Southwest Florida district’s budget was slashed by $124.3 million in FY 2012. Combined with the $13.9 million, $35 million, and $14 million cuts to the budgets of the Suwannee River district, St. Johns River district, and Northwest Florida district, respectively, those numbers add up to just over the $700 million. However, since 2012, the overall budget of the five districts has risen by almost $300 million. So the difference between pre-Scott cut budgets and the current budgets is now not $700 million, but rather closer to $400 million.  Whose responsibility is it, anyway? We reached out to Scott’s press secretary for comment. Lauren Schenone told PolitiFact, ""Water management districts independently create their own budgets. Their budgetary decisions, including tax and revenue collection, are ultimately made by the board of each water management district — not the governor, so they are completely wrong on this."" Districts do begin the budget process themselves by creating a preliminary budget independently of the governor. But their budgets pass through a complex adoption process. They need to eventually be approved by many groups, including the Florida Senate president, the Florida House speaker, and each water management district’s governing board, whose members are appointed by the governor. According to section 373.536(5)(a) of the Florida Statutes, the governor has the final say ""to approve or disapprove water management district budgets in whole or in part."" So if the governor doesn’t like a specific item in a district’s budget, he or she can veto it. Scott has claimed responsibility for the water management district budget cuts in the past, such as in this radio address from August 2011. ""I took action on the proposed budgets of Florida’s five water management districts,"" Scott said. ""All together, these budgets reflect a reduction of more than $700 million over last year."" Scott also restricted how much revenue districts could collect. A large part of district budgets comes from revenue collected through property taxes. In 2011, Scott signed a bill into law that placed a limit on the maximum amount of property tax the districts could levy. That bill lowered district property tax revenues by 30 percent, or $210 million. ""Those (property tax) revenues have not been restored to their pre-Gov. Scott levels,"" said Aliki Moncrief, executive director of Florida Conservation Voters. ""Assuming the taxable value of Florida property stayed the same from 2011-2019, we are talking about at least $1.7 billion in lost revenue for water management districts (over the course of eight years)."" Scott took responsibility for those revenue cuts, too. In a June 2011 press release, he said, ""This property tax cut allows families and businesses to use more of their hard-earned money in the way they see best, rather than having to send it to a government agency."" Our ruling The Florida Democratic Party tweeted that Scott ""cut $700 million from water management."" The budgets of Florida’s five water management districts were collectively cut by over $700 million about a year into Scott’s first term. Since the governor has the final say over the water management districts’ budgets, the tweet is largely accurate. However, in the years since 2012, the districts’ budgets have started to rise again. The overall budget of the five districts is no longer $700 million less than the pre-Scott budget. We rate this statement Mostly True. "
+"A new ad in Florida’s hotly contested Senate race portrays a clear distinction between Democratic incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson and Republican opponent Gov. Rick Scott when it comes to their record on offshore oil drilling. The ad accuses the term-limited governor of supporting offshore drilling even after the BP oil spill and claims that Scott’s January meeting about drilling with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke was nothing more than a ""political stunt."" Then the ad by Nelson shifts to his record. ""Bill Nelson actually wrote the bipartisan law that makes it illegal to drill off Florida’s coast,"" the text on the screen says. We’ve already taken a close look at Scott’s record on oil drilling when we gave him Full Flop in January. We found that Scott clearly campaigned in 2010 on expanding oil drilling. But that changed around the time of the meeting with Zinke. This time, we wanted to hone in on Nelson’s legislative record. Did Nelson actually write the law that makes it illegal to drill off Florida’s coast? Environmental experts said Nelson deserves credit for protecting Florida’s Gulf Coast, but the legislation that actually was signed into law didn’t have Nelson’s name on it. Still, based on news reporting at that time, it was clear that Nelson’s bill (and the Republican who co-sponsored it) was the inspiration for the law that enacted a moratorium on drilling on the Gulf Coast. In 2006, Nelson teamed up with former Florida Republican Sen. Mel Martinez to cosponsor a piece of legislation known as the Permanent Protection for Florida Act of 2006 (S.2239). That bill aimed to prohibit offshore drilling on the outer Continental Shelf near Florida. Specifically, the bill put a moratorium on issuing a lease for the exploration, development, or production of oil, natural gas, or any other mineral off much of the coast of Florida until June 30, 2020. Frank Jackalone, the director of Florida chapter of the Sierra Club, praised Nelson and Martinez when the bill was introduced. (The Sierra Club endorsed Nelson). ""Last week our Florida senators introduced legislation that would head off these threats by providing permanent protection for Florida’s coasts and extended protection for the remaining moratoria areas,"" Jackalone said in a speech he gave at the time ""... He and Senator Nelson have given us a wonderful example of bipartisan leadership that puts Florida’s economy and environment first."" That bill was introduced in the Senate but did not get a hearing and never made it to law. So can Nelson really take credit for signing the bipartisan law that makes it illegal to drill off Florida’s coast? Although Nelson and Martinez’s legislation was not signed into law, similar ideas were included in a section of another bill known as the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act of 2006 (S.3711), which was sponsored by former Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. That bill enacted a moratorium on drilling within 230 miles of Tampa Bay and 125 miles from the Panhandle until June 2022, among other things. It was signed into law Dec. 20, 2006. The bill didn’t have Nelson’s name on it, but each bill aimed to protect Florida’s Gulf Coast for oil drilling by placing a moratorium on issuing a lease for the exploration, development, or production of oil, natural gas, or any other mineral. Alyson Flournoy, a law professor at the University of Florida, said that if the language of Nelson’s bill was included in the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act of 2006, we would treat Nelson as the author of that part of the law. We compared the text of Nelson and Martinez’s bill with the text from the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act of 2006 to get a better look at the similarities between the two measures. The language in the 2006 Energy Act is not a carbon copy of Nelson’s bill, but conveys very similar ideas, especially about where drilling would be prohibited. For example, Nelson and Martinez’s bill defined the area off limits as the Florida exclusion zone. That area included: 25 miles west of the Military Mission Line, 150 miles off the Florida Panhandle, including the area commonly known as the ""Stovepipe’"" in the Gulf of Mexico, and 150 miles off the Florida east coast. The Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act of 2006 enacted the moratorium on any area east of the Military Mission Line in the Gulf of Mexico; any area in the Eastern Planning Area that is within 125 miles of the coastline of the State of Florida and part of the Central Planning Area that is in middle of the Gulf of Mexico. So, Nelson’s bill isn’t the exact same language, but newspaper outlets at the time said that Nelson and Martinez worked together to make sure the Gulf of Mexico was protected from oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act of 2006. ""Florida's U.S. senators, Democrat Bill Nelson and Republican Mel Martinez, had helped craft the bill, and both voted for it this morning,"" the St. Petersburg Times wrote in 2006. ""Martinez, who negotiated the measure with input from Nelson, rebuffed suggestions that the delegation could successfully maintain its 'no drilling' stance,"" the Miami Herald wrote after the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act passed the House. Days before the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act of 2006 was signed in to law. Martinez attended a press conference to speak about it. ""Nelson and I, both from Florida, have had longstanding concerns about protections we felt were necessary for Florida's fragile environment and also because of our very strong economies derived from tourism, that our coastal waters and beaches be protected,"" Martinez said. ""For that reason, the features of this bill that are attractive to us is the zone of protection that it creates for Florida along the Gulf Coast while at the same time permitting this very important additional exploration to take place."" Environmental experts agreed that Nelson deserves credit for writing the bipartisan law that makes it illegal to drill off Florida’s Gulf coast. ""Nelson out of anybody has the right to brag about being the gatekeeper on the Eastern Gulf,"" said Julie Wraithmell, the executive director of Audubon Florida. ""If it wasn’t for him, we really would have struggled."" A campaign ad paid for by Nelson said he ""actually wrote the bipartisan law that makes it illegal to drill off Florida’s coast."" The ad writers should be more careful with their language. Nelson co-sponsored legislation in 2006 that would have banned drilling off Florida’s coast. That measure was never signed in to law, but similar ideas were included in the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act of 2006, which, among other things, enacted a moratorium on drilling 125 miles of the eastern portion of the Gulf of Mexico until June 2022. According to news reports at that time, Nelson and Martinez negotiated and worked to make sure Florida’s Gulf Coast was protected under with the 2006 act. And even though the law was not an exact copy, environmental experts agreed that Nelson deserves credit for writing the bipartisan law that makes it illegal to drill off Florida’s Gulf coast. We rate this claim Mostly True."
+"The Environmental Protection Agency is not very popular among West Virginia Republicans, who see the agency as threatening the state’s mining jobs through overregulation -- at least until President Donald Trump took office. So, during an April 23 debate between Republican primary candidates for a U.S. Senate seat, it was not surprising to hear the agency criticized. One of the candidates, U.S. Rep. Evan Jenkins, boasted about his efforts to rein in the agency. ""I’ve cut a half a billion (dollars) out of the EPA just in the last two years. We’ve cut 3,000 jobs out of the EPA,"" he said. (It’s around 29:30 in the video.) We’ll look at the two parts of this statement separately -- first, the agency’s budget, and second, its employment level. Jenkins would have been more accurate if he’d said ""we’ve"" cut half a billion dollars, as he did in the second part of his statement. Obviously, in our constitutional system of checks and balances, individual U.S. House members cannot cut an agency’s budget on their own. On the more substantive question, however, Jenkins was on target. In fact, he lowballed it a little. Historical data from the Office of Management and Budget, shows spending by the EPA at $8.725 billion in 2016; $8.165 billion in 2017; and an estimated $7.916 billion in 2018. The two-year difference between 2016 and 2018 is $809 million, which is more than half a billion dollars, or a 9.2 percent reduction over that two-year span. The actual amount allowed by the omnibus spending bill passed after OMB made its estimate is slightly higher for 2018 -- $8.058 billion. But even at that higher level, the two-year decrease exceeds the half-billion-dollar figure Jenkins cited. Here’s a chart showing EPA’s budget going back to 2009: So Jenkins’ budget number appears solid. For employment, we used a data tool created by the federal Office of Management and Budget called FedScope, which federal employment gurus consider the most accurate information available. FedScope provides detailed employment data on a quarterly basis; the most recent quarter available at the time of Jenkins’ comment was September 2017. For simplicity, we took note of EPA employment in September of every year. In September 2015, EPA employed 15,445 people; in September 2016, it employed 15,634; and in September 2017, it employed 15,058. Over this two-year period, EPA employment fell by 387 people -- well short of the 3,000 Jenkins cited. The only way you can achieve a decrease of 3,000 EPA employees is by comparing the September 2017 level to the September 2012 level -- a five-year period that started before Jenkins was even in Congress. Moreover, EPA employment in 2012 was boosted by spending through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act -- more commonly known as the stimulus bill signed by President Barack Obama. So a chunk of the jobs lost since then were always intended to be temporary. This chart shows EPA employment every September going back to 2009, according to FedScope: When we asked the Partnership for Public Service, a group that studies federal employment, to look at our math, they agreed that it was accurate. Jenkins’ campaign said the candidate was referring to a news release from the House Appropriations Committee that mentioned a decline of 3,106 jobs at the EPA since 2010 -- a longer period than a listener would have assumed hearing Jenkins’ comments at the debate. When more recent data is released, it may show additional decreases in employment at EPA. An EPA plan for a government shutdown in December 2017 said the agency had a staff of 14,449, which was down from the prior shutdown plan in April, which cited a staff size of 15,219, according to the liberal website ThinkProgress. That’s a decline of 770, but it’s still not as high as the 3,000 Jenkins noted. Jenkins said, ""I’ve cut a half a billion (dollars) out of the EPA just in the last two years. We’ve cut 3,000 jobs out of the EPA."" Setting aside his choice of ""I"" rather than ""we,"" Jenkins has a point about the decrease in the EPA’s budget; in anything, his estimate is actually low. On employment, though, 3,000 jobs shed is an overzealous estimate. To get a number that large, you have to go back at least to 2012, before Jenkins was in Congress. We rate the statement Mostly True."
+"Former Vice President Al Gore said that the global community will have to continue to respond to climate change after President Donald Trump’s ""reckless"" decision to pull out of the Paris climate change agreement. Gore said that evidence abounds that climate change is real (it is ), and people ""don’t have to rely on the virtually unanimous opinion of the scientific community anymore."" ""Mother nature is telling us every night on the TV news now is like a nature hike through the book of Revelation,"" Gore said on Fox News Sunday on June 4. ""People are noticing this, these downpours and historic floods. We’ve had 11 once-in-a-thousand-year downpours in the U.S. just in the last 10 years. We’ve got these wildfires that become mega fires now. Seventy percent of Florida is in drought today. Missouri declared an emergency just a couple of days ago because of another one of these. And they keep on coming."" Gore correctly cited a drought figure for Florida from a commonly used drought index. We will explain what that index shows and what the drought means in Florida. A spokeswoman for Gore said that he was citing the United States Drought Monitor, a weekly map published on Thursdays showing drought conditions. The monitor, established in 1999, is produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The map is based on measurements of climatic, hydrologic and soil conditions as well as reported impacts and observations from more than 350 contributors around the country. The monitor showed that 71.66 percent of Florida was in a moderate to extreme drought as of May 30. (The previous few weeks it had been between 65 and 66.) While that was the highest this year, there have been multiple other weeks that it reached similarly high levels since 2000. The last time the drought monitor showed Florida’s area of drought was as high as 71 percent was February 2013. As bad as this drought is, it’s been even worse. During two weeks in April 2012, 99.96 percent of Florida was in a drought. More than 72 percent of Florida was in a drought between late January and early June 2012. There was also an extended period of drought between December 2010 and July 2011 and between April and August 2007. There were also periods of drought in 2000-01. Florida’s dry season runs from about November through May and can leave Florida prone to drought conditions. If the dry season is drier than usual and the wet season is late to appear, a period of drought can run into summer, said Victor Murphy, climate service program manager for NOAA's National Weather Service-Southern Region. There is a small bit of good news: The return of the rainy season — under way this first week of June — should improve drought conditions. ""There have been at least three other instances in the past 10 years when this has occurred,"" Murphy said. ""Not coincidentally, all of these events began in the winter/spring (dry) season, and ended during the summer. This event will be similar. ""Since the Florida wet season has returned with a vengeance over the past week, and is forecast to continue over the next few weeks, the amount of Florida in drought two to four weeks from now should be substantially less than what it is today."" Gore tied in several weather events to illustrate the effects of climate change. Experts told us that Florida is prone to periodic droughts, but rising temperatures as a result of climate change can make droughts worse. ""It’s part of the climate -- part of natural cycles,"" said David Zierden, the state climatologist for Florida who works at the Florida Climate Center at Florida State University. ""Our current drought is no worse or more prolonged than any other drought we go through periodically."" This year the Florida Peninsula only received half of its normal rainfall during the dry season, leading to the most active wildfire season since 2011. Temperatures have been rising in Florida -- the statewide average temperature for 26 of the last 27 months have all been warmer than normal, Zierden said. ""There is an increasing temperature trend, and warmer temperatures lead to greater evapotranspiration rates, which can exacerbate these periods of drought,"" Zierden said. (Gore’s spokeswoman pointed to an article by the Union of Concerned Scientists that makes a similar point.) While Gore’s numerical statement about the drought is correct, David Nolan, chair of the University of Miami’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences, cautioned against pointing to any particular weather event as proof of climate change. ""I am generally not comfortable with relating any local event, a drought in one place or a flood in another, to global warming,"" Nolan said. ""What matters most is global average temperature, because that drives sea level rise, which eventually will be the biggest problem."" Gore said ""70 percent of Florida is in drought today."" Gore correctly cited the United States Drought Monitor which showed that 71.66 percent of Florida was experiencing a drought for the week ending May 30. However, that drought percentage isn’t unheard of in Florida -- there have been other periods of drought since 2000 when the monitor began mapping drought data. We rate this claim Mostly True."
+"As a candidate and as president, Donald Trump has championed the cause of coal mining. But critics of the coal industry have countered that Trump and other supporters of coal are overlooking an energy sector with an even bigger impact on jobs -- solar energy. In a Chicago Tribune op-ed published on April 20 -- two days before Earth Day -- Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Ill., took issue with Trump’s environmental priorities. At one point in the op-ed, he wrote, ""More than 260,000 Americans are employed by the domestic solar industry — three times as many workers as employed by the entire coal mining industry."" We had previously looked at whether there are more people employed in the U.S. solar-energy industry than in the oil industry. (There aren’t.) But the comparison with the coal industry was new to us, so we decided to take a look. The sources of Schneider’s statistics When we contacted Schneider’s office, they cited two sources, one for each number in the statement. The first number -- 260,000 U.S. solar workers -- stems from the 2016 edition of the National Solar Jobs Census, which is published by the Solar Foundation, a nonprofit organization aligned with the solar industry. We confirmed that, according to the foundation’s calculations, there were 260,077 solar workers in the United States in 2016. The second number -- unstated in the op-ed, but equaling 87,000 workers employed in coal mining, if you do the math -- actually overstates the number of mine workers. According to the Energy Information Administration, a part of the federal Energy Department, the number of people working at coal mines was 65,971 in 2016. The actual ratio between the two numbers would be almost four-to-one. So the congressman has some support for his statement. However, the comparison is not exactly apples-to-apples. Let’s explore why. Comparing data for energy jobs is tricky One problem for Schneider’s numerical comparison is that it uses different databases, with different methodologies. The Solar Foundation told us that their data comes from more than 500,000 telephone calls and more than 60,000 emails to known and potential energy establishments across the United States, resulting in a total of 3,888 full responses. The group counted jobs held by a worker who spends at least 50 percent of his or her time on solar-related work. They included jobs in installation, manufacturing, sales, distribution, and project development, among other categories. The Energy Information Administration data, meanwhile, comes from official U.S. Labor Department data. It includes employees ""engaged in production, preparation, processing, development, maintenance, repair shop, or yard work at mining operations, including office workers."" The coal industry considers the official coal employment numbers to be low ""to the point of being fiction,"" said Terry Headley, a spokesman for the American Coal Council. ""They don't include many people who work at a coal mine every day, full time, but are not company employees,"" Headley said. ""They are employees of service companies that provide direct support services, such as coal truck drivers, electricians, surveyors, machinists, mechanics, construction workers and others. Taken together, despite everything that has been thrown at it, West Virginia alone has some 50,000 ‘coal miners and contractors’ according to the West Virginia Office of Miners Health Safety and Training. If you go by the federal government data, West Virginia has only about 13,000 coal miners working."" A better source While there will always be difficulties in making an exact comparison between the two energy sectors, there is a database well-suited for directly comparing solar and coal jobs. The United States Energy and Employment Report was designed by the Energy Information Association to put a variety of energy sectors on an equal statistical footing. This report found 373,087 solar jobs in 2016, compared to 160,119 coal jobs. (That’s a higher number for solar jobs than in the Solar Foundation report; it’s because the Energy Information Administration included jobs even if a relatively small proportion of the worker’s work week was spent on activities related to solar energy.) Here’s the full summary:  This data produces a ratio of 2.3 solar jobs for every coal job. So by this measurement, there are more solar jobs than coal jobs, but it’s short of three times as high, as Schneider wrote. Tara Sinclair, a George Washington University economist and an expert in labor-force data, said she agreed that the U.S. Energy and Employment Report data is the best source to use. She added that other data from Indeed, where she is a senior economic fellow, bolsters the idea that the labor market is healthier for solar than for coal. ""We saw almost eight times more solar job postings than coal job postings in the United States in the first quarter of 2017,"" Sinclair said.  ""Of course, these numbers don't represent current employment and are reflective of both growth and turnover in the different sectors. Still, it gives a sense of scale of these industries. This comparison leads me to think that Rep. Schneider's estimates may be on the conservative side looking forward."" Our ruling Schneider said, ""More than 260,000 Americans are employed by the domestic solar industry — three times as many workers as employed by the entire coal mining industry."" Based on an apples-to-apples comparison using the best available data, the ratio is just short of three-to-one. Still, the data we found confirms that the number of solar-related jobs does outpace the number of coal-related jobs today. We rate the statement Mostly True."
+"A Texas meat processor who questions a government-approved bait that kills feral hogs charges there’s no public research on the product. Will Herring, owner of the Hubbard-based Wild Boar Meat Company, which makes hog meat into pet food, has said he fears the product’s active ingredient--warfarin, long known as a rat poison and human blood thinner--will damage his business. Also, Herring said: ""There’s not one public study, and by public study I mean a study available to the public, that has looked at using the product Kaput to poison feral hogs,"" a comment we spotted in a March 6, 2017, news story in the San Antonio Express-News. A note: Public studies of particular pesticides don’t appear to be mandatory. An Environmental Protection Agency web page about registering pesticides says only that the ""company that wants to produce the pesticide must provide data from studies  that comply with our testing guidelines"" without mention of whether the studies must be public or, say, conducted independently. That web page also says that before registering a product, EPA develops risk assessments evaluating the potential harms to humans, wildlife, fish, and plants, including endangered species and non-target organisms plus any possible contamination of surface water or groundwater from leaching, runoff and ""spray drift."" Still, Herring persuaded a state district judge to issue a temporary order putting a hold on state rules approving Kaput’s use by state-licensed pesticide applicators and state Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, filed a proposal barring the state from registering any lethal pesticide, including warfarin, for feral hog control unless a state agency or university performs and publishes a scientific study weighing the pesticide’s environmental and economic effects. Both moves happened after Sid Miller, the Republican state agriculture commissioner, announced the Texas Department of Agriculture would issue rules limiting Kaput’s sale and use to licensed individuals. When we inquired, the state agency emailed us a spreadsheet indicating that Colorado-based Scimetrics, the company poised to vend Kaput, fielded $136,854 in research grants from TDA from 2013 into 2017. All told in 2016-17, the sheet indicates, the agency awarded $802,500 to fight feral hogs; that counts funds awarded to counties, universities and other agencies. Feral hogs can be fearsome nuisances. Nationally, as many as 750,000 are harvested annually, yet how they ravage rural and suburban lands remains a problem--and Texas is home to more than 2 million of them. No public study? We asked Herring how he reached his conclusion about no public studies. By phone, he told us that he didn’t find specific studies of the product in online searches nor, he said, did Genesis Laboratories, the Colorado-based company that developed the product, provide a study at his firm's inquiry. We also reached Richard Poché, Genesis Labs' president, who conceded that no Kaput study has been formally published. He said, though, the company completed a study in Texas in 2015 submitted under the title ""Field efficacy of a warfarin bait used to control feral hog populations"" for consideration by the Wiley-published Wildlife Society Bulletin, which describes itself as a journal for wildlife practitioners that effectively integrates cutting-edge science with management and conservation, and also covers important policy issues, particularly those that focus on the integration of science and policy. By email, the bulletin’s editor, Kansas State University’s David Haukos, confirmed that study was submitted. In March 2017, Haukos told us: ""The manuscript is currently undergoing peer-review; therefore, no decision has been made concerning publication."" Poché said by phone the 2015 study was followed up by another in 2016 with a third study underway in 2017, each one based on feeding the Kaput product to feral hogs. Both of the first two studies, he said, decimated exposed hog populations in North Texas study areas; he noted too the bait uses only one-fifth of the warfarin found in conventional rat and mouse baits. We asked for a copy of the 2015 study. By email, Poché said that remains ""confidential business information,"" and that releasing it before publication would leave his company with no control of where it ends up. Poché otherwise provided two of his own March 2017 PowerPoint presentations on Kaput along with the printed program for the April 2016 International Wild Pig Conference program in Myrtle Beach, S.C. A section of the program, ""Feral hog control using a new bait,"" evidently describes a Scimetric study. It opens: ""An EPA Experimental Use Permit was obtained to conduct a field trial using a novel bait to control feral hogs. The product, 12-years under development, was used to determine the efficacy against feral hogs on test sites 50 miles east of Plainview, Texas. Two paraffin bait formulations were tested, containing 0.005% and 0.01% warfarin. Hog activity was monitored pre- and post-treatment using trail cameras near feeders, VHF and GPS transmitting equipment, and bait consumption."" Next, the summary says: ""Bait was applied in modified commercial feeders with heavy lids. Baiting initiated on June 1 and terminated June 30, 2015. After the 30-day exposure period efficacy on the 5-km treatment plot baited with 0.005% warfarin was 100%, 98.6%, and 97.8% using radio-tracking, trail camera images, and bait consumption. Efficacy on the 0.01% warfarin bait plot was not as effective. Ninety-seven non-target searches were conducted during the treatment and post-treatment phases to examine for mortality, for which none were found,"" an indication other animals weren’t killed by the bait. The text closes: ""The low warfarin concentrate bait proved effective in eliminating wild hogs while posing minimal exposure to non-target wildlife."" The longer of the PowerPoint presentations includes a slide stating that warfarin was approved as a rodent-killer in 1948 and as a human drug six years later. The presentation also has several slides titled: ""Field Efficacy of a Feral Hog Bait Containing 0.005% Warfarin,"" with a subtitle indicating the slides refer to research in North Texas from 2015 into 2017. Images include feral hogs wearing GPS collars or tagged for tracking by radio. One slide summarizes the research results by different methods of making hog counts:          SOURCE: Presentation, ""Where we’ve been and where we’re going with Warfarin for controlling wild pigs,"" March 1, 2017, Richard Poché, Genesis Labs (received by email from Poché, March 9, 2017) Company: No independent research ‘necessary’ Poché, asked if independent research makes sense before Kaput goes commercial, emailed: ""Not necessary. We do research under what is called Good Laboratory Practices, which is required by the EPA. No one can match the quality and integrity of the work."" According to an EPA web page, the agency conducts audits to ensure companies developing pesticide products comply with those practices. EPA registration Our search of EPA’s web site led us to a Jan. 3, 2017, agency document indicating that on Jan. 3, 2017, Kaput Feral Hog Bait was registered with the agency under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act. ""Registration is in no way to be construed as an endorsement or recommendation of this product by the Agency,"" the document further states. ""In order to protect health and the environment, the Administrator, on his motion, may at any time suspend or cancel the registration of a pesticide in accordance with the Act."" Also, the document says, the product is ""conditionally registered"" in accord with section 3(c)(7)(a) of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act; the section says the EPA administrator may conditionally register a pesticide if the pesticide is ""identical or substantially similar"" to a registered pesticide and approving the registration wouldn’t ""significantly increase the risk of any unreasonable adverse effect on the environment."" Another agency web page says: ""If EPA finds that the pesticide meets the standard for registration, but there are outstanding data requirements, the Agency may, under certain circumstances, grant a ‘conditional’ registration pursuant to FIFRA section 3(c)(7). However, before granting a conditional registration, EPA must determine that, although an application lacks some of the required data, use of the pesticide would not significantly increase the risk of unreasonable adverse effects on people or the environment during the time needed to generate the necessary data."" We asked Poché about ""outstanding data requirements"" with Kaput, as mentioned generally by the EPA. By email, Poché said a ""1-year storage stability study"" for Kaput has been submitted to the EPA. Poché unpacked: ""An EPA-registered pesticide requires stability of the chemical in the formula available to the public. The product is stored in the marketing container on the shelf at room temperature over a one-year period. The bait is analyzed every 3 months for the warfarin concentration. That analysis is done at the beginning and at 3, 5, 9, and 12 months after manufacturing. The goal is to ensure the bait is good after 1 year and the concentration of warfarin is plus or minus 10% of what the EPA label requires. In our case the concentrations were within 1% of the label requirements,"" Poché said. Over a couple days, we did not draw an EPA response to Herring’s claim. Otherwise the National Pesticide Information Center, which partners Oregon State University with the EPA, responded to our inquiry by pointing out a 1991 EPA ""fact sheet"" on warfarin that states the EPA evaluates pesticides by obtaining from producers a ""complete set of studies showing the human health and environmental effects of each pesticide. The Agency imposes any regulatory controls that are needed to effectively manage each pesticide's risks,"" the sheet says. State intends limits Miller, the state agriculture commissioner, is a former legislator who authored the Texas law enabling hunters to shoot at feral hogs from helicopters. At the TDA, spokeswoman Jennifer Dorsett responded to our inquiry about the absence of public studies of Kaput. Dorsett said by email: ""Kaput is an entirely proprietary product, so studies on the Kaput Feral Hog Bait are owned by the company and you would have to contact them directly to see if they will release them to you."" Also by email, TDA spokesman Mark Loeffler stressed that while the state agency helped fund Kaput research, its role is generally limited to cataloging pesticides approved by EPA, including Kaput, though Miller applied his authority to make Kaput ""state limited use,"" to be sold by licensed dealers and used by licensed applicators, Loeffler said. ""We do not do state-paid studies of proposed pesticides,"" Loeffler wrote. ""We are not required to do lengthy study of a product because we have little discretion to reject or deny"" registrations, he said. Dorsett otherwise provided a document listing a dozen reports on poisoning feral hogs, issued from 1987 through 2002, including seven titles specifying ""warfarin,"" we tallied. Dorsett said the agency’s toxicologist, Michael Hare, used the reports as references in evaluating Kaput as a state-limited-use pesticide. Dorsett told us relevant research also has involved the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service, which says it has officials in nearly every county demonstrating ""the latest technology and best practices to improve the state’s food and fiber system."" We didn't hear back from the service. Loeffler added that Miller has personally drawn on a 1995 post about warfarin’s history as a rat poison and its toxicity to animals put out by universities teamed in the Extension Toxicology Network. Excerpt: ""Warfarin is only slightly dangerous to humans and domestic animals when used as directed, but care must be taken with young pigs, which are especially susceptible."" Also, the post says, warfarin--which is insoluble in water--poses no threat to aquatic organisms and is ""practically non-toxic"" to game birds, with chickens ""relatively resistant."" Our ruling Herring said there’s no public study of Kaput, the product that might soon be available in Texas to attack feral hogs. There’s no public study of that EPA-registered product, we confirmed. But a 2015 study submitted to a science journal would become public if it’s accepted for publication. Also, the effects on feral hogs of warfarin, Kaput’s active ingredient, has been explored in published studies. We rate this statement Mostly True. MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/79f1a70f-3245-4ee8-ae8a-b94980d9c72f"
+"If you inhabit the more liberal corners of social media, you may have seen a list of 10 Republican bills in your feed -- a reminder of the substantive changes that could result from unified GOP control of Washington. Here’s the text of a common version that’s circulating: OK - It's important to pay attention to the Russian spy drama, but let's not ignore the fact that the following bills HAVE been introduced: 1. HR 861 Terminate the Environmental Protection Agency 2. HR 610 Vouchers for Public Education 3. HR 899 Terminate the Department of Education 4. HJR 69 Repeal Rule Protecting Wildlife 5. HR 370 Repeal Affordable Care Act 6. HR 354 Defund Planned Parenthood 7. HR 785 National Right to Work (this one ends unions) 8. HR 83 Mobilizing Against Sanctuary Cities Bill 9. HR 147 Criminalizing Abortion (""Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act"") 10. HR 808 Sanctions against Iran Please copy/paste and share widely. Call your House Representative and ask them to not only vote ""NO""...but to speak up for our rights, health & safety, and our beautiful country. How accurate is the post? All 10 bills cited do exist, and most (though not all) have been accurately described. But a majority of the bills mentioned haven’t advanced very far or attracted more than a few co-sponsors, so many are relative longshots for actually becoming law. How accurate are the descriptions? Most of the bills listed are described by their official title, or by a truncated version of the official title. So those strike us as being accurate. But for a few bills, the description is overly broad or misleading. One of those -- H.J.R. 69 -- is described as ""Repeal Rule Protecting Wildlife."" That’s on the right track, but whoever reads this wouldn’t know that it’s specific to certain types of federal land in Alaska. The measure is an effort to overturn a federal rule using the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to repeal executive branch regulations under certain circumstances. The measure in question would overrule an Obama administration rule governing non-subsistence taking of wildlife on National Wildlife Refuge land in Alaska. As it happens, this is the only one of the 10 measures that has passed the House already. It passed by a mostly party-line, 225-193 margin on Feb. 16, 2017. It is now awaiting action in the Senate. Another bill with a somewhat exaggerated description is H.R. 785, which is listed as ""National Right to Work (this one ends unions)."" Right-to-work laws say workers can’t be forced to join a union. They do this by making it harder to form a union, and it’s true that on average, states that have right-to-work laws have significantly lower unionization rates than states that don’t. But it’s an exaggeration to say that it ""ends"" unions. In fact six of the states that have right to work laws have between 10 and 16 percent of their workforces unionized -- Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Nevada, and West Virginia. And the remainder of right-to-work states do have unions -- they’re just less common than in the states that don’t have a right-to-work law. The third and last of the exaggerated descriptions refers to H.R. 147, which is listed as ""Criminalizing Abortion (‘Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act’)."" This bill would criminalize one particular kind of abortion -- one sought ""based on the sex, gender, color or race of the child, or the race of a parent."" That’s not to say it’s not controversial -- it is. Referring to last year’s version of the bill, then-Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., called the measure ""an affront to all minority women, especially Latinas and immigrant women, who already face disproportionate barriers to access health care and health education."" But contrary to the most obvious reading of the social media post, this bill would not criminalize abortion across the board. How much support do these bills have? A few are likely to go far. For the rest, probably not. Let’s start with the bills where eventual passage seems quite plausible. As we noted, the Alaska wildlife measure has already passed the House and must now be taken up by the Senate. Two other bills listed are unlikely to move in the version listed, but the ideas contained within them are likely to be taken up by the GOP leadership on a high-priority basis. One is H.R. 370, which would repeal the Affordable Care Act. H.R. 370 itself doesn’t have a single co-sponsor, but repealing Obama’s health care law is a high priority for House Republicans. An actual repeal-and-replace bill was released on March 6, and that is the likelier vehicle to be considered by the chamber. The other measure that’s likely to advance, but not in the version listed in the post, is H.R. 354, which would stop federal funding for abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood. Federal funding for abortions is already banned, but opponents of abortion say that federal funding should be stopped for non-abortion services provided by clinics that offer abortions. The draft of the Obamacare repeal bill unveiled on March 6 would stop funding for such organizations. Of the other seven bills, none has advanced beyond introduction, and all but one have a minimal number of co-sponsors, all of them Republicans. Here’s the rundown, as of March 7, 2017: • H.R. 861 -- ""Terminate the Environmental Protection Agency"" -- one sponsor, three co-sponsors. • H.R. 610 -- ""Vouchers for Public Education"" -- one sponsor, three co-sponsors. • H.R. 899 -- ""Terminate the Department of Education"" -- one sponsor, eight co-sponsors. • H.R. 785 -- ""National Right to Work (this one ends unions) -- one sponsor, 15 co-sponsors. • H.R. 83 -- ""Mobilizing Against Sanctuary Cities Bill"" -- one sponsor, nine co-sponsors. • H.R. 147 -- ""Criminalizing Abortion (‘Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act’)"" -- one sponsor, 59 co-sponsors. • H.R. 808 -- ""Sanctions against Iran"" -- one sponsor, four co-sponsors. So just one of these bills have attracted co-sponsorship of more than 15 out of the 435 House members. The one that did, on prenatal sex selection, has been introduced for several congresses running and has only moved beyond introduction once. That was in 2012, when the House leadership put it up under so-called suspension of the rules. That means that a bill is fast-tracked to a vote, but to pass, it needs to win two-thirds support. The bill failed to meet the two-thirds threshold; on a mostly party-line vote, it secured 246 votes in favor and 168 votes against. For the rest, it’s conceivable that these can pass, especially in an environment -- as we have now -- with unified Republican control. Many of these bills address issues that President Donald Trump has advocated. That said, the House has only a limited amount of time, and co-sponsorship and committee consideration are key indications of what ranks high on the leadership’s agenda. On these metrics, the remaining seven bills fall short of being considered top-tier priorities. Rather, these bills may have more of an impact in keeping the GOP base happy. John Feehery, a former aide to then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert, said most of the bills on the list seem ""like click-bait for fundraising to me. I find it it hard (to believe) that they go anywhere."" Feehery is now president of the bipartisan lobbying firm Quinn Gillespie Associates. Our ruling The social media post listed 10 bills that it said have been introduced in the House by Republicans. All 10 bills in the post have in fact been introduced. Seven were described accurately, while three had somewhat exaggerated descriptions. Meanwhile, one of the 10 bills has passed, and two seem to be on a fast track, while the other seven are more accurately considered longshots. So the post is largely correct, but it includes some exaggerated language, and it fails to distinguish between top-tier agenda items and priorities further back in the pack. We rate it Mostly True. "
+"Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of state, doesn’t have a problem with fracking until it affects him, says a consumer rights group. ""ExxonMobil is a major player in the fracking industry, and #ExxonKnew climate change was a problem for decades, but covered up the evidence,"" reads a campaign letter from Food & Water Watch. ""Tillerson infamously sued to keep a fracking project out of his backyard, but seems happy to profit off fracking in other people's backyards."" For this fact-check, we wanted to know if the head of the largest natural gas-producing company in the United States really said no fracking way to a drilling project in his own neighborhood. Food & Water Watch is right about Tillerson’s participation in the natural gas litigation, though its account misses a few details. Fracking-caused noise and traffic was one of many concerns listed in the lawsuit. Tillerson’s lawyer also told the Wall Street Journal that Tillerson himself cared the most about property devaluation. And the oil chief dropped out of the lawsuit after receiving attention for it. In 2012, Tillerson, his wife and their neighbors in Bartonville, Texas, sued to block the construction of a 160-foot water tower in their luxury community. The tower would, in part, supply water for hydraulic fracturing — which injects pressurized water as well as sand and chemicals under shale rock formations to extract natural gas. The lawsuit contended the project violates the town’s zoning ordinance and will also be an ""unbearable nuisance."" ""A water tower will have lights on at all hours of the night, traffic to and from the tower at unknown and unreasonable hours, noise from mechanical and electrical equipment needed to maintain and operate the water tower, and creates and (sic) unsafe and unattractive nuisance to the children of the area,"" the suit reads. ""Furthermore, upon information and belief, (the Bartonville Water Supply Corporation) will sell water to oil and gas explorers for fracing shale formations leading to traffic with heavy trucks on FM 407, creating a noise nuisance and traffic hazards,"" it continues. In addition to joining the lawsuit, Tillerson sat for a three-hour deposition in May 2013 and protested the project at a town council meeting that November, according to the Journal’s report in February 2014. But the newspaper noted that Tillerson wasn’t ""the most vocal or well-known opponent of the tower."" That distinction belonged to the lead plaintiffs, former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey and his wife. Environmentalists jumped on the story, with plenty pointing out the irony and hypocrisy but embracing Tillerson into their ranks. A former oil executive penned an open letter to Tillerson on NoFrackingWay.Us decrying the environmental impacts of the practice and wishing him ""good luck with that fracking water tank."" Credo Action, an online hub of progressive activists, dubbed Tillerson ""the highest-profile anti-fracking activist in the world."" And MoveOn.org offered Tillerson its ""FrackingFighter"" award. Under pressure and after a judge dismissed the claims, Tillerson dropped out of the lawsuit two months later in April 2014, the Dallas Business Journal reported. The Armeys and a few others continued to pursue legal action over the project, and the battle continued into at least November 2015, the last mention of the case we could find. Our ruling Food & Water Watch said Tillerson ""sued to keep a fracking project out of his backyard."" Tillerson joined a lawsuit that listed noise nuisance and traffic hazards among the plaintiffs’ many concerns, though he later dropped out of the litigation. We rate the claim Mostly True."
+"Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson spent the week after the 2016 election fighting against a bill that would have steered more royalties from oil drilling to some Gulf states. Nelson’s state of Florida already bans offshore oil drilling near its coasts. But Nelson feared that by dangling more royalties, state leaders would be more open to drilling near Florida in the future. In a speech on the Senate floor Nov. 16, Nelson said President-elect Donald Trump’s position on the issue is concerning to environmentalists. ""Ever since I was a young congressman, I’ve been fighting to keep oil rigs off of Florida’s coast,"" he said, ""and now it's especially important at this time as we have a new administration coming in that took a public position in the election declaring the president-elect's intent to open up additional areas off the coast to oil drilling."" The American Energy and Conservation Act of 2016, sponsored by Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., failed to get enough Senate votes to move forward on Nov. 17. But the future of oil drilling along coasts in Florida and the United States will remain a hot topic of conversation under Trump’s administration and potentially in Nelson’s re-election campaign in 2018. Here we will look at Trump’s position on opening up additional coastal areas to drill for oil. We heard back from Nelson’s office but not from Trump’s transition team. Donald Trump’s campaign position oil drilling Trump generally spoke in favor of offshore oil drilling during the campaign, although his position wasn’t always clear. He sounded skeptical about a proposal in Congress to allow offshore drilling closer to Florida in an interview with the Tampa Bay Times in February. ""They've already got plenty in the Gulf,"" Trump said. ""It would be a little bit of a shame (to expand drilling closer to Florida), because there's so much fracking, and there's so much oil that we have now that we never thought possible. That's an issue I'd absolutely study and do the right thing."" In 2006, Congress -- with input and support from Nelson -- passed a bill to ban oil drilling within 125 miles off much of Florida’s coast and up to 235 miles at some points. The ban is set to expire in 2022. In 2015, Cassidy introduced the Offshore Energy and Jobs Act, which would allow drilling 50 miles off Florida’s Gulf shores. In response, Nelson filed a bill to extend the ban by five years. Neither bill reached a Senate vote. Trump was more forceful about his support for drilling since that time in speeches and press releases that we found through our own research and in Trump’s statements sent to us by Nelson’s Senate spokesman. During the campaign, Trump’s America First Energy Plan called for opening up onshore and offshore leasing on federal lands, eliminating a moratorium on coal leasing, and opening shale energy deposits. Trump called for unleashing ""America’s $50 trillion in untapped shale, oil, and natural gas reserves, plus hundreds of years in clean coal reserves."" In a May 2016 speech to the North Dakota Petroleum Council, Trump said that in his first 100 days in office, he would ""lift moratoriums on energy production in federal area. We’re going to revoke policies that impose unwarranted restrictions on new drilling technologies. These technologies create millions of jobs with a smaller footprint than ever before."" He reiterated those views during a September 2016 speech at the 2016 Shale Insight Conference. Trump’s position has remained the same since he won After Trump won Nov. 8, his transition team posted an energy policy that stated the administration will open onshore and offshore leasing on federal lands and waters and streamline the permitting process for all energy projects. A few days after Trump won, one of his economic advisers, Stephen Moore, told NPR that Trump’s administration believes it can raise ""hundreds of billions of dollars over the next 10 years"" by opening up more federal lands for leases for oil and gas development and coal development. On Nov. 18, the Obama administration took the opposite approach, banning offshore drilling in the Arctic as part of a new five-year plan for energy development in federal waters. Trump won’t be able to instantly toss Obama’s ban. His administration will have to prepare a report which could take as long as two years, and then the federal government would have to organize a sale of leases for companies that want to drill there, the Washington Post reported. Although Trump wants more drilling, he may have to wait years for it. CNBC reported that Trump’s plan to expand oil drilling probably won’t happen until his successor is in the White House. Reasons for delay include the years it takes to start projects, local and state governments sometimes oppose drilling, and market forces. Our ruling Nelson said that Trump said during the campaign he intends ""to open up additional areas off the coast to oil drilling."" In official campaign and transition team statements, Trump repeatedly has called for making it easier to drill for oil. He called for opening offshore areas and reducing ""unnecessary restrictions."" Since he won, Trump’s administration has reiterated its pro-drilling stance. He hasn't been so clear about his specific plans for Florida. In one interview, he appeared skeptical about expanding offshore drilling closer to Florida. He is limited in the extent that he could expand drilling anywhere near Florida’s coasts because current law bans it within at least 125 miles. With that caveat, we rate Nelson’s point Mostly True."
+"With just over a week until the rematch between Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson and former Democratic U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, the volley of attacks is at full speed. The two candidates met separately with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial board. About 40 minutes into his visit,  Feingold offered a series of issues he believes Johnson has overlooked, including climate change. Johnson ""doesn't even believe that there's a man-made role in climate change,"" Feingold said. Later in the meeting, he added climate change ""is an issue that was bipartisan before people like Senator Johnson were elected and started saying absolute nonsense about sunspots and other reasons to avoid the issue."" We wondered whether Feingold is right that Johnson has denied a human role in climate change. Johnson’s record When Johnson and Feingold first ran against each other in 2010, Johnson definitively told the Journal Sentinel’s editorial board his position at the time:  ""I absolutely do not believe in the science of man-caused climate change. It’s not proven by any stretch of the imagination."" The far more likely cause, he said,  is ""sunspot activity or something just in the geologic eons of time where we have changes in the climate."" Ben Voelkel, a Johnson campaign spokesman, told us Johnson later acknowledged humans played a role in climate change in a 2014 interview with Boston Public Radio. ""There are other forces that cause climate to change,"" Johnson told Here and Now’s Robin Young. ""So climate does change and I don’t deny that man has some effect on that. It certainly has a great deal of effect on spoiling our environment in many different ways."" But Johnson softened his view as soon as the next sentence: ""I’ve got a very open mind, but I don’t have the arrogance that man can really do much to affect climate."" The next year, Johnson voted against a Senate amendment to affirm that human activity significantly contributes to climate change. While all but one senator supported an earlier amendment affirming the existence of climate change, only five Republicans this time voted to acknowledge there is a human impact. The amendment, seen as a symbolic effort by the Democrats to force GOP senators to take a position, failed 50 to 49 (it required a 3/5 majority). Meanwhile, an energy policy position that appeared on Johnson’s campaign website in 2015 questioned human’s impact on climate change: ""Man-made global warming remains unsettled science. World-renowned climate experts have raised serious objections to the theories behind these claims. I believe it is a bad idea to impose a policy that will raise taxes on every American, will balloon energy prices and will hurt our economic competiveness (sic) – especially on such uncertain predictions."" That passage has since been removed. In August 2016, when asked about global warming on WRJN-AM radio in Racine, Johnson seemed to think it settled — before tempering his response. ""Listen, man can affect the environment; no doubt about it,"" he said. ""The climate has always changed, it always will. … The question is, how much does man cause changes in our environment, changes in our climate, and what we could possibly even do about it?"" Since Feingold made the claim, Johnson’s statements have been a similarly mixed bag: He called himself a ""skeptic"" of man-made climate change in a meeting with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s editorial board Oct. 21, 2016. He downplayed the issue of global warming three days later — saying mankind flourishes in warmer weather — while admitting humans ""obviously"" play a role. But these statements aren’t relevant to a claim made weeks earlier. Our rating Feingold said Johnson ""doesn't even believe that there's a man-made role in climate change."" Johnson did not support a Senate amendment to acknowledge a man-made role in climate change and expressed skepticism each of the few times he acknowledged humans might contribute. He has acknowledged at times that humans can play a role but downplayed how significant that role might be. For a statement that is accurate but needs additional clarification, our rating is Mostly True."
+"Some lawmakers want to ban wind turbines from much of North Carolina’s soil, citing concerns about interference with the flight paths of military and civilian aircraft. The N.C. Senate approved regulations in June to do just that. The House of Representatives didn’t vote on the regulations. But regardless of whether they are revived and become law in future legislative sessions, some Democrats are already touting opportunities for wind power that aren’t on land. ""NC's coast is possibly the best place in U.S. for an offshore windfarm,"" Rep. Duane Hall of Raleigh tweeted in August, responding to news of an offshore wind farm being built in Rhode Island. ""We need to do this!"" Beachgoers tend to hate the winds that stir up sand and send umbrellas tumbling away. But we wondered whether the energy industry views windy days at the North Carolina coast differently, or whether Hall’s claim was nothing but hot air. Energy potential First, we need to ask whether Hall’s claim is even relevant. It wouldn’t matter how good North Carolina’s potential for offshore wind power is compared with the rest of the country if no one is seriously interested in offshore wind power. Even though it’s a new industry in the U.S., it makes sense for wind power advocates to focus offshore. Winds tend to be stronger and more uniform over water than over land. Several offshore wind farms are in various stages of development, and the federal government wants 20 percent of the country’s power to come from wind by 2030. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, ""offshore wind is a crucial renewable resource to be incorporated in the country's clean energy mix"" because 80 percent of energy use is in coastal states. The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy management has identified three developable sites off the North Carolina coast that contain up to 3,740 megawatts of wind energy potential. That’s nearly twice as much as the solar energy North Carolina produced in 2015, when it ranked third in the nation in solar output. So the potential is there. But is it the best? The best states for wind Hall didn’t respond to our questions asking for evidence backing up his claim. So we looked up various maps and charts on our own, trying to find ""possibly the best place"" for offshore wind energy. A 2010 study by the federal government’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory measured offshore wind power potential in each state. North Carolina ranked fifth behind Hawaii, California, Michigan and Louisiana. Here's a map from the lab:  The study measured total wind power and did not factor how much space would be realistically unusable due to developmental or environmental issues. But taking reality into consideration, Cristina Archer, a University of Delaware professor who studies renewable energy, said North Carolina is ""a pretty awesome state for offshore wind."" While it doesn’t have the most total wind or the highest wind speeds, she said, North Carolina might have the best actual potential due to the geography of the coast. ""I would agree that it is possibly the best in the country, because of the ideal combination of high winds, relatively shallow waters, and a long coastline,"" Archer said. ""Other states, like California, might have higher winds, but the waters are too deep. Or Massachusetts is windier and shallow too, but it does not have the long coastline."" The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management agrees: ""Wind speeds off the Atlantic Coast and in the Gulf of Mexico are lower than wind speeds off the Pacific Coast. However, the presence of shallower waters in the Atlantic makes development more attractive and economical for now."" Factors against North Carolina There are a few reasons why North Carolina might be passed over, however. While North Carolina has more total offshore wind potential than any other East Coast state, some spots in New England have stronger winds. Hurricanes could also scare off some companies. Turbines can only handle winds up to certain strengths, and very fast winds can damage or destroy them. A 2012 study of the risk of hurricane damage in four counties with appealing offshore wind prospects – one each in North Carolina, Texas, New Jersey and Massachusetts – found that the second-riskiest was Dare County, in northeastern North Carolina. The silver lining is that most of the risk in Dare County would be from category 4 and 5 hurricanes. No storm that strong has hit Dare County since at least 1851, when hurricane tracking began. North Carolina as a whole has experienced only one storm that strong – Hurricane Hazel, with category 4 winds, hit southern North Carolina in 1954. Ocean auctions None of the pros or cons matter, however, if companies can’t access the swaths of ocean where they want to build wind farms. The only way to get that access is to lease it from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management at auction. The BOEM has identified three areas in North Carolina for auction – one in Dare County, near Kitty Hawk, and two near Wilmington. The only other such sites in the U.S. are in New York, South Carolina, Hawaii and Oregon. A BOEM spokeswoman said the two Wilmington areas won’t be put up for auction for some time, since they’re being combined with the South Carolina areas. The Kitty Hawk site could be auctioned next year. Our ruling Hall said North Carolina’s coast is ""possibly the best place"" in the country for offshore wind. We appreciate Hall’s use of the word ""possibly."" He’s right to acknowledge some uncertainty. North Carolina has neither the country’s best individual spots for wind power nor the most total potential. But it’s near the top and further benefits from a uniquely long, shallow and uniformly windy coastline that gives it competitive advantages. Since Hall’s claim is accurate but needs additional explanation, we rate this claim Mostly True."
+"A nasty-looking toxic algae bloom on Florida’s coasts has oozed into political races, including U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s Democratic primary. Her opponent, Tim Canova, toured the mucky scene in Stuart wearing a surgical mask. He says that Wasserman Schultz shares in the blame for the algae that extends from Lake Okeechobee to Florida coastlines on the Treasure Coast and west coast. Canova said Wasserman Schultz, who represents South Florida, has sided with the main polluters of the water that flows into the Everglades: the sugar industry. Wasserman Schultz doesn’t ""want us to know that she has voted for huge subsidies for the sugar industry and other agribusinesses, as well as for delays in cleanups, while failing to deliver federal funds for any real solution,"" he said on Medium July 9. Wasserman Schultz defended her environmental record to the Sun Sentinel, concluding, ""I will continue to walk the walk on fighting to restore our precious River of Grass while my opponent just continues to talk."" Time for PolitiFact Florida to weigh in. Algae and Big Sugar Everybody agrees that the algae is bad for the environment and business. But they disagree on who is to blame. Pollution from fertilizer, manure and septic waste from suburbs and farms poured into Lake Okeechobee. That pollution stimulated the growth of algae, so when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released water from the lake to avoid a breach of the surrounding dike, the algae-ridden water traveled to other waters in Florida. Some politicians blame the federal government for the water release as well as its failure to raise the dike. Others blame the state of Florida for siding with the sugar industry and resisting calls to redirect water through sugar land. In Florida, Big Sugar has given generously to state and local politicians and to federal candidates, including Wasserman Schultz. ""The sugar industry is completely ambidextrous as far as its ability to penetrate the Republican and Democratic camps,"" said Charles Lee, director of advocacy for Audubon Florida. Everglades delay vote Canova’s campaign points to Wasserman Schultz’s vote in the state Senate to delay Everglades cleanup and to votes on two farm bills while in Congress. In 2003, then state Sen. Wasserman Schultz voted to delay for seven years the requirement for sugar companies to clean up polluted discharges that had hurt the Everglades. It passed the state Senate 38-0 and the House 96-18, and Gov. Jeb Bush signed it into law. The well-financed sugar industry fought for the delay, while environmental groups opposed it. Two days later, Wasserman Schultz changed her vote to ""no"" because she said she was ""betrayed and misled"" about the facts. The Senate passed amendments that they believed were offered by the U.S. Justice Department but had actually been written by state environmental officials. Changing a vote is ceremonial only and carries zero practical effect -- except public relations. Ryan Banfill, Wasserman Schultz’s spokesman, said that she initially supported the bill because it included a provision to buy sugar lands for filtration and was better than a 20-year-delay alternative. Sugar votes in Congress Canova’s campaign also says Wasserman Schultz supported the sugar industry because of her votes to renew the 1981 Farm Bill in 2008 and 2014. The legislation is a sweeping bill that funds an array of nutrition and agriculture programs for multiple years. So if Wasserman Schultz voted against the farm bill, she would have also voted against food stamps, assistance to food banks and economic development programs in rural areas such as providing broadband internet service. But if Wasserman Schultz had opposed the sugar portion of the bills she could have said so and she didn’t, Canova’s campaign said. The farm bill gives lucrative benefits to the sugar industry. Specifically, it gives loans to processors and limits sugar imports to the United States. The government can also buy the surplus sugar and sell it for ethanol production. These benefits amount to market controls that reduce the supply of sugar, thus making it more expensive, said Josh Sewell, a policy analyst at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a group that is critical of the sugar policy. The industry disagrees with the term ""subsidy."" ""A direct subsidy -- a check -- we do not get that,"" said Ryan Weston, executive vice president of the Florida Sugarcane League. But Sewell said the price controls, marketing allotments and limits on imports are all government manipulations designed to provide an economic benefit to a set group and function as subsidies. ""Any governmental action that reduces the cost of doing business or increases prices beyond the normal functioning of a free market is a subsidy,"" he said. ""In this case consumers, food manufacturers, and sugar producers outside of the United States are on the losing end."" The industry argues it needs the aid to compete globally with other countries that subsidize sugar and that the aid helps save jobs. Critics, including candy companies and consumer watchdogs, argue that it drives up prices for consumers and amounts to corporate welfare. In recent years, there have been several national proposals by Democrats and Republicans to change the sugar program, but votes are rare. In June 2013, however, the House and Senate voted on sugar amendments that would have scaled back the industry’s benefits. The amendments failed in both chambers with Wasserman Schultz voting ""no."" Most of the Florida delegation voted against the amendment, including both of Florida’s senators Marco Rubio, a Republican, and Bill Nelson, a Democrat. Banfill said Wasserman Schultz voted against the amendment because she said it would keep the market stable, protect American jobs and maintain the program allowing the government to buy and then sell surplus sugar to ethanol producers. Lee, of Audubon Florida, says Wasserman Schultz isn’t alone in her support of the federal government’s sugar policy: ""The same attack could be applied to virtually every member of Congress from Florida and it could be applied to virtually every member of the Legislature."" Banfill pointed to other efforts by Wasserman Schultz to clean up the Everglades and her 92 percent lifetime rating from the League of Conservation Voters. She has supported a clean water rule proposed by the EPA and helped get the authorization included in the budget for multiple segments of the Tamiami Trail to restore natural water flow to part of the Everglades. She is one of many cosponsors of the Central Everglades Planning Project that includes restoration projects but hasn’t received a vote yet. Those are all steps that could help the Everglades and the environment, but the sugar industry’s benefits from the government remain in place. ""Yes, these positions were important and significant,"" Lee said. ""However, these positions did not really challenge the sugar industry. On core issues for ‘big sugar’ they have her support."" This is no different from every other major political leader in Florida, he added. Our ruling Canova said Wasserman Schultz ""has voted for huge subsidies for the sugar industry ... as well as for delays in cleanups."" In 2003, while in the state Senate, Wasserman Schultz was part of a unanimous vote for a seven-year delay to clean up the Everglades. Canova omits that two days later she changed her vote, but the vote had no practical effect and the measure passed anyway. Canova also said Wasserman Schultz voted to subsidize the sugar industry when she voted for the farm bill in 2008 and 2014. The farm bills didn’t contain actual cash subsidies, but they clearly contained lucrative benefits for the industry. The farm bill is a sweeping bill that benefits a long list of programs -- not just sugar. Wasserman Schultz has taken other steps to support Everglades cleanup. But Canova’s point about her specific actions is largely accurate. We rate this claim Mostly True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/e8e8d7dc-ac5b-467d-bd9a-704468f40e5d"
+"Charles and David Koch might be two of the people happiest about Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid’s impending retirement. The Nevada Democrat’s undisguised disdain for the billionaire brothers’ bankrolling of conservative groups is well-documented, and Reid’s long crusade against the Kochs isn’t letting up as he nears retirement. Kicking off a coordinated effort to draw attention towards conservative-leaning nonprofits and climate change skeptics, Reid zeroed in on the Kochs and accused them of being worse polluters than major oil companies. ""The company is among the worst in toxic air pollution in the entire United States,"" he said during a July 11 floor speech. ""Koch Industries churns out more climate-changing greenhouse gases than oil giants Chevron, Shell and Valero."" This isn’t the first time Reid has tried to connect the Kochs’ business operations with climate change, but we were curious to see which company has the worst environmental record. Measuring pollution Reached by email, a Reid spokesperson cited a 2014 Rolling Stone article detailing the history behind the Koch family’s ""Toxic Empire,"" particularly a line stating ""Koch's climate pollution ... outpaces oil giants including Valero, Chevron and Shell."" Rolling Stone cites a corporate polluter study published by the University of Massachusetts, Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute. The ""Greenhouse 100 Polluters Index"" ranks Koch Industries 22nd on its list of polluters, creating more than 28 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions in 2014. The survey puts them ahead of the oil companies mentioned by Reid — Chevron (32nd), Royal Dutch Shell (27th) and Valero (26th) all produced fewer emissions in 2014 than Koch Industries, according to the report. Pretty clear, right? Koch Industries spokesman Ken Spain says Reid makes an unfair comparison between Koch and companies in essentially different industries with fewer facilities. ""It is misleading to compare Koch Industries — one of the largest and diversified manufacturers in the US — to much smaller companies,"" he said in a statement. ""Koch operates more than 200 manufacturing sites that employ 60,000 people in the U.S. Therefore, it is only logical that our GHG emissions are greater than a company that has far fewer facilities."" Koch lands somewhere in the middle compared to the oil giants mentioned by Reid in terms of total revenue and employees, though they do own more facilities than the other three.  Spain does have a point that Koch is more involved in manufacturing and refining goods that actually extracting and selling fossil fuels. The corporation is ranked 13th on the ""Toxic 100 Air Polluters"" list due to the roughly 31 million pounds of toxic air releases reported by the facilities owned by the Kochs. But Koch Industries does have many more facilities than Shell, Chevron and Valero. Koch Industries’ sites actually emits millions more toxic air releases than the 12 companies ahead of them on the list, such as top polluters Dow Chemical and ExxonMobil. But the company ranks lower than those because the survey adjusts the rankings to include levels of toxicity in the pollution, not just the total amount. Still, out-ranking just 12 companies isn’t exactly an environmental badge of honor. The corporation has a long history of violating environmental rules. In 2000, the company was fined a record $30 million due to repeated violations of environmental law, including more than 300 oil spills in six states. Koch Petroleum and other major polluters also reached an accord with the EPA that same year over air pollution, agreeing to spend $80 million to reduce refinery emissions and pay a $4.5 million penalty in return for a ""clean slate"" from the EPA. Invista, a Koch-owned subsidy, agreed in 2009 to a $1.7 million penalty and promised to spend up to $500 million to fix more than 680 self-reported violations of EPA standards at 12 facilities owned by the subsidy. PolitiFact also rated Charles Koch’s comments about the corporation being a ""model for other companies"" in terms of environmental regulation Mostly False, largely due to the numerous environmental crimes committed by the company throughout the late ‘90s and early 2000s. But Koch appears to be turning the corner. Rolling Stone acknowledges that the company has improved its regulatory compliance over time, which in the words of Charles Koch required a ""monumental undertaking to integrate compliance into every aspect of the company."" In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, Koch environmental director Sheryl Corrigan said the company had reduced air emissions at its refineries by 76 percent since 1997. They’ve also downsized their oil pipeline business from a high of 37,000 miles of pipeline in the late 1990s to around 4,000. Spain also pointed out a 2014 EPA Toxics Release Inventory analysis, which tracks U.S. facilities that manage and release toxic chemicals. Koch-owned businesses managed 667 million pounds of production-related waste in 2014, but the company reported implementing 240 ""Source Reduction Activities"" over the same time period — more than Shell and Chevron (though the corporation listed many more facilities than the oil giants). Our ruling Reid said, ""Koch Industries churns out more climate-changing greenhouse gases than oil giants Chevron, Shell and Valero."" Reid’s claim accurately calls on facts established in a well-respected study of corporate pollution. Koch Industries does produce more greenhouse gas emissions than the oil companies listed by Reid. But it's a somewhat misleading, apples-to-oranges comparison, because there are more Koch facilities that cover more industries compared to the oil companies. The statement is accurate but needs additional information. That meets our definition of Mostly True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/a24a3586-08cf-4ee9-a52a-85c7c46929c8"
+" Arnold Schwarzenegger’s achievements are many: Body builder. Movie star. Governator. Honorary Forest Ranger. Yes, he was named an Honorary Forest Ranger by the federal government. But was he California’s environmental champion, its greenest governor in history, in terms of protecting the state’s natural beauty through land conservation? That’s what a top official with the USC Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy, Bonnie Reiss, claimed in a recent opinion column. ""When he served as governor, Schwarzenegger preserved more land than any other gubernatorial administration in California’s history,"" Reiss, the institute’s global director, wrote in the Malibu Times on June 8, 2016. She continued: ""He established the Sierra Nevada Conservancy that oversees more than 25 million acres of land in Northern California, reached an agreement to preserve Hearst Ranch with its 13 miles of pristine coastline in Central California and brokered the Tejon Ranch Conservation Agreement that permanently preserved 90 percent of the 270,000-acre ranch in Southern California."" Schwarzenegger’s publicist made the same claim about protecting ""more land"" than any other California governor recently on Twitter.  Reiss, who served as a senior advisor to then Gov. Schwarzenegger, also highlighted the recent completion of the National Park Service’s Backbone Trail project near Malibu, to which Schwarzenegger donated 40 acres of his personal property. On the big screen, the Hollywood icon regularly saves the day. So we decided to fact-check whether he’s saved ""more land"" than any governor ""in California’s history."" Our research Environmentalists and state officials said they are not aware of records that track land conservation by a governor. Reiss told us she knows of no official rankings. To back up her claim about Schwarzenegger, she pointed to articles by Wikipedia and an environmental nonprofit that describe the Sierra Nevada Conservancy as the largest of its kind in California and the nation. It operates across a huge swath: 25 million acres stretching from the Oregon border to Kern County. But that’s the boundary inside which land can be protected. The total acreage conserved by the agency is much less -- about 58,000 acres over the past decade, according to a conservancy spokeswoman. That is still a large patchwork of protected land. But Reiss’ emphasis on the 25 million acre boundary muddies the water. ""It’s not like they created a new park,"" said Bill Magavern, who was director of Sierra Club California at the same time Schwarzenegger was governor. ""They established a new government entity."" Schwarzenegger did not originate plans for the conservancy -- he signed a bill into law in 2004 creating it. The state agency administers grants to local governments and trusts seeking to preserve land. Also in response to our questions, Reiss pointed to the conservation of Hearst Ranch along the Central Coast and Tejon Ranch north of Los Angeles, two mammoth conservation deals, both completed during Schwarzenegger’s tenure. Those protected 80,000 acres and 240,000 acres, respectively, according to websites for each. Environmentalists say Schwarzenegger deserves credit, not as the architect of the deals, but as a significant player in both. The Tejon Ranch Company describes its agreement as the largest private conservation deal in California history.  Then California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger speaks in May 2008 at Tejon Ranch. State officials we spoke with, including researchers at the California State Library, said they are not aware of any other governor whose administration protected larger collections of land. Conservation money While it’s difficult to track governors by acreage protected, there’s another way to measure their green works: Money raised for land conservation. During the early and mid-2000s, California voters approved nearly $20 billion for conservation through six bond measures. This was ""a huge influx of money,"" dwarfing amounts raised in previous decades, said Bryan Cash, who serves as deputy assistant secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency under current Gov. Jerry Brown and also worked for the agency under Gov. Schwarzenegger. Four of the bond measures were approved under Gov. Gray Davis, but later implemented by Schwarzenegger. The voter-approved bond money led to the preservation of 1.5 million acres across California from 2000 to 2011, Cash said. ""The statement,"" about Schwarzenegger protecting more land than any California governor, ""is probably true,"" Cash added. Cash said money still flows to conservation under the Brown Administration, but significantly less than in the 2000s.  The USDA named Schwarzengger an 'Honorary Forest Ranger' in 2013. Our ruling Bonnie Reiss of the USC Schwarzenegger Institute said: ""When he served as governor, Schwarzenegger preserved more land than any other gubernatorial administration in California’s history."" State officials and environmentalists agree Schwarzenegger helped protect vast tracks of California’s hills, forests and coastline. No other governor, they said, compares in this category. They also said Schwarzenegger benefitted from conservation efforts initiated before he took office, including plans for the Sierra Nevada Conservancy and state bond measures that helped fund much of the land protected under his watch. Also, Reiss’ emphasis on Schwarzenegger’s establishment of the ""25 million acre"" Sierra Nevada Conservancy needs the clarification that only a small fraction of that acreage has been preserved over the last decade. We rate the claim Mostly True. MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. "
+"Bernie Sanders still doesn’t want to talk about Hillary Clinton’s damn emails. Asked for his reaction to the State Department report of Clinton’s use of a private email server, Sanders told Meet the Press’ Chuck Todd that he’d rather talk policy differences. ""Our campaign is about defeating Secretary Clinton on the real issues,"" he responded. ""I want to break up the Wall Street banks. She doesn’t. I want to raise the minimum wage to 15 bucks an hour. She wants $12 an hour. I voted against the war in Iraq. She voted for the war in Iraq. I believe we should ban fracking. She does not. I believe we should have tax on carbon and deal aggressively with climate change. That is not her position. Those are some of the issues that I am campaigning on."" Sanders is right about Clinton’s Iraq war vote and where she stands on breaking up banks, a $15 minimum wage and fracking. (For more of their policy differences, read this.) But is he also right about their differences on carbon tax and climate change? There’s no doubt that Sanders’ rhetoric on climate change and his plan to deal with it are aggressive and, unlike Clinton, he has advocated for a carbon tax. Clinton does, however, have a climate change plan. While some environmentalists have said it isn’t tough enough, others have given it positive reviews. Both the Sanders and Clinton campaigns referred us to each candidate’s climate change plan. Sanders’ plan is long and comprehensive. Beyond a tax on carbon, it includes an array of proposals from banning certain drilling and mining practices to improving the national public transit system. Clinton’s plan is shorter and, though it doesn’t include a tax on carbon, contains similar provisions on renewables. Here’s an overview: Sanders’ plan Clinton’s plan Fossil fuel influence • Cut tax subsidies for oil and gas companies • Prohibit fossil fuel lobbyists from working in the White House • Investigate climate change deniers • Cut tax subsidies for oil and gas companies Environmental standards • Enact a tax on carbon • Ban fossil fuel leasing on public lands and promote conservation and habitat preservation • Ban Arctic oil drilling, offshore drilling, fracking, mountaintop removal coal mining and pipeline projects • Stop exports of natural gas and crude oil • Defend and close loopholes in the Clean Air Act • Increase fuel efficiency standards • Begin a moratorium on nuclear power • Create a national environmental and climate justice plan • Reform fossil fuel leasing and expand clean energy production on public lands • Defend and extend environmental standards like the Clean Power Plan • Eliminate lead poisoning, clean up brownfield sites, and create an Environmental Justice Task Force Renewables • Invest in clean energy infrastructure and modernize the energy grid • Invest in clean energy, alternative fuels and energy efficiency programs • Invest in clean energy infrastructure • Launch a $60 billion local-state-federal clean energy partnership As in her plan, Clinton prefers to focus on renewables on the stump. In a January Medium post responding to the Sanders camp, Clinton’s campaign manager highlighted her pledge to ""make America the clean energy superpower of the 21st century"" in her launch speech. Clinton, who played a role in negotiating the Paris climate change agreement, herself touted her goals for more solar panel and clean electricity as ""big"" and ""bold."" Clinton has gotten her best reviews from the League of Conservation Voters, who endorsed Clinton last fall (to some controversy). The green group considers Clinton’s plan strong and aggressive and, more importantly, achievable, Tiernan Sittenfeld, its senior vice president of government affairs, told PolitiFact. ""Hillary is focused on practical solutions,"" Sittenfeld said, pointing out that there are many lawmakers in Congress who still deny climate change science. ""So (a carbon tax) is pretty remote possibility."" But some are skeptical of Clinton’s ""boldness."" Pulitzer Prize-winning website InsideClimate News called Clinton’s plan ambitious but said it ""falls short of bold."" The Washington Post’s editorial board said her ideas are ""second best."" Environmental news magazine Grist summed up her positions as not bad but ""not quite the climate hawkishness we need."" Our ruling Sanders said, ""I believe we should have tax on carbon and deal aggressively with climate change. That is not her position."" Unlike Sanders, Clinton doesn’t advocate for a carbon tax. And while Clinton doesn’t go as far as Sanders in her climate change plan, she does have one. The League of Conservation Voters supports her plan as realistic and achievable. We rate Sanders’ claim Mostly True."
+"In a recent post on Medium, Robby Mook -- Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager -- countered accusations from Bernie Sanders that Clinton has been tainted by taking money from oil and gas interests. ""In last week’s debate,"" Mook wrote of the April 14 Democratic presidential face-off in Brooklyn, ""Bernie questioned Hillary’s commitment to fighting climate change because a whopping 0.2 percent of the money given to our campaign has come from employees of oil and gas companies. Not even 2 percent, mind you: 0.2 percent."" We have taken a look at this general topic before but haven’t rated this particular assertion, so we’ll do it here. A look at the numbers We turned to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, an independent clearinghouse for campaign finance data. Clinton has raised $307,561 from people employed by the oil and gas industry. It’s worth noting that not all this money comes from people with deep pockets; this total includes donations from everyone employed by the industry, from CEOs to gas-station employees. Altogether, Clinton’s campaign has raised more than $180 million, so the percentage raised from employees of the oil and gas industry works out to 0.17 percent -- which is actually a bit less than Mook said. By comparison, Sanders has raised less from oil and gas employees than Clinton has -- $53,760 -- which amounts to 0.03 percent of the $182 million his campaign has raised. In any case, this particular statistic looks solid on the math. That said, we’ll raise a caveat. Mook’s narrow focus Mook has worded the claim carefully to exclude other donations, which amounts to a bit of cherry-picking. Mook refers to ""employees."" But as the Sanders campaign has argued -- citing analyses by Greenpeace and the Huffington Post -- Clinton’s campaign has also received donations from lobbyists who have ties to oil and gas interests. These donations would not be reported as having come from employees of oil and gas companies and thus aren’t included in the total we calculated above. The Huffington Post article, from July 17, 2015, found that ""nearly all of the lobbyists bundling contributions for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign have at one time or another worked for the fossil fuel industry."" It links to 40 registered lobbyists but only offers details on some donors who still work for the industry. The Greenpeace report says that when you add in donations by lobbyists with an alleged tie to the fossil fuel industry, Clinton's total would rise to nearly $1.8 million. The fossil fuel industry's share of the Clinton coffers would go up to about 0.8 percent. The Sanders campaign added that the Greenpeace report goes a step further to include more than $4 million to Priorities Action USA, the super PAC that supports Clinton. And the Sanders team said that Chevron, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil have donated at least $2.5 million to the Clinton Foundation. ""I understand the Clinton campaign objects to these figures, because some of the fossil fuel lobbyists who have bundled huge sums of money for their campaign also represent clients in other industries,"" said Sanders spokesman Warren Gunnels. ""In our view, that makes these contributions even more objectionable. It's the lobbyists in Washington who write the bills and curry special favors for the firms they represent. You can't reform big oil and gas companies by taking bundled campaign cash from their lobbyists."" The Sanders critique is not a slam-dunk, however For starters, it’s a stretch to draw a direct line between those super PAC donations and Clinton’s campaign. Under federal law, the candidates have no control over super PAC spending. In addition, it’s up for debate how significant these lobbyists’ donations are. It’s not clear how much of influence the oil and gas industry would wield through a donor who once lobbied for them but doesn’t any more. In some cases, the lobbyists advocated for clients in multiple industries, not just oil and gas. Finally, Clinton’s stances on oil and gas issues is not exactly in tune with the industry. She has said that if individuals from the industry want to donate to her, they should know that they may be wasting their money. She favors policies the oil and gas industry doesn’t like, and she is a big supporter of renewable energy, a philosophy Sanders has also embraced. Our ruling Mook wrote, ""In last week’s debate, Bernie questioned Hillary’s commitment to fighting climate change because a whopping 0.2 percent of the money given to our campaign has come from employees of oil and gas companies. Not even 2 percent, mind you: 0.2 percent."" Mook’s statement is accurate, though it’s carefully constructed to exclude donations by lobbyists who have at one time represented the industry -- a point made by Sanders, though its relevance is up for debate. The statement is accurate but needs additional information, so we rate it Mostly True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/f1dfea64-4e60-4564-9663-e348645568ed"
+"Looking to out-green Hillary Clinton in New York, Bernie Sanders charged that Clinton’s position on fracking was at odds with voters. New Yorkers ended the practice in the state in 2014, and Sanders called for a nationwide ban during an April 11 rally in Binghamton. Clinton, in contrast, remains on the side of the frackers, Sanders said on NBC’s Meet the Press, when he launched a multipart attack on Clinton’s positions on fracking, trade and campaign finance. ""Well, when you vote for virtually every trade agreement that has cost the workers of this country millions of jobs, when you support and continue to support fracking, despite the crisis that we have in terms of clean water,"" he said April 10, ""and essentially, when you have a super PAC that is raising tens of millions of dollars from every special interest out there, including $15 million from Wall Street, the American people do not believe that that is the kind of president that we need to make the changes in America to protect the working families of this country."" Was Sanders telling the fracking truth? (We examined Clinton’s support for free trade in a separate fact-check.) While Clinton’s past support of fracking is well documented, her current position leaves more wiggle room than Sanders’ statement suggests. Shale promoted 'round the world To refresh, fracking or hydraulic fracturing means producers are blasting pressurized water, sand and chemicals into shale rock miles underground to extract natural gas. The Environmental Protection Agency considers shale gas to be clean energy. Some environmentalists, though, are doubtful that it’s that much better than coal or oil, given reports that fracking can cause methane leaks (a greenhouse gas that’s much more potent than carbon dioxide) and earthquakes and set water ablaze. Clinton clearly supported the practice as secretary of state. Her special envoy for international energy affairs launched the Global Shale Gas Initiative encouraging other countries to explore shale as an energy source. An in-depth investigation by progressive magazine Mother Jones said that Clinton’s support of fracking was ""part of a broader push to fight climate change, boost global energy supply, and undercut the power of adversaries such as Russia that use their energy resources as a cudgel."" We found instances of Clinton and the State Department talking up fracking to Latin America, the European Union, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Bulgaria, Pakistan, China and India. ""The United States will promote the use of shale gas. Now, I know that in some places is controversial. But natural gas is the cleanest fossil fuel available for power generation today, and a number of countries in the Americas may have shale gas resources,"" Clinton said in a 2009 speech to the Inter-American Development Bank. After Clinton left the State Department in 2013, she continued to support fracking but repeatedly called for ""smart regulations"" in speeches and in her book, Hard Choices. Fracking with nuance in 2016 Compared with Sanders’ unequivocal opposition and the Republicans’ strong support, Clinton has a more complicated answer when it comes to fracking. Essentially, she supports it as long as there’s environmental oversight and no local opposition. Here’s how Clinton detailed her position during the March 6 debate in Flint, Michigan: ""I don’t support it when any locality or any state is against it, No. 1. I don’t support it when the release of methane or contamination of water is present. I don’t support it — No. 3 — unless we can require that anybody who fracks has to tell us exactly what chemicals they are using. So by the time we get through all of my conditions, I do not think there will be many places in America where fracking will continue to take place. And I think that’s the best approach, because right now, there are places where fracking is going on that are not sufficiently regulated."" (""My answer is a lot shorter,"" responded Sanders. ""No, I do not support fracking."") Clinton spokesman Josh Schwerin referred us to Clinton’s plan ""to address the fracking-related risks people are concerned about."" ""This is particularly important given that the federal government doesn’t get to say where fracking occurs and where it doesn’t, but can put new safeguards in place,"" Schwerin said. Katie Brown of Energy in Depth, the research and education arm of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, told PolitiFact that Sanders’ position to ban all fracking is outside the mainstream. ""Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, joins Democrats across the county such as Sen. Chuck Schumer, and California Gov. Jerry Brown, and Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (just to name a few), who have all touted strong regulations by the states and supported fracking for its environmental and economic benefits,"" Brown said. Warren Gunnels, Sanders’ policy director, referred us to a Reuters article, in which supporters of fracking cast Clinton’s comments as campaign rhetoric and opponents urged her to cut the caveats and ban it outright. But what exactly would Clinton’s caveats mean for frackers? A portrait of regulated extraction Clinton’s three conditions would uphold existing bans and add new ones to the mix. But they wouldn’t amount to a universal ban. The first condition leaves local and state bans in place, such as those in Vermont, New York and a few dozen cities and counties across America. Her second condition would add dozens of sites that have methane emissions or water contamination. Natural gas is primarily methane, so we’ll assume Clinton is talking about ""fugitive emissions"" or leaks. Estimates for fugitive emissions, typically expressed as a percentage of the total production, vary widely. A round up of studies by watchdog blog Carbon Brief found estimates ranging from 0.6 to 9 percent (the threshold for being cleaner than coal is 3.2 percent). Various industry and independent research has indicated that a good chunk of leaks come from a small number of ""super-emitters"" (roughly one in 25 facilities, according to a 2015 Colorado State University study). Clinton could ostensibly shut down these methane spewers, which include, for example, about 50 production sites in northern Texas and four lift wells in the Gulf Coast. Water contamination is not systemic, according to a controversial 2015 EPA study, which nonetheless identified 151 cases of fracking fluid spills in 11 states from 2006 to 2012. Robert Howarth, a noted critic of fracking and biogeochemist at Cornell University, estimates at least 4 percent of production wells pollute water, but contends that the problem is widespread given the sheer number of wells. Under Clinton’s condition, fracking could be banned in, for example, at least 25 counties in Pennsylvania and at least 12 counties in Colorado, if not in all 11 states with noted cases of spills. Frackers are already meeting Clinton’s third condition, to an extent. At least 26 states have some rules on chemical disclosure on the books, though most allow frackers to protect ""trade secrets,"" according to the American Chemical Society. In addition, the Obama administration now requires drillers on federal and tribal lands to report the composition of their fracking fluid to FracFocus, an industry-backed registry of more than 100,000 wells across America. (Here’s an example.) Environmentalists contend that these rules are not nearly enough. Howarth told PolitiFact that chemical additives are ""a small part of the problem."" ""The frack return fluids are full of really nasty materials in addition to the additives, and the precise nature of this toxic brew is seldom known,"" he said. ""Clinton's focus on just the additives is misguided."" That being said, Clinton’s condition could ban fracking in Virginia and Missouri, two states with fracking activity but no disclosure rules in place at the time of this report. Here’s a map that shows how Clinton’s conditions could affect fracking in America:  Our ruling Sanders said that Clinton supported and continues ""to support fracking."" As secretary of state, Clinton supported and promoted fracking around the world. As a 2016 candidate, her support comes with conditions such as local choice, stronger environmental regulation and chemicals. Sanders’ claim is accurate but needs additional information. We rate it Mostly True."
+"The Democratic debate in Flint, Mich., opened with a discussion of the city’s lead poisoning crisis, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Flint isn’t the only place where serious action is needed. ""We have a lot of communities right now in our country where the level of toxins in the water, including lead, are way above what anybody should tolerate,"" Clinton said. ""We have a higher rate of tested lead in people in Cleveland than in Flint. So I’m not satisfied with just doing everything we must do for Flint. I want to tackle this problem across the board."" We were curious about Clinton’s claim that Cleveland has it worse. If you stopped listening there, you might have thought she was saying the tap water in Ohio’s second-largest city is also contaminated with lead — which is not the case. Later in the debate, Clinton made a point of mentioning lead coming from other sources, too: ""I want us to have an absolute commitment to getting rid of lead wherever it is because it's not only in water systems, it's also in soil, and it's in lead paint that is found mostly in older homes,"" she said. The Clinton campaign cited an article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and we found other reports and data that back her point. Lead poisoning leads to serious neurological and behavioral effects ranging from shortened attention spans and developmental disabilities to coma and even death. While no level of lead is safe in children, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention uses a reference level of 5 micrograms of lead per one deciliter of blood as an indicator of higher-than-usual blood lead levels. According to the CDC, 2.5 percent of American children age 5 and under — about a half million kids — test at this level. Residents of Flint have been consuming tap water with lead since 2014, when the city switched its water source to the polluted Flint River to save money. In 2015, 4 percent of all kids and 6.3 percent of kids in high-risk areas had elevated blood lead levels, according to an analysis by Monica Hanna-Attisha, a researcher at Flint’s Hurley Children’s Hospital. Clinton has a point that many other American cities are dealing with the toxin. Lead-contaminated tap water has run through faucets in Washington D.C., Durham, N.C., Lakehurst Acres, Maine, Jackson, Miss. and other places throughout the years. But in most places, lead poisoning elsewhere is mainly due to lead-based paint in older houses. That’s the case for Cleveland, where a whopping 14.2 percent of kids tested at the reference level in 2014, according to the Cuyahoga County Board of Health. In the county, 10.3 percent of kids had elevated blood levels. Cleveland and Cuyahoga County aren’t exactly outliers. Looking at 2014 CDC surveillance data for 1,425 counties in 29 states, 288 counties have higher rates of lead poisoning than Flint. (We should caution that the data is far from perfect; for example, 100 percent of kids in Colfax County, N.M., tested positive, but the sample size was just 33 kids.) What’s more, 15 counties had the same percentage or higher rates of poisoned children as Flint, but at double the reference blood-lead level:  Our ruling Clinton said, ""We have a higher rate of tested lead in people in Cleveland than in Flint."" In Flint, 4 percent of all kids and 6.3 percent of kids in high-risk areas in Flint tested positive for lead poisoning in 2015. In Cleveland, that rate was 14.2 percent in 2014. However, the lead in Cleveland came from paint, not water, and Clinton's initial phrasing made that unclear. With this caveat, we rate Clinton's claim Mostly True."
+"Of all the controversies associated with Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, his position on federally owned land tends to attract less attention. But the issue of public land ownership is important to Nevadans, where federal government agencies manage and control around 85 percent of state land. And it’s partially why Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is slamming Trump on the issue in a campaign ad airing just days before the Nevada Republican presidential caucus on Feb. 23. ""Eighty-five percent of Nevada is owned and regulated by the federal government,"" says Cruz in the ad. ""And Donald Trump wants to keep big government in charge. That’s ridiculous."" The ad has aired dozens of times in Reno through the lead up to Nevada's caucus, according to Political TV Ad Archive. We thought Cruz’s claim merited fact-checking, because public lands management is a critical issue with Nevada voters. An on-screen graphic refers to a January interview with Field & Stream magazine, where Trump said he would be hesitant to give federal land over to state and local governments. ""I don’t like the idea, because I want to keep the lands great, and you don’t know what the state is going to do,"" he told an interviewer. ""I mean, are they going to sell if they get into a little bit of trouble?"" Trump’s campaign offered a slightly more detailed explanation of his proposed policy in an answer to a candidate questionnaire, but said the bigger issue was land management and not transfer of ownership. ""The issue is not that so much of the state is public land; it is how that land is managed,"" the campaign wrote, promising to cut ""needless bureaucratic red tape."" The Trump campaign didn’t return emails seeking comment. Cruz, on the other hand, takes a more libertarian stance on public land issues and said the amount of land owned by the federal government is ""unacceptable."" ""I believe we should transfer as much federal land as possible back to the states and ideally back to the people,"" he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in December. Cruz fought with the Bureau of Land Management over the agency's efforts to ""claim 90,000 acres of disputed land near Texas’s Red River,"" and for a time supported Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s standoff with the federal government over his unpaid grazing fees. And many of the Texas senator’s Nevada supporters pushed for a failed bill in the state Legislature that ""would lay claim to almost all federally managed public lands and water rights in the state."" It’s worth noting that Nevada’s state constitution expressly gives up the state’s rights to all ""unappropriated public lands"" to the federal government, which is why it’s worth quibbling with candidates like Cruz and Rubio promise to ""return"" control to its citizens  — who have never held a claim to the federally owned land in the past 151 years of Nevada statehood. Our ruling Cruz says that Trump wants to keep ""big government"" in charge of Nevada’s public lands. Trump has answered questions on public land management twice. He has not advocated for transferring ownership, but he has focused on cutting bureaucratic red tape. Cruz exaggerates Trump's position slightly by saying Trump favors ""big"" government. We rate the ad's statement Mostly True."
+"The two-week climate conference now under way in Paris, where President Barack Obama hopes for an international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, has generated attacks from conservatives such as syndicated columnist George Will. On Nov. 30, 2015, the first day of the United Nations gathering, Will made a two-part claim that we want to check. He made the statement on Fox News’ ""Special Report,"" and it was replayed the next day by Milwaukee radio talk show host Charlie Sykes, whose guests are nearly always fellow conservatives. Despite 30 years of ""propaganda"" about global warming, Will stated, ""fewer Americans carpool today to work than carpooled in 1980. SUVs have never been a larger proportion of the vehicles being sold in this country. The American people may profess occasionally to be concerned about global warming, but their behavior tells you that none of this propaganda has had any effect."" The size of the cars Americans drive and how often they carpool are only two ways in which people produce greenhouse gases -- those such as carbon dioxide from vehicles that trap heat in the atmosphere and, scientists believe, contribute to global warming. But let’s see how clean Will’s claim is. Greenhouse gases A little first on greenhouse gases. When Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker stated in September 2015 that the Obama administration’s own Environmental Protection Agency has said its Clean Power Plan ""will have a marginal impact on climate change"" (Half True), we noted that the United States and China are considered the world’s top greenhouse gas polluters. And as PolitiFact National reported the same month, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said it is ""extremely likely"" that humans are causing climate change, and ""very likely"" that greenhouses gases are the driver. We’ve also noted that according to the EPA, greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles in the United States amount to 27 percent of all sources of greenhouse gases, second only to electric power generation. Now to the first part of Will’s claim. Carpooling The latest census figures show that slightly more than 9 percent of Americans carpooled to work in 2014. As Will suggested, that’s down from nearly 20 percent in 1980, which was the first census to survey about carpooling. Driving alone rose from 64.4 percent to 76.5 percent. Among the reasons, according to experts: The rate of car ownership has risen, work schedules are less predictable, more people work from home and busier Americans want more freedom in managing their commutes with other tasks, such as getting kids to soccer practice. The other part of Will’s statement, however, goes off road a bit. SUVs We’ll note that, strictly speaking, there are traditional sport-utility vehicles, such as the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Dodge Durango, which are built on a truck platform; and the newer crossover-utility vehicles, which are built on a car chassis. They include the Honda CR-V and the Buick Encore. Traditional SUVs peaked with a 17 percent market share in 2002, according to the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Center for Automotive Research, an independent research group. In 2014, they made up only 7.1 percent of all new vehicle sales. But many people, as well as automotive experts, refer to both types of vehicles simply as SUVs. The car site Edmunds.com told us that SUVs have reached their highest-ever market share in 2015, at 35.5 percent of sales. And the Center for Automotive Research provided us similar figures. In 2014, traditional SUVs and crossovers accounted for 34 percent of new-vehicle sales, as high as any year going back to 1995. Our rating Will said that despite attention on global warming, ""fewer Americans carpool today to work than carpooled in 1980"" and ""SUVs have never been a larger proportion of the vehicles being sold in this country."" Will is correct on carpooling to work and essentially correct on SUVs, when taking into account both traditional SUVs and the smaller crossover vehicles. But it’s worth noting that the market share for the traditional SUVs is down from its peak in 2002. We rate the statement Mostly True. "
+"GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush has announced he wants a sea change in the federal government’s land management practices. In his Western Land Resource Management plan, which Bush released Oct. 21, 2015, the former Florida governor said federal land holdings are out of control — and therefore, so are expenses and Washington’s influence across the region. ""The federal government owns about half of the West, yet it continues to acquire more land,"" Bush said in the plan, which calls federal holdings ""a liability to economic freedom and growth."" He advocated more state and local control over these lands. Does Washington really own half of Western states, and is it looking for more? We decided to survey this for ourselves. The West vs. Washington There’s no exact total of how much land Washington owns and manages, partly because the total is constantly changing, but it’s a lot. According to the most recent data in a 2012 Congressional Research Service report, the government owns about 635 million to 640 million acres, or about 28 percent of all the land in the country. Most of that land is administered by three agencies in the Department of the Interior: the National Park Service (80 million acres); the Bureau of Land Management (248 million acres); and the Fish and Wildlife Service (89 million acres, plus another 217 million acres of marine refuges and monuments). In the U.S. Agriculture Department, the U.S. Forest Service is in charge of another 193 million acres. The Defense Department runs another 19 million acres in bases, training ranges and more. The rest is divided among several other departments and agencies. There is not an equal split among states, however. To Bush’s point, the federal government owns about 47 percent of the land in 11 Western states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. If we head east of the Mississippi River, Washington owns and manages only about 4 percent. This disparity is partly because of history. Most land in the West was at one time public, ranging from purchases from France, Mexico and Russia to land seized from Mexicans and Native Americans. The federal government has transferred land to private interests over the years and has focused on conservation during the last century, but these vast holdings have long been a contentious issue. Many Republicans in Western state legislatures would prefer to keep land-use decisions local. One group called the American Lands Council, headed by Utah Republican state Rep. Ken Ivory, is leading the charge in pushing for transferring federal land to states. The Council did not get back to us for this fact-check, but their website says the group wants federal lands transferred to states to ""provide better public access, better environmental health, and better economic productivity."" Bush’s plan calls for local control and a smaller federal footprint in general. Conservationists and researchers fear the real reason states want these transfers is to sell or lease public lands to private developers for ranching, mining or forestry. This land is our land As Bush says, the federal government is looking to make more acquisitions. His campaign pointed out the Interior and Agriculture departments made a fiscal year 2016 budget request that asked for almost $575 million for land acquisitions (plus $325 million for state conservation grants). The money was earmarked for acquisition projects across several federal agencies that ranged from national park lands to scenic trails to wildlife refuges. That doesn’t necessarily mean those agencies will get that money. The 2016 budget request is dependent on the Land and Water Conservation Fund, a pot of cash pooled from fees on offshore oil and gas leases. Authorized in 1965, the fund is the main mechanism for land purchases and broad conservation efforts. Congress is authorized to set aside as much as $900 million per year from this fund for land acquisition — note the 2016 request is for $900 million in all — but lawmakers rarely give conservation efforts that much. They usually shift the bulk of the money to other expenses and leave little for conservation efforts. Congress authorized $306 million total after a similar $900 million request in 2015. Complicating matters this year is that Congress failed to reauthorize the fund when it expired on Sept. 30. Bush said in his plan he supported a permanent reauthorization of the fund. ""There are additional funding sources for federal land acquisitions, but they are not as significant as LWCF,"" said Martin Nie, director of the Bolle Center for People & Forests at the University of Montana. ""And yes, federal agencies are often in the process of both acquiring more land and conveying (or exchanging) other federal lands."" Greg Zimmerman, policy director at the pro-conservation Center for Western Priorities, also pointed out that total federal acreage has fallen some over the years. That same CRS report concluded the five government agencies we mentioned earlier shed about 18 million acres between 1990 and 2010. Most of that change is from the Bureau of Land Management getting rid of land in Alaska, where the federal government still owns about 62 percent of the state. Our ruling Bush said, ""The federal government owns about half of the west, yet it continues to acquire more land."" He’s right that Washington owns about 47 percent of the land in the 11 most Western states. Government agencies also continue to request funds for land acquisitions, although the major source for these transactions recently expired. The federal government routinely acquires and disposes of land, but overall has less acreage now than it did 25 years ago. We rate his statement Mostly True."
+"Former Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., spent most of the first Democratic presidential debate in the shadow of frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. But he got in a few shots here and there. During the debate, Webb discussed the issue of climate change, arguing that the United States can’t go it alone. ""We are not going to solve climate change simply with the laws here,"" Webb said. ""We've done a good job in this country since 1970. If you look at China and India, they're the greatest polluters in the world. Fifteen out of the 20 most polluted cities in the world are in one of those two countries. We need to solve this in a global way. It's a global problem."" We decided to check whether Webb is right that ""15 out of the 20 most polluted cities in the world"" are in India and China, and whether his point is relevant for the climate change debate. (Webb’s staff did not respond to an inquiry.) The top-20 list There is indeed a credible top-20 list for most-polluted cities. It was assembled by the World Health Organization in 2014. It compares cities based on how much fine particulate matter they have in the air. This measurement is called PM 2.5, standing for particulate matter that is 2.5 microns in width or smaller. (There are about 25,000 microns per inch, so these particles are very small.) Such pollutants at the ground level pose such immediate health risks as eye, nose, throat and lung irritation, and they can elevate the risk for lung and heart ailments over the longer term. These small particles typically come from exhaust from cars, trucks, buses and other vehicles, though they can also come from natural sources such as forest and grass fires. Here’s the list: Rank CIty and country PM 2.5 pollution level 1 Delhi, India 153 2 Patna, India 149 3 Gwalior, India 144 4 Raipur, India 134 5 Karachi, Pakistan 117 6 Peshawar, Pakistan 111 7 Rawalpindi, Pakistan 107 8 Khormabad, Iran 102 9 Ahmedabad, India 100 10 Lucknow, India 96 11 Firozabad, India 96 12 Doha, Qatar 93 13 Kanpur, India 93 14 Amritsar, India 92 15 Ludhiana, India 91 16 Idgir, Turkey 90 17 Narayonganj, Bangladesh 89 18 Allahbad, India 88 19 Agra, India 88 20 Khanna, India 88 So, 13 of the 20 cities on the most-polluted list are located in India (they’re highlighted in bold). That’s two fewer cities than Webb had said, and none of the 20 cities on the list are located in China, as he’d indicated. Still, Webb’s not that far off, and he has a point that the list is dominated by developing countries, including many in south Asia. The relevance of this finding for climate change It’s important to note, however, that particulate pollution is not a key contributor to climate change. Rising global temperatures are more heavily tied to emissions of another substance -- carbon dioxide. Webb’s comment ""does seem to conflate two issues,"" said John Reilly, co-director of the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Looking at the U.S. experience over the past few decades can help clarify the difference between the two metrics. ""The U.S. cleaned up emission of particulates and sulfate aerosols by requiring cleaner, lower-sulfur coal and cleaner diesel fuel,"" Reilly said. ""But cleaning up those emissions does nothing directly to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, since we continued to use coal and petroleum products."" Ironically, particulate emissions may actually have a cooling effect rather than a warming effect because they can reflect sunlight back into space, said Brian Soden, a professor in atmospheric sciences at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. This reflectiveness may have made the earth warm more slowly than it might otherwise have. That said, experts agreed that there’s likely a reasonably high correlation between cities that have high particulate counts and those that have high emission levels for carbon dioxide, particularly when you look beyond advanced industrialized nations like the United States. While ""the two lists will not necessarily line up perfectly, the 20 most polluted cities are certainly also top contributors of carbon emissions,"" Soden said. And experts said that Webb does have a point about the need for international cooperation if carbon levels are to be cut. While the United States is a bigger carbon emitter right now, other nations like India are seeing their emissions rise more rapidly. Emissions are only going to fall worldwide if most major emitters reduce their output together. ""Yes, it is absolutely a global problem, but someone needs to lead,"" Soden said. Our ruling Webb said that ""15 out of the 20 most polluted cities in the world"" are in India and China. He’s close -- 13 are in India, though none are in China. It’s worth pointing out, however, that the top-20 list measures cities with the greatest level of particulate pollution, which is not the same thing as emissions of carbon dioxide, the primary driver of climate change. The statement is accurate but needs clarification and additional information, so we rate it Mostly True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/b78a803a-7a52-45a4-beff-8123446f0f36"
+"Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson is once again in the crosshairs of a national conservation group for his voting record. The League of Conservation Voters has run a series of television ads against Johnson, a first-term senator who is facing a 2016 rematch with Democrat Russ Feingold. The ads have aired in anticipation of possible action by Republicans in Congress to undo Obama Administration regulations limiting carbon emissions. The $1.6 million campaign includes an ad called ""Disappear,"" and another dubbed ""Lakes."" Both make variations of the same claim: That ""Ron Johnson led the fight to let polluters release unlimited amounts of carbon pollution."" The second ad includes this addendum: ""... and took nearly $225,000 from polluters."" Turns out the environmental groups are doing a bit of recycling. Support for the legislation We checked a similar claim in 2013 when the League of Conservation Voters aired an ad that said Johnson had taken ""more than $100,000 from oil and gas and voted to let them keep spewing unlimited carbon pollution into our air."" We rated the claim True. Johnson voted twice to prohibit the EPA from regulating any carbon emissions. And, at the time that ad aired, he had received $109,550 from oil and gas interests since his first campaign in 2010, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign contributions. The same votes are cited in the most recent ads. But the wording varies a bit. It says Johnson ""led the fight,"" which is problematic. The group’s backup for the ad cites two measures that Johnson voted in favor of -- one in 2011 and one in 2013 -- that would have blocked the EPA from strengthening the carbon emission standards. However, he was not a sponsor or co-sponsor of either amendment, so it’s hard to consider him a leader. The group also noted Johnson ""has co-sponsored legislation, written to President Obama, and spoken to the media regarding his opposition to the Clean Power Plan."" The bill the group cites, the Affordable Reliable Energy Now Act, was introduced May 13, 2015. Johnson is among 35 co-sponsors. That’s nearly two-thirds of the 54 senators who are Republican. The letter cited was written to Obama June 4, 2014. It called on him to withdraw the EPA carbon rules. Johnson was one of 41 Republican senators who signed. Finally, the group cites a quote from Johnson in a June 18, 2014 article posted by the liberal blog Talking Points Memo. In it, Johnson said he'd be ""totally supportive"" of using government funding legislation to block the EPA rules. ""I'm a manufacturer. You actually need power if you're going to manufacture things,"" he said. ""Let's not drive, artificially, the cost of power up -- that's a self-inflicted wound. That's what this administration is doing and I have no idea why they'd want to do that."" He was one of a half dozen GOP senators quoted in the story. So, while Johnson took the steps, the group provides little evidence he was out in front or somehow spearheading them. Campaign contributions Finally, the ad offers a new figure for campaign cash (nearly $225,000) and instead of ""oil and gas,"" describes the contributors as ""polluters."" According to same campaign contribution database we previously reviewed, Johnson received  $133,600 from the oil and gas industry, $63,428 from the mining, and $22,700 from electric power utilities. That tallies out to $219,728. Johnson campaign spokesman Brian Reisinger called the ads a ""false partisan attack"" and said they distorted Johnson’s position ""that we can protect our economy and environment at the same time with a balanced national energy policy."" Our rating The League of Conservation voters launched TV ads that claim Johnson ""led the fight to let polluters release unlimited amounts of carbon pollution and took nearly $225,000 from polluters."" Much of the ad’s content is recycled. The claim, however, is puffed up a bit this time because it says Johnson ""led"" the effort. We did not find much evidence of that. That knocks the claim down to Mostly True."
+"""Absurd,"" ""embarrassing,"" and ""brazenly silly"" were some of the insults hurled at Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley when he suggested in July that climate change contributed to the rise of ISIS. Despite the derision, the former governor of Maryland continues to stand by his talking point. ""One of the things that preceded the failure of the nation-state of Syria and the rise of ISIS was the effect of climate change and the mega-drought that affected that region, wiped out farmers, drove people to cities, created a humanitarian crisis,"" O’Malley told Bloomberg TV on July 20. Two months later, O’Malley repeated his argument in an interview with the progressive radio show Democracy Now! on Sept. 10: ""Their government could not take care of the basic needs of families in those conditions. Civil war rose up as a result of protest and repression ... then the vacuum to that led to ISIS. So these are the cascading effects that happen in a world that’s very, very connected and in a world where climate change is now creating extreme weather conditions, prolonged droughts."" With recent events -- the pope’s visit highlighting climate change and the United States’ decision to accept more Syrian refugees -- converging on the topic, we were curious if O’Malley’s claim really was ""absurd."" O’Malley’s source A spokesperson for the O’Malley campaign told us that his source was a March 2015 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study, which was well received in its field, does not mention ISIS at all, but its authors told us O’Malley’s extrapolation makes sense. The study found evidence that climate change led to an extreme drought in Syria’s breadbasket between 2006 to 2009. Food prices skyrocketed, nutrition-related diseases became widespread, and 1.5 million internal refugees abandoned their farms and flooded into Syrian cities already crowded with 1.5 million Iraqi refugees displaced by the Iraq war, according to the study. This influx of people exacerbated existing problems like unemployment, corruption and brewing discontent with the regime of Bashar al-Assad, which failed to respond to the situation, according to the study. In 2011, the unrest reached boiling point and erupted into the Syrian uprising. If we follow the sequence of events like O’Malley does, it’s reasonable to say the next fallen domino is the rise of ISIS. ""Once the war had begun all sorts of pre-existing actors took advantage of the situation to pursue their goals -- ISIS was one and the collapse of Syria provided fertile ground for their actions,"" said co-author Richard Seager, a professor of climatology at Columbia University. O’Malley’s campaign also forwarded us many reports and comments from the Department of Defense linking climate change and ISIS. We should also note that the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study is not the first rigorous, academic investigation into the links between climate change and conflict (there’s at least one other on the Syrian conflict alone). Drought’s not the sole culprit In the grander scheme of things, experts say, the drought was just one of many sparks that set the Syrian powder keg ablaze. But both the study and O’Malley acknowledge that and get credit for not overstating climate change’s impact. While climate change may have played an indirect role in the Syrian uprising and ISIS’ rise, other causes – Assad’s recruitment of al-Qaeda members, the genocide against Sunni Arabs, etc.– are direct and ""crystal clear,"" according to Ali Khedery, a former special assistant to five American ambassadors in Iraq. Michael Doran, a senior fellow on Middle East security issues at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank, pointed out that unrest in region is not confined to areas suffering from drought. He, however, said that O’Malley’s correct that the drought played a role in generating disaffection. ""The drought did not cause the Syrian revolution or the fall of Assad,"" said Kenneth Pollack, a senior fellow on Middle East policy at the Brookings Institution. ""A very complex mix of factors did that, but the study suggests that climate change was part of that mix even if we can't tell how important it was."" The study, which Pollack said is garnering a lot of attention among Middle East experts, notes that there is no single cause for conflict, while O’Malley emphasized the ""cascading effects"" of the drought, rather than the drought itself. ""It's fair to say the uprising was going to happen at some point. But the drought did happen when it happened and based on the timing of it, the agricultural collapse and the migration were direct results,"" said study lead author Colin Kelley, a climatologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara. ""The drought creating this chaotic situation also created better opportunity for ISIS to thrive. If you say that in the way (O’Malley) said, it's fair to argue."" Our ruling O’Malley argued that ""the cascading effects"" of climate change contributed to the rise of ISIS The O’Malley campaign referred us to a credible March 2015 study that supports his point. According to the study, a drought in Syria in the 2000s displaced millions of refugees and added to discontent that eventually erupted into war. While the study does not mention ISIS by name, the authors say O’Malley is simply taking their argument one step further. Experts agreed that the drought, spurred by climate change, was one of many factors that led to the Syrian conflict. O’Malley’s phrasing suggests he understands this and is careful not overstate it. We rate his claim Mostly True."
+"A state wildlife official opposed plans to alter protections for the Florida panther, saying there was no pressing reason to fear the big cats. On Sept. 2, 2015, the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission considered a policy proposal that critics said would have undercut efforts to expand the population. Opponents said the proposal favored ranchers, who have complained about panthers eating livestock and potentially threatening family members. Commissioner ""Alligator"" Ron Bergeron said he’d never had reason to be afraid of a panther. ""I’ve been within three yards of panthers, multiple times,"" said Bergeron, a Broward County paving contractor who has been a commissioner since 2007. ""There has never been a panther attack in the history of Florida."" (Watch his comments here, at the 3:10 mark.) The commission voted 4-1 to approve the proposal, with Bergeron casting the lone vote against it. The group agreed to change the plan the next day, adding language Bergeron wanted to clarify the state would continue working with the federal government using ""available staff and budgetary resources."" The overall proposal still said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and not the state, will take the lead on efforts to grow the panther population in central and north Florida. We got to wondering, was he right about the felines never attacking a person? Well, none that anyone can prove. Panther primer Florida panthers are a subspecies of cougar that once roamed across the state. A male panther requires about 200 miles of open territory to thrive, so human expansion and development in Florida devastated the cat population. Since panthers historically prey on white-tailed deer and other animals, livestock often are a substitute. Ranchers would routinely shoot the cats until the animals became protected from hunting in 1958. The federal government declared panthers an endangered species in 1967, and the state did the same in 1973. By then there were as few as 20 to 30 panthers left. They’ve rebounded since then to between 100 and 180, but that doesn’t mean everything is great. A record 30 cats were killed in 2014, most by cars in Collier and Hendry counties. The panthers also had killed a record number of livestock and pets that year. While farm animals fare poorly when panthers are about, the cats usually give humans a wide berth. A Conservation Commission spokeswoman backed up Bergeron, confirming to PolitiFact Florida that in modern times, there had never been a verified panther attack on a human in the state. That’s the wide consensus, and is a part of the agency’s website and literature — even in a handout that says what to do to if a panther attacks. We should note there have been cougar (or puma, or mountain lion, or whatever you want to call them) attacks on people in other parts of the country. For example, a 35-year-old man was killed by a mountain lion while working on his bicycle in a wilderness park in Orange County, Calif., in 2004. The same cat attacked and injured a 30-year-old woman biking in the same area later that day. In 2008, a mountain lion killed a 55-year-old man close to his home near Pinos Altos, N.M. University of Florida wildlife ecology professor Madan Oli had not heard of any panther ever attacking anyone in Florida. ""I am not aware of any documented/verified case of a Florida panther attacking humans,"" Oli said in an email. ""I think one can safely say that such an attack has not happened in this century, but I cannot say when the last attack – if it ever happened – took place."" The part about verifying an attack is what makes the claim tricky. Even an attack near Lake Kissimmee in 2014 couldn’t be verified, because the alleged victim waited three weeks to report it. Gary Mormino, professor emeritus at the University of South Florida-St. Petersburg Florida Studies program, said word of panther attacks used to routinely fill the newspapers. One particularly harrowing account from 1899 said a man named F.D. Biggs was on a picnic with his wife and 2-year-old when a ""big catamount,"" a common alternative description for panthers, attacked the child. ""The cat bit Mr. Smith terribly on the arm, and, fastening its claws in his clothing, tore his coat and shirt almost completely from his body,"" the article read. Biggs allegedly choked the animal to death and displayed its body in his Thonotosassa store. Mormino’s research showed that accounts of attacks appeared in the media up through the 1960s, in local papers and the New York Times. Whether they are reliable is a different question. ""I am struck as to how many late 19th- and early 20th-century century stories involve panther attacks and humans,"" Mormino told PolitiFact Florida. ""And I am sure these figures from the past who claimed to have been attacked by panthers were speaking the truth, for them. As to the scientific truth, I simply do not know and yield to the experts."" Our ruling Bergeron said, ""There has never been a panther attack in the history of Florida."" While that’s the official stance of the state’s fish and wildlife agency, saying ""never"" is perhaps overstating the case a bit. There historically have been accounts of people tangling with the big cats. But many of those stories come from newspaper articles that date back a century or more. Wildlife experts agree that in modern times, there have been no verified panther attacks on a person in Florida. Bergeron would have been better served if he had used the words ""verified panther attack."" We rate his statement Mostly True."
+"As experts debate legal consequences for the Minnesota dentist who killed well-known Zimbabwean lion Cecil, conservationists and animal rights activists are using the opportunity to highlight threats to the long-term viability of lions in the wild. Animal expert and television personality Jack Hanna, who is also the director emeritus of the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, emphasized how quickly the lion population has decreased within his lifetime on ABC's This Week. ""In 1947, when I was born, there were about 450,000 lions,"" Hanna said in the Aug. 2 interview. ""In the mid-'70s, when my kids were born, there were about 100,000. Today, there are less than 30,000."" We wondered if Hanna’s claim about the lion population was true. Has the population really shrunk by more than 90 percent in 68 years, and if so, why? When it comes to counting lions, accurate numbers are almost as elusive as the animals themselves. 1940s Most scientists and researchers agree that the number of lions in the wild is in decline. The Switzerland-based International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists the species as ""vulnerable"" on its threat scale, just one level below ""endangered."" It’s the speed of the decline that is in dispute. A spokesperson for Hanna said he was citing loose figures from the National Geographic Society’s Big Cats Initiative. The organization’s page on lions estimates that there were around 450,000 African lions in the 1940s, 100,000 in the 1980s, and 20,000 today — almost exactly mirroring what Hanna said. Other research questions some of Hanna's figures. He claimed more than 450,000 lions roamed the savannahs in the 1940s, but detailed studies of the population weren’t conducted back then. That means data for that period is virtually nonexistent. Susie Weller, a spokeswoman for Panthera, another big cats advocacy group, cited her organization’s own estimate that there were already as few as 200,000 ""over a century ago."" In other words, no one really knows how many lions there were in the 1940s. ""You might even see numbers in the millions,"" said Stuart Pimm, a professor of conservation ecology at Duke University and a contributor to the Big Cats Initiative. 1970s Hanna then claimed there were 100,000 lions in the wild during the 1970s. No empirical data exists for that time either, not that scientists haven't tried to make a best guess. In 1996, a team of researchers employed land-use data to predict there were around 75,800 lions in 1980. The study, which was not published, is widely cited and was conducted at Cranfield University’s International Eco Technology Research Centre in the United Kingdom. Pimm said that this strategy was one of the more reliable ways to estimate the size of the population. ""What we can consider,"" he said, ""is how much lion habitat there was back then, and then approximate how many lions fit into that area. But if you’re going to put a number on it, you have to be careful to couch it in very, very approximate terms."" The geographic analysis is the closest anyone has come to a population count for that time, and it’s a rough guess at best. Jason Riggio, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Davis and the author of a study on lion populations, said the 1980 number ""arguably should not be cited as fact"" because it doesn’t take into account expert opinions or survey data. Hanna’s claim that there were 100,000 lions left in the 1970s isn’t far off from the closest estimate for that decade, yet isn’t based on any convincing data. Today Hanna was more on target when he said there ""are less than 30,000"" lions left in the wild today. A widely used figure for the present population comes from the 2012 study led by Riggio. The paper, which combines data from two counts in the early 2000s, puts the population ""between 32,000 and 35,000."" Other organizations cited the IUCN's Red List of Threatened Species as an authoritative source for species population numbers and trends. The Red List questions Riggio’s numbers, arguing that, among other issues, his team’s use of older figures ignored downward trends that may have taken place in some regions. ""We have greater confidence in the estimate of fewer than 20,000 lions in Africa than in a number over 30,000,"" reads the group’s file on lions. Still, Hanna’s claim that there are fewer than 30,000 lions left in the wild today is within the range of these two estimates. Lions, Pimm said said, stake out in some of the most unforgiving natural habitats in the world, making them hard to locate, spot and count. ""There are roughly 30,000 lions in Africa,"" said Pimm, ""and they’re spread out over a massive area. People just don’t realize how big the continent really is."" Some researchers in the field, including Riggio, are reluctant to mention specific numbers for the changing lion population given the problematic data. But the experts agreed that Hanna's general point about a massive decline in the species is accurate. The threat lions pose to farms means that ""they are persecuted intensely in livestock areas across Africa,"" according to the IUCN, and growth in the bushmeat market has led to a decrease in the abundance of their prey. While hunters claim that trophy hunting in small numbers is a valuable way to finance conservation, the IUCN has reported an unsustainable number of kills in regions across the continent. Our ruling Hanna said, ""In 1947, when I was born, there were about 450,000 lions. In the mid-'70s, when my kids were born, there were about 100,000. Today, there are less than 30,000."" Counting lions in the wild is extremely difficult and requires a lot of estimation. Any hard numbers, therefore, should be taken with a grain of salt. Hanna’s claim reflects the consensus among researchers that lion numbers are in decline. The exact figures are up for some deabte, but his point is certainly valid. We rate it Mostly True."
+"Editor’s note: While researching this fact check, Rep. Bilirakis’ office on July 2, 2015, provided us with its research methodology using data through the Environmental Protection Agency’s Air Markets Program Data. Using this database, Bilirakis’ aides showed a 21.82 percent change in carbon dioxide tonnage emitted from Florida power plants between 2005 and 2012. PolitiFact was able to reproduce these results on July 2 when we followed their methodology, obtaining the same database numbers directly from the EPA website. We shared results with numerous sources who agreed the methodology was sound and the results illustrated Bilirakis’ point. We published the check with a Mostly True. Later that day, an EPA contact informed us the 2012 figure used in Bilirakis’ calculation was incorrect. The agency calculated percent change between 2005 and 2012 was 13.87 percent, not 21.82 percent. When we queried the database again, the figure we received was the number the EPA cited. Neither Bilirakis’ aides nor the EPA could explain the discrepancy. An environmental scientist with the EPA said there had not been a revision of the figures since 2013. The 20 percent figure has been used by Bilirakis and other members of the Florida Republican caucus since at least November 2014, although this is the first time PolitiFact has checked it. We are seeking an explanation for this discrepancy and will post findings when we have them. Republicans in Congress recently voted for legislation that would prevent the federal government from implementing new emissions regulations on power plants -- in part, some argue, because utilities are already cutting carbon levels on their own. U.S. Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Palm Harbor, said that HR 2042, known as the Ratepayer Protection Act, would protect states from costly rules that aren’t necessary. The bill would delay the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, which aims to reduce nationwide carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by 30 percent by 2030. The legislation also would allow states to opt out of the reduced emissions requirement. ""The EPA’s proposal on this rule has drawn widespread concern,"" Bilirakis said in a speech on June 24, 2015, before the GOP-majority House passed the legislation along party lines. ""It placed a heavier burden on Florida than other states, despite the fact that Florida has reduced its carbon emissions by 20 percent since 2005."" Congressional fights over regulations are not new, but we did a double take when Bilirakis said carbon emissions were down 20 percent over the last decade. (A reader sent us his comment and asked us to check it.) We decided to check whether the data fuels his claim. Carbon dating the claim We need to make sure one point is clear: Bilirakis was talking specifically about electricity generating power plants here. That’s important to understand, because the context wasn’t immediately clear to us -- or to some of our sources. The EPA’s new emission goals, which won’t be finalized until August, target power plants for that 30 percent reduction, starting at 2005 levels. The guidelines are part of President Barack Obama’s larger Climate Action Plan to enforce lower levels of air and water pollution. Some states and electricity providers have sued the EPA, saying the new rules are unnecessary and expensive for utilities, and therefore consumers. Enter the House’s Ratepayer Protection Act, which would keep the 30 percent reduction guidelines from going into effect for power plants until the justice system rules whether the EPA plan is legal. Obama has vowed to veto the Ratepayer Protection Act if it passes. A Bilirakis spokesman backed up the 20 percent figure by looking at EPA carbon dioxide emissions data for power plants generating more than 25 megawatts of electricity, which are covered by the EPA threshold for the guidelines. That data showed that between 2005 and 2012, the latest year with complete figures, Florida had reduced its power plant carbon dioxide emissions by 21.8 percent. That seems like a small slice of data, but even experts who were for the stronger emissions regulations told us it’s a valid use of the numbers to back up Bilirakis’ point. Power plants in Florida affected by the Clean Power Plan really have cut carbon dioxide by that much, according to the EPA. Of course, our first reaction to this claim was that all sources of carbon dioxide emissions had receded, which also turns out to be the case, although not at as high a rate. Accounting for cars, commercial and residential use, and a whole range of petroleum products, the U.S. Energy Information Administration says Florida’s overall emissions total have dropped about 15.7 percent in the same time span. The agency told us it’s not hard to imagine the number continuing to drop in subsequent years, but the data doesn’t show a 20 percent decrease. A look at the overall data from the EPA, which is recorded and calculated a little differently, puts the decrease from all sources at about 13.4 percent. What’s driving the downward trend for power plants? Environmental groups point out that there are several causes. Part of the change is because of utilities switching from coal to cleaner-burning natural gas (usage is up 67.6 percent between 2005 and 2012 in Florida) as natural gas prices have fallen. Credit also can go to increased efficiency in everything from air conditioners to washing machines to refrigerators. Some of the new product efficiencies are the result of other regulations, like the federal push to switch to compact fluorescent light bulbs. And while Florida was the second-highest electricity producing state in the country behind Texas in 2014, it still imports power to meet demand. That means if a power plant in another state burns fuel to generate electricity to sell to Florida, those carbon dioxide emissions don’t go against Florida’s total. That may be skewing the use-to-emissions ratio a bit. Finally, critics of the House legislation point out there’s one more caveat to the data Bilirakis cited: There’s no guarantee the state will maintain that drop in carbon dioxide from power plants. ""There is nothing to keep these emissions down to their current levels,"" said Susan Glickman, Florida director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, which opposes the Ratepayer Protection Act. ""If natural gas prices went back up, folks would start running coal plants more and emissions would increase -- absent any CO2 emission regulations."" Our ruling Bilirakis said, ""Florida has reduced its carbon emissions by 20 percent since 2005."" It may not be immediately clear from Bilirakis’ speech, but he’s only talking about carbon dioxide emissions from power plants that would be affected by the EPA’s Clean Power Plan. Those are the guidelines that would be put on hold by the bill passed by the House. EPA data show those Florida electricity generators have cut carbon dioxide emissions by 21.8 percent between 2005 and 2012. Overall carbon dioxide emissions from all sources didn’t decrease quite as much, dropping anywhere from 13.4 to 15.7 percent. Environmental groups also warned that the current reductions aren’t guaranteed. The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. We rate Bilirakis’ statement Mostly True."
+"Doubts that Washington is getting as much money as it should when it leases land to oil and gas companies go back 40 years. The decades have done little to ease those concerns. In 2013, the Government Accountability Office reported that in the year before, oil and gas companies took in revenues of $66 billion and paid $10 billion to the government. Onshore leases in particular have not kept pace with the times, according to the GAO. The conservation group Center for Western Priorities took up this banner with an intriguing comparison on its website. ""Oil companies can obtain an acre of public land for less than the price of a Big Mac,"" the center wrote. The going price for a Big Mac, without the fries and the drink, is $3.99. We decided to check whether you can lease an acre of federal land for less than that. Greg Zimmerman, the policy director at the Center for Western Priorities, sent us a link to a September 2014 sales report from the Nevada office of the Bureau of Land Management. The numbers back up Zimmerman’s claim. Texas-based Appaloosa Energy paid $6,426 for the rights to drill on 3,212 acres. Buena Vista Holdings out of Colorado paid $11,392 for the rights to 5,693 acres. That comes out to $2 per acre, and even the mathematically challenged can see that is about half the price of a Big Mac. Under BLM regulations, $2 per acre is the minimum possible bid. Just to be clear, the company pays this money each year for the right to pump oil or gas from the land over a 10-year period. It doesn’t actually own the land, but it has locked down the oil and gas rights. Zimmerman acknowledges that there is another wrinkle here. There’s an additional $1.50 per acre fee for the first five years. Zimmerman described it as the cost to hold the land while the company assesses what to do with it. A BLM spokesman told PunditFact that the bidder would pay $1.50 per year for the first five years and then $2.00 a year for the next five. ""Nevertheless, even if you add the $1.50 per acre rent to the $2.00 per acre bid, it would still be less than a Big Mac,"" Zimmerman said. If the land ever starts producing oil or gas, the company starts paying royalties to the government on top of the $2 per acre leasing fee. It’s important to note that the statement simply said oil companies can obtain an acre for very little money. It doesn’t say this happens a lot. When we ran the numbers for all of 2014, we found that the average price per acre nationwide was $220. That was for parcels leased through a competitive auction. If a parcel finds no takers through competitive bidding, the government can offer it non-competitively. One time, that led to a winning bid of about $1.50 per acre. From what we could find, the lowest lease prices were all in Nevada. Brad Posey is a managing director for Appaloosa Energy, a company that successfully secured the right to a few thousand acres at a cost of $2 each. Posey said the property comes with many hurdles before any wells can be drilled. ""That land has so many restrictions on it,"" Posey said. ""There are the prairie chickens, and habitat. A very limited portion can be explored on."" Posey is correct about the land. A proposed resource management plan for the entire area puts a number of conditions on development. It protects municipal water supplies, grazing areas and trails for off-road trail riding. And animals. ""These areas contain some of the most important habitat remaining for sage-grouse and other at-risk wildlife,"" the plan said. Posey called the venture ""pure wildcat speculation."" This raises the question, if it’s such a long shot, why is the land worth even $2 an acre? Because, as another Appaloosa managing director Martin Shields explained, sometimes an unpromising bit of land surprises you. ""Many years ago, I was with a company that paid the $2 minimum and it paid off,"" Shields said. We asked Zimmerman if he knew of any land that went for $2 an acre that ever produced oil or gas. Zimmerman said he did not know of any case when it did. Our ruling The Center for Western Priorities said that oil companies can obtain an acre of public land for less than the price of a Big Mac. A Big Mac goes for $3.99. Thousands of acres of land in Nevada were leased for $2 per acre in 2014. We found one case where federal land went for about $1.50 an acre. The track record on land leased at those low rates ever producing oil or gas is quite poor and the average leasing price nationwide is $220 per acre. The claim is accurate but it downplays that companies pay a hundred times as much for land that is more likely to be productive. We rate the claim Mostly True."
+"After a 26-year crusade against ""environmentalist wackos,"" Rush Limbaugh has emerged triumphant, according to the conservative radio host himself. Citing recent findings by market researchers Ipsos MORI, Limbaugh said on his July 22, 2014, radio show that the United States leads the pack in questioning climate change, and he’s taking all the credit. ""Fifty-four percent of Americans agreed with the statement, 'The climate change we are currently seeing is largely the result of human activity,’ "" he said. ""Why would the U.S. be the leading nation with the highest amount of doubt about the conventional wisdom of climate change? Why do you think that would be?  I think that's exactly right: Me. There's just no other explanation"" Whether Limbaugh is giving praise where praise is due, we can’t know for sure. But we did want to check out his claim that America leads in climate change skepticism. Global lukewarming We’ll start with Limbaugh’s source. In its first-ever Global Trends Survey, Ipsos MORI used an online poll to survey roughly 32,000 adults in 20 countries (Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Great Britain, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Poland, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and the United States.) Respondents were asked about their attitudes on climate change. The countries were then ranked by the percentage who agreed with the statement. Here’s how the U.S. fared:  Statement Agree Disagree Ranking The climate change we are currently seeing is largely the result of human activity 54% 32% 20 We’re headed for environmental disaster unless we change our habits quickly. 57.3% 31.5% 20 The climate change we are currently seeing is a natural phenomenon that happens from time to time 52% 35% 1(tie) I’m tired of the fuss made about the environment. 36% 54% 7 Companies do not pay enough attention to the environment 65% 22% 19 I try to recycle as much as I can. 76% 18% 14 Even the scientists don’t really know what they’re talking about when on environmental issues. 43% 43% 13 The government is just using environmental issues to raise taxes. 50% 35% 17  Based on the results, the United States had the lowest percentage of people say that climate change is: 1. Largely man-made, and 2. Leading the world toward environmental ruin. The United States also tied India for the highest percentage of people agree that climate change is a natural phenomenon that happens from time to time, though more Americans disagreed with the statement than Indians. All of that gives Limbaugh’s claim credence, though there are a couple of caveats. Ipsos MORI research director Bobby Duffy said Limbaugh’s conclusion that the United States is the most skeptical country is ""probably too simple."" While the numbers indicate that the United States is the least likely nation among those surveyed to see climate change as a man-made issue, the majority of Americans -- albeit, not by a huge margin -- still believe that climate change is anthropogenic. Moreover, Americans aren’t scoffing at the general idea of climate change. The United States ranked near the middle of the nations when asked if there is too much of a fuss made about the environment. And Americans recycle at average rates -- though Duffy noted recycling could be motivated by other concerns such as use of resources and socialization. Hockey stick gaffes The survey itself is somewhat limited. While more than 1,000 people were surveyed in some countries including the United States, other countries such as Argentina, Belgium, Poland, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Sweden and Turkey included around 500 individuals. Duffy explained that this was due to client interest in the those markets, as Ipsos MORI is a market researcher. Who was surveyed is also important. Ipsos MORI said the survey was representative of the general adult population in ""developed"" (shorthand for greater Internet access) nations such as the United States. But in developing nations, Ispos said it surveyed a ""more affluent and ‘connected’ population"" to represent an emerging middle class, according to Duffy. To some pollsters, this method of surveying is problematic. It doesn’t make sense to compare the elites of one country to the general population of another, said University of Maryland public policy researcher Steven Kull. ""If you’re looking at public opinion in a country, look at the country. If you want to look at a subset, look at a subset. Otherwise it’s apples to oranges,"" he said. Still, Ipsos’ findings are fairly consistent with the most recent Pew Research Center survey -- where 67 percent of Americans said that there is solid evidence of global warming, and 44 percent say it’s mostly due to human activity. A separate Pew Global poll found that when stacked up against 22 other countries, the United States was one of the least concerned about global warming, right under China and Britain and outranking only Poland and Pakistan. (Interestingly, Ipsos found that 91 percent of people in China said the world was heading for an environmental disaster unless we change our habits. Duffy said this can be explained again by the sampling approach and mode of interview.) One of the most comprehensive polls we found was Gallup’s 2010 survey of 111 countries. Though nearly all Americans were aware of global warming, 47 percent -- the largest percentage in the world -- said it was due to solely natural causes. About half said global warming was at least partly anthropogenic, a 12-percentage-point drop since the last Gallup poll in 2008. That’s slightly below the world’s average but far below the rates in developed countries.  Lower percentages of belief in human-caused climate change in developing nations make sense, given correspondingly lower rates of awareness, education and literacy, said Riley Dunlap, an environmental sociologist at Oklahoma State University. But in the United States, it’s politics that is causing the skepticism. The ruling Limbaugh said that the United States is ""the leading nation with the highest amount of doubt about the conventional wisdom of climate change."" While he cites an exact figure reported by Ipsos MORI, the study itself doesn’t capture the belief of general populations, only those with an Internet connection. Other polls we looked at indicate that a good proportion of developing countries have higher rates of doubt. But among peers, the United States is one of the most -- if not, the most -- skeptical when it comes to believing climate change has human factors. We rate Limbaugh’s claim Mostly True."
+"State Sen. Wendy Davis wink-admonished delegates to last month’s Texas Democratic Party convention not to ""clap too much"" for her ""or Greg Abbott will sue you."" Davis, the party’s nominee for governor, then noted that Abbott, the state attorney general and Republican gubernatorial choice, often boasts about going to work, suing the federal government and going home. In May 2013, we rated as True Abbott’s claim he’d sued President Barack Obama’s administration 25 times. ""He is so proud of that,"" Davis said. ""But what he doesn’t say is that our judges go to work; they rule against him and the people of this state win. In fact, he has lost four times in just the past few days. If he... were your lawyer,"" Davis said, ""you would fire him on the spot."" Four Abbott losses in a June jiffy? Davis's list of Abbott's ""losses"" By email, Davis spokesman Zac Petkanas pointed out news stories published over a week in June 2014 describing court actions while Abbott’s office separately responded that Davis failed to note key details. Let’s walk through how Davis backed up her statement before laying out Abbott’s objections. On June 16, 2014, according to a Dallas Morning News blog post, a state appeals court ruled a former Texas assistant attorney general, Ginger Weatherspoon, could proceed with her lawsuit charging she’d been fired for refusing to lie under oath about a judge. The story said: ""The AG’s office has spent years trying to get the suit tossed, claiming, among other things, that Weatherspoon didn’t make a ‘good faith’ effort to blow the whistle to the right links in the chain of command. A three-justice panel disagreed, and issued an opinion Monday written by Justice David Evans that said Dallas County Judge Martin Hoffman did the right thing last year when he refused to grant the AG’s office its request for summary judgment."" In the opinion, Evans said Weatherspoon reported suspected criminal violations to appropriate authorities inside the attorney general’s office. She ""has sufficiently alleged that she made good faith report of a violation of law by another public employee to an appropriate law enforcement authority,"" Evans wrote. According to a June 18, 2014, news story in the Austin American-Statesman, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., ordered the state to pay almost $1.1 million in legal fees to lawyers who represented Davis and minority rights groups in a legal challenge to district boundaries drawn by the Republican-majority Legislature. The story said: ""U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer’s order criticized lawyers in"" Abbott’s ""office for submitting a legal brief that devoted more effort to complaining than it did to answering the legal issues in the fight over lawyer fees."" Collyer, an appointee of President George W. Bush, wrote: ""This matter presents a case study in how not to respond to a motion for attorney fees and costs."" Five days later, a state judge had spurned Abbott’s attempt to remove state District Judge John Dietz from presiding over the long-running public school finance case, the Statesman reported. Abbott, facing a likely legal defeat in the case as a whole, had argued emails showed the judge was biased in favor of school district lawyers seeking to have the state’s school-finance system declared unconstitutional, the story said. Visiting Judge David Peeples found Dietz had ""acted in good faith, holding out-of-court conversations with plaintiffs lawyers because ‘he believed that all parties had agreed to let such discussions take place,’"" the story said. The same day, the Texas Tribune summed up a U.S. Supreme Court ruling as the ""latest loss for Texas in its ongoing campaign against the federal government and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency."" The Tribune news story went on to say the court had ""largely dismissed"" Abbott’s ""challenge of federal climate rules. Seven justices agreed that the EPA is allowed to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from most large industrial facilities, like power plants and factories."" Based on the accounts offered by Davis, it looks like Abbott experienced an unappealable loss at the Supreme Court (the EPA case), the loss clearing the way for a former employee to have her day in court, plus two losses that could yet lead to appeals courts making win-or-loss rulings. Abbott's office objects Abbott's state spokesman, Jerry Strickland, said the turns were not so clear-cut. Besides, Strickland told us by email, Davis failed to note a criminal prosecution simultaneously completed by Abbott’s office. According to a Statesman news story posted online June 20, 2014, a Bastrop County jury sentenced a former teacher to 15 years in prison for sexually assaulting a student; the attorney general’s office handled the case after the Bastrop County district attorney’s office recused itself. Of course, Davis didn’t say Abbott had four losses uninterrupted. Strickland said of three of the results Davis was referencing: The decision enabling the former employee’s lawsuit to proceed was only procedural. ""Citing the decision as a loss when the case hasn’t even gone before a judge is like saying a team won the game because they won the pre-game coin flip,"" Strickland said. The D.C. judge who awarded attorney fees also issued a stay on the decision, pausing her order so the state could appeal. The decision not to order Dietz’s removal from the school funding lawsuit didn’t determine how the finance lawsuit itself will be judged on the state’s appeal to the Texas Supreme Court. ""No matter what happens on any day, in any motions in the school finance case, those decisions along the way are not the final word,"" Strickland said. Past those, Strickland said Abbott won the EPA case ""on the issues we argued."" Specifically, Strickland said, the high court overturned the EPA’s illegal greenhouse gas permitting scheme after determining that it ignored federal law, exceeded the authority granted the agency by Congress and violated the federal Clean Air Act. ""That was precisely what the state argued and thus, this was a win"" for Abbott, Strickland said. The court’s decision affirmed and reversed, in part, a lower court’s ruling in EPA’s favor. The justices basically said the EPA had exceeded its statutory authority when it interpreted the Clean Air Act to require certain kinds of permitting for industrial plants based on their greenhouse-gas emissions. On the other hand, the court concluded, the agency may continue to treat greenhouse gases as a pollutant subject to regulation under federal law. Expert analyst revisits EPA ruling For expert perspective, we asked Lyle Denniston, a reporter who analyzes Supreme Court decisions for the online Supreme Court of the United States blog, to speak to how Abbott and the state of Texas fared in the EPA case. Denniston said by email that states including Texas made arguments that paralleled those offered by lawyers for business firms--and those arguments prevailed. Specifically, he said, the states said EPA couldn’t bootstrap its regulation of greenhouse gases from motor vehicle exhausts into a broad regime of regulating greenhouse gases from industrial plants. Still, Denniston said, Texas fell short of a complete victory because the court didn’t agree the EPA has no authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and other stationary sources. Rather, he wrote, the court decided EPA could regulate greenhouse gases from sources already that were obliged, under law, to curb air pollution--meaning the agency could regulate 83 percent of greenhouse gas sources instead of the 86 percent that would have come under its regulatory sway if the administration’s broadest argument had stuck, Denniston said. Strickland, provided Denniston’s comments, cautioned against reading the high court’s ruling too narrowly. The case, Strickland emailed, ""was about separation of powers, and the limits of EPA's authority. The court rebuked what they saw as a federal government that tried to rewrite the rules and laws, without legislative approval. This is a victory"" for Abbott. Our ruling Davis said Abbott ""has lost"" in court ""four times in just the past few days."" Abbott sustained four legal setbacks, we conclude, but the Democrat's statement needs clarification. Three rulings could prove to be bumps along the road o’ litigation possibly culminating in Abbott wins. And in the EPA case, the justices partly agreed with Texas, though they upheld federal regulation of greenhouse gases as pollutants. Notably, too, just one of the referenced rulings involved the Obama administration. We rate this claim as Mostly True. MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check."
+"U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, a GOP presidential contender, made waves about climate change in a May 11 interview with ABC’s Jonathan Karl on This Week. ""I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it,"" Rubio said. ""And I do not believe that the laws that they propose we pass will do anything about it. Except it will destroy our economy."" One of Florida’s other nationally watched politicians -- Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz -- criticized her fellow Floridian’s stance. After a May 13 speech at Daemen College in upstate New York, an audience member asked her how to get ""Congress unstuck in stomping on science."" Wasserman Schultz suggested that voters stop electing tea party-aligned politicians -- and then she turned her sights on Rubio for disagreeing with the scientific consensus that climate change is man-made. Wasserman Schultz, who represents parts of Broward and Miami-Dade counties, said rising sea levels and flooding will make part of her district uninhabitable in the future. She called for politicians to reach across the aisle in search of solutions, singling out a cap and trade plan as an area where the parties could agree. ""That was originally a Republican idea. It was developed in the 1970s when the Clean Air Act was initially adopted."" We decided to check Wasserman Schultz’s claim that cap and trade was originally a Republican idea. Cap and trade The idea of cap and trade is that the government sets a limit (the cap) on how much carbon individual companies -- typically electric utilities and manufacturers -- can emit. The government then issues permits to companies and allows them to buy and sell the permits as needed (the trade). If the policy works as planned, overall emissions decline, companies determine for themselves the best way to lower emissions, and the free market rewards those who lower emissions most effectively. Wasserman Schultz started the clock ticking in the 1970s. Her spokesman, Sean Bartlett, told PolitiFact Florida that ""the 1977 Clean Air Act amendments were the first time federal law used the concept of offset mechanisms that ultimately became the ‘cap and trade’ systems."" That law included precursor ideas, such as providing industry with flexibility to meet limits, rather than simply imposing controlling regulations, said Eric Pooley, a spokesman for the Environmental Defense Fund and author of The Climate War: True Believers, Power Brokers, and the Fight to Save the Earth. In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan used a cap and trade system to phase out leaded gasoline, noted MIT economics professor Richard Schmalensee and Harvard Kennedy School government professor Robert Stavins. In 1989, President George H. W. Bush proposed the use of a cap and trade system to cut by half sulfur dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants and consequent acid rain, they wrote in a Boston Globe op-ed in 2010. ""An initially resistant Democratic Congress overwhelmingly endorsed the proposal,"" the professors wrote. ""The landmark Clean Air Act amendments of 1990 passed the Senate 89 to 10 and the House 401 to 25."" Bush not only accepted the cap, but he sided with environmentalists who wanted a larger cut than his own advisers, according to Smithsonian Magazine, in a report that detailed how the Environmental Defense Fund worked with Bush’s White House to make cap and trade a reality. ""George H. W. Bush does indeed deserve enormous credit for being the champion of the cap and trade program for sulfur dioxide, a major cause of acid rain,"" Pooley said. ""That has led many over the years to refer to it as a Republican idea."" But Pooley said that Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell -- a Democrat -- also deserves credit for leading the legislative charge that ultimately passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority. ""So if pressed, I would call it a bipartisan idea that was championed by a Republican president,"" he told PolitiFact Florida. In 2005, the EPA under President George W. Bush issued the Clean Air Interstate Rule, which aimed to achieve ""the largest reduction in air pollution in more than a decade"" using cap and trade, wrote Stavins and Schmalensee. They noted the contributions under Reagan and both Bushes to argue that cap and trade should be embraced by Republicans as well as Democrats. ""After all, these policies were innovations developed by conservatives in the Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush administrations (and once strongly condemned by liberals),"" they wrote. In 2003, McCain, an Arizona Republican, and Sen. Joe Lieberman, then a Democrat from Connecticut, introduced the ""Climate Stewardship Act,"" which would have used a similar cap and trade approach to reduce carbon pollution linked to global warming. Versions of the bill were reintroduced in 2005 and 2007. That was the first time legislation was introduced to use cap and trade for carbon emissions, Pooley told PolitiFact. ""The enormous economic costs of damage caused by air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions to the environment and human health are not factored into the price of power produced by fossil-fueled technologies,"" McCain said in a floor speech to mark the bill’s 2007 introduction. ""Yet, it’s a cost that we all bear, too often in terms of ill-health and diminished quality of life."" McCain’s 2007 version was co-sponsored by Illinois Democratic Sen. Barack Obama. And both McCain and Obama had cap and trade programs in their presidential platforms. In June 2009, the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives passed a cap and trade bill, by a razor-thin margin, 219-212. But the bill failed to survive in the Senate amid Republican opposition. In 2011, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has taken a firm stand against a cap and trade bill. ""A full-blown fleecing of the middle class, it would raise electricity prices, increase gasoline prices, and ship American jobs to countries like China and India,"" wrote John Boehner, now the Speaker of the House, about the bill in June 2010. Our ruling Wasserman Schultz said that cap and trade legislation ""was originally a Republican idea."" Experts who have followed the history of the environmental policy focus on the fact that emissions trading to address acid rain became part of the Clean Air Act of 1990 under Bush. The legislation ultimately passed with bipartisan support under a Republican president. More recently, another prominent Republican -- McCain -- co-sponsored cap and trade legislation. Democrats did support cap and trade legislations at different points along the way. But we found a strong tradition of support from Republican presidents for cap and trade, which uses markets to try to reduce pollution. We rate this claim Mostly True."
+"Debate over the proposed Gogebic Taconite iron ore mine in far northern Wisconsin has quieted since the 2013 passage of a state law relaxing environmental protections for iron mining. But it has not disappeared. Gogebic wants to build a $1.5 billion open pit iron mine in the Penokee Range in Iron and Ashland counties, and has begun what is expected to be a long permitting process with the state Department of Natural Resources. The agency is one of several, including the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, that will weigh in on the project. Company officials and state business leaders say the mine will provide thousands of jobs in an economically depressed part of the state. Opposition comes from environmentalists, some local residents and members of the Bad River band of the Chippewa, whose reservation lies near the site. Opponents have dug in -- some literally in a North Woods encampment, and some in higher profile venues such as the pages of the Sunday New York Times. Environmental arguments against the project dominated a March 29, 2014 opinion piece in the Times by Wisconsin native Dan Kaufman, a writer and musician who now lives in Brooklyn N.Y. (Kaufman is also a fact checker who works as a freelancer for the Times.) Kaufman’s piece was titled ""The Fight for Wisconsin’s soul"" and detailed the size and scope of what all agree will be an immense project. (In a separate item, we rated Half True a Kaufman claim that the mine ""could be extended as long as 21 miles."") Gogebic had a hand in drafting the 2013 law, which Kaufman says would give the company  ""astonishing latitude"" when it came to building the mine -- including this startling claim: ""The new law allows the company to fill in pristine streams and ponds with mine waste."" When asked for backup, Kaufman said portions of the law, Section 295, mandate that the state approve the filling of ponds and streams, providing the company re-creates -- the legal term is mitigates -- the filled-in area in another location. ""So, an applicant shall receive DNR approval if they do something to ‘mitigate or compensate’ for the destruction elsewhere,"" Kaufman said in an email interview. But that important point was not mentioned in his original piece. In the interview, Kaufman noted the law doesn’t say where the company would have to do the mitigation work. It could, he argued, be nowhere near the mine. Kaufman’s overall interpretation of the mining law is correct, said Larry Lynch, a hydrogeologist with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. He is the agency’s top official overseeing the project. For years, state law has allowed developers who build on wetlands to re-create an equivalent wetlands in another location. The mining law applied a similar standard to some bodies of water that would be affected by the Gogebic project, Lynch said. ""You can do that under limited situations,"" he said. ""If they are going to have to impact surface waters, they can propose to mitigate."" The law applies to small lakes and streams -- lakes that are smaller than two acres and streams that have a watershed smaller than two square miles. The question of where Gogebic will store waste rock is an important aspect of the mine project. That’s because to get at the iron deposits, the company will have to dig out and remove tons of undesired material from two pits that are each estimated to be two miles long. The rock that’s embedded with the iron is then removed, crushed and the iron removed with giant magnets. Preliminary plans call for the waste rock to be piled on the surface of the ground, an enormous pile called a ""waste facility."" Lynch said the company has not told the state where on the site they propose to locate such a facility -- or said whether any bodies of water could be affected. Tentative plans call for Gogebic to use waste rock from the second pit to backfill the first pit, while the remaining rock would remain on the surface. At this point, the company has not proposed filling in any streams or ponds. ""It will depend on the design submitted at that time,"" Lynch said. ""They may lay it out so that it doesn’t have any impact on streams or lakes."" Our rating The state law aimed at paving the way for the Gogebic mine relaxed environmental regulations for iron mining, and sped up the permit process, steps aimed at giving the company more certainty. Kaufman says that law also lets the company  ""fill in pristine streams and ponds with mine waste."" Kaufman’s correct that the new mining law allows streams and ponds to be filled in at the mining site. But he left out an important point --  that before that takes place the company and state would have to strike a deal for comparable streams and ponds to be created elsewhere. We rate his statement Mostly True."
+"As a Democratic senator from Alaska -- a state that President Barack Obama lost by 14 points in 2012 -- it’s been in Mark Begich’s best interest to distance himself from many of the president’s policies as the midterm elections approach. But there’s one topic where Begich has been touting his ability to influence Obama -- oil drilling, a crucial issue for Alaskans, whose economy is heavily dependent on oil production. In Begich’s latest statewide TV ad, the narrator -- Begich’s wife, Deborah Bonito -- highlights his commitment to fighting for Alaskan issues, including drilling. ‘There’s nowhere he won’t go to listen and stand up for Alaskans,"" the ad says. ""He forced Washington to open up the Arctic Ocean to oil drilling."" We thought we’d take a closer look at Begich’s involvement in the Alaska Arctic drilling. When Royal Dutch Shell started fighting to drill in the Arctic, Begich wasn’t yet in office. By February 2008, Royal Dutch Shell held leases to drill in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas, portions of the Arctic Ocean near the Alaskan mainland. No one had drilled there for two decades. But lease-holding companies can’t drill without first clearing a number of other procedural hurdles. Once it had sold Shell leases, the government still needed to grant dozens of technical approvals, including exploration plans, water permits and air permits. That’s where Begich, the only Democrat elected statewide, came in. After getting elected in November 2008, he made his priorities known to the White House. The New York Times reported that when Begich and Obama first met in 2008, Begich said of oil drilling issues, ""If I’m elected, this is what I’m going to focus on."" Begich -- a Democrat working with a Democratic administration -- may have had more sway than his colleague, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, in pushing along the permitting process. Peter Van Tuyn, whose law firm Bessenyey and Van Tuyn LLC has fought against oil drilling in the Alaskan Arctic, agrees that Begich has had a key role on the issue. ""His biggest influence has been picking up the phone or having those people into his office or in hearings and saying ‘Dammit, we need to get this done,’ "" Van Tuyn said. Begich told the Times that ""any time (Obama) initiated a call, I felt that was carte blanche to make my case"" for Arctic drilling. As of 2012, Begich had assembled a six-page chronology of contact on oil drilling between his office and the White House. Eventually, in September 2012, Shell began drilling in the Chukchi Sea. However, it didn’t go according to plan. After spending $5 billion on the project, Shell wasn’t able to fully drill any wells that season. In March 2013, an Interior Department report found that Shell had violated permits, didn’t test certain systems in advance and lost a drilling rig. After that, Shell said it still planned to drill during the summer of 2014. But the company backed out in January after a court sided with environmental groups in ruling that in 2008, the federal government had underestimated how much oil drilling would happen when awarding the lease. This ruling didn’t block all drilling, but it did put more legal obstacles in Shell’s way. The administration could choose to appeal the decision, which only directly affects one lease sale, not all Arctic lease sales. Shell’s CEO said there was too much uncertainty to move forward with drilling in 2014. Other companies have leases to drill in the area as well, but experts told us they’ve hung back and waited to see how Shell does. So, in 2014, no companies are drilling in the Alaska Arctic, despite the efforts of Begich and others. Our ruling Begich’s ad claimed that ""he forced Washington to open up the Arctic Ocean to oil drilling."" Begich wasn’t in the Senate when the government awarded leases to Shell, but the leases were only the first step toward drilling in the Arctic Ocean. Numerous other federal permits were required before Shell could drill there, and by multiple accounts, Begich played a key role in pushing the administration from the time he began serving in the Senate. Shell did drill in 2012 -- the first activity in that region of the Arctic in decades -- though after complications arose, including legal ones, the company hasn’t done so again. So Begich can rightfully take credit for helping advancing Shell’s oil-drilling permits in the Arctic Ocean, but there’s currently no drilling taking place. We rate his claim Mostly True."
+"During his weekly floor speeches on climate change, U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse has been promoting the idea that congressional Republicans who blocked climate change legislation are out of touch with Republicans throughout the United States. On Nov. 25, PolitiFact Rhode Island gave a Mostly True ruling on Whitehouse’s claim that, in a poll, ""53 percent of young Republican voters . . . under age 35 said that they would describe a climate [change] denier as 'ignorant,' 'out of touch' or 'crazy.'"" Whitehouse repeated his assertion about young Republicans in a slightly different way during his Dec. 17 speech on climate, his 53rd, focusing on the attitudes of the tea party faction of the Republican Party. He cited a poll that looked at all Republicans, not just those under age 35. ""Another national survey, this one by the Pew Research Center, found that most -- 61 percent of non-tea party Republicans -- actually agree, actually agree there is 'solid evidence the earth is warming,' with a plurality saying it is 'mostly because of humans,'"" Whitehouse said. ""But the tea partiers are different,"" he added. ""Seventy percent of tea partiers, contrarily, say there is 'No solid evidence' the earth is warming. And 41 percent of tea partiers assert that warming is 'Just not happening.'"" ""Unfortunately here in Congress,"" he said later in the speech, ""the dark, heavy hand of the polluters is helping the tea party drive the Republican Party off the cliff."" Was Whitehouse correctly characterizing the attitudes of Republicans in general and members of the tea party in particular? We went back to the Pew survey to look at those numbers. Pew conducted the poll of 1,504 adults from Oct. 9-13, 2013; 655 said they were Republicans or leaned Republican, and 304 of them identified with the tea party. Asked whether there is ""solid evidence the earth is warming,"" 61 percent of non-tea party Republicans said yes; just 25 percent of tea party supporters said yes. (The margin of error for tea party numbers is plus or minus 6.5 percentage points and 6.2 percentage points for non-tea party Republicans. So Whitehouse quoted the findings accurately, within the margin of error. Whitehouse was also correct when he said that 70 percent of tea party members responding said there is no solid evidence that Earth is warming, with 41 percent saying it's just not happening. In contrast, a mere 13 percent of other Republicans said it's ""just not happening."" Yet just because Republicans think there's good evidence that Earth is warming doesn't mean they think human activity is responsible. That's an important point to consider when looking at whether members of the GOP support trying to do something to reverse the trend. Among non-tea party Republicans who thought the planet is warming, nearly 40 percent said it was due to natural patterns. Our ruling Sheldon Whitehouse said that ""61 percent of non-tea party Republicans actually agree . . . there is 'solid evidence the earth is warming,' . . . [but] 70 percent of tea partiers, contrarily, say there is 'no solid evidence' the earth is warming."" The senator was accurately quoting the results of the October Pew poll. But there's more to the story if you want to understand the ongoing opposition to climate change legislation by supporters of the GOP. While many non-tea party Republicans acknowledge that climate change is occurring, a majority (54 percent) still either deny climate change or think it is part of a natural cycle not caused by human activity. That's an important factor to consider, which Whitehouse omitted. For that reason, we rate his statement Mostly True. (If you have a claim you’d like PolitiFact Rhode Island to check, email us at [email protected] And follow us on Twitter: @politifactri.)"
+"Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has now made 50 speeches on the floor of the U.S. Senate urging his colleagues and other Americans to ""wake up"" about the issue of climate change. He has railed against global warming skeptics, many of them Republicans who say that the planet is not warming or, if it is, the warming isn't caused by human activity. During his Nov. 13 speech, he argued that ""the polls show clearly that climate denial is a losing tactic"" and young people aren't fooled by the arguments of climate change ""deniers."" We've fact-checked two other Whitehouse statements from his previous speeches about climate issues. We ruled his claim that the oceans ""have become 30 percent more acidic"" Mostly True; his assertion that Narragansett Bay waters have gotten 4 degrees warmer in the winter since the 1960s earned a Half True. In his Nov. 13 speech, one of the poll numbers he cited caught our eye. ""Fifty three percent of young Republican voters -- Republican voters under age 35 -- said that they would describe a climate [change] denier as 'ignorant,' 'out of touch' or 'crazy,'"" Whitehouse said. ""Republicans outside of Congress are trying to lead their party back to reality and away from what even young Republicans are calling ignorant, out of touch or crazy extremist views."" Do more than half of young-adult Republicans really think climate change skeptics are loopy? Whitehouse’s office said he got the figure from a survey commissioned by the League of Conservation Voters, an environmental advocacy group. The league hired two firms -- GS Strategy Group (which does Republican polling) and Benensen Strategy Group (President Obama's chief pollster) -- to conduct a joint poll of 600 registered voters, ages 18 to 34, last July. Fifty-three percent of Republicans under 35 said they would ""describe a politician who says climate change is not really happening"" as out of touch, ignorant or crazy, according to a joint July 24, 2013 memo from the polling firms. (The rest, if they had an opinion, preferred characterizations such as ""independent,"" ""commonsense"" or ""thoughtful,"" which were the three positive options offered.) When Democrats and independents were added in, the ratio of people who considered deniers to be out of touch, ignorant or crazy jumped to 73 percent, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent. ""It is not surprising then that a climate change denier faces stiff headwinds with young voters, with 68% saying they would be less likely to vote for a climate change denier,"" according to the report. ""And even among Republicans, 47% would be less likely to vote for a denier."" It should be noted that only 7 percent of all respondents -- Republicans, Democrats and  independents -- characterized deniers as ""crazy."" We asked the League for a Republicans-only breakdown in that category because we suspect that very few would put skeptics in the crazy category. Spokesman Jeff Gohringer said the League would not release any further data. ""The purpose of the poll was to show that Republicans understand climate change is happening and they want to see action,"" he said. ""The disconnect in Washington is that this is somehow a party issue, that the Democrats support it and Republicans don't. But huge swaths of both parties support action on climate and they know it's a problem."" One important caveat should be noted. The poll asked respondents to classify people who argue that climate change is not really happening. But that's only the most extreme type of climate change ""denier,"" a word never used in the survey. Other people sometimes saddled with that label acknowledge that the climate is changing, but they argue that it's due to natural variability, not human activity. So the League poll only characterized the deniers with the most extreme -- and scientifically untenable -- position. That's an important distinction, which can be seen in the Pew Research Center's recent national survey on climate change, conducted Oct. 9-13, among 1,504 adults. A hefty 46 percent of all Republicans said there is solid evidence that Earth is warming. But the percentage drops to half that amount (23 percent) when Republicans were asked if the warming is mostly due to human activity. Nineteen percent of the GOP respondents said it's due to natural patterns. Our ruling Sheldon Whitehouse said, ""53 percent of young Republican voters . . . under age 35 said that they would describe a climate [change] denier as 'ignorant,' 'out of touch' or 'crazy.'"" He cited the number accurately. But the findings come from just one poll, commissioned by a conservation group. And the question he referenced focused only on the most extreme position of climate change ""deniers"" (those who believe that the climate is not changing). That term can also include people who acknowledge that climate change is occurring but don't believe it’s caused by humans. Whitehouse is making a leap by suggesting that the League survey is a gauge of how all ""deniers"" are regarded by younger Republicans. Because the statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information, we rate it Mostly True. (If you have a claim you’d like PolitiFact Rhode Island to check, email us at [email protected] And follow us on Twitter: @politifactri.)"
+"A salmonella outbreak traced to California chicken processing plants recently prompted Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., to raise a pet issue on MSNBC: antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The federal shutdown was limiting government’s ability to track infection, she said. But then she pointed to a deeper issue: ""the overuse and ruination of antibiotics."" An advocate for tougher requirements for farm use of such drugs, Slaughter told host Joy-Ann Reid that she’s been ""trying to save antibiotics for persons — for human beings."" ""Eighty percent of the antibiotics in this country are fed to livestock every single day, and it's creating a terrible problem of resistant bacteria,"" she said. Eighty percent is an awfully big number, and we were curious: Do livestock consume the bulk of the nation’s antimicrobial drugs? It’s an important question, because according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, wide use of antibiotics in food-producing animals ""contributes to the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in food-producing animals."" Emergence of resistant bacteria means if you get infected with bacteria from the food you eat, it might be harder to fight that infection with antibiotics. Drug resistance may be contributing to higher hospitalization rates in the recent salmonella outbreak, for example, the Los Angeles Times reported. Here’s how it works, according to the CDC: Ranchers give animals antibiotics, which kills off or suppresses susceptible bacteria, but allows antibiotic-resistant bacteria to thrive. Those resistant bacteria may be transmitted to people through the food supply, such as by eating undercooked salmonella-tainted chicken. Since the bacteria are resistant to some antibiotics, the infections may be harder to fight, causing ""adverse human health consequences."" So CDC ""encourages and supports efforts to minimize inappropriate use of antibiotics in humans and animals."" You’re probably aware of this effort in humans — it’s why doctors are discouraged from giving their patients antibiotics to treat nonbacterial infections such as cold and flu. Widespread use of antibiotics when they’re not required helps bacteria develop defenses to the drugs in a sort of microscopic arms race. It’s also the reason the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has asked farmers to phase out certain antibiotics important to human medicine when used merely to promote growth in animals. (The industry says this accounts for a small amount of antibiotic use. The FDA says it’s hard to say.) So, back to the 80 percent number. It turns out it has been a popular talking point since 2010 among those who advocate for restricting use of antibiotics on farms. That’s the year the FDA released newly required data on sales of antibiotics by manufacturers for food-producing animals. The FDA didn’t release sales information on antibiotics for human use, but pointed to national projections from IMS Health, a Connecticut company that compiles proprietary health data. The numbers let folks compare the millions of kilograms of drugs sold by manufacturers for use by food-producing animals (13.1 million kilograms) in 2009 with those sold for use by people (3.3 million kilograms). The 13.1 million kilograms of antibiotics sold for animals was 80 percent of the total amount of drugs sold for both humans and animals, which was 16.4 million kilograms. We should note this comparison doesn’t account for all antibiotics sold in the United States. For example, it doesn’t count antibiotics sold for household pets. A researcher with the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health’s Center for a Livable Future first did the math for a 2010 blog post that’s been widely cited. (The most recent reports reveal a similar proportion, as calculated by the Pew Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming.) Pharmaceutical company lobby groups such as the Animal Health Institute, though, have cried foul. It says the number is ""wrong and misleading, for several reasons,"" and cites the FDA. The FDA has indeed offered a ""caution regarding comparisons of human and animal antibacterial drug sales data."" It repeated some of those cautions in a 2012 letter to Slaughter herself. But while it offers a series of caveats about drawing ""definite conclusions"" from ""direct comparisons"" about the drug sales data  —  such as differences in dosages between different drugs and in the sizes of human and animal populations — it confirms both sets of sales data essentially measure the same thing. Both show the volume of antibacterial drugs, by weight, being sold to various outlets from the manufacturer. So, while they don’t offer a direct estimate of human or animal use, they do offer a comparison of sales by manufacturers for both groups. In 2011, the FDA provided the IMS Health sales estimates directly to Slaughter, describing the sales numbers as ""a surrogate for human use to compare to antibacterial drug use in animals."" We should note that about a third of the antibiotics used in food-producing animals are ionophores, a type not used in humans. (The agriculture industry argues this means they have nothing to do with antibiotic resistance in humans; Lawrence at Johns Hopkins says they may still contribute.) If you remove ionophores from the sales data comparison, the proportion of antibiotics that go to food-producing animals vs. humans drops to around 70 percent. There are also also plenty of limits, as the FDA points out, on the usefulness of the publicly released sales data to inform public policy on antibiotics on farms. They don’t illuminate the reasons animals get the drugs (to promote growth? to treat infection? both?). They don’t specify how the antibiotics are administered (injection? food?). The FDA’s asking for comments on how it might release more of the information it collects from animal drug companies, and says it will update reports from previous years with that new data. That might include, for example, a detail it confirmed to Slaughter’s office in a 2011 letter — that nearly all antibiotics reported for animal use to the FDA were delivered in food and water, as opposed to by injection. Meanwhile, the industry uses the current lack of detail to downplay the usefulness of the statistic, even as it fights efforts to gather and release more information. Sales data is ""not at all useful for understanding the benefits or the risks of using antibiotics to keep animals healthy,"" Ron Phillips of the Animal Health Institute told PolitiFact. Others disagree and argue that the data is actually quite revealing. ""There is some uncertainty in these data, but not enough to escape the fact that the vast majority of antibiotics in this country are used in food animals, not to treat sick people,"" wrote Robert Lawrence, a doctor who directs the Center for a Livable Future at Johns Hopkins. Slaughter, meanwhile, is sponsoring two bills, the Delivering Antimicrobial Transparency in Animals Act and the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, to require more detailed monitoring and to limit the use of antibiotics to sick animals. Among those lobbying against both: the Animal Health Institute. Our ruling Slaughter said ""80 percent of the antibiotics in this country are fed to livestock."" The statistic comes from a comparison of FDA sales data for food-producing animals and private sales data for humans since 2009 — not all antibiotics sold in the United States. A letter from the FDA to the congresswoman confirms that most of the drugs for livestock are consumed in food and water. That means the percentage ""fed"" to animals may not be quite as high as 80 percent, though it would be close. Slaughter could have said more clearly that of all the antibiotics sold for use by people and livestock, 80 percent are for animals. But she was close. We rate her statement Mostly True."
+"Some Floridians are about to face a wallop of an increase on flood insurance -- and that’s something Republican Gov. Rick Scott, who is campaigning for re-election, hopes to stop. Scott wrote a letter to Florida’s U.S. senators, Republican Marco Rubio and Democrat Bill Nelson, urging Congress to delay a planned rate hike on some flood insurance policies and to continue federal subsidies. For that to happen, the Senate needs to vote on a proposal that the House approved in June. Nelson has indicated he supports a delay, while Rubio’s position has been less clear. The Tampa Bay Times reported in September that Rubio ""will continue to work with colleagues on solutions to make the flood program sustainable 'without excessively burdening Florida's families,' spokeswoman Brooke Sammon said."" Florida has already gotten the short end of the stick on flood insurance, says Scott. ""Over the past 35 years, Florida families have paid into the NFIP (National Flood Insurance Program) over $16 billion, four times more than the amount they have received in claim reimbursements,"" Scott wrote in a Sept. 17 letter. We wanted to research Scott’s claim about how much Floridians have paid into the program and how much we have received in claims. Flood insurance reform The National Flood Insurance Program, run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, started in 1968. More than 5 million property owners nationwide hold flood insurance, and about 20 percent are subsidized. After the 2005 storm season -- which included Hurricane Katrina -- the program became indebted to the U.S. Treasury. As of May 2013, it owed about $24 billion. (A recent General Accounting Office report gives a full dissection of the program’s shortcomings.) In an effort to avoid insolvency, lawmakers passed the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act in 2012. The law requires the program to raise rates about 25 percent a year for certain properties until they reflect true flood risk. The increases apply to businesses, second homes and homes that have had severe or repetitive losses -- that’s about 50,000 policy holders in Florida. For policy holders who own just one home, the increases won’t kick in until they sell their home, their policy lapses or they have severe or repetitive losses. The increases don’t apply to about 115,000 subsidized condos or multifamily homes or about 1.8 million policies that aren’t subsidized in Florida. According to a FEMA map, many of Florida’s affected homeowners are in coastal Miami-Dade, Pinellas and Lee counties. For those facing the flood insurance hike, it’s a double whammy on top of increases for Citizens hurricane insurance. Florida’s premiums vs. claims The state’s Office of Insurance Regulation directed us to an issue brief written by the University of Pennsylvania Wharton Center for Risk Management and Decision Processes. (Scott’s office directed us to a 2013 Tampa Bay Times article that cited the Wharton Center’s research.) The 2010 study showed that in some states policyholders paid far more in premiums than they collected in claims between 1978 and 2008 -- a 30-year stretch. (That's five years fewer than Scott claimed, but as we’ll see, the numbers likely hold true through 2013, for a total of 35 years.) In Florida, ""policyholders paid $16.1 billion in premiums but collected only $4.5 billion in claims reimbursements: that is, premiums paid over time were about 3.6 times the insurance reimbursements,"" according to the study. Florida wasn’t alone in paying more into the program than receiving back in claims. Thirteen states had an even higher ratio, and Colorado was the highest. (Florida was tied for 14th with Montana.) ""The situation is reversed in Texas, where flood insurance policyholders paid $4.5 billion in premiums but collected a larger $6.7 billion in claims,"" the study states. The study was based on data from the flood insurance program, so we went directly to the program and FEMA to check the data ourselves. We found fairly similar numbers to the Wharton study. The author of the Wharton study, Erwann Michel-Kerjan, told PolitiFact that his figure of $4.5 billion for claims in Florida through 2008 was higher than FEMA’s of $3.7 billion through mid 2013 because he accounted for inflation. Also, it’s worth noting that many of our big storms were in 2005-06, not in more recent years. So the trend in payments from 1978 to 2008 likely continues today. We asked Michel-Kerjan if we should expect Floridians to continue paying more in premiums than they receive in reimbursements. ""Keep in mind though that if there is a severe hurricane hitting the state and massive storm surge, the situation could well reverse: Florida might become a net beneficiary of the program, rather than being a net contributor,"" he said. ""This is what happened to Louisiana with Katrina in 2005."" The Tampa Bay Times explained: ""Like any other insurance, flood premiums don't reflect real-life events; they reflect risk. With its 1,200 miles of coastline, Florida is still considered more at risk than any other state. Just one major, slow moving hurricane that hits a populated part of Florida's coast could dramatically increase the state's flood claims. And private insurers have been unwilling to provide flood coverage."" Our ruling Scott said ""Over the past 35 years, Florida families have paid into the NFIP (National Flood Insurance Program) over $16 billion, four times more than the amount they have received in claim reimbursements."" A study from the Wharton Center concluded that Florida’s ""policyholders paid $16.1 billion in premiums but collected only $4.5 billion in claims reimbursements: that is, premiums paid over time were about 3.6 times the insurance reimbursements."" That statistic from the study covered 1978-2008, but it’s likely the trend has continued through 2012. The only key point that Scott omits is that this imbalance is common: Lots of states pay more in premiums than they receive in claims. A major storm could change that dynamic, and the purpose of insurance is to protect against such an event. We rate this claim Mostly True."
+"The Endangered Species Act, the law that protects animals and plants at risk of extinction, has had some dramatic successes -- among them, saving the bald eagle, the gray whale, the peregrine falcon and the American alligator. But the law has also drawn complaints from landowners and energy interests that it unnecessarily harms economic development. The debate over the decades-old law is resurfacing in Congress, with critics of the law citing a statistic that raises questions about the law’s effectiveness. Specifically, a reader suggested we check a claim by U.S. Rep. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., in a recent interview with Wyoming Public Radio. In the interview, which aired Aug. 23, 2013, Lummis said, ""Our goal is not to repeal the Endangered Species Act. Far from it. Our goal is to make the Endangered Species Act work. We have a law where only 1 percent of the species that have been listed have actually been delisted. To me, that indicates a law that is failing in its ultimate goal which is to list species, recover them, and then delist them."" Whether the act is ""failing"" is an opinion, and as we'll see, opinions differ on that point. We wanted to concentrate on whether Lummis is right that under the act, ""only 1 percent of the species that have been listed have actually been delisted."" How does the act work? The precursor to the Endangered Species Act was passed in 1966. The law was revised in 1969 and underwent a major rewrite in 1973. A key element of the 1973 act is that it prohibits federal agencies from ""authorizing, funding, or carrying out any action that would jeopardize a listed species or destroy or modify its ‘critical habitat.’ "" While this doesn’t necessarily affect privately held land, many major development projects on private land may require one or more federal permits, so they can be delayed or otherwise affected by the law. In addition, states may have their own laws on endangered species. So what does ""listing"" mean? The federal government can confer protection upon species after completing a lengthy regulatory process that includes public input. The factors that would qualify a species for the list, according to the 1973 act, include ""the present or threatened destruction, modification, or curtailment of its habitat or range; overutilization for commercial, recreational, scientific, or educational purposes; disease or predation; the inadequacy of existing regulatory mechanisms; or other natural or manmade factors affecting its continued existence."" The two key categories are ""endangered"" and ""threatened."" An endangered species is at more severe risk than a threatened species; a species can be either ""uplisted"" from threatened to endangered or ""downlisted"" from endangered to threatened, depending on the improvement of its prognosis in the wild. Species can also be ""delisted"" entirely. That can be done if the threats to the species ""have been eliminated or controlled, based on several factors including population sizes and trends and the stability of habitat quality and quantity."" How many species have been delisted? The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, one of the key agencies that carries out the act’s provisions, has a running tally of species that have been listed and delisted. All told, 56 species have been delisted. Because Lummis said she was talking about the ability of the law to ""list species, recover them, and then delist them,"" we will use the 28 species that were delisted due to recovery as the focus of our calculation. We will exclude the 10 that were delisted because they became extinct, and an additional 18 that were delisted for a variety of other reasons, such as an error in the original listing. Meanwhile, 2,105 species have been listed as either threatened or endangered. So, doing the math, 1.3 percent of listed species have ultimately been delisted.. In other words, numerically, Lummis is right -- slightly more than 1 percent of listed species have been taken off the list because they recovered. Is this the only purpose of the act? Experts say that while Lummis was right on the number, they add that the number tells only part of the story. They argue that while delisting is great, it isn’t the primary goal of the law. At root, they say, the law is designed to prevent extinction -- and on that score, the law has been a success. Only one-half of 1 percent of species placed on the list have become extinct, which works out to a success rate of over 99 percent plus. ""By the time species are listed as threatened or endangered, their numbers are so low that preventing extinction is the major challenge, with recovery and delisting a remote consideration,"" said Wm. Robert Irvin, president and CEO of the advocacy group American Rivers. ""The law acts as an emergency room. Recovery requires much longer treatment through actions under the full panoply of conservation laws and programs."" In addition, focusing on delisting ignores species that have seen improvements in viability, but not large enough to justify a delisting. This has been the case for a variety of species, from sea otters to black-footed ferrets. J. Michael Scott, an emeritus professor in the fish and wildlife department of the University of Idaho, said studies suggest that more than half of the endangered and threatened populations are stable or improving, and that percentage increases with the length of time the species has been protected. Such statistics ""suggest that the act is far more successful than the 1 percent figure suggests,"" he said. Our ruling Lummis said that under the Endangered Species Act, ""only 1 percent of the species that have been listed have actually been delisted."" She’s correct, though one could just as easily say that less than 1 percent of the species placed on the list have become extinct, and that many species have improved without being delisted. The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information, so we rate her statement Mostly True."
+"EDITOR’S NOTE:  On Aug. 28, 2013, PolitiFact Rhode Island rated as False a statement by Deepwater Wind CEO Jeffrey Grybowski that offshore wind power is ""significantly less expensive than solar energy."" We based that ruling on a comparison of the estimated price of Deepwater’s planned 1,000 megawatt windfarm with a recent contract price for a solar project in Rhode Island. Deepwater Wind objected to the ruling, pointing to contract prices of several other Rhode Island solar projects. Based on that information and a second review, we have changed our ruling to Mostly True and are providing this new analysis. July 31 was a red letter day for Deepwater Wind, a Providence company that hopes to build the first offshore wind farm in the United States. That was the day Deepwater was announced as the winner of a federal auction to lease space for the farm in a 257-square-mile area of waters off Rhode Island and Massachusetts. (The company plans an initial demonstration project of five turbines off Block Island. The larger project would have more than 100 turbines.) It was in that context that Jeffrey R. Grybowski, chief executive officer of Deepwater Wind, appeared Aug. 4, 2013 on the TV public affairs show ""10 News Conference."" Host Bill Rappleye asked Grybowski how much the electricity generated by the turbines would cost. ""Yes, 13- to 14-cent power [offshore wind energy per kilowatt hour] is probably what we’re talking about, significantly lower than the cost of what we’ve seen for offshore wind to date,"" Grybowski said. ""Also, by the way, significantly less expensive than solar energy."" We wondered whether offshore wind is, in fact, cheaper than solar. We started with the state Division of Public Utilities and Carriers and the Public Utilities Commission, which both have important roles in setting the prices for renewable energy. Deepwater has negotiated with energy distributor National Grid, which is required to buy power from renewable sources, a wholesale price of 24.4 cents per kilowatt hour for the five-turbine demonstration project, steadily ranging up to 46.9 cents per kilowatt hour in the last year of a 20-year contract, according to division officials. The demonstration would have a generating capacity of 30 megawatts -- a measure of peak output over an hour. (A megawatt is 1,000 kilowatts. The average U.S. home uses about 940 kilowatt hours per month, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.) If the demonstration wind farm, called Phase I, works out as planned, Deepwater Wind expects to move forward on plans to build a large-scale wind farm, called Phase II, in the leased federal waters. Phase II would generate up to 1,000 megawatts -- enough, the company says, to power 350,000 homes. In an interview with PolitiFact Rhode Island, Grybowski said his comments on ""10 News Conference"" were about Phase II. He predicted that in the coming years, Deepwater will be able to negotiate with National Grid a wholesale price of 13 cents to 14 cents per kilowatt hour, escalating annually over the life of a contract. To check Grybowski’s claim, we first had to determine the price of offshore wind energy. That’s a challenge because no such project has yet been built in the United States. As proof that his 13- to 14-cent-per-kilowatt-hour estimate is realistic, Grybowski pointed to a formal offer by Deepwater in 2012 to sell Phase II energy in New York state for as low as 10 cents per kwh. The closest point of comparison is in nearby Massachusetts, where the Cape Wind project in Nantucket Sound is under contract with National Grid for a year-one price, adjustable with contingencies, of 18.7 cents per kwh. How do these prices compare with the price of solar locally? The Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources, which also has a rate-setting role in renewable energy, provided a list of 18 solar projects that have entered into contracts with National Grid since December 2011. The wholesale prices ranged from 18.5 cents per kilowatt hour to 33 cents, with the largest projects having the lowest prices. Deepwater provided a similar list compiled from National Grid data, showing 21 Rhode Island solar projects, with prices also ranging from 18.5 cents per kilowatt hour to 33 cents. By law in Rhode Island, solar projects enter into contracts with National Grid at a fixed price for 15 years and offshore wind at a price with annual escalators for 20 years. Four of the 21 solar projects on Deepwater’s list have initial prices lower than Deepwater’s Phase I price. All of them would be substantially less expensive than the final Phase I price because of the annual escalator. But let’s look at the Deepwater Phase II project that Grybowski was talking about, and let’s assume that his 13-to-14 cent estimate holds true. That’s cheaper initially than all of the Rhode Island solar projects. Phase II also has an escalating price -- Grybowski said the company expects to obtain a contract of about 20 years with prices escalating about 3 percent a year. The initial Deepwater price would be cheaper than all the solar prices. At year 12, the Deepwater price would surpass the cheapest solar project’s price. After 20 years, the Deepwater price would be about 23 cents -- still cheaper than 19 of the 21 solar projects. It should be noted that comparisons of solar and offshore wind prices in Rhode Island are tricky because of scale. There’s not much room in our crowded, tiny state for the sort of large-scale solar projects that exist in the Southwest, for example. The largest solar project on Deepwater’s list, planned for the former Forbes Street Landfill, in East Providence, would have a capacity of 3.7 megawatts. Fifteen of the 21 are less than 1 megawatt, compared with the 1,000 megawatts of Deepwater’s Phase II. On the national level, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that the most widespread kind of solar power, photovoltaic, has a ""levelized cost"" of 22.4 cents per kilowatt hour, compared with offshore wind at 29.5 cents. ""Levelized cost is often cited as a convenient summary measure of the overall competitiveness of different generating technologies,"" the administration explains on its website. For a large-scale offshore wind project, Grybowski contends that the 29.5-cent estimate is inaccurate, based on faulty methodology. Our ruling Deepwater Wind’s Jeffrey Grybowski said offshore wind power is ""significantly less expensive than solar energy."" Deepwater’s small Phase I demonstration project would, in fact, be more expensive over time than all of the Rhode Island solar projects the company cited. But if Grybowski’s estimated electricity price for the much larger Phase II holds true, its price would ultimately be cheaper than 19 of the 21 solar projects. The gap would be a few cents for the larger solar projects and up to 10 cents for the smallest. Because Grybowski’s claim is accurate but needs clarification or additional information, the judges rule it Mostly True."
+"When President Barack Obama took office in 2009, he set a goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent by 2020 if all other major economies pledged to limit their emissions, too. Improvements would be tallied against how much of those gases the United States put into the atmosphere in 2005, the year the global climate change treaty known as the Kyoto Protocol was supposed to take effect. The White House would have liked it if Congress had passed a cap-and-trade bill that in theory would create strong market pressures to reduce the release of carbon into the air. That never happened, but two major changes gave the president a shot at making serious headway toward his target. Energy consumption cratered when the economy collapsed and, as you would expect, lower energy use means lower emissions. On the more positive side of the ledger, the surge in natural gas production also helped the country move toward Obama’s goal, although not without concern over environmental side effects. In a question-and-answer session on climate change at Columbia University on Aug. 26, 2013, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz highlighted the impact of natural gas on emissions. ""In these last years, the natural gas revolution, shall we say, has been a major contributor to reducing carbon emissions,"" Moniz said. ""The president has a goal, as I mentioned, of 17 percent by 2020. We are about halfway there, and about half of that is because of the substitution of natural gas for coal in the power sector, essentially driven by market forces."" We pay attention to the president’s promises and track how well he delivers the goods on the Obameter. But we also thought it would be worth digging into Moniz’s claim. Department of Energy’s focus on carbon dioxide The Energy Department, predictably, looks at the way energy use contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, and in particular, it tracks the dominant greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide. The department’s Energy Information Administration recently published the numbers for 2012, and the details surprised many people. The update reported that energy-related carbon dioxide emissions in 2012 were the lowest since 1994. Compared to 2005, those emissions had fallen by 11.8 percent. That is much more than halfway toward the president’s goal of 17 percent. The update also said the biggest drop was due to the declining use of coal to produce electricity. ""Low natural gas prices led to competition between natural gas — and coal-fired electric power generators,"" the authors wrote. ""Lower natural gas prices resulted in reduced levels of coal generation, and increased natural gas generation."" And to produce the same amount of energy, natural gas puts less carbon dioxide into the air than coal does. The most detailed data is only as recent as 2011, but the shift from coal to natural gas is clear. In terms of power generation, between 2005 and 2011, use of coal fell from 50 percent to 42 percent while the use of natural gas rose from 19 percent to 25 percent. This isn't bulletproof evidence of causation, but it strongly suggests that the switch from coal to natural gas has played a role in reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Greenhouse gases —  more than carbon dioxide If the only molecule to worry about were carbon dioxide, Moniz would have been totally right, but many compounds contribute to climate change. Obama pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent, not just carbon dioxide. The Environmental Protection Agency’s latest report looks at all the relevant gases, some of which are thousands of times more potent in their climate change impact than carbon dioxide. The EPA’s tally also includes activities other than energy production that put gases into the atmosphere. The agency’s figures show that from 2005 to 2011, emissions fell by 7 percent. Measured against the goal of 17 percent, the country has more than halfway to go. It’s roughly at the 40 percent mark. It is possible that when the 2012 numbers are in, the rate of progress will have shot up. The Department of Energy reported a relatively dramatic decline in the release of carbon dioxide in 2012. The EPA’s next report is planned for April 2014. We should note that a separate report from Moniz’s agency gives cause for concern. The Energy Information Administration projects that energy-related carbon dioxide emissions will start to creep up in 2018. By 2020, analysts predict they will show only a 9 percent reduction from 2005 levels. Our ruling Moniz said the country is ""about halfway"" toward the president’s goal of a 17 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 compared to 2005 levels. In terms of carbon dioxide, Moniz is correct, but when looking at all greenhouse gases, data from the EPA suggests the country has a little more progress to make. We rate the statement Mostly True."
+"In a recent email to supporters in Florida, Organizing for Action -- a group that supports President Barack Obama -- criticized the climate change policies of Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., one of the Senate’s leading Republicans and a possible 2016 presidential contender. The email, signed by Ivan Frishberg, the group’s climate campaign manager, begins like this: ""Friend -- ""We're spending the next week of Action August getting serious about climate change. ""To get ready, we're calling out Sen. Marco Rubio, who refuses to accept the basic science on this issue -- and is standing in the way of action. ""It's time everyone in Florida knows: Sen. Rubio is a climate change denier."" The email goes on to say that ""there are 135 documented climate change deniers currently roaming the halls of Congress."" The full list is here, but in this item we’ll be focusing on whether Rubio ""is a climate change denier."" We should clarify up front: In the policy context, the term ""climate change"" refers to rising temperatures and sea levels caused by human beings and their use of carbon-dioxide-emitting fossil fuels. (We should also note that Rubio’s staff did not respond when contacted for this story.) In supporting its claim, OFA cites a Feb. 13, 2010, article in the Tampa Tribune. According to the Tribune, Rubio called his then-Senate opponent Charlie Crist ""a believer in man-made global warming"" and said, ""I don't think there's the scientific evidence to justify it."" Asked whether he accepts scientific evidence that the global climate is undergoing change, Rubio responded, ""The climate is always changing. The climate is never static. The question is whether it's caused by man-made activity and whether it justifies economically destructive government regulation."" After trying to locate as many of Rubio’s comments on climate change as we could, we concluded that the Tribune story is indeed the strongest evidence OFA can use to support its labeling of Rubio as a ""climate change denier."" Rubio’s language to the Tribune is pretty clear: He doesn’t think there’s sufficient scientific evidence to support the claim that the climate is changing due to human factors. However, on other occasions -- both before and after the Tribune interview -- Rubio has offered somewhat more nuanced opinions on the topic. Initially, when he was speaker of the Florida House, Rubio seemed to tacitly support the idea that the earth’s temperatures were rising, even as he sometimes differed with environmentalists over specific policy options. While Rubio was speaker in 2008, the House unanimously passed a law ordering the state Department of Environmental Protection to develop rules for companies to limit their emissions of carbon dioxide, a pollutant that scientists say may be contributing to global warming. In a 2007 speech to fellow legislators, Rubio urged his state to become a Silicon Valley of the new energy-technology economy. ""Global warming, dependence on foreign sources of fuel, and capitalism have come together to create opportunities for us that were unimaginable just a few short years ago,"" he said. ""Today, Florida has the opportunity to pursue bold energy policies, not just because they’re good for our environment, but because people can actually make money doing it. This nation and ultimately the world is headed toward emission caps and energy diversification."" By phrasing it this way, without any effort to question the scientific underpinnings of global warming, Rubio suggested that he tacitly supported the science behind global warming. He made the same implication when he wrote in a 2007 Miami Herald op-ed, ""Whether motivated by global warming or geopolitics, there is widespread support for diversifying our energy portfolio and becoming more efficient in our use of energy."" By Dec. 10, 2009, Rubio was openly hedging his position on climate change science. Confronted with accusations that he had flip-flopped on climate change, Rubio told the Miami Herald, ""I'm not a scientist. I'm not qualified to make that decision. There's a significant scientific dispute about that.'' Rubio’s next flurry of comments on climate change came in 2013, after he had become a leading figure in the national GOP. Here are Rubio’s recent comments: • BuzzFeed interview, Feb. 5, 2013: In a video interview with the website BuzzFeed, Rubio said, ""The United States is a country, not a planet. On the other hand, if we unilaterally impose these sorts of things on our economy, you could have a devastating impact on economics. ... There has to be a cost-benefit analysis to every one of these principles people are pushing on. … The climate’s always changing -- that’s not the fundamental question. The fundamental question is whether man-made activity is what’s contributing most to it. I know people said there’s a significant scientific consensus on that issue, but I’ve actually seen reasonable debate on that principle."" • Republican response to the State of the Union address, Feb. 12, 2013. Responding to Obama’s speech, Rubio said, ""When we point out that no matter how many job-killing laws we pass, our government can’t control the weather – he accuses us of wanting dirty water and dirty air."" • Fox and Friends interview, Feb. 13, 2013. The day after his response to the State of the Union address, Rubio said, ""The government can’t change the weather. I said that in the speech. We can pass a bunch of laws that will destroy our economy, but it isn’t going to change the weather. Because, for example, there are other countries that are polluting in the atmosphere much greater than we are at this point -- China, India, all these countries that are still growing. They’re not going to stop doing what they’re doing. America is a country, it’s not a planet. So we can pass a bunch of laws or executive orders that will do nothing to change the climate or the weather but will devastate our economy -- devastate it."" • Statement on his Senate Web page, posted June 25, 2013: In response to a speech in which Obama outlined a series of measures on climate change that he could accomplish by executive order, Rubio said: ""This time, President Obama is discarding the Constitution and free enterprise system in the name of a job-killing environmental agenda. We must do everything we can to stand in his way."" In these comments, Rubio expressed strong opposition to Obama’s climate change policies, particularly on the grounds that the benefits would not exceed the costs. And he seemed to exude skepticism that climate change was an urgent policy concern, as well as the sentiment that human actions cannot change something as massive as the weather. Still, in these comments, Rubio never explicitly denied the science behind climate change, as he did three years earlier in the Tribune interview. In fact, in the BuzzFeed conversation, Rubio conceded that ""I’ve actually seen reasonable debate on that principle."" Someone who is a ""denier"" does not typically concede that his opponents may have a ""reasonable"" point. Our ruling Organizing for Action said that Rubio ""refuses to accept the basic science"" on climate change and is ""a climate change denier."" Rubio’s 2010 comments to the Tampa Tribune -- when he said, ""I don't think there's the scientific evidence to justify it"" -- represent the clearest evidence in support of the group’s charge. In that comment, Rubio does sound like he is denying the existence of science that supports the climate change hypothesis. Since then -- including on four separate occasions this year -- Rubio has expressed opposition to climate change policies while speaking more cautiously about the science that proves climate change is happening. On one of those occasions in February, he even conceded that he’s seen ""reasonable debate"" about the question. But in none of those instances did Rubio walk back his 2010 remarks, even though he had several opportunities to do so. We rate the claim Mostly True."
+"A congressional candidate says Uncle Sam is making it tougher to keep on truckin’. Mike Collins told the Gwinnett Daily Post that changes in federal emissions standards have added $10,000 to the price of every new truck his family’s trucking business buys. ""The EPA is stifling business,"" Collins told us, referring to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which helped write those standards. PolitiFact Georgia was curious about his claim and hit the fact-checking trail for more details. Collins is running as a Republican for the U.S. House of Representatives in Georgia’s 10th Congressional District, a conservative stretch of northeast Georgia. The current officeholder, Paul Broun, is running for the U.S. Senate. Broun’s successor will take office in January 2015. Collins is one of six candidates in the race. Collins’ father, Mac, served 12 years in the U.S. House, from 1993 to 2005, representing portions of several south metro Atlanta counties. The younger Collins is the vice president and financial officer of Collins Trucking, which boasts on its website that its vehicles can haul a minimum of 48,000 pounds of cargo. A heavy-duty truck can cost about $100,000. Collins said new federal emissions regulations that took effect in 2011 on heavy-duty trucks are responsible for some big changes in sales prices. In May 2010, President Barack Obama announced a plan to produce more environmentally friendly vehicles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the EPA created new guidelines for combination tractors that are used for freight transportation, heavy-duty pickup trucks, and gasoline and diesel heavy-duty engines. The goal: reduce carbon dioxide emissions by anywhere from 7 percent to 20 percent, along with reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The new regulations took effect in August 2011. The EPA outlined the environmental and cost benefits in one report: ""The agencies estimate that the combined standards will reduce (carbon dioxide) emissions by about 270 million metric tons and save about 530 million barrels of oil over the life of vehicles built for the 2014 to 2018 model years, providing $49 billion in net program benefits. The reduced fuel use alone will enable $50 billion in fuel savings to accrue to vehicle owners, or $42 billion in net savings when considering technology costs. A second phase of regulations is planned for model years beyond 2018."" So have these changes resulted in $10,000 price increases in the past two years? ""That’s the number that’s been floating around,"" said Guy Young, vice president of the Georgia Motor Trucking Association, based in Marietta. There are no studies of the impact of emissions changes that took effect in 2011 on truck prices. An EPA spokeswoman said the $10,000 upfront cost is consistent with the EPA’s regulatory impact analysis for heavy-duty vehicles starting in model year 2014. ""It should be noted, however, that the same analysis finds that using technologies commercially available today, the majority of vehicles will see a payback period of less than one year, while others, especially those with lower annual miles, will experience payback periods of up to two years,"" said the spokeswoman, Davina Marraccini. ""For example, an operator of a tractor-trailer can pay for the technology upgrades in under a year and have net savings up to $73,000 over the truck’s useful life."" Marraccini said the standards were developed with support from the trucking industry. The National Automobile Dealers Association and American Truck Dealers released a report in March 2012 on the impact of emissions requirements on vehicles with a model year from 2004 to 2010. It disputes the EPA’s cost-benefit projections. ""EPA underestimated compliance costs by a factor of 2-5,"" the report said. ""These higher-than-projected costs resulted in, among other things, significantly lower-than-projected new truck sales which necessarily reduced the environmental benefits associated with these standards."" The report found the average surcharge on heavy-duty trucks made in 2010 that were compliant with the emissions guidelines was about $9,000 for nearly every manufacturer. For medium-duty trucks, the surcharge was generally between $6,000 and $7,300. Bill Iredale, who’s been in the truck sales business for nearly 40 years, said Collins was correct about the price increase. ""Absolutely,"" said Iredale, sales manager at Ace Beverage Refurb & Sales, based in Norcross. Iredale said the price increases have resulted from a series of new federal emissions regulations over the past decade. Ten years ago, a medium-body truck cost about $50,000. Today, the price is about $75,000. Iredale said the recent emissions requirements do have a positive impact on air quality. ""It’s a good thing,"" he said. ""It really helped clean up the air."" Young agreed that the vehicles have better fuel economy. ""They’re really good fuel engines, but (manufacturers) had to make some changes to get that way,"" he said. So, is Collins right? The EPA anticipated such additional upfront costs. Not surprisingly, the EPA and trucking industry debate the cost benefit of the regulations. The anecdotal evidence we heard and the 2012 truck dealers report suggest Collins may be right about the higher costs. The statement, however, falls a bit shy of an absolute True ruling. It has to be viewed in the context of the overall fuel savings the new vehicles will accrue. That could be substantial and actually offset the higher costs in the long run. We rate this claim as Mostly True."
+"Most people have heard about what will happen if humans keep pumping large amounts of carbon dioxide into the air as we burn more fossil fuels, including warmer temperatures, melting polar caps, rising sea levels, stronger storms and big changes in the types of plants and animals that can survive and thrive in particular regions of the world. ""But wait,"" as an evil TV pitchman might gleefully declare, ""there's more."" On June 12, 2013, U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, took to floor of the Senate for one of his regular speeches about the impact of pollution on Earth's climate. This time he focused on a lesser-publicized problem -- the oceans are becoming more acidic. ""Our oceans face unprecedented challenges from climate change and carbon pollution,"" he said. ""Oceans have absorbed more than 550 billion tons of our carbon pollution. As a result, they have become 30 percent more acidic. That is a measurement. That is not a theory."" Thirty percent more acidic? Our first question was: ""Is it true?"" Our second was: ""If so, what does that mean?"" When most people think of measuring acidity, they think of pH, the scale that runs from 0 to 14. (Think back to your school days and the little strips of paper that changed color depending on whether a substance was an acid or a base.) ""So,"" you might ask, ""has the pH of the ocean shifted a few points?"" Not at all. The pH scale is not a straight-line measure like a yardstick. It's a logarithmic scale, where a one point drop would make a substance 10 times more acidic. (What you're really measuring is the number of hydrogen ions, which determine how acidic something is.) Whitehouse's office directed us to several sources -- and we found our own -- reporting that since the mid-18th century, when air pollution became more prevalent, the pH of surface seawater has gone from about 8.2 to about 8.1. (That's a rise in acidity, but sea water would have to drop below 7.0 before it could be officially classified as an acid.) Lowering the pH by a tenth of a point translates to a 26-percent rise in hydrogen ion concentration, but some of those science sources say the increase is actually closer to 30 percent. The pH scale has been around only since 1909. How do we know what the pH was like in the 1800s or earlier? The oceanographers we consulted told us basic chemistry provides the answer. Seawater absorbs air, including carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide interacts with the water to make the ocean more acidic. Researchers have good measurements directly comparing carbon dioxide and pH dating to 1989. They show that surface ocean acidity has risen as carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have risen, just as expected. To go further back in time, scientists have measured the carbon dioxide concentrations in tiny bubbles of air trapped in ice found in places such as Greenland and Antarctica. Those ice cores show that, until the 1850s, the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere had not risen above 280 parts per million for most of the last million years or so. But in the past century and a half, they’ve been rising steadily, causing an increase in ocean acidity. Today, those carbon dioxide levels have occasionally passed 400 parts per million. ""It's been mostly in the last 100 years,"" said Steve D'Hondt, an oceanography professor at the University of Rhode Island. One other point. The acidity of the entire ocean hasn't changed by the amount Whitehouse citied. The chemical composition of deeper layers shifts much more gradually. ""It's been a long time since the deep ocean touched the atmosphere,"" said Andrew Dickson of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, at the University of California-San Diego. ""So it's not true of the ocean as a whole. It's only true of the surface layer."" That leads us to our second question: what does it mean? Because the effects of acidification are currently restricted to the upper 600-1,600 feet of the ocean, where most of the life is found, there's serious concern that small changes in pH will have a big -- and not very healthy -- effect on many ocean species, although some may be unaffected. Earth's oceans have been much more acidic in the past -- 110 million years ago the oceans were 400 percent (five times) more acidic. But most of those changes developed over millions of years, giving organisms time to evolve and adapt to the shift. The current rise in acidity is rapid. Said University of Rhode Island oceanographer Arthur Spivack, ""We already have a measurable change in ocean pH and we're going into a period where there will be a substantial change."" Our ruling U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said the oceans ""have become 30 percent more acidic."" He is correct if you look at the increase in the concentration of hydrogen ions since the 1850s in the upper layers of the ocean, where most sea life thrives. We also note that he's describing the change using a measure that heightens the drama for the casual listener. But regardless of how it is characterized, that change is cause for concern if it harms ocean creatures sensitive to changes in pH. On the other hand, the deeper ocean has not seen a 30-percent increase. Because his statement is accurate but needs clarification and additional information, we rate it Mostly True. (If you have a claim you’d like PolitiFact Rhode Island to check, e-mail us at [email protected] And follow us on Twitter: @politifactri.)"
+"When President Barack Obama gave a major address on climate change on June 25, 2013, he reached back more than three decades for a personal anecdote to support his argument. ""Now, what you'll hear from the special interests and their allies in Congress is that (my climate change plan) will kill jobs and crush the economy and basically end American free-enterprise as we know it,"" Obama said. ""And the reason I know you'll hear those things is because that's what they said every time America sets clear rules and better standards for our air and our water and our children's health. ""And every time they've been wrong,"" Obama continued. ""when I was going to school in 1979, 1980 in Los Angeles, there were days where folks couldn't go outside -- and the sunsets were spectacular -- because of all the pollution in the air. ""At the time when we passed the Clean Air Act, to try to get rid of some of this smog, some of the same doomsayers were saying, ‘New pollution standards will decimate the auto industry.’ Guess what? It didn't happen. Our air got cleaner."" Many Twitter users asked us whether it was really true that during Obama’s days in Los Angeles ""there were days where folks couldn't go outside. … because of all the pollution in the air."" We’ll start with some background on smog. The smog predominant in Los Angeles -- formally known as ""photochemical smog"" -- is created when light reacts with motor vehicle and industrial emissions to form ground-level ozone. This ozone can make it difficult to breathe, causing asthma attacks and lung inflammation, as well as making eyes itchy and watery. In the United States, at least, Los Angeles has been ground zero for smog for decades, due to its heavy automobile usage, its industrial base and the presence of mountains and valleys, which prevent polluted air from floating elsewhere. Los Angeles smog emerged in the 1940s and worsened from the 1950s to the 1970s. It got so bad in October 1954 that the city virtually shut down for the entire month (and gas masks were common, as the photograph below illustrates). Smog became so closely identified with Los Angeles that ""smog in a can"" became a popular gag gift. Today, Los Angeles still has smog -- in April 2013, the American Lung Association ranked L.A. first in the nation for ozone pollution, as well as fourth for particulate pollution such as dust and soot. But concerted environmental efforts have reduced the extent of the problem significantly. In rising order of seriousness, smog alerts for southern California start with health advisories and move upwards to stage 1, stage 2 and stage 3. The last stage 3 smog alert came in 1974 -- so long ago that Ronald Reagan was still governor. The last stage 2 alert came in 1988, and there has been only one stage 1 alert since 1998 (it came in 2003). ""Peak ozone levels in southern California today are roughly one-third of what they were in the late 1970s, due to aggressive and innovative air pollution controls here,"" said Sam Atwood, a spokesman for the South Coast Air Quality Management District, the air-pollution control agency for Los Angeles, Orange County and portions of Riverside and San Bernardino counties. So what would Obama have experienced when he was a student at Occidental, the college he attended before transferring to Columbia University for his junior and senior year? We can approximate the impact based on statistical and anecdotal evidence. Occidental, located in the Eagle Rock neighborhood northeast of downtown L.A., would have been subject to many of the smog risks typical of the region from 1979 to 1981. According to South Coast Air Quality Management District data, a health advisory -- a comparatively low-level alert -- was issued somewhere in the agency’s region of jurisdiction 169 times in 1979, 152 times in 1980 and 159 times in 1981. The stage 1 threshold was met 120, 101, and 99 times during those three years. Even allowing that Occidental itself may have experienced just a fraction of these episodes, the university still would have faced a significant number. So what did these advisories mean in a practical sense? For a health advisory, the lowest of these levels, all children are supposed to ""discontinue prolonged, vigorous outdoor exercise lasting longer than one hour,"" and ""susceptible persons, such as those with heart or lung disease"" should ""avoid outdoor activity,"" including ""calisthenics, basketball, running, soccer, football, tennis, swimming laps, and water polo."" For the more severe stage 1 episodes, all children are supposed to ""discontinue all vigorous outdoor activities regardless of duration,"" including ""physical education classes, sports practices, and athletic competitions."" Finally, for stage 2 or stage 3, all children are supposed to ""discontinue all outdoor activities."" This suggests that Obama’s claim is slightly exaggerated. He said that ""there were days where folks couldn't go outside,"" but nothing in the rules addressed what healthy adults could do, including healthy college-age kids. Rather, the rules addressed adults with compromised health as well as children. Still, the reality of smog alerts was not pretty, and by all accounts, staying inside, if feasible, was certainly preferable. The White House pointed us to a Newsweek article from Sept. 24, 1979, when Obama was just settling in at Occidental, that documents what it called the worst L.A. smog in 24 years. ""Tennis courts stood empty,"" the article said. ""Golf courses lay nearly deserted. Schools canceled recess, and the usual parade of joggers around Pasadena's Rose Bowl dwindled to just a handful."" We found other first-hand testimony. Char Miller, a professor of environmental analysis at Pomona College in the Los Angeles suburb of Claremont, recalls enduring smog alerts when he was a student at neighboring Pitzer College in the mid 1970s. ""There were way too many days when you could not see the mountain that today frames my office window,"" he said. ""It was possible to not know it was there for months at a time."" And William Kelly, the co-author of Smogtown: The Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles, recalls attending Occidental a few years before Obama. ""When I got there in 1973, I played a vigorous game of basketball in an un-air-conditioned gym,"" Kelly said. ""I don't remember the end of the game, just waking up in the early evening with a pounding headache and watering eyes and wheezing in my dorm room. Turns out there was a stage 2 smog alert going on that afternoon, and I didn't have a clue."" Our ruling Obama said that as a student at Occidental College in Los Angeles from 1979 to 1981, ""there were days where folks couldn't go outside. … because of all the pollution in the air."" The idea that ""folks couldn’t go outside"" is an oversimplification. The advisories -- and they were only advisories -- were aimed at children and people who had existing health concerns. But Obama is right that smog was a severe problem at the time in the Los Angeles region. On balance, we rate his claim Mostly True."
+"Public transportation was one of the topics when Abel Collins, program manager for the Rhode Island chapter of the Sierra Club, was a guest on the June 2 edition of ""10 News Conference."" Collins, an unsuccessful independent candidate for Congress in the 2nd District in 2012, said one goal of his organization is to cut pollution by getting better funding for the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority, which operates the state’s bus system. ""They're stuck. They have declining revenues and increasing demand. And RIPTA has really some of the fullest buses for its transit agency size around the country,"" he said. ""So it's really something that should get more attention and hopefully this is the year that the General Assembly sees fit to give RIPTA sustainable funding for the long term. There's a bill to do that and we've been pushing on it for years."" We wondered whether RIPTA does, in fact, have some of the fullest buses around. We called Collins. He said he was told that factoid by Mark Therrien, the authority's assistant general manager for planning. We called Therrien. He said Collins was correct. When we asked for details, he referred us to the Integrated National Transit Database Analysis System (INTDAS) which has national statistics over many years for transit systems throughout the United States. The database will generate a list of comparable transit systems around the country. We did that for RIPTA and decided to focus on the 30 that were closest based on a variety of measures such as size, according to the federal ranking. We also looked at six other systems -- in Eugene, Ore.; Fort Worth, Texas; Jacksonville, Fla.; Memphis, Tenn.; Louisville, Ky.; and Des Moines, Iowa -- that Therrien said were comparable as well. But what to look at? The database, whose most recent statistics were from 2011, doesn't include a direct measurement of how full the buses are. We discovered there were a lot of indirect ways to estimate capacity that gave different rankings. Therrien said we should look at passengers per hour. By that measure, RIPTA ranked 8th out of 37 systems. We also looked at the number of passenger trips divided by the number of vehicles in operation during peak hours. RIPTA ranked 9th by that measure. Meanwhile, we received an e-mail from Albert Gan, a professor with the department of civil and environmental engineering at Florida International University, who developed the INTDAS system. He said the correct method would be to divide the number of passenger miles in a year by the number of miles driven when the buses were picking and dropping off passengers (known as revenue miles). By that measure, RIPTA ranked 13th out of 37. Then we heard back from Therrien's office, which advised us that it was best to look at the number of passenger trips divided by the number of revenue miles. In that instance, RIPTA ranked 10th. Some other systems were pretty crowded using that yardstick. Milwaukee had 24 percent more passengers per bus than Providence; Madison had 34 percent more; Eugene had 39 percent more; and Rochester, N.Y. had 46 percent more. To sum up, Abel Collins said, ""RIPTA has really some of the fullest buses for its transit agency size around the country."" ""Some of the fullest"" is a little vague, but it implies that Rhode Island is going to be up there in the rankings. RIPTA, asked about the claim, suggested that we look at 11 transit systems. We ultimately analyzed data on more than three times that many, using a federal rating method that listed bus services comparable to Rhode Island's. RIPTA's rankings ranged from 8th to 13th. They varied a bit because there's no standardized way to calculate who has the ""fullest"" buses. Because there's some uncertainty but the different methods show RIPTA ranking high, we rate Collins' statement Mostly True. (If you have a claim you’d like PolitiFact Rhode Island to check, e-mail us at [email protected] And follow us on Twitter: @politifactri.)"
+"The communications office of the National Republican Congressional Committee isn’t letting up on Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Ore. It’s recently peppered him with criticism over the sequester and President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul. This time, the issue is construction of a controversial pipeline that would carry crude oil from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast for refinement.  A May 23, 2013, press release targeted Schrader for voting against H.R. 3, a bill that would allow TransCanada to start building the Keystone XL Pipeline without approval from President Barack Obama. Specifically, the legislation skips further environmental review and removes barriers to construction.  ""With nearly 75 percent of Americans supportive of the construction of the pipeline, Schrader needs to explain to Oregon families why he voted against this needed project,"" the release states.  Three-quarters of Americans want this project to happen? We know surveys can sometimes use scurrilous, squirrelly language, so we thought we’d take a look-see. Plus, while Schrader is a veterinarian who loves animals, the man is no tree-hugging environmentalist. Does he oppose construction?  Let’s tackle the 75 percent statistic first. The NRCC relies on a survey conducted by Nanos Research that was the subject of an April 2013 news report in the Wall Street Journal.  Here’s the survey question: Based on what you have heard about the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline between Canada and the U.S., do you support, somewhat support, somewhat oppose or oppose the US/Canadian government approving the project?  Of Americans, 52 percent said they support the project and 22 percent said they somewhat support it.  Nanos, a respected independent polling firm, isn’t the only one to find that a majority of respondents in the United States support construction. An April 2013 Pew Research poll found 66 percent in favor with 23 percent opposed. The poll found broader support among Republicans and independents; Democrats are more divided.  We checked with Daniel Kessler, a media campaigner with 350.org, which opposes Keystone. The Nanos polling question looked sound to him, although he wanted to remind readers that other surveys show high support for clean energy alternatives and efforts to combat global warming.  Now, let’s address the second part of the statement. As we stated earlier, H.R. 3 eliminates the need for White House approval to start the project.  It’s undisputed that Schrader voted against the bill. Nineteen House Democrats joined majority Republicans to send the bill to the Senate, where it sits. No House Democrat from Oregon voted for the legislation. In fact, the NRCC targeted a number of Democrats with the same press release, including Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore.  A spokesman for Schrader said the congressman supports construction in principle, just not the way Republicans are going about it. ""To say that he does not support the construction on the pipeline is false,"" wrote spokesman Cody Tucker in an email to PolitiFact Oregon.  Annie Clark with the NRCC disagrees. She cited four other times where Schrader voted against construction. ""Schrader voted against constructing or expediting construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline every chance he had,"" she wrote to PolitiFact Oregon.  We checked his other votes. The legislation sought to force Obama to act or bypassed him altogether in approving Keystone. Loads of House Democrats voted against the bills.  Schrader did vote against H.R. 3, which eliminates further regulatory hurdles, eliminates presidential input and essentially gives congressional go-ahead for construction. This statement by itself we would rate Half True.  It is partially accurate in that Schrader did vote against the legislation, which authorizes the project. But it is missing significant details in that Schrader supports construction in principle, just not this particular way to get there. Had the NRCC said that Schrader voted against the bill -- as opposed to the project -- the statement would be True.  The NRCC is accurate in citing that nearly 75 percent of Americans support construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The Nanos survey is solid, as is a Pew Research poll that showed two-thirds support.  With the polling part True and the project part Half True, that brings our ruling to Mostly True for this two-part statement.  (If you want to leave a comment, go to http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/06/did_kurt_schrader_vote_against.html#incart_m-rpt-2)"
+"Sandy, the so-called ""superstorm"" that struck the East Coast in October 2012, did more than produce massive damage. It also got a lot of people talking about climate change.
+
+Climate scientists say Earth is warming, and most say it’s due to polluting gases that trap heat in the atmosphere. Stronger storms are one predicted result.
+
+And scientists say the storms are going to be even more damaging because the excess heat will cause sea level to rise, both by a melting of the polar ice caps and because water expands as it warms.
+
+When Janet Freedman, a coastal geologist with Rhode Island's Coastal Resources Management Council, talked about the risk of coastal flooding during an appearance on WJAR-TV’s ""10 News Conference,"" she said the local rise in sea level is pretty clear.
+
+The levels ""have been rising,"" she said. ""In Rhode Island we have two long-term tide gauges that have been measuring the sea level since 1930 and we've seen that they've risen maybe about 10 inches since that time.
+
+""But we anticipate that with global warming, that's going to be faster, it's going to accelerate. Most models show we'll see a foot of sea-level rise as early as 2030 but definitely 2050 we expect to see sea levels that are higher than they are now.""
+
+PolitiFact doesn't rate predictions, so we focused on whether sea level has really risen about 10 inches over the past eight decades -- an average of 1.25 inches every 10 years.
+
+We contacted Freedman, who sent us to several sources.
+
+The Sea Levels Online website, part of the Tides & Currents portion of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration website, has data from tide gauges around the world. Selecting ""Rhode Island"" sends you to data from gauges in Newport and Providence.
+
+The Newport data show that from 1930 to 2006, the mean water level has risen by 2.58 millimeters -- about a tenth of an inch -- per year. Data that take the readings through 2011 show that the overall rate over that 81-year-period has actually increased to 2.70 mm/year. We calculate the rise from 1930 to 2012 to be 211.6 mm or 8.7 inches. That's not 10 inches, but Freedman said ""maybe about.""
+
+(It's also important to note that there is a margin of error in these numbers because they are averages based on readings that fluctuate due to waves, tides, winds and other factors. The average may be 8.7 inches but the real number could be as high as 9.3 inches or as low as 8.1 inches. The odds of it being outside this ""confidence interval"" during that period are 1 in 20.)
+
+The Providence tide gauge hasn't produced as much data. Records begin around 1940 and there is a large gap in the 1950s. But the overall rate as of 2011 is also lower: 2.19 mm per year. If we extrapolate that back to 1930 and forward to 2012, that's 179.6 mm or 7.1 inches since 1930. Although the margin of error could take it as high as 8.0 inches, somewhat further from 10 inches than the Newport data.
+
+We also contacted Jon Boothroyd of the University of Rhode Island, who is designated by the U.S. Geological Survey as the state geologist. He crunches the tide gauge numbers a bit differently, taking the monthly data and averaging it for a year. He has also included more recent data. His estimate: 269 mm per 100 years. Over 82 years, that would be 220.6 mm, which is 8.7 inches as well. (The range here is 9.4 inches to 7.9 inches.)
+
+However, Boothroyd said that if you look at the actual year-to-year annual readings from Newport between 1930 and 2011, the increase has been about 270 mm, or 10.6 inches.
+
+Boothroyd said he doesn't use the Providence tide gauge data because he had doubts about it -- the readings are too far off from the Newport readings.
+
+Sea level can fluctuate if land rises or falls, for example. But between Providence and Newport, ""the bedrock and the conditions are so close to one another, it doesn't make sense why that rate of sea level rise is lower than it is in Newport,"" he said. The gauge in Providence ""is on a pier, and I don't think the pilings on that pier are sunk to bedrock. So the pier could be slowly subsiding, but the gauge shows exactly the opposite. So I don't use that number because I can't understand it. It's a really sticky wicket.""
+
+These days, satellites offer the best measurement of sea levels, and they do it every 10 days across most of the world, said Steven Nerem a climate researcher at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
+
+""The satellites are all referenced to Earth's geocenter, so our data are not affected by the land motion,"" he said.
+
+In addition, coastal temperatures, winds, the saltiness of the water, atmospheric pressure and ocean currents all have an effect on the height of the water at individual locations, which is why researchers have to use a global average and look at long-term trends.
+
+For example, when the Pacific warms during an El Nino, ""you have more precipitation over the oceans than in the continents, and you get a short-term increase in sea level,"" said Nerem ""When you have La Nina (Pacific cooling), you get more precipitation over the continents and the water gets stored there for some period of time, so you have a temporary lowering of sea level.""
+
+According to the satellite data, available at the website sealevel.colorado.edu, the global sea level has risen by 3.2 mm per year since 1993. If you assume that the rise has been steady since 1930, that would translate to an average worldwide increase of 10.3 inches. (Range: 9.0 inches up to 11.6 inches.)
+
+Is the pace of sea level rise increasing?
+
+""That's the $10 million question,"" said Nerem. ""Over the last 100 years there is a suggestion that  there is a small acceleration. If you just look at the satellite data, we don't see an acceleration. So over the last 20 years, it may just be too small, given all this variability, to detect.""
+
+Boothroyd, however, said, ""There is some indication that worldwide sea level has risen at a faster rate since 1990. Our graph suggests that is true for Newport"" citing the uptick in 2010 and 2011.
+
+Freedman said Boothroyd's numbers, which show a slightly higher annual increase, may be pointing to sea levels rising faster today. ""This trend seems to suggest that we are seeing acceleration in sea level rise over the last 20 years, but because there is so much variability in sea levels we really need forty years of sea levels to say that with scientific certainty.""
+
+Our ruling
+
+Janet Freedman, a geologist with Rhode Island's Coastal Resources Management Council, said, ""In Rhode Island we have two long-term tide gauges that have been measuring the sea level since 1930 and we've seen that they've risen maybe about 10 inches since that time.""
+
+Her ""maybe about"" phrase gives her some wiggle room.
+
+The long-term trend in Newport doesn't quite measure up to 10 inches. It's 8.7 inches. But the actual annual measurements at the beginning and end of that time period meet the truth test, mostly because of a steep -- and not explained -- increase over the last few years.
+
+The Providence tide gauge data, on the other hand, show a much smaller trend over that time period -- it would be just over 7 inches.
+
+Freedman's overarching point that sea levels have been rising is certainly true, and that's borne out by satellite data.
+
+Pinning down the actual size of the rise is as difficult as measuring the precise height of a wave.  
+
+Because her statement is essentially on-target but needs clarification or additional perspective, we rate it Mostly True.
+
+(If you have a claim you’d like PolitiFact Rhode Island to check, e-mail us at [email protected] And follow us on Twitter: @politifactri.)"
+"While some complained about the fine print in the fiscal cliff deal, a local environmental activist was pleased with one portion of the bill and said something about it that seemed worthwhile to fact-check.
+
+Environment Georgia policy advocate Jennette Gayer sent out a news release thanking federal lawmakers for continuing key tax credits for wind power.
+
+""Wind powers nearly 13 million homes across the country and states like Texas, the number one wind energy producer in the country, generate a little over 30 million (megawatt hours per year),"" Gayer wrote.
+
+PolitiFact Georgia wondered about Gayer’s claim that wind powers nearly 13 million homes in the United States. Is that true?
+
+Gayer pointed us to a couple of websites she used to back up her claim. PolitiFact Georgia was on its way down the windy road of wind energy.
+
+The development of wind energy, harvested by wind turbines, began in the 1970s. It’s grown in the decades since, but it is still a very small amount (3 percent) of the energy that’s produced in the United States, federal officials and researchers say. President Barack Obama talked energetically about wind power on the campaign trail last year, saying it’s creating jobs and it is an important alternative energy source. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney had no plans to continue the tax credits.
+
+In 1992, the federal government began offering tax credits to individuals and companies for wind energy production as part of the Energy Policy Act. For every kilowatt hour of power from wind, the government gives the producer a tax credit worth 2.2 cents. At the time, the U.S. had 1.5 gigawatts of installed wind capacity. A gigawatt is the equivalent of 1 billion watts of electricity. A standard light bulb uses 100 watts.
+
+Most of the nation’s wind energy is produced in Texas, the Plains states and the West Coast, analysts say. Very little comes from the South.
+
+""It’s less windy in the Southeast, so there’s not a lot of technology to generate that energy,"" said Eric Lantz, a research analyst with the federal government’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
+
+Some organizations, such as the Institute for Energy Research, call the tax credits a ""boondoggle."" The institute, citing a study by the American Tradition Institute, says the costs of wind power is more expensive than other forms of energy generation, such as coal, natural gas and nuclear energy.
+
+By 1999, federal officials say they saw an increase in wind capacity. The American Wind Energy Association, a prominent group that supports the expanded use of wind energy, reported this past August that the U.S. had reached the 50-gigawatt milestone.
+
+The association’s estimate is, Lantz said, about a year ahead of the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Lantz said he reviewed the EIA’s most recent numbers and believes the association’s 50-gigawatt claim is on target.
+
+So how many homes can 50 gigawatts power? Lantz looked at U.S. census data and other information on the EIA website. He concluded about 12 million homes.
+
+""I think their number is reasonable,"" Lantz said of Gayer’s estimate.
+
+EIA spokesman Jonathan Cogan agreed. The federal agency estimated the nation was on pace to generate anywhere from 125 million to 140 million kilowatts of wind energy in 2012. The average American home uses about 11,000 kilowatts of energy a year, Cogan said.
+
+""It seems to check out,"" Cogan told us.
+
+We wondered, though, whether that meant 12 million or so homes in the U.S. were actually being powered through wind energy. Lantz said there is no data detailing the number of homes that actually use wind energy. Some of that energy could be powering commercial or other nonresidential facilities.
+
+It’s not possible to say for sure how many homes actually use wind-generated electricity. But it is clear that there is enough produced to power millions of homes.
+
+To sum up, Environment Georgia analyst Jennette Gayer said wind powers about 13 million homes across America.
+
+From the people we interviewed and research we’ve seen, this claim seems to have some juice.
+
+We rate it Mostly True."
+"Mitt Romney came to coal country on Aug. 14, standing before a crowd of miners in eastern Ohio and pledging to fight for their jobs.
+
+You could be forgiven if you thought this was much ado about 3,150 jobs -- the number employed directly by coal operations in Ohio, at least before two mines announced layoffs recently. But Romney’s greater point was about how coal fires so many power plants in Ohio and the region, and how, he says, environmental regulation from President Barack Obama’s administration threatens jobs at those plants, too. This could drive up the cost of electricity for every Ohioan, Romney said.
+
+This debate -- over the cost of electricity, the shift among power plants to natural gas, the environmental and health risks, the role the government should or shouldn’t play -- has been building for years. And after the event, the Obama campaign had a response, saying that Romney’s position on coal has changed substantially since he was governor of Massachusetts.
+
+""Immediately after becoming governor, Romney condemned coal-fired plants, saying they kill people,"" said an Obama campaign news release. The claim was similar to one the Obama team made in a radio ad, and Obama reelection aides backed it with specific quotes Romney made in February, 2003, when Romney was the freshly elected governor of Massachusetts. The quotes: The Obama campaign also highlighted a Romney quote that had no lethal references but was just as strong. It came from a state of Massachusetts news releasein which Romney said:  ""If the choice is between dirty power plants or protecting the health of the people of Massachusetts, there is no choice in my mind. I will always come down on the side of public health.""
+
+Romney made each of these statements during a Feb. 6, 2003, showdown over the future of the controversial, coal-burning Salem Harbor Power Station.
+
+In 2001, Massachusetts passed new rules to reduce power plant emissions of nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide and mercury, to be phased in over several years. The mercury standard would not be finalized until 2004. Romney supported the rules, as he made clear repeatedly.
+
+Massachusetts singled out its most egregious polluters as the ""Filthy Five"" plants, including Salem Harbor. Public health and environmental scientists at Harvard studied the emissions from two of the plants in 2000 and concluded that Salem Harbor was responsible for 53 deaths, 570 emergency room visits, 14,400 asthma attacks and 99,000 incidents of upper respiratory symptoms -- all per year.
+
+As occurs with similar studies that health authorities cite, local residents and others who wanted to keep the Salem Harbor plant open (for jobs and tax revenue) disputed those figures, saying they resulted from unproven modeling. It turned out that the Harvard scientists had revised their figures in 2002, putting premature deaths from Salem Harbor’s pollution at 30 per year and reducing the number of emergency room visits to 400 and the asthma attacks at 2,000, according to the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald.
+
+But the scientists stood by the broader conclusion -- that emissions from dirty power plants can be deadly.  The Harvard methodology has now been widely replicated and is respected by health scientists, according to several environmental authorities we spoke with. Romney appeared to accept their findings, too. In the above-mentioned news release, the commonwealth of Massachusetts quoted Romney in the third person on the danger factor:
+
+""Romney said that the Salem Harbor plant is responsible for 53 premature deaths, 570 emergency room visits and 14,400 asthma attacks each year. He also pointed out that coal and oil fired plants contribute significantly more air pollution than their gas fired counterparts, exacerbating acid rain and global warming.""
+
+This was in a news release issued by the governor’s aides, not some radical outside instigator. It was issued under the name of Romney, Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey and Romney’s development chief, Douglas Foy.  According to the Boston Globe, Romney hired Foy from the  Conservation Law Foundation, or CLF, a leading environmental advocacy group in Massachusetts.
+
+The spat with Salem Harbor turned into a testy exchange that February day after Salem Harbor’s then-owner, Pacific Gas and Electric, sought an extension until 2006 to comply with Massachusetts’ emissions rules -- and plant supporters showed up to to demand that the governor back off. Romney was adamant that the company comply by 2004. His statements that day show how he felt: ""That plant kills people."" And to those including city officials who argued that this would cost jobs: ""I will not create jobs that kill people.""
+
+Based on some of the quotes, it might appear that Romney was speaking only about that single plant (which a new owner, Dominion, is phasing out, after which a subsequent third owner will build a natural gas plant there). That’s what we thought when we began looking into this. It is also what the Romney campaign told us in email.
+
+So was it accurate for the Obama campaign to imply that Romney’s words characterized his broader attitude toward coal emissions when he was governor?
+
+We kept looking, because people in the environmental community told us it was a valid claim. And the news release under Romney’s name suggested it as well.
+
+Romney spoke of plants, not just a single one, when he pointed out that coal and oil fired plants contribute significantly more air pollution than their gas fired counterparts, exacerbating acid rain and global warming.
+
+Still, to give him the benefit of doubt, what if he really just meant the Salem Harbor plant? Wasn’t that plant particularly egregious when compared with coal-fired plants under attack by federal regulators today?
+
+No, say environmentalists who include authorities from the CLF.
+
+Their claims are supported by U.S. EPA emissions data we verified independently.
+
+""When he said that ‘this plant kills people,’ he was talking about a plant that produced pollution comparable to the emissions of plants in the Midwest,"" said Seth Kaplan, vice president for policy and climate advocacy at the conservation foundation.
+
+Jonathan Peress, an environmental and regulatory attorney who works for the CLF and was recently chairman of the American Bar Association’s air quality committee, added in a separate interview with PolitiFact Ohio that Romney promoted Massachusetts air standards that were almost identical to those the U.S. EPA wants to enforce -- and that Romney now criticizes.
+
+""The levels of emissions that he was talking about were levels that were virtually identical to what the EPA has proposed,"" Kaplan agreed. ""He was steadfastly standing behind emissions reductions that are the same as those currently attacked.""
+
+To see if this was accurate -- that the emissions Romney decried were similar to or even weaker than those under current attack now by the EPA (whose rules Romney now attacks) -- we examined the emissions cuts that Massachusetts wanted and data on the level of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides emissions at Salem Harbor and in the Midwest. The U.S. EPA keeps the information in its extensive Clean Air Markets database.
+
+Nitrogen oxides react with sunlight to create ozone and smog. Sulfur dioxide is tied to particulate matter and is considered particularly dangerous to health, said Jonathan Walke, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund.
+
+The level of both these substances was multiple times lower at Salem Harbor, even when Romney was trying to force the plant to reduce emissions, than at Eastlake in Northeast Ohio and several other Ohio plants we checked. Our comparisons included multiple years, including Salem Harbor in 2003 with Ohio plants in 2011. To compensate for differences in electricity output, number of boilers and hours of operation at different power plants, we checked the data for emissions per megawatt-hour. The pattern held.
+
+""It’s all the same pollution, albeit in higher quantities in Ohio,"" Walke said.
+
+You might ask why we looked at Eastlake. It’s because FirstEnergy Corp. plans to shut down two of that plant’s boilers rather than spend heavily on scrubbers to comply with EPA rules. This is one of several coal-burning plants at the heart of the current jobs-versus-pollution debate, although Romney did not mention it specifically.
+
+It’s important to note that the rules on nitrogen and sulfur are not what is prompting the FirstEnergy shutdowns. New EPA rules on mercury and toxic metals are the cause of planned closures in Eastlake. The tougher limits won’t take effect until 2014. The EPA aims to cut mercury emissions by 79 percent.
+
+But as the Massachusetts governor, Romney supported mercury reductions in his state, too. In 2004, he signed off on a rule aiming to reduce mercury emissions by 95 percent by 2012. With Romney’s name on the letterhead, Massachusetts in May, 2004, issued a lengthy set of justifications for the mercury rule. Among them:
+
+""First, [new research] confirms and extends our understanding of mercury's harmful effects on learning, attention and other critical cognitive skills in children.  Recent studies have found that children exposed to mercury levels may show signs of attention deficit disorder, impaired visual-spatial skills and poor coordination.""
+
+Romney was ""a champion"" of those mercury regulations, said Shanna Cleveland, a staff attorney with the Conservation Law Foundation. ""He was one of the reasons we got them through.""
+
+Time to clean up: Romney was discussing a specific power plant, Salem Harbor, when he said,  ""That plant kills people."" But the public record shows that his comments were part of a broad emissions-cutting program he embraced.
+
+And the power plant that he considered deadly had emissions that were no worse, and in many cases lower, than at Midwest plants that he would now wants left alone, citing the use of affordable and abundant coal.
+
+If one were to have supported the regulations Romney wanted in 2003, it’s fairly safe to assume that ""one would also support such things nationally,"" said Jonathan Levy, an environmental scientist at  Boston University and Harvard and co-author of the now heavily replicated study on the correlation between coal-burning power plants and respiratory health.
+
+The Obama campaign claimed that as governor, Romney condemned coal plants as killers. He spoke at times of a single plant, but at other times made clear that other plants also needed to cut emissions for the sake of public health. This even included new rules for mercury reductions -- the same substance from coal plants that now is prompting closures in Ohio.
+
+The debate over coal involves calculations of costs, the abundance or scarcity of natural resources, health and environmental risks, and attitudes about government regulation. It is not our role to say Romney was right or wrong at one time.
+
+But with additional information from emissions data, interviews and the public record of his governorship,  the Obama campaign claim about Romney’s coal position of nine years ago is nearly as clear as a haze-free day.
+
+On the Truth-O-Meter, it rates Mostly True."
+"With a newly reconfigured congressional district that stretches along Lake Erie between Toledo and Cleveland, it’s not surprising that U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur would be one of Lake Erie’s biggest boosters.
+
+Late last month, the Toledo Democrat  marked Great Lakes Week on Capitol Hill with a speech on the House of Representatives floor that discussed the need to prevent voracious Asian carp from entering the Great Lakes and threatening its $7 billion fishing industry. She declared that no lake is more important than Lake Erie, noting that it has the Great Lakes’ largest fishery.
+
+Lake Erie ""contains more native fish than all the other lakes combined,"" Kaptur said. ""We must protect this valuable ecological treasure, and the local multi-billion dollar economy it supports.""
+
+Kaptur’s boast about Lake Erie containing ""more native fish than all the other lakes combined"" sounded like it might be a fish story, so PolitiFact Ohio decided to check it out.
+
+We consulted Ohio Sea Grant College Program Director Jeffrey M. Reutter, an expert on Lake Erie. He said Kaptur’s statement is largely correct, although there are caveats. He said that Lake Erie always produces more fish than any of the other Great Lakes, and invariably outstrips Lakes Ontario, Huron and Superior combined. Occasionally Lake Michigan produces enough fish so that its total, when added to the other three, exceeds the total produced by Lake Erie. He also said that some of the fish that populate the lakes - such as common carp, as well as salmon and trout that have been stocked in Lakes Michigan and Huron, are not native species.
+
+""The point I am a little unsure of is the native vs. non-native portion,"" he said. ""That is a hard one to state accurately because, for example, the common carp, which is very abundant just about everywhere, is not technically a native species and the large salmonid fishery on Lake Michigan is not native.""
+
+He said that Lake Superior contains 40 to 50 percent of the water in the Great Lakes, but just 2 percent of the fish. Lake Erie contains just 2 percent of the water, and 50 percent of the fish. He said Lake Erie produces more fish than the other lakes because it is the farthest south, the shallowest, and therefore the warmest lake. Lake Erie also is surrounded by farms and urban residential areas that stream nutrients into its waters. The nutrients feed algae and zooplankton, which feed Lake Erie’s fish. Lake Superior is deeper, colder, and is largely surrounded by forests, so it gets fewer nutrients produced by human intervention and produces fewer fish.
+
+""Personally, I would say that she is arguably correct in her statement and let it go,"" said Reutter. ""Congresswoman Kaptur has heard me speak on Lake Erie many times and I am sure she is attempting to accurately repeat something she has heard from me. I would say it’s close enough to be OK.""
+
+Ohio Department of Natural Resources fisheries biology supervisor Jeff Tyson confirmed Reutter’s observations, noting that the sport and commercial walleye and yellow perch fisheries in Lake Erie far exceed the harvestable fish in the other lakes. White bass, white perch, rainbow smelt, freshwater drum and channel catfish are also found in Lake Erie.
+
+Tyson noted that isolated specimens of the Asian carp that Kaptur fears could devastate the Great Lakes have already been found in Lake Erie, most recently in 2003. He said those fish were probably put into its waters  as part of a tradition among Asians, in which two live fish are purchased, and one is eaten and the other is released for good luck.
+
+""We think these were isolated incidents and have no evidence of an established population,"" said Tyson.
+
+Tyson said that Asian carp eat huge amounts of the same plankton consumed by larval walleye, so their introduction would hurt the walleye’s ability to compete.
+
+A Michigan Sea Grant Extension study of Great Lakes Commercial Fisheries bears out Kaptur’s contention that Lake Erie produces more fish than the other lakes combined, although it did not break out native vs. non-native species. In the year it examined - 2000 - it  found that the Great Lakes produced 46.7 million pounds of fish. Of that total, 26.1 million pounds came from Lake Erie, about 56 percent of the total. Lake Erie’s haul included roughly 7 million pounds each of walleye and smelt, 4.4 million pounds of yellow perch, 3.4 million pounds of white bass, and more than a million pounds each of carp and lake whitefish.
+
+The Great Lakes Fishery Commission also keeps data on the amount of fish produced in each of the Great Lakes. In 2005, the most recent year for which complete data is posted on its website, Lake Erie’s fish production exceeded that of the combined other lakes by a 3-to-2 margin.
+
+There’s no doubt that Kaptur is correct in her overall point that Lake Erie has by far the most productive fishery on the Great Lakes. Her contention that Lake Erie contains more native fish than the other lakes combined is slightly problematic. It’s true that the fishing haul in Lake Erie usually exceeds the combined total of the other lakes. But some fish that are commercial staples in the Great Lakes are not considered ""native"" because they were introduced from other areas, although their presence isn’t as unwelcome and devastating as invaders like zebra mussels have been, and Asian carp would be.
+
+We rate Kaptur’s statement Mostly True."
+"Before he suspended his candidacy for president, Texas Gov. Rick Perry gave a spirited defense of fracking, a process that extracts natural gas from thousands of feet underground.
+
+""You cannot show me one place where there is a proven – not one – where there is a proven pollution of groundwater by hydraulic fracking,"" Perry told a college student who raised the topic at a December 18, 2011, stop in Decorah, Iowa, according to the Texas Tribune.
+
+Not one?
+
+Perry’s sweeping claim tracks with the November 2011 release of preliminary findings of a study by the University of Texas Energy Institute. A November 10, 2011, Austin American-Statesman news article quoted the study’s leader, UT geologist Charles ""Chip"" Groat, saying hydraulic fracturing ""doesn’t seem to be of concern to groundwater.""
+
+Groat said the study had looked at regulatory violations and frameworks in states with major shale drilling operations, including Texas, Louisiana, New York and Pennsylvania. ""The violations that we've seen are of no, minor or small impact,"" he said.
+
+Perry’s claim also echoed more than 25 others made by regulatory officials, as compiled by a pro-drilling group, as well as a May 2011 assessment by the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA’s administrator, Lisa Jackson, was asked at a May 24, 2011, hearing of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform whether hydraulic fracturing can affect aquifers and water supplies. Jackson replied: ""There is evidence that it can certainly affect them. I am not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water.""
+
+The ""fracking process itself""?
+
+Fracking might be fun to say, but it’s a little slippery to define.
+
+Both Jackson and Perry were using a very specific definition of fracking, their spokeswomen told us by email, referring only to the step in the process where the shale rock is fractured.
+
+In high-pressure hydraulic fracturing for natural gas, a mix of water, sand and chemicals is shot down into the well, bursting out of holes in the pipe lining the well and cracking the gas-bearing shale rock. Gas then flows from the cracks back up the pipe for collection. The immense increase in fracking since the mid-2000s came about because companies began to use this process in horizontally drilled wells, which cost more but also reach more of the layer of shale that lies as deep as two miles below the earth’s surface.
+
+But the energy industry and environmental groups use the term fracking in very different ways.
+Fracking expert Terry Engelder, a professor of geosciences at Pennsylvania State University, mapped out the two positions for us.
+
+""Industry likes to restrict the use of the term hydraulic fracturing to just that process taking place underground during which time high-pressure water opens natural cracks or creates new cracks at the depths of the reservoir rock,"" Engelder told us by email.
+
+Conversely, Engelder said, opponents of drilling ""consider fracking to encompass the entire process from leasing land through drilling and sending natural gas to market.""
+
+PolitiFact Ohio acknowledged as much in a July 14, 2011, article. Evidence supported an Ohio lawmaker’s claim that state agencies had no proof of groundwater contamination from fracking, though the statement was rated Mostly True because in one case, a state panel found that a well’s cement casing allowed gas to seep into water wells (and up into homes, causing an explosion).
+
+Even by the narrow definition, some environmentalists say that EPA reports from 1987 and 2011 prove that fracking has contaminated water.
+
+The 1987 report (unearthed last year by the national nonprofit Environmental Working Group) said that ""residual"" fracking fluid ""migrated"" into a private water well after a nearby gas well had been fractured in West Virginia. The Dec. 8, 2011, preliminary report found fracking was a possible cause of groundwater contamination in Pavilion, Wyo., where a company was fracking inside an aquifer -- an unusual case, according to the report.
+
+EPA spokeswoman Betsaida Alcantara offered us no comment on the 1987 report, though an Aug. 4, 2011, news story by an independent nonprofit news organization, ProPublica, quotes an unidentified EPA official as saying the agency was reviewing that case.
+
+The 2011 report, Alcantara told us, ""tentatively found a link between groundwater contamination in an aquifer with hydraulic fracturing. The report is not final and it will now go through independent scientific review.""
+
+Also using the narrow definition, other regulatory officials said they did not know of groundwater pollution by fracking.
+
+The Texas Railroad Commission regulates fracking in Texas. Commission spokeswoman Gaye Greever McElwain told us, ""Commission records do not indicate a single documented water contamination case associated with the process of hydraulic fracturing in Texas.
+
+Similarly, an official with the National Groundwater Protection Council told us in a telephone interview that fracking has not been proven to contaminate groundwater. Mike Paque, executive director of the council comprising groundwater regulators and oil/gas regulators from state agencies, said the depth at which shale is fractured makes contamination by fracking itself practically impossible.
+
+""There’s no water down there to drink,"" Paque said. ""Private wells go a couple hundred feet down, and these are 11,000 feet down. So the fact that people say that, and that my state regulatory agencies say that, and the drinking water agencies say that, is correct, period.""
+
+To get our own fix on possible water pollution by fracking, we examined lists of incidents that were described as fracking-related by EarthJustice, a nonprofit law firm; the National Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy nonprofit group; and ThinkProgress, a blog run by the American Progress Action Fund, a liberal think-tank.
+
+Because we were seeking ""proven"" groundwater contamination, we first eliminated claims not related to water pollution and accounts that did not include independent evidence, such as a state investigation or newspaper story. Of the remaining 56 claims of groundwater contamination, not a single one fit the ""industry"" definition of fracking -- the one Perry was using, his spokeswoman, Lucy Nashed, told us.
+
+Yet how close to that step in the process were they? We identified 11 incidents that appeared to be both substantiated by outside evidence and linked to an essential part of the process of hydraulically fracturing a well. The 11 included events such as fracking fluid leaking from wastewater pits or from pipe lining a fracked well. Several were ""blowouts,"" which Engelder defined for us as the (normally controlled) process in which ""high pressure gas blows fracking water out of the well to clear the way for natural gas production.""
+
+A few examples: The two views of fracking seem irreconcilable.
+
+Jason Pitt, a spokesman for the Sierra Club, told us by email: ""Fracking is just one small part of an overall industrial process to extract natural gas. When speaking about ground water contamination, it is very misleading to refer back to just the fracking process."" He said there are many cases of water contamination ""that have occurred as a result of natural gas extraction across the country.""
+
+Engelder, the Penn State geologist, disagreed. ""Anti-drillers,"" he said, ""have lots of proof of spills and leaks and other stuff including noise pollution and so forth because they consider fracking to be the all-encompassing, creeping industrialization of rural areas.""
+
+Attempts to tie events such as surface spills to hydraulic fracturing miss the point, he said. ""Fracking is such a toxic word in the English language that Americans are blaming all sorts of bad things on it when, in fact, Governor Perry was using the term hydraulic fracturing correctly in his comment.""
+
+Our ruling
+
+Perry’s comment, focused on ""proven"" incidents of groundwater polluted by the specific step of breaking the shale rock, holds up. However, the definition of fracking is debated -- and if we rope in all incidents that take place at such wells, there have been more than a few reported incidents of groundwater contamination. We rate the claim Mostly True."
+"There’s plenty of fish in the waters of New Jersey, along with lots of other things: mercury, polychlorobiphenyls and dioxin, among them.
+
+And according to a former governor, there could be some danger in eating fish from Garden State waters.
+
+""Many types of fish and shellfish from waters across the state are labeled unsafe to eat,"" Jim Florio wrote in a Dec. 14 guest column in The Star-Ledger about how new reductions in mercury pollution will protect New Jerseyans from contaminated seafood.
+
+It turns out Florio wasn’t exactly telling a fish tale, PolitiFact New Jersey found.
+
+""I think that’s a fair and accurate statement actually,"" said Kerry Pflugh, manager of Constituent Services for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. ""But that doesn’t mean that everything we catch is unsafe to eat. … Advisories are not based on water quality, it’s based on what’s in the fish itself. Fish advisories are set by tissue analysis, not water quality.""
+
+Jonathan Scott, communications director for Clean Water Action in Washington, DC said, ""We would agree with his assessment.""
+
+Florio could not be reached for comment.
+
+How are fish consumption advisories formulated?
+
+Fish collected from New Jersey waterways are sent to The Academy of Sciences of Drexel University in Philadelphia. Tissue samples are taken to test for contaminants – mostly mercury, PCBs, DDT and other pesticides, said Richard Horwitz, senior biologist at the academy.
+
+A committee decides an acceptable risk for eating a particular fish based on potential health issues for people considered ""high risk"": children, pregnant women and women of child-bearing age, Horwitz said. They are advised to eat smaller portions of fish and less often.
+
+The 2010 Fish Consumption Advisories for all New Jersey waterways is available at the DEP’s Office Of Science website. The 30-page document explains what parts of fish are safe to eat; proper preparation; consumption frequency; and more.
+
+""Fish is a very healthy source of protein, vitamins and minerals,"" said Dr. Gary Buchanan, manager for the DEP’s Office of Science. ""Just be careful about the fish you eat when catching them in local waters.""
+
+The state also considers federal recommendations made by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
+
+""The EPA provides guidance to assist states, Indian tribes and local governments in developing methods of monitoring, gathering and assessing information about their fish populations,"" EPA press officer John Martin said in an email. ""Since this information is only guidance, use by states is not mandatory. The States have primary responsibility for monitoring, assessing and making advisory decisions. Thus the basis for each State fish advisory varies.""
+
+While a variety of contaminants are found in fish, mercury is the most prevalent, experts told us.
+
+The mercury found in New Jersey waters comes from air pollution emitted from power plants, coal plants and incinerators from Pennsylvania and the Midwest, according to Buchanan, Horwitz and Scott.
+
+""If those sources from out of state are reduced, that will help speed up the reduction of mercury in our waters and our fish and help allow additional fish consumption,"" Buchanan said. ""It is a nationwide problem. It’s not just a New Jersey problem. Every state in the country has a fish advisory for some parameter and some species.""
+
+Even with the chemicals found in fish, New Jerseyans shouldn’t fear eating fish caught from the state’s waters, said Tom Fote, legislative chairman for the Jersey Coast Anglers Association in Toms River, as long as fish consumption guidelines are followed.
+
+""Seafood coming out of New Jersey waters is no different than the seafood coming from out of any other state,"" Fote said.
+
+Our ruling
+
+Florio said in a recent opinion column in The Star-Ledger that most fish from New Jersey waterways ""is labeled unsafe to eat."" Experts told PolitiFact New Jersey that they agree with the former governor’s assessment but also note that fish from New Jersey waters can be eaten safely by following consumption advisories. Also, fish bought in supermarkets or other stores in New Jersey are labeled, but recreationally caught fish are not. We rate Florio’s statement Mostly True. To comment on this story, go to NJ.com."
+"The major party candidates in the 1st Congressional District are on opposite sides of whether President Barack Obama should approve the building of a massive oil pipeline project from Canada to Texas.
+
+Democrat Suzanne Bonamici is opposed; she worries about the environmental impact. Republican Rob Cornilles is supportive; he said in last week’s televised debate, about halfway throughthe program, that the project has bipartisan support.
+
+""I do support the Keystone Pipeline. It’s a bipartisan proposal. Democrats and Republicans alike in Congress want this to move forward, because it’s not only a job creator, it’s also a way for us to responsibly manage how that oil is transferred from Canada to Mexico.
+
+Does the pipeline have bipartisan support?
+
+Much of the really vocal support for this project comes from Republicans. Democrats, not so much, although there are some who want the project. Environmentalists are opposed while labor’s AFL-CIO has decided not to take a formal position.
+
+Senate Democrats who like the project are Max Baucus D-Mont., Jon Tester D-Mont., Mary Landrieu D-La., Mark Pryor, D-Ark., and Mark Begich, D-Alaska, Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Kent Conrad, D-N.D.  
+
+We queried our delegation. Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley are opposed. Rep. Earl Blumenauer was among 32 House Democrats who sent a letter urging the State Department
+to reject the route. Schrader is opposed to the expedited process, but not necessarily against — or for — the project.
+   
+We don’t think the support of one Democrat or one Republican makes a proposal bipartisan,
+but it’s clear some Democrats are on board with the project. If we had to picture a bipartisan meter, the needle probably would surpass the halfway mark but fall short of 75 percent.
+
+We rule the statement Mostly True: Requiring clarification that Democrats who are opposed are really opposed."
+"Global warming has become a hot potato, at least for Republican presidential candidates.
+
+We’ve seen candidates for the Republican nomination question whether there’s scientific consensus on climate change, but those statements are at odds with the facts. We’ve found the scientific consensus is still firmly on the side of a warming planet. We looked at Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s statement that scientists are ""questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change. … (It is) more and more being put into question."" We rated that False.
+
+The Democratic National Committee recently attacked Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, for flip-flopping on whether he believes climate change was real. (It also accused him of flip-flopping on a number of other issues; see all of our fact-checks of their claims here.)
+
+In a four-minute web ad, the DNC spliced together video of Romney first saying, ""Well, I believe the world is getting warmer … I believe that humans contribute to that.""
+
+And then saying, ""My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet.""
+
+We decided to check into whether Romney has changed his views or not.
+
+Romney’s comments, take 1
+
+Romney’s first comments were from a town hall in New Hampshire in June 2011. A voter asked if he thought climate change existed and was caused by human activity, noting that scientific evidence showed that to be the case.
+
+Here’s part of Romney’s answer (watch the exchange on C-SPAN starting at the 21:00 mark):
+
+""I don't speak for the scientific community, of course. But I believe the world is getting warmer. I can't prove that, but I believe based on what I read that the world is getting warmer. And number two, I believe that humans contribute to that. I don’t know how much our contribution is to that, because I know there have been periods of greater heat and warmth in the past, but I believe that we contribute to that. So I think it's important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may well be significant contributors to the climate change and the global warming that you're seeing.""
+
+Romney then suggested that the U.S. should reduce its dependence on foreign oil and use more domestically produced natural gas and nuclear energy. And he said some carbon-emitting forms of energy would still have to be used.
+
+Romney also said he opposed the United States unilaterally adopting a cap-and-trade plan if other countries weren’t taking similar steps to reduce greenhouse emissions. For background, a cap-and-trade plan would require industry to pay for their carbon emissions with new permit fees. There would be a limited amount of permits (the ""cap""), but companies would be able to buy and sell the permits among themselves (the ""trade"").
+
+Romney also mentioned that he wrote about energy policy in his book, No Apology. In that book, he wrote, ""I believe that climate change is occurring. The reduction in the size of global ice caps is hard to ignore. I also believe that human activity is a contributing factor.""
+
+He also wrote that cap-and-trade was ""an energy tax, disguised in the sheep’s clothing of market terminology. And it is an energy tax that would have little or no effect on global warming.""
+
+Romney’s comments, take 2
+
+Romney’s second set of comments came at a campaign event in Pittsburgh, Pa., a few months later. His comments were videotaped and posted to a blog called New Hampshire 2012: Green and promoted by Think Progress.
+
+In this case, a voter asked Romney, ""What is your position on man-made global warming and would you reject legislation, such as cap and trade, which is based on the idea of man-made global warming?""
+
+Romney first said he was opposed to cap-and-trade, then said this:
+
+""My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet. And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us. My view with regards to energy policy is pretty straightforward. I want us to become energy secure and independent of the oil cartels. And that means let’s aggressively develop our oil, our gas, our coal, our nuclear power.""
+
+Much of Romney’s underlying policy-- reduce foreign oil dependence; increase the use of natural gas and nuclear power; oppose cap-and-trade  -- remained the same in both contexts. In a few cases, he even uses the same phrasing to describe the policies.
+
+But his comments about the cause of global warming did change markedly.
+
+After Romney’s remarks were widely reported, Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul told the Boston Globe that Romney was not flip-flopping: ""This is ridiculous,"" she said in a statement. ""Governor Romney’s view on climate change has not changed. He believes it’s occurring, and that human activity contributes to it, but he doesn’t know to what extent. He opposes cap and trade, and he refused to sign such a plan when he was governor.""
+
+We will be watching to see if Romney is asked again about his thoughts on global warming; we were unable to find any other remarks since then about whether he thought human beings contribute to global warming or not.
+
+Our ruling
+
+In June 2011, Romney said he believed ""the world is getting warmer"" and that ""humans contribute to that."" In October 2011, Romney said that ""we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet.""
+
+Interestingly, in spite of his comments on the causes of climate change, Romney outlined the same set of energy policies: in favor of more natural gas and nuclear power; against foreign oil; for the continued use of domestic oil; against a cap-and-trade plan.
+
+Because he didn’t articulate any change of policy, we find Romney’s comments on the causes of climate change perplexing, and we would be interested in hearing him answer pointed questions on the matter. His spokeswoman says the two statements are consistent. But the videos clearly shows that he said different things on the causes of climate change to different audiences, and we believe Romney is savvy enough to know the difference between suggesting a human role in climate change and leaving it out. We rate the DNC’s statement Mostly True."
+"It's been a year and a half since oil suddenly gushed from the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig into the Gulf of Mexico. 
+
+In the early days, rig operator BP estimated about 1,000 barrels a day might be escaping into the gulf. The true number? More like 50,000 to 60,000 barrels — or more than 2 million gallons — every day, for nearly three months.
+
+How did we learn it was so high?
+
+U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., says it wasn't until he and a Senate colleague were able to ""wrangle the actual streaming video"" from BP that scientists were able to calculate the flow.
+
+Nelson spoke about the spill Oct. 11, 2011, on the Senate floor, where he urged his colleagues to find a way to fund gulf research. He began:
+
+""As one of the senators from a state that borders the Gulf of Mexico, naturally we have been quite concerned in the followup to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. You will remember that was an oil spill that at first BP said: Oh, it was only 1,000 barrels a day. It was not until Sen. (Barbara) Boxer, the chairman of the environment committee, and I were able to wrangle the actual streaming video from 5,000 feet below the surface and put it up on my Web site that the scientists could then calculate how much oil was coming out. It was not anywhere close to 1,000 barrels a day. In fact, it ended up being 50,000 barrels of oil a day that was gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. As a result of that total number of days, almost 5 million barrels of oil has gushed into the gulf, we can expect some serious economic and environmental consequences and particularly the consequences on the critters."" 
+
+The senior senator from Florida, responsible for lifting the veil on a disaster unfolding 5,000 feet underwater?
+
+For this fact-check, we're weighing the statement, ""It was not until Sen. Boxer ... and I were able to wrangle the actual streaming video (of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill) from 5,000 feet below the surface and put it up on my Web site that the scientists could then calculate how much oil was coming out."" 
+
+We reached out to scientists, reviewed news and video from the time, checked official reports on the spill and spoke with the senator's office. 
+
+• • •
+
+On April 20, 2010, an explosion ripped through the drilling rig, killing 11 crew members. As flames raged above water 49 miles off the coast of Louisiana, something equally violent was happening beneath the surface.
+
+It wasn't yet clear what.
+
+But within a day, a nonprofit group called SkyTruth, led by a geologist who had worked for the energy industry, began collecting and analyzing satellite images of the spill — brown swirls a reporter would later say resembled peanut butter. The group got help from Florida State oceanographer Ian MacDonald.
+
+On April 24, BP said that a broken riser pipe was leaking 1,000 barrels a day. A few days later, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration boosted the estimate to 5,000 barrels. That was the first official ""flow rate estimate."" It would be used for weeks. It wasn't based on much.
+
+In late April and early May, SkyTruth said satellite images and Coast Guard maps of the slick showed the flow might be more than four times that.
+
+But none of those estimates could fully account for what was happening below the surface, where chemical dispersants created tiny droplets that spread in underwater plumes.
+
+• • • On May 12, BP released a 30-second video of oil and gas spilling from the end of a broken pipe — and scientists scrambled to update their estimates, which now ranged from 20,000 to 100,000 barrels a day. By mid May, media reports spread additional doubt about the 5,000-barrel estimate. Rep. Edward Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat who chaired the Energy and Environment Subcommittee, sent BP a letter questioning the size of the spill. A few days later, Sens. Nelson and Boxer sent their demand for underwater video. They soon got seven hard drives of high-resolution digital imagery, thousands of hours, said Nelson spokesman Dan McLaughlin. Low-resolution streaming video — what you may have seen online — wouldn't give scientists the detail they needed, so the senators' offices also uploaded high-resolution files to large-file transfer sites on the Web and in some cases even copied the hard drives and sent them to researchers, such as Timothy Crone at Columbia University.
+
+In June, the senators repeated their call for video evidence, this time for all video records.
+
+In the Oct. 29, 2010, issue of Science magazine, a report co-authored by Crone said the oil's flow was at least 10 times higher than first reported. It credited high-resolution video data ""provided by the office of Senator Bill Nelson and by the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works.""
+
+""Sen. Nelson was one of the strongest proponents of open data access, and his work along with the work of others on that committee were critical for the work of independent scientists to go forward,"" Crone told PolitiFact Florida.
+
+Paul Ruscher, a Florida State professor who along with MacDonald urged that BP release more information, said much of what scientists suggested was initially ignored.
+
+""It was a staffer from Sen. Nelson's office who was contacted at some point, and whom I then contacted, to try to encourage both Senate and House energy committee members to get involved,"" he said. 
+
+Ruscher said Nelson and other politicians, including Sen. John Kerry and Markey, should get full credit for pushing NOAA, the Coast Guard and BP to release video.
+
+Final official estimates came from the Flow Rate Technical Group, which used several methods to estimate the amount of oil that streamed from Deepwater Horizon. Among its evidence: high-resolution video.
+
+Our ruling
+ 
+Nelson told his Senate colleagues, ""It was not until Sen. Boxer ... and I were able to wrangle the actual streaming video (of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill) from 5,000 feet below the surface and put it up on my Web site that the scientists could then calculate how much oil was coming out."" 
+
+Scientists quickly challenged BP's early estimate based on satellite images and Coast Guard maps. Independent estimates improved when BP released short video clips. But scientists who specialize in flow rate calculations based on high-resolution, time-stamped video didn't have access to data they needed until Nelson's and Boxer's offices pushed for it. Some of those files were indeed downloaded from Nelson's website, while some were on physical hard drives that had to be mailed.
+
+A casual listener might think scientists were unable to make early calculations that challenged BP's word without video from Nelson's website — and that's not quite the case. Meanwhile, other lawmakers also pushed for greater openness. But letters, press releases and interviews show Nelson did play a key role in the release of critical data, and for that we'll rate his statement Mostly True."
+"Florida's ethanol mandate has been in place less than a year, and a Panhandle Republican plans to push for its repeal.
+
+Rep. Matt Gaetz, who lives in the coastal community of Fort Walton Beach, argues corn-based fuel takes more energy to make than it generates.
+
+""A Cornell University research study concludes that ethanol generates a 29 percent energy loss, meaning it takes more than a gallon of gasoline to produce a gallon of ethanol,"" he wrote in a recent Pensacola News Journal op-ed.
+
+A PolitiFact Florida reader sent a link our way. We were curious: Has an Ivy League researcher found ethanol to be an energy loser?
+
+We were especially curious because the U.S. Department of Energy says the majority of such studies about ethanol's ""net energy balance,"" especially more recent ones, show the opposite. So, of course, does the renewable fuels industry. 
+
+First, a little background. The Florida law, passed in 2008, has required since Dec. 31, 2010, that most gasoline include 9 percent to 10 percent ""agriculturally derived"" fuel. Lawmakers said they wanted to boost renewable energy that would cut greenhouse gas emissions and reduce reliance on foreign oil. 
+
+But boaters in Gaetz's district were ready to ""get out the pitchforks,"" he said. The law doesn't apply to gas sold for small engines or boats. Still, some boaters who used the mix, known as E10, found it would rot out fuel lines and gunk up carburetors. Gaetz, propelled by angry constituents, did some research — and now has a file in his Tallahassee office to support legislation to turn back the mandate. He sent us a news release from Cornell News Service, ""Cornell ecologist's study finds that producing ethanol and biodiesel from corn and other crops is not worth the energy.""
+
+That appears to give Gaetz's claim strong roots.
+
+So does the study itself, which said ""to produce a liter of (corn) ethanol requires 29 percent more fossil energy than is produced as ethanol."" Researchers included all kinds of ""energy inputs"" required to produce fuel from corn — more than a dozen just to grow the corn in the first place, from production of pesticides and nitrogen fertilizer to construction of farm equipment to food for farmworkers. (The authors argue that government and industry studies don't take enough ""energy inputs"" into account, which is why they get a different result.) All the fossil energy, from natural gas to liquid fuel to coal, got totaled up and explained as ""gasoline equivalents.""
+
+That's a little more nuanced than Gaetz's claim that a study said it takes ""gasoline"" to produce ethanol. But it's close.
+
+Still, the study was from 2005. Did Gaetz quote an outdated statistic to make his point?
+
+We chatted with one of the researchers, David Pimentel, an emeritus professor in agriculture and life sciences at Cornell. We read him Gaetz's claim. ""Yeah, that's correct,"" Pimentel said. ""We have more up-to-date data, though. ...
+
+""It would be 1.5 gallons of gasoline equivalents to produce 1 gallon of ethanol. So this is even worse.""
+
+In other words, Gaetz cited an old number. But more recent work from the same researchers would have even better demonstrated his point. That's scarcely statistical malfeasance.
+
+What about the fact that Pimentel's research flies in the face of government and industry studies? We would have preferred Gaetz note that in his op-ed, but Pimentel's a widely cited biofuel skeptic whose work is addressed by USDA researchers and weighed by other Ivy League energy experts. That makes Pimentel's work the subject of legitimate discussion. This fact-check doesn't attempt to evaluate the science itself, but whether Gaetz accurately characterized a scientific study when he wrote, ""a Cornell University research study concludes that ethanol generates a 29 percent energy loss, meaning it takes more than a gallon of gasoline to produce a gallon of ethanol.""
+
+We found the study and talked with the Cornell researcher, who said Gaetz accurately cited him. Still, we're concerned readers might think it literally takes gasoline — rather than gasoline ""equivalents"" — to produce ethanol. Meanwhile, with the Ivy League appeal of Gaetz's statistic, it might appear to represent settled scientific consensus. In fact, researchers battle from paper to paper — and Pimentel's in the minority. So, the op-ed claim was accurate, but needs some clarification. That's our definition of Mostly True."
+"A recent environmental flare-up in Congress drew the ire of one Georgia representative and an opportunity to dust off the Truth-O-Meter.
+
+U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson recently used his website to voice his outrage about a bill called the TRAIN Act.
+
+The bill passed the House of Representatives in late September with strong support by Republicans who said the act is needed to examine Obama administration environmental policies they say have resulted in higher oil, gas and coal prices. The bill, as of late last week, was in the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Environment and Public Works.
+
+Johnson, a DeKalb County Democrat, said the bill would block ""two of the most important, life-saving Clean Air rules in decades -- the mercury and air toxics rule and cross-state air pollution rule.""
+
+The congressman then argued it’s false to claim strong environmental regulations hurt big business and used some numbers to back up his case.
+
+""Since 1970, the Clean Air Act has reduced toxic and health-threatening air pollution by 60 percent while our economy has grown more than 200 percent,"" Johnson said.
+
+So are Johnson’s numbers correct?
+
+The congressman’s office said the information we wanted to check came from the American Lung Association. A spokesman for the association referred us to an Environmental Protection Agency report last year that found emissions for six common pollutants had declined by 63 percent since 1970. The EPA report also found the nation’s gross domestic product has increased by 204 percent in that same time frame.
+
+Several experts we spoke with said the EPA’s numbers were on target and had no quarrels with the federal agency’s research.
+
+""I think [Johnson] is on point,"" said Lynn Goldman, dean of the George Washington University School of Health Services.
+
+On the economic growth part of the claim, two local economics experts we interviewed thought that number was on target, too. They both looked at GDP data that was adjusted for inflation. Christine Ries, who teaches economics at Georgia Tech, said gross domestic product is the measure most commonly used to measure economic growth.
+
+Georgia State University economics department chairwoman Sally Wallace also found no problem with the math in Johnson’s statement. She did suggest we look at per capita income to examine the second part of the congressman’s claim. The growth in that category was also above 200 percent, from $19,167 in 1970 to the 2010 per capita income of $40,584.
+
+Johnson’s statement seems to imply that the Clean Air Act did not hurt the economy or even helped it. Wallace wasn’t sure a direct correlation can be made.
+
+She researched GDP 10 years before the Clean Air Act passed and the 40 years since and concluded that the average annual growth was greater before 1970. ""It’s kind of difficult to say it’s directly related,"" Wallace told us.
+
+Two groups joined forces last year to research the economic impact of the Clean Air Act. The Small Business Majority, an advocacy group for the nation’s 28 million small businesses, and the Main Street Alliance, a national coalition of small business networks in 15 states, concluded in its 10-page report that about 1.3 million jobs were created between 1977 and 1991 as a result of environmental regulations from the Clean Air Act. Using some EPA data, they believe the Clean Air Act’s benefits far outweighed the costs. The report criticized congressional efforts to scale back the EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act.
+
+For years, as a 2001 paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research noted, manufacturers have argued whether the act puts them at a competitive disadvantage globally. The report by the widely cited think tank looked at 15 years of data and concluded that the regulations ""retard industrial activity.""
+
+Johnson is correct in his statement about the Clean Air Act’s impact on pollution. The rest of his argument was aimed at countering claims that strong environmental policies hurt business. The numbers the congressman used seem to be on target, but there’s some room for debate about the Clean Air Act’s impact on the economy. We rate his statement Mostly True."
+"Correction appended: An earlier version of the story incorrectly stated that the switch to UV had not saved ratepayers any money. The error does not change the ruling. Portland commissioner Amanda Fritz, running for another term, is proud that in her first year in office, she came out against a recommendation by the Water Bureau to build an expensive direct filtration system. Instead, she supported was to build a cheaper ultraviolet system that would zap cryptosporidium from the city’s drinking water.
+
+""In 2009, I saved ratepayers around $500 million by persuading the Council to pursue a less expensive compliance mechanism if the City is required to treat Bull Run drinking water,"" Fritz writes on her campaign literature. ""I partnered with neighborhood and business advocates to get this done by arranging for a Council work session and public hearing, where citizens made clear that the less expensive option is more responsible. The result was a unanimous vote reversing the Water Bureau’s previous plan.""
+
+We here at PolitiFact Oregon take these campaign claims seriously. Was it true that Fritz had single-handedly, with citizen support and a public hearing, persuaded the City Council to go against a recommendation by the Water Bureau? And did she in fact save ratepayers $500 million?
+
+Portland gets its drinking water pretty much untouched from the Bull Run watershed east of the city. It’s delicious and clean and we’re all very proud of it. However, we’re also under orders from the Environmental Protection Agency to protect the water we drink, following a cryptosporidius outbreak that killed at least 69 people in 1993 in Wisconsin.
+
+That means we need to do something about the open reservoirs where we store some of our drinking water and we have to treat against cryptosporidium, even though the last time we found any was in 2002.
+
+All the city commissioners think the federal mandate is unnecessary. But they’ve made plans to comply even as they seek a way out of some of the conditions. In 2009, the Water Bureau recommended meeting the cryptosporidium criteria with a $385 million filtration system that they argued would cost more, but be more versatile and forward-thinking in the end.
+
+Groups such as Friends of the Reservoirs and beer makers Rob and Kurt Widmer lobbied against the filtration system. They argued that if anything had to be done, why not opt for ultraviolet light, which would be cheaper to build at $100 million.
+
+City Council meeting records show that  Fritz, along with commissioners Dan Saltzman and Nick Fish, voiced concerns about the cost. But Commissioner Randy Leonard, who oversees water, backed his staff, and at City Hall, it’s considered bad form to go against the commissioner in charge.
+
+Fritz and Saltzman went on record as opposed to Leonard. As the council vote neared, Leonard realized he didn’t have Fish either. Leonard agreed to go with UV, saying that he doesn’t think anybody ""has ever accused me of being a bad vote counter.""
+
+So is it fair for Fritz to hog the leadership limelight? We asked the two commissioners who also expressed doubts about filtration. They said it was absolutely fair. ""She kind of pushed it; she called the question. It’s an accurate claim, for what it’s worth,"" Saltzman said.
+
+Fish said Fritz and Saltzman were on the same page, but, ""I think she was the one who was the most outspoken on this one. Ultimately, she persuaded me that UV was the right way to go and … I became the third vote on UV.""
+
+Fritz doesn’t have a lot of high-profile scores on her record as she defends her seat against Mary Nolan. So we can see why she talks about this ""money save"" a lot. On her city office blog, Fritz wrote Aug. 22 that ""citizens pushed successfully to save $500 million in 2009, with my leadership inside City Hall …"" In an April 15 re-election email to reporters, she said she felt ""privileged to have been in the position in the first half of my term to save Portland ratepayers $500 million on water rates …""
+
+And in a 2010 profile, she relays this anecdote to then-Willamette Week reporter Beth Slovic: ""I went home that evening having gotten this 5-0 vote,"" Fritz recalls, ""and I said to my kids, ‘I saved the ratepayers $500 million today,’ and the answer was, ‘Well, that’s great, Mom. What’s for dinner?’"" After our probing, we’re comfortable giving Fritz full credit on her persuasiveness. It’s not easy going up against the commissioner in charge of a bureau, especially if it’s Randy Leonard.
+
+Now, on to the savings. How does she estimate she saved ratepayers $500 million? After all, the difference between $385 million and $100 million is $285 million, not ""around $500 million.""
+
+Fritz said she takes interest costs into consideration, because the city would borrow money to build either system. She cites figures by the city’s budget office showing it would cost $180 million for the UV system and $700 million for  filtration -- or an 80 percent add-on. There’s your ""around $500 million"" in ratepayer savings, she said in an email.
+
+But we think that calculation is inflated. Regular people don’t think in terms of what a big-ticket item like a house or car might really cost, over the long term, with interest. They don’t think that way about capital budget items on the council agenda, and government officials don’t present them that way either. But $500 million is bigger than $285 million.
+
+Second, Fritz’s grand persuasion hasn’t saved ratepayers anywhere near $285 million or $500 million yet. The ultraviolet system still is being designed, said David Shaff, the Water Bureau’s director. Shaff expects design work to be completed by the end of this year -- which is when the state is expected to weigh in on whether we need a system at all. (We will say, however, that her push resulted in water rates being lowered from nearly 19 percent to 12 percent in 2010-11, a savings of roughly $6 million that year. )
+
+So the bottom line is that if the state gives the city a pass -- which might happen given that a year-long study has shown no evidence of cryptosporidium -- we may not spend anything. (Does that mean the state would save water ratepayers $100 million to $180 million, depending on how you calculate cost? There’s a thought.)
+
+Despite our misgivings about the millions saved, or to be saved, PolitiFact Oregon gives Fritz a Mostly True. She came from the political minority, challenged Leonard, and ended up with a 5-0 vote in her favor. The statement is accurate, with some additional information needed."
+"Even in these cynical, partisan days, there are some universal truths. For example: Sulfur dioxide is a pollutant that can severely affect a person’s health and, in extreme cases, be fatal. Nitrogen oxide is another common and nasty pollutant that makes people sick.
+
+Scientists and non-scientists as well as Republicans and Democrats generally agree the stuff is bad for you.
+
+But how you deal with it is where agreement ends -- at least in Congress.
+
+On the House floor Sept. 23, Republicans muscled through legislation that would delay or scrap rules to reduce mercury and other harmful air emissions, including sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. Though the bill passed, it’s highly unlikely to pass the Senate and would be vetoed by President Barack Obama if it did.
+
+Nevertheless, the House debate was lively.
+
+Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., was one of the loudest critics, insisting that delaying the tougher air pollution rules would have dire results.
+
+""Every year these protections are delayed, another 34,000 people will die prematurely,"" he said.
+
+Really? That’s a lot of dead bodies and it’s very specific. Perfect for PolitiFact.
+
+First, some background.
+
+As passed on a nearly party-line vote of 249-169, the bill would, among other things, require the president to set up a committee of Cabinet-level officials to evaluate the toll that a dozen-plus Environmental Protection Agency regulations would have on jobs, electricity, gasoline prices and competitiveness.
+
+Republicans said action was needed to slow down a runaway bureaucracy.
+
+""While there are reasonable regulations that protect our children and help keep our environment clean, we need to stop unelected bureaucrats from imposing excessive regulations that unnecessarily increase costs for consumers and make it harder for our economy to create jobs,"" House Speaker John Boehner said.
+
+Blumenauer and other Democrats said the bill was a craven gift to business that would result in dirtier air and more death.
+
+Blumenauer’s dire prediction was directed at the bill’s delay of something called the Cross‐State Air Pollution Rule which would limit the amount of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide belching from power plants in 27 states.
+
+The pollutants react in the atmosphere to create ground-level ozone and set free tiny particulates that can damage lung capacity and cause respiratory problems.
+
+In real numbers, the EPA says the rules would reduce the amount of sulfur dioxide from the plants by 6.4 million tons a year (from 8.8 million tons in 2005) and to 1.4 million tons a year of nitrogen oxide (from 2.6 million tons annually in 2005).
+
+Those are big numbers and Blumenauer argued Sept. 22 during floor debate that lawmakers voting for the bill would be directly responsible for making people sick.
+
+""The losers are hundreds of thousands of people (who) will die, get illness from cancer, asthma, lost school days, millions of lost work days, the lost quality of life that is documented beyond belief,"" he said. ""This is real, and these people lose.""
+
+Blumenauer’s aides said he was relying on studies conducted by the EPA to support his claim.
+
+The most authoritative of those studies is a 414-page analysis released in June. The dense title suggests it’s a product of science rather than sound-byte politicians: ""Regulatory Impact Analysis for the Federal Implementation Plans to Reduce Interstate Transport of Fine Particulate Matter and Ozone in 27 States; Correction of SIP Approvals for 22 States.""
+
+The report relied on the work of EPA scientists and a survey of independent, peer-reviewed studies by outside scientists.
+
+And there, listed among the ""key findings"" is this: ""The benefits result primarily from 13,000 to 34,000 fewer (particulate matter) and ozone-related premature mortalities.""
+
+The report repeats the number eight more times.
+
+We find that Blumenauer was on solid ground. But he also  cherry-picked the highest death number rather than using the range of 13,000 to 34,000 additional deaths.
+
+While that omission does not change the conclusion that air pollution is bad for public health, it could exaggerate the problem. For that reason, we rate this claim: Mostly True. Return to OregonLive.com/politics to comment on this PolitiFact/Oregon ruling."
+"There’s a strip of coastline in the United States where the quality of the water is better than good, according to the governor.
+
+""The water quality in the ocean is perfect,"" Gov. Chris Christie said during a Sept. 2 press conference at Point Pleasant Beach, days after Hurricane Irene blasted through. ""It’s been tested up and down every ocean shore in New Jersey.""
+
+PolitiFact New Jersey found that while test results show the water is the best it’s been in years, some environmental experts disagree with Christie’s assessment.
+
+First, let’s look at how New Jersey reviews water quality.
+
+The state Department of Environmental Protection, in collaboration with local health departments, tests the water from Sandy Hook to Cape May each week from mid-May to mid-September, according to department spokesman Larry Ragonese.
+
+Water samples from swimming areas are tested for fecal coliform and other types of bacteria connected with sewage, stormwater runoff, and other pollutants, he said.
+
+The results, Ragonese said, have come back clean consistently since at least 2006, ranking Jersey shore waters above the 99th percentile of cleanliness on a scale of 100 percent.
+
+""There’s really been a concerted effort to really, really stress the importance of clean beaches,"" Ragonese said.
+
+In fact, New Jersey ranked second in the nation, behind New Hampshire, for ocean water quality in 2010, according to a June report by the National Resources Defense Council.
+
+The weekly tests check the levels of enterococcus, a bacteria normally found in the feces of people and many animals. Any level above 104 enterococci per 100 milliliters of sample is considered too high, according to state standards.
+
+PolitiFact New Jersey reviewed test results for beaches in Atlantic, Cape May, Monmouth and Ocean counties dating to 2005. We found that in most cases, water quality results have been their best since 2008, with the level of enterococci well below the state’s threshold.
+
+If a test sample exceeds acceptable bacteria levels twice, the beach is closed until the bacteria level falls into normal range, Ragonese said. Jill Lipoti, director of the Division of Water Monitoring and Standards for the DEP, said three beaches were closed all along the shore this summer.
+
+Still, three environmental groups challenged Christie’s claim of ""perfect"" water quality.
+
+Trenton-based Environment New Jersey pointed to low oxygen levels in the ocean and questioned the health of the water for marine life. Pollution in Barnegat Bay and beach closures due to pollution also are a concern, said Dena Mottola Jaborska, executive director of Environment New Jersey.
+
+""I think the governor does a disservice to citizens in the state when he makes statements like that,"" Jaborska said. ""There are lots of issues with the ocean.""
+
+Larry Levine, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council in New York City, also said the Jersey shore’s water quality is not perfect.
+
+""Every coastal state has some degree of issues with water pollution at beaches,"" in part due to stormwater runoff from urban and suburban areas where raw sewage and overflow can combine in the same pipe en route to a sewage treatment plant, Levine explained. When heavy rains are more than the treatment plants can handle, an untreated mixture of sewage and runoff can be released into waterways that lead to the coast.
+
+""That’s an issue nationwide, not just in New Jersey,"" Levine said.
+
+Clean Ocean Action of Monmouth County also wouldn’t qualify the water as perfect, but credited New Jersey for taking steps toward improvement.
+
+""The ocean’s much better off than it has been in a decade and while some individual pollutants may still be low, we have taken in this state with the Legislature and the governor’s office many impressive first steps that are long overdue,"" said Sean Dixon, coastal policy attorney for Clean Ocean Action. ""There’s always more to be done.""
+
+Our ruling
+
+Encouraging people to return to the Jersey shore, Christie claimed the water quality is ""perfect,"" and that frequent test results have been favorable up and down the coast.
+
+While test results show that the shore’s waters are better than in past years, some environmental organizations disagree with the governor’s assessment.
+
+We rate this claim Mostly True. To comment on this ruling, go to NJ.com."
+"It might seem a given that a Shore town would rake in waves of revenue from its beaches.
+
+But that’s not always the case. Point Pleasant Beach, for example, doesn’t own most of its beaches but is responsible for some of the costs associated with millions of visitors every summer, according to Mayor Vincent Barrella.
+
+""Point Pleasant Beach does not own its beaches; they are privately owned and operated by businesses such as Jenkinson’s,"" Barrella wrote in an Aug. 22 column that appeared in The star-Ledger.
+
+Could it be true that some of the most popular beachfront along the Jersey Shore is privately owned?
+
+PolitiFact New Jersey found that more than 42 acres of beach are privately owned and operated in Point Pleasant Beach, and the borough owns only the 1.03-acre Maryland Avenue Beach.
+
+Several other Shore towns also do not own their beaches, said Larry Hajna, spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.
+
+Let’s look at beach ownership in the borough.
+
+Point Pleasant Beach has approximately two miles of privately held oceanfront property, according to the borough’s 2006 Open Space and Recreation Plan. The public can access nearly 30 of those 42 acres by purchasing daily or seasonal badges from private operators. The remaining beach is not open to the public, according to the plan.
+
+Most of the borough’s beaches are owned by Jenkinson’s, Martell’s, Risdens Beach Inc., the Elizabeth Carter Association and a number of private homeowners.
+
+One of the largest beaches in the borough is owned by Jenkinson’s, but the company also has the costs that come along with it.
+
+""We own it, operate it, insure it and staff it,"" said Marilou Halvorsen, marketing director for Jenkinson’s Boardwalk.
+
+Although the Maryland Avenue Beach is owned by the borough, Aqua Serve Lifeguard Service leases and operates it. The difference in ownership means Aqua can charge whatever admission fee the market can bear, while municipal operation of the beach would mean the state sets the maximum fee, said Borough Clerk Maryann Ellsworth.
+
+And that’s been a losing proposition for the community.
+
+""We lost so much money running it that we decided at least six years ago to lease out the running of the beach,"" said Ellsworth, who added that the borough lost from $10,000 to $14,000 annually when it operated the beach.
+
+Aqua Serve pays the borough $2,000 annually to operate Maryland Avenue beach, but that money is largely eaten up in costs the borough pays for portable toilets there, Ellsworth said. The daily badge fee at Maryland Avenue Beach is $8.
+
+Beaches and the cost to operate them was even an issue for the town’s forefathers.
+
+Minutes from the Aug. 16, 1887 meeting of the Point Pleasant Beach Council state ""Ownership of the beach turned down by the Council because of extreme cost to the borough for maintenance,"" according to the Point Pleasant Historical Society. At that point, the council decided to permit privately owned beaches in the borough.
+
+Still, Barrella told PolitiFact New Jersey that he hopes the borough can one day buy Risdens Beach if it ever becomes available, so the borough can generate revenue the way he said Belmar and Manasquan do from their beaches.
+
+Belmar’s beach badge revenue total was $3,023,386 from Memorial Day to Labor Day in 2010; and $2,657,278 from Memorial Day this year through Aug. 21, said Patricia Zwirz, purchasing agent.
+
+Manasquan, which has a utility to operate its beach, took in $1,793,000 from beach badges in 2010 for the same period as Belmar; and was at $1,695,000 just before Hurricane Irene hit the Jersey Shore, according to Beach Department manager/beach manager Walter Wall.
+
+Our ruling
+
+Barrella says the borough’s beaches are privately owned and operated by various businesses in town. While Jenkinson’s and others do own most of the beachfront, the borough owns slightly more than an acre of prime real estate: the Maryland Avenue beach. For that reason, we rate Barrella’s claim Mostly True. To coment on this ruling, go to NJ.com."
+"As public debate across the country has bubbled up in recent months over environmental concerns related to hydraulic fracturing — or fracking as it’s becoming widely known — proponents of oil and gas drilling have come rushing to its defense.
+
+The process involves pumping millions of gallons chemical-laced water and sand deep underground into horizontal wells under high pressure to crack open shale,  enabling natural gas extraction.
+
+On June 15, 2011, state Sen. Kris Jordan, a Delaware Republican, defended the process in a floor speech on behalf of legislation that would throw open state parkland to oil and gas drilling.
+
+During his speech, Jordan portrayed the growing concerns of the public — which have been fanned by ""Gasland,"" a controversial documentary on the environmental issues related to the fracking process — as overblown as he pointed to a long track record of safe fracking in Ohio.
+
+""State agencies have not identified one single instance where groundwater has been damaged due to hydraulic fracking,"" Jordan said.
+
+With drilling likely coming soon to Eastern Ohio where the Utica and Marcellus shale formations await possible exploration, PolitiFact Ohio decided to check out Jordan’s claim.
+
+We started with Jordan, who stood by his statement.
+
+""From what I understand, none of the cases has come from fracking itself being involved in contaminating any water,"" said Jordan. ""Any problems that have happened have been well construction issues.""
+
+Jordan said he consulted with several people in Ohio’s oil and gas industry including Tom Stewart, a top official with the Ohio Oil and Gas Association for his information.
+
+Stewart and other oil and gas supporters directed us to several recent statements from state and federal EPA officials such as one made recently by Lisa Jackson, President Barack Obama’s top federal Environmental Protection Agency administrator.
+
+During a House committee hearing, Jackson said evidence was limited on whether hydraulic fracturing can affect water tables and aquifers.
+
+""There is evidence it can certainly affect them. I am not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself impacted water although there are investigations ongoing,"" she told lawmakers.
+
+The U.S. EPA began a study in January 2011 of possible environmental problems caused by fracking. The first findings from that study aren’t expected until late 2012.
+
+ODNR officials also said they haven’t seen water contamination from fracking in Ohio.
+
+""ODNR’s Oil and Gas Program has not identified any instances of groundwater contamination related to hydraulic fracturing since the technology was first used here in the early 1950s,"" ODNR spokeswoman Heidi Hetzel-Evans said in an email.
+
+When considering these statements, however, it’s important to understand exactly what they are saying—and also what they are not saying.
+
+What they are saying is that there are no documented cases of groundwater contamination directly from the process of pumping the chemical-laced water and sand into the ground to break the rock apart.
+
+They are not talking about the actual drilling of the hole that is fracked or the construction of the drilling well that is used for the fracking process.
+
+""There is definitely a lot of misinformation out there,"" said Hetzel-Evans. ""I don’t think the general public understands that the drilling process isn’t fracking.""
+
+And while there aren’t any groundwater problems due directly to fracking in Ohio, the drilling of wells to prepare for the fracking process has lead to water contamination in at least one case in Ohio. Meanwhile, the first study of its kind in the country is turning up similar evidence.
+
+In December 2007, a home exploded in a residential neighborhood in Bainbridge Township in Geauga County, Ohio. A panel assembled by ODNR ultimately found that a poorly-constructed well casing — think of it as a cement seal around the drill hole -- allowed gas to migrate upwards along the edge of the casing and up the pipe. Ultimately, this gas seeped into the home in Bainbridge and caused the explosion.
+
+Meanwhile, there is new evidence outside of Ohio that poorly constructed drilling wells used for fracking are leading to problems with groundwater.
+
+Duke University researchers found that methane levels were 17 times higher in water wells within one kilometer of hydraulic fracking sites in New York and Pennsylvania than in water wells farther away. The methane levels in those wells showed the same characteristics as methane produced from fracking, as opposed to naturally-occurring methane.  
+
+Robert Jackson, the professor of environmental sciences who headed up the research, said that the ""methane migration"" was likely caused by problems with the casing around the drill hole rather than from the methane migrating thousands of feet through the rock from the fracking zone.
+
+But he wonders whether the new high-pressure water treatment used in fracking could be the cause.
+
+""What I haven’t seen anyone address is whether hydraulic fracturing makes it more likely to cause well casings to leak,"" he said. ""It may be the high pressure involved in fracking makes leaks more common and bigger.""
+
+Meanwhile, the gas exploration boom in Pennsylvania has begun turning up evidence that the shale gas exploration involving the fracking process could be contaminating groundwater supplies with methane.
+
+The state’s Department of Environmental Protection ordered Houston-based Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. to provide and maintain potable water and gas mitigation for residents in Dimock, Pa., who sued over wells polluted in 2009 with methane gas and other contaminants.
+
+Another group, from Lenox Township, Pa., sued Houston-driller Southwestern Energy Co. in 2010  claiming their wells were contaminated with fracking fluids.
+
+Both suits are tied up in court.    
+
+So where does that leave Jordan’s claim that ""state agencies have not identified one single instance where groundwater has been damaged due to hydraulic fracking.""
+
+That statement squares with ODNR’s records.
+
+But regulators in Ohio have linked water contamination problems in at least one incident to other aspects of drilling such as the construction of the drilling wells. That’s additional information that provides clarification.
+
+On the Truth-O-Meter, Jordan’s statement grades out at Mostly True."
+"Coyotes have people howling mad on Aquidneck Island.
+
+Middletown residents recently packed a meeting to tell town officials how alarmed they are by  coyotes boldly stalking neighborhoods, leaping fences into backyards and snatching beloved pets. Action is needed, they demanded, before one of the notoriously sly predators maims or kills a small child.
+
+But the solution that the residents convinced the town to approve April 4 -- enlisting the services of a hunter to kill coyotes -- has infuriated others. Several hundred residents have signed a petition opposing the plan.
+
+""The Town of Middletown has hired a hunter to begin a systematic mass killing of the coyotes,"" the petition reads. ""What they do not take into consideration is that for every one they kill, the population will replace and usually multiply the numbers,"" reads the petition.
+
+That second part sounded so counter-intuitive -- after all, didn’t we hunt buffalo and wolves to near extinction? -- that we decided to look into it.
+
+But first we have to dispense with the statement about the ""mass killing"" of coyotes in Middletown. As far as we know, no one has suggested that the goal is to kill huge numbers of coyotes. At the April 4 meeting, Police Chief Anthony Pesare said the town would hire just one hunter to target coyotes that have lost their fear of humans. The hunter, he said, would be teamed up with Numi Mitchell,  who since 2005 has been running the Narragansett Bay Coyote Study.
+
+Had we run this statement through the Truth-O-Meter, it  would have rated a False ruling. But we were more interested in the petition’s claim that killing coyotes just leads the animals to ""replace and usually multiply the numbers.""
+
+First we called Shana Gaines, a Newport woman and vintage clothing store owner, who started the petition. She said she based the text on remarks by Mitchell, whose team has been placing radio collars on coyotes and tracking them to better understand their habits.
+
+Mitchell, after confirming her advisory role in the Middletown initiative, referred us to several research studies, including those by Frederick F. Knowlton, who spent 45 years studying coyotes and other wildlife with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Service and as a professor at Utah State University. His work, much of it relating to coyote attacks on livestock, is commonly cited in scientific papers.
+
+""Local population reduction can provide temporary relief to sheep operators, but only until the local coyote population compensates for the removals and fills vacant territories. … Population reduction as a management option usually requires annual reapplications due to the reproductive capabilities and ease of movement of coyotes,"" he and his co-authors wrote in one 1999 paper.
+
+Kim Murray Berger, another researcher who has studied coyotes, wolves and other predators, wrote in a 2006 paper that although systematic campaigns to kill predators have ""threatened"" such species as wolves, coyotes ""have shown remarkable resilience.""
+
+The scientific explanation that is commonly given is intriguing.
+
+""It’s called responsive reproduction,"" said Christine Schadler, a wild-canid ecologist and teacher who is the New England representative for the advocacy group Project Coyote. ""It seems very mysterious. How can you shoot and shoot and shoot and wind up with more? It doesn’t seem intuitive at all.""
+
+But here’s what happens, she said. Coyotes typically live in a pack that stakes out, and protects, a territory. Packs are led by an alpha male and female, which are the only breeders among the group. When stressed by a limited amount of food, the females produce litters with fewer pups.
+
+But when the size of a pack is reduced, there’s more food for each individual. And breeding becomes more prolific. Their numbers bounce back in a year or two, she said.
+
+Coyotes have expanded from western parts of the country, despite attempts to reduce their numbers there, and spread to the East, taking advantage of the decline in wolf populations, a natural territorial competitor.
+
+""In a hundred years of trying to control the coyotes, all we’ve done is create millions more,"" Schadler said. ""There’s not a scientific article that can dispute that.""
+
+A New Hampshire sheep raiser, Schadler ""educates"" the local coyote pack to feel threatened by humans -- in ways that are not harmful to the animals. That, along with good fences and other deterrents, has prevented her from losing any sheep. All experts on coyotes caution against intentionally or unintentionally providing coyotes a source of food.
+
+We searched for someone who might argue that killing coyotes can reduce populations.
+
+We called Wildlife Services, a federal agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The office readily acknowledges overseeing the killing of tens of thousands of coyotes every year, much to the chagrin of wildlife advocates.
+
+But even Carol Bannerman, a spokeswoman for the agency, would not advocate killing coyotes simply to reduce populations. The agency responds to complaints of damage being caused by coyotes, such as livestock losses, with an ""integrated management plan"" that emphasizes non-lethal methods to ward off coyotes.
+
+Where does that leave us?
+
+Bannerman, Middletown officials and Mitchell all appear to embrace the idea, to some degree, that the targeted killing of coyotes too comfortable around humans can help deal with isolated problems.
+
+""This is just a short-term solution for a couple of individual coyotes,"" Mitchell said.
+
+Knowlton, the Utah expert, said local reduction programs can provide temporary relief from coyote problems.
+
+But, in general, wildlife advocates and scientific studies maintain that coyotes are such prolific breeders that trying to lower their numbers by killing them is ineffective.
+
+So it appears the petition, apart from the ""mass killing"" falsehood,  wasn’t feeding us a pack of lies after all. We rate the claim about coyotes replenishing their numbers Mostly True."
+"Despite decades of legal squabbles over the Southeast’s precious water resources, the problem still looms large over Georgia.
+
+But take heart. And look down. Some of the solutions can be found in your toilet, the head of a water conservation group said recently.  
+
+""In three years we could find close to 50 million gallons per day through a toilet replacement program,"" Sally Bethea, founding director of Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, said in a recent article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
+
+Can better commodes really flush away that much of the area’s water problem?
+
+Georgia has been battling for years with Florida and Alabama over how to divvy up the region’s water supply. In 2009, a federal judge ruled that if the states fail to reach a water-sharing agreement by mid-July 2012, metro Atlanta can take only the same amount of water it received in the mid-1970s -- when the population was less than a third of what it is today.
+
+Georgia appealed the ruling in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, and the state has a good shot at victory.
+
+Even if Georgia wins this battle, the available water supply might not meet the region’s long-term needs.
+
+So Bethea has targeted the potty, the modern household’s thirstiest water hog. Nationally and locally, governments have created programs to replace old-fashioned commodes that can use more than 3.5 gallons per flush with low-flow toilets that use as little as 1.28 gallons.  
+
+This is how Riverkeeper came up with its number:
+
+Atlanta is part of the 15-county Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District, which includes counties as far north as Hall and as far south as Coweta. She said the planning district estimates that 850,000 homes have old-fashioned plumbing.
+
+The district already has programs in which residents receive rebates if they install low-flow toilets. But Bethea said she envisions a more dramatic change.
+
+In the mid-1990s, New York City ran a successful program that changed out the city’s old toilets with low-flow ones.
+
+Over three years, that effort switched about 1.3 million toilets and saved an estimated 70 million to 80 million gallons per day, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Under the privately managed program, which was heavily promoted to apartment building owners and plumbers, property owners received up to $240 per toilet to have them replaced by a licensed professional.  
+
+Experts we interviewed think that New York City-style programs can be more effective than a typical rebate program. They are especially helpful for properties with low- or fixed-income residents who often live in older housing with outdated plumbing.
+
+Using EPA figures, Riverkeeper calculated that 8,120 gallons can be saved per person per year if a resident installs one new high-efficiency toilet, faucet and shower head in his home. If there are 2.5 people in the household, the savings totals 47.3 million gallons per day across the region, the group calculated.  
+
+Bethea described her estimate as ""very conservative"" because many homes have more than one toilet or 2.5 residents. It doesn’t include savings when the upgraded plumbing fixes leaks, either.
+
+We found that Riverkeeper numbers are optimistic.
+
+The group’s figure for households with old-fashioned plumbing is out of date, according to data from the Water Planning District. Last year, it was about 615,000, or 27 percent less.  
+
+And Bethea’s estimate for the amount of water saved per toilet is high. Her group assumed those toilets would date from the 1980s or earlier. The older the toilet, the more water it uses.
+
+But Atlanta’s housing stock is relatively new. Under an existing rebate program that will last until 2025, the Water Planning District expects the region to save 14 million gallons per day if 57 percent of homeowners use the program.
+
+District figures do not include savings from installing more efficient faucets and shower heads. But since those fixtures combined use thousands of gallons per year less than toilets, we think it’s reasonable to expect that they would not increase the amount of water saved to nearly 50 million gallons per day.  
+
+In addition, the Atlanta region has characteristics that could weaken the impact of a New York City-style program. The Big Apple has far more apartments, which meant persuading a single apartment building owner to change made a dramatic difference. Plus property owners had a big incentive to switch toilets quickly because of changes in how the city billed for water.
+
+To Bethea’s credit, she used careful language. She said the region ""could"" save 50 million gallons per day, not that it ""would.""  And while saving nearly 50 million gallons of water per day appears unlikely in light of water district numbers, it isn’t impossible.
+
+The region could have a higher-than-expected participation rate or proportion of very old toilets. The amount of water saved because the new plumbing fixes leaks could boost the total, and changing toilets over three years rather than 14 (under the rebate) does save more water, total.
+
+Therefore Bethea’s fundamental point rings true. A New York-style program ""could"" save 50 million gallons per day. The amount could easily be much lower, but even more conservative estimates place the savings in the range of tens of millions of gallons per day.
+
+We rate her claim Mostly True."
+"Proposed rules to improve Florida water quality standards have spiraled into a political war of words pitting environmentalists and the federal Environmental Protection Agency against Florida's business interests and much of the state's political leadership.
+
+Most of the fight -- about something called numeric nutrient criteria -- probably makes little sense to you, if you heard about it at all.
+
+Here are the basics. Inhale ... Back in 1998, the EPA told all states that they had to develop limits on nutrient pollution in state waterways -- nutrients being pollutants like nitrogen and phosphorus that cause toxic algae blooms that can kill fish and cause respiratory problems and infections among swimmers, boaters and beachgoers. The states had until 2004 to come up with the limits. But 2004 came and went in Florida with no action. So environmentalists from groups like Earthjustice, Sierra Club, the Florida Wildlife Federation, the Conservancy of Southwest Florida, the Environmental Confederation of Southwest Florida and the St. Johns Riverkeeper sued the EPA. The state Department of Environmental Protection said it had been working on setting up specific nutrient limits since 2001 but had not yet finished because of the thousands of waterways in the state and the different ecological challenges they face. Anyway, the EPA settled the lawsuit with the environmentalists and said it would produce water quality rules for Florida, which it did (except for South Florida) in November 2010. Those new regulations, which set numeric limits on the nutrients allowed in all Florida and state inland waterways, take effect in March 2012.
+
+What the exact limits are is of little consequence in that you'd have to be a scientist to understand them. Suffice it to say, they're strict enough that business groups are vexed that it will cost billions of dollars to clean up because so many Florida waterways are considered ""impaired"" -- meaning the water isn't safe for humans or where certain aquatic life could no longer live. In an economy with 11.5 percent unemployment, the ""billions"" has people worried -- particularly municipalities, businesses and farmers who are producing the pollution.
+
+Enter a group calling itself Free Market Florida, which has begun a political campaign to stop the regulations from being implemented. The group's leader, Ryan Houck, was part of a business-backed group that successfully fought against a ballot initiative in 2010 known as Amendment 4 (the measure would have given voters final approval on major development proposals).
+
+Free Market Florida launched a two-minute, 30-second web video that details the threat of the new EPA criteria to Florida's economy.
+
+""Imagine that you own a restaurant, and the health department tells you that the floors on which you walk need to be as clean as the plates on which you serve food,"" Houck says in the ad, looking directly at the camera. ""Then you open the newspaper and find out that someone's suing a fast food restaurant because their 99-cent cheeseburgers aren't as good as a $40 steak at a fancy restaurant. That's crazy, right?""
+
+The ad then cuts to Houck standing in front of a drainage canal.
+
+""Now what if I told you taxpayers, businesses, farmers and consumers had to spend billions of dollars to make drainage canals like this one every bit as clean as the water here (video cuts to Houck in front of a river) in the Wekiva River ... It may sound absurd, but it's about to happen right here in Florida.""
+
+Houck goes on to call the regulations debilitating, unscientific and costly, and says that it is all part of a plan by environmentalists not to curb pollution, but to stop development.
+
+Of the many things worth fact-checking in the ad, one claim stood out to us -- Houck's suggestion that the EPA is requiring man-made drainage canals be every bit as clean as natural, flowing rivers.
+
+We asked the four stakeholders in this argument -- Houck, the environmentalists, the EPA and the state DEP -- if that's right.
+
+We got four very different answers.
+
+""We went to great lengths to make sure the ad was accurate. We're glad you're checking it."" -- Ryan Houck, Free Market Florida.
+
+""That characterization is simply false."" -- David Guest, lawyer for Earthjustice.
+
+""There are likely circumstances where the same criteria that applies to the Wekiva River would also apply to a nearby canal."" -- Dee Ann Miller, DEP spokeswoman.
+
+""This high level of protection is likely not required for any drainage canal, therefore, the drainage canal pictured is not required to have water 'every bit as clean as the water in the Wekiva River.' "" -- Davina Marraccini, EPA spokeswoman.
+
+The differing answers at first had us puzzled -- until we had an epiphany.
+
+The answers underscore just how complex these water regulations are.
+
+Understanding the regulations
+
+For starters, we need to understand just what the regulations are, and are not. The regulations affect lakes and inland rivers and streams. More generally, they affect the water we drink (categorized as Class I bodies of water) and water we use for recreation or that supports aquatic life (Class III). Class III waters would include drainage canals that link other flowing bodies of water. But the regulations wouldn't affect drainage ditches or retention ponds, necessarily.
+
+The EPA set different requirements for lakes and rivers and streams. Lakes in the state are measured based on the color and alkalinity. Criteria for rivers and streams are divided into five geographic regions in the state. Each geographic region has its own criteria.
+
+So while lakes across Florida would have the same pollution standards, rivers and streams would not. The different regions were created to account for natural phosphorus levels in some parts of the state relative to others.
+
+Now, it's critical to note -- as we already have once -- that none of the rules in place apply to the areas in South Florida (roughly south of Lake Okeechobee). Those standards will not be proposed until November 2011. The rules also do not apply to estuaries, coastal waters and wetlands.
+
+Another important point, especially for the sake of this fact check: South Florida is home to the predominant number of the state's canal systems, said Earthjustice's Guest. About 1,000 miles of canals exist as part of the ""Central and Southern Florida Project,"" a congressionally authorized project to control flooding and supply water for municipal, industrial and agricultural uses, and for prevention of saltwater intrusion. Many but not all of those canals are in the designated South Florida region and thus exempted from the proposed standards.
+
+Comparing to the Wekiva
+
+Houck told PolitiFact Florida that the canal pictured in the video is not in South Florida, and is classified as a Class III water.
+
+If that's the case, the man-made canal would be regulated under the pending rules, and it would have to meet the same standards as natural rivers in the same geographic area.
+
+But this fact check isn't that simple. Free Market Florida chose to compare the canal to the Wekiva River, a 30-mile-long river system that starts in Central Florida and runs into the St. Johns River. The Wekiva River has been designated an Outstanding Florida Water by the state, which means it receives the ""highest protection,"" according to state policy.
+
+""OFWs are afforded higher protection, above and beyond normal requirements of a Class III water (that is, waters suitable for fishing and swimming), to maintain outstanding water quality and prevent degradation,"" the EPA's Marraccini told us. ""This high level of protection is likely not required for any drainage canal; therefore, the drainage canal pictured is not required to have water 'every bit as clean as the water in the Wekiva River.' ""
+
+Houck argues that the levels of protection for Outstanding Florida Waters and the EPA numeric nutrient criteria counts measure different things, and therefore are immaterial. And Houck is correct that Outstanding Florida Waters are required to maintain the water quality standard that was in place in March 1, 1979 (Page 32 of these rules), not specific numeric nutrient criteria limits.
+
+Proposed rule changes
+
+There's another important and complex clarification to the pending EPA standards: The state is in the process of trying to change the rules so that many man-made canals might not have the same regulations as rivers.
+
+The state's Environmental Regulation Commission has proposed creating a subset of Class III waters that would include man-made canals. Those waters would have to meet different and lower standards than regular Class III waters. The state provides a good visual explanation of the changes they are considering on slides 21-25 of this presentation.
+
+""The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) rule does apply as the video states,"" said DEP spokeswoman Jennifer Diaz. ""This situation exists because Florida’s current classification of rivers and streams does not distinguish between artificially created waters and natural free-flowing waters. About a year ago, the Environmental Regulation Commission (ERC) approved the creation of a new class of waters for artificially created and significantly altered surface waters. Although adopted by ERC, the new classification is subject to approval by EPA before it can become effective in Florida. Until this new classification is approved by EPA, no waters in Florida can be classified with a lower use expectation. Therefore, the nutrient criteria adopted by EPA that becomes effective in March 2012 will apply equally to man-made ditches/canals and natural streams.""
+
+More caveats
+
+And yet, there are more complications. The EPA says that if the state can show -- based on a structured scientific assessment -- that a canal cannot meet its current designated use, the state could downgrade the use of the body of water and the numeric criteria counts would not apply.
+
+""Factors considered in determining whether to downgrade a classification include naturally occurring pollutants and the physical conditions of the water body, as well as whether the pollution controls required would result in substantial and widespread economic and social impact, among others,"" the EPA's Marraccini said.
+
+Houck says this can lead to more lawsuits.
+
+Lastly, we need to address the cost. While we're not fact-checking how much the remediation will cost, we think it's important to note there is wide disagreement on potential financial impact. The EPA says the cost to clean Florida's waters will be $135 million to $206 million a year. A private study pegged the costs astronomically higher -- anywhere from $1 billion to $8.4 billion annually.
+
+Our ruling
+
+We hope we didn't lose you in explaining these complicated requirements, and how they match up to the claim in Free Market Florida's ad. After weeks of studying this issue, we are more convinced than ever just how complicated the proposed rules to regulate Florida's water systems are.
+
+The bottom line is Free Market Florida contends that man-made drainage canals will have to meet the same standards as pristine Florida river systems like the Wekiva River in Central Florida.
+
+As the regulations stand now, it appears that drainage canals designated as Class III waters in Central Florida would have to meet the same numeric nutrient standards as the Wekiva River. But there are several caveats that could impact the validity of that claim. For one, rules haven't been implemented for South Florida (home to the many drainage canals). Two, all drainage canals wouldn't have to meet the water quality standards of the Wekiva, just the ones in the geographic area. Three, the state is proposing a change to the rules that could exempt many of the state's drainage canals. And four, the EPA also says it could exempt individual drainage canals based on scientific study.
+
+Houck said his group made sure the drainage canal they showed is in the same region as the Wekiva, which in his mind explains away the first two caveats. The third and fourth caveats are possible changes that are not a sure thing.
+
+Where does this all leave us?
+
+Houck and his group are largely right based on all the evidence we reviewed. We wish he would have explained a little more of the nuance in the video, but we also are realists. We rate his claim Mostly True."
+"Cuts in government spending aim to reduce the deficit and bring the budget closer to balance. But the process can be more complicated than that.
+
+That point was made when U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar went before the House Committee on Natural Resources this month to testify about President Obama's proposed fiscal 2012 budget request.
+
+Rep. Betty Sutton noted the economic benefits the department helps spur in Ohio, as she focused on the budget recommendation to cut $125 million from the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. Sutton called the initiative ""incredibly important"" to the region economically.
+
+""Lake Erie supports nearly 10 percent of Ohio's jobs and generates $750 million in state and local taxes,"" she said.
+
+PolitiFact Ohio wondered where those figures came from, and took a look.
+
+The long-range Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, developed by a task force of 11 federal agencies, aims to clean up toxic sediment and polluted areas, combating invasive species such as Asian carp, restore degraded wetlands and support fish and wildlife resources.
+
+Obama requested $350 million for the program for fiscal 2012, down from the $475 million standard of 2010. The initiative was chopped to $225 million, or less than half of that, by a plan from House Republicans to cut $61 billion in federal spending.
+
+We asked Sutton's office to cite her source for data on the Lake Erie’s economic impact. They referred us to the Great Lakes Commission, a cooperative formed by the eight Great Lakes states and Canada in 1955. One of the commission's fact sheets did have those numbers, and others, which were attributed to the commission's own studies and a variety of official sources.
+
+The tax figure, credited by the commission to a fact sheet from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, ultimately came from Ohio Travel & Tourism, part of the Department of Development. It said that Lake Erie tourism generated $430 million in state tax revenue and $320 million in local tax revenue -- together totaling the $750 million Sutton cited.
+
+But the commission's communications director, Christine Manninen, told us the jobs figure Sutton relied on was stated erroneously in the March 2011 fact sheet, in a paragraph that jumbled lake-related and statewide figures. The online fact sheet was corrected after the hearing where Sutton cited it.
+
+It is the state's tourism industry that accounts for nearly 10 percent of Ohio's more than 5 million jobs, according to Ohio Travel & Tourism. Nevertheless, Lake Erie does support a large number of jobs -- more than 100,000 in northeast Ohio. Sutton relied on a credible official source for her numbers, and she cited them accurately, though one of her sources, a credible one at that, misstated its data.
+
+That’s a piece of information needed for clarification. We rate her statement as Mostly True."
+"The extensive damage to Japanese nuclear facilities following the massive earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011, has focused more attention on nuclear power than it has received in years.
+
+On the March 13, 2011, edition of Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace asked Bill Kristol, editor of the conservative magazine the Weekly Standard, about how the situation in Japan could affect the use of nuclear power in the United States.
+
+""Bill, at a time when Democrats and Republicans were finally getting together and supporting nuclear power as safe, clean, non-polluting energy, and President Obama had $36 billion in loan credits in his 2012 budget to promote more plants, what happens now to the domestic industry?"" Wallace asked.
+
+Kristol responded, ""Well, we can probably save $36 billion from the 2012 budget because I think it's a bit of a setback to nuclear power here in the U.S. I'll go out on a limb and make that prediction.
+
+""But, you know, people will say, well, we build new plants. Twenty percent of our electricity currently comes from nuclear power plants. I think there are 104 in the United States, two of them around the coast in California. Very earthquake-resistant, but I guess there could be a tsunami there. It sounds like it's the tsunami that did the most damage in Japan.
+
+""So, on the one hand, it's impressive how resistant these things are to damage. On the other hand, I do think, as you say, these alarming fears, whether or not they -- certainly if they come to fruition, and let's hope they don't -- it's obviously a setback to nuclear power. And I think it makes even stronger the case for going after natural gas and oil domestically.""
+
+We wondered whether Kristol’s statistics on electricity generation and the number of nuclear plants were correct -- and we figured our readers would be too. So we looked into it.
+
+We first turned to the Statistical Abstract of the United States, a compendium of statistics published by the U.S. Census Bureau. It includes a table summarizing electricity generation by fuel type through 2009. Dividing net electric generation via nuclear power by net generation in the electric power sector as a whole, we get 20.9 percent. That’s close enough to Kristol’s comment to pass muster with us.
+
+Next, we turned to the website of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The agency has a page where you can find active nuclear generating facilities on a map and in alphabetical order. We counted them up, and there are exactly 104 sites listed.
+
+Kristol’s only error was in suggesting that there are 104 nuclear power plants; in fact, there are 104 nuclear power reactors. Because many plants have more than one reactor, the actual number of plants is 65. (This list doesn’t count military and scientific reactors, which are not overseen by the agency.)
+
+Finally, we checked Kristol's claim about nuclear facilities on the California coast. There are, in fact, two: Diablo Canyon, located 12 miles from San Luis Obispo, and San Onofre, located 46 miles from Long Beach. The photographs on the agency's website clearly show that the plants are located near the water.
+
+So Kristol was basically correct, only erring with his mislabeling of ""reactors"" as ""plants."" We rate his statement Mostly True."
+"It’s 2008 all over again, based on a claim that recently surfaced from Ohio’s coal industry. That was the year Barack Obama won the presidency. Ten months earlier, the candidate -- a Democratic senator from Illinois who was campaigning for the presidential nomination -- did a wide-ranging, videotaped interview with the San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial board that included his prescription for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
+
+Before the campaign would end, his political opponents, including Sarah Palin, discovered the interview on the newspaper’s website and tried to use it against Obama in coal-rich states like Ohio. Maybe you’ve forgotten about it. The coal industry, in a long battle against proposals to cut greenhouse gas emissions by reducing coal use, has not.
+
+Mike Carey, president of the Ohio Coal Association, brought up Obama’s statement anew when he testified March 1 to a House subcommittee on energy and power, in advance of a proposed House Republican bill that would strip the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of its ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
+
+""We absolutely must oppose the new effort by the Obama administration to eliminate coal through the new proposed plant emissions and greenhouse gas regulations,"" Carey said. ""In 2008, President Obama said, ‘If someone wants to build a new coal-fired power plant they can, but it will bankrupt them because they will be charged a huge sum for all the greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.’ ""
+
+Later in his testimony, Carey added, ""Remember what President Obama promised; they will bankrupt anyone who plans to build a coal facility.""
+
+Did Obama really promise that?
+
+It’s a question that matters in states that employ coal miners and rely on coal-fired electricity, especially as the U.S. EPA under Obama prepares to restrict carbon emissions.
+
+During a break in the House hearing, we asked Carey for his source for the quote. Then we
+went back to the original San Francisco Chronicle interview in its entirety, transcribed the parts in which Obama discussed coal, and examined the context of Obama’s remarks.
+
+Obama at the time had proposed an aggressive plan to reduce the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by attaching a price for emissions. The allowable level of emissions would ratchet down yearly, Obama said, with money raised from this system getting invested in cleaner technologies. This would not only create incentives for reducing carbon emissions, he said, but it would also expand the use of wind and solar power, bio-fuels and, potentially, ""clean coal,"" in which carbon emissions could be captured and sequestered in a way that might do no harm. Such clean coal research is ongoing, with vigorous debate as to whether it will someday be applied on a commercial scale.
+
+Obama made clear in the interview that he was not suggesting an end to coal use. Too much of the country already uses it in existing power plants and factories. In a portion of the interview his critics failed to note, he said:
+
+""This notion of no coal, I think, is an illusion, because the fact of the matter is that right now, we are getting a lot of our energy from coal, and China is building a coal-fired plant once a week. So what we have to do then is we have to figure out how can we use coal without emitting greenhouse gases and carbon.  And how can we sequester that carbon and capture it? If we can't, then we're going to still be working on alternatives.""
+
+But Obama also made clear that he wanted to transition away from building new coal-fired plants, saying that the price on emissions for building one -- using old technology -- would be prohibitive under his plan.
+
+Carey said in his testimony that the Obama administration ""promised"" a ""war on coal,"" which is a claim we believe goes too far. The Obama administration has unquestionably angered the coal industry with rules or proposals affecting air quality standards, coal ash, renewable energy and the issuance of permits needed for coal mining -- all mentioned by Carey in his testimony. But Obama never declared war, and environmentalists and many others have a very different take on this so-called assault.
+
+Yet Obama said exactly what Carey quoted him as saying on a point that is especially current, considering the EPA’s new rules, announced this year. To repeat the then-candidate’s statement: ""If someone wants to build a new coal-fired power plant they can, but it will bankrupt them because they will be charged a huge sum for all the greenhouse gas that's being emitted.""
+
+Why, then, aren’t we rating Carey’s claim True?
+
+Two reasons: ""President Obama"" did not make the statement. Obama the U.S. senator and candidate for president did. And that leads to the second reason.
+
+Carey suggests that Obama is carrying out the threat he made in 2008, but the new rules from the EPA are different from the cap-and-trade proposal Obama had in 2008. Candidate Obama’s methods were to be more aggressive. In fact, the EPA has shown some flexibility, agreeing to phase in carbon restrictions on new or expanded plants based on their size. The agency also announced on the same day as Carey testified that it will delay its deadlines for businesses that must report their emissions.
+
+Carey quoted Obama accurately but not fully, and the regulations and methods that Obama’s EPA wants -- backed by a U.S. Supreme Court decision saying the agency has to regulate greenhouse gas emissions -- are not the same as the candidate proposed.
+
+The quote is right, but given the need for clarification or additional information, we rate Carey’s statement as Mostly True."
+"The pitched battle over Oregon’s proposed plastic bag  ban -- and accompanying 5-cent charge on paper bags -- is ripe for misused and invented facts, figures and claims. Already, we’ve knocked down one assertion that the ban would install a tax on paper bags.
+
+Well, during a Feb. 8 hearing, Beaverton Democrat Sen. Mark Hass -- one of the biggest cheerleaders for the ban -- made a few of his own assertions that had us doing double-takes. One of them was that ""12 percent of the garbage collected in those SOLV cleanups, by volume, is plastic bags.""
+
+SOLV, for the uninitiated, is a statewide conservation nonprofit. In addition to other efforts, the group organizes river and beach cleanups throughout the year.
+
+We went to SOLV’s website to see what we could dig up. We couldn’t find much in the way of overall numbers, but we did find a breakdown of the sort of trash the group’s volunteers had collected during their Fall Beach and Riverside Clean-up.
+
+Among the detritus were cigarette filters, plastic bottles, caps, cans, food wrappers, rope, straws and -- yes -- plastic bags. All told, 5,851 pieces of litter were found at the group’s 19 beach and two river cleanup sites.
+
+How much, then, did plastic bags account for? The breakdown didn’t give any sense of relative volume, though, so we could check only by percentage. By our math, 4 percent, given 245 bags were collected. That’s quite a ways away from Sen. Hass’ 12 percent figure.
+
+Next, we called SOLV and spoke with Rachel Pecore, a program coordinator there, and we asked if there were any more-comprehensive numbers about the debris SOLV has found over the years -- a number that included more than just the previous fall’s cleanup. She said she wasn’t aware of any, but she cautioned us about putting too much stock in the composition breakdown on the group’s website.
+
+As it turns out, some 7,000 volunteers participated in the fall cleanup, but only 232 of those volunteers actually participated in filling out data cards on the debris they collected. ""Volunteers have an option of completing a data card of what they picked up,"" Pecore said. ""It is not a scientifically rigorous process. They’re estimates.""
+
+Pecore then pointed us in the direction of the Ocean Conservancy, a far-reaching conservation group that keeps better numbers. In fact, she said, SOLV gets the data cards from the group and reports its findings back.
+
+We looked at Ocean Conservancy’s 2010 study of marine debris, ""Trash Travels."" According to that report, about a half-million volunteers participated in a worldwide cleanup that covered 108 countries and 45 states. All told, volunteers reported some 10,240,000 pieces of debris, of which 1,126,774 piece were plastic bags -- roughly 11 percent.
+
+As for Oregon specifically, the group found that of the 6,881 pieces of debris collected in the state, 890 bits were plastic bags. That’s about 13 percent.
+
+We’d yet to find the 12 percent figure Hass had referred to at the hearing, so we gave his office a call. The senator told us a SOLV program coordinator had given him the 12 percent figure. He said he’d follow up in an e-mail, and, true to his word, he did.
+
+Hass forwarded us -- along with a few other bits and pieces -- an e-mail he received from Diana Bartlett, a SOLV program coordinator. In the e-mail she notes that the Ocean Conservancy’s 2009 marine debris report shows that 12 percent of the trash collected by volunteers was made up of plastic bags. We checked the report and she’s right.
+
+Hass also noted that the 2009 report offers a state-by-state breakdown that says cleaners found 13.4 percent of their sample in Oregon was plastic bags (172 of the 1,281 pieces collected).
+
+Hass ended his e-mail with this: ""I’m happy to defend anything I’ve said on this issue -- and take my lumps if it’s out of context or outdated.""
+
+So, are there any lumps to give? In the Feb. 8 committee hearing Hass said. ""Twelve percent of the garbage collected in those SOLV cleanups, by volume, is plastic bags.""
+
+None of the sources gave a sense of relative volume. One discarded sofa (yes, SOLV volunteers found a brown plaid sofa on the beach one year) is more volume than 172 plastic bags.
+
+And Hass wasn’t exactly right. He cited SOLV’s cleanups but the organization doesn’t gather reliable numbers. Ocean Conservancy, the group that actually produced the figure Hass used, did report that plastic bags made up 12 percent of its marine debris collection in 2008 and 11 percent in 2009. That percentage jumped to 13.4 percent in 2008 and 13 percent in 2009 when Oregon was considered alone, according to Ocean Conservancy reports.
+
+It seems to us that Hass attributed his 12 percent figure to the wrong source. That said, the 12 percent figure seems to jibe with the general range the two most recent reports offer.
+
+With that in mind, we rate this claim Mostly True. Comment on this item."
+"Tom DeLay, the Republican former U.S. House majority leader convicted in Austin of laundering corporate contributions to bolster Texas House candidates, insisted he did no wrong and that the the case against him was just politics.
+
+In a Jan. 13 interview, DeLay told Matt Lauer, host of NBC-TV’s ""Today,"" that his indictment and trial was driven by liberal Democrats and that the ""foreman of the jury was a Greenpeace activist."" Greenpeace is an international group that calls itself the leading independent ""campaigning organization that uses peaceful direct action and creative communication"" to expose and promote solutions to global environmental problems.
+
+""The point is is that this is a political campaign"" against me, DeLay said.
+
+Greenpeace v. DeLay? We wanted background.
+
+An online search of news coverage showed that The Houston Chronicle identified the jury foreman in a Nov. 23 news article saying in part that the ""forewoman"" is a Greenpeace activist named Katie Stotts. The article’s author, R.G. Ratcliffe, told us in an interview that courtroom observers learned Stotts’ name when the judge inadvertently said it aloud. Ratcliffe said the Greenpeace information came from an entry on Stotts’ Facebook page indicating that she’d enthusiastically answered an invitation to a Greenpeace event. In our own Facebook check, we found that someone identified as Katarina von Stottsen said ""HELL YES"" to attending a September 2009 Greenpeace party in Austin.
+
+After DeLay’s trial, a letter from Katie Stotts of Austin appeared Nov. 30 on the Austin American-Statesman’s editorial page. In the letter, Stotts says that she was a juror in the trial, adding: ""We did have a good mix of political affiliations on the jury, but what it came down to wasn't political sides. It took us three very difficult and intense days to come to a decision because we were considering all of the evidence to ensure that we came to the right decision.""
+
+Stotts’ letter continues: ""For those out there crying ‘liberal,’ they don't have a leg to stand on. It is an insult to my fellow jurors and I who put our lives on hold, and poured every last bit of our energy into making certain that a fair outcome was reached based only on the evidence, not any sort of political agenda... We performed our civil service with honesty and integrity, and stereotypes have no place in that.""
+
+The letter makes no mention of Greenpeace.
+
+DeLay’s daughter, Dani DeLay Garcia, who sometimes serves as his spokeswoman, told us by e-mail that the foreman ""wrote that she was a Greenpeace activist on her questionnaire,"" referring to written questions answered by prospective jurors before jury selection.
+
+Garcia also said she’s been told the questionnaires are public record.
+
+Not so, advised Michelle Brinkman, chief deputy clerk for the Travis County District Clerk’s office. She noted that the state’s Code of Criminal Procedure says information about a person collected by a court during jury selection is confidential and may not be disclosed unless a party to the trial or bona fide member of the news media applies for it. Then, ""on a showing of good cause, the court shall permit disclosure,"" the law says.
+
+At our request, Brinkman asked the judge who presided over DeLay’s trial if questionnaire responses were available. The judge, Pat Priest, replied to her by e-mail Jan. 31: ""I don't think we need dance either to Mr. DeLay's tune or to  the reporter's, and the jurors made it clear they want their privacy protected. Tell him the information is unavailable.""
+
+The same day, we reached Dick DeGuerin, DeLay’s lawyer in the case. DeGuerin declined to share a copy of Stotts’ questionnaire responses. But, he said, Stotts partly answered a question about club memberships including political involvements by writing: ""I am a paying member of Greenpeace."" DeGuerin said she answered the next question, per volunteer activities, with: ""I’ve been to multiple rallies for environmental preservation issues."" In a follow-up interview, DeGuerin said he did not use any allotted pre-emptory challenges to strike Stotts from the jury. ""There were others"" in the jury pool ""much more objectionable,"" DeGuerin said. ""I wish I’d had 20 strikes."" Finally, we reached an Austin-area Greenpeace leader, who referred us to the group’s Washington spokesman, Joe Smyth. Smyth had no comment about Stotts but said via e-mail: ""Every citizen enjoys the rights and responsibilities of citizenship, including serving on a jury, so it's bizarre that Tom Delay seems to think he can blame his criminal conviction on someone's politics or membership in an organization.""
+
+Upshot: While Stotts reportedly self-identified as a Greenpeace backer, we’d need more information to deem her a Greenpeace activist. We rate DeLay’s statement Mostly True. UPDATE, 10:30 a.m. Feb. 11, 2011: After we published this article, Stotts responded to our Jan. 31 e-mail seeking comment. Stotts replied Feb. 10: ""I contribute monetarily to Greenpeace, but I am not a Greenpeace activist. I went to, at most, a few local environmental rallies because a good friend of mine used to work for their organization. I have probably volunteered more times for the food bank in Austin than I have for official Greenpeace events. I also work for a conservative insurance company, but neither of these things had an effect on my ability to render an honest and fair verdict in the trial."""
+"One of President Barack Obama's big laugh lines from his State of the Union address came when he talked about fish: salmon, to be specific. Obama's set-up was a call for efficient government.
+
+""We shouldn't just give our people a government that's more affordable. We should give them a government that's more competent and more efficient. We can't win the future with a government of the past,"" Obama said. ""We live and do business in the Information Age, but the last major reorganization of the government happened in the age of black-and-white TV. There are 12 different agencies that deal with exports. There are at least five different agencies that deal with housing policy. Then there's my favorite example: The Interior Department is in charge of salmon while they're in freshwater, but the Commerce Department handles them when they're in saltwater. I hear it gets even more complicated once they're smoked.""
+
+We didn't much doubt the example. (We'll note again that White House speech writers have weeks to research and write the address.) But it did make us curious. So we decided to check the facts behind salmon swimming across regulatory lines.
+
+And swim they do: Most salmon are born in rivers and streams, then swim out to the ocean to become adults. Once they're full-grown, they return to the rivers and streams to breed. The technical term for this is ""anadromous.""
+
+When fish are out in the ocean, they're regulated by the National Marine Fisheries Service, which ""predicts the status of fish stocks, ensures compliance with fisheries regulations and works to reduce wasteful fishing practices,"" according to its website. The service is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is, as Obama said, part of the U.S. Commerce Department.
+
+When fish are in the rivers and streams, they're regulated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which focuses on the conservation and protection of fish and wildlife and their habitats. The Fish and Wildlife Service is indeed part of the Department of Interior.
+
+When the fish is smoked, it would generally be regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which regulates most packaged foods.
+
+Obama might even have been underselling the complexity. A major effort in the Pacific Northwest to protect and conserve salmon in the Columbia River Basin involves a ""federal caucus"" of 10 agencies working together for that purpose, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Geological Survey, to name a few.
+
+And while the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service claims jurisdiction over salmon, freshwater fishing is also regulated heavily by state agencies.
+
+""It is a stretch to say that salmon in freshwater are regulated by the Interior Department,"" said Ray Hilborn, a professor at the University of Washington's School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences. ""Harvest in freshwater is almost totally regulated by states, and in some case tribes,"" he said in an e-mail. ""In salt water the ocean harvest beyond 3 miles is federally regulated, but almost all the catch in the U.S. takes place in Alaska, and the state of Alaska regulates that fishery.""
+
+""In reality, most of the things that affect salmon in freshwater are managed by dozens of agencies,"" he added.
+
+A conservationist we spoke with said that more agencies doesn't necessarily mean more inefficiency. ""It can cut both ways. In a good sense, it can bring more resources,"" said Andrew Goode of the Atlantic Salmon Federation, a group that works to protect wild salmon. ""It can get bogged down if the agencies have different ideas on how the species should be managed.""
+
+Finally, a spokesman with the National Fisheries Institute, which represents commercial fishers, said salmon isn't even the half of it when it comes to overlapping rules. ""There's more where that came from, unfortunately, when it comes to seafood,"" said Gavin Gibbons, a spokesman for the group. His group is particularly critical of a provision included in the 2008 farm legislation that allows the U.S. Department of Agriculture to regulate catfish. Not all fish, just catfish. He called those rules a ""a demonstrable special interest effort."" American catfish farmers asked for the new rules; they say foreign fish farmers are selling inferior products in the U.S.
+
+Gibbons praised the National Marine Fisheries Service, though, for its work conserving fish stocks. ""They're not perfect, and there are controversies about catch shares and limits and that sort of thing,"" he said. ""But broadly speaking, they're a world-class organization in terms of sustainability""
+
+In ruling on Obama's statement, we found that he's right about the regulatory division on salmon, with different agencies responsible for the fish when they're in freshwater versus when they're in saltwater. In fact, he leaves out a lot of detail, including the role of the states. The actual regulatory scene is even more complicated. But Fish and Wildlife in the Interior Department does have authority over fish when they're in freshwater, and the National Marine Fisheries Service in the Department of Commerce regulates them in saltwater. Because he left out some of the complexity, we rate his statement Mostly True."
+"Republican Agriculture Commissioner candidate Adam Putnam is sounding the alarm about a critical water shortage he says Florida will soon be facing.
+
+""The most important issue facing Florida long term is water -- whether you want to plant an orange grove, build a subdivision, save the Everglades ... it all boils down to water,"" Putnam, a congressman from Bartow in Polk County, said on Sept. 9, 2010, during an editorial board interview with the St. Petersburg Times.
+
+""We've got to find 2 billion -- find, create, make, obtain through conservation -- 2 billion gallons (of water) between now and 2025. Per day."" Putnam told the editorial board members assembled that the state needs to invest in alternative water supplies like reclaimed water, and create incentives for developers to invest in alternative supplies as well. The state must also advocate for more conservation and efficiency measures, Putnam said, and continue to invest in desalination facilities -- which turn salt water into drinking water.
+
+He wrote a policy position paper on the state's water supply issues, which you can read here.
+
+In this fact check we're drilling down on Putnam's basic assumption, that Florida needs to somehow develop an additional 2 billion gallons of water per day in the next 15 years. We turned to the state Department of Environmental Protection, the agency tasked to increase the state's available water supplies, for an answer.
+
+Florida used an estimated 6.9 billion gallons of fresh water per day in 2005, the DEP said, citing the most recent U.S. Geological Survey report. By 2025, it is projected that the state will use 8.7 billion gallons a day. That's an increase of 1.8 billion gallon per day, or 27 percent. Close to what Putnam said. We should note that the projected is based on the assumption that the state's population will grow to almost 25 million by 2025. Currently, the state's population is estimated to be around 18.77 million. The projection also assumes that the government will be responsible for providing water for everyone in the state. Both those assumptions could, of course, change between now and 2025. ""As Florida continues to grow, pressure is put on the water resources of the state and the need to ensure these resources are available for future generations becomes increasingly important,"" the state wrote in its 2010 Annual Report on Regional Water Supply Planning. ""Floridians have always enjoyed a quality of life that is inextricably linked to the health of our water resources. Tourists come here to enjoy pristine beaches, swim in our freshwater springs, and experience unique fishing opportunities. Florida's water resources also support large agricultural industries. If Florida did not maintain its high quality natural systems, the effects would be felt throughout the entire economy."" To be sure, the DEP and the state's five water management districts have been preparing for the uptick. The water management districts are required by law to develop and update regional water supply plans every five years.
+
+And they have already identified, developed or are developing projects to help close the gap.
+
+In 2005, the Legislature created the Water Protection and Sustainability Trust Fund and designated $100 million to be used to promote the development of alternative water supplies. The state set aside another $117 million over three years in 2006, 2007 and 2008. The Legislature stopped funding the program in 2009, the DEP said.
+
+The investment, however, helped water management districts provide funding assistance for 327 water saving projects, which will help create approximately 761 million gallons a day of ""new water"" available for consumptive use. That's close to 40 percent of the water expected to be needed by 2025.
+
+Most of the projects focus on adding reclaimed water capacity or demineralizing brackish groundwater.
+
+The work already being done by the state and water management districts is an important caveat when considering Putnam's comments because he makes it sound like the state has to find 2 billion gallons of water a day by 2025. In reality, the state already has projects on the book that get the state a portion of the way there.
+
+Yet, Florida has a ways to go. Putnam is right, based on the latest estimates Florida will use about 2 billion more gallons of water a day in 2025 than the state did in 2005. But the state and the five state water management districts have started planning for it, and already have identified water construction projects that will help meet some of the increasing demand. We rate Putnam's statement Mostly True."
+"A new political mailer from the Committee to Protect Florida attacks State House District 45 candidate Kathryn Starkey of New Port Richey for her record on taxes, citing her role on a water district board and her support of the Penny for Pasco, a 2004 increase in the county sales tax.
+
+The committee is headed up by Rockie Pennington, a political consultant for Richard Corcoran, one of Starkey’s two opponents in the Aug. 24 Republican primary. (Fabian Calvo is also on the ballot.)
+
+""Taxin’ Kathryn,"" says the mailer sent in early August 2010. ""With Kathryn Starkey’s record on taxes here at home, how can we trust her -- or afford her -- in Tallahassee?""
+
+We wondered, can you trust the mailer’s claims? We looked at three claims, and this Truth-O-Meter item tackles her attendance at meetings. Other items are here on her voting record for river board tax rates, and here on her actions involving the Pasco sales tax.
+
+We looked at the claim that ""As a member of the Pinellas-Anclote River Basin Board, Kathryn Starkey had the opportunity to fight for lower taxes in 14 separate budget meetings between 2002 and 2008. But ... She only attended half of those meetings!""
+
+Pennington said he based that claim on minutes from the basin board’s meetings. We took a look, too.
+
+We looked at two budget meetings each year: June, when the basin board typically sets its preliminary tax rate, and August, when it takes a final vote. (In 2007, the final vote was taken in July.)
+
+Starkey served on the board from June 2002 through April 2008, so we looked only at the 12 budget-related meetings that fell within that period. (Pennington, who put together his mailer a month ago, said he wasn’t sure why we came up with different counts for the meetings.)
+
+Of 12 budget meetings she could have attended, Starkey attended seven (five of those seven were the final votes). That attendance record is more than half — by a hair.
+
+We rate this claim Mostly True."
+"This one had us wondering.Vernon Jones, a Democratic candidate for Georgia's 4th Congressional District, discussed his environmental credentials at a recent candidate forum. He pointed to a program created during his days as DeKalb County's chief executive officer. In July 2005, the DeKalb County Board of Commissioners approved Jones' plan to convert methane gas into electricity from one of its landfills and sell it to Georgia Power.""I have a record on the environment of creating green energy by capturing methane gas at our landfills and selling it to Georgia Power and they in return selling it back as green energy -- taking trash and turning it into cash,"" Jones told the audience at the June 3 candidate forum in southeast Atlanta.It's been five years since the county government signed on with Georgia Power. So we decided to take a look at the initiative and see how it's working out. Is DeKalb, as Jones claimed, ""taking trash and turning it into cash""?First, a brief explanation on how this works. Landfill gas is largely composed of methane and carbon dioxide. By burning gas in boilers, Georgia Power can produce steam for power generation, according to its Web site. The company said the landfills can produce as many as 8 megawatts of electric power, enough to power eight Super Wal-Marts. More than 500 agencies across the nation have similar programs. DeKalb is doing it at the Seminole landfill, located near the county's southern edge.The environment is a big issue for Jones, who was CEO from 2001 through 2008. Jones won several awards for his efforts to preserve more green space in the county, primarily through a $125 million bond referendum that voters approved in 2001.Jones is also hoping to capitalize on a major concern in Georgia -- unemployment. His campaign slogan is ""Jobs First,"" and Jones is trying to convince voters that some of his economic development efforts, like the gas to energy program, are reasons why they should give him a shot in Washington. The state's unemployment rate in May was 10.2 percent. It was 9.5 percent a year earlier.In 2006, the county built a facility to convert the gas to electricity at a cost of $5.3 million. DeKalb has since spent $1.6 million on maintenance and operations, county spokeswoman Angela Walton said.And how much has DeKalb collected from the program? Walton said $3.9 million thus far. DeKalb projects it will collect nearly $1.1 million this year and slightly more in 2011.Some environmental protection groups, such as the Sierra Club, dispute the potential profit margin for DeKalb and other facilities that convert gas to electricity. They said the operating costs will eventually exceed profits when governments spend more money to pay for the environmental impact of methane -- which has high global warming potential -- leaking during the conversion process. (The Sierra Club said a higher percentage of methane leaks into the atmosphere when you convert gas to electricity.) The Sierra Club's board of directors voted last year to oppose the creation of any new landfill gas-to-energy facilities.""Methane is a dangerous gas that needs to be controlled,"" said Mark Woodall, the Sierra Club's Georgia chapter chairman. ""It doesn't need to be regarded as the answer to all renewable energy needs.""For the record, the Sierra Club has endorsed the incumbent congressman, Hank Johnson, in this race. Since 2006, DeKalb has spent about $6.9 million on the gas-to-electricity program. It has collected $3.9 million in revenue in that time span, with an estimated $2.1 million on the way in the next two years.Most business ventures have start-up costs, and DeKalb had some in this project. The revenue is on pace to soon exceed the start-up costs and expenses. DeKalb is, Jones said, converting ""trash into cash."" We rate this claim as Mostly True."
+"While discussing the continuing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico recently on Meet the Press, David Gregory asked Senator Mary Landrieu, ""Is there a problem here of a learning curve, Senator?"" Gregory added that ""we know the federal government's not equipped to stop the, the spill or plug the leak. You've got to have that level of expertise. But it does seem, and Thad Allen even referred to that in The Wall Street Journal this week, as if there is a learning curve because nobody's got the experience to deal with a large-scale spill like this."" ""We're all on a learning curve,'' Landrieu responded. ""I learned this week that Canada ... for instance, does spills into their water to practice in the event that this would happen. That is not allowed in the United States. Maybe we should think about that."" She added that ""this is like going through something where we've never had a fire drill."" We were curious about the two related claims: Whether Canada does such practice sessions in open water, and whether the United States does not. Canada does practice controlled oil spills in the open water. In a congressional hearing featuring Kevin Costner, the woman sitting to his left, Dr. Nancy Kinner, the co-director of the Coastal Response Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, mentioned that both Canada and Norway have controlled oil spills so that they can test new technologies. The United States does not share that capability with their neighbor to the north, according to Kinner. ""The United States is the only country that does oil spill R&D that has no opportunity to actually have on-water controlled spills to test technology,"" Kinner told members of Congress. The Minerals Management Service confirms that ""the U.S. prohibits training with real oil in the open ocean or conducting testing of equipment, technologies or methodologies with real oil in the open ocean. In North America testing, training and research using real oil is conducted in test tanks and in laboratories."" According to the Evironmental Protection Agency, it is technically possible to obtain a permit to spill oil on the open ocean through the EPA, but that type of permit has not been granted for at least 20 years. As of now, the main training capability inside the U.S. is the National Oil Spill Response Research & Renewable Energy Test Facility, also known as Ohmsett. Real oil is used inside the training facility, but that is an enclosed system. The advantages of the Ohmsett system include the ability to control for all variables, allowing participants to test in a variety of different conditions. However, many experts, including Kinner, believes there is value to testing in the real world. ""I think we need to open up that possibility,'' she said, ""that we have small releases where we can have open water testing, outside of Ohmsett, to test the in real world conditions, instead of in a big test tank."" The U.S. does have the Ohmsett's testing facility, and MMS has participated in the open-water exercises in Canada and Norway, so Landrieu overstates the situation when she says it is the equivalent to never having a fire drill. Landrieu is right when she says that Canada practices in open water for oil spills, and that such testing is de facto prohibited here because the EPA has not issued a permit in two decades. Still, the application process does exist. It remains legally possible to ask for permission. So we rate this statement Mostly True."
+"The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has focused attention on the nation's energy portfolio. In an appearance on the June 20, 2010, edition of NBC's Meet the Press, Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., said, ""We only have 2 percent of the oil reserves in the world, and we consume 25 percent of the world's oil on a daily basis. That is nonsustainable.""We won't pass judgment on whether it's sustainable or not, since that's a matter of opinion. But we did think it would be worth checking Markey's facts, especially since this comparison has become something of a Democratic talking point. President Barack Obama said something similar in his Oval Office address to the nation on June 15, 2010. The president's phrasing differed slightly, saying that the United States consumes ""more than 20 percent"" of the world’s oil, rather than ""25 percent.""We looked to the Energy Information Administration -- the nonpartisan Energy Department office that publishes the most complete set of statistics on U.S. energy use -- to confirm these numbers.For U.S. oil reserves, we turned to EIA's ""World Liquid Fuels Analysis to 2030."" A table in this report showed that, as of Jan. 1, 2009, the U.S. has 21.3 billion barrels of oil reserves. That's about 1.6 percent of the world total which, rounded up, would be 2 percent, as Markey said. (For the curious, that ranks the U.S. 12th in the world in reserves, with the top five being, in order, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Iran, Iraq and Kuwait.)As for the second claim, about U.S. consumption, we turned to EIA's country-by-country summaries of petroleum consumption. The most recent figures, available for 2008, are preliminary. These show that the U.S. consumed 19,498,000 barrels per day, compared to 85,462,000 for the world as a whole -- or 22.8 percent. That's a bit lower than Markey's 25 percent. But we'll add that in 2006 and 2007, the U.S. share of world consumption was 24 percent, which is just a hair under the number Markey cited.All told, Markey would have been better off using Obama's formulation -- that the U.S. consumes ""more than 20 percent"" of the world's oil. But he's still close. We rate his statement Mostly True."
+"In his June 15, 2010, Oval Office address responding to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, President Barack Obama touched on the dysfunctional record of the Minerals Management Service, the Interior Department office responsible for both collecting revenues from resource extraction on federal property and regulating drilling companies on those lands.""One place we’ve already begun to take action is at the agency in charge of regulating drilling and issuing permits, known as the Minerals Management Service,"" Obama said. ""Over the last decade, this agency has become emblematic of a failed philosophy that views all regulation with hostility -- a philosophy that says corporations should be allowed to play by their own rules and police themselves. At this agency, industry insiders were put in charge of industry oversight. Oil companies showered regulators with gifts and favors, and were essentially allowed to conduct their own safety inspections and write their own regulations.""We decided to focus on Obama's claim that ""oil companies showered regulators with gifts and favors, and were essentially allowed to conduct their own safety inspections and write their own regulations.""To analyze this statement, we decided to break it down into three parts.• Did oil companies offer ""gifts and favors"" to regulators? There's ample evidence that they did, at least in one Gulf coast office that was investigated. The most recent report of the Interior Department's Inspector General, released on May 25, 2010, found that employees of oil companies regulated by MMS footed the bill for a wide range of perks for employees of MMS' Lake Charles, La., district office. These included hunting and fishing trips; football games; and lunches. In a number of cases, the IG report named specific employees who acknowledged receiving gifts. This year's report followed a series of other IG reports that found a pattern of ethical violations -- including MMS employees' acceptance of free travel, sports tickets and ski outings -- in the agency's royalty-in-kind office. That office oversaw the collection of royalties from oil companies but did not do the kind of industry safety and environmental regulation that Obama was referring to in his Oval Office speech.Either way, this claim by the president seems to be based on solid evidence.• Were oil companies ""essentially allowed to conduct their own safety inspections""? There's also evidence that this happened, from testimony before a joint hearing conducted by the U.S. Coast Guard and the MMS after the spill began.In an account of the hearings, the Washington Post reported that the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that caught fire and sunk ""was registered in the Marshall Islands, a Pacific archipelago that like many jurisdictions, authorizes private organizations such as ... Det Norske Veritas to inspect vessels that operate under its flag. The owners of the oil rigs decide which of those organizations to hire, and they pay for the services.""The Post reported that when Thomas F. Heinan, deputy commissioner of maritime affairs for the Marshall Islands, was asked whether that arrangement presented a conflict of interest, he answered, ""In some persons' minds it might, but it's been a long-standing facility that's been in place for years.""The Post also reported that Coast Guard Capt. Verne B. Gifford testified that while the U.S. Coast Guard inspects oil rigs, ""it relies on the private inspectors to do the bulk of the work"" when those rigs are foreign-flagged. For those platforms, Gifford testified, the Coast Guard ""goes onboard the vessel just to verify,"" a process that ""usually takes maybe four to eight hours,"" the Post reported.This addresses inspections overseen by the Coast Guard, but there's also evidence -- somewhat less solid -- that something similar may have been happening with MMS, which was the main target of the president's comments.The IG report on MMS' Lake Charles, La., district office said that a confidential source ""told investigators that some MMS inspectors had allowed oil and gas production company personnel located on the platform to fill out inspection forms. The forms would then be completed or signed by the inspector and turned in for review. According to the source, operating company personnel completed the inspection forms using pencils, and MMS inspectors would write on top of the pencil in ink and turn in the completed form.""But while the confidential source's allegation was credible enough to include in the report, the IG's office stopped short of confirming the allegation, saying that their investigation of the original forms failed to assure them that the over-writing they found stemmed from fraudulent actions.• Were oil companies allowed to write their own regulations? This one is the murkiest of the three.In a May 10, 2010, article for McClatchy Newspapers, reporters Les Blumenthal and Erika Bolstad wrote that nearly 100 standards put together by the American Petroleum Institute -- the oil industry's trade group -- have made their way into federal offshore operating regulations. When we asked Blumenthal and Bolstad for their original source, they pointed us to a Jan 11, 2010, issue of the Federal Register.The Register -- the official daily listing of notices from federal agencies -- reported that the MMS ""is incorporating by reference the Eleventh Edition of the American Petroleum Institute's Specification for Subsurface Safety Valve Equipment (API Spec 14A) into its regulations."" It went on to explain that ""we currently incorporate by reference 97 private sector consensus standards into the offshore operating regulations.""We asked experts in federal regulation whether this sort of industry-agency collaboration was unusual, and whether it supported the president's assertion that the petroleum industry was writing its own regulations.James Gattuso, a senior research fellow in regulatory policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said that this sort of technical standards-writing ""happens all the time."" ""It is quite common for regulatory agencies to adopt standards drafted, or already in use, in the private sector,"" he said. ""It is especially common in very technical areas where specific expertise in the technologies involved is needed. Agencies, of course, should be wary of self-serving or anti-competitive provisions in such standards, and should use their own judgment in adopting them. But that doesn’t make the use of such standards generally inappropriate.""Cynthia R. Farina, a Cornell University law professor and the principal investigator for the Cornell eRulemaking Initiative, agreed, saying, ""It's not unheard of for agencies to adopt voluntary consensus standards for the content of federal regulation.""It's also worth noting that the API's standards weren't slipped into federal rules at midnight in some smoke-filled room. The proposed rule was published on June 12, 2008, and for the next two months, the public had an opportunity to comment. Farina added that the regulation in question was put into place using a process that requires the Interior Department to consult with a variety of other government entities.As it turns out, only two entities did offer comments on this rule -- Baker Oil Tools and the Offshore Operators Committee. Farina calls this ""a huge problem with rulemaking in general. Certainly the absence of comments from environmentalists and neutral researchers in the area would exacerbate concerns about industry 'writing its own regulations.'""Still, MMS can't be blamed for poor response to its call for comments. That's why we think that while Obama was on solid ground with his accusations that MMS regulators were ""showered ... with gifts and favors"" and that oil companies ""were essentially allowed to conduct their own safety inspections,"" the notion that industry wrote its own regulations is not a slam-dunk. While Obama is technically correct that the oil industry did in several dozen cases ""write their own regulations,"" our experts agreed that industry/regulator collaboration is common across federal agencies, at least for technical matters, and that it was done in an open way that included the opportunity for public comment. As a whole, then, we rate the president's comment Mostly True."
+"At a Congressional hearing looking at how oil companies respond to oil spills, here was an unlikely claim: Exxon Mobil's emergency plan for dealing with an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has 40 pages on how to deal with the media, but only nine pages on how to clean up a spill.The statement sounded improbable to us. Isn't answering media questions easier than cleaning up a major oil spill? So we decided to check it out. The hearings, held June 16, 2010, were aimed at letting members of Congress grill the oil executives on their plans, and they were held by the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif. Another Congressman, Bart Stupak, was particularly concerned about how similar the clean-up plans of all the major oil companies seemed to be. ""It could be said that BP is the one bad apple in the bunch,"" Stupak said. ""But, unfortunately, they appear to have plenty of company. Exxon and other oil companies are just as unprepared to respond to a major oil spill in the Gulf as BP.""He singled out Exxon Mobil, though, for particular criticism. Unlike the rest of the companies, Stupak said, Exxon Mobil devoted 40 pages to how to handle the media, everything from suggested statements to pre-written press releases to instructions on directing questions about global warning and the Exxon Valdez spill to corporate headquarters. ""While Exxon Mobil has 40 pages on its media response strategy, its plan for resource protection is only five pages long and its plan for oil removal is just nine pages long,"" Stupak said.""If a public affairs officer is asked about criminal charges, the plan instructs them to say, 'We believe that there are no grounds for such charges. This was clearly an accident and we are working to respond to the immediate needs of the incident,' "" the Michigan Democrat added. ""That talking point is ready to go before a hypothetical incident even occurs, before Exxon Mobil could have any idea of whether it was actually an accident or if there are any grounds for criminal charges. In short, Exxon Mobil has meticulously anticipated virtually every conversation that the company might need to have with the media in the days following an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.""The committee released the reports of the companies as part of their investigation. So we reviewed Exxon Mobil's 663-page plan to see if Stupak's description was accurate or exaggerated for effect. First, we'll look at the section on how Exxon handles the media. It starts on page 557 with Appendix K and continues to page 596. That's 39 pages. And just as Stupak said, it contains detailed outlines for roles and responsibilities involving the media. Questions about global warming and the Exxon Valdez are categorized as including ""sensitive corporate issues"" that should be handled by Exxon headquarters.""Category D requires referral to EMCorp for response and should not be included in press releases or response statements issued from site/region or Functional HQ,"" the document said. The appendix also includes sample press releases and suggested statements for an index of topics. Yes, it does have the pre-written denial of grounds for criminal charges. So Stupak is right about the press section of the document. BP's media section, by the way, is only six pages long. Chevron's is five pages, ConocoPhillips' is five pages and Shell's is four pages.Next, we looked at Section 13 in the Exxon plan, which is ""Resource Protection Methods."" It runs from pages 330 to 334, which is five pages. It includes a list of things the company might do to protect wildlife, everything from the deployment of several types of booms, using chemical dispersants and ""in situ"" burning (burning oil to prevent spreading) to removing sea turtle nests and playing the recorded sounds of live birds. We also looked at Section 15, ""Oil and Debris Removal Procedures."" It runs from pages 350 to 358, or nine pages. It includes some of the same elements as the previous section, including the use of booms, chemical dispersants and burning.So Stupak is largely correct in his descriptions. We did notice that a few of the elements described in those sections, though, were explained in greater length in other sections of the report. There are an additional seven pages on wildlife rehabilitation, an additional 23 pages on using chemical dispersants, and another 14 pages on burning. So that's an additional 44 pages.We asked Exxon Mobil for a response on Stupak's charges, but we didn't hear back. During the hearing, Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson didn't directly address why the media section was so long. But he did defend the fact that all of the oil companies' plans are highly similar to BP's plan.""You know, the aspect of the plan, the cookie-cutter characterization, should not come as much of a surprise, because the industry has relied on sharing of resources -- boats, booms, skimmer equipment. And in working with the Coast Guard and federal agencies, what we really should have is a unified plan. Because it doesn't matter whose well has the problem, when it has the problem, we need to be able to respond with everything we have available. So those plans look the same because in fact they call upon the same resources to respond,"" Tillerson said.In rating Stupak's statement, we find he is largely accurate in his description that the Exxon Mobil plan ""has 40 pages on its media response strategy"" while its plan for resource protection ""is only five pages long and its plan for oil removal is just nine pages long."" We did notice that other sections of the plan expand on some of the topics listed in resource protection and oil removal. Nevertheless, Exxon's media plan is highly detailed and lengthy, particularly when compared with the other oil company plans and other sections of its own report. So we rate Stupak's statement Mostly True."
+"Bill White, the Democratic nominee for governor, recently blasted his opponent's environmental record, saying in a May 17 press release: ""Rick Perry attempted to fast-track unnecessary coal-fired power plants, which degrade air quality and would cost billions. Fortunately, a court stopped him."" We wondered if White's salvo is on target. Some history: Perry issued his so-called fast-tracking order Oct. 27, 2005, ""to encourage diversity of energy supply."" The order told the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which is responsible for judging requests for permits to pollute the air, to ""prioritize and expedite the processing of environmental permit applications that are protective of the public health and environment and propose to use Texas' natural resources to generate electrical power."" The order, issued as natural gas prices climbed and after Hurricane Katrina disrupted natural gas production, shortened administrative hearings on permits, which normally took about a year, to six months. At the time, Perry said he was hoping to spare electricity consumers from rate shocks due to the surging price of natural gas. A few months later, TXU Corp., a Dallas-based energy company, announced plans to double its power production by building eight coal-fired units. Company executives were joined by Perry at their April 2006 press conference, according to the Dallas Morning News. The company, which had submitted a permit application for two new coal-units in July 2005 and had plans to build another unit permitted by the state in 2003, said it would cost $10 billion to complete all 11 units. TXU also promised to cut emissions of pollutants including sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide and mercury by 20 percent, saying it would spend $500 million on equipment to control pollution at three of its existing coal-fired units in Texas. In a Sept. 8, 2006, press release, Perry defended his order and TXU's proposal, saying ""the TXU plants are important to diversifying our energy supply so Texans do not face rate shock every time natural gas prices spike up."" TXU was then the state's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, one of several greenhouse gases widely thought to be fueling global warming. The utility acknowledged the proposed plants would emit 78 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, in addition to the 55 million tons per year company plants were already emitting, according to the Morning News. Where was White as Perry aligned with TXU? As Houston's mayor, White opposed the eight proposed units as a member of the Texas Cities for Clean Air Coalition, which was formed by then-Dallas Mayor Laura Miller in August 2006 to challenge coal-fired power plant pollution. In September 2006, the Houston Chronicle quoted White saying: ""We need to make sure that power plants built for today have minimal emissions and contributions to global warming, the greenhouse gases, where we will see increasing regulation in this country, and in other countries, in the future."" TXU and anti-coal groups faced off for and against the proposed plants, while four groups consisting of people living near proposed plant sites sued Perry, calling his executive order unconstitutional. And in February 2007, a state district judge blocked it, saying Perry overstepped his constitutional authority in ""directing a hearing officer to hold a hearing and reach a decision by a particular deadline."" The judge issued an injunction that restored power to administrative law judges to delay a hearing on TXU's permit application. The judges then postponed the hearing until June of that year. Next came a big twist. In the following months, TXU was bought out by private owners, who quickly withdrew requests for permits to build eight of the 11 coal-fired units. In June 2007, the commission granted a permit for the two surviving units, going against an administrative judge's recommendation that the agency reconsider its approval after TXU failed to prove that technology to be used at the plant would effectively control emissions. Of late, Texas utilities — not including Luminant (formerly TXU) — are seeking permits for five more proposed coal-fired and petroleum coke-fired plants. So, Perry issued his speed-up order, which was canceled by a judge, as White says. Also as he says, the 11 coal-fired power units that TXU wanted to construct were expected to cost billions. Finally, let's circle back to White's contention that the plants were unnecessary. That's debatable. In 2006, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which manages the power grid that serves most of Texas, forecast that the state needed fuel diversity to offset its dependence on natural gas, and new sources of energy to keep up with electricity demand — a tenet of Perry's 2005 order. However, anti-coal opponents who led the lawsuit against Perry's order argue that even if the state needed to generate more electricity, it should have come from cleaner energy sources such as wind power. Nathan Melson, president of Citizens Organizing for Resources and Environment, a nonprofit that organized in 2006 against TXU's proposed coal-fired plant in Savoy (about 70 miles north of Dallas), and one of the groups that sued Perry said: ""We've all got to have electricity and we all have to live, but we ought to be looking at other technology out there."" Another indicator: Whether electricity demand would have been met without the requested plants. Generally, ERCOT says, a reserve margin of at least 12.5 percent above the state's peak electricity demand is necessary to spare Texas customers frequent power outages. Theresa Gage, an ERCOT representative, told us she didn't know of any instance when ERCOT has operated below the reserve margin. ""However, in 2006, projections showed that by 2009, with no new generation brought online... ERCOT would drop below the 12.5 percent margin,"" she said. ""The 11 TXU plants — the three that were built and the eight that were not — would all have contributed to pushing the reserve margin to and above 12.5 percent."" In the meantime, other power sources have filled the gap. Some 127 units have come online since 2006, adding 14,494 megawatts of power to the state's grid. About half of the added capacity is coming from wind energy, which generates 7,318 megawatts of power, trailed by gas (4,251 megawatts) and coal (2,913 megawatts). ""We're where we need to be,"" Gage said. And On White's campaign spokeswoman Katy Bacon said that because Texas has generation capacity greatly exceeding ERCOT's recommended reserve margin, the state never needed the eight plants contemplated by TXU. In contrast, Catherine Frazier, a spokeswoman for Perry's campaign, said that ""construction of some of those (TXU-sought) plants is precisely why we're not looking at power shortages today."" The three TXU coal-fired units that ended up getting built provide a combined 2,141 megawatts of power, according to ERCOT. ""If you remove them from the calculation, then we are below the 12.5 percent margin starting in 2013, and below the 10 percent margin by 2015,"" Frazier said, citing ERCOT's projections. Unsaid: One of those units Frazier referenced had a permit two years before Perry issued his order and TXU had already applied for permits for the other two. His order didn't affect the first plant, but the other two stood to benefit from the expedited process, according to the TCEQ. Where does all this leave White's statement? Perry tried to speed up the environmental-permitting process for utilities and his order was later blocked by a court. Also, those plants would have cost billions. Whether the plants were unnecessary, as White puts it, depends on whose argument rings your bell. White is right in that plants fueled by other sources helped satisfy the state's electricity needs. Yet he's wrong if the few coal-fired plants that were completed helped Texas avoid a demand crisis. We're calling it a draw. The standoff on the question of necessity leaves White's statement Mostly True."
+"As anger grows over the massive, uncontained oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the procedure for issuing federal drilling permits for the Gulf Coast has begun to attract intense scrutiny. During a May 27, 2010, press conference, President Barack Obama -- under pressure for the failure to stem the underwater leak -- laid a large portion of the blame on the existing law that governs the permitting process, as well as the regulations to implement that law, which were drawn up by the Minerals Management Service, the Interior Department office that oversees oil and gas leases.""What's also been made clear from this disaster is that, for years, the oil and gas industry has leveraged such power that they have effectively been allowed to regulate themselves,"" Obama said. ""One example, under current law, the Interior Department has only 30 days to review an exploration plan submitted by an oil company. That leaves no time for the appropriate environmental review. The result is, they are continually waived. And this is just one example of a law that was tailored by the industry to serve their needs instead of the public's. So Congress needs to address these issues as soon as possible, and my administration will work with them to do so.""We wondered whether the president is correct that the law mandates such a short period for an environmental review.The law in question is the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act. The law was originally passed in 1953, though the amendments relevant to the Obama's statement were added in 1978.Under the law, a proposal to drill must pass through several stages before it can be approved. First, the Interior Department must choose the locations it will open to leasing. Then, the department puts those areas up for lease. Once a lease is purchased by an energy company, the leaseholder must submit an ""exploration plan"" to the Interior Secretary before exercising its right to drill. Interior Department regulations specify that the regional supervisor of MMS has 15 working days after receiving a proposed plan to rule a submission packet complete. At that point, a 30-day clock starts ticking. If the secretary finds problems during this period, modifications can be ordered or, if modifications are insufficient to solve the problem, the lease can be canceled. But if the secretary finds the plan acceptable, it must be approved within that same 30-day window.So Obama is correct about the law's 30-day limit. He's also correct that complete waivers of environmental impact reviews are common. The Interior Department says that in recent years, MMS has granted 250 to 400 waivers annually for Gulf of Mexico projects alone. (The department was unable to provide PolitiFact with the number of cases in which a waiver was not granted.) The Deepwater Horizon project had been given a ""categorical exclusion"" from detailed environmental review more than a year before the disaster occurred -- a decision that is supposed to be granted to projects that are expected to have minimal environmental impact.Meanwhile, on Obama's assertion that 30 days is too short a window to conduct a credible environmental review -- much less a plan to respond to a major malfunction -- many experts we spoke to agreed with the president. In general, then, Obama's statement is on target. But we think it's worth noting that the 30-day limit is not the only factor that explains the failure of MMS to study the environmental impact of Gulf of Mexico projects.The exploration plan Obama referenced is not the only environmental study that is supposed to be conducted during this process. Studies are also required when the lease locations are chosen and when the leases are sold, and they don't have statutory time limits.Critics say that, in their current form, these earlier-stage studies do not include enough detail on the specific drilling locations to qualify as a full-scale environmental assessment. But if MMS -- or Congress, or the industry -- had wanted to beef up these earlier studies as a way of getting around the 30-day limit, they could have done so. But they never did. In their absence, the courts have sometimes stepped in: In 2009, a federal appeals court threw out the initial five-year leasing plan for drilling in Alaska's Chukchi Sea, citing shortcomings in the plan's environmental assessment.Holly Doremus, a law professor at the University of California-Berkeley who has studied the MMS permitting process, called it ""a bit disingenuous"" for Obama to focus solely on the 30-day limit.""The categorical exclusion has never been formally justified by the short time line, and so far as I know MMS has never -- until after this blow-out -- asked Congress for more time to review exploration plans,"" she said in an interview. ""I think rather that MMS has thought, and acted, as if it didn't need to do detailed environmental review at the exploration plan stage"" because it does them at the two earlier stages. ""If that review were more thorough, and considered true worst-case scenarios, it might well be the case that 30 days would be enough to look at the environmental impacts of exploration in a particular location,"" she said.Meanwhile, some say that Congress ought to shoulder a portion of the blame for letting an inadequate permitting process fester for more than 30 years.""If that is too short for a review, then Congress should change it,"" Gary Wolfram, an economics and public policy professor at Hillsdale College. ""My suspicion is that, as with all central planners, Congress doesn’t know the proper amount of time it takes to review a project.'' Belatedly, Congress -- prodded, also belatedly, by the Obama administration -- is looking to change the rules. On May 11, 2010, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar released a legislative package that includes a proposal to eliminate the 30-day deadline. ""Changing this 30-day mandatory deadline to a 90-day timeline that can be further extended to complete environmental and safety reviews, as needed, would provide MMS more time to conduct additional environmental analysis on an exploration plan,"" the department said in its announcement.Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, sought to attach the change to a supplemental spending bill before the congressional Memorial Day recess, but the effort was unsuccessful. Supporters vow to push on. ""I am not aware of any pending free-standing legislation on this, but I do know that Congress will revisit the topic when it gets back,"" said Bill Wicker, a spokesman for Bingaman.Ultimately, Obama was correct on everything he said about the law -- the 30-day limit, the difficulties of conducting a full study in that time frame, and the frequent waivers. But we're marking him down slightly for implying that the 30-day limit tied the administration's hands. If the administration had wanted to change MMS procedures short of rewriting the law, it could have done so by proposing more stringent requirements for the other environmental assessments undertaken during the permitting process, which are not time-limited under the law. And it could have pushed earlier to rewrite the law. On balance, we rate his statement Mostly True."
+"Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal lamented the federal response to the state's plans to erect sand barriers to keep oil out of marshlands in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.Jindal talked about a meeting he had had with President Obama where Jindal explained what the state wanted from the feds.""The area we spent the most time was on our plan, the state's plan, to build sand booms to keep this oil out of our wetlands. Now, we have said for weeks now we'd much rather fight this oil on a sandy barrier island than fighting inside our wetlands. We've got miles and miles of these islands that have been eroded by Katrina, by storms, and over time. We proposed a plan, 24 segments, to rebuild, to refortify these islands. After weeks -- and if they'd approved this when we first asked, we could have built 10 miles, 10 miles of sand barriers.""Host Jake Tapper interjected here: ""The president says that more is not always better, and the Army Corps of Engineers took the request seriously, evaluated it, decided it was okay for certain areas, but they didn't necessarily think immediately the plan that was suggested was the right plan. Is that not a fair response?""""Yesterday, the Army Corps of Engineers approved 6 segments out of 24, over 40 miles out of 100,"" Jindal replied. ""But here's where our concern was: The federal government only ordered BP to pay for to do one of those six segments. That's 2 miles out of 100. Our message to the president today was: Make BP pay for this. The federal government shouldn't be making excuses for BP. This is their spill, their oil. They're the responsible party. Make them responsible.""We wanted to check Jindal's claim that the federal government only ordered BP to pay ""to do one of those six segments."" The Obama administration has said over and over that the oil company BP will pay for the clean up, and we wondered how to reconcile that with Jindal's statements.It turns out that Jindal is right about BP paying for one of six segments of sand barriers, but there's more to the story. As Tapper's comment suggested, the feds aren't so keen on the idea of building sand berms. Federal agencies are chiefly concerned that they can't be constructed quickly enough to intercept the oil, and that they will divert money and attention from other efforts.Nevertheless, on Thursday, May 27, 2010, U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen said the government would give permission for the construction of six barriers and authorize BP to pay for one, as a test to see if the barrier plan is feasible. That one barrier would cost $16 million and be paid for by BP or the federal Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund.""Louisiana's original proposal called for the dredging of more than 92 million cubic yards of material over a six to nine month period to build temporary barrier islands,"" said a statement issued by the Deepwater Horizon Unified Command. The group approved a more limited project because ""implementation of the proposal in all areas approved by the Army Corps of Engineers, in the midst of an active spill, would not be prudent or provide effective protection—especially considering the complications of a major construction project occurring in the midst of a response encompassing more than 20,000 personnel and 1,300 vessels.""The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers listed 33 separate conditions that had to be met, including protections for navigation channels and wildlife.Allen said the approval was meant as a test case. ""There are a lot of doubts whether this is a valid oil spill response technique, given the length of construction and so forth,"" he said. ""But we're not averse to attempting this as a prototype."" Some environmentalists also criticized initial proposals for dredging sand for the barriers too close to shore, according to a report in the Times-Picayune newspaper. After changes were made to address those concerns, the cost estimates for the barriers rose from $250 million to $350 million.The state government could move to build the barriers with state money, but Jindal has rejected that idea without a guarantee of reimbursement.So Jindal is right that the federal government has authorized payment for only one of six barriers. But he leaves out the fact that the government has doubts about the plan and whether it will work or not, and the first barrier is meant as a test case. We rate his statement Mostly True."
+"This week, world leaders are meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark, to try to hammer out a global climate accord.
+ 
+Washington Post  columnist Eugene Robinson had this to say about the upcoming summit in his Dec. 1, 2009, column:
+ 
+""When the Copenhagen climate summit convenes next week, the European nations that have led the crusade against global warming will be able to report that the continent has met the targets for carbon-emission reductions set in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. There may be shoulder dislocations from all the self-congratulatory back-patting,"" Robinson wrote. ""But the Kyoto targets were well on the way toward being met before they were even established. The targets are based on 1990 emissions levels -- after the Soviet Union and the East Bloc had been fouling the air for years with their antiquated, carbon-spewing heavy industries. When the communist regimes -- and their creaky economies -- collapsed in a heap, emissions from the former Soviet-dominated zone fell by nearly 40 percent. ... This post-Soviet industrial meltdown is responsible for most of the progress in reducing carbon emissions that Europe is able to claim.""
+ 
+Like Robinson, we expect the next 10 days to be full of complicated discussion about carbon emissions and reductions -- and a lot of boasting by the United States, Europe and other countries about all they're doing to slow climate change. So his claim about emissions reductions in former Soviet territory intrigued us.
+ 
+But before we dig into this statement, a little background on the meeting in Copenhagen will be useful. It's arguably the most important climate gathering since 1997, when participating countries adopted the Kyoto Protocol in Kyoto, Japan. Collectively, 38 industrialized countries -- otherwise known as Annex B countries -- committed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5 percent below 1990 levels. At the time, 15 of those countries were members of the nascent European Union. The rest included Canada, Australia, and a handful of Eastern European countries recently liberated from the former Soviet Union; the protocol refers to these nations as ""economies in transition.""
+ 
+The United States never ratified the treaty. In fact, according to data from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Web site -- an international treaty written in 1992 meant to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations  -- our emissions have increased 17 percent over 1990 levels.
+ 
+The protocol went into force in 2005, and it expires in 2012. So, world leaders are gathering in Copenhagen with the hope of laying the groundwork for the next round of emissions reductions. However, it's unclear what will actually be accomplished at the meeting. Congress has been  slow to act  on a  cap-and-trade bill  , which was initially considered the United States' strongest bargaining chip. And negotiations haven't been helped by news of hacked e-mails between climate scientists at Climate Research Unit that skeptics say  show disagreement  on the seriousness of global warming.
+ 
+Historical data from the UNFCCC show that greenhouse gas emissions in Eastern Europe dropped dramatically after the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. For example, Ukraine's annual carbon dioxide emissions dropped from 715 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 1990 to 426 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 1994.
+ 
+All the experts we spoke with agreed this drop was due to the collapse of the Soviet Union. They also told us that a specific drop of ""nearly 40 percent"" was also in the ballpark. We asked Robinson, and he pointed us to  this post  on the Green Grok, a respected blog about environmental issues maintained by the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University, that includes a chart of emissions reductions derived from the most recent UNFCCC data. Indeed, in 2007, emissions from eastern European countries were still about 37 percent below 1990 levels, according to the blog.
+ 
+They agreed that Robinson's second point -- that the ""post-Soviet industrial meltdown is responsible for most of the progress in reducing carbon emissions that Europe is able to claim"" -- has some truth to it. But they also told us that the story is more complicated than Robinson makes it seem.
+ 
+Emissions in Europe have fallen for several reasons, said Michael Levi, director of the program on energy security and climate change for the Council on Foreign Relations. For example, during the 1990s, the United Kingdom switched from coal energy to natural gas, which helped trim emissions. And Europe's population has remained relatively flat.
+ 
+But more importantly, Europe has had some pretty serious policies in place to reduce emissions, Levi said, including a carbon trading plan and incentives for alternative energy production.
+ 
+""Overall, [Robinson's] point is correct, but it's overstated,"" he said.
+ 
+Prasad Kasibhatla, associate professor at Nicholas School, agreed.
+
+""The essence of the claim by Eugene Robinson is indeed correct,"" he wrote us in an e-mail. ""According to the latest year of reporting (2007), emission reductions in the EU-15 were driven largely by large reductions in Germany and the U.K. Part of the large reductions in Germany were driven by reunification with East Germany and part of the large reductions in the U.K. were driven by switch from coal to natural gas due to reforms of energy markets.""
+
+Those variables paired with new climate change policies have reduced emissions in Western European countries by 4 percent, according to UNFCCC data.
+
+In an e-mail, Robinson agreed that he may have glossed over that point.
+
+""The EU countries did reduce emissions by 4 percent; I gave them credit for holding emissions down but perhaps not enough credit for the actual reduction.""
+
+We also think it may have been more accurate for Robinson to clarify that the ""Europeans"" included the transitioning economies from the former Soviet bloc.
+
+But Robinson argued that his overall point stands.
+
+""The point I was trying to make, and I still believe it's valid, is that the Soviet bloc collapse created a huge, one-time fall-off in emissions that makes the numbers look better than they otherwise would against the Kyoto targets,"" he wrote.
+
+With that point, we concur. Our experts tell us that it's widely understood that the fall of the Soviet Union meant major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in Europe. But they also said that Robinson glosses over important points in his statement, including that many European Union countries have taken key steps to slow climate change. We give Robinson a Mostly True."
+"President Barack Obama says California is a role model for energy conservation. 
+
+
+In a June 29, 2009, speech to promote new light bulb efficiency standards, Obama said energy conservation will produce big results in the future, and cited California as an example.
+
+ 
+
+""In the late 1970s, the state of California enacted tougher energy-efficiency policies. Over the next three decades, those policies helped create almost 1.5 million jobs. And today, Californians consume 40 percent less energy per person than the national average — which, over time, has prevented the need to build at least 24 new power plants.""
+
+ 
+
+That paragraph is chock-full of claims to check, but for now, we're going to focus on the key point of Obama's statement: that because of long-standing energy efficiency standards, ""Californians consume 40 percent less energy per person than the national average.""
+
+ 
+
+The White House provided us with a 2008 report written by David Roland-Holst at the University of California-Berkeley to back up Obama's claim. It said that Californians' electricity consumption is 40 percent below the national average. Had Obama specified electricity, he would have been correct. California's low electricity consumption is widely known. More than three decades ago, the state adopted building and appliance efficiency standards, and it required that electricity profits be separate from the amount of energy sold. This prompted utilities to offer incentives to consumers who save energy. 
+
+ 
+
+Indeed, since the mid 70s, the amount of electricity used per person has grown by almost 50 percent in the rest of the country while California’s numbers remained relatively flat. For example, in 2006, electricity use in the entire country hovered around 12,000 kilowatt hours per person, while California's was approximately 7,000 kilowatt hours, according to a 2007 report by the the California Energy Commission, a branch of the state government. That's about 40 percent less than the national average.
+
+ 
+
+But Obama
+
+said
+
+""energy,"" which includes other sources in addition to electricity, so that is what we are checking.
+
+
+Our first stop was the Energy Information Agency, where we found that overall energy consumption per person in California is quite low. In 2006, individuals there used about 232 million Btu of energy, which includes natural gas, petroleum and coal.  The state's level was about 30 percent less than the national average of 333 Btu, which ranked the state 47th in the nation.
+
+
+Statemaster.com, a database that compares states by demographics and economics, shows a similar pattern based on statistics from 2001; then, California ranked 46th in per capita energy consumption.
+
+ 
+
+So Obama is correct with his underlying point that California's energy efficiency measures have reduced consumption dramatically, but he is off target with his statistic. It's actually 30 percent lower, not 40 percent as he said. We rate his claim Mostly True."
+"Floridians who support offshore drilling to rescue the crippled state budget will be disappointed, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., warned this week. The federal government limits what the offshore drilling revenues can be used for, Nelson said, and it doesn't include things like paying for public schools. ""I’ve had a few questions lately about this idea of Florida getting oil-drilling revenues to help with its sagging budget — and, things like schools,"" Nelson said in a statement on June 15, 2009. ""If you’re swayed by this argument and big oil’s latest push to put rigs off the tourism state, then you need to know something: oil money from federal leases cannot be used for that kind of stuff.  It can only be used to clean up the mess and damages from drilling.  Here’s how the law allows royalty money to be used: mitigation of effects from drilling activities through onshore infrastructure projects; associated planning and administrative costs; coastal protection; and, mitigation of damage to animals or natural resources. There you have it. No budget windfall. Fact is — oil money won’t build schools, or roads or pay teachers.  It’ll just 'mitigate' — slow down — the oil industry’s ruination of the fourth largest state’s economy and environment."" Some background: In the Gulf of Mexico, which is the focus of the debate over more oil production, offshore drilling is banned within 230 miles of Tampa Bay and 100 miles of the Florida Panhandle through 2022. But in early June, the U.S. Senate energy committee approved a measure to allow oil and gas drilling just 45 miles off Florida's west coast. Nelson strongly opposes drilling off Florida's coast, and has threatened to filibuster if the amendment is attached to a broader energy bill. Nelson includes a key caveat in his warning about how Florida might be able to spend royalties from drilling. He notes that he's talking about
+
+federal
+
+leases. That's important because the federal government generally controls waters more than 10 miles offshore, while Florida and some other states control the waters inside 10 miles. So if Florida allowed drilling within those 10, it could use proceeds from oil leases however it sees fit, including for teacher salaries. (There's also a provision where the state could get some money for leases between 10 and 13 miles.) Currently, four states receive money from federal royalties — Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Under federal law, that money can only be used for protecting and restoring the coast through projects such as conservation, coastal restoration, hurricane protection, and mitigation of damage to fish, wildlife, or natural resources. Nelson is generally correct about the requirements as they relate to those four states, said Eileen Angelico, a spokeswoman for the federal government's Gulf of Mexico Minerals Management Service. But you can't assume the same provisions will apply to Florida, she said. ""There's no guarantee that if Florida is added that it'll have to go along with the same rules,"" she said. ""(Congress) can write it however they want to."" We think there's also a danger that people will misinterpret Nelson's comments, to assume that he means Florida schools could not profit from
+
+any
+
+offshore drilling. The fact is, Florida schools might benefit quite a bit if the state decided to allow drilling within 10 miles of its coast. States like Texas and Louisiana have reaped billions of dollars for their schools from offshore drilling leases. Texas, for example, has reaped more than $3.5 billion in revenues from offshore drilling. Most of that comes from drilling within 10 miles the coast. The money goes into an education investment fund. Every year, the state taps that fund for $800 million for public schools, said Jim Suydam, a spokesman for the Texas General Land Office. It translates to about $400 per student, and is sometimes referred to as the school's textbook fund. Texas also will get more than $35 million this year from the federal government for its share of royalties on drilling more than 10 miles offshore, he said. That money is limited to mitigation. So in fact, some gulf states have gotten quite a bit of money for their schools for allowing oil drilling off their coast. But that's mostly from drilling very close to the coast, within 10 miles. Nelson correctly specifies that the restrictions apply to federal leases. And the legislation being considered by the Senate is for drilling at least 45 miles off the western coast of Florida (in other words, entirely federal waters). We think many people might miss that distinction, however. Nelson's strongly worded statement will probably leave them with the impression that Florida couldn't get
+
+any
+
+education money from any drilling, when it could opt to do what Texas has done and use revenue from drilling within 10 miles for education. He also is extrapolating the rules from other states to apply to Florida when in fact Congress still must address how the state would be affected. And it's conceivable that Congress could change the rules for Florida or the other states, and allow that money to be spent for broader uses. So we subtract a few points and give Nelson a Mostly True."
+"Now that Sen. John McCain has chosen a running mate, Democrats have a target. Within days of her ascension to the GOP ticket, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin came under attack by Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John Kerry for her environmental views. In an Aug. 31 interview on
+
+This Week with George Stephanopoulous,
+
+Kerry said this: ""With the choice of Gov. Palin, it's now the third term of Bush-Cheney, because what he's done is he's chosen somebody who actually doesn't believe that climate change is man-made."" Kerry's claim is supported by an answer Palin gave in an interview with Newsmax, a conservative news Web site. She was asked for her ""take on global warming and how it is affecting our country,"" in an Aug. 29 interview published on Newsmax.com. She said, ""A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I'm not one though who would attribute it to being man-made."" But McCain is. As we explained in this item,
+
+McCain was an early proponent of capping emissions
+
+to combat the impact of global warming, a position he has touted in a campaign commercial. Some other past statements by Palin suggest she has been undecided about whether humans are heating up the planet. An
+
+Anchorage Daily News
+
+candidate survey during Alaska's 2006 gubernatorial campaign that asked ""what role does state government have, if any, in addressing global warming and climate change,"" prompted Palin to answer, ""We need to analyze the potential economic costs, needs and opportunities associated with climate change. Let's be cautious in how we react – to make sure we don't overreact."" On Nov. 4, 2006, just before her election, the
+
+Anchorage Daily News
+
+quoted a Palin spokesman, Curtis Smith, as saying Palin was undecided about the cause of global warming. ""She's not totally convinced one way or the other,"" Smith said. In a
+
+New York Times
+
+op-ed published in January, Palin also signaled that she doesn't think scientists have made the case for human culpability. Palin said proponents of listing polar bears as an endangered species – which she opposes – were trying to ""force the government to either stop or severely limit any public or private action that produces, or even allows, the production of greenhouse gases. But the Endangered Species Act is not the correct tool to address climate change — the act itself actually prohibits any consideration of broader issues. Such limits should be adopted through an open process in which environmental issues are weighed against economic and social needs, and where scientists debate and present information that policymakers need to make the best decisions."" In her home state, which has seen significant changes in its glacial landscapes, Palin is addressing the climate change issue. In September 2007, she created a ""climate change subcabinet"" to prepare a state strategy to respond to global warming. In a report to Alaskans in July, Palin wrote that the subcabinet ""will also be making recommendations to me on how Alaskans can save energy and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. "" Palin's nod to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in the context of global warming would suggest she's not entirely closed off to the idea that the two are related. Still, Palin's Aug. 29 statement was pretty clear: she doesn't attribute global warming to man-made causes, despite a broad, global scientific consensus that human activity is responsible for climate change. We find Kerry's statement to be Mostly True. "
+"The amount of excess heat buried in the planet’s oceans, a strong marker of climate change, reached a record high in 2022, reflecting more stored heat energy than in any year since reliable measurements were available in the late 1950s, a group of scientists reported Wednesday. That eclipses the ocean heat record set in 2021 — which eclipsed the record set in 2020, which eclipsed the one set in 2019. And it helps to explain a seemingly ever-escalating pattern of extreme weather events of late, many of which are drawing extra fuel from the energy they pull from the oceans. “If we keep breaking records, it’s kind of like a broken record,” said John Abraham, a climate researcher at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota and one of the authors of the new research published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences. The planet’s air temperature has been rising for decades, but it wobbles up and down and does not set records every single year. Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service recently ranked 2022 as the fifth-hottest year on record for the atmosphere, with other expert rankings soon to follow. The ocean doesn’t do the same dance. It changes more slowly — and more deeply. As climate change takes hold, natural ocean variations in temperature matter less and less, Abraham said, leading to a string of consecutive records in recent years, with 2018 being the last year that was not a record. More than 90 percent of the excess warming that results from the planetary energy imbalance, in which more solar heating enters the Earth’s system than escapes again to space, winds up in the ocean, the researchers say. Scientists began their record of ocean heat in 1958 because it is when measurements became dense enough, and accurate enough, to give a full global picture of the temperature trends down to considerable depths. “Oceans contain an enormous amount of water, and compared to other substances, it takes a lot of heat to change the temperature of water,” Linda Rasmussen, a retired researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography who was not involved in the work, said in an email. “The fact that we’re seeing such clear increases in ocean heat content, extending over decades now, shows that there is a significant change underway.” The new research suggests that the rise in heat contained within the upper roughly 1.25 miles of ocean water — an increase driven by a massive amount of absorbed energy measured in units known as zettajoules — represents the true pulse of climate change. The amount of added heat in 2022 is around a hundred times larger than the total world electricity generation in 2021, the researchers said in a news release. The study was led by Lijing Cheng of the Chinese Academy of Sciences with numerous collaborators at institutions in China, Italy, New Zealand and the United States. It is based on two separate ocean heat data sets, one from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and one from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Both find 2022 to be the hottest year on record for the oceans, followed by 2021, 2020, 2019 and 2017. A multitude of consequences flow from the fast warming of the oceans. Some are analogous to what is happening in the atmosphere. For instance, with the average temperature of the entire ocean warmer, it increases the odds of extremes in the form of ocean heat waves in certain regions. Just like in the case of atmospheric heat waves over land, these can be very dangerous for living organisms. “Some of the most productive and biodiverse marine ecosystems, like coral reefs and kelp forests, are very sensitive to temperature. We’re witnessing a real-life experiment to find out how resilient they are, how capable of adapting or migrating,” Rasmussen said. Other consequences of ocean warming are quite different from what happens in the atmosphere. Warm ocean water expands, raising sea levels around the globe. At the same time, this expanding surface warm water is lighter and more buoyant than colder deeper water — which means that, in the words of scientists, the ocean becomes more stratified. Warm and cold layers mix less, which in turn traps heat at the surface — speeding the planet’s warming — while depriving the deeper ocean of oxygen and nutrients that cannot mix downward. The ocean also loses oxygen because warmer water cannot hold as much of it, potentially leading to low oxygen zones that are a threat to marine life. The ocean also grows saltier in many regions, as the evaporation of warmer water leaves behind more salt — but in other regions, it actually grows fresher as rainfall increases. The study calls it a “salty gets saltier, fresh gets fresher pattern,” as evaporation wins out in some regions and rainfall in others. Still, that’s just the beginning of the implications. Kevin Trenberth, a co-author of the study and a scholar at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said the warming happening in the ocean can have direct consequences for events unfolding on land. For instance, he said, warmer water at the top levels of the ocean can help fuel more intense storms and the torrential rainfall that accompanies them. “Those upper sea surface temperatures have really serious consequences for any storm that comes along,” he said, adding, “I think we are seeing some of the repercussions of that in the storms that are hitting California … The heavy rainfalls are a direct consequence of this upper ocean heat content anomaly.” In part, that is because more heat amounts to more moisture in the air, which can supercharge any storms that materialize. For every degree Fahrenheit that the air temperature increases, the atmosphere can hold about 4 percent more water. “The simplest way to think of this is, let’s assume the weather system and everything is going as it used to, but now we have a warmer ocean,” he said. “The atmosphere can hold more moisture. The warmer the atmosphere gets, the more moisture it can hold.” The new research suggests that ocean warming, while strong and steady overall, does vary markedly around the globe — with particularly rapid increases in heat in the Atlantic region off the U.S. coastline. This is amplifying coastal sea level rise and may also be implicated in a strong warming trend affecting the coastal northeastern United States on land. “The Atlantic has been warming in spectacular fashion as a whole,” Trenberth said. Wednesday’s study is the latest in a growing body of evidence that details the steady, relentless warming of the oceans. A study published in October in Nature Reviews found that the upper reaches of the oceans have been heating up around the planet since at least the 1950s, with the most stark changes observed in the Atlantic and Southern oceans. The authors wrote that data shows the heating has both accelerated over time and increasingly has reached deeper and deeper depths. That warming — which the scientists said probably is irreversible through 2100 — is poised to continue and create new hot spots around the globe, especially if humans don’t make significant and rapid cuts to greenhouse gas emissions. In its most recent assessment, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) wrote that it is “virtually certain” that the upper levels of the oceans have warmed over the past half-century and “extremely likely that human influence is the main driver.” Humans-caused emissions “are the main driver of current global acidification of the surface open ocean,” the panel wrote. The greenhouse gas emissions that humans have produced since 1750 “have committed the global ocean to future warming,” the IPCC authors found. Over the remainder of the 21st century, the group said, ocean warming probably will be several times what it has been over the past five decades. Trenberth reiterated that not all ocean warming happens equally. Storms can move heat from water to the atmosphere, currents redistribute heat around the globe, and just as worrisome hot spots emerge, so do cool spots, such as a notorious ocean region south of Greenland that has actually shown a decrease in temperature over time. Despite the variability, there is no doubt that oceans on the whole are growing warmer over time — or what is driving that change. “The human impact is clear when you look at the global picture,” Trenberth said. “The global ocean heat content is going up steadily.”"
+"For years, scientists and health advocates have tried to bring attention to a secret source of air pollution sitting in 40 million homes around the United States — which jump-starts childhood asthma, increases the risk of respiratory problems and emits planet-warming gasses. It’s the gas stove. And now, those efforts seem to be gaining traction. On Monday, Richard Trumka Jr., one of the four commissioners of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), said in an interview that the U.S. agency was considering a ban on gas stoves — or, at least, standards around the amount of toxic fumes such stoves can spew into Americans’ kitchens. On Wednesday, the commission’s chair said it would not ban gas stoves, but was researching health risks of gas stoves and possible increases to safety standards. “I am not looking to ban gas stoves and the CPSC has no proceeding to do so,” said Alexander Hoehn-Saric, the chair of the commission, in a statement. Some cities — including Los Angeles, Seattle and New York — have already moved to ban gas stoves in certain new homes and apartments. Kathy Hochul (D), the governor of New York, has also proposed banning gas hookups, including for gas stoves, in new buildings in the entire state. All cooking creates some form of air pollution. But gas stoves are burning natural gas, a mix of methane and other chemicals. That means that when a gas stove is on, it releases not only fine pieces of particulate matter that can invade the lungs, but also nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and formaldehyde — all of which have been linked to various health risks. Scientists have identified nitrogen dioxide, for example, as contributing to childhood onset of asthma and worsening asthma symptoms. According to one study, children living in a household with gas stoves have a 42 percent increased likelihood of already having asthma and a 24 percent increased risk of developing asthma at some point in their lifetime. Last week, scientists from the clean energy think tank RMI estimated in a peer-reviewed study that 12.7 percent of childhood asthmas could be attributed to living in a household with a gas stove. Some scientists have compared the risks of gas stove use to having a smoker in the home. The Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t have the power to regulate indoor air quality, and homes with gas stoves can often have nitrogen dioxide levels far in excess of EPA outdoor guidelines. The European Union, meanwhile, is currently urging lawmakers to establish indoor air quality regulations across the bloc. But Americans have been slow to switch to electric or induction stoves — in part because of the efforts of the natural gas industry. Beginning in the 1930s, the gas industry released commercials, advertisements and slogans connecting “cooking with gas” with culinary bliss. (At one point in the 1980s there was even a catchy, and somewhat cringeworthy, rap video.) In recent years, gas companies have hired PR firms to oppose local bans on gas appliances in new buildings — with representatives sometimes infiltrating neighborhood social media groups. Now, however, the tide seems to be turning, as the connection between natural gas cooking, climate change and poor health becomes more visible. Natural gas stoves are not huge emitters of carbon dioxide, but connecting homes to gas lines creates a long-term dependence on fossil fuels that can be hard to break. Research has also shown that gas stoves emit methane — a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon dioxide in the short-term — even when they are turned off. Some consumers have been reluctant to make the shift to electric stoves given the cost of higher-end induction stoves, which offer more versatility that traditional electric ranges. But the Inflation Reduction Act, a landmark climate bill passed last year, includes cash to help low- and moderate-income households move away from their gas stoves. Starting later this year, millions of Americans could get up to $840 off the cost of an electric or induction stove. The CPSC, the agency responsible for managing the safety of U.S. consumer products, is not going to ban gas stoves — or even propose any regulations — anytime soon. “Any regulatory action by the Commission will involve a lengthy process,” a spokesperson said in an email. Agency staff will begin collecting data on gas stove hazards this year, with the aim to propose “solutions to those hazards” later in the year. Trumka also clarified on Twitter that any regulations would apply to new products, not current ones in homes. “CPSC isn’t coming for anyone’s gas stoves,” he wrote. The American Gas Association pushed back against the recent research and on natural gas cooking and asthma. “Any efforts to ban highly efficient natural gas stoves should raise alarm bells for the 187 million Americans who depend on this essential fuel every day,” they said in a statement. But as more and more information emerges about the health risks — and as the Biden administration focuses in on electrifying household appliances across the country — the move from gas to electric may be a question not of “if,” but of “when.”"
+"SACRAMENTO — Heavy rain continued to drench California on Tuesday as an ongoing parade of storms left much of the state in disarray, with power outages, collapsed roadways, mud and landslides, and treacherous floodwaters widespread across nearly the length of the state. Authorities have attributed at least 17 fatalities to the onslaught of storms that began in late December. The California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services confirmed 15 deaths in nine counties as of Tuesday morning, including five in the Sacramento region. Early Tuesday, another two people died in a crash on Highway 99 near Visalia, between Fresno and Bakersfield, when a tree fell on the road, the California Highway Patrol said. About 210,000 customers had no power across the state Tuesday as gusty showers and storms swept ashore. One midday storm brought downpours and unusual lightning, thunder and hail to San Francisco. In Santa Barbara, a government official told the National Weather Service that more than 100 vehicles were underwater and that first responders had made some 40 rescues. In nearby Montecito, where authorities ordered all residents to evacuate Monday, a road stretching across foothill communities was “destroyed,” the Weather Service reported. The Weather Service office in Los Angeles wrote that this was the “most impressive” storm to hit the region since January 2005. Mud and debris flowed down the hills of areas including Studio City, surrounding some homes and forcing some residents to shelter in place. Flash flooding turned streets into streams even in densely populated Beverly Hills and downtown L.A. In downtown Los Angeles, the rain submerged parked cars, according to photos that circulated on social media. Flights were delayed at Los Angeles International Airport, a spokeswoman said. At Los Angeles Union Station, floodwaters spilled into a pedestrian tunnel. In Chatsworth, a community in the San Fernando Valley, firefighters rescued two people trapped inside a sinkhole that swallowed two vehicles Monday night. The two-phase storm system has brought multiple waves of heavy rain and hundreds of reports of flooding across California since Sunday night. It comes on the heels of several other systems that have been unrelenting for the past two weeks. California had its driest three-year period on record from October 2019 through September 2022, and yet it remains to be seen how lasting an impact the weather whiplash might have on drought conditions there. The extreme precipitation is filling reservoirs and piling up snowpack, but because the ground is well saturated, much of the fallen rain will end up in the Pacific Ocean. Multiple rivers across California had reached flood stage Tuesday and were forecast to soon crest. In Santa Cruz, which has been battered by both heavy rains and storm surges from the sea, an overnight wind storm ripped out trees and scattered debris across city streets. In the hills above the University of California at Santa Cruz, downed power lines closed roads and convoys of Pacific Gas and Electric trucks, the state’s main electricity provider, combed through the area removing fallen logs and trying to restore power. Many businesses in the city’s downtown, which runs on both sides of the San Lorenzo River, had placed sandbags and tarps in front of their doors in anticipation of the river continuing to swell. But the level of the water began to recede before it broke its banks. Tuesday began with a bang for much of California as strong to severe thunderstorms — with a pair of nocturnal tornado warnings — jolted residents awake in the middle of the night. The National Weather Service had been tracking the storms’ progress using lightning-mapping satellites as early as Monday evening. Shortly after 11 p.m. Monday, they released a bulletin cautioning that “a strong line of thunderstorms is currently 150 miles off the coastline. This line of thunderstorms will arrive to the coastal waters after midnight.” Those storms moved ashore in California between the Bay Area and Santa Barbara between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. local time Tuesday morning, quickly intensifying as they tracked into the milder Central Valley. San Francisco posted a 69 mph gust as the storms blew through. The storms pushed east, reaching the state capital in the 3 a.m. hour. Sacramento saw a gust of 54 mph at 3:40 a.m. A severe thunderstorm warning was issued for Sacramento; last year, the local National Weather Service serving the area only issued one such warning. By then, lightning strikes were prolific by California standards — with combined cloud-to-ground and intracloud discharges making flash rates of 20 or more per minute. A pair of tornado warnings — one for Stockton and one for Modesto — were issued, leading up to 4 a.m. In Modesto, winds gusted to only 33 mph but the area picked up a quick 0.15 inches of rain in an hour. Winds in Stockton gusted up to 46 mph. Based on historical records, these were the first overnight tornado warnings ever issued by the National Weather Service in Sacramento; with records dating back to 1986, it appears the latest that any other tornado warning had been in effect was until 9:15 p.m. The low-pressure system that triggered the thunderstorms was responsible for dragging ashore an atmospheric river on Sunday night and Monday, or a narrow filament of deep subtropical moisture with origins as far away as Hawaii. That fire hose of moisture, dubbed the “Pineapple Express,” drenched Southern and Central California and dumped 2 to 3 feet of snow in the Sierra Nevada. The National Weather Service predicted up to another 22 inches of snow could fall Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. As of Tuesday afternoon, downtown Los Angeles recorded 3.35 inches of rain, and Bel Air got 6.14 inches in 48 hours. Pasadena picked up 5.41 inches, and Beverly Hills was drenched by 5.47 inches. In the higher terrain, the amounts were double or triple what fell in the lowlands. Nordhoff Ridge in Ventura County, for instance, saw 18.31 inches of rainfall, and San Marcos Pass in Santa Barbara County recorded 17.17 inches. “As far as we know, this is a historical record for the amount of rain in that location,” Eric Boldt, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Los Angeles, said at a news conference Monday. Serious flooding swamped Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. In Ventura County, at least 18 people were rescued while trying to escape rising floodwaters. The Ventura River overflowed its banks and spilled onto Highway 101. In Fillmore, a mud flow 3 feet deep swallowed Route 126 and trapped cars and semitrailers. A mudslide on Casitas Vistas Road affected three vehicles, but no injuries were reported. About 20 homes in Los Osos in San Luis Obispo County were severely damaged by floodwaters. The worst damage was around Vista and Montana roads. In Santa Barbara, water pooled 3 to 4 feet deep on Spring Street, inundating vehicles and in some cases forcing high water rescues. Evacuation centers were opened at La Colina Junior High School, the Wake Center, the Veteran’s Memorial Building and the Minami Community Center. Both sides of Highway 101 were shut down. Santa Barbara County closed public schools Tuesday and issued shelter-in-place orders for some areas before lifting those Tuesday evening. An evacuation order was imposed for Montecito, an affluent town in the county that is home to Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex. Ellen DeGeneres, also a resident, posted a video urging her neighbors to stay safe. In the Central California town of Paso Robles, a 5-year-old boy was reported missing after the car he and his mother were in was swept into a nearby creek Monday, police said. Neighbors rescued the mother, but the boy was swept downstream toward the Salinas River, according to police. Authorities mounted a search that was halted for safety reasons before resuming Tuesday, when they named the 5-year-old as Kyle Doan. Police said in a news release that Doan is 4 feet tall and weighs 52 pounds. He was last seen wearing a black jacket with a red liner and blue jeans. The sheriff’s office said it would continue the search after failing to find the boy Tuesday evening. The office of Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said Monday afternoon that the death toll from the recent storms was already more than the number of lives lost to wildfires in the past two years combined. President Biden agreed to Newsom’s request for a declaration of a state of emergency, paving the way for more federal assistance. Additional storms in the forecast later this week and next week spell more flood threats, though state water resources officials said many large reservoirs still have capacity for more rainwater, with statewide storage at about 78 percent of average. Forecasters predict a break in the stormy pattern by around Jan. 20, according to the Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center. Brianna Sacks in Los Angeles, Gerrit De Vynck in Santa Cruz and Jason Samenow and Anna Phillips in Washington contributed to this report."
+"At Andrew Schwartz’s office, California’s parade of atmospheric rivers swamped the basement and lab, drenching equipment in inches of water. The power has gone out repeatedly, sometimes for more than two days straight. But none of that has dimmed the joy of watching snow pile up so high that it has engulfed the second-story windows at his remote outpost high in the Sierra Nevada mountains, where he studies California snowpack and what it means for the drought-parched state’s water supply. By snowshoe, he has trudged through mounds of white more than 9 feet deep as he takes measurements at the UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Laboratory, a collection of buildings and monitoring equipment along the Donner Pass. On New Year’s Eve, he went sledding. “It’s kind of been heaven watching it fall,” said Schwartz, the lab’s lead scientist and manager. The dumping of snow in the Sierra Nevada over the past two weeks has come as a great relief to those who monitor mountain snowpack, a crucial source of water that fills the state’s reservoirs and will determine how long California must endure its relentless drought. While researchers caution that even this abundance of accumulation — which has reached about 15 feet in some parts of the mountains — could still be wiped out by exceptionally hot or dry conditions later in the year, the buildup of snowpack is ahead of schedule and amounts to good news for the state’s battered reservoirs. The Sierra Nevada snowpack across California has reached 226 percent of normal for this time of year, according to the state Department of Water Resources. During the prior winter, California was also hit by big December storms that led to early snow accumulation totals far above average, only to endure the driest three-month start to the year in state history, leading to the third consecutive year of drought. The more important moment of assessment comes on April 1, what Schwartz called the “golden date” for snow measurement, because that has traditionally been around when snowpacks are deepest and an important data point in modeling the year’s coming water supply. The current snowpack has even surpassed the April 1 average, at 102 percent of normal, Schwartz noted. “We didn’t even come close to that last year,” he said. “If we’re above that [April 1 average], typically it means that we’re going to be in a good water year, we can potentially look at coming out of the drought.” The battering ram of storms that hit the California coast has meant catastrophe in many parts of the state, with extensive flooding, mass evacuations, power outages, downed trees, breeched levees, mudslides, and the deaths of at least 18 people. The whiplash of extremes brought by climate change — from too little water to too much — has brought a new round of costly destruction to residents more accustomed to the ravages of smoke, fire and dry wells. The storm that hit the California coast on Wednesday was the seventh in a series of nine expected storms moving in from the Pacific Ocean since Christmas. Over the past week, some areas, such the Santa Barbara region, have received up to 15 inches of rain in one day. The abundant precipitation has already boosted California reservoir levels, although the largest ones — Lake Shasta and Lake Oroville — remain less than half full and below averages. Across the state, reservoirs are currently at 84 percent of average, Molly White, water operations manager for the State Water Project, told a briefing for reporters Wednesday. “Unfortunately, they still have a lot of road to go until they get back to average,” Michael Anderson, the state climatologist with the Department of Water Resources, said at the briefing, referring to Shasta and Oroville. “The good news is they’re off historic lows. The challenge is that they still have a lot of recovery to make before they would be back to normal operating conditions.” The recent storms have not had much impact on the Colorado River Basin, another important source of water for California. That region is also enduring a historic drought and facing dramatic cuts in water usage as levels in major reservoirs Lake Powell and Lake Mead have fallen to dangerous levels. The atmospheric rivers — narrow but intense filaments of deep tropical moisture stretching thousands of miles across the Pacific — that have drenched the California coast and mountains haven’t had the same impact further inland. Snowpacks in the Upper Colorado River Basin states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — are above average for this time of year, although not as high as California. But the past two years have also seen relatively bountiful snows in the Rockies, only to have runoff levels far lower than average. That’s because hotter temperatures in recent decades have dried out soils, hastened melting, increased evaporation and lengthened growing seasons, so vegetation consumes more water before it can reach the reservoirs, said Katrina Bennett, a hydrologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory who studies the relationship between snowpack and water supply in the Colorado River region. “Even with these very high years, we’re still seeing aridity across the basin, and that’s largely due to the fact that we still have this background of higher temperatures,” she said. “If we did have very, very high years, several years in a row, we might see some correction in the reservoir systems.” “It’s really almost too early for us to say, ‘Yes, this is going to help us.’ I think we have to see how the rest of the year really plays out in terms of the weather system and climate impacts,” Bennett added. During this wave of storms in California, the freezing elevation has been around 5,000 feet. Schwartz noted that some of the deepest snowpacks after these recent storms are in the southern Sierra Nevada. “The great thing is, that’s where they’ve needed the moisture the most, realistically,” he said. “It’s statewide, but the areas that have needed it the most in Southern California are the ones getting the most now.” On Wednesday morning, the flakes had tapered off at Schwartz’s mountain field station, but more storms were headed his way in coming days. “We’re in a really favorable spot,” he said."
+"Republicans and allies of fossil fuels are rallying behind the humble gas stove, a staple in millions of U.S. kitchens that has emerged as a flash point in the nation’s ongoing culture wars and a source of conservative resistance to President Biden’s environmental agenda. The controversy was ignited when a member of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), an agency charged with protecting the public from dangerous household products, said in mid-December that the commission will consider regulating indoor air pollution from gas stoves. On Monday,  Commissioner Richard L. Trumka Jr., a Democrat, said in an interview that he had not ruled out a ban on the appliances, prompting the agency to pivot Wednesday and clarify it was not planning a ban. But the flame was already lit. Trumka’s comment prompted loud complaints from Republicans on Capitol Hill, who claimed that the commission was trying to snatch the stoves from the 40 million homes that rely on gas, even though any regulations would only affect new appliances and not existing ones. “I’ll NEVER give up my gas stove,” Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Tex.) tweeted Tuesday. “If the maniacs in the White House come for my stove, they can pry it from my cold dead hands. COME AND TAKE IT! !” Jackson encouraged his nearly 550,000 Twitter followers to sign a petition on WinRed, a fundraising platform endorsed by the Republican National Committee, to “stop Biden from banning our stoves.” He also noted that first lady Jill Biden and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) have been photographed using the signature blue flames of gas cooktops. The backlash was bipartisan. Sen. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, the Senate’s most conservative Democrat, tweeted Tuesday that “the federal government has no business telling American families how to cook their dinner.” The chair of the CPSC, Alexander Hoehn-Saric, walked back Trumka’s comments in a statement Wednesday morning, but reiterated that the agency will look at possible ways to curb gas stoves’ emissions. Research has linked their pollution to childhood asthma and other respiratory problems, along with global warming. “Research indicates that emissions from gas stoves can be hazardous, and the CPSC is looking for ways to reduce related indoor air quality hazards,” Hoehn-Saric said. “But to be clear, I am not looking to ban gas stoves and the CPSC has no proceeding to do so.” The gas stove furor reflects the challenges the Biden administration faces the next two years as it tries to enact tougher climate regulations. While Biden has pledged to halve the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions by the end of the decade, Republicans and the fossil fuel industry are fiercely resisting stricter environmental standards. By raising fears of a ban on gas stoves, Republicans are in some ways taking a page from former president Donald Trump, who often complained about energy-efficiency standards for household appliances — including lightbulbs that make you “look orange,” toilets that “don’t get any water,” showers that lack a “full shower flow” and “worthless” dishwashers. The move by the CPSC marks the first time that the federal government has signaled it may crack down on pollution from gas stoves. But the battle has been brewing for years in states across the country, with Democratic politicians seeking to restrict gas use to curb climate change, while Republican leaders have sought to preserve a future for fossil fuels. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) on Tuesday called for New York to become the first state in the country to ban natural gas heating and appliances in new buildings, noting that buildings are the biggest source of planet-warming emissions in the Empire State. Some cities — including Los Angeles, Seattle and New York — have also moved to limit gas use in certain new homes and apartments. Republican state officials and their allies in the natural gas industry have fought such efforts on multiple fronts. Twenty-one states, many with GOP-controlled legislatures, have passed laws to prevent cities from prohibiting gas use in buildings. The gas industry has also paid Instagram influencers to gush about the benefits of cooking with gas, an effort to hook younger consumers on the fuel. In Ohio, Gov. Mike DeWine (R) on Friday signed legislation to legally redefine natural gas as a source of “green energy.” Ohio state Sen. Mark Romanchuk (R) has acknowledged that he consulted an anonymously funded, pro-gas group about the measure. Romanchuk declined to comment through a spokesman. Scientists say the world needs to rapidly transition away from fossil fuels, including replacing gas appliances with cleaner versions that emit no pollution, such as electric and induction cooktops. The recently passed climate law, known as the Inflation Reduction Act, provides rebates of up to $840 for an electric stove or oven. Still, many chefs and home cooks stubbornly prefer cooking with gas. Mike Sommers, president and chief executive of the American Petroleum Institute, said he thinks it is unlikely that the CPSC will ban gas stoves, in part because of the congressional scrutiny that would follow. “The gas stove thing caught everybody by surprise,” Sommers told reporters Wednesday. “That’s not going to happen. I expect that Congress is going to engage heavily on that issue.” Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), the new chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said in a statement that Republicans on the panel will “hold President Biden accountable for his war on American energy.” A spokeswoman for Manchin, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said the panel has no plans to investigate the issue, which falls outside its jurisdiction. While the issue has become ensnared in partisan politics, scientists say a growing body of research shows that gas stoves pose a threat to the planet and public health. A peer-reviewed study published last month found that gas stoves are responsible for roughly 12.7 percent of childhood asthma cases nationwide — on par with the childhood asthma risks associated with exposure to secondhand smoke. A separate study published last year found that gas stoves -- used nationwide but primarily in California, Illinois and northeastern states — release far more methane than previously thought, even when they are turned off. Methane, a potent planet-warming gas, traps about 80 times as much heat as carbon dioxide during its first 20 years in the atmosphere. “I don’t want to breathe the pollution that comes from gas combustion. In fact, I think people will look back and wonder why millions of us chose to,” said Rob Jackson, a climate scientist at Stanford University and a co-author of last year’s research on methane. “We don’t stand over the tailpipe of our car breathing in.” The Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate outdoor air pollution from cars, factories, power plants and other sources. But the agency lacks the legal power to limit indoor air pollution from gas stoves and other appliances inside people’s homes, prompting the CPSC to step in to fill this regulatory void. As early as 1986, EPA scientists wrote to the commission to express concerns about the potential health risks associated with pollution from gas stoves. But nearly four decades later, under intense pressure from policymakers and the fossil fuel industry, the commission is already backtracking from a possible ban. “These concerns go all the way back to the ’80s,” said Brady Seals, a manager at the environmental nonprofit RMI and a co-author of last month’s study. “Now, for the first time, policymakers are speaking about this and hopefully taking action.” In California, several cities have banned gas hookups in new construction. Late last year, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved a new ordinance, which will take effect later this year, that will make the city the largest in the state to prohibit natural gas in new buildings. The ordinance is similar to others passed in San Francisco, Berkeley, Cupertino and San Jose. These local bans have alarmed the gas industry and prompted it to counterattack. The American Public Gas Association, a trade group representing municipal gas providers, launched a national campaign to emphasize the virtues of gas, framing it as an affordable option that is less damaging for the climate than other fossil fuels. Some of the funding for this campaign came from customers of Los Angeles-based Southern California Gas. In 2018, California officials ordered the company, which serves millions of customers in the central and southern parts of the state, to stop using customer money on any activities related to new building standards. Last year, they accused the company of disregarding this prohibition and levied a nearly $10 million fine. Anna Phillips and Timothy Puko contributed to this report."
+"LÜTZERATH, Germany — From the roof of a green farm building, an activist dressed in black made an obscene gesture at police forces below before scooping debris out of the gutter and hurling it toward them. “What’s a bit of dirt when there’s a climate crisis?” his companion yelled as she rappelled out a high window to evade being detained. Nearby, police used axes to hack their way into a barn where activists had barricaded themselves. Climate activists have been fortifying the tiny hamlet of Lützerath in western Germany, hoping to stop it from being razed to make way for the expansion of an open-pit coal mine that has already swallowed more than 20 other villages. But columns of security personnel poured in Wednesday, dismantling treehouses and detaining dozens of demonstrators, making quick work of clearing large areas where they had set up camp. The tiny village has become a symbol of the cost of Germany’s continued dependence on fossil fuels. Although the government has pledged to exit coal by 2030, amid the war in Ukraine and the scramble to replace cheap natural gas supplies from Russia, officials say the coal underneath the village is essential. The last farmer is gone, after his efforts to fight eviction failed, and the land and the houses now belong to the coal giant RWE. “It’s unbelievable that it will be knocked down for this huge coal mine,” activist Zora Fotidou, 21, said this week as she stepped over a freshly dug trench in the campground. “We can have electricity and warmth without destroying people’s lives.” It was shortly after daybreak when hundreds of officers moved in, as part of what police had described as a “particularly challenging” operation. But despite the fears of a confrontation — and a few initial fireworks and molotov cocktails — the effort to expel the activists Wednesday was largely peaceful. “Do not resist, otherwise we will use force,” a policeman warned before entering one outbuilding where activists were preparing lunch. They allowed themselves to be led out in silence. Other demonstrators perched in treetops sang and chanted as police closed in. “We need to build a better future and we need to start right now,” sang one with a guitar up a tree. “We are pacifists,” said Yuno, an activist in her mid-20s, who like others here would not give more identifying details for fear of legal repercussions. She and her comrades were holed up in an 18th-century farmhouse, where large dumpsters and overturned camper vans had been installed as barricades. Her group would not resist when the police arrived, she said, but others here are more “militant” — including a group occupying one of the larger buildings. Earlier in the week, some of the demonstrators could be seen covering their fingertips with glue, or picking at them with needles. “To hide our fingerprints from the police,” said a balaclava-clad young man. While the police quickly cleared many of the structures in the camp, activists were still dotted around the treehouses as night fell, and the officers had yet to make a push into the main farm buildings. The occupied buildings in the hamlet present the “major challenge,” Willi Sauer, head of operations for Aachen police, said ahead of the operation. “We don’t know what to expect.” Possible booby traps and activists climbing the roofs are all “special challenges.” Police said they would continue operations overnight, although at a limited scale. The impact of Europe’s quick-fix fallback on fossil fuels as it rushes to fill the energy gap is starkly visible from Lützerath. On the horizon, white puffy plumes of steam from RWE’s coal-fired plant at Neurath — the second-biggest source of carbon pollution in the European Union in 2021 — rise to meet the clouds. Two of the power station’s units were due to be decommissioned at the end of last year but have now been allowed to keep burning until 2024 because of the energy crunch. Every year, the hulking 13,000-ton, 100-meter-high  excavators at the Garzweiler II mine extract 25 million tons of lignite — low-quality coal that is the world’s most polluting fossil fuel. RWE argues that the coal under Lützerath is needed to get the country through the winter. Activists counter that the argument doesn’t stand up, pointing to studies including one published last month by the University of Flensburg maintaining that the need for coal under the village was “nonexistent.” “This seemingly radical place takes its research from mainstream science,” said Jay, a 21-year-old sitting in an old barn turned into a makeshift canteen, where volunteers cooked up free vegan food for hundreds of activists daily. “If you act on it, you end up here.” The activist camp has been on the site for about two years, since Erkhard Heukamp, the farmer who was forced out after losing his court battle against RWE, allowed them to camp out on his fields. Heukamp is now gone, as are all of the original habitants of the cluster of homes in the settlement that dates back to the 12th century. Earlier in the week, the site was a hive of activity, as the hundreds of people camped out here prepared to fend off eviction. Activists in green overalls used a pickax to dig holes in the road near the farmhouse, while others carried steel girders and concrete to block vehicles. Anarchy signs have been sprayed in windows, and the village’s new residents formed a human chain to uproot paving slabs from the courtyard to fill a dumpster blocking the road. Demonstrators took turns sitting on “monopods” — wooden posts that jut into the air, designed to be difficult for police to dismantle without putting the activist on top at risk. Police moved through with cherry pickers Wednesday, as activists wrapped in foil blankets clung on. “I have enough food,” called one, though she added she was not sure what she’d do if she needed the bathroom. The village has been threatened with demolition for more than two decades, but in October, RWE struck a deal with the Greens party-led Economy and Climate Ministry over coal mining in the area. Five other villages that had been slated for demolition for the mine were saved and, under the agreement, RWE agreed to end lignite-fired power generation by 2030 — eight years earlier than planned. As demolition drew near, activists last week declared “Day X” — a call for reinforcements. But as police swarmed in Wednesday, the hundreds of activists still appeared outnumbered. If they could hold on until the weekend, they were expecting more demonstrators to join them, including climate activist Greta Thunberg. Police began to erect metal fences around the village Wednesday evening, in an attempt to prevent the activist ranks from growing. The fact that the deal to demolish Lützerath involved the Greens party was a particular betrayal for some. “I’m very angry about this decision, I don’t understand it,” said Gudula Frieling, a city councilor with the Greens, who was protesting at the site this week. “I always thought in the last days and weeks there would be a decision from my party to stop it. I was too naive.” “As I was putting up the barricades today, I was thinking of how I expected my political work to be different,” she said. “Civil disobedience is always a last resort.” Katharina Köll contributed to this report."
+"Dear readers: Today, we are pleased to introduce The Washington Post’s expansion of Climate coverage, a major investment that is commensurate with the story of climate change and its profound impact on humanity and the planet. The Post has long been a leader in covering the climate and environment. In 2020, our team won the Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting for a series on global warming called “2C: Beyond the Limit,” and our coverage of environmental justice was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting this year. Now, we are building on this strong foundation to present an unrivaled array of storytelling about the climate. We have nearly tripled the size of our Climate team — totaling more than 30 journalists — part of a newsroom-wide commitment to covering perhaps the century’s biggest story. No story is more global than climate, and we are placing reporters across the country and the world to capture it as it unfolds. At the same time, we are reimagining climate journalism to be more visual and accessible, bringing on trusted voices and some of the world’s best visual journalists to tell stories in intimate, visceral ways that we hope will both inform and empower you. Our coverage will be wide-ranging. On top of our compelling news, investigations and explanatory coverage, we will be adding new content areas and columns, such as Climate Lab, a section that will use data and graphics to tell stories; Hidden Planet, a column about the wonders of a changing planet; and Animalia, a column about wildlife and biodiversity. A new climate advice columnist and newsletter will help us navigate the choices we face when making decisions about sustainability in our everyday lives. New consumer guides will explore subjects such as how to shop and care for clothes in environmentally friendly ways. A reinvigorated Weather team will explore the effects of increasingly extreme weather. A new @PostClimate account will offer a dedicated space on Instagram for visually-first stories about climate. And even as we focus on the significant threats to our planet from climate change, we will zealously surface the innovations and ideas that offer hope through our Climate Solutions section. Thank you, Sally Buzbee Executive Editor"
+"It wasn’t so long ago that California prayed for rain. Something to quench the climate-change-fueled drought — the worst in at least 1,200 years — that has caused farm fields to wither and wells to run dry. To ease the blistering heat waves that triggered power outages and sent thousands to emergency rooms. To extinguish the wildfires that have ravaged forests, destroyed communities and blackened the skies. Now, the water that Californians so desperately wanted is pummeling them like a curse. It’s surging over riverbanks and rushing through communities, toppling drought-stressed trees, turning scorched mountainsides into avalanches of mud. The storms cut off power to roughly 150,000 customers across the state Tuesday. The flooding prompted evacuations in Montecito and other parts of Santa Barbara County, and swept away a 5-year-old boy who still has not been found. Officials said at least 16 people have been killed by the storms of the past two weeks — more than the number of lives lost in wildfires over the last two years. The recent onslaught of atmospheric rivers has underscored the perils of California’s climate paradox: Rising global temperatures are making the region drier, hotter and more fire-prone, but they also increase the likelihood of sudden, severe rainfall. Experts say the state is not prepared for periods of too much water, even as it struggles to make do without enough. “Water scarcity in California, for good reason, has been all-consuming,” said hydrologist Jeffrey Mount, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California and professor emeritus at the University of California at Davis. “But you can’t take your eyes off the wet periods [and] how to prevent catastrophic flooding. … That’s the big time challenge.” California’s escalating droughts and intensifying storms represent two sides of the same meteorological coin. Both are tied to the fact that every one-degree Celsius increase in temperature allows air to hold 7 percent more moisture. This makes the atmosphere “thirstier” during dry seasons, causing it to suck water out of vegetation and soils. But it also means there’s more water available to storms. So when it rains, it pours. Human-caused climate change, driven mostly by the burning of fossil fuels, has warmed California by about 1.4 degrees Celsius (2.5 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1895, according to a 2022 report from the California Environmental Protection Agency. Scientists say this temperature rise is exacerbating California’s naturally “boom-bust” climate, characterized by dry summers and wet winters. An emerging body of research known as attribution science has showed that climate change is responsible for about 42 percent of the ongoing severe drought that has afflicted the western United States since the start of the 21st century. Researchers are still teasing out the climate connection in California’s recent spate of storms. But models suggest that atmospheric rivers — which have historically supplied half of California’s water — are getting stronger and will continue to intensify as the planet warms. A 2018 study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters predicted that these plumes of tropical moisture will become 25 percent longer and wider under the worst-case warming scenarios. Another study in the same journal found that escalating atmospheric rivers will shift from being mostly beneficial to mostly hazardous, even as they account for a growing portion of California’s strained water supply. “We’ve always had tremendous variability,” Karla Nemeth, director of California’s Department of Water Resources, said in an interview. “What’s happening is you add climate on top of that and you’re just stretching out the extremes.” Decades of questionable planning decisions has made the state vulnerable to disasters on both ends of the spectrum, Mount said. Farmers and cities have pumped too much groundwater, causing land to sink and giving communities little to fall back on during dry periods. In the past two decades, the aquifer beneath the Central Valley has lost as much as 9.2 cubic kilometers of water per year, according to NASA satellite data. That’s more than the volume of Shasta Lake, California’s largest reservoir. At the same time, the state heavily altered its rivers — constructing dams, building levees on their banks, straightening out their twists and curves. This eliminated the rivers’ natural floodplains, making it more difficult for groundwater to replenish. Making matters worse: Communities have been built on those floodplains, so when rivers overtop their banks, the water goes into people’s houses rather than replenishing wetland habitats and slowly sinking into the soil. Santa Cruz County, which has been inundated during the recent storms, is a prime example of this “engineering hubris,” Mount said. In the late 1950s, the Army Corps of Engineers “channelized” the San Lorenzo River to make it run deeper and faster, and built levees upstream to manage flows. According to an analysis by UC-Santa Cruz professor Gary Griggs, virtually all of downtown Santa Cruz was built in what had been the river’s 100-year flood plain. But the construction also contributed to sediment buildup, diminishing the river’s capacity to control floods. As the planet warms, escalating storms will increasingly overwhelm systems that weren’t designed for such extremes. “The things we did in the past to manage water are going to be insufficient in the present, much less the future,” Mount said. The San Lorenzo River hit its second-highest level in 85 years on Monday, cresting more than eight feet above flood stage, according to the Santa Cruz Sentinel. Residents said recent fires and drought made their community even more vulnerable to this year’s storms. In 2020, the Lightning Complex fires scorched more than 86,000 acres across the region, including the towering redwood forests of Big Basin state park. Now, the burned areas are less able to absorb the onslaught of rain. Slopes are collapsing without vegetation to hold the soaked soil in place. Dead trees are being ripped from their roots and carried downstream. “All the trees up and down the hillside that have been burned, they’re flooding up the river, so the river can’t run freely,” Bethany Rogers said. She had fled her home in the Felton Groves community north of Santa Cruz during the fires. On Sunday, she had to evacuate again. Dealing with a hotter, drier climate reality has become a way of life for many Californians. The state has been in a drought state of emergency since 2021. Residents have dealt with restrictions on lawn watering, crop irrigation and other water uses on and off since 2014. The state has invested more than $8 billion in water conservation and storage measures over the last two years, and last summer Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) released a 19-page document outlining his strategy for preparing for future droughts. But critics say California hasn’t done as much to ready itself for the times when too much rain falls. Though the state Senate last year proposed a $1 billion investment in flood management and dam safety, most of the provisions were dropped from the budget that ultimately passed. “For water agencies, flood management tends to be the poorer stepchild of water supply issues,” said Deirdre Des Jardins, director of California Water Research, which conducts analysis on state water planning processes and advises environmental groups. She said the political pressure from farm groups, municipal water managers and other constituencies is focused on ensuring water access, rather than fending off floods that studies show disproportionately threaten low-income communities. Des Jardins has been alarmed by recent research suggesting that climate change has already doubled the chance of California seeing a catastrophic megaflood and could increase the likelihood of such a deluge by as much as 400 percent. “We’re just not taking those kind of extreme floods into account in our emergency planning,” she said. California’s hyper-focus on water scarcity is also a product of what Mount calls “the half-life of disaster memory.” People tend to forget about severe storms once the floodwaters recede. But droughts are long, drawn-out disasters, he said — creating a longer window of public attention for officials to implement conservation plans. In a report released in November, Mount and his colleagues at the California Public Policy Institute called on the state to develop a comprehensive “wet year strategy” for preventing flooding and capturing rainfall as a buffer against future drought. New stormwater capture systems in cities and river bypasses that redirect floodwaters into ecosystems and farm fields can help avert flood damage and recharge depleted groundwater, the report said. “The actions we take (or fail to take) during wet years sow the seeds for our successes (or our challenges) during drought,” the authors wrote. Nemeth, the Department of Water Resources director, acknowledged that the state has “a lot of work to do” to grapple with the deluges that will come in a warmer climate. But she also touted flood protection projects that are already underway. The department has taken part in tabletop exercises, known as ARkStorm, where state and federal agencies simulated their response to a 1-in-1000-year atmospheric river event. The agency is working with farmers to promote groundwater recharge projects and with reservoir managers to incorporate more sophisticated weather forecasting into their operations. In 2021, California gave out more than $23 million in grants for coastal flood risk reduction, including $7 million to Santa Cruz County. Newsom’s proposed state budget, announced Wednesday, includes more than $200 million for flood prevention projects. An increase in catastrophic storms “has been in the wings, predicted for a while,” Nemeth said. “But there’s nothing like being in it to start to shake off the old ways of doing business.” Gerrit De Vynck in Santa Cruz, Calif., contributed to this report."
+"The Biden administration is using a new opening at a powerful offshore energy agency to elevate a critic of fossil fuels who previously was blocked from a top Interior Department job because of opposition from oil industry allies in the Senate. Amanda Lefton, director of Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, or BOEM, will leave her post Jan. 19 after nearly two years in charge. The BOEM oversees leasing for offshore oil, gas, minerals and wind-power development, and Lefton has led a Biden administration shift to emphasize wind, leading to record-large lease sales supporting the nascent U.S. industry. Her replacement will be Elizabeth Klein, a senior adviser to Secretary Deb Haaland and strong supporter of renewable energies who had also worked at Interior during the Clinton and Obama administrations. The White House had intended to nominate Klein as the deputy secretary of the interior at the beginning of President Biden’s term, but changed its plans after objections from Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who hail from energy rich states. Those senators feared that Klein and Haaland — herself an outspoken critic of the oil industry — would be a difficult team for the oil and gas industry to work with, as The Washington Post reported in 2021. In her new position, Klein will head an influential part of the Interior Department but her appointment does not require Senate confirmation. Before joining the Biden administration, Klein was deputy director of the New York University School of Law’s State Energy & Environmental Impact Center, which frequently challenged Trump administration rule-changes that were designed to support fossil fuel industries. During the Obama administration, she oversaw the creation of the offshore-wind leasing program the Biden administration is now trying to supercharge as part of its efforts to address climate change. As an adviser her work has included water policy and climate change resilience, and helping Native American tribes manage settlements on water rights claims. Klein declined an interview request through a spokeswoman. In an interview, Lefton said she was leaving because she had accomplished her mandate at the agency. “I came here to get done a pretty ambitious agenda, and I feel like we were pretty successful,” said Lefton, declining to say what she will do next. At the BOEM, Klein will oversee all U.S. offshore oil and gas leasing, a program that has been shrinking but which still underpins roughly 15 percent of the country’s total oil production, according to Energy Department data. One of her biggest tasks will be to finish a plan to manage offshore oil and gas leasing for the next five years. It is now nearly seven months overdue and, as proposed, could possibly prohibit future lease sales, which the oil industry and Manchin see as an unprecedented threat to the country’s future oil supplies. “We look forward to working with Ms. Klein in support of a final 5-year program for federal offshore leasing that includes all of the proposed lease sales,” Cole Ramsey, the vice president for upstream policy at the industry’s biggest trade group, the American Petroleum Institute, said in a statement. When nominated as deputy interior secretary, Klein came under attack from right-wing groups, including an anonymous website that labeled her “a key player in prosecuting President Obama’s War on Coal and advancing the radical policy goals of environmental special interests.” David Hayes, a former Biden aide who had also spent years working with her at New York University and in the Obama administration, said Klein will be able to work with all types of companies. She is thoughtful and deliberate, and can command a room when she speaks, he said. “She’s gotten a complete bum rap,” said Hayes, who spent two years as special assistant to the president for climate policy. “Liz Klein is a pragmatic, can-do problem solver.” White House national climate adviser Ali Zaidi said Klein’s years of experience at the department under three presidents will be invaluable to Haaland, especially as the BOEM deals with new leasing requirements approved in last summer’s bill on climate spending and tax policy. “Having deep technical expertise and understanding of the machinery of the agency will be an asset for the secretary in carrying out the mission of the department,” Zaidi said in an interview. Representatives for Manchin and Murkowski declined to comment. The two lawmakers, pivotal members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, have at times been key to approving Biden’s agenda and appointees. They have also criticized the administration for slowing the pace of oil and gas leasing on federal territory as it has emphasized wind development. Zaidi said that Lefton was leaving by her own choosing and not White House request, and that the administration plans no strategy changes for the BOEM. He emphasized the administration’s goal of generating 30 gigawatts of power from offshore wind energy by the end of the decade. “The vision of the president has been clear from Day 1: There is tremendous opportunity off of our shores to unlock a source of clean power,” Zaidi said. “When we announced our 30-gigawatt goal, people were pretty skeptical. We’ve been able to grow this in a way that’s exceeded expectations.” Zaidi, who previously worked with Lefton in New York state government, credited her with helping spur that success. During her tenure Interior approved the nation’s first two commercial scale offshore wind projects, held three offshore wind lease auctions, started environmental review on projects, and began exploring more wind leasing opportunities in the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of Maine, the Central Atlantic and off the coast of Oregon, according to the department."
+"England is set to announce a ban this week on many single-use plastic items, the latest effort in a growing global move to reduce the proliferation of the hard-to-recycle material. The plan would ban single-use plastic plates, cutlery and other items in restaurants across England, expanding an existing ban on straws, stirrers and other small plastic items. It would add to the rapidly lengthening list of countries that are taking steps to reduce plastic pollution through outright restrictions, amid concerns that without drastic action, the amount of plastic flowing into the world’s oceans will continue to grow exponentially. The British government’s proposal follows a trend to expand the list of plastic no-no items from bags — which were banned or restricted in many places years ago — to more of the bulkier objects that pile up in landfills and rivers, lakes and oceans. Only 10 percent of plastic plates and cutlery are recycled in England, according to British government figures. “This new ban will have a huge impact to stop the pollution of billions of pieces of plastic and help to protect the natural environment for future generations,” British Environment Secretary Thérèse Coffey told the Daily Mail on Sunday, where she previewed her plans. A formal proposal is expected on Saturday, according to a spokesman for the U.K. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The British Parliament would need to approve the measure, and it would go into effect in the fall. A 2018 report commissioned by the British government estimated that England goes through about 1.1 billion disposable plates every year, the vast majority of which are made of plastic. The 27-nation European Union imposed a ban on many single-use plastic items starting in 2021. India, the world’s second-most populous nation, banned plastic cutlery, straws and other items last year, as did Chile. Inside the United Kingdom, England’s move would follow Scotland and Wales, which have already imposed similar restrictions. The effort would not affect single-use plastics at grocery stores, and campaigners criticized the proposal for not going far enough. “We’re dealing with a plastic flood, and this is like reaching for a mop instead of turning off the tap,” said Megan Randles, political campaigner for Greenpeace U.K., in a statement. “We need the government to deliver a meaningful plastic reduction strategy, which means bringing in plastic reduction targets and a proper reuse and refill scheme,” she said. Environmental policymakers from around the world have embarked on a U.N.-backed effort to create an international treaty to combat plastic pollution, a process they hope to complete by the end of next year. They are still discussing whether to simply take steps that would make plastic easier to recycle, potentially by regulating the chemicals that go into its production, or whether they should engage in more drastic efforts such as imposing outright production caps. The U.N. Environment Program says a garbage truck of plastic is dumped into the world’s oceans every minute. Absent global action, the program said the amount of plastic entering the world’s waterways could triple by 2040."
+"Last year was the fifth hottest ever recorded on the planet, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service announced Tuesday. It was part of an unabated broader warming trend as humans continue to pump massive amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Extreme heat waves in Europe, Asia and the United States — which stemmed in part from more than a century of burning fossil fuels — helped drive 2022’s unusual warmth, researchers found. Europe sweltered through its hottest summer on record and its second-hottest year overall, researchers said. Pakistan experienced catastrophic flooding as a result of extreme rainfall. In February, Antarctic Sea ice reached its lowest minimum in 44 years of satellite records. The year “2022 was yet another ... of climate extremes across Europe and globally. These events highlight that we are already experiencing the devastating consequences of our warming world,” Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus, said in a statement announcing the annual findings. She said data from 2022 provides “clear evidence that avoiding the worst consequences will require society to both urgently reduce carbon emissions and swiftly adapt to a changing climate.” The records show that the last eight years have been the hottest recorded in human history. Despite the urgency to halt such warming, the world’s output of carbon dioxide and other planet-warming emissions continues to rise. U.S. greenhouse gas emissions ticked up by 1.3 percent in 2022 over the previous year, according to an analysis released Tuesday by the Rhodium Group, an independent research firm. President Biden has pledged to cut U.S. emissions 50 to 52 percent by the end of the decade compared with 2005 levels, and while Congress recently passed far-reaching legislation to fund a shift toward cleaner energy, the nation is not yet on a trajectory to meet those lofty goals. Neither is the world. A U.N. report last fall found that despite high-profile promises to boost climate targets, nations have shaved just 1 percent off their projected greenhouse gas emissions for 2030. Scientists have said the world needs to cut planet-warming emissions roughly in half by the end of the decade to be on track to meet its most ambitious promises. The U.N. report found that the ongoing “emissions gap” — the gulf between national plans to reduce carbon pollution and the actual cuts needed to avert catastrophic warming — currently leaves the Earth on a path to warm by a dangerous 2.4 degrees Celsius (4.3 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century. And few nations have implemented the policies necessary to meet even these inadequate targets, the report said. “Global and national climate commitments are falling pitifully short,” U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said at the time. “We must close the emissions gap before climate catastrophe closes in on us all.” Tuesday’s report from European researchers documents how humans are continuing to heat the planet. Researchers found that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide are at the highest levels in more than 2 million years. Levels of methane, a short-lived but powerful greenhouse gas, have also continued to increase and are at the highest levels in 800,000 years, according to Copernicus. “Greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, are the main drivers of climate change, and we can see from our monitoring activities that atmospheric concentrations are continuing to rise with no signs of slowing,” Vincent-Henri Peuch, director of the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, said in Tuesday’s announcement. That continued warming has led to an increase in suffering around the globe. Scientists have detailed how a warmer atmosphere is supercharging storms, intensifying droughts and leaving places less time to prepare before the next weather-related disaster strikes. European researchers on Tuesday noted that polar regions experienced episodes of record temperatures during 2022. That includes places like Greenland, where in September virtually all of the country experienced higher temperatures than in any year since at least 1979. They noted how Pakistan and northern India endured prolonged spring heat waves, and how central and eastern China faced long-lasting heat wave conditions and subsequent drought in the summer. There was the biblical flooding that displaced millions in Pakistan, along with torrential rains that led to deadly and costly floods from Australia to South Africa to the United States. And all indications are that as long as human-caused emissions continue to warm the globe, more disasters are likely to follow. “The frequency and severity of extreme climate disasters continue to increase,” Rick Spinrad, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told reporters Tuesday in recounting the U.S. weather-related disasters over the past year. “We must adapt and become resilient to climate threats we cannot avoid.”"
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+"When a wildfire tore through drought-stricken towns near Boulder, Colo., late last year, it reminded Americans that fire risk is changing. It didn’t matter that it was winter. It didn’t matter that many of the more than 1,000 homes and other structures lost sat in suburban subdivisions, not forested enclaves. The old rules no longer applied. A new analysis reveals for the first time that a broad swath of the country, not typically associated with wildfires, is already under threat. Nearly 80 million properties in the United States stand a significant chance of exposure to fire, according to a model built by the nonprofit First Street Foundation. In the next few decades, many people will face greater danger than they do now. A Washington Post analysis of the group’s data found that an estimated 16 percent of the country’s population today lives in hazardous areas. Over the next 30 years, that share will increase to 21 percent. Nearly half of all Americans who live in areas vulnerable to fire will reside in the South, and minorities face a disproportionate risk. Properties with significant wildfire risk 0 20 40 60 80 No significant risk 100% Hover over a Zip code to view details Wildfires are becoming more severe and frequent because of human-caused climate change. Record-breaking heat and drought fueled by increasing greenhouse gas emissions are drying out grasslands and forests and lengthening the fire season. And more people are moving to communities built where wildfires are part of the landscape’s natural ecology. They are building homes right next to vegetation, putting themselves in danger. Up until now, it was difficult to pinpoint how wildfires may put specific locations in peril. Publicly available data on wildfire risk is not detailed enough to show a particular house or commercial building’s exposure. And most people don’t have access to the more precise estimates that insurance companies calculate. Fire Factor, the new model built by the First Street Foundation, aims to fill the gap with a website where people can look up data for their addresses. Overall, First Street’s data covers the contiguous United States, revealing how unevenly fire risk is spread across the country. California has the most at-risk properties because of its large size and Mediterranean climate. But across the Southern half of the country, states including Texas, Florida, Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, North Carolina and South Carolina stand at the forefront of a growing problem. The Post’s analysis of the group’s fire data and population density found that by 2052 the South will be home to the largest number of people with significant fire risk — 32 million residents. Almost half of Americans exposed to fire risk will live in the South by 2052 Midwest South 45.1% in 2022 West 49.4% 48.4% in 2052 44.4% Northeast Almost half of Americans exposed to wildfire risk will live in the South by 2052 Midwest South 45.1% in 2022 West 49.4% 48.4% in 2052 44.4% Northeast Almost half of Americans exposed to fire risk will live in the South by 2052 South 45.1% in 2022 West 49.4% 3.8 1.7 48.4% in 2052 44.4% 5 2.2 Midwest Northeast Among Southern states, Texas is at the top of the list, followed by Florida. That might seem surprising, given Florida’s history of being battered by hurricanes and, more recently, tidal flooding driven by rising seas and intense storms. But it has seasonal fires that begin in early spring, part of a natural cycle that helps cone-bearing trees spread their seeds. Deb Niemeier, a University of Maryland environmental engineering professor who focuses on community resilience and post-disaster recovery, said that just as in the West, climate change is extending the Southeastern coastal region’s traditional fire season through baking temperatures and increasingly severe droughts. “The small things that we could contain in the past may be very big ignitions in the future because you have these other effects,” Niemeier said. Western states bear a larger share of the risk, particularly in the Mountain West. The Post found that about 33 percent of people in Western states today face a significant chance of wildfire exposure. That number will probably grow to about 39 percent by 2052. Midwest Northeast West South Percent of population living in areas with significant wildfire risk, by region: 39.5% in 2052 32.7% of  population at risk in 2022 West Mountain 44.6 53.3 Ariz., Colo., Idaho, Mont., Nev., N.M., Utah, Wyo. Pacific 27.0 32.9 Calif., Ore., Wash. 18.2% in 2022 26.2% in 2052 South West South Central 27.2 39.8 Ark., La., Okla., Tex. South Atlantic 15.4 20.5 Del., Fla., Ga., Md., N.C., S.C., Va., W.Va. East South Central 8.4 16.8 Ala., Ky., Miss., Tenn. 2.8% in 2022 4.9% in 2052 Midwest West North Central 8.2 14.1 Iowa, Kan., Minn., Mo., N.D., Neb., S.D. East North Central <1% in 2022, 2052 Ill., Ind., Mich., Ohio, Wis. 1.5% in 2022 2.7% in 2052 Northeast Middle Atlantic 2.0 3.4 N.J., N.Y., Pa. New England <1% in 2022, 2052 Conn., Mass., Maine,N.H., R.I., Vt. Midwest Northeast West South Percent of population living in areas with significant wildfire risk, by region: 32.7% of population at risk in 2022 39.5% in 2052 West Mountain Ariz., Colo., Idaho, Mont., Nev., N.M., Utah, Wyo. 44.6 53.3 Pacific Calif., Ore., Wash. 27.0 32.9 18.2% in 2022 26.2% in 2052 South West South Central 27.2 39.8 Ark., La., Okla., Tex. South Atlantic Del., Fla., Ga., Md., N.C., S.C., Va., W.Va. 15.4 20.5 East South Central Ala., Ky., Miss., Tenn. 8.4 16.8 2.8% in 2022 4.9% in 2052 Midwest West North Central 8.2 14.1 Iowa, Kan., Minn., Mo., N.D., Neb., S.D. East North Central <1% in 2022, 2052 Ill., Ind., Mich., Ohio, Wis. 1.5% in 2022 2.7% in 2052 Northeast Middle Atlantic N.J., N.Y., Pa. 2.0 3.4 New England <1% in 2022, 2052 Conn., Mass., Maine, N.H., R.I., Vt. Midwest Northeast West South Percent of population living in areas with significant wildfire risk, by region: 32.7% in 2022 39.5% of population at risk in 2052 West Mountain 44.6 Ariz., Colo., Idaho, Mont., Nev., N.M., Utah, Wyo. 53.3 Pacific Calif., Ore., Wash. 27.0 32.9 18.2% in 2022 26.2% in 2052 South West South Central 27.2 Ark., La., Okla., Tex. 39.8 South Atlantic Del., Fla., Ga., Md., N.C., S.C., Va., W.Va. 15.4 20.5 East South Central Ala., Ky., Miss., Tenn. 8.4 16.8 2.8% in 2022 4.9% in 2052 Midwest West North Central Iowa, Kan., Minn., Mo., N.D., Neb., S.D. 8.2 14.1 East North Central <1% in 2022, 2052 Ill., Ind., Mich., Ohio, Wis. 1.5% in 2022 2.7% in 2052 Northeast Middle Atlantic N.J., N.Y., Pa. 2.0 3.4 New England <1% in 2022, 2052 Conn., Mass., Maine, N.H., R.I., Vt. Though President Biden has approved nearly $3.5 billion for communities to prepare for disasters related to extreme weather and climate change, only about 4 percent of all the counties facing fire exposure in this analysis have applied for wildfire mitigation projects. To be eligible for this Federal Emergency Management Agency funding, a county or state must first receive a major disaster declaration. But of the more than 2,000 counties facing fire danger, only about 20 percent have experienced a FEMA-declared fire disaster since 2010. The Post’s analysis of First Street’s data found that wildfire danger appears to disproportionally affect communities of color. By 2052, about 44 percent of all Native Americans will live in areas with significant probability of wildfire. Nearly 1 in every 4 Hispanic people will be living in similar communities. White residents rank third on the list. Estimates show that three decades from now, about 1 in 5 will face significant fire risk. Percent of population living in areas with significant wildfire risk, by race: 42.2% of population at risk in 2022 43.8% in 2052 Native American Hispanic 24.5 26.4 White 19.4 20.5 Asian 16.3 18.2 Black 12.5 13.6 Percent of population living in areas with significant wildfire risk, by race: 42.2% of population at risk in 2022 43.8% in 2052 Native American Hispanic 24.5 26.4 White 19.4 20.5 Asian 16.3 18.2 Black 12.5 13.6 Percent of population living in areas with significant wildfire risk, by race: 42.2% in 2022 43.8% of population at risk in 2052 Native American Hispanic 24.5 26.4 White 19.4 20.5 Asian 16.3 18.2 Black 12.5 13.6 Previous research has found that minority groups are especially vulnerable to damage from wildfires. Language barriers and limited car ownership can make it difficult for them to flee a fast-moving blaze. After a devastating fire, job insecurity and lack of insurance can complicate their recovery. Lilliane Ballesteros, executive director of the Latino Community Fund in Washington, said Latinos in rural or farmworker communities in the central part of the state know what they risk living in a fire-prone area, but they often can’t afford to move. “We work with farmworkers who insist on going back to work when the conditions are dangerous,” Ballesteros said. “They can’t take time off or live elsewhere.” Ballesteros said there is a growing effort by Latino-led community groups to share information about steps residents can take to guard themselves against fire danger. Her organization holds trainings in Spanish, translates official documents and tries to win the trust of people reluctant to have their properties assessed for fire risk because it might lead to citations. “People don’t have the time and resources to even access this information,"" she said. “In some communities, this work requires one-on-one conversations.” The First Street website aims to put this information in the hands of anyone with a computer or a smartphone. Their tool pulls data from a variety of sources, including federal wildfire databases and local information about each property’s age, building material and design, and it will calculate a risk factor for wildfire exposure today and 30 years from now when the effects of climate change worsen. Similar to the foundation’s flood model, its fire analysis will also be available on Realtor.com, putting buyers, sellers and renters on equal footing when it comes to understanding a property’s vulnerabilities. “It’s not just this doom-and-gloom thing. There are great solutions,” said Matthew Eby, First Street’s founder and executive director, in an interview. For each address, the website will show people how much they can reduce their risk by making their homes and properties more fire-resistant. Creating a barrier between structures and flammable vegetation, known as a defensible space, and using fire-proof building materials are proven ways to increase a home’s chances of surviving a fire. People will “be able to understand how the different solutions would impact their vulnerability,” Eby said. “We would hope they would take action.” The Post estimated the population affected by significant fire risk by adjusting the population of census tracts by the percent of properties and parcels with at least a 0.03 percent risk that were provided by the First Street Foundation. At the county level, The Post used summarized data provided by First Street and matched it with data from FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program through 2010. Regions and divisions were identified by the Census Bureau. Editing by Monica Ulmanu and Juliet Eilperin."
+"This July, temperatures in London and Hamburg in northern Germany teetered over an edge that seemed unthinkable in previous centuries: 104 degrees (40 Celsius). In large areas of the western and central United States, where temperatures routinely exceed 105 (40.5 Celsius), that may not seem particularly hot. But London and Hamburg are northern, maritime climates, where average July high temperatures are in the mid-70s (23 to 25 Celsius), and they don’t have close counterparts in the Lower 48 states. To translate these records to cities in America, The Washington Post and the nonprofit Climate Central calculated how much warmer the record was relative to extreme high temperatures in London for the month of July. Select a U.S. city London and Hamburg are located near the equivalent latitudes of Calgary and Edmonton in North America and are within 50 miles of the chilly North Sea. They are nothing like relatively arid, landlocked southern cities such as Phoenix, Las Vegas, Dallas and Oklahoma City, where temperatures reached 110 this week. Even Seattle, Green Bay, Wis., and Portland, Maine, have warmer July average highs — around 80 degrees. In smashing their all-time records, temperatures in London and Hamburg soared about 32 degrees (18 Celsius) above average. Simon Lee, an atmospheric scientist at Columbia University, said it was “surreal” watching temperature records fall in Western Europe and Britain. The heat wave “didn’t just break them by little margin like we’ve seen in the past,” he said. “It bulldozed them.” London was one of at least 34 locations in Britain to surpass the U.K.’s previous all-time highest temperature — 101.7 degrees or 38.7 Celsius. The country sweltered under the heat, as the British people and infrastructure are not accustomed to such extremes. Steel rails in London expanded and buckled, while roads in Cambridge softened and bended. People flocked to cool off in public swimming pools or air-conditioned public spaces, as fewer than 5 percent of homes have air conditioning according to government estimates. [Europe is overheating. This climate-friendly AC could help.] The heat is a preview of extreme temperatures to come in the warming climate. The U.K. Met Office found that the country is now 10 times more likely to experience 40 Celsius than in a world untouched by human-caused climate change, emphasizing the need for better climate adaptation in the country. The heat wave swept over the Iberian Peninsula last week, and Madrid matched its highest temperature on record: 105 degrees (40.7 Celsius). The mercury rose even higher in northwestern Spain, surpassing 109 degrees (43 Celsius) to set all-time records in Ourense and Ribadavia. The government advised people to stay indoors and reduce physical activity. In a country where only one-third of homes have air conditioning, some flocked to their air-conditioned workplaces and public spaces. [What extreme heat does to the human body] Temperatures remained warm through the night, and Madrid also experienced its hottest night on record at 79.1 degrees (26.2 Celsius). Elevated nighttime temperatures prevent people from cooling down and can increase heat stress, which can lead to heat exhaustion, strokes and death. In the last week, nearly 900 people in Spain have died of heat-related illnesses. Combined with dry conditions, the extreme heat has also sparked wildfires that have consumed tens of thousands of hectares. Dublin set a new July record at 91.4 degrees (33 Celsius), the country’s highest temperature in the 21st century. Huge crowds cooled down at beaches, and at least one wildfire appeared about 15 miles south of the Irish capital. The heat wave was intense but short-lived, with showers returning to the region this week. Adrián Blanco Ramos and Kasha Patel contributed to this report. The Washington Post and Climate Central calculated how much warmer each city’s record temperature was relative to the 99th percentile July high temperature from 1970 to 2021. Temperature data from London’s Heathrow Airport were used from 1973 to 2021. Temperature data is from the Global Historical Climatology Network."
+"It’s the world’s most important climate goal: limiting the Earth’s warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit). It’s the aspiration of global agreements, and to inhabitants of some small island nations, the marker of whether their homes will continue to exist. Keeping warming this low will help save the world’s coral reefs, preserve the Arctic’s protective sea ice layer and could avoid further destabilizing Antarctica and Greenland, staving off dramatic sea level rise. But with the world having already warmed by more than 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial temperatures, achieving the goal is in grave doubt. To see what hope remains, The Washington Post examined over 1,200 different scenarios for climate change over the coming century, based on the models produced by the world’s leading climate scientists and considered in a key 2022 report of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Working with experts from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, we explored the  central features of these scenarios — how fast the world embraces clean energy, how quickly we can remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere — and looked at how these in turn affect the planet’s temperature over the course of the century. The results, as you will see, show a world that keeps inching closer to catastrophic climate change. But they also point a way toward a less hot future. The scenarios help show us what needs to be done — and what we can still do. Each of these thin strands is based on sophisticated computer simulations that calculate how fast the economy and the population will grow, how quickly climate technology will advance, how rapidly we will cut our use of fossil fuels and then on top of that, the temperatures expected to result. But when we look at those scenarios that have the temperature closing out the century below 1.5C, there is a big problem. With their dramatic plunges in greenhouse gas emissions levels by 2025 — just three years away — some of the  scenarios, which were finalized in 2021 at the latest,  increasingly conflict with reality. After all, the world just saw emissions rise in 2022. So we first filtered these  out, based on a formula provided by the Potsdam Institute researchers. The researchers also added a few other rules to prevent very unlikely   near-term developments, like massive deployments of nuclear power  by 2030. There are two different kinds of scenarios that leave the planet, in the year 2100, below 1.5C of warming. One involves a “high overshoot,” but spending decades above 1.5C in such a world is an unsettling prospect. It raises the possibility, for instance, of the world experiencing dangerous tipping points and even calamities such as the irreversible loss of the West Antarctic ice sheet. So it is worth focusing on those 26 scenarios that allow for only a “low” overshoot (or none at all). Many of these scenarios require the world, by mid-century, to go well beyond the popular “net zero” goal for fossil fuel emissions. Rather, the world will have to be removing more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than it is putting in — “net negative.” And that will require the wide-scale deployment of nascent “carbon capture” technologies to remove what is already present, storing it underground, and likely also massive reforestation or other efforts to store carbon in the land itself. To assess how realistic these scenarios are, The Post used a method developed by the Potsdam Institute researchers and their international colleagues to filter scenarios based on the kinds of future developments they anticipate and the speed of progress they show happening. On five criteria, these scenarios are rated as “speculative,” “challenging” or “reasonable,” in order of increasing plausibility. In judging where to draw the lines, the scientists reviewed existing studies on topics such as energy transitions and carbon removal technologies, and applied their expert judgment to define the thresholds. They also had to remove a small number of scenarios that did not have enough information to be analyzed by these methods (about 10 percent of the total). Reasonable, challenging or speculative? Potsdam Institute researchers rated 1.5°C scenarios as speculative, challenging, or reasonable on these five dimensions, based on progress by 2050: 1. Carbon dioxide removal and storage underground 2. Carbon dioxide removal using land 3. Carbon intensity reductions 4. Changing energy demand 5. Fewer methane emissions As we begin to apply these filters, we see how the paths to meeting 1.5C narrow. Let’s consider “reasonable” expectations for the world’s ability to remove carbon dioxide from the air and store it underground — which in many ways is the biggest variable affecting whether the world can still hold warming below 1.5C without a major overshoot. Then we’ll require scenarios to be “reasonable” on the four other dimensions too. CO₂ removal (technology) speculative CO₂ removal (land) speculative Carbon intensity speculative Energy demand speculative Less methane speculative What the results suggest is that the world has probably run out of easy options to stay under 1.5C — or have a low overshoot. So that leaves two sets of other scenarios to consider, if the world wants to end the century below 1.5C somehow. First, if we still want to stay on a “low overshoot” path, we can consider what the Potsdam Institute researchers consider “challenging” scenarios, rather than “reasonable” ones. These scenarios assume the world will make even speedier progress on clean energy and carbon removal from the atmosphere. CO₂ removal (technology) Reasonable Challenging Speculative CO₂ removal (land) Reasonable Challenging Speculative Carbon intensity Reasonable Challenging Speculative Energy demand Reasonable Challenging Speculative Less methane Reasonable Challenging Speculative What makes these scenarios work? One common theme is much more dramatic carbon removal from the atmosphere, storing it either underground or in forests and agricultural landscapes. The majority  of these scenarios require us to be able to subtract over 7 billion tons per year from the atmosphere by 2050. This will require a huge scale up of interventions like carbon capture and storage, which only has an estimated capacity of about 43 million tons per year today. Capacity has roughly doubled in the past decade, but a far faster pace of change would be needed to achieve this outcome. Some scenarios also require dramatic transformations of energy use thanks to a combination of renewables and vastly expanded energy efficiency. Many require the carbon intensity of energy use — how much CO2 is emitted per unit of energy consumed — to decrease by over 80 percent by 2050. This would require total or a near total phaseout of fossil fuels, widespread electrification of the world’s energy systems and major fuel shifts in transportation to electric vehicles or the use of other fuels such as hydrogen or biofuels, among other innovations. Lila Warszawski, lead author of the Potsdam Institute study, and her colleagues argue that there is no one technology or solution that can be relied on to save the 1.5C goal. “It’s hard, and you can’t put all your eggs in one basket,” Warszawski said. “It’s hard but, you still want to go for it.” The other choice is to accept a fallback world in which the temperature significantly overshoots 1.5C during the century. With temperatures expected to be between 1.6 and 1.8C above preindustrial levels through the 2040s, 2050s and 2060s in most of these scenarios, that would raise the odds of unexpected climate catastrophes. But 16 scenarios  allow for such a “high overshoot” and are considered “reasonable” by the Potsdam Institute experts on the five dimensions above. CO₂ removal (technology) Reasonable Challenging Speculative CO₂ removal (land) Reasonable Challenging Speculative Carbon intensity Reasonable Challenging Speculative Energy demand Reasonable Challenging Speculative Less methane Reasonable Challenging Speculative How do these scenarios work? They still use carbon dioxide removal and storage, but at lower amounts — a few billion tons per year in coming decades from all sources. That’s out to the year 2050 — but to drive temperatures back down again in the second half of the century, the need for these interventions can be extremely large. “Post 2050, these scenarios are really challenging because they require a very large amount of carbon dioxide removal to return temperature to below 1.5 degrees after a high overshoot,” said Elmar Kriegler, also a researcher at the Potsdam Institute and a leader of the analysis. All these scenarios require a major takeover by renewable energy, such that the carbon intensity of powering our lives goes down by 64 to nearly 74 percent by 2050. But that is not as dramatic as the “challenging” scenarios that accomplish a low overshoot. The world’s demand for energy overall still grows in the “high overshoot” scenarios, but by a wide range, between 2 and 18 percent. Not everybody will agree with these models — or, the cutoffs imposed by the Potsdam Institute researchers. Some experts are more optimistic about technology and humanity’s ability to innovate. Others point out that it is easy to imagine countries failing to achieve what is necessary to stay below 2C at all. In the end, these are simply well-informed models of how the world will work. What’s more, we still have a limited understanding of how the climate system will respond to emissions. At the U.N. Climate Change Conference late last month, world leaders reaffirmed the 1.5C goal. But these scenarios show that without dramatic action — action the leaders did not commit to taking — it most likely will not be possible. Or at least, not without a major overshoot first. That is where the world is currently heading. About this story Editing by Monica Ulmanu. Copy editing by Dorine Bethea and Angela Mecca. The initial scenarios considered here are the 1,202 emissions pathways for which warming levels could also be evaluated, considered by the IPCC in 2022 in its Sixth Assessment Report, Working Group III. The methods used to filter scenarios based on the five dimensions described above were published by Warszawski, Kriegler, and an international group of colleagues in Environmental Research Letters in 2021. For this article, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research scientists applied the same methodology to the scenarios considered by the IPCC in 2022. Because some scenarios did not contain enough information to be considered,  scientists were able to analyze 207 out of 230 scenarios, or 90 percent, that end the century below 1.5 degrees Celsius. This includes 87 out of 97 scenarios that limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius with  limited or no overshoot. These are the scenarios considered in the charts above. The researchers also imposed an additional screen, requiring that the scenarios not plunge too quickly below 2022 emissions levels by 2025, with 2022 emissions defined as the most recent estimate of fossil CO2 and cement emissions made by the Global Carbon Project. Scenarios were removed if they implied an emissions plunge of over 19 percent below 2022 levels in just 3 years (to less than ~29.65 Gt CO2). The scientists also applied some additional screening from the IPCC report to control for other questionable developments in the near-term future, such as not allowing large amounts of new nuclear power or carbon capture and storage. The emissions and energy data that were used to calculate the five tests were interpolated to annual resolution. In most cases, the data in the database are provided in five-year intervals, extending to 10-year intervals after 2050. Temperature curves shown in the charts above are the result of a climate model that takes the emissions results from Integrated Assessment Models as inputs, and calculates the probable temperatures that will result. The curves depict the median estimate of the resulting warming, which means that there is a 50 percent chance that the actual warming that the planet sees will be lower (or higher) than that value. Scenarios qualify as 1.5C scenarios (with no or a limited overshoot, or returning to 1.5C after a high overshoot) in the IPCC’s categorization if they have   a greater than 50 percent chance of limiting warming to below 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. The original scenario data are provided by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis’s AR6 Scenario Explorer and Database. The full citation is: Edward Byers, Volker Krey, Elmar Kriegler, Keywan Riahi, Roberto Schaeffer, Jarmo Kikstra, Robin Lamboll, Zebedee Nicholls, Marit Sanstad, Chris Smith, Kaj-Ivar van der Wijst, Alaa Al Khourdajie, Franck Lecocq, Joana Portugal-Pereira, Yamina Saheb, Anders Strømann, Harald Winkler, Cornelia Auer, Elina Brutschin, Matthew Gidden, Philip Hackstock, Mathijs Harmsen, Daniel Huppmann, Peter Kolp, Claire Lepault, Jared Lewis, Giacomo Marangoni, Eduardo Müller-Casseres, Ragnhild Skeie, Michaela Werning, Katherine Calvin, Piers Forster, Celine Guivarch, Tomoko Hasegawa, Malte Meinshausen, Glen Peters, Joeri Rogelj, Bjorn Samset, Julia Steinberger, Massimo Tavoni, Detlef van Vuuren. AR6 Scenarios Database hosted by IIASA, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, 2022."
+"President Biden seized on climate change as a core priority when he took office, saying days after his inauguration, “We’ve already waited too long to deal with this climate crisis, and we can’t wait any longer.” The new president spent his first year in the White House trying to match his policies to the urgency of his words. His administration has worked aggressively to make that ambitious agenda a reality — even as success has come in fits and starts. Much of Biden’s work involved restoring dozens of environmental protections unraveled by Donald Trump’s deregulatory frenzy, but it also includes dozens of new climate policies. The Washington Post has logged each policy shift of the Biden era, across agencies and industries. If you’ve been following our award-winning tracker over the past year, this quiz will be a piece of cake. Not quite. Shortly after his inauguration, Biden canceled the presidential permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, which aimed to ship tar sands, or heavy bitumen, from Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the Gulf Coast. Barack Obama blocked the cross-border permit during his second term on the grounds that transporting that much heavy crude oil would accelerate climate change. Trump revived the project once he took office by awarding TC Energy the permit, but Biden’s move amounted to the fatal blow. In June 2021, the pipeline’s developer announced it would no longer pursue it. Not quite. In its first year, the Biden administration targeted or overturned roughly three-quarters of the policies of the Trump White House — nearly 170 so far. Among them: Biden rejoined the Paris climate agreement, which the United States left under Trump, and he temporarily halted oil and gas drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Not quite. The Biden administration approved 3,557 permits for oil and gas drilling on public land in its first year, according to an analysis by the Center for Biological Diversity, compared with the Trump administration’s first-year total of 2,658. The majority of them, issued by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management, were on federal land in New Mexico. While Biden paused new federal oil and gas leasing a week after taking office, a federal judge blocked that policy in June 2021. Halting permits on existing leases is harder than temporarily stopping federal oil and gas auctions. A federal judge on Thursday invalidated a major offshore oil and gas lease sale the Biden administration held last fall in the Gulf of Mexico, ruling the government did a flawed analysis of the drilling’s climate change impact. Not quite. Biden officials have so far defended the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision in 2020 to deny designating critical habitat for the rusty patched bumblebee, which the Trump administration initially delayed listing under the Endangered Species Act. The Natural Resources Defense Council and other groups are challenging that decision in federal court, arguing in a recent brief, “Although the rusty patched bumble bee was once common and abundant throughout much of America, the survival of this native pollinator now hangs in the balance.” The bee, which was once prevalent in the Midwest, has experienced an 88 percent population decline in the past two decades. Not quite. Unlike several of Biden’s more controversial climate policies, the single biggest step he has taken to cut greenhouse gas emissions enjoys bipartisan support: a program to cut the production and use of chemicals known as hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, by 85 percent over the next 15 years. The rule, which the Environmental Protection Agency finalized in September, implements a law enacted a year before he took office. These chemical compounds, widely used in refrigeration and air conditioning, are short-lived in the atmosphere but hundreds to thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide. By 2050, federal officials project, the program will cut 4.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent — nearly the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions as three years’ worth of pollution from the U.S. power sector. Not quite. Since his inauguration, Biden has protected 5,827,854 acres, or 9,106 square miles, of public lands and waters — an area nearly the size of New Hampshire. This record — which means Biden has protected more land and water in his first term than his three immediate predecessors — rests largely on the president’s move to reverse Trump’s decision to scale back safeguards for three large national monuments established by Democrats: Utah’s Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, and the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument in the Atlantic Ocean. Biden also established two new marine protected areas: the Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast National Marine Sanctuary, which spans 615,680 acres, and the roughly 52,000-acre National Estuarine Research Reserve in Connecticut, while adding acreage to more than a dozen national wildlife refuges. Not quite. Federal courts have ruled more than half a dozen times since Biden took office that the Trump administration violated the law. This list includes EPA policies limiting what sort of objections tribes and states could make to projects affecting their water quality and one that kept chlorpyrifos, a pesticide linked to neurological damage in fetuses and infants, on the market. A day before Biden took office the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit tossed out Trump’s Affordable Clean Energy rule, which was aimed at easing greenhouse gas limits on power plants. Carrie Jenks, executive director for the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program, said in an email that these rulings have made it easier to scrap some Trump-era rollbacks. “Courts’ decisions over the past year rejecting many of the Trump administration’s rules enabled the Biden administration to focus on replacing policies to be consistent with the administration’s priorities.” Not quite. Not long before he left office, Trump finished dismantling a 2016 EPA rule that required oil and gas companies to detect methane leaks from certain equipment and quickly repair them. In a bipartisan vote last year, Congress voted to restore the Obama-era rule. Biden signed the Congressional Review Act resolution, wiping Trump’s rollback off the books. Not quite. Biden would like to enshrine all of the policies above. But in 2021, he used his executive authority to mandate that the U.S. government devise a plan to turn its sprawling fleet of nearly 650,000 vehicles green over time. Congress holds the power to tax and spend, and it sets the boundaries of what agencies can regulate, and so the other items on this list would require a blessing from Capitol Hill. Not quite. Trump flip-flopped multiple times on the question of importing elephant trophies from overseas, first lifting an Obama ban before suggesting he might block them because he considered hunting elephants a “horror show.” But his administration made these imports legal, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service settled a lawsuit with hunting groups last year to begin processing import permits again."
+"PERHENTIAN ISLANDS, Malaysia — For nearly four decades, the coral gardener worked alone. Twice daily, he went out to sea, staying underwater for as long as his oxygen supply allowed. He learned the shapes and textures of corals long before he knew their Latin names. He studied the conditions in which they thrived — the water temperature, the sun exposure, the diversity of marine life — and saw how the disruption of just one of those factors could bring about mass death. He dedicated himself to reviving the reefs, but for a long time, no one cared to join him. Locals whispered about the eccentric diving instructor who spent his off days in the water, who spoke to corals like they were people. “Everyone thought I was stupid,” said Anuar Abdullah, 61. “But I knew I was doing the most important thing in the world.” Abdullah has spent his entire adult life restoring coral reefs, until recently working in obscurity — and at times, in poverty. In a world rapidly losing its reefs to climate change and to environmental damage, he is now emerging as an increasingly influential expert on how to revive them. Governments and resorts have come calling, asking whether he can help with reefs lost to natural disasters and overtourism. Banks and corporations have reached out, asking to sponsor his projects across Southeast Asia. Abdullah doesn’t have a doctorate in marine biology or a research lab, and he scorns science that he deems “useless to humanity.” He is unyielding when it comes to the methods he has honed over his lifetime. And he identifies, first and foremost, as a gardener. His résumé may be unconventional, observers say, but he possesses a type of practical expertise that is growing in currency as people seek out concrete and accessible ways of acting against climate change. In the past decade, thousands have traveled from around the world to learn from Abdullah how to grow corals, some eventually leaving their jobs to join his projects full time. With his roughly 700 active volunteers, he claims, he has already revived about 125 acres of coral reefs. In 2017, Thailand’s government asked Abdullah to initiate the rehabilitation of one of its most famous tourist attractions, Maya Bay, which had lost half its coral population after years of unbridled tourism. Visitors were kept out of the site for three years while Abdullah led a team of 120 people, including staff from Thailand’s Department of National Parks, in planting new corals. In 2021, after Typhoon Rai wrecked the island of Cebu in the Philippines, a group of resorts asked Abdullah whether he could save what was left of the shoreline’s coral reefs. And earlier this year, Abdullah launched a new effort with officials and companies in Egypt to build the world’s largest subtropical coral nursery in the Red Sea. There was a presentation on the nursery at the U.N. climate change summit, COP27 this month but Abdullah did not attend. He hates conferences, he says. And he had work to do. On a recent afternoon, Abdullah zipped up his dive suit and waded into the warm, shallow waters off Perhentian Kecil, the smaller of two islands near the coastal state of Terengganu in Malaysia. The island lies squarely inside the coral triangle, a part of the Pacific Ocean that contains 75 percent of the coral species in the world. Locals say the corals in this particular bay were once so abundant that it was impossible to walk on the seafloor. But they’re dead now, washed up on the beach in piles of white carcasses. Almost all the materials that Abdullah uses for restoration come directly from the ocean. To build his nurseries, he doesn’t use steel pipes or concrete blocks — which he can’t afford — and instead gathers rocks from the seafloor, stacking them so they aren’t toppled by the currents. While other coral restoration groups might rely on a lab to “fragment” live coral that is in turn used for growing, he searches for broken pieces of coral in existing reefs and affixes them to the rocks using water-resistant, animal-friendly glue. When he needs other materials, he starts by scavenging the beach for waste. He has made rafts from driftwood and salvaged old buoys and abandoned fishing rope. At Perhentian, he is working to develop a nursery that would help repopulate the bay within four years. Bending over to pick up a rock where he had affixed a coral fragment several weeks earlier, he murmured, “My little acropora.” Abdullah squinted, his eyes gray and his face lined and leathery from years in the sun. He looked for signs that the fragments were welding to the rock and starting to grow. “My little stylophora,” he continued, tilting the rock toward the sun to examine another fragment. “How are you doing today?” Born in Terengganu, Abdullah was sent to live in a foster home after both his parents died when he was 6. Curfews were strictly enforced at the foster home, but he stole trips to the seaside when he could. The ocean, he remembered, felt like freedom. In the 1980s, Abdullah settled in Perhentian as a diving instructor and became obsessed with corals. He spent two decades experimenting with how to grow them in the ocean, along the way alienating most of his friends, getting divorced from his wife and nearly bankrupting himself, he recalled. In 2006, he found success with his low-tech, affordable approach and, exhilarated, shared it with a local university. The professors, he said, made fun of his grammar. As a field, coral restoration has been siloed, split between scientists and researchers on one end and practitioners and coral “tinkerers” on the other. For a long time, many scientists had an “ivory tower syndrome” that prioritized theory over application, said David Suggett, a marine biology professor at the University of Technology in Sydney. “The questions we were asking, from a science perspective, were not always quite right — or useful,” Suggett added. “But that’s changing.” Faced with catastrophes like the mass bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, scientists are seeking out the expertise of practitioners — diving instructors, tour operators, local fishermen — who know the reefs in their areas better than anyone else. To amass the “people power” needed to revive reefs with scale, Suggett said, there’s also now an appetite for low-tech solutions. “It’s accessible science,” said Heidy Martinez, 29, a biology researcher who volunteered on the Maya Bay project. Watching coral fragments grow into small bulbs is a “magical” feeling, she added. “And it gets people hooked.” But even as Abdullah rises in prominence, he knows the field of coral restoration is changing around him. There are for-profit companies with millions of dollars in funding that are using new technology to operate “coral factories.” There is a push among research institutes to establish accreditation standards that would regulate how restoration is done worldwide and subject operations like Abdullah’s to assessments. To date, Abdullah’s has not been. Debate is intense over whether any of it is worthwhile, given that new reefs might still be killed off by global warming. These are vexing questions that, to Abdullah, only take time away from what he wants to do, which is to plant as many corals as he can — and get others to join him. His “army of gardeners” includes people like Sharifah Noor Ridzwan, 39, a dive shop owner on Perhentian who took his coral propagation course while seven months pregnant. And Sebestian Jungo, 40, who recently quit his job as a civil servant in Switzerland and moved to Perhentian to help build up the coral nursery. “For so long, I was part of the problem,” said Jungo, shirtless and barefoot on the island, “Finally, now, I can be part of the solution.” The monsoon season on Perhentian starts in November, bringing torrential rains and high, lashing winds. Except for some residents of a fishing village, most people leave the island for at least a few months. Abdullah plans to stay. He has rented a small wooden chalet not far from shore. And twice a day, he will trek down through the forest to visit his young corals. He will see to it, he said, that they make it through the monsoon."
+"The world off Australia’s northeast coast is magical yet besieged, a place of stunning colors in good times but ghostly white in bad ones. The bad have happened repeatedly in recent years as warming seas tied to climate change have bleached the vast coral ecosystem below. But through a symbiotic collaboration between five tourism companies and marine scientists at the University of Technology Sydney, “coral gardening” in underwater nurseries is trying to help preserve the country’s famed Great Barrier Reef. Divers for the companies — all intimately acquainted with the reef and, like so many businesses, dependent on its vitality — scour the seafloor. There they collect broken pieces of coral and attach them to submerged frames on which the fragments can recover and grow. Ecologically minded tourists pay to see the unusual attraction. It’s a strategy that master reef guide Russell Hosp says is aimed at giving “Mother Nature a little bit of a boost.” Some 30 gardens are currently being cultivated, and the healthy coral segments that thrive on their artificial underwater structures are then transplanted to damaged areas of the reef. The Coral Nurture Program is just one of numerous projects along the Queensland coastline, including one, run by the Reef Restoration Foundation, that just saw its planted coral spawn for the first time. Together, these efforts aim to transform the reef by making it more resilient. This month’s U.N. Climate Change Conference in Egypt, known as COP27, discussed adaptation solutions for coral nations. Peter Thomson, the U.N. secretary general’s special envoy for oceans, told a panel that he was a convert on the effectiveness of programs such as coral nurseries after seeing the results in his native Fiji. “Don’t accept the idea that coral reefs are going to be extinct,” he said. “We’re going to refuse that future.” None of the progress can overcome unchecked global warming, however. “A 1.5-degree world is really a death knell for reefs,” warned Carol Phua, who leads the World Wildlife Federation’s Global Coral Reef Initiative. The loss would be tragic. Corals are arguably the strangest of the many bewildering life-forms that can be found in the world’s oceans, simultaneously animal, vegetable and mineral. The animal is the polyp, a transparent, tentacled creature related to anemone and jellyfish. Coral polyps have squishy bodies but have evolved the miraculous ability to secrete calcium carbonate — the same material as limestone rock — as protection. These calcium carbonate barricades make up the visible architecture of a reef. Inside the polyp’s tissue are a living algae called zooxanthellae. It’s these single-celled organisms that lend reefs their famous rainbows of color. And, more importantly for the polyp, the algae provide food for their hosts, turning sunlight into proteins, fats and carbohydrates through photosynthesis. There are billions of coral polyps, containing tens of billions of zooxanthellae, hiding within the hard structure of the Great Barrier Reef. Every newborn polyp absorbs algae and secretes rock, adding infinitesimally to an ecosystem that has been growing for 20,000 years. The problem, said Emma Camp, the Coral Nurture Program’s co-founder and a university marine biologist, is that “corals have a narrow environmental niche, or range, that they typically like to survive.” Coral algae can only survive in warmer waters. But when the temperature gets too warm, the algae begins emitting a toxic substance instead of food, which the polyp instinctively and protectively ejects into the ocean. The result is coral bleaching, and the stark images of reefs after an event show what corals look like without algae inside. Unless the water temperature drops and the algae can safely return, the polyp starves, and the reef remains colorless. The Great Barrier Reef has experienced four bleaching events in various sections since 2016. Even when a coral colony survives, the stress takes a toll. The coral needs time to recover, and multiple bleachings in a short period are more likely to be fatal. Some species cope with heat better than others, but when the most vulnerable species die, the reef’s diversity suffers. Coral Nurture participants have planted nearly 77,000 corals in the program’s four years. Camp acknowledged that in comparison to the reef’s vastness — the equivalent length of Florida to Maine — the number is small. “Where we’re at with most current restoration efforts is that they’re local,” she said. That focus is something Alan Wallish appreciates. He’s a tour operator in Cairns who has spent several decades on the reef, and his business, Passions of Paradise, is among the five guiding companies partnering with the university scientists. The idea, he said, is “about looking after your own little patch.” The other initiatives underway to nurture the reef run the gamut. Eye on the Reef, headed by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, enlists the masses of divers who sightsee underwater to collect data while they’re there. A “Coral IVF” project, led by Southern Cross University, gathers coral sperm and eggs and fertilizes them in an ocean pool, depositing the larvae in degraded regions. Indigenous rangers of the Mandubarra people are also involved, working with the recreational fishers group OzFish and researchers from James Cook University to plant sea grass meadows. At a lab near Townsville, specialists at the Australian Institute of Marine Science experiment with a biodegradable, molecule-thick film that may block heat from entering the ocean. Climate change remains the big caveat for all these initiatives. Human intervention projects “are going to be essential” in coming decades, said Scott Heron, an environmental physicist with the ARC Centre for Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. But they will be most effective only if they advance in tandem with a rapid decrease in greenhouse gas emissions. “We need to be addressing climate change, and the causes of climate change, in a policy-coherent way so that we’re not putting a blowtorch as well as a hose onto the fire,” Heron said. Despite the odds, Hosp is actually pretty optimistic as he guides visitors on the Great Barrier Reef. “The work we’re doing on the reef is in conjunction with work being done in the Antarctic, and in Africa, all over the world,” he said. “There’s this concerted effort to try and fix the problem in as many ways as we can.” “Quite honestly,” he added, “I think it’s a little bit early to tick the box and say the reef, or any other ecosystem, is a lost cause. Because it’s absolutely not.”"
+"The legislation Democrats muscled through the Senate on Sunday would represent one of the most consequential pieces of economic policy in recent U.S. history — though still far smaller than the $3 trillion the Biden administration initially sought. Some of the overall figures changed in last-minute tweaks as the Senate worked through the weekend, but Democrats had not yet released an updated fiscal score for the legislation by Sunday afternoon. The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that the bill would put about $385 billion into combating climate change and bolstering U.S. energy production through changes that would encourage nearly the whole economy to cut carbon emissions. With the planet rapidly warming,  Democrats say the bill would reduce carbon emissions by roughly 40 percent by 2030, close to President Biden’s goal of cutting U.S. emissions by at least 50 to 52 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), whose vote Democrats secured in late July after months of negotiations, has also emphasized that it would spur American energy independence more broadly, including by encouraging natural gas, as the war in Ukraine has exposed domestic reliance on petrostates’ fossil fuel production. The bill uses two main levers: major new incentives for private industry to produce far more renewable energy, and other incentives for households to transform their energy use and consumption. Democrats say this second set of incentives will also offer immediate consumer relief for the higher energy prices that have bedeviled the Biden administration. The  bill would also raise hundreds of billions in new revenue through new tax provisions — the biggest of which will fall on the country’s large corporations. It would give the badly underfunded Internal Revenue Service its biggest budget increase in its history. On health care, Democrats campaigned in 2020 on major changes, and this deal fulfills two major pledges: allowing Medicare to negotiate the price of prescription drugs, and making health care more affordable for millions of Americans. The Senate dropped initial plans to limit some drug price increases to the rate of inflation for people with private insurance. The bill falls short on plugging one of the biggest gaps of the Affordable Care Act and other key items long sought by the party’s more liberal members. Still, it amounts to the biggest changes to the health system in roughly a decade. The bill left out many key policy ambitions of Democrats — excluding, for instance, plans for new child care, housing, eldercare and paid-leave programs. But after months of gridlock and false starts, the House of Representatives is expected to approve the bill on Friday, sending it to Biden to sign. Meanwhile, Republicans have warned that the measure will hurt the U.S. economy with higher taxes as fears of a recession are growing. But Democrats from Biden on down argued that the deal was a big step forward. Here is a summary of what’s in the more than 700-page bill, according to Senate Democratic officials — and what’s not. New and extended credits would incentivize  solar, wind, hydropower and other sources of renewable energy. Private firms and publicly owned utilities could get  tax subsidies both for the production of renewable energy and for  manufacturing  a specific part essential to a renewable project, such as wind turbines or solar panels. The goal? To make new green energy production cheaper for utilities to build than fossil fuel plants are. Buyers of new electric vehicles would get a refundable $7,500 tax credit applied at the point of purchase. That would also apply to vehicles whose manufacturers are no longer eligible for an existing EV credit, such as Tesla and General Motors. Couples who earn less than $300,000 a year or individuals who earn less than $150,000 would be eligible. A new $4,000 tax credit would also apply to purchases of used EVs. Tens of millions of people would qualify for these credits. The EV credits would start to take effect next year. Starting as soon as the bill is enacted, installation of home solar panels would be eligible for a 30 percent credit through 2032. That would drop to 26 percent in 2033 and 22 percent in 2023. Installing efficient heat pumps for climate control would be eligible for rebates of up to $8,000. Electric heat pump water heaters would get $1,750 rebates. Additional consumer subsidies in the bill include $840 for an electric induction cooktop and up to $9,100 for improvements to electric panels, wiring and home insulation. Households could get a total of up to $14,000 in rebates. If consumers claim the subsidies in the bill, they could save as much as $1,840 on their annual energy bill on average, according to an analysis by Rewiring America, a climate analysis group. (That would also require spending significantly to buy things such as an EV, a heat pump and solar panels.) A new Methane Emissions Reduction Program would reward oil and gas companies that slash their emissions of methane and penalize those that don’t. The program,  crafted by Senate Environment and Public Works Chair Thomas R. Carper (D-Del. ), originally would have provided $775 million upfront to oil and gas companies to cut their methane emissions. The current agreement doubles that money to $1.5 billion, according to a Senate Democratic aide. Methane traps far more  heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, the most abundant greenhouse gas. A Clean Energy and Sustainability Accelerator, commonly referred to as a green bank, would leverage public and private funds to invest in clean-energy technologies and infrastructure. In states where green banks have already been established, public money has been used to leverage six to 20 times more dollars in private investment in clean energy. To secure Manchin’s vote, Democratic leadership pledged to mandate new oil and gas leasing in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Alaska, where industry groups are pushing for a major expansion in oil production. Manchin views drilling in those areas as important for the country’s domestic energy independence. Top Democrats also promised Manchin to work on a separate permitting reform bill that would make it easier for developers to override environmental objections when building pipelines, natural gas export facilities and other energy infrastructure. This falls outside the rules of the Senate procedure the party  used to pass the economic package, meaning Democratic leadership will have to try to secure GOP support for the permitting changes. The agreement would permanently extend funding for the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund, which covers benefits for roughly 25,000 coal miners suffering from black lung disease, including those in Manchin’s coal-rich state of West Virginia. The version of the bill that passed the House last year only provided a four-year extension of a tax on coal sales that pays for the trust fund. The bill contains numerous smaller measures aimed at specific parts of the economy with high emissions: $20 billion for agriculture subsidies to help farmers reduce emissions, $6 billion to reduce emissions in chemical, steel and cement plants, and $3 billion to reduce air pollution at ports. These programs would start next year and see funding ramp up over the next several years. The biggest tax hike in the plan would apply to all U.S. corporations that earn more than $1 billion per year in profits. Under current law, U.S. corporations ostensibly pay a 21 percent tax rate. But dozens of Fortune 500 companies pay no federal income tax at all, by claiming deductions for research and development and other credits. The plan would attempt to close off that option by subjecting large corporations to a tax on their financial statements. Corporations would still be able to claim tax credits, though, since renewable energy groups raised concerns the minimum tax could undercut the effectiveness of the climate tax credits. As part of their deal  with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), a moderate who asked for changes before backing the bill, Democrats  agreed to tweak the minimum tax to allow firms to keep deducting some investment expenses. They also on Sunday amended the legislation to exempt firms owned by private equity from the new minimum tax. The new minimum would take effect in 2023. The IRS would scale up dramatically in an attempt to close the “tax gap” — the difference between what people and corporations owe and what they actually pay. Democrats say that their plan to invest $80 billion in the IRS would more than pay for itself, in part because the tax agency’s budget was cut by 20 percent between 2010 and 2020. Former IRS commissioner Charles Rossotti and current Treasury official Natasha Sarin previously estimated the IRS could raise $1.4 trillion in additional tax revenue with more funding. While Democrats are celebrating the measure, Republicans say it represents a political vulnerability for the administration if more Americans face audits or other scrutiny from the tax collector. It remains to be seen whether all the new revenue Democrats hope to raise will come from wealthy tax cheats, as they have pledged. As part of their last-minute negotiations with Sinema, Democrats agreed to limit the extent of the corporate minimum tax and instead inserted a new tax on corporations that purchase shares of their own stocks — a maneuver known as a “stock buyback.” Democrats have for years complained that these buybacks enrich wealthy shareholders, because a firm drives up the value of its stock by buying it. Liberal tax experts have said that rather than spending money to increase their stocks’ values, large corporations should spend it on improving worker pay or investing in new research and development. After the 2017 GOP tax law, 10 drug companies spent roughly $75 billion on buybacks — in the same year, they spent roughly $72 billion on research and development, according to the Roosevelt Institute, a left-leaning think tank. The 1 percent tax on stock buybacks would raise roughly $73 billion, according to a Senate Democratic aide. Conservatives will oppose the bill as likely to discourage investment, because the tax makes investors less likely to give their money to companies when rewarding them with buybacks becomes more expensive. The provision could also hurt retirement pension plans, said John Kartch, a spokesman for Americans for Tax Reform, a conservative group. The deal allows Medicare to negotiate drug prices for the first time and would prevent future administrations from refusing to do so. It’s a major win for Democrats, who have long pledged to lower the cost of medicines, particularly for seniors. The government would start by negotiating the price of 10 drugs in 2026 and gradually scale up to 20 by 2029. But it isn’t clear how many Americans with Medicare coverage would see lower out-of-pocket costs — or how much money they could save. That depends on which drugs wind up being negotiated and how much prices drop, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The bill also includes other policies aimed at curbing the sky-high cost of drugs. For instance, it caps seniors’ drug costs under Medicare to $2,000 per year, forces drug companies to pay a rebate if they increase prices faster than the rate of inflation in Medicare and provides free vaccines for seniors. The drug-pricing components are a key money saver — congressional scorekeepers had estimated these policies would reduce the deficit by nearly $288 billion over a decade. The legislation would also impose a $35 monthly cap on the cost of insulin — which people with Type 1 diabetes need to stay alive, and which many people with Type 2 diabetes use to manage their blood sugar levels — for patients enrolled in Medicare. Democrats had sought to extend the same cap to people with private insurance, but Republicans nixed such a policy on the Senate floor, pointing to the Senate parliamentarian’s ruling that it didn’t comply with budget rules. Last year, Democrats’ pandemic aid law boosted financial help for low-income Americans with plans on the Affordable Care Act’s insurance exchanges and extended the subsidies to middle-income earners for the first time. But the enhanced tax credits are set to expire at the end of this year, raising the specter of roughly 13 million Americans learning that their health premiums would soon increase — in some cases by hundreds of dollars per person annually — just weeks before the elections. The deal would extend the tax credits for three more years, starting in 2023 and running through 2025. The original version of the legislation would have brought down the federal deficit by about $300 billion over 10 years, according to Marc Goldwein, senior vice president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. That would be more than any other legislation has done since 2011. The savings would shrink somewhat if Congress later extends the Affordable Care Act subsidies, which only last for a few years in the current version of the bill. Last minute changes to assuage the parliamentarian — and secure the final support of all Democrats — have changed some of the bill’s components and the amount of money they raise. Democrats say it is still far more than needed to offset its costs, and could perhaps deliver the full $300 billion in deficit reduction. But party leaders had yet to furnish a final fiscal analysis of the legislation by Sunday morning. Democrats have sought to reclaim the mantle of fiscal responsibility from Republicans after the 2017 GOP tax act increased the federal deficit by $1.5 trillion. Most of the deficit reduction from the bill, however, will not occur for a few years, because the prescription drug provisions largely do not take effect until after 2026. Climate Democrats had already abandoned a pivotal program last year that would have punished electric utilities that didn’t deploy more clean energy: the Clean Electricity Performance Program, which would have accounted for nearly 42 percent of the original bill’s emissions cuts, according to a chart released by Schumer’s office last year. But it fell out early amid opposition from Manchin, who said it would accelerate the country’s energy transition too quickly and leave it more dependent on foreign governments. Taxes Most of Democrats’ earlier proposed tax reforms were dumped. Biden initially proposed more than $3 trillion in new tax hikes on the rich and corporations, and even those proposals were smaller versions of the multi-trillion-dollar “wealth tax” plans pushed by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) during the 2020 presidential campaign. Higher taxes on wealthy investors and heirs, also proposed by Biden, are out as well. The legislation also excludes relief from a cap on how much state and local taxes Americans can deduct off their federal taxes, which has been a top priority for some Democrats in high-tax states. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) told Axios on Wednesday that the matter “should be addressed” in a final bill. To secure Sinema’s support for the bill, Democrats dropped what tax experts have characterized as a loophole primarily benefiting the private-equity industry. That provision would have raised roughly $13 billion. Health Care Democrats will have to come to terms with the failure of their ambitions to expand health care to two other groups — millions of poor Americans in Republican-controlled states and senior citizens. President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act required states to expand Medicaid to those earning up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level. But the Supreme Court made such a move optional, and many GOP-run states refused. Advocates had hoped to ensure the plan extended Medicaid to cover these groups, which would have expanded coverage to roughly 2.2 million people, many of whom live in the South. It was a huge priority for several vulnerable Democrats, such as Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (Ga.). Last summer, more-liberal Democrats were also pushing for a major expansion of Medicare — allowing the program to cover vision, dental and hearing services. But that’s been out of talks since the fall. The deal also cut some of Biden’s priorities, such as infusing hundreds of billions into home care for the elderly and those with disabilities. And it doesn’t include provisions that could help provide health insurance for new mothers who earn low incomes, as well as some of the nation’s most vulnerable children. Earlier versions would have permanently funded coverage for low-income kids and expanded Medicaid to provide benefits for a year after giving birth in every state. This story has been updated multiple times throughout the legislative process."
+"It’s still possible for humanity to avoid the most catastrophic consequences of climate change, a group of the world’s top energy experts, economists and social scientists said Monday — but only if societies take immediate, drastic action to put the planet on a safer path. The task described by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is daunting: The world must slash annual greenhouse gas emissions by almost half in the next eight years, and find a way to zero out carbon pollution by the middle of the century. But the IPCC also describes hundreds of strategies that could help humanity achieve this goal. Indeed, the report makes clear that there is no one silver bullet to solving global warming. Instead, nations, businesses, communities and individuals all have a role to play in shaping a safer and more sustainable future. Here are six approaches highlighted in the thousands of pages of Monday’s assessment: Electricity and heat production account for the largest fraction of planet-warming pollution — about a quarter of global emissions. That makes this sector one of the most important targets for climate policy. To have a shot at limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), the world must cut energy emissions between 38 and 52 percent in the next eight years. Thanks to huge advancements in renewable energy technology, electricity generated from solar and wind is in many places cheaper than power from fossil fuels, the IPCC says. Small-scale renewable power sources, such as off-grid solar panels, can help bring electricity to communities that previously had no energy access. Governments can use policy measures such as taxes on carbon emissions, financial incentives for installing renewables and renewable portfolio standards to accelerate the transition to clean energy sources, the IPCC says. Investments in energy efficiency can also help curb overall demand for power. “Fundamental to all of these changes is that low carbon energy systems will use far less fossil fuel than today,” the authors write. Emissions from buildings accounted for roughly 21 percent of greenhouse gases spewed into the atmosphere in 2019, according to the IPCC. That number includes indirect emissions from the power used for electricity and heat, as well as emissions from the use of steel and cement. Decarbonizing the world’s buildings won’t happen quickly or easily. But widespread efforts to create more efficient and climate-conscious buildings could have profound impacts in helping the world reduce its carbon pollution. Some strategies include better insulation, more efficient heating and cooling systems, powering buildings with more renewable energy and using more sustainable construction materials — as well as public policies and financial incentives to encourage such approaches. Cities, home to more than half the world’s population, are essential to tackling climate change. Urban land areas are projected to roughly triple by 2050. If expanding settlements are built using conventional materials and technologies, such as carbon-intensive concrete and car-centric transportation systems, it will “lock in” greenhouse gas emissions for generations to come. Yet “deep decarbonization and systemic transformation” can turn cities into epicenters of the energy transition, scientists say. Simple urban planning measures, such as increasing density, mixing residential and commercial areas so people can live where they work, and developing along public transit corridors, could cut urban carbon pollution by roughly a quarter by 2050. Using recycled materials in construction and heating buildings with electricity instead of gas can further slash emissions. Investing in green space can make cities safer amid worsening heat waves and intensified flooding while also pulling carbon out of the air. Established cities can achieve the biggest emissions cuts by retrofitting buildings, adding new construction to boost the density of already populated areas and switching their energy systems to cleaner sources. But the real opportunity is in new and emerging cities, which the IPCC says have “unparalleled potential to become low or net zero GHG emissions while achieving high quality of life.” How people fly, drive and ship goods accounts for a significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions around the world. Transportation is the biggest source in the United States. Emissions from the sector need to fall sharply in coming decades to put the world on a better path to meet its climate goals. Some ways to move toward that goal, according to Monday’s report: Ramp up electric vehicles, explore hydrogen and advanced biofuels for aviation and shipping, embrace cultural and behavioral changes such as more telework and urban planning that allows people to use more public transit or travel by foot or bicycle. Technological assistance and smart transportation planning could allow developing countries to “leapfrog"" past the need for fossil-fuel based transport systems, with benefits for air quality as well as climate, the authors write. Human-managed land areas are a significant source of planet-warming pollution, accounting for 13 to 21 percent of humanity’s emissions, depending on the year. But the land can also be a tremendous ally in the fight against climate change by pulling carbon out of the atmosphere — if people learn to manage it the right way. One major area for improvement is in the way people farm, the IPCC says. Standard techniques such as tilling the soil and using lots of fertilizer release tons of greenhouse gases, and microbes in the guts of goats and cattle are a major source of problematic methane. By adopting regenerative farming practices that store carbon in the soil, curbing fertilizer use and reducing the amount of meat we consume, people can turn farmland from a carbon source into a sink. Protecting nature, especially forests and other carbon-rich ecosystems, is also essential to halt the Earth’s warming trend. Healthy forests, restored wetlands and undisturbed prairies can pull billions of tons of carbon out of the atmosphere each year, the IPCC says — delivering as much climate benefit as almost 2 million windmills. Ecosystem recovery also protects wildlife, defends against heat and flooding, cleans the air and water and improves people’s mental health. Few other strategies deliver as much environmental bang for your buck. The IPCC report makes clear that the people who suffer the most from climate change are those who contributed the least to the problem and have the fewest resources to deal with it. Least developed countries contribute about 0.4 percent of humanity’s cumulative greenhouse gas emissions, while developed nations — home to roughly the same number of people — are responsible for 27 percent of the world’s carbon pollution. Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, rich countries grew their economies and improved their citizens’ quality of life by using fossil fuels. Yet if the world is to avoid catastrophic warming, the IPCC says, these wealthy nations must now help poorer ones achieve growth using renewable energy sources and sustainable development practices instead of coal, oil and gas. This requires a three to sixfold increase in funding to help developing countries cut their emissions, the report finds. Vulnerable regions will also need far more support as they adapt to the climate impacts they cannot avoid. But so far, the world’s wealthy countries have failed to fully live up to their financing promises they made to developing nations. The world must address inequity as it fights climate change, the IPCC says, because it bolsters cooperation. And, if done right, efforts to curb emissions — such as installing solar panels in isolated communities, providing electric bikes to low-income city dwellers and restoring land management authority to indigenous people — can also improve the well-being of people. “Reducing greenhouse gas emissions can contribute to ending poverty and hunger,” said environmental sociologist Patricia Romero Lankao, a lead author of the report, “when it’s done with justice and equity approaches in mind.”"
+"Reducing the workweek to four days could have a climate benefit, advocates say. In addition to improving the well-being of workers, they say slashing working hours may reduce carbon emissions. It’s what you might call a “potential triple-dividend policy, so something that can benefit the economy, society and also the environment,” said Joe O’Connor, chief executive of the nonprofit group 4 Day Week Global. “There are not many policy interventions that are available to us that could potentially have the kind of transformative impact that reduced work time could have.” Over the years, studies have documented a link between fewer working hours and lower emissions — reductions that experts explain may be the result of changes to commuting, energy use and lifestyle habits. One analysis of data looking at more than two dozen countries from 1970 to 2007 predicted that if work hours were reduced by 10 percent, there could be drops in ecological footprint, carbon footprint and carbon dioxide emissions by 12.1 percent, 14.6 percent and 4.2 percent, respectively. “The one thing we do know from lots of years of data and various papers and so forth is that the countries with short hours of work tend to be the ones with low emissions, and work time reductions tend to be associated with emission reduction,” said Juliet Schor, an economist and sociologist at Boston College who researches work, consumption and climate change. For instance, reducing working hours could affect people’s lives outside of work, said Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He suggested this kind of change could lead people toward more environmentally friendly habits. “They become used to a different lifestyle that’s a lower consumption lifestyle because they have more time.” But those benefits would depend on a number of factors, experts emphasize, including how people choose to spend nonworking time. It’s also critical, they said, to remember that reducing working hours is just one strategy to combat climate change. “There’s no one arguing that the four-day workweek is a silver bullet that will address all of our environmental concerns in one go — far from it,” O’Connor said. “But can it be a very powerful enabler and a very powerful contributor? I think absolutely it can.” Transportation is the biggest contributor to greenhouse emissions, Schor said, “and commuting is a big part of that.” In 2020, the transportation sector accounted for about 27 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The potential benefits of cutting down on commuting and travel were perhaps most noticeable during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic. When widespread stay-at-home orders were in place, the emissions from driving, flying and industrial output were dramatically reduced. Air quality in cities around the world showed marked improvement, while global emissions plummeted. Largely fueled by the pandemic, a widespread adoption of remote and hybrid work models may mean many are already commuting less even if they work five days a week, O’Connor said — but officially adopting a four-day workweek could benefit industries that are still largely in-person. A November 2021 survey of 2,000 employees and 500 business leaders in the United Kingdom found that if all organizations introduced a four-day week, the reduced trips to work would decrease travel overall by more than 691 million miles a week. But the climate benefits of less commuting could be negated, experts said, if people choose to spend their extra time off traveling, particularly if they do so by car or plane. Schor said it’s important for people to ask themselves: “What are they going to be doing on the fifth day, and what is the energy use associated with that, and how does it compare to what they would have been doing?” Shorter working hours could lead to reductions in energy usage, experts said. According to a 2006 paper, if the United States adopted European work standards, the country would consume about 20 percent less energy. And if Europeans gave up those shorter workweeks, the authors wrote they would “consume some additional 25 percent more energy.” “There’s a definite relation between production, consumption and carbon emissions,” said Weisbrot, who co-wrote the 2006 paper. Energy could also be conserved if less resources are needed to heat and cool large office buildings, Schor said, reducing demands on electricity. When the Utah state government launched a four-day workweek trial among its employees in 2008, one report projected that shutting down buildings on Fridays would lead to a decrease of at least 6,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually, Scientific American reported. Any potential energy-saving gains, however, hinge on how companies and individuals use resources, Schor said. For example, if an entire workplace shuts down on the fifth day, that would help lower consumption — less so if the office stays open to accommodate employees taking different days off. Energy consumption could also increase overall if people spend their day off at home or elsewhere doing activities that would use more resources than if they were at work. It’s possible that fewer working hours may lead some people to have a larger carbon footprint, but experts say research suggests that most people are likely to shift toward more sustainable lifestyles. “The majority view coalesces around the idea that intense working often leads to intense living,” O’Connor said. “By offering people additional time back, you’re enabling people to have more time to make sustainable life choices.” One theory, Schor said, is that people who work more and have less free time tend to do things in more carbon-intensive ways, such as choosing faster modes of transportation or buying prepared foods. “Convenience is often carbon-intensive and people opt for convenience when they’re time-stressed.” Meanwhile, some research suggests that those who work less may be more likely to engage in traditionally low-carbon activities, such as spending time with family or sleeping. “When we talk about the four-day workweek and the environment, we focus on the tangible, but actually, in a way, the biggest potential benefit here is in the intangible,” O’Connor said. “It’s in the shift away from a focus on hard work to a focus on smart work. It’s the cultural change in how we work and the impact that could have on how we live, and I think that that’s the piece that’s really revolutionary.” But moving to widely reduce working hours should not be done in isolation, he and other experts said. “It doesn’t matter how many days you work if we’re still using fossil fuels,” Schor said."
+"Thousands of fans, many holding stainless-steel pint cups, sticker-covered water bottles and aluminum cans, cheered as Jack Johnson took the stage earlier this month. Before he began his set at the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Md., the grounds were bustling as crowds formed around a stand selling tote bags, reusable utensils and “climate offset” stickers among the usual concert merchandise. On the venue’s jumbotrons, one slide — interspersed with images of environmental advocacy groups — reminded people to recycle and compost at the show. Johnson used to gaze out after shows at an “ocean” of single-use plastic littering the floors where the audience stood, he told The Washington Post in an interview this month. Now, he said, things like the reusable-pint-cup program and water refilling stations have dramatically reduced the waste he sees. “When you look out, it’s beautiful,” Johnson said. Millions of people flock to concerts and festivals during summers, when warm days and cool nights can be spent enjoying live music. But experts say these shows can harm the planet. Concertgoers and performers’ travel, along with the energy venues use to power performances, often require burning fossil fuels that generate greenhouse gas emissions. Johnson is one of a growing number of artists pledging to make their tours more environmentally friendly as they take that toll into account. Singers and bands often work with nonprofit organizations and venues where they perform to make sure events can, in various ways, reduce the industry’s carbon footprint. Even bands that have done the most to tackle their own environmental impact — such as Pearl Jam, which began offsetting its world tours’ estimated carbon emissions in 2003 — are not immune to the effects of climate change. Last week, the legendary grunge band canceled a concert in Vienna after announcing that smoke from wildfires in France had damaged lead singer Eddie Vedder’s throat. Coldplay, Billie Eilish and Harry Styles and others have now joined the ranks of artists making climate pledges. Some are surveying fans’ modes of transportation to get to concerts, eliminating single-use plastic at concessions and offering merchandise made with recycled materials in an effort to curb overall tour-related emissions. The efforts have also largely gained momentum among well-funded artists — underscoring the money and time it takes to help make a tour sustainable. “We are very blessed that we have the resources to be able to do it, because it’s very expensive to try these things for the first time,” said Chris Martin, the lead singer of Coldplay, in a May interview with the Associated Press. “We’re so privileged that we’re in a position where we can change.” To make concerts environmentally friendly, musicians often seek guidance from outside coordinators who can organize sustainability initiatives — a process that requires resources many artists don’t have. Josh Kolenik, manager and member of the band Small Black, said the group doesn’t have much time to plan sustainability efforts between performing and working as its own crew. “We all wear a lot of hats,” Kolenik said about the four band members. “You kinda need that extra person to work with the venues."" Small Black used a hybrid van for travel to reduce emissions during its most recent tour this spring. Kolenik said it could be helpful if venues had amps and drum sets available for them to use at shows, so artists could further cut down their emissions, though he acknowledged smaller clubs face financial constraints as well. For Johnson, growing up in Hawaii, he would see beaches “colorful” with plastic, areas where microplastics blended seamlessly with sand — experiences that helped make environmentalism a natural part of his music career. He has been incorporating sustainability into his tours since the early 2000s. As more artists pledge to do the same, he said the movement has gained traction. He pointed in particular to younger musicians, for whom “it’s just more a part of their standard vocabulary.” On Johnson’s current tour, $2 from each concert ticket goes toward carbon offset projects and environmental nonprofit groups. About $35,000 was raised from a Friday show in Maryland. Tanner Watt, director of partnership and development at the nonprofit REVERB, acknowledged that at every show, no matter the artist, “there’s always some footprint of waste.” But there are ways to curb it. A report released last year by the United Kingdom-based Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research said music industry stakeholders can help significantly reduce tour-related emissions by monitoring things such as transportation and energy usage. Doing so can help keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius, compared to preindustrial levels, the report said. Carly McLachlan, one of the report’s contributors, said in an email that it’s important for artists to consider sustainability options in show design, tour routes and transportation from the early stages of creating a tour — rather than “bringing someone in to ‘green’ what you already planned.” REVERB, founded by Adam Gardner, a guitarist in the band Guster, and his wife Lauren Sullivan, has 12 full-time employees working closely with touring artists. They act as “greening"" techs — sourcing local farm food to serve bands and crews, working with venues on securing reusable products and putting other sustainability measures in place. The organization wants fans to get involved, too. At concerts the group has worked on, attendees are greeted soon after entering by a volunteer wearing an upcycled concert T-shirt, and are encouraged to connect with environmental nonprofit groups with tables set up at the event. Before his group began working with musicians and venues, Gardner said, “nobody was dedicated to handling the sustainability, and nobody knew what to do, and nobody had time to deal with it."" In the past two years, Gardner has noticed a “significant spike” in interest in sustainability in the music industry. The pandemic-driven pause in live music beginning in 2020 gave musicians, venue owners and festival producers time to weave personal sustainability efforts into future tour plans, he said. REVERB is working with artists such as Johnson and Eilish, as well as the Lumineers, the Dave Matthews Band and Shawn Mendes on their 2022 tours. In previous years, the group has worked with Styles, John Mayer, the 1975 and a slew of other musicians. Since it was founded in 2004, Gardner said REVERB’s partnerships have helped eliminate more than 4 million single-use bottles at concerts and reduced emissions equivalent to 300,000 tons of carbon dioxide. That’s like eliminating CO2 emissions from over 3 million pounds of burned coal. Typically, artists reach out to Gardner’s group because they want to change how they tour, he said. Styles, for example, voiced concern about how many single-use water bottles were left behind at his shows, so Gardner said someone from his touring crew found REVERB online. With Eilish, she “wanted to do as much as possible,” Gardner said, so REVERB worked from the beginning of her “Happier Than Ever” world tour that started this year. Sustainability initiatives were incorporated into her booking contracts, requiring venues to provide a plant-based option at concessions that was priced the same as an equivalent meat-based option. For the band and crew backstage, there are exclusively vegan food options. “That was nonnegotiable,” Gardner said. This year, Coldplay began a world tour after announcing in 2019 they would stop touring until they could make their concerts more environmentally beneficial. Following that announcement, a business-application software company, SAP, contacted the band and offered its technology, eventually creating the “Coldplay Music of the Spheres World Tour” app. The app allows fans to log their mode of transportation to concerts, said Ferose VR, SAP’s senior vice president, with a goal of pushing fans to use a “green mode of transportation,"" including carpooling with at least three fans, using an electric car or taking public transportation. Fans who use those options get a discount on merchandise on Coldplay’s website. After shows, the band’s team assesses data logged for the show and then makes plans to offset fans’ carbon footprints, such as by planting a tree for each ticket purchased, VR said. “Even if a small number commit, it makes a big impact,” VR said. Representatives for Coldplay declined to share data from the app, including about the number of fans who have downloaded it. Musicians say they hope to influence their fans’ behavior long after a concert ends. At every show on Johnson’s “Meet the Moonlight” tour, fans can enter to win front-row seats in the venue by committing to sustainable actions. Refilling a reusable water bottle, using a green mode of transportation to travel to the show and donating to an environmental nonprofit organization are all efforts that increase a fan’s chance of winning. Johnson and his team encourage fans to interact with local environmental groups through a “Village Green” that is set up at every show’s venue and highlights 5 to 10 of the groups. When they tour in a new area, Johnson said his team gets recommendations about which nonprofit groups to feature, such as ones focusing on locally sourced food or reducing plastic waste. The band fosters relationships with organizations over time, allowing Johnson to advocate for which groups he wants featured at his shows. At the Village Green last week, representatives from Plastic Pollution Coalition spoke to fans who stopped by for free stickers and reusable straws at their table — which also displayed large, clear jars filled with plastic waste. Jen Fela, the group’s vice president of programs and communications, and Jackie Nuñez, advocacy and engagement coordinator, said these types of events can boost recruiting. Concert attendee Rachel Tierney said she doesn’t usually think about artists’ sustainability efforts before going to watch them perform, but after speaking with the organizations at the show, she hopes more artists adopt similar environmentally focused efforts. Before heading to refill her reusable cup, she said, “They kinda lit a fire in me.”"
+"For years, electric vehicles were said to be just around the corner. Now, they’re here, moving from niche to mainstream, with their listen-or-you’ll-miss-it driving noises, and with no need for gas, oil changes or emissions tests — ever. The revolution is happening in a time of high gas prices and amid worries about stable energy sources fueled by the war in Ukraine. “Electric cars are normal now,” said Matthew Nelson, director of governmental affairs at Electrify America, which has the nation’s largest network of fast-charging stations. “This is a car that does what you expect a car to do.” For more than 100 years, gas-powered cars have ruled. An entire ecosystem of gas stations, dealerships, repair shops and parts makers has revolved around fuel getting squirted into a tank. The auto industry became dominated by a handful of players that ruled the world. But EVs have helped disrupt this, with new arrivals and their futurama brands: Rivian, Lucid, Polestar. “We’re really seeing the best opportunity since just after World War II for new carmakers to get into the market,” said Matt Anderson, curator of transportation at The Henry Ford, a museum in Dearborn, Mich., chronicling American innovation. Even as momentum grows around these vehicles, sales still pale in comparison to gas-powered vehicles. And there are plenty of other obstacles: EVs are more expensive, and charging stations are not located everywhere, though there’s a race to build more. The industry has largely settled on a universal plug, though Tesla still has their own that comes with an adapter. The wait time for charging an EV also varies by vehicle model and charging station. Still, the biggest EV challenge is scaling up: installing pricey charging stations and ensuring the electrical grid won’t collapse if everyone plugs in at once. The expectation is that people who have charging stations at home will plug in overnight, while those who live in apartments or who park their cars on the street will have to get a charge while running errands or maybe at work. For now, demand far outstrips supply, thanks to ongoing supply chain issues plaguing the auto industry. That means anyone wanting an EV should be prepared to wait, depending on the make and model."
+"If you’re one of the millions of Americans who rents your home, living more sustainably can feel daunting. Many of the suggested improvements, such as solar panels, energy efficient appliances and improved insulation are permanent changes that cost a significant amount of money — which means they can’t be done by renters. However, there are still actions you can take to make your rented house or apartment greener. “There are quite a few things that we recommend to people that are not permanent,” said Ben Kolo, an electrician with almost three decades of experience and the owner of Mr. Electric of Central Iowa. The first step should be improving your home’s energy efficiency, as reducing electricity usage is good for both your wallet and the environment. Although buying new appliances or installing improved insulation is out of the question, there are a number of techniques that can help reduce your overall electric consumption, saving you money while being better for the environment. While switching out your existing appliances isn’t an option, there are actions you can take to maximize their efficiency. If you don’t have a high efficiency washer, Kolo suggests running a second spin cycle to cut down on drying time. Heating water accounts for about 90 percent of the energy used by a washing machine, so opt for cold cycles whenever possible. For your dryer, make sure that your lint trap is clean, as that prolongs drying time. In the kitchen, make sure that your refrigerator isn’t overfull, as blocked airflow reduces its energy efficiency. “A refrigerator is roughly 13 percent of your appliance usage,” Kolo said. For your dishwasher, one way to cut down on energy use is to stop after the wash cycle, open the door and let the dishes air-dry. “Vampire power,” also known as standby power, refers to the energy used by gadgets and appliances when they are plugged in, but not in active use. Vampire power alone costs consumers about $3 billion per year and is responsible for approximately 10 percent of residential power usage, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The best way to cut down on vampire power is by unplugging devices when they are not in use. This can be made easier if you buy a power strip, which will let you turn off multiple devices at once. When it comes to conserving water, there are plenty of small actions that can really add up. Some of the actions that the Environmental Protection Agency recommends include turning off running water when you are brushing your teeth; taking showers instead of baths; using a dishwasher instead of washing dishes by hand; and scraping your plate before putting it in the dishwasher, rather than rinsing it. To maximize efficiency, it’s a good idea to run the ceiling fan in addition to your air conditioner. “A ceiling fan can help adjust your temperature setting by as much as four degrees,” Kolo said. “A ceiling fan costs about 1 cent an hour to run, while an air conditioner can be as much as 36 cents per hour.” If you like to set the temperature to 72ᵒF, running a ceiling fan can let you run the air conditioner at 76ᵒF without a noticeable difference. It’s also a good idea to change the filters regularly, as that helps the air conditioner run at an optimal efficiency. As Kolo points out, not only do LED lights use 70 to 80 percent less electricity than conventional lightbulbs, they also last longer. Although LED lights are more expensive, your landlord may be amenable to making the switch, since on their side, this means fewer trips to replace dead lightbulbs. “There’s also a maintenance factor to replacing conventional lightbulbs with LEDs,” Kolo said. If your landlord refuses, and you are planning to live there long enough, it may be worth making the swap yourself, as the reduced energy consumption will save you money. (If you choose to do that, you can save the conventional lightbulbs, replacing them just before you leave and taking the LED lights with you.) When it comes to your personal habits, there are a lot of environmentally friendly actions that don’t require expensive modifications to your living space. This includes avoiding single-use plastics, whether it’s carrying a water bottle, using reusable tote bags or drinking your coffee from a reusable mug. Opting for solid-bar soaps and shampoos can also cut down on plastic use while conserving energy, with one study showing that liquid hand soaps require five times as much energy to make and 20 times as much energy to package, compared to bar soaps. Other habits include recycling whenever possible, and composting food scraps. If you are short on space, there are composting options that can be done in a confined space. Some cities also have municipal compost programs. Although you can’t replace your windows as a renter, there are some low-cost ways to make sure they are as energy efficient as possible. One way is to install window tints, which are a low-cost alternative to energy-efficient windows. Tints will keep your home warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer, which will help save on energy costs. Installing window tints can be a DIY project, although “I do recommend that if you’ve never done it before to call a professional,” said Ken Fisk, the director of technical services at Window Genie. “The tricky part is getting the window clean and getting the film on without getting any creases in it.” In his 21 years working on windows, Fisk has installed window tints for a number of renters. The added benefit of window tints is they will protect your furniture from sunlight. “It doesn’t stop the fading, but it definitely slows it down,” Fisk said. “I’ve seen it a lot in the past, where one cherry table looks like a pine table and the other one is dark cherry.” One way to help the environment is to shop secondhand, whether it’s for clothing, kitchenware or furniture. Fast fashion is one of the major causes of pollution, with the EPA reporting that 11.3 million tons of textiles ended up in the landfill in 2018, which is almost twice the amount of textile waste from 2000. When it comes to furniture, buying secondhand helps limit deforestation and plastic production. Going to your local thrift store will keep these items out of the landfill while avoiding the environmental impact associated with production."
+"MANILA — Every year at least eight typhoons smash into the Philippines, an archipelago and former U.S. colony in the Pacific Ocean. As the climate changes around the world, the storms are getting worse — and most of this nation of 109 million live in their path. Extreme weather events are expected to worsen globally, and the country is at the forefront of the crisis, with towns and cities made especially vulnerable due to poor urban planning and inadequate drainage systems. Homeowners in the country’s precarious middle class, who don’t necessarily have the funds to relocate, are left largely on their own to cope and find ways to protect their possessions. Residents have learned to add features to their homes such as flood dikes, elevated floors and — in one case — a floating garage. Tropical cyclones since 2017 Conson 100 MILES Philippine Sea Vamco Category 1 (2021) LUZON Category 4 (2020) Goni Manila Category 5 (2020) PHILIPPINES Tropical cyclones since 2017 Conson 100 MILES Philippine Sea Vamco Category 1 (2021) LUZON Category 4 (2020) Goni South China Sea Manila Category 5 (2020) PHILIPPINES Tropical cyclones since 2017 PHILIPPINES Conson LUZON Category 1 (2021) Philippine Sea Vamco Category 4 (2020) Goni Manila Category 5 (2020) South China Sea 100 MILES Last year alone, tropical cyclones in the Philippines left over 100 dead and caused $662 million in damage. In a 2018 study by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, over 75 percent of Filipinos reported being affected by heavy rains, tropical cyclones, floods and earthquakes in a five-year period. In the same study, almost half said their homes had been damaged at one time by a natural disaster. Flood hazard based on topographic and rainfall data Malabon Navotas Marikina Manila Bay Manila Laguna Lake Flood hazard based on topographic and rainfall data Valenzuela Navotas Malabon Quezon City Marikina Manila Bay Manila Pasig Makati Pasay Taguig Laguna Lake Paranaque Flood hazard based on topographic and rainfall data Valenzuela Malabon Navotas Quezon City Marikina Caloocan Manila Bay Manila San Juan Mandaluyong Pasig Makati Pasay Taguig Laguna Lake Paranaque By all accounts, the floods are only getting worse. Scientists blame climate change for the erratic and early rains in northeastern India and Bangladesh that led to June’s massive flooding there. At the same time, more than 1,000 miles away, in China’s southern province of Guangdong, tens of thousands have been evacuated by the worst flooding in decades. Any solutions on climate change will be years in the making. In the meantime, people in many areas will face a lot more water, without the option of relocating. “It becomes a personal responsibility,” architect Leandro Poco said of making houses more flood-proof if the means are available. “They do not want to evacuate.” For those outside the Philippines, these steps can offer lessons in adaptation as floods increase and sea levels rise around the world. Your browser does not support the video element. Raising the foundation
+Some residents lift their houses far above sidewalk level to delay the entrance of floodwaters. They also build upward, adding additional floors to their homes, though this requires a strong foundation. A strong shell
+Homeowners are building an impenetrable shell for their houses by reinforcing corners and openings to prevent wind and water penetration. Water-compatible materials  
+Residents “wet-proof” their homes by protecting walls with a waterproof coating. They also use water-resistant material such magnesium oxide for plasterboard, and swap fixed carpets for rugs, which can be rolled. A sacrificial ground floor 
+Many homeowners have given up their ground floors. This means keeping the space minimalist. Furniture  is either heavyweight and water resistant — such as steel or stone, easily cleaned after a flood — or lightweight, easily brought upstairs. ‘Flipping the house’ 
+Many have also moved their kitchens and utility areas to the upper floors, to protect food as well as expensive appliances such as refrigerators and washing machines. Elevated power sockets 
+To avoid electrocution, homeowners are moving electrical outlets to higher points. They are also installing a split circuit breaker that allows the electricity to be turned off just on the ground floor. Fire exit  
+People have also added roof access to await rescue by boat or helicopter, should the waters keep rising. Using rainwater  
+Collecting rainwater, whether by hand or with the use of special machines, is used for flushing toilets, washing cars and in the event of a shortage of potable water. Solar power  
+Homeowners have invested in solar power, as storms can leave neighborhoods without electricity for extended periods. Bridges to next door 
+Closely connected communities can build makeshift bridges along the roofs connecting the residences, so that people can move back and forth above the waters or escape to buildings with higher floors. Some traits of resilient housing — including elevated floors, windows designed for natural ventilation and more — are reflected in traditional Filipino homes, said Vinson Serrano, instructor at the University of Santo Tomas College of Architecture. But these concepts were often shunned in the shift to Western materials and styles. When borrowing some of these ideas for one’s locale, “you can’t just copy-paste,” says Edward Barsley of the Environmental Design Studio, based in Britain, and author of “Retrofitting for Flood Resilience: A Guide to Building and Community Design.”  The key is to organize as a community. “Speak to and work with your neighbors,” said Barsley. “Maybe you could share the cost of some of these measures … and protect and make resilient a larger block of buildings.” Houses sit on stilts in Malabon, the Philippines, on June 3, 2022. Stilts are commonly used to raise homes in impoverished seaside rural communities around the country. (Photos by Martin San Diego for The Washington Post) Community and shared space is much stronger in informal settlements, said architect Paulo Alcazaren, who co-authored “Squatter City,” a book about these spaces. He emphasized that renovations are well and good but only a symptom of a larger issue. “Unless you change the larger context of governance, you cannot solve anything,” he said. “The scale of the problem cannot be solved by individual homeowners doing something to retrofit their homes.” While the middle class can renovate, the poor in the Philippines are left mostly to rebuild from scratch after each disaster. Many live in slums, with homes that are little more than clusters of dense, makeshift shanties made from upcycled material. One community at the forefront of the climate crisis lies between the cities of Malabon and Navotas in the capital region — a cluster of neighborhoods near Manila Bay that is vulnerable to typhoons and rising sea levels. Before a storm, residents tie roofs down with rope, raise the stilts of their homes and then evacuate — returning to inspect the damage afterward. Starting at around 10 a.m., high tide seeps into the community, flooding it with ankle-deep water. The house of Elena Ku, 49, is submerged with seawater all year long. She cannot afford to raise the whole foundation, so her solution has been to raise the bathroom. Every day, she scoops up water that has gotten into the house and flushes it down the toilet. Ku also has a water pump that she occasionally rents to neighbors, but she does not use it too often due to electricity charges. A makeshift bridge made of a plank and soft-drink cases leads into and out of the house. Pablo Rosales, a resident and president of the fishing organization Pangisda Pilipinas, said relocation efforts do not work for the community because locals have to be near the sea for their livelihoods. Many homes have abandoned their ground floors but, like Ku, struggle with daily inconveniences. As the district struggles with rising sea levels, pollution and the threat of commercial establishments, Rosales said residents need “a true, formal settlement” to have agency over their homes. “It hurts us to be the people who put fish on the table for others,” he said, while living in such conditions. By midafternoon the saltwater flooding the streets starts to recede, but it will be back the next day. Architects/homeowners interviewed for this story: Paulo Alcazaren, John Aguilar, Edward Barsley, James Blanco, Peach Buencamino, Ervin Lugay, Leandro Poco, Jeric Rustia, Don Sebastian, Vinson Serrano. About the data: Tropical cyclone tracks are from NOAA’s International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship (IBTrACS) data, accessed June 17, 2022. Flood hazard data is from Nationwide Operational Assessment of Hazards. Story editing by Reem Akkad, Paul Schemm and Dayana Sarkisova. Design and development by Yutao Chen. Photo editing by Olivier Laurent. Graphics editing by Kate Rabinowitz and Tim Meko. Video editing by Jason Aldag. Copy editing by Carey Biron."
+"Good morning and welcome to The Climate 202! Happy Friday. If you need a laugh this weekend about something other than speakers, we recommend this article about comedians who have tried to make climate change funny. But first: Gas-burning stoves in kitchens across America are responsible for roughly 12.7 percent of childhood asthma cases nationwide — on par with the childhood asthma risks associated with exposure to secondhand smoke, according to a study. The peer-reviewed study, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, adds fuel to a burgeoning debate over the potential threats that gas stoves pose to the planet and public health. It comes as scientists and activists cheer the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s recent decision to weigh new regulations on indoor air pollution from gas stoves, even as the natural gas industry fights to keep the signature blue flames of the appliances in American homes. Gas stoves, which are used in about 35 percent of U.S. households, can emit significant amounts of nitrogen dioxide, a pollutant that can trigger asthma and other respiratory conditions. The appliances can also leak methane, a potent planet-warming gas, even when they are turned off, according to research published last year. Asthma, a leading chronic condition globally, affects about 5 million children across the country. The study, which was led by the environmental think tank RMI, suggests that nearly 650,000 cases of childhood asthma can be attributed to gas stove use. “It’s like having car exhaust in a home,” said Brady Seals, a manager at RMI who co-authored the research. “And we know that children are some of the people spending the most time at home, along with the elderly.” The authors relied on 2019 Census data to determine the proportion of children exposed to pollution from gas stoves. They borrowed their methodology from a 2018 analysis that found 12.3 percent of childhood asthma cases in Australia were attributable to gas cooking ranges, and they used data from a 2013 analysis that found children in households with gas stoves were 42 percent more likely to experience asthma symptoms. The burden of asthma falls disproportionately on children of color and those in lower-income neighborhoods. Black and Hispanic children are twice as likely as White children to be hospitalized for asthma, while poor households are more likely to have smaller kitchens that lack proper ventilation. “This study’s findings are directly relevant to discussions about environmental justice,” said Rob Jackson, a scientist at Stanford University who has researched methane leaks from gas stoves. “No child should have asthma from breathing pollution from gas stoves when safer electric options are available,” he added, referring to induction cooktops and other electric versions. The American Gas Association, a powerful trade group representing the U.S. natural gas industry, slammed the study’s methodology and findings, accusing the authors of pursuing a “headline-grabbing approach” that lacked scientific rigor. “The claims made in this paper are clearly driven by simple advocacy-based modeling and hypotheticals over the deep and sophisticated analysis we should see in sound science,” Karen Harbert, the association’s president and chief executive, said in an emailed statement. “The authors conducted no measurements or tests based on real-life appliance usage, emissions rates or exposures, and did not adequately consider other factors that are known to contribute to asthma and other respiratory health outcomes,” Harbert added. Asked to respond to these criticisms, Seals said she stands by the soundness of the authors’ approach and conclusions. In particular, she noted that the 2013 analysis controlled for other factors that can cause asthma, including exposure to tobacco smoke, pets, mold and water damage. Under the Clean Air Act, the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate outdoor air pollution from cars, power plants and other sources. But the agency lacks the power to regulate indoor air pollution from gas stoves and other appliances. For decades, advocates have urged the Consumer Product Safety Commission to fill this regulatory vacuum that persists inside people’s homes. The five-member commission is tasked with ensuring the safety of consumer products by addressing “unreasonable risks” of illness and injury. Last month, Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. announced that the agency would issue a request for public comments by March on possible regulations on gas stoves, which he said “could be on the books” by the end of this year. Trumka, the son of the late labor leader of the same name, called an outright ban on new gas stoves “a real possibility.” Meanwhile, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm seized on the study to promote the tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act that offer households thousands of dollars to transition from fossil-fuel-burning heaters, stoves and cars to cleaner versions. “We can and must FIX this,” Granholm tweeted Wednesday. Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) on Thursday announced she won’t seek reelection in 2024, creating an open seat in a swing state after Democrats narrowly held onto the Senate majority in the midterm elections, The Washington Post’s Eugene Scott reports. Since coming to Congress in 2000, Stabenow has sought to prioritize the auto industry, which plays a major economic role in her home state. She has emerged as one of the most vocal advocates for electric vehicles on Capitol Hill and fought to include the EV tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act. As chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, Stabenow has also advocated for climate-friendly agriculture policies, including in the landmark climate law and the upcoming farm bill. A few lawmakers have already indicated interest in a possible run for Stabenow’s seat, including Reps. Haley Stevens and Elissa Slotkin, both Michigan Democrats who flipped red seats blue in 2018. A destructive winter storm system has pounded the West Coast over the past week, with torrential rains and fierce winds already killing at least two people in Northern California, causing extensive power outages, and spurring evacuations and road closures, Brianna Sacks, Reis Thebault, Brady Dennis and Matthew Cappucci report for The Post. Officials have voiced concern that more catastrophic flooding and avalanches could lie ahead as the storms, known as atmospheric rivers, persist into the weekend. So far, about 150,000 residents across the state have lost power, according to poweroutage.us. The extreme wet weather comes on the heels of a years-long devastating drought that has parched much of the West. Just last week, 80 percent of the state was in a “severe” or worse drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. However, many residents and local authorities are concerned that the sudden switch to intense rainfall — a signature of climate change — could add stress to the already strained environment, making trees more vulnerable to toppling over and inundating roadways. “We’re certainly desperate for precipitation here,” said Evan Wiig of the Community Alliance with Family Farmers. “We just wish it didn’t have to come all at once.” As Russia’s war in Ukraine intensified over the past year, European policymakers braced for an energy “nightmare” and fretted about skyrocketing oil costs. But as the world experiences one of its warmest winters on record, the high temperatures might have actually helped avert an energy crisis in Europe, The Post’s Dino Grandoni reports. The abnormally warm weather, which meteorologists have called “totally insane” and “the most extreme event ever seen in European climatology,” has eased energy demand at a time when Europeans would normally worry about warming their homes and businesses without Russian supplies. In fact, the warm spell has allowed European natural gas futures to fall to their lowest level since the war began. Of course, the unexpected weather is nothing to celebrate, as it bears the fingerprints of a different crisis: climate change. Someone please hire him! Thanks for reading!"
+"In 1977, a 21-year-old novice who was starting her life as a Dominican nun showed up the annual meeting of the textile company J.P. Stevens, which was locked in a fight with employees seeking union representation. The novice’s order, Sisters of Saint Dominic of Caldwell, had Stevens stock in its retirement portfolio, she had discovered. Now, Patricia Daly wanted to see how the union issue would play out at the meeting in New York. She was stunned to find religious groups and their supporters in active protest of the company, using their holdings as shareholders as leverage to gain access and seek influence over company policies. Sister Pat — as she became widely known — returned to the convent with an appeal that would define her life and work. “There’s a whole network here, shouldn’t we be part of it?” she told the New York Times Magazine in 2007, recounting her discussions with her superiors. “And they said, ‘OK, good, that’s your job.’” Sister Pat, who died Dec. 9 at a health-care facility in Caldwell, N.J., at 66, became a leader across a network of faith-based groups using their power as investors to push companies to pay greater attention over issues such as climate change, labor conditions and human trafficking. Over more than four decades, Sister Pat met with chief executives, roamed annual meetings and confronted corporate giants including General Electric and ExxonMobil as a voice of ethical stewardship. (The J.P. Stevens union standoff became the basis for the 1979 movie “Norma Rae.”) Her successes rarely came easily and were often incremental — requiring years of steady pressure by the groups she led, including the Tri-State Coalition for Responsible Investment (now called Investor Advocates for Social Justice). In 1999, she helped persuade William Clay Ford Jr., the executive chairman of Ford, to leave a corporate alliance that lobbied against regulations limiting greenhouse gases. General Motors and Daimler Chrysler later followed Ford’s example. She joined efforts to press ExxonMobil for greater progress in reducing emissions linked to global warming. A shareholder resolution she proposed failed in 2007, but its more than 30 percent backing was a clear message to company leaders. In 2017, ExxonMobil put a climate scientist on its board. “We are now, this company and every single one of us, challenged by one of the most profound moral concerns,” she said in 2007 to ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson, who later became secretary of state in the Trump administration. The Record newspaper in Bergen County, N.J., described her as an “ecclesiastical thorn” — who rarely wore a habit and whose bag often had a bible, the Wall Street Journal and copies of Institutional Investor magazine. Sister Pat sought to frame her work as more of moral persuasion. “We always felt it was a matter of engaging companies, sitting down at the table in a very respectful format … in a dialogue session, not negotiations, but a dialogue session,” she said. Her public image, however, was shaped for years by one fiery encounter. In 1998, she proposed a resolution at the General Electric annual meeting for the company to publicly acknowledge health risks from eating fish from Hudson River, which had areas contaminated by polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, from GE plants. Sister Pat’s coalition took out a full-page ad in the New York Times with a mocking spin on GE’s slogan: “On the Hudson, G.E. Brings BAD Things to Life.” She said the cost of the ad took a major bite from the coalition’s small budget. “We are out on a limb with this one,” she said at the time. At the meeting, Sister Pat drew comparisons between General Electric’s claim that PCBs were harmless and the tobacco industry’s former assertions that smoking posed no serious health risks. “That’s an outrageous comparison,” said GE’s chairman, Jack Welch. “That is an absolutely valid comparison, Mr. Welch,” she responded. “You owe it to God to be on the side of truth,” he said. “I am on the side of truth,” she replied. But her resolution failed. Patricia Anne Daly was born on Aug. 4, 1956, in Brooklyn and raised in Queens, where her mother was a teacher and her father worked as a freight forwarder for an import-export company. Sister Pat recounted taking an early interest in the inner workings of global commerce. Her father once showed her a bill of lading for some fabric shipped to Jamaica to make lingerie for U.S. stores. “He said, ‘Imagine what they must be paying people in Jamaica to make it worthwhile to ship the fabric there and back,’” Daly recalled. Sister Pat graduated in 1976 from Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn., with a degree in religious studies. A year earlier, she entered the Sisters of Saint Dominic and received the habit in June 1976. She made her full profession to the order in 1984. She received a master’s degree in theology of justice from Maryknoll School of Theology in Maryknoll, N.Y., in 1982. In addition to her activism, she taught religion and social justice at Roman Catholic high schools in New Jersey from 1977 to 1981, then served as associate campus minister at St. Peter’s College (now St. Peter’s University) in Jersey City until 1987. She also was a board member of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, an umbrella organization of more than 200 members including Sister Pat’s group. “So much of the conversation today is from the foundation laid by Sister Pat,” said Nell Minow, vice chair of ValueEdge Advisors, which helps guide institutional investors in what is often called ESG, or environmental, social and corporate governance. Sister Pat is survived by her mother, Anne; three sisters and a brother. The cause of death was cancer, her order said. In 1999, Vanity Fair named Sister Pat to its Hall of Fame as someone who “translates belief into commitment and never backs down from a fight.” “I don’t use the God card,” she told the Chicago Tribune in 2005. “I’m not saying I’m speaking for Jesus here. But if people see the Dominicans and the Jesuits on a shareholder resolution, they’re going to say, ‘These are people with some credibility.’”"
+"The creation of what amounts to a miniature star required 192 lasers, produced in a high-security federal government building the size of a football stadium. The lasers fired into a small chamber holding a pellet of hydrogen about half the size of a BB. As the beams fired, the atomic particles in the gas fused together and released more energy than the lasers had put in. The feat was achieved for the first time ever on Dec. 5 at a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory facility in Northern California and was announced in detail Tuesday at a news conference in Washington. It represents what officials say is a significant milestone in the decades-long effort to harness nuclear fusion, an energy source that has the potential to create abundant clean electricity. The announcement of the experimental success came bracketed by cautionary notes. It may be many more years before this technology can be employed for everyday use. This was a science experiment more than a demonstration of a practical technology. Still, it was the first time anyone had managed to create net energy gain. The experiment delivered 2.05 megajoules of energy to the lasers’ target and resulted in 3.15 megajoules of energy output, officials said. Basically, two in, three out. “This is a landmark achievement,”  Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said at department headquarters  Tuesday. The department runs the Livermore lab and its National Ignition Facility, where the experiment took place. “This milestone will undoubtedly spark even more discovery. … This is what it looks like for America to lead.” In an indication of the challenges that lie ahead for actually applying the technology, the results did not account for the 300 megajoules of energy it took to create the lasers in the first place. This is not the only experiment underway for generating fusion, and there’s something of a race to see which method works best. For decades, the field has been dominated by fusion experiments involving powerful magnets rather than lasers. “I’m not sure magnetic fusion is going to beat [laser] fusion,” said Steven Cowley, director of the Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, which uses magnets in its fusion experiments. “I think fusion is so important we should have at least two technologies vying for completion. One of them is going to end up the airplane, and one of them is going to end up the Hindenburg.” The Biden administration is aggressively pushing investment in clean energy technologies, like fusion, that are still years away from practical deployment. Scientists caution that while fusion energy holds potential to provide round-the-clock electricity without the pollution or radioactive risks of traditional coal, gas and nuclear power plants, it would be a long time before any of it is brought to the grid. “Probably decades,” said Kim Budil, director of the Lawrence Livermore laboratory. “Not five decades, which is what we used to say. I think it’s moving into the foreground. And probably with concerted effort and investment, a few decades of research on the underlying technologies could put us in a position to build a power plant.” The reaction that scientists produced at the National Ignition Facility required the firing of an immense laser system that was built only after massive cost overruns and years of delays. The development touched off a new round of debate about how far government should go in incubating multibillion-dollar long-shot technologies that may never get put to use commercially — but could change the world if they make it to market. Generating electricity from nuclear fusion would require the kind of reaction reported Tuesday, called “ignition,” every second throughout the day. Getting there would be a monumental engineering feat; just producing a fraction of a second of net energy gain, as the Livermore lab experiment did, creates so much stress on the costly machinery that the process tends to break it. The nation’s fusion program was initially created with the goal of more efficient management of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile. Fusion reactions could be used to assess those arms without the need for explosions, which create radioactive fallout. Biden administration officials hailed the developments at the Lawrence Livermore lab as a major boost for their efforts to keep the stockpile safe and reassure allies that the United States is capably managing it. “It underpins the credibility of our deterrent by demonstrating world-leading expertise in weapons-relevant technologies,” said Marvin Adams, deputy administrator for defense programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration. “That is: We know what we are doing. Continuing to assure our allies that we know what we are doing and continuing to avoid testing will advance our nonproliferation goals, also increasing our national security.” Commercial fusion energy has been a fringe pursuit for years, amid disappointing results in national laboratories and constant threats that the funding for fusion experiments would be canceled. Tammy Ma, a physicist at the National Ignition Facility, said she “burst into tears” of joy when her boss called her to report that ignition had been achieved, while Ma was in an airport waiting room. “I was jumping up and down.” “We had some rocky times,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a Bay Area Democrat who fought multiple efforts to defund the National Ignition Facility. “To see they have achieved ignition is fabulous. It is a profound breakthrough that brings an enticing promise that we could produce a nonpolluting, basically limitless source of energy.” Whether that promise will ever be fulfilled is hotly debated among scientists. “Useful energy production from miniature fusion explosions still faces enormous engineering challenges, and we don’t know if those challenges can be overcome,” said Ian Hutchinson, a professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT. For now, scientists will be focused on unlocking more practical and affordable ways to replicate the fusion reaction that powers the sun. In the sun’s core, the tremendous pressure drives hydrogen nuclei together. They combine to create helium and other light elements, converting some of the mass to energy. This is such an efficient way to produce energy that it has allowed  the sun to burn at a steady rate for many billions of years, long enough for life to appear and evolve on our sun-warmed planet roughly 93 million miles away. Nuclear fusion is also what allows hydrogen bombs to deliver tremendously violent explosions. Such fusion bombs are far more powerful than the atomic bombs that employ nuclear fission, in which atoms are split rather than fused. Using nuclear fusion for peaceful purposes has been a technological goal for decades. Experimental fusion reactors heat plasmas — free electrons and atomic nuclei — to temperatures exceeding 100 million degrees Celsius, hotter than the sun’s core. The next step is to confine that hot plasma in a tiny space, where the atomic particles can potentially undergo a fusion reaction. That can be done in different ways, reflected in the varying business plans of energy start-ups hoping to eventually deploy fusion energy to the electric grid. The history of fusion energy research is a tale of incremental milestones and recurring frustrations. It has been a long and expensive endeavor largely funded by the U.S. government, as well as governments in other nations, with a long way still to go. It is a standard joke in the field that commercially available fusion energy is always 20 years (or some similar figure) away. The National Ignition Facility was budgeted at $1 billion. It ended up costing about $3.5 billion by the time it was completed a decade ago, according to the lab’s website. Innovators argue that Tuesday’s announcement validates all the resources that have been poured into chasing fusion energy. “It is exactly the role of government to pursue science that could have enormous payoff and benefit the country and humanity that others won’t pursue,” said Josh Freed, leader of climate and energy at Third Way, a center-left think tank. “The examples of benefits from government investments in innovations that no one else was willing to finance are legion. We don’t know what will work, what won’t work, what we will discover unless we try.” While the pursuit of fusion science was initially driven by concerns around the nuclear weapons stockpile, much of the focus has since shifted to energy amid the Biden administration’s aggressive climate aspirations. Several companies have emerged in recent years with the goal of building electricity plants powered by fusion. “Fusion is the most disruptive energy source we can ever make,” said Dennis Whyte, director of the MIT Plasma Science & Fusion Center. “The fuel is inexhaustible. It is inherently safe and provides on-demand energy that is adaptable to our needs. On paper, it can supply our energy demands forever. Not many things look like that in the energy landscape.” Whyte said more than $1 trillion is spent on energy in the United States annually, so an investment even of many billions of dollars in a technology that could prove transformational and position the country as a leader is, in his view, money well spent. He noted that China and other countries are eagerly pursuing their own programs, hoping  for dominance in this area. But the news drew mixed reactions from environmentalists, who noted that the technology is unlikely to come online soon enough to address the immediate dangers posed by global warming. Tom Cochran, the former head of the nuclear program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, argued the advance will be more useful for the nation’s nuclear weapons program. “What irks me is the continued implication that this has some peaceful purpose,” he said. Electricity providers are proceeding cautiously, but some are starting to prepare for the possibility of a future with fusion plants. Duke Energy, for example, contemplates the prospect in its most recent climate report, and it is among those on a committee guiding a company called General Fusion as it endeavors to build a fusion-fueled power plant. Getting to an emissions-free grid, said Andrew Sowder, senior technical executive at the Electric Power Research Institute, “is a heavy lift for the existing technologies, even if we were to build more nuclear, wind and solar, carbon capture.” “The one thing everyone can say is they would love to have another tool in the toolbox,” Sowder said. “Fusion checks all the boxes. It is not going to come overnight, and it is not going to come free. But we can’t just hope for it. If we don’t get started investing more into it now, it will never be ready.”"
+"They are not elected to any office. But in the fight against global warming, the world’s billionaires have more influence than many heads of state. As government struggles to move quickly to contain greenhouse gases, ultrawealthy investors and philanthropists are increasingly grabbing the reins, using their fortunes to guide the transition to cleaner energy toward their favored projects and market strategies. They are men with household names like Jeff Bezos (net worth: $113 billion, according to Forbes), Mike Bloomberg ($77 billion) and Bill Gates ($106 billion), along with other billionaires who have lower profiles but equally large climate ambition. Their role as shadow policymakers has grown amid the evolution of the Biden administration climate agenda and the recent U.N. Climate Change Conference in Egypt, known as COP27, where their projects were on prominent display. “This kind of hobbyist approach has become a big factor in the way we are addressing climate change,” said David Victor, co-director of the Deep Decarbonization Initiative at the University of California at San Diego. “Is this the ideal way to do it? No. The ideal way would be large publicly oriented programs. But that is not happening anywhere in the world.” “In some cases the billionaires are making real progress,” Victor said. It is a growing point of tension in the climate movement, as the pursuits of billionaires come under heightened scrutiny more broadly. Some of the recent financial and philanthropic misadventures of figures such as crypto entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried and Tesla founder Elon Musk are leading the public to ask whether these people are as well-equipped to solve the planet’s problems as they claim — or if they are using their influence to steer public policy toward vanity projects. Many of these men have benefited from the same industrialization they are now purporting to save us from. In a recent report, Oxfam International found that 125 billionaires create more emissions through their investments and lifestyle than all of France. “They need to pay up, and not as philanthropy,” said Mitzi Jonelle Tan, a climate activist from the Philippines. “What they are doing is not solidarity or aid. They should not be praised for this. Their greed has caused the global climate crisis.” But billionaires are nevertheless stepping into the void, holding themselves out as uniquely well positioned financially and intellectually to meet a challenge that they say has become too big for government, burnishing their legacies as planet-savers along the way. Bill Gates-backed innovations are in line to receive potentially billions of dollars of U.S. subsidies and push the energy transition toward new hydrogen, nuclear and carbon-capture technologies after the climate package the Microsoft founder helped champion was signed by President Biden over the summer. The Bezos Earth Fund, created by the Amazon founder (and Washington Post owner), is a key partner to the U.S. government in pursuit of controversial carbon trading programs as a potential climate solution. Mike Bloomberg looms so large over international climate efforts that he has been named a U.N. special envoy on climate. Bloomberg Philanthropies has invested more than $1.5 billion into programs that move countries away from fossil fuels. Billionaires are so intertwined with climate policy now that when Bloomberg mounted a 2020 presidential bid, he could not claim the climate billionaire lane for himself among the candidates. He had to share it with Tom Steyer, a fellow Democratic hopeful who made his fortune running a hedge fund. The climate billionaires are not always reliable partners. Bankman-Fried had big plans to push climate action forward. But nonprofits that were promised funds from him are now scrambling for cash after his crypto empire collapsed, triggering federal investigations. Musk, whose leadership at Tesla propelled the electric-vehicle revolution, said as Biden took office that he was “super fired up” to help the new administration advance its climate agenda. He then soured on it, dumping on the president’s proposals to invest big in EV charging and clean energy infrastructure. Claims that global warming is a hoax or exaggerated have surged on Twitter, alarming climate scientists, since Musk bought it in October and gutted its content moderation policies. Nevertheless, billionaire engagement in climate action is growing as nations lean evermore on private companies and philanthropists willing to make big — often financially risky — bets on decarbonization. In the United States, in particular, an inability to muster the political support for robust regulations that limit emissions and force companies to reshape their operations has the government looking to billionaires to help redirect the economy to where mainstream science says it needs to go. “You can’t expect every government to do everything or be on top of every issue,” Marc Benioff, chief executive of Salesforce, an enterprise software company, said in an interview. Benioff, an environmental philanthropist himself, has a net worth of nearly $6 billion, according to Forbes. “There always have been philanthropists and this has been the role of philanthropy for generations: to help put a light on places where there is a darkness.” “We can take on more risk and assume more failure than commercial organizations or governments or NGOs,” he said. Benioff and Bezos are at the forefront of a U.S. initiative unveiled at the Egypt summit that puts faith in carbon trading to help solve the climate crisis. Carbon trading allows companies to pay a fee to compensate for their greenhouse gas emissions. The Bezos Earth Fund and the Rockefeller Foundation were the Biden administration partners in creating the program U.S. climate envoy John F. Kerry touts as crucial to fighting warming. “No government in the world has enough money to get this job done,” Kerry said at the program’s unveiling. “We will only succeed with a massive infusion of private capital.” The initiative got mixed reviews in Egypt at a time when many studies, including a major new one commissioned by the United Nations, find the credits are too often a sham, covering up rather than mitigating the corporate contribution to global warming. Kerry and the Bezos Earth Fund assure the new program will bring integrity to carbon credits, but critics said the initiative reflected an American approach to climate change that is unworthy of the moment. The Grassroots Global Justice Alliance dismissed it as “a new veneer on the same old market-based carbon credit programs that have never reduced emissions at the source.” Officials at the Earth Fund declined to comment. Bezos is poised to invest tens of billions of dollars in the fight against warming — beyond the $10 billion he has already committed to the Earth Fund — after telling CNN last month it will be a major focus of his plan to give away most of his  fortune. Billionaires have long been active in global warming policy. But Biden’s signature on two landmark pieces of climate legislation — the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act — cements their role as the government’s partner. A clear example is Australian mining executive Andrew Forrest, a billionaire who says he personally met with Biden and the lawmaker key to pushing the Inflation Reduction Act through Congress, Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) to lobby for it. Forrest’s vision for solving the climate crisis leans heavily on green hydrogen, a technology still being developed, for gutting emissions from big industrial operations that analysts had warned was too costly to be used widespread before the end of the decade. The Act changed that with subsidies for the technology so lucrative that Forrest, who placed big bets on it, is no longer an eccentric outlier in the quest to decarbonize heavy industry. The U.S. government has effectively anointed the billionaire chief executive of the Fortescue Metals Group — which creates more greenhouse gas emissions than many small countries — a key steward of that transition. “It’s very hard for environmentalists to say this is a bad thing, even though our company is everything they love to hate,” Forrest said in an interview. “The company is investing in these technologies and creating massive green energy sites around the world, all committed as a galloping herd to help send the world green.” Forrest, one of the richest men in Australia, will have stiff competition in the race to scale up green hydrogen from the richest man in India, billionaire Mukesh Ambani, who is leaning on Indian incentives to turn that country into a hub for the technology. But no billionaire is more influential in charting the technological course of the transition than Gates, whose Breakthrough Energy organization is investing billions of dollars in dozens of next-generation clean-tech companies. Many of them would fit right into sci-fi texts, making things like lab-cultivated meat, giant machines that vacuum carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and traveling wave nuclear reactors which create “a slow-moving chain reaction of concentric waves of fission” and use uranium 30 times more efficiently than current nuclear power technology. Another company Gates backs, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, is chasing fusion technology it hopes could ultimately provide limitless clean energy with almost zero pollution. “One glass of water will provide enough fusion fuel for one person’s lifetime,” the company predicts on its website. Bezos also invests in fusion. The companies Breakthrough invests in are particularly well suited to claim lucrative subsidies in the act, which Gates aggressively lobbied lawmakers to pass. The billionaire says he will plow his investment profits back into climate work. Mike Boots, executive vice president of Breakthrough, said in an email that although government’s role in confronting climate change is crucial, “companies, investors, and philanthropists must do more to ensure climate solutions can quickly go from breakthroughs in a lab to affordable solutions the entire world can access.” Yet not everyone is pleased to see government following the lead of Gates on some investments, such as technologies that aim to capture carbon dioxide emitted by factories, vehicles, and agriculture operations and bury it. “Carbon capture and storage is not a climate solution,” said Julia Levin, national climate program manager at Environmental Defense, a Canadian nonprofit. “Despite decades of research, billions of dollars of investment, carbon capture’s track record is of failure after expensive failure.” Public money is getting poured into the technology, she said during a panel at the U.N. summit, because “governments are listening to the wrong people.” Mikaela Loach also argued that the wrong people are charting the course for confronting climate change, at a forum in September in New York where the British climate activist said billionaires should not exist. The forum was hosted by the Gates Foundation, which paid Loach to speak. (She says she donated the fee to charity.) “I could only show up in that space if I challenged it,” Loach wrote on Twitter. She’s not the only billionaire-wary activist finding themselves in the climate billionaire orbit, in a sign of just how wide it has grown. Among the organizations that have received millions of dollars from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is Oxfam — the same group calling out billionaires, including Gates, for the climate damage they are causing. Tatiana Schlossberg in New York contributed to this report."
+"The world is set to add as much renewable energy in the next five years as it did in the past two decades, as a global energy crisis sparked by the war in Ukraine accelerates growth in renewables such as wind and solar, the International Energy Agency says. Led by solar energy, renewables are poised to overtake coal as the largest source of electricity generation worldwide by early 2025, helping to keep alive the global goal of limiting Earth’s warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit), according to the Paris-based agency’s latest forecasts. “Energy security concerns caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have motivated countries to increasingly turn to renewables such as solar and wind to reduce reliance on imported fossil fuels,” the IEA said in a report on renewable energy published this month. Global renewable power capacity is now expected to grow by 2,400 gigawatts between 2022 and 2027, an amount equivalent to the entire power capacity of China today, according to the IEA report, the latest on the renewables sector. Global solar capacity is set to almost triple over the next five years, surpassing coal and becoming the largest source of power capacity in the world, the IEA said. The capacity increase forecast in the report is 30 percent higher than the renewables growth the IEA was predicting only a year ago. More than 90 percent of global electricity expansion will be from renewable sources in the next five years, the IEA said. “Renewables were already expanding quickly, but the global energy crisis has kicked them into an extraordinary new phase of even faster growth,” IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said in a news release. The IEA described the war in Ukraine as a “decisive moment” for renewables in Europe, where governments and businesses are looking to rapidly replace Russian gas with alternatives. In the wake of the conflict, Germany — already a leader in renewable technologies but reliant on Russia for the bulk of its oil, natural gas and coal — brought forward its goal of 100 percent renewable power by more than a decade to 2035. The IEA said Europe could roll out wind and solar even faster if European Union members agree to measures including streamlining and reducing permitting timelines, improving auction designs and providing better visibility on auction schedules, as well as improving incentives to support rooftop solar. Outside Europe, growth in renewables is being driven by China, the United States and India — all of which are introducing regulatory and market overhauls faster than anticipated to combat the energy crisis. China is expected to account for almost half of new global renewable power capacity over the next five years, under a blueprint released in June as part of its five-year plan. In the United States, the Inflation Reduction Act has provided new support. The act, passed in August, includes $369 billion in climate- and energy-related funding — much of it aimed at high-tech solutions to help nudge the world’s biggest historical emitter toward a greener future. “The current energy crisis can be a historic turning point towards a cleaner and more secure energy system,” Birol said. “Renewables’ continued acceleration is critical to help keep the door open to limiting global warming” to 1.5 degrees Celsius."
+"The top financial officer of Florida said Thursday he would bar BlackRock, a major Wall Street investment firm, from managing about $2 billion of state treasury funds because of what he called a “campaign to change the world” with company policies mindful of the environment and other concerns. In targeting BlackRock, the state chief financial officer, Jimmy Patronis, said it is “undemocratic of major asset managers to use their power to influence societal outcomes.” Headed by chief executive Larry Fink, BlackRock and other investment firms have increasingly used their client shares as clout to pressure companies into following ESG standards, short for “environmental, social and governance” policies. It has questioned investments in sectors such as fossil fuels, a divestiture that many experts say not only benefits the climate but also is a smart investment strategy. But nationwide, many Republican state treasurers and attorneys general have organized themselves to rebuff such ESG policies. Patronis, a Republican, is the latest. “If Larry, or his friends on Wall Street, want to change the world, run for office. Start a nonprofit. Donate to the causes you care about,” Patronis said in a statement, citing comments from Fink about using shareholder stakes to influence corporate behavior. “Using our cash, however, to fund” a social-engineering project from BlackRock is not “something Florida ever signed up for,” he added. Patronis also sits on the nearly $218 billion Florida State Board of Administration along with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and Attorney General Ashley Moody (R), but for now there was no change in policy at the giant pension fund. He said at the state treasury BlackRock had managed $1.4 billion of long-duration funds and $600 million devoted to short-term cash activities. The move against BlackRock follows efforts in states such as Missouri, Louisiana and Texas to derail ESG corporate standards and cudgel Democrats over their use. At an August meeting of the Florida Cabinet, trustees unanimously adopted a resolution restricting the use of ESG factors in making investment decisions in the Florida Retirement System Defined Benefit Plan. The new House of Representatives, led by Republicans, plans to call executives from major financial institutions to appear at what promise to be contentious oversight committee hearings. The politicization of the issue frustrates many fund managers, because climate change has been shown to expose companies to various risks, ranging from direct effects of extreme weather to market fluctuations. Investors themselves are also making demands. “Most investors are saying that, in addition to getting financial returns, they want their money used in ways they are not embarrassed by,” said Joshua Gotbaum, an investment banker who has served in five administrations from both parties, including a stint as head of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. “Unfortunately, part of what is going on is that politicians who do not want to admit that there is climate change would like to say that taking environmental and social factors into account is somehow inappropriate,” he added. The ouster of BlackRock will have little immediate impact. The firm worldwide was managing nearly $8 trillion at the end of September. BlackRock corporate communications director Christopher Van Es said the asset management firm acted “with the sole goal of driving returns for our clients.” He cited the “strong returns BlackRock has delivered to Florida taxpayers over the past five years.” “We are disturbed by the emerging trend of political initiatives like this that sacrifice access to high-quality investments and thereby jeopardize returns, which will ultimately hurt Florida’s citizens,” Van Es said. He also said that long-term investment flows into BlackRock had reached $84 billion in the third quarter of this year and $275 billion over the last 12 months. Other major asset managers include Vanguard and State Street."
+"The National Zoo in Washington will continue to require advance online passes for entry indefinitely, officials said Wednesday. The popular site, on Connecticut Avenue in Northwest, introduced its system of online passes during the coronavirus pandemic as a way to manage visitor numbers. Similar action was taken at other museums and indoor spaces in the District, but many have been lifted as life has returned to a somewhat normal routine. But Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), D.C.’s nonvoting delegate in Congress, raised concerns this week about the zoo’s passes and asked that officials reevaluate the process. Norton wrote in a letter to the zoo that the policy of advance online reservations “may be limiting access or deterring visits to the National Zoo, especially for people who cannot get online, whether because they do not have a computer or smartphone or are unable to use such devices.” She also suggested the system could discourage visitors who want to go to the facility spontaneously, and she asked whether the passes — which are free and required for all guests, including children — were necessary. In an email Wednesday, zoo spokeswoman Annalisa Meyer wrote to The Washington Post that the pass policy “will remain in place indefinitely.” Zoo director Brandie Smith told Norton in a letter — a copy of which was sent to The Post — that the advance passes allow the facility to deal with “visitors’ needs and volume” better, including in relation to staffing. Smith wrote that after the reservation system was introduced during the pandemic, officials recognized the “value visitor passes can bring to our Zoo and local community as they enable us to observe and manage visitor capacity, reduce local traffic congestion and most importantly, provide for an overall better and safer visit to the Zoo.” She said that the zoo had observed only “minimal issues or concerns raised by visitors about passes on a day of visit” and that the zoo applied “best practices” from other Smithsonian facilities that also use entry passes. The zoo passes can be reserved up to four weeks in advance. A limited number of same-day passes are available daily at the zoo’s pedestrian entrances for those unable to reserve passes online. Visitors also can obtain passes on their mobile device on the day of their visit. Still, Norton said in a phone call Wednesday that she wasn’t fully satisfied with the zoo’s response and would raise the issue with residents at an upcoming town hall. Though the zoo may not be receiving many complaints about the passes, Norton said she has “gotten a lot of comments.” “There’s concern that there’s difficulty in gaining access,” she said. “I want to give residents a chance to give me more feedback on whether they feel inconvenienced.”"
+"Amaru, a 5-year-old rescue dog, waits patiently on his family’s front lawn in Skagway, Alaska, watching for the bus to arrive each morning. “He got used to sitting in that spot. He even looks in the direction he knows they’re going to come,” said his dad, Gary Hisman — who typically does yard work while Amaru awaits his daily transport. “He’s a very smart guy.” Amaru, along with about 40 other dogs, is part of a play group organized by Mo Mountain Mutts — a local dog walking and training business, run by husband-and-wife duo, Mo and Lee Thompson. The Thompsons lead off-leash pack walks up to three times a day, but what has captured the attention of people worldwide are hilarious videos showing how they collect their canine clients: A recent TikTok video of several dogs confidently boarding the bus on their own with big wagging tails was viewed more than 50 million times. It documents the Thompsons’ regular pickup routine. At one point, the minibus stops in front of Amaru’s home, where he is seated in the front yard — clearly expecting them. From inside the bus, the Thompsons open the doors for the pup, and he happily leaps in. Once entering the bus, the dogs typically sniff around and greet the other canine passengers, before climbing onto their assigned seat — which the Thompsons have trained them to do. Then, their harness gets secured, and the same process is repeated as the rest of the pack, about 12 dogs, is picked up. The seats are carefully selected based on factors such as a pup’s personality, age and manners. Most dogs head directly to their designated seat without being guided. “Specific areas of the bus are better suited to the dogs,” Mo, 31, explained, adding that senior dogs tend to be assigned seats closer to the front, while rowdier youngsters ride in what she calls the “licky puppy corner,” because they tend to lick each other for most of the journey. When the dogs board the bus, Mo does a small obedience drill, and passes out treats to reward good behavior. Once they’re settled and buckled in, Mo said, “they have to stay on their seats” — just like humans — while being transported to the trailhead. Mo and Lee regularly film portions of their bus rides and walks and share videos on social media. Lately they’ve been going viral. Mo Mountain Mutts has around 237,000 followers on Instagram, and 1.3 million followers on TikTok, but they reach far more people than that on social media. “I originally started posting on social media for my clients,” Mo said, adding that she often shared “class photos” for dog parents. “Somewhere along the line,” she said, “the puppy bus just took off, and now the internet is in love.” In the videos, Amaru has emerged as a fan favorite. “All my friends tease me that he’s going to leave home and go to Hollywood,” Hisman joked. People often call out the dogs by name in the video comments, to the delight of the pet’s owners. “Otis is all business… straight to his seat. Amaru wants to socialize,” one person observed. “Jake hopping on his seat is always my fav,” another commented. Fans of the dog bus say the videos are a guaranteed mood boost. “Can we all agree that this video heals all sadness? Cause I was crying two minutes ago. I am not anymore,” one person wrote. “It’s bringing me so much joy,” another user commented. Just as the Thompson’s social media stardom was unexpected, so, too, was the couple’s canine-focused career path. They never set out to start a dog walking company, Mo said — or move permanently to Alaska, for that matter. The Thompsons both grew up in Michigan and were high school sweethearts who traveled to Alaska in 2014. They initially intended to only spend the summer there, but they ended up staying. About six years ago, Mo was working as a bartender, server and hostess at a hotel restaurant, while her husband worked at the same restaurant as a server, as well as at a local school as a special education paraprofessional, and later, an athletic director. At the time, Mo, whose parents were dog breeders, had some flexibility in her work schedule, and “it just started with my co-worker and I walking each other’s dogs,” she said. “I ended up having more time available to get them out.” It grew from there. Given that Skagway has a population of less than 2,000 people, word spread about Mo’s dog walking services, and people reached out to inquire about her availability. “I just started picking up dogs slowly, to the point where I needed to make a second group,” said Mo, who left her job at the restaurant in 2016 to make more time for dog walking. “It really just evolved out of that.” Her husband, meanwhile, continued focusing on his own work, until he lost his job in 2021 after the school was closed due to covid. He started tagging along on Mo’s daily pack walks for fresh air. The timing, it turned out, could not have been better: During the height of the pandemic, “people were adopting dogs like crazy,” said Mo. Business began booming, and Lee took on Mo Mountain Mutts as his primary job, too. Eventually, they swapped their van for a bus to keep up with the growing doggy demand. Now, the couple — who has an 8-month-old son named Vern, as well as three dogs and a cat — often divide and conquer the business. Mo usually handles the morning walks, while Lee tackles the afternoon trails. They also offer training (virtually and in-person), solo walks, socialization lessons and other services. When it comes to pack walks, “there’s a lot of thought that goes into where we’re going and what we’re going to do,” Mo explained. For instance, “if it’s hot, we need to find a water source. If it’s icy, we’re not going to do an incline. If I have a puppy, we need to be on flat ground. If I have a large group, we can’t go places where there’s tight corners and blind spots.” She does temperament testing and trail training in advance to ensure she feels comfortable letting a dog go off-leash. “All the dogs that go on my pack walk need to know my rules and expectations,” she said. “We try to encourage good doggy citizens.” She added that although she prioritizes obedience and safe behavior, she also encourages playful, messy fun. “My business has been built around dogs being dogs,” she said. “The dogs come first. The dogs are always the priority.” Jim Higgins’ three-year-old mutt Murray joined the pack walks about two years ago. “He can hear the bus coming down the alley, and he gets very excited,” Higgins said. He said the dog outings have been a bright spot in a difficult several years. “They’ve kept all of our spirits up.” The Thompsons said being with dogs all day almost seems too good to be true, and the online support they get is a welcome bonus. “It’s the dream,” said Mo. “I can’t believe this is what we do for a living.”"
+"Camila Ferrara felt “stupid” plunging a microphone near a nest of turtle eggs. The Brazilian biologist wasn’t sure if she would hear much. She was studying the giant South American river turtle, one of the world’s largest freshwater turtles. “What am I doing?” she recalled asking herself. “I’m recording the eggs?” Then Ferrara — who works for the Wildlife Conservation Society, a U.S.-based conservation group — heard it: a quick, barely audible pop within the shells. The hatchlings seemed to be saying to one another, she said, “‘Come on, come on, it’s time to wake up. Come on, come on.’ And then all the hatchlings can leave the nest together.” Researchers for decades thought of aquatic turtles as hard of hearing and mostly mute. One popular 1950s textbook claimed turtles “make no appreciable use of sound in their daily routine.” In the world’s rumbling rivers and cacophonous oceans, the lumbering reptiles appeared to tread along without much to say. But recent recordings of these turtles’ first “words” — before they even hatch — challenge notions not just of the turtles’ capacity to communicate, but also of their instinct to care for young. Now the discovery has spurred an urgent count of this talkative turtle’s numbers, and may shape protections for shelled creatures in the Amazon and beyond. When Ferrara began studying turtle communication, “so many people looked at me and said, ‘Oh, how? I don’t think that turtles use sound to communicate,’” she said. “I said, ‘Let’s see.’” Known locally as the arrau or tartaruga da amazonia, the giant South American river turtle lives throughout the Amazon and its tributaries. During the dry season, thousands of females at once crawl onto beaches along the river to lay their eggs. For other kinds of turtles, the mothering usually ends at the beach. Many turtle hatchlings are left by their parents to fend for themselves. But that’s not the case with the arrau. After nesting, females often hover by the shore for up to two months waiting for their eggs to hatch. So Ferrara and her colleagues wondered: are mother turtle and child turtle communicating with one another? To test the idea, her team spent months taping the turtles — on land and underwater, in the wild and in a swimming pool. The team recorded a wide repertoire of whisper-quiet calls from arrau of all ages. Embryos appear to chirp together to coordinate hatching and digging up to the surface. With so many jaguars and other predators lurking, it is safer for baby turtles to move en masse toward the river. The mothers, meanwhile, approach and respond to the calls of their young. Once the hatchlings reach the water, the baby turtles migrate down the river with the adult females, Ferrara’s radio-tracking research shows. When her team published an early study on turtle vocalizations a decade ago, Ferrara said, academic journals resisted putting the phrase “parental care” in the title of a study about turtles. “At that time it was very hard to publish,” she said. “It was something really new.” But Ferrara and her colleagues have gone on to record vocalizations from more turtle species, including the pig-nosed turtle in Australia, Blanding’s turtle in Minnesota and Kemp’s ridley sea turtle in Mexico, one of the world’s most endangered. “Probably most of these species use sound to communicate,” she said. Other researchers may have missed turtle noises since they tend to be quiet, infrequent and low-pitched — just at the edge of human hearing. Leatherback sea turtles, for instance, appear to have ears tuned to the frequency of waves rolling ashore. Some species can take hours to reply to each other. “Had we had a bit more expansive imaginations, we might have caught this earlier,” said Karen Bakker, a fellow at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study who wrote about turtle vocalization in her book, “The Sounds of Life.” “We’re looking for sounds in the frequencies we can hear,” she added. “We’re looking for sounds at a temporal rate that is as quick as we speak. And so we have blinders on our ears.” As a group, turtles are more ancient than dinosaurs, and are central to many cultures’ creation stories. Yet today they rank among the species at most risk of extinction. Nearly three in five species may vanish, according to a recent assessment, with climate change, habitat loss and hunting posing risks. The Amazon once teemed with so many turtles, it was difficult to navigate. While Indigenous people have long relied on turtles for meat, the arrival of Europeans accelerated their decline. Colonists rounded up the turtles as a ready source of fresh meat. Missionaries declared turtles counted as fish, so Catholics could eat them during Lent. Fat from their eggs was rendered for street lighting in Brazil and cooking fat in Europe. The species still faces serious threats. A boom in dam construction threatens to cull their numbers. And a continued appetite for turtle meat sustains a lucrative illegal trade, where middlemen can buy an arrau for $50 and sell it downriver for $450. Residents of Brazil’s Amazonas state alone, according to one estimate, consume about 1.7 million turtles and tortoises every year. Conservationists are pushing to have the International Union for Conservation of Nature declare the species endangered. Researchers are now racing to count how many arrau turtles remain in the wild. In September and October, Ferrara and other Wildlife Conservation Society scientists conducted a turtle census along the Guaporé River, which forms the border between Brazil and Bolivia. With flying drones fixed with infrared cameras, the researchers counted the nesting site, which they say is probably the largest concentration of any freshwater turtle species in the world. The team is still analyzing the images, but it estimates that a staggering 80,000 giant turtles nested along the river. Over the past couple of weeks, millions of hatchlings have crawled out of their shells and scurried into the river. “We need to know its biology, its population,” said Omar Torrico, a biologist and drone pilot with the group. “Maybe climate change is going to be one of the problems for the future. And so we think assessing the population is one of the most important things to know.” Ferrara now wants to figure out if noise pollution drowns out turtle chatter. “We can observe with those impacts with the other types of animals, like for whales or dolphins. We know that the ship noise can impact their communication.” But for her, the real fight is not in the field, but in the cities, convincing regular Brazilians to refrain from eating turtle meat. For her, changing the minds of just a few folks would be a victory. “What I want is to see two or three people stop.” This article is part of Animalia, a column exploring the strange and fascinating world of animals and the ways in which we appreciate, imperil and depend on them."
+"Patrick Fortune was walking his dog Ka’Hu in his Austin neighborhood when he spotted something long and yellow down a ravine 30 feet below him. It took him a few seconds, but then he remembered a post from Nextdoor over the summer: A 16-foot albino reticulated python had been reported missing in the neighborhood after it was stolen from a van, its owner said. This had to be the snake. Someone named Daryl Fields posted in July that his python, named Snow, was taken from his vehicle in its travel tote while he was visiting Austin from Dallas. “She is a big gentle giant,” Fields wrote. “I’m sure whoever broke in my vehicle freaked out realizing it was a snake inside. Please give me a call if you hear or see anything.” Fortune, 34, recalled that a few people had reported seeing the snake on a walking path near his Coronado Hills neighborhood that first week, but he hadn’t heard of any other sightings. “The snake was big enough to take cats and pretty much anything else it wanted, so people were a little worried,” said Fortune, who did not have any experience with snakes, including pythons. “But then it disappeared, and everything calmed down. We figured it was gone.” When Fortune realized that he had found the missing python that day — Dec. 19 — he said he took his dog home and told his girlfriend, Raven Zimmer, what he’d seen. He wasn’t sure if it was alive or dead, he said, but if it was alive, they should rescue it. She was on board. Fortune said he’d seen plenty of cottonmouth snakes and rattlesnakes in Texas, and he’d once come across a 5-foot bullsnake. “I knew that pythons were tropical — they like to be warm,” he said, noting that it been cold in Austin for several weeks, and it was 45 degrees outside on the day he spotted Snow. Both he and Zimmer have soft spots for animals in need. “Raven and I are animal lovers, and we’ve helped rescue owls and rabbits before,” Fortune added. “Rescuing the snake seemed like the right thing to do.” He and Zimmer, 33, said they had no idea how to care for a freezing python, but they figured that warmth and a large container to put the snake in would be key. They quickly warmed up a heating pad in the microwave, grabbed a few towels and loaded their large dog carrier into Fortune’s truck. When they arrived at the top of the ravine, another neighbor called the Austin Animal Center and was told it would take a couple of hours to get an animal control officer on the scene to help, Fortune said. He figured that if the snake was still alive, it didn’t have the luxury of time, due to the cold weather. “The embankment was pretty steep, but Raven walked on down, and I grabbed the crate and shuffled it down,” Fortune said. “The snake looked dead to us, but Raven reached out and touched it, and we were surprised when it moved,” he added. “I thought, ‘Oh! That’s different. Now what do we do?’” He decided to snap a few photos of the snake and text them to people he knew in the neighborhood, hoping that someone would help him and Zimmer get the 75-pound python into the dog crate and push it up the hill. When Dillon Dority, 29, received a text from a family member that the snake had been found, he immediately rushed over from his parents’ house, across the street from the ravine. “I like the strange and unusual, so I was all in,” he said, adding that he knew nothing about large reticulated pythons but once had a boyfriend who kept a small ball python as a pet. The trio decided that Fortune would firmly hold the snake behind its head while Zimmer and Dority picked up its body and scooted it into the carrier. “Because we have lots of snakes in Texas, I knew it was common practice that if you grab them behind the head, you’ll have power over them because they can’t strike you,” Fortune said. “The snake didn’t seem to like that,” he noted. “It reared up and opened its mouth, and it gave me a ‘don’t mess with me’ look.” Although Snow was 10 inches wide and its  hiss was intimidating, Fortune said he and the others were determined to see the rescue through. They were not afraid of getting bitten or constricted, because the snake was moving slowly in the cold, Fortune said. “We were genuinely worried about the snake — it could freeze to death in the cold,” he said. “We tried picking her up again, and she became lethargic and didn’t fight us this time. She was struggling to survive.” “She was ice cold — it was like picking up a cold, slimy rock,” Dority added, noting from his experience with his ex-boyfriend’s snake that he knew pythons thrived in a warm climate of 80 to 90 degrees. “When a python is exposed to the cold, its body starts to shut down,” he said. “We knew we had to get it warm.” He and Zimmer tucked the heat pad and blanket around the snake in the carrier, then all three of them pushed and pulled the heavy crate up the embankment. They decided to take the python to Dority’s house because he lived the closest. He also had a fireplace. “We took the snake inside, and I got some wood and Patrick started a fire,” Dority said. “The fire started roaring and I also started up a space heater.” Dority had an infrared digital thermometer, so he held it to the snake’s head every few minutes and took its temperature. “The first time, it read 53 degrees,” he said. “Raven was googling for information about pythons and learned [the temperature] was supposed to be in the 70s. So we were relieved when it started going up.” “It was a happy feeling to know that the snake was alive and coming around,” Zimmer said. “I’m really impressed that it survived in the cold as long as it did.” About 90 minutes into their herpetology urgent care, the doorbell rang, Fortune said. JT Moorman, a senior animal protection officer with the Austin Animal Center, had arrived to pick up the snake. When Moorman walked into the living room holding a small cat carrier, everyone burst into laughter, Dority said. “The officer took one look and said, ‘Oh, that’s a big snake,’”  Fortune said. Moorman said he’d received a call that he needed to retrieve a python and he had no idea how massive it was. “I’ve gone on a lot of calls like these, and they’re usually three-foot pythons,” he said. “A 16-foot, reticulated python? I was flabbergasted. This was a first.” Snow probably survived for nearly six months in the ravine by eating mice and rabbits and the occasional possum, he said. After the others helped him to transfer Snow into a kennel in the back of his truck, Moorman drove the snake  to the Austin Zoo to be held temporarily while other animal control officers tracked down Snow’s owner. Daryl Fields drove to Austin a few days later to pick Snow up, posting  on Facebook that he was “so glad to have my baby back.” Fields did not respond to requests from The Washington Post for comment, but he told Austin’s KXAN News that being reunited with Snow was the best Christmas present he’d ever had. Fortune said he hopes the snake is warm and happy now that she’s back home. “It isn’t every day that you find a 16-foot python in a creek bed,” he said. “She was probably living her best life down there until it got cold.” “I’m not a snake person,” Fortune added. “But I’m really glad she made it.”"
+"Washington’s Humane Rescue Alliance is packed to the gills with roughly 170 animals, from cats and dogs to birds, rabbits, turtles, snakes and fish. And the nonprofit organization is now promoting those creatures and waiving some of its adoption fees in hopes that more of them go to new homes. Officials at the D.C. rescue facility said both their facility and the foster homes where animals often go until they find permanent homes are at capacity, putting them in desperate need. “Across the country, intake is up and adoptions are down,” said Andrea Messina, an executive vice president and chief development officer at the Humane Rescue Alliance in D.C. The facility is waiving adoption fees for dogs that weigh more than 40 pounds, which tend to be harder to place, through Jan. 5. Adoption fees for smaller-size dogs and other animals are still in place and range between $10 and $250. Pet ownership spiked during the pandemic, as Americans sought furry friends to keep them company while some worked from home and human interaction was limited. Demand became so high in some areas, including in the D.C. region, that shelters and animal rescue and adoption facilities couldn’t keep up. Shelter Animals Count, which runs a database that tracks shelter and rescue activity at 500 sites across the country, documented a higher percentage of adoptions in 2020 than 2019. In the D.C. area, animal experts said they had not seen such a demand to adopt pets since after Sept. 11, 2001, when people en masse sought pets for comfort. But now, as the world has opened back up, and as inflation affects consumer prices for everything including chicken and dog food, it’s also meant changes for pets. Messina said the facility is seeing some returns of animals from people who say they can’t afford their additional costs. In other cases, she said, pet owners have gotten hit with unforeseen circumstances, such as getting laid off from a job, an expensive health problem, or losing a home and having to move to a place that doesn’t accept pets. The Humane Rescue Alliance normally would take in animals from other spots across the country to help, Messina said, but it doesn’t have the space in the D.C. area. Still, the humane rescue center isn’t seeing as many animals being given up or returned as other facilities, a trend that officials attribute to their expansion of several programs of assistance in the past few years, including free food and some free — or reduced — medical care. Each case is decided based on the owners’ and pets’ needs. This holiday season, the Humane Rescue Alliance is doing more on social media and in online community groups to promote its animals on social media and through community groups that are available for adoption to try to find them new homes. It had roughly 40 cats and 80 dogs — plus birds, mice, turtles, rabbits, snakes and guinea pigs — looking for new homes as of Friday. Among them is Bankroll, a 1-year-old dog who’s now 40 pounds after coming to the shelter rather skinny. He’s a sweetie, shelter caretakers said, that “likes to sniff around” and loves to be petted. For cat lovers, there’s Jinx. Like many after the holidays, this 8-year-old feline needs to drop a few, coming in at 13 pounds. His owner could no longer care for him so he needs a new home. Also in need of a new home is Breeze, a 1-year-old white-and-brown guinea pig who was a stray. Keepers said the pig is active, playful, and enjoys eating bananas, broccoli and carrots. For those who want a companion with less fur and more scales, there’s an adult female ball python named Royalty, who was rescued from a house fire. The queen, as she’s dubbed, enjoys “warm baths, basking in the sun, and being worshiped by her subjects (hanging out with you! ),” according to her adoption listing. To adopt an animal from the rescue alliance, people can do a walk-in adoption Tuesday through Sunday at the Humane Rescue Alliance facility, located at 71 Oglethorpe St. NW, or call 202-723-5730 for more information."
+"In the not-so-distant past, scientists predicted that global temperatures would surge dramatically throughout this century, assuming that humans would rely heavily on fossil fuels for decades. But they are revising their forecasts as they track both signs of progress and unexpected hazards. Accelerating solar and wind energy adoption means global warming probably will not reach the extremes once feared, climate scientists say. At the same time, recent heat, storms and ecological disasters prove, they say, that climate change impacts could be more severe than predicted even with less warming. Researchers are increasingly worried about the degree to which even less-than-extreme increases in global temperatures will intensify heat and storms, irreversibly destabilize natural systems and overwhelm even highly developed societies. Extremes considered virtually impossible not long ago are already occurring. Scientists pointed to recent signs of societies’ fragility: drought contributing to the Arab Spring uprisings; California narrowly avoiding widespread blackouts amid record-high temperatures; heat waves killing tens of thousands of people each year, including in Europe, the planet’s most developed continent. It’s an indication that — even with successful efforts to reduce emissions and limit global warming — these dramatic swings could devastate many stable societies sooner, and more often, than previously expected. “We see already that extremes are bringing about catastrophe,” said Claudia Tebaldi, an earth scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash. “The question is: How are we going to possibly adapt and lower the risk by turning the dial of what we can control?” And researchers are watching closely to see if the planet is approaching — or even passing — tipping points in climate change: thresholds of ice loss or deforestation that would be so consequential, they would make cascading harms unavoidable. “People are already dying of climate change right now,” said Sonia Seneviratne, a professor at ETH Zurich’s Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science in Switzerland. “We have started to see events at near-zero probability of happening without human-induced climate change.” The latest forecasts suggest Earth’s ever-thickening blanket of greenhouse gases has it on a path to warm by more than 2 degrees Celsius by 2100 — a threshold scientists and policymakers have emphasized as one that would usher in catastrophic effects. That is despite efforts to keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius through the global treaty known as the Paris agreement, signed at a U.N. climate change conference in 2015. An October report from the United Nations found that if countries uphold even their most aggressive pledges to reduce output of climate change-inducing greenhouse gases, the planet would warm 2.4 degrees Celsius (4.3 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century. But the latest projections of warming nevertheless show humanity has made progress at reining in some of its planet-warming emissions, scientists said. One scenario laid out in a 2014 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report and called “business as usual” — predicting global emissions and warming without any policy intervention and continued adoption of coal-fired power — had suggested global temperature would rise as much as 5 degrees Celsius of warming above preindustrial levels by the end of this century. The likelihood of such sustained and rapid warming now appears remote. “I think that’s good news,” Tebaldi said. Climate scientists credit the rapid adoption of renewable energy — solar and wind power accounted for 1.7 percent of global electricity generation in 2010, and 8.7 percent of it in 2020. The world is set to add as much renewable energy generation in the next five years as it did in the past two decades, the International Energy Agency predicted in a report released this month. If energy transformations continue and technologies such as carbon sequestration become viable, climate models suggest global warming could eventually reverse, bringing temperatures back down close to 1.5 degrees above preindustrial levels. At the same time, many nations are failing to take the actions they’ve pledged to make that happen. Some scientists have argued the most extreme projections of warming have long failed to account for clean-energy advances, in particular declines in coal use. Zeke Hausfather, one of those critics, said many climate scientists now agree they need to reconsider their projections. “If we succeed really well, we can limit warming to below 2 degrees. If we do poorly, we can end up closer to 3 degrees,” said Hausfather, climate research lead at payments company Stripe and co-author of a key IPCC report. “We don’t think we’re heading toward a 4-degree world, but we can’t rule it out if we get unlucky.” If moderating projections of global warming are good news, the bad news is what is already unfolding: Average global temperatures have risen more than 1.1 degrees Celsius, or 1.9 degrees Fahrenheit, since the dawn of industry and combustion engines. And that level of warming is less than half what is likely by the end of the century. Take, for example, a heat wave that descended on the Pacific Northwest in June 2021. Portland and Seattle hit record highs of 116 degrees and 108 degrees, respectively. British Columbia broke Canadian high-temperature records three days in a row, peaking at 121 degrees — more than 40 degrees hotter than normal for that time of year. Scientists quickly determined the heat was so extreme, it could not have occurred without the influence of global warming. Further research found that, in a world with 2 degrees of warming above preindustrial temperatures, it may be a once-in-a-decade sort of event. Elsewhere, communities are facing the near-likelihood of sustained extreme heat. Half a century ago, about 12 million people endured average annual global temperatures greater than 29 degrees Celsius, or 84 degrees Fahrenheit; that number could grow to 3.5 billion people by 2070, one study found in 2020. Climate scientist Timothy Lenton, one of the study’s co-authors, called that “absolutely shocking.” “I cannot believe we’d cope well in a world where billions of people are exposed to these kinds of extremes,” said Lenton, director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter in Britain. Then there are the precipitation extremes. Many scientists have pointed to drought, and resulting surges in food prices, as a factor in anti-government uprisings in Arab countries in the early 2010s and in a civil war in Syria that has been ongoing for 11 years. Research on flooding in Pakistan that killed 1,500 people and affected 33 million people, leaving millions homeless, suggested climate change intensified rainfall by 50 to 75 percent. The events echo U.N. reports asserting that human influence on weather extremes is strengthening and that climate change is already causing “dangerous and widespread disruption” to ecosystems and communities. Many climate scientists said society has largely discounted weather extremes because of a bias toward what is most likely, rather than the range of what is possible. But now, it’s becoming hard to ignore the reality of just how sweltering extreme heat can be, said Karen McKinnon, an assistant professor at the University of California at Los Angeles. “We’re just now experiencing what that looks like and what that feels like,” she said. The consequences of weather extremes also depend on factors beyond meteorology. Some climate scientists stressed that societies’ ability to manage disasters — and, especially in the future, multiple disasters at once — will help determine the level of hazards they face. “Countries are not only going to be affected suddenly by one event,” Seneviratne said. “The risk is actually much higher than you would expect if you look at any one of them in isolation.” For example, communities’ resiliency will depend on the stability of insurance markets in disaster-weary places such as Florida, or, more crucially, on the security of food and housing in places such as Pakistan. “We model the individual impact of hazards, but we don’t model the potential ripple impacts through society,” said Luke Kemp, a research associate at the Center for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge in Britain. There are also risks that scientists are vastly underestimating the effects that could come with any given level of global warming, which has increased at a pace without precedent in the past 100,000 years. So there is no historical guide to analyzing how ecosystems and societies might react to the changes induced by greenhouse gas emissions. That could mean that, even at some best-case scenarios of warming global leaders are aiming for, effects on the planet would be devastating, Seneviratne said. And Kemp said it’s also important not to assume the latest global warming forecasts will become reality, and to keep in mind that what seems remote remains possible. Though there are signs of progress at limiting greenhouse gas emissions, he called it a mistake to put much stock in predictions of what geopolitical and energy systems will look like decades into the future, and what that will mean both for how much greenhouse gases will be emitted and whether societies will be equipped to endure the warming those emissions bring. “This narrative of, ‘Don’t worry, we’re on track for 2 to 3 degrees’ [of warming], I think, is seriously overconfident,” Kemp said."
+"When extreme weather events occur, puzzling and often ominous terms crop up — “firenado,” “polar vortex,” “thundersnow.” Another one emerged into the mainstream at the beginning of 2023, when California declared a state of emergency while a string of storms slammed the West Coast with a name that sounded oddly sunny: “Pineapple Express.” The storm, which brought 100-plus mph wind gusts and caused flooding and landslides, is no day at the beach. So what, exactly, is a Pineapple Express? The powerful storm type gets its name from its origin in the tropical Pacific around Hawaii and the island state’s affinity for the sweet treat. Pineapple Express storms carry moisture northward from the tropics and dump it in high concentrations on the West Coast and Canada. Fueled by a powerful southern portion of the polar jet stream, which is strongest in the winter, according to the American Meteorological Society, the Pineapple Express is sometimes likened to a “conveyor belt” of moisture. It can bring as much as 5 inches of rain a day, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says. Pineapple Express storms are a particularly well-known type of “atmospheric river,” considered a fundamental feature of the Earth’s water cycle. They can be beneficial — supplying fresh water and even alleviating drought or quelling wildfires — but they can also slam the West Coast and Canada with dangerous amounts of snow and rain. Scientists have cautioned that atmospheric rivers could worsen amid climate change. These rivers in the sky can stretch thousands of miles long and are often a few hundred miles wide. The largest freshwater “rivers” in the world, they can carry more than twice the volume of the Amazon. They occur elsewhere, too — in the United Kingdom and the Iberian Peninsula, for example, which receive moisture from the Caribbean. In February 2022, Brisbane, Australia, received 80 percent of its typical yearly rainfall in three days from an atmospheric river. Similar to hurricanes, atmospheric rivers are ranked from 1 to 5. The scale — which goes from “primarily beneficial” to “primarily hazardous” — corresponds to how much moisture they transport as well as how long they last in a particular area. The rating system wasn’t launched until 2019. While California is known for its long dry spells, the Golden State is no stranger to such weather events. Researchers found that from 1979 to 2019, atmospheric rivers of varying intensities hit the West Coast an average of 24 times per year. In October 2021, one brought California some relief, following a record-breaking dry period. Scientists have projected that such weather whiplash — extreme dryness to wet precipitation events — could increase by 25 to 100 percent in California by the end of the century. And as the planet warms, atmospheric rivers could get wider, longer and more intense, studies have suggested. Mike Branom and Kasha Patel contributed to this report."
+"A mention of California might usually conjure images of wildfires and droughts, but scientists say that the Golden State is also the site of extreme, once-a-century “megafloods” — and that climate change could amplify just how bad one gets. The idea seems inconceivable — a month-long storm that dumps 30 inches of rain in San Francisco and up to 100 inches of rain and/or melted snow in the mountains. But it has happened before — most recently in 1862 — and if history is any indicator, we’re overdue for another, according to research published Friday in Science Advances that seeks to shed light on the lurking hazard. “This risk is increasing and was already underappreciated,” said Daniel Swain, one of the study’s two authors and a climate scientist at the University of California at Los Angeles. “We want to get ahead of it.” In such an event, some in the Sierra Nevada could end up with 25 to 34 feet of snow, and most of California’s major highways would be washed out or become inaccessible. Swain is working with emergency management officials and the National Weather Service, explaining that it’s not a question of whether a megaflood will happen but when. “It already has happened in 1862, and it probably has happened about five times per millennium before that,” he said. “On human time scales, 100 or 200 years sounds like a long time. But these are fairly regular occurrences.” His paper built on the work of other scientists, who examined layers of sediment along the coastline to determine how frequently megafloods occurred. They found evidence of extreme freshwater runoff, which washed soil and stony materials out to sea. Those layers of material became buried beneath years of sand. The depth of the layers and the sizes of the pebbles and other material contained in them offer insight into the severity of past floods. “It hasn’t happened in recent memory, so it’s a little bit ‘out of sight, out of mind,’ ” Swain said. “But [California is] a region that is in the perfect area … in a climatological and geographic context.” On the West Coast, there commonly are atmospheric rivers, or streams of moisture-rich air at the mid-levels of the atmosphere with connections to the deep tropics. For a California megaflood to occur, you’d need a nearly stationary zone of low pressure in the northeast Pacific, which would sling a succession of high-end atmospheric rivers into the California coastline. “These would be atmospheric river families,” Swain said. “You get one of these semi-persistent [dips in the jet stream] over the northeast Pacific that wobbles around for a few weeks and allows winter storm after winter storm across the northeast Pacific into California.” The paper warns of “extraordinary impacts” and reports that such an episode could transform “the interior Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys into a temporary but vast inland sea nearly 300 miles in length and [inundate] much of the now densely populated coastal plain in present-day Los Angeles and Orange Counties.” The effects of a month-long barrage of soaking storms could be disastrous, but Swain notes that it’s possible to have advance warning. “This is something we’d see coming three to five days out, and I’d hope a week and perhaps even two weeks out, with a probabilistic type of prediction,” Swain said. “We’d have a decent amount of warning for it.” Swain’s simulations showed the odds of a megaflood occurring are far greater in winters dominated by El Niño  than in  winters influenced by La Niña. El Niño is a large-scale chain-reaction atmosphere-ocean pattern that can dominate the atmosphere for several years at a time, and it usually begins with higher-than-normal sea surface temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific. “When you look at the top eight monthly precipitation totals in simulations, eight out of eight occurred in El Niño years,” Swain said. The influence of human-caused climate change also plays a role: Swain says it boosts the ceiling in a megaflood. “We have multiple scenarios. The future one is much larger, consistent with [climate change],” he said. “In the historical scenario, the lesser one, certain parts of the Sierra Nevada see 50 to 60 inches of liquid-equivalent precipitation … but in the future event, some places see 70 to 80 and a few see 100 in a 30-day period. Even places like San Francisco and Sacramento could see 20 to 30 inches of rain, and that’s just in one month.” An independent study published in Scientific Reports on Friday concluded that human-caused climate change will intensify atmospheric rivers and could double or triple their economic damage in the western United States by the 2090s. A warmer atmosphere has a greater capacity to store moisture. In the absence of storms, that means the air can more quickly dry up the landscape — hence California’s prolonged drought — but should rain occur, the deck is stacked to favor an exceptional event. “Moisture isn’t the limiting factor in California,” Swain said. “There’s plenty of moisture around even in the drought years. The absence is a lack of mechanism. It’s a lack of storms rather than moisture.” Alan Rhoades, who is an expert on atmospheric rivers and was not involved in either study, said the research highlights the “the importance of not forgetting about major flood events, which are also central to California’s history."" “The major worry is how much climate change will alter the frequency of these event occurrences and how much it will fuel and amplify the impacts of the next record-setting [atmospheric river] event,” wrote Rhoades, a hydroclimate research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in an email. He added that compared to previous megafloods in the late 1800s, “California has vastly expanded its rural, urban, and agricultural sprawl, which could lead to more potential for loss of life and property.” While researchers can’t say when the next California megaflood will strike, forecasters are confident that it will happen. There’s a 0.5 to 1.0 percent chance of it happening in any given year. Swain said one goal of his work is to push officials to prepare. He suggested working with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to “run through simulations as a real tabletop on the ground disaster scenarios.” “We’ll work through where the points of failure would actually be, because one of the things we want to do is get ahead of the curve,” he said. Kasha Patel contributed to this report."
+"Storms fueled crippling floods in Missouri and Kentucky. A drought starved Lake Mead, Lake Powell and much of the American West, endangering water supplies and creating conditions for devastating wildfires. A deadly collection of 83 tornadoes tore across the South. Golf-ball-size hail battered swaths of Minnesota and Wisconsin, damaging homes, vehicles and businesses. Unprecedented flooding inundated Yellowstone National Park. The Christmas week winter storm for the ages blasted much of the nation with biting cold, and blizzard conditions pummeled western New York, leaving more than two dozen people dead. And the catastrophe that was Hurricane Ian steamrolled parts of Florida and lumbered up the East Coast this fall, leaving tens of billions of dollars of damage in its wake and killing more than 125 people. While weather disasters strike the United States every year, 2022 brought the latest reminder that extreme events, fueled in part by the warming planet, are growing more intense and costly — both at home and abroad. Here are some numbers that help describe the toll such calamities inflicted on the United States over the past year and what threats probably lie ahead: The number of “billion-dollar disaster” events as of mid-December, according to federal officials. While that number is mercifully lower than the record years of 2020 and 2021 — which saw 22 and 20 such disasters, respectively — it still represents a high amount of suffering. Over the past four decades, the United States has experienced an average of 7.7 billion-dollar disasters annually. But since 2017, the average has jumped to nearly 18 each year. More frequent disasters mean less time to prepare for each one. An analysis by the research nonprofit Climate Central found that from 2017 to 2021, the nation experienced a billion-dollar disaster every 18 days on average, compared with 82 days between such events on average in the 1980s. “The lessons we are learning from these more frequent, more costly extreme weather events should be apparent now across many regions,” said Adam Smith, an economist and scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). “There’s no reason to expect that the trends will reverse or flat line.” The number of acres burned by wildfire as of Dec. 23, according to the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC). “Twenty years ago, this would have been considered an above-normal season,” said Jim Wallman, an NIFC meteorologist. But what is normal is changing. “This is like what would be considered an average season right now.” Wallman said that in the decade preceding 2005, wildfires burned an average of 6.3 million acres each year. By 2021, that 10-year annual average had risen to more than 7 million acres — a more than 10 percent increase. Alaska saw the largest amount of scorched land by far during 2022, at more than 3 million acres. New Mexico experienced record wildfires this spring, and states such as Texas, Oregon and Idaho saw hundreds of thousands of acres burned, with many of those blazes human-caused. A new analysis this year revealed that 1 in 6 Americans now live in an area with significant wildfire risk. That’s nearly 80 million properties in the United States that face a real threat of exposure. In a hotter, drier world, scientists expect those risks to continue to intensify. Two decades ago, if a fire burned 10,000 acres in a day, that was startling, Wallman said. “Now, when conditions are right, we are seeing that more frequently,” he said. Some timber fires in recent years have burned 50,000 or more acres in a day. A rare few, such as the Dixie Fire in California last year, surpassed 100,000 acres in a day. The number of inches of rainfall that fell during a single day this summer in St. Louis, easily eclipsing the record of about 7 inches set in August 1915, when remnants of a hurricane passed through the area. The historic deluge — an event with less than a 1-in-1,000 chance of occurring in a given year — dropped startling amounts of rain on St. Louis and surrounding areas. Some areas northwest of the city saw rainfall totals up to a foot. Overwhelmed storm water drains and sewage systems overflowed and backed up into houses. Dozens of rescues took place amid the flash flooding. “What happened was way more than the system — any system — can handle,” Sean Hadley, spokesman for the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District, told The Washington Post at the time. That disaster marked just one episode in a summer full of intense precipitation. From Eastern Kentucky to inland Florida, from Chicago to Wisconsin, massive rain events fueled the sort of flooding that is becoming more common and is battering outdated and outmatched infrastructure. Scientists say climate change is helping to fuel the increased frequency and intensity of the extreme rainfall events, in part because a warmer atmosphere can hold significantly more moisture. During a five-week span in July and August, five 1,000-year rain events occurred across the county. The problem is playing out around the globe, deepening catastrophes such as the monumental flooding in Pakistan this year that displaced millions of people. In the United States, extreme precipitation in many communities has laid bare how government flood insurance maps often fail to reflect the risks that Americans actually face. The degrees Fahrenheit warmer than average in the contiguous United States over the meteorological summer, measured from June 1 through Aug. 31. That made 2022 the third-hottest U.S. summer on record in the past 128 years, according to NOAA. The heat that scorched and baked the country this summer smashed thousands of temperature records along the way. More than 7,000, in fact, according to a Post analysis of NOAA data. More than 400 monthly records and 27 all-time records also fell. A persistent drought that has covered more than 40 percent of the continental United States for nearly two years has put pressure on livestock herds across the Great Plains and stressed water supplies across the West. Outdoor workers have faced growing health risks from the heat, and officials have been forced to limit activities from fireworks to camp fires. Extreme weather has threatened business owners in towns around national parks, impacted air quality and raised nighttime temperatures to dangerous levels. The worsening summer swelter is hardly a U.S. problem. Europe experienced its hottest summer on record in 2022. And scientists published a sprawling global assessment that warned warming will continue unless humans drastically cut back on greenhouse gas emissions that heat the planet. The number of years since the American West has experienced such a prolonged, profound drought, according to a study published earlier this year in the journal Nature Climate Change. Researchers found that the decades-long drought that has gripped the West since 2000, fueled in part by the warming of the planet, marks the driest 22-year period since at least A.D. 800. The crisis has depleted groundwater, melted annual snowpack and dried out critical lakes. It has led officials to fear for a “complete doomsday scenario” along the parched Colorado River, which serves roughly 1 in 10 Americans. At a recent gathering in Las Vegas, water managers said unprecedented shortages soon could descend upon cities and farms throughout the West. Officials warned that long-standing rules about how water is divvied up along the river will have to change, as years of overconsumption collide with the stark realities of climate change. Even as scientists and federal officials are still tallying its toll, Hurricane Ian seems destined to become the third-most destructive storm on record, behind Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Hurricane Harvey in 2017. The cost of those disasters, adjusted for inflation, stand at roughly $186 billion and $149 billion, respectively. Ian is likely to eclipse the $100 billion mark as well. Ian was among the strongest hurricanes to make landfall when it barreled into Florida’s southwest coast in late September, as a Category 4 storm with sustained winds of 150 mph. It obliterated coastal communities and caused massive inland flooding as it ambled across the state. “Ian really delivered the trifecta of impacts to southern and central Florida — high winds, storm surge, and then flooding well inland,” NOAA’s Smith said. Part of the reason that Ian was so destructive was the fact that huge amounts of people, homes and businesses lay in its path. Some of those same spots were hit again in November by Hurricane Nicole, a less powerful but still harmful storm that has not yet been deemed a billion-dollar disaster. The United States, Smith said, has faced a Category 4 or 5 storm making landfall repeatedly in recent years. “It’s a bad trend,” he said. “It shows our vulnerability is high, our exposure is high, and the costs will continue to climb if we don’t better seek to mitigate future damages.” The number of consecutive years in which the United States experienced 10 or more billion-dollar, weather-related disasters. What has become more common, and even expected, wasn’t always the case. Dating back to 1980, government figures show 13 years that included a double-digit number of such disasters, when adjusted for inflation. Of those, 11 have come since 2011. Researchers and public officials who have studied the changes say multiple factors are driving the troubling trend, including the fact that development has continued in disaster-prone areas and that Americans have continued to flock toward coastal communities. But, Smith told The Post this year: “Climate change is the 800-pound gorilla in the room.” Deaths that have officially been attributed to climate- and weather-related disasters so far in 2022, and the late-year winter storm that pummeled Buffalo and other parts of the nation will add dozens of deaths to the final total. Floods and fires, storms and heat waves take more than just an economic toll, of course. They destroy wildlife and natural landscapes. They upend livelihoods. They leave people homeless. And they claim lives. Hurricane Ian was the most deadly catastrophe, killing at least 131 people as it leveled homes and flooded communities across Florida, according to government figures. Scores of other Americans have died in the floods that devastated eastern Kentucky, wildfires that ravaged parts of California and heat waves that swept across large swaths of the country. Customers without power at the peak of the devastating and deadly Arctic blast that swept across much of the United States in the waning days of 2022. Our colleagues at the Capital Weather Gang this week tallied some of the most significant figures associated with the storm that brought a frigid end to an otherwise historically warm year. More than 20,000 flights have been canceled in recent days, during one of the most hectic travel periods of the year, according to the site FlightAware. Hundreds of drivers found themselves stranded on highways and back roads. Nearly a dozen states, from Montana to New York, saw blizzard warnings during the storms, and more than half the U.S. population was under either a wind chill warning or wind chill advisory from Dec. 21 to 25. More than 4 feet of snow fell in places in western New York, and at least 39 people in the Buffalo area have died, officials said Wednesday. Rescuers raced to free people trapped in cars; nursing homes and shelters risked running out of food. The National Guard was going door to door to check on residents in some Buffalo neighborhoods who had lost power for prolonged periods. “It’s a horrible storm with too many deaths,” Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said at a Wednesday news conference. “It’s heartbreaking, it’s a gut punch.” When officials tally the storm’s destructive and widespread toll, it is likely to become the year’s final billion-dollar disaster."
+"Packing fierce winds, bitter cold, and often heavy snow, the blizzard has earned a reputation as the most severe type of winter storm. A number have been powerful and deadly enough to become among the most memorable United States weather disasters. The National Weather Service defines a blizzard as an event in which strong winds, exceeding 35 miles per hour, coincide with blowing or falling snow to reduce visibility below a quarter mile. This type of storm need not involve monumental snowfall: A ground blizzard, in which already-fallen snow is blown about by strong winds, can happen beneath sunny skies. Many storms that meet blizzard criteria, though, are powerful behemoths with very low pressure that pull in massive quantities of air. In these storms, the same jets of moving air that allow sustained 35 mile per hour wind also transport plentiful moisture from the south and frigid temperatures from the north. Where the two clash, there is often heavy snowfall, coinciding with bitter cold and howling wind. In the Lower 48 states, blizzard conditions occur most frequently in the central and northern Plains. The flat landscape, just east of the Rockies, is ideal for powdery, windswept snow north of developing storms and along powerful cold fronts; a small handful of blizzards occur in this part of the country each year. The Northeast also typically sees a blizzard or two per year, particularly portions bordering the Atlantic Ocean. Here, intense nor’easters often foster heavy snow and powerful winds simultaneously. The three coexisting hazards make blizzards uniquely dangerous, as people can find themselves stuck outside in cars or on foot in near-zero visibility and accumulating snow without the ability to find shelter. In these conditions, frigid wind chills can lead to frostbite and hypothermia. The storms also can lead to power outages, exposing even those within built structures to dangerous cold or, at the hands of faulty generators, the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning. Low visibility can also lead to deadly car crashes. The most severe blizzards in U.S. history have killed dozens, or even hundreds. Here are five of the worst to have struck the country. Often known as the Storm of the Century, the 1993 blizzard saw a low-pressure system strengthen rapidly while racing up the East Coast. The powerful storm dragged a massive shield of snow, accompanied by howling wind and followed by extreme cold, from the Florida panhandle to Maine. Roofs collapsed, ships sank, millions lost power, every major airport on the East Coast shut down, and hundreds of Appalachian hikers were stranded as portions of 15 states saw more than 20 inches of snow. More than 270 people were killed across fourteen states, including 44 from an ocean surge and severe thunderstorms in Florida; the blizzard caused $11.3 billion of inflation-adjusted damage to become America’s costliest winter storm until the February 2021 cold wave. One of the strongest nontropical storm systems in U.S. history explosively intensified over eastern Michigan in 1978. The storm, which had the third lowest pressure recorded in the United States outside of a hurricane, pulled exceptionally cold air into the Midwest and the Ohio Valley with winds that gusted above 80 mph. Punishing wind chills as low as minus-50 degrees and up to a foot of powdery snow overwhelmed the region; where the Great Lakes were near enough to add moisture to the air, as many as three feet of snow accumulated. Known as the Cleveland Superbomb, the epic storm killed more than 70 people and shut down infrastructure across the region. Aside from a small handful of hurricanes, no storm has ever proved as destructive in the Northeast, Great Lakes and Ohio Valley regions as the Great Appalachian Storm of 1950. An immense low-pressure zone, powered by a massive dip in the jet stream and blocked from sliding out to sea, took an unusual east-to-west track across the Mid-Atlantic. Extreme cold air spilled toward the cyclone, with temperatures reported below zero as far south as Georgia and Arkansas. A steep change in pressure over a relatively short distance, because of a high-pressure zone over Southeast Canada, allowed extreme wind to develop, with gusts in excess of 100 mph in Newark; Hartford, Conn.; and Concord, N.H. All of that wind pulled plentiful moisture into the low, leading to flooding rain, destructive icing, and, along the spine of the Appalachians, more than 60 inches of snow. The storm also induced severe coastal flooding and erosion. West Virginia and Ohio set statewide single-storm snowfall records, as did the city of Pittsburgh. More than 350 people may have died, and the storm was the single costliest weather event in U.S. history at the time. New York and southern New England, hardly strangers to snow, saw their most severe blizzard of record in the late 19th century. A low-pressure area intensified while sliding north along a stalled Mid-Atlantic front, and sustained winds above 50 mph pulled frigid air into the cities of the Northeast. Heavy snow continued to fall for nearly two days as the storm stalled near Long Island. New York City was hit particularly hard; the temperature plummeted as low as 6 degrees, and up to 3 feet of snow fell amid roaring winds and near-zero visibility in the outer boroughs. In Upstate New York and portions of Connecticut, temperatures were even colder, and 45 to 60 inches of snow accumulated. The March 1888 blizzard paralyzed the economy and infrastructure of New York City and killed an estimated 200 residents, mostly those caught without shelter as the temperature dropped. Another 100 people died in the Northeast, and 100 more aboard offshore boats, making the storm probably the deadliest blizzard in American history. Little snow fell during the first major blizzard of 1888, which struck exactly two months before the crippling March storm in the Northeast. But the few inches of fine, powdery snow that did accumulate were whipped by wind into one of America’s most infamous natural disasters, the Schoolhouse Blizzard. A powerful cold front roared across the U.S. Plains, accompanied by a brief period of snow that was quickly followed by powerful winds and temperatures as low as minus-30 degrees. Hundreds of children were trapped either at or commuting home from school, and died after becoming disoriented and lost in the blowing snow and frigid temperatures. More than 200 people were killed."
+"Winter is coming, and you know what that means: Social media and news broadcasts will be lit up with words like “polar vortex,”“bombogenesis” and “thundersnow” grabbing national headlines. Some winter weather terms are technical. Some are weird. Others are important to understand for staying safe in potentially hazardous situations. Here are the terms you need to know this winter. When snow is falling heavily, people may casually describe the scene outside as a blizzard, but the term has a very specific definition. For a storm to be a blizzard, the location it’s affecting must experience sustained winds or frequent gusts at or above 35 mph for at least three hours, combined with falling and/or blowing snow. Such a combination of snow and wind frequently results in whiteout conditions, making for dangerous or impossible travel. It’s possible for there to be a blizzard even when it’s not precipitating, if strong winds whip up snow that has already fallen. That’s relatively common over the Northern Plains, where bitter Arctic-chilled air on the backside of storms often makes for treacherous travel. You may have heard Capital Weather Gang or television forecasters use these terms before. Mood snow or conversational snow is snow that doesn’t bring any headaches. It may coat grassy areas but melts on roads, and you don’t have to shovel it. It just sets the mood and gives us a good excuse to read a book near the window while enjoying a cup of hot chocolate. Bombogenesis and bomb cyclones are real things. Bombogenesis occurs when a storm’s central barometric pressure plummets 24 millibars in 24 hours. It’s a sign that the storm is evacuating air, allowing explosive strengthening. Storms that achieve this bomb status are known for their fury, bringing howling winds, copious precipitation and sometimes a blockbuster snowstorm. The polar vortex sounds scary, but it’s not a storm. It’s a belt of winds encircling a reservoir of frigid air in the North Pole (and also the South Pole during its winter). Occasionally, lobes or pieces of it break off, allowing intense cold to plunge into the Lower 48 states. There are two polar vortexes. The one just described resides in the lower atmosphere (in the troposphere) and is most frequently referenced by weather forecasters. The other vortex, higher up (in the stratosphere), is of greater interest to academic researchers, but its behavior can also have significant implications for mid-latitude weather. Thundersnow is exactly what it sounds like: a thunderstorm but with snow rather than rain. Especially in intense winter storms, vivid lightning, booming thunder and heavy snowfall can occur simultaneously. If you see a flash or hear a rumble, it’s a sign to drop the shovel and ditch the sleds — heading indoors to safety. During a storm, the intensity of snowfall matters a lot. Lighter snow is easier for motorists to negotiate and road crews to clear, whereas heavy snow can be crippling. By definition, the intensity of snowfall is determined by how much it reduces visibility. Heavy snow reduces visibility to 5/16 of a mile or less, while visibility is greater than 5/8 of a mile in light snow. Moderate snow is everything in between. Typically heavy snow produces at least an inch of snow per hour, while light snow leaves behind less than half an inch per hour. During the most exceptional storms, snowfall rates of 2 or 3 inches per hour or higher are possible. Just as you could get scattered rain showers in the warmer seasons, it’s possible for a spattering of intermittent snow to light up the radar. In these situations, the snow doesn’t fall over enough territory to be considered “widespread.” Snow showers can feature snowfall rates of all intensities. Occasionally, if they are heavy enough, they can create localized areas of hazardous travel conditions, by coating roads and lowering visibility. Snow squalls are more potent. They’re short-lived bands of heavy snow and are sometimes accompanied by strong winds. Snow squalls can create whiteout conditions reminiscent of a summertime thunderstorm. They often contain all the ingredients of a blizzard but don’t last long enough for a blizzard warning to be issued. But they’re often even more deadly. Some of the biggest car-wreck disasters of the past several decades have come when snow squalls envelop drivers in a sudden shroud. A 131-car pileup claimed a life in Wisconsin in 2019, less than a month after a snow squall snarled traffic in a 27-car Pennsylvania accident. The National Weather Service rolled out a new product for snow squall warnings last January, to be able to better warn before a snow squall strikes. Flurries are usually inconsequential. A vigorous flurry might briefly lower visibility or whiten the ground but, with most flurries, you can almost count the number of individual snowflakes flying around. It’s just like confetti drifting capaciously through the air, catching the sun as sporadic flakes dance their whimsical dance. Graupel are snow “pellets.” They form when supercooled droplet of water collect around and freeze onto a snowflake. Graupel may bounce off your jacket or the hood of your car; you can even hold them in your hand and crunch them. They’re usually about a quarter-inch across. Sleet is also a pelletlike precipitation and may appear very similar to graupel, but its formative processes are different. Sleet occurs when snowflakes melt in a layer of warm air, but refreeze into hardened ice pellets before pelting the ground like a peppering of ammunition from a BB gun. Freezing rain is exactly that — rain that freezes. It forms when ordinary rain falls through warm air, but the ground temperatures are below freezing. When that happens, the water freezes on contact, riming everything it touches with a slick glaze. It’s perhaps the most dangerous type of precipitation that can fall. Enough freezing rain, and you get an ice storm, which is infamous for downing power lines and resulting in widespread hazardous weather. Watches, warnings and advisories: For inclement winter weather situations, the National Weather Service will issue different kinds of alerts for you to be prepared for different hazardous situations. The Weather Service also may issue blizzard or ice storm warnings when conditions are met and also alerts for extreme wind chills, a measure of how cold the air feels, factoring in wind speeds. In 2016, the Weather Service introduced a special “potential winter weather hazard” statement for situations in which even very light amounts of precipitation combined with cold temperatures might create dangerous travel conditions during heavy commuting periods. This story has been updated since it first published."
+"At winter’s cruellest, the temperatures plunge well below zero, taking parts of the country into deep-freeze.. The only phenomenon frigid enough to generate that kind of chill is the polar vortex, of which you have heard but might not fully understand. There are not one but two polar vortexes in each hemisphere, North and South. One exists in the lowest layer of the atmosphere, the troposphere, which is where we live and where the weather happens. The other exists in the second-lowest, called the stratosphere, which is a shroud of thin air that gets warmer at higher altitudes. If the two polar vortexes line up just right, the Lower 48 can find itself in a very deep freeze. The low-level vortex in the troposphere is a large mass of brutally cold air and swirling winds coiled around omnipresent polar low pressure. The year-round cold temperature causes air to condense and shrink in size, which creates a vacuum effect that draws air inward. The tropospheric polar vortex is the one that affects our weather. Most of the time, its harsh conditions are out of reach. But every so often, lobes of it pinch off from the main flow and crash south. This can lash the Lower 48 with piercing shots of cold, intense bouts of storminess and bitter wind chills well below zero. How cold it gets in the Lower 48 depends on how much of the vortex breaks off and how far south it gets. It is as if the tropospheric polar vortex is a backyard full of dogs, and the jet stream is a fence. The dogs are always trying to escape through gaps in the fence. Occasionally a few of them manage to get out and cause a few days of very cold weather. But once in a while, the entire fence collapses and almost all of the dogs run wild. That is when the big cold-air outbreaks happen. The stratospheric polar vortex lives above and separate from the troposphere. It is much more compact than its tropospheric cousin. It forms in a similar way but is smoother and maintains a much sharper edge. That is because there is very little mixing with the air below it. With lots of rotational energy, this counterclockwise gyre can speed with little to slow it down. The stratospheric polar vortex does not stick around year-long: It disintegrates around March and starts to regenerate again in September; that is when the sun sets on the North Pole for the last time until spring. By December and January, the stratospheric polar vortex is a full-fledged machine. But a strong polar vortex does not mean storms for us. In fact, it is the contrary. Most of the time, the stratospheric polar vortex has little impact on our weather. The two layers of the atmosphere remain largely disconnected. Once in a while, the stratospheric vortex gets disrupted — a sudden stratospheric warming event. When this happens, the vortex can split and affect the weather below it. It can cause kinks in the jet stream so that, instead of flowing west to east, there are a lot of dips and ridges. And the waves in the jet stream can disrupt the lower (tropospheric) polar vortex, break off a lobe and force it south. We know by now to bundle up when that happens. This story has been updated since it first published."
+"An intrusion of polar air into the United States this week won’t just mean an extreme chill — along with it, damaging winds and white-out conditions are likely in many areas. The weather system is forecast to drop temperatures as much as 30 degrees below normal across most of the contiguous states, and could produce blizzard conditions across parts of the Plains and Midwest. It is likely to make for treacherous travel conditions and produce widespread power outages in the days before Christmas. To stay safe as the holidays begin, here are four things you can do before bad weather arrives. The expected combination of gusty winds and frigid temperatures could make for a dangerous situation in the event of power outages, which federal data have shown are occurring more often and for longer durations as extreme weather stresses the energy grid. Be sure to check that you have some emergency kit basics on hand: extra blankets, candles, flashlights and nonperishable food. Do what you can to keep cellphones and other electronic devices charged, and have a plan to recharge them should you lose power — whether via batteries, a vehicle or even a hand-crank weather radio. If using a portable generator, be wary of the risks of carbon monoxide poisoning from its exhaust — and never operate it indoors or in a garage. Given the severity of the cold descending on so much of the country, exposed plumbing could freeze quickly — plumbers say it can take six hours in freezing temperatures, but even less time in more frigid conditions for the pipes to freeze and burst. Parts of the Plains and Midwest are likely to remain at subzero temperatures for extended periods over the coming days. Plumbers recommend leaving taps at a trickle to prevent standing water from freezing or, in the event of a power outage, even shutting off the water supply and letting taps run dry. The cold could catch many people off-guard, as it is not just the strongest blast of cold so far this winter but, for some parts of the country, the coldest December chill in decades. Anyone planning to venture out into the cold — or anyone who could find themselves stuck in, say, a broken-down vehicle — should be dressed to weather the elements for as long as possible. To stay warmest, dress in multiple layers of loosefitting clothing, with moisture-wicking, non-cotton fabrics closest to the body and a layer that can block wind and precipitation on the outside. And don’t forget a hat, gloves and warm socks. Extreme cold is an even deadlier hazard than extreme heat, federal health data has shown, because as temperatures drop, cold can quickly overcome the body’s ability to adapt. It can take a matter of minutes for hypothermia to set in, marked first by shivers, and then by exhaustion, confusion and drowsiness. More than 112 million people are expected to travel at least 50 miles from home between Dec. 23 and Jan. 2, according to AAA — with the bulk of them going by car or truck. Motorists should be aware of weather they could face on the road. Cars can become easily incapacitated because of extreme cold, while slippery roadways can trigger crashes. Just as you should have an emergency kit for your home, keep important provisions in your vehicle, as well. That can include: blankets, a bandanna or bright cloth to serve as a distress signal, sand or cat litter for tires stuck in snow or ice, a windshield scraper and shovel, a flashlight, snacks and water. While drivers often store winter survival kits in trunks, the Minnesota Department of Public Safety Homeland Security and Emergency Management suggests storing the items in the passenger compartment in case the trunk gets jammed or is frozen shut. And if your vehicle is stuck, experts recommend running the engine occasionally to keep warm — while also ensuring snow is not blocking the vehicle’s exhaust pipes, risking a buildup of carbon monoxide. “It’s just about being prepared,” said Mike Griesinger, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Twin Cities forecast office in Minnesota. “The last thing you want to do is get stuck out somewhere where you’re unfamiliar and you have no idea when help may be able to come by.”"
+"If you’re from the Northern Tier, Rockies, Midwest or New England, odds are you’re no stranger to “wind chill.” You probably feel its effects all the time during the winter, when even the lightest stirring or breeze can turn a seasonably cold day downright bone-chilling. Stronger winds and below-freezing temperatures can bring the risk of frostbite and hypothermia as well, making wind chill an important figure to understand and plan for anytime outdoor recreation is to be considered. Most television weathercasters and mobile apps alike display values associated with the wind chill, but few take the time to define what it means. The premise of wind chill is simple: When the ambient air is cooler than your body temperature (roughly 98.6 degrees), any stitch of wind will blow away the insulating layer of mildness that forms around you. The human body emits heat, which generates a cushion of warmth surrounding a person. The faster the wind, the quicker a person sheds their warm layer, leaving them exposed to the cold once again. The body has to work at a faster pace to combat that constant loss of heat. When someone says “it’s 24 degrees outside, but the wind chill is 17,” they’re really saying that, at a temperature of 24 degrees with some wind, the rate of heat loss from an individual to the environment (and what the individual perceives) is equal to what 17 degrees and no wind would feel like. Atmospheric scientists and physicists have crunched the numbers and found a way to quantify this wind-induced dissipation of heat — by treating humans like a power source. We can calculate how much heat a human radiates in units of watts per meter squared. Watts are units of power, and they can be converted into calories per second. You know the phrase “burning calories”? Yep. Think about expending the energy contained in your food, but as heat! The “per meter squared” term comes from the surface area of an average human. That makes sense, since we radiate heat out of our skin. The formula above is used by the National Weather Service and by computer algorithms to calculate wind speed. The constants, or numeric values, come from assumptions mathematicians made about the average dimensions of a human, etc. It’s also presumed that sunlight isn’t playing more than a negligible role in heating a person. Wind chill is defined only for temperatures below 50 degrees and winds over 3 mph. Let’s assume the temperature is sitting right at the freezing mark. With a sustained 10 mph wind, the wind chill, sometimes advertised as a “feels like temperature,” would be 24 degrees. At 20 mph, that wind chill would drop to 20 degrees. How about 32 degrees amid a full-fledged 50 mph New England blizzard? The wind chill would be a frigid 14 degrees. According to Weather Underground, the coldest wind chill ever recorded in the United States (utilizing the current wind chill formula first employed in 2001) occurred on Jan. 16, 2004, atop the 6,288-foot summit of Mount Washington in New Hampshire. A temperature of minus-41.8 combined with winds gusting over 87 mph brought a wind chill of minus-102.6 degrees. The Weather Service will issue wind chill advisories and warnings when conditions are dangerous, and there are a few tips that you can follow to be safe: stay dry, stay covered, dress in layers and stay informed with local news and alerts. This story has been updated since it first published."
+"Just before the 2022 holiday season, blizzard-like conditions upended shopping, errands and travel plans for thousands of Americans. Plummeting temperatures, extreme snowfall and howling winds played the role of the Grinch in spoiling holiday plans across the country. During that storm, blizzard warnings were in effect for over 12 million Americans, and nearly 50 million people were under winter storm warnings. Over 200 million people across the country faced some form of warning or advisory from the historic winter storm, which saw at least 28 die in Buffalo alone. For millions of Americans unfamiliar with blizzard conditions, the first encounter can be scary — and even hazardous. Here’s what you need to know about blizzards. The National Weather Service classifies a blizzard as blowing or falling snow with winds of at least 35 mph for at least three hours. These conditions generally produce a significant amount of snow and cause reduced visibility, to about a quarter of a mile or less. Falling and drifting snow can lead to whiteout conditions in which the sky, ground and landmarks appear entirely white and indistinguishable — essentially there is no visibility. Blizzard warnings are issued when there is an 80 percent or greater chance that a blizzard will occur. The warning indicates that there will be blizzard conditions for at least three hours, a potentially life-threatening scenario making travel nearly impossible. In the days before a blizzard, a winter storm watch is issued, normally at least 24 hours ahead of time, when there is at least a 50 percent chance of a hazardous winter event occurring but there is uncertainty surrounding the location, timing and severity. A watch signals that conditions are “favorable” for hazardous winter weather. Ground blizzards occur when already fallen snow is blown by howling winds, even under sunny skies. In the Midwest, most ground blizzards develop with little or no new snowfall. Ground blizzards develop when polar cold fronts drift through a region, causing temperatures to drop quickly and winds to pick up rapidly, sometimes with gusts of 50 to 60 mph. In the Lower 48, blizzard conditions occur most frequently in the central and northern Plains. The flat landscape, just east of the Rockies, is ideal for powdery, windswept snow north of developing storms and along powerful cold fronts. A handful of blizzards occur in that part of the country each year. The Northeast also typically sees a blizzard or two per year, particularly in portions on the Atlantic Ocean. Here, intense nor’easters often foster heavy snow and powerful winds simultaneously. Many storms that meet blizzard criteria are powerful behemoths with very low pressure that pull in massive quantities of air. In these storms, the same jets of moving air that allow sustained 35-mph wind also transport plentiful moisture from the south and frigid temperatures from the north. Where the two clash, there is often heavy snowfall, coinciding with bitter cold and roaring winds. Jacob Feuerstein contributed to this report. This story has been updated since it was originally published."
+"It was the middle of July and already this summer had become a top contender for the hottest in Texas’s recorded history. In San Antonio, which by July would normally experience about three days of triple-digit heat, there had been three dozen. Houston, Waco and Austin were also seeing temperatures 5 to 8 degrees above normal. The state was roasting and Texans were using a record amount of electricity to stay cool. New calculations suggest that, by the middle of this century, this record-breaking summer in Texas may look normal. Across much of the United States, millions of people are expected to experience extreme temperatures more frequently and for longer periods of time — a threat that will grow as climate change worsens. The new data, released Monday by the nonprofit First Street Foundation, calculates the heat risk facing each property in the contiguous United States over the next 30 years, the length of a typical mortgage, providing some of the most detailed nationwide estimates. It uses heat index, a measure of how hot it feels outside by including temperature and humidity. A Washington Post analysis of the group’s data found that today’s climate conditions have caused an estimated 46 percent of Americans to endure at least three consecutive days of 100-plus degree heat, on average, each year. Over the next 30 years, that will increase to 63 percent of the population. Nowhere is the danger more widespread than in the South, where global warming is expected to deliver an average of 20 extra days of triple-digit heat per year. In some southern states, such as Texas and Florida, residents could see over 70 consecutive days with the heat index topping 100 degrees Fahrenheit. “We’re talking about taking summer, which is already hot, and expanding it for months,” said Jaime González, director of the Houston Healthy Cities program for the Nature Conservancy in Texas. “That’s going to cause all sorts of disruptions to everyday life.” This data comes as more Americans are moving to some of the hottest parts of the United States. For more than a decade, census data has shown Sun Belt states like Arizona, Texas and Florida drawing in new residents, while Northeastern and Midwestern states are not. The larger pattern identified by First Street’s model suggests that people living in the South are likely to face some of the most dramatic changes over the next several decades. A previous analysis found that the southern half of the country also faces the greatest risk of wildfire. First Street’s analysis of property level heat exposure is based on a combination of high-resolution measurements of surface temperature data, tree cover, impervious surfaces — like pavement and asphalt — and proximity to water. It incorporates global climate models from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and it relies on a moderate scenario in which global greenhouse gas emissions peak around 2040 and then slowly decline. If countries act more quickly, or fail to enact climate-friendly policies, the outcome could change. Areas with at least three consecutive days of dangerous heat 2023 2053 (new areas) Midwest Northeast West South Percent of population living in areas exposed to dangerous heat 0% 20 40 60 80 100 2023 2053 West Mountain Ariz., Colo., Idaho, Mont., Nev., N.M., Utah, Wyo. Pacific Calif., Ore., Wash. 0% 20 40 60 80 100 South West South Cent. Ark., La., Okla., Tex. South Atlantic Del., Fla., Ga., Md., N.C., S.C., Va., W.Va. East South Cent. Ala., Ky., Miss., Tenn. 0% 20 40 60 80 100 Midwest West North Cent. Iowa, Kan., Minn., Mo., N.D., Neb., S.D. East North Cent. Ill., Ind., Mich., Ohio, Wis. 0% 20 40 60 80 100 Northeast Middle Atlantic N.J., N.Y., Pa. New England Conn., Mass., Maine, N.H., R.I., Vt. Areas with at least three consecutive days of dangerous heat 2023 2053 (new areas) Midwest Northeast West South Percent of population living in areas exposed to dangerous heat 0% 20 40 60 80 100 2023 2053 West Mountain Ariz., Colo., Idaho, Nev., Mont., N.M., Utah, Wyo. Pacific Calif., Ore., Wash. 0% 20 40 60 80 100 South West South Central Ark., La., Okla., Tex. South Atlantic Del., Fla., Ga., Md., N.C., S.C., Va., W.Va. East South Central Ala., Ky., Miss., Tenn. 0% 20 40 60 80 100 Midwest West North Central Iowa, Kan., Minn., Mo., N.D., Neb., S.D. East North Central Ill., Ind., Mich., Ohio, Wis. 0% 20 40 60 80 100 Northeast Middle Atlantic N.J., N.Y., Pa. New England Conn., Mass., Maine, N.H., R.I., Vt. Midwest Northeast West South Areas with at least three consecutive days of dangerous heat 2023 2053 (new areas) Percent of population living in areas exposed to dangerous heat 0% 20 40 60 80 100 2023 2053 West Mountain Ariz., Colo., Idaho, Mont., Nev., N.M., Utah, Wyo. Pacific Calif., Ore., Wash. 0% 20 40 60 80 100 South West South Central Ark., La., Okla., Tex. South Atlantic Del., Fla., Ga., Md., N.C., S.C., Va., W.Va. East South Central Ala., Ky., Miss., Tenn. 0% 20 40 60 80 100 Midwest West North Central Iowa, Kan., Minn., Mo., N.D., Neb., S.D. East North Central Ill., Ind., Mich., Ohio, Wis. 0% 20 40 60 80 100 Northeast Middle Atlantic N.J., N.Y., Pa. New England Conn., Mass., Maine, N.H., R.I., Vt. The analysis found that Miami-Dade County in Florida will likely suffer the most extreme change. Whereas the county sees about 50 days of a heat index above 100 degrees, it is likely to have 91 broiling days by 2053. “We know we have a heat problem here. This is right in line with what we expect,” said Jane Gilbert, Miami-Dade’s chief heat officer. Unlike the West and the Midwest, which have been scorched this year by extreme heat waves, South Florida has chronic exposure to high heat for months, Gilbert said. This drives up energy costs and endangers outdoor workers, homeless people and those who can’t afford to air-condition their homes all day. The county has designated May 1 through Oct. 31 as an official heat season and launched an awareness campaign targeting neighborhoods with the highest rates of heat-related hospitalization. [Why summer in America is becoming longer, hotter and more dangerous] Gilbert said having property-level heat projections could help county officials make the case for more tree-planting and painted rooftops that reduce the need for air conditioning. “If it’s truly good modeling, it’s extremely valuable to help us develop policies to require cooling,” she said. Florida tops the states that will see the largest increase in days with a heat index over 100 degrees. But residents all along the Gulf Coast and Southeastern Atlantic are also expected to live through more weeks of dangerous heat because of muggy summertime conditions, low elevation and the Gulf of Mexico’s warm waters. Even more severe temperatures are expected to hit a swath of the country stretching from northern Texas and Louisiana to Illinois and Indiana. Though the central United States is not typically thought of as bearing the brunt of summertime heat, First Street’s analysis found that tens of millions more people living in this region are likely to see a heat index above 125 degrees by mid-century. The group calls this area an “extreme heat belt.” Situated between the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains, this part of the country “almost forms a bowl that funnels humidity into the area, which drives up those ‘feels like’ temperatures,” said Jeremy Porter, chief research officer for First Street. Extreme heat belt By mid-century, the number of counties experiencing at least one day with a heat index of 125° will increase from 50 to more than 1,000. Iowa Ind. Ill. Mo. Tenn. Okla. S.C. Ark. Miss. Ga. La. Tex. Days with extremly dangerous heat in 2053 Heat index ≥125°F 1 2 ≥3 day 0 Extreme heat belt By mid-century, the number of counties experiencing at least one day with a heat index of 125° will increase from 50 to more than 1,000. Iowa Ind. Ill. Mo. Tenn. S.C. Okla. Ark. Ga. Miss. Tex. La. Days with extremly dangerous heat in 2053 Heat index ≥125°F 1 2 ≥3 days 0 Extreme heat belt By mid-century, the number of counties experiencing at least one day with a heat index of 125° will increase from 50 to more than 1,000. Days with extremly dangerous heat in 2053 Heat index ≥125°F 1 2 ≥3 days 0 Extreme heat belt By mid-century, the number of counties experiencing at least one day with a heat index of 125° will increase from 50 to more than 1,000. Wis. Chicago Iowa Nebr. Ohio Ind. Ill. Kansas City Calif. Va. Kans. Mo. Ky. N.C. Ariz. Fayetteville Tenn. Memphis Okla. Ark. S.C. Phoenix N.M. Ga. Dallas Miss. La. Tex. Houston Fla. Days with extremely dangerous heat in 2053 Heat index ≥125°F 1 2 ≥3 days 0 According to the National Weather Service, at a heat index of 125 degrees — which the agency classifies as an “extreme danger” day — heat stroke becomes “highly likely.” And although there is no set temperature threshold at which roads, bridges and trains start to fail, or water pipes break, recent examples show that it doesn’t take a 125-degree day to overtax essential infrastructure. [What extreme heat does to the human body] Heat is the top weather-related killer in the United States. But like other effects of climate change, it is felt unevenly. The poor, the elderly, very young children and people with certain chronic medical conditions are most at risk. Treeless city neighborhoods, packed with buildings, parking lots and asphalt roads, absorb and retain more heat than areas with tree-lined streets and parks. Scientists call this the urban heat island effect. Nationwide, this pattern reveals itself in city after city, concentrating heat in majority low-income Black and Latino neighborhoods that were designated as risky investments decades ago. Today, about 64 percent of all Black people in the U.S. experience a dangerous heat wave, defined as more than three consecutive days of a heat index above 100 degrees. But that will increase to 79 percent in 30 years, making a population that is already more vulnerable to heat significantly more exposed. Percent of population affected by dangerous heat, by race 0% 20 40 60 80 100 2023 2053 Black Hispanic White Asian Native American Percent of population affected by dangerous heat, by race 0% 20 40 60 80 100 2023 2053 Black Hispanic White Asian Native American Percent of population affected by dangerous heat, by race 0% 20 40 60 80 100 2023 2053 Black Hispanic White Asian Native American The Post also found that by the middle of this century, 71 percent of the poorest neighborhoods in the country will likely endure severe heat. Extreme heat will also make work more dangerous. Today, there are roughly 3.8 million people who work outdoors and experience at least one severe heat wave. In 30 years, that number will increase nearly 30 percent to 4.9 million. In the Houston neighborhood of Gulfton, the shift to more days of dangerous temperatures and humidity would expose the area’s 45,000 residents — many of them recent immigrants from Afghanistan, Syria, and Central America — to unbearable levels of heat. The neighborhood has one park and few trees. Two years ago, when Houston officials worked with scientists and volunteers to map its heat island effect, they discovered parts of Gulfton were 17 degrees hotter in the afternoon than the coolest neighborhood they measured. González said that until recently, conversations about climate change in Houston were dominated by talk of flooding and sea level rise. The destruction unleashed by Hurricane Harvey in 2017 forced the city to confront the likelihood of intensifying storms. Now, this summer’s record-setting heat is forcing another shift in focus, he said. “We’re getting a little bit of a preview of what it might look like if we don’t take more action,” González said. The 2023 numbers in the analysis reflect the current climate. They are estimates based on 2014-2020 averages, and adjusted to include temperature and humidity projections from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s global climate model ensemble. Population estimates are based on the 2020 5-year American Community Survey census tract data. Regions and divisions were identified by the Census Bureau. Outdoor worker estimates are based on County Business Patterns from 2020 and include the sectors of agriculture, construction, and landscaping services. Editing by Monica Ulmanu."
+"At The Washington Post, we’re dedicated to covering the impacts of climate change and a warming world — both  in the United States and around the world. We’re dedicated to covering solutions, too. But we don’t believe in shying away from the extent of the problem and the impact warming temperatures are already having on our planet. Climate change is and will continue to touch almost everything around us, from our septic tanks to your seasonal allergies and the turbulence you experience on your next flight. The most drastic impacts are disproportionately affecting poorer countries. And scientists are clear — without swift and drastic action, Earth will become uninhabitable. There is still time to stop some further impacts of a warming planet. (We’re tracking President Biden’s environmental actions here). But a warming and changing planet is already here. Here is a look at some of The Post’s climate coverage on how rising temperatures are impacting the people, animals and agriculture around the world. By Terrence McCoy In Brazil, climate change has caused intense droughts, followed by punishing rains and catastrophic flooding. The country now has a problem that many here fear is impossible to solve. In a country of profound inequality and widespread poverty, the poor have long been locked out of the formal housing market, clustering together in often unsafe locations. The nation does not have the resources, the logistical capacity or the political will to relocate the estimated 4 million Brazilians in areas of risk, housing analysts say, let alone address the underlying social issues that first gave rise to the favelas. by Louisa Loveluck and Mustafa Salim Carved from an ancient land once known as Mesopotamia, Iraq is home to the cradle of civilization — the expanse between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers where the first complex human communities emerged. But years of below-average rainfall have left Iraqi farmers more dependent than ever on the dwindling waters of the Tigris and Euphrates. In the historic marshes, men are clinging to what remains of life as they knew it, as their buffaloes die and their wives and children scatter across nearby cities, no longer able to stand the summer heat. Temperatures in Iraq topped a record 125 degrees in 2021, with aid groups warning that drought was limiting access to food, water and electricity for 12 million people here and in neighboring Syria. With Iraq warming faster than much of the rest of the globe, this is a glimpse of the world’s future. By Rachel Chason and Adrienne Surprenant Every year, South Sudan has a rainy season. But the water levels since 2019 have set records. Flooding in 2021  displaced more than 700,000 — about 1 in every 15 people in South Sudan. In some cases, mothers had so little to eat that they could not breastfeed. Cases of malaria and other waterborne illnesses surged. The rising waters are driving what the World Food Program says is the biggest hunger crisis to hit South Sudan since it became independent from Sudan in 2011. More than 60 percent of the population is considered at a crisis level or worse. By William Booth Hurst Castle has stood on its sandy spit since 1544, through the Napoleonic Wars and World War II. Its garrison protected the Allied forces on D-Day. But last year, a large section of the castle — a wing constructed in the mid-19th century by the best military engineers in the world — tumbled into the fast currents of the Solent strait. “Hurst Castle is one of the canaries in the coal mine, but it is just one of many,” said Keith Jones, climate change adviser for the National Trust, which cares for 28,000 historic buildings, including castles, mansions, barns, lighthouses, mills, pubs and villages, as well as holiday cottages. The National Trust warned that while 5 percent of its 67,426 sites — natural and constructed — already face the “highest level” of threat from climate change, that portion could rise to 17 percent over the next 40 years, depending on what actions the world takes to limit future warming. By Rachel Chason and Rael Ombuor Africa has just one-eighth the minimum density of weather stations recommended by the World Meteorological Organization, which means there is a problematic lack of data about dozens of countries that are among the most vulnerable to climate change. On the ground, the dearth of data has meant inaccurate forecasts and poor or nonexistent early-warning systems for people increasingly experiencing deadly cyclones, prolonged droughts and intense floods. In the academic world, researchers say the lack of data has led to challenges in measuring the extent of climate change. By Diego Laje, Anthony Faiola and Ana Vanessa Herrero From the frigid peaks of Patagonia to the tropical wetlands of Brazil, worsening droughts  are slamming farmers, shutting down ski slopes, upending transit and spiking prices for everything from coffee to electricity. So low are levels of the Paraná River running through Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina that some ranchers are herding cattle across dried-up riverbeds typically lined with cargo-toting barges. Raging wildfires in Paraguay have brought acrid smoke to the limits of the capital. Last year, the rushing cascades of Iguazu Falls on the Brazilian-Argentine frontier reduced to a relative drip. Analysts fear the droughts are a harbinger of a new normal, portending consistently lower crop yields in the future. By Darryl Fears Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is experiencing its sixth massive bleaching event as climate change has warmed the ocean. Reef managers have confirmed that aerial surveys detected catastrophic bleaching on 60 percent of the reef’s corals. The discovery is particularly disturbing, researchers said, because a cooling La Niña weather pattern in the ocean usually offsets warming that stresses coral and causes them to lose color."
+"With its sweltering deserts and frigid northern plains, the United States features some of the world’s most extreme weather. Every day, the National Weather Service publishes the highest and lowest temperatures recorded at reliable weather stations in the Lower 48 states. An analysis of more than a decade of this data reveals the nation’s most exceptional temperatures range from a scorching 130 degrees in Death Valley, Calif., to a numbing minus-56 degrees in Cotton, Minn. Highest highs and lowest lows The highest highs and lowest lows across the United States generally occur where they do because of a combination of weather patterns, the sun angle and local topography. The highest maximum temperature measured between December 2011 and July 2022 was a sweltering 130 degrees, recorded on Aug. 16, 2020, and again on July 9, 2021. Both were recorded in Death Valley National Park, a barren and low-lying strip of desert surrounded on all sides by tall mountains. The unusual topography of the park, which is the lowest point in the United States, promotes extreme heat. The weather station there holds the official but controversial record for the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth’s surface, of 134 degrees. The lowest temperature in the past 10 years, meanwhile, was a frigid minus-56 degrees in Cotton, Minn., on Jan. 31, 2019. The town, about 31 miles northwest of Duluth, was at the epicenter of the severe cold air outbreak that struck much of the central United States that week, during one of the most extreme periods of cold to impact the Midwest in decades. The most extreme days Taking the average of these daily extremes and comparing them with the average over this 10-year period uncovered the most unusually warm and cold days. The most unusual extremely warm day occurred on Dec. 31, 2011, when the average of the extreme high and low was nearly 20 degrees above the decade average of 25.8 degrees. Oct. 30, 2019, featured the decade’s coldest extremes. The average of warmest highest and coldest low on the day before Halloween is 49.5 degrees but, that day, the average was just 24.5 degrees, which was 25 degrees below normal. The chill of that late October day was the fault of a slug of frigid air that slid along the Rockies, bringing a minimum temperature of minus-46 degrees to the notoriously cold valley in Utah known as Peter Sinks. It was the coldest October low nationwide in the past decade by 11 degrees. Records by state The daily coldest and warmest temperatures recorded in the United States are almost always west of the Mississippi, according to National Weather Service data. Colorado was the state most likely to see the coldest minimum daily temperatures in the summer, registering the coldest low temperatures more than 600 times. The other states that most frequently posted the nation’s coldest summer temperatures were Montana, Wyoming, Minnesota and Idaho, in that order. The highest maximum temperatures were concentrated in just a few states. The clear winner in this regard is California, with Death Valley responsible for a majority of the state’s hot weather extremes. Texas, Florida and Arizona also each recorded significant numbers of the highest daily recorded temperatures in the United States. One unexpected facet of the data was a nationwide high in Massachusetts, on April 16, 2012, when the town of Westfield reached 93 degrees ahead of a powerful cold front. The exceptional New England heat coincided with the Boston Marathon, making for one of the hottest races in the city’s history. Another interesting feature in this data is that California had the Lower 48’s highest and lowest temperature 195 times. Most recently, on June 29, Death Valley soared to 119 degrees, while Bodie, a former gold-mining town near the Nevada border, saw its temperature plummet to a nationwide low of 26 degrees."
+"Every day, deforestation brings the Amazon closer to what scientists warn will be its death, when the loss of tree cover finally pushes it past the point of no return and the world loses its greatest shield against rising temperatures. The Washington Post is focusing on the rainforest in its new series “The Amazon, Undone.” We’re traveling throughout Brazil, home to roughly 60 percent of the Amazon. To examine the effects of deforestation, we took a 500-mile trip down a highway that slices through the rainforest, wreaking havoc on the ecology of the forest itself and fueling criminal behavior such as land-grabbing and even murder. To follow beef tied to illegal deforestation from Brazil to the United States, we examined thousands of shipment and purchase logs and obtained satellite imagery that exposed illegal cattle grazing. Here’s what we know about the dire state of the Amazon rainforest and why it’s increasingly important to pay attention to its destruction."
+"Human-driven climate change has set in motion massive ice losses in Greenland that couldn’t be halted even if the world stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, according to a study published Monday. The findings in the journal Nature Climate Change project that it is now inevitable that 3.3 percent of the Greenland ice sheet will melt — equal to 110 trillion tons of ice, the researchers said. That will trigger nearly a foot of global sea-level rise. The predictions are more dire than other forecasts, though they use different assumptions. While the study did not specify a time frame for the melting and sea-level rise, the authors suggested much of it can play out between now and the year 2100. “The point is, we need to plan for that ice as if it weren’t on the ice sheet in the near future, within a century or so,” William Colgan, a study co-author who studies the ice sheet from its surface with his colleagues at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, said in a video interview. “Every study has bigger numbers than the last. It’s always faster than forecast,” Colgan said. One reason that new research appears worse than other findings may just be that it is simpler. It tries to calculate how much ice Greenland must lose as it recalibrates to a warmer climate. In contrast, sophisticated computer simulations of how the ice sheet will behave under future scenarios for global emissions have produced less alarming predictions. A one-foot rise in global sea levels would have severe consequences. If the sea level along the U.S. coasts rose by an average of 10 to 12 inches by 2050, a recent report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found, the most destructive floods would take place five times as often, and moderate floods would become 10 times as frequent. Other countries — low-lying island nations and developing ones, like Bangladesh — are even more vulnerable. These nations, which have done little to fuel the higher temperatures that are now thawing the Greenland ice sheet, lack the billions of dollars it will take to adapt to rising seas. The paper’s lead author, Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland scientist Jason Box, collaborated with scientists based at institutions in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Norway, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United States to assess the extent of ice loss already locked in by human activity. Just last year, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — which generally forecasts lower figures for total ice loss from Greenland by the end of the century — projected around half a foot of sea-level rise from Greenland by the year 2100 at the high end. That scenario assumed humans would emit a large amount of greenhouse gases for another 80 years. The current study, in contrast, does not factor in any additional greenhouse gas emissions or specify when the melting would take place, making the comparison with the U.N. report imperfect. The finding that 3.3 percent of Greenland is, in effect, already lost represents “a minimum, a lower bound,” Box said. It could be much worse than that, the study suggests, especially if the world continues to burn fossil fuels and if 2012, which set a record for Greenland ice loss, becomes more like the norm. But that aspect of the study offers hope: Even if more sea-level rise is locked in than previously believed, cutting emissions fast to limit warming close to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) would prevent things from getting much worse. Greenland is the world’s largest island and is covered with a sheet of ice that, if it melted entirely, could raise sea levels by more than 20 feet. That is not in doubt — nor is the fact that in past warm periods in Earth’s history, the ice sheet has been much smaller than it is today. The question has always been how much ice will thaw as temperatures rise — and how fast. Melt rates have been increasing in the past two decades, and Greenland is the largest single ice-based contributor to the rate of global sea-level rise, surpassing contributions from both the larger Antarctic ice sheet and from mountain glaciers around the world. Greenland lies in the Arctic, which is warming much faster than the rest of the world. Higher Arctic temperatures cause large amounts of ice on Greenland’s surface to thaw. While the island’s oceanfront glaciers are also shedding enormous icebergs at an accelerating pace, it is this surface melt — which translates into gushing ice rivers, disappearing lakes and giant waterfalls vanishing into crevasses — that causes the biggest ice losses. In the past, scientists have tried to determine what Greenland’s ongoing melting means for the global sea level through complex computer simulations. They model the ice itself, the ocean around it, and the future climate based on different trajectories of emissions. In general, the models have produced modest figures. For instance, according to the latest IPCC assessment, the most “likely” loss from Greenland by 2100 under a very high emissions scenario equates to about 5 inches of sea-level rise. This represents the disappearance of about 1.8 percent of Greenland’s total mass. Most models and scenarios produce something much lower. In a low-emissions scenario, which the world is trying to achieve right now, the IPCC report suggests Greenland would contribute only a few inches to sea-level rise by the century’s end. The new research “obtains numbers that are high compared to other studies,” said Sophie Nowicki, an expert on Greenland at the University at Buffalo who contributed to the IPCC report. Nowicki observed, however, that one reason the number is so high is that the study considers only the last 20 years — which have seen strong warming — as the current climate to which the ice sheet is now adjusting. Taking a 40-year period would yield a lower result, Nowicki said. “This committed number is not well-known and actually quite hard to estimate, because of the long response time scale of the ice sheet,” Nowicki said. Box, for his part, argues that the models upon which the IPCC report is based are “like a facsimile of reality,�� without enough detail to reflect how Greenland is really changing. Those computer models have sparked considerable controversy recently, with one research group charging they do not adequately track Greenland’s current, high levels of ice loss. In Greenland, the processes triggering ice loss from large glaciers often occur hundreds of meters below the sea surface in narrow fjords, where warm water can flick at the submerged ice in complex motions. In some cases, these processes may simply be playing out at too small a scale for the models to capture. Meanwhile, while it is clear that hotter air melts the ice sheet from the surface, the consequences of all that water running off the ice sheet — and sometimes, through and under it — raises additional questions. Much of the water vanishes into crevasses, called moulins, and travels through unseen pathways through the ice to the sea. How much this causes the ice itself to slick and lurch forward remains under debate and might be happening at a finer scale than what the models capture. “Individual moulins, they are not in the models,” Colgan said. The new research assesses Greenland’s future through a simpler method. It tries to calculate how much ice loss from Greenland is already dictated by physics, given the current Arctic climate. An ice sheet — like an ice cube, but at a vastly larger scale — is always in the process of melting, or growing, in response to the temperature surrounding it. But with an ice body as large as Greenland — picture the entire state of Alaska covered with ice that is one to two miles thick — adjustment takes a long time. This means that a loss can be almost inevitable, even if it has not actually happened yet. Still, the ice sheet will leave clues as it shrinks. As it thaws, scientists think the change will manifest itself at a location called the snow line. This is the dividing line between the high altitude, bright white parts of the ice sheet that accumulate snow and mass even during the summer, and the darker, lower elevation parts that melt and contribute water to the sea. This line moves every year, depending on how warm or cool the summer is, tracking how much of Greenland melts in a given period. The new research contends that in the current climate, the average location of the snow line must move inward and upward, leaving a smaller area in which ice would be able to accumulate. That would yield a smaller ice sheet. “What they’re saying is that the climate we already have is in the process of burning away the edges of the ice,” said Ted Scambos, an ice sheet expert at the University of Colorado at Boulder who did not work on the paper. Scambos, however, said it could take much longer than 80 years for 3.3 percent of the ice sheet to melt: the study says “most” of the change can happen by 2100. “A lot of the change they forecast would happen in this century, but to get [that level of retreat] would require several centuries, more perhaps,” he said. Future ice losses will be greater than that amount if global warming continues to advance — which it will. If the massive melt year of 2012 became the norm, for instance, that would be likely to yield about 2½ feet of committed sea-level rise, the study says. Pennsylvania State University professor Richard Alley, an ice sheet expert, said the fact that researchers remain uncertain about how the planet’s ice sheets will change and raise global sea levels shows the need for more research. “The problems are deeply challenging, will not be solved by wishful thinking, and have not yet been solved by business-as-usual,” he said. But Alley added that it is clear that the more we let the planet warm, the more the seas will rise. “[The] rise can be a little less than usual projections, or a little more, or a lot more, but not a lot less,” Alley said."
+"2021 ended as it began: with disaster. Twelve months after an atmospheric river deluged California, triggering mudslides in burned landscapes and leaving a half-million people without power, a late-season wildfire destroyed hundreds of homes in the suburbs of Denver. In between, Americans suffered blistering heat waves, merciless droughts and monstrous hurricanes. People collapsed in farm fields and drowned in basement apartments; entire communities were obliterated by surging seas and encroaching flames. More than 4 in 10 Americans live in a county that was struck by climate-related extreme weather last year, according to a new Washington Post analysis of federal disaster declarations, and more than 80 percent experienced a heat wave. In the country that has generated more greenhouse gases than any other nation in history, global warming is expanding its reach and exacting an escalating toll. At least 656 people died amid the onslaught of disasters, media reports and government records show. The cost of the destruction tops $104 billion, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, even before officials calculate the final toll of wildfires, drought and heat waves in the West. While the Federal Emergency Management Agency identified fewer climate-related disasters in individual counties last year, it declared eight of these emergencies statewide — the most since 1998 — encompassing 135 million people overall. There is little doubt that the future will be worse. Steadily rising temperatures heighten the risk of wildfires, turbocharge rain storms, exacerbate flooding and intensify drought. Yet planet-warming pollution, primarily from burning fossil fuels, surged to near-record highs last year. The Build Back Better bill, which contains the biggest clean energy investment in U.S. history, stalled in Congress. The United Nations climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, produced pledges that put global average temperatures on track to rise about 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century — a degree of warming that would transform once unthinkable disasters into near-annual occurrences. 2022 begins with two crucial questions still unanswered: Will the United States invest in ways to make extreme weather less destructive? And will the country lead the world in curbing warming before it becomes impossible for humanity to adapt? These questions loom over Louisville, Colo., Mayor Ashley Stolzmann, who lost much of her town to wildfire on Thursday. “When I lay awake the first night, not able to sleep from the fire, when I was evacuated from my house,” she said, “the first thing I thought of is: I need everyone to reduce their carbon emissions.” Over the course of just a few hours on Dec. 30, raging winds had propelled the flames through vegetation parched by the area’s warmest and driest summer and fall on record. The Marshall Fire burned so hot and so fast that it was able to jump a six-lane highway to engulf more than 1,000 homes in Louisville and neighboring Superior, quickly becoming the most destructive blaze in state history. “To lose whole neighborhoods is just so very sad and devastating and unexpected,” Stolzmann said in an interview. Fires like that are not supposed to happen in densely populated suburbs. They’re not supposed to ignite in December, long after the first snows of the winter have usually fallen. Yet rising temperatures have intensified wildfire behavior and lengthened the season for when they can burn, scientists say. In most forest types, the proportion of fires that are “high severity” (killing the majority of vegetation) has at least doubled in recent decades. The weather necessary for fire — high temperatures, low humidity, rainless days and high winds — lasts more than a month longer than it did four decades ago. “More people are living in more flammable landscapes,” said Chelsea Nagy, a research scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Earth Lab. “More people are going to be interfacing with disaster.” The Post’s analysis of federal data shows that about 15 percent of Americans live in a county that experienced a declared fire disaster this year, a number that has been steadily increasing since 2018. It is a testament to the way climate change “has loaded the weather dice against us,” climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe said. Think of the climate as a bell curve, with temperatures distributed according to how common they ought to be. The center of the bell curve has shifted slightly, with the world just over a degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than in the preindustrial era. But the area of the curve now in the “extreme” zone has increased significantly. To assess Americans’ exposure to climate disasters, The Post considered FEMA declarations around severe storms, hurricanes, floods, wildfires and droughts — events that research shows are made more likely and more severe by rising temperatures. For every 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming, the atmosphere can hold 7 percent more moisture, resulting in exponentially wetter storms. When the remnants of Hurricane Ida hit the New York metro area in September, rainfall rates of three to four inches per hour overwhelmed a sewage system that was designed to handle less than half that amount. From the mountains of North Carolina to the narrows of the Grand Canyon to the streets of Bloomington, Ind., and rural parts of Tennessee, flash floods killed more than 100 Americans. Conversely, the relationship between air temperature and humidity means that warmer conditions make the atmosphere “thirstier.” Water quickly evaporates from vegetation and soil, intensifying drought and making forests more likely to burn. On the Klamath River, water shortages sickened fish and emptied wells. In California, the Dixie Fire burned an area larger than New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Dallas combined. More than 90 percent of the United States west of the Rockies was in drought last year. Meanwhile, melting polar ice caps have raised global sea levels an average of eight or nine inches since 1880, heightening the risk of coastal floods. The heat absorbed by the oceans lends fuel to hurricanes, enabling mere tropical depressions to rapidly intensify into devastating Category 4 and 5 storms. Not a single structure was left undamaged after Hurricane Ida made landfall near Grand Isle, La., in September. Surging waves ripped apart houses and obliterated levees; howling winds left the barrier island community buried under three feet of sand. The Post also analyzed heat wave data from roughly 7,500 NOAA temperature monitors across the nation, finding that 80 percent of Americans live in a county that experienced at least one day of abnormally high temperatures last year. Although extreme heat is not officially considered a disaster, it is one of the most fatal forms of severe weather. Officials say that at least 227 people were killed by the record-shattering heat dome that struck the Pacific Northwest in late June — a figure that is almost certainly an undercount. The science of attribution allows researchers to link these crises to human-caused warming. Using sophisticated computer models, they compare real-world disasters to historical phenomena and simulations of how those events might have unfolded in a preindustrial world. Two of last year’s biggest weather crises cannot be definitively tied to climate change: the February “deep freeze” that left millions without power from Texas to Ohio, and the December tornado outbreak that killed dozens of people across Kentucky. Combined, these disasters affected counties that are home to roughly 15 percent of the U.S. population. Even though climate change will make frigid weather less likely, some scientists have suggested that warming in the Arctic can lead to fluctuations in the polar vortex, allowing tongues of cold air to lash out into lower latitudes. Other studies indicate that warmer winter temperatures provided fuel for the late-season thunderstorms that gave rise to December’s twisters. But Michael Wehner, a climate scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said more attribution research on both types of these disasters is needed to determine whether climate change increased the likelihood of these events. For that reason, The Post did not include the deep freeze and tornadoes in its climate disaster analysis. On the other hand, some recent events were made so extreme by rising temperatures that “they break statistical models,” Wehner said. The Pacific Northwest heat dome, which scientists say was “virtually impossible” without climate change, was one such event. Last week’s Marshall Fire is likely to be another. “It’s such an outlier, we don’t have anything to compare it to. How do you put statistics on that?” Wehner said. This is what makes climate change so dangerous. In a steadily warming world, disasters can happen in places, at times and with intensities never seen before. They overwhelm infrastructure that wasn’t built to deal with them. They catch communities unprepared. Yet people can change even faster than the climate, Wehner said, giving the United States a chance to adapt. Climate was not the only factor contributing to last week’s conflagration in the Denver suburbs. The initial spark almost certainly came from a human source. The 100 mph winds made the blaze far more difficult to fight. Ongoing development in fire-prone areas adds to the devastation when the inevitable occurs. Many of these factors are within people’s control, Nagy said. Public awareness campaigns around issues such as extinguishing campfires and cigarette butts, as well as industrial safety measures like burying power lines, can cut the number of “human ignitions,” which are behind the vast majority of fires that burn in the United States. Building codes and zoning regulations can be updated to make structures less flammable and prevent people from moving into areas that are impossible to defend. Saving lives also requires investing in social infrastructure, said Patricia Romero-Lankao, a sociologist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. It means strengthening health-care access, so people are less vulnerable to the effects of smoke from fires and mold from floods. It means improving government outreach to non-English speakers and other marginalized groups. Cultivating connections between neighbors, so that people know who needs help during an evacuation and whom to check on when the mercury spikes to dangerous highs, can protect the most vulnerable. “We need to build safety nets, a sense of belonging, a sense of shared space to deal with this,” she said. “It’s not only technical solutions.” Louisville, where hundreds of homes were lost last week, has already adopted some of these measures, Stolzmann said. Flameproof building materials and carbon-free appliances are required in new construction. The community’s scattered residents are connected by text chains, which they use to check on one another’s houses, recommend contractors, offer reassurance. Still, there are limits on people’s capacity to adapt, Wehner said, since disasters will become exponentially worse for every incremental increase in temperature. “When we look back at the world that was and compare it to our 1 degree Celsius warmer world, the change is a lot,” Wehner said. “But when you compare that to 1.5 degrees, it’s a larger change. And then compare it to 2 to 3 degrees” — where scientists say the world is headed — “it’s kind of off the charts.”"
+"Wildfires had been burning for weeks, shrouding Reno, Nev., in harmful smoke, when Jillian Abney and her eight-year-old daughter Izi drove into the Sierras last year in search of cleaner air. The eerie yellow haze that filled the sky had brought summer to an abrupt halt, canceling all of the season’s usual delights. Abney headed for Donner Lake, hoping the higher elevation would put them above the smoke. But instead of the blue skies that had greeted her on countless trips throughout her life, she arrived to find smoke hanging in the sky and creeping through the valleys below. It smelled like a campfire, but those had been banned for the season. “If it’s like that again this August, we are escaping,” she said. Summer temperatures in Reno have risen 10.9 degrees Fahrenheit, on average, since 1970, making it the fastest warming city in the nation during the hottest months, according to an analysis by the nonprofit research group Climate Central. For two consecutive summers, smoke from blazes burning in California has choked the region, sending residents to the emergency room, closing schools and threatening the tourism industry. It is among the sharpest examples of how climate change is fundamentally altering the summer months — turning what for many Americans is a time of joy into stretches of extreme heat, dangerously polluted air, anxiety, and lost traditions. Though the summer season of 2022 is young, parts of the nation already have experienced punishingly high temperatures, extreme drought, wildfires, severe storms, flooding or some combination. Projections from federal agencies suggest more abnormally hot weather, an expansion of drought and well above average wildfire and hurricane activity in the months ahead. Scientists say the recent spate of severe summers is a clear change from previous generations. The average summer temperature in the past five years has been 1.7 degrees (0.94 Celsius) warmer than it was from 1971 through 2000, according to a Washington Post analysis of data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But some parts of the country have been much harder hit, with the West showing a 2.7 degrees (1.5 Celsius) increase. “The past few summers, we’ve just seen such a constant parade of one climate-related event after another,” said Kristina Dahl, principal climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental advocacy group. “This really does strike us as a point where we need to be shifting our thinking about summer and how we are approaching it.” Summer has always been a turbulent season, a time of checking weather forecasts and watching the skies. And despite the major shifts that have taken place, many people still relish the season. Vacationers still flock to places that now face some degree of wildfire or flood risk. But climate change is increasingly pushing summer to extremes, creating inhospitable conditions and endangering lives. While these climatic shifts are occurring year-round nationwide — in fact, in many areas, it’s getting warmer faster during other seasons — the summer is often when the effects cascade. The temperatures are higher, so any increase may be felt even more strongly. And people are more likely to spend extended time outside, exposed to the elements. Across the country, heat waves are arriving more frequently, more intensely and earlier in the year. Nights are warming at a slightly higher rate than days in most parts of the United States, according to the most recent National Climate Assessment, harming people’s ability to cool down after hot days. A Climate Central study found that in just more than half of cities analyzed, high-heat days arrived at least a week earlier, on average, than 50 years ago. Three-fourths of places had more “extremely hot” days. In the West and Southwest, the wildfire season is lengthening, and a historic drought is emptying reservoirs. On the East Coast, hotter-than-usual temperatures are contributing to more severe flooding and heavy downpours. As hot weather arrives, the nation’s electric grid is under growing strain, with regulators from the Midwest to the Southwest warning of rolling power outages this summer. This year, the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center’s three-month outlook through September suggests there will be hotter-than-normal temperatures throughout much of the country, with a punishing heat dome building over the western and central U.S. in coming days. As heat bakes the country, drought is expected to grip parts of the nation’s Corn Belt and the Middle Mississippi Valley. The country is also facing the likelihood of another active wildfire season and the seventh straight above-average Atlantic hurricane season. Global warming is driving the shift to hotter summers, experts say, but urban growth is also to blame. The three fastest-warming cities — Reno, Las Vegas and Boise — are expanding outward. As new homes are built and more asphalt is poured, these cities are absorbing and retaining more heat than the undeveloped land around them, said Nevada state climatologist Stephanie McAfee. Scientists call this the urban heat island effect. “Increasingly, Las Vegas is seeing nights where it’s only cooling into the upper 80s,” McAfee said. “There are people in Southern Nevada who are doing the calculus of keeping the air conditioning on versus making budget cuts.” The consequences of scorching daytime temperatures and nights without relief were on vivid display last year, when a historic heat wave in the Pacific Northwest sent temperatures climbing more than 30 degrees higher than average. Portland broke records three days in a row, peaking at 116 degrees. According to official estimates, the heat wave killed nearly 200 people in Oregon and Washington. “Our imagination for what the impact could be has been completely changed,” said Steven Mitchell, medical director of the emergency department at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. “So many of us saw a career’s worth of heat stroke and heat illness in a matter of hours,” Mitchell said. “We began to treat it like a multi-casualty event.” Those hit hardest, he said, were the most vulnerable — the very old, the very young and low-income residents who had the least access to cooling. “On the hottest day, we had more calls to our 911 system than at any time in the history of the 911 program,” Mitchell said. “A huge portion of those were for heat-related impacts.” These days, the hospital and others in the area are working to prepare for the next severe heat wave. Mitchell said he attends a weekly check-in call with hospitals in the region to make sure they have a plan to prevent any one facility from getting overwhelmed. And he said hospitals are working more closely with emergency responders to improve monitoring for a rise in heat-related cases. Summertime in the Pacific Northwest has always been referred to as “trauma season” by hospital staffers, Mitchell said, because more people are on vacation, outdoors and more likely to get injured. But the prospect of extreme heat has added another dimension of worry. “It just strains our system more than it already is,” Mitchell said. “There is a certain amount of trepidation as we move into the summer months.” Researchers have found that some heat waves in recent years, including the one that struck the Pacific Northwest last year, would have been virtually impossible without human-caused global warming. “We can start saying people are dying because of climate change,” said Kristie Ebi, a professor of global health at the University of Washington. “This is really shifting the kinds of statements we can make.” In other parts of the Southwest, communities are bracing for the prospect of flash floods. In Flagstaff, Ariz., a gateway to the Grand Canyon and other local attractions, summer signals the arrival of the monsoon season. But the rains, which would typically be welcome in a region suffering from drought, have lately inspired anxiety and fear. Last year, heavy rainfall over recent wildfire burn scars sent torrents of water, mud and debris into the city, damaging homes and forcing residents to evacuate. This year, the Tunnel Fire, a fast moving wildfire, swept through the Coconino National Forest in April, fueled by high winds and a years-long drought. More than 700 homes were evacuated. Another wildfire burned about 26,500 acres just six miles north of the city last month. “It’s a totally different environment out there these days, and it’s not like it’s going to get back to normal anytime soon,” said Flagstaff City Manager Greg Clifton. “This community is remarkably resilient, but you have to wonder how far that resiliency can go.” As he spoke late last month, Clifton was driving through a neighborhood fortified with piles of sandbags. City officials had issued a news release urging people living near the recent wildfires to immediately buy flood insurance. Once again, Flagstaff was preparing for an unpredictable wet season, not knowing if the rains would be gentle or would wash away the roads. For the last several years, some cities in the West have replaced their Fourth of July fireworks displays with shows put on by drones equipped with color-changing lights over concerns about fires. Flagstaff is switching to a laser light show this year. Elsewhere, fire officials are urging people not to set off fireworks at home. Barbeque restrictions have also become commonplace, as have summertime bans on campfires in national forests during dry, breezy weather. The cascading effects of climate change have also left their mark on summer camp, a cherished ritual for millions of Americans. In the Northeast and parts of the Midwest, rising summer-time temperatures and increasing rainfall have caused camp directors and summer youth program organizers to worry about heat stress, higher utility bills and flooding, in addition to the usual scrapes and bruises. Stephanie Koch, CEO of the Boys & Girls Club of Atlantic City, said increasingly volatile weather is stretching her organization’s budget. In the last two years, the club has purchased flood insurance for two of its three buildings for the first time — it couldn’t afford to insure the third. It is seeking donations to cover the cost of water bottles for about 300 campers, as well as soaring electricity bills from energy price spikes and having to run the air conditioning more often. Training for camp staff now includes conversations about flexibility and patience with schedule changes. “I’m third generation to this area and I’ve seen incredible changes,” Koch said. “When you live on a barrier island, you’re focused on weather all of the time. But now it’s a matter of asking: Where are you going to be located? What buildings do you need flood insurance on? My own house was damaged by Hurricane Sandy and is now 12 feet off the ground.” On the shore of Lake Tahoe, the University of Nevada, Reno offers a sleep-away 4-H camp that has embraced a sense of cautiousness. Last year, the Caldor Fire, a huge blaze that became the 15th largest in California’s recorded history, burned more than 200,000 acres near the lake. The group had to cancel one program and reschedule another. Kenny Haack-Damon, the state’s 4-H Camp education program coordinator, said campfires have become a thing of the past. Instead, campers build solar ovens, using cardboard boxes lined with tin foil to cook their s’mores. He said the biggest challenge is to figure out which outdoor activities can still be done safely, and which lessons might best be taught indoors. “The point of camp is to be outside as much as possible,” Haack-Damon said. “It’s hard to think about what that’s going to look like as things get warmer or wildfires become more of a threat.” About this story: County and regional temperature data is from the Monthly U.S. Climate Divisional Database (NClimDiv) maintained by the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI). Reno temperature data is from the Reno-Tahoe International Airport station via The Global Historical Climatology Network daily (GHCNd), also maintained by NCEI."
+"When it comes to heat, the human body is remarkably resilient — it’s the humidity that makes it harder to cool down. And humidity, driven in part by climate change, is increasing. A measurement of the combination of heat and humidity is called a “wet-bulb temperature,” which is determined by wrapping a completely wet wick around the bulb of a thermometer. Scientists are using this metric to figure out which regions of the world may become too dangerous for humans. A term we rarely hear about, the wet-bulb temperature reflects not only heat, but also how much water is in the air. The higher that number is, the harder it is for sweat to evaporate and for bodies to cool down. [Wet-bulb temperature is important, climate experts say. So what is it?] At a certain threshold of heat and humidity, “it’s no longer possible to be able to sweat fast enough to prevent overheating,” said Radley Horton, a professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Scientists have found that Mexico and Central America, the Persian Gulf, India, Pakistan and Southeast Asia are all careening toward this threshold before the end of the century. “Humid heat risks are grossly underestimated today and will increase dramatically in the future,” Horton said. “As locations around the world experience previously rare or unprecedented extremes with increasing frequency, we run the risk that our previous messaging about extreme heat risk — already woefully inadequate — will fall further short of the mark.” You might think that being closer to the beach would be a great way to catch that ocean breeze and cool off. But Horton said proximity to water in extreme conditions could make things worse. As warming temperatures cause the water to evaporate, it adds humidity to the air. “If you’re sitting in a city along the Persian Gulf, the sea breeze could be a deadly breeze,” he said. To better understand why these places are becoming too hot and humid for humans to endure, you have to first understand how the body cools itself. Your browser does not support the video element. As the sun heats up the air, the ground, objects and people, the human body will react in an effort to cool itself. The skin sweats. Evaporation of this water cools the body — as long as the surrounding humidity levels allow the evaporation to take place. If the hot air is too humid, that heat exchange is blocked and the body loses its primary means of cooling itself. The wet-bulb temperature that marks the upper limit of what the human body can handle is 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 Celsius). But any temperatures above 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 Celsius) can be dangerous and deadly. Horton and other scientists noted in a 2020 paper that these temperatures are occurring with increasing frequency in parts of the world. To put things in perspective, the highest wet-bulb temperature ever recorded in the Washington region, known for its muggy, unbearable summers, was 87.2 degrees (30.7 Celsius). “Extreme humid heat overall has more than doubled in frequency since 1979,” the study’s authors wrote. These conditions are reaching that deadly threshold in places like South Asia and the Middle East and could regularly cross it by 2075, scientists say. Horton and his colleagues found that parts of the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan have each passed the 95 degree mark for one or two hours more than three times since 1987. On the coast of the Gulf of California, in the Mexican state of Sonora, scientists are also seeing a “very significant” increase in wet-bulb and air temperatures, said Tereza Cavazos, a senior researcher in the department of physical oceanography at the Ensenada Center for Scientific Research and Higher Education. During the summer, parts of the gulf can reach temperatures of 86 to 87.8 degrees Fahrenheit (30 to 31 degrees Celsius), which causes the water to evaporate more quickly. The combination of warmer waters and increasing heat trends in Sonora are causing the wet-bulb temperatures to reach dangerous levels. “Just increasing 1 or 2 degrees Celsius can be the tipping point for changing the impact,” Cavazos said. The blistering heat is resulting in difficult living conditions, especially for communities that lack resources to provide relief. [What questions do you have about climate change? Ask The Post.] Even below these thresholds, cooling down is hard work on the body. The efforts to fight the effects of heat puts pressure on your heart and kidneys. With extreme heat, people’s organs can start to fail. If you have preexisting conditions, it’s even more likely. Your browser does not support the video element. As your body works to cool down, the heart works harder in an effort to pump blood up just below the surface of the skin, where it can get cooler. The kidneys work harder to conserve your body’s water. When your body temperature gets too high, it will ultimately cause your body’s proteins to break down, its enzymes to stop regulating your organs’ functions and your organs to start shutting down. This is a heat stroke: Your body essentially cooks to the point where you have multi-organ failure. In heat waves, many deaths are due to health problems exacerbated by the extreme conditions. “It’s very clear during a heat wave, more people do die of heat stroke,” said Zachary Schlader, an associate professor at Indiana University Bloomington who focuses on thermal stress and the human body. But even more die of heart-related conditions. “The body responds [to heat] in such a way it could make the organ vulnerable.” [How to cool your home without relying on air conditioning] During heat waves there are some simple ways to take care of your body. Your browser does not support the video element. If you have air conditioning, the solution is simple: Go inside. If you don’t have those resources, hydrate. Drinking water can ease the load on the heart, kidneys and other organs. Take a break: Even moderate physical exertion such as walking greatly increases the heat your body’s muscles will generate. Protecting yourself from such stress is inextricably tied to socioeconomic status and resources. “The poorest people are the most vulnerable, and they are already suffering,” Cavazos said, noting that Sonora depends on farming, meaning a lot of people have to engage in physical labor in the dangerous heat. In regions like the Persian Gulf, extreme heat is the new normal: Qatar has adapted so extensively to the blistering climate that it air-conditions the outdoors. But not everyone has access to outdoor air conditioning, including those building the facilities that have them. When the wealthy country began construction on venues to host the 2022 World Cup, it faced an uproar over its treatment of workers building the stadiums. In 2019, the United Nations warned that during the four hottest months of the year, outdoor laborers in Qatar were working under “significant occupational heat stress conditions.” Qatar in May imposed regulations expanding the time frame that prohibits outdoor labor from taking place to between 10 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. during the hotter months of the year, while also outlawing any work if the wet-bulb temperature is more than approximately 89 degrees Fahrenheit. Merely surviving in those conditions depends on your place in society and what that affords: access to air conditioning, insulated homes, jobs that don’t require extreme physical exertion under the sun and policies in place to protect you from dangerous conditions. “As humans, we have learned to adapt,” Cavazos said. “The problem is the cost. Some will not survive.” Project editing by Reem Akkad. Graphics editing by Tim Meko. Graphics by Hannah Dormido. Design and development by Garland Potts. Copy editing by Jordan Melendrez."
+"Forest fires are burning nearly twice as many trees as they did just two decades ago, according to a study from the University of Maryland’s Global Land Analysis and Discovery (UMD’s GLAD) laboratory. Researchers found that a typical forest fire season burns 3 million more hectares (7.4 million acres) than in 2001. Forest fires accounted for a quarter of global tree loss in the past 20 years, according to a summation of the data produced by the World Resources Institute. In the United States this year alone, several large wildfires in California have burned nearly 200,000 acres and killed at least four people, according to data from CalFire. One notable blaze threatened the country’s oldest trees, in Yosemite National Park, while the largest fire, on the California-Oregon border, killed at least four and burned more than 60,000 acres. Globally, several massive wildfires have engulfed large forests in different corners of the world, showing the growing extent of damaging blazes. In Europe, large wildfires have affected at least a dozen countries, burning across 600,000 hectares of land, according to reporting by Reuters. Fed by a dry summer and temperatures that pushed above the century mark, large fires darkened skies in Portugal and France this summer. Wildfires in the largely untamed wilderness of Russia’s Siberian and Far East regions have scorched upward of 3.2 million hectares of forest this year, according to the Moscow Times, blanketing several towns in toxic smoke. Elsewhere in Asia, parts of China are battling numerous wildfires in the midst of the country’s worst heat wave since 1961. Rising temperatures caused by human activity are an important driver of worsening wildfire conditions globally. As the atmosphere becomes warmer, typically lush forests dry out and become more vulnerable to fires. Dried-out forests can act like tinderboxes, allowing fires to spiral out of control. Vast blazes release even more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, contributing to further warming of the planet. The World Resources Institute refers to this cycle as the fire-climate feedback loop, and little can be done to slow it outside of dramatically lowering greenhouse gas emissions. A changing climate has caused boreal forests to ignite as never before. About 70 percent of all fire-driven tree loss over the past 20 years has occurred in boreal forests, which are in northern areas of the planet, which are warming at higher rates than other parts of the globe. In 2021 alone, 6.67 million hectares of tree cover were lost in boreal forests, compared with just 1.16 million hectares lost in tropical forests such as the Amazon, according to UMD’s GLAD laboratory. In both cases, though, the loss of these trees and the thawing of permafrost threatens to release ancient stores of carbon, converting vast forests from climate-healthy carbon sinks into accidental polluters. “We are seeing some severe fire years in the boreal and tropical forests in recent years,” said Alexandra Tyukavina, assistant research professor at UMD’s GLAD laboratory and the study’s lead author. “This is an alarming sign, and climate change likely plays a role.” In tropical forests, agriculture and growing deforestation have increased the risk of wildfires while also making the forests less resilient to blazes. The expansion of industry and agriculture into these previously untouched parts of the globe means that most fires in tropical rainforests are sparked by people, as opposed to being ignited naturally by lightning strikes. Although the analysis shows that fire-related tree loss in Brazil spiked in 2016 and has shrunk since, the number of trees lost to wildfires in the past five years is still many times higher than in the early years of the 21st century. The threat from wildfires is expected only to grow globally, as the climate is all but guaranteed to continue to warm. Still, mitigation efforts can be implemented. The 2022 report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found that each increment of additional warming will lead to more devastation and death from a variety of climate hazards, meaning that keeping temperatures even a tenth of one degree Celsius cooler could have a substantial impact. For boreal forests, restricting warming to under 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) is critical. Scientists with the IPCC say that some of the worst-case warming scenarios would lead to 15 years of greenhouse gas emissions being released from the massive stores of carbon in these regions, something that could be curbed if the planet’s temperature increase is kept below the threshold of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Humans also can change how they interact with forests — ending deforestation and limiting agricultural techniques such as slash and burn can help improve forest resilience, especially in the tropics. Improved monitoring of wildfires will also prove helpful to researchers. “We need to have timely information on where forest fires are happening and to educate the public on safe fire behaviors,” Tyukavina said. “It is also important to incentivize fire-safe alternatives to land management practices that might result in escaped forest fires, such as burning of logging and crop residue.”"
+"Your browser does not support the video element. This is step 1 This is step 2 This is step 3 TONGASS NATIONAL FOREST, Alaska — The Sitka spruce soaring more than 180 feet skyward has stood on this spot on Prince of Wales Island for centuries. While fierce winds have contorted the towering trunks of its neighbors, the spruce’s trunk is ramrod straight. Standing apart from the rest of the canopy, it ascends to the height of a 17-story building. This tree’s erect bearing — a 1917 publication called the Sitka species “the autocrat of timbers” — is what helps give it such extraordinary commercial value. Musical instrument makers covet its fine grain, as do builders whose clients want old-growth wood that’s increasingly scarce. In a world whose ancient forests have largely disappeared, this grove holds a sliver of what remains. Even when the top and branches are lopped off, a tree this size would yield at least 6,000 board feet of lumber, said industry consultant Catherine Mater, who assessed the spruce’s potential market value for The Washington Post. It would fetch around $17,500 on the open market. But there’s another value the spruce holds: the carbon dioxide locked inside its fibers, in its roots, in the soil and in the vegetation that clings to it from its branches to its base, where berry bushes proliferate. The miraculous process that sustains life on Earth is embedded within its vast trunk, a reservoir for the greenhouse gases that now threaten humanity. The spruce draws in carbon dioxide through the tiny holes in its leaves, known as stomata, and water through its roots. The sunlight it absorbs fuels a reaction that splits the water and carbon dioxide into glucose, which traps the carbon, and releases oxygen into the atmosphere. The spruce would hold nearly 12 metric tons of carbon, says forest ecologist Beverly Law, a professor emeritus at Oregon State University. Its roots and the soil below would hold another 1.4 tons. And while roughly a third of the tree’s carbon would stay locked in the logs being shipped to mill, the rest would escape to the atmosphere. This mammoth tree plays an outsize role in the Tongass National Forest, which holds the equivalent of 9.9 billion tons of CO2 — nearly twice what the United States emits from burning fossil fuels each year. Walking around its 15-foot-wide base, Marina Anderson, the Organized Village of Kasaan’s tribal administrator, pointed out a plethora of plants her ancestors, the Haida and Tlingit peoples, have used over the centuries. “There’s watermelon berries, Jacob’s berries, blueberries. There’s fiddleheads,” said Anderson, whose people made their homes here before this spruce arose from the soil. There are the spruce needles she makes into syrup and adds to salt, and butter. The devil’s club she dries for tea, and for medicine. Covered in a riotous mix of pale lichens and deep-green moss, the tree’s flaky bark is marred by a long, electric-blue slash of spray paint running across one side of its wide trunk. Many months ago, the U.S. Forest Service chose the spruce to be cut down and extracted by helicopter — an elaborate process reserved for only the finest trees on this rugged hillside. In the words of loggers, “You cut the best, so the best is always left.” The spruce’s fortunes as ever, are bound in the politics of timber and climate change thousands of miles away in Washington D.C. Its blue death mark might as well be a question mark: Is this tree worth more to us alive? Or dead? Anderson knows what her answer is. As Magellan sailed around the world and Copernicus planted the sun at the center of the solar system, seeds from a grown Sitka spruce landed on the remains of a mature tree that had toppled over. So did the seeds of a western hemlock, the species that dominates the forest in this archipelago. It was the early 1500s. The colony established here at the tail end of the 18th century, dubbed “Russian America,” did not yet exist. The Industrial Revolution had not begun. The spruce took root long before the timber wars of the 20th century and the climate wars of the 21st. Together, the two saplings began to grow, aided by the scattering of soil on the decrepit root mass and circumstances set in motion long before their birth. When the glaciers covering Prince of Wales melted more than 14,000 years earlier, the retreat triggered a landslide, depositing chalky material right at the toe of that cascade — where the young trees took root. The calcium carbonate nurtured their growth, even during a relatively cold period on the island. Prince of Wales is the largest island along Alaska’s panhandle, spanning 2,577 square miles. It lies within an archipelago of 1,100 islands, on the state’s southeast stretch near Canada’s British Columbia. A coastal temperate rainforest, it is often wet, with average temperatures hovering between 40 and 51 degrees Fahrenheit. The spruce began to rise, sending its roots into the soil where it could steel itself against the strong winds that buffet the island. Underground, the roots found fractures in the limestone-rich soil, drawing in nutrients and moisture. It shed the limbs on its lower stem as it grew, leaving its lower trunk bare of branches. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 282 parts per million. Already, there were people in the forest. The Tlingit had settled this part of Alaska long before, surviving off the sea as well as the woods. Thousands probably lived on Prince of Wales, given its vast resources, in communal settings divided by clans. By 1700 the Haida — another oceangoing people, who lived in Canada and had journeyed as far south as Peru in their massive canoes — began to settle here. They traveled in the largest dugout canoes in the world, more than 50 feet long and seven feet wide, made from long-lived red cedars. They erected totem poles in front of every family home, noted Michael Jones, historian for the Organized Village of Kasaan. The Little Ice Age had enveloped the island, making the winters colder and the snowpack heavier. The greater snowfall insulated the tree’s roots, helping ensure its survival. As it became the dominant tree, it flourished further in the forest’s open space. And the site’s southern exposure bathed it in light on all but a few of the darkest winter days. Russians arrived in Alaska in the late 1700s. Illustrations depict a trading company headquarters in Sitka, circa 1827; an expedition led by the first Russian governor, Alexander Baranov, arriving at Sitka in 1804; and members of the Tlingit nation performing a war dance in 1802, before they wiped out most of the Russian-American Company's original settlement at Sitka. (Three Lions/Getty Images) About this series By the latter part of the century two Spaniards, Juan Francisco Bodega y Quadra and Francisco Mourelle, explored villages not far away for a month in 1775. The Russians came shortly afterward, established a trading company by 1799, and focused on killing sea otters for their pelts. When the United States bought Alaska from Russia on Oct. 18, 1867 — over the objections of the Tlingit — it had more to do with asserting U.S. influence in the Pacific than commandeering the riches of its forests. Soon enough, officials such as J.W. White, a captain in the U.S. Revenue-Marine Service, began to eye Alaska’s trees, writing in 1876, “When the forests of Oregon and Washington are gone, Alaska will be our permanent supply.” As timber became more valuable, federal officials fought to claim the forest as their own. Between the 1930s and 1960s, they repeatedly burned cabins and smokehouses at Indigenous fish camps. While Alaska Natives returned year after year to these sites, to catch salmon and herring they relied on year-round, Forest Service officials referred to them in disparaging terms such as squatters. The year 1951 could have augured the death of the spruce. That was when Ketchikan Pulp & Paper Co. and the Forest Service signed a 50-year contract to cut down 8.25 billion board feet — enough to fill 1.6 million log trucks. It ranked as the largest timber sale in the agency’s history. A second 50-year contract with Alaska Lumber and Pulp Co. followed five years later. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere had risen to 315 parts per million. At the time, Forest Service researchers called old growth in the Tongass “decadent climax forest stands.” The spruce tree growing on central Prince of Wales already fit that description. As it climbed, it acquired several of the hallmarks of what naturalist Richard Carstensen lovingly calls “age and decrepitude,” including delicate plants hanging off its branches. These epiphytes ranged in texture and color, from the orange moss known as Antitrichia curtipendula to the light-green lichens belonging to the genus Usnea, known more commonly as old man’s beard and witches’ hair, respectively. To harvest big trees more easily, however, the government had to build roads across Prince of Wales. In the mid-1960s it constructed one about 200 yards away from the old spruce, paving it with shot rock from a quarry. For companies seeking to supply the growing market for paper and for rayon, made from cellulose, these large trees were ideal. And Alaska Native corporations, the companies established in 1971 after receiving a small portion of their original homelands, also chopped down old growth. Within three decades, just a fraction still stood. By 1975, timber had become a major economic force in Alaska, after oil and seafood. In search of high-paying jobs, men from all over the country began to arrive in a seasonal migration of loggers that would bring Americans from Oregon and Maine to the great state. The industry continued to boom through 1980, with logging and sawmill jobs averaging roughly 1,100 in the winter and 2,300 in the summer. International wood exports in fiscal 1981 totaled nearly $270 million, and shipments to the East Coast netted tens of millions more. Michael Kampnich, who grew up in dairy country in Upstate New York, found work as “a feller” in 1980 on Prince of Wales. “I was 21, and single and this sounded like a terrific adventure,” recalled Kampnich, 62. “I just fell in love with the place. I loved working in the woods. I still look back on those days fondly. It was kind of an exciting time.” Kampnich and other loggers, who were earning between $180 and $200 a day, felled trees in units. While many measured about two to two-and-half feet in diameter, some were much more massive. Risks were everywhere, from the dead or broken branches that could fall from the canopy — dubbed “widow makers” — to rotting trees that could collapse without warning. “You’ve got a few of these dominant spruce that were, eight, nine feet. I cut a few like that. You know, it was a thrill to cut timber, especially big trees. It’s challenging. It’s very hard work. There’s a fairly high degree of danger to it.” The island took center stage in the state’s timber industry. Companies set up enormous floating logging camps on Thorne Bay, complete with bunkhouses for loggers and a cookhouse for meals. The year Kampnich arrived, production was at its peak in the Tongass, at more than half-a-billion board feet — enough to fill at least 100,000 log trucks. Other trees were bigger and more accessible than the Sitka spruce that had survived for more than four centuries. Its roots, by this time, had spread out at least 20 feet in every direction — perhaps much more. The tree’s circumference measured 15.7 feet. Scenes from the Tongass National Forest in July: Downtown Juneau, Alaska's capital; the shoreline of Prince of Wales Island; and visitors to Nugget Falls at the Mendenhall Glacier, near Juneau. Kampnich stopped logging in 1986. “The primary thing for me was danger. You know, I had a couple of close calls, where I literally thought I was going to be killed — that’s part of the job. I had a number of friends who were seriously injured, I had a few that were killed. And once I started a family, I wanted something different.” But others kept coming, especially as logging became more difficult in the Pacific Northwest. Keith Landers had worked in Oregon for two decades, taking the leftover timber for shingles, but the old growth was running out. “It has to be old timber,” he explained. “I mean, we can cut second growth, but the people on the other end are not going to like it. It’s just not going to last.” Broader economic forces started to reshape logging in Alaska. Federal regulations, such as the Clean Water Act, had made it more expensive for pulp mills to operate. Nylon and polyester were replacing rayon in the global marketplace. Sawmills in Haines, Seward and Klawock closed in 1991, and the big pulp mills soon followed. Landers was undeterred. He heard about a small mill for sale near Thorne Bay, and in 1994 decided it was time to move. Public officials made it clear that they wanted loggers like Landers to reap the island’s bounty. A few years after his arrival, they paved the road running past the massive spruce to make it even easier to transport the giant logs. Not long after Landers bought his mill, President Bill Clinton’s deputies took a hard look at road-building in federal forests. Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck halted construction because Congress slashed the budget, but he decided he wanted a permanent halt to new roads. A lecture from his boss when he was a young field biologist in Michigan’s Hiawatha National Forest in the ‘70s echoed in his head: “The most significant thing we do on the forest to change the land is to build a road.” Still, Clinton was worried about including Alaska in a proposed road ban; there was already pushback from Alaska Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, who chaired the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee. Dombeck briefed Clinton as they flew aboard Marine One to survey fire damage in Idaho. The president had a single question: How many jobs would banning roads cost in Alaska? The answer: 383. “Well, I don’t know what Ted Stevens is worried about,” the president remarked. The roadless rule was published on Jan. 12, 2001, right before Clinton left office. It set off a bitter battle, pitting conservationists, many Alaska Natives and Democrats on one side against timber companies, the Alaska political establishment and Republicans on the other. Barack Obama’s administration tried to forge a compromise, to shift over time to logging “young-growth” trees that were half-a-century old. But once Donald Trump was elected, it was clear the plan would be scrapped. Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) cheered. “Thankfully, the Obama administration has only weeks left in office, after which we can turn this decision around and bring active management to our federal forests for the benefit for Alaska and America’s economy.” The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere stood at 405 parts per million. And the spruce on Prince of Wales faced the prospect of the ax once more. Marina Anderson’s father made his living off logging. The family’s native corporation, Shaan Seet, clear-cut much of the old growth on its land before she was born, and her dad helped build many of the roads crisscrossing Prince of Wales. By the time Jimmy Anderson died in 2014, attitudes about logging had begun to change. Marina emerged as the one who would uphold her family’s Haida and Tlingit traditions, reviving a way of life. Along with her brother Cole, Anderson, 28, catches salmon from the Tongass’s rivers and harvests berries and other plants from the forest. On a hot day in late June — it reached 80 degrees, a nagging reminder of how climate change had already shifted conditions in this temperate rainforest — she headed to the shores of Port Saint Nicholas Bay to teach a group of Native teenagers how to spot plants ripe for picking. “It’s so hot,” she groused, twisting her long auburn hair into a bun and placing a broad-brimmed cedar hat atop her head. Marina Anderson, a member of the Haida and Tlingit nations, teaches members of the Alaska Youth Stewards about foraging traditions like harvesting rice from the roots of chocolate lilies. Wearing clamdiggers and a black tank top, Anderson easily navigated her way through a thicket of old-growth forest. She dodged devil’s club — coveted for food and medicinal purposes, whose stem is loaded with prickly spikes that can embed in the skin — and clambered over mossy logs. Making it out to the beach, she guided the teenagers to some chocolate lilies — their bright-green pistils and mustard-yellow stamens peeking out from the rich brown petals — and urged the kids to take a whiff. One of them, Joel Alejandro, inhaled before staggering back. “Kinda stinky, right?” she asked, smiling before ripping it out of the earth to show them the small grains sticking to the roots. “You see that? It’s all rice. We all know how much of a bummer it is if you’ve got fish and no rice.” Walking through the forest, Anderson stopped to marvel at the power of old growth, the ancient trees above her, the rich and spongy ground beneath her feet. The notion of cutting them down for high-end houses infuriates her. “We have to stop,” she said. “There is not enough left for everybody, and we’re not going to let any go.” Her generation is intent on mastering the native skills driven underground decades earlier, knowledge that draws on the resources of the forest, rivers and sea to withstand the disorienting present. The past, almost invisible now, provides a path forward. Her friend and colleague, wood carver Michael Chilton, hovered so closely to watch as his father carved wood that it amounted to an implicit ultimatum: “It was either teach me, or I’ll get myself cut.” Chilton, now 30, began carving at the age of nine. His dad, now 56, had done the same, pestering his uncles as a kid in Juneau to teach him even the basics of the craft. Anderson, who became Kasaan’s tribal administrator at the start of the pandemic, joined other Alaska Native leaders fighting to preserve the roadless rule even as the Trump administration sought to get rid of it. They filed administrative petitions, arguing that old-growth forests were critical to the forest’s survival and their way of life. A tattoo on her rib cage captures one of her father’s favorite sayings: “Being Haida is not about the things that you do. Being Haida is about the way you do things.” In January, Sealaska made a pivotal decision. The regional tribal corporation that had cut much of the old growth on its land officially stopped logging. Instead, under California’s emissions trading system, Sealaska sold carbon credits for its trees to the oil and gas company BP, making $100 million. It has offered $10 million of those proceeds to help raise money to invest in new businesses and generate jobs for local Alaska Natives. A broad coalition, including outdoor recreation and environmental groups, argues that a different kind of forest-based economy has already emerged. Tourism accounted for 18 percent of southeast Alaska’s jobs in 2019, according to the business group Southeast Conference, while the seafood industry generated 8 percent. Timber, by contrast, accounted for just 337 jobs, or 0.7 percent — and that was before Sealaska stopped logging. The pandemic hammered the region’s leisure and hospitality industry last year: As the cruise industry skidded to a halt, the sector’s employment dipped by 45 percent. But small-scale tourism boomed this year, as Americans headed outdoors once coronavirus vaccines became widely available. Wildlife and nature are a major driver of the economy in the Tongass, from tourism at the Mendenhall Glacier to whale watching off Juneau and fish processing in the city, as Martin Shelton unloads Taku River salmon for Yakobi Fisheries. Sitting outside at a beer garden in downtown Juneau, Dan Kirkwood, general manager of Alaska Seaplanes Adventures, gestured toward the crowd. “These people are all here because they want to see glaciers, whales, bears and Alaska Native culture,” he said. For $850 a person, Kirkwood’s company takes guests to a pristine spot on the archipelago’s Admiralty Island, where they gaze from a distance at brown bears as they grab salmon, graze on vegetation and amble about. Only 24 people are allowed to touch down by float plane at Pack Creek each day, minimizing the tourists’ impact. This is the sort of small-scale employment that Meredith Trainor, executive director of the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, sees as sustaining the shift away from logging. Rather than depending on a single commodity such as timber, she argued, the region can draw on diverse businesses that are interconnected. Juneau’s Amalga Distillery ages its whiskey in big barrels that are rolled down the street so that Barnaby and Devils Club Brewing can barrel-age its beer. Juneau Composts picks up the distillery’s spent grain, along with its napkins, paper towels and garnishes, and sells it back to the community as fertilizer. Strictly Local Gallery in the town of Craig on Prince of Wales is buying handiwork from artists across the region. “The answer is that it’s many things that get stitched together,” Trainor said. “And that makes us safer.” Kampnich, who once reveled in felling massive trees here, used to dismiss environmentalists’ objections that clearing the forest would have unintended consequences. He wrote a piece in the 1990s in the Juneau Empire saying just that. But 15 years ago, Kampnich — who is still wiry and fit but now has white, bushy eyebrows spilling over his clear blue eyes — noticed how trees coming up at the exact same time created a biological desert that harms deer, salmon and other wildlife. “Some of what they were saying, I saw it happening,” he said. “The conservationists were right.” Kampnich knows that on Prince of Wales, many people are wary of stopping logging altogether. But he thinks there is room for small operators like Landers to stay in business. Landers — whose beaten flannel shirt and jeans are covered in wood dust — takes pride in the wood he cuts. His mill’s yellow cedar graces the ceiling above passengers’ heads as they traverse N gates at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, an undulating emblem of the rainforest. One of his hands bears the scars of working with heavy equipment, and he describes his economic aspirations in blunt terms. “All I want to do is make enough money until I’m dead.” When it comes to Trainor and her allies, Landers has little patience. “You want to stop logging in the Tongass, tell your friends to quit buying our product. Because they love red cedar. We’re in love with their money, period. And that’s the truth about the matter.” His anger is palpable as he walks through his small mill, past a $100,000 saw he bought recently. Landers has little respect for politicians who have instituted policies from thousands of miles away. “You know, we need a plan. And that’s what we don’t have in the Tongass. We change our underwear every four years.” Bryce Dahlstrom is an owner of Viking Lumber, a family-owned firm that started up as the pulp mills were shutting down in the 1990s. In November 2019, he stood before the city council in Craig, the island’s biggest town, urging its members to reconsider the idea of moving away from old-growth logging. Council members had gathered to discuss a letter they planned to send to the Trump administration endorsing the idea of eventually transitioning to cutting young growth. As the owner of the last major sawmill in southeast Alaska, with about 40 employees, Dahlstrom commanded the members’ attention. “Viking is a big supporter of the city of Craig,” he reminded them. “We provide them with heat for their middle school, and elementary and swimming pool. The reason we can do that is because we’ve got a high-value log.” “You don’t force business into doing something different because it’s socially unacceptable,” Dahlstrom argued. Viking Lumber Co. is the only major sawmill operating on Prince of Wales, near the town of Klawock. It focuses on harvesting old-growth trees. Dahlstrom had an ally in Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who was born in nearby Ketchikan. In 2017, she wrote legislation to authorize the exchange of thousands of acres of U.S. Forest Service land in the Tongass with land held by the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority, an independent state agency. The Tongass property held more old-growth forests, so after the swap the state agency was able to auction off 4,000 acres of forest. Viking won the bid, paying close to $5 million so far to log the old-growth trees there. The clear cuts on land that once belonged to U.S. taxpayers on Prince of Wales, near the town of Naukati, are visible from the road. They amount to desiccated tree graveyards, littered with slashed branches and stumps whose rings attest to their advanced age. Transferring federal land to state control represents the industry’s best shot at cutting down more old growth, the Alaska Forest Association associate board member Eric Cole posted in May to a private Facebook group. But, he wrote on the Alaskan Loggers page, “the odds of that happening are very slim.” In September 2020, after losing a timber sale challenge brought by the law firm Earthjustice, the Trump administration proposed harvesting old-growth trees in what it dubbed the Twin Mountain II sale. The lofty Sitka spruce off Highway 43 stood within the sale’s boundaries. The blue slash was spray-painted on its 500-year-old trunk. But when Joe Biden won the presidency in November, it was clear the roadless rule would be back. And Forest Service officials on the ground, for their part, are exploring what the agency can do to support the economy beyond holding timber sales. Delilah Brigham, the deputy district ranger for Thorne Bay, said that many people don’t realize the agency is upgrading the spartan recreation area surrounding El Capitan Cave. The work will make it easier for tourists to visit the karst formation and archaeological trove. “They just see the timber,” she said. “They don’t see all the other projects.” Maybe, instead of taking the trees, the Tongass could be a climate sanctuary whose carbon stores would buy Americans time as the nation transitions away from fossil fuels, suggested scientists such as Beverly Law and the Earth Island Institute’s Dominick DellaSala. Biologists John Schoen and Dave Albert estimate that about half of the Tongass’s biggest old-growth stands have been clear-cut since the start of industrial forestry in the 1950s. Roughly 5 million acres of commercial-quality old-growth habitat remains, only about 537,000 acres of which are large trees. Scenes of logging operations in the Tongass National Forest, in July. Debris remains after clear-cutting on Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority land, while a truck carries timber from old-growth trees on a road through the forest. Walking around the ancient spruce this summer, DellaSala heard the songs of the birds he began studying three decades ago: the single, melodious note of the varied thrush, the high, three-part tweet of a Pacific-slope flycatcher and the rapid-fire, descending chatter of a Wilson’s warbler. These creatures need this forest, he argued, but so does the climate. Younger trees take up carbon faster, but they’re not storing as much as old trees. “In a climate emergency, you want to hold onto that carbon, you don’t want to put it into the atmosphere,” DellaSala said. “You want to absorb it, but you want to hold onto it as well.” In mid-July, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack called all three members of the Alaska delegation as he worked remotely in Iowa. He told them all that not only was he reversing Trump’s policy but also was ending all old-growth harvesting except by Alaska Natives and small local operators such as Landers. Anderson heard the news that same day, in a conference call between the Forest Service’s Regional Forester David Schmid and tribal officials. She was walking between her kitchen and her smokehouse, where she had been curing king and dog salmon. She listened as Schmid explained that the tribes would get cultural priority in selecting the red cedars to use in their most monumental works. The magnitude of the moment stunned her. Alaska’s ancient trees would be spared. And she rejoiced. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere stood at 412.5 parts per million and rising. Several miles away, the battered crown of the spruce towered over the landscape. The blue death mark remained, but under the new policy, the timber sale that signaled its demise was canceled. The venerable tree was safe. For now. [Sign up for the latest news about climate change, energy and the environment, delivered every Thursday] Several researchers provided input on the Tongass National Forest’s ecosystem, including the U.S. Forest Service’s James Baichtal, Robert “Mike” Sheets and Sheila Jacobson; former Alaska Department of Fish and Game scientist John Schoen; the Earth Island Institute’s Dominck DellaSala; Oregon State University Professor Emeritus Beverly Law; naturalist Richard Carstensen; author James Mackovjak and consultant Catherine Mater. Editing by Trish Wilson. Photography and video by Salwan Georges. Photo editing by Olivier Laurent. Design and development by Garland Potts. Design editing by Matthew Callahan. Map by Lauren Tierney. Map data sourced from the National Audubon Society. Graphics editing by Chiqui Esteban. Copy editing by Anastasia Marks and Vince Rinehart. Project management by Julie Vitkovskaya."
+"Scientists have discovered a series of worrying weaknesses in the ice shelf holding back one of Antarctica’s most dangerous glaciers, suggesting that this important buttress against sea level rise could shatter within the next three to five years. Until recently, the ice shelf was seen as the most stable part of Thwaites Glacier, a Florida-sized frozen expanse that already contributes about 4 percent of annual global sea level rise. Because of this brace, the eastern portion of Thwaites flowed more slowly than the rest of the notorious “doomsday glacier.” But new data show that the warming ocean is eroding the eastern ice shelf from below. Satellite images taken as recently as last month and presented Monday at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union show several large, diagonal cracks extending across the floating ice wedge. These weak spots are like cracks in a windshield, said Oregon State University glaciologist Erin Pettit. One more blow and they could spiderweb across the entire ice shelf surface. “This eastern ice shelf is likely to shatter into hundreds of icebergs,” she said. “Suddenly the whole thing would collapse.” The failure of the shelf would not immediately accelerate global sea level rise. The shelf already floats on the ocean surface, taking up the same amount of space whether it is solid or liquid. But when the shelf fails, the eastern third of Thwaites Glacier will triple in speed, spitting formerly landlocked ice into the sea. Total collapse of Thwaites could result in several feet of sea level rise, scientists say, endangering millions of people in coastal areas. “It’s upwardly mobile in terms of how much ice it could put into the ocean in the future as these processes continue,” said Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the University of Colorado Boulder, and a leader of the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (ITGC). He spoke to reporters via Zoom from McMurdo Station on the coast of Antarctica, where he is awaiting a flight to his field site atop the crumbling ice shelf. “Things are evolving really rapidly here,” Scambos added. “It’s daunting.” Pettit and Scambos’s observations also show that the warming ocean is loosening the ice shelf’s grip on the underwater mountain that helps it act as a brace against the ice river at its back. Even if the fractures don’t cause the shelf to disintegrate, it is likely to become completely unmoored from the seafloor within the next decade. Other researchers from the ITGC revealed chaos in the “grounding zone” where the land-bound portion of the glacier connects to the floating shelf that extends out over the sea. Ocean water there is hot, by Antarctic standards, and where it enters crevasses it can create “hot spots” of melting. Without its protective ice shelf, scientists fear that Thwaites may become vulnerable to ice cliff collapse, a process in which towering walls of ice that directly overlook the ocean start to crumble into the sea. This process hasn’t been observed in Antarctica. But “if it started instantiating it would become self-sustaining and cause quite a bit of retreat for certain glaciers” including Thwaites, said Anna Crawford, a glaciologist at the University of St. Andrews. Models developed by Crawford suggest that Thwaites could exhibit this kind of runaway collapse, though it’s unlikely to happen in the immediate future. “But what we’re seeing already is enough to be worried about,” she said. “Thwaites is kind of a monster.”"
+"The Supreme Court on Thursday sharply cut back the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to reduce the carbon output of existing power plants, a blow to the Biden administration’s plans for combating climate change. The ruling infuriated President Biden and environmentalists, who said it raised formidable obstacles to the United States meeting its climate goals, including the president’s goal of running the U.S. power grid on clean energy by 2035. “Another devastating decision that aims to take our country backwards,” Biden said. But the Republican-led states that challenged the broad authority the EPA claimed said it was a dutiful examination of the Clean Air Act and a proper acknowledgment that Congress had not given such vast powers to the agency. The vote was 6 to 3, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. writing for the court’s majority. And it reinforced an emerging view from its conservatives that too much power is vested in executive branch agencies that act without clear authority from Congress. “Capping carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal to generate electricity may be a sensible ‘solution to the crisis of the day,’ ” Roberts wrote, referring to a court precedent. “But it is not plausible that Congress gave EPA the authority to adopt on its own such a regulatory scheme.” In similar fashion, the court has reined in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for enacting an eviction moratorium during the pandemic, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration from far-reaching vaccine-or-test requirements. Roberts was joined in the EPA decision by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Gorsuch wrote separately to elaborate: “When Congress seems slow to solve problems, it may be only natural that those in the Executive Branch might seek to take matters into their own hands. But the Constitution does not authorize agencies to use pen-and-phone regulations as substitutes for laws passed by the people’s representatives.” Justice Elena Kagan, writing for herself and fellow liberal justices Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, countered that the majority had empowered the wrong people to pass judgment on an existential dilemma. “The Court appoints itself — instead of Congress or the expert agency — the decisionmaker on climate policy,” Kagan wrote. “I cannot think of many things more frightening.” Kagan began her dissent with familiar warnings about the calamity ahead. With higher seas, fiercer wildfires and other consequences of climate change apparent, the world is already in unprecedented territory. Global average temperatures have increased more than 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) since the preindustrial era, largely because of pollution from burning fossil fuels. If warming exceeds 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), scientists warn, sea levels could surge, ecosystems collapse, and millions of additional people would be at risk from heat, hunger, disaster and disease. Biden hoped to lead by example to convince other countries to cut emissions and help the world keep warming under the 1.5 degrees threshold. Now such diplomacy has become more difficult for Biden, especially as countries scramble for new sources of oil and gas after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The president said he will “continue using lawful executive authority, including the EPA’s legally-upheld authorities,” work with cities and states to pass laws, and “keep pushing for additional Congressional action, so that Americans can fully seize the economic opportunities, cost-saving benefits, and security of a clean energy future.” The decision rested on what is called the “major questions” doctrine, which says Congress must “speak clearly” when authorizing agency action on significant issues. In his ruling, Roberts chastised the EPA for finding “newfound power in the vague language” of the Clean Air Act, arguing a law written a half-century ago never allowed the EPA to force electric utilities to switch from coal to solar, wind and other renewable forms of generation. “It is not plausible that Congress gave EPA the authority to adopt on its own such a regulatory scheme,” Roberts wrote. “A decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from that representative body.” In her dissent, Kagan said it made sense for Congress in the Clean Air Act to leave to government experts the best way to solve problems that might have been unforeseeable when the law was written. “The enacting Congress told EPA to pick the ‘best system of emission reduction’ (taking into account various factors),” Kagan wrote. “In selecting those words, Congress understood — it had to — that the ‘best system’ would change over time. Congress wanted and instructed EPA to keep up. To ensure the statute’s continued effectiveness, the ‘best system’ should evolve as circumstances evolved — in a way Congress knew it couldn’t then know.” She pointed out that the Biden administration has not issued its own regulations. “That new rule will be subject anyway to immediate, pre-enforcement judicial review,” Kagan wrote. “But this Court could not wait — even to see what the new rule says — to constrain EPA’s efforts to address climate change.” Environmentalists and those who challenged EPA’s authority were divided over what comes next. Richard Lazarus, a Harvard environmental law professor, said that the Supreme Court was insisting on a clear statement from what it knows is an “effectively dysfunctional” body. “The Court threatens to upend the national government’s ability to safeguard the public health and welfare at the very moment when the United States, and all nations, are facing our greatest environmental challenge of all: climate change,” Lazarus wrote in an email. Others noted the decision still allows for the EPA to regulate power plants’ greenhouse gas emission. It just cannot mandate that utilities shift to renewables after Thursday’s ruling. “There is something of a silver lining here,” said Jody Freeman, also a Harvard Law School professor. “It leaves a pathway for EPA to still set meaningful standards.” EPA officials, too, say they have other tools to reduce power plants’ pollution. “While I am deeply disappointed by the Supreme Court’s decision, we are committed to using the full scope of EPA’s authorities,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement. Others predicted Thursday’s ruling may invite future court challenges to other federal regulations. “The consequences potentially reach far beyond EPA and the Clean Air Act,” said Lisa Heinzerling, an environmental law professor at Georgetown University. “This is a big statement on how it intends to act moving forward.” West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey (R), who led the lawsuit against the EPA, suggested he may bring more cases based on the “major questions” doctrine. “It could be a very positive tool in the ongoing fight against federal overreach,” he told reporters Thursday. The ruling comes as Biden struggles to pass a major climate bill through an evenly split Senate, compounding Democrats’ efforts to address rising temperatures. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) accused the court of “pushing the country back to a time when robber barons and corporate elites have complete power and average citizens have no say.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) praised the ruling. “The Court has undone illegal regulations issued by the EPA without any clear congressional authorization and confirmed that only the people’s representatives in Congress — not unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats — may write our nation’s laws,” McConnell said in a statement. The United States is the world’s second-biggest annual emitter of greenhouse gases, and is responsible for a greater portion of historical emissions than any other nation. West Virginia v. EPA is the latest battle pitting the coal industry and Republican-led states against a Democratic administration that proposes sweeping changes to the way the nation’s power sector produces electricity. The Supreme Court in 2016 stopped the Obama administration’s plan to drastically reduce power plants’ carbon output. The plan never went into effect, but its emission-reduction goals were met ahead of schedule because of economic conditions that made coal-fired plants more expensive. A more lenient plan was promulgated by the Trump administration, which said its reading of the law limited the EPA’s actions to regulating emissions at a specific site instead of across the system, a restriction that has come to be known as “inside the fence.” But on the last day of the Trump administration, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said that was an intentional “misreading” of the law. “The EPA has ample discretion in carrying out its mandate,” the decision concluded. “But it may not shirk its responsibility by imagining new limitations that the plain language of the statute does not clearly require.” As a result, the Trump rules were struck, the Obama rules were not reinstated, and the Biden administration has yet to formulate its plan. For that reason, the administration and environmentalists were stunned when the Supreme Court took the case. The Biden administration advised it to simply vacate the D.C. appeals court decision and wait to make a more intensive review of the EPA’s powers after new regulations were proposed. The case deeply divided the business community. Mining companies and other firms in the coal sector urged the court to rein in the EPA, arguing coal is necessary for keeping electricity prices low and the grid reliable. Apple, Tesla and other major tech and retail firms investing in renewable energy, meanwhile, told the court that “stable, nationwide rules” are needed to avert climate disaster. The consolidated cases are known as West Virginia v. EPA. Sarah Kaplan and Tyler Pager contributed to this report."
+"The simple way to think about this crisis: There’s no longer enough water to go around to meet the needs of farmers and Native American populations as well as fish and birds. For more than a century, the federal government has overseen an intricate and imperfect system of water distribution intended to sustain an ecosystem and an economy. The whole precarious balance was based on the assumption that enough snow would always fall, and melt, and fill the vast watershed of the Klamath River Basin, which straddles the border of California and Oregon and is home to about 124,000 people. But this year, the region buckled under one of the worst droughts ever recorded. For generations, Native Americans lived and fished in what was called the Everglades of the West. The channels of the watershed reached from remnants of ancient Lake Modoc in southern Oregon across the California line to the Pacific coast. Then came Manifest Destiny and the federal government, staking a claim on the rugged, unspoiled land. The Klamath Project started in 1906 and transformed the basin’s hydrology by draining wetlands and routing water from Upper Klamath Lake through hundreds of miles of canals, tunnels, dikes and ditches. It irrigates more than 200,000 acres on some 1,400 farms, many auctioned off to World War I and World War II veterans. Some of their descendants work that land today. The federal government also monitors the water levels in the lake to protect endangered fish essential to tribal life. [Reservoirs are drying up as consequences of the Western drought worsen] For the first time in more than a century, the region is so parched that the Bureau of Reclamation, which allocates water, has distributed none. No water for farmers, who grow alfalfa that feeds cattle in China, peppermint for tea exported to Europe, and potatoes used by Frito-Lay and In-N-Out Burger. No water for the fish sacred to the Klamath Tribes, who revere the Lost River sucker, shortnose sucker and other species as central to their survival. No water for migratory birds, who rest and breed at two diminished wildlife refuges along the Pacific Flyway. And no water for hundreds of people who live around the Klamath Project. Their wells have run dry. The extreme effects of climate-related drought have worsened a long-existing conflict between Native Americans and farmers and ranchers, all fighting for the resource essential to their survival. The shores of Upper Klamath Lake were once covered by marshes and wetlands. Development and human intervention have eroded the ecosystem's natural cycle. The consequences have been felt by tribes and others who fish downstream on the Klamath River. Tribal leaders say the endangered fish are a warning of a larger disruption to the entire watershed. The Klamath Tribes have fought for decades to keep the one right the federal government had guaranteed: the ability to hunt and fish on land taken from them. “Nature is obviously quite complicated. Everything is intertwined,” said Alex Gonyaw, senior fish biologist for the Klamath Tribes. “Agriculture came in and just modified absolutely everything you can think of in terms of wetlands and hydrology and the way the ecosystem functioned.” The C’waam and Koptu fish essential to tribal culture once numbered in the tens of millions; now there are about 3,400 left in the wild, Gonyaw said. The young don’t live long enough to reproduce because of poor water quality in the Upper Klamath Lake. Unrestricted cattle grazing upstream releases phosphorus into the lake, and as water levels fall due to irrigation, the concentration of contaminants kills the fish, Gonyaw said. Development along the shores of the lake has also upset the balance. Without wetlands to filter out the contaminants, toxic algae thrives, ultimately suffocating the juvenile fish. “Those fish were created specifically by our creator to take care of us,” said Don Gentry, chairman of the Klamath Tribal Council. “They’re part of our subsistence, a part of our culture, and also a part of our worldview.” The Klamath, Yurok, Karuk, Hoopa Valley, Modoc and Yahooskin tribes all lived in the region, sustained by food in wetlands. The U.S. War Department sent surveyors John C. Fremont and Kit Carson to explore the Pacific territories for westward expansion. The group killed Native Americans as they moved north; expedition member Thomas E. Breckenridge wrote that the men “had orders while in camp or on the move to shoot Indians on sight. While on the march the crack of a rifle and the dying yell of a native was not an unusual occurrence.” When the group reached the Upper Klamath Lake in 1846, Klamath people killed three of them. In retaliation, Fremont’s party slaughtered more than a dozen Klamath people on the lakeshore. That violence, not the first racist and hostile action toward the Indigenous people of Klamath, “kind of set a tone,” Gentry said, “just because people wanted what our people had.” In 1864, the federal government and the tribes signed a treaty that transferred more than 20 million acres of native land in exchange for their right to hunt, fish and live on 1.5 million acres of reservation land. The decades of subjugation were punctuated in 1954 by Congress terminating the tribes’ federal recognition and buying the reservation land, which became national forest and logging acreage. The government had promised fishing rights and water forever to the tribes. But it also promised irrigation water forever to the overwhelmingly White farmers of the basin, who enjoyed political support, said Hannah Gosnell, an Oregon State University geography professor. The dueling promises have been in conflict for more than a century. Over the past decade, however, the tribes have won court approval to begin enforcing the water rights first established in that original 1864 treaty. “The tables are turning now,” Gosnell said. “The power dynamics are changing, and it’s really hard for the irrigators to come to terms with.” [California's Chinook salmon population is disappearing] Across the California line, over half of the juvenile Chinook salmon born on the Klamath River this year have died of disease. In a normal year, freshwater from the lake flows downstream and west and improves the health of the Klamath River. This year, the Bureau of Reclamation prevented that outflow of water, called a “flushing flow,”  to protect the Lost River sucker and shortnose sucker in Upper Klamath Lake. “If we don’t have the Klamath River and we don’t have healthy fish runs, it’s really hard to be a Yurok person,” said Barry McCovey, the tribe’s fishery department director. “It’s just as important to our people as the air that we breathe.” The river’s dams also disrupt the migration of Chinook and coho salmon along the river, and in June, federal energy regulators approved a plan to remove four of the dams to comply with requirements of the Endangered Species Act, and to begin to restore the river. The dam removal will take time, but advocates for the fish and the tribes agree it’s a step in the right direction. “When you dam a river, when you divert a river, when you change the river from what it’s used to doing for millions and millions of years,” McCovey said, “some things will suffer and others will prosper.” Without water distribution this year, many farmers struggle to irrigate and have to let some acreage remain dry. Angry and frustrated, they say their livelihood is at stake. Many share what water there is. Cutting off water from the Klamath Project also threatens a way of life and a legacy for many farmers. They are worried, angry and frustrated. Some are struggling to pay employees and meet demand from distributors. Many are resourceful, sharing what water there is. All have felt the weight of a historically parched year. Scott Seus is a third-generation farmer who mainly grows horseradish and peppermint. His season started late, and every day has been a struggle. “There isn’t anything easy this year,” he said. “We’re having to work for every ounce of existence.” He’s growing only about 40 percent of his land this year, although he still needs to pay water fees to maintain the other 60 percent. The crops he has grown this year are not as large or as green. “There’ll come a point here,” he said, “where we may have to make some hard decisions that might include walking away from fields.” The Klamath Project turned the region’s agriculture into an industry. After World War II, plots were transferred to veterans whose names were picked out of “an old-fashioned pickle jar,” according to a 1947 Time magazine article. Any veteran with $2,000, two years of farm experience, and “habits of honesty, temperance, thrift and industry” could apply for one of the 60-to-141-acre plots. The plots were “acres of rich bottom land” that were “cultivated into fertile farm lots” by Japanese Americans, who had been forcefully detained at the nearby Tule Lake segregation center during the war. Seus’s grandfather was one of the lucky names pulled from the pickle jar. His dad was just a baby when his family moved to their 70-acre plot in 1947, living out of a dusty old barracks from the camp. Soon the family built their business and the house in which Seus is now raising his son. “It’s absolutely in your blood, and it’s absolutely your pride,” Seus said. “It’s your identity.” Back then, “it seemed like the water supplies were endless, so it really wasn’t for several decades that anyone started to realize,” said Todd Kepple, director of the Klamath County Museum, “we may not have enough water here to keep everyone whole.” After the 2001 drought, the federal Bureau of Reclamation withheld water from farmers to preserve the Lost River sucker and shortnose sucker protected under the Endangered Species Act. The agency based its decision on two federal biological studies that identified a minimum water level necessary for the species’s health. Protests erupted, and Native Americans were hung in effigy, Gosnell said. During one rally, a brigade passed buckets filled with water from Upper Klamath Lake, dumping it into the main canal that feeds the project. Eventually, farmers had enough with symbolic protests. They stormed the canal head gates and pried them open with a crowbar, releasing water into the project. U.S. Marshals were called in to contain the conflict, and the bureau eventually buckled, allotting some water to the farmers. “I remember going to the bucket brigade when I was little,” said Hesston Gallup, who grows alfalfa for livestock in the United States, Japan and China. “Now I’m 30, and we’re facing the exact same problem we were when I was in elementary school.” [The Northern Hemisphere has a punishing heat wave infestation] This is the first year Gallup is farming on his own. He grew up on the family farm that his father and uncle started in the 1970s, and five years ago bought his uncle out. He says his 1,000-acre farm is down to a quarter or less of its average production, with no water from the project. He buys water from his local district wells and also has been irrigating with water his neighbors have shared from their private wells. “Is this ever going to get fixed?” he asked. “I was planning to be there forever, like, you know, raise a family, kind of how I was raised,” he said. “And it’s that future is looking not very promising right now.” In August, the federal government announced $15 million in drought relief for agricultural producers in the basin. Both Gallup and Seus point out that the farmers are not the only people suffering. They mention their employees and the trickle-down effect on local businesses and charitable organizations. The water deficit goes a lot deeper than the farmers and the fish, Gallup said. “Right now, there is no winner,” he said. “Everyone’s losing.” The region's wildlife also are imperiled. Two important sanctuaries are almost bone-dry. In normal years, runoff water from irrigators replenishes the refuges. This year, the refuges received no water from the Klamath Project. Along the canals, wells have run dry and hundreds have turned to bottled water, in another consequence of an imperfect system. Also suffering are wildlife whose protected habitats rely on Klamath Project water. The national wildlife refuges at Tule Lake and Lower Klamath are home to tens of thousands of waterfowl and are major stops for migratory birds on the Pacific Flyway. In normal years, runoff from water allocated to irrigators replenishes the refuges. This year, the refuges received no water from the project, and parts of the Tule Lake refuge were bone-dry and cracked after an emergency diversion of water. Last year, more than 60,000 birds died of botulism in one of the worst outbreaks in years. This year,  nearly all the ducks have vanished from the Lower Klamath refuge, the first migratory bird refuge established in the country. A recent aerial survey by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of the vast preserve showed about 35,000 ducks this year compared with 1.5 million in 1948. The nearby Tule Lake refuge had only about 30,000 ducks in the survey, down from 3.5 million. Although there has not been a severe outbreak of disease, Susan Sawyer, of the service, said that without a suitable habitat with water plants to feed on, local waterfowl are reproducing at extremely reduced rates, and most of the migratory birds are skipping the refuges all together. The water demands of the entire region are so complex that solving one deficit creates several more someplace else. Kelsey and Nathan Steinberg woke up one morning in early July without running water — their aging well ran dry. That week, they said, three of their neighbors experienced the same. Officials received hundreds of calls about wells gone dry between July and October. Recent powerful rainstorms in the West have barely made a dent, officials said. “It was like one of those things that you just, like, never, ever really imagine,” Kelsey Steinberg said. “It’s like a heavy, deep feeling that is kind of, like, helpless.” They are still without well water, and can’t get a driller to deepen their well until next year. Without distributed water this year, many farmers are drawing on groundwater to irrigate their crops, further depleting the supply that feeds domestic wells. Many shallow wells can usually can catch runoff flowing through the canals. But those, too, are dry in the drought. The whole system is overtaxed and in debt. Over the last couple of decades, groundwater supply has dwindled, said Brad Kirby, manager of the Tulelake Irrigation District. “We’re in such a big hole,” he said, that even if the project turns on the water, “we can’t catch up.” Link River Dam in Klamath Falls, Ore., on July 30. The dam holds water of the Upper Klamath Lake for irrigation. The acrimony that followed the water crisis of 2001 eventually yielded to collaboration. People from the region went together to lobby on Capitol Hill to fund a new water-sharing arrangement, and in 2010, the water users, tribes, irrigation districts, and California and Oregon signed a new kind of treaty, the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement. The pact called for farmers to receive a small amount of water from the Klamath Project even in drier years and $500 million to fund several restorative initiatives, including wetland habitat restoration, irrigation infrastructure, and the removal or updating of hydroelectric dams to protect salmon in the Klamath River. As Gosnell explains it, the agreement’s success came from compromise. “They had gotten everybody together and everybody kind of figured out” a way to craft solutions, she said. “Not everybody really gets what they want, but sometimes you get what you need. That’s what the KBRA was. And it’s just too bad that Congress wouldn’t fund it.” Many across the basin agree promises from all sides  are falling short. “At the end of the day, the big culprit, I think, is the federal government,” Gosnell said, adding that many federal agencies have made many mistakes year after year, all independently of each other. For now, the basin remains fractured. “The tribes of the basin have been losing for a long time,” said McCovey, the Yurok fisheries director. “And we’re to the point where we don’t have a whole lot left to give. We don’t have a whole lot left to sacrifice.” Court rulings have affirmed the Klamath Tribes’ water rights. Farmers, who once were favored by water allotment, are even more frustrated. “What we’re doing isn’t working,” said Tricia Hill, a fourth-generation potato farmer. “And by holding that water, it’s not helping the fish, and that’s … water on farms that would have made a huge difference."" [How to cope with the existential dread of climate change] The tribes see the endangered fish species as a harbinger of doom. “We see this fractured ecosystem,” McCovey said. “We see the river suffering, and you see fish runs plummeting. When we start seeing all of this stuff, it sets off alarm bells inside of us because we’re having this fight or flight instinct. We know that this is a threat to our livelihood.” As is in nature, everything is interconnected. “Without a restored ecosystem, nobody gets anything,” Gosnell said. “Nobody wins.” But, she said, restoration is only part of the solution. The physical challenges can’t be overcome without addressing the human ones. Part of that, Gosnell said, is returning land to the tribes. The recent $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill provides $160 million for Fish and Wildlife to fund efforts over five years to protect and restore the habitats of the Lost River sucker and shortnose sucker as well as salmon in the Klamath River. While relief and restoration efforts have long punctuated the Klamath conflict, no single investment of this scale has been made before. Despite the suffering and the tensions this year, some remain optimistic the people of the basin can find common cause and new solutions. ""Farming is a profession of hope,” Hill said, “if the sun’s going to shine and the rain’s going to come, crops are going to grow.” Gentry agreed. “You know, unfortunately, sometimes out of turmoil and struggle, good things can happen,” he said, “I’ve noticed that my own life, you know ... it’s amazing what we can survive through. And so to me, I see opportunity for a better future.” Andrew Van Dam and Ted Mellnik contributed to this report. Design and development by Jake Crump. Editing by Ann Gerhart, Tim Meko, Whitney Shefte, Matthew Callahan and Olivier Laurent. Copy editing by Allison Cho. Sources: Chrysten Rivard/Trout Unlimited; hydrography and gage data from U.S. Geological Survey; Klamath Basin Hydrology Report/Oregon Water Resources Department; Canal A discharge data from U.S. Bureau of Reclamation; 12-month precipitation percentile data from WestWide Drought Tracker; wildfire perimeter data from National Interagency Fire Center; habitat data from the Klamath Basin Integrated Fisheries Restoration and Monitoring Plan (IFRMP), United States Fish and Wildlife Service and Klamath Basin Birding Trail."
+"How much warming can the world bear? That question is one of the fundamental issues in dispute at the ongoing U.N. climate change summit, known as COP26, in Glasgow, Scotland. Here’s what different levels of warming would look like, and how global temperature targets have been set. Six years ago, when countries came together in Paris for the COP21 summit, at which the Paris climate accord was shaped, they committed to limit the global average temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels. However, while the 2015 agreement set 2C as the minimum, it included language that suggested countries should push for a more ambitious goal: 1.5C. A preliminary draft of the COP26 agreement released Wednesday “reaffirms” the Paris agreement’s goal: limiting warming to well below 2C and pursuing a target of 1.5C. But it does not commit to meeting the 1.5C threshold. The difference between the two targets may seem small, but they represent vastly different levels of effort for countries seeking to limit their carbon footprints, and strikingly divergent outcomes for the planet. Some experts doubt that 1.5C remains achievable. Limiting warming to 1.5C “will be very difficult,” Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates told U.K. lawmaker Jeremy Hunt in a conversation hosted by the think tank Policy Exchange last week. Evidence shows that the two targets also represent different scenarios for the climate’s impact on human life. A study released Tuesday by the U.K. Met Office, Britain’s national weather service, found that 1 billion people could face heat stress, a potentially fatal combination of heat and humidity, if temperatures rise by 2C. “The higher the level of warming, the more severe and widespread the risks to people’s lives, but it is still possible to avoid these higher risks if we act now,” said Richard Betts, one of the leaders of the project."
+"Nearly 1 in 3 Americans live in a county hit by a weather disaster in the past three months, according to a new Washington Post analysis of federal disaster declarations. On top of that, 64 percent live in places that experienced a multiday heat wave — phenomena that are not officially deemed disasters but are considered the most dangerous form of extreme weather. The expanding reach of climate-fueled disasters, a trend that has been increasing at least since 2018, shows the extent to which a warming planet has already transformed Americans’ lives. At least 388 people in the United States have died due to hurricanes, floods, heat waves and wildfires since June, according to media reports and government records. Record-shattering temperatures in the Pacific Northwest cooked hundreds of people to death in their own homes. Flash floods turned basement apartments into death traps and in one instance ripped twin babies from their father’s arms. Wildfires raged through 5 million acres of tinder-dry forest. Chronic drought pushed federal officials to impose mandatory cuts to Colorado River water for the first time. Americans’ growing sense of vulnerability is palpable. Craig Fugate, former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Florida’s Emergency Management Division, has never known a summer as packed with crises as this one. The question, he wonders, is whether this calamitous season will mark a turning point in public opinion that finally forces political leaders to act. “If not,” Fugate asked, “what will it take?” Even seasoned survivors say that recent disasters are the worst they’ve ever experienced. People who never considered themselves at risk from climate change are suddenly waking up to floodwaters outside their windows and smoke in their skies, wondering if anywhere is safe. The true test of this summer’s significance will be in whether the United States can meaningfully curb its planet-warming emissions — and fast. The nation’s most ambitious plan to address climate change and adapt to its impacts — Democrats’ $3.5 trillion budget bill — is now in jeopardy after Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) called for a “strategic pause” on the legislation Thursday, citing concern over the price tag. The proposal to institute renewable energy requirements for power companies, impose import fees on polluters and provide generous support for electric vehicles cannot pass without Manchin’s vote. Yet time is one thing the world lacks. The planet has already warmed more than 1.1 degrees Celsius (roughly 2 degrees Fahrenheit) since the start of the industrial era. The United States has contributed more to that warming than any other country in history; a quarter of all carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere since 1850 has come from Americans burning fossil fuels. Humanity must roughly halve emissions by the end of the decade to have a chance of avoiding the worst effects of warming, according to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The climate will not stabilize unless greenhouse gas emissions cease. Until then, the scientists warn, we commit ourselves to an even hotter and more disastrous future with each ton of carbon we unleash. ‘Something’s amiss’ Extreme weather has always been a “game of chance,” said earth scientist Claudia Tebaldi. People have long weighed the risk of storm surge against a view of the ocean, bet against the threat of fire by building homes nestled in the trees. But climate change has loaded the dice for disaster. Studies show the chance of a given tropical storm becoming a hurricane that is Category 3 or greater has grown 8 percent every decade since 1979. The area of the West burned by wildfire is twice what it would be without human influence. For every degree Celsius of warming, the atmosphere is able to hold 7 percent more moisture, leading to exponential increases in rainfall. Scientists say the Pacific Northwest heat wave, which killed more than 200 people in June, was “virtually impossible” in a world without climate change. “What we are doing with global warming is making ourselves play a game that is rigged more and more against us because of our own actions,” said Tebaldi, a researcher at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and a lead author of the IPCC’s latest climate report. As extreme weather events become more frequent and intense, that report cautioned, they are more likely to coincide — creating “compound catastrophes” that are still more dangerous than each disaster would be on its own. Experts pointed to the deadly deluges in the Northeast this week. The region had already experienced a historically wet August, which left waterways close to overtopping and the ground so saturated it couldn’t absorb any more rain. By the time Hurricane Ida’s remnants plowed through, dropping record amounts of rain in a matter of hours, flash flooding was inevitable. Seven rivers saw record-breaking floods, according to Dartmouth hydrologist Evan Dethier, at a time when waterways usually record their lowest flows of the year. Similarly, the intense heat Louisiana has experienced in Ida’s wake has compounded the storm’s damage. Nearly a week after the storm made landfall, New Orleans has begun evacuating residents to save them from the sweltering conditions. The 100-degree heat index would be easier to withstand if so many people hadn’t lost power during the storm, experts said. And the toll of the hurricane would be less catastrophic if it wasn’t followed by temperatures that could kill. Using advanced computer models, scientists can calculate the degree to which climate change made a given disaster more likely. This type of research, known as “attribution science,” has revealed how warming boosted Hurricane Harvey’s rainfall by at least 15 percent in 2017 and how a 2020 heat wave that blasted Siberia was almost impossible in a world not altered by humans. For its analysis of exposure to disasters, The Post considered FEMA-declared severe storms, fires, hurricanes, coastal storms and floods — events that scientists have found are made more frequent or severe by climate change. Though most of those events were not subject to an attribution analysis, experts increasingly say the fact that these extremes are unfolding in a hotter world makes them, inevitably, climate disasters. As Texas Tech researcher and Nature Conservancy chief scientist Katharine Hayhoe put it on Twitter: “The question today is not … how could climate change affect this event — but rather how could it NOT, as it is occurring over the massively altered background conditions of our 1.1C warmer planet.” Things certainly felt worse to Margie Smith as she waited in line for water outside a city-run food assistance center in New Orleans’s West Bank. The lifelong Southerner is used to hurricanes, used to people measuring their lives in the number of storms they’ve witnessed, used to people saying nothing could ever be as bad as Katrina. But now, on her fifth day without electricity, surrounded by broken telephone poles and splintered trees, she’s not so sure. The storms seem stronger. The summer heat lasts longer. The normally mild winters have been shattered by ice storms and wild temperature swings. Smith is no expert, she insisted. “But it feels like something’s amiss.” Surveys show that concern about climate change has been steadily rising among Americans for the past decade. In a 2019 poll from The Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation, 63 percent of people who said their area had been affected by severe storms, droughts or extremely hot days identified climate change as a “major factor.” A slightly smaller fraction, 54 percent, viewed climate change as a major contributor to wildfires in their area. Mariana Arcaya, a social epidemiologist and urban planner at MIT, has noticed an uptick in confessions of outrage, grief and fear from people in her life. Friends have reached out to ask where they should move to “escape” climate risks. And in her research on the health effects of natural disasters, Arcaya is hearing more and more people worry about higher temperatures creating higher utility bills and basement flooding damaging rental homes. “People have rightly been talking about climate change as the emergency that it is for years,” Arcaya said. “And it feels like that sense of urgency is finally spreading to those who, until now, have felt pretty safe.” Yet views of the issue are sharply polarized. This year, a Gallup poll found a record high 82 percent of Democrats said the effects of global warming had already begun, compared with 29 percent of Republicans. In the Post-Kaiser poll, Democrats in the Southeast were more than twice as likely as Republicans to blame climate change for recent severe storms. And even among those who worry about warming, the issue lacks political urgency. When the Pew Research Center asked Americans about President Biden’s policy agenda in January, just 38 percent said climate change should be a top priority. Fourteen other issues, from strengthening the economy to dealing with immigration, ranked higher. Bracing for impact The record-breaking nature of recent disasters has strained infrastructure that wasn’t built to withstand them. Storms have overwhelmed the pumps that remove water from New York City’s subway stations, nearly drowning people who were trapped underground. Temperatures high enough to melt streetcar cables forced Portland’s transit agency to suspend service during the heat wave, making it harder for vulnerable residents to reach cooling centers. Preparations for Hurricane Ida were hampered by its rapid intensification, a trademark of climate change-driven storms. Officials had just 76 hours between when a tropical depression was identified in the Caribbean and the minute Ida made landfall — not enough time to change the flow of traffic on highways to enable a full evacuation. And the breathless pace of emergencies has pushed the nation’s first responders to the breaking point. A U.S. Forest Service firefighter said he’s been working for five straight months, struggling to contain blazes that move faster than any he’s ever seen. His crew is so tired he’s had to ask members to stay home from assignments. As much as they are needed to help battle the 84 large fires currently burning across the country, their fatigue makes them a hazard. But there is no one to replace them. Since mid-July, the National Interagency Fire Center has set the nation’s preparedness level at 5 — the highest possible rating, which indicates the country is at risk of exhausting its firefighting resources. The firefighter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of losing his job, said hundreds of requests for help from incident commanders have gone unfilled. “We’re so on our heels, we’re so burnt out, we’re so understaffed,” he said. Trevor Riggen, the head of the American Red Cross’s domestic disaster program, said the agency is “testing the limits” of its network. This week alone, more than 2,000 staff and volunteers have deployed across 10 states. Many of them are on their second or third crisis of the summer. “It’s no longer, ‘We have a big event and then there’s time to recover,’” Riggen said. “Disaster has become a chronic condition.” But the extent of damage wrought by climate change will be determined by how the nation plans for it, and how the communities rebuild. Almost half of public roadways are currently in poor or mediocre condition, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers — making events like the deadly collapse of a Mississippi highway during Hurricane Ida more likely. The location and condition of some 10,000 miles of levees in the United States are unknown. Chronically underfunded storm water systems are unable to cope with record rainfall. Many electric utilities have not taken steps to ensure the grid keeps functioning amid worsening hurricanes and wildfires. Communities need to start preparing for the unprecedented, Fugate said. Coastal cities should develop alternative evacuation plans to avoid getting caught off-guard by rapidly intensifying storms — for example, building comfortable, well-equipped shelters for people who don’t have time to flee. Levees and storm-water systems must be built to withstand floods that would have been impossible in a cooler world. Amid unstoppable wildfires, homes at the edge of forests can be made safer with flameproof building materials. Social systems are also in need of repair, said Arcaya. During heat waves, early warning systems and check-ins from neighbors have been proved to save hundreds of lives. After hurricanes, research shows, people with strong connections to their neighbors experience less trauma and are better able to get back on their feet. The country will need a robust support system to help thousands of displaced people navigate the bureaucracy required to obtain federal assistance, Arcaya said. And since disasters often destroy affordable housing, the nation will need to invest in building more places for people to live. These changes will be expensive, Fugate acknowledged. But the cost of responding to disasters already totals more than $81 billion per year. “It’s a choice between spending now or spending more in the future.” Beyond adaptation However no amount of investment in infrastructure will be enough, experts say, if people don’t stop the world from warming. Under the worst-case scenarios for climate change, average temperatures in much of the country are projected to be between 6 and 8 degrees Fahrenheit higher by the end of the century. More than 60,000 additional people may be killed per year by extreme heat by 2050. Hurricanes that gain 70 miles per hour of wind speed in half a day could happen every few years by the end of the century. Most people will not be able to keep up with such a rapid pace of change, Tebaldi said. And the most vulnerable citizens will inevitably suffer the most. Low-income people won’t be able to afford insurance or home repairs. On Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency released findings that people of color are disproportionately likely to live in communities hit by flooding, extreme heat and other climate impacts in a warming world. “If we want to limit these probabilities, if we want to limit the damages, then we should start to do something for real about mitigating,” Tebaldi said. “And we need to start now.” Holly Bailey and Scott Clement contributed to this report."
+"Human-caused warming has led to an “almost complete loss of stability” in the system that drives Atlantic Ocean currents, a new study has found — raising the worrying prospect that this critical aquatic “conveyor belt” could be close to collapse. In recent years, scientists have warned about a weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which transports warm, salty water from the tropics to northern Europe and then sends colder water back south along the ocean floor. Researchers who study ancient climate change have also uncovered evidence that the AMOC can turn off abruptly, causing wild temperature swings and other dramatic shifts in global weather systems. Scientists haven’t directly observed the AMOC slowing down. But the new analysis, published Thursday in the journal Nature Climate Change, draws on more than a century of ocean temperature and salinity data to show significant changes in eight indirect measures of the circulation’s strength. These indicators suggest that the AMOC is running out of steam, making it more susceptible to disruptions that might knock it out of equilibrium, said study author Niklas Boers, a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. If the circulation shuts down, it could bring extreme cold to Europe and parts of North America, raise sea levels along the U.S. East Coast and disrupt seasonal monsoons that provide water to much of the world. “This is an increase in understanding … of how close to a tipping point the AMOC might already be,” said Levke Caesar, a climate physicist at Maynooth University who was not involved in the study. Boers’s analysis doesn’t suggest exactly when the switch might happen. But “the mere possibility that the AMOC tipping point is close should be motivation enough for us to take countermeasures,” Caesar said. “The consequences of a collapse would likely be far-reaching.” The AMOC is the product of a gigantic, ocean-wide balancing act. It starts in the tropics, where high temperatures not only warm up the seawater but also increase its proportion of salt by boosting evaporation. This warm, salty water flows northeast from the U.S. coastline toward Europe — creating the current we know as the Gulf Stream. But as the current gains latitude it cools, adding density to waters already laden with salt. By the time it hits Greenland, it is dense enough to sink deep beneath the surface. It pushes other submerged water south toward Antarctica, where it mixes with other ocean currents as part of a global system known as the “thermohaline circulation.” This circulation is at the heart of Earth’s climate system, playing a critical role in redistributing heat and regulating weather patterns around the world. As long as the necessary temperature and salinity gradients exist, AMOC is self-sustaining, Boers explained. The predictable physics that make dense water sink and lighter water “upwell” keep the circulation churning in an endless loop. But climate change has shifted the balance. Higher temperatures make ocean waters warmer and lighter. An influx of freshwater from melting ice sheets and glaciers dilutes North Atlantic’s saltiness, reducing its density. If these waters aren’t heavy enough to sink, the entire AMOC will shut down. It’s happened before. Studies suggest that toward the end of the last ice age, a massive glacial lake burst through a declining North American ice sheet. The flood of freshwater spilled into the Atlantic, halting the AMOC and plunging much of the Northern Hemisphere — especially Europe — into deep cold. Gas bubbles trapped in polar ice indicate the cold spell lasted 1,000 years. Analyses of plant fossils and ancient artifacts suggest that the climate shift transformed ecosystems and threw human societies into upheaval. “The phenomenon is intrinsically bi-stable,” Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution President Peter de Menocal said of the AMOC. “It’s either on or it’s off.” But is it about to turn off now? “That’s the core question we’re all concerned about,” said de Menocal, who was not involved in Boers’s research. In its 2019 “Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate,” the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projected that the AMOC would weaken during this century, but total collapse within the next 300 years was only likely under the worst-case warming scenarios. The new analysis suggests “the critical threshold is most likely much closer than we would have expected,” Boers said. The “restoring forces,” or feedback loops, that keep the AMOC churning are in decline, he said. All the indicators analyzed in his study — including sea surface temperature and salt concentrations — have become increasingly variable. It’s as though the AMOC is a patient newly arrived in the emergency room, and Boers has provided scientists with an assessment of its vital signs, de Menocal said. “All the signs are consistent with the patient having a real mortal problem.” Physical oceanographers like him are also trying to confirm the AMOC slowdown through direct observations. But the AMOC is so big and complex that it will probably take years of careful monitoring and data collection before a definitive measurement is possible. “Yet everyone also realizes the jeopardy of waiting for that proof,” de Menocal said. After all, there are plenty of other indications that Earth’s climate is in unprecedented territory. This summer, the Pacific Northwest was blasted by a heat wave scientists say was “virtually impossible” without human-caused warming. China, Germany, Belgium, Uganda and India have all experienced massive, deadly floods. Wildfires are raging from California to Turkey to the frozen forests of Siberia. The world is more than 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than it was before humans started burning fossil fuels, and it’s getting hotter all the time. And the apparent consequences of the AMOC slowing are already being felt. A persistent “cold blob” in the ocean south of Greenland is thought to result from less warm water reaching that region. The lagging Gulf Stream has caused exceptionally high sea level rise along the U.S. East Coast. Key fisheries have been upended by the rapid temperature swings, and beloved species are struggling to cope with the changes. If the AMOC does completely shut down, the change would be irreversible in human lifetimes, Boers said. The “bi-stable” nature of the phenomenon means it will find new equilibrium in its “off” state. Turning it back on would require a shift in the climate far greater than the changes that triggered the shutdown. “It’s one of those events that should not happen, and we should try all that we can to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible,” Boers said. “This is a system we don’t want to mess with.” Brady Dennis contributed to this report."
+"It’s the world’s most important climate goal: limiting the Earth’s warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit). It’s the aspiration of global agreements, and to inhabitants of some small island nations, the marker of whether their homes will continue to exist. Keeping warming this low will help save the world’s coral reefs, preserve the Arctic’s protective sea ice layer and could avoid further destabilizing Antarctica and Greenland, staving off dramatic sea level rise. But with the world having already warmed by more than 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial temperatures, achieving the goal is in grave doubt. To see what hope remains, The Washington Post examined over 1,200 different scenarios for climate change over the coming century, based on the models produced by the world’s leading climate scientists and considered in a key 2022 report of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Working with experts from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, we explored the  central features of these scenarios — how fast the world embraces clean energy, how quickly we can remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere — and looked at how these in turn affect the planet’s temperature over the course of the century. The results, as you will see, show a world that keeps inching closer to catastrophic climate change. But they also point a way toward a less hot future. The scenarios help show us what needs to be done — and what we can still do. Each of these thin strands is based on sophisticated computer simulations that calculate how fast the economy and the population will grow, how quickly climate technology will advance, how rapidly we will cut our use of fossil fuels and then on top of that, the temperatures expected to result. But when we look at those scenarios that have the temperature closing out the century below 1.5C, there is a big problem. With their dramatic plunges in greenhouse gas emissions levels by 2025 — just three years away — some of the  scenarios, which were finalized in 2021 at the latest,  increasingly conflict with reality. After all, the world just saw emissions rise in 2022. So we first filtered these  out, based on a formula provided by the Potsdam Institute researchers. The researchers also added a few other rules to prevent very unlikely   near-term developments, like massive deployments of nuclear power  by 2030. There are two different kinds of scenarios that leave the planet, in the year 2100, below 1.5C of warming. One involves a “high overshoot,” but spending decades above 1.5C in such a world is an unsettling prospect. It raises the possibility, for instance, of the world experiencing dangerous tipping points and even calamities such as the irreversible loss of the West Antarctic ice sheet. So it is worth focusing on those 26 scenarios that allow for only a “low” overshoot (or none at all). Many of these scenarios require the world, by mid-century, to go well beyond the popular “net zero” goal for fossil fuel emissions. Rather, the world will have to be removing more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than it is putting in — “net negative.” And that will require the wide-scale deployment of nascent “carbon capture” technologies to remove what is already present, storing it underground, and likely also massive reforestation or other efforts to store carbon in the land itself. To assess how realistic these scenarios are, The Post used a method developed by the Potsdam Institute researchers and their international colleagues to filter scenarios based on the kinds of future developments they anticipate and the speed of progress they show happening. On five criteria, these scenarios are rated as “speculative,” “challenging” or “reasonable,” in order of increasing plausibility. In judging where to draw the lines, the scientists reviewed existing studies on topics such as energy transitions and carbon removal technologies, and applied their expert judgment to define the thresholds. They also had to remove a small number of scenarios that did not have enough information to be analyzed by these methods (about 10 percent of the total). Reasonable, challenging or speculative? Potsdam Institute researchers rated 1.5°C scenarios as speculative, challenging, or reasonable on these five dimensions, based on progress by 2050: 1. Carbon dioxide removal and storage underground 2. Carbon dioxide removal using land 3. Carbon intensity reductions 4. Changing energy demand 5. Fewer methane emissions As we begin to apply these filters, we see how the paths to meeting 1.5C narrow. Let’s consider “reasonable” expectations for the world’s ability to remove carbon dioxide from the air and store it underground ��� which in many ways is the biggest variable affecting whether the world can still hold warming below 1.5C without a major overshoot. Then we’ll require scenarios to be “reasonable” on the four other dimensions too. CO₂ removal (technology) speculative CO₂ removal (land) speculative Carbon intensity speculative Energy demand speculative Less methane speculative What the results suggest is that the world has probably run out of easy options to stay under 1.5C — or have a low overshoot. So that leaves two sets of other scenarios to consider, if the world wants to end the century below 1.5C somehow. First, if we still want to stay on a “low overshoot” path, we can consider what the Potsdam Institute researchers consider “challenging” scenarios, rather than “reasonable” ones. These scenarios assume the world will make even speedier progress on clean energy and carbon removal from the atmosphere. CO₂ removal (technology) Reasonable Challenging Speculative CO₂ removal (land) Reasonable Challenging Speculative Carbon intensity Reasonable Challenging Speculative Energy demand Reasonable Challenging Speculative Less methane Reasonable Challenging Speculative What makes these scenarios work? One common theme is much more dramatic carbon removal from the atmosphere, storing it either underground or in forests and agricultural landscapes. The majority  of these scenarios require us to be able to subtract over 7 billion tons per year from the atmosphere by 2050. This will require a huge scale up of interventions like carbon capture and storage, which only has an estimated capacity of about 43 million tons per year today. Capacity has roughly doubled in the past decade, but a far faster pace of change would be needed to achieve this outcome. Some scenarios also require dramatic transformations of energy use thanks to a combination of renewables and vastly expanded energy efficiency. Many require the carbon intensity of energy use — how much CO2 is emitted per unit of energy consumed — to decrease by over 80 percent by 2050. This would require total or a near total phaseout of fossil fuels, widespread electrification of the world’s energy systems and major fuel shifts in transportation to electric vehicles or the use of other fuels such as hydrogen or biofuels, among other innovations. Lila Warszawski, lead author of the Potsdam Institute study, and her colleagues argue that there is no one technology or solution that can be relied on to save the 1.5C goal. “It’s hard, and you can’t put all your eggs in one basket,” Warszawski said. “It’s hard but, you still want to go for it.” The other choice is to accept a fallback world in which the temperature significantly overshoots 1.5C during the century. With temperatures expected to be between 1.6 and 1.8C above preindustrial levels through the 2040s, 2050s and 2060s in most of these scenarios, that would raise the odds of unexpected climate catastrophes. But 16 scenarios  allow for such a “high overshoot” and are considered “reasonable” by the Potsdam Institute experts on the five dimensions above. CO₂ removal (technology) Reasonable Challenging Speculative CO₂ removal (land) Reasonable Challenging Speculative Carbon intensity Reasonable Challenging Speculative Energy demand Reasonable Challenging Speculative Less methane Reasonable Challenging Speculative How do these scenarios work? They still use carbon dioxide removal and storage, but at lower amounts — a few billion tons per year in coming decades from all sources. That’s out to the year 2050 — but to drive temperatures back down again in the second half of the century, the need for these interventions can be extremely large. “Post 2050, these scenarios are really challenging because they require a very large amount of carbon dioxide removal to return temperature to below 1.5 degrees after a high overshoot,” said Elmar Kriegler, also a researcher at the Potsdam Institute and a leader of the analysis. All these scenarios require a major takeover by renewable energy, such that the carbon intensity of powering our lives goes down by 64 to nearly 74 percent by 2050. But that is not as dramatic as the “challenging” scenarios that accomplish a low overshoot. The world’s demand for energy overall still grows in the “high overshoot” scenarios, but by a wide range, between 2 and 18 percent. Not everybody will agree with these models — or, the cutoffs imposed by the Potsdam Institute researchers. Some experts are more optimistic about technology and humanity’s ability to innovate. Others point out that it is easy to imagine countries failing to achieve what is necessary to stay below 2C at all. In the end, these are simply well-informed models of how the world will work. What’s more, we still have a limited understanding of how the climate system will respond to emissions. At the U.N. Climate Change Conference late last month, world leaders reaffirmed the 1.5C goal. But these scenarios show that without dramatic action — action the leaders did not commit to taking — it most likely will not be possible. Or at least, not without a major overshoot first. That is where the world is currently heading. About this story Editing by Monica Ulmanu. Copy editing by Dorine Bethea and Angela Mecca. The initial scenarios considered here are the 1,202 emissions pathways for which warming levels could also be evaluated, considered by the IPCC in 2022 in its Sixth Assessment Report, Working Group III. The methods used to filter scenarios based on the five dimensions described above were published by Warszawski, Kriegler, and an international group of colleagues in Environmental Research Letters in 2021. For this article, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research scientists applied the same methodology to the scenarios considered by the IPCC in 2022. Because some scenarios did not contain enough information to be considered,  scientists were able to analyze 207 out of 230 scenarios, or 90 percent, that end the century below 1.5 degrees Celsius. This includes 87 out of 97 scenarios that limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius with  limited or no overshoot. These are the scenarios considered in the charts above. The researchers also imposed an additional screen, requiring that the scenarios not plunge too quickly below 2022 emissions levels by 2025, with 2022 emissions defined as the most recent estimate of fossil CO2 and cement emissions made by the Global Carbon Project. Scenarios were removed if they implied an emissions plunge of over 19 percent below 2022 levels in just 3 years (to less than ~29.65 Gt CO2). The scientists also applied some additional screening from the IPCC report to control for other questionable developments in the near-term future, such as not allowing large amounts of new nuclear power or carbon capture and storage. The emissions and energy data that were used to calculate the five tests were interpolated to annual resolution. In most cases, the data in the database are provided in five-year intervals, extending to 10-year intervals after 2050. Temperature curves shown in the charts above are the result of a climate model that takes the emissions results from Integrated Assessment Models as inputs, and calculates the probable temperatures that will result. The curves depict the median estimate of the resulting warming, which means that there is a 50 percent chance that the actual warming that the planet sees will be lower (or higher) than that value. Scenarios qualify as 1.5C scenarios (with no or a limited overshoot, or returning to 1.5C after a high overshoot) in the IPCC’s categorization if they have   a greater than 50 percent chance of limiting warming to below 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. The original scenario data are provided by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis’s AR6 Scenario Explorer and Database. The full citation is: Edward Byers, Volker Krey, Elmar Kriegler, Keywan Riahi, Roberto Schaeffer, Jarmo Kikstra, Robin Lamboll, Zebedee Nicholls, Marit Sanstad, Chris Smith, Kaj-Ivar van der Wijst, Alaa Al Khourdajie, Franck Lecocq, Joana Portugal-Pereira, Yamina Saheb, Anders Strømann, Harald Winkler, Cornelia Auer, Elina Brutschin, Matthew Gidden, Philip Hackstock, Mathijs Harmsen, Daniel Huppmann, Peter Kolp, Claire Lepault, Jared Lewis, Giacomo Marangoni, Eduardo Müller-Casseres, Ragnhild Skeie, Michaela Werning, Katherine Calvin, Piers Forster, Celine Guivarch, Tomoko Hasegawa, Malte Meinshausen, Glen Peters, Joeri Rogelj, Bjorn Samset, Julia Steinberger, Massimo Tavoni, Detlef van Vuuren. AR6 Scenarios Database hosted by IIASA, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, 2022."
+"As Stephen Strader has watched Hurricane Ian barreling toward Florida’s west coast, he cannot stop thinking about all that lies in its path. “What if Hurricane Ian had occurred in 1950? How many people would be affected?” said Strader, a hazards geographer and professor at Villanova University. “Not nearly as many as now. Our built environment is expanding and growing.” Florida’s allure has been a constant for generations. But recent decades have brought more transplants — and more development — than ever. In few places is that more apparent than along the swath of coastline facing disastrous impacts from Ian, from the Tampa Bay area south to Fort Myers and Naples. From 1970 to 2020, census records show, the Cape Coral-Fort Myers area grew an astounding 623 percent, to more than 760,000 people. Over that same period, the North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton area grew to 283 percent to nearly 834,000 residents. Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater saw growth of more than 187 percent and is now home to more than 3.1 million people. Strader said the population surge in Florida in recent decades — along with the building boom that has accompanied it — has put exponentially more assets and more people in harm’s way. “People want to live near the coasts and live near the beach, but that comes with a cost. Unfortunately, we have to bear the brunt of that risk,” Strader said. “There are more people than ever before in the path of these storms. Plus, a lot of people are going to be experiencing a hurricane for the first time.” Strader and fellow researchers refer to such looming risks as the “expanding bull’s eye” effect — the notion that as more humans populate and build in an area, it creates an ever-larger opportunity for a weather-related disaster to wreak havoc. “Then throw on sea-level rise and climate change on top of that, and you are looking at a multi-headed monster,” Strader said. Cities in Florida are well aware of the risks. The Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council, for instance, has simulated what the damage and recovery might look like from a catastrophic Category 5 hurricane, in hopes of helping local leaders plan for the scenarios that might unfold. But even those efforts have done little to stop the feverish development in the state — a reality that persists in many coastal regions around the country. “Everybody in the room agrees this is a major problem that we still haven’t come to grips with,” said Rob Young, a professor of geology at Western Carolina University and director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines. “This is a national problem. But Florida has been particularly good at putting more things in harm’s way.” Karen Clark’s Boston-based firm, which models the potential impacts of disasters, has estimated that a direct hit on Florida’s coast could cost many billions of dollars in losses, in part because of the population and housing growth that has defined recent decades. But where a storm ultimately comes ashore and how it behaves afterward are key. “Hurricanes are like real estate. The three most important things are location, location, location,” Clark said, adding, “Very slight shifts in the path of this storm could mean that the losses change by a factor. That’s what we are watching.” This much is certain: Almost anywhere Ian could have made landfall is home to far more people and many more assets than only a generation ago. “It’s going to affect more people than ever before,” Strader said. “We really haven’t done much to check this growth … What we are finding out is that is not sustainable.” Naema Ahmed contributed to this report."
+"It was the middle of July and already this summer had become a top contender for the hottest in Texas’s recorded history. In San Antonio, which by July would normally experience about three days of triple-digit heat, there had been three dozen. Houston, Waco and Austin were also seeing temperatures 5 to 8 degrees above normal. The state was roasting and Texans were using a record amount of electricity to stay cool. New calculations suggest that, by the middle of this century, this record-breaking summer in Texas may look normal. Across much of the United States, millions of people are expected to experience extreme temperatures more frequently and for longer periods of time — a threat that will grow as climate change worsens. The new data, released Monday by the nonprofit First Street Foundation, calculates the heat risk facing each property in the contiguous United States over the next 30 years, the length of a typical mortgage, providing some of the most detailed nationwide estimates. It uses heat index, a measure of how hot it feels outside by including temperature and humidity. A Washington Post analysis of the group’s data found that today’s climate conditions have caused an estimated 46 percent of Americans to endure at least three consecutive days of 100-plus degree heat, on average, each year. Over the next 30 years, that will increase to 63 percent of the population. Nowhere is the danger more widespread than in the South, where global warming is expected to deliver an average of 20 extra days of triple-digit heat per year. In some southern states, such as Texas and Florida, residents could see over 70 consecutive days with the heat index topping 100 degrees Fahrenheit. “We’re talking about taking summer, which is already hot, and expanding it for months,” said Jaime González, director of the Houston Healthy Cities program for the Nature Conservancy in Texas. “That’s going to cause all sorts of disruptions to everyday life.” This data comes as more Americans are moving to some of the hottest parts of the United States. For more than a decade, census data has shown Sun Belt states like Arizona, Texas and Florida drawing in new residents, while Northeastern and Midwestern states are not. The larger pattern identified by First Street’s model suggests that people living in the South are likely to face some of the most dramatic changes over the next several decades. A previous analysis found that the southern half of the country also faces the greatest risk of wildfire. First Street’s analysis of property level heat exposure is based on a combination of high-resolution measurements of surface temperature data, tree cover, impervious surfaces — like pavement and asphalt — and proximity to water. It incorporates global climate models from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and it relies on a moderate scenario in which global greenhouse gas emissions peak around 2040 and then slowly decline. If countries act more quickly, or fail to enact climate-friendly policies, the outcome could change. Areas with at least three consecutive days of dangerous heat 2023 2053 (new areas) Midwest Northeast West South Percent of population living in areas exposed to dangerous heat 0% 20 40 60 80 100 2023 2053 West Mountain Ariz., Colo., Idaho, Mont., Nev., N.M., Utah, Wyo. Pacific Calif., Ore., Wash. 0% 20 40 60 80 100 South West South Cent. Ark., La., Okla., Tex. South Atlantic Del., Fla., Ga., Md., N.C., S.C., Va., W.Va. East South Cent. Ala., Ky., Miss., Tenn. 0% 20 40 60 80 100 Midwest West North Cent. Iowa, Kan., Minn., Mo., N.D., Neb., S.D. East North Cent. Ill., Ind., Mich., Ohio, Wis. 0% 20 40 60 80 100 Northeast Middle Atlantic N.J., N.Y., Pa. New England Conn., Mass., Maine, N.H., R.I., Vt. Areas with at least three consecutive days of dangerous heat 2023 2053 (new areas) Midwest Northeast West South Percent of population living in areas exposed to dangerous heat 0% 20 40 60 80 100 2023 2053 West Mountain Ariz., Colo., Idaho, Nev., Mont., N.M., Utah, Wyo. Pacific Calif., Ore., Wash. 0% 20 40 60 80 100 South West South Central Ark., La., Okla., Tex. South Atlantic Del., Fla., Ga., Md., N.C., S.C., Va., W.Va. East South Central Ala., Ky., Miss., Tenn. 0% 20 40 60 80 100 Midwest West North Central Iowa, Kan., Minn., Mo., N.D., Neb., S.D. East North Central Ill., Ind., Mich., Ohio, Wis. 0% 20 40 60 80 100 Northeast Middle Atlantic N.J., N.Y., Pa. New England Conn., Mass., Maine, N.H., R.I., Vt. Midwest Northeast West South Areas with at least three consecutive days of dangerous heat 2023 2053 (new areas) Percent of population living in areas exposed to dangerous heat 0% 20 40 60 80 100 2023 2053 West Mountain Ariz., Colo., Idaho, Mont., Nev., N.M., Utah, Wyo. Pacific Calif., Ore., Wash. 0% 20 40 60 80 100 South West South Central Ark., La., Okla., Tex. South Atlantic Del., Fla., Ga., Md., N.C., S.C., Va., W.Va. East South Central Ala., Ky., Miss., Tenn. 0% 20 40 60 80 100 Midwest West North Central Iowa, Kan., Minn., Mo., N.D., Neb., S.D. East North Central Ill., Ind., Mich., Ohio, Wis. 0% 20 40 60 80 100 Northeast Middle Atlantic N.J., N.Y., Pa. New England Conn., Mass., Maine, N.H., R.I., Vt. The analysis found that Miami-Dade County in Florida will likely suffer the most extreme change. Whereas the county sees about 50 days of a heat index above 100 degrees, it is likely to have 91 broiling days by 2053. “We know we have a heat problem here. This is right in line with what we expect,” said Jane Gilbert, Miami-Dade’s chief heat officer. Unlike the West and the Midwest, which have been scorched this year by extreme heat waves, South Florida has chronic exposure to high heat for months, Gilbert said. This drives up energy costs and endangers outdoor workers, homeless people and those who can’t afford to air-condition their homes all day. The county has designated May 1 through Oct. 31 as an official heat season and launched an awareness campaign targeting neighborhoods with the highest rates of heat-related hospitalization. [Why summer in America is becoming longer, hotter and more dangerous] Gilbert said having property-level heat projections could help county officials make the case for more tree-planting and painted rooftops that reduce the need for air conditioning. “If it’s truly good modeling, it’s extremely valuable to help us develop policies to require cooling,” she said. Florida tops the states that will see the largest increase in days with a heat index over 100 degrees. But residents all along the Gulf Coast and Southeastern Atlantic are also expected to live through more weeks of dangerous heat because of muggy summertime conditions, low elevation and the Gulf of Mexico’s warm waters. Even more severe temperatures are expected to hit a swath of the country stretching from northern Texas and Louisiana to Illinois and Indiana. Though the central United States is not typically thought of as bearing the brunt of summertime heat, First Street’s analysis found that tens of millions more people living in this region are likely to see a heat index above 125 degrees by mid-century. The group calls this area an “extreme heat belt.” Situated between the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains, this part of the country “almost forms a bowl that funnels humidity into the area, which drives up those ‘feels like’ temperatures,” said Jeremy Porter, chief research officer for First Street. Extreme heat belt By mid-century, the number of counties experiencing at least one day with a heat index of 125° will increase from 50 to more than 1,000. Iowa Ind. Ill. Mo. Tenn. Okla. S.C. Ark. Miss. Ga. La. Tex. Days with extremly dangerous heat in 2053 Heat index ≥125°F 1 2 ≥3 day 0 Extreme heat belt By mid-century, the number of counties experiencing at least one day with a heat index of 125° will increase from 50 to more than 1,000. Iowa Ind. Ill. Mo. Tenn. S.C. Okla. Ark. Ga. Miss. Tex. La. Days with extremly dangerous heat in 2053 Heat index ≥125°F 1 2 ≥3 days 0 Extreme heat belt By mid-century, the number of counties experiencing at least one day with a heat index of 125° will increase from 50 to more than 1,000. Days with extremly dangerous heat in 2053 Heat index ≥125°F 1 2 ≥3 days 0 Extreme heat belt By mid-century, the number of counties experiencing at least one day with a heat index of 125° will increase from 50 to more than 1,000. Wis. Chicago Iowa Nebr. Ohio Ind. Ill. Kansas City Calif. Va. Kans. Mo. Ky. N.C. Ariz. Fayetteville Tenn. Memphis Okla. Ark. S.C. Phoenix N.M. Ga. Dallas Miss. La. Tex. Houston Fla. Days with extremely dangerous heat in 2053 Heat index ≥125°F 1 2 ≥3 days 0 According to the National Weather Service, at a heat index of 125 degrees — which the agency classifies as an “extreme danger” day — heat stroke becomes “highly likely.” And although there is no set temperature threshold at which roads, bridges and trains start to fail, or water pipes break, recent examples show that it doesn’t take a 125-degree day to overtax essential infrastructure. [What extreme heat does to the human body] Heat is the top weather-related killer in the United States. But like other effects of climate change, it is felt unevenly. The poor, the elderly, very young children and people with certain chronic medical conditions are most at risk. Treeless city neighborhoods, packed with buildings, parking lots and asphalt roads, absorb and retain more heat than areas with tree-lined streets and parks. Scientists call this the urban heat island effect. Nationwide, this pattern reveals itself in city after city, concentrating heat in majority low-income Black and Latino neighborhoods that were designated as risky investments decades ago. Today, about 64 percent of all Black people in the U.S. experience a dangerous heat wave, defined as more than three consecutive days of a heat index above 100 degrees. But that will increase to 79 percent in 30 years, making a population that is already more vulnerable to heat significantly more exposed. Percent of population affected by dangerous heat, by race 0% 20 40 60 80 100 2023 2053 Black Hispanic White Asian Native American Percent of population affected by dangerous heat, by race 0% 20 40 60 80 100 2023 2053 Black Hispanic White Asian Native American Percent of population affected by dangerous heat, by race 0% 20 40 60 80 100 2023 2053 Black Hispanic White Asian Native American The Post also found that by the middle of this century, 71 percent of the poorest neighborhoods in the country will likely endure severe heat. Extreme heat will also make work more dangerous. Today, there are roughly 3.8 million people who work outdoors and experience at least one severe heat wave. In 30 years, that number will increase nearly 30 percent to 4.9 million. In the Houston neighborhood of Gulfton, the shift to more days of dangerous temperatures and humidity would expose the area’s 45,000 residents — many of them recent immigrants from Afghanistan, Syria, and Central America — to unbearable levels of heat. The neighborhood has one park and few trees. Two years ago, when Houston officials worked with scientists and volunteers to map its heat island effect, they discovered parts of Gulfton were 17 degrees hotter in the afternoon than the coolest neighborhood they measured. González said that until recently, conversations about climate change in Houston were dominated by talk of flooding and sea level rise. The destruction unleashed by Hurricane Harvey in 2017 forced the city to confront the likelihood of intensifying storms. Now, this summer’s record-setting heat is forcing another shift in focus, he said. “We’re getting a little bit of a preview of what it might look like if we don’t take more action,” González said. The 2023 numbers in the analysis reflect the current climate. They are estimates based on 2014-2020 averages, and adjusted to include temperature and humidity projections from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s global climate model ensemble. Population estimates are based on the 2020 5-year American Community Survey census tract data. Regions and divisions were identified by the Census Bureau. Outdoor worker estimates are based on County Business Patterns from 2020 and include the sectors of agriculture, construction, and landscaping services. Editing by Monica Ulmanu."
+"This July, temperatures in London and Hamburg in northern Germany teetered over an edge that seemed unthinkable in previous centuries: 104 degrees (40 Celsius). In large areas of the western and central United States, where temperatures routinely exceed 105 (40.5 Celsius), that may not seem particularly hot. But London and Hamburg are northern, maritime climates, where average July high temperatures are in the mid-70s (23 to 25 Celsius), and they don’t have close counterparts in the Lower 48 states. To translate these records to cities in America, The Washington Post and the nonprofit Climate Central calculated how much warmer the record was relative to extreme high temperatures in London for the month of July. Select a U.S. city London and Hamburg are located near the equivalent latitudes of Calgary and Edmonton in North America and are within 50 miles of the chilly North Sea. They are nothing like relatively arid, landlocked southern cities such as Phoenix, Las Vegas, Dallas and Oklahoma City, where temperatures reached 110 this week. Even Seattle, Green Bay, Wis., and Portland, Maine, have warmer July average highs — around 80 degrees. In smashing their all-time records, temperatures in London and Hamburg soared about 32 degrees (18 Celsius) above average. Simon Lee, an atmospheric scientist at Columbia University, said it was “surreal” watching temperature records fall in Western Europe and Britain. The heat wave “didn’t just break them by little margin like we’ve seen in the past,” he said. “It bulldozed them.” London was one of at least 34 locations in Britain to surpass the U.K.’s previous all-time highest temperature — 101.7 degrees or 38.7 Celsius. The country sweltered under the heat, as the British people and infrastructure are not accustomed to such extremes. Steel rails in London expanded and buckled, while roads in Cambridge softened and bended. People flocked to cool off in public swimming pools or air-conditioned public spaces, as fewer than 5 percent of homes have air conditioning according to government estimates. [Europe is overheating. This climate-friendly AC could help.] The heat is a preview of extreme temperatures to come in the warming climate. The U.K. Met Office found that the country is now 10 times more likely to experience 40 Celsius than in a world untouched by human-caused climate change, emphasizing the need for better climate adaptation in the country. The heat wave swept over the Iberian Peninsula last week, and Madrid matched its highest temperature on record: 105 degrees (40.7 Celsius). The mercury rose even higher in northwestern Spain, surpassing 109 degrees (43 Celsius) to set all-time records in Ourense and Ribadavia. The government advised people to stay indoors and reduce physical activity. In a country where only one-third of homes have air conditioning, some flocked to their air-conditioned workplaces and public spaces. [What extreme heat does to the human body] Temperatures remained warm through the night, and Madrid also experienced its hottest night on record at 79.1 degrees (26.2 Celsius). Elevated nighttime temperatures prevent people from cooling down and can increase heat stress, which can lead to heat exhaustion, strokes and death. In the last week, nearly 900 people in Spain have died of heat-related illnesses. Combined with dry conditions, the extreme heat has also sparked wildfires that have consumed tens of thousands of hectares. Dublin set a new July record at 91.4 degrees (33 Celsius), the country’s highest temperature in the 21st century. Huge crowds cooled down at beaches, and at least one wildfire appeared about 15 miles south of the Irish capital. The heat wave was intense but short-lived, with showers returning to the region this week. Adrián Blanco Ramos and Kasha Patel contributed to this report. The Washington Post and Climate Central calculated how much warmer each city’s record temperature was relative to the 99th percentile July high temperature from 1970 to 2021. Temperature data from London’s Heathrow Airport were used from 1973 to 2021. Temperature data is from the Global Historical Climatology Network."
+"When a wildfire tore through drought-stricken towns near Boulder, Colo., late last year, it reminded Americans that fire risk is changing. It didn’t matter that it was winter. It didn’t matter that many of the more than 1,000 homes and other structures lost sat in suburban subdivisions, not forested enclaves. The old rules no longer applied. A new analysis reveals for the first time that a broad swath of the country, not typically associated with wildfires, is already under threat. Nearly 80 million properties in the United States stand a significant chance of exposure to fire, according to a model built by the nonprofit First Street Foundation. In the next few decades, many people will face greater danger than they do now. A Washington Post analysis of the group’s data found that an estimated 16 percent of the country’s population today lives in hazardous areas. Over the next 30 years, that share will increase to 21 percent. Nearly half of all Americans who live in areas vulnerable to fire will reside in the South, and minorities face a disproportionate risk. Properties with significant wildfire risk 0 20 40 60 80 No significant risk 100% Hover over a Zip code to view details Wildfires are becoming more severe and frequent because of human-caused climate change. Record-breaking heat and drought fueled by increasing greenhouse gas emissions are drying out grasslands and forests and lengthening the fire season. And more people are moving to communities built where wildfires are part of the landscape’s natural ecology. They are building homes right next to vegetation, putting themselves in danger. Up until now, it was difficult to pinpoint how wildfires may put specific locations in peril. Publicly available data on wildfire risk is not detailed enough to show a particular house or commercial building’s exposure. And most people don’t have access to the more precise estimates that insurance companies calculate. Fire Factor, the new model built by the First Street Foundation, aims to fill the gap with a website where people can look up data for their addresses. Overall, First Street’s data covers the contiguous United States, revealing how unevenly fire risk is spread across the country. California has the most at-risk properties because of its large size and Mediterranean climate. But across the Southern half of the country, states including Texas, Florida, Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, North Carolina and South Carolina stand at the forefront of a growing problem. The Post’s analysis of the group’s fire data and population density found that by 2052 the South will be home to the largest number of people with significant fire risk — 32 million residents. Almost half of Americans exposed to fire risk will live in the South by 2052 Midwest South 45.1% in 2022 West 49.4% 48.4% in 2052 44.4% Northeast Almost half of Americans exposed to wildfire risk will live in the South by 2052 Midwest South 45.1% in 2022 West 49.4% 48.4% in 2052 44.4% Northeast Almost half of Americans exposed to fire risk will live in the South by 2052 South 45.1% in 2022 West 49.4% 3.8 1.7 48.4% in 2052 44.4% 5 2.2 Midwest Northeast Among Southern states, Texas is at the top of the list, followed by Florida. That might seem surprising, given Florida’s history of being battered by hurricanes and, more recently, tidal flooding driven by rising seas and intense storms. But it has seasonal fires that begin in early spring, part of a natural cycle that helps cone-bearing trees spread their seeds. Deb Niemeier, a University of Maryland environmental engineering professor who focuses on community resilience and post-disaster recovery, said that just as in the West, climate change is extending the Southeastern coastal region’s traditional fire season through baking temperatures and increasingly severe droughts. “The small things that we could contain in the past may be very big ignitions in the future because you have these other effects,” Niemeier said. Western states bear a larger share of the risk, particularly in the Mountain West. The Post found that about 33 percent of people in Western states today face a significant chance of wildfire exposure. That number will probably grow to about 39 percent by 2052. Midwest Northeast West South Percent of population living in areas with significant wildfire risk, by region: 39.5% in 2052 32.7% of  population at risk in 2022 West Mountain 44.6 53.3 Ariz., Colo., Idaho, Mont., Nev., N.M., Utah, Wyo. Pacific 27.0 32.9 Calif., Ore., Wash. 18.2% in 2022 26.2% in 2052 South West South Central 27.2 39.8 Ark., La., Okla., Tex. South Atlantic 15.4 20.5 Del., Fla., Ga., Md., N.C., S.C., Va., W.Va. East South Central 8.4 16.8 Ala., Ky., Miss., Tenn. 2.8% in 2022 4.9% in 2052 Midwest West North Central 8.2 14.1 Iowa, Kan., Minn., Mo., N.D., Neb., S.D. East North Central <1% in 2022, 2052 Ill., Ind., Mich., Ohio, Wis. 1.5% in 2022 2.7% in 2052 Northeast Middle Atlantic 2.0 3.4 N.J., N.Y., Pa. New England <1% in 2022, 2052 Conn., Mass., Maine,N.H., R.I., Vt. Midwest Northeast West South Percent of population living in areas with significant wildfire risk, by region: 32.7% of population at risk in 2022 39.5% in 2052 West Mountain Ariz., Colo., Idaho, Mont., Nev., N.M., Utah, Wyo. 44.6 53.3 Pacific Calif., Ore., Wash. 27.0 32.9 18.2% in 2022 26.2% in 2052 South West South Central 27.2 39.8 Ark., La., Okla., Tex. South Atlantic Del., Fla., Ga., Md., N.C., S.C., Va., W.Va. 15.4 20.5 East South Central Ala., Ky., Miss., Tenn. 8.4 16.8 2.8% in 2022 4.9% in 2052 Midwest West North Central 8.2 14.1 Iowa, Kan., Minn., Mo., N.D., Neb., S.D. East North Central <1% in 2022, 2052 Ill., Ind., Mich., Ohio, Wis. 1.5% in 2022 2.7% in 2052 Northeast Middle Atlantic N.J., N.Y., Pa. 2.0 3.4 New England <1% in 2022, 2052 Conn., Mass., Maine, N.H., R.I., Vt. Midwest Northeast West South Percent of population living in areas with significant wildfire risk, by region: 32.7% in 2022 39.5% of population at risk in 2052 West Mountain 44.6 Ariz., Colo., Idaho, Mont., Nev., N.M., Utah, Wyo. 53.3 Pacific Calif., Ore., Wash. 27.0 32.9 18.2% in 2022 26.2% in 2052 South West South Central 27.2 Ark., La., Okla., Tex. 39.8 South Atlantic Del., Fla., Ga., Md., N.C., S.C., Va., W.Va. 15.4 20.5 East South Central Ala., Ky., Miss., Tenn. 8.4 16.8 2.8% in 2022 4.9% in 2052 Midwest West North Central Iowa, Kan., Minn., Mo., N.D., Neb., S.D. 8.2 14.1 East North Central <1% in 2022, 2052 Ill., Ind., Mich., Ohio, Wis. 1.5% in 2022 2.7% in 2052 Northeast Middle Atlantic N.J., N.Y., Pa. 2.0 3.4 New England <1% in 2022, 2052 Conn., Mass., Maine, N.H., R.I., Vt. Though President Biden has approved nearly $3.5 billion for communities to prepare for disasters related to extreme weather and climate change, only about 4 percent of all the counties facing fire exposure in this analysis have applied for wildfire mitigation projects. To be eligible for this Federal Emergency Management Agency funding, a county or state must first receive a major disaster declaration. But of the more than 2,000 counties facing fire danger, only about 20 percent have experienced a FEMA-declared fire disaster since 2010. The Post’s analysis of First Street’s data found that wildfire danger appears to disproportionally affect communities of color. By 2052, about 44 percent of all Native Americans will live in areas with significant probability of wildfire. Nearly 1 in every 4 Hispanic people will be living in similar communities. White residents rank third on the list. Estimates show that three decades from now, about 1 in 5 will face significant fire risk. Percent of population living in areas with significant wildfire risk, by race: 42.2% of population at risk in 2022 43.8% in 2052 Native American Hispanic 24.5 26.4 White 19.4 20.5 Asian 16.3 18.2 Black 12.5 13.6 Percent of population living in areas with significant wildfire risk, by race: 42.2% of population at risk in 2022 43.8% in 2052 Native American Hispanic 24.5 26.4 White 19.4 20.5 Asian 16.3 18.2 Black 12.5 13.6 Percent of population living in areas with significant wildfire risk, by race: 42.2% in 2022 43.8% of population at risk in 2052 Native American Hispanic 24.5 26.4 White 19.4 20.5 Asian 16.3 18.2 Black 12.5 13.6 Previous research has found that minority groups are especially vulnerable to damage from wildfires. Language barriers and limited car ownership can make it difficult for them to flee a fast-moving blaze. After a devastating fire, job insecurity and lack of insurance can complicate their recovery. Lilliane Ballesteros, executive director of the Latino Community Fund in Washington, said Latinos in rural or farmworker communities in the central part of the state know what they risk living in a fire-prone area, but they often can’t afford to move. “We work with farmworkers who insist on going back to work when the conditions are dangerous,” Ballesteros said. “They can’t take time off or live elsewhere.” Ballesteros said there is a growing effort by Latino-led community groups to share information about steps residents can take to guard themselves against fire danger. Her organization holds trainings in Spanish, translates official documents and tries to win the trust of people reluctant to have their properties assessed for fire risk because it might lead to citations. “People don’t have the time and resources to even access this information,"" she said. “In some communities, this work requires one-on-one conversations.” The First Street website aims to put this information in the hands of anyone with a computer or a smartphone. Their tool pulls data from a variety of sources, including federal wildfire databases and local information about each property’s age, building material and design, and it will calculate a risk factor for wildfire exposure today and 30 years from now when the effects of climate change worsen. Similar to the foundation’s flood model, its fire analysis will also be available on Realtor.com, putting buyers, sellers and renters on equal footing when it comes to understanding a property’s vulnerabilities. “It’s not just this doom-and-gloom thing. There are great solutions,” said Matthew Eby, First Street’s founder and executive director, in an interview. For each address, the website will show people how much they can reduce their risk by making their homes and properties more fire-resistant. Creating a barrier between structures and flammable vegetation, known as a defensible space, and using fire-proof building materials are proven ways to increase a home’s chances of surviving a fire. People will “be able to understand how the different solutions would impact their vulnerability,” Eby said. “We would hope they would take action.” The Post estimated the population affected by significant fire risk by adjusting the population of census tracts by the percent of properties and parcels with at least a 0.03 percent risk that were provided by the First Street Foundation. At the county level, The Post used summarized data provided by First Street and matched it with data from FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program through 2010. Regions and divisions were identified by the Census Bureau. Editing by Monica Ulmanu and Juliet Eilperin."
+"President Biden seized on climate change as a core priority when he took office, saying days after his inauguration, “We’ve already waited too long to deal with this climate crisis, and we can’t wait any longer.” The new president spent his first year in the White House trying to match his policies to the urgency of his words. His administration has worked aggressively to make that ambitious agenda a reality — even as success has come in fits and starts. Much of Biden’s work involved restoring dozens of environmental protections unraveled by Donald Trump’s deregulatory frenzy, but it also includes dozens of new climate policies. The Washington Post has logged each policy shift of the Biden era, across agencies and industries. If you’ve been following our award-winning tracker over the past year, this quiz will be a piece of cake. Not quite. Shortly after his inauguration, Biden canceled the presidential permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, which aimed to ship tar sands, or heavy bitumen, from Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the Gulf Coast. Barack Obama blocked the cross-border permit during his second term on the grounds that transporting that much heavy crude oil would accelerate climate change. Trump revived the project once he took office by awarding TC Energy the permit, but Biden’s move amounted to the fatal blow. In June 2021, the pipeline’s developer announced it would no longer pursue it. Not quite. In its first year, the Biden administration targeted or overturned roughly three-quarters of the policies of the Trump White House — nearly 170 so far. Among them: Biden rejoined the Paris climate agreement, which the United States left under Trump, and he temporarily halted oil and gas drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Not quite. The Biden administration approved 3,557 permits for oil and gas drilling on public land in its first year, according to an analysis by the Center for Biological Diversity, compared with the Trump administration’s first-year total of 2,658. The majority of them, issued by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management, were on federal land in New Mexico. While Biden paused new federal oil and gas leasing a week after taking office, a federal judge blocked that policy in June 2021. Halting permits on existing leases is harder than temporarily stopping federal oil and gas auctions. A federal judge on Thursday invalidated a major offshore oil and gas lease sale the Biden administration held last fall in the Gulf of Mexico, ruling the government did a flawed analysis of the drilling’s climate change impact. Not quite. Biden officials have so far defended the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision in 2020 to deny designating critical habitat for the rusty patched bumblebee, which the Trump administration initially delayed listing under the Endangered Species Act. The Natural Resources Defense Council and other groups are challenging that decision in federal court, arguing in a recent brief, “Although the rusty patched bumble bee was once common and abundant throughout much of America, the survival of this native pollinator now hangs in the balance.” The bee, which was once prevalent in the Midwest, has experienced an 88 percent population decline in the past two decades. Not quite. Unlike several of Biden’s more controversial climate policies, the single biggest step he has taken to cut greenhouse gas emissions enjoys bipartisan support: a program to cut the production and use of chemicals known as hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, by 85 percent over the next 15 years. The rule, which the Environmental Protection Agency finalized in September, implements a law enacted a year before he took office. These chemical compounds, widely used in refrigeration and air conditioning, are short-lived in the atmosphere but hundreds to thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide. By 2050, federal officials project, the program will cut 4.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent — nearly the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions as three years’ worth of pollution from the U.S. power sector. Not quite. Since his inauguration, Biden has protected 5,827,854 acres, or 9,106 square miles, of public lands and waters — an area nearly the size of New Hampshire. This record — which means Biden has protected more land and water in his first term than his three immediate predecessors — rests largely on the president’s move to reverse Trump’s decision to scale back safeguards for three large national monuments established by Democrats: Utah’s Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, and the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument in the Atlantic Ocean. Biden also established two new marine protected areas: the Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast National Marine Sanctuary, which spans 615,680 acres, and the roughly 52,000-acre National Estuarine Research Reserve in Connecticut, while adding acreage to more than a dozen national wildlife refuges. Not quite. Federal courts have ruled more than half a dozen times since Biden took office that the Trump administration violated the law. This list includes EPA policies limiting what sort of objections tribes and states could make to projects affecting their water quality and one that kept chlorpyrifos, a pesticide linked to neurological damage in fetuses and infants, on the market. A day before Biden took office the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit tossed out Trump’s Affordable Clean Energy rule, which was aimed at easing greenhouse gas limits on power plants. Carrie Jenks, executive director for the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program, said in an email that these rulings have made it easier to scrap some Trump-era rollbacks. “Courts’ decisions over the past year rejecting many of the Trump administration’s rules enabled the Biden administration to focus on replacing policies to be consistent with the administration’s priorities.” Not quite. Not long before he left office, Trump finished dismantling a 2016 EPA rule that required oil and gas companies to detect methane leaks from certain equipment and quickly repair them. In a bipartisan vote last year, Congress voted to restore the Obama-era rule. Biden signed the Congressional Review Act resolution, wiping Trump’s rollback off the books. Not quite. Biden would like to enshrine all of the policies above. But in 2021, he used his executive authority to mandate that the U.S. government devise a plan to turn its sprawling fleet of nearly 650,000 vehicles green over time. Congress holds the power to tax and spend, and it sets the boundaries of what agencies can regulate, and so the other items on this list would require a blessing from Capitol Hill. Not quite. Trump flip-flopped multiple times on the question of importing elephant trophies from overseas, first lifting an Obama ban before suggesting he might block them because he considered hunting elephants a “horror show.” But his administration made these imports legal, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service settled a lawsuit with hunting groups last year to begin processing import permits again."
+"England is set to announce a ban this week on many single-use plastic items, the latest effort in a growing global move to reduce the proliferation of the hard-to-recycle material. The plan would ban single-use plastic plates, cutlery and other items in restaurants across England, expanding an existing ban on straws, stirrers and other small plastic items. It would add to the rapidly lengthening list of countries that are taking steps to reduce plastic pollution through outright restrictions, amid concerns that without drastic action, the amount of plastic flowing into the world’s oceans will continue to grow exponentially. The British government’s proposal follows a trend to expand the list of plastic no-no items from bags — which were banned or restricted in many places years ago — to more of the bulkier objects that pile up in landfills and rivers, lakes and oceans. Only 10 percent of plastic plates and cutlery are recycled in England, according to British government figures. “This new ban will have a huge impact to stop the pollution of billions of pieces of plastic and help to protect the natural environment for future generations,” British Environment Secretary Thérèse Coffey told the Daily Mail on Sunday, where she previewed her plans. A formal proposal is expected on Saturday, according to a spokesman for the U.K. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The British Parliament would need to approve the measure, and it would go into effect in the fall. A 2018 report commissioned by the British government estimated that England goes through about 1.1 billion disposable plates every year, the vast majority of which are made of plastic. The 27-nation European Union imposed a ban on many single-use plastic items starting in 2021. India, the world’s second-most populous nation, banned plastic cutlery, straws and other items last year, as did Chile. Inside the United Kingdom, England’s move would follow Scotland and Wales, which have already imposed similar restrictions. The effort would not affect single-use plastics at grocery stores, and campaigners criticized the proposal for not going far enough. “We’re dealing with a plastic flood, and this is like reaching for a mop instead of turning off the tap,” said Megan Randles, political campaigner for Greenpeace U.K., in a statement. “We need the government to deliver a meaningful plastic reduction strategy, which means bringing in plastic reduction targets and a proper reuse and refill scheme,” she said. Environmental policymakers from around the world have embarked on a U.N.-backed effort to create an international treaty to combat plastic pollution, a process they hope to complete by the end of next year. They are still discussing whether to simply take steps that would make plastic easier to recycle, potentially by regulating the chemicals that go into its production, or whether they should engage in more drastic efforts such as imposing outright production caps. The U.N. Environment Program says a garbage truck of plastic is dumped into the world’s oceans every minute. Absent global action, the program said the amount of plastic entering the world’s waterways could triple by 2040."
+"To our readers: Our world is undergoing a transformation. Global warming has pushed the planet into unprecedented territory, ravaging ecosystems, raising sea levels and exposing millions of people to new weather extremes. In the past year alone, catastrophic events such as fires, floods and heat domes have swept the globe, bringing the effects of climate change sharply into focus. Yet there are people and organizations around the world confronting these challenges and offering hope for the future. The Washington Post’s Climate Solutions site is a destination that aims to spotlight their work — while also empowering readers to understand how they can make a difference as individuals and within their own communities. Launched in 2019 with the support of Rolex, the initiative tells the stories of innovators and innovations through every form of journalism we know, from rich narratives to arresting visuals. Our Climate Visionaries series profiled a biologist using plants to save the planet; a three-star general pushing militaries to go green; and an Indigenous chief leading his First Nation’s fight against climate change. We’ve taken readers on Pakistan’s mission to plant 10 billion trees and into Virginia’s efforts to transform abandoned coal mines into solar farms. We’ve shadowed farmers developing environmentally friendly grains, sharing a recipe for sustainable sourdough along the way. And as scientists have released reports detailing the planet’s perilous current path, we’ve explained how the world can still halt climate change and why it’s important to not give into climate despair. From hydrogen fuel to desalination, our reporters have worked to demystify some of the most important debates over how to cut greenhouse gas emissions and cope with global warming’s impact. And as we face the effects of climate change in our own lives, Climate Solutions has provided practical guidance on steps that people can take to prepare themselves and protect our planet. Should you ditch your traditional lawn? Is it time to purchase an EV? Is your home prepared for wildfires? And could your pets curb their own carbon footprint? As The Post embarks on a major expansion to cover climate and its impact on humanity through revelatory reporting, Climate Solutions can offer encouragement in a time of daunting environmental challenges. We welcome your comments and suggestions. Please send them to climate@washpost.com."
+"The thrum of idling  engines is the background noise of U.S. military deployments around the world, as soldiers draw power from their vehicles for communications and other necessities, even when they are sitting still. If Pentagon planners have their way, the military could soon become a lot quieter and more fuel-efficient: They are pushing to add anti-idling technology to their next-generation workhorse vehicle, the partial replacement for the Humvee. The technology, which would turn the engine off when the vehicle is sitting still, would cut its fuel consumption by 20 percent overall. Any switch could have a big climate impact: With its big fleet and worldwide presence, the Department of Defense accounts for more than half of the federal government’s carbon footprint. And saving on the fuel also cuts the need to truck it  through hostile areas, an extra benefit for leaders scarred by years of attacks on fuel convoys in Afghanistan and Iraq. “The warfighter purpose and the view of climate as a national security challenge are fully aligned in cases like this,” Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks said after a tour in the Pentagon courtyard of an exhibition of climate-friendly technology, including prototypes of vehicles with anti-idling technology. The vehicles — painted the sandy tan color of a military that spent the past two decades fighting desert wars — were silent, but their radios were on and their air conditioning was whirring, a necessity for soldiers who are keeping watch in hot places. Turning the engine off automatically when a truck isn’t on the move might seem a basic step — one that many auto companies incorporated years ago. But the Pentagon sometimes makes changes slowly, partly because of the extreme demands that the military places on its equipment. “We have to operate in extremely high temperatures in the desert down to the Arctic,” Timothy Goddette, one of the U.S. Army’s top officials charged with acquisitions, told a House hearing in 2021. “And then as we wrap them into armor and integrate them into very tight systems, how do we keep them cool, how do we ensure that those electronics also work in very high temperatures?” The anti-idling system is not complicated. The vehicle gets extra lithium-ion batteries, just a little bigger than those used in regular cars. And it gets some extra equipment to automatically flip the engine back on whenever the spare power needs an extra boost. That means the vehicle briefly rumbles back to life every few minutes. In the meantime, soldiers can use their radios and other communication devices, along with air conditioning or heating, without idling the engine nonstop. The Defense Department eventually wants to electrify more and more of its fleet, including all of its noncombat vehicles. The National Defense Authorization Act that was passed in Congress last month for the first time imposes a requirement to do so, by 2035. The Humvee replacement, known as the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, or JLTV, doesn’t fall under the requirement, but the efforts to improve its fuel efficiency could still have a big impact. The military expects eventually to use more than 60,000 of them, so simple changes that can cut fuel use by a fifth would be significant. The same technology eventually could spread more widely. “If you look at each vehicle, maybe that’s not a lot of fuel, but when you look across the deployed force, that can be really significant,” said Joe Bryan, the chief sustainability officer of the Defense Department. Only a single prototype JLTV with the anti-idling technology has been built so far, but the Pentagon has said it hopes to incorporate it into a new round of 16,000 vehicles for which it will award a contract early this year. It is also considering retrofitting existing vehicles at a cost of $50,000 each, said Michael Sprang, who heads the Pentagon office overseeing the JLTV’s design. The conversion kit weighs about 190 pounds. The efforts haven’t been met with universal acclaim. Some Republican lawmakers in Congress warn that electrifying the military will lead to a deepened dependence on China for battery supplies, at least for now. “So much of what we use and what goes into the batteries ... is coming from our adversaries,” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) told Defense News. “So, just like the movement to manufacture chips in the United States, where do the resources to develop them come from: the silica? China.” The Pentagon is seeking to ensure that it has a reliable supply of lithium and other ingredients of batteries — but it also says that despite its size, it can never match the scale of the private sector. The security issues partly inspired the tax credits for U.S.-made electric cars in the Biden administration’s signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act; the credits are to help encourage domestic battery production. That could benefit the private sector and the Pentagon alike, officials say. Biden last year also invoked the Defense Production Act to bolster the domestic battery industry. “Bottom line, we have to be fast followers to the commercial sector in many aspects of battery supply,” said Hicks, the deputy defense secretary. “We have made some specific investments ourselves to do that well,” she said. “In addition to the batteries, it’s the supply chain for the critical minerals and other aspects that we care a lot about.”"
+"A new assessment of Earth’s depleted ozone layer released Monday shows that efforts to repair the vital atmospheric shield are working, according to a panel of U.N.-backed scientists, as global emissions of ozone-harming chemicals continue to decline. As a result, the ozone layer — which blocks ultraviolet sunlight from reaching Earth’s surface — continues to slowly thicken. Restoring it is key for human health, food security and the planet. UV-B radiation causes cancer and eye damage in humans. It also damages plants, inhibiting their growth and curbing their ability to store planet-warming carbon dioxide. Scientists said the ozone’s recovery should also serve as proof that societies can join to solve environmental problems and combat climate change. “Ozone action sets a precedent for climate action,” World Meteorological Organization Secretary General Petteri Taalas said in a statement. “Our success in phasing out ozone-eating chemicals shows us what can and must be done — as a matter of urgency — to transition away from fossil fuels, reduce greenhouse gases and so limit temperature increase.” At this rate, the ozone layer could recover to 1980s levels across most of the globe by the 2040s, and by 2066 in Antarctica, the report concludes. Ozone loss is most dramatic above the South Pole, with an ozone “hole” appearing there every spring. Those improvements will not be steady, scientists stressed, given natural fluctuations in ozone levels and the ozone-inhibiting influence of volcanic eruptions like the massive one from underwater Pacific Ocean volcano Hunga Tonga a year ago. But scientists said the latest ozone data and projections are nonetheless further proof of the success of the Montreal Protocol, the global 1987 agreement to phase out production and use of ozone-depleting substances. Meg Seki, executive secretary of the U.N. Environment Program’s Ozone Secretariat, in a statement called the findings “fantastic news.” A recent decline in observed levels of the chemical known as CFC-11, in particular — which as recently as 2018 had been observed at higher-than-expected levels and traced to China — is proof that societies can collaborate to address a confounding environmental problem, said Martyn Chipperfield, a professor at the University of Leeds who serves on the scientific panel. “That turned out to be another success story,” he said. “Communities came together and it was addressed.” Ozone is a molecule made of three oxygen atoms, and it proliferates in a layer of the stratosphere about 9 to 18 miles above the ground. It can exist at ground level, too, where it is a product of air pollution on hot summer days and considered a health hazard. But in the atmosphere, it serves as an essential shield protecting Earth’s life from harmful ultraviolet radiation. In the same way that UV lights eradicate pathogens like the virus responsible for covid-19, the sun’s radiation would make it impossible for life to thrive on Earth if not for the ozone layer’s protection. UV-B, a high-energy form of solar radiation, damages DNA in plants and animals, disrupting a variety of biological processes and reducing the efficiency of photosynthesis. The Montreal Protocol, which has been approved by every country in the world, protects the ozone by outlawing the manufacturing and use of substances that destroy it when they come in contact with it in the atmosphere. That largely includes a class known as chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, which contain ozone-depleting chlorine and were used in refrigerators, air conditioners and aerosol cans. The treaty was expanded in 2016 through the Kigali Amendment to include hydrofluorocarbons or HFCs, a replacement for CFCs that do not harm the ozone but are a type of greenhouse gas that warms the planet more potently than carbon dioxide. The U.S. Senate ratified the amendment in September. The report, which was presented Monday morning at the American Meteorological Society’s annual meeting in Denver, finds the world is also making progress at reining in these planet-warming emissions. “We can already see HFCs are not increasing as fast as we thought they would because countries are starting to implement their own controls,” said Paul Newman, one of four co-chairs of the Scientific Assessment Panel of the Montreal Protocol. Still, it is possible forthcoming data on ozone levels will prompt some concerns that the ozone layer is not recovering as quickly as the report concludes, he said. Newman said he expects that will be because the Hunga Tonga eruption blasted so much material into the atmosphere. Volcanic eruptions are known to accelerate ozone depletion. Progress would likely also be slowed if humans pursue geoengineering to reverse global warming by injecting sunlight-reflecting particles into the upper atmosphere, Newman said. The panel, which considered the potential impact of that practice for the first time for Monday’s report, found that, depending on the timing, frequency and amount of such injections, the particles could alter aspects of atmospheric chemistry that are important in ozone development. “The Antarctic ozone hole is the poster child of ozone depletion,” Newman said. “Stratospheric aerosol injections will probably make it a little bit worse.”"
+"REYKJANES PENINSULA, Iceland — The electric red and green glow of the production facility resembles the Icelandic aurora borealis. Algae in their growth stage flow through hundreds of glass tubes that travel from floor to ceiling, all part of a multistep process yielding nutrients for health supplements. Soon, all parts of each alga will be used. The facility, operated by Icelandic manufacturer Algalif, is a space of inspiration for Julie Encausse, a 34-year-old bioplastic entrepreneur. During a July summer storm, Svavar Halldorsson, an Algalif executive, was guiding her through a tour of the company’s newest facility on the Reykjanes Peninsula. By the end of 2023, this new facility aims to triple its production. After Algalif dries the microalgae and extracts oleoresin, a third of this output then goes toward health supplements. Algalif has traditionally used the rest as a fertilizer. Now Encausse, founder and chief executive of the bioplastic start-up Marea, hopes to use that leftover biomass to create a microalgae spray that can reduce the world’s reliance on plastic packaging. Her newest partnership with Algalif is part of a start-up network in Iceland that focuses on inventive and creative technologies to address the climate and sustainability crisis. The Sjavarklasinn (“Iceland Ocean Cluster”) network includes environmental entrepreneurs working across several industries. Thor Sigfusson founded the network in 2012 after conducting research on how partnerships between companies in Iceland’s technology sector helped expand that industry. At the time, he found that the fishing industry was not experiencing the same collaboration or growth. “Even though companies were in the same building together, fishing from the same quotas and facing similar challenges, they were closed off,” said Alexandra Leeper, the Iceland Ocean Cluster’s head of research and innovation. Three  cod hanging on the wall of the second-floor entryway are the first thing to greet any visitor to the Iceland Ocean Cluster. Lightbulbs shine from their centers, and the dried scales filter the light to fill the space with an amber glow. The precise design is one that underlines the group’s belief that using 100 percent of a fish or natural resource can give rise to innovative technologies. Straddling the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Iceland experiences dramatic seasons in an ever-changing geologic theater. Glaciers sit atop active volcano zones — the island exists in the extremes. This also means that Icelanders face daily indicators of climate change, such as increased glacial runoff. These visible impacts have given a heightened urgency to tackling environmental problems, fueling partnerships like the one between Encausse and Halldorsson. “It will all work out in the end,” Encausse says to a rain-drenched Algalif employee in passing as she and Halldorsson discuss the facility’s building timeline. In Icelandic, this is a common phrase — “þetta reddast” — that people use to assure one another. Encausse and Marea co-founder Edda Bjork Bolladottir have partnered with the cluster for 2½ years. Encausse says that involvement was core to their company’s inception. “There is a collaborative mind-set when being on an island,” she said. “We need to work together to survive, and this was passed from generation to generation.” In a country about the size of Kentucky, the people of Iceland have had to learn how to guard their resources. Encausse has discovered that often means using 100 percent of any material — a lesson she’s now implementing in her work with Algalif. She created a food coating from Algalif’s leftover biomass, a product she’s named Iceborea — in a nod to the aurora borealis. “We are repurposing it and making something with value that gives it another life to avoid using more plastic,” Encausse said. Once Algalif’s factory expands  over the next year, it will have 66 tons of microalgae leftovers that Encausse’s company can tap each year. When sprayed onto fresh produce, Iceborea becomes a natural thin film and a semipermeable barrier that can protect against microorganisms. Iceborea can either be eaten with produce or washed off, reducing the need for plastic packaging. Reusing factory byproducts is an entrepreneurial trend in Iceland. Take Edda Aradottir. She is the chief executive of Carbfix, a company capturing CO2 byproduct from the largest geothermal plant in Iceland, Hellisheidi, and injecting it into stone to be buried underground. Carbfix’s successful trials have marked a global milestone for carbon sequestration. It also has received international recognition — and Aradottir’s leadership has already served as a model for growing start-ups and other founders in the cluster trying to tackle extensive environmental concerns. “It’s inspiring to see that perseverance pays off,” Encausse said about Aradottir’s work. Another Icelandic company, GeoSilica, harvests silica buildup from the Hellisheidi waste stream to make health supplements. GeoSilica reaches the Icelandic and European markets, and its chief executive, Fida Abu Libdeh, is also working with the Philippines to pilot her silica-removal technology to create similar sustainable factory processes. A Palestinian from Jerusalem, Abu Libdeh moved to Iceland in 1995 at age 16, a transition she described as difficult because of the language barrier and the country’s small immigrant population. In 2012, she graduated from the University of Iceland after studying sustainable energy engineering and researching the health benefits of silica. That same year, she and Burkni Palsson co-founded GeoSilica. Ever since moving to Iceland, she was impressed with how the country produced electricity through geothermal sources. “I knew I was going to do something in connection with that in the future,” she said. GeoSilica is not formally part of the Iceland Ocean Cluster, but the network it has fostered reflects the same collaborative approach. Abu Libdeh has worked with cluster companies and held investor meetings at its headquarters. It’s a place that founders want to be, she said, where they want to learn from each other even if they are competitors in their fields. While there has been progress over the years, Abu Libdeh said, it’s still a challenge for women to enter this entrepreneurial space. In 2020, less than 1 percent of investment went to women-founded start-ups, according to a recent European Women in Venture Capital report. Halla Jonsdottir, research and development lead and co-founder of Optitog, has based her start-up in the cluster for three years. Her company is creating equipment to increase the catch area of shrimp trawls without scraping the seafloor — technology that’s meant to reduce fuel demands and CO2 emissions while protecting the ocean floor. As a female founder in the Icelandic fishing technology industry, Jonsdottir is a rarity. Leeper believes Jonsdottir may be one of the few women working in fishing gear innovation. Jonsdottir says the cluster helped drive her growth. “They put emphasis on making us visible in a male-driven industry.” What began as a dozen start-ups in 2012 has now grown to more than 70 members and associated firms connected to the Iceland Ocean Cluster. Sigfusson has ignited the blue economy within Iceland, but his project’s reach has also gone global. There are now four sister clusters in the United States, as well as one in Denmark and one in the Faroe Islands. The Alaska Ocean Cluster, which was the first to follow the Icelandic model, has already accelerated policy change in the United States. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) proposed legislation last year to create “Ocean Innovation Clusters” in major U.S. port cities, which would provide grants along the U.S. coastline and the Great Lakes. “I’ve learned a great deal from our friends in Iceland who created a roadmap of innovation and public/private partnership when they established the first Oceans Cluster in Reykjavik,” Murkowski said in an email. “I’ll continue to press upon my colleagues the significance of this legislation and the promise it holds for the modernization and resilience of our maritime economy.” At 12:30 p.m. on a July afternoon, the cluster’s first-floor food hall, Grandi Matholl, buzzes during a busy hour. Fish haulers dressed in oversized, waterproof waders eat on wooden benches alongside employees in professional suits. Attached to the Matholl is Bakkaskemman, a seating area with a glass window where visitors can watch fish being unloaded off ships. Every afternoon on a business day, there’s an online auction to sell the day’s catch. Upstairs in her office, Jonsdottir works on her trawler technology. Later in the week, Encausse will use the meeting room space to meet with investors about Iceborea. The pungent smell of cod lingers in Bakkaskemman. It’s etched into the paint, leaking from the histories of the walls. In 30 minutes, the auction will begin."
+"(Will Goldenberg) (Alice Li) (Alice Li/TWP) Among the world’s tallest trees, next to the world’s biggest ocean and along the state’s longest highway, the largest birds in North America are returning to Northern California after a 130-year absence. In the 1800s, California condors were the heartbeat of the region, soaring higher than any bird — but humans pushed the condors to the brink of extinction. Now, the Northern California Condor Restoration Program, the native Yurok Tribe and government agencies have introduced a program to blend the species back into the natural landscape of the Pacific Northwest over the next two decades. Condor Slide 4 A California condor (Gymnogyps californianus) sounds almost mythical: A bird larger than any person. Beaks that can rip through whale flesh. Yet a gentle conservator that does not kill, but rather feeds on animals that are already dead. The California condors’ vast wingspan helps them soar up to 15,000 feet without flapping for long periods. They can cover up to 150 miles in a day to search for food and soar up to 50 mph. Some Indigenous tribes believed the birds brought thunder when they flapped their enormous wings, earning them the nickname “thunderbird.” The last reliable report of a condor north of San Francisco was in 1904. Researchers say the population declined due to lead poisoning, which was caused by the birds ingesting fragments of lead ammunition in carcasses killed and left by hunters, as well as habitat destruction and poaching. By 2007, conservation groups with the California Condor Recovery Program successfully introduced 144 condors around the southern coast. That same year, the Yurok Tribe Council passed a resolution to create a reintroduction site in Northern California — but the group needed to find a suitable location. The Yurok Tribe and government partners drafted a plan to release condors into Redwood National Park. The towering old-growth coastal redwoods provided ample space for them to nest and rest, while the birds could forage in vast open prairies. Consistent winds also help the birds glide for extended periods of time and reduce energy spent flapping their large wings. The Yurok Tribe received four California condors from the Oregon Zoo and World Center for Birds of Prey in Boise, Idaho. While the condor release facility was under construction in Redwood National Park, the birds spent several months at a sanctuary in San Simeon under the care of biologist Joe Burnett and his colleagues at the Ventana Wildlife Society, a nonprofit group that restores endangered species in central California. “I’ve always just listened and watched their behavior and kind of let them guide me,” said Burnett, who has released nearly 200 condors into the wild. “I’m continually learning more about how they tick, how they work, how they survive out in this environment.” Condor Slide 15 Burnett, his colleagues at Ventana Wildlife Society and zoo veterinarians drove the birds hundreds of miles for transfer to the Yurok staff at the newly minted release facility in Redwood National Park. While transferring the birds out of their crates, one condor nipped the finger of Chris West, a senior biologist with the Yurok Tribe Wildlife Department. Condor Slide 17 Once the birds were out of the crates, the crew, along with veterinarians from the Oakland Zoo, performed health checks, such as measuring white blood cell counts, heart rates and lead exposure. The condors also received identification tags on their wings, labeled with local tracking numbers, A0, A1, A2 and A3. Condor Slide 19 The Yurok, who characterize the condors by their kindheartedness and sense to renew the Earth, also gave each bird a Yurok name at the time of release: Hlow Hoo-let (translated to “at last I or we fly!”), Ney-gem’ ‘Ne-chween-kah (“she carries our prayers”), Poy’-we-son (“the one who goes out ahead”) and Nes-kwe-chokw’ (“he returns”). Condor Slide 21 “They want to be free. [Their] job is to keep our prayers going and to keep our [environment] clean. It’s not just to be a bird,” said Susie Long, a Yurok Tribe elder and a founding member of the tribe. The Yurok use fallen feathers in cultural ceremonies, as the condors carry their prayers toward the heavens. For the next several months, staff at the facility logged the birds’ behavior throughout the day and night in a notebook, describing their eating habits and social bonding in the form of “cuddle puddles” and play. Condor Slide 24 Finally, the time came to release the first two condors into the wild. A3 inched his way to the open gate and then pushed off, like a child diving into the deep end for the first time. A2 was a little more hesitant, standing at the open gate for a few seconds before following his companion in flight. Condor Slide 26 As the condors took their first flight among the redwood trees, hundreds of people logged on to the Yurok Tribe’s live stream of the release. Yurok tribe members, friends from Ventana Wildlife Society and zoos as well as bird nerds from near and far rejoiced as the first condors entered Northern California in more than a century. Condor Slide 28 As of July, all four condors in the first cohort were reintroduced back into the wild in Redwood National Park. Four more condors have entered the pens, waiting for their time to take off and join their friends. The Yurok Condor Restoration Program plans to release four to six birds per year for the next 20 years. Condor Slide 30 [Sign up for the latest news about climate change, energy and the environment, delivered every Thursday]"
+"SAINT-PAULIN, Quebec — With the press of a green button, Sam Bruneau’s snowmobile sprung silently to life and took off at a low whine. The lithium-ion batteries under the seats propelled the sleek red machine through the outskirts of Saint-Paulin, a hamlet two hours north of Montreal — over bridges, past a waterfall and onto a single-track trail. Around one curve, Bruneau, 30, pulled his electric sled to a halt in a stand of pine trees, replete with fluffy poufs of snow that gave the bows an idyllic bend. As he stopped, it was quiet enough to hear the snow squeak in minus-20-degree weather. And, if it weren’t for the gasoline snowmobiles also on the trail, the exhaust fumes would be nonexistent. “You can connect so much more with the outdoors when you don’t have the noise,” said Bruneau, CEO and co-founder of Taiga, a Montreal-based power sports company. “When you don’t have the smell.” Taiga is the maker of one of the world’s first electric snowmobiles, and has since applied the technology to personal watercraft as well. The company is at the forefront of a burgeoning electric recreation industry, which aims to reduce not only decibels and fumes but also reliance on fossil fuels that, when burned, contribute to climate change. From the outside, the Taigas look nearly identical to their gas counterparts. But with the ability to go from 0 to 100 kilometers per hour — or approximately 62 miles per hour — in as little as 2.9 seconds, they have more torque than many combustion-engine sleds. As a Taiga employee floored the electric machine on a straightaway, it quickly caught air over a roll, and when the brakes were slammed at the other end of the field, there was silence. Bruneau hopes this type of power will appeal to performance-oriented buyers and that the quieter, cleaner experience will help attract new people to the sport: “Trying electric for the first time is easier and much more approachable than a gas sled.” [Lawn care is going electric. And the revolution is here to stay.] Taiga snowmobiles start at about $17,490 and can travel about 60 miles on a charge. The company expects to make its first snowmobile delivery this winter, and the waiting list for its sleds is already more than a year long. “We ordered seven of them,” said Simon Boivin, a spokesperson for Sépaq, a Quebec government corporation that manages a network of national parks and wildlife reserves. “We feel like we have a responsibility to play a role in combating climate change and reduce our carbon footprint.” Taiga snowmobiles can travel about 60 miles on a charge. In as little as 2.9 seconds, they have the ability to go from 0 to 100 kilometers per hour. Their price starts at about $17,490, and the waiting list for them is more than a year long. (Photos by Richard Lam for The Washington Post) The climate benefits of shifting the power sports industry away from fossil fuels could be significant. Snowmobiles in the United States consumed almost 150 million gallons of gasoline in 2020, the Federal Highway Administration estimated. Non-highway motorcycles used more than 216 million gallons and all-terrain vehicles another 382 million. Boating guzzled a whopping 2.3 billion gallons. Combined, that’s the equivalent to the planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions of nearly 6 million cars operating for a year. Small gasoline engines can also be outsize contributors of other pollutants, such as smog and unburned gasoline. The two-stroke engines still found in many snowmobiles are particularly potent. “[They] are incredibly cheap to make and they have an incredible power-to-weight ratio,” said Gary Bishop, a senior research engineer at the University of Denver who has studied snowmobile use in Yellowstone National Park. “From a pollution point of view, they are about as bad as you can get.” Momentum around electric recreation is growing. In addition to battery-powered snowmobiles and personal watercraft, there are zero-emissions boats and all-terrain vehicles already available. More marquee names in the industry have also expressed ambitions to move in that direction. BRP, which owns the Ski-Doo and Sea-Doo brands, aims to have all-electric models by 2026. Polaris is working with an electric motorcycles manufacturer to find ways to incorporate battery power in its off-road vehicles and sleds. In a statement, Arctic Cat’s senior vice president of engineering, Bill Rhinesmith, said that the company has “built, and continues to develop, concepts for electric snowmobiles.” Electric snowmobiles didn’t appear overnight, said Jay Meldrum, director of Michigan Technological University’s Keweenaw Research Center. Meldrum helped oversee the international clean snowmobile challenge student competition, which the center hosted, for nearly two decades. He said the first electric snowmobile to enter was in 2005, from McGill University in Canada. “It didn’t work,” Meldrum said. The next year it moved across the garage and everyone applauded. Subsequently he saw a number of other promising electric entries, including from Finland. That team went on to form Aurora Powertrains, a company that converts internal combustion engine snowmobiles to “eSleds,” and offers northern lights tours. Since 2017, it has produced 30 sleds and has a goal to make several hundred for next season. Taiga wants to produce 10,000 snowmobiles annually by 2025. Bruneau co-founded Taiga with two college classmates in 2015 after they graduated from McGill. The trio was a decade removed from the school’s entrance into the clean snowmobile competition and, while the early attempts served as inspiration, their goal was to design an electric sled from scratch and handle as much of the process as possible in-house, instead of relying on third-party vendors. “It’s really the Tesla model applied to power sports,” he said. But, he added, “snowmobiles are extreme.” The primary technical problems Bruneau and his colleagues faced were cost, cold and weight. If the machines are too heavy, they sink into the snow or drag. Low temperatures can drain batteries and limit range — an issue Taiga helps stave off by using some of the batteries’ energy to prevent the lithium-ion cells from getting too cold, which improves overall efficiency. Before the morning ride in Saint-Paulin, the gauges on the flashy digital dashboard showed a trickle of juice flowing to the batteries, as their temperature slowly rose from single digits into the comparatively balmy twenties. As for cost, the company estimates that its electric snowmobiles are priced about $2,000 to $2,500 higher than gas equivalents. Bruneau said the difference could pay back in fuel savings within a year or two for moderate to frequent snowmobilers, and he hopes that public policy can help close the gap even further. He would, for instance, like to see incentives similar to electric vehicles for battery-powered power sports equipment. Improvements to the Taiga snowmobile have been iterative, said Bruneau. It’s gone through five major design changes since the initial prototype in 2016, dropping significantly in both cost and weight along the way, while doubling in range. The company now has three models for preorder, with varying configurations for different snow and riding types. Taiga brought two sleds along for the test drive — a red Ekko and a white Nomad. They sat hooked to a blue charging station with the Taiga logo splashed across it. “Convergent evolution,” Bruneau said of the marriage of snowmobile and electric-vehicle technologies. He then unplugged his sled, pulled down the goggles on his helmet and slid softly into the countryside. Despite initial demand, electric powersport manufacturers may eventually have to contend with some of the same concerns that people have about electric vehicles: range anxiety and maintenance. To mitigate the range issue, Taiga is hoping to dramatically expand its network of chargers. Currently, there are only two installed — including the one in Saint-Paulin. But the goal is to have 1,100 across North America, ideally positioned near food or other natural stopping points, including marinas for personal watercraft. With the optional fast-charger package, the snowmobile can recharge to 80 percent in as little as half an hour — just enough time for a pit stop. [Sales of hybrid cars are surging. That’s a good sign for the future of electric vehicles, experts say.] Taiga is also working to develop a service network. Many of the parts on the electric snowmobile — skids, shocks, etc. — are similar or identical to those on gasoline counterparts. The electric motor is designed to never require servicing and, if it does break, it can be swapped out as a single component. And because snowmobiles travel far fewer miles in their lifetime than cars that use the same battery technology, Bruneau expects those to last more than long enough. “An electric snowmobile is a logical choice to meet most of the needs we have in a national park,” said Boivin, with Sépaq. Some, however, caution against battery power being a cure-all for the impact of snowmobiles. “For the most part it moves things in the right direction,” said Hilary Eisen, policy director at the nonprofit Winter Wildlands Alliance. But, she noted, the electricity for charging the machines must still come from clean or renewable sources for the technology to realize its full climate benefits. And battery-power doesn’t resolve conflicts between motorized and nonmotorized recreators around safely sharing trails or competing for untracked snow. Those, she said, “will need to be carefully managed just like any motor vehicle.” Taiga has two charging stations installed but is hoping to dramatically expand its network of them. The goal is to have 1,100 stations across North America, ideally positioned near natural stopping points. Taiga is also working to develop a service network for parts, and Bruneau said the sleds' batteries should last for a long time. (Photos by Richmond Lam for The Washington Post) Ski areas, and other fleets, could be key snowmobile consumers for companies like Taiga. Some are already in line for one of the company’s machines, and more are considering queuing. “It’ll start every time and the torque is supposed to be unbelievable,” said Sean Grzyb, ski patrol director at the Middlebury College Snow Bowl in Vermont. He has had his eye on the Taiga for about a year, but has so far held off on making a deposit. “I really want one; I just want to make sure it’s actually happening.” [Sign up for the latest news about climate change, energy and the environment, delivered every Thursday] As it starts deliveries, Taiga will be the rare electric snowmobile on the trail. And despite frigid temperatures on the test drive, the Nomad lost only about 20 percent of its battery during approximately 12 miles of riding — on par with the expected range. The most notable issue of the day came when one of the gasoline-powered guide sleds got mired in the powder at the edge of the trail. Seeing the scene, Bruneau backed the Nomad up and tied it to the gas sled. He then switched the Taiga to “sport” mode to unlock extra torque and gave the throttle a squeeze. With a jolt, the other snowmobile came free and the ride continued on. The electric snowmobile led the way."
+"Climate change can feel confusing, big and scary. Trust us: We get it. Just take a deep breath, and let it back out again (it will be full of carbon dioxide, for the record). With this quiz, we’ll start with some of the basics — and then work our way up from there. Can you pass Climate Change 101? [Sign up for the latest news about climate change, energy and the environment, delivered every Thursday] Not quite. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the leading scientific body on the subject, declared last August that human-caused warming of the atmosphere, land and oceans is “unequivocal.” The only way to limit warming is to zero out emissions of greenhouse gases produced by burning fossil fuels and other human activities, the IPPC said. Not quite. Carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere, is the main cause of global warming. Scientists do not think changes in the sun can explain the warming we’re seeing. The seasonal ozone hole over Antarctica represents a major and dramatic instance of human activity damaging the Earth’s atmosphere, but it is not a major cause of warming. Not quite. Greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and water vapor, trap heat energy emanating from the Earth and prevent it from going into space. This keeps the planet much warmer than it would be otherwise. But human activities, such as burning fossil fuels, are adding even more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and causing added warming. Not quite. A Washington Post analysis found that numerous hot spots have already exceeded the critical 2 degree Celsius (3.6 degree Fahrenheit) mark, far above the global average. In general, higher latitudes, such as the Arctic, are warming faster than mid-latitude regions. Not quite. While the Paris agreement did indeed identify 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) as a line not to be crossed, it also suggested that countries should make an effort to keep warming even lower, to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels. Since then, additional evidence has suggested that this more stringent limit may be needed to avoid many severe consequences of warming. The latest IPCC report states that the world is on track to blaze past a crucial climate target within eight years. Not quite. On June 1, 2017, President Donald Trump spurred global criticism by declaring that the United States would back out of the landmark deal. Trump took additional steps in November 2019 toward withdrawal. However, on Jan. 20, 2021, President Biden returned the United States to the agreement shortly after his inauguration. The Post is tracking all of Biden’s steps to reverse Trump’s climate policies. Not quite. A “high-emissions scenario” is one that represents a major failure to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The IPCC predicts that in such a case the average global temperature could rise by 3.3° to 5.7° degrees Celsius, an increase that could trigger catastrophic consequences, such as massive sea-level rise. But with swift reductions in emissions, worst-case scenarios like this can still be avoided. The Paris climate agreement, if fully implemented, would steer the world off this severe pathway. Not quite. Climate change can worsen the effects of certain types of severe weather events, such as hurricanes, wildfires, heat waves, droughts, floods and even snowstorms. Not quite. Antarctica is losing 152 billion tons of ice per year at present, and Greenland is losing 275 billion tons per year, according to NASA. Scientists have found that the rate of ice loss in Greenland has grown by a factor of six since the 1980s, and that in Antarctica a similar acceleration is underway. Not quite. The remains of woolly mammoths, once lodged in permafrost, are starting to appear in Siberia, one of the fastest-warming places in the world."
+"Your browser does not support the video element. All it takes is one ember, thrown from a wildfire. Aided by the wind, these pulsing red bits of wood can quietly sneak thousands of feet from the fire line and land on a property. Ignition can happen in a matter of minutes. Soon, only ashes remain. Wildfires are growing in size and frequency due to climate change, according to the World Health Organization. Common ways that wildfires cause property damage include not only embers but also direct flames and radiant heat, which in tightly packed communities can lead to a cascade of destruction. But, experts say, there are ways to protect our homes from the threat. Here’s how. Starting with the home itself, several key alterations and upgrades can help prevent it from catching fire. In a review of the 2018 Camp fire in California, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) found embers that had flown more than two miles from the fire line. The roof is one place that such embers frequently land. The highest-rated roofs — Class A roofs — provide the most fire protection and are commonly made of concrete, clay roof tiles, fiberglass asphalt composition shingles or metal. Among the lowest-rated material are wood shakes — though they can be treated with a fire retardant. “The edge between the dormer and the roof is where embers can accumulate,” said Alexander Maranghides, a fire protection engineer at NIST. Embers can also find their way into your home through vents, such as those in the attic or in the roof’s overhang. Yana Valachovic, a forest adviser affiliated with the University of California, notes there have been technological developments in this area. For instance, there are vents designed to swell when exposed to heat as a way of sealing off a house. But Valachovic says that fine wire mesh can also do the trick. Steve Hawks, with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, recommends mesh with no more than one-eighth inch gaps — any bigger and embers could get inside and “burn the house down.” Siding is another area to pay attention to, said Roy Wright, president of the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety. He explained that fire-resistant materials can better withstand contact with flames or radiant heat. “If you have stucco or concrete cement board, that’s not going to ignite,” said Wright. Wood, however, can burn, and vinyl siding can melt, providing little protection from a fire — and possibly accelerating it. Broken windows can flood a home with embers and make fire damage imminent. Double-pane windows are more durable than single-panel, and metal screens or noncombustible window coverings can offer even more protection, according to the Colorado State Forest Service. Outside your home, the goal is to remove as much potential fuel for the wildfire as possible. The first five feet are particularly crucial, experts say. “By doing that first five feet, you basically interrupt the pathway of the flames to the house,” said Valachovic. Look for trees, shrubs or other plants in proximity to the house, she said. Mulch and pine needles are potential accelerants that are often overlooked. Remove or replace them with less flammable material like stone, or healthy flame-resistant plants, such as French lavender or sage. Consider replacing wood fencing that connects to the home with nonflammable material such as metal. Many fire risks hide in unexpected places. For example, Wright says that often, people only pay attention to the top of their deck. He emphasizes the need to look underneath as well. Valachovic said she even makes sure to bring her straw broom off the porch during fire season. If possible, move garbage and recycling cans farther away from the home. The goal is to reduce potential fuel and lower a fire’s intensity by spacing items away from one another. “People are imagining the big flame, but what they should imagine is the small flames creeping up to the house,” said Michele Steinberg, the wildfire division director for the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). “You’re seeing homes pretty far away from the big flames igniting.” Tree branches hanging over the home should be trimmed back. There should be at least 10 feet of distance between chimneys and tree branches, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire). Further out, look for items that could bring flames inward. Is there a wooden railing or fence? How about a shed or other outbuilding? Consider replacements constructed from materials such as metal or stone. Remove dead plants and dry leaves, prune flammable vegetation and space out shrubs and trees. Firewood is best stored outside of this zone. Objects in the yard, such as play sets and furniture, should be distanced apart from each other. Creating this space can lower the intensity of a fire should one of the items ignite. At the outer reaches of a property, the goal is to keep any fire low to the ground and prevent it from climbing vertically and jumping between closely spaced trees. “We want to reduce the intensity of the fire,” said Hawks. “We do that through fuel reductions.” Active mowing or maintenance may not be as necessary, but large piles of debris should still be removed. If possible, trees should have at least 10 feet of horizontal spacing, according to Cal Fire. Low-hanging branches and shrubs under trees should be removed to create vertical space and prevent potential ladders for the flames. Taking appropriate action in each of the risk zones can help improve the chances of your home surviving a fire. The website wildfirerisk.org details risk levels in communities across the country. Preventive measures are particularly important for those with the greatest exposure. But Steinberg, with the NFPA, says the possibility of accidental ignitions — from grills or cigarettes to fireworks — means that fire preparedness practices “are a good idea pretty much everywhere.”"
+"MALCOLM KNAPP RESEARCH FOREST, British Columbia — Suzanne Simard walks into the forest with a churchgoer’s reverence. The soaring canopies of Douglas firs are her cathedral’s ceiling. Shifting branches of cedars, maples and hemlocks filter the sunlight like stained-glass windows. A songbird chorus echoes from the treetops, accompanied by the wind whistling through pine boughs and a woodpecker’s steady drumming. But beauty alone is not what makes this place sacred to Simard. In each colossal tree, the University of British Columbia forest ecologist sees a source of oxygen, a filter for water and a home for hundreds of different creatures. To her, the lush, multilayered understory is proof of a thriving community, where a variety of species ensures that every wavelength of light is put to good use. And although Simard cannot hear their conversation, she knows the trees are in communion with the fungi beneath her feet — bartering carbon for water and nutrients in a raucous exchange older than the forests themselves. Crouching low, Simard pulls a trowel from her pocket and cuts deep into the earth, through layers of moss, duff and debris. “See this?” In her cupped hands, she holds a palmful of soil flecked with thin, white filaments. “Mycorrhizal fungi,” she says. “It’s joining all these trees together.” Through decades of study, Simard and other ecologists have revealed how fungi and trees are linked in vast, subterranean networks through which organisms send messages and swap resources. The findings have helped revolutionize the way the world sees forests, turning static stands of trees into complex societies of interdependent species, where scenes of both fierce competition and startling cooperation play out on a grand scale. Now, Simard is attempting to translate that research into a road map for protecting forests from the demands of logging and the ravages of climate change. In an experiment spanning hundreds of miles, she and her colleagues aim to show the benefits of preserving “mother trees” — giant elders of the forest, which Simard believes play a critical role in maintaining fungal networks, nurturing younger seedlings and safeguarding millions of tons of carbon stored in vegetation and soil. Adopting such practices would fundamentally alter forest industries, Simard admits. It would mean logging less, using fewer wood-based products and investing more in restoring battered ecosystems. It would require people to behave a bit more like creatures of the forest — to recognize our interdependence, to learn from elders, to take less than we give. But she argues that change is necessary to avert dangerous warming that threatens both trees and humans. “What it comes down to,” she says, “is we have to save our forests, or we’re done.” Opening her cupped palms, Simard allows her handful of fungal filaments to fall back to the earth. “It comes down to whether we value our environment as something to take from, or something to tend.” Through decades of study, Simard and other ecologists have revealed how fungi and trees are linked in vast subterranean networks. The fungi provide a foundation for underground food webs and serve as a link in the biological chain that shuttles carbon from the air, into trees, through the fungi and then deep into the ground. Simard brushes dirt from her hands, then trudges to the edge of the stand. “Let’s go see the clear cut.” On the other side of the road is a 50-acre expanse of tree stumps, shrubs and child-sized Douglas fir saplings. A sign identifies it as part of Simard’s Mother Tree Project, one of five experimental plots here in the Malcolm Knapp Research Forest, an hour east of Vancouver, Canada. With her trowel, Simard digs another hole in the ground. Four years after the plot was logged and replanted, the soil is dusty and shallow. There’s little of the moss and partly-decomposed debris she found in the uncut forest. “There’s hardly any forest floor left,” she says. Simard’s career began in landscapes like this one. The daughter and granddaughter of tree cutters, her first job was as a forester for a Canadian logging company, flagging the biggest and most valuable trees to be harvested and hauled away. Afterward, the clear-cut site would be sprayed with herbicides — a measure meant to help newly planted commercial seedlings by killing off competitors for sunshine and nutrients. But Simard noticed the replanted landscapes didn’t appear as healthy as the forests they had replaced. “It just felt wrong,” she says. “I saw the forest as a connected place … and we were ripping it apart.” So she sought out evidence to support her instincts. For her doctoral thesis at Oregon State University, Simard used radioactive carbon as a chemical tracer to show sugars moving between trees of different species connected by the fungal network. When one tree was moved into the shade, making it harder to perform photosynthesis, it received extra carbon from the other plant. The 1997 findings were splashed across the cover of Nature, one of the most prestigious scientific journals, under the headline “The Wood-Wide Web.” Simard became something of a scientific celebrity — she headlined TED Talks, starred in documentaries and inspired a character in the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Overstory.” Yet Simard’s studies were just one part of a flourishing new field of research on fungal networks. Scientists now know that over 90 percent of all terrestrial plants form mycorrhizal partnerships — the legacy of a half-billion-year-old alliance that likely helped plants migrate from the oceans onto land. The fungi provide a foundation for underground food webs. Their lacy architecture retain filter water and prevent erosion by giving structure to the soil. And, crucially, these networks serve as a link in the biological chain that shuttles carbon from the air, into trees, through fungi and then deep into the ground. Studies suggest that as much as 20 percent of the carbon taken up by plants is transferred to their fungal symbionts, allowing the world’s mycorrhizal fungi to sequester at least 5 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year. “It’s dizzying to think about all of those interactions that are happening under our feet,” said Toby Kiers, an evolutionary biologist at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. As the importance of mycorrhizal networks became more and more clear, Simard wanted to map the unseen systems. In an experiment led by graduate student Kevin Bieler, Simard’s team painstakingly tested the DNA of every tree and fungus in a 10,000-square-foot patch of forest. They discovered genetically identical fungi on the roots of as many as 19 different trees — often linking young saplings to forest veterans. The largest, oldest trees boasted by far the most fungal connections. Experiments have found the largest, oldest trees have the most fungal connections in a system. In her research, Simard calls highly-connected trees “hub trees” or “legacy trees” but in interviews she calls them “mother trees.”   Her research has shown that emerging plants fare better when they are connected by the mycorrhizal fungi to those mother trees. The veteran trees seem to recognize their kin and allocate more resources to them. In scientific papers, Simard refers to these highly-connected individuals as “hub trees” or “legacy trees.” But in her heart, and in interviews, they are “mother trees” — grand, nurturing and wise. Simard’s studies have showed that emerging plants fare better when mycorrhizal fungi connect them to mother trees. The ancient giants appear to recognize their kin, allocating more resources to sibling seedlings than to unrelated organisms. They might even behave altruistically; in one lab experiment, Simard witnessed trees under life-threatening attack from insects sending a flood of carbon into the fungal network. “I’m not saying it’s always harmonious,” Simard cautions. As in any community, forest relationships can be fraught. Tree still compete for light and nutrients. Their fungal symbionts sometimes take more sugar than the host can afford to give. “But out of diversity and connection,” she says, “a beautiful and productive forest emerges.” Other scientists are less sure about the importance of these ties. “In my mind, it’s still an open question,” says Stanford University mycologist Kabir Peay. He pointed out that most research on carbon transfers between trees has taken place in labs, which are poor replicas of a forest’s true complexity. [Ruby, the Capitol Christmas Tree, is part of a species in climate peril] Even some of Simard’s experiments offer “equivocal” evidence for the role of mycorrhizal networks, Peay adds. One 2009 study found that the fungi appeared to boost the growth of trees that emerged directly from seed, but had no effect on planted seedlings. Kiers also worries that Simard’s “anthropomorphic” framing erases scientific nuances — and in doing so, misses some of nature’s mystery. Yet both scientists agree on the urgency of protecting fungal networks. “It’s unclear whether we know enough about these communities to improve the outcomes we want in the face of a changing climate,” Peay says. “But I think we need to try.” The greenhouses at the University of British Columbia where Simard does much of her research and teaching. Critics of Simard's experiments point out most research on carbon transfers between tress has taken place in labs, which are poor replicas of the true complexity of the forest. Despite the revolution in scientists’ understanding of this terrain, Simard says forestry hasn’t changed much since her early days in the woods. Researchers estimate that more than 90 percent of British Columbia’s towering ancient forests have been cut down, and another 94,000 acres of old growth is lost each year. The vast majority of this logging involves clear-cuts or “clear-cuts with reserves,” where just a tiny patch of trees is left standing, leaving mycorrhizal fungi to wither without their plant partners. And since the biggest, oldest trees provide the most valuable timber, companies often target them first. Meanwhile, provincial regulations still mandate that replanted areas be “free to grow” without competition — nudging forest managers to cultivate same-aged “plantations” of just a few species, rather than fostering more diverse landscapes. [This tree has stood here for 500 years. Should it be sold for $17,500?] This approach may jeopardize the networks forests need to survive. Simard has found that tree plantations harbor just a tenth of the fungi species found in mature wild forests. Separately, a team of Swedish researchers showed that logging in Scots pine forests shrank the fungal community by 95 percent. And when trees are removed from a landscape, it unleashes the carbon buried below, studies by Simard and others show. A 2019 report by the Sierra Club found that logged and replanted forests in British Columbia remain net carbon emitters for at least 13 years after being harvested. The province’s own data show that forest management generates more than 40 million tons of carbon dioxide each year — equal to the annual emissions from 101 gas-fired power plants. “It’s just so crazy,” Simard says. “We’re ripping up our carbon sinks and using petrol to ship it all over the world. … We’re just making the problem worse with all these policies and these decisions.” Here at Malcolm Knapp, the toll of warming is already plain. By this point in late October, autumn rains should have turned the soil into soggy, springy mush. Instead, desiccated twigs crunch like potato chips each time Simard takes a step. The day is unseasonably hot, and the air carries the scent of wood smoke from more than two dozen wildfires burning in the region. Degraded, disconnected and deprived of their fungal partners, Simard worries about how replanted forests will endure in a changed climate. Human greenhouse gas emissions have already warmed the Earth by more than 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit). Droughts are longer, wildfires more ferocious and insect plagues are surging. Will missing mycorrhizal fungi make plantation trees more vulnerable to marauding pests, she wonders? Will seedlings succumb to water scarcity without mother trees helping them grow? “Maybe in the past, some of those plantations would do okay,” Simard says. “But with these additional stresses on forests — I don’t know what it’s going to be like. But I’m afraid for them.” Leaves, debris and soil from different plots packed into brown paper bags. In the lab, the material is dehydrated to calculate how much carbon it contains. Now it’s up to us to protect forests from the problems we’ve created, Simard says. That’s the goal of the Mother Tree Project: to understand what forests need in a changing climate, so people can play a helpful role in the communities that plants and animals and fungi have fostered for thousands of years. The experiment encompasses nine forest sites scattered across more than 600 miles of British Columbia, each with slightly different environmental circumstances. The coastal sites are warm and wet; the interior ones are drier. There’s harsh cold at northern latitudes and rising heat to the south. This creates a “climatic gradient,” Simard says, allowing her to test how forests function in varying conditions and predict what might happen as temperatures rise and precipitation dwindles. At every site, Simard partnered with logging companies to conduct five “treatments,” or harvesting methods. One experimental plot was left untouched, to act as the control. A second was clear cut, representing the status quo. [Gene editing could revive a nearly lost tree. Not everyone is on board.] At another plot, the crew removed 90 percent of the forest, until only the mother trees remained. For yet another, they left the mother trees amid clusters of neighbors, creating islands of green amid a shorn landscape. And in the final, least intensive treatment, they kept 60 percent of the forest standing, so there were no significant breaks in the canopy. The plots were logged four years ago and replanted with a mix of Douglas fir, larch and pines. Now Simard and her team must watch to see what happens. They visit each plot every year or so, taking several days to document each tree, shrub, moss and mushroom. Planted seedlings get a checkup. Fungi are collected for DNA tests. Leaves, debris and soil are packed away into dozens of brown paper bags; when they get back to the lab, technicians dehydrate the material and calculate how much carbon it contains. Despite her misgivings about some of Simard’s language, Kiers calls the setup “a beautifully designed experiment.” “What happens to the fungal community under these treatments … is one of the ideas we really would like to understand,” she says. The full results of the Mother Tree experiment won’t be known until the replanted forests reach maturity, decades from now. But some takeaways are already clear, Simard says. Given the immense amount of carbon stored in ancient, uncut forests, she believes governments should cease all logging there. “It just doesn’t make sense,” she says. “Any trees that are planted are going to take hundreds, if not thousands, of years to recover those carbon pools. And that’s outside the time frame we have to change things.” In “secondary forests” — ecosystems that have regrown after being logged a century ago — Simard says logging should look like the least intensive treatment in the mother tree experiment. At these sites, her team has found, leaving more than half the forest intact helped create “refuges” for mycorrhizal fungi and increased regeneration of new trees. [These trees have survived more than 1,000 years. Can they survive climate change?] In a 2020 study in the journal Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, Simard and her colleagues also reported that ecosystems held onto much more carbon when their canopy was kept intact. The benefit was especially apparent at the Mother Tree Project’s drier research sites. There, clear-cut plots lost more than 60 percent of their total ecosystem carbon, compared to an 8 percent decline in plots where more than half the trees remained. As climate change dries out Western forests, the researchers wrote, these techniques will become even more vital to keep carbon out of the atmosphere. Malcom Knapp manager Hélène Marcoux, who oversees both research and logging in the forest, cautions that this kind of harvest would come with trade-offs. Selective logging by hand can be more dangerous than clear-cutting with machines. It’s also more expensive, which would increase the cost of building materials and other products made from wood. “But there are also so many things to gain,” Marcoux says. “We won’t get all that money now, but we will guarantee something for the future.” Nor is this approach anything new. It’s how First Nations people have cared for this landscape for hundreds upon hundreds of years, Simard says. “We need to be listening to the land like they did, like they still do.” Here in Simard’s healthiest experimental plot, the one where 60 percent of the tree cover was allowed to remain, the forest offers reminders of its resilience: Deep soil. A wealth of mosses. Honey-colored light that drips through the layered branches of trees. Despite traces of the harvest that occurred four years ago, this place still feels sacred and irrepressibly alive. Then Simard spots a spindly Douglas fir tree, barely a foot high. She pauses, thinking it was one of the seedlings her crew planted after the harvest. Yet its stem is faintly curved — a sign of a tree that has sprouted on its own. Once more, Simard retrieves her trowel and gently works the tree free of the soil, exposing an expansive tangle of roots entwined with barely discernible threads of fungi. “It’s a natural,” she confirms. Unlike pampered, nursery-grown trees, the fir had to develop an “exploratory” root system to get the nutrients it needed. Now, whatever threats loom ahead of the forest — drought, invasive plants, nutrient shortages — the tree’s ample roots and mycorrhizal partners will help it access what it needs to survive. But Simard still wants to give it a boost. Gently, she nestles the sapling back into the earth, then empties her water bottle into the parched ground. “Good luck,” she says. “Good luck little tree.” Photo editing by Olivier Laurent. Copy editing by Gaby Morera Di Núbila. Design and development by Andrew Braford."
+"MUDDUSJÄRVI, Finland — Pauliina Feodoroff walks through one of the world’s last ancient forests, with lingonberries, wild mushrooms and reindeer droppings crunching gently beneath her dirt-caked boots. But her stride falters as she enters a clearing littered with tree stumps, limbs and branches. Chainsaws mowed down this section last winter, and now it’s off-limits for the hundreds of reindeer who once helped it blossom. Feodoroff — a member of the Sámi Indigenous group, a community that revolves around the reindeer and their habitats — wants to buy this land back, and summon the reindeer to return. It’s part of a grand experiment to rewild the Arctic by regenerating the biodiverse latticework of reindeer habitats, which help regulate the planet’s temperatures. Quickly and quietly, 44-year-old Feodoroff is deploying dozens of Sámi negotiators to buy up strategic plots of land. She’s allying with conservationists and institutions to raise awareness about deforestation in reindeer habitats, and is pushing to redefine these forests as falling under international jurisdiction, rather than national. If Feodoroff succeeds, experts predict the repercussions will be global. Regenerating Finland’s northern taigas, part of a coniferous halo that spans 6 million square miles across the northern latitudes of Eurasia and North America, would restore one of the world’s most potent shields against climate change. “If we have one example of forest where we stopped its current damage, that now thrives, it will have a domino effect,” said Feodoroff, her gloved hand leaning on a centuries-old Scottish pine stump. If negotiations go well here, Feodoroff’s team will start right away, essentially, doing nothing. They aim to take this forest out of production and allow it to return to its natural rhythms. That is a radical idea in Finland, a country built on the timber industry that still boasts Europe’s largest swath of pristine forests and its oldest carbon sinks. It’s also a place where industrial-level deforestation has been growing. For centuries, reindeer have been central to land maintenance. In life, their droppings, and in death, their carcasses, are nutrient-rich fertilizers that sustain the rivers, soil and trees that absorb greenhouses gases and prevent them from accumulating in the atmosphere. The animal’s digestive tracts, calibrated to sync with the harsh Arctic climate, fill with specific enzymes and bacteria that allow them to graze seasonal grasses, mosses and lichen, a stringy, highly nutritious algae-fungi composite that hangs in abundant wisps from the sturdy branches of ancient trees. When the temperatures dip, the pads of their shovel-shaped hoofs shrink and their sharp rims emerge, enabling reindeer to dig lichen buried under the snow, and resulting in a kind of smooth mirror of white-covered ground. If too much lichen remains on the forest floor, it absorbs sunlight and warms the earth instead of having that light reflected back into the atmosphere. If the reindeer ecosystems are lost, ecologists predict, the planet will heat up even faster and its carbon sinks will disintegrate. A report this year from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change notes climate change has increased the vulnerability of reindeer herding “to the extent that its long-term sustainability is threatened.” It noted Arctic and sub-Arctic temperatures have already risen 2 degrees Celsius (3.6°F) in the past 30 years. Sámi society would dissipate too. The community uses virtually every part of the reindeer for every purpose in their lives: fur and skin for clothes, blankets and tents; antlers for knives; meat — tartare’d, flash-frozen, air dried, smoked, brined and boiled — as a primary protein to survive the dark, cold winter. It comes from a place of reverence — a notion that reindeer lead the way for humans, not the other way around, said Heikki Nikula, a Sámi friend of Feodoroff’s and one of Finland’s top chefs. “Nature, the reindeer, they are king,” he said, preparing a dish of sliced reindeer heart. Local resistance to deforestation has been growing, and new generations have been reviving reindeer husbandry traditions. Nikula’s cousins have recently started culling reindeer near home, rather than at a slaughterhouse. Before they’re knifed open, the reindeer eat hay and relax in the woods for four days, he said, which yields superior tasting meat. Feodoroff — a filmmaker, theater director, community advocate and mother of two — is pushing to revive more of those practices, even as the animals are facing extinction. But to do that she’s been experimenting with the market economy — on the global art scene. An invitation to present at the Sámi Pavilion at Venice Biennale in Italy sparked Feodoroff’s idea to use the world of global art to sound the alarm on Finnish deforestation two years ago. It was the first-ever forum for Sámi art at the world’s most prestigious art event. At first, she was unsure how she could represent the Indigenous community that numbers up to140,000, mostly across the northern stretches of Finland, Sweden, Norway and Russia. Feodoroff sent clips of her work to Katya García-Antón, the Pavilion’s organizer, but asked if the spot should be given to an actual visual artist. Eventually, Feodoroff realized this was a key opportunity for her cause: There was “money that’s just hanging around,” and a cultural zeitgeist she could leverage, she said. “The museums of the world are scratching their head, thinking, how do we meet the climate crisis? There are these contemporary artists who make a plastic wave, which we can stare at, like, wow,” she said, sardonically. “And at the same time, they’re so confused about how do we integrate Indigenous artists?” Feodoroff and Jarmo Pyykkö in Retsamo, an area that was logged before 1994 near Inari. A tree stump in the Retsamo area in a logging site that was cut down between 1994 and 2003. Feodoroff lies in a Retsamo-area logging site. Feodoroff has answered that question for them. She developed a three-act performance called “Matriarchy,” which involves a troop of female performers, including Feodoroff and her partner Hanna Parry, who introduce Sámi society and issue an immediate call to action: to save their culture along with the environment. The climactic second act, “Auction,” beseeches its audience to bid for “viewing rights” to Arctic forests, to keep them out of harm’s way. The subject is the reindeer terrain; the medium is the performers’ bodies, voices and traditional dress and ritual items. The experience asks the audience to “gaze,” assume responsibility and, as a last, offstage act, crack open their wallets. “We can say it’s a form of atonement,” Feodoroff says, almost whispering, at the top of the second act. The first “auction” was to the Museum of Modern Art in Helsinki, for an undisclosed amount that enabled Feodoroff to buy about 100 acres of forest. Negotiations with five other institutions followed. “It’s outrageous that we need to buy our own lands, to keep our way of living, to keep the carbon trapped in the ground,” she said. “But to influence Finland, you have to go through Venice.” Herding reindeer has long been a critical part of Sámi culture in Finland. Feodoroff talks to Sisko Länsman at a reindeer separation in Skalluvaara. Many reindeer herders admire Feodoroff as an entrepreneurial maverick, a bridge between the modern capitalist society that’s endangered their way of life and the non-hierarchical Sámis, often more experienced in bartering than buyouts. “Pauliina is one of those visionaries who sees more,” said Anna Morottaja, a Sámi musician who acted in “Matriarchy.” “She’s doing art and performances and conservation because that’s how we live our lives here; we learn to slaughter reindeer, to fish, to acquire many different skills. It’s a very Sámi way.” Feodoroff and her partners at Snowchange, a nonprofit, joined with a network of scientists and Sámi reindeer herders to begin buying forestland four years ago. The group started with a 600,000 euro loan from the European Investment Bank and the Dutch environmental bank Triodos, then, soon after, got more than 1.2 million euros from Finnish funds as well. As climate change dominates the global agenda, funds continue to roll in. New donors over the past year include the Christensen Fund and the Google Foundation, which granted the group 1.25 million euro, as well as trace-gas analysis machines — Ghostbuster-like mobile packs with ray guns — to measure CO2 and methane emissions in logged areas, and emissions sequestration in those that have been rewilded. Feodoroff references that data in negotiations with landowners, which include young city dwellers — land inheritors who aren’t profiting from it, but want to do some good — as well as Sámi reindeer herders, facing uncertainties over the future of their livelihoods. [Preserving reindeer herding in Scandinavia’s Sami culture] “Pauliina’s given us peace,” said Osmo Seurujärvi, a Sámi reindeer herder whose brother sold to Feodoroff after turning down a higher offer from a company planning to build vacation cabins on the land. Feodoroff and Snowchange, who are rewilding about 125,000 acres, are the second-largest restoration operators in the country, after the Finnish state. This tree is part of an untouched forest which is protected for 20 years by an agreement between Muddusjärvi Reindeer Herders' Association and Metsähallitus, the state-owned logging company. The Kettukangas forest is nearly untouched by humans and is protected from 2010 to 2030 by the agreement between Muotkatunturi Reindeer Herders' Association and Metsähallitus. Feodoroff has a quiet bearing and slow, measured way of speaking, which frustrates her in English, but feels like an advantage in Sámi dialects. She’s the daughter of a Sámi man, whose family was displaced from Russia, and a Finn woman, who moved to the North to work as a nurse in the 1960s, around the time that the region’s first roads were being built. Her father suffered racist bullying at school, where “teachers sought to wipe the native out of him,” said Feodoroff. To protect them, he raised Feodoroff and her siblings as Finns — no reindeer herding, no traditional dress, no Sámi language. Feodoroff only began discovering, and embracing, her heritage when she left home to study at the Theatre Academy in Helsinki. There, her professors chided her for focusing on the reindeer and forests of her childhood. She longed to join her father, who, after years as a company man, had taken up reindeer herding. When she showed up unannounced on the herding trail, after getting tipped off from his friends on his whereabouts, her father told her to go back to Helsinki. He was concerned about the violence that surrounded the trade. Feodoroff admits her father had a point. Her gear was too flimsy for the subfreezing temperatures. Attempts to wrangle the reindeer ended in injuries. In the coming years, she pivoted to a more immediate obstacle: logging. In 2003, Feodoroff and a Sámi friend met with Sini Harkki, director of Greenpeace Nordic, in Helsinki, asking for help in thwarting state-backed loggers. Greenpeace was preparing to launch an international campaign to map northern Finland, locating the pastures vital to reindeer migration patterns. Metsähallitus, the state-owned logging company, was scanning the area as it sought to expand harvesting. In Sami culture, there is a practice of using every part possible of the reindeer. For example, meat is cooked and preserved and fur is used to make clothing. Heikki Nikula presents the finished dish of reindeer heart. Feodoroff joined Greenpeace as it began supporting reindeer herders from a village called Nellim, who were suing loggers. The suit, which began in 2006, was bitterly divisive. A local shop banned reindeer herders and Greenpeace activists (it went out of business). Mixed Sámi-Finnish families erupted into fistfights. Lumberjacks assaulted Sámi reindeer herders and Greenpeace activists. The fight was clearly not about just profit, “but about power, and racism,” said Feodoroff. In 2009, the Nellim case was dismissed. But Greenpeace pressured the company’s clients abroad, citing U.N. conventions that classified reindeer herding as an Indigenous right. It marked the start of a strategy seeking to show that the land, recognized by the international community as critical to the survival of the Sámi population, did not necessarily belong to the state. Metsähallitus, pressured by its clients abroad to reach a resolution, offered to preserve around 90 percent of the key reindeer sites for 20 years. Still, Metsähallitus raced to extract timber on other, “nonessential” sites. In response, Feodoroff and her partners doubled down on efforts to halt deforestation, scouting resources and leverage from abroad, and aligning their cause with legal agreements to protect biodiversity and Indigenous groups as defined by the European Union, the U.N. and other bodies. They used open data from Metsähallitus’ own deforestation projections, as well as publicly available satellite images from NASA, the Sentinel space telescope and GPS-linked reindeer tracking collars, to start mapping to thwart deforestation. This data cartography activism later served as the basis for co-published reports with researchers at NASA, studies of Arctic ice loss in the Smithsonian and interactive atlases with the Colorado-based National Snow and Ice Center. Ultimately, their findings proved what the Sámi had been claiming for decades: deforestation was ecologically catastrophic and only minimally profitable. A third of the world’s landmass is forested — a steep historical decline, even if it seems like a lot. During the past ten thousand years, the planet’s original forest cover has decreased by nearly half. In Finland, the most heavily forested country in Europe, some 95 percent of the woodlands have been logged or disturbed. As forests are stripped of their natural defenses — rivers, trees and peatlands that sequester carbon, reindeer that keep the systems in check — they are also becoming more vulnerable to rising temperatures. The Arctic Circle, according to recent studies, is warming nearly four times faster than the rest of the world. “These are the last pristine ecosystems,” said Tero Mustonen, president of Snowchange. “If we lose them, we lose species that we don’t even know about yet.” Outi Pieski, a friend of Feodoroff's, in Dalvadas on Oct. 7. Pieski, her daughter Katja Haarla-Pieski and Mikael Haetta sit together for a supper made of reindeer in Dalvadas in October. And despite Feodoroff’s headway, she’s still facing a powerful logging lobby in Finland’s Parliament. Atte Harjanne, chairperson of the Green Party, said that even as scientists warn that logging degrades Finland’s once-robust carbon sinks and fragile ecosystems, discussions to limit the practice remain taboo. “It’s unpatriotic to question logging, it’s so deep in our identity,” he said. Lacking lucrative oil resources, Finland converted its timber into wealth during the post-World War II years, exporting pulp as a raw material for paper. But even as digitization has shrunk the paper industry, Finland’s logging industry has expanded. Metsähallitus, the state-owned logging enterprise, plans to cut nearly 2,500 acres, including 750 acres of old-growth forests. Figures from Statistics Finland show that Finnish forests, once net-carbon sinks, became carbon emitters for the first time last year. As the E.U. scrambles for alternatives to Russian oil and gas, it is also allowing Finland to designate wood biomass as a carbon neutral energy source, despite findings that burning wood is worse for the atmosphere than coal. “From a national, economic point of view, you have to cut less,” said Jarmo Pyykkö, an environmentalist who has helped Feodoroff survey and purchase lands for over two decades. “Because it’s so strong, the logging sector is making all the others pay for the climate.” Feodoroff said she wants to correct a widespread misconception: that wood is free, and its supplies nearly inexhaustible. Her “auctions” are symbolic, she said, seeking to “reframe the worth” of the trees, reindeer and natural environments that are priceless. “It’s like the emperor’s new clothes. I’m selling nothing, but if we can make a deal to protect our reindeer, our forests, then I don’t care about anything else. We don’t take money from mining companies, but our thinking is, really, whatever works,” she said, sipping tea at her kitchen table, her phone blowing up ahead of her final Venice performance in October. [Sign up for the latest news about climate change, energy and the environment, delivered every Thursday] An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that Pauliina Feodoroff and the group Snowchange are the second-largest landowners in the country, after the Finnish state. They are the second-largest restoration operators in the country. This version has been corrected."
+"OFF THE COAST OF SANTA BARBARA — Just yards from the Fish 1, a 22-foot research vessel, a humpback whale about twice the size of the boat hurled itself out of the water, sending shimmering droplets in a broken necklace of splash. In the other direction, a hulking cargo ship, stacked high with containers, crept closer. Aboard the Fish 1, a slight figure whose face is crinkled from years in the sun and saltwater, looked from one to the other. Ocean scientist Douglas McCauley wanted to see whether the near real-time detection system he and his colleagues had developed, Whale Safe, could avert collisions between whales and ships in the Santa Barbara Channel. The tool represents one of the ways McCauley, who heads the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory at the University of California Santa Barbara, is working to protect the ocean even as it becomes more industrialized. By collecting data from several sources — an acoustic monitoring buoy that listens for whale songs, identifies them according to species with an algorithm and sends that information to satellites; a predictive habitat model for blue whales; and sightings logged in an app — Whale Safe forecasts to ships the chances of meeting a whale. Then, it grades shipping companies on whether they actually slow down to 10 knots or less during whale migrations, from May 1 to Dec. 15. “We can literally watch all of the ships in California and across the whole ocean; we are better positioned than ever before to try to track damage as it occurs, or before it occurs,” McCauley said a few days later in a Zoom call from the French Polynesian island of Moorea, where he is spending a month researching coral reefs. “We are in trouble if we don’t do something different, and I realized that if I kept sticking my head literally underwater or stayed in the lab, these problems weren’t going to fix themselves.” Humans have worked in the seas for centuries: fishing, seafaring and more recently, drilling for oil and gas and the development of offshore wind farms. Shipping lanes cross almost every surface of the sea, except for shrinking swaths of the Southern and Arctic Ocean. But as development has intensified and the planet has warmed, the 43-year-old McCauley has ventured into the gray area between scientific research and advocacy to try to fix these problems — or at least make them visible. He is trying to save the whales; collect plastic; explore the links between climate change, overfishing and nutrition in the South Pacific; warn about the dangers of seabed mining; track sharks using drones and artificial intelligence; and calculate the benefits to people, animals and the planet that come from protecting broad swaths of the sea. “One of Doug’s compelling traits as a scientist is that he is keen to explore outside the box,” said Benjamin Halpern, a UCSB professor of marine biology and ocean conservation who has worked with McCauley for about a decade. “He is a very creative thinker, and able to think differently about the solutions to problems and what kinds of research and science can help inform those.” [These whales are on the brink. Now comes climate change -- and wind power] In meetings with corporate executives and political leaders, McCauley has made a consistent argument: Protecting the sea is in our interest, since it already does a lot of the work for us. In 2020 McCauley led a report that provided a framework for marine protected areas on the high seas, finding that such refuges could be powerful tools for biodiversity conservation, carbon sequestration and climate resilience. Even port and fishing communities, he argued, depend on an ocean that is still wild and alive. “We have a globally unique chance to talk about this before it’s too late,” he said. California sea lions swim near the Channel Islands in California on Sept. 30. Humpback whales swim near the Channel Islands. Ship strikes killed 80 whales annually in three of the past four years, but the toll is probably much higher than reported. Dolphins swim near the Channel Islands in California. The encounter in late September, amid one of the world’s busiest shipping channels and a vibrant ecosystem, offered a glimpse of how to do just that. Minutes after the container ship had passed McCauley’s boat, the whale — possibly the same one, but it is hard to tell — had found another, and the two sent up exhales of spray. It was as if a bulldozer operator had plowed through a herd of elephants without stopping, not too far from a major city’s downtown, hoping to avoid a crash. And it happens many times a day here in the Santa Barbara Channel, even though barely anyone sees it. While McCauley tracks these interactions, much of the public seems to have noticed this industrial shift underwater. Since 2000, global container port traffic has nearly quadrupled; aquaculture produces more than half of the fish we eat; about 8 million metric tons of plastic enter the oceans every year;  over half the global oceans are fished; more than 700,000 miles of undersea data cables snake across the ocean floor; seabed mining may soon begin in some of the world’s last pristine ecosystems; and the fishing industry is beginning to target deep ocean life. The ocean is, by far, the world’s largest carbon sink, having absorbed about 40 percent of the excess greenhouse gasses from burning fossil fuels. But it comes at a cost: more acidic and warmer waters, which may not soak up as much carbon going forward. The fact that ocean animals evolved to a narrow range of conditions, McCauley and others found, makes them more vulnerable to climate change. The landscape was less crowded when McCauley grew up in Lomita, Calif., and went to school in San Pedro, not far from the ports and the channel. He could see whale migrations out the window of his high school geometry class. From an early age, he would ride his bike to the beach as an escape, and “all of a sudden, I was in a super wild place.” He spent much of his adolescence and early adulthood working at the local public aquarium, and working on fishing boats. It was there, catching squid at 1 a.m. to sell as bait, hauling in a croaker bigger than he was, and watching people spend $20 a day to go out a boat to catch dinner for their families, that he saw how a thriving ocean economy works. It was later, in his career as a scientist, that he had data to explain what he learned through experience: What is good for the ocean is also good for people, and possibly business too. Slowing down ships means fewer ship strikes, which means more whales. That is good for biodiversity and climate change: Whales themselves are carbon sinks and fertilize plant growth (another carbon sink). It also means cleaner air for those who live nearby, and fewer carbon emissions from fossil fuels. McCauley and Callie Leiphardt, lead project scientist on Whale Safe at the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory, search for whales off Santa Barbara and in California’s Channel Islands. Christoph Pierre, director of Marine Operations and Collector Naturalist, checks an app where users can log whale sightings. As McCauley and Christoph Pierre, director of marine operations, search for whales, they take photos that are later uploaded to a photo ID database. He and others developed WhaleSafe, he said, after shipping companies asked: “These are the biggest mammals on the planet. Can’t you tell us when they’re there so we don’t run into them?” Three shipping companies contacted for this article, as well as an industry association, said that they supported such programs. CMA CGM, among the world’s largest shipping container companies, is sending alerts above medium directly to their captains, and Hyundai Heavy Industries is working with Whale Safe to incorporate its data directly onboard new ships. But some of the firms tracked by the tool, which has recently expanded its use to include San Francisco, have received F grades. Matson Navigation, for example, only slowed down roughly 18 percent of the time. Lee Kindberg, the head of environment and sustainability for Maersk, which received a B for slowing down in about 79 percent of cases, said the company supports Whale Safe. But she added that shippers must balance safety and speed restrictions against weather and demands from companies — and their customers — who want everything faster. And, as climate change scrambles whales’ migration patterns and schedules, tools like Whale Safe may become even more essential in protecting them, McCauley said. Trying to prevent ship strikes, one of the leading causes of whale deaths, is becoming an emergency. Three of the past  four years rank as the deadliest on record for whales on the West Coast — about 80 annually — but the death toll is probably much higher, since most sink to the ocean floor. There have been no known ship strikes in the Santa Barbara Channel since the launch of Whale Safe in 2020, though it is too early to make a causal link. While aboard the Fish 1, McCauley pulled on a wet suit, flippers and a mask and jumped into the water to inspect the buoy. Looking not unlike one of the sea lions who popped up nearby with his slick outer layer and whiskers poking out beneath his mask, he scrubbed it for barnacles, and made sure all of the hardware was in good condition. Like the buoys, McCauley seems to be able to take in information, translate it into languages its recipients understand and make it actionable, according to Jane Lubchenco, a marine ecologist who has worked with McCauley and now serves as deputy director for climate and environment at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “He is adept at boiling something down to the most important components and expressing his knowledge in an accessible fashion, and he is passionate about solutions,” she said in an email. Still, some worry that engaging with industry could allow companies to burnish their image. “Doug does seem quite nimble and effective at engaging with the private sector, and I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing,” Halpern said. “Maybe it’s valuable that someone is testing those waters, because we can’t solve the climate change catastrophe we face without engaging the private sector and corporations.” McCauley spreads his message with a billionaire’s help. Salesforce co-founder Marc Benioff and his wife Lynne decided to fund an ocean science lab after reading a landmark study he co-authored on the ocean’s industrialization. McCauley serves as the lab’s director, and the university has received $88 million from the Benioffs since 2016. Since then, their conversations about the ocean and “carbon math” have shaped much of Benioff’s climate and environmental philanthropy, including the “Trillion Trees” tree-planting initiative. “By aligning with Doug on the ocean, we found a bigger vision on the climate,” Benioff said in a Zoom interview. McCauley said he is aware that some might question engaging with private philanthropists and industry, but argued that he and others could not afford to wait for federal funding — and action. “We don’t have the luxury of time.” The boat approaches the buoy. McCauley prepares to check and clean the buoy. McCauley steadies himself as he works on the buoy. Over the past few years, McCauley has tried to make that decision-enabling data available and legible to policymakers across the globe. Alongside a group of other scientists, McCauley has worked in Kiribati to document how damage to coral reefs from climate change and overfishing harms the diet and health of country’s inhabitants, who depend on fish for essential nutrients. The researchers share that data with government officials to show which islands are most at risk. McCauley is also tackling the issue of deep seabed mining, which could begin in international waters as soon as next year. McCauley and the Benioff Ocean Science Lab have tried to map potential excavation sites across the globe, since the public remains largely unaware of this development, its scope and its possible threats. [How protecting the ocean can save species and fight climate change] At the bottom of the ocean around the world lie significant deposits of metals, including some needed for electric vehicle batteries and other clean energy projects. Some companies see ocean deposits as key to this clean energy transition, and are jockeying for primacy in this prospective new industry. Along with more than 400 other scientists, McCauley signed a statement last year arguing that deep-sea mining will result in “loss of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning that would be irreversible on multigenerational time scales.” They argued that there are still too many unknowns in the deep ocean to mine them responsibly. McCauley helped bring together leaders from environmental nonprofits and businesses to discuss the risks of seabed mining. Afterward, other advocates successfully worked to pressure Google, BMW, Volvo, Samsung and others to support a moratorium. But industry officials such as the Metals Company CEO Gerard Barron counter that deep-sea mining opponents are ignoring the trade-offs that come from keeping the ocean off limits. “While saying ‘No’ to something is easy,” said Barron, who heads a seabed mining corporation, “finding a solution is hard and if we fail to consider all our options, we will consign our biodiverse rainforests and carbon sinks to further destruction, increase our emissions load, and further damage the oceans Douglas has set out to protect.” McCauley, by contrast, sees these planetary puzzle pieces as interlocked. Stopping seabed mining might mean less ocean noise, which might mean more whales, which means more stored carbon, which might mean fewer forest fires in his native California, or less sea-level rise in Kiribati. Sometimes it is impossible for McCauley to ignore how climate change has changed his surroundings. He recently took a group of students to the woods near Santa Barbara to learn about the carbon cycle, but had difficulty teaching the lesson because almost all of the trees around them had died of drought, beetle infestation, or forest fire. “I have too real a sense of how bad things are going to get with climate in such a short amount of time,” he said. Still, he manages to marvel at the natural world, and the mysteries it holds. Back aboard the Fish 1, not long after the container ship — and an oil tanker — had passed by, one of the whales came right underneath the boat. It surfaced briefly about 10 feet away, flicking its tail and disappearing. Later, over Zoom, McCauley reflected on that moment: “I have no good explanation for why a whale would swim under the boat and look up at us, other than that it can. “Some piece of that is a reminder that they deserve a space on the planet because they are incredibly intelligent, incredibly complex and sophisticated animals, and wonder about us as much as we wonder about them.” [Sign up for the latest news about climate change, energy and the environment, delivered every Thursday]"
+"GRAND BAHAMA, Bahamas — Sam Teicher hovers over a section of Rainbow Reef, his yellow and black scuba fins stilling in the turquoise waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Contrary to the reef’s colorful name, the corals below him make up a bleak palette of grays. He looks up from the broken, stick-like pieces and uses one hand to make a slicing motion across his throat. Dead. Leaving the coral graveyard behind, Teicher swims to another area of the reef nearby, carefully steering clear of healthy elkhorn corals that dot the seascape. Tiny, yellow fish dart away as he moves closer to a cluster of finger-sized staghorn corals — a critically endangered species essential for reef-building — protruding from a plate attached to the reef. Teicher gestures toward the lemon-hued branches, then points at himself. Ours. The small collection of corals is one of many that were farmed on land and then planted onto reefs near Grand Bahama island this year by Coral Vita, a company founded by Teicher and fellow Yale University graduate Gator Halpern that is trying to help drive restoration of coral reefs — vital ecosystems that are being decimated around the world by climate change. Efforts to revive coral reefs have existed for decades. Traditionally, restoration has involved growing corals in the ocean, with natural growth rates per year ranging from less than a centimeter to up to 10 centimeters, depending on the species. But as the threat against reefs has intensified, researchers are introducing innovative methods to farm, grow and plant healthy corals more efficiently. These advances include growing them in tanks on land, or using advanced techniques to boost growth rates and resiliency to the changing environment. Coral Vita’s founders say they are integrating a range of these approaches — such as cutting corals into small pieces, a process known as “microfragmentation” — to grow corals up to 50 times faster than in nature, improve their resilience to climate change and provide large-scale restoration services through land-based farms. The idea behind a farm model that combines science and production technology is to “reframe the process of coral farming from kind of a coral-gardening style that it traditionally has been and move it more towards a coral-factory-style setup,” says Halpern, 32, the company’s president. In another twist, Coral Vita is operating as a for-profit company — an approach to funding that has drawn some skepticism within a field dominated by nonprofit organizations and research institutions that are typically funded by grants and philanthropic donations. But Teicher and Halpern say their for-profit model, which can generate revenue from various sources including restoration contracts and ecotourism, is necessary to repair reefs on a massive scale. Traditional coral farming has “a very important role to play,” Halpern says. But Teicher, 32, the company’s “chief reef officer,” says a for-profit model may unlock sources of funding that could help make the field less dependent on grants and donations at a time when climate change and human activity, such as overfishing and pollution, are rapidly degrading coral reefs. While reefs occupy less than 1 percent of the ocean floor, they are home to more than 25 percent of marine life. They also provide a host of essential resources to people, such as food, coastal protection, and income from tourism and fisheries. Coral can be particularly vulnerable to rising ocean temperatures. If the water is too warm, corals will expel the algae that live in their tissues. These algae not only give corals their vibrant colors, but also serve as a source of nutrients. Without their plant partners, corals turn white, a process known as coral bleaching, and can die over time. Mass die-offs of coral reefs, which are also affected by disease and ocean acidification, would have far-reaching ecological, economic and security consequences, scientists say. Their demise could deplete biodiversity, eliminate a major source of food and income for people, and leave coastal areas even more vulnerable to powerful waves and extreme weather. [Climate change killed 14% of the world’s coral reefs in a decade, study finds] Since launching its pilot farm in Freeport on the island of Grand Bahama in 2019, months before a powerful hurricane devastated the island, Coral Vita has attracted global attention. The company was recognized last year as one of five inaugural Earthshot Prize winners, an environmental award established by Britain’s Prince William that gives awardees a million pounds (about $1.07 million in today’s dollar) each to fund their work. “There are 100 countries and territories, more or less, with coral reefs,” Teicher says. “There need to be large-scale coral farms in every single one of them.” [Earthshot Prize: These innovations could win 1 million pounds from Prince William] Coral Vita — which has raised more than $4 million in funding from a roster of investors including Sustainable Ocean Alliance, Apollo Projects and Builders Initiative — planted their corals for the first time earlier this year. The company has grown its team to more than a dozen people, with plans to expand further. But Teicher says that it matters less whether Coral Vita is involved in these other farms, as long as “the impact is happening.” “Coral restoration is not a silver bullet. We need to stop killing coral reefs,” he says. But with scientists warning that climate change could largely wipe out the world’s coral reefs by 2050 without a major cut in greenhouse gas emissions, Teicher says the Coral Vita team is focused on another target: for there to be a “thriving restoration economy where reefs and communities are prosperous and healthy and surviving because we’re investing and taking care of them.” “Hopefully, we can have a transformative model,” he says. “You can do for-profit for good.” Signs at the intersections of weathered roads direct visitors to the Coral Vita farm, a collection of utilitarian structures sitting on about two-and-a-half acres of land that run along part of Grand Bahama’s extensive seawater canal system. Neat rows of turquoise and white tanks sit under nets of black shade cloth stretched over an open-air structure made of wooden beams. A chocolate brown, two-story building nearby houses the farm’s laboratory and indoor workspaces. “It really is one of the most state-of-the-art facilities for coral restoration,” says Teicher, who strolls around the farm in a company T-shirt, navy board shorts and worn, brown flip-flops. Typically, pieces of coral are grown in underwater nurseries before being planted on reefs — a common process that is low cost, doesn’t require complex technology and keeps the corals in their natural environment. Coral pieces are typically hung like ornaments from treelike structures made of PVC pipes before being transplanted back onto reefs or used as stock to grow more corals. But these corals are often vulnerable to the elements, as well as disease and predation, says Jessica Ward, the U.S. Virgin Islands coral manager at the Nature Conservancy. Land-based nurseries — such as the Coral Vita farm, where corals are nurtured in tanks before being planted onto reefs — are becoming more common. While the operations tend to come with a hefty price tag and are more labor intensive, they provide an opportunity to raise corals in a controlled environment where experimental methods could be used and “allows for scalability of restoration,” Ward says. “Restoring reefs at scale means we can restore large areas of reef in a shorter amount of time than more traditional methods, and more efficiently, with the goal of getting reefs to a point where they are self-sustaining faster,” she says. “This is crucial to saving coral reefs in the face of myriad threats that are not abating, particularly climate change.” The bits of coral growing in the tanks at Coral Vita’s farm are the product of microfragmentation, where cutting larger chunks of coral into small pieces stimulates growth in the same way human skin heals from a wound. Marine biologist David E. Vaughan, who is credited with discovering the method, says it is “a game changer for corals.” In just a couple of years, microfragments cut from the same coral that are planted onto reefs can eventually fuse together to become a head of coral, a process that would take anywhere from 25 to 100 years to happen naturally, says Vaughan, who consulted for Coral Vita during its earlier years but no longer has financial ties to the operation. What’s more, he says, even though these corals are “only kindergartners,” their size triggers them to act like mature corals and become reproductive during spawning season. Coral Vita is also beginning to experiment with “assisted evolution,” or techniques aimed at accelerating adaptive processes that happen in nature. For corals, these methods largely focus on improving resilience to climate change, such as increasing heat tolerance, says Madeleine van Oppen, one of the researchers who published a foundational scientific paper on assisted evolution in 2015. There is “no genetic modification, but it’s just speeding up what happens naturally,” says van Oppen, a professor at the University of Melbourne and the Australian Institute of Marine Science. One approach, for instance, involves breeding the most heat-tolerant corals found on the reef to produce heat-tolerant offspring for restoration. These corals can be identified by exposing corals to environmental conditions that reflect a warming planet and observing how the specimens react. Some worry that assisted evolution techniques ""would create a super coral that will outcompete anything that is still there,” van Oppen says. “I personally think that’s quite unlikely. The improvements that we see are relevant, but not such that I think that they will just wipe out anything.” [Scientists are weighing radical steps to save coral] Additionally, the farm is outfitted with a high-tech aquaculture system, referred to by Coral Vita employees as the “life support system,” which supplies water to the tanks and can regulate water quality through temperature, pH and other adjustable settings. The land-based system can be replicated elsewhere, Teicher says, with some adjustments for a region’s specific coral. “It can be very plug and play, which is really important for being scalable.” he says. The potential for scalability is critical to Coral Vita’s business plan, which is connected to the idea of “selling restoration as a service,” Teicher says. While Teicher says that grants and awards have made up a “larger chunk” of the company’s revenue streams, Coral Vita signed its first restoration contracts with the Bahamian government and the Grand Bahama Port Authority in 2021. Though the payment amounts are “not that large,” he says that “for any island nation government to commit funds to something like coral reef restoration is amazing.” [The professor who assigns value to nature — then persuades world leaders to save it] The company has also been able to generate revenue through other sources. For instance, paying visitors can take an educational tour of the farm. Coral Vita also has an adopt-a-coral program, through which individuals and corporations can sponsor anything from small fragments to entire tanks. Last year, Teicher says, the coral adoption program brought in more than $60,000. The work “speaks to their commitment to Grand Bahama, speaks to their commitment to the Bahamas, and it speaks to their commitment to sea life,” says Clay Sweeting, the minister of agriculture and marine resources in the Bahamas. “It’s a big task to undertake.” The business, Teicher and Halpern say, has weathered its share of challenges. “It’s been a long and rocky road to get here,” said Halpern, speaking over Zoom from Saudi Arabia. “We’re not a for-profit because we get to make money and become rich,” he adds. “The amount of funding available in the philanthropic nonprofit space is a drop in the bucket in terms of the opportunity that exists to be able to make a difference if you’re able to harness the power of capitalism for the benefit of the environment.” But the company’s for-profit model has prompted some skepticism. “All the other groups that are working on these problems are doing it for the good of the planet and not to make a profit,” says Gail Woon, a marine biologist and founder of Earthcare, a nonprofit environmental education organization based in Grand Bahama. “I’ve always had a problem with that part of their project.” It also remains to be seen if a for-profit approach such as Coral Vita’s can have its intended large-scale impact on the reef, says Vaughan, who now heads the nonprofit Plant A Million Corals Foundation, which he founded. A farm operation that may have, at minimum, about a couple million dollars in start-up costs and plants fewer than 5,000 to 10,000 corals a year “isn’t the economic scale that we need to get this to,” Vaughan says, adding that hundreds of thousands of operations “costing couple of dollars a coral” will be required. “This is a different philosophy and a different model, and if that is what gets corals planted to save our reefs, save our ocean and save our planet, great,” Vaughan adds. “We’re going to go and stick with the nonprofit model and try to get there faster with the ability to get to scale.” Still, Woon says, she believes Coral Vita’s work holds promise. “It is scalable, and it is doable,” she says. “I want to see them be successful.” It all started in 2013 with a conversation between two friends in their first year of graduate school at what is now known as the Yale School of the Environment. They were hanging out on the back porch of a clapboard house on a tree-lined residential street in New Haven. Despite being a scuba diver, Halpern, a San Diego native, had never heard about the possibility of restoring degraded reefs. Meanwhile, Teicher, who grew up in D.C. and also dives, had worked on a coral restoration project that used the traditional method of growing corals in underwater nurseries. As Teicher recounted this experience to Halpern, the two realized they could try to take a different approach. Armed with their idea and some funding from grants, the pair enlisted the help of coral experts such as Vaughan. Coral Vita landed its first investor in 2016 and others soon followed, including former Washington Nationals pitcher Max Scherzer, who now plays for the New York Mets, and his wife Erica. Teicher and Halpern chose Grand Bahama as the site for the company’s first farm after evaluating factors such as water quality at restoration sites as well as potential for ecotourism and local and government partnerships. They moved to the seahorse-shaped island in 2018. By May of the following year, the farm was open and operational, growing 24 native species of coral. (Most restoration projects in the Caribbean grow between two to five species, Teicher says.) They experienced a coral spawning event, a natural phenomenon where corals in the ocean reproduce by releasing their eggs and sperm at the same time. School groups were touring the farm. Restoration inquiries were coming in. Then, on Sept. 1, 2019, Hurricane Dorian slammed into Grand Bahama, generating a 17-foot storm surge that left much of the farm underwater. Despite their best efforts to secure everything, the company’s tanks were washed away and none of the corals survived — a year and a half’s worth of work lost. “It just was destruction,” Teicher recalls. Elsewhere on Grand Bahama, though, the devastation was much worse. Entire homes were gone. Dozens of people were dead, and even more were missing, numbers that are probably underestimates of the storm’s true toll. Emergency responders couldn’t reach parts of the island where roads were blocked by water and storm debris or that had been completely washed out. Coral farming was no longer an immediate priority. “We’ll just go help people,” Teicher says, remembering the decision to pivot to assisting with relief efforts. “There’s nothing else to do but help people at this point. That’s what we could do.” Teicher says he and other Coral Vita employees were among the first people to reach some of the island’s eastern settlements, including High Rock, which was one of the communities hit hardest by Dorian. “Coral Vita turned into Rescue Vita,” says Alannah Vellacott, a marine ecologist and Grand Bahama native who was Coral Vita’s first Bahamian employee. “I’m really, really grateful that they wanted to be those people for the Grand Bahamians that lived in the Eastern communities,” says Vellacott, 32, whose childhood home was destroyed during Dorian. As the community of Grand Bahama began the process of recovering from Dorian, so did Coral Vita. The company recovered all but one of its coral tanks and began rebuilding in November 2019. “I thought they would come in, see that it’s not worth it, or come in, run out of money,” Vellacott says. But “they stayed after Dorian,” she adds, eyes glossing over, voice thick. “It was then that I realized that they were actually going to stick around.” Since reopening the farm in March 2020 and surviving the pandemic, “basically everything is finally where we want to be,” Teicher says on one sweltering August morning as he walks along a path by the coral tanks. From February to July this year, Coral Vita completed its first out-planting session, planting roughly 5,600 corals grown at the farm across two areas of reef. While some permitting issues and inclement weather impacted their ability to hit their goal of planting 10,000 corals by the summer, Teicher says, the team hopes to have that many corals, and ideally more, planted by the end of the year. But the company intends for its impact to go beyond the environment, its founders say. Coral Vita works with other local environmental organizations, and more than half of its growing staff is Bahamian, according to Teicher. “I don’t want to give my child an ocean that they cannot be fed by, be comforted by, that they can’t play in and have a great time,” says Vellacott, who grew up exploring mangroves in the backyard of her childhood home and the expansive ocean that surrounds the island. A gold conch pendant — “a reminder of who I am and where I came from” — and a signet ring that belonged to her father, a biology teacher, hang from a gold chain around her neck. Vellacott looks out from the second story of the farm’s main building, motioning in the direction of the rows of tanks. “This is all going to be for my children, for my nieces and nephews, for future Bahamians, for this region,” she says. “We’re not going to see restored reefs in our lifetime,” she adds. “None of this is for us. It’s for the future.” Story editing by Dayana Sarkisova. Photo editing by Olivier Laurent. Illustration animation by Emma Kumer. Design and development by Hailey Haymond. Copy editing by Paola Ruano."
+"KERATSINI, Greece — It was Lefteris Arapakis’s first expedition on a fishing boat, and he didn’t expect what the nets would pull up. There were scorpionfish, red mullet and sea bream. But there was also a bright red can of Coke. Arapakis, whose family had plied the waters near Athens for five generations, pulled the can out of the net and turned it over to look at the sell-by date stamped o­n the bottom. 1987. Seven years older than him. It had been in the Mediterranean for almost three decades. He was still staring at the can when a fisherman grabbed it out of his hand and tossed it back into the water. “That’s not what we’re paid to catch,” Arapakis recalled the fisherman saying. Every day, the fishing boat — and thousands just like it on the crystalline Mediterranean — caught old bottles, plastic foam, flip-flops and other detritus in its nets. And every day, its crew tossed everything back into the undulating waters, only hauling back what would bring cash. So Arapakis, now 28, had an idea: He would try to convince the fishing industry to treat plastic as a catch. In 2016, he launched a nonprofit focused on sea cleanup and fishing education called Enaleia, a play on Greek words that calls to mind sustainable fishing. Once the fishers brought the plastic ashore, he would recycle it and pay them for their trouble. Six years into the project, he has signed up more than half of Greece’s large-scale fishing fleet — hundreds of ships — to pull in the plastic they gather as they ply the Mediterranean. He plans to keep expanding globally. This year, after Arapakis spread his efforts across Greece and much of Italy, he expects to gather nearly 200 tons of plastic — enough to fill a football field five feet high with tiny pieces of plastic. That’s more than 7,500 pounds of plastic every week. And others have taken notice: The United Nations Environment Program named him a Young Champion of the Earth in 2020 — its highest environmental honor for people under 30. Global plastics activists have struggled for years to make an impact as the amount of plastic flowing into the world’s oceans continues  unabated. One 2015 study found that more than 8 million metric tons of plastic were likely going into the world’s waters every year. The problem is especially acute in the Mediterranean. “In a way, plastics are trapped inside the Mediterranean,” said Kostas Tsiaras, a research scientist at the Hellenic Center for Marine Research who has studied plastic pollution in the sea. And the challenge is global: the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an area of especially dense concentrations of plastic debris in the northern part of that ocean, is estimated to be roughly twice the size of Texas. “At first the fishermen were making fun of us,” Arapakis said. “They said we are not Greek garbage collectors.” But as the project has expanded, the fishing industry has flocked to it. “They were part of the problem. Now they’re part of the solution.” he said. When Lefteris Arapakis’s father, Vangelis, started working the seas in 1978, it was a different era. The fish were plentiful, and the plastic nearly nonexistent. “In the 1970s there weren’t any plastic bottles. Bottled water didn’t exist,” Vangelis, 57, said on a recent afternoon, perched in his office above the selling floor of the Keratsini fish market just west of Athens — the biggest in the country. Inside, the smell was of stale cigarettes. From a cracked window came the aroma of the sea. Things changed in the 1980s, he said. For a time, when fishing boats followed in the wake of the big ferryboats that plied the sea near Athens, they would find a trail of bobbing bottles. The problem built quickly: the Mediterranean is like a big bathtub, connected to the Atlantic Ocean only by the narrow Strait of Gibraltar, leaving detritus with little escape. By the 1990s, when Lefteris was a child, plastics were a daily nuisance in the nets. But if anyone ever brought the waste to shore, local authorities would complain about the disposal problem and ask for it to be dumped at sea. The message back then was “make it disappear,” Vangelis says. Fishing could then become a frustrating cycle, as plastic debris passed from one boat to another. “We’d take the fish and we’d toss everything else back in the sea,” he said. “Another boat would come again in five hours and they’d do the same thing.” Back then, there were still plenty of fish when the boats pulled in their nets, according to Vangelis. Now, though, every year it feels like there are fewer fish for a shorter time. Vangelis had hoped to pull his eldest son into the fishing industry, giving him summer jobs cleaning the boat and selling fish at the market. “He was gifted to be able to talk to clients and to offer what we had to offer,” the father said. “He was good at explaining things.” But Lefteris Arapakis, a lanky theater aficionado with shoulder-length hair, a scraggly goatee and a pierced ear, had always been an awkward fit for the culture of the wharves. In that world, big, taciturn men plied the seas for long hours. They sold their fish overnight, then slugged back beers at a portside cafe as the first light broke over the water. Fishermen measured their success by the size of their haul and the size of their car. He was fine with his little Alfa Romeo and a copy of Dante tucked into his backpack. Worse, Arapakis’s sympathy was in the wrong place: “I always felt pity for the fish,” he said. Aboard the Panagiota II, Lefteris Arapakis’s father's fishing boat. Arapakis felt a shock of excitement when he saw what the boat brought back the first day it collected trash, in 2018: two big trash bags full of plastic. Arapakis always knew he didn’t want to spend his life on the family boat, navigating choppy seas as his great-grandfather’s painted icon of St. Nikolaos watched over his shoulder. Fishing for plastic, however, felt different, and the boat — the Panagiota II, named after the family matriarch — could be his testing ground. Arapakis felt a shock of excitement when he saw what the boat brought back the first day it collected trash, in 2018: two big trash bags full of plastic. “If we hadn’t taken action, we would have had that plastic floating around the Mediterranean forever,” Arapakis said. Now the organization Arapakis started, Enaleia, pays fishing crews a small amount every month for the plastic they gather — between $30 and $90 per crew member, depending on how much plastic they bring in. (The group found that crews bring in more if they get paid for their work.) The funding comes from foundations that support the organization — mostly Greek groups, with a few international donors such as the Ocean Conservancy, Nestlé and Pfizer — and from profits from the sales of recovered fishing nets to clothing manufacturers, who can reclaim the material for socks, backpacks and shoes. Other fishermen get paid to do days of plastics cleanup entirely, instead of heading out for fish. Small port towns don’t always welcome the sudden influx of litter, and sometimes Arapakis has to push to get permission, or even legal changes, to store it somewhere. At the beginning, convincing fishermen to join was painstaking work, requiring a lot of face time in unfamiliar villages. It wasn’t easy: The industry doesn’t always cotton to environmentalists, since many fishermen think the activists want to take away their livelihoods. And the culture can be deeply resistant to change. One season, Arapakis’s father painted his boat a vibrant cerulean rather than the deeper blue that is traditional. Other fishermen were still laughing about it a year later. So sometimes Arapakis would just walk up and down a wharf, talking to the crews he came across. “Maybe you know my family. We fish in Piraeus,” Arapakis would tell them. The Greek fishing industry is small enough that people often recognized his family name. Then it would usually take shared meals and some ouzo, Greece’s ubiquitous anise-flavored spirit for the fishers to trust him. “I had to get drunk with them,” Arapakis said. At each new port, he needed to convince authorities to let him store the plastic that many of them viewed as trash, and to find new routes to recyclers. Now from port to port across Greece’s vast coastline, fishing boats are gathering plastic and bringing it to shore. About 60 percent of Greece’s biggest fishing boats are working with him, about as much as makes sense logistically, Arapakis said. The remainder work from ports where it wouldn’t be cost-effective to set up the infrastructure to take the plastic for recycling. And in Arapakis’s home port, a vacant corner has been filling up with the measure of their success: car seats. Old fishing nets. Bottles from Greece, Turkey, Egypt, even the United States. Big trucks haul the catch to recyclers across Greece. The fishing boats of Vangelis Arapakis (pictured), and others at the port in Keratsini, Greece. When Vangelis started working the seas in 1978, it was a different era. The fish were plentiful, and the plastic nearly nonexistent, he said. At the recycling plant in the mountains outside Athens where Arapakis sends much of his plastic, black plastic pipes that were the remnants of a fish farm were heaped outside the main warehouse on a recent afternoon. Bundles of plastic bottles were piled 15 and 20 feet high. Inside the plant, workers fed the plastic into complicated machines that first washed the old material, then dried and sorted it, then chopped it into flakes or melted it into pellets. The material was poured into tall sacks that each held a metric ton of tiny pieces of plastic that looked like vast piles of small, sparkly jewels. Figuring out what to do with all of the plastic has required nearly as much creativity as getting fishers to sign on. Small port towns don’t always welcome the sudden influx of litter, and sometimes Arapakis has to push to get permission, or even legal changes, to store it somewhere. Until very recently, for example, Italy didn’t technically permit plastic waste to be hauled from the sea. And recycling companies don’t like plastic that has spent decades in the sea: it’s sun- and water-beaten, and the end product isn’t as strong as what comes from fresher material, making it more challenging to resell. But there’s a growing demand for reclaimed plastic, and sometimes the story is just as attractive as the material itself. Companies such as Adidas have started making shoes and clothing out of reclaimed ocean plastic, a development Arapakis hopes will expand the market. For now, much of his recycled plastic is mixed with higher-quality recycled plastic to make things like furniture. He sends the used fishing nets to companies in Spain and the Netherlands that turn them into backpacks and other articles of clothing. He gives ocean-plastic socks out as presents, including — at a recent star-studded reception — to Greece’s president. “Until we had this option with Lefteris, there wasn’t any place to put the trash,” said Christos Iliou, 54, a fisherman on the island of Kythnos, about 50 miles southeast of Athens who has a Playboy bunny tattooed on his left bicep and a golden propeller on a chain around his neck. “You could collect it, but it was a Catch-22 because it would end up back in the sea.” “Lefteris has a gift. He can convey his passion,” he said. “People trust him. They know who he is.” At the daily fish auction at the Keratsini port near Athens, on July 26, 2022. On a recent morning, Iliou puttered his boat out of the main port of Kythnos. The water was perfectly clear — and bottles could be seen underneath the surface, on the seafloor about 10 feet down. He was piloting a team of cleanup volunteers toward a series of beaches that were accessible only from the water. In the port, a plastic bag floated by. Further out, day-trippers on rental boats roared across the water, leaving the fishing vessel rocking in their wake. The island’s terraced hills — once covered with hops that were taken to an Athens brewery, now mostly abandoned — slowly passed against the horizon. At one beach — just thirty or forty feet wide — the cicadas buzzed in the morning heat. There were no other people in sight. And though from a distance the beach looked pristine, up close the ground was thick with litter. Half a flip-flop. A cookie cutter in the shape of an anchor. A long piece of driftwood, plastic bags impaled on each of its gnarled branches. A red medicine bottle. “You feel you’re doing something, even if it’s a little bit,” said one of the volunteers, Irini Vlastari, 66, who came on the cleanup venture with her son and two grandchildren. Vlastari lived on the island until she was 12, when she moved to Athens. She still comes back every summer. Back when she was a child, people reused things, she said. Old clothing was repurposed into dolls. Tin cans were cut into toy cars. “We wouldn’t throw things away.” Now, “every year there’s more trash.” Volunteers collect coastal plastic in Kythnos, Greece, on July 27, 2022. Irini Vlastari, 66, came on the cleanup venture with her son and two grandchildren. “You feel you’re doing something, even if it’s a little bit,” she said. The cleanup hauls in two 55-gallon bags of plastic over a few hours. Enaleia’s efforts won’t clean up the Mediterranean on their own, Arapakis acknowledged — the scale is far too vast. “Cleaning plastic from the sea is not solving the problem, it’s treating the symptom,” he said. Enaleia also tries to do preventive work, encouraging fishing boats to recycle their nets at the end of the season rather than tossing them in the sea. This year they gathered more than 30 tons. Arapakis is still thinking about places to expand: Kenya is the latest target, his first attempt beyond the Mediterranean. Next is the rest of Italy and Cyprus. Another target is Egypt, whose powerful Nile pumps a torrent of plastic into the Mediterranean. In Kenya and elsewhere, Arapakis says his program is able to have even more of an impact, paying fishermen more than they could earn by fishing simply to focus on gathering plastic. That helps fish populations recover and brings in more plastic per fisher than in the Mediterranean. The cleanup effort, as small as it is compared to the scale of the challenge, is still a way to leave the sea a better place, Arapakis said. “I cannot change the climate crisis. But I can change my father’s mind, and some of the others who work with him. And then we can expand to fishing communities around Greece, and then you can expand to Italy and the Mediterranean,” Arapakis said. “What you change grows. ” Elinda Labropoulou contributed to this report. Story editing by Dayana Sarkisova. Photo editing by Olivier Laurent. Illustration animation by Emma Kumer. Design and development by Hailey Haymond. Copy editing by Adrienne Dunn."
+"Last January, just days after the start of the new year, a sudden snowstorm left hundreds of drivers stranded on a 40-mile stretch of Interstate 95 in Virginia. The commuters — which included Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) — were stuck for more than 24 hours, turning their engines on and off to keep warm, layering the clothes they had, and even searching for sustenance from a nearby bread truck. Eventually, after an ordeal that stretched over a chilling night, emergency crews cleared the accidents and freed cars that had frozen to the roadway. Everyone went home. But the incident provoked anxiety among those worried about an all-electric future. What if, they wondered, all the cars had been battery-powered? Would their drivers have made it through with enough battery life to drive away? As frigid temperatures sweep across the country once again — and motorists from Buffalo to Seattle have contended with snow and ice — electric cars are facing fresh scrutiny. Lithium-ion batteries perform more sluggishly in cold temperatures, cutting into an electric car’s range when temperatures drop close to freezing. (For what it’s worth, gas-powered cars also don’t perform perfectly in the cold.) But there’s a fix for electric cars with dwindling range in winter: the humble heat pump. Two factors account for why electric vehicles have a slightly harder time in cold weather than gas-powered cars. One stems from the simple reality that the massive lithium-ion batteries in electric cars perform best around 70 degrees Fahrenheit. “Cars are like humans,” said Anna Stefanopoulou, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan. “They like room temperature.” At cold temperatures, lithium ions — which flow from the anode of the battery to the cathode of the battery to create an electrical current — move more slowly through the battery and face greater resistance. That causes the battery to function less efficiently. But the second reason has to do with the human sitting inside. No one wants to sit in a frigid car during the winter. When it’s cold, gas-powered cars can redirect waste heat from the engine into the cabin to warm the driver and passengers. (Gas-powered cars aren’t particularly efficient — when the engine is on, only about 20 percent of the energy produced is actually going to turn the wheels.) Gas vehicles “produce so much wasted heat,” said Scott Case, the CEO of Recurrent, a data science company that focuses on electric vehicles. “It’s a smart idea from an engineering perspective to make lemonade out of lemons.” Electric cars, however, are super efficient. According to the Department of Energy, EVs use over 75 percent of their energy to propel the car. That means that there isn’t much waste heat available. Instead, many EVs warm their passengers through electric resistance heating (essentially heating a wire and blowing air over it). Cabin heating accounts for the lion’s share of what drains the EV battery in cold temperatures. According to a 2019 study from AAA that tested five different EVs in 20-degree-Fahrenheit temperatures, on average the cars lost about 41 percent of their range with the cabin heater on. With the cabin heater off, however, they lost only about 12 percent of their range. But not all EVs are created equal. According to a study from Recurrent that looked at real-world data from thousands of electric vehicles, EVs can lose anywhere from only 3 percent (the Jaguar I-PACE) to 32 percent (the Chevy Bolt) of their range in subzero temperatures, depending on how the car manages cold weather. Part of that, according to Case, is whether the car uses inefficient electric resistance heating or a much more efficient electric heat pump. Heat pumps work like air conditioners, moving heat instead of creating it — so they can be three to four times more efficient than other forms of heating. Recurrent’s data compares cars like the Tesla Model Y — which comes standard with a heat pump — to cars like the Ford Mustang Mach-E, where no models offer a heat pump. According to the study, the Mustang loses almost 30 percent of its range at 20 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit, while the Model Y loses only about 15 percent. “A car with a heat pump does much better when it drops down to freezing than one without,” Case said. There are other means to minimize range loss when it’s cold. Many EVs come with seat heaters or even heated steering wheels, which can warm passengers without heating the car’s entire interior. Some cars use the minimal waste heat from the engine to warm the battery and make the charge last longer. EV drivers can also direct their cars to warm up the battery while the car is still plugged in, again extending the range of the vehicle while driving. Ultimately, experts say, cold weather is not a reason to avoid electric vehicles entirely. Jay Friedland, a policy adviser at the advocacy group Plug in America, points out that the country with the highest number of EVs per capita is Norway, where temperatures frequently hover in the 20- to 30-degree Fahrenheit range. “If you’re going to be driving in cold weather, you just need to know you’re going to have some range loss, and plan accordingly,” Friedland said. One thing is certain, however — a stopped EV can keep its occupants warm for long periods of time in a snowstorm pileup. After the Virginia highway debacle, many EV owners, YouTubers and journalists tested their electric cars in freezing temperatures to see what would happen. One journalist for Car and Driver found that, at subfreezing temperatures, his Tesla Model 3 with a resistance heater could keep the cabin warmed to 65 degrees Fahrenheit for a maximum of 45 hours. That number could rise to 50 or 60 hours with a heat pump. “You don’t have to worry about being stuck in long winter traffic jams,” Case said."
+"Whether it’s spring cleaning or tackling a New Year’s resolution, many people are purging their closets at least once a year — if not more — and flooding their local charities with heaps of donations. Donating has long been a popular, convenient and largely guilt-free way to get rid of clothes you don’t wear anymore. But how much of your donated clothing finds a new home or helps someone in need? Far less than you probably might think, experts say. “We often fantasize as consumers that ‘This is going to a good home’ and ‘Someone’s really going to love this,’ ” says Cosette Joyner Martinez, an associate professor in the department of design, housing and merchandising at Oklahoma State University. Few nonprofits in the United States collect and redistribute more donated clothes than Goodwill does. “Goodwill receives billions of pounds of donations every year,” much of which is used clothing, says Brittany Dickinson, manager of sustainability for Goodwill Industries International. In 2021, according to Dickinson, Goodwill handled more than 107 million donations of used goods, totaling around 5.7 billion pounds. (That is around the combined weight of about 19,000 blue whales, the largest animals on Earth.) People will often “buy a bunch of clothes and they’re like, ‘It’s okay if I just donate them, they’ll get use,’ ” adds Katrina Caspelich, chief marketing officer for Remake, a global nonprofit organization advocating for fair pay and climate justice in the clothing industry. “But that’s not true.” In reality, a large portion of donated clothes typically aren’t suitable for someone else to wear because they are in poor condition. Those unwanted clothes can then become a problem if they get shipped overseas or worse, incinerated or landfilled. The solution, though, is not to stop donating entirely. Donating clothes can extend their life span, and reputable charities generally make many efforts to keep out of landfills most items they receive. What’s more, charities often use the profits from sales of donated clothing to fund critical community-based programs and services. Here is what you need to know about donating clothes and how you can avoid doing more harm than good. Depending on where you donate and the condition of your clothes, they could go directly to people in need, be sold in thrift stores, get sent to other countries, or wind up repurposed as rags or another product that uses textile fibers. Some donations, however, are in such poor condition that they can only be incinerated or trashed. “There’s so much stuff coming in,” says Lynda Grose, a professor of fashion design and critical studies at California College of the Arts. “There’s only so much those companies can process.” In the case of a charity such as Goodwill, about half of donated clothing is “deemed suitable for retail,” Dickinson says, meaning it can be sold in the organization’s brick-and-mortar thrift stores or through e-commerce. The remaining 50 percent of donations that don’t meet the quality standard are sold in Goodwill outlet stores, which are wholesale establishments that sell items at significantly lower prices, or to salvage dealers. Goodwill, she says, only throws away textile donations that arrive wet or soiled. (There are also several local and national initiatives to develop scalable, traceable and circular solutions for unsold donated goods, including repair and upcycling programs as well as a textile-to-textile recycling project, she says.) About 38 to 48 percent of secondhand clothing in traditional retail channels are sold, though the rate can vary depending on the Goodwill location, according to Dickinson. Whatever doesn’t sell in stores is typically moved to an outlet, where items are commonly sold by the pound. A minimum of about 30 percent of the total weight of donations received by Goodwill are sold locally through thrift stores, e-commerce and outlets, she estimates. Anything left over from outlets is sold in bulk as salvage where the materials are sorted into categories such as resale, recycling, downcycling and export. Individual Goodwill organizations, Dickinson adds, work with their own local network of salvage buyers, and they do not directly send products overseas. But the salvage businesses that buy up unsold clothing operate locally, nationally and globally, so it can be difficult to know exactly where items end up. While selling clothes to salvage buyers “is currently the only solution that exists in America at scale to extend the life of unsold donated goods,” Dickinson says, “the salvage market is not a perfect system, mainly because it’s opaque.” Sending clothing overseas might be well-intentioned, but some experts say the shipments could create a waste problem and negatively affect local economies. “When our used clothes get sent abroad, their sales can compete with other local merchants and textile industries in the area, and that competition can put financial pressure on those who may already be struggling to make a profit,” Caspelich says. It is important, experts say, to be thoughtful about donations. Make sure your clothes are in the best condition possible. Garments should be clean and free of pet hair or lint. Check any pockets for trash or personal items. If your clothes have rips or missing buttons, try mending and repairing before donating. That said, some organizations will take things that are broken, stained or ripped. Goodwill, for instance, typically puts damaged items aside for its outlets or salvage, Dickinson says. Avoid donating clothes that aren’t in season. For example, don’t donate heavy coats, jackets and sweaters in the summer or send those items to warm-weather places. Instead, wait for winter or fall, when there is probably more demand for that type of clothing. You also shouldn’t donate clothing, even new items, to disaster-relief efforts unless a reputable organization that is on the ground in the affected area makes a specific request, says Miguel Jaller, co-director of the Sustainable Freight Research Program at the University of California at Davis. Most of the clothing that often gets donated in the aftermath of disasters isn’t going to be useful, Jaller says, noting that relief organizations typically don’t have the resources to clean, organize or make donated clothing usable for people in need. Many drives and collection centers accumulate clothing, he says, but “just a small percentage” ends up being worn. Then, he adds, it can become the responsibility of larger charity organizations or local governments to deal with the unused donations, which might be incinerated, buried or thrown away. If you’re concerned about what might be happening to your donated clothes, experts recommend researching charities. In her book “The Conscious Closet,” Elizabeth L. Cline points people to online resources such as Charity Watch, Charity Navigator and the Better Business Bureau’s Give.org website, which evaluate organizations and provide information about how they operate. While charities such as Goodwill sell donations to secondhand shoppers when possible, much of the profits is used to fund community-based services. Across the Goodwill network, Dickinson says, nearly 80 percent of the revenue from the sale of donations supports the organization’s mission of providing job placement and training, and support services such as child care, financial education, transportation, tax preparation and mentoring. You can also donate clothes to efforts that directly distribute them to people in need. Consider local clothing drives held by shelters or churches. Some groups collect and give away specific types of clothing such as professional attire for men and women, or prom dresses. Don’t hesitate to look deeper and ask questions, says Karen Leonas, a professor of textile sciences at the Wilson College of Textiles at North Carolina State University. Before donating, she suggests, try to figure out what charities do with non-sellable goods and whether they’re taking a conscientious approach. Are they transparent about their sorting process? Can they explain how clothes move through their system? Donating isn’t the only way to increase the life span of your clothes. For basic items such as plain T-shirts, Joyner Martinez recommends changing how you wear those clothes. For example, if a white T-shirt is starting to look dingy, you can wear it as a pajama shirt or something you put on to do yard work, she says. Once it isn’t wearable anymore, you could use it as a rag. Hand-me-downs and clothing swaps, where you can trade clothes with friends, family or neighbors, help ensure that your unwanted clothing will get worn. If you have high-quality garments, you can also consider consignment or resale. “It’s a great way to give clothes a second life and earn a little extra money,” Caspelich says. Keep in mind, though, that not all clothing might be suitable for resale. “Resale is not a good avenue for that thing that you’ve had for 15 years,” Joyner Martinez says. “It’s a great thing for something that you bought by mistake or you bought to wear once.”"
+"Earlier this year, Congress passed the biggest climate bill in history — cloaked under the name the “Inflation Reduction Act.” But while economists say the bill may not reduce inflation very much, it could do one  important thing for a country trying to move away from fossil fuels: Spur millions of households across America to switch over to cleaner energy sources with free money. Starting in the new year, the bill will offer households thousands of dollars to transition over from fossil-fuel burning heaters, stoves and cars to cleaner versions. On Jan. 1, middle-income households will be able to access over a half-dozen tax credits for electric stoves, cars, rooftop solar and more. And starting sometime in mid-2023, lower-income households will be able to get upfront discounts on some of those same appliances — without having to wait to file their taxes to get the cash back. This handy online tool shows what you might be eligible for, depending on your Zip code and income. But which credits should Americans focus on — and which are best for the climate? Here’s a guide to the top climate-friendly benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act, and how to access them. Tax credit available on Jan. 1: 30 percent of the cost, up to $2,000 Income limit: None Ah, heat pumps — one of the most popular technologies of the transition to clean energy. “Heat pump” is a bit of a misnomer for these machines, which are more like super-efficient combo air conditioning and heating systems. These appliances run on electricity and move heat, instead of creating it, and so can be three to five times more efficient than traditional gas or electrical resistance heaters. “For a lot of people, a heat pump is going to be their biggest personal impact,” said Sage Briscoe, the federal senior policy manager at Rewiring America, a clean-energy think tank. (Heat pumps have become so iconic that Rewiring America even has a heat pump mascot.) Heat pumps can have enormous cost and carbon savings. According to one analysis using data from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, switching to a heat pump can save homeowners anywhere from $100 to $1,200 per year on heating bills and prevent anywhere from 1 to 8 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year. For comparison, going vegan for an entire year saves about 1 metric ton of CO2 emissions. But many consumers encounter obstacles when switching over to heat pumps. In some areas, it can be difficult to find a contractor trained and willing to install them; some homeowners report that contractors share misinformation about heat pumps, including that they don’t work in cold climates. (Modern heat pumps do work in cold climates, and can heat a home even when outdoor temperatures are down to minus-31 degrees Fahrenheit.) Briscoe recommends that homeowners look for skilled contractors who know about heat pumps and do advance research to figure out which models might work best for their home. Tax credit available on Jan. 1: Up to $7,500 depending on the make and model of the car Income limit: <$150,000 for single filers; <$300,000 for joint filers If you are like the millions of Americans who don’t live in a community with ample public transit, the best way to decarbonize your transport is switching to an electric car. But electric cars can be prohibitively expensive for many Americans. Starting Jan. 1, a new EV tax credit will offer consumers up to $7,500 off the purchase of an electric vehicle. For the first few months, Americans will get somewhere between $3,751  and $7,500 off their purchase of an EV, depending on the size of the battery in the car. There are limitations, per the new law. The vehicles will also have to be assembled in North America, and cars that cost more than $55,000 aren’t eligible, nor are vans or trucks that cost more than $80,000. This week, the Internal Revenue Service provided a list of vehicles that are expected to meet the criteria starting Jan. 1. Beginning about March, however, that $7,500 credit will be split into two parts: Consumers can get a $3,750 credit if the vehicle has a battery containing at least 40 percent critical minerals from the United States (or a country that the United States has a free-trade agreement with) and another $3,750 credit if at least 50 percent of the battery’s components were assembled and manufactured in North America. Those rules haven’t been finalized yet, so the tax credit starting on Jan. 1 is a stopgap measure until the White House has ironed out the final version. Joe Britton, the executive director of the EV industry group Zeta, said that means  there will likely be a wider group of vehicles eligible for the full tax credit in January and February  than there will be later in 2023. Because of this, he recommended that potential EV owners act fast in 2023. “I would be buying a car in the first quarter,” he said. Tax credit available now: 30 percent of the cost of installation, no cap Income limit: None For those who want to generate their own clean energy, there is always rooftop solar panels. This tax credit has actually been available since the Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law in August 2022. It offers a tax credit equal to 30 percent of the cost of installing rooftop solar, with no cap. According to Rewiring America, the average 6 kilowatt solar installation costs  about $19,000, making the average solar tax credit  about $5,700. (The Inflation Reduction Act also includes a 30 percent tax credit for homeowners that need to upgrade their electricity panel for rooftop solar, and a 30 percent tax credit for installing battery storage.) Solar panels can save homeowners tens of thousands of dollars in utility bills and, when combined with battery storage, can also provide a power backup in the case of a blackout or other disaster. For someone trying to move their entire home away from fossil fuels, solar panels become even more enticing: Switch everything over to electricity, and then make the electricity super cheap with the help from the sun. For people who don’t own their own homes, there are other options as well. Renters can subscribe to a community solar project to lower their electricity bills and get indirect benefits from the tax credits. There are many other credits also coming out in 2023: for EV chargers (up to $1,000), heat pump water heaters (up to $2,000), and even cash for sealing up the doors and windows of your home (up to $1,200). The most important thing to know, Briscoe said, is whether you qualify for the upfront discounts for low- and moderate-income Americans — which won’t be available until later in 2023 — or the tax credits, which will be available Jan. 1. (Try this tool.) If going the tax credit route, it’s better to spread the upgrades out across multiple years, since there is an annual limit on how many of the credits you can claim in a given year. And, she warned, it is not always going to be easy: It can be hard to find the right installers and the right information for how to make use of all the available government resources. But ultimately, Briscoe said, how you start decarbonizing your life isn’t as important as just starting. “It’s like dieting or any other change in your life,” she said. “You have to take the first step, and then another step.”"
+"Corry Robb’s colleagues at the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency use powerful satellites to monitor protests in Iran, missile launches in North Korea and Russian strikes on Ukraine. This fall, Robb and a team from the agency were deployed under far different circumstances: to Florida, in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian. With climate change driving more frequent and powerful natural disasters, the intelligence agency, part of the Department of Defense, is contending with new needs closer to home. Charged with mapping and analyzing the physical world, it’s turning skills sharpened in the world’s danger spots toward helping people inside U.S. borders. And within days of Ian’s landfall on the Florida coast, Robb and his team of analysts were processing tens of thousands of drone and satellite images per day to help direct rescuers in the Fort Myers area to their most important targets. The week-long effort was one of the latest examples of public agencies and companies repurposing advanced technology toward improving the speed and efficacy of rescues, as more people stand in the pathway of climate-driven disasters. Now, U.S. intelligence officials are experimenting with ways to get involved, taking a small step toward an area they have often avoided: domestic deployments. “Geospatial data is really layered data,” said Robb, who helps run a team at the geospatial intelligence agency that deploys to locations around the world. “We’re that foundational layer that you build everything on top of.” The deployment came after President Biden declared Hurricane Ian a major disaster on Sept. 29, giving the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) the power to request help from across the federal government in response to one of the most powerful hurricanes ever to hit the United States. The intelligence officials could accumulate drone and satellite photos of the hurricane-hit areas, plug them into their systems, and come up with a list of areas that were the likeliest to be in need of search-and-rescue teams. They could figure out which boat docks were still likely to be functional, making it easier to get around by water. They could plot quicker and safer routes for rescuers as they zipped around a torn-up and waterlogged landscape no longer navigable with Google Maps. More than 100 people died in the hurricane. Far more needed help from emergency workers. At the peak, the analysts’ system was processing about 60,000 images per day, Robb said, helping to produce rich information about the geography of the damage that made rescue efforts more effective. The agency has deployed to natural disasters for years, but it  hadn’t previously used drones, which meant it didn’t have as rich or as many low-altitude images to work with. The agency doesn’t use classified images for emergency situations such as Hurricane Ian, since most of the people who would need access to them don’t have security clearances, Robb said. But the analysts are still able to do powerful work with commercial, unclassified satellite images and pictures taken from small quadcopter drones, the kind with four spinning rotors, he said. The data “tells us where some vulnerable communities could be,” he said. The team worked out of a parking lot in a cramped, nondescript white trailer that was small enough to be towed around by pickup truck. Sitting on black folding chairs as they stared at their computer screens, they tried to pinpoint rescue targets that people on the ground wouldn’t otherwise have been able to see. Analysts brought special large-format printers that could create detailed, waterproof maps on the spot. And they could feed data into an online portal that emergency personnel could access on their phones, helping to spread the information widely and quickly. The effort was responsible for at least one human rescue, Robb said. After receiving a tip that a person might be stranded in a stand of mangrove trees, which can be difficult to search because of their thick root structures, an analyst pored over drone imagery and found a possible target for a rescue team. The analyst was right. The emergency responders “were getting the information that they needed to be able to turn the power back on. Find the people still trapped in debris. All that kind of stuff,” Robb said. Analysts such as Robb aren’t the only national security personnel finding themselves pulled more into a different kind of fight, one that is driven by climate change rather than human enemies. Across the globe, armed forces are also increasingly being seen as the emergency responders of last resort, as wildfires, floods and other disasters start to strain the civilian safety net. The result can be complicated: officials who are accustomed to fighting foreign adversaries sometimes say that natural disasters are an unwanted distraction. And in societies in which attitudes toward the military are mixed or in which armies have occasionally subverted civilian leaders, widespread domestic deployments can cause tension. That’s true in the United States as well, where intelligence agencies restrain their activities domestically. That’s why the team deployed under the control of FEMA, a civilian nonmilitary agency, he said. “There are some very strong sensitivities and some hot-button issues,” Robb said. But, he said, “we’re helping fellow Americans, which is kind of neat.”"
+"When Trystan Bass first stepped into her 1920s-era home in Oakland, Calif., she immediately noticed the focal point of the living room: a floor-to-ceiling wood-burning fireplace. “It’s gorgeous and one of the reasons I bought the house,” said Bass, 53. “But I was never going to light a fire in it.” No matter the type of fireplace, whether it’s wood-burning, pellet-burning, natural gas or electric, using one typically generates some amount of greenhouse gases and other emissions that can be damaging to the environment and human health. To avoid these effects, Bass said she recently bought flameless battery-powered candles and placed them inside her fireplace. “It’s exactly the effect with none of the muss and fuss,” she said. If you want to light up a real fire or at least mimic the experience, here’s what experts say you need to know about commonly available fireplaces and how you can curb emissions from using them this winter. A traditional open wood-burning fireplace “emits the greatest amount of pollution and is typically the least efficient,” according to a spokesperson with the Environmental Protection Agency. Most of the heat goes out through the chimney, making it a poor way to warm a home. Burning logs of wood in an open fireplace also can cause air-quality problems. Experts say smoke from residential wood burning is a major cause of poor outdoor and indoor air quality in many areas across the country, particularly during winter months. Wood-burning by households can produce more than 300,000 tons per year of fine particulate matter, or PM 2.5, which is a hazardous air pollutant, according to the EPA’s 2017 National Emissions Inventory. In comparison, residential use of natural gas generates just over 4,000 tons per year of PM 2.5. “If you’re in a neighborhood where there’s one smoky fire burning, you’ll notice that from blocks around,” said Bill Magavern, the policy director at the Coalition for Clean Air, a California-based nonprofit organization that advocates healthy air. “Just one fire can be enough, unfortunately, to dirty the air in a whole community.” Wood smoke contains carbon monoxide and other toxins, as well as fine particles, which can trigger or worsen certain health conditions. Breathing in particulate matter is associated with asthma and serious heart problems, including irregular heart rhythms, heart attacks, strokes and heart failure. How to burn a cleaner wood fire: To reduce the amount of potentially harmful byproducts released, experts say it’s critical that your wood fire is burning well. If the carbon contained in wood is burned at peak efficiency, it should turn into carbon dioxide, said Anna Karion, a research scientist who works in the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s greenhouse gas measurements program. But, she noted, wood-burning fireplaces generally can’t create the ideal combustion conditions to produce only carbon dioxide. Using an inefficient fuel or burning in poorly ventilated conditions also can lead to more of the carbon being emitted as carbon monoxide or methane, she said. “Either way, you’re emitting the carbon, but what the impact is going to be of that molecule depends on this efficiency of the combustion,” Karion said. “If it’s all being combusted directly to CO2, that’s sort of like the perfect case.” The hotter a fire burns, the cleaner it is, said John Crouch, the director of public affairs at the Hearth, Patio and Barbecue Association, an industry group. For those planning to light wood fires, Crouch and other experts emphasized the importance of using dry wood that has been seasoned and split well. Properly dried wood should have a moisture reading of 20 percent or less, according to the EPA. You can buy moisture meters at hardware stores and online. The EPA provides online resources and guidance about burning wood through its “Burn Wise” program. If you’re lighting only an occasional fire, you might want to use a “wood/wax fire log,” which tends to be more environmentally friendly than regular wood, Crouch said. These logs are typically a mix of sawdust and some candle wax intended for use in fireplaces. They should not be used in wood stoves, he said. “One of the reasons fire logs have lower emissions is simply because the paraffin mixed in the sawdust helps keep the fire temperature hotter, so it does a better job of breaking down the particulates,” he said. Avoid burning garbage, plastic, glossy paper or wood that has been treated, Magavern said. “Then you get chemical toxins that go beyond the ones that you find in natural wood.” If you light a fire and notice a lot of smoke coming out of your chimney, “that’s a bad sign,” Magavern said. “A properly burning fire should only be giving off a thin wisp of white steam after a half-hour or so.” Another way to increase efficiency and reduce wood smoke pollution is to install a wood or pellet-burning stove insert, according to the EPA, which certifies these appliances. Generally, wood or pellet-burning stoves also allow users to better control the heat. Designed to be installed within the firebox of an existing fireplace, an insert may be the appropriate option if you’re trying to heat large portions of a house or, in some cases, an entire home, Crouch said. Wood or pellet stoves also can be free-standing. “One of the weaknesses of an open fireplace is things just move along too fast” and there isn’t enough time for the fire to finish burning everything, he said. Stoves and fireplace inserts certified by the EPA are supposed to be designed with better insulation and improved air flow, meaning “more of these gases and particles are burned inside the stove, resulting in less smoke,” according to the agency. In a 2013 publication, the EPA estimated that 65 percent, or about 7.8 million, of the wood stoves in the United States were older, inefficient devices. “Changing out one old, dirty, inefficient wood stove is equivalent to the PM 2.5 pollution reduction of taking five old diesel buses off the road,” the EPA noted. But the EPA’s certification of wood stoves has come under scrutiny after a report published last year by the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management (NESCAUM), a group of state air-quality regulators. After reviewing around 250 certified wood heaters, the report found “a systemic failure of the entire certification process, including EPA’s oversight and enforcement of its requirements.” A spokesperson for the EPA said the agency is “working to address the concerns raised by the 2021 NESCAUM report.” Experts say pellet-burning stove inserts, which also can be certified by the EPA, are another option — although they typically require electricity to run. These stoves use pellets made of compressed wood or other biomass as fuel and are generally cleaner and more efficient than wood stoves, according to the EPA. However, environmental and social concerns are being raised about pellets and how they’re manufactured. A report from the Rachel Carson Council, a national environmental group, criticized the wood pellet industry, calling attention to impacts such as deforestation and the increased risk of health problems for communities surrounding production facilities releasing pollution. The report also noted that “burning wood pellets releases 65% more CO2 than coal per megawatt hour.” For the most part, natural gas fireplaces, which also include gas stove inserts or gas logs, are “going to burn a lot cleaner and safer than wood and other types of fuels,” said Brett Little, the education manager at the GreenHome Institute, a nonprofit organization. According to the EPA, gas logs are generally designed for decorative purposes. If you’re looking to provide heat for a room, installing a gas stove into an open fireplace might be the better choice. Burning natural gas “has virtually no particulate emissions,” Crouch added. But it does produce pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide, the EPA spokesperson said. The agency recommends avoiding the use of unvented gas fireplaces, including gas logs and gas stoves. Some experts say it’s also important to take into account the broader environmental footprint of the energy source. A significant proportion of natural gas in the United States is procured through a controversial extraction process known as fracking. And since natural gas is mainly methane, any leak can release the potent greenhouse gas into the air. “The pellet stove is not leaking methane into the atmosphere, whereas the natural gas system is contributing to leaking methane all over and it leaks in people’s homes, too,” Little said. Regardless of whether you have a gas or wood fireplace, the EPA urges proper installation and maintenance. “Blocked, leaking or damaged chimneys or flues can release harmful combustion gases and particles and even fatal concentrations of carbon monoxide,” the EPA spokesperson said. Chimneys and vents should be professionally inspected each year. If you primarily want a fireplace for aesthetics, Little encourages people to ask one question: “Is it necessary to burn anything to do that?” Electric fireplaces, many of which are outfitted with resistance heaters, can provide the look and feel of a wood-burning or gas fireplace without the on-site emissions concerns. “Why put out carbon emissions and risk your health and your safety when you can just have something that is very aesthetically pleasing and works very well taking the electric approach?” Little said. But Little and other experts note the environmental impact of these fireplaces depends largely on how the electricity is generated. “You have to understand your grid and what your grid is made out of at the time,” Little said. “You might still be burning gas indirectly through the power plant,” he added. “But what we know is the grid is getting cleaner and cleaner and cleaner every year and eventually it’ll be all renewable.”"
+"Consumer products giant 3M announced Tuesday that it will stop making and using a ubiquitous class of long-lasting, hazardous chemicals that can pose health risks to millions of Americans. The Minnesota-based conglomerate, which makes widely used products including sticky notes, adhesive tape and safety masks, pledged to “exit all manufacturing” and “work to discontinue the use” of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, across its products by the end of 2025, according to a news release. More commonly known as “forever chemicals,” the compounds do not break down naturally and have been found in the water supplies of communities across the country. “With these two actions, 3M is committing to innovate toward a world less dependent upon PFAS,” the release said. Tuesday’s announcement comes as 3M is facing an onslaught of lawsuits from states and individuals who are claiming contamination from PFAS harmed their health. Bloomberg Intelligence estimates long-term legal liabilities could wind up costing the company $30 billion or more. 3M’s current annual net sales of manufactured PFAS are approximately $1.3 billion, according to the company. Exposure to certain levels of PFAS chemicals has been linked to infertility, developmental issues or delays in children, and several types of cancer, among other health concerns. Despite these known risks to humans, the chemicals, which help make consumer goods resistant to water as well as stains and grease, continue to show up in products such as cosmetics, dental floss, food packaging and clothing. The Biden administration has taken steps to regulate PFAS in various ways. Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency said it would set enforceable drinking water limits on certain compounds. Since then, the EPA has publicly warned that the chemicals pose a greater danger to human health than regulators previously thought. In August, the agency also proposed classifying two of the most common of these chemical compounds — PFOA and PFOS — as hazardous. EPA Administrator Michael Regan tweeted Tuesday afternoon that “protecting people from PFAS pollution is one of my top priorities,” and he vowed “to hold polluters accountable and protect public health.” Major U.S. manufacturers including 3M have long agreed to stop making PFOA and PFOS after their health risks became clear. 3M committed in 2000 to phase out the two chemicals, but it continued to use other types of “forever chemicals,” of which there are thousands with varying properties. In Tuesday’s announcement, 3M argued the class of chemicals continues to be “essential for modern life.” The latest decision “is based on an evolving external landscape,” the company said, pointing to regulatory crackdowns as well as pressure from consumers and investors. “While PFAS can be safely made and used, we also see an opportunity to lead in a rapidly evolving external regulatory and business landscape to make the greatest impact for those we serve,” 3M chairman and chief executive Mike Roman said in the news release. The company did not say exactly how it plans to achieve its targets, noting, “We have already reduced our use of PFAS over the past three years through ongoing research and development, and will continue to innovate new solutions for customers.” John Rumpler, senior clean water director for Environment America, called 3M’s announcement “great news for clean water.” “For the sake of our health and our environment, we hope 3M will phase out PFAS production before 2025 and that other companies will follow suit,” he said in a statement. Others questioned the company’s motivation. Erik Olson, a senior strategic director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in an interview that 3M’s announcement almost certainly stems in part from the “massive liability” the company is facing. “Virtually every American is walking around with PFAS in their bodies,” Olson said. “The handwriting is on the wall that continuing to make these chemicals is putting their shareholders and their company at risk.” Olson and other environmental advocates are hoping 3M’s decision to move away from PFAS chemicals sends a powerful signal to other companies to “follow suit and get out of this dangerous chemistry,” he said. But he is skeptical that will happen quickly. “There is a risk that others will see a void to be filled,” he said. Dino Grandoni contributed to this report."
+"MONTREAL — Close to 200 countries reached a watershed agreement early Monday to stem the loss of nature worldwide, pledging to protect nearly a third of Earth’s land and oceans as a refuge for the planet’s remaining wild plants and animals by the end of the decade. A room of bleary-eyed delegates erupted in applause in the wee hours after agreeing to the landmark framework at the U.N. biodiversity summit, called COP15. The hope is to turn the tide on an ongoing extinction crisis. About 1 million species are at risk of disappearing forever, a mass-extinction event that scientists say would be on par with the devastation wrought by the asteroid that wiped out most dinosaurs. Today’s loss of biodiversity is being driven not by a space rock but by one species: humans. The loss of habitat, the exploitation of species, climate change, pollution and destruction from invasive species moved by people between continents are all driving a decline in the variety of plants and animals. Nations now have the next eight years to hit their targets for protecting life. With few legal mechanisms for enforcement, they will have to trust one another to protect habitats and funnel hundreds of billions of dollars to conservation. “This is an incredible milestone for the world when it comes to conservation,” said Brian O’Donnell, the director of the conservation group Campaign for Nature. “We have been on a rapid path of destruction of nature for hundreds of years, and this can mark a turning point.” As much of the rest of the world watched the World Cup and prepared for the holidays, delegates worked well past midnight over the weekend to hash out a deal, trudging through snowy streets to gather at the Montreal Convention Center. They sought a major agreement akin to the Paris climate deal in 2015, when nations agreed to try to limit Earth’s warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit). “I feel quite exhausted because this meeting has gone on and on like a marathon,” said Huang Runqiu, the COP15 president and minister of ecology and environment for China, which co-hosted the talks with Canada. The 10-year deal sets nearly two dozen targets. The banner commitment calls on nations to collectively conserve for wildlife at least 30 percent of land, inland waterways, and coastal and ocean areas by 2030 — the promise dubbed “30 by 30.” “It’s a global goal. Every country commits what they are capable of committing,” said Masha Kalinina, a senior officer focused on biodiversity at the Pew Charitable Trusts. “Some will do more, some will do less.” The world has a long way to go to achieve that goal. Right now, only about a sixth of the continents and a 12th of the oceans have some form of protection, according to the U.N.’s World Conservation Monitoring Center. The agreement also calls for cutting by half nutrient runoff from farms, as well as the rate at which invasive species are introduced to ecosystems. Nations also committed to reducing the risk of pesticides by 50 percent. Insect populations are seeing drastic declines in some parts of the globe as part of a potential and debated bugpocalypse. It remains to be seen how seriously world leaders take these commitments over the coming decade. In the past, countries have fallen short of goals set in similar deals. Nations whiffed on fully meeting any of the 20 biodiversity targets set after a 2010 meeting in Aichi, Japan, the last time they set major conservation targets. No head of state other than Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attended the meeting in Montreal in person. Chinese leader Xi Jinping opened the high-level negotiations remotely. To try to prevent failure this time, negotiators included a monitoring framework to track progress. But the agreement’s language on preventing extinctions is not as strong as some advocates wanted. In many cases, the plan lacks measurable targets. “While agreements are great, if we’re going to save life on Earth, now we have to roll up our sleeves and do it,” said Tanya Sanerib, international legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Basically, the agreement is a watered-down version of business as usual when it comes to fighting wildlife extinction.” The talks in Montreal, which drew about 12,000 participants, were set to end Monday. As disagreements mounted, some attendees decided to reschedule flights. But in the end, delegates were able to come to a “30 by 30” deal on time. A key point of tension between rich and poor countries was money. By one estimate, a staggering $598 billion to $824 billion is needed annually to reverse the loss of species worldwide. Countries in South America and Africa — home to rainforests and other ecosystems that harbor the richest diversity of life on Earth — wanted reassurances from wealthier nations that money will flow from individual donors and foreign governments to help them protect landscapes and police against illegal poachers and loggers. “It’s sort of a chicken and an egg,” said Andrew Deutz, a director at the Nature Conservancy. “More money, then you can take on more commitments. Show us that there’s more commitments, then we’ll give you more money.” Susana Muhamad, the environmental minister of rainforest-rich Colombia, emphasized Sunday that the agreement must “align the resources and the ambitions.” Ève Bazaiba, environment minister for the Democratic Republic of Congo, said over the weekend that her country is committed to the “30 by 30” goal. But she added that her government needs financial help to protect swaths of the Congo Basin, which has the world’s second-largest expanse of tropical forest. “When it comes to fauna, we need to have the means to achieve this objective,” she said. At one point last week, delegates from many developing countries briefly walked out on talks over the issue of funding. And on Monday, the Democratic Republic of Congo lodged an early-morning objection to a lack of adequate funding in the framework. Despite the objection, China finalized the decision with a banging of a gavel, leading to a tense moment as some African nations took turns voicing their reservations with the finished deal. A representative from Cameroon called the move “a force of hand.” In the end, the agreement put wealthier countries on the hook for sending $30 billion annually to small island nations and other developing countries by the end of the decade, a figure short of what poorer nations initially called for. In total, the deal calls for mobilizing $200 billion a year for conservation work from all sources, with much of the money coming in the form of funds that governments spend within their own borders. The American delegation played a role in negotiations, even though the United States is not officially party to the Convention on Biological Diversity, the treaty underpinning the talks in Montreal. Bill Clinton signed the pact in the 1990s, but it never won ratification with a two-thirds majority in the Senate. The only other country that is not a member of the treaty is the Holy See. But Monica Medina, the U.S. special envoy for biodiversity, went to Montreal to emphasize that the Biden administration had made its own “30 by 30” conservation commitment, dubbing the plan “America the Beautiful.” “I hope that we will have a time in the future when the Senate would ratify it,” Medina said. “But we’re contributing no matter what.” The deal was a long time in the making. The final proceedings, originally scheduled for 2020 in the Chinese city of Kunming, were postponed and moved to Montreal because of the coronavirus pandemic. One of the goals of the summit, which required negotiators to take daily coronavirus tests, was to reduce the viral spillover from live animal markets — one theory as to how the pathogen behind covid-19 started its worldwide spread. “This meeting was delayed by two years due to a global pandemic,” said Alfred DeGemmis, associate director of international policy for the Wildlife Conservation Society. “Governments are finally taking much-needed steps to prevent the next covid-19.”"
+"To save a fearsome predator from extinction, the United States is on the verge of putting in place a near total ban on buying and selling fins sliced off of sharks. Late Thursday, the Senate approved language making it illegal, with few exceptions, to trade shark fins. The provision, which the House had inserted into an annual military policy bill, is now headed to President Biden for his signature. U.S. lawmakers hope to put a dent into a worldwide shark trade that harvests between 26 million and 73 million sharks a year, according to one estimate. Fishers abroad often chop the fins from sharks while still alive and dump the bodies overboard. The practice, called finning, leaves the fish unable to swim and survive. “We understand that sharks are critical to life in the ocean,” Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan (D), a nonvoting delegate in the House for the Northern Mariana Islands who spearheaded the bipartisan bill with Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex. ), said in a statement. “Yet, despite their importance ecologically and economically, sharks are in serious trouble.” But American shark fishers warn that banning fin sales here will result in fishers throwing away fins and do nothing to curb overfishing in foreign waters that are not as well regulated as U.S. fisheries. And some members of Asian communities, where shark fin soup is served at celebratory meals, have criticized past limits on shark fin sales as unfair. “It’d be like telling a farmer to waste half of a chicken or half of a cow,” said Kevin Wark, a commercial fisher who catches shark and monkfish out of Barnegat Light, N.J. “It’s just not going to work out for us.” In fish markets, the fin is the most valuable part of a shark. The flat appendage is a main ingredient in shark fin soup, a delicacy in China and other countries where, for centuries, the brothy dish has traditionally been served at weddings and other big events. But in Earth’s oceans, the apex predator is prized for a different reason. In the popular imagination, sharks have recently gone from a demon fish that terrorizes swimmers to a conservation darling, recognized for helping to keep prey populations in check in its position atop the ocean food web. But sharks tend to grow slowly and, for some species, produce few pups per litter, making them particularly vulnerable to overfishing. Many species are now in serious trouble. A third of sharks, rays and related fish are at risk of extinction, making the group of species among the most threatened vertebrates in the world. At least a dozen states have already banned shark fin sales, according to the environmental group WildAid. And finning is already illegal in U.S. waters. Boats that catch sharks in the Gulf of Mexico and along the East Coast need to bring the entire fish ashore. U.S. fishers will still be able to catch sharks and sell the rest of their meat. After New Jersey put in place a statewide fin sales ban, Wark said he must cut off and throw away the fins to bring the rest of the shark to market. The ban, he added, is a “poster child of people doing something to make themselves feel good and think that they’re going to save the species.” “It just creates a system of waste,” he added. When California moved forward with its own fin ban about a decade ago, it caused consternation among many Asian-Americans, even those that supported the prohibition. “It’s not that this ban is ‘racist’ as some have put it, it’s that it’s the kind of thing that smells a bit of cynical political posturing,” cookbook editor and radio host Francis Lam wrote in a 2011 Salon article, which he said in a direct message on Twitter that he still stands by today. Shaun Gehan, a lawyer who represents commercial fishers, said the industry has already been hit hard by a slump in sales after pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong and the coronavirus pandemic limited access to Asian markets. The local ban, he added, does little to solve unsustainable fishing practices abroad. “It certainly hurts a small, sustainable sector of the domestic fishing industry. But it’s also stupid,” Gehan said. “It does nothing to solve the problem where it actually occurs.” Gib Brogan, a campaign manager at the advocacy group Oceana, which supports the fin sales ban, said, “The shark fin legislation is going to be a strong signal from the United States that the shark fin trade is not sustainable and that the United States won’t be part of it.” “This has been many years and many Congresses that we’ve been pushing for this,” Brogan added. The legislation comes on the heels of a November vote by countries participating in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) to expand the number of shark species protected. The U.S. ban comes with a few exceptions, including allowing the sale of fins from certain dogfish sharks. The defense authorization act also would reauthorize programs supporting the conservation of coral reefs and the rehabilitation of marine mammals. “This will be a very good thing for the oceans, not just for sharks,” Brogan said."
+"European Union policymakers struck a deal on Tuesday to impose a border tax on highly polluting products such as steel and aluminum — an unparalleled move to safeguard Europe’s own climate ambitions while pushing China and others to be greener. The agreement, which still needs final approvals, would impose a tariff on imports of steel, cement, fertilizer and other products that have a heavy carbon footprint. The tax would raise the cost of those products to account for the high price of carbon emissions in Europe, where manufacturers pay around $94 for every metric ton of carbon they release into the atmosphere. The goal is to impose the same cost of carbon dioxide emissions that European manufacturers pay when they produce inside the E.U. 's borders. The deal was reached a week after the Biden administration invited the E.U. to jointly create a trade group that would give like-minded countries an advantage in producing cleanly produced steel and aluminum. Members would impose tariffs against metals from other countries that were produced in less environmentally friendly ways. Combined, the two projects would add up to a starkly different approach from some of the world’s richest nations on how they account for environmentally harmful practices outside of their borders. In particular, it would lead to far more pressure on China to limit its emissions, which are by far the highest in the world, by some measures more than all other developed nations combined. “We are making sure that what we do at home is not jeopardized by a sort of climate dumping,” said Pascal Canfin, the head of the environment committee of the European Parliament, who was one of the policymakers who negotiated the deal announced Tuesday and has long advocated for such a measure. “That would destroy jobs and industries in Europe.” The decision would require importers starting in October 2023 to account for the carbon emissions released when the product was made. In 2026, they would have to actually start paying the tariff, which is known in the often-clunky world of trade negotiators as a carbon border adjustment mechanism. The effort will cover steel, iron, cement, fertilizer, aluminum, electricity and hydrogen. The tool would give Europe the ability to reach far beyond its borders to encourage other countries to invest in environmentally friendly industry. “We will create an economic interest and rationale for a steelmaker in Turkey or in China to invest in green technologies,” Canfin said. “Because otherwise, anyway, they will pay. We are discussing a real decarbonization of key sectors.” Before the agreement is finalized, the countries involved will need to discuss how to phase out credits that European industries are currently allotted to make them more competitive against foreign manufacturers. And the European Parliament and the 27 European member states will need to sign off on it. But policymakers involved in the discussions said final approval is all but assured by early next year. Germany’s climate envoy, Jennifer Morgan, praised the deal, saying she hoped it would spark a wave of new climate ambition around the world. “That mechanism is really there to also create incentives for other countries to green their supply chains. We are in the middle of a climate crisis, and we all need to be moving together on that,” she said in an interview. The border tax is so powerful, she said, that she had been seeing Germany’s trade partners sit up and take notice in a way they hadn’t previously done. “That’s been taken seriously. It’s almost as if Europe is being taken that we mean this climate action seriously,” she said. U.S. policymakers have in the past worried that previous versions of Europe’s carbon border tax would hit U.S. exports to Europe, partly because Washington and Brussels impose climate regulations very differently. The two sides have sparred with each other over climate policy in the past. Most recently, Europeans have been frustrated that President Biden’s signature climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, gives tax breaks to electric cars made in the United States, offering them an advantage over European ones. Some European leaders have called it protectionism wrapped up in climate policy. Biden administration officials have encouraged Europeans to support their own industry. Canfin said any costs on U.S. goods could probably be worked out in a broader negotiation between Europe and the United States on aligning their efforts to combat global warming. Eventually, he said, he hoped it could expand to other parts of the economy. “We need to avoid frictions among the countries or within the club of countries that are willing to move forward on climate action,” said Canfin, a close ally of French President Emmanuel Macron. There are risks to the effort. Critics say such tariffs are banned under World Trade Organization rules, something E.U. policymakers rebut but that is likely to result in a formal complaint inside the organization once they go into effect. The tariffs could also spark a wider trade war, especially if the United States and Europe were to unite against China. But for now, Europe and the United States appear aligned on the idea that tariffs tied to emissions might be an effective tool against Beijing and possibly other big emitters such as India, experts said. “Brussels and Washington have finally realized that carbon tariffs may be the only way to force China to finally cut emissions,” said Paul Bledsoe, a former Clinton White House climate aide who now works at the Progressive Policy Institute, a think tank. “That’s really the bottom line. Nothing else has worked.” Bledsoe said that as the United States spends more and more on climate action, its impatience will mount with Beijing and other countries that aren’t moving as quickly. Border taxes may be a rare area of bipartisan agreement on climate policy, especially since they can be used to hit China, he said. “We’re just spending so much capital on reducing emissions while Chinese emissions are still growing that the political urge to erect some kind of carbon tariff is going to be irresistible, especially ahead of the next presidential election,” Bledsoe said."
+"On Tuesday, the Energy Department announced  a long-awaited milestone in the development of nuclear fusion energy: net energy gain. The news could galvanize the fusion community, which has long hyped the technology as a possible clean energy tool to combat climate change. But how big of a deal is the “net energy gain” anyway — and what does it mean for the fusion power plants of the future? Here’s what you need to know. Existing nuclear power plants work through fission — splitting apart heavy atoms to create energy. In fission, a neutron collides with a heavy uranium atom, splitting it into lighter atoms and releasing a lot of heat and energy at the same time. Fusion, on the other hand, works in the opposite way — it involves smushing two atoms (often two hydrogen atoms) together to create a new element (often helium), in the same way that stars creates energy. In that process, the two hydrogen atoms lose a small amount of mass, which is converted to energy according to Einstein’s famous equation, E=mc². Because the speed of light is very, very fast — 300,000,000 meters per second — even a tiny amount of mass lost can result in a ton of energy. Up to this point, researchers have been able to fuse two hydrogen atoms together successfully, but it has always taken more energy to do the reaction than they get back. Net energy gain — where they get more energy back than they put in to create the reaction — has been the elusive holy grail of fusion research. On Tuesday, researchers at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California announced that they attained net energy gain by shooting lasers at hydrogen atoms. The lasers delivered 2.05 megajoules of energy and created 3.15 megajoules of fusion energy, a gain of about 1.5 times. The 192 laser beams compressed the hydrogen atoms down to about 100 times the density of lead and heated them to approximately 100 million degrees Celsius. The high density and temperature caused the atoms to merge into helium. Other methods being researched  involve using magnets to confine superhot plasma. “It’s like the Kitty Hawk moment for the Wright brothers,” said Melanie Windridge, a plasma physicist and the CEO of Fusion Energy Insights. “It’s like the plane taking off.” No. Scientists refer to the current breakthrough as “scientific net energy gain” — meaning that more energy has come out of the reaction than was inputted by the laser. That’s a huge milestone that has never before been achieved. But it’s only a net energy gain at the micro level. The lasers used at the Livermore lab are only about 1 percent efficient, according to Troy Carter, a plasma physicist at the University of California at Los Angeles. That means that it takes about 100 times more energy to run the lasers than they are ultimately able to deliver to the hydrogen atoms. So researchers will still have to reach “engineering net energy gain,” or the point at which the entire process takes less energy than is outputted by the reaction. They will also have to figure out how to turn the outputted energy — currently in the form of kinetic energy from the helium nucleus and the neutron — into a form that is usable for electricity. They could do that by converting it to heat, then heating steam to turn a turbine and run a generator. That process also has efficiency limitations. All that means that the energy gain will probably need to be pushed much, much higher for fusion to actually be commercially viable. At the moment, researchers can also only do the fusion reaction about once a day. In between, they have to allow the lasers to cool  and replace the fusion fuel target. A commercially viable plant would need to be able to do it several times per second, said Dennis Whyte, director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center at MIT. “Once you’ve got scientific viability,” he said, “you’ve got to figure out engineering viability.” Fusion’s possibilities are huge. The technology is much, much safer than nuclear fission, since fusion can’t create runaway reactions. It also doesn’t produce radioactive byproducts that need to be stored, or harmful carbon emissions; it simply produces inert helium and a neutron. And we’re not likely to run out of fuel: The fuel for fusion is just heavy hydrogen atoms, which can be found in seawater. That’s the trillion-dollar question. For decades, scientists have joked that fusion is always 30 or 40 years away. Over the years, researchers have variously predicted that fusion plants will be operational in the 1990s, the 2000s, the 2010s and the 2020s. Current fusion experts argue that it’s not a matter of time, but a matter of will — if governments and private donors finance fusion aggressively, they say, a prototype fusion power plant could be available in the 2030s. “The timeline is not really a question of time,” Carter said. “It’s a question of innovating and putting the effort in.”"
+"Going to a physical store; shopping online with several delivery choices; renting clothes; swapping them: These days it can feel as though there’s an overwhelming number of ways to get your hands on more clothes. But which option is best for the planet? The answer, experts say, is complicated. But you can make decisions that will help reduce your impact, regardless of how you choose to shop. “I don’t think it’s very easy to say, ‘Okay, buy online or go to shops,’ ” says Sadegh Shahmohammadi, a data scientist at the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research. “It’s really hard to say whether this is better or that one is better, so it’s not really one solution for everyone.” The transportation involved in delivering clothes to consumers generally makes up a smaller part of a garment’s overall environmental impact than how it is made and cared for. Still, Shahmohammadi and other experts say it’s possible to cut greenhouse gas emissions by changing the ways you get your clothes — such as looking at how you get to a store, the shipping rate you opt for and how frequently you return things. Here’s what you need to know. Online and in-store shopping both involve transportation that can produce climate-warming emissions. For most brick-and-mortar operations, companies need to move clothes from warehouses to stores and then consumers make trips to and from those shops, often in gas-guzzling cars. Meanwhile, online retailers typically ship goods to distribution centers before delivering them directly to consumers, or dropping packages at stores or other central locations where people can pick up their items. “We have never had a distribution system in history like the one we have today, in which we can order anything that we want and it’s going to be reliably and cheaply at your doorstep,” says Miguel Jaller, co-director of the Sustainable Freight Research Program at the University of California at Davis. “That comes with some pros and cons.” Research suggests that ordering online can have a smaller carbon footprint than in-person shopping for the same reason that public transportation is often better for the environment than cars. Similar to a bus full of passengers, Jaller says, a single van delivering multiple packages to one neighborhood is more efficient than people hopping in their cars, driving elsewhere to shop and then carting what they buy home. One model analyzing the behaviors of people in Dallas and San Francisco found that exclusively shopping online could lead to an 87 percent decrease in vehicle miles traveled and related emissions, according to a paper published in 2020. But Jaller, who co-authored the paper, says his findings and other studies are often based on specific scenarios. The environmental and climate impacts of how you get clothes can change significantly depending on a variety of factors. For one, cities can be vastly different. “You cannot compare a location where people access goods and malls and shopping through public transit as opposed to another location where everyone drives a large SUV,” Jaller says, adding that emissions can also depend on companies, such as whether a retailer is shipping items over longer distances or distributing more locally, or if they’re using electric delivery vehicles. Studies often find that in-store shopping can produce more emissions than ordering online because people tend to drive to stores. But if you decide to walk, bike or take public transportation “it’s at least very intuitive to assume that the overall advantage that the online has is going to also drop,” says Josué Velázquez Martínez, director of the Sustainable Supply Chain Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The potential environmental benefits of e-commerce largely stems from retailers having enough time to fully load delivery trucks before sending them out, Velázquez Martínez says. “Trying to consolidate deliveries is the key.” There’s one major problem though: People ordering online typically want their items as soon as possible. “Fast shipping can really create a huge mess in all of this,” Velázquez Martínez says. Choosing an earlier delivery date might mean that your item is transported by airplane, which emits huge amounts of CO2. The trucks making these rapid deliveries also aren’t likely to be full, and drivers could be making multiple trips to your neighborhood on the same day. Whenever possible, experts say online shoppers should choose slower shipping options. “In general, anybody that is in logistics and supply chains agree that having one or two or three days more to deliver is always better,” Velázquez Martínez says. More time for deliveries makes planning, inventory replenishment and distribution “way more efficient, which in turn also reduces the amount of fuel and energy that you require to serve your customers.” Shahmohammadi recommends bundling orders instead of receiving separate deliveries. Ideally, he says, try to buy multiple items from the same supplier “so that it reduces your footprint per delivery.” Consolidating orders could also help address online shopping’s packaging issue, says Ting Chi, a professor and chair of Washington State University’s department of apparel, merchandising, design and textiles. Separate deliveries can lead to boxes that aren’t full and additional packaging, which isn’t always recycled, Chi says. “Combining orders into one package would better use the space of the boxes or containers.” Shopping in-person can also benefit from a type of consolidation known as “trip chaining,” or when you can add more activities to an outing, Shahmohammadi says. You could incorporate a stop to buy clothes on your way home from work or if you’re already out running other errands. “If you can chain your trip and then link it to other activities, then that could reduce the share of the footprints related to your clothing,” he says. Another downside to shopping online, particularly for clothes, is the increased chance of returns. One study of a German clothing retailer published in 2012 noted that the company reported a return rate of 35 percent for online sales. The study’s researchers estimated that 6 to 10 percent of things sold through the retailer’s brick-and-mortar stores were returned. The higher return rates for clothes bought online isn’t surprising. Online shoppers can’t physically try on clothes and often have to rely on size guides that can differ across brands. Liberal policies that allow people to send items back for free to exchange or receive full refunds makes returns even more likely. As a result, many people tend to order more clothes than they would buy from a store, often in different sizes, and then return what they don’t like. Not only can the frequency of returns cause a “huge amount of environmental damage” because of the added transportation emissions and packaging, but sending things back can also burden companies, Chi says. “Every time that we see a return, they need to assign their employees to inspect the returned items for integrity or quality.” Returns, he says, “could easily offset those benefits that we receive from online shopping.” Customers can cut down on ordering by minimizing uncertainty, experts say. Read customer comments and reviews, and if it’s an option, test out virtual try-ons. Online retailers can help by providing improved customer service and more accurate sizing information, Chi adds. Experts also recommend taking steps to lower the chances of failed deliveries, since when the truck has to repeat attempts to deliver your package, this contributes to emissions. One option is to have your items delivered to the store or a package pickup location near you. Beyond eliminating the risk of a failed delivery, it lowers a retailer’s emissions footprint if packages are sent to a central site instead of multiple homes. But keep in mind that distance and your personal transportation can make a difference. “If you have to drive a long way to a pick up center, then that could also be a problem,” Velázquez Martínez says. While experts note that renting clothes, which has increased in popularity in recent years, also has associated transportation emissions since garments are regularly being shipped back and forth, the practice can be more environmentally friendly than buying something new. The benefits, though, depend largely on how you use the clothes, says Velázquez Martínez. Buying basic pieces that you’ll wear until they’re worn out could be better for the environment than renting, he says. But for special occasions where you might only wear an outfit once “rental, by far, is better.”"
+"TOKYO — Though it throws out about 90 pounds of food per person every year, Japan doesn’t rank at the top of the world’s list of waste offenders. Still, what’s discarded represents a serious problem for an island nation with limited landfill space and a goal of greater sustainability. Reinvention can offer an alternative. Japanese companies are taking vegetable peels, cooking oil, eggshells and other used foodstuffs and making entirely different products. Cement, for example. Even furniture. Here are three companies with solutions that they hope will help their country cut its food waste in half by 2030, perhaps saving a bit of the planet along the way. Tourists enjoy the Japanese countryside as they ride the Takachiho Amaterasu Railway's sightseeing train. Posing with the pink-and-white train is a favorite picture for tourists who visit the southern Japan town of Takachiho. Ingredients for the biodiesel fuel that powers the train come from a couple thousand restaurants in Japan. After a powerful 2005 typhoon destroyed the railway in Takachiho, a town of about 12,000 people in southern Japan, local leaders decided it was too expensive to restore all train operations. The loss put an essential source of the town’s economic activity at risk. The rebuilding that began on the railway itself is still underway. But a two-car, open-air train that offers tourists breathtaking countryside views now runs daily — its fuel processed from leftover lard from tonkotsu ramen soup and cooking oil waste from tempura, which is gathered from about 2,000 restaurants in Japan. The chief executive of the company working to rebuild the train operations, Takachiho Amaterasu Railway, focused on environmental issues from the start. Fumihiko Takayama believed the town’s residents were partially responsible for the storm’s devastation because of the trees that had been cut down for housing and business development. He wanted to ensure the company’s work didn’t cause further harm. Tourists board the train for a three-mile trip in the Japanese countryside. Hiroyoshi Saitoh is the railway's general manager. Facility chief Daiki Nishiura refuels the train in between its daily sightseeing runs. Amaterasu is working with Nishida Shoun, a transportation company in Fukuoka, which produces about 3,000 liters of biodiesel daily at its plant. The fuel powers the Amaterasu Grand Super Cart on the scenic, three-mile round-trip journey taken by thousands of tourists from Japan and abroad. “We wanted it to be something more than just a tourist attraction, that could inform people about the history, culture and environment,” said Hiroyoshi Saitoh, the company’s managing director. “By implementing the biodiesel, we wanted people to become more conscious about environmental issues as well as biodiesel, especially for the students that come here on school trips.” One thing many of them notice: The biodiesel smells like tonkotsu ramen or fried rice from a Chinese restaurant. And the minimal smoke it emits is white, a big difference from the thick black smoke and gasoline smell of regular diesel. Kota Machida, chief executive of the start-up company Fabula, checks dried food waste in a laboratory at Tokyo University. Fabula makes coasters out of “food cement,” specifically Chinese cabbage (top), burdock, and coffee. Fabula has found that almost any discarded food item can be turned into its food cement. Concrete is the most widely used construction material in the world, and its key ingredient, cement, is a major polluter of greenhouse emissions — accounting for 8 percent of global carbon emissions, according to international research group Chatham House. So what if a more sustainable alternative were possible by making cement with food waste, which also would help reduce greenhouse emissions from landfills where that waste would otherwise be dumped? That’s the idea behind Fabula, a Tokyo-based start-up. Researchers at Fabula created a recipe to create food concrete by drying food scraps, compressing them and pressing them into a mold at a high temperature. The company, founded in 2021 by researchers at the University of Tokyo, began with commonly discarded items like cabbage, orange peels and onion peels but found that almost any food item can be used. (Even a bento, or a boxed lunch, from a convenience store worked.) It now takes mostly coffee grounds and tea leaves to make its cement. The product’s durability depends on the ingredient. Fabula is currently producing made-to-order household items, such as coasters and dishes, while awaiting its patent. The goal is to make furniture and larger structures once the technology is able to make the cement more durable. The company hopes to work with farmers who have surplus crops and construction companies looking for sustainable alternatives. Food manufacturing companies that cannot avoid generating waste during their processes have also reached out to work with the company, said Takuma Oishi, Fabula’s chief commercial officer. “We also hope that we can maybe become some sort of a matching service between companies that have food waste and companies who want to build things out of such materials,” he said. Since the cement is 100 percent edible, it could create opportunities during disaster response when temporary structures need to be built quickly, Oishi added. The evacuees placed in them might even turn to them for sustenance. If the technology advances enough, he suggested, someday evacuees may be able “to eat the homes or furniture when necessary.” Staff members at NOD in Tokyo work at turning eggshells and coffee grounds into 3D-printed furniture. This chair was created through coffee grounds and a 3D printer. One step of the 3D printing process begins at NOD. Coffee grounds and 3D printing make for a sleek table surface at NOD. The 15th century Japanese technique of kintsugi — which means “to join with gold” — uses lacquer mixed with powdered gold to repair shattered pieces of pottery. Its underlying ethos is that mistakes and imperfections can become something beautiful and meaningful. Yusuke Mizobata, chief executive of the Tokyo-based design company NOD, considers kintsugi a predecessor of the modern concept of upcycling. It’s the inspiration behind his work to turn coffee grounds and eggshells into minimalistic 3D-printed furniture. “I think upcycling is actually a very natural part of Japanese culture, but things have become too convenient today, where we can buy everything we need,” he said. “In the past, people utilized what they had around them in more creative ways. … [With] technology, we can encourage people to do so.” The idea came about as Mizobata and his colleagues were working on spatial design projects and saw how quickly furniture would be built and then dismantled for commercial spaces such as hotels. They wanted to find a more sustainable option. Their 3D printing ink is made from coffee grounds, egg shells and other food items that are dried and blended with resins. That mixture is turned into pellets that are melted for the ink they need. Japan, Mizobata noted, is one of the few countries with 3D printers that can create materials as tall as about 10 feet. NOD makes furniture on a commission basis, but its CEO hopes the technology will become more accessible and common so that people can easily create items with food items they would otherwise throw out. Ultimately, Mizobata hopes the growth of furniture made from food waste might help change people’s mindsets about consumption and encourage them to upcycle rather than buy new. “While people are now more conscious about upcycling and sustainability, it’s still difficult [for many] to integrate it in their daily lives,” he said. [Sign up for the latest news about climate change, energy and the environment, delivered every Thursday]"
+"Faced with the staggering amount of emissions and resources typically associated with clothing, you might think the key to having a more sustainable wardrobe is obvious: Stop shopping. “It’d be very easy for me to say, ‘Just stop buying stuff,’ ” says Mark Sumner, a lecturer focusing on sustainability within the textile, clothing and fashion industry at the University of Leeds’s School of Design. “But that is a very lazy response and does not reflect the complexity of fashion and its positive impacts for workers.” Fashion and clothing are a critical part of culture, society and individual expression. And at some point, most people are going to want or need to buy new clothes. To help reduce environmental and social impacts, how you shop — finding ways to reduce unnecessary purchases of new items, thinking about how you might wear what you buy and looking for clothes that will last — matters. “At the end of the day, it’s not about what brands do you shop,” says Katrina Caspelich, chief marketing officer for Remake, a global nonprofit advocating for fair pay and climate justice in the clothing industry. “It’s about what kind of changes are you going to make to how you do consumption.” While ditching shopping isn’t the answer, many people are buying new clothes too often. One 2021 survey of consumers in the United Kingdom reported that nearly 39 percent of respondents said they shop for fashion at least once a month. Almost one-fifth of people surveyed said they buy something new every two weeks, according to the report from Drapers, a U.K.-based fashion retail publication. “The biggest thing that anyone can do to make a difference is to lower their consumption of clothing,” Caspelich says. Even clothes from brands touting how they use less resources still have an environmental cost. What’s more, each new sale can signal to companies that they need to keep producing to meet consumer demand, adding to the staggering amount of textiles already in circulation. Despite increased efforts to donate, resell, repurpose and recycle used clothing domestically, garments can end up shipped overseas, often to Africa or elsewhere in the Global South, creating a waste problem and potentially hurting local economies. Clothes also wind up in landfills in the United States. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, discarded clothing ranks as the top source of textiles in municipal solid waste, above furniture, carpets, footwear, linens and towels. In 2018, the agency reported that landfills received 11.3 million tons of textiles, more than 7 percent of its total waste. “The best thing that people can do is keep materials that have been extracted in use for longer,” says Lynda Grose, a professor of fashion design and critical studies at California College of the Arts. Instead of buying everything new, experts recommend trying to get the most out of what you already own. Extending the life span of your clothes through proper care and repair accomplishes that. If you’re looking to add to your wardrobe, consider alternative ways to refresh your closet. If possible, experts suggest shopping secondhand from thrift or consignment stores or resale platforms, participating in clothing swaps, or renting clothes for special occasions. There’s a difference, according to University of North Carolina at Greensboro professor Elena Karpova, between what she calls “affluent consumption” and “I-need-to-function consumption.” With the rise of e-commerce and the ability to buy things with a single click, have them delivered within a matter of days and then return what you don’t want with relative ease, she and others say, it’s not surprising that many people are often purchasing things they don’t need. “This is not about saying don’t buy stuff,” Sumner says. “This is about saying let’s just be careful that we don’t just do impulse, impulse, impulse.” Whether you’re buying a brand-new article of clothing or acquiring used items, your first step should be to think through the decision. “You shouldn’t approach secondhand the same way you would approach fast fashion,” Caspelich says. Be mindful, she suggests, and try to add to your closet more purposefully. Karpova, who studies textile and apparel sustainability, recommends ranking clothes you want to buy on a scale of one to 10. “I never buy anything that’s lower than nine,” she says. “Shoot for 10.” Before you’re about to get something, take a moment to consider the purchase, Sumner says. “Just stop and put the phone down, or stop and walk away from the cash register and ask yourself, ‘Why am I buying this?’ ” A significant proportion of a garment’s overall environmental impact typically occurs in the use phase, experts say, largely because of how clothes are laundered, used and cared for. This is also the stage, experts note, in which consumers have the most control. “The magic to me is really in the use phase,” says Cosette Joyner Martinez, an associate professor in the department of design, housing and merchandising at Oklahoma State University. Buying clothes should be thought of as a long-term commitment, Joyner Martinez says. “I think about it like a marriage, like I’m entering a relationship,” she says. “Not only am I going to think about how I’m going to use it and how long I’m going to use it, but I’m also going to think about how that thing is going to end its life.” Experiment with a capsule wardrobe, or a small collection of clothing that can be worn interchangeably to create a number of different outfits. If you’re adding to your closet, try to pick higher-quality items, experts say, but remember that price isn’t always a reliable indicator of how well clothing is made. Shop less for trendy styles or hues and choose more classic silhouettes and staple colors, such as black, brown, navy, gray or white. “You can wear things longer without it looking dated,” says Karen Leonas, a professor of textile sciences at the Wilson College of Textiles at North Carolina State University. Timeless, well-made clothes could also have a better chance of finding a new home once you’re done with them. But while considering those factors can help you buy better and reduce consumption, the key, several experts say, is to focus more on what you will actually use. “As long as you feel good in it and you’re going to wear it, then that’s what really matters,” Caspelich says. An inexpensive fast-fashion T-shirt that you take care of and wear all the time, for instance, may be more sustainable than a shirt made from organic fibers that you get rid of after only a few wears. What’s more, caring for clothes properly, such as not machine-washing and drying too often, can extend their life span. The Waste and Resources Action Program, a U.K.-based charity, estimates that if clothes stay in active use for nine months longer, which would increase their average life span to about three years, carbon, water and waste footprints could be slashed by 20 to 30 percent. “The longer we can keep clothing in use, the more we can keep out of landfills,” Caspelich says."
+"DENVER — As the leader of one of the world’s biggest and most invasive iron ore mining operations, Andrew Forrest has done more to propel global warming than some small countries. The Australian billionaire expresses few regrets about his company and its partners having pumped millions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, or the bitter legal conflicts with Aboriginal officials over ecological destruction allegedly committed by his firm, Fortescue Metals Group. He prefers the label “heavy industrialist.” Don’t call him a “greenie.” Yet as the world reaches an energy inflection point, Forrest is now a point man for audacious climate action, with his sights set on the United States. He is betting the future of his $34 billion company on a plunge into “green hydrogen,” a superfuel theoretically capable of powering jet planes, large machines and even electricity plants without any carbon footprint. The head winds are fierce. Hydrogen gas is made by separating water molecules, and producing it typically requires massive amounts of climate-unfriendly natural gas. So far, no one has been able to make affordable hydrogen fuel produced entirely with renewable sources of energy. It requires too much wind or solar power to be practical for mass production. Scientists are racing to change that, with Forrest placing a huge wager on their success bringing green hydrogen to market quickly. Forrest says he will make 15 million tons by 2030, a scale and pace others doubt. The billionaire boasts he will erase fossil fuels from Fortescue’s operations and supply huge quantities of the new fuel to others. “Some are arguing that the technology we need to beat global warming is not with us yet,” Forrest said as a black SUV zipped him from his penthouse suite at the Denver Ritz-Carlton earlier this fall to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which is collaborating with him. “I say that is completely false. The most optimal technologies aren’t with us yet, but we’ve got enough now to make huge heavy-industry companies green.” Forrest’s vision became a lot less fanciful with the Inflation Reduction Act, the historic climate measure enacted by the United States this summer. It is drawing wealthy investors from around the world to pursue all manner of clean energy projects in the United States. The law promises green hydrogen producers a subsidy unmatched anywhere. That $3 per kilogram could move this curious form of energy out of the lab and into mass production. “It has let the genie out of the bottle,” Forrest said. It has also pushed the executive into the ranks of the climate billionaires, playing the role of an ambassador for green hydrogen on such prominent stages as the U.N. global climate summit known as COP27, which concluded recently in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Forrest traces his quest to a near-fatal hiking accident in 2016. He plunged off a cliff into the water, where he had to pry his shattered leg from a rock. “It was brutal,” he said. “I could have lost my life.” Forrest earned a doctorate in ocean studies during his recovery, learning about the catastrophic changes being wrought by methane released from thawing Siberian permafrost. It convinced him the world’s timeline for climate action is inadequate. “The fossil fuel industry has been saying we’ll evolve into this and get it right by 2050,” he said. “They can’t say that anymore. The problem is now.” Forrest readily admits this is as much about chasing corporate profits as clearing his conscience. Fortescue’s intention to produce enough green hydrogen to power the equivalent of 60 million diesel cars by 2030 has sent Forrest around the world, striking tentative deals to build plants and import terminals. The company has committed $6.2 billion, with its plans stretching from the deserts of the Middle East to European industrial zones. The Australian Outback will host facilities, and repurposed coal mines in West Virginia and other states are being scouted. The technology is hotly debated by fellow corporate change agents: Elon Musk mocks it as foolishly impractical, while Bill Gates sees it as crucial to a carbon-free future. Forrest seeks to make a name alongside these climate-minded billionaires. “He’s not waiting around for people to do what we’ve been doing, which is procrastinate for years,” said U.S. climate envoy John F. Kerry. “He could help change thinking.” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm called the Australian “somebody who has vision and is putting his money where his mouth is.” Getting machines to run on hydrogen is not complicated. Industries have been using hydrogen for decades, in the oil refining process, to make fertilizer, and as fuel to propel rockets into space. There are several thousand hydrogen cars in California, and a smattering of hydrogen-fueled passenger trains and city buses around the world. The Inflation Reduction Act’s hydrogen subsidies, totaling $16 billion, have lowered the cost of making hydrogen with renewable power so much that many analysts project it will be priced competitively with dirtier varieties as soon as the science catches up. “Hydrogen has suddenly been recognized as a needed component in the drive to decarbonize,” said Frank Wolak, president of the Fuel Cell & Hydrogen Energy Association. “The Inflation Reduction Act is a kind of accelerator.” The speed at which green hydrogen comes to market hinges on how much innovation can happen quickly around machines called electrolyzers, which turn water into hydrogen fuel by separating out the oxygen. The Biden administration is investing heavily in next-generation electrolyzers that can make the fuel with considerably less energy. White House National Climate Adviser Ali Zaidi compares electrolyzers to the battery components the Obama administration invested heavily in to accelerate the transition to electric cars. Oil and gas companies are eager to dominate the hydrogen landscape themselves. They would continue using natural gas to make much of it for now, pairing production with carbon capture technology meant to trap the emissions. In a bit of marketing spin, the industry calls it “blue hydrogen.” Forrest calls it bunk. “It is proven unreliable,” Forrest said of carbon capture technology at a clean energy event in Pittsburgh earlier this year. “Would any oil and gas executive count on an unreliable technology to save the life of their child when there are reliable options available?” Forrest asked. He’s also competing with the nuclear industry, which is pushing to power hydrogen production with its technology. The nuke-powered fuel has its own color label: “pink” hydrogen. The Biden administration is supporting all in the hydrogen color wars, giving the biggest subsidies to those who can produce truly green hydrogen and leaving the market to sort it all out. The frenzy across the United States to take advantage of the new federal money for green hydrogen brought Forrest together with Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) in September to announce a partnership. It had already been an eventful day, with Forrest arriving to his tour of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory with Kiss rocker Gene Simmons, whom the billionaire considers a buddy. Simmons said the two like to wax philosophical. Polis wasn’t sure how to address Forrest, who goes by the nickname “Twiggy” (he was skinny as a kid). Polis went with Twiggy. It was awkward, like everything in this alliance between liberals and the heavy industrialist. “This is, after all, a man who has produced zero green hydrogen so far,” said Rachel Fakhry, a hydrogen expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The signals he is sending are positive, but we are missing some key pieces to make a judgment on how good this ambition is. We need to make sure what he makes is actually green.” The outlook for how exactly green hydrogen would be used is murky. The amount of wind and solar power it takes to produce, and the tremendous cost involved with storing and shipping the final product, probably make it impractical for fueling passenger cars, for example. California heavily subsidized a “hydrogen highway” experiment, but it has largely proved a disappointment. There are fewer than 10,000 of the cars on the road in the state, almost entirely burning hydrogen made with fossil fuels. “Every generation since the 1970s has had this idea that the next generation will be driving hydrogen cars,” said Martin Tengler, lead hydrogen analyst at BloombergNEF. “We tell people: You don’t drive a hydrogen car and neither will your children.” But his organization is bullish on the use of hydrogen for other machinery, and it and other groups, including the think tank Carbon Tracker, predict the clean variety Forrest is chasing will dominate a hydrogen economy that could grow to $3 trillion by 2050. Whether it will scale up on the timeline set by Forrest is a separate question. Last spring, Forrest went to a coal power station in West Virginia to pitch rank-and-file coal miners on the future they could have in hydrogen. He stressed how decommissioned coal facilities present a prime opportunity for hydrogen production, with much of the needed infrastructure and workforce readily available. “You know, they are not married to that black stuff, which can eventually kill you,” Forrest said. “They're in coal only because they love their community, their families, their careers. If they have another medium, which is going to be even better for their community, their families, their careers, they're going to switch straight up.” The overtures in West Virginia got the attention of the state’s Democratic senator, Joe Manchin III, the driving force behind the Inflation Reduction Act, with whom he has met. Forrest also presented his plans to President Biden at a White House meeting, he said. Back in Australia, Forrest is known to be both charming and manipulative. He built his iron ore mining empire on the same kind of risky gamble he is making on green hydrogen. He bought up tens of thousands of kilometers passed over by the existing big mining companies as unsuitable for extraction, as the iron ore deposits were less abundant and would take extra effort to pull the from the earth. The extraction process used on some of the Fortescue plots is particularly destructive to the environment because it involves scraping over a large surface rather than digging deep into concentrated areas. With demand for iron ore exploding in China, Forrest saw dollar signs on the subpar land where competitors saw headaches. His company now has more than 15,000 employees. Critics in Australia wince at Forrest’s reinvention, branding it greenwashing. “They absolutely destroyed our community,” said Michael Woodley, head of the Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corp. “They pit families against each other, and they prey on people who historically come from a very poor background.” Fortescue took a divide-and-conquer approach to negotiating with Indigenous residents, forging deals highly advantageous to the company with allies while freezing others out. The courts ultimately sided with the Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corp., finding it owns title to the land in question. Fortescue has since been fighting paying compensation to the Yindjibarndi people, calling it “mining welfare” that would be unhealthy for the community. The billionaire frames his $6.2 billion plan to eliminate fossil fuels from Fortescue’s mining business by 2030 as less about altruism than corporate acumen, a move the company projects will save $818 million a year in diesel and gas costs and drive healthy returns. “People said, ‘You’re going to be screwing up your dividend,’ ” Kerry said. “No, he’s not. He’s going to make more money. And he’s going to do it the right way. That’s a really important thought for everybody to have out there. This can be done.”"
+"In Elena Karpova’s household, the rumbling sound of a clothes dryer has become an unfamiliar noise. “I use the dryer maybe twice, three times a year, just when it’s an emergency,” says Karpova, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro who studies textile and apparel sustainability. Instead, Karpova prefers to air dry her clothes. Dryers, she says, are “energy gobblers” and when combined with machine washing too often can wear out clothes much more quickly, in addition to having huge environmental and climate impacts. Washing “can be the most significant thing that you do” to your clothes, says Mark Sumner, a lecturer focusing on sustainability within the textile, clothing and fashion industry at the University of Leeds’ School of Design. Laundering a garment could cause it to shrink, become misshapen, fade or pill (when small balls of fuzz form on the surface of clothes). “It can be really quite harmful to the clothes itself,” shortening the life of the garment and leading to purchases of new clothing, Sumner says. “And of course, let’s not forget about energy and water and detergents used in the washing process,” which can also release microfibers into waterways and exacerbate the problem of microplastic pollution. “It’s a double whammy.” Making simple changes to your laundry routine, he and other experts say, can go a long way in helping you reduce emissions, save money and take better care of your clothes. While many people focus on manufacturing when calculating their clothes’ environmental impact, machine washing and drying clothes can often be a major source of pollution and emissions. In fact, the impacts of laundry can be “on the same order of magnitude” as the production phase of clothing, says Roland Geyer, a life cycle assessment expert and professor at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at the University of California at Santa Barbara. “People are washing their clothes more frequently than they ever did before,” Sumner says. According to Energy Star, the average American family does 300 loads of laundry each year. A standard washing machine uses around 20 gallons of water for each load and electric dryers, on average, can use anywhere from 1,800 to 5,000 watts, or about 1.8 to 5 kilowatt hours of electricity per cycle, according to Energy Star. Choosing more efficient washers and dryers can make a difference for the planet and your wallet. Energy Star certified washing machines generally use about 25 percent less energy and 33 percent less water than regular models. Meanwhile, certified dryers are 20 percent more efficient compared to standard dryers. A household that uses washers and dryers certified by Energy Star could reduce their carbon footprint by more than 400 pounds of CO2 annually, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, which is equal to planting a quarter acre of trees. If every American household swapped out their appliances for more efficient models, the impacts would be even greater. The combined cost savings would swell above $4.8 billion each year and more than 41 billion pounds of annual greenhouse gas emissions would be prevented from entering the atmosphere, the EPA estimates. That’s equivalent to the emissions from nearly 4 million cars. But even if you have high-efficiency machines, experts say it’s still important to cut down on the loads of laundry you’re doing. “Every time we put that garment in the washing machine, part of it is gone down the drain,” says Cosette Joyner Martinez, an associate professor in the department of design, housing and merchandising at Oklahoma State University. “Then we lose another piece of it in the dryer in the lint trap, so we’re disintegrating our garments.” Aside from noticeable odors or visible stains, when your clothes need to be laundered largely depends on how the garments are worn and the type of material. Clothes that you exercise and sweat in, for instance, should be washed more frequently than the outfit you wear to work a desk job. “Lots of people just have a T-shirt worn once and then they put in the laundry basket without thinking whether it’s clean or not,” Karpova says. “People don’t think about, ‘Is it clean? Does it need to be laundered?’ It’s just you go through the motions.” What your clothes are made out of also determines how long you can go between washes, experts say. Natural fibers like wool or cotton typically need to be washed less than synthetic materials, such as polyester. While polyester works well for activewear because of its moisture wicking properties, the material is “oleophilic,” or oil-loving, attracting oil from skin that can contribute to body odor. To make matters worse, research has shown that sweaty-smelling compounds can cling to polyester fibers and not wash out completely, leading to a buildup of odors over time. The chemical structure and “fiber morphology” of natural fabrics are very different from synthetics, says Preeti Arya, an assistant professor of textile development and marketing at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. Wool, for example, is naturally odor resistant. The fibers can absorb large amounts of moisture which helps to keep skin drier, and prevent the sweat and bacteria that cause body odor from collecting. Wool fibers also have another unique property: The ability to trap odor molecules and only release them when laundered. Odorous compounds, perspiration and oil are locked away in the center of wool fibers, Arya says. Even if you’ve been sweating, you likely won’t see sweat stains or smell. On the other hand, she says, if you wear polyester for a few hours, “You have to wash it because polyester loves our body oils and odors.” Water heating consumes about 90 percent of the energy it takes to operate a washing machine, according to Energy Star. Changing your washer’s temperature setting from hot to warm can cut energy use in half. Washing with cold water can reduce your energy footprint even more. By washing four out of five loads of laundry in cold water, you could cut 864 pounds of CO2 emissions in a year, an amount equivalent to planting 0.37 acres of U.S. forest, according to the American Cleaning Institute. Experts encourage using the cold cycle as much as possible. “The temperature that we’re washing with is often way too warm,” Joyner Martinez says, adding that hot water settings are only really necessary for sanitizing. Modern laundry detergents, even those that aren’t marked for cold-water use, are typically formulated to clean just as well at lower temperatures. While single-dose detergent pods have become increasingly popular, a debate is raging over whether they may contribute to the growing plastic pollution problem that threatens human health and the environment. Keep in mind that washers use about the same amount of energy regardless of the size of the load, so try to only run your machine when it’s full. And consider using higher spin settings if your washing machine has the option, which can reduce drying time. Some experts also caution against dry cleaning too often. In addition to the energy needed to power dry cleaners, traditional operations often use polluting chemicals that can harm human health and the environment. Some research also indicates that the chemicals can stay on dry cleaned clothes. In January, the Environmental Protection Agency added 1-bromopropane, a powerful dry-cleaning solvent and airborne pollutant that has been linked to cancer and neurological damage, to its list of hazardous air pollutants — a designation that allows the agency to limit its emissions. Certain clothes, such as those with heavy beading or embellishment, require dry cleaning. But some of the delicate materials that you might send to the cleaners such as silk or wool can be gently washed by hand, says Katrina Caspelich, who directs marketing and partnerships for Remake, a global nonprofit organization advocating for fair pay and climate justice in the clothing industry. Test a small section of your garment to make sure it’s suitable for hand-washing — any color bleeding, warping or shrinkage is a bad sign — and use cold water and mild soap. If you do need to dry clean something, you can ask for more environmentally friendly cleaning options, Caspelich adds. Some cleaners offer professional wet cleaning, where clothes are laundered in computer-controlled washers and dryers that gently clean. Another option is liquid carbon dioxide cleaning, which uses pressurized CO2 in combination with other cleaning agents. You also don’t always need water and energy guzzling machines and detergent to keep your clothes fresh. “Really what people are trying to do when they launder is to make [their clothes] smell good,” Joyner Martinez says. If possible, Sumner recommends hanging clothes outside in the sun where they can be exposed to UV rays. Steam is another way to de-wrinkle and help refresh your garments. Hang up your clothes in the bathroom while you’re showering or use an at-home steamer. Whenever possible, choose to air dry your clothes, experts say. “If you’re air drying, that’s saving the most energy,” says Joe Vukovich, a staff attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council who works on energy efficiency. If you are using a dryer, make sure to regularly clean the lint screen, dryer duct and moisture sensors to maintain efficiency. Instead of using timed drying, choose the automatic cycle, which uses moisture sensors to determine when your clothes are dry and reduces the chance of running the machine for longer than needed. You can also dry loads of laundry back-to-back and make use of residual heat. Newer dryer models also often use less energy to dry typical loads on low heat than on high heat, even though it may take longer to dry clothes, according to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. But if you want to increase your clothes’ life span, experts recommend avoiding the dryer. Air drying clothes that need to be washed more frequently, such as workout gear, can make a “huge difference,” Joyner Martinez says. “The life extension that we get in the product is very dramatic.”"
+"Lake Toxaway, N.C. — In a kitchen near her office at the Southern Highlands Reserve, perched 4,500 feet high in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Kelly Holdbrooks slides a paper grocery bag out of a cabinet. She pulls out a half-dozen pine cones and holds them to the afternoon light, explaining that the seeds inside will one day be grown into saplings and planted throughout these mountains. “This is what came off Ruby,” says Holdbrooks, the reserve’s executive director. That would be Ruby, a.k.a Picea rubens, a 78-foot-tall red spruce that U.S. Forest Service officials had harvested the day before, a stone’s throw from the Blue Ridge Parkway in the Pisgah National Forest. Barely 24 hours later, Ruby lay on a trailer inside a cavernous warehouse at the Western North Carolina Agricultural Center, an hour’s drive away. Workers were preparing the towering tree for its two-week tour through North Carolina and Virginia to Washington, where after its official lighting Tuesday, it will spend the holiday season shimmering on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol. But far from Capitol Hill, Holdbrooks and other advocates are hoping Ruby’s moment in the national spotlight will bring long-overdue attention to the importance of red spruce trees — and to the ways a species once threatened by logging and acid rain now faces the perils of a fast-warming climate. They also hope the choice of a red spruce as the Capitol Christmas Tree will bolster the decades-long effort to restore the trees in their natural habitats throughout the Appalachians. “They are iconic,” Holdbrooks said. She noted that the pyramid-shaped trees, distinguished by hardy, yellow-green needles, provide a key habitat to a range of plants and animals, including endangered species such as the Carolina northern flying squirrel and the spruce-fir moss spider — one of the world’s smallest tarantulas. And humans fortunate enough to trek through a cool, moist red spruce forest, with its spongy turf underfoot, encounter an almost mystical escape. “It’s got this J.R.R. Tolkien thing going on,” Holdbrooks said. She and an array of government officials, conservation workers and volunteers have ambitious plans to ensure that red spruces — relics of the last Ice Age — thrive in these mountains for generations to come. “It pushes me every day to work harder,” she said. Red spruces have endured an array of scourges. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the species was prized by loggers hacking their way through East Coast forests. The spruce’s light color and weight, its straight grain and resilience made it ideal for building musical instruments, making paper and even sawing into lumber for construction. “It was just a very high-quality wood,” said Stephen Keller, an associate professor of plant biology at the University of Vermont who has long studied the red spruce. Years of heavy logging sharply reduced the presence of the stately trees, which once dominated forests throughout the Appalachian range. Slash burning and sparks from trains that were used to haul timber out of the forests triggered fires that further harmed the species. “There was a lot of peat and organic matter, and that was just fuel for these fires,” Keller said. Another serious hazard arrived decades later, when industrial pollution led to the problem of acid rain in the 1960s and ’70s. That was particularly harsh on red spruces, Keller said, because acid rain leached calcium out of the soil, the trees became susceptible to damage from midwinter warming followed by cold snaps. The Clean Air Act eventually helped resolve that problem, and researchers started to see a slow recovery of the red spruce. Meanwhile, the invasion of the balsam woolly adelgid, an exotic aphid-like insect from Europe that particularly ravaged Fraser firs, added yet another menace. One research paper found the pest “has wreaked considerable ecological havoc” throughout spruce-fir forests in the Southern Appalachians. These days, however, climate change poses the most profound threat. “The elephant in the room,” Holdbrooks calls it. Because red spruces prefer cool, humid environments, more-extreme midsummer heat and drier conditions have put the trees under increasing stress. Keller said numerous models that seek to predict the future distribution of the tree species “show severe reduction in suitable climate throughout most of its range.” Katy Shallows, the restoration strategy manager for the Central Appalachians program at the Nature Conservancy, acknowledges that without help, the pockets of red spruce that have endured past challenges face a daunting future. “We’re going to be in trouble if the climate is changing and there’s not the capacity to adapt and evolve,” she said. But she also has optimism about what lies ahead, she said, in part because of the dedicated environmentalists who are determined not to let red spruces such as Ruby face climate change alone. “We’ve come a long way,” she said, “but we still have a long ways to go.” To understand why those striving to restore red spruce forests feel so passionate about the work, Shallows said, it is important to grasp what would be lost if these ancient trees vanish. “It’s critical to maintain red spruce forests in the highest elevations because they will be the climate refugia for many of the species that depend on them — and many of the species that are moving upslope as the climate gets warmer and drier,” she said. Red spruces provide shelter and food to an array of birds and mammals, including the northern saw-whet owl, the black-capped chickadee and multiple types of salamanders. They also provide harbor to a plethora of plants, such as the wood sorrel and bluebead lily, and lichen with names such as Appalachian Dust Bunnies and Oosting’s Square Britches. Without spruce-fir forests — where the two evergreens reside — those other species’ sanctuaries will shrink. “Then those species will have nowhere to go, especially as it gets hotter and drier,” Shallows said. “We will lose a lot of that biodiversity.” Her group and others are doing what they can to prevent that. For decades, the Nature Conservancy and other groups have planted stands of red spruce across sites in West Virginia, western Maryland and southwestern Virginia — with a focus not only on helping to expand and connect often isolated islands of trees, but also on trying to increase the genetic diversity of the trees to make them more resilient. Partnerships such as the Central Appalachian Spruce Restoration Initiative and the Southern Appalachian Spruce Restoration Initiative do similar work up and down the East Coast, leveraging the resources and expertise of state and federal government agencies, nonprofit organizations and private conservations groups. Since 2009, the Southern Highlands Reserve has propagated red spruce seedlings in its modest nursery and has grown more than 10,000 saplings. It has worked with partners to plant more than 6,000 of those on public lands in Western North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. The reserve boasts that it has “an unprecedented 90 percent success rate” of survival for its red spruce trees — a figure Holdbrooks attributes to using only the hardiest seedlings and letting them mature longer before planting, so the trees will withstand winds, falling leaves and other challenges of life in the forest. As part of the U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree Program, the Forest Service has partnered with the reserve and promised $50,000 toward the construction of a state-of-the-art nursery that will grow red spruce seedlings. The National Forest Foundation aims to contribute at least $200,000 more for the structure, which will be built at the reserve and be a key piece of an effort to raise 50,000 red spruce trees from seed and plant them on public lands in the region. Holdbrooks expects that when the updated greenhouse is eventually built on-site, the reserve’s capacity will be doubled and the job of caring for young trees will be easier. The restoration efforts give the species a decent shot to endure in the age of climate change, Keller said. “A lot of people feel a responsibility to do everything we can to make those remnant patches that are left as resilient as possible, and also to increase the numbers,” he added. “We want to give this species its best possible chance to stick around and weather the challenges that are ahead. Things are not getting any easier.” Back at the Southern Highlands Reserve, Holdbrooks walks along an overlook, the mountains behind her unfurling in every direction. She points at patches of high-elevation, dark-green forest in the distance that stand in sharp contrast to the red and orange and gold autumn leaves that cover most hillsides. “That’s the spruce-fir forests,” she says. Nearby, she checks on seedlings at the reserve’s two on-site greenhouses. “This is where the magic happens,” she half-jokes. Inside sit the thumb-size beginning of trees that advocates hope will grow where red spruces once thrived and, they hope, will thrive again. “We’re just putting them back where our ancestors cut them down,” Holdbrooks says. Meanwhile, Keller had a one-word reaction to the news that the federal government had chosen a red spruce as this year’s Capitol Christmas tree. “Awesome,” he said. He hopes the move will bring a wave of attention to the conservation efforts. “And if it encourages people to read and learn about it and maybe take a hike and experience these forests themselves, I think that’s amazing.” On a recent afternoon, months after a team of biologists, silviculturists, forestry technicians and arborists first scoured the Pisgah and Nantahala national forests looking for the right tree, Ruby was in Asheville about to begin the 14-stop journey — pausing for public events at courthouses and a high school, at a zoo and in town squares — on the way to Washington. Before she was loaded onto the trailer, workers were busy decorating her upper reaches with colorful lights. “It will not look like this again until it’s unpacked at the Capitol,” said Adrianne Rubiaco, a spokeswoman for the Forest Service, as workers readied the tree for the two-week trip. But even after Ruby’s time on the Mall in D.C. ends, after the ornaments have been removed and her once-majestic needles wither, her story won’t quite be over. Her pine cones and the seeds inside them remain inside that paper grocery bag at the Southern Highlands Reserve, waiting to make their way into the world. “Her seedlings will be part of the next generation of red spruce,” Rubiaco said. “ ‘Ruby’s legacy,’ we call it. Life after the West Lawn.”"
+"VENICE — Three years ago, a historic rush of water surged into this city, inundating restaurants and churches, tossing boats onto streets, and leaving Venetians distressed about a future with ever more extreme events. But this past week, one of those events arrived — a tide nearly as large as 2019’s — and residents barely noticed, aside from some wind and rain. The city was spared from disaster. That’s because of a $6 billion engineering project designed to protect Venice from mass flooding and the exhausting cycle of cleanup and recovery. The lagoon city’s inlets are now guarded by 78 rectangular metal barriers, each the height of a five-story building, that are pumped with air and raised from the sea floor any time high waters threaten it. It’s a landmark climate change solution, one requiring 30 years of planning and 20 years of construction, that has reduced fears of Venice turning into a modern-day Atlantis. “A great satisfaction,” said Giovanni Zarotti, the technical director for the Consorzio Venezia Nuova, a consortium of construction companies that operates the barrier system. “Because we have in our hands the fate of something priceless.” But for one of the world’s most fragile cities, there is a difference between being protected and being saved. The system that safeguards Venice could become stressed with even a 30-centimeter sea-level rise, its operator says — something that middle-of-the-road projections indicate could come by mid-century. With luck, and if major nations dramatically cut back emissions, the MOSE, as the system is known, could yet work for 100 years as designed, scientists say. But more dire scenarios would trim the system’s life span by decades. The result is that a just-reinforced city remains vulnerable in the longer term. “50 years, 100 years — somewhere between those two dates,” said Pierpaolo Campostrini, the director of a research consortium that studies the Venetian lagoon. “That doesn’t mean the MOSE is not useful. But we know it’s temporary.” Many low-lying and jeopardized parts of the world don’t have the resources to properly defend themselves against rising seas, flooding and other extreme events. But Venice’s experience shows the challenges of adaptation even when little expense is spared. Italy has made it a national mission to safeguard Venice, a maze of Middle Ages treasure built improbably over 118 islands. Although some of the project’s difficulties have been specific — a corruption scandal in 2014 led to a wave of arrests and personnel changes — one of the lessons is more universal: It’s hard to aim a big, slow project at faster-moving science. Viewed up close, the scale of the MOSE is stunning. The yellow barriers, end-to-end, span nearly a mile and are operated in part from an artificial island that workers liken to a concrete fortress. A day-long Washington Post tour included a walk through underwater tunnels used for maintenance and inspection — a hidden world of air compression pipes and dials just three miles from the campanile and cupolas of old Venice. “It’s definitely unique,” Zarotti said. In contrast with the permanently visible dams and dikes constructed in places such as the Netherlands, the raisable gates of the MOSE are hidden away on the sea floor. That allows the lagoon on most days to operate as normal. Ships can come and go. And crucially, so can the tides, with saltwater from the Adriatic helping to flush out the lagoon and prevent it from becoming a fetid petri dish. But there is a downside to the project’s inherent concept, which was finalized in the 1990s, an early age of climate science: It was designed to be used infrequently. Eventually, rising seas will force the MOSE to operate so regularly that it becomes a semi-permanent seal, altering the lagoon’s environment, preventing the flow of marine traffic, and straining the system itself, which needs regular maintenance. The only question, among operators and scientists, is when that tipping point will come. For now, the MOSE is being used only sparingly, usually in the winter, when higher winds tend to build storm surges across the Adriatic. Each use costs roughly $300,000, with workers dispatched to the artificial island, as patrol boats cordon off maritime traffic. But if the seas rise even 30 cm, the MOSE would be raised one day in every three or four. Zarotti said that would stress the system, making it hard to perform maintenance and interfering with maritime traffic. Asked if the MOSE would be sustainable at a 30-cm rise, he said: “The way I see it, no.” And if seas rise 60 cm — a scenario that’s well within play for 2100 — the MOSE would be used up to 500 times per year. More dire projections for 2100 suggest a sea rise beyond one meter. By then, the lagoon would be closed essentially year-round. Alberto Scotti, the engineer who is often described as the father of the project, said the MOSE could be stretched to operate with a 60-cm rise, but it would require some novel steps — such as raising some barriers but not all, sacrificing a degree of protection to allow the lagoon to more regularly breathe. Another step, he said, would involve increasing the threshold for when the system is deployed. In other words: Venice would need to acquiesce to low-level inundation. “Today nobody can accept the idea of a few centimeters of flooding after spending so much money,” Scotti said. “But in the future? By then, other cities along the Adriatic will have already been lost.” — In so many instances through history, Venice has found ways to defy its precarious environment. The earliest engineers figured out how to construct buildings on mud flats, using wooden posts as foundations. Experts during the Renaissance orchestrated a monumental plan to divert rivers that were spilling sediment into the lagoon and risked turning water into land. Three centuries ago, workers built up barrier islands with impermeable rocks, improving them as natural storm walls. But Venice’s margins for survival have gotten narrower. Compared with 150 years ago, the average water level is 32 cm higher. That’s partly because of melting ice sheets and rising oceans. But it’s also because of a catastrophic decision in the 1950s and 1960s, in which groundwater was pumped from underground aquifers for industrial purposes — a move that caused Venice to sink roughly 12 cm. In a city so close to sea level, those centimeters matter profoundly. Before the introduction of the MOSE, the once-per-decade floods of a century ago had begun to happen four times per year. Of the city’s 20 biggest recorded high-water events, 11 occurred since 2000. The iconic Piazza San Marco, ringed by the Gothic Doge’s palace and a gilded basilica dating back to 1063, rarely took on water through most of its history. Now, even with the MOSE activated on the most extreme days, the piazza — which also happens to be Venice’s lowest-lying point — floods about 100 days per year. “You no longer need exceptional weather to cause this,” said Alvise Papa, the director of Venice’s weather prediction service. As Papa walked into the piazza during the high tide of midmorning, seagulls lapped up water, and little lakes spread around the legs of outdoor cafe tables. Tourists walked in tight lines along high-rise planks, while a few, in waders, posed for photos. By design, flooding is tolerated in up to 12 percent of the city. The MOSE is intended to kick in on days the water is forecast to top 110 cm above “level zero” — the mean level from the late 1800s, when Venice first started keeping records. “At 75 cm the flooding starts in the piazza and by 95 everything is covered,” Papa said. Smartphone apps, using his center’s data, showed high water marks for each of the next few days. On this day: 90 cm. The following day: 95. The little inundations, ebbing as the tide recedes, do little to disrupt life in the city. But they are damaging nonetheless, leaving behind salt crystals that can devastate the ancient buildings. Mario Piana, the restoration expert in charge of Basilica di San Marco, describes a treasure that has been aging on super-speed, with accumulated salt breaking down plaster, chipping away at walls and damaging mosaics and irreplaceable marbles from Byzantium. With the barriers only used for higher-water events, the basilica was recently forced to build protection of its own: Its exterior is now fenced off by a glass barrier, reaching chest high, and extending two meters underground. Water in the piazza now stops at the basilica doors. — There are other projects, too — many completed, some not — designed to supplement the MOSE. The Consorzio Venezia Nuova has worked to restore salt marshes and strengthen the barrier islands, adding new sand formations and breakwaters. In much of the city, pavement has been raised to 110 cm, the MOSE activation level. Soon, workers will begin similar elevation work in Piazza San Marco. But those are relatively modest projects. Scientists and other experts on the lagoon say the MOSE has forestalled serious exploration of bigger ideas. “Whatever was seen as an alternative to the MOSE — canceled!” Campostrini said. “Officials always said, let’s finish the MOSE first. Then think about what comes next.” Even now, the MOSE is not technically finished. It has been operating for two years in experimental mode. Engineers say they are still completing the last backup systems. The project is expected to be officially wrapped up next year. But given the potential limits on its life span, some experts say it’s already necessary to begin considering successor solutions. Among the long-term proposals, the most prominent calls for the injection of seawater into aquifers deep underground. Such injections, performed at various boreholes that would be created throughout town, could raise Venice some 20 to 25 cm — in effect wiping away 150 years of sinking and sea change, said Pietro Teatini, one of the hydraulic engineers behind the idea. Similar injections have been used by energy companies for gas storage, and to help mitigate sinking or otherwise raise land under population centers such as Tokyo and Taipei. Scientists who spoke to The Post were highly divided about the idea for Venice. One called it “terrible” and worried about how the city’s surface could be raised evenly. Yet others said the idea might work. Testing would first need to be performed on a small scale. “We presented the idea — I really don’t remember, 15 years ago,” Teatini said. “What happened? They said, okay, seems good, but please wait. The official [government] answer was: Wait.” Such a system, if it ever came to pass, could work in tandem with the MOSE. But Georg Umgiesser, an oceanographer who has spent 40 years modeling the rising waters of the lagoon, said he anticipates that Venice will be eventually forced into a cruder method to block the seas: a permanent wall. When delivering seminars to students or at scientific conferences, he includes a slide saying that it’s not a matter of if, but when. A sea wall would transform the lagoon in ways Venetians have been adamantly against. The waters around the city would turn into a brackish lake. Fishing habitats would be jeopardized. So would the entranceways to ports. The city would need to find a new way to keep the water clean. Umgiesser, the director of CNR-Ismar, an Italian national research council, said that “nobody wants to hear about this idea right now.” Maybe, he said, some yet-unknown technology can stave off what he feels is inevitable. Barring that, he said, “there will be no other idea that can save Venice.” “The MOSE buys us time,” he said."
+"Many American households are beginning to prepare for one of the biggest holidays of the year: Christmas. And for those who celebrate, that often means figuring out what to do about a tree — the time-honored centerpiece of the season’s festivities. What type of tree or, in some cases, trees you choose largely comes down to personal preference. For many people, a real tree represents tradition — a chance to re-create memories of finding “The One” and hauling it home from the forest or a neighborhood tree lot — with a fresh scent that helps create a holiday atmosphere. But artificial trees offer convenience, since they can be reused year after year and typically come with built-in lights or decorations. But with more consumers becoming increasingly concerned about their purchases’ environmental impact, you might be wondering which type of Christmas tree is more planet-friendly. Here’s what you need to know when it comes to whether real or artificial trees are better for the environment. While you might worry that chopping down tens of millions of trees each year amounts to an environmental nightmare, a real Christmas tree can be more sustainable than an artificial one, says Bill Ulfelder, executive director of the Nature Conservancy in New York. “There should be no remorse, no guilt, like, ‘Oh my goodness, it’s a cut tree.’ It’s absolutely the contrary,” says Ulfelder, who has a master’s degree in forestry. “Trees are a renewable resource. When they’re being cut, they’re being harvested in ways that they’re being replanted, so it’s a great renewable resource that provides lots of environmental, conservation and nature benefits.” For one, living trees absorb carbon dioxide — a main contributor to global warming — from the air and release oxygen. It can take at least seven years to grow a Christmas tree to its typical height of between six and seven feet, according to the National Christmas Tree Association (NCTA), a trade group that in part represents growers and sellers of real trees. While estimates can vary significantly, one study suggests that growing Christmas trees may sequester nearly a ton of carbon dioxide per acre, according to the Sightline Institute. What happens to that carbon depends on how these trees are treated once they’re cut and discarded. As these trees grow, not only do they provide clean air, but they can also serve as wildlife habitats, help improve water quality and slow erosion, and preserve green spaces. Christmas trees are often grown on hillsides that wouldn’t be suitable for farming other types of crops. And for every tree harvested, one to three seedlings are planted the following spring, according to NCTA. What’s more, real trees can be repurposed in ways that continue to benefit the environment even after they’re no longer living. Cities such as New York and D.C. have municipal programs that collect dead Christmas trees and turn them into mulch. The trees can also be used to prevent dune erosion or sunken in ponds and lakes to create natural habitats for freshwater wildlife, Ulfelder says. “There’s life for [real] Christmas trees after Christmas,” he says. But Ulfelder and other experts recognize that there is an environmental cost to farming and distributing real trees. Growing trees requires water and, in many cases, fertilizers and pesticides. On top of that, harvesting trees and shipping them from farms to stores or lots can produce emissions. Still, real trees may be the preferred choice over artificial ones when it comes to overall sustainability, which also takes into account economic and social impacts, says Bert Cregg, a professor of horticulture and forestry at Michigan State University. “That’s where I think the real trees are head and shoulders above” artificial trees, Cregg says. There are nearly 15,000 Christmas tree farms in the United States, the vast majority of which are family-owned operations, and the industry provides full or part-time employment to more than 100,000 people, according to NCTA. “Like any other agriculture, are you going to support local farmers or are you going to support a large manufacturer someplace else?” Cregg says. Most of the artificial trees sold in the United States are manufactured in China, according to NCTA, citing data from the Commerce Department. The trees are typically loaded onto fossil-fuel-burning ocean freighters bound for the United States, where they are distributed to retailers nationwide. But experts say the emissions associated with transporting artificial trees are less significant than what is produced when making them. Artificial trees are often made of plastic, a petroleum-based material, and steel. Many trees use polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, which has been linked to health and environmental risks. Trees can also be made of polyethylene, another type of plastic, says Mac Harman, founder and CEO of Balsam Hill, a leading retailer of artificial Christmas trees and holiday decor in the United States. Although not much about artificial trees initially sounds Earth-friendly, in certain cases they can be the more environmentally conscious choice, according to the American Christmas Tree Association (ACTA), a nonprofit industry group that represents artificial tree manufacturers. One 2018 study analyzed real and artificial Christmas trees across different environmental metrics, including global warming potential, primary energy demand and water usage, among others, and found that artificial trees may have less environmental impact if they are reused for at least five years compared to buying a new real tree each year. “The impact of both types of trees varies based on how far consumers travel to get their tree, how they dispose of their tree (for live trees, landfill, incinerate or compost), and how long consumers use their trees,” according to a summary of the study from ACTA, which released the assessment conducted by WAP Sustainability Consulting. But another in-depth study released in 2009 concluded that artificial trees would only become better than natural ones if they were used for 20 years. A Nielsen survey paid for by ACTA found that nearly 50 percent of artificial tree owners reported planning to use their trees for 10 or more seasons, Harman says. He adds that artificial trees also are often given away or donated, which can extend their life span. The downside, though, is that once these trees are no longer of use to anyone “they do end up mostly in landfills at this point,” he says. More plastic eventually winding up in landfills should worry consumers, Ulfelder says. “If you keep artificial trees truly long enough, the carbon footprint may be smaller, but then you’ve still got plastic and then there’s plastic going into the landfill,” he says. “So that’s just one way of looking at the comparison, and I think we just need to look at the whole of the nature benefits of the natural trees.” If you’re interested in a real tree, Ulfelder recommends trying to buy local whenever possible. Driving a long distance in a gas-guzzling car to get to a farm or seller can be a significant source of emissions. Buying your tree from a farm or lot in your area can also help support the local economy. The top Christmas tree producing states include Oregon, North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Washington, according to NCTA. Looking for an organically grown Christmas tree is an additional step you can take to help the environment, Ulfelder says. The U.S. Forest Service also sells permits to people who want to go out into the wild and cut down their own tree. “For every tree that is found, cut and carried home as a holiday fixture, you’re also contributing to the overall forest health,” according to a government website selling the permits. Buying a living tree, or one that can be replanted outdoors, is another option. “The big trick is getting the tree to live afterward,” Cregg says. If you have a living tree, it’s critical not to keep it inside your home for too long, especially if you’re in northern parts of the country, or it may begin to lose its ability to withstand cold temperatures, he says. He suggests leaving the tree up for two weeks at most before moving it to an unheated garage or patio until springtime. “Then, you can plant it just like your normal spring planting routine.” It’s also important to take care of real trees, Cregg says. The trees need a lot of water and he recommends checking your tree stand daily to make sure your tree isn’t drying out. And how you dispose of your real tree matters. “If people put the tree in a bonfire, all that carbon is back in the atmosphere,” Cregg says. If you’re planning to mulch your tree, make sure to remove any decorations, Ulfelder says. Leftover ornaments, lights or pieces of tinsel can create a headache for mulchers. For those who prefer artificial trees, try to keep them in use and out of landfills for as long as possible. And although real and artificial trees can have varying impacts, experts say it’s important to consider this holiday decision in the context of other personal choices that can contribute to climate change. “At the end of the day, assuming that an artificial tree is used for at least five years, neither tree has a significant impact on the environment when compared to other activities of daily living like driving a car,” Harman says."
+"The world off Australia’s northeast coast is magical yet besieged, a place of stunning colors in good times but ghostly white in bad ones. The bad have happened repeatedly in recent years as warming seas tied to climate change have bleached the vast coral ecosystem below. But through a symbiotic collaboration between five tourism companies and marine scientists at the University of Technology Sydney, “coral gardening” in underwater nurseries is trying to help preserve the country’s famed Great Barrier Reef. Divers for the companies — all intimately acquainted with the reef and, like so many businesses, dependent on its vitality — scour the seafloor. There they collect broken pieces of coral and attach them to submerged frames on which the fragments can recover and grow. Ecologically minded tourists pay to see the unusual attraction. It’s a strategy that master reef guide Russell Hosp says is aimed at giving “Mother Nature a little bit of a boost.” Some 30 gardens are currently being cultivated, and the healthy coral segments that thrive on their artificial underwater structures are then transplanted to damaged areas of the reef. The Coral Nurture Program is just one of numerous projects along the Queensland coastline, including one, run by the Reef Restoration Foundation, that just saw its planted coral spawn for the first time. Together, these efforts aim to transform the reef by making it more resilient. This month’s U.N. Climate Change Conference in Egypt, known as COP27, discussed adaptation solutions for coral nations. Peter Thomson, the U.N. secretary general’s special envoy for oceans, told a panel that he was a convert on the effectiveness of programs such as coral nurseries after seeing the results in his native Fiji. “Don’t accept the idea that coral reefs are going to be extinct,” he said. “We’re going to refuse that future.” None of the progress can overcome unchecked global warming, however. “A 1.5-degree world is really a death knell for reefs,” warned Carol Phua, who leads the World Wildlife Federation’s Global Coral Reef Initiative. The loss would be tragic. Corals are arguably the strangest of the many bewildering life-forms that can be found in the world’s oceans, simultaneously animal, vegetable and mineral. The animal is the polyp, a transparent, tentacled creature related to anemone and jellyfish. Coral polyps have squishy bodies but have evolved the miraculous ability to secrete calcium carbonate — the same material as limestone rock — as protection. These calcium carbonate barricades make up the visible architecture of a reef. Inside the polyp’s tissue are a living algae called zooxanthellae. It’s these single-celled organisms that lend reefs their famous rainbows of color. And, more importantly for the polyp, the algae provide food for their hosts, turning sunlight into proteins, fats and carbohydrates through photosynthesis. There are billions of coral polyps, containing tens of billions of zooxanthellae, hiding within the hard structure of the Great Barrier Reef. Every newborn polyp absorbs algae and secretes rock, adding infinitesimally to an ecosystem that has been growing for 20,000 years. The problem, said Emma Camp, the Coral Nurture Program’s co-founder and a university marine biologist, is that “corals have a narrow environmental niche, or range, that they typically like to survive.” Coral algae can only survive in warmer waters. But when the temperature gets too warm, the algae begins emitting a toxic substance instead of food, which the polyp instinctively and protectively ejects into the ocean. The result is coral bleaching, and the stark images of reefs after an event show what corals look like without algae inside. Unless the water temperature drops and the algae can safely return, the polyp starves, and the reef remains colorless. The Great Barrier Reef has experienced four bleaching events in various sections since 2016. Even when a coral colony survives, the stress takes a toll. The coral needs time to recover, and multiple bleachings in a short period are more likely to be fatal. Some species cope with heat better than others, but when the most vulnerable species die, the reef’s diversity suffers. Coral Nurture participants have planted nearly 77,000 corals in the program’s four years. Camp acknowledged that in comparison to the reef’s vastness — the equivalent length of Florida to Maine — the number is small. “Where we’re at with most current restoration efforts is that they’re local,” she said. That focus is something Alan Wallish appreciates. He’s a tour operator in Cairns who has spent several decades on the reef, and his business, Passions of Paradise, is among the five guiding companies partnering with the university scientists. The idea, he said, is “about looking after your own little patch.” The other initiatives underway to nurture the reef run the gamut. Eye on the Reef, headed by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, enlists the masses of divers who sightsee underwater to collect data while they’re there. A “Coral IVF” project, led by Southern Cross University, gathers coral sperm and eggs and fertilizes them in an ocean pool, depositing the larvae in degraded regions. Indigenous rangers of the Mandubarra people are also involved, working with the recreational fishers group OzFish and researchers from James Cook University to plant sea grass meadows. At a lab near Townsville, specialists at the Australian Institute of Marine Science experiment with a biodegradable, molecule-thick film that may block heat from entering the ocean. Climate change remains the big caveat for all these initiatives. Human intervention projects “are going to be essential” in coming decades, said Scott Heron, an environmental physicist with the ARC Centre for Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. But they will be most effective only if they advance in tandem with a rapid decrease in greenhouse gas emissions. “We need to be addressing climate change, and the causes of climate change, in a policy-coherent way so that we’re not putting a blowtorch as well as a hose onto the fire,” Heron said. Despite the odds, Hosp is actually pretty optimistic as he guides visitors on the Great Barrier Reef. “The work we’re doing on the reef is in conjunction with work being done in the Antarctic, and in Africa, all over the world,” he said. “There’s this concerted effort to try and fix the problem in as many ways as we can.” “Quite honestly,” he added, “I think it’s a little bit early to tick the box and say the reef, or any other ecosystem, is a lost cause. Because it’s absolutely not.”"
+"Alvin Kaunda was in the middle of detailing the effects of human actions on the natural world when the tip of a brown trunk popped into view just behind his left ear. The trunk, belonging to one of the young residents of an elephant orphanage in Nairobi where Kaunda had gone to report a story on the devastating drought affecting Kenya and its wildlife, gently draped over the journalist’s shoulder before twisting upward to investigate his ear, exploring the side of his head. Kaunda, though, appeared unfazed by the unexpected intrusion of his personal space and continued to deliver his on-camera report, only finally bursting into laughter when the elephant’s leathery appendage started snuffling his face. Clips of the moment started to circulate online over the weekend and have since racked up millions of views — skyrocketing Kaunda and the curious young elephant to viral fame. The brief interaction between reporter and subject delighted viewers and left many in awe of Kaunda’s ability to maintain his composure for as long as he did. The Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, a nonprofit that runs the orphanage, identified the elephant as Kindani, a 4-year-old female who was rescued in April 2018. “Baby elephant disrupting a TV reporter is the best part of today,” tweeted one Twitter user, who shared a video of the exchange that has been watched more than 11.8 million times as of Wednesday. For Kaunda, it all started as just another day on the job. The Kenya Broadcasting Corp. reporter was on assignment at the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust elephant orphanage, according to Kenyans.co.ke. Kenya has been battling its worst drought in four decades, and local officials say the extreme weather is killing 20 times as many elephants as poaching. A recent report released by the country’s Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife revealed that more than a thousand animals have died as a result of the drought, including wildebeests, zebras, elephants and buffaloes. Kaunda told a local Kenyan radio station that he knew he wanted to set up a shot at the orphanage where he would be speaking in front of the elephants. But he was struggling to get through his report and had already attempted 10 takes — all of which were unsuccessful. “I’d kept my distance, but I was so focused and didn’t even realize they were getting close,” he said. At the start of what would become the viral moment, Kaunda, clad in a T-shirt and a red and navy jacket, can be seen standing among several reddish-brown elephants gripping a microphone bearing the KBC logo in his hand. In the background, Kindani has her trunk draped over the back of one of the other elephants. “Here we go,” says a faint voice off camera. With a quick inhale, Kaunda focuses his gaze into the camera and begins. “It is said charity begins at home,” Kaunda says, his expression serious, “and for these young orphaned elephants, this charitable foundation is what they call home.” He briefly looks away from the camera when one of the elephants appears to nudge the side of his body with its head, but he doesn’t falter. Instead, he places a gentle hand on top of the elephant’s head and forges on, seemingly determined to get a usable take. Kindani, though, now directly behind him, appears to have other plans. “And with the rising drought cases, it is up to us to be guardians of our own natural world,” Kaunda says, ignoring the probing elephant trunk doing a close examination of his ear. It moves on to the top of his head before inching down toward the center of his face, forcing Kaunda to close his eyes as he valiantly continues talking. But when Kindani’s trunk starts groping around his nose and mouth, the reporter gives up. Letting out a high-pitched giggle, he squirms, drawing laughter from off camera while the elephant swiftly pulls back her trunk. On social media, the interaction, which lasted less than a minute, was soon captivating people around the world. “Most of us would have lost our professionalism far sooner!” the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust tweeted. “An important piece pertaining to the drought, but our orphans just saw a visitor to investigate!” Kindani “knows exactly what she’s plotting to do,” the organization added in another tweet, responding to a Twitter user who pointed out the elephant’s eyes just moments before she approached Kaunda. “The side eye is often a precursor to cheeky behaviour.” Pitted against the willful elephant, many viewers were impressed by Kaunda’s resolve. “I’m amazed at how long this reporter was able to keep his composure,” one person tweeted. “I would’ve started laughing at the first touch.” Another Twitter user applauded the journalist for his “amazing professional control.” “The reporter stayed the course until it was no longer possible to do so,” the person wrote. “I’m glad he laughed at the end, did my heart good.” In the interview with the Kenyan radio station, Kaunda described the trunk as “ticklish,” saying, “[I] just tried to keep my cool.” “It actually didn’t have any smell,” he said. “I’m sure if it had a foul smell it would have really distracted me. It wasn’t normal, but I liked the experience.” Kaunda, who calls himself as a “wildlife enthusiast,” said he hopes to experience more of these encounters, adding that he has a goal of “getting close” to several species of animals. “So far only two are left; the lion and the leopard.”"
+"California regulators announced initiatives Wednesday to speed up the state’s clean-energy transition by cutting demand for fossil fuels by the end of the decade, including ending the construction of new gas-burning power plants — moves that would help combat climate change but could put the state at higher risk of power blackouts. The proposal, which goes before the California Air Resources Board for a vote next month, lays out how the state could reach its goal of carbon neutrality by 2045, one of the most ambitious timelines in the nation. While it does not have the force of a legal ban on new gas power plants, its approval would make clear to other state agencies, including the California Public Utilities Commission, the state’s current policy. If California follows through on the proposal, planet-warming emissions are expected to fall  85 percent below 1990 levels by 2045. California would also blow past its interim target, which requires that emissions fall by 40 percent by 2030. The new plan anticipates a cut of 48 percent by the end of the decade. “The climate is changing before our eyes. We need to take action to reduce the worst impacts of a changing climate and there is only one way to do that, break forever our dependence on fossil fuels,” said Liane Randolph, chair of the air board. Yet she cautioned that reaching the state’s targets would be a challenge. The plan “calls for a build-out of renewable energy resources at a rate we have never seen before in this state,” she said. Gov. Gavin Newsom praised the proposal. “It’s the most ambitious set of climate goals of any jurisdiction in the world, and if adopted, it’ll spur an economic transformation akin to the industrial revolution,” he said in a statement following the plan’s release. Some environmental advocates were less impressed. Catherine Garoupa White, executive director of the Central Valley Air Quality Coalition, said that while board staff had made changes to the plan in response to pressure from advocates, it remained overly reliant on technological advances to curb emissions and was not as aggressive as she and others had hoped. “It’s important to keep in mind that this document is just a plan, and there is currently no enforcement strategy for ensuring any of these changes happen in the real world,” she said. Though an earlier proposal would have allowed the state to expand its use of gas, regulators said they ultimately struck this part at the urging of climate advocates speaking on behalf of disadvantaged neighborhoods near oil refineries and gas plants. California’s aspirations of transitioning rapidly to clean energy have been frustrated by the continuing threat of rolling blackouts, especially on hot summer nights when air conditioners are buzzing and the state can’t tap power from solar farms. To keep power flowing, the state has added giant new battery systems that can store the extra energy produced by solar panels during the day. In June, California lawmakers approved a contentious plan, backed by Newsom, that would extend the life of old natural gas power plants and the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant to help shore up the electricity grid. This week’s action by the air resources board would not affect that legislation, but it would prevent construction of any new natural gas plants, even those built with technology to limit emissions. In addition, clean-air regulators in September announced a ban on new sales of natural gas heaters, water heaters and furnaces by 2030. That prohibition is part of a new, comprehensive blueprint to meet federal ozone standards over the next 15 years, but also will benefit the climate by reducing carbon emissions. Under the plan put together by air board staff and announced Wednesday, many of the biggest cuts would come from the transportation sector. California has banned the sale of gas-burning cars by 2035, and the board is working on a proposal to end sales of diesel big rigs, delivery vans and other large vehicles within the next two decades. But the proposal also calls for rapid electrification of buildings: 3 million all-electric homes by 2030 and 7 million by 2035. If the state is to meet its targets, officials estimate it will need 6 million heat pumps by 2030 and 20 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2045. “The backbone of this transition is going to be having a clean grid,” said Rajinder Sahota, the board’s deputy executive director for climate change and research. Powering millions of cars, trucks and home appliances with electricity will require the state to nearly double its existing electricity generation and quadruple wind and solar power, she said. Still, California does not expect to quit oil and gas. Older gas-burning cars and trucks will be on the road for years to come, and some of the hardest-to-transition industries, such as cement plants, are not expected to break free of fossil fuels anytime soon. “Existing fossil gas generation will continue to play a critical role in grid reliability” until other alternatives can be deployed, the plan notes. To address these remaining sources of greenhouse gas, the proposal recommends use of technology to capture and store carbon. Environmental advocates have criticized this part of the state’s plan, saying it relies on experimental technology and would allow polluting industries to continue operating in parts of the state burdened with some of the worst air pollution in the country. “I am dismayed to see the drastic reliance on unproven, engineered carbon removal strategies,” Baani Behniwal of the Climate Center, an environmental group based in Santa Rosa, said in a statement Wednesday. Instead, state regulators should focus on carbon-removal strategies using the natural environment, she said."
+"PERHENTIAN ISLANDS, Malaysia — For nearly four decades, the coral gardener worked alone. Twice daily, he went out to sea, staying underwater for as long as his oxygen supply allowed. He learned the shapes and textures of corals long before he knew their Latin names. He studied the conditions in which they thrived — the water temperature, the sun exposure, the diversity of marine life — and saw how the disruption of just one of those factors could bring about mass death. He dedicated himself to reviving the reefs, but for a long time, no one cared to join him. Locals whispered about the eccentric diving instructor who spent his off days in the water, who spoke to corals like they were people. “Everyone thought I was stupid,” said Anuar Abdullah, 61. “But I knew I was doing the most important thing in the world.” Abdullah has spent his entire adult life restoring coral reefs, until recently working in obscurity — and at times, in poverty. In a world rapidly losing its reefs to climate change and to environmental damage, he is now emerging as an increasingly influential expert on how to revive them. Governments and resorts have come calling, asking whether he can help with reefs lost to natural disasters and overtourism. Banks and corporations have reached out, asking to sponsor his projects across Southeast Asia. Abdullah doesn’t have a doctorate in marine biology or a research lab, and he scorns science that he deems “useless to humanity.” He is unyielding when it comes to the methods he has honed over his lifetime. And he identifies, first and foremost, as a gardener. His résumé may be unconventional, observers say, but he possesses a type of practical expertise that is growing in currency as people seek out concrete and accessible ways of acting against climate change. In the past decade, thousands have traveled from around the world to learn from Abdullah how to grow corals, some eventually leaving their jobs to join his projects full time. With his roughly 700 active volunteers, he claims, he has already revived about 125 acres of coral reefs. In 2017, Thailand’s government asked Abdullah to initiate the rehabilitation of one of its most famous tourist attractions, Maya Bay, which had lost half its coral population after years of unbridled tourism. Visitors were kept out of the site for three years while Abdullah led a team of 120 people, including staff from Thailand’s Department of National Parks, in planting new corals. In 2021, after Typhoon Rai wrecked the island of Cebu in the Philippines, a group of resorts asked Abdullah whether he could save what was left of the shoreline’s coral reefs. And earlier this year, Abdullah launched a new effort with officials and companies in Egypt to build the world’s largest subtropical coral nursery in the Red Sea. There was a presentation on the nursery at the U.N. climate change summit, COP27 this month but Abdullah did not attend. He hates conferences, he says. And he had work to do. On a recent afternoon, Abdullah zipped up his dive suit and waded into the warm, shallow waters off Perhentian Kecil, the smaller of two islands near the coastal state of Terengganu in Malaysia. The island lies squarely inside the coral triangle, a part of the Pacific Ocean that contains 75 percent of the coral species in the world. Locals say the corals in this particular bay were once so abundant that it was impossible to walk on the seafloor. But they’re dead now, washed up on the beach in piles of white carcasses. Almost all the materials that Abdullah uses for restoration come directly from the ocean. To build his nurseries, he doesn’t use steel pipes or concrete blocks — which he can’t afford — and instead gathers rocks from the seafloor, stacking them so they aren’t toppled by the currents. While other coral restoration groups might rely on a lab to “fragment” live coral that is in turn used for growing, he searches for broken pieces of coral in existing reefs and affixes them to the rocks using water-resistant, animal-friendly glue. When he needs other materials, he starts by scavenging the beach for waste. He has made rafts from driftwood and salvaged old buoys and abandoned fishing rope. At Perhentian, he is working to develop a nursery that would help repopulate the bay within four years. Bending over to pick up a rock where he had affixed a coral fragment several weeks earlier, he murmured, “My little acropora.” Abdullah squinted, his eyes gray and his face lined and leathery from years in the sun. He looked for signs that the fragments were welding to the rock and starting to grow. “My little stylophora,” he continued, tilting the rock toward the sun to examine another fragment. “How are you doing today?” Born in Terengganu, Abdullah was sent to live in a foster home after both his parents died when he was 6. Curfews were strictly enforced at the foster home, but he stole trips to the seaside when he could. The ocean, he remembered, felt like freedom. In the 1980s, Abdullah settled in Perhentian as a diving instructor and became obsessed with corals. He spent two decades experimenting with how to grow them in the ocean, along the way alienating most of his friends, getting divorced from his wife and nearly bankrupting himself, he recalled. In 2006, he found success with his low-tech, affordable approach and, exhilarated, shared it with a local university. The professors, he said, made fun of his grammar. As a field, coral restoration has been siloed, split between scientists and researchers on one end and practitioners and coral “tinkerers” on the other. For a long time, many scientists had an “ivory tower syndrome” that prioritized theory over application, said David Suggett, a marine biology professor at the University of Technology in Sydney. “The questions we were asking, from a science perspective, were not always quite right — or useful,” Suggett added. “But that’s changing.” Faced with catastrophes like the mass bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, scientists are seeking out the expertise of practitioners — diving instructors, tour operators, local fishermen — who know the reefs in their areas better than anyone else. To amass the “people power” needed to revive reefs with scale, Suggett said, there’s also now an appetite for low-tech solutions. “It’s accessible science,” said Heidy Martinez, 29, a biology researcher who volunteered on the Maya Bay project. Watching coral fragments grow into small bulbs is a “magical” feeling, she added. “And it gets people hooked.” But even as Abdullah rises in prominence, he knows the field of coral restoration is changing around him. There are for-profit companies with millions of dollars in funding that are using new technology to operate “coral factories.” There is a push among research institutes to establish accreditation standards that would regulate how restoration is done worldwide and subject operations like Abdullah’s to assessments. To date, Abdullah’s has not been. Debate is intense over whether any of it is worthwhile, given that new reefs might still be killed off by global warming. These are vexing questions that, to Abdullah, only take time away from what he wants to do, which is to plant as many corals as he can — and get others to join him. His “army of gardeners” includes people like Sharifah Noor Ridzwan, 39, a dive shop owner on Perhentian who took his coral propagation course while seven months pregnant. And Sebestian Jungo, 40, who recently quit his job as a civil servant in Switzerland and moved to Perhentian to help build up the coral nursery. “For so long, I was part of the problem,” said Jungo, shirtless and barefoot on the island, “Finally, now, I can be part of the solution.” The monsoon season on Perhentian starts in November, bringing torrential rains and high, lashing winds. Except for some residents of a fishing village, most people leave the island for at least a few months. Abdullah plans to stay. He has rented a small wooden chalet not far from shore. And twice a day, he will trek down through the forest to visit his young corals. He will see to it, he said, that they make it through the monsoon."
+"Easy-to-use detergent pods have become ubiquitous in American homes, containing just the right combination and amount of cleaning agents to leave clothes fresh and dishes sparkling. But now a debate is raging over whether they may contribute to the growing plastic pollution problem that threatens human health and the environment. An eco-friendly company that sells cleaning products and advocacy groups petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday to take action against the use of the “plastic film” that surrounds the pods, arguing that the material does not completely break down in water as advertised. The petition urges the agency to require health and environmental safety tests for polyvinyl alcohol, also known as PVA or PVOH, which encases the pods. The petition calls on the EPA to remove the compound from its Safer Choice and Safer Chemical Ingredients lists until the tests are conducted and PVA is proved safe. Blueland, a company which sells a “dry-form” laundry detergent tablet, has spearheaded the effort to subject pods to greater federal scrutiny. Its actions have angered major players within the cleaning-products industry, including a trade association and the manufacturer of the film used in detergent pods. “Polyvinyl alcohol is a polymer, so by definition it is a plastic — it’s a synthetic petroleum-based plastic,” said Blueland co-founder Sarah Paiji Yoo. Yoo added that she and others at the New York City-based company view the popular pods and newer laundry detergent sheets that use PVA as “arguably worse than straws.” “At least with a straw you can look at it and know like, ‘Okay, this is trash. I should put this in the trash can,’ ” she said. “These pods and sheets are plastics that are designed to go down our drains and into our water systems that ultimately empty out into the natural environment,” she said. Asked for comment, an EPA spokesperson said the agency “will review the petition and respond accordingly.” PVA, which is also used in the textile industry, has been widely regarded as safe. In addition to being included on the EPA’s Safer Chemical Ingredients list, the compound is approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in food packaging, dietary supplements and pharmaceutical products. The Environmental Working Group has also rated PVA as a low-hazard ingredient in personal care products. What’s more, single-dose detergent pods that use PVA are often considered to be a more environmentally friendly alternative to traditional liquid products that come in plastic containers. Research touted by the American Cleaning Institute, or ACI, a trade group, suggests that at least 60 percent of PVA film biodegrades within 28 days and 100 percent of the film within 90 days. The group says water containing the dissolved film will go to wastewater treatment plants, where bacteria and other microorganisms break down the material “through natural biodegradation.” Blueland commissioned and helped fund a peer-reviewed study last year that challenges that claim. Its petition, which is supported by several organizations dedicated to fighting plastic pollution, cites the study’s estimate that about 75 percent of PVA from laundry and dishwasher pods remained intact after passing through conventional wastewater treatment. “It is now urgent for the scientific community to focus its attention on these new emerging pollutants,” said Stefano Magni, an assistant professor of ecology in the biosciences department at the University of Milan who has studied the compound’s possible toxicity but was not involved in the study commissioned by Blueland. “Indeed, a huge amount of PVA is annually produced, placed on the market and then used and released in the environment,” particularly in aquatic ecosystems. Charles Rolsky, co-author of the Blueland-funded study and a senior research scientist at the Shaw Institute in Maine, said that earlier research suggesting PVA could leave no trace over time often involved conditions that typically aren’t found in the real world. Those results could lead consumers to believe that a pod product using PVA film may “seem more eco-friendly and biodegradable than it actually is,” he added. Yoo said that “at this point, there are probably millions of consumers who are buying these sheets or pods thinking they’re doing a really great thing for the planet. They’re converting into these products because of the sustainability messaging, because of the plastic-free messaging, but unbeknownst to them, they’re actually sending plastic particles down their drains.” Fully biodegrading PVA requires the presence of the right species and concentration of microorganisms, which also have to be trained to break the compound down, Rolsky said. And there isn’t “a single wastewater treatment plant in the United States where water sits with those microbes for anything close to 28 days,” he said. “At most, it might be a week, but more realistically it’s days to hours.” While more research is needed on PVA’s potential effects on humans and the planet, the concern is that the film is “very similar to conventional plastics that we see on a regular basis,” Rolsky said. But there’s one major difference, he said: PVA “just happens to be water soluble.” He compared PVA’s ability to dissolve to pouring salt into water. “The salt will disappear, but you can still very much taste the salt itself, even though you can’t see it.” A growing body of research suggests that plastic pollution can have serious health and environmental effects, including those posed by the ability of small plastic particles to absorb chemicals, contaminants and heavy metals and move those harmful substances up the food chain. But evidence of the potential effects of PVA “are scarce,” said Magni, who co-authored a study that did not find toxic effects associated with the compound in fish embryos and a species of water flea. He added that environmental tests of PVA are “urgently needed.” Both MonoSol, the Indiana-based company that manufactures the wrapping, and the ACI rejected the call for federal officials to regulate use of the film in consumer goods. In a statement, Matthew Vander Laan, MonoSol’s vice president of corporate affairs, called the petition a “publicity stunt” and accused Blueland of “exploiting the credibility of the EPA in pursuit of its own commercial goals.” “Decades of study, including evaluations by the EPA, FDA, regulatory and certification bodies around the world, have proven the safety and sustainability of PVA,” Vander Laan said. Meanwhile, the ACI issued a lengthy statement that highlighted benefits of PVA film and supporting research findings. The trade association also reiterated its criticisms of the research commissioned by Blueland, noting that the study “presents a flawed model based on theoretical assumptions and uses flawed data in that model.” “Because this chemistry has enabled these innovative laundry and automatic dishwashing product formats, it is extremely disappointing to learn about the misinformation that is being spread about PVA/PVOH,” the ACI statement said. But Rolsky said that he and other experts are calling for more research: “PVA shouldn’t be vilified.” “We can’t speculate,” he added. “We have the tools to do the analysis. We should do the analysis and learn how it actually behaves.” Magni agreed. Research into this and other water-soluble polymers is “in the zero year,” he said. “There is still everything to do.”"
+"The Biden administration on Thursday will propose requiring all major federal contractors to set targets for reducing their emissions in line with the 2015 Paris climate accord, a significant step toward greening the government’s sprawling operations and one that could ripple across the U.S. supply chain. The proposed rule, which comes as leaders from nearly 200 nations converge at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Egypt, would also mandate that federal contractors publicly disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and the risks they face from climate change. The U.S. government is the world’s largest buyer of goods and services, purchasing more than $630 billion in the last fiscal year alone. President Biden has previously called for the government to become carbon-neutral by 2050, in part by creating a federal fleet of electric vehicles and buying clean electricity for federal buildings. Speaking to reporters Thursday, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden will arrive at the talks Friday “with historic momentum on climate thanks to the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act and other significant steps that put us on an enduring path towards meeting our ambitions and clean energy goals.” “While he’s on the ground, he’ll speak to his personal commitment to addressing the climate crisis,” Sullivan added. “He’ll highlight some of the progress the United States has made, both here at home and in rallying action on climate around the world. And he’ll underscore the need to go further, faster to help the most vulnerable communities build their resilience without losing sight of the need for the world and particularly for the major economies to cut emissions drastically. in this decisive decade.” The administration plans to highlight the proposal during Biden’s visit to the U.N. summit, as well as during a Saturday event there  featuring Brian Deese, the director of the National Economic Council, and Ali Zaidi, the White House national climate adviser. “As the world’s largest purchaser of goods and services, the Federal government has a critical opportunity to leverage its spending power to help reduce climate risks and safeguard taxpayer dollars,” Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young said in a statement. “This new proposed rule is an important step forward that will help us achieve our ambitious climate goals, promote efficiency, and increase the resilience of federal supply chains.” On Friday, the Biden administration will also issue a long-awaited proposal on limiting emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, from U.S. oil and gas operations, according to an individual familiar with the plan who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the details. The Environmental Protection Agency will offer oil and gas companies more flexibility in how they monitor their wells for methane emissions, this person said, allowing flyover inspections with sensors that have become popular in the industry to count toward new monitoring requirements. The rule would allow companies that fly drones or planes with methane-detection technology over their oil and gas fields at least every other month to limit more arduous on-the-ground inspections to once a year. It would also grant further leniency to companies that use constant-monitoring systems, often deployed in conjunction with independent certification programs, under a sliding-scale system that aims to enable industry to use developing technology to do more efficient monitoring. Asked about the matter Thursday, the EPA declined to comment. By unveiling the two proposals during the talks, Biden aims to reassure America’s partners overseas that the U.S. government can continue to fulfill its climate pledges even in the face of Republican opposition. The proposed rule on the federal supply chain covers roughly 85 percent of the emissions associated with it, which are more than double the emissions stemming from operating the government’s 300,000 buildings and 600,000 vehicles combined, the White House said. Once enacted, officials said, the rule would make the United States the first national government to require major suppliers to set climate goals aligned with the Paris agreement. Under the proposal, federal contractors receiving between $7.5 million and $50 million in annual contracts would be required to publicly disclose their “Scope 1” and “Scope 2” emissions. Scope 1 covers direct emissions from sources owned or controlled by a company, such as a fleet of cars or a power plant. Scope 2 covers emissions from the generation of energy the company purchases. Federal contractors with less than $7.5 million in annual contracts would be exempt from the rule. The largest suppliers would need to disclose certain categories of scope 3 emissions, which cover those produced by a company’s customers and suppliers, such as drivers filling their cars with gasoline. “On week one, President Biden charged us to make the Federal government climate-ready and resilient,” Council on Environmental Quality Chair Brenda Mallory said in a statement. “Requiring major Federal suppliers to disclose emissions and risks strengthens our supply chain and brings us closer to reaching our net-zero emissions goals.” The proposed rule reflects the Biden administration’s broader push to treat climate change as an economic risk. In March, the Securities and Exchange Commission unveiled a controversial proposal that would require all publicly traded companies to disclose their emissions and the risks they face from global warming, prompting pushback from Republicans who said the Wall Street regulator was overstepping its authority. A senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly, said the regulation would protect the federal supply chain from increasingly common disruptions linked to climate change, such as heat waves that can strain the electricity grid. Even without the rule in place, the government has taken steps to reduce this risk. For example, the Defense Department installed a solar-powered microgrid at the Miramar base in San Diego, allowing the base to disconnect from California’s electricity system during the heat wave that scorched the state this summer. “We see financial risk without those kinds of investments,” the senior administration official said. The proposal will be issued by the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council, a body comprising the Defense Department, the General Services Administration and the NASA and chaired by the Office of Federal Procurement Policy in the Office of Management and Budget. It will be subject to a 60-day public comment period. Matt Viser, Timothy Puko and Dino Grandoni contributed to this report."
+"In 1886, after meeting the inventor Thomas Edison in New York, Hawaii’s King Kalakaua enthusiastically began electrifying the grounds of his new residence — and within a year, 325 incandescent lights had the Iolani Palace fully aglow. The king wouldn’t be able to pull off the same feat these days on Maui. Much of the island’s outdoor illumination soon could violate a new ordinance intended to help the island’s winged population. Fines could reach $1,000 a day. The measure restricts outdoor lighting in an effort to keep endangered birds — and Maui has some of the world’s rarest — from crashing into spotlighted buildings. But Bill 21, signed into law last week, is ruffling feathers because its provisions also could keep flagpoles, church steeples, swimming pools and even luaus in the dark. “People have told me they’ve seen birds falling on the ground in town, up country, all over the place,” said the bill’s author, Kelly Takaya King, who chairs the Maui County Council’s Climate Action, Resilience and Environment Committee. Maui is a veritable Eden for species such as the wedge-tailed shearwater, white-tailed tropicbird, brown booby, myna, kiwikiu and nene — the state bird and the world’s rarest goose. The island also is home to some 170,000 people, however, and the new law is pitting the avian paradise against the human one. The ordinance imposes a near-total ban on upward-shining outdoor lighting and limits short-wavelength blue-light content. Similar laws are in effect in many jurisdictions nationwide to protect various local interests, including the night skies in Arizona and the wilderness in New Hampshire. Maui has a more complicated set of priorities. The outdoor light restrictions effectively prohibit nighttime hula dances and luau performances — local cultural signatures. Indoor alternatives are impractical. “Customers do not want to be in a ballroom or enclosed facility — they can go to Detroit and do that,” wrote Debbie Weil-Manuma, the president of a local tourism company, in a letter of opposition. At the same time, Maui is grappling with an invasive species arriving in flocks of up to 35,000 a day: tourists. Local officials are considering caps on hotel and vacation rentals. Birds can be disoriented by artificial light, sometimes confusing it for moonlight, and end up slamming into a building’s windows or circling until exhausted. In a single night in May 2017, 398 migrating birds — including warblers, grosbeaks and ovenbirds — flew into the floodlights of an office tower in Galveston, Tex. Only three survived. This danger is why the Empire State Building in New York City, the former John Hancock Center in Chicago and other landmark skyscrapers now go dark overnight during peak bird migration periods. Yet, most mass bird fatalities occur in urban centers with tall buildings in high density. Maui is rural, and its kalana, or county office building, is only nine stories tall. Jack Curran, a New Jersey lighting consultant who evaluated the science behind the bill, said the council “clearly didn’t do their homework.” The bill also requires that lighted surfaces be nonreflective, with a matte surface if painted. As the island is coated in compliant black paint, Curran joked, “Maui will wind up looking like Halloween.” Even support for the regulation is fractured. “This bill does provide good benefits,” said Jordan Molina, Maui’s public works director, “but it doesn’t have to do so recklessly.” The new law, he added, will make his office the “blue-light police.” Although the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service did not oppose the bill, it recommended creating a habitat conservation plan unless the county could devise a foolproof lighting policy. According to public records, the council relied on a single, non-peer-reviewed study funded by an Arizona company, C&W Energy Solutions, that lobbied for the bill. (The county’s attorneys issued a memorandum in July warning of the “potentially serious conflict of interest,” which the council ignored.) And King’s efforts were propelled in part by conservation groups’ lawsuit alleging that a luxury resort’s lights disoriented at least 15 endangered petrels between 2008 and 2021, resulting in at least one petrel’s death. (By contrast, the Maui Forest Bird Recovery Project has focused on the continuing “depredation by feral cats,” which number in the thousands on the island.) Still at issue are the measure’s conflicting exemptions. For example, lights at public golf courses, tennis courts and schools’ athletics events are allowed, but not lights at hotel-owned golf courses or tennis courts. Conventional string lights are permitted for holidays and cultural festivals but must be “fully shielded” for all other uses, including weddings. The county fair is also exempt. So are emergency services and emergency road repairs. The law will inhibit TV and film crews’ night lights, such as those used by “Hawaii Five-O,” “NCIS: Hawai‘i” and “The White Lotus.” The latter was honored in October by the Maui County Film Office for giving the island national and international recognition. King told local media that compliant lights are widely available online. But when asked recently for online links to such bulbs, her office sent just one — for a bedside night light that can double as an outdoor bug light, although it was unclear whether the bulb meets all of the ordinance’s specifications. “Appropriate lighting is not available,” King then conceded. “We’re hoping it will be in the next few years. When you pass a lot of these environmental laws, you kind of have to go in steps to get them passed.” As passed, the bill explicitly removed exemptions for field harvesting, security lighting at beaches run by hotels or condominiums, safety lighting for water features, motion-sensor lighting, and lighting on state or federal property — including Maui’s harbors and even the runway lights at its airports. Council member Shane Sinenci supported the ultimate provisions. “Our unique biodiversity is what makes us appealing to both visitors and to residents alike,” the Maui News quoted him as saying before the final vote. “We are often underestimating the value of a healthy ecosystem and all the benefits that comes with it.” The law takes effect in July for new lighting and requires existing lighting to be in compliance by 2026."
+"CIGLENA, Croatia — Hidden in the rolling hills of the Croatian countryside, a futuristic structure that looks a little like a flying saucer is what backers say is the hope for the region’s emissions-free future. In a part of Europe that still generates much of its electricity by burning natural gas and coal, some green advocates say they should look deep beneath their feet to harness the power of the earth’s core. Croatia and its neighbors sit on top of a patch of unusual geology where the vast heat at the center of the world has an especially easy time coming close to the surface. The result is a high concentration of potential emissions-free geothermal energy, one that can form the base of a carbon-free electricity grid, unlike wind and solar power, which don’t typically generate power around-the-clock. The UFO-like Velika Ciglena geothermal plant is the first of its kind in Croatia, and backers believe the technology could eventually power much of the country’s needs, as well as in neighboring countries that have similar geology, such as Austria, Hungary and Serbia. “There is a huge potential to generate a lot of electricity out of this. There is a huge potential for district heating. And there is a huge potential for agriculture,” said Marijan Krpan, the chief executive of the Croatian Hydrocarbon Agency, the state agency that oversees drilling in the country. Krpan said he hopes geothermal energy could eventually generate a third of the country’s power demand. Geothermal energy’s backers are gaining momentum around the world, as the technology improves and societies seek every avenue to reduce the emission of harmful greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Among other virtues, advocates say, geothermal energy has a relatively small footprint, generating far more electricity per square foot than either wind or solar power, both of which require a lot of land to create power in any quantity. And geothermal power doesn’t have the same waste or safety risks as nuclear energy, a rival emissions-free source for electricity. So advocates are advancing geothermal projects around the world, wherever the earth’s crust is conducive. In Paris, geothermal wells are heating elegant 19th-century apartment blocks. In the rugged mountains of eastern California, a major new geothermal power plant opened in August. In Iceland, a tiny island nation that sits atop countless hot springs, geothermal plants are being used to power the world’s biggest carbon capture effort, an innovative attempt to pull carbon out of the air and pump it into the ground. And in Croatia, there has been a flowering of projects after the government changed regulations in 2016 to allow the country’s thousands of disused oil and gas wells to be reused for geothermal projects. The northern part of the country is part of the geothermal-rich Pannonian basin, a region where continental plates collided about 16 million years ago, then folded back on themselves repeatedly, creating fractured rock that allows heat to rise from the earth’s molten core close to the surface. “It’s a treasure,” said Zeljka Sladovic, the founder of GeoDa Consulting and a longtime consultant on geothermal projects in Croatia. For decades, the geologist worked for Croatia’s oil and gas industry, since the country was long rich with both of those resources. Now the oil has largely run out, and the country imports most of its gas. But the detailed underground maps left over from decades of fossil fuel exploration can help geothermal investors find good prospects. In Croatia, that has meant projects that generate heat for entire districts in towns that have centralized heating infrastructure instead of furnaces or boilers in each building. Farmers are using the technology to warm their greenhouses. And the first geothermal power plant opened last year in the middle of a cornfield just outside Ciglena, a village of about 300 people that is about 20 miles from the Hungarian border. The Velika Ciglena power plant is an unlikely futuristic addition to a pastoral landscape. Weathered 19th-century churches back onto farmland and forest, and jouncing roads twist their way from Croatia’s elegant capital of Zagreb, which is an hour away. The installation is dominated by 44 massive silver fans, each about 20 feet across, and spinning parallel to the ground, that cool the water before it is pumped back into the ground. “We showed to the world and to the sector that Croatia’s geothermal potential is useful,” said Dragan Jurilj, one of the investors who helped build the power plant and who now operates it amid an ownership dispute with his former Turkish partners. The plant can generate about 17 megawatts of power, although because of the way Croatia’s grid is operated, it’s currently limited to 10 megawatts. At the installation’s higher end, that’s equivalent to about the electricity generated by about 94 football fields of solar panels, on a plot of land that is less than a tenth of that. Skeptics of the efforts say that solar and wind generate power more cheaply, especially in Croatia, where the geothermal water isn’t as hot as it is in more volcanic places like Iceland. “I’m not sure that it makes sense from an economic point of view,” said Neven Duic, the president of the International Center for Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment System, a Zagreb-based research group, who said he thought that more modest geothermal projects, such as municipal heating plants, would generate fewer profits but might make more social sense than electricity. But as the climate warms, backers of geothermal energy say that it can be a good hedge against the weather extremes that can sometimes threaten aboveground renewable energy sources. Europe had its warmest summer on record this year, drying up rivers and draining hydroelectric dams of their energy source, for instance. And now that Russia has caused an energy shortage in Europe by cutting off natural gas supplies, there is fresh impetus to invest in every form of homegrown power. “This is our own resource. You don’t have to haggle about it with anybody. What’s better than having our own energy in our backyard?” said Dragutin Domitrovic, who served as construction manager when the Velika Ciglena power plant was being built and now runs Calida Aqua, a geothermal consulting group. Geothermal energy typically works by drilling a well a mile or two into the ground and pumping up water that has been heated by the energy of the earth’s core. The heat is used to make steam that spins turbines, generating electricity. Then the cooled water is pumped back down into the ground. In many areas of Croatia’s Pannonian region, the water is boiling a little more than a mile down and gets hotter the deeper a well is drilled. Hotter water leads to more electricity. But there is wide variability from site to site, drilling wells is expensive, and often it’s impossible to know in advance whether a drill hole will yield good enough water. That can scare off investors. “This is a game which is not for the feebleminded. But with patience you can be there,” said Domitrovic, who said that with European energy prices as high as they were this summer, he thought that many geothermal projects would break even in seven to 10 years. Croatian authorities are eager to press forward. Several new permits for geothermal power plants have been issued in recent months. And the leaders of the government office that oversees the process, the Croatian Hydrocarbon Agency, want to make their focus even clearer by changing their name, which comes from the fossil fuel era. “We would like to change the name to the Geoenergy Agency,” said Krpan, its chief executive."
+"After months of negotiations, the European Union reached a political agreement this week to effectively ban new nonelectric cars from 2035 onward. The agreement, reached at 9 p.m. on Thursday in Brussels and announced by the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament, amounts to a 100 percent carbon dioxide emission reduction target for new cars and vans by 2035. “This agreement will pave the way for the modern and competitive automotive industry in the EU. The world is changing, and we must remain at the forefront of innovation,” Jozef Sikela — the minister of industry and trade in the Czech Republic, which holds the rotating council presidency — said in a statement. The legislation still needs to be approved formally to become law in the E.U., one of the largest automobile markets and home to some of the biggest manufacturers. However, approval by the Council and European Parliament is expected, with only minor changes. Many climate change campaigners, who hoped other governments would follow in the E.U.’s footsteps in effectively banning new gas and diesel vehicles, welcomed the news. “The days of the carbon-spewing, pollution-belching combustion engine are finally numbered,” Julia Poliscanova, senior director for vehicles and e-mobility at Brussels-based campaign group Transport & Environment. “It’s 125 years since Rudolf Diesel revolutionized engine efficiency, but lawmakers have decided the next chapter will be written by the cleaner, better electric vehicle.” Even so, Poliscanova and some other experts worried that the measures, while a step toward sustainable transportation, were still too slow. Manufacturers that produce smaller fleets of less than 10,000 cars or 22,000 vans annually are to have lower targets, at least initially. This means that niche manufacturers, including high-end brands such as Lamborghini and Ferrari, will be given more leeway on an interim target for 2030, though they will eventually be expected to reach the final target by 2035. The European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association cautiously welcomed the decision, which they said was “far-reaching” and “without precedent.” But Oliver Zipse, the group’s president, said he also needed to see how the E.U. would help the industry with the transition, including with sources of renewable energy, public charging infrastructure and access to raw materials. “Make no mistake, the European automobile industry is up to the challenge of providing these zero-emission cars and vans,” said Zipse, who is also chief executive of German automotive giant BMW. “However, we are now keen to see the framework conditions which are essential to meet this target reflected in EU policies.” Some conservative critics of the legislation suggested that a shift toward all-electric vehicles would increase the cost of new cars in Europe. The result, claimed Jens Gieseke, a German negotiator from the European People’s Party, is that streets will be filled with old cars like in the capital of Communist-led Cuba. “With today’s agreement, a ‘Havana effect’ is becoming more realistic. After 2035, our streets might become full of vintage cars, because new cars are not available or not affordable,” Gieseke said in a statement. The European People’s Party and others argued that while emissions need to be brought down, the legislation is too blunt an instrument and would simply result in Chinese and American manufacturers with more flexibility taking business from Europe. But supporters of the measure said that companies would be given ample time to transition, with an interim target of 55 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 compared to 2021 levels for cars, and a 50 percent reduction for vans. “With these targets, we create clarity for the car industry and stimulate innovation and investments for car manufacturers,” Jan Huitema, a Dutch politician and chief negotiator for the European Parliament, said in a statement."
+"Waiting on a train platform in Hassleholm, Sweden, Manni Elfborg was both poetic and practical in explaining why his family was taking a 24-hour rail trip, rather than two short-hop flights, to their vacation destination in Slovenia. Elfborg, 61, talked about the experience of the train — watching landscapes pass by outside the windows. He said he appreciated disembarking in city centers, rather than at airports on the outskirts. But his son, 27-year-old Theodor, acknowledged they were an exception among their family friends: “We’re usually the only ones who say: ‘We took the train.’ ” For nearly two decades, cheap, short flights defined European travel. With the rise of budget airlines, people with limited discretionary funds could consider trips that were previously out of reach. And people took advantage of that access, exploring other countries and cultures, embracing the European Union ideal of free movement across borders. But all those flights amounted to a big carbon footprint. While cheap for travelers, they incurred a hefty environmental cost — undermining Europe’s pledges to cut harmful emissions and become carbon-neutral. Now, climate-conscious European governments and groups are going to varying lengths to break people of their flight habits. Some are building on the “flight shame” movement popularized by Swedish teen activist Greta Thunberg. Germany and Spain have been experimenting with ways to make train travel more appealing, offering tickets at a nominal price. Meanwhile, France, the Netherlands and Austria are trying to limit people’s options by limiting flights. We set out to discover how well those efforts are working: whether they are successfully getting people to skip carbon-heavy flights in favor of more environmentally friendly trains. We embarked on a multi-leg train trip that began in Sweden and took us through Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium before ending in France. Stockholm NORWAY SWEDEN Copenhagen Malmo IRELAND BRITAIN Amsterdam POLAND London Berlin Brussels CZECH REPUBLIC GERMANY Paris AUSTRIA FRANCE SWITZER- LAND Bordeaux ITALY SPAIN Rome Stockholm NORWAY SWEDEN Copenhagen Malmo IRELAND BRITAIN Amsterdam POLAND London Berlin Brussels CZECH REPUBLIC GERMANY Paris AUSTRIA FRANCE SWITZER- LAND Bordeaux ITALY SPAIN Rome Stockholm NORWAY SWEDEN Copenhagen Malmo IRELAND BRITAIN Amsterdam POLAND London Berlin Brussels CZECH REPUBLIC GERMANY Paris AUSTRIA FRANCE SWITZER- LAND Bordeaux ITALY SPAIN Rome Along the journey, we found that the government efforts have contributed to something of a rail renaissance. Trains at the end of summer in Europe were packed. “I had a seat available on this train for the last time in May,” said Linus Hall, a conductor on the sold-out Snalltaget sleeper train between Stockholm and Berlin. Flights are also nearly back to their pre-pandemic levels, however. And for those who do opt for the train, European rail services may not be up to their expectations. Our trip involved multiple delays, complicated connections, long bathroom lines, stolen luggage and at one point a rail strike that forced us off the train and onto a bus. Malmo, Sweden ➞ Berlin Stockholm NORWAY SWEDEN DENMARK Malmo Copenhagen Hamburg POLAND Berlin GERMANY Frankfurt CZECH REPUBLIC Trains similar to the ones we took emit about an eighth of the carbon dioxide that planes emit on the same trip. PLANE NORWAY SWEDEN DENMARK Malmo Copenhagen Hamburg POLAND Berlin GERMANY Frankfurt CZECH REPUBLIC Trains similar to the ones we took emit about an eighth of the carbon dioxide that planes emit on the same trip. PLANE NORWAY SWEDEN DENMARK Malmo Copenhagen Hamburg POLAND Berlin GERMANY Frankfurt CZECH REPUBLIC Trains similar to the ones we took emit about an eighth of the carbon dioxide that planes emit on the same trip. PLANE We joined the night train in the early evening at the railway junction of Hassleholm, about 45 minutes north of the Swedish city of Malmo. The prevailing standard of train travel in Europe is a far cry from the sleek Chunnel trains that zip beneath the seabed of the English Channel and can reach speeds of 186 miles per hour. More typical is the boxy Snalltaget. The night train’s operators boast that it runs on renewable energy. But it also tops out at 124 miles an hour and features refurbished but still bare-bones cars built in the 1970s. All the seats on the train require reservations. Few remained unoccupied when we boarded. Many passengers had already been on the train for as long as four hours, after boarding in the Swedish capital or one of the stops in between. Pillows and shoes were strewn about the floor. Some people were already asleep, their heads leaning against seat covers that read in Swedish: “Say hello to your fellow travelers!” When Snalltaget began service from Sweden to Berlin in 2012, it seemed doomed to fail. Budget airlines were expanding their fleets and selling seats on their 1-hour 40-minute flights from Stockholm to Berlin at dumping prices. Snalltaget struggled to find enough travelers for even two small carriages on its 15-hour, not-much-cheaper trip. But a new era of rail travel began in the summer of 2019, when Thunberg, then 16, helped popularize flygskam, or “flight shame.” In Sweden that year, train travel increased one-third over the previous summer, while air travel dropped about 4 percent at the country’s major airports. Paul Chiambaretto, who has studied the flight shame movement, cautioned that shame has its limits. “People who often travel by train are also the ones who often travel by plane,” he said, adding that few are ashamed. A common defense: Why be ashamed when trains are often more expensive than equivalent flights, when trains sell out far in advance and when booking can be dizzyingly complicated, especially on cross-border trips involving multiple European rail operators. “The number of apps or website tabs you need to have open to even find out how to make some of these trips,” said Berlin-based blogger and train enthusiast Jon Worth, “means it’s basically out of reach of anyone who’s not uber keen.” For many, it comes down to which mode of transportation is less of a hassle. Ten major Swedish airports saw about a quarter fewer travelers this summer than in 2019, before the pandemic. But along with environmental concerns, that drop can be linked to strikes, widespread flight cancellations and rising ticket prices. Rail passenger numbers, meanwhile, were down 5 percent in the second quarter of this year, compared with the same period in 2019. Nobody taking the Snalltaget sleeper train cited social pressure as a reason they booked their ticket, though some talked about the environment. Ellen Haaslahti, 23, said she was studying environmental sciences and has been alarmed by the “brutal” predictions of scientists she has spoken with. “Every day, I’m hearing how bad things are,” she said. Taking the train was “a way to express how I can change my lifestyle according to what I believe.” In the dining car, where the lights were dimmed for the evening, Tomas Hedblom, 29, said he preferred the train over planes: “It’s more comfortable. You can walk around!” But when he did get up to walk, his girlfriend, Nina Tikkanen, 25, admitted she wouldn’t have minded a flight. The real reason they didn’t fly? “I think he’s a bit afraid,” she said, and laughed. At Malmo Central Station, the night train stopped for a scheduled hour, so the dining car could come off and sleeper coaches could be added. Then the train continued on its route — crossing the strait that connects the Baltic and North seas via the Oresund Bridge, passing the blinking runway lights of Copenhagen airport a short time later. The conversations onboard became quieter. Travelers closed their curtains. Many were asleep by the time they crossed the Danish-German border. The cheapest train tickets just get you a seat. For more money, passengers can reserve a spot in a small cabin with three berths stacked on each side of a narrow aisle. Don’t want to be inches above or below strangers? You need to reserve an entire cabin. The train cars have been retrofitted, but they still have a retro feel. “A brand new passenger coach is quite expensive — for us, that was not an alternative,” said Marco Andersson, a senior executive at Snalltaget. With the revival of train travel, European railway companies have competed to secure secondhand coaches. “Compared to other markets, railway passenger coaches have a long lifetime,” Andersson said, noting that many of the Snalltaget cars were produced in Germany in the 1970s. The train arrived in Berlin 10 minutes ahead of schedule the next morning, nearly 17 hours after leaving Stockholm. But because of construction, the route terminated at a commuter station. Passengers were left to find their own way to Berlin Central. Berlin ➞ Amsterdam Hanover Amsterdam Berlin NETHER- LANDS Frankfurt BELGIUM GERMANY Munich FRANCE AUSTRIA Trains similar to the ones we took emit about a quarter of the carbon dioxide that planes emit on the same trip. 78 kg per person PLANE 18 kg per person TRAIN Hanover Amsterdam Berlin NETHER- LANDS Frankfurt BELGIUM GERMANY Munich FRANCE AUSTRIA Trains similar to the ones we took emit about a quarter of the carbon dioxide that planes emit on the same trip. 78 kg per person PLANE 18 kg per person TRAIN Hanover Amsterdam Berlin NETHER- LANDS Frankfurt BELGIUM GERMANY Munich FRANCE AUSTRIA Trains similar to the ones we took emit about a quarter of the carbon dioxide that planes emit on the same trip. 78 kg per person PLANE 18 kg per person TRAIN As travelers streamed onto the platform at Berlin’s main station, they were met by environmental activists who encouraged them say into a camera in German: “Yes, I would welcome an extension of the 9 euro ticket!” The German government wants to double train ridership by 2030. And it doesn’t think shame — or the deterrence of airport chaos — will get it there. So this summer it tried to get people to take a fresh look at public transportation, while easing the burden of inflation, with the offer of unlimited regional rail and bus travel, costing a symbolic 9 euros (about $9) per month. At the end of the three-month experiment, German railway companies reported they had sold more than 52 million tickets. The regional trains of DB, the main operator, were 10 percent busier than before the pandemic. And as many as one in five people who made use of the tickets said they did not previously rely on public transportation. According to preliminary estimates by a public transportation association, the tickets may have saved 1.8 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions. (This month, the German government agreed on a successor model, though it is expected to cost travelers about $50 a month.) Sabine Laurisch, a retiree who rushed to buy a 9 euro ticket when they first became available in May, said she used it for about 30 train trips this summer — discovering places she otherwise wouldn’t have explored. When we spoke to her the day before the 9-euro program ended, she was just returning from a nearby spa town. “For years, I traveled excessively” by plane, she said. “I’m embarrassed when I think of the carbon footprint.” Heidi Rupp, 58, said she saved about $300 by using the ticket this summer. But disappointing service — with widespread reports of overfilled trains, broken air conditioning and long delays — raised questions for her about how many minds it would change. “You have to change what you offer, and not just tweak the prices,” she said. We saw what Rupp and other critics meant. We wanted to try to get to the Dutch border by mostly traveling on the 9-euro tickets we had just bought. But the tickets weren’t valid on the direct trains between Berlin and Amsterdam. So we switched from one regional train to the next. In the German city of Hanover, the train station was so busy that moving along the platform required advanced skills in negotiation and gentle pushing. It’s been like this all summer, travelers and staffers told us. “At times, one had the slight feeling that the system is breaking down a little bit,” said Marcel Tewes, a senior executive at German railway company Eurobahn. All three of our German trains were behind schedule — though one made up the time en route. That’s in keeping with data showing almost every second German long-distance train was delayed by six minutes or more through the summer months. Tewes said he was proud of how his company had managed the busy period. But he blamed strategic political failures for capping railway ambitions. “One should have invested many, many years ago,” he said. Germany — a country with a powerful car lobby, where people embrace autobahns without speed limits — spent $74 per capita on railways in 2019, compared with about $400 in Switzerland, which leads statistics in train performance. Under Germany’s current center-left government, the country may now for the first time spend more money on railways than on road construction and maintenance. (The United States spends many times more on roads than on rails.) When our train got to the Dutch border, our trip hit its biggest hitch: a major rail strike in the Netherlands. The conductor urged everyone to get out to avoid getting stuck. People rushed toward the doors. But when we got to the station’s parking lot, it was empty. It took another half-hour for the first replacement bus to show up. We were lucky and among the first to get on. As we slowly made our way to Amsterdam, the grass outside appeared yellow and burned from an extended drought. In an interview, Dutch Environment Minister Vivianne Heijnen told us that with climate change, the moist peat common in northern Europe is shrinking and collapsing — requiring the restructuring of rail beds, increasing maintenance costs and presenting another challenge to the country’s goal of increasing passengers on trains by 30 percent by 2030. “If it takes too long [to travel], or if lines are not reliable, some people will go back into the car or into the plane,” Heijnen said. We arrived in Amsterdam about one hour late. By then, the schedules of travelers trying to reach the Dutch capital had long been tossed aside. Many were relieved, and even a bit surprised, that they made it. Amsterdam ➞ Bordeaux, France BRITAIN Amsterdam London Brussels BELGIUM Paris Nantes FRANCE Lyon Bordeaux Marseille SPAIN Trains similar to the ones we took emit about one-sixteenth of the carbon dioxide that planes emit on the same trip. 125 kg per person PLANE TRAIN 8kg per person BRITAIN Amsterdam London Brussels BELGIUM Paris Nantes FRANCE Lyon Bordeaux Marseille SPAIN Trains similar to the ones we took emit about one-sixteenth of the carbon dioxide that planes emit on the same trip. 125 kg per person PLANE TRAIN 8kg per person BRITAIN Amsterdam London Brussels BELGIUM Paris Nantes FRANCE Lyon Bordeaux Marseille SPAIN Trains similar to the ones we took emit about one sixteenth of the carbon dioxide that planes emit on the same trip. 125 kg per person PLANE TRAIN 8kg per person The final leg of our trip took us from the Netherlands to France — both countries that have gone beyond shaming and train incentives and begun to limit flights as an option. Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, one of the world’s busiest international hubs, in June introduced a cap on the number of passengers who could depart from there. The airport plans to continue caps through the end of March. In the near-term, the move is mostly about dealing with post-pandemic staff shortages, which have prompted long lines and flight cancellations. But starting next year, the Dutch government — which owns a majority stake in Schiphol — will cap flights in and out of the airport at 440,000 flights per year, down 12 percent from the 2019 peak. In that decision, the government highlighted the need to address climate change. At the central train station in Amsterdam, as cold wind blew over the platforms, some travelers said Schiphol doesn’t need to work much harder to keep people away. A pair traveling to Paris said in the past they would have taken a plane. But going through security at the airport these days could take longer than the three-hour train ride. The padded red seats on the smooth-running, high-speed Thalys train offered a soothing experience after a day of delays and a strike. It was, perhaps, too soothing. As we watched sunrise, another passenger discovered their bag had been stolen. It’s happening with growing frequency, a train staffer told us. When the train reached Paris, it came to a halt next to a French TGV with a slogan that boasted: “World record in railway speed. 357 mph.” France has some flight shaming. After the country’s top soccer club posted a video of its team traveling to a nearby match by plane and not by train or bus, the transport minister invoked the Latin saying: “To err is human, but to persevere diabolical.” France also has train bragging, reflecting the country’s pride in its high-speed rail network, which offers some of the fastest connections in the world and is relatively reliable. The state-owned SNCF railway company had a record summer, tallying 10 percent more high-speed train passengers than in 2019. That had a lot to do with rising gas prices and post-pandemic revenge travel, said Alain Krakovitch, the head of SNCF’s high- and medium-speed connections. But another factor may have been at play, too. As part of an effort to reduce carbon emissions by 40 percent by 2030 compared with 1990 levels, the French government wants to ban short-haul domestic flights. A pending regulation is controversial, and its legality is being reviewed by the European Union. But the government has essentially made it happen anyway, by conditioning Air France’s pandemic bailout on an agreement that the flag carrier would stop serving routes that can be reached in less than 2½ hours by train. Krakovitch said it’s unclear how many travelers have since shifted; previous estimates suggested that more than 2 million trips could be impacted annually. The link between Paris and the wine capital of Bordeaux is one of the affected routes. In only two hours, the train zips past vineyards, fields and medieval towers. There’s a constant stream of passengers heading to the onboard restaurant, which sells small Bordeaux wine bottles and croque-monsieur. The espresso comes with a piece of chocolate. “The train has a lot of advantages,” said Pierre Hurmic, the mayor of Bordeaux. “You can perfectly work on the train, so two hours on the train are never two lost hours.” Bordeaux-based real estate specialist Sébastien Duchamp de Chastaigné, 40, who often travels overseas for work, was less convinced. What was previously a smooth journey with a quick connection at Paris Orly airport has become longer and more unreliable since his flights were suspended, he said. He worries about “strikes, breakdowns and the fact that there aren’t enough trains.” The absence of planes, he said, also means “there is no competition” even when trains are fully booked. For France’s railway company, full trains are good for business. They indirectly help fund the country’s costly high-speed network. But some local politicians — including those who share the government’s concerns over climate change — worry the strategy will backfire. “The impact for the area is quite catastrophic,” said Marie Récalde, a regional center-left politician in Mérignac, an industry hub and the town where Bordeaux’s airport is located. She said the ban has made the area less attractive for companies, and has left her scrambling for tickets when she has to travel to Paris. Some businesses have begun shuttling their employees between Paris and Bordeaux on private planes, she said. Design and development Hailey Haymond. Editing by Marisa Bellack, Olivier Laurent, Joseph Moore and Reem Akkad. Copy editing by Jeremy Hester and Laura Michalski."
+"LEPHALALE, South Africa — Blood trickled down Cecil’s face. A tranquilizer dart had pierced his rough, leathery skin above the ear. Steps away, his sedated mother had collapsed. Paulina’s hind foot was lassoed with a rope and she was blindfolded. A group of men and women tugged on the rope and rocked her large, round frame, trying to get her up and into a metal crate. “1, 2, 3, push!” someone commanded. “1, 2, 3, push!” Then, they plunged a cattle prod under Paulina’s bottom. The crackle of electricity flowed through her body. She staggered up, then fell again. Five other endangered black rhinos were undergoing different stages of the same treatment. To an outsider, it seemed cruel. But to the team of animal conservationists corralling the rhinos, the tactics were vital to keeping them alive. Rhino poaching is on the rise again in South Africa, feeding appetites in Asia and the Middle East, where rhino horns are often used in traditional medicines or as cultural artifacts. South African and Asian governments, as well as Interpol, have struggled for decades to curb this illicit global trade, where each horn can fetch tens of thousands of dollars. Now, animal conservationists are trying to save South Africa’s rhinos by moving them out of threatened areas and into new habitats with strong security and strategic conservation methods. The hope is that this will allow the rhinos to seed large breeding herds, protecting the species for future generations. Some are being sent to neighboring countries such as Mozambique — part of an extraordinary, Noah’s ark-like effort to create cross-border sanctuaries, repopulate depleted national parks, and restore ecosystems that can fight climate change and attract tourists. “They can’t really look after the rhino here, no matter the resources they have,” said Werner Myburgh, the head of the Peace Parks Foundation, a conservation nonprofit, referring to the reserve where Paulina, Cecil and dozens of black and white rhinos have lived for years. “So you have to move the rhinos, or else you will lose all of them eventually.” “You give them a new lease on life,” he added. That’s why on a recent morning, a group of eight rhinos — seven black and one white — embarked on a roughly 1,000-mile journey from their nature preserve in northeastern South Africa to a sanctuary in southern Mozambique’s Zinave National Park. The last time black rhinos roamed in the park was 40 years ago, before a 15-year civil war decimated its wildlife. Taking the animals there would mean nearly two days of travel, most of it along unforgiving terrain. A Washington Post reporter and photographer were there to document the journey. Those leading the convoy were nervous: Would poachers attack, hoping to seize nearly $500,000 worth of rhino horns? What would happen if the truck broke down in an isolated stretch of the Mozambican forest? Would all the sedated rhinos drink enough water to survive the bumpy journey in crates the size of small walk-in closets? “We are pushing the limits,” said Kester Vickery, the main architect of the journey. “Our biggest challenge is fighting time.” A few moments later, he added: “I don’t want to lose a rhino on our watch.” Earlier that morning, in the cold predawn hours, the rhinos were inside their compounds, known as bomas. Some of the animals were restless, running and snorting, sensing something was afoot. Cecil stood next to Paulina, following her wherever she went. The animals lived in the Manketti reserve, owned by Exxaro, South Africa’s largest coal producer, which is also involved in animal conservation. Protecting the rhinos from poachers has always been a challenge here: 4,500 miners work inside the reserve; local communities live on its borders; and a public road runs through the park’s 54,000 acres. During the pandemic, Manketti lost valuable tourist revenue, hurting funding for security and park maintenance. Poachers have killed 12 rhinos here in the past six years, including three in a single attack last year. “This whole area is hammered by rhino poaching right now,” said Marius Fuls, the reserve’s manager. “We cannot restrict access like other game reserves.” Over the past 14 years, poachers have killed about 11,000 rhinos in Africa, according to conservation groups, more than 9,000 of them in South Africa, home to the majority of the world’s rhinos. The poaching started to soar in 2008, peaking at 1,349 rhinos killed in 2015, before decreasing due to dwindling populations, better prevention systems and stronger regional alliances. Now, incidents are ticking up again. According to South African government data, 451 rhinos were killed last year, a 13 percent spike from 2020, when pandemic lockdowns thwarted criminal syndicates. About 249 rhinos were killed in the first six months of this year, 10 more than during the same period in 2021. Today, roughly 2,000 black rhinos and 15,000 white rhinos are left in South Africa. Larger parks have invested in electronic tracking surveillance and armies of anti-poaching rangers, and have even started sawing off rhino horns to deter poachers. Exxaro decided on a different strategy, donating and moving all 41 of its rhinos — 30 white and 11 black ones — to Zinave, where they felt the animals would be safer. “The cost-to-benefit equation doesn’t make sense anymore,” Fuls said. With South African government approval, the move was organized by the Peace Parks Foundation, a nonprofit supported by U.S. and European governments. The group has transported 17,000 animals over the past two decades, ranging from antelopes to elephants, to “rewild” depleted national parks in Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Animal conservationists see reviving these ecosystems as part of a larger mission to combat poverty, prevent mass extinctions and battle climate change. In May, the first 19 white rhinos were transported by road from Manketti to Zinave, which is part of a larger conservation area stretching 62,000 square miles across parks in Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Now, it was the black rhinos’ turn. As the sun bathed the bomas in a golden hue, veterinarian Peter Rogers stood atop the platform and shot a tranquilizer dart into a black rhino. The animal ran, then staggered toward the fence, slowly succumbing to the drugs. As the rhino’s legs buckled, Rogers and his team entered the boma. They tied ropes around the animal’s snout and hind leg, then wrapped a blindfold around its eyes — to prevent one of the world’s most dangerous animals from stampeding. Vickery used a cattle prod to get the rhino to stand up. The goal was to insert a transmitter and microchip in the rhino’s horn so conservationists can track it in Mozambique. Then, the animal was “walked” into a crate for the journey ahead. Paulina and Cecil were the last ones to go through this ritual. Cecil was swiftly subdued and placed into the crate, blood still trickling down his face. Paulina was more stubborn. As they held her down, one team member revved up a buzz saw, and after gluing the transmitter and microchip, sawed off what remained of Paulina’s long horn. The other rhinos had their horns sawed off as well. The horns, like fingernails, would grow back in a few months. But removing them now caused the rhinos no pain, and meant the animals wouldn’t harm themselves inside the crates during the journey. Less than an hour later, all eight crates had been loaded onto the bed of the large truck. Only four black rhinos and 10 white rhinos remained in the park. In a few months, they too are scheduled to be taken to Mozambique. “It’s sad to see them leave, but they and their species will have a better chance of survival,” said Siviwe Kweba, one of the park’s rangers. “That’s how we console ourselves.” At 10 a.m., the convoy pushed off toward the Mozambique border, roughly 300 miles away. An hour into the journey, the convoy stopped. Rogers and another veterinarian, Shaun Roper, got out. They could hear at least two rhinos banging against the crate. “This one is a little jumpy,” Rogers said. Roper got on top, clutching a syringe. He opened the hatch, leaned in, and administered a tranquilizer. Four anti-poaching rangers trailing the convoy in a pickup truck also got out. They placed themselves on either end of the caravan, AK-47 rifles slung over their shoulders. Another walked along the road, watching for suspicious activity. The rhinos’ horns were sawed off, but poachers didn’t know that. “It’s a soft, easy target,” said a member of the anti-poaching team, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of security concerns. “They are quite a cash cow for a well-organized group. And there are many well-organized groups here.” Four hours later, as darkness set in, the truck broke down. They were still roughly 25 miles outside the city of Mbombela. One of the rhinos started to bang against the crate, bored and restless. Roper gave him a small dose of tranquilizer and he began to calm down. Without being sedated, the rhinos could have easily crashed through their crates. Thankfully, the team had a backup plan. The rhinos were towed to a parking lot on the outskirts of Nelspruit, where the trailer carrying the animals was unhooked and attached to a second truck. The convoy reached the Lebombo border crossing about 4 the next morning. A South African police escort took them through border control, bypassing a long line of trucks. On the other side, Mozambican security forces were waiting to escort the rhinos to Zinave, sirens flashing. The unpaved roads to the park were much rougher and slower — along one stretch it would take 10 hours to go just 140 miles. The rhinos were agitated by the constant shaking. Any breakdown could take days to fix. “It’s a constant race against time,” Fuls said. Halfway into the journey, two tires blew out at the same time. The driver scrambled to fix them. While they waited, Fuls and his team fed the rhinos some water and high-protein camel thorn tree pods to “give them the last bit of energy” to reach the park. Nearly 40 hours after leaving South Africa, the convoy arrived in the early-morning hours of Wednesday. All the animals had lost weight. Fuls breathed a sigh of relief. “The rhinos were quite calm, but really tired,” he said. Eight years ago, Zinave National Park was so silent that not even the sound of chirping birds could be heard. During Mozambique’s civil war, from 1977 to 1992, the area was both a hunting ground and a battlefield. The animals vanished. Since 2015, the Peace Parks Foundation has brought in about 2,400 animals, rebuilding the park from scratch, erecting radio towers, fences and roads. The rhinos were the 14th species, increasing the biodiversity. Today, there are about 6,000 animals. Rhinos are a keystone species, which means they help hold an ecosystem together. White rhinos restore grasslands as they graze, and black rhinos eat specific plants that act as a natural fertilizer when cycled back into the earth as waste. “The black rhino plays their own unique role getting the whole ecosystem functioning properly again,” said Bernard van Lente, the park’s project manager. “We’re stimulating diversity and so plants grow more vigorously, which is a key element to prevent climate change.” For the first time, Mozambique has the “Big Five” — rhinos, lions, elephants, leopards and buffalo. Already, one of the 19 white rhinos has given birth. “It’s important for the economy of the country,” said Sansao Mabulanbe, head of the park’s protection service. “There will be a lot of people coming here to see the black rhino.” “But it’s a challenge,” he conceded. “We have to do our best to protect these rhinos.” While moving rhinos is widely accepted as an important conservation tool, some efforts have failed. In the 1990s, rhinos were moved from South Africa to Botswana, where they were facing extinction, a success story at the time. But scores have been killed there over the past three years as the nation grapples with a surge in poaching. In Zinave, the rhinos will roam in a fenced-in sanctuary with electronic surveillance, allowing for better monitoring. A 90-strong anti-poaching unit, armed with semiautomatic weapons, patrols the area round-the-clock by foot, truck, and helicopter. Local communities do not live inside the sanctuary, preventing clashes with humans. Communities nearby are educated in wildlife conservation and given jobs to prevent them from hunting for food. Yet gangs of poachers have already entered the park to hunt antelopes, said Eduardo Luis, one of the rangers, describing how they ambushed one such group last year. “Soon the poachers will come for the black rhino,” Luis said. “But we have trained heavily on a big level. We can fight the poachers.” Ultimately, though, the relocations are a stopgap measure, admits Myburgh, from the Peace Parks Foundation. The only way to protect rhinos in the long term is to persuade people to stop buying their horns, he said, pointing to the activism that made furs and pelts unpopular. “The end game will not be won by doing what we’re doing,” Myburgh said. “We’re just playing for time.” When the truck arrived, the rhinos were placed into bomas and monitored for their health. They immediately started drinking water, which was a good sign, Fuls said. The next morning, the first batch was released. The others followed the next day. Paulina and Cecil were the last to be set free. They came out together. At first, they stayed by the doors of their boma, unsure if they had been liberated. For 15 minutes, they remained in the area, running here and there, smelling their new home. Then, mother and son ran into the African bush and vanished."
+"A common smell of American childhood, the diesel fumes wafting through yellow school buses, may soon be obsolete, as school districts across the nation turn to electric buses amid falling costs and growing concerns about global warming. The shift would spell a major change to children’s experience of school, replacing the sweet-noxious scent of diesel with the whizz and whir of electric motors underneath a school bus floor. The rollout is happening quickly — orders expanded more than tenfold since the beginning of 2021 — and the Biden administration aims to speed it up even faster with a Wednesday announcement of the winners of $965 million in subsidies for electric and low-emissions bus purchases around the country. Some advocates say they are hopeful they can electrify the entire American school bus fleet by 2030. Proponents argue that school transportation is a natural candidate for electrification, since the buses operate on fixed routes with regular breaks that can be used to charge batteries. They say the children most dependent on school buses to get to classrooms — students of color and lower-income families — also suffer disproportionately from asthma and other illnesses that are worsened by constant exposure to diesel fumes. Studies also show that exposure to pollution worsens school performance. “We are forever changing school bus fleets across the United States,” the head of the Environmental Protection Administration, Michael Regan, told reporters ahead of the announcement, which he made with Vice President Harris in Seattle. “This bus symbolizes so much about our collective investment in our future,” Harris said, speaking in front of a new bus. “It is about our investment in our children, in their health, and in their education.” Although the upfront cost of electric school buses can be up to four times more expensive than their rumbling combustion-powered forebears, advocates and climate-friendly policymakers are trying to find ways to make up the difference. Already, fuel costs are lower, and so is maintenance, since electric buses have fewer parts that wear down. Diesel engines account for nearly a quarter of the U.S. transportation sector’s greenhouse gas emissions. Burning the fuel is a significant source of harmful pollutants including ground-level ozone and particulate matter that can lead to respiratory diseases in children. The Biden administration is trying to spur cheaper electric vehicles by supporting the U.S. battery industry and through incentives to school districts that it hopes will help spark more orders for buses, bringing down costs. Last year’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill funded the grants announced Wednesday, and it dedicates another $4 billion toward electric and low-emission school bus purchases over the next four years. The result has been a burst of electric school bus purchases across the United States, including in the Washington region, where the Montgomery County Public Schools last year ordered the single biggest fleet in the nation, 326 of them by 2025. By the end of this school year, 86 will be on the road. The sprawling school district is a major consumer of diesel fuel, with its 1,400 school buses burning 17,000 gallons of diesel a day as they crisscross the roads. So, any effort to electrify them quickly has an impact. “This project is momentous, not just because of its size, but because it demonstrates something pretty remarkable, which is that electrifying a municipal fleet is not a pipe dream. It’s not something that should be pushed off another year,” said Duncan McIntyre, the chief executive of Highland Electric Fleets, the company that the Montgomery County schools hired to deliver the buses along with the entire charging and maintenance infrastructure around them. The school system is paying the company $1.3 million annually for 12 years to lease the buses and provide the electricity for them, which it says is the same as it costs to buy, fuel and maintain diesel buses. “This sets an example for the entire country,” McIntyre said. More than a dozen of the new electric buses sat in the parking lot outside Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda this week. Had they been conventional diesels, they would have created a smelly cacophony as they idled. Instead, they were perfectly silent. When they pulled away, they made a slight whir, then a whine, as the electric motors whisked them forward. Inside the buses, the seats were just as tight as they were decades ago. But conversation was perfectly audible, and the dominant smell was of the fabric of the new seats and the wet air outside. “Kids are going to grow up with this. They’re not going to know what it’s like,” said Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md. ), whose congressional district encompasses much of Montgomery Country and who has pushed for greater funding for climate initiatives. “Your bus used to smell really bad? The transmission was always broken?” Painted a shiny yellow, the buses were otherwise nearly indistinguishable in appearance from the diesel ones whose technology has barely evolved in a generation. The body was made by Thomas Built Buses, one of the largest bus manufacturers in the country. The electric guts — the batteries and the motors — were supplied by Proterra, which makes heavy-duty electric vehicles, including transit buses. Up front, where the engine normally sits, there were electronic components. Nothing rumbled. At the school system’s Bethesda school bus depot, Highland has built a long new row of electric chargers where the buses replenish their batteries during their free hours. Doing so was a major undertaking: The depot used to have enough electric cables to keep on the lights and air conditioning for a couple of offices. Now it needs 10 to 20 times as much power, McIntyre said, about as much as 10 big hospitals. That’s one challenge in electrifying the national school bus fleet: doing so requires a lot more grid capacity than exists. That means more high-voltage cables, more transformers and substations — and a whole effort that will take time and cash. It’s the same problem facing other electrification efforts, as climate advocates urge a wider use of electric cars and a shift from gas stoves and furnaces to electric-powered ones. Skeptics of efforts to electrify buses say the extra cash could better be spent on teachers, classrooms or lower taxes. They question whether the current price premium makes them first in line. Some say going slower might save money for school districts in the long run, if other industry efforts can do the work of bringing down the price of batteries over the next few years. But statewide efforts are going even faster than national ones: In March, Maryland passed a law requiring all new school bus purchases to be electric by 2025. In April, New York required the same by 2027. Maryland buses have a 12-year operating life by law, so the transition will not be immediate. To recharge electric buses, drivers pirouette backward into a parking spot at an angle so that a port near the rear end — hidden under a flap that looks just like a gas cap — can be connected to a charger with a cable. Charging from zero to full takes about four hours. Each bus has about 140 miles of range. Since the average bus route in Montgomery is about 65 miles, there’s little worry about running out of juice, unlike with municipal buses, whose longer routes and greater daily usage makes them more complicated to electrify. “This is great. It’s really smooth,” said Johnny Chiang, who has been driving buses for the Montgomery schools for three years. “Diesels are much heavier to drive. This wheel feels much easier to control.” When the buses aren’t in use, they can feed electricity back into the grid during hours of peak demand, acting as giant batteries that spare power companies the need to fire up extra coal-fired plants during hours when solar, wind and other renewable sources aren’t creating enough juice. Highland plans to start doing that in Montgomery Country later this school year, earning money from Pepco in the process and further reducing its costs. Electric school bus experts say they see a quick shift from where the market was in 2014, when the first handful of school buses were put into service, until today. “It’s where the market is going and where the demand is moving,” said Sue Gander, the head of the Electric School Bus Initiative at the World Resources Institute, which is tracking the rollout of electric buses and advocating for policies that encourage their use. The buses “have the lowest amount of greenhouse emissions as any bus on the road,” about half as much per mile, on average, she said, after accounting for emissions from the electricity generated to power them. Their carbon footprint will further drop as renewable energy supplants electricity generated from fossil fuels in the years to come, she said. “Within this next decade, we are going to be seeing electric school buses as the option of choice,” she said."
+"Ten years after Hurricane Sandy charted a deadly and destructive course up the East Coast, reminders of its impact remain across the New Jersey shore. Abandoned buildings, first damaged in the storm, now wear a decade of further disrepair. There are docks missing rows of wooden planks and telltale water lines etched into garage doors like old, faded scars — signs not necessarily noticeable to outsiders, but clear to storm survivors, many of whom now tower over these properties in houses propped up to comply with new insurance guidelines. Gandys Beach, a popular fishing area along the Delaware Bay, fits into another category: places transformed and now almost unrecognizable. After Sandy’s storm surge met a row of homes on Bayview Road, the state bought out most of those buildings, and the street itself is now more sand than road. What’s left is a stretch of unmanicured beach with a new purpose. It’s been turned into an experiment, where officials, scientists and engineers work together to test nature-driven resilience strategies for the rising seas threatening New Jersey’s famed and highly populated coast. While climate change is causing widespread sea level rise, the Jersey Shore experiences it at a rate more than double the global average, a Rutgers University study found. That’s in part because land there is sinking, due to natural and human-caused factors. In the past century, Gandys Beach alone has seen a foot of sea level rise, and lost almost 500 feet of shoreline. Experts familiar with the area describe the tide there as “aggressive,” “dynamic” and “crazy” — the water swells enough to go from lapping at your toes during low tide to rising above your head during an average high tide. These conditions make adaptation increasingly critical. After Sandy, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service received $167 million in federal funding for restoring facilities and wildlife habitats that were damaged during the storm. They dedicated $880,000 of that to Gandys Beach. If a project can survive and thrive in an environment like Gandys, Fish and Wildlife biologist Danielle McCulloch believes it can stand up to conditions anywhere. The progress and failures experienced on this shrinking slice of shore are now informing mitigation strategies up the coast, including the creation of “living shorelines” made with natural matter like oysters and marshes to stave off land loss. On an overcast July day, the thick air promising rain, McCulloch convened some members of the team behind the Gandys Beach’s project to survey their work. Sporting tall wading boots and carrying binoculars around her neck, McCulloch apologized in advance for interrupting anyone to point out interesting wildlife — “I feel like missing nature is worse than being impolite,” she explained. That morning, there were a number of reasons for interruptions along the Delaware Bay beaches, from the squalls of shorebirds to a parade of horseshoe crabs leaving swirls in the sand as they headed to the water. The Delaware Bay is home to the largest population of horseshoe crabs in the world, and Gandys Beach serves as a migratory rest stop for the endangered rufa red knot birds, who come to snack on the crab eggs. McCulloch and her colleagues came to look at a series of offshore structures known as “breakwaters,” installed about four years post-Sandy. Stretching intermittently across 3,000 feet parallel to the shore, the 10-by-30-foot formations serve as physical barriers between the waves and the beach, visible during low tide and fully submerged as the water rises. Oyster castles — solid, interlocking blocks composed of a concrete-and-oyster-shell mixture that entices marine mollusks to latch on — make up the barriers. Bags filled with oyster shells were added as reinforcements to solidify them; closer to the shoreline, the Nature Conservancy, the nonprofit that owns this section of the beach, planted vegetation and put in compact tubes of natural fibers to “hold the line,” as McCulloch put it. This design aims to serve dual purposes: dampen the waves to curb further beach erosion and grow the oyster population, which naturally improves water quality and creates a reef-like habitat for other marine life. To test those hypotheses, the Fish and Wildlife Service used Sandy appropriations money to fund ongoing research from the Stevens Institute of Technology, Rutgers Haskin Shellfish Research Laboratory and Partnership for the Delaware Estuary. So far, their findings are split. Along the broader beach and a quieter stretch of Nantuxent Creek, where the water has less wave energy, the oyster castles have been a boon, sustaining multiple generations of oysters and mussels. On the shore, the shell bags have provided stability for plants to take root and grow, while the compact tubes of natural fibers, called coir logs, failed to have much of a perceived impact. The higher-energy wave areas have proved more challenging. While the oyster castles did support some marine life, it was not as robust, and the Stevens researchers found they actually amplified some of the waves behind the structures. Recognizing this, the group made some quick changes. Additional breakwater structures were added, creating a perpendicular “spine” stretching out from the beach. Researchers are still monitoring whether this change has made a difference. The waves also untethered the shell bags, some of which ripped open and scattered along the beach, leaving behind plastic waste. To address this, the team attempted to make “lemons out of lemonade,” said Adrianna Zito-Livingston of the Nature Conservancy. The bags were naturally piling up by the vegetation, so the team decided to place them in areas that needed more reinforcements — that way they can help protect the plants and accrue more sand. In the future, Zito-Livingston said, they are eager to explore options for bags made of other materials. “We’re learning these are not a great restriction on their own for these kinds of energetics,” Zito-Livingston said. “But they make really nice little speed bumps, they trap sediments and can slow things down.” Some of the practical takeaways from the research on these shores have been applied to other in-progress projects along the New Jersey coast, including those in more populated communities. That includes plans to rehabilitate marsh areas, which research proved played a key role in protecting inland areas during Hurricane Sandy. For example, the Fish and Wildlife Service is using funding from the bipartisan infrastructure law to support restoration of a marsh in Barnegat Bay. There, teams are using a similar combination of wave-attenuating structures in the water and shell bags to build back marsh vegetation at the shore. When Sandy swept through this area, resident Pat Doyle said, she was displaced from her longtime family home. Now, she’s one of the most ardent supporters of another nature-based initiative borne out of the Gandys Beach research that could help prevent further erosion and flooding in her neighborhood. Another nonprofit organization, the American Littoral Society, is using federal and state funding to set up seven “reefs” of rock-and-shell-filled baskets along the coast meant to serve both as breakwaters and as aquatic habitats. Although a few dozen residents came out to help the society build those baskets, Doyle said they are also controversial: Some people have complained about the look of the installations, which poke out of the bay and are particularly prominent during low tide. “What I try to say is, it’s not about what we want, at this point, it’s about what we desperately need,” Doyle said. She believes there needs to be more education in shorefront communities about the rising sea levels, and more support for homeowners who are continually paying the price of climate change. After Sandy, she said, she asked the town about buyouts and was told that was not an option in her area. So, she “emptied a bank account,” as she described it, to raise her home in compliance with flood insurance standards. At first, her rates dropped, but the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s new pricing methodology for flood insurance has sent them spiking. Though she’s hopeful about the reefs, she said the area is still experiencing significant flooding. Residents have been appealing to elected officials for funding to add more protections, including additional physical barriers. Doyle’s experience exemplifies another lesson from the work at Gandys Beach: the need for long-term, collaborative projects. It’s not just that experts are needed who understand science or engineering — there’s also a need for those in the government like McCulloch who can help navigate the red tape and complex funding processes that can prove prohibitive to community efforts. “No one you meet today is going to say that they know it all — that’s why we have these big partnerships, that’s why we all are working together, and that’s why we collect the data,” McCulloch said. “We need it to make sure we’re doing the right thing because people’s homes depend on it, these species depend on it, [and] we’ve got to figure this out now because we’re running out of time.”"
+"Eco-friendly eaters may know that almonds are a water-intensive crop, that fish farms pollute the water or that beef consumption drives deforestation. But a study released Monday goes far broader and deeper, offering a new guide to weighing total ecological consequences of crops, livestock and seafood. Researchers amassed data on food production and its impacts on the Earth including disturbances to wild-animal habitats, water use and pollution, and contribution to planetary warming. Their findings reveal what types of food production have the greatest consequences, and where. The study published in the journal Nature Sustainability — which examined nearly 99 percent of all food production on land and sea as reported to the United Nations in 2017 — offers a new way to evaluate what to eat and how to feed the world, according to its lead author, Ben Halpern, a professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. “We need to be thinking about the multiple ways that food affects the environment,” said Halpern, who directs UCSB’s National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. “The results we’ve presented show how you can use more information about these multiple stressors and the global scale of our food production consequences to influence your individual choice.” The researchers left out food produced in home gardens and by hunters, as well as nonfood crops like coffee, tea and tobacco. But they assessed impacts including displacing ecosystems for cropland and destroying seafloor habitat with fishing equipment; water used by crops and livestock; nutrient pollution of waterways from fertilizer-tainted runoff and concentrated fecal matter; and greenhouse gas emissions from farming machinery and boat engines, production of fertilizers and pesticides, and livestock flatulence and manure. Unsurprisingly, pig and cattle meat ranked far ahead of any other products, with cattle having a massive impact on greenhouse gas emissions and pigs on water quality. But pork may have larger environmental costs than beef when factoring in that so much pig waste ends up polluting waterways. Nutrient pollution from animal waste and fertilizers causes algae blooms in waterways, which can eventually create “dead zones” of water containing little or no dissolved oxygen. The researchers also included the environmental impact of any plant or other animal used to produce feed for livestock and fish, which boosted the overall damage associated with these kinds of foods. The study raises questions about the sustainability of seafood, finding that it has an outsize impact on shore as well as off our coasts. While aquatic systems produce 1.1 percent of the world’s food, they account for 9.9 percent of the food system’s global environmental footprint. A category of fish that includes cod, flounder and halibut had more than four times the environmental impact of other fish because the trawls dragged to harvest them destroy habitat along the seafloor. The environmental pressure was three times that associated with raising sheep for meat, though that type of fishing produces four times more food than sheep farming does, the study noted. One researcher not involved with the study said its approach provides a “comprehensive” analysis that goes far beyond other work to quantify environmental pressures, with most looking strictly at land- or sea-based impacts, and not both. “The authors had to make some difficult choices about how they’d compare apples to oranges, and while their attempt was not the final word of that conversation, it represents an important start,” said Matthew Hayek, an assistant professor in environmental studies at New York University. Rice and wheat ranked in the same tier of environmental impacts as animal-based products including cow milk and chicken meat largely because growing the grains requires so much water. But also, they are grown in such massive quantities around the world that their disturbances to natural habitats and ecology are magnified. Crops used to make cooking oils, including palm and canola, are other examples of plant-based food products whose impacts rival those of some animal-based products because they are grown and used so widely, the study found. On the other hand, a crop like papaya is particularly resource intensive, but it is grown on such a relatively smaller scale that its impact is low, Halpern said. Five countries account for nearly half of all food system impacts: India, China, the United States, Brazil and Pakistan. And researchers found that not only was this damage heavily concentrated in a handful of countries, but that some countries have bigger environmental impacts than others for producing the same types of food. For example, beef production in Brazil has a larger environmental impact than is attributed to the U.S. cattle industry, though Brazil produces 10 percent less meat than the United States. Halpern said he hopes the study leads more people and policymakers to consider ways to reduce the environmental consequences of food choices and regulation. Though the analysis considers the different types of ecological pressures equally, future use of the data and research methods could weigh one more heavily depending on what environmental challenges are being faced, he said. “There’s so many possible solutions to reducing the environmental footprint of food production,” Halpern said. “We have created a huge menu for options of how to do that.”"
+"The Environmental Protection Agency announced plans Thursday to further cut emissions of climate super-pollutants widely used in air conditioning and refrigeration, the latest step in the United States’ effort to phase down the potent greenhouse gases. The federal agency’s new proposed rule would set guidelines to lower the number of available allowances for the production and use of hydrofluorocarbons — chemicals that can be thousands of times more powerful than carbon dioxide in warming the planet — to 40 percent below historical levels starting in 2024. “This is a really strong step forward,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a phone interview Thursday. Because the production and consumption of these powerful chemicals need to be phased down, Regan added that the Biden administration is pushing to create “the next generation of chemical compounds that don’t sacrifice the comforts or the needs that we have, but makes significant inroads in staving off the climate crisis while boosting American manufacturing.” Curbing these super-pollutants, also known as HFCs, is a rare climate issue that has broad bipartisan support as well as buy-in from business and industry. The latest EPA proposal comes about a month after the Senate voted to ratify a global treaty known as the Kigali Amendment to the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which calls for a gradual reduction in the use and production of the chemicals. “This proposal continues to reinforce the president’s vision that the United States will continue to be a global leader on climate change,” Regan said. “It shores up and ensures that we’re on track to meet the goals of the Kigali Amendment.” Once seen as a solution to using other chemicals that deplete Earth’s protective ozone layer, the heat-trapping properties of hydrofluorocarbons have become a serious problem. A global phase-down of the climate-damaging chemicals is projected to prevent up to 0.5 degree Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming by the end of this century. To proceed with efforts to reduce HFCs, the EPA is proposing to continue allocating production and consumption allowances for 2024 through 2028. The rule is expected to affect manufacturers and entities that import and export HFCs, among other stakeholders. The agency is also looking to make other changes to implementation, compliance and enforcement provisions related to the phase-down, including revised record-keeping and reporting requirements. Under the proposed rule, the EPA would require annual emissions reporting from facilities that produce the chemicals. The EPA plans to finalize this rule next year. Regan said the proposal should benefit affected companies and allow them to continue investing in U.S. manufacturing and good-paying jobs “to really transition our refrigeration and our air conditioning into the next generation technology that we need not only domestically but globally.” Avipsa Mahapatra, climate campaign lead at the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), a nongovernmental advocacy organization, praised the proposal. “It demonstrates that we are swiftly and steadfastly advancing along the road map ... to end reliance on HFCs for cooling,” Mahapatra said. “The fact that they’re sticking to the schedule itself, I think, is something worth applauding.” In the United States, the refrigeration and air-conditioning sector uses the most of these chemicals. The EPA noted that its next proposed rule will focus on transitioning away from HFCs in the refrigeration and air conditioning, foams and aerosols sectors. Commercial refrigeration, which includes grocery stores as well as restaurants and food-processing operations, accounts for about 28 percent of all U.S. emissions of HFCs. Air conditioning for commercial buildings and homes represents 40 to 60 percent of emissions, according to federal data. A number of major supermarket chains, including Walmart and Amazon-owned Whole Foods, have pledged to phase out the chemicals in their operations, where leaking of the super-pollutants has been a pervasive issue. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.) The commercial food industry estimates that supermarkets lose an average of 25 percent of their refrigerant charge every year. An EIA undercover investigation, which began in 2019, of grocery stores in D.C., Maryland and Virginia found that more than half the surveyed stores were emitting HFCs. The new regulation proposed Thursday is the next part of a national HFC phase-down program, which is the result of a bipartisan law passed in 2020 that included a provision to slash the powerful pollutants by 85 percent by 2036. The EPA established the program last year and took the first step of limiting HFCs through 2023 by allocating allowances for companies to make or import the chemicals. As part of the phase-down, the agency has also established enforcement mechanisms that make it harder to illegally traffic HFCs. According to the EPA, in the first nine months of this year, a task force co-led by the agency and the Department of Homeland Security prevented illegal HFC shipments at the border equivalent to more than 889,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide — equivalent to the emissions of a year’s worth of electricity use for nearly 173,000 homes. The EPA estimates that all provisions of the phase-down effort would yield more than $268 billion in benefits from 2022 through 2050. “We believe it’s a win, win, win,” Regan said. “This is good for our planet because we’re reducing a super-pollutant. It’s good for people, and it’s good for our bipartisan posture for how we’re putting America first.” Helen Walter-Terrinoni, vice president of regulatory affairs for the Air-Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute, a trade group, said because the proposed rule is similar to the first regulation the EPA finalized last year, it helps “provide continuity and predictability for refrigerant producers and manufacturers alike.” The EIA’s Mahapatra added that “the writing on the wall is clear on the future of these super-polluting HFCs.” “We are on an ambitious and aggressive path to ramp up climate-friendly and energy-efficient cooling efforts in the U.S.,” she said. Juliet Eilperin and Dino Grandoni contributed to this report."
+"With just weeks until many neighborhood streets are flooded with candy-seeking trick-or-treaters, environmentalists and sustainability experts say you should consider taking a second look at the sweet treats you might be planning to hand out — or eat — this Halloween. While chocolate is a crowd-pleaser, the ubiquitous candy “has some pretty close associations with two of the biggest environmental crises that we face right now, and that’s the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis,” says John Buchanan, vice president of sustainable production for Conservation International. What’s more, much of the individually wrapped candies plucked from bowls at parties or hauled home at the end of the night contribute to the spooky holiday’s waste problem. “Halloween should really be called Plasticween,” says Judith Enck, a former senior Environmental Protection Agency official under Barack Obama who now heads the Beyond Plastics advocacy organization. Although costumes and decorations are major sources of plastic, the overabundance of non-recyclable candy wrappers is also cause for concern. Broadly, Enck says, the holiday “is a plastic and solid waste disaster.” But Enck and other experts emphasize that axing the holiday isn’t the answer. “I would vigorously oppose canceling Halloween,” she says. “I have very fond memories of trick-or-treating as a child. My kids had wonderful times trick-or-treating,” adds Carolyn Dimitri, an applied economist and associate professor of food studies at New York University. “It’s our culture, our custom — we give candy on Halloween.” So, if you’re among the roughly two-thirds of Americans planning to pass out candy this year, here’s how experts recommend treating — rather than tricking — the planet with your choices. “It’s important for consumers, with any product that they buy, that they educate themselves about where it comes from and how it’s made and the impact of the product on the environment and the social implications of it,” says Alexander Ferguson, vice president for communications and membership at the nonprofit World Cocoa Foundation. The environmental, climate and social impacts of popular candy products are largely associated with two common ingredients, experts say: cocoa and palm oil — both of which can be found in chocolate-containing candies. “In terms of sustainability, the biggest problems in confectionery are in chocolate,” says Etelle Higonnet, an environmental and human rights expert who helped create the first environmental scorecard for chocolate. Companies typically source cocoa and palm oil from tropical areas often inhabited by people in less economically-developed communities, Dimitri says. According to some estimates, about 70 percent of the world’s cocoa comes from West Africa while around 90 percent of the world’s palm oil trees are grown on a handful of islands in Indonesia and Malaysia. Producing cocoa and palm oil has led to the deforestation of critical rainforests, which poses problems for climate and biodiversity, Buchanan says. West Africa’s Ivory Coast, for instance, has lost 80 percent of its forests since 1970. Preserving these rainforests can help the world meet its goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to preindustrial levels, he adds. “Deforestation and land use change are such huge drivers of emissions globally,” Buchanan says. “Even if we had a 100 percent perfect solution to green energy and … decarbonization, if you decarbonize the economy tomorrow, we still have to take nature into account if we are to stay below 1.5 degrees of warming. The global community must address both fossil fuel emissions and emissions associated with loss of natural areas and land use.” Cocoa and palm oil are also linked to human rights issues, including forced labor and child labor. Aside from taking steps to provide living wages to cocoa farmers, many of whom have been paid about $1 a day or less, major chocolate manufacturers such as Mars, Nestlé and Hershey have pledged to stop using cocoa harvested by children. But difficulties tracing cocoa back to farms means companies often can’t guarantee that their chocolate is produced without child labor, The Washington Post’s Peter Whoriskey and Rachel Siegel reported in 2019. The chocolate industry is working on achieving better rates of traceability, or knowing where a product comes from, Ferguson says. “That sounds like a very simple thing, but actually it’s quite a hard thing to do when you’ve got many smallholder farmers and a long and complicated supply chain.” Additionally, poverty underpins many of the labor issues affecting those involved in the production of chocolate. Farmers often have to use their own children, because they can’t afford laborers. “People tend to draw conclusions about the use of children in agriculture, and I think it’s important to keep in mind that for a lot of families there is not any other option,” Dimitri says. One of the simplest actions concerned consumers can take is to buy candy that doesn’t use palm oil, Dimitri says. “Palm oil is really popular because it has really good mouthfeel and it’s really inexpensive,” she says. But it is possible to find products without the troublesome ingredient. “A lot of candy companies have tried to reformulate their products so that they don’t have palm oil in them because there’s been resistance to it,” she adds. Make sure to check ingredient labels carefully because some products from the same brand will still contain palm oil, even if other items do not. You could buy Halloween candy that doesn’t contain cocoa, but experts caution against boycotting chocolate entirely. Cocoa is mostly produced by individual farmers running small operations, Buchanan says. “If there isn’t a market for cocoa, they’re going to be even worse off, so you’re certainly not going to deal with challenges like child labor by taking away a key source of income.” Instead, Ferguson says, “reward companies that are trying to do the right thing and stay engaged.” Some experts recommend looking for third-party certification labels from groups such as Fairtrade and Rainforest Alliance that are intended to help distinguish products that meet certain ethical standards. Though these certifications can be flawed and don’t guarantee a perfect product, they are often better than nothing, experts say. “Given the complexities and the challenges of what we’ve seen, I think that there’s really a risk of letting perfect be the enemy of the good,” Buchanan says. Still, buying certified chocolate means fewer options — and the candy tends to be more expensive. For example, Tony’s Chocolonely, a company that sells Fairtrade-certified chocolate, offers 100 individually packaged chocolates for $48.69. Alter Eco also offers certified food products, including 60-count boxes of individually wrapped truffles for $49.99. Higonnet also points consumers to resources such as the Chocolate Scorecard, which surveys major chocolate companies and ranks them based on criteria such as traceability and transparency, living income, child labor, and deforestation and climate, among others. According to the 2022 scorecard, several major brands that sell more affordable candy options are overall “starting to implement good policies.” “The best thing, regardless of whether you’re buying from a big company or a small company, is to be pushing them and asking them what are they doing to be part of the solution,” Buchanan says. “It’s not as easy as just going to small specialty companies. Those companies have their role and they can do things differently with the way they operate, but they also have a small footprint. We need the big companies as well.” It’s also important to try to reduce the amount of non-recyclable waste and uneaten candy that gets thrown away. Keep in mind that you can donate unopened Halloween candy to organizations that send treats to soldiers and first responders or local community drives. But be sure to check donation requirements. Homemade items, for example, often aren’t accepted. Many candy wrappers aren’t commonly recyclable, says Enck of Beyond Plastics, which provides a tip sheet for cutting back on plastic during Halloween. If possible, she suggests buying candy in bulk and putting it in paper bags, which can be recycled. Some popular candies, such as Nerds, Dots and Junior Mints, can also come individually packaged in recyclable cardboard boxes. Although candy doesn’t stay good forever, it can remain safe and edible for longer than you might think, says Gregory Ziegler, a professor of food science at Pennsylvania State University who specializes in chocolate and confectionery. “From a safety standpoint, candy is pretty safe,” Ziegler says. “It has very little moisture in most of it and a lot of sugar is really what protects it from much microbial growth that might make it unsafe.” But, he notes, there is a difference between safe and edible. The shelf life for most candy ends because of texture or flavor change, which can affect enjoyment, he says. For example, if chocolate melts and rehardens it can develop a white-ish cast known as bloom, which isn’t harmful but might cause the candy to taste bad. Ziegler recommends storing Halloween candy in a dry, sealed container. You can also put sweets into the freezer or refrigerator. “Almost all the reactions that cause candy to go bad slow down the lower the temperature is.” Most candy should last six months, he says. “If you treat it right, maybe longer than that.”"
+"NORFOLK — As coastal cities wrestle with increasing threats from rising waters, a nonprofit’s costly new headquarters offers an answer that is both defiant and prescient. The Elizabeth River Project’s $8.1 million headquarters on a flood plain destined to be submerged in the coming decades as tides rise and storms intensify has been designed to showcase strategies to stay longer in harm’s way. Eventually it will surrender to the inevitable: The environmental group has agreed to demolish the building and abandon the site. “It’s intended to show you how to work and play and live with this rising sea level,” said Marjorie Mayfield Jackson, who co-founded the Elizabeth River Project 25 years ago to restore the waterway. “And once it’s no longer functioning, we take down the building and give it back to nature, give it back to the river.” Polls show more than half of Americans think they are being harmed by climate change. That number jumps in places already feeling its effects like Norfolk, where a poll shows three-quarters of the population is worried about the risk. Yet worrying about the problem is one thing, facing the reality is another. The novel experiment to build a sort of resilience theme park for homeowners and developers, destined for destruction, aims to ease people into confronting that reality. “This whole corridor is at risk, but culturally vital,” said Sam Bowling, the architect for Work Program Architects who spearheaded the design. “All these people live and work and have their favorite bars along Colley Avenue. They don’t want to leave. They’re aware of the risks.” Construction on a small creek will be complete next year, Mayfield Jackson said. A 6,500-square-foot laboratory will be raised 11 feet on an avenue resurgent with restaurants, a brewery and small businesses. Strategies to reduce the building’s environmental impact are off-the-shelf solutions so they can be replicated by homeowners and developers. A solar array will generate electricity. A green roof and a rain garden will collect water for use in toilets. A southern-facing green wall will reduce the need for cooling in the summer and heating in the winter, bolstered by insulation that exceeds local energy-saving requirements. The lab’s reduced environmental impact will be certified by EarthCraft, a program the designers view as more approachable and affordable to homeowners than the well-known LEED certification. “We want to show others that there might just be a better way to live and work in urban areas on the coast, despite rising seas,” Bowling added. The site marks the first time a U.S. private property owner has agreed to a rolling conservation easement, according to the representative of the land conservation trust working with the nonprofit, which acknowledges that rising waters will overtake the land. When certain trigger points like repeated flooding are reached, the land is returned to nature forever. A.R. Siders, an assistant professor in the Biden School of Public Policy and Administration and a member of the University of Delaware’s Disaster Research Center who studies adaptation to climate change, said policies like these could make it easier for people to move away from threatened areas. She points to the collapse of Outer Banks homes on an eroding shoreline that spread debris 15 miles down the beach this spring after a storm. “Wouldn’t it be better to have a plan to dismantle those homes and take them away before they cause debris over miles of beach?” she asked. A rolling easement, she added, makes what seems unpredictable predictable. For a city, the easements mean it reaps the tax benefits of permitting building in a vulnerable area but understands that comes with an expiration date. Norfolk officials say the site shows ways to comply with the city’s updated zoning ordinance, which awards new developments points for resilience to climate effects. At the site, restored wetlands featuring native grasses and an oyster reef will mitigate flooding and prevent erosion. Pervious paving and rain gardens will absorb and store rainwater, keeping it out of the city’s overwhelmed storm water system. “We’ve been supportive of this,” said Kyle Spencer, Norfolk’s acting chief resilience officer. “We’d like to see ourselves as this sort of living laboratory to work through these really complicated, tough issues cities like ours are facing.” Mary-Carson Stiff, a board member of the Living River Trust, a nonprofit conservation effort that will enforce the easement, said it offers a potential solution to the coming conflict between rising waters and private property rights in cities like Norfolk, where portions of the waterfront will become uninhabitable. Rolling easements are used in a few states, but only by public bodies. In Texas, they protect access to public beaches. As the mean low tide naturally shifts, the public’s right to access moves, as well. In Maine, they protect dunes by prohibiting sea walls and requiring their removal as the shoreline moves. The idea was first championed in the 1990s by James Titus, a sea-level rise expert at the Environmental Protection Agency who clashed with agency officials over his repeated calls to address the problem. As waters threaten, private property becomes public under the public trust doctrine — the legal principle that the government owns natural resources like rivers and shorelines. “There’s no legal framework to address the large-scale changing ownership of a coastline as sea levels rise,” Stiff said. “I see the rolling easement as the instrument to address what will be an incredible legal challenge in the future.” By agreeing to rolling easements, property owners get tax benefits from the federal government and from some states, Stiff said. For now, state and local governments face expensive buyouts and potential court battles. In 2009, a hurricane damaged cottages along the beach in Nags Head, N.C., and the town ordered their permanent removal, saying they sat on public trust land and declaring them public nuisances. The owners sued. After years in court, Nags Head lost and settled for $1.5 million. Why haven’t easements become common since Titus started talking about them more than two decades ago? Jesse Reiblich, who was recently a postgraduate law fellow at William & Mary and examined easements while a fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Ocean Solutions, said it will take “property owners realizing that they are waging a losing battle. That hasn’t happened yet on a large scale.” Decades from now, either climbing sea levels or frequent floods will prompt the Elizabeth River Project to tear down its headquarters. What can be recycled will be recycled, connections to utilities like water, sewer and electrical will be removed, and nature will again rule the land. For Mayfield Jackson, it’s fitting for a creek that is slowly recovering from the devastation of industrialization. “We’re not just showing how to do it right for humans and businesses,” she said, “but to safeguard the river, too.”"
+"When Hurricane Ian barreled into Punta Gorda and the surrounding west Florida coastline on Wednesday, the powerful storm lingered over the city north of Fort Myers for hours. It pummeled the area with torrential rain and roaring winds: One gust reached 135 miles per hour, among the highest recorded in the state. But once the storm passed, the sight of Punta Gorda may have surprised some people. While it had typical post-hurricane storm debris, downed trees and several flooded streets, a number of homes and buildings appeared largely intact and many showed only minimal damage to their exteriors. Those who saw videos and photos of the city shared on social media also noticed the apparent lack of widespread structural destruction. “I can’t believe the eye went directly over Punta Gorda, and all these houses are still standing! !” one Twitter user wrote in response to an aerial video that showed part of the city the morning after the storm. How is it possible that the coastal city wasn’t more devastated by a storm that ranks among the most powerful to ever strike the United States? One major factor, according to some experts, are modern building codes. “It’s a demonstration that updated building codes really work,” said Nicholas Rajkovich, an associate professor in the School of Architecture and Planning at the University at Buffalo, who specializes in adapting buildings to a changing climate. “Buildings built to newer codes consistently have fared better during hurricanes and other storms than older homes.” In Florida, the “turning point” for building codes came after Hurricane Andrew struck the state in 1992, said Kathy Baughman McLeod, senior vice president and director for the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center. Andrew, which caused dozens of deaths and an estimated $26 billion in damages, resulted in a statewide building code that included some of the toughest storm-specific codes in the country. The storm was a “game-changing hurricane,” said Baughman McLeod, who lived through Andrew and Hurricane Charley, among others, when she resided in Florida. For Punta Gorda, the critical rebuild came after Hurricane Charley decimated the city in 2004. “Charley was almost like a spring cleaning event,” said Joe Schortz, a resident of Punta Gorda and owner of a local construction and remodeling business. “Charley destroyed a lot of the older homes with the winds.” Many of the homes and buildings were reconstructed to modernized building codes that were improved again in 2007, Schortz said. And in the aftermath of Ian, the buildings left still standing seemed to have at least one thing in common, he said: “Everything with a 2007 code and beyond pretty much was fine.” At Charlotte High School, which was rebuilt after Charley, a plaque testifies to its commitment to a more resilient future. “This school has risen from the rubble to reawaken as the magnificent, enduring structure you see today,” the plaque reads. “Never again will the winds be feared, never again.” The high school survived Ian with barely any structural damage, according to a report from Reuters. But Punta Gorda didn’t escape unscathed. Much of the city is without power and water, Schortz said. Meanwhile, “quite a few places did get ravaged,” he said. Many of those structures, however, survived Charley and likely weren’t upgraded to improve their defenses in the event of another direct hit. Buildings constructed using modern codes have a slew of structural advantages that can help them better withstand extreme weather, including major storms. For instance, updated codes often have stricter requirements around “structural load continuity,” which involves ensuring that a roof is well-connected to walls and the walls are well-connected to the structure’s foundation, Rajkovich said. Even a small failure in the “building envelope,” or the walls, roof, foundation, doors and windows, can lead to catastrophe. A broken window or door, for example, can allow wind pressure to get into a building, he added. “Then, there’s no real place for that wind pressure to get out of the building again,” he said. “Once it basically blows the door open, it’s trying to find a place to exit and it will do that pretty violently. Often, it will blow a hole in some other part of the house and at that point, it’s really open to the elements.” With scientists predicting that climate change will likely lead to more frequent and intense storms, in addition to other types of extreme weather events, Rajkovich and other experts said updating codes and rebuilding in a way that reflects those more challenging conditions can help communities adapt and become more resilient. “Our built environment protects us as human beings,” Baughman McLeod said. “The stronger that built environment is against the winds and the water and the rain, the more we survive and the more protected our economic assets are. “Building codes are one of the strongest ways that government can protect people and property from climate-driven hurricanes.” The Biden administration has launched a National Initiative to Advance Building Codes, which, in part, provides incentives for state, local, tribal and territorial governments to update their standards and modernizes the way federal buildings are constructed. David Hayes, who just finished a stint as special assistant to the president for climate policy, noted in an interview Thursday that only 30 percent of the communities in the United States have adopted modern building codes. “It’s just a plain old practical thing, but it’s essential,” he said. “When you build back now after this crisis, will the infrastructure be able to withstand the next Ian that’s coming along? That question has not been asked in previous administrations. It’s being asked and answered in this one.” While Rajkovich said the importance of modernizing building codes can’t be overstated, he and other experts noted that how you rebuild is only one way to improve resilience. It’s also important, he said, to consider whether it’s safe to stay in vulnerable areas and to bolster natural coastal protection such as wetlands and mangroves, among other things. “This isn’t just a Florida issue. This is a national issue,” he said. “Thinking about a national strategy for resilience is really important for this country to be able to adapt to climate change.” Rich Matthews in Punta Gorda, Fla. contributed to this report"
+"With two back-to-back hurricanes — one of which ranks among the most extreme storms ever to threaten the United States — making landfall on the heels of a summer of record-shattering heat waves and raging wildfires, countless Americans are experiencing the country’s acute vulnerability to climate change firsthand. As special assistant to the president for climate policy, for the past two years, David Hayes — who served as deputy interior secretary during the Clinton and Obama administrations — has largely focused on coping with climate impacts and making the country more resilient. Hayes, 68, whose last day in his post was Friday, has led efforts to implement climate-resilience interagency working groups dedicated to extreme heat, drought, wildfires, floods and coastal impacts; worked to expand offshore wind power; and helped to develop and carry out President Biden’s ambitious plan to conserve 30 percent of U.S. lands and waters by 2030. This week, ahead of his departure, Hayes sat down with The Washington Post for an interview to reflect on his experience and how prepared he thinks the country is to weather the climate threats of a warming planet. (This interview has been edited for clarity and length.) As a country, how are we doing when it comes climate resilience and adaptation? If you had to assign a letter grade, what would it be and why? On Jan. 19, [2021] the letter grade would be “D.” We really as a country have not given nearly enough attention to the climate impacts that are happening. Most of the conversation around climate traditionally has been on the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and transition to clean energy. The president in his climate executive order said yes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, yes to transition to clean energy, but yes, also, to resilience, to getting our communities prepared because these impacts are happening right now. Look at today in Florida. My gosh, what more of a reminder do we need? So, “D” before the president came in, “A” for ambition with the president to make resilience a key part of the climate platform of the administration, and I would say “A” in terms of creating the ecosystem in the government to confront the resilience challenge. The first step is organizing around resilience. This is just like climate. Climate doesn’t exist in one agency or another agency. Similarly with resilience, what we need to do is actually look not at a department-by-department approach. We need to look at what are the impacts that communities are facing and how do we organize around those impacts and have the federal government help the communities that are facing coastal impacts, extreme heat, wildfire, drought and flood. The ecosystem we developed was to actually focus on the impacts and not on the federal funding streams or the federal services or the particular departments that have a role to play, and we set up these interagency working groups. We have a new way of doing things. I’m very excited about these impact-focused interagency working groups. But we have a lot more work to do. It’s like an “A” on the first test of a semester, but the finals are coming up. What have you accomplished in your time as part of the White House climate team, and what’s the most important thing you couldn’t get done, or the biggest stumbling block you encountered? One of the biggest voids that we saw early on was the fact that there was not a capability to tell communities, basically, for your Zip code, 50 years from now, what’s your extreme heat risk, what’s your flood risk? So we’ve worked for the past year with experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Geological Survey and our own Office of Science and Technology Policy to put together the Climate Mapping for Resilience and Adaptation web portal. You can go down to the census tract and look forward. That’s particularly salient, by the way, at a time when under the bipartisan infrastructure law, we’re going to be investing over a trillion dollars in new infrastructure. Let’s make sure that communities know what the risks are and so the infrastructure can be designed in a way that will withstand what we’re seeing in Florida right now. The portal is also designed to give communities the tools they need. It pulls together, for example, under wildfire and under extreme heat, here are the funding opportunities from the federal government. The biggest challenge is continuing to work with communities and doing the outreach with communities. It’s something that we need to continue to work on and expand our efforts. This is all about community decisions about how they are going to best protect themselves. When you look at what’s happening with Ian, what does it tell you about America’s vulnerability to climate impacts, and where we stand in terms of resilience? What needs to shift so that the country can be well prepared for the future? Ian reminds us that we have underinvested in longer-term resilience. We’ve been very good as a country in terms of immediate response, and you’ll see it again with FEMA [the Federal Emergency Management Agency]. They are fabulous in coming in and working to get the power back up and dealing with the immediate impacts. But as a country and certainly prior administrations and prior Congresses have not funded the longer-term issues. I’ll give you one other example of an initiative that we’re excited about that is highly relevant here: the National Initiative to Advance Building Codes. Modern building codes ensure that the structures being built in that community will withstand the kind of amazing winds,  et cetera, and they also are very oriented toward energy efficiency. But only 30 percent of the communities in the country have adopted modern building codes. It’s just a plain old practical thing, but it’s essential. When you build back now after this crisis, will the infrastructure be able to withstand the next Ian that’s coming along? That question has not been asked in previous administrations. It’s being asked and answered in this one. What has been the impact of the initiative to advance building codes? We’re early in it. On Friday, we are sending out to all of our agencies directives about how to ensure that in their notices of funding opportunities, they are incentivizing the adoption of building codes. There are steps then that communities have to take to raise up their building codes. Those are out of our control. But we’re excited about the uptake that we’ve had and the recognition by communities that they need to advance. Wildfires have only gotten more severe and costly. Was anything done differently this past year? Will something be done differently next year? We now have a 10-year plan from the Forest Service and a five-year plan from the Department of Interior for identifying the high-risk fire sheds. We are using the new money coming from the [bipartisan infrastructure] bill and from the IRA [Inflation Reduction Act] to be focusing on those high-risk fire sheds. This is another area that’s been around for a while, but it’s been underfunded terribly. We’re already talking about shifting the firefighting workforce, now that fire season is ending, thank goodness, into fire mitigation efforts, so this is a huge focus. How much safer are Americans today compared to before  Biden  took office? We are definitely safer. Communities have more information to make their decisions. We have more funding that we are getting out. But we’ve got a challenge here. Climate change is happening, is accelerating and creating more risk. So, I don’t want to sugarcoat it. We’ve got our work cut out for us, but we’re confronting it and addressing it aggressively. Are policymakers and the public beginning to recognize the importance of adapting and becoming more resilient in the face of climate change? What role do you see it playing as part of the country’s overall response to climate change? The fact that Congress and the bipartisan infrastructure law gave $50 billion for resilience under a title called resilience, that tells you something. [On Wednesday,] Sen. Christopher A. Coons’s [D-Del.] and Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s [R-Alaska] bipartisan bill called the National Climate Adaptation and Resilience Strategy Act passed out of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee on a voice vote, which you never see. The fact that Senator Coons and Senator Murkowski are joined at the hip to deal with resilience and adaptation, that tells you something. We have turned an important page, and it’s going to take everybody in Congress, the federal government, states and local communities to tackle this thing. I’m excited about the launch that has occurred in this administration to really take it on and to back it with information, with money and with commitment. In a 2013 interview with The Post, you said your dream job would be a golf-teaching pro at Pebble Beach. What’s next for you? I have given up on that dream. I’m going to take a step back and think about how I can best help this agenda going forward. I’m going to stay in the arena in some capacity. TBD in terms of what it looks like."
+"In the Atlantic, last year was the third most active season on record in terms of named storms. This year, Hurricane Fiona slammed Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands, causing flash flooding, mudslides and widespread power outages. Now all eyes are on Hurricane Ian as it barrels toward Florida. Preparing for a tropical storm can be stressful, but it doesn’t have to be intimidating. Here are some tips for readying yourself before a hurricane hits, staying safe when it makes landfall and assessing the damage after it passes."
+"With broad bipartisan support, the Senate on Wednesday ratified by a 69-27 vote a global treaty that would sharply limit the emissions of super-pollutants that frequently leak from air conditioners and other types of refrigeration. The treaty — known as the Kigali Amendment to the 1987 Montreal Protocol — compels countries to phase out the use of the potent hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, which are hundreds to thousands of times as powerful as carbon dioxide in speeding up climate change. The United States became the 137th country to ratify the amendment — and negotiators said the move would encourage the remaining nations to follow suit. The earlier Montreal Protocol clamped down on the production of ozone-depleting substances. U.S. climate envoy John F. Kerry, who was in the Rwandan capital of Kigali when the amendment was negotiated, said the Senate vote “was a decade in the making and a profound victory ​for the climate and the American economy.” The treaty, which had to win support of at least two-thirds of the Senate, brought together an unusual coalition of supporters including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers as well as the Natural Resources Defense Council. In a statement, Kerry said that “businesses supported it because it drives American exports; climate advocates championed it because it will avoid up to half a degree of global warming by the end of the century; and world leaders backed it because it ensures strong international cooperation.” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that ratifying the Kigali Amendment and adopting the Inflation Reduction Act was “the strongest one-two punch against climate change any Congress has ever taken.” He said the treaty would “reduce global temperatures by about half a degree Celsius by the end of this century, a little talked about fact with very significant impact.” That reduction equals about 1 degree Fahrenheit. He called it a “win-win in our fight against climate change.” Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, said the ratification showed President Biden’s “continuing climate leadership, and his appreciation of the need for speed to slow warming in the near term, avoid climate tipping points and slow the self-reinforcing feedbacks.” Sentiment supporting ratification has been growing in recent years. The Senate, with Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) as the lead sponsor, had during the 2020 lame-duck session passed the American Innovation and Manufacturing Act, which authorized the Environmental Protection Agency to carry out most of the regulations that would be required under ratification. Kennedy’s state is home to Mexichem Fluor and Honeywell plants that make the chemicals. Most U.S. industrial makers of air conditioning had already been pushing for the adoption of the treaty in the name of American jobs and competitiveness. “The Senate is signaling that Kigali counts for the jobs it will create; for global competitive advantage it creates; the additional exports that will result and it counts for U.S. technology preeminence,” Stephen Yurek, president of the Air Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute said in a statement. He said that U.S. manufacturers already supply 75 percent of the world’s air-conditioning equipment and that global demand was “exploding.” Still, many senators opposed the action. Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said domestic legislation was adequate. “We did it here, we did it right. We don’t need to get entangled in another United Nations treaty,” he said. Barrasso also complained that “this treaty is especially bad because it doubles down on the practice of treating China as a developing country.” Like all other developing countries, under the treaty China gets a grace period before it must reduce HFCs. Americans for Prosperity, supported by the Koch family, sent a letter to lawmakers urging a no vote on the Kigali Amendment, warning that the vote could be included in the organization’s annual legislative scorecard. The letter said the treaty “would impose costly restrictions, serving as a consumer tax on air conditioning and refrigeration, on the American people and give an unfair advantage to China and other industrial competitors of the United States.” Other Republicans have opposed the treaty. Three senators — James M. Inhofe (Okla.), Mike Lee (Utah) and Rand Paul (Ky.) — joined Barrasso in placing holds on the Kigali Amendment in an effort to block a vote, according to two individuals who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the holds were not public. But Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del. ), who had teamed with Kennedy and whose state is the lowest-lying in the country, said that “it’s not every day that you have a full-court press from the business community and are joined with a full-court press from the environmental community.” Dan Lashof, director of the World Resources Institute, said U.S. manufacturers have been “innovators, so this just strengthens the U.S. role in promoting solutions and will strengthen the U.S. economy, as well as being a big win for the climate.” Maxine Joselow contributed to this report."
+"While Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard’s decision Wednesday to give away the outdoor-apparel company to help tackle climate change and other environmental problems shocked some in the industry, many people familiar with Chouinard weren’t surprised. “It seemed very Yvon to me,” said John Sterling, who worked in Patagonia’s environmental programs from 1996 to 2002. “When I worked there, it was a challenge to out-activist Yvon.” Chouinard, a nature-loving rock climber turned businessman and reluctant billionaire, founded Patagonia in 1973 and has since been molding the company into a leader in responsible business. Giving Patagonia away marks the boldest act of environmental activism yet, after years of unconventional crusades ranging from a campaign against genetic engineering to suing a sitting president over protecting public lands. Patagonia’s reputation isn’t “a conceived of strategy for the brand,” Sterling said, but rather it reflects Chouinard’s values. “He’s got a pretty clear sense of where he’s headed.” In a 2012 interview, Chouinard, now 83, explained that the resources he has to “do good” come from his company. Despite being “a relatively small company in the scheme of things,” Patagonia, he said, “has this tremendous power to change — well, I mean, I hate to be bragging, but change society and to change larger companies and lead by example.” Here are a few of the radical pursuits Patagonia has undertaken during its nearly 50-year history. For years, the company has provided optional nonviolent civil disobedience trainings to employees. The sessions, Sterling said, stemmed from a group of employees getting arrested in 1996 at a protest against logging ancient redwoods in a forest in Northern California. Patagonia has also established a bail policy to help any employee who is arrested while peacefully protesting, provided that they have previously completed a civil disobedience class. This policy of encouraging dissent is not confined to environmental issues. This summer, amid the nationwide debate over abortion, the company announced in a post on LinkedIn that all part-time and full-time employees receive “training and bail for those who peacefully protest for reproductive justice.” “We don’t have a just society, and that’s when you need civil disobedience, absolutely,” Chouinard said in the 2012 interview. Patagonia’s Environmental Internship Program offers employees the opportunity to take up to two months away from their regular jobs to work for an environmental group of their choice while continuing to earn their paycheck and benefits. John Wallin, who worked at Patagonia from 1993 to 1999, did two internships through the program — an experience that he said inspired him to leave the company and start his own nonprofit environmental organization. “I did that because the internships both gave me a fluency in the issues and a desire to make a bigger difference,” said Wallin, who founded the Nevada Wilderness Project. “The Patagonia response, when I said, ‘I think I’m going to leave my middle management job in mail order and start this nonprofit because I think we can protect a lot of Nevada,’ was ‘That is so fantastic. Here’s a phone line and a desk in our service center in Reno.’” According to Patagonia, 34 employees, 12 stores and one department took advantage of the program this year, which amounted to “almost 10,000 volunteer hours for 43 organizations.” Patagonia has long supported the removal of dams, especially those that are “derelict and particularly harmful,” according to a 2014 company statement. In the statement, Chouinard called himself “a lover of wild rivers.” “That’s why our company has been involved in trying to take out obsolete and damaging dams since 1993,” he said. The company has advocated for the removal of four lower dams on the Snake River, placing four full-page ads in the New York Times in 1999 that called attention to the impacts of those dams on Pacific Northwest salmon populations, said Sterling, who was directing the company’s environmental programs at the time. More recently, Patagonia funded a 2014 documentary film called “DamNation,” which aimed to mobilize support for demolishing dams to revive wild fish populations. Patagonia has been donating money to causes it supports since the 1970s. But starting in 1985, the company pledged that 1 percent of its sales would go toward “the preservation and restoration of the natural environment.” In 2002, Chouinard co-founded a nonprofit corporation called “1% for the Planet” in an effort to get other businesses to do the same. “1% of sales is a hard number,” Chouinard said in the 2012 interview. “And I don’t look at it as charity. It’s our cost of doing business.” The 1% for the Planet alliance now has more than 5,000 members, according to its website — a list that includes brands such as Kleen Kanteen, Boxed Water and Caudalie. A fierce defender of public lands, Patagonia made headlines when Chouinard and the company became embroiled in a high-profile fight with the Trump administration over national monuments in Utah. After President Donald Trump moved to drastically reduce the size of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in December 2017, Patagonia posted a stark message to its website: “The President Stole Your Land.” “In an illegal move, the president just reduced the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments,” the rest of the message read. “This is the largest elimination of protected land in American history.” In the lead-up to December and after, Patagonia carried out a multipronged effort to support public land protections that went beyond assisting grass-roots environmental organizations. The company orchestrated a publicity effort that included its first-ever television ad — a one-minute spot that featured Chouinard, who is known for being somewhat of a recluse, talking about the importance of public lands and “wild places.” Patagonia and other outdoor recreation companies also successfully moved a major industry trade show out of Salt Lake City to Denver. Patagonia joined a coalition of Native American and grass-roots groups in a lawsuit aimed at forcing Trump to restore Bears Ears’ original boundaries. The decision to sue a sitting president was “fairly unprecedented” for a company like Patagonia, said Josh Ewing, who worked with Patagonia on Bears Ears while heading the nonprofit Friends of Cedar Mesa. The lawsuit and the effort to move the trade show “were steps that companies usually don’t take,” said Ewing, who now directs the Rural Climate Partnership. “They don’t take protest-like steps with their money because they’re afraid of their money, they’re afraid of losing their money if they get too active.”"
+"Although a majority of Americans say they are concerned about climate change, it appears many aren’t really talking to their close friends and family about it. According to a 2022 survey conducted by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, 64 percent of Americans reported being “very worried” or “somewhat worried” about climate change — but 67 percent of Americans also said they “rarely” or “never” discussed global warming with their friends and family, according to the report titled “Climate Change in the American Mind.” That’s not ideal, some experts say. “The first step to action on climate change is to talk about it, that’s the number one thing we can do,” said Lucky Tran, a science communicator at Columbia University who focuses in part on climate justice. “We can’t solve any problems, especially at the global scale, if we don’t talk about the problem and the best way to address it.” And when it comes to the climate, he added, “How we talk about climate change really shapes what solutions we have for climate change.” Here’s what Tran and other experts say you need to know about broaching climate-related issues. Climate change communication has historically focused on trying to convince people that global warming is real, happening and caused by humans. But public opinion polling shows that there are already “huge majorities in the country” who understand those things to be true, said Jon Krosnick, a social psychologist and professor at Stanford University. Krosnick, who has researched American public opinion on global warming, argued that continued efforts that largely focus on persuading people about the realities of climate change “is going to be wasted money, wasted effort, wasted air.” Instead, discussions about just how “green” the American public is, as well as general insights from polling that reflect people’s views on climate change, may do more to impact how government officials act, he said. “The American public doesn’t realize how green it is, and even elected representatives don’t realize how green the American public is,” he said. “You don’t have to change anybody’s opinion. You just have to make the unanimities or near unanimities more salient for people.” How climate change is discussed could also impact approaches to solutions, other experts said. “It’s important for climate communication today to really focus on how to include different perspectives, different ideologies that can give viable hope — because there is hope — in terms of how to address climate change differently than what’s been proposed in the past,” said Hanna Morris, an assistant professor at the School of the Environment at the University of Toronto, who researches climate change media and communication. It sometimes seems as though climate change conversations can be divided into two narratives: People are either overly optimistic about solutions — or claim it’s “too late” to act. In reality, Tran said, most people talking about climate change fall somewhere between those two extremes. He cautioned against spreading messages that are too focused on fear or optimism, because both can lead to inaction. “Why would you take action to solve something if you don’t think it’ll make a difference?” he said. “At the same time, if we think the problem is solved, why would we take any action to solve it?” Tran noted the more pessimistic narratives can be traced to the fossil fuel industry or other special interest groups invested in maintaining the status quo. The drumbeat of negative scientific findings that continue to emerge can also reinforce this gloomy outlook. What’s more, “doomism” views on climate change and the future aren’t grounded in reality, some experts say. “It’s definitely not too late for each and every one of us to have a real meaningful impact on ...  climate action,” said Kimberly Nicholas, a sustainability and climate scientist at Lund University. “There, fatalism really worries me because it’s not a scientific question of the technical details, ‘Are they possible?’ It’s a question of, ‘Will enough human beings actually undertake any of the necessary actions?’ ” Fearmongering could also be dangerous, Tran said. “If we have no hope of having a better world, then it becomes a more divided world.” It is, however, important to acknowledge and help people process their grief and anxiety around climate change, said Jonathan Foley, executive director of Project Drawdown, a climate nonprofit. “A lot of people in the climate conversation are younger or new, which is great,” Foley said. “But not surprisingly, people who are suddenly paying attention to this are saying, ‘Oh my God, this is horrible.’ ” “It’s kind of like finding out you have a serious illness,” he added. “It’s really a shock, and grief is part of the stages we go through when we hear bad news.” The key, Nicholas said, is not to get stuck in the “doom��� stage — and to use those feelings as a source of motivation to take action. Climate change is a complex problem and proposing “simplistic, all-encompassing grand solutions” is not the answer, Morris said. These types of fixes, she said, tend to oversimplify issues and could fuel the idea that there is a right and wrong way to address the climate crisis. While experts said it’s critical not to entirely dismiss individual actions, they underline that certain actions matter more. There are downsides, for instance, to the “every little bit helps” idea, Nicholas said. You should turn off the faucet every time you brush your teeth so you don’t waste water — but “that’s not a high impact action” when it comes to the climate, she said. “Basically, the only things I talk about are flying, driving and eating meat, I actually think it’s not really worth spending much time on much else,” she said. “We have to focus on where most emissions are and focus on reducing that as quickly as possible.” While it’s improbable that any one person is capable of single-handedly creating major change, actions can have “ripple effects,” Nicholas said. She compared it to how cathedrals were built by hand — a process that involved hundreds, if not thousands, of people over years. “History doesn’t really know their names, and many of them probably didn’t live to see it completed, and they didn’t know where all the pieces were coming from or where everything was going,” she said. “But they laid their stone or they made their window or they put the wood together. They did the one little piece that they were capable of doing and it did add up to this amazing thing that has really stood the test of time.” But individual action should be seen as “part of an ecosystem of change that requires systemic level changes,” Tran said. Messaging about solutions shouldn’t be limited to reducing emissions, he added. Social solutions that address inequities and environmental justice issues “need to go hand-in-hand” with discussions about physical or economic solutions to climate change, he said. A key component of talking about climate issues revolves around making climate solutions equitable, said Beverly Wright, founder and executive director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice. “The people who have been most impacted by climate are people of color in general and poor people,” Wright said. “If we just addressed the question from the standpoint of, ‘Climate change is here, we have to reduce greenhouse gases,’ but don’t talk about how we do that, then you end up with communities being presented with what we call false solutions or our legislature being presented with false solutions.” There should also be communication that gets those most impacted involved in the solutions, experts said. For one, Tran encouraged more trusted messengers to participate in the climate conversation. “You need people who look like the people in the communities who are dealing with a problem to be able to motivate them to take action,” he said. “They understand what’s at stake. They understand how people are being harmed. They understand what solutions are needed to be put in place.” “We need everyone to be a climate communicator and not just rely on one or two people or not just scientists,” he said. “Every person needs to talk about climate change.”"
+"The environmental justice movement notched important victories in Louisiana this week by blocking two planned petrochemical plants — a move that will prevent huge amounts of greenhouse emissions from entering the atmosphere. The petrochemical complexes would have both been built in St. James Parish, home to what is commonly known at Louisiana’s “cancer alley.” With the emergence of shale gas drilling over the past dozen years, many companies have flocked to the area to take advantage of inexpensive natural gas. There are now approximately 150 oil refineries, plastics plants and chemical facilities there. But over the past few days, two of those projects — Formosa Plastics and South Louisiana Methanol — were shelved. Louisiana’s 19th Judicial District Court reversed the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality’s decision to issue air permits to Formosa Plastics. And LDEQ said that South Louisiana Methanol failed to modify its permit within the time allotted. The rulings’ consequences lie in these numbers: $9.4 billion. The amount the Taiwanese company Formosa Plastics would have spent building a new petrochemical complex covering 2,400 acres — or about 1,818 football fields, counting the end zones. $2.2 billion. The amount South Louisiana Methanol had planned on spending on its chemical plant. 13.6 million tons. That’s the volume of greenhouse gases that would have been emitted by Formosa Plastics every year. It’s equal to about three-and-a-half coal plants — more than the carbon footprint of Rhode Island or the District, according to Rhode Island’s Department of Environmental Management. The South Louisiana Methanol complex would have been the largest in North America, emitting more than 2 million tons a year of greenhouse gases. Formosa also would have emitted 800 tons of toxic chemicals a year. 14. The number of air permits approved by the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality in 2020, despite 15,500 public comments submitted opposing the permits. 34. The number of pages in the opinion by the Louisiana 19th Judicial District Court judge Trudy M. White, who said residents who challenged Formosa’s air permits “could not have known that LDEQ would violate its duty.” In the Welcome and St. James census tract, more than 87 percent of more than 2,000 residents living there identify as “Black or African American,” according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That tract that would have been most affected by the Formosa Plastics plan. “The demographics of Welcome reflects its roots as a place once dominated by plantations, populated by the enslaved ancestors of present-day residents,” the judge wrote. ProPublica reported that “the air around Formosa’s site is more toxic with cancer-causing chemicals than 99.6 percent of industrialized areas of the country” already. “If the complex emits all the chemicals it proposes in its permit application, it would rank in the top 1 percent nationwide of major plants in America in terms of the concentrations of cancer-causing chemicals in its vicinity.” Formosa Plastic has said that it expected to create 1,200 new direct jobs with an average salary of $84,500 plus benefits. But only a few would have gone to people living in the area, community leaders said. Janile Parks, Formosa’s director of community and government relations, said in an email that the company “respectfully disagrees” with Judge White’s conclusion. She said the permits issued by the LDEQ “are sound” and that the agency “properly performed its duty to protect the environment.” Parks said the company “intends to explore all legal options.” Julie Teel Simmonds, senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement that “the ruling affirms our long-held conviction that it is completely contrary to the public trust and environmental justice to further pollute a Black community already living with unhealthy air for the sake of generating more throwaway plastic already permeating our planet.”"
+"Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard announced Wednesday that he is giving away the outdoor-apparel company — an unorthodox move intended to help combat climate change and the environmental crisis. In a letter posted to the company’s website, Chouinard wrote that ownership of the company, which was founded in 1973 and reportedly valued at about $3 billion, has been transferred to a trust that was created to protect the company’s values and mission as well as a nonprofit organization. “Earth is now our only shareholder,” it said. “100% of the company’s voting stock transfers to the Patagonia Purpose Trust, created to protect the company’s values; and 100% of the nonvoting stock had been given to the Holdfast Collective, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting the environmental crisis and defending nature.” In addition, profits that aren’t reinvested back into the business will be distributed by Patagonia as a dividend to the Holdfast Collective to help address climate change, according to a news release. The company projects that it will pay out an annual dividend of about $100 million — an amount that could change depending on the health of the business. “It’s been a half-century since we began our experiment in responsible business,” Chouinard, 83, said in the release. “If we have any hope of a thriving planet 50 years from now, it demands all of us doing all we can with the resources we have. As the business leader I never wanted to be, I am doing my part. Instead of extracting value from nature and transforming it into wealth, we are using the wealth Patagonia creates to protect the source.” “I am dead serious about saving this planet,” he added. The decision, which was first reported by the New York Times, reflects Chouinard’s maverick approach to tying his business to conservation and political activism over his roughly five-decade career. The company lambasted President Donald Trump and members of his administration for scaling back public land protections, and even sued Trump over his move to cut Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument by 85 percent. Several of Chouinard’s allies said that his move reflected his long-standing approach to environmentalism. “It’s kind of crazy to say it doesn’t surprise me,” said Josh Ewing, who worked with Patagonia to expand Bears Ears’ boundaries while heading the nonprofit Friends of Cedar Mesa. “I’ve had the opportunity to appreciate the just unique and unprecedented leadership that the Chouinards, as well as staff at Patagonia, have put into conservation and climate leadership,” said Ewing, who now directs the Rural Climate Partnership. In 2021, Patagonia announced it would no longer sell its merchandise at a popular Wyoming ski resort after one of the owners hosted a fundraiser featuring Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) and other Republicans who support Trump. The company has also pursued more traditional forms of activism. Beyond making products with materials that cause less harm to the environment, for years Patagonia has donated 1 percent of its sales largely to grass-roots environmental nonprofits, and will continue to do so. Patagonia funded a 2014 documentary film called “DamNation,” which aimed to mobilize support for demolishing dams in order to revive wild fish populations. Chouinard has also supported groups that work directly on elections, such as the League of Conservation Voters. LCV President Gene Karpinski said the retail magnate backed the group’s efforts to register and turn out young voters and voters of color. Chouinard has “been a model for building a sustainable business and now he’s a model for doing sustainable giving,” Karpinski said. “From the beginning, his company had a vision for being best in class as a sustainable company, and now he’s ensuring that will be the path going forward.” In Wednesday’s letter, Chouinard explained that selling Patagonia or going public were both flawed options. While the company could have been sold and all the profits donated, there wasn’t a guarantee that a new owner would maintain the business’s values or ensure that all of its workers stayed employed. And taking the company public, Chouinard wrote, would have been a “disaster.” “Even public companies with good intentions are under too much pressure to create short-term gain at the expense of long-term vitality and responsibility,” he wrote. Choosing to give away Patagonia is the latest step in the company’s lengthy experiment in responsible business, Chouinard wrote. “If we have any hope of a thriving planet — much less a thriving business — 50 years from now, it is going to take all of us doing what we can with the resources we have,” he wrote. “This is another way we’ve found to do our part.” Ryan Gellert, Patagonia’s CEO, said in a statement that the Chouinard family “challenged” him and a few others two years ago to develop a new structure for the company with two central goals: “They wanted us to both protect the purpose of the business and immediately and perpetually release more funding to fight the environmental crisis,” he said. “We believe this new structure delivers on both and we hope it will inspire a new way of doing business that puts people and planet first.” Under the new arrangement, the Chouinard family will guide the Patagonia Purpose Trust and the philanthropic work carried out by the Holdfast Collective, according to the news release. The company’s leadership also will not change. Gellert will continue to serve as the company’s CEO while the Chouinard family remains on Patagonia’s board. To mark the occasion, Patagonia tweeted, “We’re closed today to celebrate this new plan to save our one and only home. We’ll be back online tomorrow.” On Wednesday night, staff attended a “party for the planet” at the company’s campus in Ventura, Calif., a spokesperson said. Members of Patagonia’s board praised the transfer of ownership. “Companies that create the next model of capitalism through deep commitment to purpose will attract more investment, better employees, and deeper customer loyalty,” Charles Conn, chair of the board, said in a statement. “They are the future of business if we want to build a better world, and that future starts with what Yvon is doing now.” Some retail industry experts said the move could reverberate beyond a single company. Chouinard has “just set a new bar for retailers,” Paula Rosenblum, managing partner of at the retail consulting firm RSR, wrote in an email. “No greenwashing here. He put his money where his mouth was.”"
+"In early 2020, weeks before anxiety about another crisis roiled the globe, a small group of students gathered in a room at the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire for a counseling session on worry and grief related to global warming. For an hour, during the first such session at the institution, the students talked through fears and frustrations of a world impacted by climate change. Lauren Becker, a former student who had worked with the university’s counseling services to make these sessions happen, sat in one day to observe. But at the end of the session, she said she left feeling even more hopeless than before. It was hard to feel as though there was a “level of understanding of how dire the situation is,” Becker said. She didn’t blame the counselor —and was grateful they were taking on this task — but she hoped the counseling would acknowledge the physical and psychological toll of climate change on young people, an age group she said is “inheriting” the crisis. “I think that this is the case in a lot of different arenas where it’s not as informed care as it could be,” she said. There is a critical need among young people for climate stress counseling services, psychological experts say, especially in university settings. But many therapists and counselors aren’t trained to provide students with this specific type of support, in part because of a lack of research about climate stress as a distinct phenomenon. Still, several universities across the United States are beginning to fill this gap: Some are starting to offer climate stress therapy for students in the form of pilot programs, while others are discussing what might be possible through existing campus counseling services. Eco-anxiety is commonly used to describe people’s concerns about climate change, but psychologists say it is better to use more general terms such as “climate stress” and “climate distress” — terms that encompass the array of feelings someone may have in response to climate change. Climate stress therapy, experts say, is an effort to validate these emotions, help clients process their responses to climate change and provide coping strategies. If young people don’t have the right resources and feel “sort of paralyzed in these uncomfortable emotions, then we’re not going to be able to solve this thing,” said Sarah Stoeckl, the assistant director of the University of Oregon’s Office of Sustainability. “We need young people to fight and that means we need to support them.” Stoeckl’s team at the University of Oregon wants to allocate more resources toward helping students experiencing climate stress, which includes reaching out to the institution’s counseling center. Universities have an obligation, Stoeckl said, to tend to students’ feelings of frustration, anger, fear and powerlessness in the face of climate change. Psychologists say there’s also an existing imbalance in who seeks these resources, with individuals who outwardly express high levels of climate distress often coming from privileged backgrounds. Though communities of color are disproportionately affected by climate change, Elizabeth Haase, chair of the American Psychiatric Association Committee on Climate Change and Mental Health, explains that a “hierarchy of needs” prevents many of these individuals from addressing their climate distress. “You don’t have the space to have that kind of change unless you have that degree of privilege, which leaves you with time and energy to work on it,” Haase said. Those involved in creating climate stress resources say it’s critical to acknowledge perspectives from communities of color and marginalized communities, including those who have long had fundamental worries about how environmental realities impact their lives. Dan Murphy, a former post-doctoral fellow in professional psychology at the University of Michigan, said he’s hopeful that growing research will give leadership at the institution the authority it needs to say in an “evidence-based way, we need you to address climate stress in the student population.” From February to April, Murphy and Carolyn Scorpio, a staff social worker for the University of Michigan’s Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS), created and facilitated a 10-week pilot therapy group for climate stress through CAPS. For an hour once a week, five students joined them on Zoom. During the meetings, there was an emphasis on building connections among the students in the group, allowing them to bond over shared feelings and experiences surrounding the climate crisis. Conversations also centered on how students can talk to family and friends who don’t have the same level of concern about climate change. They talked about how to manage despair and grief related to the future of the planet, but also how to find joy and gratitude when immersed in nature. With climate stress counseling, Scorpio said rather than just consoling, it helps to provide coping strategies to assist students in calming their own nervous systems, and to think about the issues from a different perspective. Murphy said he began thinking more about addressing climate stress while doing field work for his doctorate in Pittsburgh. Some clients described how thoughts about the climate crisis and dire future of the planet exacerbated existing struggles with severe depression or suicidal thoughts — and he worried he didn’t have the specific training to address some of those concerns. The American Psychiatric Association does not currently require mental health professionals to have training on climate-related issues. For now, experts say therapists interested in offering climate-specific resources need to seek out tools to do so themselves. A group of instructors will soon launch a climate psychology certificate in an effort to equip more mental health and allied professionals with the training they need to provide this care. Leslie Davenport, a climate psychology educator and consultant, and Barbara Easterlin, a clinician and consultant specializing in climate psychology, will co-lead the five-week program that begins this month. Davenport said the certificate program will recognize perspectives from Black and Indigenous people, as well as communities of color, who she noted have experienced “multiple crises” in addition to climate change. Of the 40 participants who will be accepted into the certificate program, Davenport suspects some of them will be counselors at universities. She hopes this training will teach counselors how to help students cope with their climate stress and find ways to be a part of meaningful change. “I compare it to something like pain management. If your hand is accidentally slammed in a door, you’re not only going to do things to bring kind of a peaceful state of mind,” Davenport said. “You want to get your hand out of the door, too. The psychological part is really meant to go hand in hand with climate action.” At Michigan, students in counseling services told Scorpio they struggled to focus on homework and career goals. “This idea of, ‘What’s the point of doing all this if the world is on fire?’” Scorpio said. Scorpio and Murphy had the idea for a therapy group on climate stress after consulting with each other about what their clients had been experiencing. Even as people expressed interest in the possible program, there were challenges: Busy college students couldn’t commit to hour-long sessions, and it was hard to ensure they’d find a secluded space every week. When they did meet, Scorpio said, the feedback from students was “overwhelmingly positive.” Students valued the sense of community in the group and relished having an intentional space to share their feelings. Some wished the sessions could have lasted longer. At Western Michigan University, recent graduate Kennedy Williams and her friend Max Offerman organized five “climate cafes” on campus for students last year. The sessions were meant to be informal spaces where people could share their emotional responses to climate change, as outlined by the Climate Psychology Alliance. At meetings, participants would choose an object in nature they resonate with — including leaves, flowers, twigs, stones, shells — sparking conversation and allowing students to connect to each other’s experiences. One of the main rules: No calls to action. Some counselors and former students noted that many participating in these climate stress groups are usually already familiar with or entrenched in ways they can address the crisis — solutions they can tackle as individuals. For this reason, they preferred for group sessions to focus on coping with, and expressing, their feelings. “Climate cafes were really just a safe space to … feel what they’re feeling without the judgment of ‘you’re not doing enough,’” Williams said, “because that leads to burnout really fast.” Haase said leaders, including university administrators, should validate and respond to students’ concerns about climate change. Maddie Loeffler was a sophomore at UW-Eau Claire when she attended the same climate anxiety and grief counseling session as Becker. Loeffler said the counseling session didn’t lessen her stress or sense of hopelessness about climate change. But she didn’t expect it to. “It’s not about fixing climate anxiety or making it go away. It’s about connecting with people who are experiencing the same thing.”"
+"Amid a prolonged, historic September heat wave, the West is baking. Scorching temperatures are expected to peak early this week, prompting widespread public safety concerns due to the extreme heat — which, experts say, is likely to become more frequent and more intense as the planet warms. “The best-case scenario is still that this is the coolest summer you’ll experience in the rest of your life,” said Ben Zaitchik, a professor in the earth and planetary sciences department at Johns Hopkins University, who studies extreme weather events. “We’re going to be facing heat waves of at least the intensity we’ve been experiencing the past couple of years and almost certainly of greater intensity, even if we decarbonize along the best-case scenario.” But many people, particularly those who have spent most of their lives in temperate climates, often don’t know how to cope with heat. It’s necessary, Zaitchik and other experts emphasized, not only to know how to prepare for a heat wave, but also to take steps to adapt to the changing environment. “Heat is often referred to as the silent killer because it doesn’t get the kind of attention a big hurricane blowing in does,” he said. “Just being aware of that is critically important.” If you know a heat wave is coming, think about what you have planned for those days. Avoid strenuous outdoor activities, if possible, or plan to do them during cooler parts of the day. For people who have to be outside, take steps to protect yourself from the heat. Dress in loose, lightweight, light-colored clothing and shield yourself from the sun with hats, sunglasses and sunscreen. The hotter it is, the more frequently you should be taking breaks. You can also try to stay cool by soaking your head and shirt in water. Health risks associated with heat exposure can range from milder conditions such as heat cramps to heat strokes, which can be fatal. It’s important to know which symptoms are serious and when to call for medical help, said Olga Wilhelmi, a scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research. If heat exhaustion, for instance, is left untreated, it may progress to heat stroke. Symptoms of heat exhaustion include heavy sweating, elevated heart rate, nausea and vomiting, headaches, dizziness, fatigue and generally feeling unwell. Some key signs of heat stroke are central nervous system dysfunction, such as feeling confused or having seizures, as well as a lack of sweat. During heat waves, air conditioning can save lives. “Tragically, when we see people who succumb to heat-related illness or severe outcomes, it’s usually lack of access to air conditioning,” Matthew Levy, an associate professor of emergency medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, previously told The Washington Post. But many homes don’t have air conditioning. Meanwhile, some people might choose not to run their units due to concerns about increasing utility bills, overloading electrical grids or contributing to human-caused climate change — which is exacerbating the intensity and frequency of extreme heat events. Have a plan to access air-conditioned spaces, whether it’s outfitting your home with a wall unit or a portable device, or knowing of other places you can go, such as another person’s home, community cooling centers, public libraries or malls. Even being in air conditioning for a few hours can be helpful, Wilhelmi said. Think about ventilation, Zaitchik said. Often, “ventilation is your friend, so really trying to get airflow can be really valuable.” Fans can also be a huge help, as long as it isn’t too hot inside. When indoor temperatures reach the high 90s, electric fans, which move air around but don’t cool it, won’t prevent against heat-related illness, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. If you’re purchasing fans, Zaitchik recommends choosing some battery-operated units in case of power outages. Place fans where they will draw in the coolest air — a fan in a window overlooking a leafy backyard is preferable to one that pulls in hot air and car exhaust from a busy roadway. Make sure any ceiling fans are spinning counterclockwise, so they push air down in a column. Adding water can also enhance the effect of fans, experts said. Have a spray bottle handy and keep your skin moist by misting yourself often. In addition to using water to help keep your body cool, hydration is key. If you’re dehydrated, you may be more prone to developing other heat-related conditions because your body can’t sweat as efficiently or cool down as well, Grant Lipman, an emergency physician and founder of the GOES Health app, told The Post in June. “In effect, you body’s radiator is low on coolant.” Have bottled water on hand or keep large jugs filled in case of water shortages, especially in areas where extreme heat has caused droughts. Anyone can be negatively affected by hotter temperatures if they’re not careful, but certain populations are more vulnerable, including the elderly, young children, athletes, people who have chronic medical conditions, pregnant people and those who may be struggling with mental health issues. Heat can also exact a psychological toll on people who don’t have preexisting mental health conditions. If you know anyone who might be at increased risk, check in on them and make sure they’re equipped to stay safe. This may mean inviting an elderly relative to stay with you, helping someone get to a community cooling center, or dropping by people’s homes to see whether their air conditioners are working or to bring them cold drinks. Additionally, it’s important to help strangers who may be in need. “Really, the difference between a severe heat stress affecting somebody, a vulnerable person, and them being fine can be the difference of opening a window or getting a bottle of water,” Zaitchik said. Heat can exact a toll on pets and plants, too. If it’s too hot for you, it’s too hot for your pet. Beyond making sure your animals can stay cool and hydrated and watching for signs of overheating, avoid unprotected walks on hot pavement or asphalt, which can burn paw pads. For plants, think about when and how you water them, according to an article published by Oregon State University. Watering in the morning gives plants time to absorb moisture before it gets too hot, said Erica Chernoh, a horticulturist with the Oregon State University Extension Service. Make sure water penetrates at least six inches down, and if you’re watering by hand, pour close to the soil under the plant, she suggests. It could also be helpful to use shade cloth over your plants or add mulch around them, which can slow down evaporation, according to Chernoh. Potted plants and seedlings can be moved to shadier spots."
+"WARSAW — A few weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, Joanna Pandera, a Polish energy expert, removed the gas stovetop from her kitchen and replaced it with an electric range. She signed a contract for an electric heat pump so that she would no longer need Russian natural gas to warm her home through Poland’s long winters. And she threw a party, cooking borscht and pierogies with Ukrainian refugees to celebrate her home’s newfound energy independence. “The celebration was that we removed Russian gas,” said Pandera, the director of Forum Energii, a Warsaw-based think tank that advocates for a Polish transition to renewable energy. Pandera is working to de-Russify the energy flowing into her house, and many Poles, furious with Russia and sympathetic to Ukraine, are doing the same this year. Poland has a reputation for being the West Virginia of Europe, with its national identity tied to coal mining. But the war in Ukraine is doing what years of pushing from climate advocates could not: A growing number of Poles are embracing green measures because the shift will free them from Russian fossil fuels. The country led Europe in installations of renewable-friendly heat pumps per capita this year, with their sales more than doubling compared to a year ago. Just last year, Polish policymakers aimed to install 10 gigawatts of solar panels by 2030 — a goal it has already surpassed. Poland’s national leaders, who continue to praise the virtues of their domestic coal, still won’t win many environmental awards. But Polish citizens are increasingly going in a new direction. “We are doing everything we can to help our citizens be more energy independent,” said Magdalena Mlochowska, the director of climate efforts for the Warsaw city government, which is run by the country’s main opposition party. “In Poland the biggest fear is to have no gas because of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin. People have started to be afraid of gas as their only source of heat.” Before the conflict, Poland was working to switch from old-fashioned coal-fired boilers to gas boilers for heat and hot water. The change improved air quality and reduced carbon emissions, but did nothing to  cut reliance on Russian energy. Now Europe has banned purchases of Russian coal and restricted Russian gas in a bid to starve the Russian economy of funds for the war effort. And Russia itself is also reducing gas shipments — including a full halt to Poland, and, on Friday, a cutoff of Nord Stream 1, the main gas pipeline to Germany — in an apparent bid to create shortages and pressure European leaders to cut their support for Ukraine. That means there is less coal and gas to go around, and what is left is far more expensive. Coal in Poland now costs triple what it did last year, and the wholesale price of natural gas in Europe is 10 times what it was a year ago. The crisis has left Poles reeling — and realizing they depended on Russian energy far more than they thought. Poland no longer produces much of the harder, cleaner-burning coal that is best for home use — it burns most of its domestic coal in its power plants. Since about 40 percent of the coal burned in Polish homes had been coming from Russia, the country now faces the strange prospect that it could run out of coal this winter, leaving citizens shivering. Polish leaders have always said that coal will be domestic, cheap and reliable, Pandera said. “And now we see it’s Russian coal, it’s expensive and it might not be there,” she said. “Everybody is waiting for winter,” Pandera said. “It will certainly be dramatic. They will not be able to heat their homes either because of the physical lack of coal or because they can’t afford it. People are going to be sitting in cold homes.” European Union leaders agreed  in July to cut their use of natural gas by approximately 15 percent — about what they think they need to avoid running out during the cold months of the year. Before the war, Russia supplied about half of Poland’s gas, although the government had been working to build pipelines and other infrastructure to make it easier to get supplies from other countries. “Decarbonization is becoming a long-term energy security issue,” said Michal Kurtyka, who until last year was Poland’s climate and environment minister. Until this spring, Danuta Zdunczyk had been heating her house just outside Warsaw with coal — an arduous process that required regular trips to refill the boiler with the black stuff. “I wanted to switch into heat pumps a long time ago, but after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine it just speeded things up,” said Zdunczyk, who works for a pharmaceutical company. “The whole situation really made people more aware of how dangerous this system was that we’ve been relying on,” she said. “I’m very happy that we as a country won’t be dependent on Russia and that Poland won’t be putting money into Russia’s pocket for its war in Ukraine.” Heat pumps run on electricity, so they appeal to climate advocates because they can run on renewable energy. Installers say their phones have been ringing off the hook. Krzysztof Januszek, who runs a heat pump installation company called Eco Synergia, said that interest in his technology boomed within days of Russian tanks rolling into Ukraine on Feb. 24. “It started in the beginning of March, right after the war started,” he said. Poles know the changes to energy supplies are likely permanent, he said, meaning that they are willing to make bigger investments to adapt to the new situation in which it is better to avoid gas and to use as little energy as possible. Waiting times for heat pumps in Poland are now six months, he said. “We will leave Russian gas. It won’t come back,” he said. “So no matter what, the energy prices are going to be more expensive.” Right now, Januszek is helping to build the Stay Inn Hotel, which is under construction near Warsaw’s main airport. Its owners believe it will be Poland’s first hotel heated and cooled exclusively by heat pumps. The warmth will come from 28 narrow wells that Januszek drilled down to 165 yards underneath the building. Solar panels on the roof will help cover some of the energy needs. Opening is set for late September. In the basement of the hotel on a recent morning, while construction workers put the finishing touches on the kitchen and the entrance areas, the heat pump was already at work, as big gray boxes about 5½ feet high circulated water in and out of the boreholes. The pump will heat the hotel’s pool and spa, too. Even before the war, the hotel’s owner wanted to build in a climate-friendly manner. Now, though, it makes even better business sense, said a representative from Cantare, the company that is building the hotel. “We are worried about the lack of gas,” said Kazimierz Federak, who is overseeing construction at the hotel. He said the company was already receiving notes from Poland’s state-controlled oil and gas company about possibly limiting gas use this winter. Cantare is trying to switch to heat pumps at its other properties as quickly as possible to avoid gas price increases, Federak said. With more costly fossil fuels, he said that the heat pumps pay for their higher initial costs within three or four years — more than twice as fast compared to before the war. “Frankly speaking there’s no way to limit the use of gas,” he said. “It’s hard to choose what to turn off.” For all the efforts among ordinary Poles, many Polish climate advocates say that the national government remains tethered to coal. “The government still thinks that coal is the baseline of Polish energy,” said Piotr Siergiej, the spokesman for Polish Smog Alert, an environmental advocacy group. “But Polish society is 180 degrees different. Polish society is going into cheaper energy, and the cheaper energy is renewable energy. The paradigm in Poland shifted, but the government doesn’t realize it yet.” The Polish government still supports fossil fuels, even as it’s started to provide modest incentives to shift to cleaner energy. Since 2018, the Polish government has offered citizens up to $6,700 to switch from coal boilers to less dirty forms of heat. In July it upped the potential assistance to about $16,500. And last month  it also devoted at least $430 million toward local energy efficiency projects. But in recent weeks it also announced one-off subsidies of up to $630 for households that haven’t made the changeover, prompting climate advocates to say that the government was rewarding the use of fossil fuels. And Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki directed state businesses to buy 4.5 million metric tons of coal to prepare for the winter. Other policy changes that could make a difference — such as making it easier to build onshore wind power — are still mired in discussions in the Polish Parliament. Some analysts fear that with prices so high, Poland’s climate outlook could get worse before it gets better. Not only has the government made it easier to burn dirty coal for heat this winter, some fear that Poles could turn to burning wood or trash in their heating stoves, making Poland’s air even more unbreathable. It already ranks among the dirtiest in Europe. “I am sometimes a bit perplexed as to where Polish energy politics is headed in these times,” said Monika Morawiecka, a longtime Polish energy executive who is now a senior adviser at the Regulatory Assistance Project, a U.S.-based group that advocates for cleaner energy. Polish policymakers say they are moving as quickly as they can. “We have to rely on what is there in the short run, but also accelerate renewables,” said Deputy Climate Minister Adam Guibourge-Czetwertynski. “The changes we see in Poland are happening much faster than people outside Poland think.” Dariusz Kalan contributed to this report."
+"While the Inflation Reduction Act will help make a significant cut in U.S. emissions, estimates suggest it won’t be enough to help the country reach its climate targets. President Biden’s use of executive action, experts say, will be a key element in driving further change. “We absolutely are going to need all hands on deck — states, the federal government, everyone that can do something,” said Maya Golden-Krasner, deputy director of the Climate Law Institute at the Center for Biological Diversity. “There are some really big, bold actions, though, that Biden can take and can get us pretty far.” The Biden administration has already undertaken dozens of executive actions on climate, but a new report out Monday details what could lie ahead. Activists are pushing White House officials, who are eager to mobilize the party’s base in the November election and are less worried about alienating centrist lawmakers over energy policy, to do more. The 99-page report, published by the Revolving Door Project, an initiative of the liberal think tank Center for Economic and Policy Research, lays out potential executive branch policies available under current law even without the declaration of a climate emergency, which could open up some additional powers. “We’re trying to advocate for this administration to take seriously a whole-of-government approach to a crisis of apocalyptic proportions,” said Toni Aguilar Rosenthal, a researcher with the Revolving Door Project and one of the report’s authors. “There exists massive, but wildly underutilized, authorities that could do real good for real people today. We’re asking the administration to do that, to take those steps right now and to service that crisis, to meet it where it is.” For its part, the Biden administration made it clear it’s ready to shift some of its focus away from working with Congress. The White House on Friday announced major changes to its top climate team, a move toward using executive authority to reach the president’s climate targets. At least one independent analysis from the research firm Rhodium Group suggests that with executive action, it may be possible to reach Biden’s goal of cutting U.S. greenhouse gas emissions at least in half by 2030, compared with 2005 levels. According to Rhodium, a “joint-action scenario” that includes state-level measures, congressional passage of certain legislation, and regulations and other executive branch actions would reduce emissions by 45 to 51 percent below 2005 levels. That analysis assessed the potential impact of the Build Back Better Act, which had more sweeping climate policies than the legislation Biden signed last month, but John Larsen, a partner with Rhodium, said the emissions estimates should mostly hold true. “With the IRA in law, the next place to look for the big ticket items, so to speak, like the next set of high-impact opportunities, is going to be the executive branch,” Larsen said. Republicans and conservative groups are likely to challenge many new federal climate policies in court, and they have scored some key victories on that front. And Larsen and other experts emphasized that there are limits to what executive action can achieve alone. “Executive action and very creatively using executive authority as forcefully as possible is not sufficient in itself to solve the climate crisis, to bring the United States in line with its climate goals,” said Max Moran, a research director at the Revolving Door Project. But, he noted, “it is an absolutely necessary part of the puzzle.” Here are some of the executive actions the White House and relevant agencies can take, as well as their possible impacts on the climate. It’s critical, Moran said, for the Clean Air Act to be used “as much as possible.” The Revolving Door Project report, in part, calls on the EPA to use that law to close loopholes that allow oil and gas companies to underreport emissions. Additionally, the report suggests lowering the threshold for required reporting, meaning more facilities would need to report their methane emissions. “Methane, at least in the short term, is one of the biggest bang-for-the-buck targets for climate policy,” said Colin Murphy, deputy director of the Policy Institute for Energy, Environment and the Economy at the University of California at Davis, who was not involved in the report. Murphy said as more research on methane sources is conducted, “the more we realize it’s a relatively small handful of really high-volume emitters that are driving a big chunk of the methane profile, and so going after those might be something that executive action could do.” Larsen noted the EPA is already working on rules targeting methane emissions from oil and gas operations, greenhouse gas standards for power plants and more standards for light-duty vehicle emissions. These rules, he said, “all have the potential for additional emission reductions beyond what we modeled the IRA could achieve.” A Rhodium analysis estimates that methane regulations, for example, could reduce emissions 100 to 250 million metric tons by 2030. Another option is for the EPA to “set a national science-based cap on greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act,” Golden-Krasner said, though this would likely invite a court challenge. The Center for Biological Diversity has also published reports detailing executive actions available to Biden with and without the declaration of a climate emergency. A greenhouse gas emissions cap, she said, is “going to get us a significant amount of reductions,” adding that it’s “flexible. It allows the states to figure out how they’re going to meet the standards.” Experts also noted the Clean Water Act can be used to address critical environmental concerns, though some acknowledged the law may not play as significant a role in reducing emissions. The new report, in part, urges the Energy Department to use its Loan Programs Office to support clean energy projects and discourages the office from using “its authority to assist fossil fuel efforts, even if they are branded as ‘innovative fossil energy technologies.’” The new climate law authorizes another $40 billion in loan guarantees for energy innovations, along with $3.6 billion to cover the costs of the risks associated with this new lending. It’s important to “make sure that clean energy projects actually have a level playing field versus coal-powered electricity,” said Aidan Smith, one of the report’s authors and a senior adviser at Data for Progress, a liberal think tank. The report also calls on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to prioritize finalizing proposed rules on transmission lines, noting that the country’s transmission infrastructure needs to have the capacity to support potential clean energy projects. The report out Monday suggests the Agriculture Department could pursue antitrust actions “against hyper-pollutive, extractive, and exploitative Big Ag firms.” “There exists broad authority within the USDA to engage in enforcement actions in corporate wrongdoing and other malfeasance there that just hasn’t been pursued, and that has really dire consequences for rural communities and for farmers and for the vast majority of the physical land of the United States,” Revolving Door’s Aguilar Rosenthal said. “Cracking down on those crimes is, I think, a very easy … place to start.” The report also encourages increasing the number of civil and criminal cases brought against those who violate environmental laws. “The point of environmental enforcement is supposed to be deterrence,” Moran said. But keep in mind that many courts are backlogged, Murphy said. “What you need is more resources going to create more courts and more judges and more lawyers in those spaces. That’s not a quick thing.” Executive action, Murphy said, could help start that process. The Revolving Door Project report details what is possible without an emergency declaration — but some experts say that such a proclamation could be helpful. Not only does declaring a climate emergency have symbolic value, but it also would allow the president to unlock certain emergency executive powers, Golden-Krasner said. A February report from the Center for Biological Diversity laid out climate emergency executive actions Biden could take, which in part include halting crude oil exports; limiting oil and gas drilling in federal waters; restricting international trade and private investment in fossil fuels; and directing agencies to boost renewable-energy sources. While some policy experts argue that the declaration of a climate emergency could be game-changing, others say the potential impacts are less certain. “The emergency declaration might be able to help on the margin,” Larsen said. “But there’s no guarantee it is actually able to help him drive the transformational change we need to see to get to the emission reduction targets.” The latest report on possible executive action aims to highlight the importance of thinking of the executive branch “in a holistic sense,” Moran said. “The climate crisis literally already is changing every aspect of human society, so every aspect of the government, every single agency, should be looking through its legal mandates and legal powers and thinking about how that applies to climate and what they can do.” But experts emphasized that executive authority does have limitations — for example, Murphy said, one major obstacle is the amount of time it typically takes for any action to lead to change. The federal government can “certainly do something,” he said, “but it’s not like the Biden administration could issue an executive order and within a month have a radically different enforcement regime and a radically different slate of outcomes.” Instead, Murphy compared it to turning the Titanic. “They can tell the rudder to go one way,” he said, “but it’s going to take time and it’s going to take a lot of other parts of the government apparatus working in concert with it.” Dino Grandoni contributed to this report."
+"SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Kyra LoPiccolo crouched in front of a small, white foam box under the hot summer sun. She opened the cooler and from the ice plucked a tiny vial of pollen — a potential salve for an entire species. Clasping a branch of a two-story American chestnut, LoPiccolo pulled out a delicate, yellow-dusted glass slide and rubbed the thawed pollen onto some of the tree’s flowers. A few feet away and armed with another set of vials, a pair of colleagues at this field research station were aloft in a crane working on higher limbs. The team gloved the fingerlike flowers with white bags and zip-ties them — an effort to control the flow of pollen. In a few months, genetically modified chestnuts will be ready for harvest. “We open them up, and it’s like Christmas every time,” said LoPiccolo, a recent graduate of the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY ESF). These trees once ruled the canopies of much of Appalachia, with billions of mature American chestnut trees that towered in leafy forests from Maine to Mississippi. But around the beginning of the 20th century, an exotic fungus nearly drove the tree out of existence. Today, they still sprout in the wild but rarely reach maturity. Outside of growers’ orchards, scientists say, the tree is “functionally extinct.” LoPiccolo and other researchers at SUNY ESF are growing American chestnut trees in the fields of Syracuse that can withstand that infection: Half of the nuts produced with the genetically engineered pollen will carry DNA meant to fight the blight. The researchers are now ready to sow the seeds in the wild, pushing to become the first in the United States to use genetic engineering to bring a forest tree back to its former glory. But first, the project is seeking approval not only from three federal agencies but also from chestnut aficionados concerned about altering the genome of a beloved tree. Global trade and climate change are poised to make the spread and severity of arboreal plagues and pestilence worse. The hills around Syracuse are silhouetted with pale ash trees slain by emerald-colored borers. Ancient bristlecone pines out West are succumbing to bark beetle outbreaks triggered by rising temperatures. As many as 1 in 6 trees native to the Lower 48 states are at risk of extinction. Scientists have wondered whether it’s possible to restore forests by raising better trees. Bringing back even a portion of the 2 billion tons of chestnut biomass lost to fungus would not only remake deciduous forests in the east but would also help combat climate change. Long-living and fast-growing, the American chestnut is a powerful sponge for greenhouse gas emissions. “We’re making a path for saving other tree species, and it might even go beyond trees,” said Bill Powell, director of SUNY ESF’s American Chestnut Research and Restoration Project. Gaining approval to start planting the nuts, Powell said, would be a “big, big success.” Still, he acknowledged this is something no one has done before — and would require massive effort. His team would also need help to spread blight-resistant chestnuts across hundreds of miles of mountains. “I always say this is a century project. It’s going to take the general public wanting to plant these trees,” he said. That’s not a given: Some chestnut lovers are leery of messing with what more than one writer has dubbed nature’s “perfect tree.” And regulators need to give the go-ahead. “The big public policy question is: Should we bring back forests with genetically modified chestnut trees?” said Edward Messina, director of the Office of Pesticide Programs at the Environmental Protection Agency, one of the agencies weighing approval. “That’s a pretty heavy question.” The American chestnut showered sustenance onto the forest floor for jays, squirrels, bears and people for millennia. Native Americans fashioned the tree’s bark into wigwams. European colonists chopped its trunks into logs for cabins. Its straight-grained timber was sought by furniture fabricators and musical instrument makers. Its rot-resistant wood was ideal for the railroad ties, telegraph poles and fence posts that helped connect and carve up the young nation. Its lumber held generations of Americans from cradle to coffin. The tree served to signal changes in seasons, decorating hillsides with cream-colored petals to begin summer and showering children with chestnuts after they climbed and clubbed its branches in the autumn. Pushcart vendors selling roasted chestnuts on city streets once marked the start of the holiday season. But by the time Nat King Cole sang of “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire,” the tree had nearly vanished. Workers at the Bronx Zoo were the first to notice, in 1904, the festering wounds. By the following spring, nearly every chestnut in the park showed signs of infection. The fungus, brought over on a different species of chestnut tree imported for agriculture, leads to cankers in the tree’s bark. Once an infection girdles a trunk, the circulation of nutrients is cut off. The leaves above droop and die — and the tree is doomed. The pathogen, called Cryphonectria parasitica, spread in all directions. The crisis prompted Congress to task the U.S. Department of Agriculture with inspecting and quarantining agricultural imports. But the 1912 law came too late for the species. Within a few decades, the pathogen nearly eradicated the species from North American forests. For years, horticulturalists bred American chestnuts with the trees’ Asian cousins, which carry a natural hardiness to the fungus. But with hundreds to thousands of genes involved, efforts at producing a hybrid that flourishes in the wild have met only middling success, according to Jared Westbrook, a geneticist and director of science at the American Chestnut Foundation, a nonprofit organization seeking to rescue the tree. “We’ve come to this existential realization, we need an additional source of resistance so these trees can survive,” he said. The setbacks prompted Herb Darling, co-founder of the foundation’s New York chapter, to approach Powell about turning to biotechnology to resurrect the species. A professor of forest pathology in Syracuse, Powell had written his PhD dissertation on chestnut blight. In the 1990s, while paging through summaries of recently published papers in his office, he had an aha! moment: He spotted a gene that could protect the chestnut. “I immediately called my colleague, Chuck Maynard, and said, ‘We got to try this out.’ ” The fungus infecting chestnut trees thrives by secreting a chemical called oxalic acid, which kills cells and allows the pathogen to feast on the dead tissue. But many other plants, including bananas, strawberries and wheat, avoid that fate by producing an enzyme called oxalate oxidase that breaks down the toxin. By 2014, Powell and Maynard successfully added the wheat gene to chestnuts and were growing infection-resistant trees. The pair dubbed one line Darling 58, in honor of Herb. At the orchard in Syracuse this June, a team working with Andy Newhouse, a biologist and assistant director of the restoration project, had dug hooks into their tiny trunks to intentionally infect them with the fungus. The results were dramatic: On the tree carrying the disease-resistant gene, a gray, dime-size sore swelled up at the site of the quarter-inch incision — an infection from which the tree would recover. In the tree without the gene, a rust-orange depression spread halfway around the trunk. “It’s killing the tree,” Newhouse said. “Almost certainly it’s going to be girdled within another month. And everything above here will be dead.” Previous inoculation experiments showed that cankers on ordinary American chestnuts grew to quadruple the length of those on their counterparts with genetic material transferred from wheat. “Making a transgenic tree — I hate to say it like this, but it isn’t that hard,” Newhouse said. The most difficult hurdle for Darling 58, he said, is winning regulatory approval. To distribute Darling 58 in the wild, the restoration team is awaiting a decision from three federal regulators — a process that began in 2020. The EPA is reviewing how the transgenic tree’s enzyme will interact with people and the woodland environment. The Food and Drug Administration is evaluating the nuts’ nutritional safety. And the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is reviewing how the tree may affect insects and other plants. “We were even told 10 years ago, before we started this process, that it probably wouldn’t be realistic for our little university research project to do this,” said Newhouse, who is responsible for guiding Darling 58 through the regulatory process. The group has done its own testing on both regular and transgenic chestnuts, comparing effects on bumblebees pollinating their flowers, insects feasting on their fresh leaves and frog tadpoles gobbling up their decomposing litter. “There was no difference,” Powell said. But saving a species — especially with genetic engineering — is as much a public relations battle as it is a scientific quest. Critics say releasing the transgenic tree is akin to running a massive and irreversible experiment in the wild. During the USDA’s public comment period, critics urged the agency not to approve Darling 58, arguing that not enough is known about the risks it poses. Chestnuts can live for centuries, they note, but the transgenic trees have only been tested for a few years. Anne Petermann, executive director of Global Justice Ecology Project, which helped organize the campaign against Darling 58, is worried the project will lead to more commercial use of transgenic trees, to produce paper and lumber. She noted biotech firms hoping to make greater use of genetically modified organisms have helped fund SUNY ESF’s work. “There are studies coming out weekly that show just how much we don’t know about forest ecosystems,” she said. Some people cite past efforts to save the chestnut as a reason their concern is justified. In the 1910s, for instance, Pennsylvania foresters told landowners to chop down healthy trees in a vain effort to stop the spread of the fungus, a practice that may have inadvertently exterminated native chestnuts with blight tolerance. “The story of the American chestnut is truly a cautionary tale,” said Donald Edward Davis, a founding member of the Georgia chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation and author of “The American Chestnut: An Environmental History.” “And because of that, I really think the public should be more careful about endorsing, just carte blanche, the transgenic approach.” Davis left the foundation after it threw its support behind the SUNY ESF project in 2016. So did Lois Breault-Melican and Denis Melican, a wife and husband who served as board members of the Massachusetts and Rhode Island chapter. Some growers, the couple said, have given up too soon on trying to pick out blight-resistant American chestnuts and breed them with their Asian counterparts. “We don’t need genetic engineering to bring the chestnut back,” Melican said. “They are coming back. All that’s necessary is patience.” But Powell countered that crossbreeding transfers far more genes between species. “Genetic engineering is actually a less-risky procedure than a lot of things that we’ve done in the past,” he said. “We are very precise. We’re only moving one, two — just a small number of genes into the tree.” Powell hopes his work spurs similar efforts among geneticists. “It’s going to spark a lot of other research on trees that people basically wanted to do but couldn’t do because they had that brick wall in front of them,” he said. Already, Powell’s team is investigating ways to insert blight-resistant genes into chinkapins, a tree closely related to American chestnuts, and to engineer elms that can resist elm yellows, a bacterial disease with no known cure. At Purdue University, researchers have attempted to tweak the genes of ash to survive the emerald ash borer, a beetle from Asia that has destroyed tens of millions of trees across 30 states since first identified in Michigan in 2002. With advancements like CRISPR, a Nobel Prize-winning gene-editing tool that is faster, cheaper and more precise than its predecessors, more opportunities will only open up for genetic engineers. For now, Darling 58 winds its ways through federal bureaucracy. “This particular review has taken us a bit longer,” said USDA spokesman Rick Coker, noting the agency still needs to publish draft reviews, gather feedback and finalize documents. The researchers expect the three agencies to make a final decision by next summer. Here in Syracuse, yards away from his tree experiment, Newhouse stepped into a field of knee-high saplings. The tiny oaks, hickories, pines and chestnuts here were not planted in neat rows, unlike in other parts of the research station. Instead, they were sown seemingly at random, a vision for how closed Appalachian coal mines might be reseeded in the future. Chestnuts can thrive in poor, rocky soil left in quarries. If there’s any chance of returning the American chestnut to its former heights, thousands of acres need to be reclaimed. Many factors could complicate restoration. The fungus could evolve. Other diseases may take hold. Rising temperatures are poised to shift its range north. “The scale of the former range of American chestnut is so huge, it’s intimidating to think about what that will look like,” Newhouse said. “And it won’t happen in our lifetimes.” Ultimately, public input will be integral to whether restoration can go forward, said Messina, the EPA official. His team will weigh the benefits of the project, “which I can argue there are many, with any identified risks.” “This case sits right at the intersection of cutting-edge science and public policy considerations,” Messina said in a video call. Still the question remains, he added: “Just because we can do something, should we?”"
+"Five years ago, having an electric vehicle was along the lines of bringing your own bags to the grocery store or eschewing plastic straws: Some people did it, but those who did were either passionate environmentalists (often driving the snub-nosed Nissan Leaf) or wealthy technophiles (often driving the Tesla Model S). EVs felt like a novelty or a purity test — they certainly didn’t feel like an inevitability. But over the past few years, everything changed. There was the Super Bowl ad for EVs, featuring Will Ferrell smashing his fist through a globe and shouting, “We’re going to crush those lugers!” (Ferrell was referring to Norway, the country that sells more EVs per capita than any other country in the world.) There was the announcement by six automakers and 30 countries that they would phase out gasoline-powered car sales by 2040, and the call by President Biden to make 50 percent of new car sales emissions-free a decade sooner. There was the release of the GMC Hummer EV — a monstrous, electricity-guzzling house on wheels that many environmentalists abhorred — the Ford F-150 Lightning EV and even the Mustang Mach-E EV. Automakers, in short, took their most treasured brands — even brands that appeal to a swath of America that is decidedly not crunchy and environmentalist — and rolled out all-electric models. In short, the transition from gas-powered, internal combustion engine vehicles to electric vehicles no longer feels niche, or speculative. It feels inevitable. And this week, another profound development: California, which already leads the nation with 18 percent of new cars sold electric, is expected to approve a regulation to ban the sales of new gas-only powered vehicles by 2035. In addition to EVs, only a limited number of plug-in hybrids will be allowed to be sold. This is a big deal: California’s car market is only slightly smaller than those of France, Italy and Britain — and while many countries have promised to phase out sales of gas cars  by such-and-such date, few have concrete regulations like California. Sixteen states have traditionally followed California’s lead in setting its own independent fuel standards — they could soon follow. Going from 18 percent to nearly 100 percent EV sales in 13 years may seem almost impossible. But Corey Cantor, an electric vehicles associate at the research firm BloombergNEF, points out that, in 2019, 7 percent of new cars sold in California were EVs. In a few years, that number has more than doubled. “When things move that quickly, it’s pretty surreal,” Cantor said. Of course, roadblocks remain. Producing hundreds of thousands of electric cars will require supplies of critical minerals and a pace of factory manufacturing that doesn’t currently exist. (Case in point: Ford has a three-year backlog for the Ford F-150 Lightning, thanks to sky-high demand.) The Biden administration has invested $5 billion into a network of car chargers across the country, but a recent study of chargers in the San Francisco Bay area found that over a quarter weren’t functioning. For the moment, sales of EVs are mostly focused in higher-priced vehicles, rather than smaller, more affordable sedans, but automakers are trying to push the price point down. And in order for consumers to take advantage of the new $7,500 EV tax credit in the recently signed Inflation Reduction Act, more minerals and batteries will have to be produced within the United States. The combination of high upfront prices, the oft-mentioned “range anxiety” and unfamiliarity with EVs may cause some Americans to resist going electric for years to come. Still,  most EVs are now cheaper over the lifetime of the vehicle than comparable gas-powered cars. This year’s spiking gas prices drove many Americans — some of whom had never considered going electric before — to look into what it would be like to drive a car that pulls its energy from the grid. “A couple of years ago, there was always a question about EVs — do people want them?” Cantor said. “Now that’s not even the question. It’s all about scale-up.”"
+"It wasn’t so long ago that California prayed for rain. Something to quench the climate-change-fueled drought — the worst in at least 1,200 years — that has caused farm fields to wither and wells to run dry. To ease the blistering heat waves that triggered power outages and sent thousands to emergency rooms. To extinguish the wildfires that have ravaged forests, destroyed communities and blackened the skies. Now, the water that Californians so desperately wanted is pummeling them like a curse. It’s surging over riverbanks and rushing through communities, toppling drought-stressed trees, turning scorched mountainsides into avalanches of mud. The storms cut off power to roughly 150,000 customers across the state Tuesday. The flooding prompted evacuations in Montecito and other parts of Santa Barbara County, and swept away a 5-year-old boy who still has not been found. Officials said at least 16 people have been killed by the storms of the past two weeks — more than the number of lives lost in wildfires over the last two years. The recent onslaught of atmospheric rivers has underscored the perils of California’s climate paradox: Rising global temperatures are making the region drier, hotter and more fire-prone, but they also increase the likelihood of sudden, severe rainfall. Experts say the state is not prepared for periods of too much water, even as it struggles to make do without enough. “Water scarcity in California, for good reason, has been all-consuming,” said hydrologist Jeffrey Mount, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California and professor emeritus at the University of California at Davis. “But you can’t take your eyes off the wet periods [and] how to prevent catastrophic flooding. … That’s the big time challenge.” California’s escalating droughts and intensifying storms represent two sides of the same meteorological coin. Both are tied to the fact that every one-degree Celsius increase in temperature allows air to hold 7 percent more moisture. This makes the atmosphere “thirstier” during dry seasons, causing it to suck water out of vegetation and soils. But it also means there’s more water available to storms. So when it rains, it pours. Human-caused climate change, driven mostly by the burning of fossil fuels, has warmed California by about 1.4 degrees Celsius (2.5 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1895, according to a 2022 report from the California Environmental Protection Agency. Scientists say this temperature rise is exacerbating California’s naturally “boom-bust” climate, characterized by dry summers and wet winters. An emerging body of research known as attribution science has showed that climate change is responsible for about 42 percent of the ongoing severe drought that has afflicted the western United States since the start of the 21st century. Researchers are still teasing out the climate connection in California’s recent spate of storms. But models suggest that atmospheric rivers — which have historically supplied half of California’s water — are getting stronger and will continue to intensify as the planet warms. A 2018 study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters predicted that these plumes of tropical moisture will become 25 percent longer and wider under the worst-case warming scenarios. Another study in the same journal found that escalating atmospheric rivers will shift from being mostly beneficial to mostly hazardous, even as they account for a growing portion of California’s strained water supply. “We’ve always had tremendous variability,” Karla Nemeth, director of California’s Department of Water Resources, said in an interview. “What’s happening is you add climate on top of that and you’re just stretching out the extremes.” Decades of questionable planning decisions has made the state vulnerable to disasters on both ends of the spectrum, Mount said. Farmers and cities have pumped too much groundwater, causing land to sink and giving communities little to fall back on during dry periods. In the past two decades, the aquifer beneath the Central Valley has lost as much as 9.2 cubic kilometers of water per year, according to NASA satellite data. That’s more than the volume of Shasta Lake, California’s largest reservoir. At the same time, the state heavily altered its rivers — constructing dams, building levees on their banks, straightening out their twists and curves. This eliminated the rivers’ natural floodplains, making it more difficult for groundwater to replenish. Making matters worse: Communities have been built on those floodplains, so when rivers overtop their banks, the water goes into people’s houses rather than replenishing wetland habitats and slowly sinking into the soil. Santa Cruz County, which has been inundated during the recent storms, is a prime example of this “engineering hubris,” Mount said. In the late 1950s, the Army Corps of Engineers “channelized” the San Lorenzo River to make it run deeper and faster, and built levees upstream to manage flows. According to an analysis by UC-Santa Cruz professor Gary Griggs, virtually all of downtown Santa Cruz was built in what had been the river’s 100-year flood plain. But the construction also contributed to sediment buildup, diminishing the river’s capacity to control floods. As the planet warms, escalating storms will increasingly overwhelm systems that weren’t designed for such extremes. “The things we did in the past to manage water are going to be insufficient in the present, much less the future,” Mount said. The San Lorenzo River hit its second-highest level in 85 years on Monday, cresting more than eight feet above flood stage, according to the Santa Cruz Sentinel. Residents said recent fires and drought made their community even more vulnerable to this year’s storms. In 2020, the Lightning Complex fires scorched more than 86,000 acres across the region, including the towering redwood forests of Big Basin state park. Now, the burned areas are less able to absorb the onslaught of rain. Slopes are collapsing without vegetation to hold the soaked soil in place. Dead trees are being ripped from their roots and carried downstream. “All the trees up and down the hillside that have been burned, they’re flooding up the river, so the river can’t run freely,” Bethany Rogers said. She had fled her home in the Felton Groves community north of Santa Cruz during the fires. On Sunday, she had to evacuate again. Dealing with a hotter, drier climate reality has become a way of life for many Californians. The state has been in a drought state of emergency since 2021. Residents have dealt with restrictions on lawn watering, crop irrigation and other water uses on and off since 2014. The state has invested more than $8 billion in water conservation and storage measures over the last two years, and last summer Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) released a 19-page document outlining his strategy for preparing for future droughts. But critics say California hasn’t done as much to ready itself for the times when too much rain falls. Though the state Senate last year proposed a $1 billion investment in flood management and dam safety, most of the provisions were dropped from the budget that ultimately passed. “For water agencies, flood management tends to be the poorer stepchild of water supply issues,” said Deirdre Des Jardins, director of California Water Research, which conducts analysis on state water planning processes and advises environmental groups. She said the political pressure from farm groups, municipal water managers and other constituencies is focused on ensuring water access, rather than fending off floods that studies show disproportionately threaten low-income communities. Des Jardins has been alarmed by recent research suggesting that climate change has already doubled the chance of California seeing a catastrophic megaflood and could increase the likelihood of such a deluge by as much as 400 percent. “We’re just not taking those kind of extreme floods into account in our emergency planning,” she said. California’s hyper-focus on water scarcity is also a product of what Mount calls “the half-life of disaster memory.” People tend to forget about severe storms once the floodwaters recede. But droughts are long, drawn-out disasters, he said — creating a longer window of public attention for officials to implement conservation plans. In a report released in November, Mount and his colleagues at the California Public Policy Institute called on the state to develop a comprehensive “wet year strategy” for preventing flooding and capturing rainfall as a buffer against future drought. New stormwater capture systems in cities and river bypasses that redirect floodwaters into ecosystems and farm fields can help avert flood damage and recharge depleted groundwater, the report said. “The actions we take (or fail to take) during wet years sow the seeds for our successes (or our challenges) during drought,” the authors wrote. Nemeth, the Department of Water Resources director, acknowledged that the state has “a lot of work to do” to grapple with the deluges that will come in a warmer climate. But she also touted flood protection projects that are already underway. The department has taken part in tabletop exercises, known as ARkStorm, where state and federal agencies simulated their response to a 1-in-1000-year atmospheric river event. The agency is working with farmers to promote groundwater recharge projects and with reservoir managers to incorporate more sophisticated weather forecasting into their operations. In 2021, California gave out more than $23 million in grants for coastal flood risk reduction, including $7 million to Santa Cruz County. Newsom’s proposed state budget, announced Wednesday, includes more than $200 million for flood prevention projects. An increase in catastrophic storms “has been in the wings, predicted for a while,” Nemeth said. “But there’s nothing like being in it to start to shake off the old ways of doing business.” Gerrit De Vynck in Santa Cruz, Calif., contributed to this report."
+"A new assessment of Earth’s depleted ozone layer released Monday shows that efforts to repair the vital atmospheric shield are working, according to a panel of U.N.-backed scientists, as global emissions of ozone-harming chemicals continue to decline. As a result, the ozone layer — which blocks ultraviolet sunlight from reaching Earth’s surface — continues to slowly thicken. Restoring it is key for human health, food security and the planet. UV-B radiation causes cancer and eye damage in humans. It also damages plants, inhibiting their growth and curbing their ability to store planet-warming carbon dioxide. Scientists said the ozone’s recovery should also serve as proof that societies can join to solve environmental problems and combat climate change. “Ozone action sets a precedent for climate action,” World Meteorological Organization Secretary General Petteri Taalas said in a statement. “Our success in phasing out ozone-eating chemicals shows us what can and must be done — as a matter of urgency — to transition away from fossil fuels, reduce greenhouse gases and so limit temperature increase.” At this rate, the ozone layer could recover to 1980s levels across most of the globe by the 2040s, and by 2066 in Antarctica, the report concludes. Ozone loss is most dramatic above the South Pole, with an ozone “hole” appearing there every spring. Those improvements will not be steady, scientists stressed, given natural fluctuations in ozone levels and the ozone-inhibiting influence of volcanic eruptions like the massive one from underwater Pacific Ocean volcano Hunga Tonga a year ago. But scientists said the latest ozone data and projections are nonetheless further proof of the success of the Montreal Protocol, the global 1987 agreement to phase out production and use of ozone-depleting substances. Meg Seki, executive secretary of the U.N. Environment Program’s Ozone Secretariat, in a statement called the findings “fantastic news.” A recent decline in observed levels of the chemical known as CFC-11, in particular — which as recently as 2018 had been observed at higher-than-expected levels and traced to China — is proof that societies can collaborate to address a confounding environmental problem, said Martyn Chipperfield, a professor at the University of Leeds who serves on the scientific panel. “That turned out to be another success story,” he said. “Communities came together and it was addressed.” Ozone is a molecule made of three oxygen atoms, and it proliferates in a layer of the stratosphere about 9 to 18 miles above the ground. It can exist at ground level, too, where it is a product of air pollution on hot summer days and considered a health hazard. But in the atmosphere, it serves as an essential shield protecting Earth’s life from harmful ultraviolet radiation. In the same way that UV lights eradicate pathogens like the virus responsible for covid-19, the sun’s radiation would make it impossible for life to thrive on Earth if not for the ozone layer’s protection. UV-B, a high-energy form of solar radiation, damages DNA in plants and animals, disrupting a variety of biological processes and reducing the efficiency of photosynthesis. The Montreal Protocol, which has been approved by every country in the world, protects the ozone by outlawing the manufacturing and use of substances that destroy it when they come in contact with it in the atmosphere. That largely includes a class known as chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, which contain ozone-depleting chlorine and were used in refrigerators, air conditioners and aerosol cans. The treaty was expanded in 2016 through the Kigali Amendment to include hydrofluorocarbons or HFCs, a replacement for CFCs that do not harm the ozone but are a type of greenhouse gas that warms the planet more potently than carbon dioxide. The U.S. Senate ratified the amendment in September. The report, which was presented Monday morning at the American Meteorological Society’s annual meeting in Denver, finds the world is also making progress at reining in these planet-warming emissions. “We can already see HFCs are not increasing as fast as we thought they would because countries are starting to implement their own controls,” said Paul Newman, one of four co-chairs of the Scientific Assessment Panel of the Montreal Protocol. Still, it is possible forthcoming data on ozone levels will prompt some concerns that the ozone layer is not recovering as quickly as the report concludes, he said. Newman said he expects that will be because the Hunga Tonga eruption blasted so much material into the atmosphere. Volcanic eruptions are known to accelerate ozone depletion. Progress would likely also be slowed if humans pursue geoengineering to reverse global warming by injecting sunlight-reflecting particles into the upper atmosphere, Newman said. The panel, which considered the potential impact of that practice for the first time for Monday’s report, found that, depending on the timing, frequency and amount of such injections, the particles could alter aspects of atmospheric chemistry that are important in ozone development. “The Antarctic ozone hole is the poster child of ozone depletion,” Newman said. “Stratospheric aerosol injections will probably make it a little bit worse.”"
+"Long thought of as big and dimwitted, the T. rex might owe its perch as king of the Cretaceous to its brains as much as its jaws and giant teeth. A study published Thursday in the Journal of Comparative Neurology suggests the dinosaur’s cerebrum contained enough neurons to solve problems and even form cultures. That’s a level of brain cells similar to that in baboons, potentially making theropods — a group of vicious, two-legged and fast-running dinosaurs that included tyrannosauruses and velociraptors — the “primates of their time,” according to Suzana Herculano-Houzel, a neuroscientist and biologist at Vanderbilt University who wrote the paper. “What if the asteroid hadn’t happened?” Herculano-Houzel said, referring to the cosmic collision thought to have driven most dinosaurs to extinction. “That’s a whole other world that would have been terrifying.” The new research builds on a growing body of evidence suggesting the Tyrannosaurus rex was more than just a big brute. Rather, it appears to have been a social animal that worked in packs. The soft tissue that made up dinosaurs’ gray matter rotted away eons ago. So Herculano-Houzel looked at T. rex’s bony brain cases and compared them to the skeletons of its living cousins: the birds. Extrapolating from emus and ostriches, Herculano-Houzel estimated the T. rex’s cerebrum had as many as 3 billion neurons, comparable to a baboon’s brain. Another terrifying carnivorous dinosaur called the Alioramus, meanwhile, had over 1 billion, similar to a capuchin monkey. If the T. rex’s cognition approached that of a baboon’s, the dinosaur may have been capable of using tools and passing down knowledge through generations, Herculano-Houzel said. “The overall study is an important step in understanding the evolution of the structure and function of the modern bird brain,” said Amy Balanoff, an evolutionary biologist at Johns Hopkins University not involved in the study. Other research that chips away at the childhood image of the T. rex as a scaly, solitary monster involves mass burial sites found in Utah, Montana and elsewhere, suggesting the carnivores moved in groups like wolves. The remains of other male theropods have been found guarding clutches of eggs, a social behavior seen in modern birds. Paleontologists even suspect tyrannosauruses had feathers — and are hunting for the fossil evidence. Herculano-Houzel’s analysis hinges on treating theropods as a separate, warm-blooded group instead of lumping T. rex and its cousins with the rest of the dinosaurs. Past researchers, she said, used to “take all dinosaurs together and throw them in the blender.” Balanoff said she would like to see future research with updated fossil measurements. She also called the notion of the T. rex forming cultures a “really fascinating idea” but added, “I don’t know that we’re quite there yet in being able to make this prediction.” “That being said, I welcome the positing of big ideas to drive science forward,” Balanoff said. Now that paleontologists know to look for it, perhaps they will find more evidence of T. rex’s rich social lives, Herculano-Houzel said. “If they were hunters, maybe you find evidence of them hunting in groups, using some sort of social communication. If you have no reason to expect that, you’re not going to look for that evidence.”"
+"Without dramatic cuts to water consumption, Utah’s Great Salt Lake is on track to disappear within five years, a dire new report warns, imperiling ecosystems and exposing millions of people to toxic dust from the drying lake bed. The report, led by researchers at Brigham Young University and published this week,  found that unsustainable water use has shrunk the lake to just 37 percent of its former volume. The West’s ongoing megadrought — a crisis made worse by climate change — has accelerated its decline to rates far faster than scientists had predicted. But current conservation measures are critically insufficient to replace the roughly 40 billion gallons of water the lake has lost annually since 2020, the scientists said. The report calls on Utah and nearby states to curb water consumption by a third to a half, allowing 2.5 million acre feet of water to flow from streams and rivers directly into the lake for the next couple of years. Otherwise, it said, the Great Salt Lake is headed for irreversible collapse. “This is a crisis,” said Brigham Young University ecologist Ben Abbott, a lead author of the report. “The ecosystem is on life support, [and] we need to have this emergency intervention to make sure it doesn’t disappear.” Scientists and officials have long recognized that water in the Great Salt Lake watershed is overallocated — more water has been guaranteed to people and businesses than falls as rain and snow each year. Agriculture accounts for more than 70 percent of the state’s water use — much of it going to grow hay and alfalfa to feed livestock. Another 9 percent is taken up by mineral extraction. Cities use another 9 percent to run power plants and irrigate lawns. There are so many claims on the state’s rivers and streams that, by the time they reach the Great Salt Lake, there’s very little water left. Over the last three years, the report says, the lake has received less than a third of its normal stream flow because so much water has been diverted for other purposes. In 2022, its surface sank to a record low, 10 feet below what is considered a minimum healthy level. With less freshwater flowing in, the lake has grown so salty that it’s becoming toxic even to the native brine shrimp and flies that evolved to live there, Abbott said. This in turn endangers the 10 million birds that rely on the lake for a rest stop as they migrate across the continent each year. The vanishing lake may short-circuit the weather system that cycles rain and snow from the lake to the mountains and back again, depriving Utah’s storied ski slopes. It threatens a billion-dollar industry extracting magnesium, lithium and other critical minerals from the brine. It has also exposed more than 800 square miles of sediments laced with arsenic, mercury and other dangerous substances, which can be picked up by wind and blown into the lungs of some 2.5 million people living near the lakeshore. “Nanoparticles of dust have potential to cause just as much harm if they come from dry lake bed as from a tailpipe or a smokestack,” said Brian Moench, president of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment. He called the shrinking of the lake a “bona fide, documented, unquestionable health hazard.” Dried-up saline lakes are hot spots for dangerous air pollution. Nearly a century after Owens Lake in southern California was drained to provide water to Los Angeles County in the 1920s, it was still the largest source of hazardous dust in the country, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The pollution has been linked to high rates of asthma, heart and lung disease and early deaths. Kevin Perry, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Utah who studies pollution from the receding lake, said about 90 percent of the lake bed is protected by a thin crust of salt that keeps dust from escaping. But the longer the lake remains dry, the more that crust will erode, exposing more dangerous sediments to the air. “You see this wall of dust coming off the lake, and it reduces horizontal visibility sometimes to less than a mile,” Perry said. The impact might only last a couple hours at a time, he said, but the consequences can be profound. Perry and other researchers have mapped the location and elevation of the dust hot spots, he said, and the results show that the problem is unlikely to abate anytime soon. The lake would need to rise roughly 14 feet to cover 80 percent of current hot spots, Perry said, or about 10 feet to submerge half of them. Even researchers have been taken aback by the rapid pace of the Great Salt Lake’s decline, Abbott said. Most scientific models projected that the shrinking would slow as the lake became smaller and saltier, since saltwater evaporates less readily than freshwater. But human-caused climate change, driven mostly by burning fossil fuels, has increased average temperatures in northern Utah by about 4 degrees Fahrenheit since the early 1900s and made the region more prone to drought, the report said. Studies suggest this warming accounts for about 9 percent of the decline in streamflows into the lake. Satellite surveys also show significant declines in groundwater beneath the lake, as ongoing drought depletes the region’s aquifers. If humans weren’t using so much water, the lake might be able to withstand these shifts in climate, Abbott said. But the combined pressure of drought and overconsumption is proving to be more than it can bear. Candice Hasenyager, the director of the Utah Division of Water Resources, said Utahns are becoming increasingly aware of the urgency of the lake’s decline. Last year, the Utah legislature passed numerous bills aimed at conservation, including a $40 million trust intended to help the ailing lake. Gov. Spencer Cox (R) recently proposed another massive infusion of funding for water management and conservation. “We don’t have the luxury to have one solution,” but curbing water demand is essential, Hasenyager said. “We live in a desert, in one of the driest states in the nation, and we need to reduce the amount of water we use.” Yet recent efforts haven’t kept up with the accelerating crisis. Abbott and his colleagues found that Utah’s new conservation laws increased stream flow to Great Salt Lake by less than 100,000 acre feet in 2022 — a tiny fraction of the 2.5 million acre feet increase that’s needed to bring the lake back to a healthy minimum level. “Among legislators and decision-makers there is still a very prevalent narrative of ‘let’s put in place conservation measures so over the next couple of decades the Great Salt Lake can recover,'” Abbott said. “But we don’t have that time.” “This isn’t business as usual,” he added. “This is an emergency rescue plan.” The new report, drafted by more than 30 scientists from 11 universities, advocacy groups and other research institutions, recommends that Cox authorize emergency releases from Utah’s reservoirs to get the lake up to a safe level over the next two years. This would require as much as a 50 percent cut in the amount of water the state uses each year, requiring investment from federal agencies on down to local governments, church leaders and community groups. For decades, Abbott said, officials have prioritized human uses for all the water that trickles through the Great Salt Lake watershed. Until last year, the lake itself wasn’t even considered a legitimate recipient of any water that fell in the region. If a farmer chose not to use some of their shares, allowing that water to flow to the lake and the surrounding ecosystem, they risked losing their water rights in the future. “We have to shift from thinking of nature as a commodity, as a natural resource, to what we’ve learned over the last 50 years in ecology, and what Indigenous cultures have always known,” Abbott said. “Humans depend on the environment. … We have to think about, ‘What does the lake need to be healthy?’ and manage our water use with what remains.” The weather this year has given Utah a prime opportunity to, in Abbott’s words, “put the lake first.” After a series of December storms, the state’s snowpack is already at 170 percent of normal January levels. If that snow persists and precipitation continues through the rest of the winter, it would enable the state to set aside millions of acre feet of water for the lake without making such drastic cuts to consumption. “I’m generally optimistic,” said Hasenyager, the water resources director. “I don’t think we are past a point of no return — yet.”"
+"Camila Ferrara felt “stupid” plunging a microphone near a nest of turtle eggs. The Brazilian biologist wasn’t sure if she would hear much. She was studying the giant South American river turtle, one of the world’s largest freshwater turtles. “What am I doing?” she recalled asking herself. “I’m recording the eggs?” Then Ferrara — who works for the Wildlife Conservation Society, a U.S.-based conservation group — heard it: a quick, barely audible pop within the shells. The hatchlings seemed to be saying to one another, she said, “‘Come on, come on, it’s time to wake up. Come on, come on.’ And then all the hatchlings can leave the nest together.” Researchers for decades thought of aquatic turtles as hard of hearing and mostly mute. One popular 1950s textbook claimed turtles “make no appreciable use of sound in their daily routine.” In the world’s rumbling rivers and cacophonous oceans, the lumbering reptiles appeared to tread along without much to say. But recent recordings of these turtles’ first “words” — before they even hatch — challenge notions not just of the turtles’ capacity to communicate, but also of their instinct to care for young. Now the discovery has spurred an urgent count of this talkative turtle’s numbers, and may shape protections for shelled creatures in the Amazon and beyond. When Ferrara began studying turtle communication, “so many people looked at me and said, ‘Oh, how? I don’t think that turtles use sound to communicate,’” she said. “I said, ‘Let’s see.’” Known locally as the arrau or tartaruga da amazonia, the giant South American river turtle lives throughout the Amazon and its tributaries. During the dry season, thousands of females at once crawl onto beaches along the river to lay their eggs. For other kinds of turtles, the mothering usually ends at the beach. Many turtle hatchlings are left by their parents to fend for themselves. But that’s not the case with the arrau. After nesting, females often hover by the shore for up to two months waiting for their eggs to hatch. So Ferrara and her colleagues wondered: are mother turtle and child turtle communicating with one another? To test the idea, her team spent months taping the turtles — on land and underwater, in the wild and in a swimming pool. The team recorded a wide repertoire of whisper-quiet calls from arrau of all ages. Embryos appear to chirp together to coordinate hatching and digging up to the surface. With so many jaguars and other predators lurking, it is safer for baby turtles to move en masse toward the river. The mothers, meanwhile, approach and respond to the calls of their young. Once the hatchlings reach the water, the baby turtles migrate down the river with the adult females, Ferrara’s radio-tracking research shows. When her team published an early study on turtle vocalizations a decade ago, Ferrara said, academic journals resisted putting the phrase “parental care” in the title of a study about turtles. “At that time it was very hard to publish,” she said. “It was something really new.” But Ferrara and her colleagues have gone on to record vocalizations from more turtle species, including the pig-nosed turtle in Australia, Blanding’s turtle in Minnesota and Kemp’s ridley sea turtle in Mexico, one of the world’s most endangered. “Probably most of these species use sound to communicate,” she said. Other researchers may have missed turtle noises since they tend to be quiet, infrequent and low-pitched — just at the edge of human hearing. Leatherback sea turtles, for instance, appear to have ears tuned to the frequency of waves rolling ashore. Some species can take hours to reply to each other. “Had we had a bit more expansive imaginations, we might have caught this earlier,” said Karen Bakker, a fellow at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study who wrote about turtle vocalization in her book, “The Sounds of Life.” “We’re looking for sounds in the frequencies we can hear,” she added. “We’re looking for sounds at a temporal rate that is as quick as we speak. And so we have blinders on our ears.” As a group, turtles are more ancient than dinosaurs, and are central to many cultures’ creation stories. Yet today they rank among the species at most risk of extinction. Nearly three in five species may vanish, according to a recent assessment, with climate change, habitat loss and hunting posing risks. The Amazon once teemed with so many turtles, it was difficult to navigate. While Indigenous people have long relied on turtles for meat, the arrival of Europeans accelerated their decline. Colonists rounded up the turtles as a ready source of fresh meat. Missionaries declared turtles counted as fish, so Catholics could eat them during Lent. Fat from their eggs was rendered for street lighting in Brazil and cooking fat in Europe. The species still faces serious threats. A boom in dam construction threatens to cull their numbers. And a continued appetite for turtle meat sustains a lucrative illegal trade, where middlemen can buy an arrau for $50 and sell it downriver for $450. Residents of Brazil’s Amazonas state alone, according to one estimate, consume about 1.7 million turtles and tortoises every year. Conservationists are pushing to have the International Union for Conservation of Nature declare the species endangered. Researchers are now racing to count how many arrau turtles remain in the wild. In September and October, Ferrara and other Wildlife Conservation Society scientists conducted a turtle census along the Guaporé River, which forms the border between Brazil and Bolivia. With flying drones fixed with infrared cameras, the researchers counted the nesting site, which they say is probably the largest concentration of any freshwater turtle species in the world. The team is still analyzing the images, but it estimates that a staggering 80,000 giant turtles nested along the river. Over the past couple of weeks, millions of hatchlings have crawled out of their shells and scurried into the river. “We need to know its biology, its population,” said Omar Torrico, a biologist and drone pilot with the group. “Maybe climate change is going to be one of the problems for the future. And so we think assessing the population is one of the most important things to know.” Ferrara now wants to figure out if noise pollution drowns out turtle chatter. “We can observe with those impacts with the other types of animals, like for whales or dolphins. We know that the ship noise can impact their communication.” But for her, the real fight is not in the field, but in the cities, convincing regular Brazilians to refrain from eating turtle meat. For her, changing the minds of just a few folks would be a victory. “What I want is to see two or three people stop.” This article is part of Animalia, a column exploring the strange and fascinating world of animals and the ways in which we appreciate, imperil and depend on them."
+"The effort to restore the Chesapeake Bay has made little overall progress the past two years, with improvements in some categories offset by stagnation or deterioration in others, a new report has found. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s biennial State of the Bay report found that oyster harvests hit record numbers in the previous two years in Maryland and Virginia, and the bay’s low-oxygen “dead zone” was among the smallest recorded since monitoring began 38 years ago — and yet the population of blue crabs plummeted to such worrisome levels that the organization suggested reassessing how crabs are managed. Meanwhile, long-standing efforts to protect the bay’s wetlands by creating buffers and planting trees have languished, with several states falling behind goals as tens of thousands of acres of open land in the watershed have been plowed under for urban and suburban development. “I know that some of this news is frustrating to some, and I will count myself in this list,” Hilary Harp Falk, the bay foundation’s president and chief executive, said during a news briefing. “While we’ve made significant progress, far too much pollution still reaches our waterways.” The environmental nonprofit’s report is yet another sign that state and federal efforts to restore the bay by achieving several measurable targets by 2025 will probably fall short. The report assesses 13 indicators of the bay’s health in three categories — pollution, habitat and fisheries — and grades each of them on a scale of 100. In 2022, the overall score remained at 32, as in 2020, with three indicators higher, three lower and seven unchanged. A perfect score would theoretically reflect what the bay was like when Europeans arrived more than 400 years ago, before industrialization and development, the report says. Hitting 70 would be considered a sign of restoration. Levels of phosphorous and nitrogen — two naturally occurring chemicals that feed algae blooms and create huge dead zones in the bay — fell below 10-year averages in 2021, thanks largely to upgrades of wastewater treatment plants. But the report says more must be done to reduce these pollutants by limiting agricultural and urban-suburban runoff, an effort that will require additional government funding and cooperation from farmers, including small family farms in the watershed. Levels of durable industrial pollutants such as mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls in the Chesapeake remain about the same, according to the report. But the detection of newer and less understood pollutants in the water, such as PFAS — so-called “forever chemicals” composed of per- and polyfluoroalkyl compounds — pose additional problems. Global warming has complicated rescue efforts further, as rising sea levels inundate wetlands and more intense storms rip up underwater grasses that shelter aquatic life and oxygenate the water, the report says. Warmer water also holds less oxygen, a phenomenon documented in a recent study that has offset the benefits of some restoration efforts, said Beth McGee, the bay foundation’s director of science and agricultural policy. The report says several strategies that could clean the water have been shown to work, but regional governments need to do more to implement them. One of the most cost-effective is planting trees in buffer zones along streams and wetlands, McGee said. Trees shade stream beds, cooling the water, and they absorb carbon from the atmosphere to reduce global warming. Yet, McGee told reporters, the bay states are “woefully behind” on their targets for forested buffers. The foundation’s report comes as two members of Maryland’s congressional delegation hope to spotlight the nation’s largest estuary and incorporate the watershed into the national park system by creating the Chesapeake National Recreation Area."
+"The Biden administration on Friday imposed a rule expanding the definition of waterways that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has authority to regulate, a move that reverses a Trump-era change and seeks to overcome nearly a decade of challenges to EPA powers, including a pending Supreme Court case. The EPA said its rule strikes a balance it hoped would protect waterways as well as commerce, returning its Waters of the United States regulatory framework to something resembling its state before it became a focus of political debate in 2015. That year, the Obama administration significantly and controversially widened the scope of the Clean Water Act to cover even ephemeral streams and ponds; Trump dramatically weakened EPA’s water pollution authority with a 2019 rule of his own. In broadening EPA’s powers once again, Administrator Michael Regan said the agency aimed “to deliver a durable definition of WOTUS that safeguards our nation’s waters, strengthens economic opportunity, and protects people’s health while providing greater certainty for farmers, ranchers, and landowners.” Environmentalists say the rule is central to efforts to restore the health of impaired waterways and fragile wildlife habitats because it gives federal and state governments powers to limit the flow of pollutants, including livestock waste, construction runoff and industrial effluent. The regulation determines how broadly the government can enforce the Clean Water Act, the landmark 1972 law credited with gradual, though sometimes inconsistent, improvement to the health of polluted and degraded rivers and lakes. But the rule has been a flash point because advocates for industry and property rights say it is overly costly and impractical when applied to wetlands that can be difficult to define or streams that run only for part of the year. Friday’s announcement did not quell criticisms, with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce suggesting the Biden rule would only add to regulatory uncertainty and unpredictability it said could hinder the planning and construction of major government-funded infrastructure projects. And although the Biden rule is less expansive than Obama’s, Republicans quickly attacked it as onerous. “The rule announced today is the latest round of regulatory overreach regarding what waters are subject to regulation under the Clean Water Act, and will unfairly burden America’s farmers, ranchers, miners, infrastructure builders, and landowners,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said in a statement. Jon Devine, director of federal water policy for the Natural Resources Defense Council, meanwhile called the Biden rule “sensible, good-government action.” The environmental group and others estimated that Trump’s regulatory regime would remove federal protections from roughly half the nation’s wetlands and at least 1.19 million miles of rain-dependent streams and rivers. Biden’s rule would bring much of those wetlands and waterways back under EPA’s regulatory authority, though it would not go so far as Obama’s 2015 rule. The Biden administration said it would redefine EPA oversight as covering “traditional navigable waters,” including interstate waterways and upstream water sources that influence the health and quality of those waterways. The definition is based on legal framework established before 2015, with adjustments based on court rulings and newer science, EPA said. The Department of the Army joined EPA in finalizing the new rule because the Army Corps of Engineers has authority over any actions filling regulated bodies of water with dredge spoils or other materials. “The rule’s clear and supportable definition of waters of the United States will allow for more efficient and effective implementation and provide the clarity long desired by farmers, industry, environmental organizations, and other stakeholders,” Michael L. Connor, the Army’s assistant secretary for civil works, said in a statement. The Biden administration’s action comes ahead of an expected Supreme Court ruling that could limit EPA authority. The Supreme Court heard a case in October concerning a home that Idaho couple Michael and Chantell Sackett planned to build but that EPA said would disturb wetlands. Members of the court’s conservative majority raised concerns about the law’s broad reach over development on private property. The new Biden rule does not change EPA’s approach toward such cases, in which the agency said its authority applied because the wetlands are next to a large lake. A court ruling that narrows the agency’s power could require some regulatory revisions, but might not otherwise upend Biden’s approach to water pollution, said Kevin Minoli, an attorney at Alston & Bird who served as a career attorney at EPA under four presidents. The rule could nonetheless invite new challenges. It expands EPA’s power over isolated wetlands and other bodies of water if the agency can argue they serve important functions such as storing floodwaters or providing habitat and food resources, he said. A 2001 Supreme Court ruling said the government could not use the presence of migratory birds to assert that the Clean Water Act applies to isolated bodies of water. “This rule brings them fully back into play,” Minoli said."
+"Arizona’s newly expanded water finance board had met only three times. The state authority had no director. Nor had it made a public call for water projects to boost Arizona’s dwindling water supplies from the Colorado River. But earlier this week the board was suddenly facing a vote on whether to support a $5 billion project led by an Israeli company to build a plant to desalinate ocean water in Mexico and pump it 200 miles across the border — and through a national monument — to ease the state’s water crisis. Arizona and Mexico have been talking for years about removing salt from water in the Sea of Cortez, but this plan was new to many, and the rush for the state’s blessing in the waning days of Republican Gov. Doug Ducey’s administration worried some in the state. “I’m sorry but this reeks of backroom deals,” State Sen. Lisa Otondo (D) told the board during its meeting on Tuesday. The accelerated debate also reflected the urgency of the water crisis facing the American Southwest. With water levels in key reservoirs approaching dangerously low thresholds — as a historic drought extends into its third decade — many officials want to import water into the Colorado River basin from elsewhere. “The risk here clearly, in this case, outweighs the rush,” Andy Tobin, a member of the water finance board and a former speaker in the Arizona House of Representatives, said during Tuesday’s meeting. “We’ve got folks who are running out of water.” IDE Technologies, an Israel-based company that has built desalination plants around the world, claims it can deliver an oasis of up to 1 million acre-feet of water to the drought-parched state — an amount roughly equal to what central and southern Arizona took from the Colorado River this year. During its presentation to the Water Infrastructure Finance Authority of Arizona, two representatives from the developer, plus a Goldman Sachs official involved in financing for the project, presented their vision for the largest desalination plant in the world. The representatives said the project would be entirely financed by private money but they want Arizona to pledge to buy the water at an unspecified future price. “We need a long-term commitment that when we deliver water to you, you will buy it,” said Erez Hoter-Ishay, manager of the Arizona Water Project Solution Team, as the IDE-led consortium is called. “Simple as that.” On Tuesday, the water finance board voted unanimously approve a nonbinding resolution to continue to study the project. IDE said the plant would be built near Puerto Peñasco, along the Sea of Cortez in the Mexican state of Sonora. The roughly $5 billion first phase would involve building a plant that sucks in seawater and filters it through membranes to remove the salt. Then it would be pumped through a 200-mile pipeline north, crossing into the United States at the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, an international biosphere reserve, before following a highway toward Maricopa County, where it could join canals that serve Phoenix and Tucson. The first phase, a single pipeline, could carry about 300,000 acre-feet of water to Arizona and could be operational by 2027, with future pipes supplying up to 1 million acre-feet, the IDE representatives said. An acre-foot equals 326,000 gallons, or enough to cover an acre of land in a foot of water. Environmental groups have raised concerns that the plant, which would pump brine back into the Sea of Cortez, could damage marine habitat, and the pipeline could disrupt the sensitive desert in the national monument. Jennifer Martin, a program manager with the Sierra Club in Arizona, told the board that the state should be focused on conserving water, moving away from water-intensive crops such as alfalfa, and reining in rapid growth, rather than shifting the environmental burden onto Mexico and future generations. “Sierra Club urges you to put the brakes on this expensive, energy-intensive and environmentally-harmful proposal now and not to rush it through in the waning days of 2022 and the Ducey administration,” she said. Arizona and Mexico for the past several years have been discussing another possible desalination approach — where Arizona would pay for a plant across the border in exchange for taking a portion of Mexico’s allotment from the Colorado River, said Sarah Porter, director of Arizona State University’s Kyl Center for Water Policy. The cross-border pipeline plan “is a little bit out of left field.” Porter said she’s not sure there would be a market for buying such a large quantity of water in Arizona, even with the shortages on the Colorado River. “We don’t need to run out and find another couple hundred thousand or 500,000 acre-feet of water,” she said. “It’s not at all clear that that level of demand will develop.” During Tuesday’s meeting, some board members said they were surprised to be considering such a major infrastructure project after first hearing about it just a few days earlier. The expanded board was created by legislation earlier this year to administer a $1 billion fund for projects to boost the state’s water supply. State Rep. Reginald Bolding (D), a nonvoting member of the board, questioned how IDE even knew to present its proposal to the board. “We haven’t hired an executive director or staff. To my knowledge we haven’t put out any calls for proposals,” he said. “How did you know to put in a proposal for this agreement before we even set up the infrastructure of the board?” Hoter-Ishay said the company has been meeting with officials in Arizona and Mexico for more than three years to develop the project and wants the state’s commitment before starting a federal environmental review. Earlier this year, Ducey toured an IDE desalination plant during a visit to Israel. State Rep. Russell Bowers, the Republican speaker of Arizona’s House of Representatives, told the water board he’d been aware of the project but had signed a nondisclosure agreement, so he couldn’t discuss it. C.J. Karamargin, a spokesman for Ducey, said the governor has been outspoken about the state’s water crisis and the urgent need to address it. “Arizona is facing a water emergency. We are in a dire situation,” he said. Karamargin noted that an IDE desalination plant in Carlsbad, Calif., has been supplying drinking water to residents in San Diego County for years and said the green soccer fields during the World Cup in Qatar came from the same technology. “It's not only a game-changing amount of water. It’s a game-changing approach,” he said. “It is very good news indeed that a company that has the track record that IDE apparently has is interested in coming here and taking this on.” The project would need approvals in both the United States and Mexico. The developer submitted a right-of-way application for the water pipeline to the Bureau of Land Management on Wednesday, beginning what promises to be a lengthy environmental review process. IDE’s presentation was vague on the cost of their water. Hoter-Ishay cited some estimates from last year that valued an acre-foot of water at $2,200 to $3,300 but stressed this was “of course subject to engineering.” For 300,000 acre-feet of water, that range could mean up to nearly $1 billion per year. “No one can value the cost of water,” Hoter-Ishay said. “When you don’t have water, you don’t have growth, you don’t have life.”"
+"LAS VEGAS — The water managers responsible for divvying up the Colorado River’s dwindling supply  are painting a bleak portrait of a river in crisis,  warning that unprecedented shortages could be coming to farms and cities in the West and that old rules governing how water is shared will have to change. State and federal authorities say that years of overconsumption are colliding with the stark realities of climate change, pushing Colorado River reservoirs to such dangerously low levels that the major dams on the river could soon become obstacles to delivering water to millions in the Southwest. The federal government has called on the seven Western states that rely on Colorado River water to cut usage by 2 to 4 million acre-feet — up to a third of the river’s annual average flow — to try to avoid such dire outcomes. But the states have so far failed to reach a voluntary agreement on how to make that happen, and the Interior Department may impose unilateral cuts in coming months. “Without immediate and decisive actions, elevations at Lake Powell and Mead could force the system to stop functioning,” Tommy Beaudreau, the Interior Department’s deputy secretary, told a conference of Colorado River officials here Friday. “That’s an intolerable condition that we won’t allow to happen.” Many state water officials fear they are already running out of time. Ted Cooke, general manager of the Central Arizona Project, which delivers Colorado River water to central Arizona, said that “there’s a real possibility of an effective dead pool” within the next two years. That means water levels could fall so far that the Glen Canyon and Hoover dams — which created the reservoirs at Lake Powell and Lake Mead — would become an obstacle to delivering water to cities and farms in Arizona, California and Mexico. “We may not be able to get water past either of the two dams in the major reservoirs for certain parts of the year,” Cooke said. “This is on our doorstep.” The looming crisis has energized this annual gathering of water bureaucrats, the occasional cowboy hat visible among the standing-room-only crowd inside Caesars Palace. It’s the first time the conference has sold out, organizers said, and the specter of mass shortages looms as state water managers, tribes and the federal government meet to hash out how to cut usage on an unprecedented scale. “I can feel the anxiety and the uncertainty in this room and in the basin,” said Camille Calimlim Touton, commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation. The negotiations will ultimately have to weigh cuts in rapidly growing urban areas against those in farming communities that produce much of the country’s supply of winter vegetables. In the complex world of water rights, farms often have priority over cities because they’ve been using river water longer. Unlike in past negotiations, water managers now expect that cuts will affect even the most senior water users. The states of the Upper Colorado River Basin — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — say it is difficult to specify how much they can cut because they are less dependent on allocations from reservoirs and more on variable flows of the river. The lower basin states — California, Arizona and Nevada — also consume far more water. “In the Upper Basin, we can say we’ll take 80 percent, and Mother Nature gives us 30,” said Gene Shawcroft, chair of the Colorado River Authority of Utah. “Those are some of the challenges we’re wrestling with.” The federal government set an August deadline for the states to reach a voluntary agreement on cuts, but that deadline passed with no deal. Some state officials here blame the Biden administration. When it became clear this summer that the federal government wasn’t ready to impose unilateral cuts, the urgency for a deal evaporated, they said. Now the Biden administration has launched a new environmental review for distributing Colorado River supplies in low-water scenarios. Water managers hope to have more clarity on what states can offer by the end of January. By summer, the federal government is expected to define its authority to impose unilateral cuts. “Unfortunately, it’s a year later than we need it,” Cooke said in an interview. Across the West, drought has already led to a record number of wells running dry in California, forced huge swaths of farmland to lie fallow and required homeowners to limit how much they water their lawns. This week, a major water provider in Southern California declared a regional drought emergency and called on those areas that rely on Colorado River water to reduce their imported supplies. The problems on the river have been building for years. Over the past two decades, during the most severe drought for the region in centuries, Colorado River basin states have taken more water out of the river than it has produced, draining the reservoirs that act as a buffer during hard times. The average annual flow of the river during that period has been 13.4 million acre-feet — while users are pulling out an average of 15 million acre-feet per year, said James Prairie, research and modeling group chief at the Bureau of Reclamation. In 1999, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the two largest reservoirs in the country, held 47.6 million acre-feet of water. That has fallen to about 13.1 million acre-feet, or 26 percent of their capacity. An acre-foot equals 326,000 gallons, or enough to cover an acre of land in a foot of water. Federal officials have projected that, as soon as July, the level in Lake Powell could fall to the point where the hydroelectric plant inside the Glen Canyon Dam could no longer produce power, and then keep falling so that it would become impossible to deliver the quantities of water that Southwest states rely on. Water managers say such a “dead pool” is also possible on Lake Mead within two years. “These reservoirs have served us for 23 years, but we’re now pushing them to their limits,” Prairie said. David Palumbo, the Bureau of Reclamation’s deputy commissioner of operations, stressed that the effects of climate change — a hotter and drier West, where the ground absorbs more runoff from mountain snow before it reaches the reservoirs — means the past is no longer a useful guide to the future of the river. Even high snow years are now seeing low runoff, he said. “That runoff efficiency is critical to be aware of and, frankly, to be afraid of,” he said. Water managers say cuts are likely to hit hard in Arizona and California, where major farming regions consume big portions of the available supply. These states, which get water after it passes through Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam, also face the greatest risk if the reservoirs fall to dangerous levels, said John Entsminger, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. “If you can’t get water through Hoover Dam, that’s the water supply for 25 million Americans,” he said."
+"LYTTON, British Columbia — Owen Collings stood on the far side of the river and watched his village burn. The howling fire tornadoes whipped by 40 mph winds. The explosions as parked cars and propane tanks erupted. From the moment the flames torched his own home on the south end of the village to when they engulfed the new mayor’s white-picket fence on the north side took less than an hour. “It was roaring like a monstrous animal,"" he said. And then Lytton went quiet. It’s been nearly a year and a half since the 249 residents of this quaint hamlet at the confluence of the Thompson and Fraser rivers became a symbol of the dangers of a warming world. During a North American heat wave last year that killed more than 1,000 people, Lytton endured the hottest temperature ever recorded in Canada, 121 degrees. The next day, the town burned to the ground. The experience of Lytton, which has yet to rebuild, shows how adapting to climate threats, and its slow and arduous recovery phase, can inflict its own wounds. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked Lytton five months after the fire when he pledged to cap Canada’s fossil fuel emissions. “What happened in Lytton can and has and will happen anywhere,” he told world leaders in Glasgow last year. British Columbia’s then-premier John Horgan called on making Lytton a case study in “how we build a community for the future.” But rebuilding has barely begun. The downtown remains a fenced-off disaster zone, while many of the documents needed to guide construction got torched in the blaze. And many residents — including several of the village’s newly elected leaders — have grown deeply frustrated with the pace of recovery. They say the effort to make Lytton a climate change poster-child — a carbon neutral community with solar-powered sidewalks and homes built to exacting fire-resistant standards to gird against the next blaze — has shifted the focus from returning people to their homes. “We’ve heard enough about Lytton being a model community,” Denise O’Connor, who was elected mayor in October, told a meeting of the village council this year. “Lytton is not a piece of land that’s ready to be newly developed. ... It’s a village of people who lost everything in that fire.” Some towns wiped out by natural disasters have chosen to come back green, such as the small farming community in Kansas destroyed by a tornado two years ago that rebuilt with wind power and energy-efficient buildings. But the time or expense required for environmentally friendly upgrades can give communities pause. Earlier this year, the city council in Louisville, Colo., which lost more than 500 homes in the Marshall Fire, voted to make its ambitious green building codes optional. “In the wake of trauma, community residents have a strong desire to rebuild as they were before, but this limits opportunities for reducing future risk,"" noted a report last year by UC Berkeley and others on rebuilding after wildfires in California. In Lytton, a group of citizens grew impatient with the lack of progress on rebuilding, as well as what they saw as cumbersome and costly building requirements. Some of the newest members of the village council were vocal critics of their predecessors’ decisions over the past year. “I would like to say that you should be ashamed of your behavior but I doubt you will be,” outgoing council member Lilliane Graie said during her last meeting in October, accusing her successors of “harassing and attacking this council for 15 months.” “And this incoming council, I hope you learn very quickly the mess that you have made,” she said. O’Connor won office after helping lead the charge for a swifter recovery. She was a happily-retired elementary school principal on the afternoon in June 2021 when she happened to learn, scrolling through Facebook, that a fire was raging just down the street. She had time to grab her mother’s wedding ring, her insurance papers, and a toiletry bag before she fled. Her home, built in the 1930s and overlooking the Fraser River, burned along with more than 200 other houses and buildings in Lytton and surrounding areas. For months, O’Connor lived in motels or bed-and-breakfasts with her daughter’s family. She returned in November to her childhood home — on a hillside above downtown that was spared in the fire. Within days, flooding from an atmospheric river washed out the only highway to Lytton, isolating the remaining residents even further. As months passed with little progress on the burn site, O’Connor and other residents began to feel dismayed with the lack of action or information about the recovery plans of the village and provincial governments. She wrote long Facebook posts at 75 days, six months, nine months and more than a year after the fire, documenting her frustrations navigating the fog of bureaucracy, the slow pace of environmental testing and cleanup, a stalled building permit process, lack of access to her property and how one of the first steps the village took was to propose making Lytton a net-zero emissions community. “After the fire, I was so desperate for information, I just started writing letters,” O’Connor said. “I guess I’m vocal. And people encouraged me to just keep asking the questions and sharing the information."" O’Connor volunteered to run the resilience center, a hub for relief workers and residents to get updates, which operated out of a room in a school that survived the blaze. She started a petition to get the provincial government to help the village, whose five-person council had just three members for a period after the fire. The town, just seven blocks long, lost its grocery store, fire station, hotel, two museums, swimming pool, coffee shop, bank, police station, hospital, pharmacy and village office, which meant most of Lytton’s historical records and documents got incinerated. “One of the biggest challenges that we have was the fact that everything burned,"" said Mike Baker, the village’s chief administrative officer. “So all of our bylaws were destroyed, all of our policies and procedures and everything.” Baker was sitting in a yellow construction trailer owned by Matcon Environmental, the prime contractor hired by the province to lead the cleanup, where he works when he visits Lytton. On that chilly November day, he’d left his home in Salmon Arm at 4:45 a.m. and drove 170 miles to reach Lytton by 8 a.m. Other village employees work out of a rented cabin nearly 30 miles away. Council meetings are held in a hotel in Kamloops, a two-hour drive, and broadcast on Zoom. Baker agreed the cleanup has been a “slow go” but he attributed that to the painstaking work of testing and removing toxic materials from the soils. Workers have had to scrape away up to a meter of topsoil from some properties to clear remnants of oils, metals, arsenic, asbestos and other contaminants, according to Collings, a village liaison to the recovery effort. Lytton also sits within the Nlaka’pamux First Nation territory, and there is ongoing archaeological work looking for artifacts and remnants of Indigenous settlements that date back thousands of years. Throughout the burn site, First Nation archaeologists and their assistants meticulously filter and sift mountains of dirt looking for artifacts. As soil removal and cataloguing continue, one of the biggest debates is about what Lytton should become once it can start to rebuild. There are frequent wildfires in the semiarid, pine-forested mountains around Lytton, and former mayor Jan Polderman and other former village leaders explored how to put Lytton on the forefront of fire resistance and renewable energy, as a way to attract and retain residents. One of those ideas was to install hardened solar panels in sidewalks to help power the village. The technology, created by a Vancouver company, had been tested at a university in Kamloops and was embraced by Polderman and others. But the new village leadership questioned its costs and practicality. The outgoing council, in its last meeting, also adopted new requirements for all new homes that curtailed trees, vegetation, and flammable items in residents’ yards, while mandating specific widths of doors and hallways and other features inside. The rules make it more difficult to have propane barbecues, woodpiles, wooden lawn furniture, mobile homes, sheds or other items residents say they’ve been accustomed to having. “If you’re making it fire resistant ... then what is the point of arguing with that?"" said Richard Forrest, a resident who chairs the commission of the Lytton Museum and Archives, which also burned in the fire. Canada’s Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction helped develop the village’s fire-safety bylaws. At a presentation to council members in January, the group’s executive director, Paul Kovacs, said Lytton remains at extreme risk for wildfires. He said the new building standards would cost about 5,000 Canadian dollars more per home, but the long-term benefits would dwarf the costs. “We had extraordinary impacts of climate change,” Kovacs said. “This is what a building bylaw looks to confront.” New research on last summer’s record-breaking heat wave has shown how the warming atmosphere — and the lack of soil moisture and changes to the jet stream — make such extreme temperatures more likely in the future. A study in Nature Climate Change projected that such heat waves could happen every 10 years in a world that’s warmed 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to preindustrial levels. The world could reach that threshold by 2050, according to several projections. But in Lytton, rebuilding to cutting-edge fire-resistant standards has faced pushback from new council members, who have begun to revisit them. “Nobody’s against being fire smart, everybody wants a safer community,” said Jennifer Thoss, a teacher and newly elected council member who lost five homes in the fire that she rented to tenants. She described the fire safety restrictions, however, as “too onerous. I’ve heard the word draconian. I’ve heard punitive."" Thoss said none of her tenants, including the elderly, have quality or stable housing. They’re living in motels, basements, and trailers — waiting for rebuilding to begin. “It’s really dire,” she said. “This is past the point of having any common sense. I hope I can help expedite things.” Despite more than 115 million Canadian dollars pledged by the provincial and federal government for recovery, village officials are also worried about costly improvements to the village, as they are required to set aside in reserves the depreciated value of any assets — so they can be replaced in the future. With such a small community and tax base, that’s not easy. Lorna Fandrich, the biggest employer in the area, is also eager to accelerate the recovery and give people more freedom to rebuild how they want. After the fire, she was so desperate for services to return to Lytton that she buttonholed a bank manager in Kamloops while making a deposit. Soon a red Scotiabank trailer was plopped onto her property at the Kumsheen Rafting Resort, which Fandrich owns with her husband. The family suffered deeply in the fire. Her two sons’ homes, her daughter’s coffee shop, and the Lytton Chinese History Museum that Fandrich opened in 2017, with its collection of 1,600 artifacts commemorating Chinese contributions during the gold rush and railroad eras — all burned down. But what she misses most now is the web of personal connections in a close-knit community. Stopping to talk to neighbors on the way to the post office. Meeting friends for coffee. Holiday celebrations and festivals. She knows, as she put it, “the face of Lytton will change,” although she hopes it keeps some of its old flavor. She believes some housing regulations are too strict and discourage some people from wanting to return or rebuild. “People think that they’re forcing this on us because we’re a model community,” she said. “We just want a community.”"
+"Saving whales is probably a good way to save the planet, according to a group of scientists who examined the animals’ potential to act as a carbon sink — something that helps reduce carbon in the Earth’s atmosphere by absorbing more carbon than it releases. Many nature-based solutions to fighting climate change have focused on the ability of trees and wetlands to capture and store atmospheric carbon dioxide. But in a paper published Thursday in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, a group of biologists explores the idea that whales can influence the amount of carbon in the air and in the ocean, potentially contributing to the overall reduction of atmospheric carbon dioxide. “Understanding the role of whales in the carbon cycle is a dynamic and emerging field that may benefit both marine conservation and climate-change strategies,” wrote the authors, led by Heidi Pearson, a biologist from the University of Alaska Southeast. The ocean is by far the world’s largest carbon sink, having absorbed about 40 percent of all carbon dioxide emitted from the burning of fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution. Marine biologists recently discovered that whales, particularly great whales, also play an important role in capturing carbon from the atmosphere. They can weigh up to 28 tons and live over 100 years, the researchers wrote, and their size and long lives mean they accumulate more carbon in their bodies than other small animals. When they die, they sink to the bottom of the ocean, taking carbon out of the atmosphere for centuries. “Whales consume up to 4 percent of their massive body weight in krill and photosynthetic plankton every day. For the blue whale, this equates to nearly 8,000 pounds,” the scientists wrote. “When they finish digesting their food, their excrement is rich in important nutrients that help these krill and plankton flourish, aiding in increased photosynthesis and carbon storage from the atmosphere.” A 2019 report published by the International Monetary Fund estimated that a great whale sequesters 33 tons of carbon dioxide each year on average, while a tree absorbs only up to 48 pounds a year — a figure the report’s authors used to suggest that conservationists could be better off saving whales than planting trees. The new paper explores how a recovery in whale populations to pre-whaling levels — between 4 million and 5 million, from slightly more than 1.3 million in 2019, according to the IMF report — could increase the animals’ ability to act as a carbon sink. (Commercial hunting, the main reason whales’ numbers have dwindled, has decreased their populations by 81 percent, the researchers said.) Among a number of whale species, the amount of carbon that was being sequestered “jumps up by one or two orders of magnitude” with a recovery in the whale population, said Stephen Wing, a co-author of the paper and a marine science professor at the University of Otago in New Zealand. The numbers are “relatively small” considering the scope of the global climate challenge, “but relative to the promises that some nations make on reducing CO2 emissions, they’re relatively large,” he added. “We’re kind of hind casting and saying the recovery could achieve pre-whaling numbers because the system has previously sustained that number of whales,” Wing said. Whales, along with a number of ocean animals, are vulnerable to climate change, as rising temperatures drive them into new habitats. They rank among the world’s most endangered marine mammals, including the North Atlantic right whale, only about 340 of which remain. Whales are still being killed in startlingly high numbers, years after commercial whaling was banned, in waters brimming with ships that strike them and ropes that entangle them. Offshore wind turbines — part of President Biden’s clean energy agenda — are also poised to encroach on their habitat as the administration tries to balance tackling global warming with protecting wildlife. “Whale recovery has the potential for long-term self-sustained enhancement of the ocean carbon sink,” the authors wrote. “The full carbon dioxide reduction role of great whales (and other organisms) will only be realized through robust conservation and management interventions that directly promote population increases.” The authors were cautious on the math behind including whale carbon in any wider climate-change mitigation strategies just yet, however, as there are still many scientific unknowns. They argued that recent studies valuing the carbon contribution of a single blue whale at $1.4 million “are based on assumptions beyond our understanding of whale ecology and biological oceanography.” Dino Grandoni and Tatiana Schlossberg contributed to this report."
+"The bison couldn’t crack the ice. As Christmastime wound down last year, unseasonably warm temperatures and heavy rain in Alaska’s Delta Junction melted snow and ice, which quickly refroze due to subzero temperatures near the surface. Usually, the bovine can shovel through snow with their heads and horns, but the frozen snow and ice persisted like a layer of cement atop the grasses and plants they need to feed on. And the bison couldn’t get through. About 180 bison, or a third of the Delta herd, starved to death. Those that survived were skinny and in poor form. Bison season in the Delta Junction area, one of the most popular hunting seasons in Alaska, was cut short from six months to two weeks. It was one of several exceptional events the Arctic experienced over the past year, all intensified by a warmer world. A typhoon, formed in unusually warm waters in the North Pacific, hit the western coast of Alaska as the state’s strongest storm in decades. A late heat wave in Greenland caused unprecedented melt in September, which can contribute to sea level rise. Despite decent winter snow in Alaska, the rapid onset of summer created devastating conditions for wildfires that burned a record million acres by June. The recent events are a continuation of a decades-long destabilization in the Arctic region, researchers said in the 2022 Arctic Report Card, a new federal assessment of the region released Tuesday. Since the first report card was issued in 2006, researchers have documented a decline in the polar environment, with loss from sea ice to wildlife. As time goes on, many of the effects of a warmer, wetter and stormier Arctic are coming into a clearer focus. “As we see changes in the Arctic, its connectivity to the rest of the world only increases,” said Matthew Druckenmiller, the lead editor of this year’s assessment and a research scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center. “We will continue to see dramatic changes that will not only transform ecosystems but that will more and more highlight the winners and losers. And I think our context will be a lot more losers than winners.” Here are key findings from this year’s 133-page report, including additions on rainfall trends and observations by Arctic Indigenous people. Arctic annual surface-air temperatures from October 2021 to September 2022 were the sixth warmest on record. The ranking continues a disturbing trend: The past seven years in the Arctic have been the hottest seven years since 1900. The warmer temperatures are causing major shifts in ecological and landscaping processes in the Arctic. Summer is coming earlier and winter is starting later, the report found, decreasing the length of the snow season. For example, snow cover in June across the region has declined around 20 percent in recent decades. Even though winter snow accumulation was above average this year, warmer temperatures are causing it to melt earlier. The report, which used a reference period from 1991 to 2020, found overall snow cover was below average, which tracks with trends observed over the past 15 years. The earlier snowmelt and the hot, dry conditions in Alaska were a critical factor in the widespread wildfires this summer. More than 2 million acres burned across the entire state by July. Wildfire smoke worsened air quality, reducing visibility at the Fairbanks airport. Greenland also experienced an extended warm season. The first day of September usually indicates the end of the melt season, but a heat wave in September caused temperatures to rise around 36 degrees Fahrenheit higher than normal for this time of the year. Ice melted across more than a third of the ice sheet, marking Greenland’s largest September melt in four decades of records. Later that month, remnants of Hurricane Fiona in the region caused additional melting. The report stated the September melt events are “challenging how researchers define the Greenland summer melt season.” Greenland experienced an overall loss of ice for the 25th consecutive year. Warmer temperatures are also increasing the amount of rain across the Arctic. In a hotter world, heavy precipitation events are becoming 7 percent more intense for every 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit of warming. The Arctic experienced wetter-than-normal conditions for the much of the past year, part of a longer trend. According to the report, Arctic precipitation has significantly increased since the 1950s across all seasons and data sets. Druckenmiller said the sudden, extreme rain last December that led to the starvation of the numerous bison was a “really terrible example” of how the increased rainfall can affect communities. In 2022, increased rainfall was also apparent in eastern Greenland, Svalbard, Norway and the central Arctic Ocean. “We are seeing increased precipitation across the Arctic within all seasons … That not only means total accumulation, but it also means longer periods of wet conditions,” Druckenmiller said. John Walsh, the lead author of the new chapter on precipitation, said researchers don’t know if storms in the region are becoming more frequent but said they could be getting wetter. Arctic storms are passing over warmer and more open waters, which allows for more water to evaporate into a storm system. In September, Typhoon Merbok brought hurricane-force winds and destructive storm surge to the western coast of Alaska. The typhoon flooded communities near the Bering Sea and damaged homes, hunting camps and boats. Satellite data showed numerous summer storms also helped stir nutrients in the water and created algal blooms, which can contaminate or clog the waters for marine life. From 2003 to 2022, most Arctic regions experienced an increase in ocean plankton blooms. Warm Arctic temperatures are continuing to decrease the thickness and area of sea ice. In 2022, similar to the year before, the sea levels were much lower than the long-term average. The decades-long loss of ice has boosted ship traffic in the region — less ice blocking travel paths means more available routes for vessels. This summer, the Northern Sea Route and Northwest Passage were able to be open due to the low ice concentrations, making travel easier for tourists and research vessels. The authors of the assessment found ship traffic has been increasing from 2009 to 2018, most significantly from ships traveling from the Pacific Ocean through the Bering Strait and Beaufort. However, the increased ship traffic can disturb the Arctic ecosystem and bring unwanted human impacts, such as oil spills. In a new feature, this year’s report included observations from Indigenous Alaskan communities that describe changes to hunting practices in recent decades. Inupiaq and Inuit people share on-the-ground observations from their cultures’ centuries of life experience and knowledge of the land. “When you have an oral history that is still living 500 generations later, there are things that science and scientists, which is under 200 years old, could learn from,” said Jackie Qatalina Schaeffer, a co-author of the report and an Inupiaq from Kotzebue, Alaska. The sea ice retreat forced hunters to travel as far as 100 miles from their homes to find walruses during the spring harvest. The thinning of sea ice has also made seal hunting dangerous in some communities. Indigenous hunters have doubled the number of days spent hunting bowhead whales in open water in Utqiaġvik, Nuiqsut and Kaktovik but face higher waves with less sea ice. The heightened waves pose a larger risk to hunters and are pushing some villages to buy larger and stronger boats, which have become more expensive to fuel, in part due to the war in Ukraine. The bowhead whales are now migrating earlier in spring and later in the fall, shifting the hunting season for some crews as well. Communities in the Bering and Chukchi seas also reported substantial die-offs of sea birds, such as ducks and puffins, likely due to starvation and low sea ice in the areas. “We’re not a reactive culture,” said Schaeffer, who is also director of climate initiatives for the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium. “We plan and we adapt and then we sustain. And that’s how we survive.”"
+"SAN PEDRO DE CASTA, Peru — On a mountainside high above Peru’s capital, Javier Obispo pauses from the backbreaking work of renovating an amuna. The abandoned irrigation dike distributed water before Europeans came to South America. With Lima’s water supply under increasing pressure, the 42-year-old veterinary technician has been working with other villagers here to bring the ancient technology back to life. The steep Andean slopes, dotted with small cactuses wielding outsize thorns, tower around us, a parched shade of light brown. Climate change is making itself felt. “Twenty years ago, the soil would be damp. There used to be waterfalls,” says Obispo, gesturing at a dusty bluff above. “Now, there just isn’t enough pasture anymore. What’s it going to be like in 2030?” But now the water is beginning to trickle, for perhaps the first time in centuries. The amunas — permeable stone-and-adobe walls 18 inches high that run for miles across this imposing landscape — divert excess water from streams that during the rainy season would otherwise flow uncontrolled down the mountains and eventually be lost in the Pacific Ocean. They then infiltrate that water into the soil, replenishing the water table and ensuring its gradual release throughout the year in natural springs. The ancient technology also improves water purity and helps prevent erosion and landslides. Obispo is one of a dozen villagers laboring together in the tropical mountain sun to rescue this five-mile-long amuna, excavating it from the accumulated earth and refurbishing it in a pilot project that holds promise for this arid landscape. “The amunas are the only hope,” says Obispo, who lives here in a community of 400. “Without them, San Pedro de Casta will die.” Yet the project, organized by the local nonprofit Aquafondo, is intended to also benefit populations far beyond this remote region. A hair-raising four-hour drive some 13,000 feet below lies Lima, thought to be the world’s third most populous desert city, after Cairo and Karachi, Pakistan. Nestled beside the Pacific in what is effectively a northern extension of South America’s Atacama Desert, the location of Peru’s chaotic capital of 10 million was chosen in the 1500s by the conquering Spaniards rather than the ecologically savvy Indigenous residents — and has become increasingly problematic with the explosive growth of recent decades. Lima’s water supply is dependent largely on three small rivers that descend from the Andes and fluctuate during the year from bone dry to raging torrents whose volume can overwhelm the state-owned water utility. The company, Sedapal, has invested heavily in high-altitude reservoirs above San Pedro de Casta and initiated the construction of several costly desalination plants, to remove salt from ocean water. Yet Lima still suffers a water gap of about 100 cubic feet per second. That means that roughly 1 million poorer inhabitants on the margins of the city lack running water. They rely instead on an unregulated fleet of tanker trucks dispensing untreated water at rates 10 times greater than those paid by more affluent limeños connected to water lines. The deficit could be made up almost entirely by water delivered by amunas, researchers have calculated. To get there, Peru would have to restore hundreds of miles of the prehistoric dikes across all three watersheds that serve Lima. “The idea is first to help the local community, the guardians of the water. Otherwise, we would just be using them,” says Mariella Sánchez, Aquafondo’s executive director. “But the objective is the same for those who live downstream in Lima: to improve living conditions.” The San Pedro de Casta model, which is being funded by Backus, Peru’s largest beer and beverages company, and GIZ, Germany’s international aid agency, is one of several pilots being attempted by different nonprofits. The development of the amunas around 600 B.C., centuries before the rise of the Incas, remains shrouded in mystery because Andean cultures did not develop writing. Their revival now could be scaled nationally to benefit other coastal cities. As the source of the Amazon River, Peru is blessed with abundant fresh water. But 98 percent of its precipitation cycles eastward, from the Andes and the Amazon toward Bolivia, Colombia, Brazil and the Atlantic, while two-thirds of its 33 million people live on the country’s arid western coastal strip. The effects of the climate crisis in the Peruvian Andes are complex. The highest of Lima’s watersheds are receiving slightly more precipitation than before, but in more intense, harder to manage bursts. Lower down, at the level of San Pedro de Casta, there is less. Obispo says the rains that once ran from around Christmas through April now typically arrive in mid-January and end in mid-March. Local herds of cows and goats have dropped 40 percent, he says, while harvests of potatoes, corn and broad beans have dropped between 30 and 50 percent. Reviving the amunas could be complemented by projects to restore the puna, the high-altitude tundra ecosystem that, when healthy, holds water like a sponge. A consortium of nongovernmental organizations, backed by the U.S. Agency for International Development and involving researchers from Imperial College London, have begun the sensitive work of encouraging mountain communities to swap their horses and cattle for more sustainable llamas and alpacas. The native South American camelids have soft foot pads and nibble only the tips of the grass — unlike the imported livestock, which pull up the slow-growing vegetation by the roots while their hoofs compact the soil. These green measures can cost 100 times less per cubic foot of water than investing in gray infrastructure such as dams and reservoirs. Sedapal views the different approaches as complementary and equally necessary to ensure Lima’s water security in the coming decades. For San Pedro de Casta, the benefits of restoring the local amunas are expected to come much more quickly, over the next 12 months. “This could be a turning point,” says Obispo. “We’re hoping that some people who have left the village will now even consider coming back.”"
+"As many as a million different species are threatened with extinction. Is there anything we can do to stop them from vanishing forever? That’s the question at the center of an international summit kicking off this week in Montreal. Negotiators are gathering in Canada for a United Nations biodiversity conference, known as COP15, to work out a plan for preserving Earth’s fragile ecosystems. “We are waging war on nature,” U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said in a speech in Montreal. There is a lot on the line. Just life on Earth as we know it. Without some sort of intervention, scientists fear a mass extinction will occur, with dire implications for human beings. Here’s what you need to know: The summit’s headline goal is codifying a commitment from countries to preserve 30 percent of their land and water by 2030. That target has a pithy name: “30 by 30.” More broadly, conservationists see the meeting as their chance to hammer out an agreement akin to the Paris climate deal in 2015, when nations agreed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions — or at least try to. Climate change is intractably linked to extinction. Rising temperatures threaten to upend the habitats of everything from Antarctic penguins to tropical songbirds. Only by setting aside large swaths of forests and other ecosystems can wildlife thrive. But there are plenty of other issues to hash out, and much of the agreement’s text still needs to be negotiated by representatives of about 190 countries What counts as conserved area, for instance? Can wildlife be protected in ways that won’t infringe on the rights of Indigenous people to use ancestral lands? And how much should rich nations — ones that have already gained by harnessing natural resources — help out poor ones that are still developing? The biodiversity summit comes on the heels of a U.N. climate conference in Egypt where wealthy countries agreed to create a fund to assist developing nations dealing with global warming. “Animals don’t look at borders,” said Bradley Williams, an associate director of legislative and administrative advocacy at the Sierra Club. “This is a crisis that has to be a global effort, so I think the wealthiest nations really need to pay their fair share.” It’s complicated. For one, the United States isn’t an official party to the negotiations. In 1993, Bill Clinton signed the Convention on Biological Diversity, the international treaty underlying this month’s negotiations. But the pact has never been able to garner the elusive 67-votes supermajority in the Senate needed for ratification. Yet the Biden administration has its own “30 by 30” goal of preserving nearly a third of the nation’s land and water by the end of the decade, dubbed “America the Beautiful.” Given that pledge, Will Gartshore, a senior director for government affairs and advocacy at the World Wildlife Fund, thinks the United States can prod other nations toward an ambitious agreement despite not being a party to it. “We’re seeing a lot of movement by the U.S. in the same direction, from this administration in particular, to effectively achieve a lot of the goals that are being pursued,” he said. The United States says it wants to do just that. “We lean forward to try to figure out ways that we can help other countries to make that commitment,” Monica Medina, a State Department official recently designated a new special envoy for biodiversity and water resources, said in an interview in September. The success rate is not great. In 2010, for instance, nations set 20 goals for conserving the world’s biodiversity. The targets included minimizing the impacts of ocean acidification on coral reefs and maintaining the genetic diversity of cultivated plants. More than a decade later, none of those goals set at the conference in Japan have been fully achieved, according to a recent assessment. It took some perseverance for diplomats to even get to the negotiation table this month. The conference was originally scheduled to start in 2020 but was delayed several times by the coronavirus pandemic. And the final meeting spot had to be moved from China to Canada. There are other signs of progress. At a separate international conference in Panama on wildlife trafficking last month, dozens of countries voted to regulate the global trade of shark fins, the main ingredient of a delicacy called shark fin soup. They’re very high. Farmers rely on dwindling numbers of bees and other insects to pollinate their crops. Fishers depend on healthy oceans for their food and livelihoods. The loss of wildlife isn’t just bad for the plants and animal themselves. Extinctions threaten to degrade ecosystems that people rely on for safe water, protein and other vital resources. “With a bottomless appetite for unchecked and unequal economic growth, humanity has become a weapon of mass extinction,” Guterres said."
+"The thawing of the permafrost due to climate change may expose a vast store of ancient viruses, according to a team of European researchers, who say they have found 13 previously unknown pathogens that had been trapped in the previously frozen ground of Russia’s vast Siberian region. The scientists found one virus that they estimated had been stranded under a lake more than 48,500 years ago, they said, highlighting a potential new danger from a warming planet: what they called “zombie” viruses. The same team of French, Russian and German researchers previously isolated ancient viruses from the permafrost and published their findings in 2015. This concentration of fresh viruses suggests that such pathogens are probably more common in the tundra than previously believed, they suggest in a preprint study they published last month on the BioRxiv website, a portal where many scientists circulate their research before it is accepted in a scientific journal. “Every time we look, we will find a virus,” said Jean-Michel Claverie, a co-author of the study and an emeritus professor of virology at Aix-Marseille Université in France, in a phone interview. “It’s a done deal. We know that every time we’re going to look for viruses, infectious viruses in permafrost, we are going to find some.” Although the ones they studied were infectious only to amoebas, the researchers said that there was a risk that other viruses trapped in the permafrost for millennia could spread to humans and other animals. Virologists who were not involved in the research said the specter of future pandemics being unleashed from the Siberian steppe ranks low on the list of current public health threats. Most new — or ancient — viruses are not dangerous, and the ones that survive the deep freeze for thousands of years tend not to be in the category of coronaviruses and other highly infectious viruses that lead to pandemics, they said. The European team’s findings have not yet been peer-reviewed. But independent virologists said that their findings seemed plausible, and relied on the same techniques that have produced other, vetted results. The risks from viruses pent up in the Arctic are worth monitoring, several scientists said. Smallpox, for example, has a genetic structure that can hold up under long-term freezing, and if people stumble upon the defrosted corpses of smallpox victims, there is a chance they could be infected anew. Other categories of virus — such as the coronaviruses that cause covid-19 — are more fragile and less likely to survive the deep freeze. “In nature we have a big natural freezer, which is the Siberian permafrost,” said Paulo Verardi, a virologist who is the head of the Department of Pathobiology and Veterinary Science at the University of Connecticut. “And that can be a little bit concerning,” especially if pathogens are frozen inside animals or people, he said. But, he said, “if you do the risk assessment, this is very low,” he added. “We have many more things to worry about right now.” For the most recent research, the European team took samples from several sites in Siberia over a series of years starting in 2015. The viruses they found — of an unusually large type that infects amoebas — were last active thousands, and in some cases, tens of thousands of years ago. Some of the samples were in soil or rivers, although one of the amoeba-targeting viruses was found in the frozen intestinal remains of a Siberian wolf from at least 27,000 years ago, the team said. The researchers used amoebas as “virus bait,” they said, because they thought it would be a good way to search for viruses without propagating ones that could spread to animals or humans. But they said that didn’t mean these viruses didn’t exist in the frozen tundra. Siberia is warming at one of the fastest rates on Earth, about four times the global average. For many recent summers it has been plagued by wildfires and temperatures reaching 100 degrees Fahrenheit. And its permafrost — soil that is so thoroughly cold that it remains frozen even through the summer — is rapidly thawing. That means that organisms that have been locked away for thousands of years are now being exposed, as longer periods of defrosting at the soil surface enables objects that had been trapped below to rise upward. Researchers say the chance of humans stumbling upon the carcasses of humans or animals is increasing, especially in Russia, whose far-north reaches are more densely settled than Arctic regions in other countries. The team gathered some of their samples in Yakutsk, a regional capital and one of Russia’s fastest-growing cities due to a mining boom. The warming permafrost has been blamed for outbreaks of infectious disease before. A 2016 outbreak of anthrax hit a remote Siberian village and was linked to a 75-year-old reindeer carcass that had emerged from the frozen ground. But anthrax, which is not a virus, isn’t unique to Siberia and is unlikely to cause widespread pandemics. Many virologists say they are more worried by viruses that are currently circulating among humans than the risk of unusual ones from the permafrost. New microbes emerge or reemerge all the time, Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told The Washington Post in 2015, when the permafrost researchers’ first findings came out. “This is a fact of our planet and our existence,” he said. “The finding of new viruses in permafrost is not much different from all of this. Its relevance will be dependent on a sequence of unlikely events: The permafrost virus must be able to infect humans, it must then [cause disease], and it must be able to spread efficiently from human to human. This can happen, but it is very unlikely.” More problematic, many virologists say, are modern-day viruses that infect people and lead to diseases that are sometimes hard to control, such as Ebola, cholera, Dengue and even the ordinary flu. Viruses that cause disease in humans are unlikely to survive the repeated defrosting and freezing cycle that happens at the surface level of the permafrost. And the spread in mosquitoes and ticks that has been linked to global warming is more likely to infect humans with pathogens, some experts say. An extinct virus “seems like a low risk compared to the large numbers of viruses that are circulating among vertebrates around the world, and that have proven to be real threats in the past, and where similar events could happen in the future, as we still lack a framework for recognizing those ahead of time,” said Colin Parrish, a virologist at Cornell University who is also the president of the American Society for Virology. Francis reported from London."
+"Young children living in neighborhoods with high rates of poverty are more likely to be exposed to many different air pollutants, and that can harm their development during early childhood, according to a study published Wednesday. The children’s increased exposure to air toxins during infancy can reduce reading and math abilities and cause them to fall behind — for some, the effect is equivalent to losing an entire month of elementary school. While there are other issues that can affect school preparedness for early-age children, the study found that exposure to air pollutants, when isolated, accounted for a third of the impact when compared with other concerns. It has long been known that poorer communities are disproportionately exposed to air pollution than more-affluent communities, but the study, published in Science Advances, dives deeper into some impacts, exploring the intersections of neighborhoods’ socioeconomic status and the effects on early-childhood cognitive development, while looking at disparities in air quality. In the study, researchers show the ways cognitive gaps are formed as early as 6 months and are entrenched by age 2, before children even start school, said lead researcher Geoffrey Wodtke, associate director of the University of Chicago’s Stone Center for Research on Wealth Inequality and Mobility. “The study is showing that children born into high-poverty neighborhoods are more likely to be exposed to many neurotoxic air pollutants, and that those differences in turn are linked with inequalities in early-childhood development, specifically reading and math abilities measured around the time of school entry,” Wodtke told The Washington Post. Researchers used data from the U.S. Department of Education’s early-childhood longitudinal study birth cohorts, which assessed 10,000 children born in or around 2001, tracking them through the time they entered kindergarten. The children were from across the United States. Researchers analyzed the socioeconomic status and air pollution concentrations of the children’s neighborhoods. Scientists then followed the children until they were about 4 years old, when they were assessed for early reading and math skills. “What’s important is we provide some initial and relatively strong evidence that being born into a poor neighborhood harms early cognitive development, and this is at least partly due to exposure to neurotoxic air pollution,” Wodtke said in a statement. Some pediatric environmental health scientists were not surprised by these findings, pointing to previous literature and research on early exposure to air pollutants and the relationship with lower cognitive test scores. But the study provides a steppingstone to understanding how air pollution affects other factors that may influence children’s healthy neurodevelopment, said one pediatrician and professor who has studied intersections. “This is really important because we have significant health inequities of all kinds for children in the U.S. that tracks with poverty,” said Catherine Karr, an environmental epidemiologist and pediatric environmental medicine specialist at the University of Washington. “Clean air is part of the prescription for every child to meet their full health potential, including cognitive health,” added Karr, who was not involved in the study. In the study, scientists differentiate between the types of exposures. Poorer communities were more exposed to particulate matter and traffic-related pollution like nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide — exposures that appeared to have more of an impact on reading and math abilities during early-childhood development. But more-affluent communities were more likely to be exposed to ozone air pollutants. Wodtke said the study does not pinpoint any leading air pollutants that are associated with high-poverty neighborhoods and lower test scores. Instead, it finds many air toxins have a weak association with both. Experts pointed to mounting evidence that indicates that postnatal exposure to air pollution is associated with deficiencies in cognitive test scores. It has also been linked to attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms and externalizing behavior problems in pediatric populations. Emerging evidence also finds that exposure to fine particulate matter is correlated with reduced cortical thickness and thinner gray matter in the brain, which may influence information processing, learning and memory. Previous research has found that exposure to higher concentrations of small-particle air pollution is associated with poorer child behavioral functioning and cognitive performance. Anjum Hajat, an associate professor in the department of epidemiology at the University of Washington, said the study “provides further evidence of the links between poverty, air pollution and health.” “We have known for some time that living in high-poverty neighborhoods can be bad for your health, so being able to understand why that is allows us to better consider ways to intervene,” said Hajat, who was not part of the study. Recent research has continued to show that children exposed to elevated levels of air pollution may be more likely to have poor academic skills in early adolescence, including in spelling, reading comprehension and math, according to studies conducted by Columbia University. Hajat said while the link between air pollution and poverty is “pretty well established,” as are links between neighborhood poverty and other health effects, “this study links these different strands of research to give us one possible solution to improving child development.”"
+"Australia is pushing back on a United Nations-backed mission’s recommendation to add its treasured Great Barrier Reef to the list of endangered World Heritage sites, saying there was no need for such a decision. The latest warning about the world’s biggest coral reef ecosystem cited climate change, coastal development and deteriorating water quality, calling for greater conservation efforts “in large part due to the sheer scale of the challenge.” The mission’s report was released this week after a March visit by officials from the U.N. cultural agency, UNESCO, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The Great Barrier Reef contributes more than $4 billion a year to Australia’s economy and supports tens of thousands of jobs, the government says. Home to some 400 types of coral and 1,500 species of fish, the sprawling reef has been a World Heritage site since 1981. The U.N. agency classifies 52 such sites as “in danger” and says the goal is to encourage action to protect them. Australia’s environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, said Tuesday that the new government was already taking action to protect the reef, more so than when the inspection took place while the previous administration was in office. She said the government has committed nearly $800 million to caring for the reef. “No one loves the Great Barrier Reef more than Australians. No one is more determined to protect it than the Australian government,” she told reporters. “We’ll clearly make the point to UNESCO that there is no need to single the Great Barrier Reef out in this way,” she said. The U.N.-backed mission said it “sympathizes with” concerns that designating the reef as “in danger” could impact vital tourism. But it added that such a designation could also position Australia as “a world leader in conserving globally significant natural heritage.” It’s not the first time UNESCO has faced opposition from Australia for suggesting the listing. A similar recommendation last year fell through, but it was revisited this year. In its new report, the U.N.-backed mission said it acknowledges that climate change requires “a global solution.” Its recommendations for the Great Barrier Reef include boosting funding for protection efforts, reducing “excess use” of fertilizers and pesticides in nearby sugar-cane and banana farms, and phasing out gillnet fishing, which can entrap creatures such as sea turtles. It also highlighted the danger of mass bleaching events triggered by warming waters, which can kill coral reefs. The decline of the world’s reefs threatens millions of people who rely on them for food, jobs and protection from flooding — as well as billions of dollars in goods and services. UNESCO told the Associated Press that it has had “a constructive dialogue” with Australian authorities in recent months. “But there is still work to be done,” it said. A decision on whether to officially label the reef as endangered is expected to be made next year by the World Heritage Committee."
+"Dozens of countries voted this week to regulate a global trade that has killed millions of sharks and threatened numerous species in recent decades — all over a bowl of soup. Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) voted to limit or regulate nearly all species being traded for the main ingredient in shark fin soup. The proposal was led by Panama, the host country of the 19th Conference of the Parties to CITES, also known as the World Wildlife Conference, which runs through Nov. 25. The decision is a “landmark in not only the number of species it covers, but in the amount of the trade that is going to be regulated,” said Sue Lieberman, vice president of international policy for the Wildlife Conservation Society. “If you’re going to ask, ‘How can it be that we are losing the world’s sharks?’ The answer is, yes, it’s because of a bowl of soup.” Lieberman added that China is the largest consumer of shark fins, while Hong Kong is the largest port for the trade. Before the vote, CITES regulations applied to about 20 to 25 percent of shark species that are frequently fished for their fins. Now, about 90 to 95 percent of those species will be covered, Lieberman said. Countries participating in the CITES convention will have to issue permits certifying that the fins are legally obtained and that the level of fishing is sustainable. Those permits are usually checked at ports when shark fins are imported and exported, Lieberman said. About 36 percent of the world’s shark and ray species are threatened with extinction, according to the World Wildlife Fund, but demand for their fins and meat has long blunted conservation efforts. “Sharks are really in quite a special class when it comes to fisheries because an awful lot of them live a long time. As a result of that, they take a long time to reach maturity and start having young,” said Colman O Criodain, global head of wildlife policy at World Wildlife Fund International. “They’re very vulnerable to overfishing — a little bit of fishing does a lot of damage.” Eighty-eight countries voted in favor of the expanded regulations, while 29 voted against it and 17 abstained, the Wildlife Conservation Society said. Dissenting countries included Indonesia, China and Japan. “The vast bulk of the shark and ray catch worldwide happens in about 20 countries,” O Criodain said. “We know that a lot of these countries struggle with governance on a number of fronts.” He added that enforcement is “not going to be easy, but in the long run, it’s for the best.” According to O Criodain, sharks are generally the ocean’s top predators, “so if you’re going to be losing them in significant numbers, you’re going to seriously change the profile of the marine ecosystem.” “In the long run, you’re going to impede the capacity of the ocean to deliver the food and the other benefits that humans need to survive,” he said."
+"A major seafood guide announced Wednesday it no longer considers Maine’s famed lobsters sustainable, given that whales on the brink of extinction are dying after becoming entangled in fishing gear. The decision to revoke the Marine Stewardship Council’s recognizable blue label is a blow to a business already feeling an economic pinch amid low lobster prices, high fuel costs and questions about its environmental practices. Conservationists have launched an aggressive campaign to do more to protect critically endangered right whales in the North Atlantic, whose numbers continue to decline. Only an estimated 340 individuals remain. “We’re hopeful and look for the opportunity to work with the fishery and others to figure out how to help them move forward,” said Erika Feller, a regional director at the Marine Stewardship Council. “Hopefully, the fishery can regain certification.” Retailers across the United States sell seafood rated by the Marine Stewardship Council, a nonprofit which uses independent reviewers to determine whether a fishery is well managed and that it does not harm other species or ocean habitats. The announcement comes just a month after another sustainability guide, Seafood Watch, cautioned against buying lobster caught in either American or Canadian waters. Taken together, the removal of the sustainability labels puts more pressure than ever on the average diner to avoid ordering a lobster roll. “These are wild animals that we’re impacting,” said Jennifer Dianto Kemmerly, vice president of global ocean initiatives at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, which runs Seafood Watch. But lobstermen and their representatives in Congress are furious at the suggestion that eating New England’s renowned shellfish damages the environment. “This is not a slap on the wrist,” Sen. Angus King (Maine), an independent who caucuses with Democrats, said in an interview of the Seafood Watch assessment. “They are literally trying to put these people out of business.” Maine’s thousands of licensed lobstermen, they say, comply with conservation law and have taken plenty of measures to reduce the risk of ensnaring right whales. Evidence is scant that lobstering is driving the endangered whale’s numbers down, say both Democratic and Republican lawmakers from the state. “This is neighbors in small communities, on islands and peninsulas that have done everything they can to harvest this resource in a responsible manner that allowed the next generation and the next generation and the next generation to have that same job,” said Steve Train, a lobsterman based on Long Island, Maine. While right whales face several pressures, including collisions with boats and a warming ocean, entanglements in fishing gear are a leading cause of death, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service. Last year the agency, which is responsible for protecting the species, updated its safeguards by compelling lobstermen to reduce the amount of rope in the water and restrict lobstering for part of the year. But in July, a district court ruled in favor of the Center for Biological Diversity and other environmental groups that argued the government’s new rope rule fell short of its legal obligations under the Marine Mammal Protection Act to protect the whales. The court decision triggered a review of the lobster’s MSC certification. The Gulf of Maine lobster fishery lost its MSC certification once before, in 2020, after a similar court case. The suspension was lifted the following year. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg is expected to issue a ruling on next steps soon. And the National Marine Fisheries Service wants to finalize a stronger rule by 2024. “We’re watching the whale go extinct in real time,” said Kristen Monsell, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. New regulation, she added, “will be difficult, but that’s what needs to happen in order to save the species.”"
+"Easy-to-use detergent pods have become ubiquitous in American homes, containing just the right combination and amount of cleaning agents to leave clothes fresh and dishes sparkling. But now a debate is raging over whether they may contribute to the growing plastic pollution problem that threatens human health and the environment. An eco-friendly company that sells cleaning products and advocacy groups petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday to take action against the use of the “plastic film” that surrounds the pods, arguing that the material does not completely break down in water as advertised. The petition urges the agency to require health and environmental safety tests for polyvinyl alcohol, also known as PVA or PVOH, which encases the pods. The petition calls on the EPA to remove the compound from its Safer Choice and Safer Chemical Ingredients lists until the tests are conducted and PVA is proved safe. Blueland, a company which sells a “dry-form” laundry detergent tablet, has spearheaded the effort to subject pods to greater federal scrutiny. Its actions have angered major players within the cleaning-products industry, including a trade association and the manufacturer of the film used in detergent pods. “Polyvinyl alcohol is a polymer, so by definition it is a plastic — it’s a synthetic petroleum-based plastic,” said Blueland co-founder Sarah Paiji Yoo. Yoo added that she and others at the New York City-based company view the popular pods and newer laundry detergent sheets that use PVA as “arguably worse than straws.” “At least with a straw you can look at it and know like, ‘Okay, this is trash. I should put this in the trash can,’ ” she said. “These pods and sheets are plastics that are designed to go down our drains and into our water systems that ultimately empty out into the natural environment,” she said. Asked for comment, an EPA spokesperson said the agency “will review the petition and respond accordingly.” PVA, which is also used in the textile industry, has been widely regarded as safe. In addition to being included on the EPA’s Safer Chemical Ingredients list, the compound is approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in food packaging, dietary supplements and pharmaceutical products. The Environmental Working Group has also rated PVA as a low-hazard ingredient in personal care products. What’s more, single-dose detergent pods that use PVA are often considered to be a more environmentally friendly alternative to traditional liquid products that come in plastic containers. Research touted by the American Cleaning Institute, or ACI, a trade group, suggests that at least 60 percent of PVA film biodegrades within 28 days and 100 percent of the film within 90 days. The group says water containing the dissolved film will go to wastewater treatment plants, where bacteria and other microorganisms break down the material “through natural biodegradation.” Blueland commissioned and helped fund a peer-reviewed study last year that challenges that claim. Its petition, which is supported by several organizations dedicated to fighting plastic pollution, cites the study’s estimate that about 75 percent of PVA from laundry and dishwasher pods remained intact after passing through conventional wastewater treatment. “It is now urgent for the scientific community to focus its attention on these new emerging pollutants,” said Stefano Magni, an assistant professor of ecology in the biosciences department at the University of Milan who has studied the compound’s possible toxicity but was not involved in the study commissioned by Blueland. “Indeed, a huge amount of PVA is annually produced, placed on the market and then used and released in the environment,” particularly in aquatic ecosystems. Charles Rolsky, co-author of the Blueland-funded study and a senior research scientist at the Shaw Institute in Maine, said that earlier research suggesting PVA could leave no trace over time often involved conditions that typically aren’t found in the real world. Those results could lead consumers to believe that a pod product using PVA film may “seem more eco-friendly and biodegradable than it actually is,” he added. Yoo said that “at this point, there are probably millions of consumers who are buying these sheets or pods thinking they’re doing a really great thing for the planet. They’re converting into these products because of the sustainability messaging, because of the plastic-free messaging, but unbeknownst to them, they’re actually sending plastic particles down their drains.” Fully biodegrading PVA requires the presence of the right species and concentration of microorganisms, which also have to be trained to break the compound down, Rolsky said. And there isn’t “a single wastewater treatment plant in the United States where water sits with those microbes for anything close to 28 days,” he said. “At most, it might be a week, but more realistically it’s days to hours.” While more research is needed on PVA’s potential effects on humans and the planet, the concern is that the film is “very similar to conventional plastics that we see on a regular basis,” Rolsky said. But there’s one major difference, he said: PVA “just happens to be water soluble.” He compared PVA’s ability to dissolve to pouring salt into water. “The salt will disappear, but you can still very much taste the salt itself, even though you can’t see it.” A growing body of research suggests that plastic pollution can have serious health and environmental effects, including those posed by the ability of small plastic particles to absorb chemicals, contaminants and heavy metals and move those harmful substances up the food chain. But evidence of the potential effects of PVA “are scarce,” said Magni, who co-authored a study that did not find toxic effects associated with the compound in fish embryos and a species of water flea. He added that environmental tests of PVA are “urgently needed.” Both MonoSol, the Indiana-based company that manufactures the wrapping, and the ACI rejected the call for federal officials to regulate use of the film in consumer goods. In a statement, Matthew Vander Laan, MonoSol’s vice president of corporate affairs, called the petition a “publicity stunt” and accused Blueland of “exploiting the credibility of the EPA in pursuit of its own commercial goals.” “Decades of study, including evaluations by the EPA, FDA, regulatory and certification bodies around the world, have proven the safety and sustainability of PVA,” Vander Laan said. Meanwhile, the ACI issued a lengthy statement that highlighted benefits of PVA film and supporting research findings. The trade association also reiterated its criticisms of the research commissioned by Blueland, noting that the study “presents a flawed model based on theoretical assumptions and uses flawed data in that model.” “Because this chemistry has enabled these innovative laundry and automatic dishwashing product formats, it is extremely disappointing to learn about the misinformation that is being spread about PVA/PVOH,” the ACI statement said. But Rolsky said that he and other experts are calling for more research: “PVA shouldn’t be vilified.” “We can’t speculate,” he added. “We have the tools to do the analysis. We should do the analysis and learn how it actually behaves.” Magni agreed. Research into this and other water-soluble polymers is “in the zero year,” he said. “There is still everything to do.”"
+"The Chesapeake Bay would join the list of America’s most treasured parks and natural landscapes under a measure backed by two members of Congress to designate the nation’s largest estuary as a national recreation area. Sen. Chris Van Hollen and Rep. John Sarbanes, both Maryland Democrats, said Monday they intend to introduce legislation in the next Congress that would incorporate the bay into the nation’s park system and elevate its status as one of the nation’s most important landscapes, thus easing the way toward obtaining steady federal funding to conserve the body of water, promote tourism and expand public access within its 64,000 square miles of watershed. It would also set in motion an ambitious plan to knit together and highlight key places of interest around the bay — such as a 19th-century watermen’s house in Annapolis or a spit of land in Hampton, Va., where enslaved Africans first arrived by boat in colonial America — as public embarkation points to explore the bay’s cultural, historical and ecological riches. Van Hollen, quoting an early proponent of the idea, envisioned the land-based circle of destinations as “a string of pearls that will tie key areas of the Bay watershed together.” If anything, the proposed national recognition of the bay’s importance and its impact on American history is long overdue, said Joel Dunn, president and chief executive of the Chesapeake Conservancy. “This place, the Chesapeake, is the birthplace of American identity,” Dunn said. “It’s just as spectacular as Yellowstone or Yosemite, and it’s as great as the Great Smokies or as grand as the Grand Tetons. ... But, despite all that amazing nature, culture and history, it’s not represented in the park system.” Van Hollen said in an interview that the initiative has been decades in the making, and it approached reality over the past couple of years as representatives from more than 30 organizations, including Virginia’s congressional delegation, state officials and nonprofits, laid down guiding principles for federal legislation. Among other things, the group wanted to ensure that the effort would highlight the bay’s connection to Indigenous peoples and previously marginalized histories such as the impact and legacy of slavery. The proposed legislation also directs the federal government to promote more equitable public access to the bay for the future. While the designation would make it easier to acquire additional properties to widen public access to the bay, the lawmakers emphasized that such expansion would be on a voluntary basis, not by condemnation through eminent domain. They also said that listing the bay as a national recreation area would not lead to tighter regulations or restrictions on commercial activity or recreation, but could instead help to promote tourism and the area’s commercial prospects. “It’s a way to introduce ourselves to the world,” said Johnny Shockley, a third-generation waterman whose life embodies the transition from backbreaking work hauling oysters from the bay to cultivating them using high-tech and sustainable methods. He hopes the designation will showcase the bay and its rise as a commercial powerhouse following the Civil War that supplied the nation with oysters and crabs, while also helping to marshal private and federal resources to reclaim waters that were damaged and depleted by that industry. “The infrastructure that we used to get them out, we need now to build infrastructure to get them back,” said Shockley, of Dorchester County. The National Park Service would assume more authority over the area but would not supersede state powers. The Park Service would, however, be able to identify and absorb additional properties into the park on a voluntary basis or enter into agreements to jointly manage sites belonging to states, local jurisdictions or nonprofits. “So baked into this is a very collaborative process for how the national recreation area will evolve over time,” Sarbanes said in an interview, adding that the proposal builds on the Chesapeake Bay Gateways and Watertrails Network that’s been in place since 2000. Under that initiative, the Interior Department has helped assemble a network of more than 300 places, including parks, museums or other places in the Chesapeake watershed that are devoted to interpreting, conserving or promoting the bay. “I think the Chesapeake National Recreation Area is just a terrific way to kind of take that appreciation to the next level,” Sarbanes said. He said the draft legislation — which has been shaped by representatives from organizations as diverse as the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the American Sportfishing Association, the National Marine Manufacturers Association, Latino Outdoors and Maryland watermen — will be open to public review and comment for 90 days. The federal classification of public lands includes more than two dozen categories, ranging from national parks and national memorials to national refuges and national battlefield sites, but all are considered parks. The Park Services’s website lists 18 national recreation areas — which are managed by the Park Service or the U.S. Forest Service and tend to be focused on bodies of water — including the Delaware Water Gap, which straddles the Delaware River between Pennsylvania and New Jersey; Glen Canyon, which encompasses Lake Powell in Arizona and Utah; and Lake Mead, the nation’s largest and oldest national recreation area, in Arizona and Nevada. The Chesapeake Bay became the gateway for European explorers who established the first permanent English-speaking colony in North America at Jamestown. It was fundamental to the rise of the Maryland and Virginia colonies, and the setting for two profoundly contradictory events in the origin of American democracy. The House of Burgesses, which convened in July 1619, would become the Virginia General Assembly and the oldest continuous legislative body in the Americas. Weeks later, the first enslaved people would arrive in a privateer’s ship at Point Comfort. The idea of including the Chesapeake Bay in the nation’s park system goes back at least to the 1980s and then-Anne Arundel County Executive O. James Lighthizer, whose early efforts got a boost from the Capital newspaper’s editorial board in 1986. “The idea is for a Chesapeake Bay National Park to be formed from out of many bits and pieces of county, state and federal land along the bay in all the states that share the bay — primarily Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania,” the editorial says. The draft legislation by Van Hollen and others identifies four key sites that the Park Service would be authorized to acquire through donation or voluntary sale: Burtis House, a waterman’s residence built around 1880 in the City Dock area of downtown Annapolis and most recently was home to the National Sailing Hall of Fame; Whitehall Manor, which was built in 1746 and occupied by Maryland’s last provincial governor, Horatio Sharpe; the Thomas Point Shoal Lighthouse, a rare “screw-pile” structure that looks like a cottage on stilts that was erected in 1875; and 122 acres of Fort Monroe’s North Beach, where ships delivered enslaved Africans in 1619. “It is, as you know, a treasure not just for this region but for the country and world,” Van Hollen said. “And we need to both preserve and protect it, but also ensure that those who make their livelihood from the bay have a prosperous future. And I think this will combine those important goals.”"
+"It happens every winter in India’s sprawling capital: The cold air arrives, trapping the dust and other pollutants emitted by its 20 million residents. The result? A filthy, choking haze that engulfs the city and halts daily life. For the third day this week, air quality in the city passed the “severe” threshold, reaching 445 on Friday, India’s Ministry of Earth Sciences said. The figure is 10 times the target level established in the World Health Organization’s 2021 air quality guidelines, which advises a 24-hour mean of 45. As the smog descended on Delhi and the surrounding areas, officials on Friday ordered schools, factories and construction sites closed and banned diesel trucks from bringing nonessential goods to the capital. About half of the city’s government employees were urged to work from home. The WHO estimates that millions die annually due to air pollution, and recognizes it as the world’s largest environmental health threat. IQAir, a Swiss air quality company, ranked New Delhi as the most polluted capital in 2021. Air pollution has been linked to heart diseases, a higher risk of stroke and lung cancer, and in 2019 was the leading cause of death in India, according to government data. Siddharth Singh, the author of “The Great Smog of India,” tweeted that, unlike immunity developed from a virus or a vaccine, “the human body cannot get used to air pollution,” as “the particulate matter enters your lungs, your bloodstream, and then lodges itself in your organs.” Both the state and federal governments in India have faced criticism for failing to tackle the air pollution problem. And as the crisis mounted this week, regional politicians tried to blame each other for the health hazard. In a news conference on Friday, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said that Delhi and Punjab should not be held responsible for the smog, which he called “a northern India issue.” He said that there would be no solution without joint state and federal action, adding that the six months since the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) formed a government in Punjab was “not enough” for the government to implement solutions. India’s Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav, however, blamed the northern Punjab state for failing to stop farmers from burning crop residues, writing on Twitter that “there is no doubt over who has turned Delhi into a gas chamber.” In a Twitter thread in October, Vimlendu Jha, environmentalist and founder of the youth organization Swechha, said the Delhi government lacks “political will and urgency.” The central and state governments “have FAILED to find a medium to long term solution to this problem,” Jha wrote, “often stopping at just blaming the farmers and passing the buck, instead of farm reforms, crop rotation incentives, technology assistance etc.” The crisis comes as India’s government called Friday for rich countries to deliver on their pledge of providing $100 billion in annual climate finance to developing countries — and to increase the amount at the U.N. climate conference next week. Masih reported from New Delhi."
+"In 1886, after meeting the inventor Thomas Edison in New York, Hawaii’s King Kalakaua enthusiastically began electrifying the grounds of his new residence — and within a year, 325 incandescent lights had the Iolani Palace fully aglow. The king wouldn’t be able to pull off the same feat these days on Maui. Much of the island’s outdoor illumination soon could violate a new ordinance intended to help the island’s winged population. Fines could reach $1,000 a day. The measure restricts outdoor lighting in an effort to keep endangered birds — and Maui has some of the world’s rarest — from crashing into spotlighted buildings. But Bill 21, signed into law last week, is ruffling feathers because its provisions also could keep flagpoles, church steeples, swimming pools and even luaus in the dark. “People have told me they’ve seen birds falling on the ground in town, up country, all over the place,” said the bill’s author, Kelly Takaya King, who chairs the Maui County Council’s Climate Action, Resilience and Environment Committee. Maui is a veritable Eden for species such as the wedge-tailed shearwater, white-tailed tropicbird, brown booby, myna, kiwikiu and nene — the state bird and the world’s rarest goose. The island also is home to some 170,000 people, however, and the new law is pitting the avian paradise against the human one. The ordinance imposes a near-total ban on upward-shining outdoor lighting and limits short-wavelength blue-light content. Similar laws are in effect in many jurisdictions nationwide to protect various local interests, including the night skies in Arizona and the wilderness in New Hampshire. Maui has a more complicated set of priorities. The outdoor light restrictions effectively prohibit nighttime hula dances and luau performances — local cultural signatures. Indoor alternatives are impractical. “Customers do not want to be in a ballroom or enclosed facility — they can go to Detroit and do that,” wrote Debbie Weil-Manuma, the president of a local tourism company, in a letter of opposition. At the same time, Maui is grappling with an invasive species arriving in flocks of up to 35,000 a day: tourists. Local officials are considering caps on hotel and vacation rentals. Birds can be disoriented by artificial light, sometimes confusing it for moonlight, and end up slamming into a building’s windows or circling until exhausted. In a single night in May 2017, 398 migrating birds — including warblers, grosbeaks and ovenbirds — flew into the floodlights of an office tower in Galveston, Tex. Only three survived. This danger is why the Empire State Building in New York City, the former John Hancock Center in Chicago and other landmark skyscrapers now go dark overnight during peak bird migration periods. Yet, most mass bird fatalities occur in urban centers with tall buildings in high density. Maui is rural, and its kalana, or county office building, is only nine stories tall. Jack Curran, a New Jersey lighting consultant who evaluated the science behind the bill, said the council “clearly didn’t do their homework.” The bill also requires that lighted surfaces be nonreflective, with a matte surface if painted. As the island is coated in compliant black paint, Curran joked, “Maui will wind up looking like Halloween.” Even support for the regulation is fractured. “This bill does provide good benefits,” said Jordan Molina, Maui’s public works director, “but it doesn’t have to do so recklessly.” The new law, he added, will make his office the “blue-light police.” Although the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service did not oppose the bill, it recommended creating a habitat conservation plan unless the county could devise a foolproof lighting policy. According to public records, the council relied on a single, non-peer-reviewed study funded by an Arizona company, C&W Energy Solutions, that lobbied for the bill. (The county’s attorneys issued a memorandum in July warning of the “potentially serious conflict of interest,” which the council ignored.) And King’s efforts were propelled in part by conservation groups’ lawsuit alleging that a luxury resort’s lights disoriented at least 15 endangered petrels between 2008 and 2021, resulting in at least one petrel’s death. (By contrast, the Maui Forest Bird Recovery Project has focused on the continuing “depredation by feral cats,” which number in the thousands on the island.) Still at issue are the measure’s conflicting exemptions. For example, lights at public golf courses, tennis courts and schools’ athletics events are allowed, but not lights at hotel-owned golf courses or tennis courts. Conventional string lights are permitted for holidays and cultural festivals but must be “fully shielded” for all other uses, including weddings. The county fair is also exempt. So are emergency services and emergency road repairs. The law will inhibit TV and film crews’ night lights, such as those used by “Hawaii Five-O,” “NCIS: Hawai‘i” and “The White Lotus.” The latter was honored in October by the Maui County Film Office for giving the island national and international recognition. King told local media that compliant lights are widely available online. But when asked recently for online links to such bulbs, her office sent just one — for a bedside night light that can double as an outdoor bug light, although it was unclear whether the bulb meets all of the ordinance’s specifications. “Appropriate lighting is not available,” King then conceded. “We’re hoping it will be in the next few years. When you pass a lot of these environmental laws, you kind of have to go in steps to get them passed.” As passed, the bill explicitly removed exemptions for field harvesting, security lighting at beaches run by hotels or condominiums, safety lighting for water features, motion-sensor lighting, and lighting on state or federal property — including Maui’s harbors and even the runway lights at its airports. Council member Shane Sinenci supported the ultimate provisions. “Our unique biodiversity is what makes us appealing to both visitors and to residents alike,” the Maui News quoted him as saying before the final vote. “We are often underestimating the value of a healthy ecosystem and all the benefits that comes with it.” The law takes effect in July for new lighting and requires existing lighting to be in compliance by 2026."
+"As the search for his 5-year-old son continued for a third day, Brian Doan recounted how Kyle separated from his mother, Lindsy Doan, on Monday in San Miguel, Calif. Usually the family’s 4,000-pound Chevrolet Traverse easily rolled over any runoff from the San Marcos Creek. But that day, with Lindsy driving and Kyle in the back, water quickly carried the car into the overflowing creek, where it clung to a tree, she later told Brian. Lindsy told Kyle to remove his seat belt and leave his backpack. They would exit the car through her door, where she could reach a tree, she told him. “Don’t worry, Mommy,” Kyle said to his mother. “It’s okay. Don’t panic.” Opening the door and bracing against the flowing water, she pulled Kyle out with one hand while holding the tree with the other. The water carried clay and debris from the riverbed, twisting her arms awkwardly and testing her grip. Then the creek forcefully pushed her hand against the tree, and Kyle was gone. Lindsy screamed for help. She stayed closer to the water’s edge and was rescued by a couple whose house looked over the creek. Kyle was whisked into the middle of the river. This week’s deluge of rain — some areas saw as much as 18 inches — has left at least 18 people dead, a number higher than the combined totals of recent wildfires. As the storm momentarily breaks, residents in the Doans’ small California county have been rallying dozens to sift through the mud and have raised thousands of dollars in just two days. Kyle’s parents, along with 80 local and state officials and more than 40 community volunteers, are still searching for the 4-foot-tall, 52-pound boy with hazel eyes and dirty-blond hair. “It’s the worst thing imaginable if you’re a parent,” said Brian Doan, who recounted the separation to The Washington Post on Wednesday. “You’re dealing with a tragedy where there’s no bad guy. You’re dealing with Mother Nature.” He said he was trying to shield his wife from the media as the story grows into the national spotlight, and his son a stark symbol of the fear and pain Californians experienced this week. Lindsy Doan is a teacher at Kyle’s school. They drove together each morning, Brian said, passing over that low-lying road regularly, which is why she was driving Kyle that wet morning. She didn’t see any road closure signs as the storm opened up on California, so she continued on. Lindsy was not in a position to answer journalists’ questions on Wednesday, Brian said, because she was exhausted with guilt and regret, replaying each second of the separation, desperately trying to bring back her 5-year-old. The family is in “recover mode,” the father said, bracing for the worst. The past year and a half had been difficult at times for Kyle. In August 2021, he tripped and fractured his femur. The recovery was hard for a boy who loved to play soccer, dance to hotel lobby music and play with his older siblings. In November, the rod that surgeons had inserted into his leg was finally taken out. He asked his parents constantly when he could play soccer again. After winter break, they told him. Before New Year’s, the family took Kyle and his two older siblings, Tyler, 18, and Melanie, 16, to see his grandmother just north of Sacramento. She was worried Kyle would see her as a stranger, Brian said, because they had rarely seen each other since the coronavirus pandemic started. “But he was so loving with her,” Brian said. “Just like he is with everyone.” Hours after the separation Monday, community members started taking action as local authorities suspended the search for the first time because of the worsening weather. Monday evening was the worst night of the parents’ lives, Brian said. “My baby’s not eating, so I shouldn’t be eating, either,” Lindsy told Brian throughout the day. Lindsy finally ate a piece of toast, and friends have been preparing meals for the Doans and the volunteers since. On Tuesday, Katarena Messer, a friend of the family, set up a GoFundMe fundraiser and organized volunteer search crews. The San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office used drones and search teams trained to find people underwater. The waters slowly receded, leaving the land wet and muddy where just days before it was dry and bare from a years-long drought. By Wednesday, the fundraiser had reached its goal of $10,000, and Messer set up a community Facebook group called “Bring Kyle Home,” which quickly grew to more than 3,000 people. She and dozens of volunteers searched along the creek, often in pairs because conditions were still dangerous. Their frequent posts show a community trying to help. “Anyone want to search following the trail from 101 just past San Marcos Creek?” one member wrote. “Has anyone looked out in the river down that way? If not I’ll be going down with my boys,” another posted. “Prayers for a happy ending soon,” said another. Many lost their boots. Messer said she fell waist deep into mud 50 feet from where the creek was now flowing, a sign of how quickly the water levels had gone down. Photos that Messer shared with The Post show uprooted trees, broken branches and little mud holes on both sides of the receding creek. Late Wednesday afternoon local time, more than 100 National Guard personnel joined the search team that now consisted of trained divers, K-9 units and members of neighboring sheriff’s departments. Brian said the family is grateful for the community’s support and the government search teams. Nights are difficult, when visibility lags and the search is suspended yet again. “When darkness comes in, you get upset,” Brian said. “Why can’t we do it? Why can’t we find him? He’s just out there. It’s just so unfair.”"
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+"The frigid and stormy weather system that delivered subzero wind chills and blizzard conditions to parts of the United States over the 2022 winter holidays earned the ominous meteorological distinction: “Bomb cylone.” If that sounds menacing, it’s because it is supposed to: The term was designed to convey a degree of intensity and danger that is typically associated with hurricanes, but that even winter storms can carry. Here is what it means, and what it means for people affected by these massive winter storms. The definition is clear-cut and technical: A bomb cyclone is a mid-latitude storm whose central air pressure falls at a rate of one millibar per hour for at least 24 hours. Normal air pressure is about 1010 millibars, a measurement of the force exerted by the weight of the atmosphere. But in stormy weather, air pressure drops well below that — the lower the pressure, the stronger the storm. The pressure of the storm system that swept across the country during the 2022 holidays fell from 994 millibars to 963 millibars in 24 hours, a drop of 31 millibars. That was more than enough to qualify as what meteorologists call “explosive bombogenesis,” a rapid intensification that warrants the “bomb cyclone” label. As with any storm, they develop when drastically different air masses clash — typically, cold and dry air moving down from the north and warm, moist air coming up from the tropics. The warmer air rapidly rises, creating cloud systems, lowering air pressure and developing into a storm system that circulates counterclockwise around that center of low pressure. Rapid storm strengthening is a signal that increasing amounts of warm air are being drawn into a storm’s circulation, spiraling toward its center and rising out its top. When more air escapes out the top of the storm than is being sucked inward, air pressure drops even further. The differences in air temperature that feed this process can be especially pronounced when a polar air mass is as cold as the one surging into the United States. Bomb cyclones, often occurring in the fall or winter, typically produce heavy rain or snow, coastal flooding and hurricane-force wind gusts. For example, one that hit New England in 2022 dumped as much as 2 feet of snow; another that hit the Pacific Northwest in 2019 produced a 106-mph wind gust. The term was first used when it was coined in a 1980 research paper by MIT meteorologists Frederick Sanders and John R. Gyakum. Gyakum told The Washington Post in 2018 that it was born out of a need to better communicate the intensity of storms outside summertime and hurricane season. “Given their explosive development, it was an easy path to take to just call these systems ‘bombs,’” Gyakum said. He said that while some winter storms had similar intensity to hurricanes, many people would assume severe storm risks passed with the end of hurricane season in the fall. “Our goal was to help raise awareness that damaging ocean storms don’t just happen during the summer,” said Gyakum, now a professor of atmospheric science at McGill University in Montreal. This article has been updated since it first published."
+"The top official in New York’s Erie County said Wednesday that he takes full responsibility for issuing a travel ban that many residents have criticized for coming too late to stop people from driving during the brunt of last week’s historic blizzard. Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz tweeted that he does not know whether instituting the ban earlier “would have changed anything but it was my decision and I bear full responsibility.” The county, which contains Buffalo, announced a travel ban shortly before 9 a.m. Friday, giving motorists a 41-minute heads-up as many of them were driving to work. The ban went into effect minutes before 79 mph winds struck the area. The timing of the ban has become one of the flash points as Western New York grapples with the aftermath of a storm that took the lives of at least 37 people in Erie County. Although county officials had been imploring people to stay home and for businesses to close, those were merely advisories. Last Thursday, a day before the storm, some residents were begging the top emergency official to enact a ban, with more than a dozen people across Facebook and Twitter posting and responding to Poloncarz’s updates that they would still be forced to work given the mad rush of the holiday weekend. Earlier that morning, “life-threatening conditions” and “dangerously strong” winds were encroaching on Buffalo, according to forecasts. In his news conference early Friday, Poloncarz drove home how dangerous the blizzard was going to be. Only twice in his tenure had the National Weather Service indicated a weather event would have an “extreme impact,” he said. Six minutes after the ban went into effect, Poloncarz shared on Facebook that the Weather Service in Buffalo had recorded 72 and 79 mph winds in the area. Nearly 13,000 people had already lost power. The executive’s comment is the latest development in the mounting scrutiny over how officials prepared for a historic blizzard that they spent ample time warning residents about but seemingly did not properly prepare them for. In a news conference Wednesday, Poloncarz said officials deciding on when to issue the driving ban weighed projections indicating the storm band would not hit until midmorning and the need for overnight shift workers to be able to get home. “If anyone’s to be blamed, you can blame me,” he said. “I’m the one who has to make the final call on behalf of the county.” He also slammed Buffalo leaders for failing to quickly and efficiently plow streets so that people could get out of their homes and get food and heat. And he accused Mayor Byron W. Brown’s administration of being absent in the coordinated local and state response, saying no one from the city has attended any of their daily calls for elected officials. The county ended up taking over the cleanup efforts for a third of Buffalo, Poloncarz said, and is in discussions with state officials about handling all plowing for the city during future large storms. “The mayor is not going to be happy to hear about it, but storm, after storm, after storm, after storm — the city, unfortunately, is the last one to be opened, and that shouldn’t be the case,” Poloncarz said. “It’s embarrassing, to tell you the truth.” Brown has deflected Poloncarz’s admonishments and defended his handling of the blizzard preparation and response. In an interview Wednesday, Brown said he gets people’s frustration, anger and fear but stuck to his narrative that his constituents were “adequately prepared” and “adequately notified.” “Everything that could have been done in the lead-up to the storm and during the storm was done,” the mayor said. Residents, however, do not feel that way. In response to Poloncarz’s tweet addressing his decision about issuing the ban, people on Twitter again shared their anger and frustration. “It absolutely could have changed everything,” one user replied, going on to explain that people had already left for work or to buy supplies when the ban was announced. “If the ban had been done the day before & all business didn’t even open Friday, this wouldn’t have happened.”"
+"For 14 hours in Buffalo, emergency services technician Felicia Williams sat inside her snow-covered ambulance without food or water, helplessly listening to her dispatchers answer calls about people freezing, mothers and babies stranded in cars, oxygen tanks running out, and other first responders trapped trying to get to them. In front of her, four cars were askew in snow drifts, blocking the road. And, as the 26-year-old began to fear that even she may die there, Williams grew furious that Buffalo hadn’t acted sooner to prevent people from going out on the roads in the worst storm since 1977. “I think a travel ban should have been put in place a lot earlier,” said Williams, an EMT with American Medical Response in Buffalo. Erie County, which contains Buffalo, issued a travel ban shortly before 9 a.m. Friday, giving motorists only a 41-minute head’s up as many of them were driving to work. But the timing of the ban has become one of the flash points as western New York grapples with the aftermath of a storm that already taken the lives of 28 people in Erie County. Buffalo city spokesman Mike DeGeorge said more than half of the deaths occurred outside, a number involving people in their cars. The devastating impact is, in large part, due to a collision of a historic blizzard, bad timing, a dearth of emergency management resources, and the immense difficulty of trying to force residents who are largely desensitized to severe weather to abandon much-needed jobs, as well as their holiday plans, according to interviews with lawmakers, community organizers and disaster experts. The blizzard struck right before Christmas, when many already short-staffed government agencies were further trimmed down for the holiday. It also hit on a Friday — a critical payday for many people who live paycheck to paycheck (27 percent of the city population lives in poverty) — a day on which many may have planned to buy gifts, food, or supplies before an especially cold Christmas. “Most of the calls were people trapped in their cars,” Williams said. “We were doing everything in our power to get to them, but the truth is those people in stuck vehicles shouldn’t have been there and there will be many deaths because of that.” Although county officials had been imploring people to stay home and for businesses to close, those were merely advisories. On Thursday, some residents were begging the top emergency official to enact a ban, with more than a dozen people across Facebook and Twitter posting and responding to County Executive Mark C. Poloncarz’s updates that they would still be forced to work given the mad rush of the holiday weekend. Earlier that morning, “life-threatening conditions” and “dangerously strong winds” were encroaching on Buffalo, according to forecasts. In his news conference that morning, Poloncarz drove home how dangerous the blizzard was going to be. Only twice in his tenure had the National Weather Service listed a weather event as having “extreme impact,” he said. Six minutes after the ban went into effect, Poloncarz shared on Facebook that the U.S. National Weather Service Buffalo N.Y. recorded 72 and 79-mph winds in the area. Nearly 13,000 people had already lost power. By Friday afternoon, Williams was one of a host of emergency responders who found themselves stranded alongside some of the terrified drivers they were trying to save. Ambulances could not get to some neighborhoods for more than 24 hours. Due to blinding snow and powerful gusts, plows were pulled off the roads, further isolating neighborhoods. And unlike past severe weather events that usually hit the small towns south of Buffalo, this storm bore down on the city, putting many more people in harm’s way and paralyzing infrastructure. Officials acknowledged that they assumed they were ready for this kind of weather. On Tuesday, Erie County Sheriff John Garcia said, that when they were told they were going to have a generational storm and heard terms such as “bomb cyclone,” he thought, “this is something that we are used to.” But, he added, they were wrong. “I’ve never seen anything like this before,” he said. The blizzard also tested the emergency response resources of a region that has seen its already thin staffing, equipment and funds further whittled down by the pandemic. Last month, the state recorded a 10 percent drop in certified EMT and paramedic staffing due to low wages and burnout. The problem is worse in rural areas, like parts of Erie County, where many responders are volunteers. But first responders on the ground in Buffalo said that even with a fleet of ambulances and full crews, they still would not have been a match for the heavy snow and ferocious winds that paralyzed roads and caused sweeping power outages. To help, hundreds of community members networked on social media to save those trapped in freezing cars and homes, deliver medicine, and take people to the hospital. Over the weekend, Poloncarz acknowledged the difficulties of rescuing those in need. Police and ambulances could not get to two-thirds of Erie County’s hardest hit areas because they too were stuck. In the worst affected areas, there were no services available. “It is not something we are proud of,” he said. On Tuesday, Poloncarz said that those services were finally back up and available. In his Tuesday news conference, Garcia said that authorities never expected the impacts to be as bad as they were. “Do we have to get better? Absolutely,” he said, adding that the county needs better and more equipment to respond to this type of weather. Erie County personnel began preparing for this weather event early last week, with various departments ramping up prep activities, county spokesperson Peter Anderson told The Washington Post. In response to questions about enacting the travel ban, Anderson said that officials wanted to make “every effort to allow third-shift workers to get home before the brunt of the storm hit was made, and that is why the ban went into effect when it did.” Many of Buffalo’s residents live in older buildings with poor insulation and electric stoves, making it nearly impossible to stay warm without power. This problem is particularly bad in the eastern part of the city, where there are more lower income and subsidized housing complexes, community organizers said. In these buildings, many people have been living without food, power, or running water since Friday, burning candles and huddled under blankets, Myles Carter, a housing inspector and volunteer said. Carter said there are only two working, open warming shelters in the city right now. After rescuing nearly 20 people from frigid conditions, he questioned why city officials did not open more schools, churches and government buildings, and stock them with food, cots and blankets for residents who already struggle to keep their homes warm. “People were told to shelter in place but the places people were sheltering weren’t safe,” Carter said. “The bottom line is that our entire country knew this blizzard was coming. There should have been more preparation for needy people and a state of emergency declared way ahead of time.” The city defended how it handled shelters for its 270,000 residents. DeGeorge, the city spokesperson, said it had “enough warming shelters that were advertised prior to the snowstorm and blizzard conditions.” In total, there were four shelters, including the two warming centers, but two quickly lost power. Crews quickly opened another site in South Buffalo. DeGeorge said that additional community centers and some schools were opened. When asked why more weren’t opened ahead of time, he said that the weather had been in the 40s on Thursday. And when Friday morning’s travel ban went into effect, “that obviously affected our ability to get more shelters open."" Police and fire houses became spontaneous warm spaces, opening their doors to hundreds of people who were caught outside Friday and Saturday, he said. Disaster experts acknowledge preparing for the storm was a hard balance to strike — deciding how extreme to go when bolstering a community for a disaster. Often, residents push back against lockdowns or strict safety measures and admonish officials when the preparation seems overblown. In fact, Erie County officials enacted many more warnings and preparations for this snowstorm than they did eight years ago, when a wall of snow struck the area, killing 13 people, suddenly stranding thousands of drivers on impassible roads, and trapping people in their homes for days without food. “It is terribly, terribly tough to get people in public positions to make preemptive decisions that could cost them immensely. It costs them even if it was the right decision,” Natalie Simpson, an expert on emergency services and disaster response at the University of Buffalo. “Officials did a much better job than they did in 2014, but I think there is going to be a lot of learning from this one.” On Dec. 22, Poloncarz advised residents in a news conference to stay home and ensure they had everything they needed for the weekend. He repeated the National Weather Service’s warning that this will be “a once-in-a-generation” storm and that his county “is going to be ground zero.” He reiterated these dire warnings on Facebook and Twitter, urging private businesses to close and reminding drivers that plows will not be out if there is zero visibility. “As of now, we have not instituted a driving ban but we are monitoring conditions and will make a determination on that as this event develops,” he tweeted at 11:28 a.m. That evening, Erie County issued a state of emergency to start at 7 a.m. the next morning, along with a travel advisory. But residents wanted an all-out ban earlier. In response to many of his messages, social media users begged him to shut down all travel so that they or their loved ones would not be forced to go to work. Their employers don’t “care about advisories,” they wrote. “Mark, my best friend works 40 minutes from her home. she will be forced to report to work unless you announce a driving ban. please keep her and the rest of buffalo safe. people do not want to get stranded at their jobs/risk their lives,” one woman wrote. “Your recommendation already has been completely ignored by the corporation I work for. They want that extra shopping day. Please put the ban in place, many of us work very early tomorrow and are going to get stuck somewhere in this dangerous storm waiting for a decision,” another said. “I’d call it now. No one should be out Friday after 8 a.m.,” chimed in one user. Shortly before 9 a.m. the next morning, Poloncarz instituted a travel ban starting at 9:30 a.m. — right after the morning rush. By then, many people were already out on the roads, or didn’t know the ban even existed. Shaquille Jones, a security guard, said in an interview that he went out Friday with his mom and sister — who is on crutches due to a broken leg — and a few relatives for some last minute errands. They ended up stuck in their car for 18 hours, unable to get police to come to their aid. Freezing and facing rising snow, they climbed out the windows at 3 a.m. Saturday, braving 70 mph winds and snow up to their chests to try to find a warm shelter. Jones said he went back out to try to help rescue other stranded drivers. He said he found several people either not responsive or possibly dead. Some of them curled into their back seats, others under piles of snow near their vehicle. Stanisława Jóźwiak, a 73-year-old Polish immigrant, was one of those who never made it out of her car. Her daughter, Edie Syta, said that her mother struggled with English and may not have understood the grave danger when she went out Friday morning. Hours later, Syta got a frantic call from her mother after she’d been trapped in a snowdrift for several hours. Family friends eventually found Jóźwiak’s body in her car, buried in about two feet of snow. “Buffalo should have been better prepared,” Syta said. “I wish they —” she trailed off. “I don’t know. I just wish it was different.” Some of the problems that exacerbated the storm’s impact continue to linger. By Monday afternoon, Melanie Sullivan had been going on four days without heat or power, her 1-year-old daughter’s hands turning red from the cold despite her best efforts to warm them over boiling pots of water. Like so many others, when she tried to call for help, she was told that her plight was not enough of an emergency, or that police just couldn’t get to them. Bryan Brauner, the chief executive of Twin City Ambulance, a private company, said his organization has been hampered by staffing shortages for years, and a storm like this requires an immense amount of personnel and equipment. He says the state should have pre-positioned more plows, heavy equipment and responders to help local agencies during the worst of the storm. While Buffalo bore the brunt of the damage this storm, smaller, more rural counties were also affected and have been battling severe weather incidents with truncated budgets and broken equipment every year, said state Sen. George Borello, a Republican who has spoken out about the need for better emergency services. For example, in Chautauqua County, where he lives, just the cost of salt to help cars navigate icy roads could “be a budget buster.” “This certainly is a wake-up call that we need to fortify our emergency services,” he said. “The bottom line is that New York state needs to provide more support. That’s bolstering basic needs for equipment and ensuring that local governments have access to funding.” To fill in gaps during this blizzard, residents have been coordinating their own disaster response efforts in massive Facebook groups. Members have helped get a woman to the hospital to deliver her baby after 911 never showed up and plowers didn’t get to her street; helped deliver food to cancer patients at a hospital; and helped treat an elderly man with frostbite. Williams is one of them. After getting picked up at 6:30 a.m. Saturday by a volunteer fire crew from Seneca, eating a warm meal, and taking a piping hot shower, the EMT was back on the roads responding to calls for help on Facebook, this time in her own truck. Her ambulance still needs to be rescued."
+"At least 28 people have died in the catastrophic snowstorm in Western New York, officials announced Monday, marking the blizzard as the region’s deadliest in at least 50 years. Roads remain impassable and almost 10,000 people are still without power as the unrelenting storm is forecast to drop as much as a foot of additional snow, Erie County Executive Mark C. Poloncarz said during a Monday afternoon news conference. Rescuers are struggling to free people trapped in their cars, while people stuck in shelters and nursing homes are running out of food. “This is the worst storm probably in our lifetime and maybe in the history of the city,” Poloncarz said. “And this is not the end yet.” Much of the county is under a travel ban, with only emergency vehicles and essential workers allowed on the roads. Officials urged people to stay indoors Monday, even if their heat wasn’t working and their cupboards were bare. Driving was still treacherous, and any car that got stuck in a snowbank risked blocking access for an ambulance or rescue crew. The National Weather Service warned that a “reinforcing shot” of cold air from Canada could cause more snow across the Great Plains and Midwest on Monday, while the eastern half of the country would remain in a deep freeze. Buffalo Niagara International Airport is closed through at least Wednesday morning. The monitoring site FlightAware.com reported more than 7,700 delays and 3,900 cancellations among flights within, into or out of the United States as of Monday evening. Southwest Airlines customers have been hit particularly hard, with two-thirds of the airline’s flights halted on Monday and more cancellations expected on Tuesday and Wednesday, according to CEO Bob Jordan. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) said she requested a federal emergency disaster declaration, which would free up additional resources for the state, during a phone call with President Biden on Monday afternoon. The president signed the declaration later on Monday. “I know it is frightening and it is exasperating, and you’re asking when is this going to end,” Hochul said. “Please stay at home.” At least 27 people have died in Erie County, officials announced Monday afternoon — more than double the death toll from the previous day. The dead, who range in age from their mid-20s to 93, have been found in their cars, homes and in snowbanks. At least half died outside, presumably from exposure. Three suffered cardiac arrests while shoveling snow — a common consequence of the cold, which can cause arteries and veins to constrict and blood pressure to skyrocket. Buffalo Mayor Byron W. Brown (D) said Monday that 20 people had died in the city. But because that tally has not been cross-checked with figures from the medical examiner’s office, authorities said it was unclear whether those deaths were included in the countywide toll. In nearby Niagara County, officials said Sunday that a 27-year-old man died of carbon monoxide poisoning after heavy snow covered the vents on his external furnace. A second victim was hospitalized. Poloncarz warned residents relying on generators to ensure the machines are positioned at least 20 feet from their homes, with the exhaust pipe pointed away from the house. He expects the death toll to keep rising as first responders eventually reach victims who may have been dead for days. Buffalo is the nexus of a powerful Arctic blast that has wreaked havoc from Washington to Florida, subjecting more than half the country to some form of winter weather warning or advisory. The Associated Press reported that there have been at least 50 storm-related deaths across the country. The deep freeze has greatly damaged infrastructure in the South, where power grids and water systems rarely have to tolerate such cold. Residents of Jackson, Miss., where the water system has been floundering for years, were again advised to boil their water over the holiday weekend. The mayor of Selma, Ala., declared a state of emergency as burst pipes put the city at risk of running out of water. Over the course of the cold wave, more than 6 million customers lost electricity across the country, according to PowerOutage.us. More than 200,000 people in Washington state, New York, Maine, Texas and Virginia were still without power Monday. As the frigid conditions began to ease in some areas, utilities lifted restrictions aimed at conserving electricity. In the Carolinas, Duke Energy said Monday that it had restored power to thousands and no longer needed customers to curb their energy use. But New York officials said Monday afternoon that two of the four Buffalo power substations that suffered damage during the storm still require repairs to their circuitry. In one case, a station was buried in an 18-foot snow drift, making it impossible for crews to get in and fix the damage. Brown, the Buffalo mayor, said his own house lost power and heat during the storm. His family, including a 5-year-old great-nephew, piled on layer upon layer of clothes as the temperature indoors dipped down to 40 degrees. Meanwhile, the snow is slowing down but refuses to stop. A Weather Service station at the Buffalo airport has recorded 49.2 inches of snowfall in the past three days. With months to go before the end of winter, the city has already surpassed its normal snowfall average for the entire season. Even as meteorologists forecast warmer days ahead for Buffalo later this week, the western half of the country must brace for another storm. The Weather Service warned of a cyclone moving across the West Coast toward the Rockies, bringing high winds and the threat of flash floods. The days-long combination of high winds, relentless snowfall and brutal cold has devastated a region that prides itself on handling wild winter weather with aplomb. By Monday, more people in Western New York had died than in the historic blizzard of 1977, which dropped as much as 100 inches on some parts of the region. Hochul said state response teams had rescued at least 550 people from freezing homes and cars over the course of the storm. But conditions were so bad at one point that even emergency crews and state troopers couldn’t operate. “The snow fell with a vengeance, with a ferocity [that is] the worst I’ve ever seen,” Poloncarz said. The depth of snow and scale of power outages imperiled even those who stayed at home. Burst pipes flooded houses. People shivered through their second or third day without heat. A Facebook group for victims of the storm was filled with desperate people seeking support, advice and answers. A nurse wondered what route she should take to reach her job at the hospital. Another man needed someone to check on his elderly father, who had stopped answering his phone. A woman was going into labor. Another parent had no formula to feed her baby. Edie Syta, an art teacher for Buffalo Public Schools, said her elderly mother was among those who died trapped in their cars in the bitter cold. Stanislawa Jozwiak, a 73-year-old refugee from Poland, set out Friday morning in the direction of a specialty market across town. Several hours later, Jozwiak called her daughter: Her car had slid off the road, and she was stuck in snow. The older woman wasn’t quite sure where she was, surrounded by swirling white. “Mama, we’re coming for you,” Syta said. “I need a miracle from God,” her mother replied. Syta and her husband tried to dig out their own car to rescue Jozwiak, but they could barely make it up the street. She called the police, the snow hotline, a friend who used to work in snow plowing — anyone who might be able to help. When there was still no news on the 25th, Syta and her brother agreed to make a Christmas meal. Maybe it would give them hope. But just as they began to eat, Syta’s phone rang. Friends had found her mother’s car on the highway, buried in two feet of snow. Jozwiak’s body was inside. “It hasn’t sunk in,” Syta said Monday. “I feel empty. I feel confused. … And then there are moments when you want to just swear and scream at the top of your lungs, to say, ‘Why?’” Syta still doesn’t know why her mother left the safety of her home that morning. Perhaps Jozwiak, who wasn’t fluent in English, didn’t understand the severity of the weather report. Maybe she was simply determined to get fresh carp, cabbage and other ingredients for the family’s traditional Christmas Eve dinner. Syta knows there were scores of other people trapped in the snow, just like her mother was. She can’t help but imagine how many of them have died, how many people are about receive that terrible phone call. “So many families are going to be broken,” she said through tears. “And they’re never going to look at Christmas the same. I never will.” Justin Sondel in Buffalo contributed to this report."
+"Officials on Sunday reported 13 additional deaths in Erie County, N.Y., attributed to the catastrophic snowstorm that has wreaked havoc across much of the country, bringing to 16 the number of confirmed blizzard-related fatalities in the hard-hit Buffalo area. Rescuers have found additional bodies, officials said Sunday evening, but the cause of death for those people has not yet been determined. “The number will continue to rise,” Erie County spokesman Peter Anderson said. The Arctic blast that reached its peak ferocity in Buffalo has spread a deep chill across much of the United States since Thursday, stretching from Washington state to Florida, with about 200 million people covered by a winter advisory, according to National Weather Service calculations. In Washington, D.C., the temperature topped out at 22 degrees on Christmas Eve, the coldest maximum temperature for that date on record, according to NWS data. Erie County Executive Mark C. Poloncarz tweeted a few details about 12 of the victims late Sunday, saying four of the people confirmed to have died from the storm were found outside, one was found indoors and another in a car. Three died after cardiac emergencies while clearing  snow, Poloncarz said in his tweet, and another three died because emergency responders couldn’t reach them in time. The oldest victim who has been identified was 93, and the youngest was 26, officials said Sunday evening. Later Sunday, the city of Buffalo confirmed that the number of deaths had climbed to 10 from the six earlier reported by Erie County. The toll is “expected to be much higher,” said Mike DeGeorge, a city spokesman. The storm snarled traffic and holiday travel plans, with more than 5,400 flights canceled in the United States on Saturday and Sunday, according to Flight Aware. UPS and FedEx said the weather disrupted their operations in the Midwest, slowing deliveries. As of Sunday evening, around 15,000 utility customers in Buffalo were still without power, officials said. Officials said the disaster may go down as the worst in the region’s history. As the snow shifted south and winds subsided, crews were contending with power substations that were frozen and need specialized equipment for repairs, officials said. Some first responders required rescue during the storm, two warming centers closed after losing power, and crews dug out 11 ambulances on Sunday that had become stuck in the snow. The operations center that handles 911 calls nearly had to be shut down after its fire-suppression system ruptured, causing flooding. Poloncarz said crews had reached a home where local media had reported that a 1-year-old baby was being kept alive on a ventilator. But the rescue personnel found no one at the house and had not been able to contact members of the family, he said. “It was bad, is the best way to put it. It was as bad as anyone’s ever seen,” Poloncarz said, adding that he has been in touch with the Biden administration as well as New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) about obtaining additional resources. Hochul, an Erie County resident who said her own home was flooded and without power, said National Guard members were on the ground in the hardest-hit areas of the county, with more on the way, helping doctors and nurses get to hospitals and rescuing people stuck in vehicles. In response to questions from reporters, she said the Guard was activated ahead of the storm, but  weather conditions slowed them from accessing  the hardest-hit areas. “This is a war with Mother Nature, and she has been hitting us with everything she has,” Hochul said. “This is one for the ages, and we’re still in the middle of it.” She said she had spoken with White House chief of staff Ron Klain and was told that the Biden administration was prepared to approve a disaster declaration for the region within 24 hours once local officials submit a request. Steven A. Nigrelli, acting superintendent of the New York State Police, said there were two cases of looting, which he described as “isolated incidents.” The blast of Arctic air that has chilled a huge swath of the country since Thursday is expected to weaken as it drifts eastward, with temperatures gradually warming over the next few days. The number of utility customers without power nationwide was significantly down from Friday, when it reached 1.5 million, according to PowerOutage.us. Only 17,000 remained without power in New York state by Sunday night, along with about 37,000 in Maine, the website said. “This is not the type of system you see every day in terms of intensity,” Ashton Robinson Cook, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service, said of the Arctic blast. The storm pummeled the Great Lakes region with the heaviest snow, he said, and could still drop more  onto the Buffalo area even as the cold air drifts to the northeast. In Erie County, a ban on driving remained in place through Monday morning, and officials pleaded with residents to stay home to avoid getting stuck on still-dangerous roadways. The region received several feet of snow in a 48-hour period, and the snow was so heavy that certain high drifts could only be moved with a specialized snow-removal vehicle called a “high lift.” In addition to frigid temperatures, wind gusts that reached  nearly 80 mph over the weekend created whiteout conditions that blinded drivers. “It’s like putting in front of you a sheet of white paper and just keeping it there,” Poloncarz said. He pleaded with county employees who have been home for the past two days to report to work and relieve their exhausted colleagues. “This was not the Christmas that we wanted,” he said. “It will be a Christmas that we remember.” Giovanni Centurione, a 41-year-old Buffalo resident who owns a clothing store downtown, said he’s never experienced anything like this storm. During the most intense phase of the wind, he said, “in certain parts of the building, it felt like it was shaking.” He described hunkering down in his apartment building in the Allentown neighborhood on Sunday, listening to a police scanner for reports of break-ins. Occasionally, he said, he has picked up traffic of stranded people seeking help, with emergency crews unable to reach them. “It’s really heartbreaking,” he said."
+"Brutal winter storm conditions that continued to batter most of the United States brought one of the cities most accustomed to snow — Buffalo — to a standstill overnight and into Saturday, with hundreds of people stuck in vehicles in the frigid cold and drifting snow, and no way for rescue workers to reach them. Two people died in separate incidents at their homes and a third died on the street when first responders could not get to them. There was no emergency service for much of the area, said Mark C. Poloncarz, county executive for Erie County, which includes Buffalo. A physician was coaching over the phone as a woman delivered her sister’s baby at home. First responders from a hospital could not get to an infant who needed help a few blocks away. People were stranded for the night in restaurants as well as their homes, he said. “This was a very, very bad night in our community,” Poloncarz said during a Saturday morning briefing. “Thankfully, the sun is up.” “This may turn out to be the worst storm in our community’s history, surpassing the famed blizzard of ’77 for its ferocity,” he added. PJM, a power grid operator that serves 65 million customers across 13 states from Illinois to Virginia, as well as D.C., urged consumers to conserve energy through Christmas morning because of severe demand. Lake-effect snowfall downwind of the Great Lakes will continue into Sunday. Still, Christmas Day brings the prospect of relief from the worst of the mammoth storm, even though biting cold will remain for another day. Brian Hurley, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said in an interview late Saturday afternoon that the storm had passed from the United States and was along the Quebec and Ontario border near St. James Bay. “On Christmas Day, we’ll still be cold, but we start warming up,” Hurley said. Snarled air travel was improving. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said on Twitter that about 20 percent of Friday’s flights, about 6,000 in all, were canceled. Air travel was slowly returning, but he urged patience. More than 3,300 flights were canceled in the U.S. on Saturday, according to FlightAware. In Buffalo, though, thousands were expected to be without power or heat overnight into Sunday. AccuWeather meteorologist Jake Sojda predicted that Buffalo would get 4 to 6 feet of snow by Sunday, coupled with wind gusts approaching hurricane force of 74 miles per hour or more. Erie County said Saturday that emergency response was not available in about two-thirds of the blizzard-affected area. Emergency vehicles themselves were stuck in the snow. “It’s not something we’re proud of,” Poloncarz said. He warned people not to call 911 or an emergency storm number unless they had life-threatening crises. Abandoned vehicles were causing additional problems, and there were concerns that snow-clogged exhaust vents were causing carbon monoxide or natural gas exhaust to back up into homes. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) ordered the National Guard to respond, and units were on their way to the worst-hit parts of the region. She and another official said numerous rescues were made overnight around the Buffalo area, in some cases with snowplows plucking stranded motorists from their cars and taking them to warming centers. Buffalo Niagara International Airport will be closed through Monday morning, Hochul said, and she warned people who hoped to travel to Buffalo for Christmas not to attempt to drive, either. Hochul said water poured into the streets of Far Rockaway and other bayside sections of Queens, then froze as rains departed and temperatures plunged, creating ice hazards. Nevertheless, New York City airports were open, and trains and subways were running, Hochul said. She said during a briefing Saturday that the “real feel” temperature was not above zero anywhere in the state. The storm in western New York “may go down as one of the worst in history,” the governor said, attributing it to the effects of climate change. While Buffalo may have seen the storm’s worst, few parts of the country were unaffected by the cold, ice, snow and winds that have barreled across the nation over the past several days. As of Saturday afternoon, officials across the U.S. had confirmed 16 storm-related deaths. Areas in the South and Southeast, stretching from Texas to central Florida, were under a hard-freeze warning Saturday night into Sunday. Rain and freezing rain are in the forecast for Sunday for the Pacific Northwest, including parts of Washington, Oregon and Idaho. Below-zero wind chills will continue for much of the Central and Northeastern U.S. Power was knocked out for at least 1.5 million people on Friday, and temperatures plummeted, sometimes at record-breaking speeds. Duke Energy said that high energy demand from the frigid temperatures led to temporary power outages for nearly 340,000 people in the Carolinas on Christmas Eve. Power was slowly being restored around the country, with about 335,000 without power as of 9 p.m. Eastern time on Saturday, according to PowerOutage.us. FedEx said on Saturday that the severe weather is causing disruptions to its hubs in Memphis and Indianapolis and that delays could be expected for deliveries through Monday. The storm that the National Weather Service described as “once in a generation” began Thursday and is expected to last through Christmas weekend, ultimately carving a 2,000-mile path across much of the country. The danger zone extended from Canada to Mexico and from Washington state to Florida. Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown, who said his home had been without power since Friday night, told CNN that 65 stranded motorists had been rescued and another 200 had been reported. With many emergency vehicles unable to reach snowed-in areas, the city has partnered with a snowmobile club to facilitate rescues. “We’ve had police officers and four-wheel-drive vehicles get stuck,” Brown said. “Firetrucks get stuck. In some cases, we’ve seen plows get stuck.” With trees and power lines down and snow clogging many streets, it has been difficult for utility crews to restore power to the more than 20,000 homes without it, the mayor said. Among those needing assistance are people who rely on ventilators and oxygen. The Buffalo News reported that the mother of a 1-year-old who needs a ventilator spent the night  operating the machine manually to keep her child alive. The newspaper reported that emergency vehicles could not reach the woman because of the storm and that officials were trying to get a snowmobile to her apartment. In Michigan, a Detroit television station reported that an 82-year-old woman was found dead outside her Bath Township assisted-living facility on Friday morning. Four people were dead after a 46-car pileup on the Ohio Turnpike on Friday, authorities said. On the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, a tribal leader reported that people were trapped by ice and 30 inches of snow, burning clothes for heat because firewood deliveries could not get through. The conditions “pose an imminent threat to tribal government operations, to public safety and the health of tribal members who currently do not have access to medical care, such as dialysis, ambulance service for crisis intervention medical care,” Oglala Sioux Tribe President Frank Star Comes Out  wrote in an email. In Kentucky, swirling winds and plummeting temperatures caused several crashes that resulted in backups as long as 14 miles on Highway 127. The icy conditions sent dozens of cars careening, and at least one tractor-trailer jackknifed, as slowdowns and road closures spread across the state. In the wake of the crashes, only one southbound lane was open on Interstate 71, where state officials reported that hundreds of travelers were stranded over a six-mile stretch. The state said in a Twitter post that emergency officials were working “to get them off the road and into warmth.” “I know that was tough for a lot of folks, but we did wellness checks on every single vehicle on I-71 in that backup,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) said during a news conference Saturday morning. “No tragedies or serious medical injuries. Certainly had to help a lot of people. I know a lot of people were scared. It was a major tractor-trailer jackknife that took a significant amount of time to clear.” Beshear said there were 43,000 power outages, and the state asked residents to reduce their electricity usage to minimize the potential for blackouts. The governor issued an executive order lowering the speed limit in certain areas to 45 mph and urged people to stay off the roads unless absolutely necessary. As temperatures gradually rose, the outlook brightened. State officials said Saturday morning that roads were being cleared, and Emergency Management Director Jeremy Slinker said he was “hoping to turn the corner today.” Emily Wax-Thibodeaux, Jason Samenow, Danielle Paquette, Emmanuel Felton and researcher Cate Brown contributed to this report."
+"As extreme winter weather chilled much of the United States during the holiday weekend, Duke Energy announced Saturday that it was imposing rolling power outages in the Carolinas on Christmas Eve because of increased strain on the energy grid. Duke Energy Carolinas and Duke Energy Progress said they, like other utility companies nationwide dealing with the Arctic blast, were asking customers to conserve usage and expect “load shedding steps that include interruptions in service.” Nearly 340,000 Duke Energy customers were without power at noon Eastern time, according to the utility’s outage map, including more than 140,000 in the Charlotte area. The number of customers in the Carolinas without power had reached close to 500,000 at one point Saturday morning. “Due to the extreme cold temperatures and subsequent demand for power around much of the nation, electricity supplies are very tight,” parent company Duke Energy wrote in a news release on Saturday. The company said the temporary outages, many lasting 15 to 30 minutes, were “necessary to extend available power generation and help maintain operations until additional power is available.” But for some of the hundreds of thousands of Duke Energy customers who were without power, the move came without warning and at the worst time: Homes in the Carolinas are faced with frigid temperatures on a weekend when families are gathering for Christmas Eve and Hanukkah. Saturday temperatures dipped into the single-digit wind chills for much of North and South Carolina. “I can’t believe @DukeEnergy cut off power to my #Charlotte neighborhood at 7 a.m. on Christmas Eve with no warning & are now saying these are planned outages,” tweeted Leslie Mac, who said the company “failed to even auto text your customers to allow us to prepare. It’s the coldest day of the year.” North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) tweeted that he had spoken with Duke Energy CEO Lynn Good “to offer assistance and to express urgency about the need to restore power quickly in this extreme cold while keeping customers accurately informed.” “I’m grateful for the workers braving the wind and cold to get the power back on,” the governor wrote. A spokesperson with Duke Energy did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday morning. At least 1.5 million people nationwide were without power Friday, when a fearsome storm tore through much of the country. Storm gusts zapped power in Texas and along the East Coast, especially Virginia and North Carolina. In Louisiana, the state’s fire marshal noted “several instances of widespread power outages in different spots across our state” and urged people to explore alternative power and heating options. The attention on North Carolina’s power grid comes weeks after shootings at two electrical substations in the central part of the state left thousands of homes without power and highlighted the vulnerability of critical infrastructure. The FBI is investigating. The National Weather Service issued wind-chill warnings Saturday morning for western parts of the Carolinas, where the agency said the temperature could feel like negative-40 degrees Fahrenheit. Among the tips Duke Energy gave customers were to “select the lowest comfortable thermostat setting and bump it down several degrees whenever possible,” “avoid using large appliances” and “shift nonessential activities, like laundry, to late evening hours when power demand is lower.” “We sincerely appreciate the cooperation and patience of our customers, who can help ensure the stability and reliability of the system for all by taking these steps,” Daniel Stephens, manager of system operations for Duke Energy Carolinas, said in a news release. Customers were infuriated by the lack of warning about the load shedding. “Make it make sense,” one customer tweeted. “I don’t fault @DukeEnergy if they needed to do this. Had to be a tough call to make,” tweeted writer Corey Inscoe. “But it seems like they should have warned people and/or let people know whether their outage is intentional or caused by the storm.” Others noted the timing of the outage, with one critic renaming a famous Dr. Seuss holiday story: “How Duke Energy Stole Christmas.” And some, well, just couldn’t figure out why their power was out during the extreme winter weather. “Duke Energy just blacked out our power,” author Dennis Mersereau wrote. “It’s 8 degrees.”"
+"More than 1 million customers are without electricity Friday as power outages continue across swaths of the country paralyzed by icy winds and blizzard conditions. The ice and snow are also upending plans for travelers during the busy holiday week: More than 4,900 U.S. flights for Friday were canceled by early evening, and more than 7,600 were delayed. Roads have also become treacherous in many places. At least 10 people have died in vehicle crashes across four states this week amid the storm. On Friday, traffic had also slowed to a crawl on roadways from Chicago to Nashville to Pittsburgh. The punishing storm, which has unleashed blinding snow in parts of the nation, now meets the criteria for a bomb cyclone. Travel remains substantially compromised across the nation Friday as an Arctic front and winter storm bring icy precipitation, plunging temperatures and high winds in the East and blizzard conditions over parts of the Great Lakes. The falling snow that snarled travel in the Midwest and Ohio Valley on Thursday has largely subsided, but blowing snow will continue to disrupt air travel and create low visibility for drivers into Saturday. The number of flight cancellations and delays at U.S. airports was continuing to grow as of midday Friday, with more than 5,000 delays and 4,000 cancellations according to FlightAware. So when will things start to improve? TORONTO — The same winter storm bearing down on swaths of the United States battered parts of Canada on Friday with whiteout conditions and fierce winds, causing flight cancellations at the country’s busiest airport, shuttering stretches of major highways and leaving thousands in the two most populous provinces without power. According to FlightAware, a flight-tracking website, more than a third of flights at Toronto’s Pearson Airport, the country’s busiest travel hub, had been canceled. Billy Bishop Airport, another Toronto area airport, said late Friday afternoon that all remaining flights would be canceled. West Jet, a Canadian airline, proactively canceled flights at airports in Toronto, Ottawa and Quebec. NEW YORK — Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown (D) delivered an afternoon update on the dire conditions in the city from his darkened home after he and thousands of others residents lost power during a blizzard that is expected to dump as much as four feet of snow on the lakefront city. As of 5 p.m., the city’s electricity provider, National Grid, was estimating that as many as 20,000 customers in Buffalo were without power. Even the city’s two warming centers were without electricity, but conditions were too dangerous, the utility provider said, for its crews to work to restore power. The mayor said the city’s Code Blue shelter, for unhoused residents, did still have power and was housing 200 to 300 people. DETROIT — Despite the wind chill and the freezing temperatures, the baking went on at Zingerman’s Bakehouse in Ann Arbor. At the famous eatery, Friday was slower than normal. But “the two days before were crazy,” said Amy Emberling, managing partner. Customers anticipating the storm rescheduled their pickups of stollen, cakes and cookie boxes, packed with German Pfeffernüsse, chocolate-mint and pignolis, an Italian nut cookie. A rare slower day gave the 80-person staff at Zingerman’s Bakehouse time for gift-giving and a meal together. Friday marked the most frigid day of the ongoing Arctic outbreak, with two dozen states seeing wind chills below minus-10, but very cold weather will continue through the holiday weekend, especially in the East. On Christmas Eve morning, pretty much the entirety of the Lower 48 states will awaken to freezing temperatures, with the exception of south Florida and the West Coast. Record lows in the single digits are possible in several locations in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast, including Charleston (20 degrees); Roanoke (minus-2); Greenville, S.C. (7); Charlottesville (7) and Philadelphia (8). Wind chills will make most of these locations feel well below zero. At least ten traffic deaths were reported across four states as snow, ice and frigid temperatures spread across the country in recent days. The Kansas Highway Patrol reported three deaths Wednesday evening, of a 60-year-old man in Republic County, a 33-year-old man in Geary County and a 21-year-old man in Saline County. A spokesperson for the Oklahoma Highway Patrol told The Post that there were three fatal crashes, with three total fatalities, on Thursday. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) said Friday that three traffic fatalities had been reported in that state. While cutting power to more than a million customers and unleashing powerful winds and frigid air, this week’s winter storm has laid down a fresh coating of snow in many parts of the Lower 48 just in time for Christmas. The map above shows the projected snow depth at 7 a.m. Eastern time Sunday. Areas assured of a white Christmas include much of the Mountain West, the Dakotas, the central Plains, the Upper Midwest, the Great Lakes, large parts of the Tennessee and Ohio valleys and the interior Northeast. ST. PAUL, Minn. — Despite the subzero temperatures, audiences streamed into Xcel Energy Center to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, a hard-rock orchestral holiday show that’s become a favorite in the Twin Cities. Inside the arena, staff member Jay Webber said he was happy not to have to work outside, where he normally directs pedestrian traffic. “I’m grateful,” he said. Ellise Lamb comes every year to TSO and wasn’t about to let a little black ice stop her. She saw car parts all along Interstate 494. “You could see where they slid,” she said. “The parts just went on and on.” As of 5 p.m. Eastern time Friday, more than 4,900 scheduled U.S. flights were already canceled, and more than 7,600 were already delayed. Airports in Seattle, Chicago and New York each had more than 200 canceled departures. More than half of the scheduled departures were canceled at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, Buffalo Niagara International Airport, Portland International Airport, Chicago Midway Airport, Sioux Falls (S.D.) Regional Airport, and Gerald R. Ford International Airport outside Grand Rapids, Mich. Watch out for falling iguanas in South Florida this Christmas. Seriously. This week, a massive storm system is bringing blizzard conditions, wind chills and Arctic cold to the Lower 48. The frigid air is expected to immobilize coldblooded animals. Iguanas sleeping in trees may lose their grip and drop to the ground. Stunned sea turtles may be blown ashore from Texas to New England. “You change the environment, and the organisms that are going to feel it first and hardest are the ectotherms [coldblooded animals] because their entire fitness is thermally dependent,” said Martha Muñoz, an evolutionary biologist at Yale University. DENVER — Mud-splattered Jeeps and sedans streamed into the Park Meadows Mall in suburban Denver as the weather warmed to 10 degrees above zero Friday. Roads leading into the shopping center were icy in spots, drying out in others. Crowds jammed the escalators and lines snaked around the corner at Starbucks as people ran to finish up last-minute shopping. Children bundled in snow boots and stocking hats rode in carts shaped like miniature firetrucks pushed by weary parents. People said they came to warm up and kill time. The storm that unleashed blinding snow in the Midwest and Great Lakes regions and helped drag frigid air and howling winds from Montana to Florida is reaching maturity. It has now met the meteorological criteria for a bomb cyclone — the most intense kind of mid-latitude storm. This means its pressure has fallen at least 24 millibars over the past 24 hours. Centered near the border of Ontario and Quebec, its minimum pressure fell to around 970 millibars Friday afternoon. A day ago, its central pressure over Indiana was about 1006 millibars. The lower the pressure, the strong the storm."
+"The data is clear: Rising global temperatures mean winters are getting milder, on average, and the sort of record-setting cold that spanned the country Friday is becoming rarer. But at the same time, global warming may be altering atmospheric patterns and pushing harsh outbreaks of polar air to normally moderate climates, according to scientists who are actively debating the link. Drastic changes in the Arctic, which is warming faster than anywhere else on Earth, are at the center of the discussion. Shifts in Arctic ice and snow cover are triggering atmospheric patterns that allow polar air to spread southward more often, according to recent research. “We’ve seen the same situation basically the last three years in a row,” said Jennifer Francis, senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Massachusetts. “Here we go again.” But understanding any link between planetary warming and extreme cold remains a work in progress. Many climate scientists still emphasize that even if frigid air escapes the Arctic more often, that air will nonetheless become milder over time. The debate started with a research paper Francis co-authored in 2012. It gets revived whenever an extreme-cold event creates headlines, such as in 2021, when Texas’s energy grid was overwhelmed by a storm that killed 246 people. Francis’s research hypothesized that Arctic warming was reducing the contrast between polar and tropical temperatures, weakening the jet stream, a band of strong winds in the upper atmosphere that helps guide weather patterns. A weaker jet stream would allow weather systems to more easily swing from the Arctic down into mid-latitude regions that typically have temperate climates. Since then, observations of jet stream patterns have not confirmed the hypothesis, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA. But the research inspired a flurry of follow-up studies that Swain expects will eventually clarify a link between climate change and cold-weather outbreaks. “We’re 10 years into this conversation and there’s still a lot of mixed feelings in the scientific community, though there is some tantalizing evidence that there is some ‘there’ there,” said Swain, who works at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. A 2021 study published in the journal Science is one new point of debate. The research explains what author Judah Cohen called “a physical foundation” linking Arctic warming and changes in atmospheric patterns. It focuses on the polar vortex, an area of low pressure typically parked over the North Pole and surrounded by a band of fast-flowing air. Cohen likens it to a spinning top — when the polar vortex is strong, that band of air spins in a tight circle. Increasingly often, Cohen found, the polar vortex weakens like a wobbling top. That gives the circulating air a more oblong, extended shape and encourages bursts of Arctic air to spread southward. While the polar vortex took on that stretched shape for about 10 days a year in 1980, in recent years, it has been occurring more than twice as often, said Cohen, director of seasonal forecasting at Atmospheric and Environmental Research. The research links that to changes in the climate around the Arctic: In the Barents and Kara seas north of Russia and Scandinavia, the waters have warmed and ice has melted, whereas in Siberia, there’s been a cooling trend from increases in snowfall induced by climate change. Some scientists say that a longer and more thorough record of data is needed to back up Cohen’s research and that there isn’t enough evidence to blame Arctic warming for cold outbreaks at lower latitudes. Swain predicted that scientists will make sense of the atmospheric dynamics but that it could take years. “It’s one of the most complicated topics in climate science,” Swain said. In the meantime, researchers are confident that cold extremes will follow larger global trends and gradually get warmer, though they still will have significant impacts on places unaccustomed to the cold. “We’re going to break a lot of records this week, for sure,” Francis said. “The likelihood of breaking cold records is decreasing, and we see that in the data.” And Cohen said data suggests that relief from the cold across the United States is near: Weather models agree that the polar vortex is going to snap back from its oblong shape by early January, trapping the most frigid air around the North Pole once again."
+"As a wicked winter storm continues to blast much of the country, snow has started to move into parts of the Midwest. In Chicago, snow is forecast to be heavy at times for the rest of Thursday and into the night. The forecast to the east is more dire: For Buffalo, a combination of factors could bring a blizzard for the ages. In many areas of the East, temperatures will drop suddenly through Friday, leading to a flash freeze and treacherous roads in some areas. And still, the dangerously snowy and windy part of this storm is just beginning. Across the country, travelers are weary, with plans upended during the busy week for holiday travel. By Thursday afternoon, nearly 3,600 flights within, into or out of the United States scheduled for that day and Friday had been canceled, leaving many stranded travelers attempting to rebook their journeys. If you’re from the Northern Tier, Rockies, Midwest or New England, odds are you’re no stranger to “wind chill.” You probably feel its effects all the time during the winter, when even the lightest stirring or breeze can turn a seasonably cold day downright bone-chilling. Stronger winds and below-freezing temperatures can bring the risk of frostbite and hypothermia as well, making wind chill an important figure to understand and plan for anytime outdoor recreation is to be considered. The premise of wind chill is simple: When the ambient air is cooler than your body temperature (roughly 98.6 degrees), any stitch of wind will blow away the insulating layer of mildness that forms around you. This Arctic blast will leave few places in the Lower 48 untouched. East of the Rockies, every state except Florida will see wind chills at or below zero through Sunday. On Thursday morning, one location in western Montana, north of Butte, registered a wind chill of minus-74 degrees, according to the National Weather Service. Wind chills near minus-70 were also observed in Wyoming. While wind chills Thursday night and into the weekend may fall short of the peaks seen Wednesday night and Thursday morning, they will still be extreme. Wind chill warnings and advisories stretch from the Canada border to the Mexico border and to the shores of the Gulf of Mexico and East Coast. New York’s Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority will suspend all service, including bus, rail and paratransit, starting at 2 a.m. Friday and continuing until further notice due to severe storm conditions expected through the night and into the weekend. The National Weather Service in Buffalo warned Thursday evening that an intense storm system will impact western and north central New York tonight and continue through Christmas. Very strong winds and blizzard conditions are expected Friday night and Saturday. Late Thursday afternoon and evening, weather radar showed snow extending from Wisconsin and Michigan as far south as Arkansas. In many areas the snow was being blown around by strong winds. For example, at 4 p.m. local time, Chicago O’Hare reported moderate snow, 26-mph wind gusts, half-mile visibility and a wind chill of minus-9. The dangerously snowy and windy part of this storm is just beginning. First, wind-driven snow, heavy at times, will fall along the Arctic front into Friday morning, producing several inches of snow by itself. Winds will increase to 40 to 50 mph, causing the snow to blow and drift. Here are some projections (on top of snow that has already fallen, where applicable): According to the flight tracking site FlightAware, by 6 p.m. Thursday airports had canceled more than 4,200 flights within, into or out of the United States scheduled for Thursday or Friday. Airports in Chicago and Denver combined for more than 600 of the Thursday cancellations. As of Thursday evening, Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, Chicago Midway International Airport and LaGuardia Airport in New York already had canceled more than 120 Friday flights each. Around 6 p.m. Thursday, Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport had 263 flight cancellations, representing 25 percent of the airport’s schedule, with 27 percent of flights delayed. Around the same time, Chicago Midway had canceled 37 percent of its Thursday flights. Midway and O’Hare had canceled more than 200 Friday flights combined. DENVER — Stained bags, scuffed duffels and oversize boxes crowded together on luggage carousels at Denver International Airport on Thursday, as stranded passengers frantically tried to rebook flights. Hundreds were left without a way to get home because of the storm. The Runnellses, for example, spent seven hours on a shuttle from Breckenridge, Colo., on Wednesday night, only to find that their flight to Tulsa had been canceled. Unable to rebook until Dec. 26, they decided to head back to Breckenridge on Thursday afternoon to continue their ski trip. With the focus of the attention on areas east of the Rockies, we shouldn’t forget that very cold air has bled into the Pacific Northwest as well. Temperatures 20 to 30 degrees below normal have been common in the region for a few days now. It’s been below freezing in Seattle since Tuesday morning. On Thursday morning, temperatures were in the teens and only made it to the low 20s as of midafternoon. Wind chills spent the day near zero and in the single digits. Up next? An icy mix of precipitation. A winter storm warning takes effect in Seattle on Thursday evening and continues through Friday. Snowfall of up to two inches and ice accumulation around a quarter-inch is forecast before it all turns over to cold rain late Friday. MINNEAPOLIS — The city’s famous Lake Harriet was a sea of white on Thursday, with only one person on the ice: A guy who goes by “Turtle Man Fred,” age 70. Fred has made snow forts on the lake since childhood. And with the ice finally thick enough to walk on, Fred didn’t want to lose a day. “I make them with square edges. When I come back the next day, they have been completely run over,” he said. The temperature is minus-7, even lower with the wind chill, but Fred shoveled the snow into a huge pile. “It’s basically a piece of land art,” he said. Detroit Public Schools and many suburban school districts canceled classes and after-school programs and sports on Friday because of the storm. DETROIT — At the corner of 8 Mile Road and Woodward Avenue, people waved homemade signs asking for help. Temperatures hovered around 40 degrees but are expected to fall to single digits overnight. “Could always be worse,” said Keith, 51, who declined to give his last name. He’s been homeless since his mother died in October 2021. He lives in a tent but stays in a motel nearby whenever he collects enough money from passersby. Across the city, homeless shelters prepared for extra guests, setting up air mattresses and extra food. Detroit’s storm preparations focused on seniors, people experiencing homelessness and other vulnerable populations who may need shelter if low temperatures and high winds knock out power and heat. Severe weather and plunging temperatures in normally storm-hardy Chicago forced closures of several popular amusements on Thursday, shutting visitors out of museums and holiday light displays and forcing an early end of the season to the beloved downtown Christkindlmarket. Downtown spots popular with families and tourists, such as the Shedd Aquarium and the Christkindlmarket, announced early closures for Thursday. For the market, a busy outdoor attraction that normally runs from the day after Thanksgiving until Christmas Eve, the early close marked a premature end to the season."
+"An exceptionally powerful winter storm is set to unleash dangerous weather across the eastern two-thirds of the country into the holiday weekend, disrupting air and land travel during one of the busiest times of year. Some snow will break out in the Upper Midwest and Plains on Wednesday, but the most severe conditions are anticipated Thursday and Friday across the Great Lakes. “Brief bursts of heavy snow, strong wind gusts, and rapidly falling temperatures will likely lead to sudden whiteouts, flash freezing, and icy roads,” the National Weather Service wrote. “Even in areas unaffected by snow, dangerous cold is expected.” Nearly 70 million people are under winter storm watches or warnings in the Midwest, Great Lakes and Appalachians. Blizzard warnings are in effect for portions of the Dakotas, southern Minnesota, northern Iowa, northern Indiana and western and northern Michigan. Snow and strong winds could affect major airport hubs, including Chicago’s O’Hare International and the Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County airports. The combination of snow and winds gusting over 40 mph will result in blowing and drifting snow that reduces visibility to near zero at times, particularly in a zone from western Kansas and Nebraska northward to Minnesota extending eastward through western New York. “Whiteout conditions are expected … with travel becoming very difficult or impossible,” wrote the National Weather Service in Minneapolis. “This event could be life-threatening if you are stranded.” Cities that could deal with blizzard conditions between Thursday and Friday — at least for a short interval — include Kansas City, Mo., St. Louis, Des Moines, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Chicago, Indianapolis, Detroit and Buffalo. In some places near the Great Lakes, including Buffalo, wind gusts could reach 50 to 65 mph, causing significant tree damage and power outages amid dangerously low temperatures. Locations from the Rockies eastward that avoid snowfall will not escape near record-cold temperatures running some 40 degrees or more below normal. Wind chill watches, advisories and warnings affect more than 100 million people, extending from the Canadian border to Texas and as far east as the Appalachians, with subfreezing temperatures likely to plunge down to the Gulf of Mexico. In some places, temperatures will be the lowest in decades during the month of December. Over the north central United States, actual air temperatures of minus-20 to minus-40 are expected, and wind chills could flirt with minus-60. The National Weather Service in Bismarck, N.D., is calling the cold “life-threatening.” “The dangerously cold wind chills could cause frostbite on exposed skin in as little as 5 minutes,” it wrote. That cold will make it to the East Coast on Friday, abruptly arriving as a flash freeze that could send temperatures plummeting 25 degrees or more in just a few hours. Coming after a morning of heavy rainfall and perhaps a short burst of snow, the flash freeze may turn some roadways into treacherous sheets of ice, potentially leading to extremely hazardous travel on major thoroughfares like Interstates 95, 84 and 81. In the Northeast, the same storm system — which will intensify so rapidly it will qualify as a weather “bomb” — will push water against the coastline, causing coastal flooding. On Wednesday evening, snow associated with the Arctic front was falling in portions of Wyoming, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Minnesota and Wisconsin. In Minneapolis, light snow began in the morning with temperatures hovering between 0 and minus-5. Winds were still light but are forecast to ramp up quickly Thursday and Thursday night. The Arctic front stretched from southern Idaho to south of Chicago and was seeping southeastward. Frigid air had already invaded much of Montana, northern Wyoming, the Dakotas and as far southeast northern Iowa and southern Wisconsin. In northern parts of North Dakota and Montana, temperatures hovered between minus-15 and minus-25 degrees with wind chills as low as around minus-50. Early Wednesday, a weather station in Glacier National Park registered a wind chill of minus-70. As the front crossed Casper, Wyo., the temperature dropped from 27 degrees to 3 degrees in just 15 minutes. In Cheyenne, the temperature plummeted from 43 degrees to 3 degrees in 30 minutes as a blinding snow squall moved in. In Canada’s Northwest Territories, where the cold air is coming from, the air temperature fell as low as minus-63 degrees — the most frigid so far this year. Along the Arctic cold front, an upper-air disturbance will dive south out of British Columbia and Alberta into the central Plains by Thursday. It will explosively strengthen a surface low pressure zone pushing across the Plains, transforming it into a powerhouse storm system that will sweep up the Ohio Valley. By Friday night, it’ll be lumbering into Quebec and Ontario en route to the Hudson Bay. The storm will rapidly intensify as a bomb cyclone, a designation given to the most intense mid-latitude weather systems. Its pressure will drop from 1003 millibars Thursday night near the Indiana-Ohio border to 968 millibars Friday night — which is the approximate pressure of a Category 2 or 3 hurricane — over southern Quebec. Mid-latitude storms whose pressure falls 24 millibars in 24 hours are considered meteorological bombs — this storm’s pressure is projected to fall 35 millibars in that time. The lower the pressure, the stronger the storm. In the Mid-Atlantic Since low pressure systems spin counterclockwise, the system will draw in a tongue of mild air on its eastern side. That will keep most of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast predominantly rain. The exception will be in the Appalachians, specifically the Alleghenies of western Maryland, western Virginia and eastern West Virginia, where cold air entrenched in the mountains will be difficult to scour out. The National Weather Service is warning of 4 to 7 inches of snow east of the Allegheny front, in addition to a quarter inch of ice from freezing rain. This will occur the first half of Thursday. That’s just round one of the storm before the flash freeze arrives Friday — not just for mountains, but also areas toward the coastal plain — including Washington and Baltimore. A major Plains and Great Lakes blizzard Farther west, however, the Plains, Upper Midwest and even parts of the Mid-South, perhaps as far south as Nashville, will see snow — and for some, a lot of it. The jackpot, which could feature a foot or more, looks to fall in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, with a secondary maximum downwind of Lakes Erie and Ontario. Even in areas that only see a few inches of snow, travel is expected to still be extremely dangerous because of high winds that will limit visibility. St. Louis, Kansas City, Omaha and the Twin Cities are under winter storm warnings, with a general 2 to 6 inches of snow likely to fall — lesser south, more north. West of Minneapolis, a blizzard warning is in effect; the combination of 40-50 mph winds and moderate to heavy snow could make for whiteout conditions during the height of the storm Thursday night into Friday, while the wind and cold could lead to wind chills below minus-30. In Chicago, Detroit and Indianapolis, a winter storm watch is in effect. That’s where confidence is lesser on just how much snow will fall. In the Windy City, totals will probably range between 3 and 6 inches, but will walk a steep gradient; accumulation will quickly climb as one drifts toward Michigan, with a foot or more probably falling in parts of the mitten. In the storm’s wake, cold air blowing out of the west-northwest across Lakes Erie and Ontario could brew some lake-effect snows, although it’s not a classic wind direction for extreme accumulations, since it doesn’t blow lengthwise down the lakes. Instead, a foot or so is likely over the weekend, though meteorologists are still fine-tuning the details. “Travel for the holiday weekend, including Friday, could be very difficult to impossible at times” through Monday, wrote the Weather Service office in Buffalo. The office also warned that high winds will push waters on Lake Erie over three feet above flood stage along the lakeshore. “That’s huge!” it tweeted. Behind the storm, a plume of Siberian air will be shunted southward into the United States, lasting about 72 hours and affecting nearly everyone east of the Rockies. It will first creep across the Canadian border into early Wednesday, blasting south as a cold front that will drop temperatures 40 degrees or more in just under  six hours. The biting chill will blast into Denver on Wednesday night, dropping temperatures from 40 degrees to zero in just a matter of hours. By Thursday morning, it will be near minus-10 with wind chills around minus-30. “Life Threatening Cold Arrives Late Wednesday,” tweeted the Weather Service office serving Denver. “We promise that’s not an exaggeration. This is likely to be the coldest day in 32 years in Denver so many people have not experienced a cold snap like this.” Over the Dakotas, temperatures could dip to near minus-30 on Friday night. In Bismarck, they’ve been below zero since Sunday, and will stay that way until Christmas. Wind chills of minus-40 are likely. Breaking down in a vehicle without an emergency kit on hand could very quickly become deadly. That cold will plunge southward, arriving in St. Louis on Thursday. Highs will peak in the mid-30s with snow, quickly falling to around minus-3 at night. Friday won’t climb above the single digits. In Oklahoma City, Thursday won’t make it above 11 or 12 degrees. In the Texas Panhandle, temperatures could drop from highs near 50 on Wednesday to the teens by midnight. Locally, such fronts are known as “blue northers.” The cold will blast all the way to the Gulf Coast by Thursday afternoon, transforming the ocean into a seemingly smoking lagoon. That will be due to “Arctic sea smoke,” or a unique type of fog which forms when frigid air blows over warmer waters. The cold will reach the East Coast on Friday, but will do so abruptly. That will spell a danger for those driving on area interstates, particularly between Washington, D.C., and Hartford, Conn. Temperatures on Friday morning will be in the 40s to near 50, with rain likely to fall as moisture swirls into the parent low pressure system to the northwest. As the cold front comes through around noontime, readings will plummet into the 20s, with temperature drops of 25 degrees or more likely in a three-hour window. At the same time, a very brief period of snow is possible. Crews won’t be able to pretreat the roadways due to the rain, and any lingering moisture and puddles could quickly turn to ice. That could leave roadways highly treacherous. There’s some chance strong winds help dry roads before they can ice over, but pockets of dangerous travel are a risk."
+"An intrusion of polar air into the United States this week won’t just mean an extreme chill — along with it, damaging winds and white-out conditions are likely in many areas. The weather system is forecast to drop temperatures as much as 30 degrees below normal across most of the contiguous states, and could produce blizzard conditions across parts of the Plains and Midwest. It is likely to make for treacherous travel conditions and produce widespread power outages in the days before Christmas. To stay safe as the holidays begin, here are four things you can do before bad weather arrives. The expected combination of gusty winds and frigid temperatures could make for a dangerous situation in the event of power outages, which federal data have shown are occurring more often and for longer durations as extreme weather stresses the energy grid. Be sure to check that you have some emergency kit basics on hand: extra blankets, candles, flashlights and nonperishable food. Do what you can to keep cellphones and other electronic devices charged, and have a plan to recharge them should you lose power — whether via batteries, a vehicle or even a hand-crank weather radio. If using a portable generator, be wary of the risks of carbon monoxide poisoning from its exhaust — and never operate it indoors or in a garage. Given the severity of the cold descending on so much of the country, exposed plumbing could freeze quickly — plumbers say it can take six hours in freezing temperatures, but even less time in more frigid conditions for the pipes to freeze and burst. Parts of the Plains and Midwest are likely to remain at subzero temperatures for extended periods over the coming days. Plumbers recommend leaving taps at a trickle to prevent standing water from freezing or, in the event of a power outage, even shutting off the water supply and letting taps run dry. The cold could catch many people off-guard, as it is not just the strongest blast of cold so far this winter but, for some parts of the country, the coldest December chill in decades. Anyone planning to venture out into the cold — or anyone who could find themselves stuck in, say, a broken-down vehicle — should be dressed to weather the elements for as long as possible. To stay warmest, dress in multiple layers of loosefitting clothing, with moisture-wicking, non-cotton fabrics closest to the body and a layer that can block wind and precipitation on the outside. And don’t forget a hat, gloves and warm socks. Extreme cold is an even deadlier hazard than extreme heat, federal health data has shown, because as temperatures drop, cold can quickly overcome the body’s ability to adapt. It can take a matter of minutes for hypothermia to set in, marked first by shivers, and then by exhaustion, confusion and drowsiness. More than 112 million people are expected to travel at least 50 miles from home between Dec. 23 and Jan. 2, according to AAA — with the bulk of them going by car or truck. Motorists should be aware of weather they could face on the road. Cars can become easily incapacitated because of extreme cold, while slippery roadways can trigger crashes. Just as you should have an emergency kit for your home, keep important provisions in your vehicle, as well. That can include: blankets, a bandanna or bright cloth to serve as a distress signal, sand or cat litter for tires stuck in snow or ice, a windshield scraper and shovel, a flashlight, snacks and water. While drivers often store winter survival kits in trunks, the Minnesota Department of Public Safety Homeland Security and Emergency Management suggests storing the items in the passenger compartment in case the trunk gets jammed or is frozen shut. And if your vehicle is stuck, experts recommend running the engine occasionally to keep warm — while also ensuring snow is not blocking the vehicle’s exhaust pipes, risking a buildup of carbon monoxide. “It’s just about being prepared,” said Mike Griesinger, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Twin Cities forecast office in Minnesota. “The last thing you want to do is get stuck out somewhere where you’re unfamiliar and you have no idea when help may be able to come by.”"
+"Weather models are in strong agreement that blasts of frigid air will plunge into the northern Plains, Midwest and eastern United States in the days leading up to Christmas. Some of this air — 30 or more degrees below average — might be the coldest in late December in at least two decades. At the same time, there are increasing odds of significant winter storminess in the eastern half of the nation between Wednesday and Christmas Eve. While far from a lock, Mother Nature may deliver a white Christmas for a swath of the Midwest and eastern United States. The frigid weather and possibility of snow will coincide with a peak time for holiday travelers. At roughly a week out, it’s not possible to forecast exactly where a storm might form and what areas will see snow or rain or remain dry. But between Dec. 22 and 24, the chance of a significant storm between the Midwest and East Coast is above normal. The primary setup for our potential outbreak of wintry weather involves strong high pressure building over the eastern Pacific Ocean toward the Alaska Aleutian Islands. That high acts as a force field, deflecting the jet stream around it. The jet — which separates frigid and more mild air — will bulge toward the Arctic Circle in central North America before crashing southward over the central and eastern United States. We can glance at a model of the trajectories of air parcels in the atmosphere for clues about the origins of next week’s air mass. If we run the model for Christmas Eve in the Midwest, it traces the air back to Nunavut, Canada, between the Northwest Passages and Baffin Bay, adjacent to Greenland. The initial blast of cold will drive southward into the northern Rockies and northern Plains on Monday and Tuesday, reaching the Great Lakes Tuesday into Wednesday. Some of the coldest areas near the border with Canada could see temperatures 30 to 40 degrees below normal, meaning highs around minus-10 and lows from minus-20 to minus-30. Subzero temperatures could reach as far south as the central Plains. The core of the cold will probably remain over the north central United States through midweek, although temperatures 10 to 20 degrees below normal could reach parts of the South and the eastern United States late in the workweek. A second, reinforcing blast of cold may dive into the northern Plains and Upper Midwest Wednesday and Thursday, pushing frigid air even farther south and east. Minneapolis should expect lows well below zero while Chicago may see highs only in the teens for much of the second half of next week. By Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, much of the eastern half of the country may see temperatures 10 to 30 degrees below normal. There are signs a third shot of frigid air could enter the northern Plains around Christmas Day before barreling south and eastward about 10 days from now. The National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center places high odds of below average temperatures in the central and eastern states both 6 to 10 and 8 to 14 days into the future. The potential for snowfall will stretch from the Plains to the East Coast during the second half of next week. Here’s what we know: It’s important to remember the approximate timeline with which meteorologists can cast predictions — understanding that the first blast of cold is still three days away and the possibility of a storm five to seven days away: At seven to 10 days in advance, forecasters can identify large-scale patterns favorable for cold (or warm) air outbreaks and big storms. That means estimating the approximate shape of the jet stream, which would offer insight into temperature trends — and where storms might form. At five to seven days in advance, forecasters can start estimating temperature differences from normal. That’s why they can say, for instance, that the impending air mass over the Plains has the potential to be 30 degrees or more colder than average. They can also begin spotting the ingredients needed to make a storm — but can’t tell yet whether they’ll overlap just right. At three to five days in advance, forecasters can provide a prediction of high and low temperatures with adequate accuracy for planning purposes. They can also tell if a storm will form, and gauge roughly how strong it will be. They might also be able to determine where, within 100 miles or so in either direction, a storm will track. They can’t yet reliably give forecasts of specific rain or snow totals because small shifts in the track could markedly change those amounts. At one to two days in advance, forecasters know where the storm will go, about how much rain or snow will fall, how bad the winds will be, and how long it will last. They can provide specific snowfall forecasts and guidance for planning purposes. On the day of, forecasters can identify “mesoscale” influences, or gauge how smaller-scale (about the size of a few counties) features will locally affect conditions. That might mean pinpointing where a 10-mile-wide stubborn snow band will set up, or where the greatest tornado risk of an afternoon might be."
+"Meteorologists were surveying significant storm damage across southeastern Louisiana on Thursday in the wake of a tornado outbreak that killed at least three people Tuesday and Wednesday and roared through a part of New Orleans that had been devastated by another tornado in March. The damage from nearly a dozen suspected or confirmed tornadoes was so widespread, the National Weather Service said its work to evaluate the severity of the tornadoes would probably continue into Friday and possibly extend into southern Mississippi as well. The tornadoes came during a two-day outbreak of deadly storms across the South, the product of a weather system that was bringing wintry weather to much of the country. One tornado that passed along the southern edge of New Orleans caused major damage in Gretna in Jefferson Parish before roaring northeastward into St. Bernard Parish, where Sheriff James Pohlmann said at a news conference Wednesday evening that it caused a two-mile path of destruction but only minor injuries. On Thursday afternoon, the Weather Service reported that the tornado had earned a rating of EF2 on the 0-to-5 scale on tornado intensity. Arabi, a community in St. Bernard that borders parts of New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward and was devastated by a tornado March 22, suffered major damage. That March tornado, rated an EF3 and the strongest on record to hit New Orleans, killed a 25-year-old man and damaged or destroyed dozens of homes in Arabi. Four injuries were also reported Wednesday in Orleans Parish. As Wednesday’s tornado swept across the region, debris could be seen falling from the sky on lower Canal Street in New Orleans, ABC News meteorologist Rob Marciano tweeted. First responders reported large amounts of damage throughout Jefferson Parish, where the tornado may have first touched down. The parish said on Twitter that multiple poles and lines were down in the area. The damage in St. Bernard Parish included broken roofs, said Guy McInnis, the parish president, at Wednesday’s news conference. “No structures are completely destroyed. It’s mostly shingle damage, and power should return in a couple of hours,” he said. “Please remember that we are not the only ones hit by a tornado tonight,” McInnis said. “We are like tornado alley.” Photos and video from social media also revealed damage in Marrero, on the south side of the Mississippi River, and below downtown New Orleans in Jefferson Parish, where a shopping center appeared mangled. As storms passed through southeast Louisiana on Wednesday evening, more than 38,000 customers were without power, according to PowerOutage. US. That was down to about 2,500 customers in St. Bernard Parish by midday Thursday. In addition to the twister that tore through New Orleans, a tornado swept through nearby St. Charles Parish earlier in the day Wednesday, killing a 56-year-old woman and destroying her house. Eight others were injured and at least a dozen structures were damaged in St. Charles Parish, including the sheriff’s office firing range, parish officials told reporters at a news conference. The tornado responsible, which was on the ground for nearly five miles, was given an EF2 rating. The Louisiana Department of Health said the woman’s death in St. Charles was the third tied to the spate of storms. Two people died south of Shreveport, La., on Tuesday when a tornado struck the town of Keithville, damaging or destroying about two to three dozen homes, according to local officials. The victims in Keithville were a 30-year-old woman and her 8-year-old son, local media reported. Another damaging tornado on Tuesday hit the town of Farmerville, just to the northeast of Shreveport, injuring 14 people. It was rated an EF3. “This has been a very difficult couple of days for our state,” Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) said in a video posted to his Facebook page. “I am amazed that we didn’t have more loss of life in Louisiana than we had.” Wednesday’s swarm of damaging tornadoes began with a storm that tracked through New Iberia, La., about 20 miles southeast of Lafayette. It damaged several homes and trapped several people, according to the police department. Three people were taken to hospitals. Tornado damage was also reported Wednesday in southern Mississippi, southern Alabama, the Florida Panhandle and southwest Georgia. The large and powerful storm that spawned the tornadoes Tuesday and Wednesday originated in California over the weekend and is lumbering across the Lower 48 states. It has also generated blizzard conditions in the northern Rockies, northern Plains and parts of the Upper Midwest, and was producing ice and snow across the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast on Thursday. The wintry weather was expected to continue into Friday. The National Weather Service received over 30 reports of tornadoes in southern Louisiana and Mississippi on Wednesday, adding to another 30-plus reports it received in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi on Tuesday."
+"About two weeks after Earth’s largest active volcano began erupting, Mauna Loa has gone quiet. So, too, has Kilauea, its smaller neighbor on Hawaii’s Big Island, which had been erupting almost constantly for more than a year. “We feel pretty confident this eruption has, in fact, paused and is probably over,” Ken Hon, scientist in charge of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, said Tuesday in reference to Mauna Loa. But volcanologists don’t know whether there is a link between the end of the two eruptions, something that highlights the larger challenges the scientists face in analyzing and predicting volcanic activity. Mauna Loa is among the best understood and most closely watched volcanoes in the world because of its record of activity, with 34 eruptions since 1843, and yet significant questions remain about the factors influencing when it erupts and when it quiets. That uncertainty extends to other hazardous volcanoes as well, prompting volcanologists to suggest that observations of the Mauna Loa eruption could help inform predictions of eruptions elsewhere. There had been signs since September that Mauna Loa was primed for its first eruption in 38 years. It finally happened in late November. And volcanologists had been observing signals of diminishing activity at Kilauea in recent weeks. But it was otherwise challenging to pinpoint the timing of activity at either volcano. “We’re getting better at forecasting the onset of eruptions because we have so much more data now,” said Einat Lev, an associate research professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “We’re not making that much progress on predicting the end.” Hon said about 200 million to 250 million cubic meters of lava flowed from Mauna Loa, which means “long mountain” in Hawaiian, over 12 days, a larger-than-usual amount of lava flow that reflects the abnormally long period since its last eruption. While the lava flow crossed a road leading to a key observatory used to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, it did not otherwise cause any damage. The lava flow stopped more than a mile and a half from the Daniel K. Inouye Highway, a busy road that serves as a shortcut between communities on the eastern and western coasts of the Big Island. Talmadge Magno, the civil defense administrator for Hawaii County, called it “the best situation we could have asked for from Mauna Loa.” Mauna Loa’s eruption was on par with the length of similar eruptions in the past, Hon said. Volcanologists had predicted that the eruption might last a few weeks, though they stressed that they could not predict its ending with much confidence. Kilauea was the site of a significant eruption in 2018, which destroyed hundreds of homes in the Puna district of eastern Hawaii and caused a massive collapse in the volcano’s caldera. A smaller eruption began at the volcano in September 2021 and had continued through Mauna Loa’s eruption, which began Nov. 27. But volcanologists believe the latest Kilauea eruption stopped sometime between Dec. 6 and Dec. 9, after a period of declining seismic activity within the volcano that had been observed since early November, Hon said. The question of whether and how the volcanoes may be connected remains “controversial,” said Diana Roman, a volcanologist at the Carnegie Institute. “Do they take turns? Are they both driven by some independent other part of the system that somehow turns one off and turns one on? We don’t know,” Roman said. “There are intriguing hints that perhaps they don’t act independently of each other.” Hon said researchers will dig into observations of both volcanoes over the next year to find what they can learn about any relationship between them. Both are shield volcanoes, named for their wide and gradually sloping profile, and are fueled by a hot spot, or an area in the middle of a tectonic plate where Earth’s mantle has an outlet to the planet’s surface. “Kilauea may have been diminishing on its own,” Hon said, adding that Mauna Loa’s eruption “may have caused enough physical changes to stop it, or it may have been headed to stop on its own.” Meanwhile, volcanologists will also be studying observations of the volcanoes to better understand signals that might help them predict eruptions elsewhere, such as Mount Rainier near Seattle. Lava has not flowed from the stratovolcano in a millennium, and it has been 500 years since a lahar — a damaging wave of mud and debris — swept down its slopes. Elizabeth Westby, a geologist at the Cascades Volcano Observatory, said that staff at that institution have been involved in observing Mauna Loa’s eruption, and that the experiences and lessons could pay dividends the next time volcanic activity occurs in the Pacific Northwest. “It keeps us on our toes,” Westby said. “It’s good training.” Scientists have evidence to believe Mount Rainier would provide ample warning of eruption through millimeter-scale bulging to its surface and spates of earthquakes as magma makes its way toward the surface. There are 20 monitoring stations on and around the volcano to detect those signals, Westby said. But in volcanology unlike with, say, weather forecasting, there isn’t enough data available to model specific, high-confidence predictions of when eruptions will occur and how severe they might be. There are research efforts underway and in planning to improve eruption forecasting by increasing volcano monitoring in places like the Chilean Andes, scientists said. But for now, it’s hard to say with certainty that volcanoes like Rainier will provide signals long before eruption, as Mauna Loa did, said Emily Brodsky, a professor of Earth and planetary sciences at the University of California at Santa Cruz. “People are hesitant to assure the public there’s going to be a long warning,” she said. “Stealth eruptions exist.”"
+"At the northern tip of Alaska, the city of Utqiagvik on Monday reached its warmest temperature ever observed between November and March, when the mercury shot up to 40 degrees — 36 degrees above the norm. The record-crushing high temperature was six degrees higher than the next warmest December reading ever measured there, in more than a century of records. It marked yet another exceptional extreme event in a region that is rapidly warming because of human-caused climate change. “For a station with 100+ years of observation to break a monthly record by 6F and a seasonal record by 4F is very significant,” wrote Rick Thoman, a climate scientist based in Alaska, in an email. He noted that Monday was “only the third December day on record to have a high temperature above freezing” in Utqiagvik, formerly known as Barrow. The extraordinary temperature came at the conclusion of a recent warm spell and more than two weeks since the sun last set in the city more than 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle. The sun won’t rise there again until late January. Despite plunging into total darkness, the city and much of the Arctic have witnessed unseasonably mild air in recent days. Record temperatures in the upper 30s and lower 40s were widespread across Alaska’s North Slope on Monday. Thoman noted that Umiat, about 170 miles southeast of Utqiagvik, also saw its temperature reach the 40s for the first time in December since at least World War II. Some of the warmth across the region is traced to a zone of a low pressure to its west and high pressure to the south. Together, the pressure systems drew unusually warm air northward, before a cold front arrived, dropping temperatures back below freezing. Thoman also pointed to open water in the Chukchi Sea, to the west of Alaska’s North Slope, as a contributor to the warmth. The loss of sea ice, because of human-caused climate change, allows the air to heat up more quickly. Record-setting temperatures moved into the region late last week. Utqiagvik set a record high for Dec. 2 on Friday and registered its warmest low temperature for December that same day. December is off to an atypically warm start across much of the Arctic. According to the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer website, temperatures over the region average 11.5 degrees (6.4 Celsius) above normal. To start December, Greenland’s capital city of Nuuk reached 50 degrees and a majority of the island’s weather stations rose above freezing. Iceland began the month with temperatures as warm as 58 degrees, following a very warm November. The December warmth across the Arctic comes on the heels of a November that was the eighth warmest on record, according to data post to Twitter by climate scientist Zack Labe. In Alaska, temperatures up 10 degrees above normal were logged during the month. 2022 is on target to finish as one of the Arctic’s toastiest on record. A recent study showed that the Arctic is warming up to four times faster than the rest of the globe and that numerous extreme events have been tied to this warming. During July, a summer storm dumped 1.42 inches of rain in 24 hours in Utqiagvik, breaking the record. An increase in precipitation across Alaska’s North Slope is “surely tied to [a] dramatic decrease in late summer and autumn sea ice,” Thoman told The Post in July. That reduction in ice increases moisture availability. Additional precipitation extremes have been observed in Alaska in recent months. Juneau, the state’s capital, saw its wettest January and February on record this year, and the interior city of Fairbanks was slammed by nearly 2 inches of rain in a December 2021 ice storm without cold-season precedent. Climate change is affecting the state in other ways, too. Unusually warm temperatures probably enhanced vegetation growth in Southwest Alaska’s sparsely populated tundra, leading to a record-breaking 2022 wildfire season. And coastal flooding — exacerbated by rising seas and reduced ice coverage — has hit communities in northern and western Alaska hard in recent years, especially as powerful storms, such as one that struck in September, batter the state."
+"The tornado outbreak across the South on Tuesday and Wednesday, along with another one weeks earlier, propelled November to the status of one of 2022’s most active months for twisters. Although some twisters are normal in November, their number and ferocity this year were unusual. Ordinarily, tornado activity is most pronounced from mid-spring to the beginning of summer. The November tornado outbreaks are reminiscent of several other out-of-season events in recent years. Last December brought unprecedented tornado activity for the time of year. The recent flurry of tornado events — outside the bounds of what is normal — is raising questions about how climate change could be shifting twister behavior. January and February were characteristically quiet for tornadoes in the Lower 48 states before activity flared up in March An outbreak on March 5 struck Iowa, with one particularly long-tracking and violent twister on the ground for nearly 70 miles. The tornado, which killed six, was rated an EF4 on a scale that goes up to 5; it was the strongest tornado ever recorded so far north so early in the year. That outbreak was followed weeks later by two others, on March 21 and 30. Both were prolific twister producers, and that March became the most active on record for tornadoes. But as mid-April turned to May and June, the tornado outbreaks all but ceased, producing a lull that coincided with what is normally the most active time of year. By May’s third week, the 2022 tornado count had sunk below average; by mid-July, it had plummeted beneath the 25th percentile. Then, November arrived. On Nov. 4, a powerful line of rotating thunderstorms produced a swarm of damaging tornadoes in Texas and Oklahoma that included two rated EF4 and two rated EF3. Nov. 4 was just the third day since 2014 to see multiple EF4 or EF5 twisters. The outbreak across the South on Nov. 29 and 30 produced two EF3 tornadoes — one of which scoured deep ruts in the ground, along with dozens of weaker twisters. On average, the 11th month of the year has one of the lowest tornado counts, and March, while relatively active, has counts that pale in comparison to April, May or June. Although 2022’s tornado activity has departed from the norm, it falls along the lines of recent years. The autumn months of 2021 also were uncharacteristically active, with a near-record tornado count in October and an unprecedented December of twisters. That year also saw a secondary maximum of tornadoes in March, but a relative dearth of twisters in April, May and June. Similarly, 2020 brought destructive early-year outbreaks that gave way to a below-average May and June. In 2018, the biggest day for tornadoes was in October and the third-biggest was in December. All three of the most significant twister events in 2017 occurred in the first week of March, while the two days with the most tornadoes in 2016 were in February and November. The heightened March activity over the past few years could be related to the presence of La Niña. Research has tied La Niña events — in which the Pacific Ocean near South America is cooler than normal — to intensified early-spring tornado activity. Some research also supports the idea that global warming could be promoting more-severe weather in colder months by increasing the warm, humid air that fuels storms when such air is normally absent. As for the lackluster activity in the later spring months in recent years? With little research linking either climate change or La Niña conditions to twisters in May and June, it may just be luck."
+"Severe thunderstorms and tornadoes ripped through parts of the South between Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning, with one in the swarm of twisters killing at least two people in Alabama. While authorities were still assessing the storms’ effects as of Wednesday, the majority of the damage appeared to be sprawled across Alabama and Mississippi. In spots across the pair of states, residents were surveying mangled homes after storms left only their frames. A tornado struck just north of Montgomery County in the Flatwood community , killing two people — a 39-year-old woman and her 8-year-old son, according to Christina Thornton, director of the Montgomery County Emergency Management Agency. One individual, the husband and father of the victims, was taken to the hospital for his injuries. Thornton said several homes in the Flatwood area were damaged by fallen trees. The damage “is isolated to that area,” Thornton said. “All homes have been checked.” The National Weather Service office in Birmingham, Ala., classified the storm as an EF-2 tornado with winds estimated at 115 mph when it touched down. The Weather Service received reports of at least 37 tornadoes, concentrated in northern Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Several of the tornadoes were “large and extremely dangerous,” the agency said. The twisters toppled trees and power lines, and several caused significant structural damage to homes and buildings across the three states. Powerful winds uprooted trees and peeled siding from homes in Mississippi and Alabama. Videos showed mobile-home debris lying scattered across lawns and major roadways. A steeple was yanked from the top of a church, and some residents  had been trapped in a grocery store, the Weather Service reported. Almost every unit in an apartment building in Eutaw, Ala., was exposed after a storm ripped its roof off. Fifteen families were displaced, according to Hodges Smith of the Greene County emergency management agency. The families were removed from their homes during the storm and placed in a temporary shelter. “It’s absolutely looking like a small community’s been wiped off the map,” Montgomery County’s Thornton told Fox Weather on Wednesday morning, “It’s really devastating to think about when you look across the field and you know that there were homes there the day before.” Thornton added: “It’s just so overwhelming when moments of disaster can utterly change life’s landscape.” The Weather Service  logged dozens of reports of damaging straight-line winds and large hail over a larger zone that spanned from eastern Texas to Georgia and as far north as Kentucky. The storms also unloaded torrential rain. Some places recorded more than 5 inches, and several flash-flood warnings were issued in central Mississippi and Alabama. In Birmingham, a number of intersections were reportedly flooded early Wednesday. According to the Weather Channel, the National Weather Service issued 141 severe thunderstorm warnings and 76 tornado warnings between Tuesday afternoon and 8 a.m. Wednesday across 10 states. The storm outbreak, which forecasters had warned about for nearly a week, continued Wednesday morning as a line of intense storms was sweeping across southern Georgia and the Florida Panhandle. A tornado watch covered a sliver of the Florida Panhandle until 11 a.m. Central time, and the Weather Service issued a tornado warning for the area around Panama City until 9 a.m. The storm risk was expected to wane by Wednesday afternoon as the responsible cold front pushed off the southeast coast. Gusty downpours were forecast for the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast on Wednesday afternoon but were not expected to be severe. Local officials throughout the southeast reported damaged homes. In Mississippi, Choctaw County Sheriff’s Sgt. Dillion Cates told Fox Weather that the storms caused trees to fall “throughout that area” and reported “severe damage” to some homes. “There was a house in the Sherwood community that the roof was actually lifted off of the house, twisted 180 degrees and dropped back down on the home,” Cates said. In the northeastern Louisiana town of Caldwell Parish, mangled dresser drawers were strewn across lawns with the clothes still folded neatly inside. Video footage showed people with flashlights sifting through the rubble, gathering valuables from demolished homes. Trees that snapped in half fell to the ground and crippled homes. Entire homes were reduced to rubble. At least three people sustained minor injuries when the tornado struck Caldwell Parish County, the parish’s Department of Homeland Security told The Washington Post. While tornadoes are most numerous in the spring across the South and much of the Lower 48, they are not uncommon in November, which is a “second season” for severe storms. The United States averages about 65 tornadoes each November. The month began with a flurry of tornadoes in parts of Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas that was blamed for at least one death. Ajasa reported from New York and Timsit from London."
+"Multiple tornadoes raked across portions of the South on Tuesday evening, some “large and extremely dangerous,” according to the National Weather Service. The tornadoes developed amid a dangerous setup for violent thunderstorms that forecasters at Weather Service had warned about for days. On Tuesday afternoon and evening, numerous strong to severe thunderstorms had erupted between eastern Texas and Tennessee, with most intense activity between northern Louisiana and central Mississippi. That’s where the Weather Service has issued a “particularly dangerous situation” (PDS) tornado watch until 2 a.m. Central time Wednesday. Such PDS watches are reserved for the most severe circumstances. Additional tornado watches are in effect until 11 p.m. Central time for southeast Mississippi, southwest Alabama and west-central Alabama, including Tuscaloosa. Numerous tornado warnings, for radar-indicated rotation, were issued Tuesday afternoon and evening across the South and Lower Mississippi Valley. At least eight tornadoes had been confirmed in Louisiana and Mississippi as of 7 p.m. Central. The Weather Service had received several reports of structural damage and downed trees from the twisters. As of 8 p.m. local time, the storm had damaged homes in Lowndes County, Miss., which has about 60,000 residents, and temporarily trapped some people inside a store, according to a local mayor. The city of Columbus is the county seat of Lowndes, just east of Starkville — home to Mississippi State University. Columbus Mayor Keith Gaskin said he hasn’t heard any reports of fatalities. “The tornado is heading toward downtown Columbus right now,” he said. Gaskin said his family lives in an antebellum home downtown and is hunkering down for the storm with pillows up against a wall in the dining room — the only room in the house without windows. “We’re just prayerful that it won’t be as bad as it has been in the past,” he said. The Storm Prediction Center cautioned Tuesday that severe storms could develop over a sprawling zone that includes more than 40 million people from near Houston into western Ohio. But central Mississippi faces the highest odds of particularly dangerous weather. That’s where the Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center has declared a rare level 4 out of 5 risk for severe storms. This area could see storms come in repeated waves, meaning a “long duration severe weather event” through Wednesday morning, according to the Weather Service forecast office in Jackson, Miss. The danger will be amplified as predicted tornadoes are expected to be fast-moving and sometimes wrapped in rain, reducing lead time and making them hard to see. Additionally, the threat of tornadoes is continuing after dark, when they are known to be most deadly. Some of the areas most at risk have many poorly constructed homes that are vulnerable to tornado damage. The threat of severe weather will continue into parts of the Southeast on Wednesday, but storm intensity should ease some. Areas affected: The level 4 out of 5 risk of severe weather includes most of central Mississippi, extreme northeastern Louisiana and extreme northwest Alabama. In Mississippi, it includes Jackson, Meridian, Clinton, Pearl and Vicksburg. Surrounding that region is a level 3 out of 5 risk of severe weather for much of the Lower Mississippi Valley. This zone includes Monroe and Alexandria, La. ; Hattiesburg, Miss; and Huntsville, Ala. A level 2 out of 5 slight risk covers Nashville, New Orleans, Birmingham, Mobile and Shreveport, La. Houston, Indianapolis and Chattanooga are within a level 1 out of 5 risk zone. Timing: Severe thunderstorms will continue through the evening and first half of the overnight. After midnight, they may congeal into a line that gradually weakens as it pushes east. Hazards: The specific hazards associated with thunderstorms will be predicated on whether storms are able to remain isolated as lone, rotating thunderstorms or supercells. If rotating storms remain discrete, then tornadoes will be possible, with the risk of isolated strong and/or long-track tornadoes. Otherwise, damaging straight-line winds and hail, perhaps up to the size of chicken eggs, will accompany thunderstorms. Overnight, any lines of storms that develop will contain damaging winds and a low-end risk for brief, transient tornadoes. Where storms pass over the same areas repeatedly, flash flooding may ensue. Flood watches have been posted for portions of southeast Louisiana, and southern Mississippi and Alabama with up to 4 inches of rain possible. The setup: A potent high-altitude disturbance ejecting out of the western United States will swing a strong cold front east across the Plains, the Mid-South and the Mississippi and Tennessee valleys. Ahead of it, warm, humid air will waft north from the Gulf of Mexico, providing ample fuel for storms. Enhanced rising motion ahead of the disturbances will further bolster thunderstorm risk, while an uptick in wind shear, or changing winds with height induced by an overhead jet stream, will encourage said storms to rotate. Nighttime tornado risk: Indications are that the greatest severe weather risk may exist through 9 p.m. Central or even later meaning several hours of a significant nocturnal tornado threat. Nighttime tornadoes are disproportionately more deadly. Storm characteristics: Thunderstorms in the South are often more fast-moving than their Great Plains counterparts. Tuesday night’s storms could be moving to the northeast at highway speeds. That means that, by the time conditions begin to deteriorate, there will be only a few moments before an immediate, life-threatening tornado risk arrives. That also may lead to less advance warning. In addition, storms will have low cloud bases, which means any tornadic circulation may be impossible to see (assuming it’s even during the daylight hours). Moreover, tornadoes may be rain-wrapped and enshrouded in heavy precipitation. An especially vulnerable zone: Mississippi has the fourth-greatest per capita density of mobile homes in the nation. It’s estimated that nearly a sixth of all housing units in the Magnolia State are mobile and/or manufactured homes. These homes often fail structurally even in minimal tornadic winds. Complicating matters is the urban planning. Unlike in Florida, where mobile home communities may form entire neighborhoods, many mobile homes in Mississippi and, in particular, Alabama are isolated — the next house might be hundreds of feet or more away. That makes it impossible to install communal storm cellars that are realistically accessible at a moment’s notice. Even more concerning is the road network of the Deep South. Unlike in the Plains, where one-mile grids are the standard, the roadways in Mississippi are labyrinthine and winding, offering few if any reasonable escape paths for those seeking to move from mobile homes ahead of a storm. On severe weather days, preparation is key. Ensure that wherever you go, you are no more than five minutes from a sturdy tornado shelter — ideally something below ground and without windows. This includes if you are driving. Have multiple ways to be notified if a warning is issued for your location. Low-level lapse rates: There is a chance that storms will be tempered by weak low-level lapse rates, or the rate at which temperatures decrease with altitude in the sky. That means there’s less upward “oomph” to boost thunderstorm updrafts in the lowest few miles of the atmosphere, which could acutely reduce the threat of strong and/or violent tornadoes. Lift: It’s unclear how much broad-scale “lift” will exist to foster upward motion in the first place. There is a distinct possibility that lift on the broad scale is meager. In that case, there may be fewer storms overall, but we’d probably see one to two “hot spots” of enhanced storm activity. Those would become strips of surface convergence where air gathers that would focus a tornado risk. Thunderstorms probably would ride along that repeatedly and “train,” possibly resulting in the threat of multiple tornadoes over a localized area."
+"The lower Mississippi Valley is bracing for what the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center warns could be a “regional tornado outbreak” on Tuesday, with widespread severe weather and the potential for a few strong tornadoes. It will be the second episode of severe thunderstorms to ravage parts of the South this November, bookending a month that began with deadly storms in Texas and Oklahoma on Nov. 4. Hardest hit this time will be regions between northern Louisiana and southwest Tennessee, though anyone residing in Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee or Mississippi should remain on high alert. The storms could continue into the Tennessee Valley on Wednesday, although the risk of severe weather will lessen. While severe weather is most common in the springtime, autumn often proves a muted “second season.” That’s due to periodic clashes between summer’s lingering warmth, fueled by Gulf of Mexico moisture, and surges of chilly Canadian air portending winter. The mid-South often becomes an atmospheric battleground as the jet stream strengthens each fall, energizing storms and encouraging some to rotate. The Storm Prediction Center took the highly unusual step of issuing a level 4 out of 5 risk of severe weather, which is quite atypical for November. For that category to be drawn a full day in advance is even rarer. In fact, the agency has included moderate risks in its day-before outlooks only seven times in the past 20 years. They’re reserved for particularly dangerous severe weather events. The level 4 out of 5 risk zone includes most of northwest Mississippi, extreme southeast Arkansas and the northeast corner of Louisiana. The zone includes communities mainly along and west of Interstate 55, including Greenville and Greenwood, Miss., and it extends as far east as Tupelo. Memphis is also clipped by the risk area, including some of its southern and western suburbs. Approximately 1.85 million people are encompassed within that zone. A level 3 risk of severe weather surrounds the level 4 zone, casting a wider net and covering the rest of the Memphis metro area as well as Jackson, Tenn.; Jackson, Miss. ; and Monroe, La. A broader level 2 risk blankets areas all the way from the Gulf Coast into southwest Kentucky, including Nashville; Little Rock; Birmingham, Ala.; and Shreveport; Baton Rouge and Lafayette, La. Elsewhere, cities like Houston and Louisville are under a level 1 risk of severe weather. The ingredients will be present to support the development of rotating thunderstorms or supercells that can spawn tornadoes. The Storm Prediction Center says “significant and/or long-track tornadoes” are possible; these are capable of reaching at least EF2 strength on the 0-to-5 Enhanced Fujita scale for tornado intensity. Whether intense tornadoes develop will depend on whether supercells remain discrete and unaffected by nearby storms. That’s not a certainty, but if supercells evolve, the risk of significant tornadoes will grow. During the late evening and overnight, the storms may merge into clusters and line segments, which would increase the risk of damaging straight-line winds while the tornado threat lessens some. A few instances of hail are possible, too, but will not be the primary threat. Moisture streaming northward will keep low clouds in place much of the day, with periodic showers. The sudden blossoming of thunderstorms or convective initiation won’t occur until a “cap” of warm air aloft is broken. That lid of hot, dry air, originating from the Desert Southwest, prevents humid, unstable surface air from rising — until it suddenly erupts upward and punctures the cap. Weather models often struggle with simulating when convective initiation will occur. In this case, it’s likely that storms will materialize by 3 or 4 p.m. local time., then survive until 9 or 10 p.m. before the supercells start to weaken some. On severe weather days, advanced preparation is key. Ensure that, wherever you go, you are no more than five minutes away from a sturdy tornado shelter — ideally something below ground and without windows. This includes if you are driving. Have multiple ways to be notified if a warning is issued for your location. Tornado watches will be issued during the late morning or around lunchtime for broad areas. A watch means conditions are favorable for the development of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes. More targeted warnings will be issued for thunderstorm cells that, on radar, are exhibiting rotation or if a tornado is confirmed by a storm spotter or the presence of debris on radar. If a tornado warning is issued for your location, that’s an immediate call to take shelter. The trigger for the storms is a pocket of cold air, low pressure and spin at high altitudes diving southeastward over the western United States on Monday. As it progresses toward the central states on Tuesday, it will destabilize the lower atmosphere, or encourage surface air to rise. The parent upper-air disturbance is nestled within a dip in the jet stream known as a trough. That jet stream momentum aloft is contributing to a change of wind speed and/or direction with height known as wind shear. Any clouds that span multiple layers of the atmosphere in a sheared environment acquire rotation. That will enhance the tornado threat. Most of the storms will be forming ahead of a cold front, although there are signs that a few supercells could form sneakily along a warm front in southern Alabama and the Florida Panhandle. Those could produce offshore waterspouts or brief tornadoes, too."
+"Areas downwind of lakes Erie and Ontario in western New York are among the snowiest places in the United States. Even against the backdrop of the many impressive storms that have plastered these areas over the years, last week’s snow event stands out. Just south of Buffalo, snowfall totals associated with the event exceeded 6 feet, cementing it as one of the most prolific on record for the region. It’s possible that the rapid pace with which snow accumulated will break New York’s 24-hour snowfall record and an unofficial 48-hour top mark. Reports compiled by the National Weather Service office in Buffalo documented extreme totals that maxed out at 81.2 inches in Erie County, which includes Buffalo and its southern suburbs, among them Orchard Park, Hamburg and Blasdell: These totals, which were reported by trained and untrained public observers, have yet to be officially vetted and certified, according to a statement by the National Weather Service office in Buffalo. While the reports remain “unofficial until they can be verified,” they paint a picture of a storm of historic magnitude in the Lake Erie area. Before Friday, the most prolific Buffalo-area lake effect snow event in modern history likely occurred in mid-November 2014, when three towns in Erie County each measured more than 60 inches of snow. According to the Weather Service, the 2014 event had some historical precedent: a December 1945 storm during which Lancaster, N.Y., reported snow totals “in excess of 70 inches.” Last week’s storm seems to have overshadowed both of those events, making it the most prolific lake-effect event in known history for the Lake Erie area. Two other blockbuster storms — one in October 2006, the other in January 1977 — are well known for their severity in the Buffalo region. But neither involved snowfall totals close to last week’s event. The 2006 storm caused crippling damage despite a relatively modest 24-inch maximum total, because it struck early in the season when trees were fully leaved. The 1977 event involved feet of powdery, already-fallen snow that blew off frozen Lake Erie into the city. It’s possible last week’s storm totals near Buffalo may even top historic amounts from areas downwind of Lake Ontario, which generally see more voluminous lake-effect storms. That’s because Lake Ontario is deeper and larger than Lake Erie, and the hills downwind are higher. More than 80 inches of snow have accumulated in Ontario-adjacent towns during a handful of storms. In January 1997, several observers atop the Tug Hill Plateau reported totals in excess of 90 inches. A 10-day storm dropped up to 141 inches of snow east of Pulaski in February 2007. And in January 1966, Lake Ontario-adjacent Oswego picked up 102 inches during a long-fused storm. It was during that 1966 event that the state’s 24-hour snowfall record was set: a staggering 50 inches in Camden — about 30 miles northeast of Syracuse. Last week’s Buffalo-area storm may threaten this statewide record. For example, a 24-hour total of 66 inches of snow was reported in Orchard Park. In addition, a reported total of 72.4 inches from Nov. 18-19 near Hamburg may break New York’s unofficial two-day snowfall record of 69.3 inches. However, these amounts have not yet been certified and more investigation is required to see if they were legitimate. If weather observers measure snow amounts more often than every six hours, for example, their reports can be disqualified because such frequent reporting tends to inflate totals. Too-frequent measuring nullified a potential record from the January 1997 storm. According to the Weather Service in Buffalo, a team that includes members of its office, the Weather Service’s Eastern Region Headquarters, the New York state climatology office, the Northeast Regional Climate Center and the National Centers for Environmental Information will evaluate last week’s snowfall reports to determine whether a new 24-hour snowfall record was set."
+"Nearly six weeks after Hurricane Ian crashed into Florida, bringing fierce winds and catastrophic flooding to the southwest coast, the state’s east coast is bracing for a second major storm that could threaten its nascent recovery efforts and strain the federal and state response. Tropical Storm Nicole is expected to reach hurricane strength by Wednesday and make landfall on Florida’s Atlantic coastline Wednesday night, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami. The storm’s approach has prompted hurricane warnings for communities from Boca Raton to the Flagler-Volusia county line, meaning that those areas are likely to experience hurricane-force winds and flooding in the next 36 hours. Nicole’s arrival would present a challenge to emergency managers under any conditions. The storm is expected to deliver between 3 and 5 inches of rain, with up to 7 inches predicted in some areas. And it is barreling toward a densely populated coast where many communities already experience regular “nuisance flooding” when high tides are pushed even higher by sea level rise. At a news conference Tuesday, Lee County Manager Roger Desjarlais said the county plans to open two shelters, though it does not anticipate issuing evacuation orders. Home to Sanibel Island, Fort Myers Beach and Fort Myers, where Ian made landfall, the county recorded a death toll from the storm higher than anywhere in the state. “We’re cognizant of the fact that a lot of residents are living in damaged properties,” Desjarlais said. “Some people are living in tents. Some people are living in homes that still require a lot of repair.” Coming on the heels of Ian, one of the most powerful storms to slam into the United States in the past decade, Nicole may also serve as a test of whether Florida is prepared for the escalating effects of climate change. Cascading disasters, such as the battery of floods, powerful rainstorms and heat waves that struck the United States in June, are becoming more common and are expected to hit coastal areas the hardest. Several of the coastal and inland areas where Ian destroyed homes, tore up roads and left behind a staggering amount of wreckage were under a tropical storm watch Tuesday. That included Port Charlotte and Fort Myers, as well as the greater Tampa Bay region. As Nicole nears, these communities have suddenly had to shift from post-storm cleanup to preparations for another potential disaster. Many roofs are covered by tarps — the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has installed more than 18,000 since Ian made landfall on Sept. 28 — and some county officials are concerned that Nicole’s winds could scatter the debris left in Ian’s wake. In Seminole County, north of Orlando, Ian and its remnants dumped unprecedented amounts of rain that turned creeks into rushing rivers. At a Tuesday news conference, Alan Harris, the county’s emergency manager, warned residents that Nicole could bring more flooding and damage. “This is not the time for hurricane fatigue,” he said. Harris said he is particularly concerned that rainfall from Ian has left the ground saturated and weakened trees’ root structures. “The winds could bring down trees, and those could bring down power lines,” he said. In areas that are still reeling from Ian, Nicole’s arrival could slow recovery efforts, forcing federal and state agencies to make tough decisions about whether to shift employees from one disaster to another. On the state’s east coast, basic government functions, such as debris removal after a storm, could be impeded by the fact that most major haulers are likely to be tied up on the west coast for months clearing downed trees and waterlogged drywall. If counties have to compete with one another for contractors, cleanup workers and equipment, it could drive up costs and make rebuilding difficult. Florida’s emergency management division announced this week that all of the Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster recovery centers opened to help Floridians displaced by Ian will close this week until severe weather has passed. Thirty-four counties have been placed under a state of emergency, giving the agency broader authority and the state the ability to request federal assistance. In its latest briefing Tuesday morning, FEMA said it had 2,400 employees in Florida in support of Ian recovery efforts. FEMA press secretary Jeremy Edwards said the agency has staffers in Tallahassee who can work directly with state officials to respond to the storm. “We also know that some areas in Florida remain vulnerable due to the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, and we stand ready to help those who may be impacted by Nicole prepare, while continuing to support those recovering from Ian,” he said. A spokesperson for the Army Corps of Engineers said the corps is positioning teams of coastal engineers so they can inspect for damage along the coast following the storm. It is also moving survey vessels and crews into place near certain ports. On the state’s east coast, local officials urged residents to take the storm seriously. Forecasters have advised residents not to focus on Nicole’s exact track. Federal officials expect widespread flooding outside the storm’s cone, affecting much of the state and parts of the Georgia coast. On Tuesday evening, St. Johns County announced it was implementing a voluntary evacuation for its coastal communities, including the city of St. Augustine. Farther south, local officials in Martin and St. Lucie counties were also urging coastal residents to leave their homes. Meanwhile, some school systems in Florida, including in Miami-Dade County and Orlando — announced they were canceling classes on Wednesday. Palm Beach County issued a mandatory evacuation order to take effect Wednesday morning for about 119,000 residents living in mobile homes, on barrier islands and in other low-lying areas. The county plans to open nine shelters. At a news conference Tuesday, County Mayor Robert Weinroth said residents in flood-prone areas should not delay making decisions about whether to leave their homes. “If you are going to leave, this is the time to be making those plans,” he said. Yet he and other county officials also encouraged residents to vote, saying that preparations for the storm had “no impact on the elections.” Port Canaveral, a typically busy departure point for cruise lines, published an evacuation notice warning owners of vessels weighing under 500 gross tons to remove them from its waterways, warning that the port “is not suitable for refuge during a hurricane.” Tim Craig in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., contributed to this report."
+"A strong cold front is set to deliver a line of severe thunderstorms to parts of central and eastern Texas on Friday, with the risk of large hail, destructive winds and tornadoes. The strongest storms may move through major metropolitan areas toward the afternoon and evening commute, spelling concern for motorists struck on area roadways. The National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center has highlighted a level 3 out of 5 “enhanced” risk of severe weather, which blankets much of central and East Texas, southeast Oklahoma, southwest Arkansas and adjacent northwest Louisiana. “Several tornadoes are possible over far southeast Oklahoma and eastern Texas,” the agency wrote in its online outlook. “A strong tornado or two may occur from late afternoon into early evening.” Nearly 12 million people are in the bull’s eye where the odds of dangerous thunderstorms and tornadoes are the highest. Among them are residents in the greater Dallas-Fort Worth metro area east toward the Louisiana and Arkansas borders. The Weather Service issued a tornado watch until 8 p.m. Central time in the zone from roughly Waco, Tex., to Tulsa, including Dallas, cautioning that a few tornadoes were likely “with a couple intense tornadoes possible.” At 1:35 p.m., heavy storms were already starting to flare up just west of Dallas. The hazardous weather stems from a dramatic clash of the seasons. In the West, frigid air is bleeding south from Canada, overlapping with Pacific moisture to plaster parts of the Rockies with snowfall. Winter weather advisories blanketed the Rockies, where snow showers were garnishing the high terrain after an earlier storm plastered some spots with feet of snow. Yet another system is delivering snow by the foot in the Cascades, and will target the Sierra Nevada in the days ahead. Farther east, temperatures are spiking 20 degrees or more above average in spots as high pressure swells northward. Mobridge, S.D., set a monthly record high at 80 degrees Wednesday; its average high is closer to 50. In between, the seasons are waging war — and the increasingly volatile atmosphere will rear its angry head Friday afternoon and evening. A Level 3 out of 5 enhanced risk for severe weather encompasses the greater Dallas-Fort Worth area, and stretches from southeast of Austin into southeast Oklahoma, including Waco and McAlester. Much of Interstates 20 and 30 are also included, as are places farther east including Lufkin, Tex., Shreveport, La. and Hot Springs, Ark. A lesser Level 2 out of 5 slight risk spans from Oklahoma City and Tulsa all the way to the Gulf Coast, including Houston-Galveston. Hazards: Widespread strong to damaging winds within the mainline, along with isolated tornadoes. If supercells form, a strong tornado or two are possible. Timing: Thunderstorms will rapidly fire during the mid-to-late afternoon around Dallas, pushing into areas just to its east as the afternoon and evening commute is starting. They will cross into Arkansas and Louisiana, affecting Shreveport and Texarkana, between 9 p.m. and midnight local time. On water vapor satellite imagery Friday morning, the instigating trigger — a lobe of high altitude cold air, low pressure and spin nestled within a dip in the jet stream — could be seen in New Mexico around sunrise. That so-called “kicker” was ejecting east, and will slip over Texas Hill Country Friday. It will enhance ascent, or upward motion, ahead of it, fostering the formation of thunderstorms. Southerly winds were also helping draw warmth and moisture northward across the southern Plains, while a shot of cool, dry air from the northwest was wrapping in behind the instigating disturbance. The resulting battle between the air masses, which will play out along a strong cold front, is what will brew storms. That boundary will be moving through Central Texas and should approach the Interstate 35 corridor around lunchtime. Thunderstorms will rapidly develop near and east of a line from Waco to Dallas-Fort Worth to near Ardmore, Okla., around 2 or 3 p.m. There is some uncertainty how much “discrete” development there is — in other words, how many lone thunderstorm cells will form ahead of the cold front. Along the front itself, a squall line of thunderstorms is anticipated. Due to considerable wind shear, or a change in wind speed and/or direction with height, any thunderstorms that form ahead of the mainline will have the propensity to become supercells or rotating thunderstorms and produce large hail, damaging winds and tornadoes. A strong tornado cannot be ruled out if discrete development occurs — and can persist long enough before cell mergers muddle storm structure. Within the line itself, scattered to widespread strong to damaging winds of 50 to 70 mph are likely, along with embedded circulations capable of producing quick-hitting tornadoes."
+"The tropical Atlantic remains unusually busy for November, with forecasters monitoring multiple systems at a time when activity is usually tamping down. After battering Belize as a hurricane Wednesday, where it caused flooding and wind damage, Tropical Depression Lisa is raining itself out over southeast Mexico. Meanwhile, Hurricane Martin, fueled by unusually warm ocean waters, is sweeping across the North Atlantic as the farthest-north hurricane on record during November. When Lisa and Martin coexisted as hurricanes on Wednesday, it marked only the third instance on record of multiple Atlantic hurricanes during the month. Statistically, a November hurricane should form in the Atlantic just once every two or three years. Meanwhile, two additional Atlantic disturbances are being tracked by the National Hurricane Center because of their potential to develop over the coming days. Lisa made landfall in Belize late Wednesday afternoon as a Category 1 hurricane with 85 mph sustained winds. It struck 10 miles southwest of Belize City, which was flooded by the hurricane’s ocean surge and largely left in the dark by its powerful winds. Although a relatively small storm, with hurricane-force winds extending just 15 miles from its center, Lisa was strengthening as it came ashore. The ocean surge, pushing waters up to 4 to 7 feet above normally dry land — engulfed many parts of Belize City, home to 57,000 people, where eyewitnesses described widespread flooding. “Much of Belize City is underwater. My hotel is completely swamped,” storm chaser Josh Morgerman wrote on Twitter on Wednesday evening. Light to moderate damage to houses and infrastructure was also reported. Farther inland, the storm unloaded 4 to 8 inches of rain. Downpours continued Thursday in some areas, and totals could reach 10 inches. Excessive rainfall — and areas of flooding — not only affected Belize, but also neighboring Guatemala and parts of Mexico. Lisa was downgraded to a tropical depression Thursday morning as it decayed over southwest Mexico. A remnant low-level swirl of the storm center may emerge into the Bay of Campeche in the southern Gulf of Mexico in a few days, but it is not forecast to gain significant strength. About 3,500 miles to the northeast of Lisa spins Martin in the North Atlantic. The mammoth storm has tropical-storm-force winds that extend 520 miles from the center. The storm is racing northeast at 48 mph Thursday afternoon with sustained winds of 85 mph. Sitting at 45.6 degrees north latitude, Martin is the farthest-north hurricane on record this late in the year. “No Atlantic hurricanes have been recorded in November as far north as Martin,” meteorologist Michael Lowry wrote Thursday morning in his Substack newsletter. He attributed Martin’s high-latitude strength to “historically warm sea surface temperatures in this part of the world.” Human-caused climate change is warming ocean waters around the world, and research has already shown storms are gaining strength farther north than they used to. Martin is expected to lose its tropical characteristic but retain its hurricane-force winds as it moves over colder waters over the next two days. Its remnants may eventually threaten Ireland and the United Kingdom by late in the weekend as a weaker but still windy tempest. With Lisa and Martin preparing to wind down, the seasonal count of named storms in the North Atlantic stands at 13, including seven hurricanes and two major hurricanes. This is close to normal. Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) — which is a measure of total Atlantic tropical activity based on the strength and duration of all storms — is somewhat below normal, or about 78 percent of average. Hurricane season isn’t over until Nov. 30, however, and the Hurricane Center is watching two more areas for potential development. An area of disturbed weather east of Bermuda is forecast to drift west over the coming days and has a 10 percent chance of becoming a tropical depression or storm. This disturbance is expected to eventually merge with another area of storminess east of the Bahamas, which is given a 30 percent chance to develop over the next five days. It may move over the Bahamas and ultimately the Southeast United States. Early next week, it has the potential to produce coastal flooding, erosion and periods of rain from Florida to the Carolinas. Jason Samenow contributed to this report."
+"As Hurricane Ian plowed across central Florida at the end of September, the manager of a Port Orange wastewater facility was worried about what would happen when the storm forced wastewater to overflow from a four-mile pipe and into a nearby body of water. He was searching desperately for a chemical compound that would reduce harm to marine and human life. But there wouldn’t be any accessible for almost two more days. “We tried other providers but they were strapped as well due to Hurricane Ian,” Chris Wall, manager of the water reclamation facility, said in a recent filing to Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). The untreated wastewater overflowed from the site — accounting for just some of the millions of gallons of spills that have been reported around the state since the storm. In the weeks since Ian pulled away from the Sunshine State, city workers and concerned citizens have filed hundreds of pollution reports to the state’s DEP. Many of the most frequent in Florida were linked to sewage systems, which unloaded harmful bacteria and viruses for humans into waterways. Researchers say it could take months before the ocean flushes out the contaminated water. “We knew that there was a large amount of sewage that was being released into the waterways, not just in one area, but in many areas,” said Jennifer Hecker, executive director of the Coastal & Heartland National Estuary Partnership (CHNEP), part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) National Estuary Program. “I’ve been working on this for nearly 30 years, and I’ve never encountered anything of this scale and magnitude.” As more debris has cleared a month after Ian’s landfall, the CHNEP and its environmental partners have been able to take samples from watersheds, rivers and estuaries in southwest Florida to assess for common pollutants and bacteria. Still, Hecker said conditions in mid-October for sampling water were not ideal; some boat ramps had still been blocked and access to certain waterways remained difficult because of damage from the storm. As of mid-October, the team had found numerous places where the water was six to 10 times the state’s safety threshold for the types of bacteria found in feces such as E. coli and enterococci. Those bacteria can cause urinary tract infections, life-threatening inflammation to the heart and other serious infections. As of Nov. 1, microscopic algae called Karenia brevis (commonly known as red tide) were also present at high enough concentrations to cause respiratory issues for people in Charlotte, Lee and Sarasota counties, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “From Sarasota Bay south to Naples, levels of bacteria in the water are generally elevated and well above what the criteria are for bacteria in our in our waterways,” said Christine Angelini, director of the University of Florida’s Center for Coastal Solutions, which is one of CHNEP’s partners collecting data. Additionally, she said an excess of nutrients and debris were depleting oxygen levels in major waterways, such as the Peace River, which could lead to massive loss of fish important for the state’s economy. Ian’s torrential rainfall and historic storm surge strained sewage systems that were already vulnerable. Florida’s wastewater systems rely heavily on electric “lift stations” that pump wastewater from trenches about 10 feet deep up to surface-level plants that clean the water. These stations are inexpensive and use smaller pipelines at shallow depths. “We don’t have a lot of topography,” said Sarina Ergas, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of South Florida. “It’s very flat.” That’s why Florida needs to pump sewage to treatment plants. But one disadvantage is that the pumps typically rely on electric power to run. In Ian’s wake, millions of Floridians were without electricity. If power supply is interrupted, the EPA said, it can “interrupt the normal operation” of the wastewater treatment and lead to flooding “upstream of the lift station.” When Ian caused a power outage in the city of Maitland, just northeast of Orlando, the pumps couldn’t operate, creating high water volumes that the surrounding area couldn’t hold. As a result, 150,000 gallons of untreated wastewater backed up into water bodies. Stations sometimes have backup generators, but federal incident reports filed shortly after Ian showed they aren’t always reliable. An auxiliary pump in North Fort Myers ran out of fuel, which took time to replenish due to debris from Ian. A backup generator in Tampa Bay shut off unexpectedly after running for several hours. Another near Orlando turned off just two weeks after annual preventive maintenance. Some of the most severe damage came in the city of Bradenton. At a lift station, electricity from Florida Power & Light, a subsidiary of NextEra Energy, failed. Then the backup generator failed too, “after an extended period of operation,” the city’s water company said. As the storm raged, 4 million gallons of untreated wastewater poured from the site into Wares Creek. Later, the company applied lime — which retains pollutants — and collected other debris. The sheer size of Ian, which brought more than 20 inches of rainfall in parts of the state, makes it difficult to plan infrastructure that would be sturdy enough to withstand similar storms. John Shaw, an expert witness in courts and a consultant to municipalities about wastewater, said that a hurricane is “an inundation event you really can’t design for. Let’s just call it an act of God that exceeds the capacity of the [pumping] station. And you can’t design a facility that’s going to survive an act like that.” Cities sometimes don’t enforce regulations of wastewater systems with rigor. A few months ago, the Suncoast Waterkeeper and other environmental organizations settled a lawsuit with the city of Bradenton for a history of sewage spills in the Manatee River long before Ian hit. The city has committed to upgrade the aging infrastructure, perhaps to bigger pumps, over the next three years using federal grant money. “These are large municipalities with miles and miles of sewage lines that over the course of the last several decades have come into disrepair. They’ve got to put investments in upgrading them,” said Justin Bloom, the founder and board member of the Suncoast Waterkeeper. Bloom thinks a lot of the water-quality issues post-Ian were “preventable” if there had been more regulation and enforcement of such systems. “In improving regulations, I think we need to anticipate more storms and more severe rainfall,” he said. While he said there’s no “overnight fix,” Bloom hoped there could be improvements “by this time next year ... but it’s going to take a while.” For the recovery of the immediate damage, researchers say the return to clean waterways depends on how quickly natural weather systems and ocean circulation can flush the contaminants from the rivers and estuaries. “So much of this depends on what sort of weather conditions are in the weeks and months to come,” Angelini said. “We really don’t know what that end point is and when we will come back to more normal levels.”"
+"A strong fall storm system is set to bring a sampler pack of wild weather across the entire country, delivering snow to some, record warmth for others and even the risk of a few tornadoes in between. The storm will feed off the clash between winter’s chill and summer’s leftover warmth, growing into an atmospheric sink drain that will swirl up a bit of everything. To the west of the storm, frigid temperatures will overlap with Pacific moisture to drop a foot and a half of snow in the Sierra Nevada, where winter storm warnings are in effect. Snow will also fall in the higher terrain around the Four Corners, the northern Rockies and northwest Montana. Farther east, long-standing temperature records are in jeopardy across the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, where highs could range 10 to 15 degrees above normal for the better part of a week. In the middle, the opposite air masses will meet and wage war over the Plains, brewing days of severe weather chances and the risk of flooding rains. The National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center has already drawn severe weather risk areas for Thursday and Friday; Saturday could yield some strong storms, too. On Tuesday morning, high pressure dominated much of the contiguous United States. That was allowing mild air to surge north and spread over much of the central and eastern United States. That’s a mere prelude to what’s set to unfold by late in the week. The main feature to watch is a trough, or dip in the jet stream, that will dive southeast, drawing very cold air southward. It was pushing east over the Pacific Northwest on Tuesday with valley rain and snow in the higher elevations. That initial trough will hastily swing southeast, reaching the southern Plains on Thursday. As the cold air embedded in the trough progresses eastward, snow will break out in the higher terrain of the Rockies. From Texas to Kansas, where the cold interacts with warm, unstable air from the Gulf of Mexico, thunderstorms will begin to erupt Thursday. That severe weather risk will persist for several days along a “dry line” or the boundary between dry, desert air from the Southwest and Gulf of Mexico moisture to the east. Meanwhile, high pressure will establish itself beneath a ridge, or northward crest, of the jet stream, which will be centered over the East. That will allow temperatures to swell markedly. Frigid air from British Columbia is bleeding south over the western United States, allowing temperatures to tumble some 15 to 25 degrees below average through the end of the workweek. Phoenix is forecast to hit a high of 64 degrees Thursday, compared with an average high of 82. Las Vegas is in a similar boat, with middle to upper 50s in the forecast on a day when readings would ordinarily be in the mid-70s. Rain is expected in both cities. Farther north, the cold is more deeply entrenched. Seattle will see highs in the mid-40s through Thursday, a far cry from Oct. 16, when the city hit 88 degrees — the warmest reading ever observed there so late in the year. Average early November highs are in the mid-50s. Across most of the West, overnight lows will dip into the 20s or 30s, except single digits and teens in the highest elevations — like in the Sierra Nevada. That’s also where a weak atmospheric river will lap at the coastline, with comparatively moist air forced up the mountains. The central Sierra Nevada is under a winter storm warning, with the National Weather Service writing that 3 to 6 inches of snow are possible above 5,000 feet elevation, and totals could reach 8 to 16 inches above 7,500 feet. Additional winter weather advisories cover the mountains of Oregon, the high terrain of Nevada and the Wasatch Range of Utah. That’s where 5 to 10 inches of snow could fall. To the east of the developing low-pressure system’s center, a dome of high pressure will park over the Great Lakes for several days. That will divert the jet stream north, allowing heat to build over the eastern half of the nation. It will be particularly pronounced in New England, where highs of some 20-plus degrees above average are possible. Consider Boston — the city is forecast to sit at 72 degrees Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Areas west of town in the Merrimack Valley could see mid- to upper 70s; it’s not impossible that a rogue 80 populates the map. “To put it into perspective, normal highs in early November are in the mid to upper 50s,” wrote the National Weather Service office serving the Boston area. “Given record high temperatures for the dates in the mid to upper 70s, it is conceivable that we could see record warmth this weekend. There are no signals for a precipitation event of any significance through Monday.” In New York, where the average early November high is 55 degrees, Saturday, Sunday and Monday are predicted to soar to near 70. And Washington, D.C., is eyeing highs in the mid-70s, compared to averages in the lower 60s. In the middle of the nation, where the cold and warm air collide, a storm system will be born. As low pressure intensifies at ground level, a dry line — the divide between dry air to the west and warmer, more humid air to the southeast — will sharpen over the High Plains. It will become established from Texas Hill Country and the Trans-Pesos to western Kansas on Thursday before pushing east on Friday and Saturday. Along it, severe weather is likely. On Thursday, “capping,” or the presence of a lid of warm air at the mid-levels to inhibit thunderstorm formation, may prevent the development of widespread thunderstorms — though just a couple are possible, especially from the Texas Panhandle into southwest Kansas near Liberal. If one or two form, they won’t have to compete with neighboring cells, and could become severe. Given how much wind shear, or the change of wind speed and/or direction with height, is available, they could become supercells or rotating thunderstorms. Salina, Garden City and Liberal in Kansas, and Amarillo and Lubbock in Texas, ought to pay close attention; they’re already in a level 2 out of 5 “slight risk” of severe weather drawn by the Storm Prediction Center. On Friday, that risk expands east, occupying the Interstate 35 corridor from Dallas up to Oklahoma City and into south central Kansas. Waco, Austin, San Antonio and Abilene are encompassed by the risk area too. Given the closer proximity of the instigating upper-air disturbance, there is a lesser propensity for “capping,” so storms will be more widespread. They’ll probably form a squall line with widespread strong to locally damaging winds and the chance of a few embedded spin-up tornadoes. Those storms may collapse toward Houston and Galveston and northwest Louisiana into Saturday."
+"November is about to begin but, in much of Europe, it still feels like late summer. Temperatures climbed to their highest levels on record so late in the year across large swaths of the continent over the weekend — into the 70s and 80s in many instances. This latest spell of heat follows numerous other record-shattering events during the spring and summer. While October has been a warm month overall in Europe, the peak of this late-autumn heat wave arrived in recent days. Record high temperatures — as much as 35 degrees (20 Celsius) above normal — stretched from Scandinavia through central and western Europe and southward into North Africa. Saturday was the hottest day ever measured after Oct. 20 in France, tweeted Etienne Kapikian, a meteorologist with Meteo France, the country’s weather agency. Dozens of individual records were established all across the country. The weekend warmth in Belgium was also unprecedented for so late in the season, Kapikian tweeted. Widespread high temperatures from 77 to 86 degrees (25 to 30 Celsius) were common over the past several days, setting the following particularly notable records: “This setup is perfect for delivering exceptional warmth to Europe from south-westerly flow. Temperatures [are] closer to those expected in late August or early September,” wrote London meteorologist Scott Duncan on Twitter on Sunday afternoon. “We have never observed warmth like this in Europe so late in the year.” Over the past two weeks, temperatures in parts of France and surrounding countries have run more than 15 degrees (8.5 Celsius) above normal. This exceptional warmth helped France clinch its warmest October on record by a large margin, Kapikian tweeted. Austria and Switzerland also had their warmest Octobers, tweeted Maximiliano Herrera, who tracks weather extremes around the world. While the heat may have peaked in intensity, it is continuing as the month ends and November begins over Eastern Europe, with additional records likely to fall in coming days. Other than a brief cool down in November’s first week, there’s little change to the larger weather pattern ahead. Warmer than normal conditions should persist for some time in much of Europe. Unusual heat has affected Europe repeatedly since the spring. According to the Copernicus Climate Change Service of the European Union, this past summer was the hottest on record for the continent, surpassing the value set in 2021 by 0.7 degrees (0.4 Celsius). Heat waves were common throughout the summer in Europe and eastward into China and other parts of Asia. The scorching summer of 2022 was made hotter by human-caused climate change. According to World Weather Attribution project — which analyzes climate change’s impact on extreme weather — the exceptional heat in Britain in July, when the mercury topped 104 degrees (40-plus Celsius) for the first time in recorded history, would have been extremely unlikely without human influence on the climate. Heat waves are increasing in frequency, duration, intensity and size and are expected to worsen in a warming world."
+"Faced with the staggering amount of emissions and resources typically associated with clothing, you might think the key to having a more sustainable wardrobe is obvious: Stop shopping. “It’d be very easy for me to say, ‘Just stop buying stuff,’ ” says Mark Sumner, a lecturer focusing on sustainability within the textile, clothing and fashion industry at the University of Leeds’s School of Design. “But that is a very lazy response and does not reflect the complexity of fashion and its positive impacts for workers.” Fashion and clothing are a critical part of culture, society and individual expression. And at some point, most people are going to want or need to buy new clothes. To help reduce environmental and social impacts, how you shop — finding ways to reduce unnecessary purchases of new items, thinking about how you might wear what you buy and looking for clothes that will last — matters. “At the end of the day, it’s not about what brands do you shop,” says Katrina Caspelich, chief marketing officer for Remake, a global nonprofit advocating for fair pay and climate justice in the clothing industry. “It’s about what kind of changes are you going to make to how you do consumption.” While ditching shopping isn’t the answer, many people are buying new clothes too often. One 2021 survey of consumers in the United Kingdom reported that nearly 39 percent of respondents said they shop for fashion at least once a month. Almost one-fifth of people surveyed said they buy something new every two weeks, according to the report from Drapers, a U.K.-based fashion retail publication. “The biggest thing that anyone can do to make a difference is to lower their consumption of clothing,” Caspelich says. Even clothes from brands touting how they use less resources still have an environmental cost. What’s more, each new sale can signal to companies that they need to keep producing to meet consumer demand, adding to the staggering amount of textiles already in circulation. Despite increased efforts to donate, resell, repurpose and recycle used clothing domestically, garments can end up shipped overseas, often to Africa or elsewhere in the Global South, creating a waste problem and potentially hurting local economies. Clothes also wind up in landfills in the United States. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, discarded clothing ranks as the top source of textiles in municipal solid waste, above furniture, carpets, footwear, linens and towels. In 2018, the agency reported that landfills received 11.3 million tons of textiles, more than 7 percent of its total waste. “The best thing that people can do is keep materials that have been extracted in use for longer,” says Lynda Grose, a professor of fashion design and critical studies at California College of the Arts. Instead of buying everything new, experts recommend trying to get the most out of what you already own. Extending the life span of your clothes through proper care and repair accomplishes that. If you’re looking to add to your wardrobe, consider alternative ways to refresh your closet. If possible, experts suggest shopping secondhand from thrift or consignment stores or resale platforms, participating in clothing swaps, or renting clothes for special occasions. There’s a difference, according to University of North Carolina at Greensboro professor Elena Karpova, between what she calls “affluent consumption” and “I-need-to-function consumption.” With the rise of e-commerce and the ability to buy things with a single click, have them delivered within a matter of days and then return what you don’t want with relative ease, she and others say, it’s not surprising that many people are often purchasing things they don’t need. “This is not about saying don’t buy stuff,” Sumner says. “This is about saying let’s just be careful that we don’t just do impulse, impulse, impulse.” Whether you’re buying a brand-new article of clothing or acquiring used items, your first step should be to think through the decision. “You shouldn’t approach secondhand the same way you would approach fast fashion,” Caspelich says. Be mindful, she suggests, and try to add to your closet more purposefully. Karpova, who studies textile and apparel sustainability, recommends ranking clothes you want to buy on a scale of one to 10. “I never buy anything that’s lower than nine,” she says. “Shoot for 10.” Before you’re about to get something, take a moment to consider the purchase, Sumner says. “Just stop and put the phone down, or stop and walk away from the cash register and ask yourself, ‘Why am I buying this?’ ” A significant proportion of a garment’s overall environmental impact typically occurs in the use phase, experts say, largely because of how clothes are laundered, used and cared for. This is also the stage, experts note, in which consumers have the most control. “The magic to me is really in the use phase,” says Cosette Joyner Martinez, an associate professor in the department of design, housing and merchandising at Oklahoma State University. Buying clothes should be thought of as a long-term commitment, Joyner Martinez says. “I think about it like a marriage, like I’m entering a relationship,” she says. “Not only am I going to think about how I’m going to use it and how long I’m going to use it, but I’m also going to think about how that thing is going to end its life.” Experiment with a capsule wardrobe, or a small collection of clothing that can be worn interchangeably to create a number of different outfits. If you’re adding to your closet, try to pick higher-quality items, experts say, but remember that price isn’t always a reliable indicator of how well clothing is made. Shop less for trendy styles or hues and choose more classic silhouettes and staple colors, such as black, brown, navy, gray or white. “You can wear things longer without it looking dated,” says Karen Leonas, a professor of textile sciences at the Wilson College of Textiles at North Carolina State University. Timeless, well-made clothes could also have a better chance of finding a new home once you’re done with them. But while considering those factors can help you buy better and reduce consumption, the key, several experts say, is to focus more on what you will actually use. “As long as you feel good in it and you’re going to wear it, then that’s what really matters,” Caspelich says. An inexpensive fast-fashion T-shirt that you take care of and wear all the time, for instance, may be more sustainable than a shirt made from organic fibers that you get rid of after only a few wears. What’s more, caring for clothes properly, such as not machine-washing and drying too often, can extend their life span. The Waste and Resources Action Program, a U.K.-based charity, estimates that if clothes stay in active use for nine months longer, which would increase their average life span to about three years, carbon, water and waste footprints could be slashed by 20 to 30 percent. “The longer we can keep clothing in use, the more we can keep out of landfills,” Caspelich says."
+"In Elena Karpova’s household, the rumbling sound of a clothes dryer has become an unfamiliar noise. “I use the dryer maybe twice, three times a year, just when it’s an emergency,” says Karpova, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro who studies textile and apparel sustainability. Instead, Karpova prefers to air dry her clothes. Dryers, she says, are “energy gobblers” and when combined with machine washing too often can wear out clothes much more quickly, in addition to having huge environmental and climate impacts. Washing “can be the most significant thing that you do” to your clothes, says Mark Sumner, a lecturer focusing on sustainability within the textile, clothing and fashion industry at the University of Leeds’ School of Design. Laundering a garment could cause it to shrink, become misshapen, fade or pill (when small balls of fuzz form on the surface of clothes). “It can be really quite harmful to the clothes itself,” shortening the life of the garment and leading to purchases of new clothing, Sumner says. “And of course, let’s not forget about energy and water and detergents used in the washing process,” which can also release microfibers into waterways and exacerbate the problem of microplastic pollution. “It’s a double whammy.” Making simple changes to your laundry routine, he and other experts say, can go a long way in helping you reduce emissions, save money and take better care of your clothes. While many people focus on manufacturing when calculating their clothes’ environmental impact, machine washing and drying clothes can often be a major source of pollution and emissions. In fact, the impacts of laundry can be “on the same order of magnitude” as the production phase of clothing, says Roland Geyer, a life cycle assessment expert and professor at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at the University of California at Santa Barbara. “People are washing their clothes more frequently than they ever did before,” Sumner says. According to Energy Star, the average American family does 300 loads of laundry each year. A standard washing machine uses around 20 gallons of water for each load and electric dryers, on average, can use anywhere from 1,800 to 5,000 watts, or about 1.8 to 5 kilowatt hours of electricity per cycle, according to Energy Star. Choosing more efficient washers and dryers can make a difference for the planet and your wallet. Energy Star certified washing machines generally use about 25 percent less energy and 33 percent less water than regular models. Meanwhile, certified dryers are 20 percent more efficient compared to standard dryers. A household that uses washers and dryers certified by Energy Star could reduce their carbon footprint by more than 400 pounds of CO2 annually, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, which is equal to planting a quarter acre of trees. If every American household swapped out their appliances for more efficient models, the impacts would be even greater. The combined cost savings would swell above $4.8 billion each year and more than 41 billion pounds of annual greenhouse gas emissions would be prevented from entering the atmosphere, the EPA estimates. That’s equivalent to the emissions from nearly 4 million cars. But even if you have high-efficiency machines, experts say it’s still important to cut down on the loads of laundry you’re doing. “Every time we put that garment in the washing machine, part of it is gone down the drain,” says Cosette Joyner Martinez, an associate professor in the department of design, housing and merchandising at Oklahoma State University. “Then we lose another piece of it in the dryer in the lint trap, so we’re disintegrating our garments.” Aside from noticeable odors or visible stains, when your clothes need to be laundered largely depends on how the garments are worn and the type of material. Clothes that you exercise and sweat in, for instance, should be washed more frequently than the outfit you wear to work a desk job. “Lots of people just have a T-shirt worn once and then they put in the laundry basket without thinking whether it’s clean or not,” Karpova says. “People don’t think about, ‘Is it clean? Does it need to be laundered?’ It’s just you go through the motions.” What your clothes are made out of also determines how long you can go between washes, experts say. Natural fibers like wool or cotton typically need to be washed less than synthetic materials, such as polyester. While polyester works well for activewear because of its moisture wicking properties, the material is “oleophilic,” or oil-loving, attracting oil from skin that can contribute to body odor. To make matters worse, research has shown that sweaty-smelling compounds can cling to polyester fibers and not wash out completely, leading to a buildup of odors over time. The chemical structure and “fiber morphology” of natural fabrics are very different from synthetics, says Preeti Arya, an assistant professor of textile development and marketing at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. Wool, for example, is naturally odor resistant. The fibers can absorb large amounts of moisture which helps to keep skin drier, and prevent the sweat and bacteria that cause body odor from collecting. Wool fibers also have another unique property: The ability to trap odor molecules and only release them when laundered. Odorous compounds, perspiration and oil are locked away in the center of wool fibers, Arya says. Even if you’ve been sweating, you likely won’t see sweat stains or smell. On the other hand, she says, if you wear polyester for a few hours, “You have to wash it because polyester loves our body oils and odors.” Water heating consumes about 90 percent of the energy it takes to operate a washing machine, according to Energy Star. Changing your washer’s temperature setting from hot to warm can cut energy use in half. Washing with cold water can reduce your energy footprint even more. By washing four out of five loads of laundry in cold water, you could cut 864 pounds of CO2 emissions in a year, an amount equivalent to planting 0.37 acres of U.S. forest, according to the American Cleaning Institute. Experts encourage using the cold cycle as much as possible. “The temperature that we’re washing with is often way too warm,” Joyner Martinez says, adding that hot water settings are only really necessary for sanitizing. Modern laundry detergents, even those that aren’t marked for cold-water use, are typically formulated to clean just as well at lower temperatures. While single-dose detergent pods have become increasingly popular, a debate is raging over whether they may contribute to the growing plastic pollution problem that threatens human health and the environment. Keep in mind that washers use about the same amount of energy regardless of the size of the load, so try to only run your machine when it’s full. And consider using higher spin settings if your washing machine has the option, which can reduce drying time. Some experts also caution against dry cleaning too often. In addition to the energy needed to power dry cleaners, traditional operations often use polluting chemicals that can harm human health and the environment. Some research also indicates that the chemicals can stay on dry cleaned clothes. In January, the Environmental Protection Agency added 1-bromopropane, a powerful dry-cleaning solvent and airborne pollutant that has been linked to cancer and neurological damage, to its list of hazardous air pollutants — a designation that allows the agency to limit its emissions. Certain clothes, such as those with heavy beading or embellishment, require dry cleaning. But some of the delicate materials that you might send to the cleaners such as silk or wool can be gently washed by hand, says Katrina Caspelich, who directs marketing and partnerships for Remake, a global nonprofit organization advocating for fair pay and climate justice in the clothing industry. Test a small section of your garment to make sure it’s suitable for hand-washing — any color bleeding, warping or shrinkage is a bad sign — and use cold water and mild soap. If you do need to dry clean something, you can ask for more environmentally friendly cleaning options, Caspelich adds. Some cleaners offer professional wet cleaning, where clothes are laundered in computer-controlled washers and dryers that gently clean. Another option is liquid carbon dioxide cleaning, which uses pressurized CO2 in combination with other cleaning agents. You also don’t always need water and energy guzzling machines and detergent to keep your clothes fresh. “Really what people are trying to do when they launder is to make [their clothes] smell good,” Joyner Martinez says. If possible, Sumner recommends hanging clothes outside in the sun where they can be exposed to UV rays. Steam is another way to de-wrinkle and help refresh your garments. Hang up your clothes in the bathroom while you’re showering or use an at-home steamer. Whenever possible, choose to air dry your clothes, experts say. “If you’re air drying, that’s saving the most energy,” says Joe Vukovich, a staff attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council who works on energy efficiency. If you are using a dryer, make sure to regularly clean the lint screen, dryer duct and moisture sensors to maintain efficiency. Instead of using timed drying, choose the automatic cycle, which uses moisture sensors to determine when your clothes are dry and reduces the chance of running the machine for longer than needed. You can also dry loads of laundry back-to-back and make use of residual heat. Newer dryer models also often use less energy to dry typical loads on low heat than on high heat, even though it may take longer to dry clothes, according to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. But if you want to increase your clothes’ life span, experts recommend avoiding the dryer. Air drying clothes that need to be washed more frequently, such as workout gear, can make a “huge difference,” Joyner Martinez says. “The life extension that we get in the product is very dramatic.”"
+"Our efforts to tread lightly on the planet often revolve around how we commute, what we eat and where we set our thermostats. But the way we furnish our homes has a surprising effect, too. According to the National Wildlife Federation, furniture manufacturers are the third largest consumers of wood, behind the construction and paper industries. Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that Americans disposed of about 12 million tons of furniture in 2018 — about 80 percent of which ended up in a landfill — up from 2.15 million tons in 1960. That’s a lot of old couches left on the curb. In recent years, the furniture industry has begun to resemble the “fast fashion” industry, encouraging consumers to buy cheap items and replace them within a year or two. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The first thing to consider when shopping for new furniture? Not buying it at all, says Laura Hodges, a Maryland designer with certifications from the Green Building Council and Sustainable Furnishings Council. “When I meet with a new client, we always start by asking if anything even needs to be purchased,” she says. “If we’re not [buying] anything new, there’s no energy used to make it or ship it, there’s no need to harvest materials, and there’s no waste, and if you can save an old item from a landfill, even better.” Margot Guralnick, an editor at the eco-friendly blog and publisher Remodelista, also nudges homeowners to re-use: “You may have furniture in your basement or your attic, or a perfectly good sofa sitting unused in an office,” she says. “And remember: A desk doesn’t have to be labeled a desk. A big table could work as a desk, and a stool could become a nightstand.” (You might even ask friends or relatives whether they’re willing to part with furniture collecting dust in their basements.) From there, it’s not terribly hard to give an outdated or well-worn piece new life. Take the old couch to a local upholsterer or furniture refinisher; put a new coat of stain or paint on an old table. The next best option is to buy used furniture. “A lot of older furniture is better-made than the mass-produced items in many stores today,” Hodges says. “Back in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, furniture was designed better and solidly built, often by hand. Those items tend to last longer, which is why they’re still around.” You can find high-quality items at vintage and antique stores, thrift shops and yard sales. Guralnick also recommends Craigslist, eBay, Etsy and Facebook’s Buy Nothing groups. She advises using the sort-by-distance filter when perusing those sites, so you don’t fall in love with an item that’s 600 miles away. If you decide to buy new, Hodges says, “the first thing to do is identify companies that make things that last.” She recommends American-made items with hardwood frames, kiln-dried wood, eight-way hand-tied spring systems (found in couches and chairs) and hand-applied finishes. “If you find a piece of furniture that is technically made of all ‘sustainable’ materials and it falls apart in a few months, that’s not sustainable,” Hodges says. “Even if it’s made of recyclable steel, it doesn’t matter unless somebody actually takes the sofa apart and has every piece of metal recycled and every natural fiber composted. If it ends up in a landfill, you haven’t solved any problems.” Just as a lot of food is labeled “fresh” or “natural” with no real significance, furniture manufacturers may insist their products are “environmentally friendly” or “sustainably produced” with scant evidence. But you can do your own homework. For wood pieces, check out the Wood Furniture Scorecard from the Sustainable Furnishings Council and National Wildlife Federation. The annual list ranks dozens of companies based on publicly available information regarding sourcing and transparency. Websites such as Remodelista and Minted Space also curate collections of furniture makers with a focus on sustainability. Sarit Marcus, founder of Minted Space, notes that it’s best to make furniture out of fast-growing trees, such as mango and rubber trees, as well as plants such as bamboo, cane, rattan, reed and seagrass. Avoid slow-growers such as Brazilian mahogany, Canadian white cedar, cherry, maple and oak, which take decades to mature. The next big concern is the use of harmful chemicals. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, more than 80,000 chemicals are used in everyday items found in American homes, such as furniture. “Of those, only 200 are tested by the Environmental Protection Agency, and only five are regulated,” Marcus says. Stain-resistant fabrics, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) found in lacquers, polyvinyl chloride (PVC) commonly used in outdoor furniture and antimicrobials found in mattresses all generate toxins during their production. Flame retardants — found in upholstery, foam and mattresses — are increasingly linked to cancer, neurological damage and other serious health problems, according to the National Institutes of Health. Marcus recommends wool, recycled polyester and Ultrasuede for fabrics, and beeswax and linseed oil for furniture finishes, because of their near-zero environmental impact. There are so many factors to weigh when measuring an item’s sustainability that it can be easy to feel paralyzed. “A piece might be made in Europe, which adds to the impact of shipping, but what if it’s made from rapidly renewable materials?” Hodges says. “There’s no one clear way to be sustainable.” Just don’t shrug your shoulders and give up. “Do as much as you can, and take baby steps,” Hodges says. “All of us doing things imperfectly is better than a few people doing it perfectly.” Scott Kirkwood is a freelance writer in D.C."
+"For millions of people, climate change is a deeply, unavoidably personal story. When interviewing people, I often ask if they recall the moment they knew climate change was happening to them right now, the moment when climate models and warnings became real. For some, it was the blistering heat against their skin during the 2021 heat dome in the Pacific Northwest. Or a cardboard sign asking “Is global warming the culprit?” on a car windshield smashed after Hurricane Sandy roared ashore in New Jersey in 2012. For me, it was the morning of Sept. 9, 2020, when the dawn never came. All week, wildfires raged from Seattle to Mexico, depositing a thick layer of soot and smoke over California. Around 7 a.m., I watched a blood-red orb traverse the sky over my home in San Francisco. “Mother Nature just gave us a red card,” a friend wrote me later that night, shortly after deciding to move back to Britain, “and it’s going to get worse.” Moments like these are a major reason I have begun hearing a question I hadn’t heard much in a decade covering climate change: “What can I do?” We’re launching the Climate Coach at The Washington Post to answer this question. Don’t expect lists of “101 things” or symbolic gestures. No plastic straw campaigns here. We’ll be digging into data and giving evidence-backed advice and thoughtful analysis about what matters in protecting the planet, the environment and one another. Each week, the Climate Coach column and newsletter will host an honest discussion about the environmental choices we face in our daily lives. We’ll approach these questions with curiosity, optimism — and vigilant skepticism. You may have heard the argument that there’s nothing ordinary people can do that matters except voting: It’s the Green New Deal or bust. But there’s a second view, one that sees individual action as critically important. While global problems don’t seem entirely amenable to individual action, that is only part of the story. Human culture and global warming are not linear systems. They are driven by exponential curves, social contagions and threshold effects. They exist at the messy confluence of biology, economics, psychology and physics. Take solar panels. In 2021, researchers in the journal Nature published a paper studying why people install solar panels on their roofs. Subsidies, geography and policy were all considered. The most powerful factor? Whether a neighbor already had solar panels. There was even a proximity effect. People living within two blocks of homes with panels were the most likely to buy their own. Solar panels, in other words, were contagious. With climate, we must consider social norms as well as policies and incentives. We’ll take this as a guiding principle at the Climate Coach column. Individual climate action is more than the sum of its parts, complementing, not substituting for, transformative political and economic change. We’ll answer your concerns and follow your interests (let me know your questions here). We’ll explore how to change your career for the climate. Savor invasive species (pass the lionfish). How to invest your savings in a stable climate. Uncover the incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act. Meet the bugs that will feed the future. Repower communities in coal country. Swap cars for people on slow streets. Try on fashion’s mend-and-repair movement. Track down sources of air pollution in your home and neighborhood. And learn, perhaps, how to worry a bit less and act a bit more on the climate. I’ve been working on climate issues for more than 15 years — including the last six as a reporter and editor at the news site Quartz — and I also spent several years developing climate policy for international organizations. But for me, this column will also be personal. In June, my son, Vaughan, was born. The only Earth he has ever known is nearly 1.2° Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the one most humans have experienced. Once he is my age, he is expected to live in a world with carbon dioxide levels exceeding those that existed more than 4 million years ago, a period when forests took root in the Arctic and sea levels flooded where the cities we live in exist today. That’s not a world I want to pass on to him or the 10 billion or so others he will be sharing the planet with by 2050, the year that scientists working under the United Nations advise the world should reach net-zero emissions to avoid the most catastrophic warming. I want Vaughan, and everyone else, to have the best possible chance in a warming world. Fortunately, that’s a choice we have as a society — and as individuals. The Climate Coach column and newsletter will launch in January. Sign up now."
+"PENNINGTON, N.J. — There was one minute left on Suzanne Horsley’s stopwatch and the atmosphere remained thick with carbon dioxide, despite the efforts of her third graders to clear the air. Horsley, a wellness teacher at Toll Gate Grammar School, in Pennington, N.J., had directed the kids to toss balls of yarn representing carbon dioxide molecules to their peers stationed at plastic disks representing forests. The first round of the game was set in the 1700s, and the students had cleared the patch of playing field in under four minutes. But this third round took place in the present day, after the advent of cars, factories, electricity and massive deforestation. With fewer forests to catch the balls and longer distances to throw, the gases were accumulating faster than kids could retrieve them. “That was hard,” said Horsley after the round ended. “In this time period versus the 1700s, way more challenging right?” “Yeah,” the students chimed in. “In 2022, we got a lot of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,” said Horsley. “What’s the problem with it, what is it causing?” “Global warming,” volunteered one girl. Two years ago, New Jersey became the first state in the country to adopt learning standards obligating teachers to instruct kids about climate change across grade levels and subjects. The standards, which went into effect this fall, introduce students as young as kindergartners to the subject, not just in science class but in the arts, world languages, social studies and physical education. Supporters say the instruction is necessary to prepare younger generations for a world — and labor market — increasingly reshaped by climate change. “There’s no way we can expect our children to have the solutions and the innovations to these challenges if we’re not giving them the tools and resources needed here and now,” said Tammy Murphy, the wife of New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) and a founding member of former vice president Al Gore’s Climate Reality Action Fund, who pushed to get the standards into schools. Just as students must be able to add and subtract before learning calculus, she said, kids need to understand the basics of climate change — the vocabulary, the logic behind it — before they can tackle the climate crisis. Historically, climate change has not been comprehensively taught in U.S. schools, largely because of the partisanship surrounding climate change and many teachers’ limited grasp of the science. That started to change in 2013, with the release of new national science standards, which instructed science teachers to introduce students to climate change and its human causes starting in middle school. Still, only 20 states have adopted the standards. Other states may not mention the human causes of the crisis, and a few even promote falsehoods about it, according to a 2020 report from the National Center for Science Education and Texas Freedom Network Education Fund. Even in New Jersey, many teachers said they lacked confidence in their knowledge of the subject in a 2021 survey. The state has set aside $5 million for lesson plans and professional development, and it is enlisting teachers like Horsley, who holds a master’s degree in outdoor education and has a passion for the environment, to develop model lessons. For now, the climate instruction requirements haven’t faced much pushback from climate deniers. Conservatives have trained their attacks instead on the state’s new sex-education standards. But state officials anticipate some criticism as the lessons begin to roll out in classrooms. Supporters are trying to ensure that teachers have plenty of examples for teaching the standards in age-appropriate ways, with racial and environmental justice as one of the key features of the instruction. “It’s not like we’re asking kindergartners to look at the Keeling Curve,” said Lauren Madden, a professor of education at the College of New Jersey who prepared a report on the standards, referring to a graph showing daily carbon dioxide concentrations. On a recent weekday, Cari Gallagher, a third grade teacher at Lawrenceville Elementary School in central New Jersey, was reading to her students from “No Sand in the House!” which tells the story of a grandfather whose Jersey Shore home is devastated by Hurricane Sandy. Later, the students sat down to write about what they’d heard, drawing connections between the book and their own lives, world events or other books they’d read. Then, in a group activity, they built structures — carports, walls and other barriers made of Legos, blocks, Play-Doh and straws — that might protect against climate change calamities. Research suggests education does have an impact on how people understand climate change and their willingness to take action to stop it. One study found that college students who took a class that discussed reducing their carbon footprint tended to adopt environment-friendly practices and stick with them over many years. Another found that educating middle-schoolers about climate change resulted in their parents expressing greater concern about the problem. “Education is certainly a way that we could have perhaps slowed down where we are right now in terms of the climate crisis,” said Margaret Wang, co-founder and chief operating officer of SubjectToClimate, a nonprofit that is helping teachers to find and share climate lessons. More jobs related to climate change are already opening up, said Wang, and children will need skills not just to discover scientific innovations but to tell stories, advocate, inspire and make public policy. One pressing concern in New Jersey is that the lessons are rolling out unevenly across the state. Schools in affluent towns like Pennington tend to have more time and resources to introduce new instruction; schools in poorer communities that are often the most vulnerable to climate disasters, such as Camden, may lack the resources to do so. “I am happy to see New Jersey as a pioneer of climate change standards,” said Maria Santiago-Valentin, co-founder of the Atlantic Climate Justice Alliance, a group that works to mitigate the disproportionate harm of climate change on marginalized communities. But, she said, the standards will need to be revised if they fail to adequately emphasize the unequal impact of climate change on Black and Hispanic communities or ensure that students in those groups receive the instruction. At Toll Gate elementary, Horsley, the wellness teacher, was getting ready to hand off the third graders to their classroom teacher. Before filing back into the school, a handsome brick building that suffered flooding last year during Hurricane Ida, students reflected on the lesson. Ayla, a third grader dressed in jeans and tie-dye sneakers, said it made her want to “do something” about climate change because “I don’t want it to get so hot.” Wes, another third grader, said adults could have done more to protect the environment. “I think they’ve done a medium job because they’re still producing a lot of carbon dioxide and a lot of people are littering still.” “I feel bad for the other animals because they don’t know about it, so they don’t know what to do,” added his classmate, Hunter. Abby, who wore a “Girl Power” T-shirt, said it was up to humans to drive less and recycle and protect other species from climate disaster. “When I first found out we were going to learn about climate change in gym, I was like, that’s surprising, because normally we learn that in class,” Abby added. “But I’m glad we did it in gym,” she continued. “It was really fun.” This story about climate change education was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter."
+"So you’re thinking about eating more plants? You’re in good company. Whether people are actually doing it, they’re certainly thinking and talking about it. A recent poll from Oklahoma State University that’s still undergoing peer review puts the number of American adults who say they’re vegan or vegetarian at 10 percent (a number consistent with other polls I’ve seen). Meanwhile, flexitarianism has also become a thing, and plant messages are everywhere. Plants themselves, not so much. So far, there’s no evidence that people are actually eating more of them — and meat consumption hasn’t decreased — but if you’re gonna do something, talking and thinking about it is a necessary first step. Eating more plants gives you lots of room to maneuver because there are lots of kinds of plants. But, from a climate perspective, they’re not created equal; some are way better than others. If climate impact is one of the things making plants climb your personal dinner chart, it helps to know which tread most lightly on our earth. When you think of vegans and vegetarians, you naturally think of vegetables. Salads, leafy greens, broccoli, asparagus! And they’re all better climate choices than meat. But, among plants, they’re the worst choice. Sounds weird, I know, because they’ve gotten more of a health halo than any other plant category, but there are three reasons vegetables are climatically suboptimal. The first is that they have  higher fertilizer and pesticide loads than most other plant crops. While there aren’t reliable input-per-crop statistics (that I’ve found), you can get a sense of the disparity by looking at production costs. A 2017 analysis of broccoli’s costs puts fertilizer at $269 and pesticides at $335, about $600 per acre per year. Look at corn or soy from that same year, and total fertilizer and pesticide costs ran about $200 per acre for corn, and less than $100 for soybeans. Vegetables are also mostly irrigated, and mostly tilled (California, for example, has very few no-till acres). Consequently, their impact on the environment is relatively heavy. Second is their perishability, which contributes to food waste. Something like one-third of the food we grow in the United States gets wasted, but for fruits and vegetables, it’s closer to half. I’m betting that, if you were to check your fridge right now, you’d find something at the bottom of the crisper to prove the point. Third is that most vegetables, especially the green kind, have very few calories, and that’s a conundrum. In a world of overabundance, where obesity is a pressing public health problem, foods with few calories are a good thing. But when we have a growing population to feed, and limited land on which to do it, using that land to grow nutrients without calories is a luxury. We’ve got about 7.7 billion people on Earth, and 2.7 billion acres growing crops. That comes to one-third of an acre per person, to grow crops both for us and the animals we eat (we also get calories from grazing animals, which is problematic for other reasons). Green vegetables yield some of the lowest calories per acre; spinach and leaf lettuce, for example, are about 1.6 million. Yes, they’re high in nutrition! But ideally, we’re looking for crops that deliver both calories and nutrition. Oh, and protein’s good, too; there are still places in the world where people don’t get enough (although the United States is emphatically not one of them). I’m not anti-veg! I eat plenty of them, and they absolutely, positively have a place in a diet that both people and planet can thrive on. But if you eat more than a few servings a day, your diet’s going to have a bigger climate impact than if you focus on other kinds of plants. Climate-friendly foods grow on trees! Tree fruits and nuts aren’t perfect. Fruits use a lot of pesticides (one 2019 estimate for growing apples in Washington state puts the cost at nearly $2,000 per acre per year), and nuts use a lot of water (almost 500 gallons per pound), but the amount of food they produce — without farmers having to till soil and replant every year — makes them some of the most climate-friendly foods we can eat. Apples, oranges and avocados (yes, a fruit) come in at 5 million to 7 million calories per acre, and nuts do even better, with almonds and walnuts in the 6-million-to-7-million range. Plant an orchard, and you get a climate twofer: food, but also the perennial, carbon-storing plants they grow on. On a per-calorie basis, apples have less than one-third the climate impact of brassicas (the group of vegetables that includes cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage). While berries and grapes aren’t quite as good as tree fruits, with almost three times the impact of apples, they’re still a fine choice. Nuts are crazy carbon-friendly, with a mere 2 percent of the footprint of that cauliflower rice. These are the crops that, obviously, grow in rows, but are also planted and harvested by big machines. It’s corn and soy, but also oats, barley, wheat, dry beans, chickpeas, lentils and all the other grains and legumes that are the backbone of a diet that’s good for both people and planet. Let’s start with corn and soy, which are, respectively, the highest-yielding cereal grass and plant protein source we grow. Corn rolls in at about 15 million calories per acre, and soy is about 6 million (protein production uses a lot of plant resources, so high-protein crops are generally lower-yielding). I know what you’re thinking: “But externalities!” And there are many! I think the biggest one is that nutrient runoff causes toxic algae blooms and fish kills. But all crops use fertilizer (and the nutrients can be from either manure or chemical versions), and vegetables use more than the crops we’ve all learned to hate. The externality that’s unique to corn and soy is the obesity and disease that result from eating way too many foods that contain the industrial ingredients derived from them. But imagine if, instead of putting our crops into cars (about 40 percent of our corn becomes ethanol) and pigs (another 40 percent of corn and 70 percent of soy become animal feed) and Twinkies (most of the rest goes into processed foods), we ate them as tortillas and tofu? Our 90 million acres of corn and 88 million acres of soy could, together, meet the caloric needs of nearly a quarter of the entire world’s population. (No, of course, people shouldn’t eat exclusively corn and soy. I’m just trying to give this a sense of scale.) Staple crops — whole grains and legumes, but also tubers (potatoes and sweet potatoes) and even some starchy tree fruits (jackfruit and bananas) — are where the climate action is. They’re healthful, nutritious, versatile and much less perishable than garden-variety fruits and veg. They deliver calories and nutrition in one package. They use fewer inputs than other plants, and they’re often grown without irrigation. I’d go so far as to suggest that we need a name for a diet that’s mostly staple crops, but “stapletarian” sounds like you’ve got a job in the copy shop. If you’ve got a better idea, please let me know."
+"Even if you’ve never composted, odds are you know two things: The process turns food scraps into something healthy for your garden, and it can be a little messy. True on both accounts. In many ways, composting is a never-ending chemistry experiment that unfolds in your kitchen or backyard, yet it’s really not much harder than sorting your recyclables."
+"So, you’re thinking about buying a Tesla (or Chevy Bolt, or Nissan Leaf, or one of the other options among the growing electric vehicle market). You know that emissions from gas-powered cars are contributing to a warming world. You know that, over the summer, Congress passed climate legislation with tax credits that will — at least eventually — make some electric vehicles easier to afford. But now there’s a more fundamental issue to grapple with: What will it take, and how much will it cost, to set your house up for an EV? Actually, probably not. Almost all electric vehicles come with what’s called a Level 1 charger. These chargers plug directly into a standard outlet. But although they require minimal effort and money, they also charge a car’s battery at a slow rate. You might be able to add dozens of miles of range with an overnight charge, but it will take more than a day to fully charge an empty battery. You also need to make sure that your home’s electrical system can handle the additional burden of charging a car on top of, say, doing laundry or using a microwave oven. (More on that below.) When you hear about installing an EV charger at a home, those conversations are mostly about Level 2 chargers. Because they’re more powerful, consumers can fill up their battery overnight and get dozens of miles of range added by plugging the car in for an hour. Level 2 chargers require a different kind of plug (think of the outlet that your washer and dryer use), and you’ll need to call an electrician to get one set up. “Whether or not you’re going to absolutely want to go to a Level 2 has a lot to do with how far you drive every day,” says Simon Ouellette, CEO of Mogile Technologies, an EV research company in Montreal. Another consideration is whether you have other opportunities to charge your vehicle. “If there’s a lot of [public] chargers near your office or on the street where you live, … then the urgency isn’t there in the same way it is if you’re really going to be depending on your own residence to charge your car.” (According to data from the Energy Department, nearly 4 out of every 5 public chargers are Level 2.) Level 3 chargers are the fastest, but because they require so much power, it’s rare to see one installed at a private residence. First, the bad news: If you rely on street parking, your home probably can’t accommodate an EV. As long as you’ve got a driveway, a garage or somewhere else to store your car, you can install an electric vehicle charger. However, “some installations are more complicated than others,” says Caradoc Ehrenhalt, founder and CEO of EV Safe Charge, a charging solutions company in Los Angeles. In general, it is much easier and less expensive if you’re able to park the car close to an existing power source. These days, you can buy chargers that come with about 25 feet of cable, and as long as you can park within that distance, you should be in good shape. But some homeowners aren’t so lucky. Ehrenhalt gives the example of a detached garage that isn’t connected to a power source and that’s located far from the house. To install an EV charger in that situation, you’d need to connect the garage to the property’s electrical panel. That could involve trenching and running the cable underground, even cutting through the surface of the driveway before refilling and recovering it. In extreme cases, the process can take several days. If your electrical panel is in the basement, your ceiling is another factor, Ouellette says. You may need to drill holes through it to run the wiring. The other potentially pricey quandary for prospective EV owners is whether your home’s electrical system is equipped to handle the additional load of charging a car. A licensed electrician can help you answer that question. Harvey Faulkner, a master electrician and owner of Focus Trade Services in the D.C. area, says one major hint that you’ll need an upgrade is if you look at your electrical panel and it doesn’t have any room for additional breakers. Installation costs vary widely, depending on where you live and how complicated the job is. “If you had a panel literally right next to where you want to park your car and you’re putting a charger in that’s just a few feet away, that type of installation by a licensed electrician, including permitting, might generally start at $500,” Ehrenhalt says. But most installations, he says, end up costing between $1,500 and $3,000. That total will balloon considerably if your electrical panel or underlying electrical service (the amount of electricity that can be supplied to your house by the public utility) needs upgrading. An EV charging station “is basically just a dedicated line” of power, explains Michael Anthony Harris, an electrician with Harris Electric Company of Washington. “And in order to run a dedicated line, your panel has got to be able to support it.” If you need a new panel, expect to pay an additional $2,000 to $4,000 on top of the cost of having the EV charger installed. If you need a full electrical service upgrade, expect to pay an additional $5,000 to $8,000, Harris says. Then, of course, there’s the cost of the charger itself. With the exception of Tesla’s Supercharger, which is compatible only with Teslas, all Level 1 and Level 2 chargers available in North America have a standard plug that will work with any electric car. From there, the options are differentiated by size, charging speed, cord length and whether they connect to WiFi, among other features. Some have hoods or covers to protect them from snow, rain and ice. They can cost between a few hundred dollars and a few thousand dollars. One popular model, the JuiceBox 40, costs around $700, and another oft-recommended charger, the ChargePoint Home Flex, is $749. You’ll want to talk to an electrician about which one is best for you. And don’t forget about your monthly electric bill, which is bound to increase. Still, once the upfront expenses of buying the car and installing the charger are behind you, the gas savings will quickly add up. Plus, electric vehicles have fewer maintenance costs than gas-powered ones, according to the Energy Department, because their batteries and motors need less attention, and you don’t have to worry about changing the oil. If your building doesn’t already have an EV charging station, this is where things can get thorny. “There are so many variables that come into play,” says Ouellette, including how people pay for electricity in the building and the rules that govern common space. “It’s not just a variable of what’s the physical reality of your condo and all that. But it’s also who’s on the board, and are they problem solvers?” Even if everyone can come to an agreement, you still need to determine how much power the building can accommodate. If, for example, the building can handle two EV chargers on top of powering the elevators and lights, how will those chargers be shared? If not, does the building want to pay for upgrading the electrical panel or service? Ouellette notes that it usually loops back around to the question of the building’s bylaws and rules, and “that could be a long loop.”"
+"Lesley Alderman, LCSW, is a psychotherapist based in Brooklyn. One of my patients showed up at her virtual psychotherapy session last week looking tired. She had always been ambitious and concerned about injustice. During this session, she sighed when talking about a meeting where her colleagues complained about unfair treatment. She said: “I don’t know why they bother getting upset, when it feels like nothing matters.” I was concerned by her disengagement. But then a colleague sounded similarly worn down. She had spent the pandemic helping her third and fourth graders with remote school while trying to keep her small business going. She confided to me: “I haven’t followed the war in Ukraine at all, I simply don’t have the bandwidth.” To an unusual degree, people are weary. During the spring of 2020, just as the pandemic started, the question my patients asked was, “when do you think things will go back to normal?” Now, no one talks to me about a return to normal. There’s an unspoken recognition that the chaos we are experiencing might be with us for a long time. Patients who had been concerned about national and world events and visibly frightened during the pandemic, now seem exhausted. The murder of George Floyd was horrific, and mass shootings are increasingly common. Now it feels like we are all in a relentless game of whack-a-mole, but in this case the rodents are existential threats. I’m noticing that many of my patients are experiencing a deficit of optimism, and are overwhelmed about important issues that are beyond their control. I’m calling it “hope fatigue.” People are tired of hoping that the pandemic will end, that the Ukraine war will be over, that mass shootings can be controlled, and that our government can address these pressing crises. Two in 10 Americans said they trusted the government in Washington to do what is right “just about always” or “most of the time” in a 2022 Pew Research Center poll. The symptoms of this fatigue are feeling anxious, tuning out or giving up. “People are having a lot of difficulties — covid has done a number on us. And now they are insecure about the state of the world,” said Paul Slovic, a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon, who has been studying the psychology of risk and decision-making for over 60 years. Therapists are struggling to help. We try to instill a sense of hope in our patients: that they can feel better, that they have agency, that their catastrophic thoughts may be overstating reality. But when a patient laments climate change and questions whether they should have children, it’s a challenge. It’s tempting, at times, to commiserate with them — but that’s not productive. I try to validate their concern and then explore what this means for them personally. Many of the problems threaten our fundamental sense of security. Will my community be decimated by fires, are my children safe at school, could there be a nuclear war? “I see a lot of people ‘going through the motions of living’ but, since they don’t know what to make of life, how to keep safe, how to have control over anything or make a difference in anything, how to have fun, they slip into a kind of detachment,” said psychologist Judy Levitz, founding director of the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center in New York City. Humans need to feel they have some degree of control. When you take away a person’s sense of safety, depression and anxiety can set in. Our nervous systems were simply not designed to attend to so many crises at once. It’s no wonder that 33 percent of Americans reported symptoms of depression and anxiety this summer, up from just 11 percent who reported those symptoms in 2019, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Household Pulse Survey. Dwelling on issues that seem unfixable can lead to an anxious paralysis, but there’s hope. “Just because you can’t fix an issue, doesn’t mean that you should ignore it,” said Slovic, whose website, the Arithmetic of Compassion, highlights obstacles to humanitarian decision-making. “We are not helpless.” This is some of the advice I give my patients. Take a break from the news. Doomscrolling can be addictive and amplify the tragic nature of events. In one study, researchers found that those who were immersed in the Boston Marathon bombing news for multiple hours a day in the week after the event experienced higher acute stress than individuals who were on the scene. “We speculate that the graphic nature of the coverage and the repetition of those images triggered the intense distress,” said Roxane Cohen Silver, the senior author of the study and a distinguished professor of psychological science, public health and medicine at the University of California at Irvine. I advise patients who are feeling depressed by the headlines to read the news just once a day, turn off alerts on their phone and, if possible, check social media sparingly. Take care of yourself. I tell my patients: “You have to be in good fighting shape to cope with the current turbulence.” That means boosting your resilience by taking care of your nervous system (sleep well, eat well, exercise wisely) and engaging in life-affirming activities. Focus on the present. Get in the habit of anchoring yourself in the here and now. Fretting about the future is not helpful. Try a breathing exercise. Taking a few deep breaths — for instance, inhaling to the count of five and exhaling to the count of five — will help calm your sympathetic nervous system (the fight or flight response) and lower your anxiety. When I offer deep breathing exercises, some of my patients can be skeptical, as if I am offering some kind of woo-woo, new-age mumbo jumbo. But I remind them the exercises are based in science. They typically report back that at the very least, breathing gives them something to do when they feel their heart rate escalating. Think about your victories. Remind yourself of what’s working well in your own life — whether it’s your job, friendships, or the uplifting array of houseplants you nurtured during the pandemic. Be your own therapist. Ask yourself, what do I specifically feel hopeless about and why? Being able to put into words what’s getting you down can help you feel less flooded by emotions and better able to process the information rationally. Take action. Worrying doesn’t help one’s mental health, but taking action does. Look around your community. Maybe your local playground would benefit from a basketball court, or your church or synagogue could sponsor a refugee family. When people engage in local issues, they have a renewed sense of optimism. Join forces with a friend. Pick a cause. There are hundreds of nonprofits dedicated to addressing some of the most tenacious challenges on the planet. Donate money to an inspiring organization or volunteer. Slovic offers this advice: “Think about what you can do rather than what you can’t.” We welcome your comments on this column at OnYourMind@washpost.com."
+"If you’ve heard one thing about cutting your diet’s impact on climate, it’s this: Eat less meat. And it’s true. Animal foods are the biggest greenhouse gas emitters, by a long shot. Depending on whom you ask, and how you count, animal foods make up well over half of our global diet’s climate impact. But there’s meat, and then there’s beef. Despite the social media meat wars, there’s no getting around the fact that beef is the single biggest dietary contributor to climate change. According to the World Resources Institute, if cattle were a country, they would be the third-largest emitter, behind only China and the United States (although I suspect they would have a functioning government). And global beef demand is projected to almost double by 2050, according to the nonprofit research group. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that cattle have many good points, as well: They can turn grass into high-quality human food; they are often the best way to get food out of land unsuitable for crops; when their grazing is well-managed, they can improve soil health and even sequester some carbon. But they can’t sequester enough carbon to make up for what their digestive systems emit and the greenhouse gas cost of the deforestation that is driven primarily by that increasing demand for beef. I’m not anti-beef; I think there’s a place for it in our food system, and there are places in the developing world where it can help fight protein deficiency. But when it comes to climate-friendly (or -friendlier) meat, I’m going to make the case that pigs have it all over cows. How are pigs better? I will count the ways. 1. They’re not ruminants. (They’re monogastrics, which means they have only one stomach.) They don’t burp up methane when they digest their feed. 2. They are extremely good at turning feed into meat, a trait that’s measured by the feed conversion factor. It takes 55 pounds of feed (that’s just the dry matter, minus the water) to make 2.2 pounds of beef. For  2.2 pounds of pork, it’s only 14 pounds of feed. (For chickens, it’s only 7.3 pounds; more on that later.) 3. They are very fertile. A cow can have one calf a year, which means an entire year of the mother’s life has to be factored into the environmental impact of a steer or heifer. A sow can have well over 20 piglets in a year. All this adds up to a much lower environmental footprint. According to Our World in Data, 1 calorie of pork has about one-seventh the climate impact of 1 calorie of beef. Let’s be clear: Pork ain’t lentils. Legumes are one-tenth the impact of pork, and if you’re concerned about the climate impact of your diet, amping up the beans is the way to do it. But I know, from many years of lentil advocacy and also data, that beans are a tough sell. So here’s what I’m thinking. People aren’t going to switch from beef to beans, but maybe, just maybe, they’ll switch some of their beef — let’s say half — to pork. Pork is meat. Pork is way more climate-friendly than beef. And pork is also bacon. There is, however, a catch. It’s the pigs, and the lives they lead in our industrialized meat-production system. I eat meat, and I care about the lives of my livestock. I’ve raised a lot of my own — chickens, ducks, turkeys and, yes, pigs. And when I’m not eating my animals, I try to source meat from people who are giving animals decent lives. One of those people is David Newman. Our acquaintanceship didn’t start on a promising note. I was in Des Moines visiting farms a few years back, and I had an early flight out. I stumbled into a cab, bleary-eyed, coffee in hand, at something like 4:30 a.m. There was another guest going to the airport, so we shared the cab. My cabmate wasn’t nearly as bleary as I was. He was wide awake and friendly, and we started talking about what brought us to Des Moines. My heart sank when he told me he was there for a meeting of the National Pork Board. Did I really want to start a conversation about the animal welfare issues that concern me about keeping pigs in crowded, indoor, unenriched environments? No, I did not. But he did. Turns out, he raises Berkshire hogs, outdoors, and has some of the same issues I do. His farm’s ethos, he told me recently, is “to be as good to the animals as we possibly can be.” I have since been to his farm (and he’s been to mine), and seen the ethos in action. Sows each have their own little hut, and the huts are scattered around a pasture. Each hut has a small courtyard with a wall around it, just high enough to keep piglets in when they’re very small. When they grow big enough to climb over the wall, that’s exactly what they do, and the pasture in Myrtle, Mo., is populated with piglets running amok. The pigs get finished in a hoop barn with outdoor access and deep bedding. The deep straw — no concrete — lets the pigs express their natural rooting behavior. Newman also wants the animals to have plenty of room: “We give them a crazy amount of space.” Raising pigs this way has a couple of consequences we have to take into account. First, it’s going to increase the climate impact because it’s less efficient; Newman’s pigs take seven months, rather than the usual six, to get to slaughter weight. I don’t have a perfect way to compare them, climatically, but one European study of nonconventional pig systems found that the increase in CO2 was somewhere between 4 percent and 54 percent. Even the high end is still way better than beef. Second, this pork costs more. I asked Newman how much more he needs to get for his pork to make a living. “About 30 percent,” he told me. How this translates to grocery store prices is hard to say, but I recently bought a pound of ground pork from sustainable grower Niman Ranch for $5.99 at my local Stop & Shop, more than the conventional pork, but less than most of the ground beef. If you sub in pork for half your beef, you can cut the carbon impact of your diet by about 23 percent. If it’s well-raised pork, that number drops, but is still substantial. If you sub in chicken, you do even better, but I prefer pork because you have to kill fewer animals. Also, bacon. In case this column triggers a stampede to the well-raised pork producers, I should note that there won’t be enough for everyone. For that, we have to change our pork-producing ways — but a tsunami of demand might be just the way to get that done. I don’t think subbing in pork for half your beef is a big ask. I mean, you must love barbecue, or sausages, or spare ribs. Also, bacon. C’mon, is it really so hard? Hey, at least I’m not asking you to eat insects."
+"Since 2020, many of us have spent more time feeding ourselves than ever before. Planning, shopping, cooking and cleaning feel like never-ending tasks as we have become more acutely involved in securing three meals a day, seven days a week for our households. We’re constantly in our kitchens, and this has forced many of us to become that much more aware of the environmental impact of our meals. Although we are not experts on climate change and the environment, we are authorities on food and kitchens, and we’re often looking for ways to reduce waste in our cooking, cleaning, food storage and more. If you’re of the same mind-set, we’ve assembled a list of 20 actions — some easy, some a little more involved — that you can take right now to become a more sustainably minded home cook. If this feels like a long list, start by picking one or two things to try adding to your routine. Each small daily decision can make an impact in the long run. [ Sign up for the Ecokitchen newsletter and become a climate-conscious cook] Doing so traps the heat inside, meaning that it will require less energy to bring the water to a boil and also does so more quickly. Though it might be an instinct to tear off a sheet for cleaning messes or absorbing moisture, more sustainable options work just as well. Dish towels and sponges are great for wiping up spills, and a wire rack is in many ways better for draining fried foods. [How to kick your paper towel habit: It’s easier than you think] Parchment paper is great for simplifying cleanup and keeping foods from sticking, but it, along with aluminum foil, can also be reused. As long as it’s not ripped or extremely soiled, simply wipe it down (or even throw it in the dishwasher in the case of aluminum foil), fold it up and save it for another use. Looking for a more durable option? Silicone baking mats make cleanup a breeze. Eight states have banned single-use plastic shopping bags, and a number of states charge fees for plastic bag use, forcing stores and consumers to make reusable bags a habit. Take another step by leaving the plastic produce bags behind, too. Most produce, including potatoes, onions and citrus, can go straight into your shopping cart, as they’ll be washed or peeled before being consumed anyway. [Reducing your plastic wrap use in the kitchen is easy, with just a few tweaks] Tired of tossing plastic zip-top bags in the trash? Just hand wash and dry thoroughly and they can live to see another day. However, you shouldn’t reuse plastic bags that contained raw meat, seafood or eggs. For a modest investment, silicone food storage bags are extremely durable. We’ve all probably reached peak dish washing fatigue and appreciate the convenience of disposable plates and cutlery, but think about the environment the next time you’re deciding how to serve up a meal. Even for upcoming picnics when paper plates are the norm, pulling dishes from the cabinet can add an extra dose of sophistication to the affair. Use it to water your plants. Rice water in particular is more beneficial to plants thanks to the added starch, which encourages the growth of healthy bacteria. [A better pot of rice is within reach with these 5 tips] For those with the luxury of a dishwasher, it tends to be more eco-friendly than handwashing. However, you should wait until it’s full to run it, and use the “economy” option if you have it. Also consider turning off heat drying and letting the dishes air dry. For those of us washing our dishes by hand, if you have a two-compartment sink, it’s best practice to fill one side with soapy water to wash dishes and the other side with clean water to rinse them — and don’t let the faucet run — to reduce water loss. Willing to make an investment? Install a low-flow aerator to save even more water. [A complete guide to Instant Pots and other multicookers] When cooking a small amount, countertop appliances (microwaves, toaster ovens, air fryers, etc.) use less energy than heating up a full-size oven. These small appliances also heat up the environment less, so they’re great to use in the summer to cut down on the need for running the air conditioner. Keeping a list of what you have in your fridge and freezer can prevent you from holding the door open while you try to figure out what to cook or what you need to pick up on a shopping trip. And for those items with shorter life spans, keep them in one area as a “use first” station to cut down on food waste. [Reduce waste and eat well while using what’s already in your refrigerator and freezer] For items where a stark temperature change isn’t important — i.e. bacon and baked potatoes — you don’t need to preheat the oven at all; just put the food in and let it start to cook as the oven climbs to the desired temperature. And when preheating is needed, use an oven thermometer to determine how long your oven takes and try not to do so longer than necessary. While we all can appreciate a freshly cooked meal, dishes eaten a few days later can be just as good, and in some cases even better. (We’re talking about you, chili.) Eating leftovers not only helps reduce food waste, but it can help save time and money, too. Another benefit: Reheating last night’s dinner will probably consume less energy than cooking a new meal from scratch. Small changes to our daily routines can have a lasting impact. Start with your morning cup of Joe: If you pick up your coffee on the go, bring a reusable coffee cup along for the ride. If you make it at home, the French press doesn’t require any extra tools, and certain electric coffee makers come with their own mesh filters. There are also options for reusable pods and cloth filters to replace single-use versions. Look for sponges made from recycled materials and dish soaps and detergents that are biodegradable and free of phosphates and other harmful materials that can threaten marine life. Buy bulk products with less packaging, and consider purchasing biodegradable trash bags the next time you run out. Your refrigerator should be running around 37 degrees (check with your manufacturer for the exact temperature). Too high and food safety risks arise, too low and you’re expending more energy than you actually need. Your best bet is to buy a fridge thermometer (if you have one installed in the appliance, it isn’t always accurate) and adjust the temperature accordingly. [Why are you still peeling all those vegetables?] Even a small amount of dust on the coils — beneath or behind your refrigerator — can significantly reduce the appliance’s energy efficiency. So every year or so, unplug the fridge and use a vacuum or duster around the coils to help keep it running as it should. There are perks to living in such a connected world, but the energy it takes to get products from all over the globe onto your plate is not one of them. The fuel required to get an item from where it is made to where it is purchased or consumed has a cost, and the greater that distance, the greater the carbon emissions. Look into local farmers markets and community-supported agriculture (CSA) — vendors may be more likely to grow and raise food organically and humanely, and the proximity of their farms reduces the cost of transporting it. Once you’ve consumed and repurposed all that you can, a certain amount of food and related products still need to be disposed of. That’s where composting comes in. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, “Making compost keeps these materials out of landfills where they take up space and release methane, a potent greenhouse gas.” If you’re not ready to start your own pile at home, store compostable material in the fridge or freezer to avoid odors and insects before taking it to your local farmers market, community garden or other composting site. [How to start composting at home, even if you don’t have a yard] According to the analysis of a 2018 study published in the journal Science: “Avoiding meat and dairy products is the single biggest way to reduce your environmental impact on the planet.” Beef is often cited as the worst environmental offender. “Giving up beef once a week in favor of beans, over the course of a year, is the equivalent of not burning 38 gallons of gas,” Tamar Haspel wrote in The Washington Post. Even if you’re not prepared to go vegetarian or vegan, eating fewer animal products — particularly red meat — is a win. [Here’s how much giving up beef helps — or doesn’t help — the planet] There’s always a number of things to take into consideration when trying to do what’s best for the planet, but we think this list is a good starting point for actions to consider. What steps have you taken to green your kitchen? Share your tips in the comments."
+"Climate Diaries is a series that sheds light on what an average week — the good, bad, easy and hard — is like for people who are trying to live a more climate-conscious lifestyle. Climate Diaries aims to show a transparent and honest reflection of what people face while on this journey. Name: Daniel Sherrell Location: D.C. Age: 31 I am an organizer in the American climate movement. I’ve spent most of the past decade trying to force our political institutions to pass policy commensurate to the scale of the crisis. I try my best to do all the basic things: recycle, no red meat, bike to work. But I don’t believe our path to climate salvation runs through the accumulation of individual consumption choices. Fossil fuel executives invented the term “carbon footprint,” an ingenious means of foisting responsibility onto hapless consumers while they continued pumping billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere and spending millions of dollars to prevent it being regulated. Their interference has prevented the United States from passing any major federal climate legislation for the past three decades. Breaking that oligarchic stranglehold is not the kind of work an individual can do. That’s what social movements are for. I’m currently working with labor unions around the country on a campaign to decarbonize public school buildings. After hours, I’m helping organize an April 23rd rally in D.C. to get vital clean energy investments passed in Congress. I spend a lot of time on Zoom calls, trying to save the people, places and principles that I love. I spend less time than I’d like actually relishing those things. Last year I published a book called “Warmth,” my attempt to walk the impossible tightrope between the enormity of the crisis and the immediacy of my own little life. I wake up in a threadbare hotel in Springfield, Ill. It’s spitting rain on the big picture window and the city is flat as sheet metal. I’m here to meet with a coalition of labor unions that just passed what might be the most ambitious clean energy bill in the country, legislation that sets the state on a path to 100 percent renewable energy and attaches strong labor standards. It’s time to discuss the hard part: implementation. One of the bill’s key provisions offers money for solar installation and energy efficiency audits at all the state’s public schools. In an overlarge conference room at the state AFL-CIO, we talk through the moving pieces. Which schools should be prioritized? (Those in the lowest-income districts.) How do we make sure the installation jobs are union? (Linking up with pre-apprenticeship programs.) How do we make administrators aware of the new policies? (Lots and lots of webinars.) At the end of the day, we make tracks for the local watering hole. All the union operatives have come down from the state house. Firefighters, operating engineers, teachers, electrical workers. Lots of neat haircuts and good suits. Lots of men. These guys are all on the right side of history, though I have to code-switch a little to engage them on the climate crisis. One of the state’s most powerful labor leaders tells me he used to be a coal miner down near Taylorville. The industry in that area is in sharp decline, though I know enough not to celebrate the planetary implications. Instead we focus on the future: union jobs in renewable energy. “We’ve got to build those turbines,” he says, waving a big, beringed hand. “As many as possible.” Meanwhile, the most important federal climate legislation in U.S. history is sitting in congressional purgatory. After summarily killing President Biden’s signature Build Back Better agenda, Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W. Va.) recently dangled his openness to a smaller bill containing $500 billion worth of clean energy investments. It would be the biggest ever federal boost to the renewable energy industry and is key to keeping our climate goals within reach. A big tent coalition of environmental groups, civil rights organizations and labor unions has come together to organize a rally in D.C. on April 23 — a final push to reignite negotiations. I spend Saturday back in my apartment, struggling to write an op-ed articulating the stakes. Sometimes, the desperation is a conduit, and the words just funnel through me. Other times, I feel so sad and overwhelmed that it takes me half an hour to string a sentence together. My cat, Waffle, keeps wanting to sit on the keyboard. I nudge her off and look out the window. The sky is beautiful, cloudless. I close my laptop and head out for a stroll. This is a lesson I’ve learned over many years: Sometimes, facing the climate crisis means allowing myself to enjoy the weather. I head out in the early afternoon to help hang posters for the rally in D.C. This is a habit I’ve tried to cultivate: to assess how much time and energy I have outside of work, and then give some of both to the climate movement. I try thinking in specific terms: how many hours, which particular tasks. It helps make political work concrete — another deliberate choice I can make, like shopping with reusable bags. A group of us are meant to meet at Logan Circle, but I’m the only one there. I didn’t organize the effort, but even so I get that sinking feeling, every organizer’s worst nightmare: You planned the thing and nobody came. I stress-pace around the circle’s oxidizing equestrian statue and text the actual organizer. Ten minutes later he shows up, followed by one friend I invited, and another she recruited from work. I’m struggling not to betray the creeping mixture of shame, frustration and despair I feel every time a climate event goes bust. Around Logan Circle, people are having picnics. Some of them have dogs, or small children, or little cups of prosecco. It looks nice. I can’t tell which is stronger: my wish that they would join us, or that I could join them. The organizer gives us a short briefing, then hands us an overambitious stack of posters and a few rolls of tape. I wrench on my game face. I’m surprised by which businesses are willing to hang the posters. The proprietor of a used bookstore says they don’t have any room, though we’re standing in front of his empty store window. A Starbucks barista takes the poster conspiratorially and says she’ll cajole her manager. The bakery, the sex shop and the nail salon are all enthusiastic and ask for more details. After a few hours, my friend has to leave to go cook iftar for the first night of Ramadan. She’s been doing all of this while fasting. I feel guilty and grateful and spend another hour putting posters up by myself. RSVPs for the D.C. rally are not looking good so far. Familiar doubts start shuttling through my head. What does Joe Manchin care if a few people gather outside the White House asking him not to torch the world? He’s made his fortune burning coal. Screw the rest of us; the rich will survive a 3 degrees Celsius world. And yet. The whispers from Capitol Hill are that something big could pass. Biden and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) need public pressure and political cover. I cannot tell if this is a story I’m telling myself because I need to, or because it’s true. Probably a little bit of both. I’m fine with that: Hope is a practice — a muscle I try to stretch daily, even when it feels stiff. I strap on my helmet and bike to work. Work is a treadmill of Zoom calls. Some I take standing at my standing desk. Others I take slouched and off camera. In the afternoon, I do a book talk with 50 people from Friends of the Earth Ireland. They want me to talk about navigating climate anxiety. I tell everyone that I am navigating a lot of it as we speak. The transparency feels good, but I feel so tired, guilty for not bringing my best self. A trenchant young Irish activist says she’s given up on national governments stepping up to the plate. I want to push back, but what evidence do I have? A little, it turns out! Just yesterday, Vice President Harris held an event at an elementary school in Southeast D.C., underscoring the importance of investing in energy-efficient and climate-resilient public school buildings, effectively lifting our campaign into the national spotlight. Our communications director drafts a news release to help amplify the moment and maximize momentum for our Carbon-Free and Healthy Schools campaigns. We send the materials out to our labor partners in the states, who leverage the attention to put pressure on their local decision-makers. It feels, in a small way, like the gears are catching. Later that night, grasping at emotional straws on the Internet, I watch a YouTube video titled “We WILL Fix Climate Change!” None of the information is new, but it’s a good articulation of the case against fatalism, and the narrator — sanguine, British — sounds like the voice from my favorite meditation app. Weirdly, all the characters in the video are little animated birds. I guess our story is easier to bear when we swap out the protagonists. Today is a long string of calls with union leaders everywhere from Maine to Texas. Every third call, I pour myself a mug of black tea and walk a lap around the office. The day speeds by in little blue blocks on my Google calendar, the red bar marking the present moving inexorably downward. After work, I make a few calls regarding the April 23 rally. I talk to a local Ukrainian American activist about the connection between President Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression and Russia’s fossil fuel reserves. She’s excited to speak at the rally and agrees to spread the word through her Ukrainian networks. “If the U.S. passes this bill and invests in renewables, it will undercut oil-backed dictators everywhere,” she says. Later, I head to the airport to catch a flight to San Francisco. I have meetings tomorrow with a big SEIU Local that represents 54,000 custodians, bus drivers, school administrators, and public employees across the Bay Area. They want to use collective bargaining to compel their school districts to decarbonize. Sitting on the tarmac, I worry, as I always do, about whether the strategic benefit of in-person planning outweighs the emissions from the flight. I have no answer. I pay for the onboard WiFi and start trimming my inbox. I wake up early, having crashed on an air mattress at my friends’ house in Oakland. We eat breakfast in their backyard, a minor oasis, overhung by a 40-year-old buckeye. It’s the platonic ideal of a climbing tree, and we lift ourselves into its crown. From the tallest branch, I watch the sun jump the freeway and run up the hills. When I arrive at the SEIU office, the leaders of the local are outside smoking in the parking lot. We’ve only ever met on Zoom, but I already like these people. They talk quickly and like to tell war stories: the time they made a stingy manager cry during bargaining, the time their members led a racial justice march through Oakland after the murder of George Floyd. The energy is irrepressible, exciting, difficult to facilitate. After eight hours of strategizing, I meet up with my friend for a hike in the hills. The California poppies are all in bloom, and there are tiny buds on the blackberry bushes. I ask him about last year’s wildfires, and he says the strangest thing was how quickly it all got normalized: the unbreathable air, the days spent indoors. From atop the ridge, San Francisco Bay looks enormous and benevolent. I sneak a peek at my phone. RSVPs for the D.C. rally have shot up past 600. Good progress, and a long, long way to go."
+"Climate Diaries is a series that sheds light on what an average week — the good, bad, easy and hard — is like for people who are trying to live a more climate-conscious lifestyle. Climate Diaries aims to show a transparent and honest reflection of what people face while on this journey. Name: Sophia Kianni Location: Palo Alto, Calif. Age: 20 I am a climate activist studying environmental science and public policy at Stanford University. In middle school, I witnessed the devastating impact air pollution and climate change were having on my parents’ home country, Iran, and my experience inspired me to found Climate Cardinals, an international nonprofit working to make climate education more accessible to people who don’t speak English. As a result of my environmental advocacy, I was chosen to represent the United States as the youngest member on the inaugural United Nations Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change. I try to make choices to lessen my impact on the planet and reduce my carbon footprint, but it’s also important to know that the very concept of the carbon footprint was invented by an ad agency hired by fossil fuel companies to distract people from the huge amounts of pollution that Big Oil and gas companies produce. So while it’s important for everyone to do their part, those who pollute the most have an obligation to reduce the most. Through my work at the United Nations, I am putting pressure on leaders to pass comprehensive climate legislation. I don’t believe in absolving personal responsibility; limiting your own consumption and recycling is always beneficial. But oftentimes the most impactful step we can take on an individual basis is to vote for elected officials who will champion progressive climate policies. Sustainability is not binary, and as an individual I strive for progress, not perfection, when it comes to climate-conscious living. It’s my last week of classes at Stanford! This quarter, I took courses on environmental history and water justice, climate change ventures, biosecurity, and Farsi. My biosecurity class is in the School of Medicine Alway Building, which is all the way across campus from my dorm, so I usually bike to get to class when I want to attend the lecture in person. When I wake up in the morning, I realize that my bike has a flat tire, so I borrow my best friend’s bike to get to class on time. Thankfully, I rent my bike from a green bike-sharing service that emphasizes sustainability by offering free repairs and preventing bike turnover. After my lecture, I decide to bike to Trader Joe’s with some friends to get nonperishable snacks like walnuts and raisins for our dorms. None of us have cars, so we use our bikes to get around to the local shopping center and grocery stores. Trader Joe’s is one of my preferred grocery stores, as they have committed to cutting down plastic packaging and improving their resource management. Midday, I have my final presentation for my Stanford Climate Ventures class, and I borrow my roommate’s blazer since I don’t want to buy a new professional outfit. I walk to the Graduate School of Business to meet with my team and present our company idea for a new sustainable method of electrochemically producing ammonia — a compound used to produce all nitrogen-based fertilizers. Current commercial ammonia production takes place via the century-old Haber-Bosch process, which uses fossil fuels and requires huge production facilities. The panel of venture capitalists seem very receptive to our business model, and I feel a breath of relief to be one step closer to spring break! I wake up early to walk to the dining hall to grab my signature breakfast of oatmeal, bananas and peanut butter before my Farsi class. I bring a Tupperware container so I can take some food back to my dorm without having to use the single-use to-go boxes Stanford offers us. After I finish my class, I am free for the rest of the day, so I decide to spend a few hours packing my belongings to prepare to go home for spring break. I also do my laundry using biodegradable laundry sheets and try (and fail) to fit my whole load of dirty clothes into one washer. At lunch, I grab some apples and grapes from the dining hall as snacks for my dorm so I can reduce a trip to the grocery store. Stanford has created a ​​One Plate, One Planet program that prioritizes climate-smart dining by reducing food waste and curbing deforestation through supply-chain sourcing decisions. The sustainability initiatives are still a work in progress, as Stanford is planning to get rid of to-go containers over the next few weeks to reduce landfill trash. The Beyond Meat burgers and tofu scrambles are some of my favorite protein options and have helped me stick to a mainly vegetarian diet at college. Since my friends and I are leaving for spring break over the next few days, we decide to throw all of our perishable snacks and food into our backpacks and have a picnic. The weather is beautiful, so we lay out a blanket on Stanford’s main quad and soak up some sun. Going to school across the country from my family has been hard at times, but the Northern California weather has been one of the nicest upsides. Instead of planning elaborate and wasteful activities, I always have the option to walk to the Stanford Cactus Garden, hike the Dish Loop Trail, or spend the day doing homework on the law school terrace. I round out my day by tagging along with my best friend to the gym with my trusty reusable water bottle and ear buds in tow. I say a final goodbye to my friends and head to sleep early for once so I can catch my morning flight back to Washington, D.C. I drag myself out of bed and head to San Francisco International Airport so I can fly home to McLean, Va., to visit my parents and their two lovebirds. As a thrifty student, I fly using United’s discounted 18-22 year-old flight program. I also offset my emissions through Conservation International’s partnership with United, which enables customers to purchase verified emission reductions through a carbon calculator for flights. Obviously, this is not a perfect system, but I try my best to balance my identity as the homesick child of two lonely empty-nesters and an activist striving to live a more climate-conscious lifestyle. It would have been impossible for me to get home for this break without choosing to fly: Taking buses across the country would have taken 3-4 days of nonstop travel and cost several hundred dollars more. After a short five-hour flight, I run to hug my dad, who was waiting with a bouquet of roses. Alongside missing my family and my bed, I am delighted to be back home, as I need to refill my reusable bottles of Youth To The People cleanser and OUAI shampoo and conditioner. With my replenished beauty routine and better sleep schedule, I feel ready to face my hometown. I spend my first day back home shopping for local produce from Balducci’s, a specialty grocery store that’s only a short walk away from my house. After I’ve lugged back all the ingredients, my dad and I dice up tomatoes, sweet peppers and onions, and pan fry them with tofu. We also boil eggs and cook rice, and I use the leftover water to water our houseplants. My parents instilled values of sustainability into me while I was growing up, as they would always limit their food waste and reuse containers. Our compost bin has accumulated food scraps and beautiful green rinds of cantaloupe, so I throw on some old clothes, grab a shovel, and head to our backyard. I use the dig and drop composting method to give our fig tree some TLC, so hopefully by the next time I visit, it will be ripe with fruits. I ended up coming home right in time to celebrate Nowruz, the Persian New Year, which happens on the first day of spring! Every year, my mom sets up a haft-sin: a table adorned with items such as vinegar, apples, sumac, lentil sprouts, Persian cookies and dry fruit. I help to beautify the table with hand-painted hard boiled eggs and bouquets of roses and hyacinths. Nowruz emphasizes respect for the Earth, as the flowers are supposed to symbolize the rebirth of nature and Earth’s healing. The mirror that is placed at the middle of the table is supposed to spur reflection and self-reckoning of behavior. When we are done with family celebrations and festivities, my mom plants the flowers and composts the lentil sprouts and fruit. I meet up with some of my childhood friends and we take the Metro to get to D.C. and visit the national monuments. D.C. and the greater Northern Virginia region have great public transportation and it’s a very walkable area, so I never felt the need to get a car in high school (and I settled for being the kid who rode the bus to school). We take nostalgic photos at the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial, and then we walk a mile and a half to get food in Chinatown. It’s a heartwarming full-circle moment to walk through the city where I first got my start as a climate activist, attending protests on Capitol Hill and organizing strategy meetings. I slurp down my Singapore noodles while my mind churns with new climate campaign ideas and initiatives, filled with a renewed sense of hope."
+"Climate Diaries is a series that sheds light on what an average week — the good, bad, easy and hard — is like for people who are trying to live a more climate-conscious lifestyle. Climate Diaries aims to show a transparent and honest reflection of what people face while on this journey. Name: Lucia Priselac Location: Chicago Age: 29 I am the founding director of the Uproot Project, a network of journalists of color working to bring diverse voices to the forefront of environmental reporting. Growing up, I invested in the liberal arts, shying away from anything I deemed “science-y,” including environmental studies. The irony is that I grew up with a mother who works in STEM, a father who deeply respects the earth and nature, and a family farm that depends on nutrient-rich soil for the business to survive. My dad loves to garden. He has a great appreciation for what the earth has to offer and what we have to offer it in return. I realize I learned a lot from him. Today, I’m a big proponent of doing what I can in the form of little acts. If you are a person who is able to make big, sustainable changes in your life, I commend you. I feel very new to sustainable living and I’ve realized that giving myself grace is necessary for me to continue in my journey. Recycling, running errands in bulk, reducing my food waste, and using reusable bags, straws and water bottles are among the ways that I am trying to live sustainably. The shift to sustainable practices can be incredibly overwhelming to those new to it. These are my ways of caring for the  Earth without burning out along the way. Today is meal planning day! I try to be conscious about food waste. I get the majority of my groceries from a company called Imperfect Foods. Imperfect Foods’ mission is to eliminate food waste and build a better food system for everyone by sourcing food items that aren’t aesthetically pleasing enough for grocery stores or foods where there is a surplus and won’t sell before the expiration date. I end up eating seasonally more often than not, as Imperfect Foods often ends up with a surplus of fruits and vegetables that are in-season. For this box, they suggested English cucumbers, which immediately made me want to create some type of Mediterranean bowl. I love how Imperfect Foods forces me to be creative with my cooking. Finding new ways to cook the same ingredients is a fun adventure. Also, making sure to use all the ingredients before their expiration dates adds an extra layer of challenge. Some of my favorite recipes have been born out of an absolute desperation not to eat the same food prepared the same three ways I’ve cooked it for years (I’m looking at you, confit tomatoes). Today is a work and errand day for me. I’m traveling to a conference at the end of the week, so I need to wrap up a few projects before I leave. I also just recently moved from Seattle to Chicago, so I’m still furnishing and decorating my apartment. The start of my day is pretty simple. I take my dog on a walk around the block for his puppy potty time. Before I leave the house, I make coffee. I have a typical electric coffee pot, but I use a reusable wire filter instead of a paper one. For me, it was a small, sustainable switch. Also, coffee grounds are great for gardening, so I try to remember to sprinkle some into the dirt of my houseplants to help them survive my lack of a “green thumb.” During my breaks from work, I peruse Facebook Marketplace. I love thrifting clothes and furniture, especially knowing that I am keeping my new finds out of the landfill. I find a side table and a desk chair that are exactly what I’m looking for. I ask the sellers if I can pick them up today so I can consolidate my errands into one big trip and not have to drive around the city for multiple days. They say yes, so we are in business! Today is not going as planned. I am stressed. When I’m stressed, I love to bake. I have two bananas from my previous Imperfect Foods box that are on the brink of going bad, and since it’s rainy and cold in Chicago, I decide to make banana bread. It is satisfying to make something with my hands, and there’s the added benefit of saving the bananas while knowing I’ll have a comforting baked good at the end. I try to keep most of my dry goods, like my flour and sugar, in resealable Mason jars and other containers to extend their shelf life and make them more visible in my cabinets. I’m on the shorter side, so if food gets pushed to the back of my cabinet it can be lost forever or until I do a deep clean. Using clear, reusable food storage containers helps me limit my food waste and keeps my grocery bill down. During stressful days like today, it can be hard to remain even a little environmentally conscious because of everything else happening inside my brain. I’ve tried to incorporate self-soothing techniques like baking with little sustainable practices like using fruits on the brink in my bakes or repurposing leftover pie dough to make something small instead of just throwing it away. It's been raining in Chicago for the past few days, so my puppy and I haven’t been able to take a long walk. Luckily, there is a break in the weather today, which means it’s a park day! We love walking around the city, and he especially loves going to the park where he can run around and find sticks to chew. Sticks are one of the most environmentally friendly dog toys. My puppy is always determined to find the biggest stick he can and then try to run with it. He’s a corgi, so it's always entertaining watching him run with his little legs and big stick. I love coming to the park with him because that means I am getting my body moving, too. It’s nice to be outside embracing the fresh air and the little bit of sunshine. I’ve been trying to think of moving my body less as exercise and more as joyful movement. It helps me be grateful that I have the ability to move and be active instead of feeling like it's a requirement. I’m trying to be more mindful about how I go about my life and not live for the “Instagram moment,” but to live for the betterment of myself and my surrounding environment. I decide that today is going to be a self-care day. I find that if I feel more centered and relaxed, I can focus on the things I need to accomplish for the remainder of the week. I think there is a certain stereotype around self-care where people think that it has to be long showers and fluffy robes. My version of self-care is a little different. While I do complete an extended version of my skin-care routine, I find that my self-care also consists of curling up with a book purchased from a used bookstore. I love physically holding the books I’m reading. However, I know that paper books are not the best choice for the environment. I try to balance my desire to hold and read a physical book with my desire to practice sustainability. That’s where used bookstores come in handy: Fewer books end up in the landfill and more books end up on my bookshelves, which I see as a win-win. Just like thrifting, used bookstores can have some hidden gems. I found an almost brand new copy of “Tess of the D’Urbervilles,” which was a steal for me! Today is packing day for a conference I’m attending out of state. Instead of buying new, travel-size personal care items, I use reusable travel-size containers. I love these because you never have to worry about the size of your liquid containers, and it saves you a trip to the store every time you need airline-friendly liquids! I also try to use reusable packing squares to put my travel liquids in instead of single-use plastic bags. I keep all my travel accessories together, which helps me stay organized when preparing for a trip. Even with my personal care items like my face wash and body wash, I try to be environmentally conscious. I look for clean and cruelty-free brands that have recyclable containers. Cruelty-free products are important to me. I have actively switched from using makeup brands that are not cruelty-free to ones such as Rare Beauty, which not only takes sensitive skin into mind when creating formulas but also is vegan and sustainably packaged. If the little things we do as individuals can make an impact on the environment, imagine the impact it would have if every company took that initiative. Today is travel day! I wake up earlier than usual to finish packing and get my puppy ready for his boarding stay with a dogsitter. My puppy and I go on a little walk around the block before we order our Lyft. I opt to do a multi-stop Lyft instead of driving my puppy to his sitter, driving back to my apartment, and then ordering another Lyft to the airport. Traveling while trying to be environmentally conscious is a challenge, as the transportation industry is one of the greatest greenhouse gas contributors. When I travel, and especially when I fly, I try to lower my carbon footprint in other ways. Taking a car-share, carpooling, or getting on public transportation systems are all great ways to get to the airport without driving your own car. Getting an electronic boarding pass instead of printing a paper one saves the use of paper and ink (the latter of which is most likely not water-based). Little things, done however and whenever you can, make a big impact. And continuing to travel sustainably ensures we don’t lose sight of the world we are all collectively trying to save."
+"“Everywhere the trees fell, they left holes in the roof,” Nixon says. “My son’s home was destroyed by Michael and so were two of my nieces’ homes.” After her son moved in with her, Nixon became ill from extensive black mold inside her home’s walls that grew because of persistent leaks from storm damage. Finally, after 14 inspections of her home, it was deemed unlivable by the local government. “At first FEMA told me I would get a mobile home, but with the help of Samaritan’s Purse [a nonprofit humanitarian aid organization], I was able to have a brand-new home built for me,” Nixon says. “It’s phenomenal, a two-bedroom house that was built to way more than standard requirements for energy efficiency and hurricane ratings.” Intense storms such as hurricanes and tornadoes, floods, wildfires, high winds and extreme heat and cold are becoming more common as climate change impacts the Earth, so homes like Nixon’s are likely to become more sought after. With donated materials and assistance from the Tallahassee-based Federal Alliance for Safe Homes (FLASH), Nixon’s home is a model of resilience to natural disasters. Resilient design refers to intentionally designing buildings, landscapes, communities and regions to adapt to a wide variety of impacts from climate change, according to the Resilient Design Institute. There aren’t broadly accepted specific metrics in place for homes to qualify as resilient — not like LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), which certifies buildings for energy efficiency and low carbon emissions. “After Hurricane Michael, I had some PTSD and panic attacks, but since I moved into this house, I don’t even hear the rain,” says Nixon, who also regained her health after moving from her mold-filled home. Her new home has extra insulation to protect against temperature extremes and was built with 8-by-8-inch lumber instead of 4-by-4 lumber for greater strength. “One reason FLASH got involved with upgrading Mrs. Nixon’s home was to demonstrate the short cost differential between meeting the standard code and building a resilient home,” says Leslie Henderson, president and CEO of the organization. “Resilient homes are durable homes.” The nonprofit’s mission is to help every homeowner have their “DREAM” home, which stands for “durable, resilient, energy-efficient, affordable and modern.” A resilient home is one that’s built for the future after an assessment of current and predicted risks, says Illya Azaroff, a founding principal of +LAB architects and an associate professor at New York City College of Technology. “Resilient design can have multiple benefits, including sustainability,” says Alex Wilson, president of the Resilient Design Institute and founder of BuildingGreen in Brattleboro, Vt. “The elements of resilient design, such as higher insulation levels, stronger windows, passive solar power and natural daylight that will help homeowners survive power outages, extreme heat and extreme cold, also save energy and mitigate climate change.” Homes that survive a major storm or fire also reduce the amount of disaster-related debris that ends up in landfills, Henderson says. While architects and builders can use technology and materials to improve a home’s durability during a disaster, home buyers can also add resilience to their list of traits to consider when searching for a home. Homeowners can retrofit their homes to reduce the likelihood or intensity of damage due to weather extremes. “You need to start by assessing risks in an area, such as flooding in some parts of the D.C. region, wildfires in California and tornadoes in the Midwest,” Wilson says. “Look at projections for the future, too, such as the anticipated prevalence of droughts in some areas even as precipitation increases.” Wilson says resources such as flood factor and wildfire risk maps can help consumers understand what may be required to protect their homes. Just as technology has improved other industries, building science and building materials have evolved in recent decades, Azaroff says. “For example, before construction even starts, architects and builders can put their design through a program to see if any alterations would help the structure be more wind resistant,” Azaroff says. “We can project 50 to 100 years in the future and model how the house will perform under extreme heat conditions or increased precipitation.” At the same time, Azaroff says, architects are reevaluating traditional architecture to respond to environmental surroundings. For example, a hip roof, which has multiple slopes, offers better wind resistance than a gable roof, which has only two slopes. Builders are beginning to pay more attention to those considerations when building homes in areas prone to high winds and hurricanes. “The way a house is assembled also plays a big role in its resilience,” Azaroff says. “For a minimal cost differential, builders can use ring shank nails instead of regular nails, use more nails and arrange them in a way that addresses wind pressure and uplift. Taping and sealing the edges of the plywood lining and the roof also provides enhanced strength for very little additional cost.” To reduce flood damage, many homes are built without a basement or a crawl space, Wilson says. “If there is a basement, it’s smart to avoid putting mechanical equipment there,” Wilson says. “Some homes are designed with ‘wet flood proofing’ so floodwater can enter and exit the house easily without knocking it down. You can also design a home with ‘wettable’ materials that can dry out if they get wet rather than paper-based materials that have to be torn out and replaced.” For extreme heat and cold, the best strategy is a super energy-efficient home, Wilson says. “Extra insulation and triple pane windows help, along with mechanical systems built for higher cooling or heating capacity in the future,” Wilson says. “You can also place windows facing north and south with overhangs for summer shade rather than facing east and west. Planting shade trees and vines can keep a house cooler, too.” Designing a home this way offers “passive survivability” to withstand heat or in the case of power outages, which are common during all types of disasters, including extreme temperatures, Wilson says. “All of these techniques can be applied to an attainably priced home so that resilience doesn’t have to be only for wealthier people,” Azaroff says. Whether you’re buying an existing home or a newly built home, you can ask your real estate agent and home inspector to help you evaluate  its resilience to climate change. “The first thing every buyer should begin with is the location,” Henderson says. “For example, if you’re in an area prone to earthquakes, find out how close the house is to a fault line and find out the history of the house such as whether there’s been an insurance claim on it.” The FLASH Buyers Guide to Resilient Homes includes printable checklists for home buyers and lists of questions to ask your real estate agent about how disaster-resistant a home may be. “I share any information I can from a visual inspection of a home with the buyers and then it’s up to them whether they want to go ahead and make an offer,” says Robert Wallis, a real estate agent with Hill, Spooner and Elliott Real Estate in Tallahassee. “It can be hard to estimate what it may cost to make a home more resilient, such as replacing all the windows or the roof, but at least they know about a potential issue.” Comparing the year the house was constructed to the building code at the time can also provide insight into the level of insulation and how the home was built, Wallis says. You can visit the Inspect to Protect website (inspecttoprotect.org) and enter an address to find out the code under which a home was built, the history of natural disasters in the area and suggested retrofits to make the property more resilient. “When you’re shopping for a home, you can factor in what you might be able to do to make it safer,” Henderson says. “It’s important to understand that the cost of a home is not just the selling price, it’s also the cost of not having a home if an emergency hits and your home needs to be repaired.” Many home listings now include information about flood zones and climate risk and the potential for higher insurance costs, Azaroff says. “You can also ask a home inspector to check the age and condition of the roof, whether there are impact resistant windows and to assess the insulation if possible,” Azaroff says. “This is not just for safety. Resilient homes tend to retain their property values better than homes that are not resilient.” An energy audit can be a good place to start looking for ways to improve your home’s resilience to climate change, Wilson says. The audit can identify areas to weatherize your home. “If you’re concerned about extreme heat and cold, you need to start with the building envelope,” Azaroff says. “You may want to add roof insulation to resist rapid changes in temperature and check your windows and doors to see if they need to be replaced.” Simply caulking and sealing your windows and doors can make a difference, along with shutters or shade outside for summer heat, Azaroff says. “FLASH worked on a flood mitigation and winterization project on a senior housing community in Connecticut where we started by looking at the outside of the property to use landscaping and gutters to move water away from the building,” Henderson says. “Then we put risers under the appliances in the basement and replaced the carpet with a solid resin floor with area rugs that are easier to replace in case of a flood.” For winterization, caulking windows, checking the flashing around openings and squirting foam insulation around openings such as hose bibs reduced heat loss and lowered the property’s energy bills. “Consumers really need to evaluate their homeowner’s insurance to see if they have proper coverage to cover the new climate they’re in,” says Kurt George, director of marketing and strategy for Fort Worth-based Property Damage Appraisers, which provides damage assessments for insurance companies. “If they’ve got a view of a river, they probably need more than a basic policy in case of flood damage.” Some of the retrofits that George recommends homeowners consider include upgrading windows, particularly those that have more exposure to wind and sunlight, to provide protection from extreme temperatures. “Insulating the attic and roof prevents heat loss through the roof,” George says. “It’s also important to look at your landscaping, especially your trees. Hire an arborist, especially if your trees are tall and older, and remove the trees if there’s a chance they’ll hit your house during a storm.” Among the projects recommended by the FLASH guide for homeowners are items such as sealing a roof deck. According to the guide, unsealed decks can lead to severe flooding during heavy rain. Sealing a roof deck averages $500 for a 2,000-square-foot home and can reduce 95 percent of water entry during a hurricane. “If you buy a house in California or another wildfire-prone area, you can do simple things like buy ember-excluding screens for your soffit and ridge vents,” Wilson says. “Put in a patio instead of a raised deck, because decks are more flammable and debris tends to accumulate underneath them.” Landscaping can also be important to protect your home depending on the hazards you face. Adding trees for shade can add protection from extreme heat and reducing density or choosing less flammable plants can be helpful in a fire zone. “Every project to improve the resilience of a home depends on the local conditions,” Wallis says. “For example, in Florida our issues are wind and water, especially from hurricanes. So homeowners would be wise to invest in storm shutters.”"
+"Climate Diaries is a series that sheds light on what an average week — the good, bad, easy and hard — is like for people who are trying to live a more climate-conscious lifestyle. Climate Diaries aims to show a transparent and honest reflection of what people face while on this journey. Name: Leah Thomas Location: Santa Barbara Age: 27 I’m an environmental creative and author of “The Intersectional Environmentalist: How to Dismantle Systems of Oppression to Protect People + Planet.” I sort of stumbled into the world of environmentalism. I thought I wanted to be a veterinarian initially because I’ve always been fascinated by animals, but I started to gravitate toward ecosystems ecology and sustainability, formally studying environmental science and policy in school. I also followed the example of members of my family, who were always really thrifty and encouraged my love for nature. My maternal grandma took me to the thrift store often, and she really made use of everything, like reusing bags and containers. She had a beautiful garden outside, as did my paternal grandmother and great grandmother. I think all of that rubbed off on me and inspired me more than I realized. In my everyday life, I try my best to live intentionally, always considering the impact my decisions have on people and the planet, but also embracing nuance and imperfection. In the past, I was very strict and hard on myself with sustainable choices, but I realized shame-based motivation did not work well for me or my overall well-being. Instead, offering myself grace and doing my best helps a lot. I try to use eco-friendly cleaning products and beauty products, recycle and compost, thrift clothing or buy sustainably. The thing I most often do is buy from local stores that sell sustainably made, local artisan products. I also founded an environmental nonprofit, Intersectional Environmentalist, and it gives me a great sense of joy to work with them each week. I also think of sustainability as more than what I buy; it’s also how I sustain myself, my relationships and my community. Am I resting or nurturing healthy friendships? Am I resting enough so I can sustain myself? When I feel I’m personally living sustainably, I feel happier, and it’s much easier to stay motivated to protect the planet in little everyday decisions. Today was all about planning for a trip — my book “babymoon,” or the last time I’ll have a getaway before the release of my first book. I’m taking a trip to Portugal for about two weeks, with a stop in Amsterdam. Traveling is something I’ve struggled with as someone who cares for the planet, like many of us do. In the past, I have received comments on Instagram shaming me for traveling by plane; I don’t blame them, but there is nuance. I used to really restrict myself and my choices because I wanted to be a perfect environmentalist, and I couldn’t justify my desire to explore when the carbon offsets of plane travel are enormous. But after experiencing a lot of burnout in 2020 and 2021, I decided to commit to going on more adventures and exploring around the world when I can, or even just discovering my neighborhood by taking long walks. Finding a sense of awe in nature and around the world reminds me why I care for the earth, because there are such amazing sites and natural spaces and cultures worth protecting globally. When I only focus on research, writing, content creation and environmental education, I lose sense of what inspired me to care for the earth in the first place. So today was spent packing and preparing. I reflected on how to travel internationally with consideration for people and planet and how I can be an environmentalist while also allowing myself some grace, as I think all of us should. Traveling during a pandemic and while sustainable air travel is still several innovations away is a difficult decision to make and one I don’t take lightly. To try my best to live consciously on the go I make sure to: pack reusables, bring thrifted and sustainably made items, buy from local vendors and artisans, stay at eco-friendly accommodations that conserve water, reduce waste or are built with natural materials, and avoid buying things I might throw away shortly after. I also use a debit card that gives 1 percent back to environmental organizations. Today was about being in flight and arriving. I left for Amsterdam late Saturday and arrived in the Netherlands after an exhausting 10-hour flight. I stayed awake during the flight, with my mind wrapped around the reality that my first book comes out in about a month. I’m excited, but as a first time writer, there is some stress and anxiety. To tune my brain out, I started a new show called “Two Weeks To Live” that I really enjoyed. I adore the Netherlands; once in an interview I was asked what I imagined the perfect sustainable future to look like and I said, “Amsterdam.” The city is designed so well, very clean and sustainable: Many people opt for bikes instead of cars, there is less pollution, public transportation is abundant, and you don’t see much waste while walking around! It’s easier to live consciously when an entire town and culture embraces it. Being there makes me imagine what better systems in the United States could look like if sustainable living were truly accessible and easy for everyone, instead of something people have to go out of their way to do or pay a lot to participate in. For example, if biking and public transportation were safer and more efficient, I think many people in California would choose that instead of a personal car. It was storming and dark when I arrived, which was a stark contrast from the bright and sunny southern California town I live in. I realized the weather definitely has an impact on my mood. I feel so much happier when the sun is out; I like the rain in small doses, but foggy skies I could go without. The sun came out today, which made for a beautiful walk around the city. I had brunch with my friend Jeanne, founder of sustainable fashion brand Zazi Vintage, which uses nontoxic dyes and repurposes materials. I also grabbed coffee with the founder of a new platform at the intersection of Palestinian art, culture and sustainability. It was nice to be traveling solo but have a network of people blossoming in a new city. That’s the beauty of the eco-conscious community: There are people everywhere all around the world, with their own unique takes on how they live in ways that have less harmful impacts on the planet, and I always learn something new. Today, I received a DM from someone who said they were disappointed that I traveled by plane because of the negative environmental impact of emissions. I chatted with them and let them know how traveling helped me feel connected to the earth and that I hope more sustainable methods of international travel become accessible soon. There’s nuance to everything, and I came to terms with the fact that it’s okay for people to have different values surrounding what is acceptable to them and what is not. I do at times feel pressure to restrict myself even more, but I don’t want to do so to people-please, because that wouldn’t be living in alignment with my values at the end of the day. However there is a balance of genuinely listening to feedback and reflecting on it and holding myself accountable without making excuses. I can offer myself grace, while also not overlooking how airplane travel does emit a lot of pollution and making changes to reduce my impact. Traveling is not a necessity, especially for vacation and not for work, and in many ways is inaccessible and a luxury, so it’s something I think about often. I left around 5 a.m. for an early flight from Rotterdam to Faro, Portugal, where I’ll travel with a friend for the next two weeks. Since Portugal is one of the warmer places in Europe, I decided to come on over to check it out during the off season. Faro is a remote town in the Algarve region, and I drove up a hill to a magnificent farming community. Since things are very spread out in Portugal and I was staying in rural towns, driving was the best option as opposed to the biking and public transportation in Amsterdam. I grew up in the Midwest and was once a park ranger in a rural town in Kansas for three months, so I feel comfortable in places like this. It reminded me a lot of California but felt more quiet, with very few people in Faro most places I went — even the beach. I was greeted by the groundskeeper at Casas da Serra Tavira, a collection of Portuguese minimalist-style homes designed on a hillside overlooking the town, which I found on Airbnb. It turns out one of the creators is an environmental policy analyst, which made me feel right at home. The groundskeeper gave us a tour in Portuguese, and I tried my best to follow along with smiles; it’s a bit similar to Spanish, so I understood many things. I realized I brought way too many clothing items after hauling my large suitcase up the hill. I struggle with wishing I was more of a minimalist. I have a lot of thrifted items, but really could do with less. I sat in the sun to recharge and lay around a lot. Feeling the sun on my skin helps me to stay connected with nature and gives me an appreciation for the earth. After one rainy day in Amsterdam, I felt so grateful for the sun. Today was my second day and first full day in Faro. I woke up to the sound of a local cat meowing. I went outside and gave her a bit of cheese after brewing some morning tea. I’d gone into town to pick up some basics like bread and fruit, and honestly, the bread was so much fresher and tastier than the bread back home, which I usually get from a local grocery store. I’m not sure why; perhaps it was made locally. Being in this little farming community reminded me a lot about sustainable farming. Just seeing the small farms — versus the huge confined animal feeding lots and larger-scale farms of the United States that use a lot of pesticides — and the intention many farmers put into their food here showed me clearly that another world for agriculture is possible. I once lived in a rural farming community in Kansas and spoke with farmers about how they wished more people supported small farms and how they are losing money to larger farms. In Portugal, I really liked how the local grocery stores supported their nearby small farms. Today, I also started to feel reality creeping in: My first book as a published author at 27 is about to come out. I have a list of responsibilities that I’m grateful to do, like over 40 virtual and in-person speaking engagements about environmental justice, but at times it feels daunting. I tried to soak up the sun and put my computer away for a bit and curled up next to a fire to distract myself. Last day in Faro. I went for a walk along the mountainside of the little farming town. During my days up in the hills I barely ever saw another person, which was such a stark contrast from my days spent working in Los Angeles, where the streets are crowded and the air is filled with smog, car exhaust and pollution. I walked past another little farm and heard cows mooing; I stood up as high as I could to get a glimpse of their cute faces and started to fantasize about having a farm one day. I often think about getting away from the city and learning how to live off the land, which has less environmental impacts than large-scale agriculture and I think would bring me a lot of peace and serenity. As I walked next to the road on my way back to the house I was staying at, I spotted an orange tree off to the side. I hopped over the highway barricade (which was terribly small, so it was relatively easy) and picked some oranges with my friend. The abundance of oranges in rural Portugal was a sweet sight that made me think of how much better the world would be if we let the land do its thing and grow abundantly, instead of always extracting from the earth and building on top of it. The oranges were wild orange trees off the small road, and it was really cool seeing them growing in this small town. The peace and quiet was just what I needed to reconnect with the earth before one of the biggest months of my life. To end the day at sunset, I sat on a ledge on the corner of the house with my feet dangling off the side and just observed the hillside again. I tried to take a picture in my mind so I’d always remember, but then I must admit I took out my phone and snapped a few as well! I’m maybe not as “off the grid” as many environmentalists are; my phone is often always nearby. Today was an exciting day because I left Faro to adventure to a treehouse about four hours away in a town up north off the beaten path. The trip required going up a side of a mountain, and I stopped on the way there to look at the hill below on the way to the treehouse. This trip I felt very content and really focused on observing the nature around me. It’s wild how much you miss when you’re so preoccupied on your phone or not fully present. The thriving trees in the remote town were skinny and tall, but still a luscious deep forest green, so unlike any forests I’d seen in California. I spent some time looking for crystals and beautiful rocks on the ground and found a beautiful white quartz to add to my collection at home. The treehouse was on the side of the mountain, hidden within the trees with the most serene view. Again, I could hear cows mooing off in the distance at a farm down below, and again, I was greeted by a sweet cat and also a lovely dog that lived on the property. This was my first time staying in a treehouse, and I admired the wooden design and how the house fit so nicely in the tree. I used a pulley lever on the side of the tree to haul my bags up to the top, and there was a compost toilet built in the tree and a small kitchen. This was my first time staying in a treehouse and it was pretty high up, but a really great size. The compost toilet was really unique; it had wood shavings to top off waste instead of flushing. I ended the night with a cup of tea, staring up at the stars, feeling content. I started to realize how much I needed a break. I was burned out, as many of us are after the past two years. I often find myself trying to give as many talks as I can, do every project I can, meet with as many students as I can, learn about climate science and read up on every topic I can so I can stay in the know — but oftentimes I don’t really leave a lot of room for rest and relaxation. The stakes are so high when it comes to the climate crisis, and I sometimes view resting as trivial and travel as an unneeded luxury given the circumstances of the world. During the pandemic, I started off as unemployed and furloughed, and I completely dedicated my life to trying to write a book and founding an educational environmental nonprofit. I really didn’t take breaks or stop to look up and appreciate the world around me or the community I’ve been able to find. My time away helped me feel ready to come back to reality feeling recharged and also having a bit more nuance in making sure I don’t lose track of caring for myself as I try to care for the planet and finding restful adventures when I can to ground me."
+"Climate Diaries is a series that sheds light on what an average week — the good, bad, easy and hard — is like for people who are trying to live a more climate-conscious lifestyle. Climate Diaries aims to show a transparent and honest reflection of what people face while on this journey. Name: Elizabeth Teo City: Toronto Age: 25 I’m an environmental educator and content creator on Instagram, focused on creating awareness and providing actionable steps on environmental issues such as fast fashion, waste and climate change through an intersectional lens. I’m Chinese American and Canadian and graduated from the University of Toronto. I started exploring deeper into my journey to sustainability because I was tired of feeling powerless after most of my classes in environmental studies. I wanted to do more than just turn off the lights and take shorter showers. That’s when I first stumbled on the zero-waste movement and learned about the impact of fast fashion. I’m proud to say I’ve been free of fast fashion for many years now. I only buy what I need a few times a year and opt to shop my own closet, borrow from my mom, grandma and brother or buy secondhand or from a sustainable brand if needed. I also do what I can to reduce my waste in my everyday life. In the morning, I brush my teeth and use the washroom. We still use toilet paper, but I think another great alternative is a bidet. We do have one, but our toilet needs new screws to put it in. I also had one growing up, so I never thought it was weird to use. After that I get dressed for work. I’m lucky enough to work from home and have access to my mom’s closet for work clothes. She has a lot of great button-up tops, which are all I need because I just conduct meetings by Zoom, so I get to wear comfy pants (sometimes I wear my pajamas since nobody sees what you’re wearing below). My mom also has work shoes that I borrow when I need to. For dinner I make some delicious garlic and soy sauce stir-fried green beans. It was definitely one of my favorite dishes growing up, and my grandma would make it often for dinner. They are so crunchy and garlicky. My mom makes some delicious deep-fried tofu to go along with it. My brother surprises me with a thrifted Kate Spade purse he found at Plato’s Closet. It’s absolutely stunning and a great find as I’m trying to upgrade my closet to more of a professional wardrobe. I’ve been carrying a worn-out black backpack I got from my mom for a while. After work I head to the gym in our condo and work out for an hour and a half (mixture of cardio and weightlifting). I take a shower and just wash my body with a bar of soap from Lush since I washed my hair the other day. This might be TMI, but I usually only shower when working out or going out, which is every other day or so. I work from home and have dry skin, so I find that it helps and also helps reduce my water consumption. In the morning, I make a chai latte with soy milk. The tea mix is a loose leaf chai blend from David’s Tea, which I put in my tea strainer and let it sit in some hot water for a few minutes and add some soy milk. My nose is a bit runny today, so I pull out a handkerchief that I made a couple months ago from my sleeping shorts that were getting old and worn. After washing them, I cut them into squares to make four new handkerchiefs. Whenever I’m done using them, I toss them into a little baggie and throw them into my dirty laundry basket. For lunch we have spicy cold tofu, which we make by mixing soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic, black bean chili oil and chopped-up green onions and pouring it over cold uncooked tofu. It’s a very easy dish and super tasty. For dinner we head to one of my favorite vegetarian sushi restaurants, called Tenon Vegetarian Cuisine, in Markham, Ontario. My go-to order is their vegetarian bento box with mock chicken or beef, which is absolutely delicious. They also add in vegetarian sushi rolls, seaweed salad and rice. After this we head home and I head to the gym for a 30-minute walk on high incline. I do miss the trails near us, but it’s been too cold to stay out long. Working out really helps preserve my energy throughout the week to make things from scratch versus buying and allows me to take care of my mental health. For a quick breakfast I have toast, sliced tomatoes, lettuce, Dijon mustard and pesto sauce. The pesto comes in a glass container that I wash out and save for reuse. For lunch we boil vegetables. I save the water I washed the vegetables with in a pitcher for my plants. Then I use the boiled vegetable water to make soup and throw in whatever we have in the fridge (daikon, carrot, tofu, onions, miso paste, beans, garlic). We also cook some rice. I save the rice water in glass jars for my plants later. I generally work from home, so I usually don’t go out on the weekdays, but today I’m meeting a friend for the first time in a while. I get ready and try to wear some warm but cute clothes because it’s minus-10 degrees Celsius today! I borrow my brother’s cute black overalls and wear a black long-sleeve I’ve had for years and put on my old snow boots. I grab my reusable container (for leftovers), gloves, purse and a reusable water bottle. Then I hop on the bus to a Korean restaurant. I have some leftovers, so I pack them up in my container and take it with me and catch the bus home. Once I get home, I put my leftovers in the fridge, then do a quick workout. Today I’m just working from home again, which cuts down on travel emissions and spending. I wake up at 7 a.m. and make a smoothie with leftover fruit and spinach that’s about to go bad in our fridge. I also add soy milk, ice and an overripe banana. For lunch we have our leftover soup and rice. Today is also watering day for my plants! I have less than 20 of them, but they make me so happy. I use the leftover vegetable water that I saved up in my pitcher to water my plants. I keep the rice water in the fridge because I’m scared it will get moldy. My grandma told me it was her secret to helping her fiddle leaf plant grow five times as fast! And it must work because every time I visit her it has a new branch with a whole set of leaves! I will be asking for a plant cutting later on to grow my collection. I’ve been growing donkey tail leaves that fell off by propagating them in soil and watering them every two days. Seeing your plants grow is very satisfying and is a great way to connect with nature even when you don’t have an outdoor garden. Before going to bed I let some red adzuki beans soak in a bowl of water for tomorrow’s dessert. Today is another chilly day, so I add some extra layers and my robe for another nice day of working from home. I make my morning smoothie with another overripe banana, some browning kale (I just chop off the brown parts), soy milk, ice and a mushy peach. Before the pandemic, we would bring our own containers to Bulk Barn, which was great because it cut down on any packaging. My packaging consumption definitely grew because of the restrictions with reusables and the single-use masks that I had to wear because it was protocol at my last job. It was a lot harder to get things in reusable containers because of covid, too. For dessert my mom is making the red bean dessert. I reuse the water that the beans were soaked in to add to my water pitcher to water my plants. To make it, you let the beans boil until they look like they’re breaking down and then add pandan leaves and orange zest (you can use the extract too). Most people add sugar at this stage, but we add maple syrup afterward to our own taste, so we leave it out for now. My mom is also borderline diabetic, which is scary, and diabetes unfortunately runs in our family, so most things we make are sugar-free, which allows my brother and I to add sugar to our own portions. You can eat it either hot or cold. I prefer cold with coconut milk, but most people eat it hot. I opened a can of coconut milk, which is a must-have for this dessert. When opening cans I use hot water to slosh it around to make sure I get everything, then wash, rinse and recycle. Today is laundry day! I use eco-friendly laundry strips from Kind Laundry. They come in cardboard and are a lot easier to carry around compared with heavy liquid laundry detergent, which also has a ton of harsh chemicals. My mom and I both have sensitive skin, so we’re grateful that they had unscented options. Growing up in a Chinese household, I always looked forward to dim sum on the weekends. For brunch we have dim sum at one of my favorite vegetarian restaurants, called 知味齋 Gourmet Vegetarian Restaurant. It’s amazing how many traditional dim sum dishes can also be vegetarian! My favorite dishes are the mock black pepper BBQ beefsteak, deep-fried squid (the texture was very realistic! ), and sweet and sour chicken. The deep-fried taro roll is good and not too oily. At night I’m craving some cake, so I decide to make my trusty vegan lemon cake recipe that I was lucky to find online. This amazing recipe is by The Vegan 8, a.k.a. Brandi Doming, and I really love the lemon glaze recipe! It was my first vegan cake recipe and really showed me how delicious and easy vegan baking can be. A lot of recipes often call for things that most people wouldn’t have in their pantry, but I’m glad this one kept it simple! I always have cans of coconut milk in my pantry because it’s used in a lot of Chinese and Malaysian desserts. Today we head to our local gardening center to reconnect with nature while staying warm. There are many plant sales in the winter because many plants become dormant or are hard to relocate in the harsh Canadian winter. We see a beautiful pitcher plant, which I’ve only seen in National Geographic videos growing up, and many other beautiful plants and succulents. Having plants inside my home makes it feel more alive and more connected. Many of my plants are also from Facebook Marketplace, where many local plant lovers like myself propagate or grow their own indoor plants to give away or resell. I’ve met many wonderful people in my community this way. My goal is to grow a garden full of native plants for the bees when I get a backyard. I’d also like to experiment growing local fruit trees like pawpaws, which apparently taste like a cross between a mango and a banana. I learned about them when working for Not Far From the Tree, which is a local fruit-picking nonprofit in Toronto that donates their fruit to many shelters and local folks in the city. They help prevent local fruit from rotting and emitting more CO2 into the atmosphere."
+"Climate Diaries is a series that sheds light on what an average week — the good, bad, easy and hard — is like for people who are trying to live a more climate-conscious lifestyle. Climate Diaries aims to show a transparent and honest reflection of what people face while on this journey. Name: Valeria Hinojosa Location: Miami Age: 34 Back in the day, I used to be a private banker. Yup, you read that right. I was part of the 9-to-5 rat race. It was precisely that job that shook my core and woke me up, helping me realize that even if I was getting bigger bonuses and moving up the corporate ladder, my happiness was decreasing. Seven years ago, I took a leap of faith and decided to quit my job the day I got a juicy promotion. My boss and colleagues were shocked, but I finally got the freedom I was craving. I was able to write about topics that truly matter to me: ethical fashion, plant-based foods, nontoxic beauty and sustainable hotels. Soon after I quit, my savings dissolved, I declared bankruptcy and lived on my mother’s couch for eight months. Those were tough times, but instead of knocking me down, they gave me the strength to follow my calling. Today, I focus on being happier than yesterday, learning and growing every day, and working on my business as a full-time eco-conscious travel and lifestyle blogger. My husband, Santiago, has been traveling for more than two weeks and, today, I got to pick him up from the airport. I had planned a romantic date only to realize — halfway to the arrivals doors — that our electric car was low on energy. Our plans quickly went from dinner and a movie to desperately searching for a charging station and then sitting in the car for 40 minutes eating a vegan cookie I had in my purse while our car charged. We’re somewhat used to this experience, since Miami doesn’t have many charging stations. Our building didn’t let us install one in the parking lot, and sometimes I forget to fill our battery on time. Miami is simply one of those cities where the public transportation network isn’t as developed as in other places around the world. Here, you need a car. Last year, we decided to switch from a hybrid car to an electric vehicle. Although the planet is still at the early stages of transitioning to renewable energy, we’re always looking for ways to lower our carbon footprint. Today, Santiago and I had to run some errands around town. When we finally had time for a late lunch, we searched for a vegan restaurant nearby using HappyCow, an app that maps plant-based options worldwide. We love cooking and rarely dine out, but when we do leave the house for a bite, I make sure to bring all my reusables with me. I carry a purse and a separate cotton tote bag for my portable coffee mug, refillable water bottle, bamboo cutlery, washable metal straw, sealable salad bowl, dessert container … you name it! I have tools and containers for every situation to limit having to use any unnecessary single-use plastic items. Once we got to the restaurant, I ordered a few vegan options, including a smoothie. I asked the manager if they could serve it in my reusable mug, but after taking the first sip, I realized that they had mixed-up my order. Suddenly, she came out of the kitchen with the right order, but it was in a plastic cup. Being perfectly sustainable isn’t realistic, but hey, we have to keep trying. Especially now that more restaurants and coffee shops are open to accepting reusables again. Because of the pandemic, most places rejected my reusables every time I asked. I found that most small business owners, sustainable stores and vegan coffee shops were always happy to accept them. Another reason to support small businesses! This morning, I helped our small team of four seal each of our CBD bottles with plant-based wax by hand. It took us a few hours to seal 200 bottles but, believe it or not, I kind of enjoy these moments. Here’s a little behind-the-scenes on our company: As the pandemic started, we decided to launch Intū, a CBD company. All our boxes are made from recycled cardboard and printed with algae ink (which makes them compostable) our labels are seed paper (yes, you can plant them), and our products are plastic-free (we provide a vegan wax seal on a biodegradable cork, making a difference in a market oversaturated with plastic droppers). Frogs. Tiny frogs everywhere. Compost success! This morning, I saw frogs and worms enjoying our nutrient rich compost. From what I read online, this is a good thing. Frogs, worms and bugs mean healthy compost. It took us only eight months. Whoever has ventured deep into the world of composting will know that this is a love-hate relationship. Most of my food comes in its natural form and needs to be peeled, cooked, de-seeded or dehydrated, leaving lots of organic waste behind. If these leftovers were to end up mixed with other trash and in a landfill, they would begin to rot and emit methane. To prevent this, I bought a home composter and added it to our tiny patio two years ago. Before this, I had been freezing my compost and taking it to the nearest composting organizations. I was truly excited about this ugly yet sexy barrel that came with 35 screws and took four hours to assemble, only to discover that composting takes a lot of patience. It took us eight months to see what used to be food turn into fertilizer. The only problem is that we do have big appetites, and very quickly our tumbler began to overflow. Luckily, I got a Food Cycler (perfect for those who live in an apartment or don’t have space for a garden compost bin), which helps dry and crush food scraps, turning them into fresh fertilizer in a matter of hours using very little energy. Headed to the dermatologist today. I’m going after trying many different natural remedies and nontoxic creams. I love spending time under the sun, whether it’s watering the plants in our garden, walking on the boardwalk, or going to the ocean. Unfortunately, I developed a series of spots across my face. Known as melasma, they’re not dangerous but they do bother me. I got there on time, waited for 40 minutes until they could see me, sat in front of the doctor, and with just one look at my skin she proposed a $3,000 treatment and 12 depigmentation products worth $1,000. Twelve products! Who uses 12 facial products every day? Both the nurses and the doctor spoke and moved so rapidly, I didn’t realize what was happening until one of them was kind enough to ask if I needed time to read all the ingredients in the products. They gave me 10 minutes to read, so I opened my go-to apps: Think Dirty and EWG’s Healthy Living. Petrolatum, paraffin, parabens … and many other words I couldn’t even pronounce. I ended up opting for one laser treatment plus two of the most “natural” products on the list. Will any of these ingredients interact with my thyroid disease? Or trigger an allergic reaction? How will my health react to this in the long run? Why do I feel doctors don’t ask the right questions, like “How’s your diet?” “What type of lifestyle do you have?” This morning, I decided to sell my closet. Yes, both used and new pieces from sustainable and ethical brands I support, with all funds going toward nature preservation. Giving back to my community is very important, which is why I co-created the Yindah Foundation a year ago to protect the Bolivian forests, fauna and Indigenous communities after the 2019 wildfires consumed over 5 million hectares of nature. Fundraising efforts are becoming more difficult by the day. We were given the news that one of our major donors has been radio silent and nonresponsive to our contact, even after months of committing to do so. This unexpected blow meant that we’ll have to put some natural preservation projects on hold while we figure out how to fill that money gap. Selling my closet and inspiring more people to buy second hand while using the funds for something profound seems like a good first step. My followers have been asking for a closet sale for a while so, today, I added a small shop on my website. Today, I went back to the meditation app I’ve used for years — Insight Timer. I have a confession: Occasionally, I can be a bit of a workaholic. Between shooting stills, editing videos, writing for my platforms, growing an eco-company and a foundation, I sometimes forget to take time for myself. I love my job but work shouldn’t be all that matters in life. This reminder usually hits me when I’m reaching a saturation point, sending alerts that manifest as headaches, fatigue, anxiety or crankiness. We’re a generation of overworked and stressed people, which is why learning to work better (instead of working more) should be the objective. I also enrolled in a new virtual workshop to learn about the impact that toxins and poor lifestyle habits have on our brain, body and spirit. Our mental and spiritual health are just as important as our physical health. If we don’t create a space for relaxation and wellness, our bodies will begin to react to the accumulation of stress. Whenever I come to this realization, I make space to do some yoga or meditate (even if it’s the middle of the day), go to the beach to look at the ocean instead of a screen, cook something, or enjoy a glass of vegan wine (yes, not all wine is vegan) with some smooth tunes in the background. Picking up a book or walking the dogs work wonders, too. I also made the decision today to leave Miami, the place I’ve called home for 14 years. My husband and I sat down and began discussing, visualizing and manifesting lifestyles that would bring out the best in us. Right there we realized the role that location and society play in our mental and spiritual health. Hopefully, this move will be a step in the right direction."
+"Climate Diaries is a series that sheds light on what an average week — the good, bad, easy and hard — is like for people who are trying to live a more climate-conscious lifestyle. Climate Diaries aims to show a transparent and honest reflection of what people face while on this journey. Name: Anita Vandyke Location: Sydney Anita Vandyke is a rocket scientist and medical doctor and most importantly, mother to Vivian. She was born in Guangzhou, China, raised in Australia, and currently splits her time between Sydney and San Francisco. She writes about motherhood, zero waste living and minimalism on Instagram and on her website. She is the author of “A Zero Waste Life” and “A Zero Waste Family” Her zero-waste lifestyle started in July 2015 when she says was going through a “quarter-life’ crisis.” Despite experiencing corporate success, she says she felt she needed to align more closely with her core values in daily life. She turned toward minimalism and zero waste living, starting her Instagram account as a visual diary to keep track of the changes she was making. I brought my zero waste kit to work today, which includes a reusable coffee cup, a spork, foldable tote bag and a bottle. Even though I am an environmentalist, I often find it hard to reduce my waste when out and about, but my zero-waste kit helps to reduce everyday plastic waste, preventing single-use items from going into landfills. I brought out my zero-waste kit when having lunch. I did get some funny looks from the restaurant staff, but I explained that I am trying to reduce my waste and prevent plastic pollution. It gives me a huge boost when they say “That’s a great idea!” I walked out with a smile on my face and a small discount on my takeaway coffee for using my reusable coffee cup. Today I walked to work instead of driving in an effort to reduce my carbon footprint. Luckily it was a sunny day. Walking is my favorite form of incidental exercise and I use a step counter app to monitor how many steps I take in a day. I try to walk or cycle to work at least three or four times a week. I pack my work items in a backpack and put on my sneakers and walk 30 minutes to work. It’s become a lovely habit to clear my head before and after work. As a doctor working in a major hospital, I crave silence and also time for myself. Walking is great for the environment and for my mental health. I am currently saving up for an electric vehicle. Today is errand day! I batch my errands to reduce my driving. This can be a hassle because it does require a bit of planning, so I write a list of all the errands I need to do over a week and plan accordingly. Today I went to the post office to pick up some parcels, attended a Pilates class and also went to the grocery store as they were all located in the same area. At the start it did seem like extra work, but once I adopted this habit, it’s become second nature. Less driving also means saving money on petrol too, which is great for the bank account. I had a full day of work today and preparing dinner can be such a chore, it’s so tempting to just order takeaway food. To make it easier for myself, I prepared a vegetable and lentil soup using items from my pantry and fridge that were close to its use-by date (no food waste, please) and put it in a slow cooker. One of my favorite life hacks is to use a timer for my slow cooker, so that I have a hot meal ready for when I come home from work. The goal is to eventually have solar panels on my house, which I am slowly saving for, but until then, I’ve been using a timer on my appliances which is a great way to save electricity. My husband and I had a family meeting to discuss our budget and our bills. Today we looked at every bill we get such as mobile phones, Internet and electricity providers and made the switch to the carbon-neutral option. It took a couple of hours to research and switch to companies which allow customers to carbon offset their bills. This was well worth the time because now we know our money is going toward a climate-conscious cause. Making the switch did seem tedious in the beginning, but just by spending a few hours looking at our bills, we ended up saving money too. Today is our weekly shop at the farmers market. The whole family loves going. It also encourages us to eat seasonally and organically, and reduces our food carbon miles. The stall holders love giving samples of their produce to my daughter. I bring my reusable produce bags and some straw baskets to fill them up with our favorite produce. I went for a hike with my family today. We try to go for a hike, swim or simply just sit in nature at least once a week. It’s so tempting to just sit at home watching television or go to the local mall, but by enjoying the outdoors and seeing how amazing Mother Nature is, I have come to appreciate that every step (no matter how small) is important in helping our planet."
+"Climate Diaries is a series that sheds light on what an average week — the good, bad, easy and hard — is like for people who are trying to live a more climate-conscious lifestyle. Climate Diaries aims to show a transparent and honest reflection of what people face while on this journey. Name: Sophia Li Location: Brooklyn and Upstate New York Age: 30 Sophia Li is a journalist and climate advocate based in Brooklyn and Upstate New York. She is the host of Meta’s podcast Climate Talks and co-host of the climate talk show All of the Above. She just bought a house 40 miles outside of Manhattan with her partner and is balancing the new responsibilities of being a homeowner with being an engaged citizen in the climate movement. Her climate journey was ingrained in her as a child as she grew up with family members in China who practice the Buddhist ideology of existing in a symbiotic relationship with all living things. Happy Lunar New Year! Woke up in Cabarete in the Dominican Republic. Spent the past five days here with dear friends from New York who were smart enough to plan ahead and spend the winter months based here in the sunshine. Today we woke up to a downpour. Went to the local clinic to get a coronavirus test before flying back to New York in the afternoon. Before leaving for the airport, I took one last dip in the ocean just as the sun peeked out. Whenever I can, and especially when I feel overwhelmed in the climate movement, I connect to nature. This time, while standing in the ocean, I felt the urge to scream. Happy screams. Followed by gratitude screams for the warmth and saltwater. While I type this on the flight en route to JFK, I understand how contradictory it is to start a climate diary on a plane. I’ve gone through this thought process and rabbit hole countless times: How can an environmentally conscious person travel? That question in itself seems like an oxymoron, and there’s no simple, blanket answer in 2022. Everyday people can’t sail on a carbon-neutral yacht like Greta Thunberg every time we want to cross an ocean. The answer, I found, lies more in strategy, frequency and intention, not the action in itself. Sustainability does not have to be binary. Here are the questions we can ask ourselves before flying: Can I extend my trip so there’s the same amount of travel over the year but fewer flights? Can I choose a greener airline? Can I combine work and play in one flight? For more tangible answers: I fly economy, as it’s comparatively a smaller footprint. I chose JetBlue for this trip as it is a greener airline. And at the end of each year, I use Gold Standard to cumulatively offset my annual flight footprint. I’m back at our home in Upstate New York. My partner and I moved in right before the new year and haven’t unpacked much as we’re replacing all the 1960s carpeting with hardwood floors. We were searching for properties for more than a year and had very firm requirements for the house going into the buying process. My partner, Lawrence, is a first responder with the Fire Department of New York. His background is in civil engineering, and he is also certified in passive house design. A passive house is considered to be the highest energy-efficient certification a home can have. It’s more popular in Europe, but more homes and residential buildings are being built here with the five principles of the passive house in mind: 1. super-insulated envelopes, 2. airtight construction, 3. high-performance glazing, 4. thermal-bridge-free detailing, and 5. heat-recovery ventilation. We didn’t have the budget to build a passive home, so we took in some core passive house principles in our house hunt, like shape-factor ratio, which indicates the ratio of the volume of habitable space to the surface area of the exterior. Simply put, rectangular or cube-shaped homes are usually more energy efficient than houses with archways and curves. Those extra design elements increase energy usage. Some may call it aesthetically boring, but we love our rectangular, low shape-factor home. Today we spent time adding spray foam insulation where there are leaks in doorways and windows. It’s not sexy, but one of the most energy-efficient things you can do for your home is having proper insulation. Outside our kitchen window, we have two bird feeders. We have grown quite attached to all the birds that feed here. We recently discovered a family of woodpeckers that live in the tree immediately facing our kitchen window. Sometimes we’ll see a squirrel try to crawl into the hole the woodpeckers excavated inside this tree trunk, and they duke it out over their territory as we watch while eating oatmeal. I used to scroll on my phone during breakfast or lunch breaks during the week, but now I’m fully immersed in observing what’s happening in our local ecosystem right outside our windows. To my dismay, the exterminator came today. Lawrence and I would sometimes see ants the size of my thumb in the kitchen. They’re the biggest ants I’ve ever seen, and he started getting concerned that they are carpenter ants. Carpenter ants get their names because they build nests inside wood and eat through it, destroying wooden structures; our home is entirely made out of wood. We had a minor argument. I was trying to make the case that the ants are just passing through and perhaps not building a home in the infrastructure. I’m worried the exterminator will introduce toxins that might be brought back to the greater ecosystems around us. We decided it was better to get a professional’s opinion just in case they are carpenter ants. The exterminator confirmed they are carpenter ants and ensured us that the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration have strict regulations on the formulas exterminators use so they don’t impact the environment at large. He also explained that exterminators all go through an intensive, month-long course about environmental protocols. Three of Lawrence’s best friends from college are visiting us this weekend. They are driving up from D.C., and it’s my first time meeting them, so I’m keen to make a good impression. I wake up at 7 a.m. excited and eager to start cleaning. I opt for cleaning solutions that are refillable and cleaner formulas that are effective but don’t use bleach or ammonia. As soon as there’s more sunlight, I start to see dead ants all over our living room and kitchen floors. Although we had only seen a handful alive since moving in, there were probably 40 or more scattered over the top floor. I guess I was a bit naive in thinking these ants were just passing through, but I’m glad I took the time to ask the exterminator all those questions. Lawrence returns home from work, and we start preparing dinner for when our guests arrive. Every day, we put out a “compost bowl” where we gather our compost scraps on the kitchen counter. At the end of the day, we put it in the freezer until we can take it outside to our compost bin. We use an Exaco Juwel compost bin. It’s an Austrian brand, has a bear lock top and can hold an insane amount of compost. We’re looking forward to growing a small garden come spring using this compost soil. Today, we took our friends for a hike at Harriman State Park. A partial ice and snowstorm occurred the day before, so the trails are still a bit icy. As we maneuver carefully up the hiking path, I find myself stopping every five feet enamored that every part of nature is encased in its own igloo of ice. Mushrooms, branches and leaves, dead flowers, and even a waterfall all frozen in time. Hiking down the mountain proved to be quite slippery and dangerous, so we opted to slide down as much as possible on our butts. After the hike, we drove to Saturday Junk Shop, a local thrift store. I want to source the majority of furniture and interiors for our home secondhand. Our design aesthetic for the home is based on the Japanese philosophy of “wabi sabi.” When applied to design, this philosophy evokes a connection to Earth and natural materials, with a focus on authenticity. The biggest barrier when it comes to shopping secondhand is simply our own patience. We have accepted that some rooms may be bare for a while until we find the right furniture. Our friends leave midmorning, and Lawrence heads off for a 24-hour shift at a firehouse in Brooklyn. I decide to take a nap in the afternoon and wake up realizing that the temperature in the house has dropped significantly. Lawrence messages me that when he left for work the hot water wasn’t working in our showers. We think something is wrong with our water heater but have no clue where it may be. I call the previous owner, who we have a friendly relationship with, and he directs me to a corner in our basement. Our air and water are heated via gas, and sure enough, the pilot flame had turned off. After a few hours and a neighbor’s assistance, we finally got the heating and hot water running again. Another part of buying a preexisting home is that you have no say in whether it is powered by gas or electricity. Our home is heated by gas, which is a fossil fuel, of course. Tonight, it was top of mind to dig further into converting into an electric home, so I ecosia-ed (ecosia is a search engine that uses its ad revenue to plant trees) the pros and cons of an electric home. Choosing a gas vs. electric home isn’t that straightforward. Lawrence and I decide to do an energy audit of our home before converting anything. One of the phrases I live by is “sustainability is a spectrum.” There are no one-solution answers in any scenarios. Mondays are trash pickup days. Most of our waste is food waste that is composted, but I have also felt a lot of guilt over how much waste is going to landfills just by replacing our carpet with hardwood floors. It’s 1,400 square feet of carpet and composite boards that went to landfills in total. The carpenters we asked said carpet can last anywhere from five to 15 years, depending on the quality, while the hardwood floors in our living room have been here since the home was first built over 50 years ago. That made the choice clear. Researching the different types and grades of hardwood is when it got more complicated. We got in touch with five hardwood flooring companies local to the area. Due to supply-chain issues, the majority of floors are on backorder, including bamboo. Most said they would have to reach out to milling companies to execute our order. One floor company we found in New Jersey had Tauari Brazilian oak in stock in the quantity we needed. We opted for this hardwood because it was an existing inventory just an hour south of us and didn’t have to travel that much farther to reach us. Recycling has also been something that is top of mind: Our municipality here no longer takes glass recycling as it kept breaking. So every week we collect all the glass recycling in a separate container and take it back to Brooklyn to recycle. Sustainability is a lifelong journey, and as displayed in this one week of dilemmas, there’s never a straightforward answer. My philosophy of what sustainability means evolves as I do."
+"Here’s the thing: Small changes alone won’t save our planet. To keep the Earth from warming above the critical 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) limit, climate action needs to happen at an institutional level. The Washington Post has built a tracker to keep you up to date on all of President’s Biden’s environmental actions. But that doesn’t mean you should feel helpless, or that your actions aren’t worthwhile. Taking steps to lower your own carbon footprint may help ease your climate anxiety by giving you back some power — and even the smallest of actions will contribute to keeping our planet habitable. With that in mind, here are 10 places to start. By Sarah Kaplan The carbon footprint of U.S. food waste is greater than that of the airline industry. More greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture than from several forms of transportation combined. The environmental consequences of producing food that no one eats are massive. The biggest proportion of food waste — about 37 percent, according to the nonprofit ReFED — happens in the home. Keep a list of what food you have on hand and organize the refrigerator so you can keep track of what’s inside. Some people find it helpful to label things with the date they were purchased or cooked. Others have a system in which the oldest items go on the top shelf, so they will reach for those items first. Want to effect change on a larger scale? You can also write to local officials and vote for laws that support food recovery and prevent waste from ending up in landfills. By Tik Root There are an estimated 40 million to 50 million acres of lawn in the continental United States — that’s nearly as much as all of the country’s national parks combined. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, maintaining those lawns consumes nearly 3 trillion gallons of water a year, as well as 59 million pounds of pesticides, which can seep into our land and waterways. Transportation Department data shows that in 2020, Americans used roughly 3 billion gallons of gasoline to run lawn and garden equipment. That’s the equivalent of nearly 6 million passenger cars running for a year. Replacing grass with plants is among the most important ways to keep a yard eco-friendly. Laying down mulch is an easy place to start. It quickly kills grass and offers a blank canvas for planting. “If you have lawn under a mature tree, convert it to a mulched area,” suggested Kathy Connolly, a Connecticut-based landscape designer, who recommends about six inches of raw arborist wood chips for the job. Connolly also recommends converting some of your lawn into paths, rock gardens or other features. “Ecologically, though,” she said, “the best thing to do is plant native trees and shrubs.” By Sunny Fitzgerald Healthy marine ecosystems are essential for human well-being, and millions of people around the world rely on coral reefs for food, protection, recreation, medicine, cultural connection and economic opportunities. So the decline of coral reefs is not just an ocean-lover’s issue — it’s also a global problem that requires collaborative action. There are plenty of ways travelers can do their part. To start, think about what you bring when you go to the beach. Skip sunscreens and toiletries that contain oxybenzone and other chemicals and opt for mineral-based products instead. And remember to pack a reusable water bottle, utensils and bag, so you can avoid single-use plastic. By Sarah Kaplan Here’s the thing about sustainable shopping: There are very few things you can purchase that are actively beneficial for the climate. Unless you’re buying a tree that will suck carbon from the air, most products require land, water and fossil fuels to produce, use and transport. New stuff — clothes, appliances, bath products, toys, etc. — inherently comes at an environmental cost. In many situations, the “greenest” product you can buy is … nothing. Unless your purchase represents a significant upgrade from what you already own — say, swapping out your old gas-guzzling car for an electric vehicle — you are better off trying to refurbish or repurpose existing items than acquiring more stuff. Instead of buying paper towels, tear up old T-shirts to use as rags. Give your family’s discarded books and toys to younger children in your neighborhood. Build your own “circular economy” in your community and your home. By Tik Root Engaging with on-the-ground organizations as well as the policy process are a couple of ways that experts suggest individuals can encourage protection of the nation’s old-growth forests. There are a number of groups that aim to help protect forests and old-growth trees. Joan Maloof, founder of the nonprofit Old-Growth Forest Network, said land trusts often buy and conserve land, and that the Land Trust Alliance runs findalandtrust.com to help connect people to organizations close to them. “There are a lot of local organizations that speak out for their old-growth forest, too,” Maloof said. Nationally, she said there was a dearth of organizations advocating specifically for forest protection, which is why she started the Old-Growth Forest Network. But there are groups that have broader forest interests, such as promoting tree-planting and other restoration initiatives, including the Arbor Day Foundation and American Forests. By Sarah Kaplan One of the most powerful individual actions people can take against climate change is to change the way they get around. New electric vehicles can be expensive — even the most affordable have a suggested sale price between $30,000 and $40,000. But as more car manufacturers start producing EVs (General Motors has even said it will only make EVs by 2035), the cost of these cars is expected to come down. EVs also tend to have lower fuel and maintenance costs than gas-powered cars, making them cheaper over the course of their lifetimes than combustion engine vehicles, according to recent research from MIT. Electric vehicle purchases also qualify for federal tax credits of up to $7,500. Depending on where you live, your city or state might also provide additional financial incentives to go electric. The Energy Department maintains a full list of rebates, tax credits and other programs offered in each state, and more are expected to become available as President Biden moves to expand the nation’s electric vehicle fleet. If buying an electric car isn’t feasible for you right now — and you need a car to get around — a hybrid is the next-best thing. By Sarah Kaplan Weatherization comes in many forms, but the easiest is closing up the cracks around windows and doors. According to the Energy Department, 25 to 30 percent of household heating and cooling is lost through windows. You can first identify leakage points by turning on your kitchen and bathroom exhaust fans, creating a slight pressure differential between indoors and outdoors, then holding up a lit incense stick to potential problem areas. If the smoke wavers or blows in one direction, there’s a draft that needs fixing. Use weatherstripping to insulate windows and install a sweep to the bottom of exterior doors. In the summer, as soon as the sun rises, window shades should come down. Window glass is “one of the weakest links” in a building’s defense against solar radiation, buildings scientist Alexandra Rempel said, because it readily transmits heat. The best way to prevent this is to install exterior window coverings, like shutters or retractable awnings. If those aren’t an option, inside curtains or blinds are a good alternative. You can even cover a piece of cardboard in aluminum foil and press it into the window frame. By Sarah Kaplan Climate scientists are clear that a just and equitable society isn’t possible on a planet that’s been destabilized by human activities. One study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that Black and Hispanic communities in the United States are exposed to far more air pollution than they produce through actions such as driving and using electricity. In contrast, White Americans experience better air quality than the national average, even though their activities are the source of most pollutants. Another paper in the journal Science found that climate change will cause the most economic harm in the nation’s poorest counties; many of those places, such as Zavala County, Tex., and Wilkinson County, Miss., are home to mostly people of color. Understanding that climate change will disproportionally impact these communities is an important step toward battling global warming and creating a more just world. By Sarah Kaplan Without systemic changes in the way society functions — such as an electric grid powered completely by renewable energy or a food system that generates lower amounts of greenhouse gas emissions — it is pretty much impossible for a single person or even a large institution to go completely carbon-free. “The whole purpose of offsets,” said University of California at Berkeley climate policy researcher Barbara Haya, “is to create a way for an individual or a company or a university to pay someone else to reduce emissions to cover emissions that they can’t reduce themselves.” People can buy offsets for emissions from a specific activity, such as an international flight, or buy packages with names like “the green wedding carbon offset” and “balanced living bundle.” But make sure you do your research. Examine the projects in the company’s portfolio. If they don’t list all projects and provide certifications, that’s a big red flag. Good projects should be permanent and enforceable. They must also be “additional” — efforts that wouldn’t happen if not funded by the offset, and that don’t simply shift emissions someplace else. Educating your peers is a great way to multiply your efforts. Share this article with your friends and family and help them take steps to make their lives a little more climate-friendly. P.S. If you are a Post subscriber, you can “gift” this article — allowing anyone with the link to access it without the paywall — by clicking on the gift icon below."
+"As wildfires, floods, hurricanes and other climate-related disasters grow more frequent and severe, many people think businesses need to step up their sustainability efforts. According to a 2015 Public Affairs Council survey, 59 percent of Americans believed major companies were generally not doing a good job of protecting the environment. Some fitness facilities are trying to do their part. In April 2021, for example, gym chain Life Time updated its five-year sustainability plan. The company, with more than 150 locations in the United States and Canada, reported goals of reducing energy and water consumption, with further investments in equipment and operational efficiencies, and reducing their plastics footprint nationwide. Some smaller gyms, including the Green Microgym Belmont in Portland, Ore., and Green Fitness Studio in Brooklyn, were built to be environmentally responsible. The Portland facility has ellipticals and spin bikes that convert users’ energy to electricity that helps power the building. Green Fitness Studio has mirrored glass to keep heating costs down, low-flow shower heads and faucets to save water, and a sod-covered “living roof” to lower cooling costs and pollution. Environmentally friendly gyms aren’t just good for the planet, they’re good for your health. Stefanie Young, vice president of technical solutions at the U.S. Green Building Council, said green gyms typically have better indoor air quality and use fewer toxic chemicals in their cleaning procedures. “All of that affects how the user engages with the space, so it’s important not just from an environmental aspect, but when you add the covid pandemic aspect, it’s even more important,” she said. So how should you go about finding an eco-conscious gym or encouraging your current gym to become greener? We spoke with experts and identified questions you should consider and actions you can take. If you’re in the market for a gym, take a tour before joining. “There’s a lot of pledging going on, to do XYZ by 2030,” said Bill Zujewski, chief marketing officer of the Green Business Bureau in Boston. Visiting a gym in person is especially important at a franchise, where corporate claims aren’t necessarily being fulfilled by the franchise owner, he added. What does the exterior look like? One of the clearest clues to a gym’s energy efficiency is also the easiest to spot: Its exterior walls and windows. This is known as the building envelope, which comprises the materials that create a barrier between inside and out. “If you have a really thin glass layer or envelope and a cold climate, like Minneapolis, you’re going to have a lot of heat loss,” Young cited as an example. Meanwhile, it would be hard to keep that space cool during the summer. Is the gym using green energy? Because heating and electricity are major contributors to a gym’s carbon footprint, “One of the biggest bangs for a gym is to use green power,” Zujewski said. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, at least half of residential and commercial customers have the option to buy renewable energy from their power supplier, and everyone can buy renewable energy certificates. Also known as “green power” or “clean power,” in most states they’re available through programs such as green pricing, competitive electricity markets or green certificates. Adam Zellner, president of Greener by Design in New Brunswick, N.J., suggests finding out whether green utility incentives are available in your gym’s Zip code and asking whether the owner is taking advantage of them. This could be the push they need to take action. “Before you know it, they look around and go, ‘Man, if [only] I had known that the utility would have paid for this energy-efficient chiller or HVAC [system]” he said. Does the gym use LEDs and timers? Gyms should use energy-saving LED bulbs and keep them on timers or motion sensors to avoid wasting energy at slow times, Zujewski said. Similarly, facilities should track traffic patterns and use smart thermostats to adjust the temperature when the needs are highest. Does the gym recycle and avoid single-use items? Gym owners can also take a green approach to materials management. That means not just recycling and composting, but also paying attention to what’s entering the building in the first place. Gyms should limit single-use products such as paper towels, cups and pamphlets, Young said. Having members fill containers with filtered water — rather than selling disposable bottles from resource-heavy refrigerated vending machines — is a “no-brainer,” Zujewski added. What cleaning products does it use? “The more that they can clean green, especially now [during the pandemic], the better,” Zellner said. That means using biodegradable wipes, Zujewski advised. Jennifer Souder, director of planning at Greener by Design, recommended cleaning products that have received a Green Seal certification, which has standards on volatile organic compounds, packaging and animal testing. Does the gym say it’s eco-conscious? While marketing isn’t everything, it matters. “If they’re not telling you they’re green, they’re probably not green,” said Adam Boesel, founder of the Green Microgym. Souder said that a truly green gym’s eco-friendly policies will be on its website. If the website lists third-party certification, verify it. “A certain company might just kind of stamp themselves green,” Souder said. She suggested a quick Google search to make sure the certification is from a legitimate organization, such as LEED, from the U.S. Green Building Council, or B Corp. Watch out for greenwashing. To find out how green a place truly is, during a tour ask “what they’re doing around energy efficiency, sustainability, water conservation, plastic elimination,” Zujewski said. “They should have their checklist of [answers to] those five questions ready to go.” This is especially important at a franchise, where corporate claims aren’t necessarily being fulfilled by the franchise owner, he added. Other red flags include plastic piling up in the lobby, having all the lights on when the building is empty, or when the gym’s green claims don’t match its practices. For example: Management says all the right things, but there’s a vending machine filled with plastic water bottles. Examine your own gym habits. You can do your part, too. That means taking small but doable steps such as walking, biking or taking public transportation to the gym, bringing your own towel and taking a photo of a flier instead of grabbing the flier itself. Young suggests letting the owner and operator know that sustainability matters to you, and that as a consumer you have choices. While your gym’s policies alone won’t make a big dent in climate change, “Every little thing counts,” Zellner said. “If 10 million of us [take action], then it’s a huge difference.” Pam Moore is a Boulder, Colo., freelance writer and host of the “Real Fit” podcast, featuring conversations with female athletes on body image, confidence and more. Visit her at pam-moore.com."
+"Chloe Breyer and her husband, Greg Scholl, honeymooned in Alaska. The couple also sold her engagement ring years later and donated the money to conservation causes. So when they read about a soaring Sitka spruce in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest that The Washington Post featured recently, they were moved to act. After centuries of growing, the prominent tree now stands more than 180 feet tall and 15.7 feet around. It is worth about $17,500 as raw timber — but chopping the 500-year-old tree down would also release many tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide that it has stored throughout its lifetime. “It was really an appreciation that it’s a living thing on this planet,” said Breyer, 52, who lives in New York City. The couple wrote to The Post wanting to buy the ancient spruce. “It just seemed like it would be worth trying to protect in any way possible.” Breyer and Scholl were not alone in their desire to purchase the tree. So we turned to the experts, who say that when it comes protecting old-growth forests, there are ways for individuals to get involved. Even if people came up with the money, the short answer is that it is probably not possible to buy the specific tree from the article. “The Forest Service isn’t going to sell one tree. They’ll have a timber sale where they lay out a large area, and then they designate trees in that larger area and put it up for bid,” said Jim Furnish, a retired deputy chief of the U.S. Forest Service. “The idea of buying that one tree is charming but probably not practical.” Joan Maloof, founder of the nonprofit Old-Growth Forest Network, also noted that because this tree is in a national forest, the public technically already owns it. “It already belongs to you,” she said. “But the people you hired to manage those forests are the ones who decided to cut it down.” Engaging with on-the-ground organizations as well as the policy process are a couple of ways that experts suggest individuals can encourage protection of the nation’s old-growth forests. “You can donate to an organization that’s buying up land and protecting it,” Maloof said. Those with more money could purchase and preserve land themselves. “You can also go the route of donating to organizations that are speaking out for the forests.” In January, the regional tribal corporation Sealaska decided to stop its logging operations and instead sell credits for the carbon that its trees store to oil and gas company BP. Some of those funds — as much as $10 million, along with $7 million from the Nature Conservancy — are slated to go toward the Seacoast Trust, which has the ultimate goal of raising $100 million. The money will help support the Sustainable Southeast Partnership, a network of individuals and organizations that work to strengthen cultural, economic and ecological resilience in Southeast Alaska. There a number of places that aim to help protect forests and old-growth trees. Maloof said land trusts often buy and conserve land, and that the Land Trust Alliance runs findalandtrust.com to help connect people to organizations close to them. “There are a lot of local organizations that speak out for their old-growth forest, too,” Maloof said. Nationally, she said there is a dearth of organizations that are advocating specifically for forest protection, which is why she started the Old-Growth Forest Network. But there are groups that have broader forest interests, such as promoting tree-planting and other restoration initiatives, including the Arbor Day Foundation and American Forests. “There are a lot of good people around the country that are trying to save forests,” she said. Ultimately, “it’s not just about saving one tree, it’s about saving old-growth trees as a whole,” said Bruce Stein, chief scientist at the National Wildlife Federation. He and other experts point to political change as the best route for increasing protections for forests. Kate Glover, an attorney with the environmental nonprofit Earthjustice, said: “The major areas that people can get involved in are really policy areas. We can encourage the Biden administration to protect old-growth forests.” In 2001, the outgoing Clinton administration issued a landmark rule established prohibitions on road construction and timber harvesting on 58.5 million acres of national forests — including on more than 9 million acres in the Tongass National Forest. Forest Service data shows that the Trump administration auctioned off less timber on an annual basis in the Tongass than either Barack Obama or George W. Bush. In 2020, however, former president Donald Trump’s administration exempted the Tongass National Forest from the rule. Last year, President Biden’s administration froze large-scale old-growth timber sales in the Tongass and proposed restoring roadless protections in the national forest. The public comment period on the change runs through Jan. 24 and concerned individuals can make a submission — which is what Breyer and her husband say they plan to do. “Absolutely,” she said. “If there’s a way to weigh in, of course.” But some argue that focusing on the Tongass misses the mark. “The Tongass is not representative of the problems facing the majority of the national forests,” said Bill Imbergamo, executive director of the Federal Forest Resource Coalition, a trade organization. “There is nothing like it.” Imbergamo noted that most of the areas available for harvest in national forests are not made up of old-growth trees and that, while important to nearby mills, the overall harvest from public lands only makes up a small portion of the U.S. timber supply. The vast majority comes from private land. Steve Pedery, conservation director of the nonprofit Oregon Wild, disagreed regarding old-growth trees. “It’s a little like saying commercial whaling is no big deal because there’s not that many whales left,” he said. “We’re still here in Oregon fighting timber sales where they are cutting 160-year-old trees down.” Furnish would like to see the Forest Service develop more explicit policies for protecting old-growth forests, which he called “an issue of great unfinished business.” He would also like to see the agency factor carbon storage into its harvesting plans — a point Pedery echoed. “The U.S. Forest Service still doesn’t consider the carbon impact of its timber sales,” he said. “What we really need out of this administration is to show some leadership on public forests.”"
+"TAOS, N.M. — Mike Reynolds never worried too much as the world inched closer to doomsday. In the spring of 2020, motorists lined up in their cars outside grocery stores waiting for food as the coronavirus pandemic first wrapped its tentacles around the global supply chain. Next came an unprecedented surge of extreme weather as wildfires devastated the American West, hurricanes lashed tropical coastlines and a deadly winter storm brought the Texas power grid to its knees. “I was watching that on TV and then walking down the hallway of my building, picking bananas and spinach and kale and tomatoes and eating them. Barefoot, because my building was warm without fuel,” Reynolds said. “My Earthship took care of me.” Earthships are off-grid, self-reliant houses built from tires, dirt and garbage that have long been an offbeat curiosity for travelers passing by the ski town of Taos, but suddenly look like a haven for climate doomers. Residents of the 630-acre flagship Earthship community treat their own waste, collect their own water, grow their own food, and regulate their own temperature by relying on the sun, rain and earth, which Reynolds and other adherents call natural “phenomena.” Reynolds, 76, has been building these structures — he calls them “vessels” — since the early 1970s when, after graduating from architecture school at the University of Cincinnati, he took up off-road motorcycle racing on the high desert plateau around Taos to try to injure himself to avoid being drafted to the Vietnam War. He never left, attracting interest and eyerolls as dozens of Earthships arose from the dirt. “They were talking about a freak on the mesa in New Mexico building buildings out of garbage. That was scandalous,” Reynolds said. But he gained more followers as people became more conscious of climate change, and 2020 brought a surge of interest in new construction. “Now,” he said, “all they’re doing is just going apes---.” New Earthships once used to sit dormant for years, but many are now sold before they’re even completed as the pandemic has drawn people to an oasis of self-sufficiency. They range from dreamers such as Linda May, who was depicted in the film “Nomadland” and whose ultimate goal was to build an Earthship, to young people anxious about a worsening climate, a housing shortage, and the dark promise of eternally escalating electricity and heating costs. To them, Earthships offer a life free of grids and bills; a clean break from a world that feels like it’s on the verge of breaking itself. “It’s hard for me to even think of going back to a conventional house,” said Freya Dobson, 24, who recently traveled from New York to join an academy that teaches people how to build Earthships. “This is a real solution for living.” Earthships operate using six green-building principles governing heating and cooling, solar electricity, water collection, sewage treatment, food production, and the use of natural and recycled materials. This meant that when Earthships emerged in the 1970s, they “addressed something nobody else did: What do we do with garbage?” said Rachel Preston Prinz, a green designer in Santa Fe, N.M., who wrote the book “Hacking the Earthship.” About 40 percent of a typical Earthship is built with natural or recycled materials, most notably foundations and walls made up of hundreds of used tires packed with dirt. These work with dual layers of floor-to-ceiling passive solar windows, which collect sun during winter and reject it in the summer to keep structures at a comfortable room temperature, no matter the weather outside. Inside a usual customized Earthship, arched, cavernous living spaces resemble what Tatooine bunkers in “Star Wars” would look like if the Skywalkers made annual pilgrimages to Burning Man. Plants line corridors between inner and outer windows, while glass bottles and aluminum cans stuffed inside walls make rooms look like mosaic playgrounds resembling the work of Antoni Gaudí. “It’s incredibly beautiful,” said Britt Shacham Bernstein, 25, shortly after visiting an Earthship for the first time. “There’s a whole ecosystem in here, and you’re a part of the ecosystem.” Earthships originally spawned from the arid climate of Taos, maximizing abundant sunlight while squeezing whatever they can from about eight inches of annual rainfall. Each Earthship shares a set of core organs such as a water organization module, which filters and separates water as it moves throughout the house. In the Earthship ecosystem, water is first used for drinking, showering and hand washing before moving to interior plants, such as fig and banana trees, along with hanging gardens of herbs and flowers. The resulting “gray water” is used to fertilize ornamental outdoor plants and can be safely released into the groundwater supply or used in the toilet, from which “black water” is flushed into a septic tank. You’d never know what your house is doing with your waste. “I often hear: ‘It smells really great in here,’” said Meredith Albury, a tour guide and photographer for Earthship Biotecture, the eco-construction company Reynolds founded to build Earthships. Another module controls solar power, which is used primarily for lights and appliances. Earthships use about one-sixth as much power as a conventional house. “You take care of it, it’ll take care of you,” Albury said. “It’s very symbiotic.” A typical Earthship can produce 25 to 50 percent of the food its residents need, depending on a multitude of factors including diet, climate and how much time is spent on garden maintenance, said Phil Basehart, a construction team leader. If you follow a plant-based diet, you may never have to visit a grocery store again. This appeals not only to rugged survivalists, but to people suddenly worried about where their food will come from after the pandemic. “We got more business because of it,” Basehart said. “People were looking at this as their panic room, so to speak.” Steven Jewett, a pumpkin farmer and real estate broker in New York’s Catskills region who describes himself as a “liberal prepper,” bought an Earthship in October with three friends as a rental property — under the condition that if any of them lose their home because of a catastrophe, “we get to go to one of our vacation houses until the dust clears.” Said Trent Wolbe, a sustainability lead for events and experiences at Google and a fellow owner who completed an Earthship Academy in 2012: “They’re super inspiring from a sustainability point of view. If you’re a builder, or someone who is interested in doing off-grid systems and expanding where people can live reliably, then all signs point to Earthships.” Co-owner Isadora Tang, an innovation consultant in Brooklyn, added that the structures represent “a different way of living that inspires all of us.” Jewett’s group paid $396,000 for their Earthship — more than the asking price of $379,000 — beating out two other bidders. Earthships sell for similar prices as conventional homes of comparable size and location, and cost slightly more to build, although their design can save owners money over time. Jewett estimates the group saves about $1,500 each year in utility costs. But there are also stories of failed builds and abandoned projects, sometimes after tens of thousands of dollars have been spent, and Reynolds has faced lawsuits from unsatisfied buyers. Earthships are experimental, evolving and imperfect structures, and most American families cannot afford expensive growing pains. Enthusiasts warn against buying or building an Earthship before participating in an Earthship Academy, in which students pay about $1,000 to spend a month helping with a build and taking classes on construction and maintenance. An Earthship is “not plug and play,” said Dobson, who graduated in October from the academy in Taos, and homeowners can be “dependent on people in the Earthship community” to help them solve problems. They’re also hard to build, and many prospective owners hire the for-profit Earthship Biotecture as contractors. “You’re packing 400 pounds of dirt into a tire,” Dobson said. “That’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.” Earthship Biotecture’s Global Model, the most popular build, was designed to work in the vast majority of climates with minor adaptations, and a study on Earthships built in London, Paris and Spain showed it is largely successful at providing thermal comfort without heating or cooling. But the intimate relationship between house and earth requires complex construction considerations that go much smoother with the touch of their eccentric founder. “Maybe he’s a visionary, maybe he’s crazy,” Prinz said. “But if you’re not working with Mike, I feel like I’m losing some of that.” Reynolds has turned his focus to a new model, which he calls Unity, that incorporates cost-cutting measures such as eliminating roof vents and using just one layer of glass windows. This could make builds about one-third cheaper than most Earthships. As he pounded tires into submission, the gray-maned Reynolds said he wants these structures to be more efficient so inhabitants can take what they need from the earth, rather than relying on a global economy of abundance. “A lion doesn’t kill 40 elk and stash them somewhere,” he said. “He kills an elk every time he gets hungry.” You hear a lot of this talk on the mesa — how self-sufficiency can mesh with symbiosis to entirely invert our world of dependency and domination — and you start to imagine a world in which Earthships make up our homes, offices, supermarkets and hospitals. Oil and gas companies would crumble, and yesterday’s hulking SUVs would serve not as a smoldering dystopian backdrop, but as insulation for your living room. Reynolds has tried to build multifamily and commercial structures for years but has run into permit problems, forcing his team to experiment with new projects in places with loose building codes. His team has built a typhoon shelter in the Philippines, disaster relief homes in Puerto Rico and an in-progress school in southern Haiti, which was devastated by an earthquake this past summer. The projects are mostly funded by volunteers who pay to work on the builds and learn about Earthships, just like they do at the academies in New Mexico. But these volunteers and graduates, many of whom dream of their own Earthships, inevitably encounter that moment where hopes on the mesa collide with social realities. Word Smith, a translator from Tucson, finished October’s academy certain that he wanted to live in an Earthship, and although he’s ready to upend his life to do that, most municipalities do not grant people permission to build from waste and rubber. “You have these diplomats going to COP26 and just talking for two weeks, and everyone goes home and does nothing while the earth burns,” Smith said. “Here you have people literally building the future, and they can’t get a permit.” Reynolds knows humanity needs time to be swayed. He compares people to a banana plant in his Earthship that, as the months pass, gradually bends to reach the sunlight. Just before the pandemic, he received a diagnosis of Stage 4 prostate cancer. It has driven him to build as many Earthships as he possibly can. “It’s got to be down to, the Titanic’s got to be sinking, and this is the life raft,” he said. “But selling them on the life raft while they can go dine and dance in the hall with the rich people in the top level, it’s a hard sell.”"
+"If you’ve been thinking about adding a solar power system to your home, you aren’t alone. Some 3 million systems sit atop American roofs, including about 400,000 that were installed each year in 2019 and 2020, according to Becca Jones-Albertus, director of the Solar Energy Technologies Office at the U.S. Energy Department. For many homeowners, the decision to go solar is a two-part process. The first is the financial side: Will the investment ultimately pay for itself and reduce or eliminate electric bills? Assuming the answer is yes, then you are ready to dive into the second — and more practical — part of the process: How do I get quality solar photovoltaic panels installed at my home by trustworthy professionals? Here are answers to some basic questions to get you started."
+"Summer is officially here. For many Americans, that means blankets of grassy green for kids to play in, or families to picnic on. There are an estimated 40 million to 50 million acres of lawn in the continental United States — that’s nearly as much as all of the country’s national parks combined. In 2020, Americans spent $105 billion keeping  their lawns verdant and neat. But our grass addiction comes at an environmental cost. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, maintaining those lawns also consumes nearly 3 trillion gallons of water a year as well as 59 million pounds of pesticides, which can seep into our land and waterways. Department of Transportation data shows that in 2018, Americans used nearly 3 billion gallons of gasoline running lawn and garden equipment. That’s the equivalent of 6 million passenger cars running for a year. As these issues are becoming more prominent in climate change discussion, there are steps you can take to more sustainably manage the impact of your lawn. The Washington Post’s garden correspondent Adrian Higgins has covered everything from using organic fertilizers (or making your own from compost) to avoiding pesticides. The transition to electric lawn maintenance equipment is also well underway. But how we care for our lawns is secondary to the amount of lawn we have in the first place, experts say. Having less grass and more plants is among the most important factors in keeping a yard eco-friendly. “Lawn, ecologically, is dead space,” said Doug Tallamy, an entomologist at the University of Delaware and author of “Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard.” The solution, he says, is ultimately less lawn. He recommends people aim to cut the amount of turf grass in their yard in half. But getting there, he says, will take a shift in culture that goes far beyond just using an electric mower. America’s infatuation with grassy expanses  dates back to the Founding Fathers. Thomas Jefferson cultivated a lawn — previously a fixture of the European aristocracy — at his Monticello estate. By the second half of the 20th century, as the middle class grew, bought houses and spread into the suburbs, lawns had become a staple of Americana. But, Tallamy insists, change is possible. “You can be an important part of conservation,” he said. “You aren’t powerless.” Laying down mulch is one place to start. It quickly kills grass and offers a blank canvas for  planting. “If you have lawn under a mature tree, convert it to a mulched area,” suggested Kathy Connolly, a Connecticut-based landscape designer who recommends about six inches of raw, arborist, wood chips for the job. Connolly  also  recommends converting some of your lawn into paths, rock gardens or other features. “Ecologically, though,” she said, “the best thing to do is plant native trees and shrubs.” Invasive plants,  Tallamy said, “are ecologically castrating the land around us.” Native plants, on the other hand, often have deep root structures, making them good for storing water or providing drainage. They have also co-evolved for local conditions. The inclusion of native plants could look like cold-tolerant plants where temperatures dip or cactuses that need less water in arid regions. Eric Braun, the water resources manager for the town of Gilbert, Ariz., is quick to emphasize that water-friendly landscapes, also known as xeriscapes, don’t have to look like moonscapes. “Xeriscape doesn’t mean one saguaro and a cow skull. It can be very lush and inviting,” said Braun. “The number one thing was showing people that it can be a beautiful landscape.” he said. And when they realized that they didn’t have to spend every Saturday mowing it, that really started to change people’s perception. More broadly, Tallamy said native landscapes can help refocus our gardens on the ecological purpose of plants, which is to produce food. Plant energy  gets passed up the food chain, often via insects. But many insects only eat one native plant species, or group of related plants. So, if we are planting nonnative plants, that food doesn’t necessarily transfer from creature to creature, and the ecosystem can stall. Monarch butterflies, for example, famously rely on milkweed, and as the plant has become less abundant, the monarch population has plummeted. Bird species are also in decline, as are more than 40 percent of insect species. The United Nations estimates that, globally, 1 million plant and animal species are under threat of extinction. Tallamy said native flora better supports native fauna and, as a result, helps combat these declines. Tallamy is a fan of oak trees, which  come in 91 native species, grow almost everywhere in the country and attract caterpillars, a key species for supporting other wildlife — to raise a clutch of chicks, a pair of robins needs between 6,000 caterpillars and 9,000 caterpillars in just 16 days, Tallamy said. “It’s not that we’re being nice guys to nature,” Tallamy said. “We need this, or we’re in big trouble.” Others put less emphasis on nativity, and more on the diversity of species and types of plants in a yard. “Yes, we want natives but let’s be inclusive and not exclude plants that have come from somewhere,” said Juliet Stromberg, a professor at Arizona State University, who was one of more than a dozen ecologists who wrote a letter arguing that a plant’s origin is less important than its environmental impact. “What I would suggest is just loosening the reins a little bit,” she said. “If you’re bringing in the plant that’s the same genus, the insects are going to be fine.” Casey Reynolds, the executive director of Turf grass Producers International, a trade association for grass farmers, argues that grass can be a great option, especially in urban or suburban environments. One of the benefits, he says, is that lawns provide an area for people to play. “I would never tell people to plant grass everywhere,” he said. “[But] I can’t enjoy my lawn if it’s made up of shrubs.” The value of grass falls on a continuum, said Mark Hostetler, an urban ecologist at the University of Florida. On one hand, wild, native grasses are wonderful carbon sinks that support biodiversity. But when grass is maintained, he said, it loses many of its environmental advantages. Hostetler said manicured lawns are “better than cement …(but) ecologically horrible.” Cutting the grass, he explained, rereleases the carbon that  was stored in the clippings and  halts the growth of other plants that may be coming in. The emissions from mowers, fertilizers, water and other types of lawn care further offset environmental gains. Whether you choose native or nonnative replacement plants, cutting back  your lawn  is an admittedly difficult undertaking. Plants cost money, and landscaping takes time. Outdoor space of any sort is a luxury in many urban, low-income and minority communities — let alone the ability to prioritize plants. “I understand that changing your landscape is a pain in the neck,” said Jim Kleinwachter, the “Conservation@Home” program director at the Conservation Foundation. But he offers  an upside: “You’re going to have color through the summer instead of one thing.” Plus, residents often revel in livelier gardens. “People love butterflies and birds,” Kleinwachter said. “At the same time, the other pollinators will come in under the radar.” That, in turn, means more flowering plants, about three-quarters of which require pollination. Wading through the differences between native and nonnative plants — say Japanese wisteria (invasive) vs. American wisteria (native) — may also seem daunting. While a quick Google search can often help, state and local nature and gardening organizations are another useful resource. The National Wildlife Federation also has a native plant finder curated by Zip code. “The biggest question we get is ‘Where I can find these native plants?’” Mary Phillips of the National Wildlife Federation said. She says local nurseries maybe able to help. This spring, the National Wildlife Federation launched a “Garden for Wildlife” shop, which sells native plant bundles such as “Pollinator Power” and “Monarch Munchable.” The good news for monarchs, and other insects, is that the native plant movement is catching on. From 2019 to 2020, Phillips said the number of people planting and certifying their wildlife gardens as National Wildlife Federation certified wildlife habitats doubled. Many more are opting for less lawn. Laurie Silvia, a homeowner in Old Lyme, Conn., said she and her wife used to spend hours each week on lawn care — maintenance that was getting more difficult with age. So, a few years back, the couple decided to make a change. On a budget, Silvia found free leaf mulch, collected cardboard, and started to cover up the grass. She refilled the space with plants that she swapped with friends and neighbors. She also made part of her backyard into a meadow. “Most of us grow up with the (notion) lawn has to be green and has to be perfect,” Silvia said. “The hardest thing is letting go of these ideas we have.” Today, she estimates she has about 80 percent less lawn than before, which has cut mowing time dramatically. She says it has attracted a plethora of wildlife. “We don’t have go on a hike to see nature; we’re bringing it into our yard,” Silvia said. The bunnies are abundant now, she said. The birds are bountiful. Foxes and turkeys have also come through for the first time. “I wish they would get off their lawn mowers and find a different way to enjoy their properties,” Silvia said, encouraging others to follow suit. “Just let yourself go and be free to color outside the lines.”"
+"I pick up a butternut squash in my left hand and pull a peeler across its curves with my right, letting the ribbons drop to the cutting board. I switch to my sharp cook’s knife and hack the squash in half lengthwise, then scrape out the seeds and stringy pulp with a spoon. After chopping the bright orange flesh, I swoop the results of my work into two piles: cubes on the right, everything else on the left. [Kicking your paper towel habit is easier than you think] On one side, it’s raw food, destined for the oven; on the other, detritus, destined for the compost bin. As I consider a drumbeat of statistics about the world’s food-waste crisis, however, the line between those two piles has started to blur. These days, I look for ways to cook the whole vegetable (or fruit) from skin to seeds — and to perhaps redefine the very idea of “scraps” along the way. The stakes are high: According to a report from the United Nations issued in March, in 2019 households worldwide discarded 11 percent of the food they bought, with food services wasting 5 percent and retail outlets 2 percent. That adds up to a staggering 930 million metric tons of uneaten food, enough to load up more than 23 million 40-ton trucks. Food waste accounts for 8 to 10 percent of global greenhouse emissions, but perhaps most strikingly it occurs against the stark backdrop of hunger, experienced by some 690 million people worldwide in 2019. In a news release announcing the report’s findings, Inger Andersen, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, put it succinctly: “Reducing food waste would cut greenhouse gas emissions, slow the destruction of nature through land conversion and pollution, enhance the availability of food and thus reduce hunger and save money at a time of global recession.” Plenty of strategies can help you reduce food waste at home, starting with cooking more of what you already have before shopping, keeping an inventory and storing food properly to prevent spoilage. But once you’re at your cutting board, it’s worth also looking for ways to use a higher proportion of the produce you buy — by putting peels and stems and seeds to work as valuable ingredients unto themselves. Eat well by cooking what's already on hand Make your grocery shopping more eco-friendly Composting 101: How to get started How to kick your paper towel habit Reduce your plastic wrap use in the kitchen The problem is that too many recipes for using produce scraps require you to set them aside for a future date when you’ll supposedly find the time to, say, pickle those Swiss chard stems or toast those squash seeds. And if you can manage that, more power to you. I haven’t been so successful, aside from saving some onion and garlic skins and veg trimmings in my freezer for periodic brothmaking. What I’ve started employing instead are strategies for using produce scraps in the moment, in the dish I’m cooking with the rest of the ingredient. [Why are you still peeling all those vegetables?] The first step is perhaps the easiest: Peel less. Perhaps you long ago discovered, as I did, that there is no reason to peel carrots, and that giving them a good scrub suffices. Bring that same mentality to other root vegetables: potatoes, sweet potatoes, turnips, rutabagas — even beets. Why did we ever peel so many things anyhow? I blame formal (i.e. French) culinary training and its trickle-down effect on recipe developers and cookbook authors who brought a restaurant-chef standard to home cooks. “Haute cuisine, high cuisine, high culture ... is about refinement, so it’s about peeling, making things beautiful and into certain shapes,” said Amy Emberling, a co-owner at Zingerman’s Bakehouse in Ann Arbor, Mich. “They connected the idea of something being great to it being refined. If you could afford it, you wouldn’t eat those peels.” Max La Manna, author of “More Plants Less Waste,” remembers when he cooked at New York City’s ABCV, owned by Jean-Georges Vongerichten. “It was a great experience, but when we would prep food, we peeled everything,” he told me. “We would cut the carrot into a long rectangle. And we’d cut away so much of the vegetable and throw it away just to get these perfectly square sides.” Besides avoiding food waste, there are other reasons to put the peeler aside. Not only is it a matter of efficiency, said Linda Ly, author of “The No-Waste Vegetable Cookbook,” but you can’t detect a carrot peel when it’s cooked. And there are health implications. “The skins hold quite a bit of nutrition in a plant, so if you’re just peeling something and composting it, you’re losing it,” she said in an interview. “Because I garden, I’m hyper-aware of soil health and microbes and gut health, and there are studies saying dirt in the soil is so good for you, because you’re adding to your gut biome. When you’re peeling, you’re getting rid of that good bacteria.” While the roots are in the oven, turn the tops into a tart sauce. Read this recipe If you’re worried about pesticides, buy organic produce and wash it well. According to toxicologist Thomas Galligan at the Environmental Working Group, while some pesticides are absorbed by produce through the soil, others are sprayed directly during growing or after harvesting, resulting in more pesticides on the peel than inside. The amount of pesticide on non-organic produce varies widely by fruit or vegetable, so the group issues annual “Dirty Dozen” and “Clean Fifteen” lists, based on Agriculture Department testing that assumes washing and peeling. If you’re eating the peel, he said, the group’s general advice holds: Choose organic produce when possible — especially for the Dirty Dozen. This is especially important, he added, for anything you’re eating raw. Beyond the pesticide concern, I approach most recipe instruction around vegetable prep with a good dose of skepticism. For years, I’ve resisted the imperative to use just the “white and light green parts” of a scallion, as if there is a detectable taste difference once the green gets dark. The only mushroom stems I remove are shiitake stems because they’re so chewy, and I avoid even trimming others. There’s little reason to trim the root end off garlic cloves, either. The same perspective applies to greens: Do you really need to separate leaf from stem and use the former but not the latter? With tender greens such as spinach or herbs such as parsley and cilantro, don’t even bother stripping. With hardier greens, treat tougher stems the way you would celery, thinly slicing or finely chopping and sauteing them with your aromatic vegetable base until tender, then adding the leaves later in the cooking process. Don’t discard the stems: They add color and texture. Read this recipe If you garden, you probably know to avoid eating the leaves of rhubarb, eggplant and potatoes. But many commonly discarded parts of other vegetables are perfectly edible, including the leaves of the brassicas that we typically grow for their flowers (cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels sprouts). Even after buying cauliflower at the market, use those leaves curling around the head, and don’t discard the core or stem, either. “The leaves are really thick, and they taste really good,” said Anne-Marie Bonneau, author of “The Zero-Waste Chef.” When she roasted a cauliflower recently, “I cut those up, and the core, too. I peeled the bumpy parts off the core and cubed the core and just roasted it with olive oil and salt and pepper, and in the end I chopped up some preserved lemons and put them in, too, with some herbes de Provence. It was delicious, and there was hardly anything left of my cauliflower.” Similarly, broccoli stems can seem tough, but except for maybe an inch or so of particularly woody parts, you can peel the stem and chop it for cooking alongside the florets. You can turn carrot tops into pesto, and beet and radish greens can be cooked just the way you would Swiss chard. But rather than roasting roots by themselves and saving greens for another day (and trying to keep them from rotting in the meantime), give them separate treatments in the same dish. I like to make a tart chimichurri with carrot tops while I roast the bottoms and spoon the former over the latter for serving. Ly braises radishes in a buttery broth, then folds in their greens until wilted. The roots and greens combine in this balsamic-drizzled grain dish. Read this recipe And forget the typical instruction to snap off asparagus spears wherever they seem to “want” to break. That results in much more waste than needed. Better to trim off just an inch or so from the ends, depending on how thick and tough they seem, then peel the bottoms a little if you’d like. Some peels, of course, seem downright inedible: the outer layers of onions, garlic, avocado and bananas. But even many of those deserve reconsideration. Onion and garlic skins can still lend their flavor to the aforementioned scrappy vegetable broth, but that’s not all. I’ve started leaving the skins on when I add them to a pot of dried beans. The flavor goes into the liquid (and the beans), the flesh almost disintegrates, and the peels are then easy to pick out and compost. If you’ve followed any viral food trends on TikTok lately, you’ve probably seen cooks making — or making fun of — “pulled pork” from banana peels. I haven’t tried that yet, but I started doing something else with the peels after reading about it in Lindsay-Jean Hard’s book “Cooking With Scraps.” For her banana cake, Hard simmers peels in water until tender before pureeing, but she doesn’t include the banana flesh. In keeping with my goal to use the whole fruit, I wondered: What about a banana bread that uses the flesh and the peel? Freeze the fruit, peels and all, then blend it into the batter. Read this recipe Turns out, Hard was way ahead of me. When she went to work with Emberling at Zingerman’s, she suggested just that, and Emberling jumped at the chance to cut down on not only the bakery’s waste but its composting bill. After her book had published, Hard discovered that freezing and thawing bananas softened the peels dramatically without the need to cook them, enough that you could puree the whole fruit before adding it to batter. “People are at first skeptical,” she said. “But they were won over once they tasted it, because it tastes even more banana-y than before.” The bakery stopped peeling apples for pie and carrots for cake, too, but the whole-banana bread made the biggest splash. It’s among the company’s top mail-order items — Zingerman’s sells between 4,000 and 10,000 loaves of it a month — so including the peels not only helped reduce its compost by 30 percent; it saved money on ingredients by increasing the yield of the bananas and on labor by allowing them to skip the peeling. “Let me be clear: That wasn’t the initial motivation,” Emberling said. “But it’s certainly nice.” Other peels, such as those on winter squash, seem as if they’re going to be too tough or unpleasant to eat, but it depends on the variety. I don’t peel kabocha and delicata squash before roasting, for instance, and the peels get tender, while butternut’s peel doesn’t. La Manna demonstrates a nifty solution in his Seed-to-Skin Squash and Sage Pasta: Thinly slice the removed peel and roast it with the seeds on a pan separate from the cubes. You’ll get a crunchy, crispy garnish for pasta enrobed in a thick, rich squash sauce. That’s how I dispatched the piles of butternut squash prep on my cutting board. Thanks to La Manna’s recipe, the line between food on one side and detritus on the other blurred so much it started to fade. Erasing the line is ultimately about changing your definition of scraps altogether, Bonneau said. “It’s kind of like calling plants weeds,” she said. “It depends on your perspective. They’re all plants, and it’s all food.” The peel and seeds become a crunchy garnish. Read this recipe Photos by Scott Suchman for The Washington Post. Food styling by Lisa Cherkasky for The Washington Post. Props by Limonata Creative. Art direction and design by Amanda Soto. Photo editing by Jennifer Beeson Gregory."
+"Here’s a fun fact: The transportation sector is the biggest source of planet-warming emissions in the United States. Here’s another: The majority of those emissions come from cars and light-duty trucks — the vehicles people drive to work, school, the grocery store and grandma’s house. This means one of the most powerful individual actions people can take against climate change is to change the way they get around. One way to achieve that is to buy an electric vehicle, which produces about a third as much carbon dioxide per mile as a gasoline-powered car. If you’re able to charge your car from completely renewable sources — say, solar panels on the roof of your garage — you can drive as long as you want without generating any emissions at all. But — fun fact — individual actions alone aren’t sufficient to avert catastrophic warming. If you really want to make a meaningful contribution to the fight against climate change, experts say, you must consider both how you can curb your transportation-related emissions and how you can help make clean, green, reliable transportation available to others. Going electric Traditional vehicles aren’t just bad for the environment — they’re wasteful. As little as 12 percent of the energy from a car’s gasoline fuel goes toward making it move. Most internal combustion engine cars are so inefficient that the vast majority of energy produced by burning gas gets lost as heat or wasted overcoming friction from the air and road. In other words, instead of filling my car’s 16.6-gallon tank, I might as well put 14 gallons of that gas in an oil drum, light it on fire and watch the smoke drift upward. It’s not getting me anywhere anyway. And ultimately, all that carbon is destined to wind up in the sky, where it helps drive up the average temperature of the planet. By contrast, battery electric vehicles are between 60 and 100 percent efficient. Even if the electricity that powers them comes from fossil fuel sources, they’re using a lot less of it, so their emissions are far lower. New EVs can be expensive — even the most affordable have a suggested sale price between $30,000 and $40,000. But as more car manufacturers start producing electric vehicles (General Motors has even said it will only make EVs by 2035) the cost of these cars is expected to come down. EVs also tend to have lower fuel and maintenance costs than gas-powered cars, making them cheaper over the course of their lifetimes than combustion engine vehicles, according to recent research from MIT. Electric vehicle purchases also qualify for federal tax credits of up to $7,500. Depending on where you live, your city or state might also provide additional financial incentives to go electric. The Department of Energy maintains a full list of rebates, tax credits and other programs offered in each state, and more are expected to become available as President Biden moves to expand the nation’s electric vehicle fleet. Once you’ve decided to buy an EV, the next big question is: how will you charge it? There are three categories, or “levels” of charging option. Level 1 is a standard 120-volt outlet, which generally adds about 2-5 miles of range per hour. If you mostly use your car to travel short distances and are able to charge it every night, and there’s a free outlet in your garage or near your parking spot, then you’re all set. Just make sure there’s no other equipment such as a refrigerator using the same circuit — otherwise you’re setting yourself up for an overload. If you want to boost your charging power, you can pay between $500 and $2,000 to upgrade to a Level 2 charging station. This requires special equipment, and your electrical system will have to be capable of providing 240 volts of energy (the same amount required for big appliances such as clothes dryers or an electric stove). But many places offer tax incentives to help cover the cost of installation. These stations provide 10 to 20 miles of range per hour of charging. If charging at home is not an option — if you live in an apartment building, for example — you can go to a Level 3 fast charging station, which supplies direct current electricity to your car. A Level 3 charging station can add 60 to 80 miles of range in 20 minutes — the amount of time it takes to use the bathroom and buy a cup of coffee for the road. Biden’s proposed infrastructure package also contains millions of dollars to expand the country’s public EV charging network. Numerous websites, including the Energy Department, provide maps of public charging stations. The cost of fueling up at these stations can vary based on the price of electricity and whether they charge per minute plugged in or per kilowatt hour of energy provided. But it’s generally cheaper than gas; a Tesla Model 3 battery costs about $17 to fully charge and will last roughly 300 miles, whereas the gas to drive an equivalent distance in my combustion engine car costs twice that amount. Widening your impact Switching to an electric vehicle can make a sizable dent in your personal carbon footprint. But if the change stops with you, it won’t make much of a difference in the broader fight against climate change. Ultimately, everyone needs to be able to get around in a safe and sustainable way, said Alvaro Sanchez, vice president of policy at the Greenlining Institute, an Oakland, Calif.-based nonprofit that researches and advocates for environmental justice programs. Low-income people of color are disproportionately harmed by pollution from gas guzzling cars, he noted. Historically racist zoning decisions mean they are more likely to live near high-traffic roads. Meanwhile, high housing costs can push people to the outskirts of cities, subjecting them to long commutes. A 2019 study from the Union of Concerned Scientists found that Black Californians were exposed to 43 percent more lung-irritating small particles than White residents, and people who didn’t own cars faced higher levels of pollution than those who did. Yet it’s also harder for people in these communities to access new technology such as electric vehicles. They are more likely to live in apartment buildings, or in older homes where the electrical system can’t support EV charging, and less likely to live near a public charging station. Most of the government incentives for electric vehicles are directed at new purchases, which means only people who can afford the high upfront cost of a car can access them. “We designed strategies for about 10 years thinking about lowest hanging fruit in terms of adoption,” Sanchez said. Since the people most likely to buy a new EV are wealthier and White, “for a long time we’ve been subsidizing that demographic,” he added. But several initiatives to expand EV access in California could serve as models for national programs, Sanchez said. With funding from its carbon and trade program, the state launched the Clean Cars 4 All program, which gives low-income drivers $9,500 for a new EV or hybrid when they trade in older, gas-powered vehicles. The state also offers electric car share programs in Sacramento and Los Angeles, as well as an electric van carpool program for agricultural workers in rural areas. People who care about expanding access to clean transportation can advocate for similar programs in their states, Sanchez said. But equitably eliminating the nearly 2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide produced by the U.S. transportation sector will take more than just swapping gas cars for electric, he added. It will require redesigning neighborhoods to make it easier for people to walk and bike. It will require building more affordable housing, so that people aren’t forced to live far from where they work. It will take boosting funding for public transit and making sure buses and subways take people where they need to go. If the United States switches to clean transportation in a way that keeps the most vulnerable people in mind, Sanchez argues, the whole country will benefit. “When we design for people who face the biggest barriers,” he said, “we’re also breaking down the barriers for everyone else.”"
+"This story was featured in The Optimist newsletter. Sign up here to receive stories of kindness, resilience and the best among us every Wednesday and Sunday. I have a gross confession: Last week, when I cleaned out my fridge for the first time in I’d-rather-not-say-how-long, I found some slimy spinach, a jar of salsa gone moldy, the soured dregs of a pint of yogurt and a ball of leftover cookie dough I forgot to bake. All of it went in the trash. I felt awful, because I’ve reported on how food waste contributes to climate change. More than a third of all food grown for human consumption in the United States never makes it to someone’s stomach, according to the nonprofit ReFED. That’s about $408 billion worth of food, grown on 18 percent of U.S. farmland with 4 trillion tons of water. The carbon footprint of U.S. food waste is greater than that of the airline industry. Globally, wasted food accounts for about 8 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. The environmental consequences of producing food that no one eats are massive. Meanwhile, a staggering 26 million American adults told the Census Bureau last fall that they hadn’t had enough to eat in the previous week. The problem was even worse in households with children. The world produces more than enough to feed everybody; we just need to do a better job ensuring the food reaches those who are hungry. So I reached out to food-waste experts to find out how an ordinary consumer like me can help fight the problem. The biggest proportion of food waste — about 37 percent, according to ReFED — happens in the home. People aspirationally buy ingredients they aren’t able to cook. (I’ve done that.) Food gets lost in the crowded abyss of the refrigerator. (Been there.) Perishables go bad quickly if improperly stored, and misunderstanding date labels causes people to throw away foods prematurely. (Guilty as charged.) These mistakes are easy to make but pretty simple to fix, too, said Susan Miller-Davis, principal at the food and climate consulting firm Infinite Table. Make a list before you go shopping and buy only ingredients you plan to use. Consider getting perishable goods from farmers markets or local greengrocers; food produced locally is usually fresher and won’t go bad as fast. At home, keep a list of what food you have on hand, and organize the refrigerator so you can keep track of what’s inside. Some people find it helpful to label things with the date they were purchased or cooked. Others have a system in which the oldest items go on the top shelf, so they will reach for those items first. When it comes time to prepare a meal, “I don’t cook what I’m in the mood for,” Miller-Davis said. “I open my refrigerator, and I assess what needs to be cooked.” Her upcoming cookbook, “What’s for Dinner,” offers tips for making use of whatever’s available. Carrot tops can be turned into pesto. Wilting greens can be thrown into soup. Fruit on its last legs can be chopped and frozen to later become a smoothie. If there’s absolutely no way to rescue an item (for example, my slimy spinach), composting can limit the environmental impact of tossing it. When food rots in a landfill, it produces huge amounts of methane — a greenhouse gas at least 28 times as potent as carbon dioxide. But in compost bins, microbes convert that organic matter into nutrient-rich soil, keeping the carbon out of the atmosphere and producing valuable fertilizer. Project Drawdown, a nonprofit researching the best ways to reduce planet-warming emissions, reports that increasing composting around the globe could generate carbon savings equivalent to taking roughly 15 million passenger vehicles off the road for 30 years. Miller-Davis acknowledged that her approach to food-waste reduction “is tough when everyone’s busy.” Many people are already juggling full-time work with child care, remote school and the stress of living through a pandemic. Others are searching for jobs, caring for sick family members or simply struggling to get by. But a 2020 study of dietary data from more than 40,000 adults found that the average American spends about $1,300 a year on food that doesn’t get eaten. That’s more than the average annual spending on clothing, gasoline, and household heat and electricity. Investing a relatively small amount of time in averting waste can lead to significant savings. Our power to tackle this problem isn’t limited to our own kitchens. About 28 percent of waste happens in such businesses as restaurants and grocery stores. By banding together with fellow diners and shoppers, we can push for policies that limit waste and redirect uneaten food to where it’s needed. If your school or workplace has a cafeteria, ask whether it can sell half portions of meals, allowing people who want to eat less to avoid having to throw out leftovers. Removing trays can discourage people from taking more than they will eat, and eliminating self-serve buffets makes it easier to safely reuse food left over at the end of the day. Ask local restaurants and grocery stores to participate in food recovery programs, which direct surplus food to shelters, soup kitchens and other places where it can be used. Since these programs are often run by nonprofits and volunteers, donating can help boost their operations. Shop at grocery stores that have made substantive commitments to reduce food waste and are transparent about their progress (the Center for Biological Diversity publishes an annual report card on 10 of the biggest companies). You can also write to local officials and vote for laws that support food recovery and prevent waste from ending up in landfills. In Vermont, which adopted a universal recycling law in 2012, the state food bank saw donations triple after big waste generators were barred from throwing out uneaten food. “They don’t attribute all of that to the universal recycling program, but some of it definitely is,” said Josh Kelly, materials management section chief for the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation. Last summer, the program expanded to cover all residents, making Vermont the first state in the country to mandate that food waste be separated from other trash. Waste haulers are required to provide pickup services for those who aren’t able to compost at home. Some towns and cities also sell food waste to anaerobic digesters, which turn organic matter into biogas that can fuel power plants as well as solid byproducts that can be turned into fertilizer, construction material and animal bedding. Meanwhile, major food manufacturers have inked contracts to turn materials that don’t meet standards and leftover fry oil into high-energy animal feed. Some Vermont jurisdictions have adopted pay-as-you-throw programs, in which users are charged for the amount of waste they generate rather than paying a flat rate. “What we know about human behavior is when you see the bill, you reduce the waste,” Kelly said. One 2005 study found that these programs can reduce residential waste by as much as 38 percent and increase the amount recycled by up to 40 percent. If food waste is halved in the next 30 years, according to Project Drawdown, the world will avoid emitting at least 10 gigatons of carbon dioxide — equivalent to taking 2,570 coal-fired power plants offline. By avoiding deforestation for additional farmland, these measures will also prevent more than 70 gigatons of additional emissions. Reducing food waste is one of a few climate solutions that cost almost nothing but deliver massive financial as well as environmental benefits, said Miller-Davis, who is also a fellow at Project Drawdown. “You’d think it would be a no-brainer,” she said. Miller-Davis might be overestimating how much brain power it takes me to put together my grocery list. But after our conversation, I’m excited to do the work."
+"As a reporter covering climate solutions, I receive one query more than any other: “What’s the best thing for me to do to protect the planet?” The annoyingly squishy answer is: It depends. Politicians can pass legislation, CEOs can change manufacturing processes, farmers can practice regenerative agriculture, school boards and shipping companies can convert their bus and truck fleets to electrical vehicles. Not every solution is going to work for everybody. Teenagers can’t vote, people in rural areas can’t choose not to drive, a single parent working multiple jobs can’t afford to spend extra money on recycled products. So the best thing you can do is whatever most leverages your position, resources and skills to tackle climate change. This year, “Climate Curious” is going to offer guides to doing just that. This one is for people who own their homes (or have a good relationship with their landlords). At the risk of sounding like a piece of circa-2007 clickbait, there is one neat trick homeowners can deploy to shrink their carbon footprint. It’ll make your house more comfortable, save money in the long run and the government might help pay for it. It’s “weatherization” — sealing up your home so you don’t waste energy on heating and cooling that is lost to the outside world. Weatherization comes in many forms, but the easiest is closing up the cracks around windows and doors. You can first identify leakage points by turning on your kitchen and bathroom exhaust fans, creating a slight pressure differential between indoors and outdoors, then holding up a lit incense stick to potential problem areas. If the smoke wavers or blows in one direction, there’s a draft that needs fixing. Use weatherstripping to insulate windows and install a sweep to the bottom of exterior doors. You can also place a draft stopper — a cylindrical pillow you can get for less than $15 at a hardware store — on windowsills and door thresholds. According to the Energy Department, 25 to 30 percent of household heating and cooling is lost through windows. Just put your hand up to a pane on a winter’s day — feel how cold it is? That’s energy wasted. You can counter this by installing blinds or drapes; one Cornell University analysis found that a simple roller shade can reduce heat loss through a window by 24 to 31 percent. In summertime, glass treatments that block certain wavelengths of light can stop heat seeping into the home. A somewhat more expensive option is to replace your windows. Look for double-, triple- or even quadruple-glazed windows; the more panes of glass the window has, the less heat it will transfer. Even fancier windows will include argon gas — a powerful insulator — between the panes. When shopping, look for performance labels from the National Fenestration Rating Council. (Fun fact: “fenestration” is a noun referring to the design of openings in a building; “defenestration” describes the act of throwing something out a window.) A window’s “U-factor” indicates how well it keeps heat from escaping, while the “solar heat gain coefficient” measures how well it prevents the sun’s warmth from coming in; low scores on both metrics indicate a well-insulated window. If you plan to renovate your house, then it’s a good time to think about sealing up crawl spaces, insulating ducts and repairing the heating and cooling system. The Energy Department has a helpful guide to adding insulation to existing buildings, and most contractors can talk through the best option for your home. Even if you’re not able to do a complete renovation, smaller measures such as putting a thick carpet on the floor of a room over an unheated garage or installing a radiant barrier in an attic that traps summer heat can make a difference. Because weatherization can pose some hefty upfront costs, there are quite a few government programs to help homeowners pay for it. The Energy Department’s Weatherization Assistance Program, which is administered through states and tribes, will pay for upgrades to homes of people who can’t afford them. Weatherization is especially valuable for low-income households, which typically spend more than 16 percent of their annual income on energy bills (compared to 3.5 percent for other households). The Energy Department estimates that the program cuts energy expenses for these households by 35 percent. But if you plan to live in your home for more than 10 years, the measures eventually will pay for themselves. A 2015 study by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory found that the Weatherization Assistance Program delivered $1.40 in energy savings for every dollar invested. When health and safety benefits were wrapped in, the return on each dollar invested increased to more than $4. I spoke to Erich Valo, a photographer and father of two in Oakland, Calif., who implemented a slew of energy efficiency measures when he remodeled his century-old house in 2019. “Choosing to do the weatherization was the easiest part of the remodeling process,” he told me. By installing triple-glazed windows and improving insulation, he cut his winter gas bill by almost 60 percent. His calculations suggest that the savings will exceed the cost of the improvements within 15 years. “But even if we sold the house and didn’t get to reap all the investments, we’d know the next person would also be using less fuel,” he said. The carbon reductions from weatherization measures depend on how you heat and cool your home. Valo’s house is heated with natural gas, which generates 117 pounds of carbon dioxide per million British Thermal Units (a measurement of heat). That means his efficiency measures are saving more than 1,500 pounds of carbon dioxide every winter — the equivalent of canceling a road trip from D.C. to Denver. It’s a bit more complicated to calculate carbon savings from weatherizing homes that are heated electrically, or use air conditioning in the summer, because those numbers depend on how your electricity is produced. But even if your energy comes entirely from solar or another renewable source, improving efficiency can help take pressure off the grid — something that will become increasingly important as more people purchase electric vehicles and appliances. People often tell me they feel powerless in the face of the scale of the climate crisis. That’s fair: Humanity produced about 34 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2020, a figure that makes Valo’s 1,500 pounds of savings seem a bit puny. The sweeping social and economic transformation that scientists say is needed to attack the problem will require a global effort. But individual actions can still be meaningful, especially if they are followed up with advocacy. I often think about something climate scientist Daniel Swain explained to me last year: The physics of the greenhouse effect mean that climate effects such as wildfires and hurricanes become exponentially worse with each incremental increase in global temperatures. That means every pound of CO2 cut, every bit of warming avoided, helps secure a safer future. No action, however small, is pointless. And if each person who pursues weatherization convinces two friends to do the same, then the effects of their action also grow exponentially. Valo’s 1,500 pounds of carbon savings could become 3,000, then 6,000. If all 139 million households in the United States used efficiency measures to cut their heating and cooling costs by a third, the country would save almost 150 million tons of carbon dioxide annually. Neat trick, huh? Do you have questions about climate change? Ask us here and maybe we’ll feature your question next!"
+"In Siberia, the icebox of the Northern Hemisphere, temperatures have plunged to their lowest levels in at least two decades: around minus-80 degrees. This exceptional cold is projected to continue into the weekend. Temperatures have fallen up to 50 degrees Fahrenheit (27.8 Celsius) below normal amid this frigid siege, with the bitter cold stretching as far west as the far reaches of Eastern Europe. The rural northern Siberian town of Zhilinda, home to fewer than 1,000 people, dipped to minus-79.8 degrees (minus-62.1 Celsius) Tuesday, its lowest January temperature on record, according to climate expert Maximiliano Herrera. It marked the lowest temperature in Siberia since 2002. Computer models suggested a few spots may have been even colder — or as low as minus-81 (minus-62.8 Celsius). Such cold has become uncommon in recent decades because of human-caused climate change. Global warming decreases the frequency and intensity of cold air outbreaks, but it does not eliminate them. Herrera noted Zhilinda was just a whiff away from setting its all-time record low of minus-82.3 degrees (minus-63.5 Celsius). The all-time record low for all of Russia, which is the lowest temperature for any inhabited area of the Northern Hemisphere, is minus-89.9 degrees (minus-67.7 Celsius) — set in February 1933. At least a half-dozen official weather stations in Russia have reached minus-76 degrees (minus-60 Celsius) or lower in recent days. These locations are embedded within a large swath of extreme cold that stretched from around the southern Barents Sea, east of Scandinavia, to the Sea of Okhotsk, north of Japan. Zhilinda had not seen temperatures rise above minus-58 degrees (minus-50 Celsius) for six days as of Wednesday. And temperatures are forecast to fall toward minus-76 degrees (minus-60 Celsius) again in coming nights. Olenek — southeast of Zhilinda — was among the locations where temperatures tumbled to exceptionally low levels. Its low of minus-76.7 degrees (minus-60.4 Celsius) was the coldest at that location since January 1959, according to Thierry Goose, a climate researcher in British Columbia. The cold is connected to a zone of very strong high pressure entrenched over the region and lobes of the polar vortex swirling around it. Thus far this winter, the polar vortex — which is a zone of frigid air that originates near the North Pole — has been very strong and stable, bottling up cold air over Arctic regions. Because the vortex has remained mostly undisturbed, it has limited the escape of frigid air into the mid-latitudes. The extreme cold is expected to focus over the eastern half of Russia over the next few days, gradually shifting eastward through the weekend. Computer models project temperatures in the neighborhood of minus-60 Celsius. Sometimes, exceptionally cold air that builds over Siberia spills into the eastern United States. This happened just before Christmas with the extreme Arctic outbreak that set records from the Rockies to the East Coast. Judah Cohen, a meteorologist and long-range forecast expert, recently suggested on Twitter that it takes about two weeks for cold air over Siberia to reach the Lower 48 states. Although the eastern United States has had very mild weather since that late December cold blast, there is the potential for a significant pattern change toward the end of January. Key to this change would be the development of high pressure over western North America, which would both block storms from hitting California and potentially create a pathway for the exceptional cold in Siberia to cross into the Western Hemisphere."
+"Since Christmas, no fewer than eight atmospheric rivers — narrow but intense filaments of deep tropical moisture stretching thousands of miles across the Pacific — have bombarded California. The atmospheric rivers were aimed at the coast like a series of meteorological fire hoses, and at least 17 deaths have been attributed to the onslaught, which has brought damaging floods, landslides, downed trees and power outages. Prolific rain totals of 10 to 20 inches, up to 200 inches of mountain snow, winds approaching hurricane force and even a handful of tornado warnings have accompanied the promenade of storms. At long last, there is a possible pause in sight — probably in about 7 to 10 days — but not before several more episodes of heavy precipitation. And, if there is a pause, it’s too soon to know whether it will be sustained or short-lived. The latest wave of rain was soaking areas near and north of the Bay Area on Wednesday morning. That will taper into downpours mainly affecting Northern California near the Oregon border into Friday morning, before the possibility of more soaking rain for the Bay Area and Central Valley, and eventually areas farther south, into the weekend. That will then be followed by yet another gut punch to the beleaguered region on Monday into Tuesday. Flood watches and wind advisories blanket the northern two-thirds of California, with winter weather advisories in the mountains. Gusty winds at times mean an ongoing threat for downed trees and power outages. For now, the National Weather Service office serving the Bay Area writes that the “storm door remains open,” though there’s finally a glimmer of hope for sunnier days ahead. On Wednesday, a large cyclone, or low-pressure system, was located about 1,000 miles offshore of the Pacific Northwest. Its counterclockwise spin was swirling ashore waves of moisture along a warm front, with widespread light to occasionally moderate rain. Rainfall will be steady on Wednesday, but not overly intense. The bulk of the precipitation will fall north of the Bay Area. A half-inch to an inch of rain is probable in San Francisco, with up to 1 to 2 inches north of the city through Wednesday night. On Thursday, rainfall ahead of an approaching cold front will be mainly confined in a north to south strip over northern coastal California. Most computer models suggest this will skirt north of the Bay Area, at least until Thursday night. Some models bring heavy rain back toward San Francisco on Thursday night into Friday, which could also push eastward into northern areas of the Central Valley. Areas along the Northern California coast could see 2 to 4 inches of rain through Friday, with 3 to 6 inches in the higher terrain of the Coastal Range. Closer to an inch is probable around San Francisco and Sacramento. The Weather Service office serving the Bay Area cautioned, “additional accumulating precip will be problematic given saturated soils and full creeks/streams.” “Storm drains and ditches may become clogged with debris,” wrote the National Weather Service in Sacramento. “Area creeks and streams are running high and could flood with more heavy rain.” A more significant atmospheric river will surge into California over the weekend. That will come as the aforementioned low-pressure system over the northeast Pacific shifts to the north and east, tugging a jet of moisture into much of the state, progressing from north to south. Coastal areas over almost the entire state as well as the Central Valley could see another 1 to 3 inches of rain, including around the Bay Area, Sacramento, Santa Barbara and Los Angeles. At least 2 to 4 inches are probable in the higher terrain in places where it’s too warm to snow. In the high elevations of the Sierra Nevada, a few more feet of snow are probable. Yet another atmospheric river will affect California late Sunday into Monday or Tuesday. While it’s too early to pinpoint rainfall or snow totals, a general inch or two of rain can be expected in Northern California, with amounts probably waning as one heads farther south. It’s not out of the question that one more atmospheric river will come ashore in the middle of next week, but it’s uncertain where it could hit and its intensity. Some time late next week, there are signs that high pressure will become established over the eastern Pacific, moving into a position that will deflect the eastward-moving atmospheric rivers toward the Pacific Northwest. This prediction is far enough into the future that it’s not a guarantee, and there’s no telling exactly how long this less stormy pattern might persist."
+"A parade of storms known as atmospheric rivers has dumped massive amounts of rain and snow on California since late December. The storms have produced deadly flooding, crippling snow, dangerous mudslides, severe thunderstorms and tornadoes. Here are five images that help demonstrate the breadth and power of the storms — part of a weather pattern that could continue for another week or more. An atmospheric river event for the ages Atmospheric rivers funnel extreme amounts of moisture over the oceans into narrow bands of clouds. As these clouds are transported over land, they can produce many hours of intense rain and snow. Precipitable water is an indicator of how much moisture there is in the atmosphere. Higher values of precipitable water correspond to greater potential for heavy rain or snow. The animation of precipitable water forecast above, which spans Jan. 9 to 23, shows the parade of multiple atmospheric rivers lashing California with repeated rounds of heavy rain and snow. The darkest shades of red and brown represent precipitable water values 200 to 250 percent of normal. The awe of a bomb cyclone As is often the case, the worst weather Mother Nature has to offer can often be beautiful when viewed from high above. In this view captured by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s GOES-18 weather satellite, the low-pressure center of last week’s “bomb cyclone” can be seen spinning over the Pacific Ocean as it approaches the West Coast from Jan. 3 to 4. The bomb cyclone, which is a rapidly intensifying storm whose central pressure drops at least 24 millibars in 24 hours, was one of a series of powerful storms that has repeatedly thrust atmospheric rivers into California in recent weeks. It was only a few weeks ago that a different bomb cyclone developed along the Arctic front, blasting much of the country with extreme cold and some areas with blizzard conditions. Historic rainfall hammers California The atmospheric rivers have deluged California with copious amounts of rain. In just the past two days, ending at 4 a.m. Tuesday, areas of higher terrain in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties have seen more than 16 inches of rain. The 12.37 inches of rain in San Francisco between Dec. 26 and Jan. 9 qualifies as the third-wettest 15-day period since 1849, according to Bay Area meteorologist Jan Null. During this period, Sacramento recorded more than 8 inches of rain, and Los Angeles registered more than 4 inches. The extreme rainfall, which is expected to continue until the expected end of the pattern around Jan. 20, has caused widespread and severe flooding, road closures and mudslides. While the unrelenting rain is wreaking havoc in the short term, it is combining with snow to help put a significant dent in the drought that has long plagued the region. Surging snowpack across the Sierra Nevada Snowpack across much of the central and southern portions of the Sierra Nevada is now 200 to 300 percent of normal for the date, as shown in the map above. In some locations the snowpack has already exceeded the April 1 average. (April 1 is typically around the time the snowpack is at its deepest.) The growing snowpack is helping to ease California’s years-long drought. The most recent U.S. Drought Monitor, released Jan. 5, upgraded central to southern portions of the state from the most severe level, D4 (exceptional drought), to D3 (extreme drought). Additional rain and snow in the next week or so could further ease drought conditions across California. Raging rivers rise out of their banks After multiple years of drought, too much rain falling too fast has pushed multiple rivers beyond flood stage. One of the more extreme forecasts is for the Salinas River. The visual above shows that where the river runs near Spreckels in Monterey County, the water level is expected to reach or exceed 30 feet, which is about seven feet above flood stage. The effects of heavy rain and flooding have been catastrophic, and at least 17 deaths have been attributed to the storms since late December. Rivers that were recently, currently or soon expected to be above flood stage as of Tuesday afternoon include the Russian River, the Salinas River, the Carmel River, the Santa Ynez River and Bear Creek, according to the California Nevada River Forecast Center."
+"The amount of excess heat buried in the planet’s oceans, a strong marker of climate change, reached a record high in 2022, reflecting more stored heat energy than in any year since reliable measurements were available in the late 1950s, a group of scientists reported Wednesday. That eclipses the ocean heat record set in 2021 — which eclipsed the record set in 2020, which eclipsed the one set in 2019. And it helps to explain a seemingly ever-escalating pattern of extreme weather events of late, many of which are drawing extra fuel from the energy they pull from the oceans. “If we keep breaking records, it’s kind of like a broken record,” said John Abraham, a climate researcher at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota and one of the authors of the new research published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences. The planet’s air temperature has been rising for decades, but it wobbles up and down and does not set records every single year. Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service recently ranked 2022 as the fifth-hottest year on record for the atmosphere, with other expert rankings soon to follow. The ocean doesn’t do the same dance. It changes more slowly — and more deeply. As climate change takes hold, natural ocean variations in temperature matter less and less, Abraham said, leading to a string of consecutive records in recent years, with 2018 being the last year that was not a record. More than 90 percent of the excess warming that results from the planetary energy imbalance, in which more solar heating enters the Earth’s system than escapes again to space, winds up in the ocean, the researchers say. Scientists began their record of ocean heat in 1958 because it is when measurements became dense enough, and accurate enough, to give a full global picture of the temperature trends down to considerable depths. “Oceans contain an enormous amount of water, and compared to other substances, it takes a lot of heat to change the temperature of water,” Linda Rasmussen, a retired researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography who was not involved in the work, said in an email. “The fact that we’re seeing such clear increases in ocean heat content, extending over decades now, shows that there is a significant change underway.” The new research suggests that the rise in heat contained within the upper roughly 1.25 miles of ocean water — an increase driven by a massive amount of absorbed energy measured in units known as zettajoules — represents the true pulse of climate change. The amount of added heat in 2022 is around a hundred times larger than the total world electricity generation in 2021, the researchers said in a news release. The study was led by Lijing Cheng of the Chinese Academy of Sciences with numerous collaborators at institutions in China, Italy, New Zealand and the United States. It is based on two separate ocean heat data sets, one from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and one from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Both find 2022 to be the hottest year on record for the oceans, followed by 2021, 2020, 2019 and 2017. A multitude of consequences flow from the fast warming of the oceans. Some are analogous to what is happening in the atmosphere. For instance, with the average temperature of the entire ocean warmer, it increases the odds of extremes in the form of ocean heat waves in certain regions. Just like in the case of atmospheric heat waves over land, these can be very dangerous for living organisms. “Some of the most productive and biodiverse marine ecosystems, like coral reefs and kelp forests, are very sensitive to temperature. We’re witnessing a real-life experiment to find out how resilient they are, how capable of adapting or migrating,” Rasmussen said. Other consequences of ocean warming are quite different from what happens in the atmosphere. Warm ocean water expands, raising sea levels around the globe. At the same time, this expanding surface warm water is lighter and more buoyant than colder deeper water — which means that, in the words of scientists, the ocean becomes more stratified. Warm and cold layers mix less, which in turn traps heat at the surface — speeding the planet’s warming — while depriving the deeper ocean of oxygen and nutrients that cannot mix downward. The ocean also loses oxygen because warmer water cannot hold as much of it, potentially leading to low oxygen zones that are a threat to marine life. The ocean also grows saltier in many regions, as the evaporation of warmer water leaves behind more salt — but in other regions, it actually grows fresher as rainfall increases. The study calls it a “salty gets saltier, fresh gets fresher pattern,” as evaporation wins out in some regions and rainfall in others. Still, that’s just the beginning of the implications. Kevin Trenberth, a co-author of the study and a scholar at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said the warming happening in the ocean can have direct consequences for events unfolding on land. For instance, he said, warmer water at the top levels of the ocean can help fuel more intense storms and the torrential rainfall that accompanies them. “Those upper sea surface temperatures have really serious consequences for any storm that comes along,” he said, adding, “I think we are seeing some of the repercussions of that in the storms that are hitting California … The heavy rainfalls are a direct consequence of this upper ocean heat content anomaly.” In part, that is because more heat amounts to more moisture in the air, which can supercharge any storms that materialize. For every degree Fahrenheit that the air temperature increases, the atmosphere can hold about 4 percent more water. “The simplest way to think of this is, let’s assume the weather system and everything is going as it used to, but now we have a warmer ocean,” he said. “The atmosphere can hold more moisture. The warmer the atmosphere gets, the more moisture it can hold.” The new research suggests that ocean warming, while strong and steady overall, does vary markedly around the globe — with particularly rapid increases in heat in the Atlantic region off the U.S. coastline. This is amplifying coastal sea level rise and may also be implicated in a strong warming trend affecting the coastal northeastern United States on land. “The Atlantic has been warming in spectacular fashion as a whole,” Trenberth said. Wednesday’s study is the latest in a growing body of evidence that details the steady, relentless warming of the oceans. A study published in October in Nature Reviews found that the upper reaches of the oceans have been heating up around the planet since at least the 1950s, with the most stark changes observed in the Atlantic and Southern oceans. The authors wrote that data shows the heating has both accelerated over time and increasingly has reached deeper and deeper depths. That warming — which the scientists said probably is irreversible through 2100 — is poised to continue and create new hot spots around the globe, especially if humans don’t make significant and rapid cuts to greenhouse gas emissions. In its most recent assessment, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) wrote that it is “virtually certain” that the upper levels of the oceans have warmed over the past half-century and “extremely likely that human influence is the main driver.” Humans-caused emissions “are the main driver of current global acidification of the surface open ocean,” the panel wrote. The greenhouse gas emissions that humans have produced since 1750 “have committed the global ocean to future warming,” the IPCC authors found. Over the remainder of the 21st century, the group said, ocean warming probably will be several times what it has been over the past five decades. Trenberth reiterated that not all ocean warming happens equally. Storms can move heat from water to the atmosphere, currents redistribute heat around the globe, and just as worrisome hot spots emerge, so do cool spots, such as a notorious ocean region south of Greenland that has actually shown a decrease in temperature over time. Despite the variability, there is no doubt that oceans on the whole are growing warmer over time — or what is driving that change. “The human impact is clear when you look at the global picture,” Trenberth said. “The global ocean heat content is going up steadily.”"
+"It wasn’t so long ago that California prayed for rain. Something to quench the climate-change-fueled drought — the worst in at least 1,200 years — that has caused farm fields to wither and wells to run dry. To ease the blistering heat waves that triggered power outages and sent thousands to emergency rooms. To extinguish the wildfires that have ravaged forests, destroyed communities and blackened the skies. Now, the water that Californians so desperately wanted is pummeling them like a curse. It’s surging over riverbanks and rushing through communities, toppling drought-stressed trees, turning scorched mountainsides into avalanches of mud. The storms cut off power to roughly 150,000 customers across the state Tuesday. The flooding prompted evacuations in Montecito and other parts of Santa Barbara County, and swept away a 5-year-old boy who still has not been found. Officials said at least 16 people have been killed by the storms of the past two weeks — more than the number of lives lost in wildfires over the last two years. The recent onslaught of atmospheric rivers has underscored the perils of California’s climate paradox: Rising global temperatures are making the region drier, hotter and more fire-prone, but they also increase the likelihood of sudden, severe rainfall. Experts say the state is not prepared for periods of too much water, even as it struggles to make do without enough. “Water scarcity in California, for good reason, has been all-consuming,” said hydrologist Jeffrey Mount, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California and professor emeritus at the University of California at Davis. “But you can’t take your eyes off the wet periods [and] how to prevent catastrophic flooding. … That’s the big time challenge.” California’s escalating droughts and intensifying storms represent two sides of the same meteorological coin. Both are tied to the fact that every one-degree Celsius increase in temperature allows air to hold 7 percent more moisture. This makes the atmosphere “thirstier” during dry seasons, causing it to suck water out of vegetation and soils. But it also means there’s more water available to storms. So when it rains, it pours. Human-caused climate change, driven mostly by the burning of fossil fuels, has warmed California by about 1.4 degrees Celsius (2.5 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1895, according to a 2022 report from the California Environmental Protection Agency. Scientists say this temperature rise is exacerbating California’s naturally “boom-bust” climate, characterized by dry summers and wet winters. An emerging body of research known as attribution science has showed that climate change is responsible for about 42 percent of the ongoing severe drought that has afflicted the western United States since the start of the 21st century. Researchers are still teasing out the climate connection in California’s recent spate of storms. But models suggest that atmospheric rivers — which have historically supplied half of California’s water — are getting stronger and will continue to intensify as the planet warms. A 2018 study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters predicted that these plumes of tropical moisture will become 25 percent longer and wider under the worst-case warming scenarios. Another study in the same journal found that escalating atmospheric rivers will shift from being mostly beneficial to mostly hazardous, even as they account for a growing portion of California’s strained water supply. “We’ve always had tremendous variability,” Karla Nemeth, director of California’s Department of Water Resources, said in an interview. “What’s happening is you add climate on top of that and you’re just stretching out the extremes.” Decades of questionable planning decisions has made the state vulnerable to disasters on both ends of the spectrum, Mount said. Farmers and cities have pumped too much groundwater, causing land to sink and giving communities little to fall back on during dry periods. In the past two decades, the aquifer beneath the Central Valley has lost as much as 9.2 cubic kilometers of water per year, according to NASA satellite data. That’s more than the volume of Shasta Lake, California’s largest reservoir. At the same time, the state heavily altered its rivers — constructing dams, building levees on their banks, straightening out their twists and curves. This eliminated the rivers’ natural floodplains, making it more difficult for groundwater to replenish. Making matters worse: Communities have been built on those floodplains, so when rivers overtop their banks, the water goes into people’s houses rather than replenishing wetland habitats and slowly sinking into the soil. Santa Cruz County, which has been inundated during the recent storms, is a prime example of this “engineering hubris,” Mount said. In the late 1950s, the Army Corps of Engineers “channelized” the San Lorenzo River to make it run deeper and faster, and built levees upstream to manage flows. According to an analysis by UC-Santa Cruz professor Gary Griggs, virtually all of downtown Santa Cruz was built in what had been the river’s 100-year flood plain. But the construction also contributed to sediment buildup, diminishing the river’s capacity to control floods. As the planet warms, escalating storms will increasingly overwhelm systems that weren’t designed for such extremes. “The things we did in the past to manage water are going to be insufficient in the present, much less the future,” Mount said. The San Lorenzo River hit its second-highest level in 85 years on Monday, cresting more than eight feet above flood stage, according to the Santa Cruz Sentinel. Residents said recent fires and drought made their community even more vulnerable to this year’s storms. In 2020, the Lightning Complex fires scorched more than 86,000 acres across the region, including the towering redwood forests of Big Basin state park. Now, the burned areas are less able to absorb the onslaught of rain. Slopes are collapsing without vegetation to hold the soaked soil in place. Dead trees are being ripped from their roots and carried downstream. “All the trees up and down the hillside that have been burned, they’re flooding up the river, so the river can’t run freely,” Bethany Rogers said. She had fled her home in the Felton Groves community north of Santa Cruz during the fires. On Sunday, she had to evacuate again. Dealing with a hotter, drier climate reality has become a way of life for many Californians. The state has been in a drought state of emergency since 2021. Residents have dealt with restrictions on lawn watering, crop irrigation and other water uses on and off since 2014. The state has invested more than $8 billion in water conservation and storage measures over the last two years, and last summer Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) released a 19-page document outlining his strategy for preparing for future droughts. But critics say California hasn’t done as much to ready itself for the times when too much rain falls. Though the state Senate last year proposed a $1 billion investment in flood management and dam safety, most of the provisions were dropped from the budget that ultimately passed. “For water agencies, flood management tends to be the poorer stepchild of water supply issues,” said Deirdre Des Jardins, director of California Water Research, which conducts analysis on state water planning processes and advises environmental groups. She said the political pressure from farm groups, municipal water managers and other constituencies is focused on ensuring water access, rather than fending off floods that studies show disproportionately threaten low-income communities. Des Jardins has been alarmed by recent research suggesting that climate change has already doubled the chance of California seeing a catastrophic megaflood and could increase the likelihood of such a deluge by as much as 400 percent. “We’re just not taking those kind of extreme floods into account in our emergency planning,” she said. California’s hyper-focus on water scarcity is also a product of what Mount calls “the half-life of disaster memory.” People tend to forget about severe storms once the floodwaters recede. But droughts are long, drawn-out disasters, he said — creating a longer window of public attention for officials to implement conservation plans. In a report released in November, Mount and his colleagues at the California Public Policy Institute called on the state to develop a comprehensive “wet year strategy” for preventing flooding and capturing rainfall as a buffer against future drought. New stormwater capture systems in cities and river bypasses that redirect floodwaters into ecosystems and farm fields can help avert flood damage and recharge depleted groundwater, the report said. “The actions we take (or fail to take) during wet years sow the seeds for our successes (or our challenges) during drought,” the authors wrote. Nemeth, the Department of Water Resources director, acknowledged that the state has “a lot of work to do” to grapple with the deluges that will come in a warmer climate. But she also touted flood protection projects that are already underway. The department has taken part in tabletop exercises, known as ARkStorm, where state and federal agencies simulated their response to a 1-in-1000-year atmospheric river event. The agency is working with farmers to promote groundwater recharge projects and with reservoir managers to incorporate more sophisticated weather forecasting into their operations. In 2021, California gave out more than $23 million in grants for coastal flood risk reduction, including $7 million to Santa Cruz County. Newsom’s proposed state budget, announced Wednesday, includes more than $200 million for flood prevention projects. An increase in catastrophic storms “has been in the wings, predicted for a while,” Nemeth said. “But there’s nothing like being in it to start to shake off the old ways of doing business.” Gerrit De Vynck in Santa Cruz, Calif., contributed to this report."
+"Today was a lot like yesterday, but with thicker clouds. Those clouds helped keep temperatures on the low side of the forecast. Highs were primarily in the mid- and upper 40s locally, or a few degrees above average for the date. We’ve got a few showers inbound tonight. Tomorrow is a bit warmer out ahead of the next cold front. That front may spark some intense showers and storms Thursday evening or night. Listen to our daily D.C. forecasts: Apple Podcasts | Amazon Echo | More options Through Tonight: Mainly gray and dry through early or mid-evening. A couple of showers roam through the late evening into the overnight as a warm front passes through. Shower odds dwindle in the predawn, with a few spots perhaps seeing about 0.10 inches of rain, and others generally less to none. Temperatures likely fall to the upper 30s or around 40. Winds are from the southeast around five to 10 mph. View the current weather at The Washington Post. Tomorrow (Thursday): Clouds rule the day. It’s a bit warmer, and maybe even a little bit muggy as low-level moisture rises. Highs should make the mid-50s to around 60 as temperatures rise through the evening. There could be a passing shower, but the main rain interest holds off until after dark. See Dan Stillman’s forecast through the weekend. And if you haven’t already, join us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram. For related traffic news, check out Gridlock. Thursday night storms? There’s the potential for some rumbles as a front passes Thursday night. The front is associated with another low-pressure system running into the Great Lakes. Instability — storm juice — will be limited given that it’s mid-January, but recall that one of the ways winter is changing locally is more severe thunderstorms. In this case, there is some potential for damaging wind gusts given strong winds a few thousand feet off the surface. The best odds of that are south of the area, but not zero locally. Want our 5 a.m. forecast delivered to your email inbox? Subscribe here."
+"In the not-so-distant past, scientists predicted that global temperatures would surge dramatically throughout this century, assuming that humans would rely heavily on fossil fuels for decades. But they are revising their forecasts as they track both signs of progress and unexpected hazards. Accelerating solar and wind energy adoption means global warming probably will not reach the extremes once feared, climate scientists say. At the same time, recent heat, storms and ecological disasters prove, they say, that climate change impacts could be more severe than predicted even with less warming. Researchers are increasingly worried about the degree to which even less-than-extreme increases in global temperatures will intensify heat and storms, irreversibly destabilize natural systems and overwhelm even highly developed societies. Extremes considered virtually impossible not long ago are already occurring. Scientists pointed to recent signs of societies’ fragility: drought contributing to the Arab Spring uprisings; California narrowly avoiding widespread blackouts amid record-high temperatures; heat waves killing tens of thousands of people each year, including in Europe, the planet’s most developed continent. It’s an indication that — even with successful efforts to reduce emissions and limit global warming — these dramatic swings could devastate many stable societies sooner, and more often, than previously expected. “We see already that extremes are bringing about catastrophe,” said Claudia Tebaldi, an earth scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash. “The question is: How are we going to possibly adapt and lower the risk by turning the dial of what we can control?” And researchers are watching closely to see if the planet is approaching — or even passing — tipping points in climate change: thresholds of ice loss or deforestation that would be so consequential, they would make cascading harms unavoidable. “People are already dying of climate change right now,” said Sonia Seneviratne, a professor at ETH Zurich’s Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science in Switzerland. “We have started to see events at near-zero probability of happening without human-induced climate change.” The latest forecasts suggest Earth’s ever-thickening blanket of greenhouse gases has it on a path to warm by more than 2 degrees Celsius by 2100 — a threshold scientists and policymakers have emphasized as one that would usher in catastrophic effects. That is despite efforts to keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius through the global treaty known as the Paris agreement, signed at a U.N. climate change conference in 2015. An October report from the United Nations found that if countries uphold even their most aggressive pledges to reduce output of climate change-inducing greenhouse gases, the planet would warm 2.4 degrees Celsius (4.3 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century. But the latest projections of warming nevertheless show humanity has made progress at reining in some of its planet-warming emissions, scientists said. One scenario laid out in a 2014 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report and called “business as usual” — predicting global emissions and warming without any policy intervention and continued adoption of coal-fired power — had suggested global temperature would rise as much as 5 degrees Celsius of warming above preindustrial levels by the end of this century. The likelihood of such sustained and rapid warming now appears remote. “I think that’s good news,” Tebaldi said. Climate scientists credit the rapid adoption of renewable energy — solar and wind power accounted for 1.7 percent of global electricity generation in 2010, and 8.7 percent of it in 2020. The world is set to add as much renewable energy generation in the next five years as it did in the past two decades, the International Energy Agency predicted in a report released this month. If energy transformations continue and technologies such as carbon sequestration become viable, climate models suggest global warming could eventually reverse, bringing temperatures back down close to 1.5 degrees above preindustrial levels. At the same time, many nations are failing to take the actions they’ve pledged to make that happen. Some scientists have argued the most extreme projections of warming have long failed to account for clean-energy advances, in particular declines in coal use. Zeke Hausfather, one of those critics, said many climate scientists now agree they need to reconsider their projections. “If we succeed really well, we can limit warming to below 2 degrees. If we do poorly, we can end up closer to 3 degrees,” said Hausfather, climate research lead at payments company Stripe and co-author of a key IPCC report. “We don’t think we’re heading toward a 4-degree world, but we can’t rule it out if we get unlucky.” If moderating projections of global warming are good news, the bad news is what is already unfolding: Average global temperatures have risen more than 1.1 degrees Celsius, or 1.9 degrees Fahrenheit, since the dawn of industry and combustion engines. And that level of warming is less than half what is likely by the end of the century. Take, for example, a heat wave that descended on the Pacific Northwest in June 2021. Portland and Seattle hit record highs of 116 degrees and 108 degrees, respectively. British Columbia broke Canadian high-temperature records three days in a row, peaking at 121 degrees — more than 40 degrees hotter than normal for that time of year. Scientists quickly determined the heat was so extreme, it could not have occurred without the influence of global warming. Further research found that, in a world with 2 degrees of warming above preindustrial temperatures, it may be a once-in-a-decade sort of event. Elsewhere, communities are facing the near-likelihood of sustained extreme heat. Half a century ago, about 12 million people endured average annual global temperatures greater than 29 degrees Celsius, or 84 degrees Fahrenheit; that number could grow to 3.5 billion people by 2070, one study found in 2020. Climate scientist Timothy Lenton, one of the study’s co-authors, called that “absolutely shocking.” “I cannot believe we’d cope well in a world where billions of people are exposed to these kinds of extremes,” said Lenton, director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter in Britain. Then there are the precipitation extremes. Many scientists have pointed to drought, and resulting surges in food prices, as a factor in anti-government uprisings in Arab countries in the early 2010s and in a civil war in Syria that has been ongoing for 11 years. Research on flooding in Pakistan that killed 1,500 people and affected 33 million people, leaving millions homeless, suggested climate change intensified rainfall by 50 to 75 percent. The events echo U.N. reports asserting that human influence on weather extremes is strengthening and that climate change is already causing “dangerous and widespread disruption” to ecosystems and communities. Many climate scientists said society has largely discounted weather extremes because of a bias toward what is most likely, rather than the range of what is possible. But now, it’s becoming hard to ignore the reality of just how sweltering extreme heat can be, said Karen McKinnon, an assistant professor at the University of California at Los Angeles. “We’re just now experiencing what that looks like and what that feels like,” she said. The consequences of weather extremes also depend on factors beyond meteorology. Some climate scientists stressed that societies’ ability to manage disasters — and, especially in the future, multiple disasters at once — will help determine the level of hazards they face. “Countries are not only going to be affected suddenly by one event,” Seneviratne said. “The risk is actually much higher than you would expect if you look at any one of them in isolation.” For example, communities’ resiliency will depend on the stability of insurance markets in disaster-weary places such as Florida, or, more crucially, on the security of food and housing in places such as Pakistan. “We model the individual impact of hazards, but we don’t model the potential ripple impacts through society,” said Luke Kemp, a research associate at the Center for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge in Britain. There are also risks that scientists are vastly underestimating the effects that could come with any given level of global warming, which has increased at a pace without precedent in the past 100,000 years. So there is no historical guide to analyzing how ecosystems and societies might react to the changes induced by greenhouse gas emissions. That could mean that, even at some best-case scenarios of warming global leaders are aiming for, effects on the planet would be devastating, Seneviratne said. And Kemp said it’s also important not to assume the latest global warming forecasts will become reality, and to keep in mind that what seems remote remains possible. Though there are signs of progress at limiting greenhouse gas emissions, he called it a mistake to put much stock in predictions of what geopolitical and energy systems will look like decades into the future, and what that will mean both for how much greenhouse gases will be emitted and whether societies will be equipped to endure the warming those emissions bring. “This narrative of, ‘Don’t worry, we’re on track for 2 to 3 degrees’ [of warming], I think, is seriously overconfident,” Kemp said."
+"When extreme weather events occur, puzzling and often ominous terms crop up — “firenado,” “polar vortex,” “thundersnow.” Another one emerged into the mainstream at the beginning of 2023, when California declared a state of emergency while a string of storms slammed the West Coast with a name that sounded oddly sunny: “Pineapple Express.” The storm, which brought 100-plus mph wind gusts and caused flooding and landslides, is no day at the beach. So what, exactly, is a Pineapple Express? The powerful storm type gets its name from its origin in the tropical Pacific around Hawaii and the island state’s affinity for the sweet treat. Pineapple Express storms carry moisture northward from the tropics and dump it in high concentrations on the West Coast and Canada. Fueled by a powerful southern portion of the polar jet stream, which is strongest in the winter, according to the American Meteorological Society, the Pineapple Express is sometimes likened to a “conveyor belt” of moisture. It can bring as much as 5 inches of rain a day, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says. Pineapple Express storms are a particularly well-known type of “atmospheric river,” considered a fundamental feature of the Earth’s water cycle. They can be beneficial — supplying fresh water and even alleviating drought or quelling wildfires — but they can also slam the West Coast and Canada with dangerous amounts of snow and rain. Scientists have cautioned that atmospheric rivers could worsen amid climate change. These rivers in the sky can stretch thousands of miles long and are often a few hundred miles wide. The largest freshwater “rivers” in the world, they can carry more than twice the volume of the Amazon. They occur elsewhere, too — in the United Kingdom and the Iberian Peninsula, for example, which receive moisture from the Caribbean. In February 2022, Brisbane, Australia, received 80 percent of its typical yearly rainfall in three days from an atmospheric river. Similar to hurricanes, atmospheric rivers are ranked from 1 to 5. The scale — which goes from “primarily beneficial” to “primarily hazardous” — corresponds to how much moisture they transport as well as how long they last in a particular area. The rating system wasn’t launched until 2019. While California is known for its long dry spells, the Golden State is no stranger to such weather events. Researchers found that from 1979 to 2019, atmospheric rivers of varying intensities hit the West Coast an average of 24 times per year. In October 2021, one brought California some relief, following a record-breaking dry period. Scientists have projected that such weather whiplash — extreme dryness to wet precipitation events — could increase by 25 to 100 percent in California by the end of the century. And as the planet warms, atmospheric rivers could get wider, longer and more intense, studies have suggested. Mike Branom and Kasha Patel contributed to this report."
+"A mention of California might usually conjure images of wildfires and droughts, but scientists say that the Golden State is also the site of extreme, once-a-century “megafloods” — and that climate change could amplify just how bad one gets. The idea seems inconceivable — a month-long storm that dumps 30 inches of rain in San Francisco and up to 100 inches of rain and/or melted snow in the mountains. But it has happened before — most recently in 1862 — and if history is any indicator, we’re overdue for another, according to research published Friday in Science Advances that seeks to shed light on the lurking hazard. “This risk is increasing and was already underappreciated,” said Daniel Swain, one of the study’s two authors and a climate scientist at the University of California at Los Angeles. “We want to get ahead of it.” In such an event, some in the Sierra Nevada could end up with 25 to 34 feet of snow, and most of California’s major highways would be washed out or become inaccessible. Swain is working with emergency management officials and the National Weather Service, explaining that it’s not a question of whether a megaflood will happen but when. “It already has happened in 1862, and it probably has happened about five times per millennium before that,” he said. “On human time scales, 100 or 200 years sounds like a long time. But these are fairly regular occurrences.” His paper built on the work of other scientists, who examined layers of sediment along the coastline to determine how frequently megafloods occurred. They found evidence of extreme freshwater runoff, which washed soil and stony materials out to sea. Those layers of material became buried beneath years of sand. The depth of the layers and the sizes of the pebbles and other material contained in them offer insight into the severity of past floods. “It hasn’t happened in recent memory, so it’s a little bit ‘out of sight, out of mind,’ ” Swain said. “But [California is] a region that is in the perfect area … in a climatological and geographic context.” On the West Coast, there commonly are atmospheric rivers, or streams of moisture-rich air at the mid-levels of the atmosphere with connections to the deep tropics. For a California megaflood to occur, you’d need a nearly stationary zone of low pressure in the northeast Pacific, which would sling a succession of high-end atmospheric rivers into the California coastline. “These would be atmospheric river families,” Swain said. “You get one of these semi-persistent [dips in the jet stream] over the northeast Pacific that wobbles around for a few weeks and allows winter storm after winter storm across the northeast Pacific into California.” The paper warns of “extraordinary impacts” and reports that such an episode could transform “the interior Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys into a temporary but vast inland sea nearly 300 miles in length and [inundate] much of the now densely populated coastal plain in present-day Los Angeles and Orange Counties.” The effects of a month-long barrage of soaking storms could be disastrous, but Swain notes that it’s possible to have advance warning. “This is something we’d see coming three to five days out, and I’d hope a week and perhaps even two weeks out, with a probabilistic type of prediction,” Swain said. “We’d have a decent amount of warning for it.” Swain’s simulations showed the odds of a megaflood occurring are far greater in winters dominated by El Niño  than in  winters influenced by La Niña. El Niño is a large-scale chain-reaction atmosphere-ocean pattern that can dominate the atmosphere for several years at a time, and it usually begins with higher-than-normal sea surface temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific. “When you look at the top eight monthly precipitation totals in simulations, eight out of eight occurred in El Niño years,” Swain said. The influence of human-caused climate change also plays a role: Swain says it boosts the ceiling in a megaflood. “We have multiple scenarios. The future one is much larger, consistent with [climate change],” he said. “In the historical scenario, the lesser one, certain parts of the Sierra Nevada see 50 to 60 inches of liquid-equivalent precipitation … but in the future event, some places see 70 to 80 and a few see 100 in a 30-day period. Even places like San Francisco and Sacramento could see 20 to 30 inches of rain, and that’s just in one month.” An independent study published in Scientific Reports on Friday concluded that human-caused climate change will intensify atmospheric rivers and could double or triple their economic damage in the western United States by the 2090s. A warmer atmosphere has a greater capacity to store moisture. In the absence of storms, that means the air can more quickly dry up the landscape — hence California’s prolonged drought — but should rain occur, the deck is stacked to favor an exceptional event. “Moisture isn’t the limiting factor in California,” Swain said. “There’s plenty of moisture around even in the drought years. The absence is a lack of mechanism. It’s a lack of storms rather than moisture.” Alan Rhoades, who is an expert on atmospheric rivers and was not involved in either study, said the research highlights the “the importance of not forgetting about major flood events, which are also central to California’s history."" “The major worry is how much climate change will alter the frequency of these event occurrences and how much it will fuel and amplify the impacts of the next record-setting [atmospheric river] event,” wrote Rhoades, a hydroclimate research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in an email. He added that compared to previous megafloods in the late 1800s, “California has vastly expanded its rural, urban, and agricultural sprawl, which could lead to more potential for loss of life and property.” While researchers can’t say when the next California megaflood will strike, forecasters are confident that it will happen. There’s a 0.5 to 1.0 percent chance of it happening in any given year. Swain said one goal of his work is to push officials to prepare. He suggested working with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to “run through simulations as a real tabletop on the ground disaster scenarios.” “We’ll work through where the points of failure would actually be, because one of the things we want to do is get ahead of the curve,” he said. Kasha Patel contributed to this report."
+"Storms fueled crippling floods in Missouri and Kentucky. A drought starved Lake Mead, Lake Powell and much of the American West, endangering water supplies and creating conditions for devastating wildfires. A deadly collection of 83 tornadoes tore across the South. Golf-ball-size hail battered swaths of Minnesota and Wisconsin, damaging homes, vehicles and businesses. Unprecedented flooding inundated Yellowstone National Park. The Christmas week winter storm for the ages blasted much of the nation with biting cold, and blizzard conditions pummeled western New York, leaving more than two dozen people dead. And the catastrophe that was Hurricane Ian steamrolled parts of Florida and lumbered up the East Coast this fall, leaving tens of billions of dollars of damage in its wake and killing more than 125 people. While weather disasters strike the United States every year, 2022 brought the latest reminder that extreme events, fueled in part by the warming planet, are growing more intense and costly — both at home and abroad. Here are some numbers that help describe the toll such calamities inflicted on the United States over the past year and what threats probably lie ahead: The number of “billion-dollar disaster” events as of mid-December, according to federal officials. While that number is mercifully lower than the record years of 2020 and 2021 — which saw 22 and 20 such disasters, respectively — it still represents a high amount of suffering. Over the past four decades, the United States has experienced an average of 7.7 billion-dollar disasters annually. But since 2017, the average has jumped to nearly 18 each year. More frequent disasters mean less time to prepare for each one. An analysis by the research nonprofit Climate Central found that from 2017 to 2021, the nation experienced a billion-dollar disaster every 18 days on average, compared with 82 days between such events on average in the 1980s. “The lessons we are learning from these more frequent, more costly extreme weather events should be apparent now across many regions,” said Adam Smith, an economist and scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). “There’s no reason to expect that the trends will reverse or flat line.” The number of acres burned by wildfire as of Dec. 23, according to the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC). “Twenty years ago, this would have been considered an above-normal season,” said Jim Wallman, an NIFC meteorologist. But what is normal is changing. “This is like what would be considered an average season right now.” Wallman said that in the decade preceding 2005, wildfires burned an average of 6.3 million acres each year. By 2021, that 10-year annual average had risen to more than 7 million acres — a more than 10 percent increase. Alaska saw the largest amount of scorched land by far during 2022, at more than 3 million acres. New Mexico experienced record wildfires this spring, and states such as Texas, Oregon and Idaho saw hundreds of thousands of acres burned, with many of those blazes human-caused. A new analysis this year revealed that 1 in 6 Americans now live in an area with significant wildfire risk. That’s nearly 80 million properties in the United States that face a real threat of exposure. In a hotter, drier world, scientists expect those risks to continue to intensify. Two decades ago, if a fire burned 10,000 acres in a day, that was startling, Wallman said. “Now, when conditions are right, we are seeing that more frequently,” he said. Some timber fires in recent years have burned 50,000 or more acres in a day. A rare few, such as the Dixie Fire in California last year, surpassed 100,000 acres in a day. The number of inches of rainfall that fell during a single day this summer in St. Louis, easily eclipsing the record of about 7 inches set in August 1915, when remnants of a hurricane passed through the area. The historic deluge — an event with less than a 1-in-1,000 chance of occurring in a given year — dropped startling amounts of rain on St. Louis and surrounding areas. Some areas northwest of the city saw rainfall totals up to a foot. Overwhelmed storm water drains and sewage systems overflowed and backed up into houses. Dozens of rescues took place amid the flash flooding. “What happened was way more than the system — any system — can handle,” Sean Hadley, spokesman for the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District, told The Washington Post at the time. That disaster marked just one episode in a summer full of intense precipitation. From Eastern Kentucky to inland Florida, from Chicago to Wisconsin, massive rain events fueled the sort of flooding that is becoming more common and is battering outdated and outmatched infrastructure. Scientists say climate change is helping to fuel the increased frequency and intensity of the extreme rainfall events, in part because a warmer atmosphere can hold significantly more moisture. During a five-week span in July and August, five 1,000-year rain events occurred across the county. The problem is playing out around the globe, deepening catastrophes such as the monumental flooding in Pakistan this year that displaced millions of people. In the United States, extreme precipitation in many communities has laid bare how government flood insurance maps often fail to reflect the risks that Americans actually face. The degrees Fahrenheit warmer than average in the contiguous United States over the meteorological summer, measured from June 1 through Aug. 31. That made 2022 the third-hottest U.S. summer on record in the past 128 years, according to NOAA. The heat that scorched and baked the country this summer smashed thousands of temperature records along the way. More than 7,000, in fact, according to a Post analysis of NOAA data. More than 400 monthly records and 27 all-time records also fell. A persistent drought that has covered more than 40 percent of the continental United States for nearly two years has put pressure on livestock herds across the Great Plains and stressed water supplies across the West. Outdoor workers have faced growing health risks from the heat, and officials have been forced to limit activities from fireworks to camp fires. Extreme weather has threatened business owners in towns around national parks, impacted air quality and raised nighttime temperatures to dangerous levels. The worsening summer swelter is hardly a U.S. problem. Europe experienced its hottest summer on record in 2022. And scientists published a sprawling global assessment that warned warming will continue unless humans drastically cut back on greenhouse gas emissions that heat the planet. The number of years since the American West has experienced such a prolonged, profound drought, according to a study published earlier this year in the journal Nature Climate Change. Researchers found that the decades-long drought that has gripped the West since 2000, fueled in part by the warming of the planet, marks the driest 22-year period since at least A.D. 800. The crisis has depleted groundwater, melted annual snowpack and dried out critical lakes. It has led officials to fear for a “complete doomsday scenario” along the parched Colorado River, which serves roughly 1 in 10 Americans. At a recent gathering in Las Vegas, water managers said unprecedented shortages soon could descend upon cities and farms throughout the West. Officials warned that long-standing rules about how water is divvied up along the river will have to change, as years of overconsumption collide with the stark realities of climate change. Even as scientists and federal officials are still tallying its toll, Hurricane Ian seems destined to become the third-most destructive storm on record, behind Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Hurricane Harvey in 2017. The cost of those disasters, adjusted for inflation, stand at roughly $186 billion and $149 billion, respectively. Ian is likely to eclipse the $100 billion mark as well. Ian was among the strongest hurricanes to make landfall when it barreled into Florida’s southwest coast in late September, as a Category 4 storm with sustained winds of 150 mph. It obliterated coastal communities and caused massive inland flooding as it ambled across the state. “Ian really delivered the trifecta of impacts to southern and central Florida — high winds, storm surge, and then flooding well inland,” NOAA’s Smith said. Part of the reason that Ian was so destructive was the fact that huge amounts of people, homes and businesses lay in its path. Some of those same spots were hit again in November by Hurricane Nicole, a less powerful but still harmful storm that has not yet been deemed a billion-dollar disaster. The United States, Smith said, has faced a Category 4 or 5 storm making landfall repeatedly in recent years. “It’s a bad trend,” he said. “It shows our vulnerability is high, our exposure is high, and the costs will continue to climb if we don’t better seek to mitigate future damages.” The number of consecutive years in which the United States experienced 10 or more billion-dollar, weather-related disasters. What has become more common, and even expected, wasn’t always the case. Dating back to 1980, government figures show 13 years that included a double-digit number of such disasters, when adjusted for inflation. Of those, 11 have come since 2011. Researchers and public officials who have studied the changes say multiple factors are driving the troubling trend, including the fact that development has continued in disaster-prone areas and that Americans have continued to flock toward coastal communities. But, Smith told The Post this year: “Climate change is the 800-pound gorilla in the room.” Deaths that have officially been attributed to climate- and weather-related disasters so far in 2022, and the late-year winter storm that pummeled Buffalo and other parts of the nation will add dozens of deaths to the final total. Floods and fires, storms and heat waves take more than just an economic toll, of course. They destroy wildlife and natural landscapes. They upend livelihoods. They leave people homeless. And they claim lives. Hurricane Ian was the most deadly catastrophe, killing at least 131 people as it leveled homes and flooded communities across Florida, according to government figures. Scores of other Americans have died in the floods that devastated eastern Kentucky, wildfires that ravaged parts of California and heat waves that swept across large swaths of the country. Customers without power at the peak of the devastating and deadly Arctic blast that swept across much of the United States in the waning days of 2022. Our colleagues at the Capital Weather Gang this week tallied some of the most significant figures associated with the storm that brought a frigid end to an otherwise historically warm year. More than 20,000 flights have been canceled in recent days, during one of the most hectic travel periods of the year, according to the site FlightAware. Hundreds of drivers found themselves stranded on highways and back roads. Nearly a dozen states, from Montana to New York, saw blizzard warnings during the storms, and more than half the U.S. population was under either a wind chill warning or wind chill advisory from Dec. 21 to 25. More than 4 feet of snow fell in places in western New York, and at least 39 people in the Buffalo area have died, officials said Wednesday. Rescuers raced to free people trapped in cars; nursing homes and shelters risked running out of food. The National Guard was going door to door to check on residents in some Buffalo neighborhoods who had lost power for prolonged periods. “It’s a horrible storm with too many deaths,” Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said at a Wednesday news conference. “It’s heartbreaking, it’s a gut punch.” When officials tally the storm’s destructive and widespread toll, it is likely to become the year’s final billion-dollar disaster."
+"Packing fierce winds, bitter cold, and often heavy snow, the blizzard has earned a reputation as the most severe type of winter storm. A number have been powerful and deadly enough to become among the most memorable United States weather disasters. The National Weather Service defines a blizzard as an event in which strong winds, exceeding 35 miles per hour, coincide with blowing or falling snow to reduce visibility below a quarter mile. This type of storm need not involve monumental snowfall: A ground blizzard, in which already-fallen snow is blown about by strong winds, can happen beneath sunny skies. Many storms that meet blizzard criteria, though, are powerful behemoths with very low pressure that pull in massive quantities of air. In these storms, the same jets of moving air that allow sustained 35 mile per hour wind also transport plentiful moisture from the south and frigid temperatures from the north. Where the two clash, there is often heavy snowfall, coinciding with bitter cold and howling wind. In the Lower 48 states, blizzard conditions occur most frequently in the central and northern Plains. The flat landscape, just east of the Rockies, is ideal for powdery, windswept snow north of developing storms and along powerful cold fronts; a small handful of blizzards occur in this part of the country each year. The Northeast also typically sees a blizzard or two per year, particularly portions bordering the Atlantic Ocean. Here, intense nor’easters often foster heavy snow and powerful winds simultaneously. The three coexisting hazards make blizzards uniquely dangerous, as people can find themselves stuck outside in cars or on foot in near-zero visibility and accumulating snow without the ability to find shelter. In these conditions, frigid wind chills can lead to frostbite and hypothermia. The storms also can lead to power outages, exposing even those within built structures to dangerous cold or, at the hands of faulty generators, the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning. Low visibility can also lead to deadly car crashes. The most severe blizzards in U.S. history have killed dozens, or even hundreds. Here are five of the worst to have struck the country. Often known as the Storm of the Century, the 1993 blizzard saw a low-pressure system strengthen rapidly while racing up the East Coast. The powerful storm dragged a massive shield of snow, accompanied by howling wind and followed by extreme cold, from the Florida panhandle to Maine. Roofs collapsed, ships sank, millions lost power, every major airport on the East Coast shut down, and hundreds of Appalachian hikers were stranded as portions of 15 states saw more than 20 inches of snow. More than 270 people were killed across fourteen states, including 44 from an ocean surge and severe thunderstorms in Florida; the blizzard caused $11.3 billion of inflation-adjusted damage to become America’s costliest winter storm until the February 2021 cold wave. One of the strongest nontropical storm systems in U.S. history explosively intensified over eastern Michigan in 1978. The storm, which had the third lowest pressure recorded in the United States outside of a hurricane, pulled exceptionally cold air into the Midwest and the Ohio Valley with winds that gusted above 80 mph. Punishing wind chills as low as minus-50 degrees and up to a foot of powdery snow overwhelmed the region; where the Great Lakes were near enough to add moisture to the air, as many as three feet of snow accumulated. Known as the Cleveland Superbomb, the epic storm killed more than 70 people and shut down infrastructure across the region. Aside from a small handful of hurricanes, no storm has ever proved as destructive in the Northeast, Great Lakes and Ohio Valley regions as the Great Appalachian Storm of 1950. An immense low-pressure zone, powered by a massive dip in the jet stream and blocked from sliding out to sea, took an unusual east-to-west track across the Mid-Atlantic. Extreme cold air spilled toward the cyclone, with temperatures reported below zero as far south as Georgia and Arkansas. A steep change in pressure over a relatively short distance, because of a high-pressure zone over Southeast Canada, allowed extreme wind to develop, with gusts in excess of 100 mph in Newark; Hartford, Conn.; and Concord, N.H. All of that wind pulled plentiful moisture into the low, leading to flooding rain, destructive icing, and, along the spine of the Appalachians, more than 60 inches of snow. The storm also induced severe coastal flooding and erosion. West Virginia and Ohio set statewide single-storm snowfall records, as did the city of Pittsburgh. More than 350 people may have died, and the storm was the single costliest weather event in U.S. history at the time. New York and southern New England, hardly strangers to snow, saw their most severe blizzard of record in the late 19th century. A low-pressure area intensified while sliding north along a stalled Mid-Atlantic front, and sustained winds above 50 mph pulled frigid air into the cities of the Northeast. Heavy snow continued to fall for nearly two days as the storm stalled near Long Island. New York City was hit particularly hard; the temperature plummeted as low as 6 degrees, and up to 3 feet of snow fell amid roaring winds and near-zero visibility in the outer boroughs. In Upstate New York and portions of Connecticut, temperatures were even colder, and 45 to 60 inches of snow accumulated. The March 1888 blizzard paralyzed the economy and infrastructure of New York City and killed an estimated 200 residents, mostly those caught without shelter as the temperature dropped. Another 100 people died in the Northeast, and 100 more aboard offshore boats, making the storm probably the deadliest blizzard in American history. Little snow fell during the first major blizzard of 1888, which struck exactly two months before the crippling March storm in the Northeast. But the few inches of fine, powdery snow that did accumulate were whipped by wind into one of America’s most infamous natural disasters, the Schoolhouse Blizzard. A powerful cold front roared across the U.S. Plains, accompanied by a brief period of snow that was quickly followed by powerful winds and temperatures as low as minus-30 degrees. Hundreds of children were trapped either at or commuting home from school, and died after becoming disoriented and lost in the blowing snow and frigid temperatures. More than 200 people were killed."
+"Winter is coming, and you know what that means: Social media and news broadcasts will be lit up with words like “polar vortex,”“bombogenesis” and “thundersnow” grabbing national headlines. Some winter weather terms are technical. Some are weird. Others are important to understand for staying safe in potentially hazardous situations. Here are the terms you need to know this winter. When snow is falling heavily, people may casually describe the scene outside as a blizzard, but the term has a very specific definition. For a storm to be a blizzard, the location it’s affecting must experience sustained winds or frequent gusts at or above 35 mph for at least three hours, combined with falling and/or blowing snow. Such a combination of snow and wind frequently results in whiteout conditions, making for dangerous or impossible travel. It’s possible for there to be a blizzard even when it’s not precipitating, if strong winds whip up snow that has already fallen. That’s relatively common over the Northern Plains, where bitter Arctic-chilled air on the backside of storms often makes for treacherous travel. You may have heard Capital Weather Gang or television forecasters use these terms before. Mood snow or conversational snow is snow that doesn’t bring any headaches. It may coat grassy areas but melts on roads, and you don’t have to shovel it. It just sets the mood and gives us a good excuse to read a book near the window while enjoying a cup of hot chocolate. Bombogenesis and bomb cyclones are real things. Bombogenesis occurs when a storm’s central barometric pressure plummets 24 millibars in 24 hours. It’s a sign that the storm is evacuating air, allowing explosive strengthening. Storms that achieve this bomb status are known for their fury, bringing howling winds, copious precipitation and sometimes a blockbuster snowstorm. The polar vortex sounds scary, but it’s not a storm. It’s a belt of winds encircling a reservoir of frigid air in the North Pole (and also the South Pole during its winter). Occasionally, lobes or pieces of it break off, allowing intense cold to plunge into the Lower 48 states. There are two polar vortexes. The one just described resides in the lower atmosphere (in the troposphere) and is most frequently referenced by weather forecasters. The other vortex, higher up (in the stratosphere), is of greater interest to academic researchers, but its behavior can also have significant implications for mid-latitude weather. Thundersnow is exactly what it sounds like: a thunderstorm but with snow rather than rain. Especially in intense winter storms, vivid lightning, booming thunder and heavy snowfall can occur simultaneously. If you see a flash or hear a rumble, it’s a sign to drop the shovel and ditch the sleds — heading indoors to safety. During a storm, the intensity of snowfall matters a lot. Lighter snow is easier for motorists to negotiate and road crews to clear, whereas heavy snow can be crippling. By definition, the intensity of snowfall is determined by how much it reduces visibility. Heavy snow reduces visibility to 5/16 of a mile or less, while visibility is greater than 5/8 of a mile in light snow. Moderate snow is everything in between. Typically heavy snow produces at least an inch of snow per hour, while light snow leaves behind less than half an inch per hour. During the most exceptional storms, snowfall rates of 2 or 3 inches per hour or higher are possible. Just as you could get scattered rain showers in the warmer seasons, it’s possible for a spattering of intermittent snow to light up the radar. In these situations, the snow doesn’t fall over enough territory to be considered “widespread.” Snow showers can feature snowfall rates of all intensities. Occasionally, if they are heavy enough, they can create localized areas of hazardous travel conditions, by coating roads and lowering visibility. Snow squalls are more potent. They’re short-lived bands of heavy snow and are sometimes accompanied by strong winds. Snow squalls can create whiteout conditions reminiscent of a summertime thunderstorm. They often contain all the ingredients of a blizzard but don’t last long enough for a blizzard warning to be issued. But they’re often even more deadly. Some of the biggest car-wreck disasters of the past several decades have come when snow squalls envelop drivers in a sudden shroud. A 131-car pileup claimed a life in Wisconsin in 2019, less than a month after a snow squall snarled traffic in a 27-car Pennsylvania accident. The National Weather Service rolled out a new product for snow squall warnings last January, to be able to better warn before a snow squall strikes. Flurries are usually inconsequential. A vigorous flurry might briefly lower visibility or whiten the ground but, with most flurries, you can almost count the number of individual snowflakes flying around. It’s just like confetti drifting capaciously through the air, catching the sun as sporadic flakes dance their whimsical dance. Graupel are snow “pellets.” They form when supercooled droplet of water collect around and freeze onto a snowflake. Graupel may bounce off your jacket or the hood of your car; you can even hold them in your hand and crunch them. They’re usually about a quarter-inch across. Sleet is also a pelletlike precipitation and may appear very similar to graupel, but its formative processes are different. Sleet occurs when snowflakes melt in a layer of warm air, but refreeze into hardened ice pellets before pelting the ground like a peppering of ammunition from a BB gun. Freezing rain is exactly that — rain that freezes. It forms when ordinary rain falls through warm air, but the ground temperatures are below freezing. When that happens, the water freezes on contact, riming everything it touches with a slick glaze. It’s perhaps the most dangerous type of precipitation that can fall. Enough freezing rain, and you get an ice storm, which is infamous for downing power lines and resulting in widespread hazardous weather. Watches, warnings and advisories: For inclement winter weather situations, the National Weather Service will issue different kinds of alerts for you to be prepared for different hazardous situations. The Weather Service also may issue blizzard or ice storm warnings when conditions are met and also alerts for extreme wind chills, a measure of how cold the air feels, factoring in wind speeds. In 2016, the Weather Service introduced a special “potential winter weather hazard” statement for situations in which even very light amounts of precipitation combined with cold temperatures might create dangerous travel conditions during heavy commuting periods. This story has been updated since it first published."
+"At winter’s cruellest, the temperatures plunge well below zero, taking parts of the country into deep-freeze.. The only phenomenon frigid enough to generate that kind of chill is the polar vortex, of which you have heard but might not fully understand. There are not one but two polar vortexes in each hemisphere, North and South. One exists in the lowest layer of the atmosphere, the troposphere, which is where we live and where the weather happens. The other exists in the second-lowest, called the stratosphere, which is a shroud of thin air that gets warmer at higher altitudes. If the two polar vortexes line up just right, the Lower 48 can find itself in a very deep freeze. The low-level vortex in the troposphere is a large mass of brutally cold air and swirling winds coiled around omnipresent polar low pressure. The year-round cold temperature causes air to condense and shrink in size, which creates a vacuum effect that draws air inward. The tropospheric polar vortex is the one that affects our weather. Most of the time, its harsh conditions are out of reach. But every so often, lobes of it pinch off from the main flow and crash south. This can lash the Lower 48 with piercing shots of cold, intense bouts of storminess and bitter wind chills well below zero. How cold it gets in the Lower 48 depends on how much of the vortex breaks off and how far south it gets. It is as if the tropospheric polar vortex is a backyard full of dogs, and the jet stream is a fence. The dogs are always trying to escape through gaps in the fence. Occasionally a few of them manage to get out and cause a few days of very cold weather. But once in a while, the entire fence collapses and almost all of the dogs run wild. That is when the big cold-air outbreaks happen. The stratospheric polar vortex lives above and separate from the troposphere. It is much more compact than its tropospheric cousin. It forms in a similar way but is smoother and maintains a much sharper edge. That is because there is very little mixing with the air below it. With lots of rotational energy, this counterclockwise gyre can speed with little to slow it down. The stratospheric polar vortex does not stick around year-long: It disintegrates around March and starts to regenerate again in September; that is when the sun sets on the North Pole for the last time until spring. By December and January, the stratospheric polar vortex is a full-fledged machine. But a strong polar vortex does not mean storms for us. In fact, it is the contrary. Most of the time, the stratospheric polar vortex has little impact on our weather. The two layers of the atmosphere remain largely disconnected. Once in a while, the stratospheric vortex gets disrupted — a sudden stratospheric warming event. When this happens, the vortex can split and affect the weather below it. It can cause kinks in the jet stream so that, instead of flowing west to east, there are a lot of dips and ridges. And the waves in the jet stream can disrupt the lower (tropospheric) polar vortex, break off a lobe and force it south. We know by now to bundle up when that happens. This story has been updated since it first published."
+"An intrusion of polar air into the United States this week won’t just mean an extreme chill — along with it, damaging winds and white-out conditions are likely in many areas. The weather system is forecast to drop temperatures as much as 30 degrees below normal across most of the contiguous states, and could produce blizzard conditions across parts of the Plains and Midwest. It is likely to make for treacherous travel conditions and produce widespread power outages in the days before Christmas. To stay safe as the holidays begin, here are four things you can do before bad weather arrives. The expected combination of gusty winds and frigid temperatures could make for a dangerous situation in the event of power outages, which federal data have shown are occurring more often and for longer durations as extreme weather stresses the energy grid. Be sure to check that you have some emergency kit basics on hand: extra blankets, candles, flashlights and nonperishable food. Do what you can to keep cellphones and other electronic devices charged, and have a plan to recharge them should you lose power — whether via batteries, a vehicle or even a hand-crank weather radio. If using a portable generator, be wary of the risks of carbon monoxide poisoning from its exhaust — and never operate it indoors or in a garage. Given the severity of the cold descending on so much of the country, exposed plumbing could freeze quickly — plumbers say it can take six hours in freezing temperatures, but even less time in more frigid conditions for the pipes to freeze and burst. Parts of the Plains and Midwest are likely to remain at subzero temperatures for extended periods over the coming days. Plumbers recommend leaving taps at a trickle to prevent standing water from freezing or, in the event of a power outage, even shutting off the water supply and letting taps run dry. The cold could catch many people off-guard, as it is not just the strongest blast of cold so far this winter but, for some parts of the country, the coldest December chill in decades. Anyone planning to venture out into the cold — or anyone who could find themselves stuck in, say, a broken-down vehicle — should be dressed to weather the elements for as long as possible. To stay warmest, dress in multiple layers of loosefitting clothing, with moisture-wicking, non-cotton fabrics closest to the body and a layer that can block wind and precipitation on the outside. And don’t forget a hat, gloves and warm socks. Extreme cold is an even deadlier hazard than extreme heat, federal health data has shown, because as temperatures drop, cold can quickly overcome the body’s ability to adapt. It can take a matter of minutes for hypothermia to set in, marked first by shivers, and then by exhaustion, confusion and drowsiness. More than 112 million people are expected to travel at least 50 miles from home between Dec. 23 and Jan. 2, according to AAA — with the bulk of them going by car or truck. Motorists should be aware of weather they could face on the road. Cars can become easily incapacitated because of extreme cold, while slippery roadways can trigger crashes. Just as you should have an emergency kit for your home, keep important provisions in your vehicle, as well. That can include: blankets, a bandanna or bright cloth to serve as a distress signal, sand or cat litter for tires stuck in snow or ice, a windshield scraper and shovel, a flashlight, snacks and water. While drivers often store winter survival kits in trunks, the Minnesota Department of Public Safety Homeland Security and Emergency Management suggests storing the items in the passenger compartment in case the trunk gets jammed or is frozen shut. And if your vehicle is stuck, experts recommend running the engine occasionally to keep warm — while also ensuring snow is not blocking the vehicle’s exhaust pipes, risking a buildup of carbon monoxide. “It’s just about being prepared,” said Mike Griesinger, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Twin Cities forecast office in Minnesota. “The last thing you want to do is get stuck out somewhere where you’re unfamiliar and you have no idea when help may be able to come by.”"
+"If you’re from the Northern Tier, Rockies, Midwest or New England, odds are you’re no stranger to “wind chill.” You probably feel its effects all the time during the winter, when even the lightest stirring or breeze can turn a seasonably cold day downright bone-chilling. Stronger winds and below-freezing temperatures can bring the risk of frostbite and hypothermia as well, making wind chill an important figure to understand and plan for anytime outdoor recreation is to be considered. Most television weathercasters and mobile apps alike display values associated with the wind chill, but few take the time to define what it means. The premise of wind chill is simple: When the ambient air is cooler than your body temperature (roughly 98.6 degrees), any stitch of wind will blow away the insulating layer of mildness that forms around you. The human body emits heat, which generates a cushion of warmth surrounding a person. The faster the wind, the quicker a person sheds their warm layer, leaving them exposed to the cold once again. The body has to work at a faster pace to combat that constant loss of heat. When someone says “it’s 24 degrees outside, but the wind chill is 17,” they’re really saying that, at a temperature of 24 degrees with some wind, the rate of heat loss from an individual to the environment (and what the individual perceives) is equal to what 17 degrees and no wind would feel like. Atmospheric scientists and physicists have crunched the numbers and found a way to quantify this wind-induced dissipation of heat — by treating humans like a power source. We can calculate how much heat a human radiates in units of watts per meter squared. Watts are units of power, and they can be converted into calories per second. You know the phrase “burning calories”? Yep. Think about expending the energy contained in your food, but as heat! The “per meter squared” term comes from the surface area of an average human. That makes sense, since we radiate heat out of our skin. The formula above is used by the National Weather Service and by computer algorithms to calculate wind speed. The constants, or numeric values, come from assumptions mathematicians made about the average dimensions of a human, etc. It’s also presumed that sunlight isn’t playing more than a negligible role in heating a person. Wind chill is defined only for temperatures below 50 degrees and winds over 3 mph. Let’s assume the temperature is sitting right at the freezing mark. With a sustained 10 mph wind, the wind chill, sometimes advertised as a “feels like temperature,” would be 24 degrees. At 20 mph, that wind chill would drop to 20 degrees. How about 32 degrees amid a full-fledged 50 mph New England blizzard? The wind chill would be a frigid 14 degrees. According to Weather Underground, the coldest wind chill ever recorded in the United States (utilizing the current wind chill formula first employed in 2001) occurred on Jan. 16, 2004, atop the 6,288-foot summit of Mount Washington in New Hampshire. A temperature of minus-41.8 combined with winds gusting over 87 mph brought a wind chill of minus-102.6 degrees. The Weather Service will issue wind chill advisories and warnings when conditions are dangerous, and there are a few tips that you can follow to be safe: stay dry, stay covered, dress in layers and stay informed with local news and alerts. This story has been updated since it first published."