Joseph J. Romm's Blog, page 140

Here’s What 2015’s Strong El Niño Means For This Year’s Hurricane Season

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A below-average hurricane season is expected for 2015.

CREDIT: Shutterstock

Despite an early unofficial start to the 2015 hurricane season — with Tropical Storm Ana making landfall weeks before the official June 1 start date — scientists predict that this year’s season will see some of the lowest storm activity in nearly a decade.

Announcing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) outlook for the season Wednesday, NOAA administrator Kathryn Sullivan said that the 2015 season has the highest probability of a below average season since about 1998. This year is anticipated to see six to 11 tropical storms, between three and six of which could become hurricanes (with between zero and two of those having the potential to become major storm events). Between 1981 and 2010, each season saw an average of 12 named storms, six hurricanes, and three major storm events.

“These numbers are below average for hurricane season, but below average doesn’t mean no pitches get thrown our way,” Sullivan said in a press call Wednesday. “No matter how many pitches Mother Nature throws at us, if just one of those pitches gets through the strike zone we could be in trouble.”

A strengthening El Niño is the main reason scientists predict a particularly quiet season. El Niño — characterized by unusually warm temperatures in the equatorial regions of the Pacific Ocean — changes global wind patterns, creating hostile upper-level winds in the tropical Atlantic that in turn create unfavorable conditions for the formation of hurricanes.

“In the Atlantic, El Niño brings stronger than normal winds, which creates a hostile environment for hurricanes,” James Done, a meterologist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research, told ThinkProgress. “Hurricanes generally favor calm environments, and strong winds tend to tear hurricanes apart.”

Cooler ocean temperatures in the Atlantic also lessen the chance of an intense storm season. Warm waters are the primary force behind hurricane intensity — normally, waters have to be a little over 78° F for hurricanes to form and intensify — and current ocean temperatures for the southern Atlantic Coast are just around that threshold.

But while the Atlantic might see a reprieve from an active hurricane season, El Niño will have the opposite effect for the Pacific region. Both the waters around Hawaii and those in the northeast Pacific could see a 50 percent increase in activity from average years, Jeff Masters, director of meteorology at Weather Underground, told ThinkProgress.

The northwest Pacific has already seen an incredibly active typhoon season, with seven typhoons occurring since the season began in January. Warm Pacific temperatures — driven by El Niño — are largely responsible for the increased frequency and power of the storms.

An active Pacific storm season could bring intense rains to the U.S. Southwest, with states like Arizona, New Mexico, and the western part of Texas most likely to see the remnants of hurricanes that develop off the coast of Mexico.

Unfortunately, drought-plagued California is unlikely to see those rains. “Those storms tend to track east, so it probably won’t help the drought in California,” Masters said. California has seen a few tropical storms in the past — one in the 1800s and one in 1939 — so while such an event is possible, Masters pointed out that “we have no skill to predict those kinds of things.”

Despite the potential for a quiet season in the Atlantic, Masters cautioned that the “standard disclaimer” still applies: “Even a quiet hurricane season can breed a category 5 monster. The fact that this season’s forecast is for quieter-than-average doesn’t mean people should be less prepared.”

The 1992 hurricane season was the year that, despite an El Niño pattern, saw the devastating impact of Hurricane Andrew, which killed 15 people when it made landfall and is still one of the costliest storms in U.S. history.

NOAA officials stressed that storm surge — the water level rise caused by a storm — is the greatest threat to public safety caused by a hurricane. “Storm surge is always the greater threat to life in a hurricane,” Sullivan said. “It is the water, not the wind, that kills.”

As climate change drives up sea levels, storm surge is poised to become even more dangerous. While scientists don’t yet understand how climate change will impact the frequency of hurricanes, they are confident that stronger storms will become stronger, dumping more precipitation and creating higher storm surge. Even a small rise in sea level translates to a pronounced rise in storm surge — according to a study conducted by Lloyds of London, the storm surge associated with Hurricane Sandy was 30 percent higher due to sea level rise.

“Just a few centimeters of sea level rise can make billions of dollars in additional damage due to storm surge,” Masters said.

President Obama will visit the National Hurricane Center on Thursday, May 28 to receive briefings on hurricane preparedness for the upcoming season. The visit comes during National Hurricane Preparedness Week, which runs through Friday.

But to truly prepare for hurricanes in both the present and future, Done said, scientists need to better understand how to anticipate a storm’s impacts. Done, whose work is partially funded by the re-insurance industry, has been involved in creating a hurricane scale that better correlates with potential damage by taking into account things like the area of the damaging winds and how fast a storm is moving forward.

“Where the science needs to go is to try to understand what we can say about seasonal forecast impacts,” Done said. “That’s something that researchers are engaged in to make these seasonal forecasts more useful.”

The post Here’s What 2015’s Strong El Niño Means For This Year’s Hurricane Season appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Scientists Weigh In On Climate Impacts Of Texas’ Devastating Floods

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Joselyn Ramirez swims in a flooded school playground in Houston, Tuesday, May 26, 2015. Severe weather in the Houston area overnight caused flooding.

CREDIT: AP Photo/David J. Phillip

There’s a lot to say about the flash flooding that began last weekend in Texas and Oklahoma. So far 18 people are confirmed dead and at least 10 are missing. The weather’s broken records: Oklahoma City broke its all-time rainfall record for a single month, and Texas’ Wimberley Valley saw the highest flood in its recorded history. And more heavy rain is on the way.

Texas and Oklahoma are certainly no strangers to intense flooding, particularly in May, and particularly with an El Niño developing. But with average atmospheric carbon dioxide at levels so high that they’ve never before seen by humans, many have asked the question: what’s the role of human-caused climate change here?

The scientists ThinkProgress spoke to on Wednesday would not say the extreme flooding event was caused by climate change, noting the science of figuring out humanity’s role in a weather event would likely take about a year. But they agreed that current global warming has already made it more likely for an extreme flooding event like the one in Texas and Oklahoma to occur, and that similar events would become even more likely in a warmer world.

“There are several factors that have created conditions that made it more likely to have this disastrous situation, and I would say the majority of them are natural factors,” said Brenda Ekwurzel, a senior climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists. “However, there’s a definite climate assist that creates the likelihoods of the odds of it being a more severe event.”

According to Ekwurzel, there were three basic contributors that made an intense flooding event more likely in the region, two of which had to do with our increasingly hot oceans. As Ekwurzel put its it, hot oceans can fuel extreme precipitation events because “the earth likes to cool itself off — so we end up having evaporation from the hot ocean’s surface, they form clouds, come over land, and they rain.”

Right now, she noted, there are above-average sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Pacific Ocean, the latter of which is being fueled by a building El Niño. That El Niño is expected to accelerate the effects of global warming even further.

The third factor that Ekwurzel said contributes to making a similar flooding event more likely in Texas and Oklahoma is one followers of the climate and weather connection know very well: the atmosphere’s ability to hold more moisture. The fact that the atmosphere is warmer because of increased carbon emissions means it’s able to hold more moisture, meaning more precipitation when storms occur.

“Because of climate change we have a very warm atmosphere,” Ekwurzel said. “And when you have a hot atmosphere you can hold more water vapor, so when a natural storm comes, you can organize that water vapor into a storm, wring out the atmosphere, and have very intense precipitation.”

Though it’s normal for Texas and Oklahoma to see torrential rainfall in the spring, one thing that’s been unusual is the duration of the event, according to Tom Di Liberto, a meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center. Di Liberto told ThinkProgress that storms have been moving very slowly across the region, meaning that rain has been pummeling down day after day with little relief.

“It’s not unusual for these types of storms to develop and cause heavy amounts of rain. That’s normal — that’s springtime,” he said. “What’s been weird about this one is this pattern consistent throughout the month where we have these upper level systems that track very slowly … there’s just all these ingredients that lead to some areas getting a ton of rainfall in a very short amount of time.”

And with the area on the heels of recovering from one of its most severe droughts on record, he said, “It’s a little bit of a weather whiplash.”

Di Liberto said he wasn’t sure what exactly climate change’s role was in the current flooding events, but did note that climate scientists have seen an observed change in heavy precipitation across the United States. Indeed, the 2014 National Climate Assessment (NCA) predicts that climate change will increase the probability of extreme rainfall and flooding events in the Northeast, Midwest, and Great Plains. In the Great Plains, this will likely happen alongside more extreme droughts, the NCA predicts.

“You probably can’t tell from this individual event, what the impact of climate change was,” Di Liberto said. “But it’s not inconsistent with what you’d see in a warming world.”

The post Scientists Weigh In On Climate Impacts Of Texas’ Devastating Floods appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Mount Everest Could Look Very Different By The End Of The Century

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CREDIT: shutterstock

Most of Mount Everest’s glaciers will markedly shrink over the course of this century, as climate change continues to warm the Himalayan region, according to a new study.

The study, published Wednesday in the journal Cryosphere, found that the thousands of glaciers in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region — where Everest is located — could shrink by 70 to 99 percent by the end of this century. The researchers used a model that took into account eight future temperature and precipitation scenarios as well as historical data on temperature, precipitation, and glacial melt. Since the scenarios varied in terms of warming, the researchers found that total scale of loss will depend on how much emissions rise and how much those emissions affect the climate in the Himalayan region.

“The signal of future glacier change in the region is clear: continued and possibly accelerated mass loss from glaciers is likely given the projected increase in temperatures,” Joseph Shea, lead author of the study and a glacier hydrologist at the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development, said in a statement.

That glacier melt could have major impacts for the people who live in the region and depend heavily on meltwater from the glaciers. More than one billion people in the region depend on water from the glaciers, the Guardian reports, and as the glaciers continue to retreat, the meltwater will become less reliable.

“Changes in glacier area and volume are expected to have large impacts on the availability of water during the dry seasons, which will impact agriculture, hydropower generation, and local water resources availability,” the study reads.

In addition to disrupting water sources, the retreat of glaciers could also create lakes dammed by glacial debris — which, if that dam breaks, could pose a huge risk to communities living downstream to the lakes. Mount Everest also has a unique problem when it comes to climate change: the human poop that’s built up from years of mountaineers trekking up the mountain could spread as Everest’s glaciers melt.

The researchers stress that this study should be seen as one of the first to quantify how glaciers in the Himalayan region will react to climate change, and that since “considerable uncertainties” remain, more research on the subject is needed. Still, that doesn’t mean the study’s findings shouldn’t be taken seriously.

“Glaciers in the region appear to be highly sensitive to changes in temperature, and projected increases in precipitation are insufficient to offset the increased glacier melt,” the researchers write. “While we have identified numerous sources of uncertainty in the model, the signal of future glacier change in the region is clear and compelling.”

Scientists have warned about climate change’s risks to Mount Everest and the rest of the Himalayan region before. In 2014, a Chinese scientist said that Everest’s glaciers had melted 10 percent in the last 40 years, and that climate change was likely to blame. A 2013 study done by the same scientist — Kang Shichang, glaciologist at Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research — found that the tops of Tibetan glaciers were shrinking, or “virtually being decapitated,” in Schichang’s words.

Other studies have also warned of climate change’s impact on glaciers around the world. Last year, a Parks Canada official said that Alberta’s Athabasca glacier — the most-visited glacier in North America — is melting at an “astonishing” rate, and could disappear within a generation. And this year, a study found that Western Canada could use 70 percent of its glaciers by the end of the century.

“What [glaciers] are telling us is that the climate is changing. The glaciers don’t respond to weather, so they don’t get confused about whether it was a cold winter or a hot summer,” Gary Clarke, professor emeritus at University of British Columbia, told ThinkProgress in April. “When the glaciers are wasting away, we know that the climate isn’t helpful to them.”

The post Mount Everest Could Look Very Different By The End Of The Century appeared first on ThinkProgress.

China’s Coal Use May Have Peaked Years Ahead Of Schedule

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China’s coal use (dark orange) has dropped sharply since 2013, according to analysis of government data by Greenpeace/Energydesk China.

China’s coal use fell by nearly 8 percent in the first four months of 2015 versus the same period in 2014, according to analysis by Greenpeace’s Energydesk team. Given China’s aggressive commitments to slash urban air pollution levels and reverse carbon pollution trends, we may have witnessed the peak in Chinese coal consumption years ahead of schedule. That would be another climate and clean energy game changer.

As we reported last year, the Chinese government said in November it would cap coal use by 2020. That announcement came quickly after the breakthrough CO2 deal Chinese President Xi Jinping announced with Obama in November that “China intends to achieve the peaking of CO2 emissions around 2030 and to make best efforts to peak early.”

The italicized “language was critical and we should assume it was not issued lightly,” as Melanie Hart, director for China policy at the Center for American Progress, told me in February. “It suggests that Chinese leaders are open to making even more ambitious climate moves if the economics allow, and this new data suggests that the economics are looking very good indeed.”

China has known for a while it could peak in CO2 before 2030, but officials apparently weren’t quite ready to make public a specific earlier date like, say, 2025. Hart points out that “most models indicate that China’s carbon dioxide emissions will peak about ten years after coal” (see discussion here). It will be interesting to see whether China drops any hints about a CO2 peak in 2025 in the negotiations leading up to the Paris climate summit.

China appears to be accelerating some of its air quality and coal phase-out deadlines. Reuters recently ran a story, “Beijing promises coal-free power by 2017 to fight pollution.”

Certainly Chinese government statistics need to be viewed with caution, and, as Hart explains, “to be sure, there have been adjustments before, so we should hold off on judging whether coal has peaked until we see sustained trend.”

On the other hand, given the scrutiny China is under now, a number of analysts say it is reasonable to have higher confidence in these numbers now. Hart notes that is particularly true of the industrial coal numbers because the Chinese “have an official plan to shut down heavy industry.”

“There’s a must-close-down list and they are really making it harder for those plants to operate,” she said in an email. “Formerly local government could just hide them but now it’s getting much harder. The critical thing now is the party is 100 percent convinced that the old heavy industry model will run them into the ground (no room for more growth, consumes too much energy, too much air pollution).”

On the electricity side, there are so many substitutes available for coal power — nuclear, hydro, natural gas, solar, wind — the carbon free sources have been engaged in a real race to see who wins. As of 2013, wind power is on top, as Forbes reported earlier this month.

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China’s shift toward carbon-free energy and away from coal is a game-changer. EnergyDesk notes of the four-month drop in coal use, “If the reduction continues until the end of the year, it will be the largest recorded year-on-year reduction in coal use and CO2 in any country.”

Back in 2009, Climate Progress predicted “that U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide emissions will never exceed 2007 levels. We have peaked.” That seems increasingly likely to be an accurate call. It may be a tad early to make the same call about China’s coal use, but it looks more and more like China’s coal use is unlikely to significantly beat 2013 levels. And that would substantially improve our chances of stabilizing global atmospheric carbon dioxide at non-catastrophic levels.

The post China’s Coal Use May Have Peaked Years Ahead Of Schedule appeared first on ThinkProgress.

BREAKING: The EPA Just Protected Drinking Water For Millions Of Americans

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Trout Unlimited, the nation’s oldest and largest coldwater fisheries conservation organization dedicated to conserving, protecting and restoring North America’s trout and salmon and their watersheds, applauded the announcement Wednesday.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Mike Groll

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will have an easier time regulating water pollution under a new rule released Wednesday.

The Waters of the United States rule, developed by the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers, offers protection to two million miles of streams and 20 million acres of wetlands that, until now, were not clearly designated under the Clean Water Act. The rule clarifies what tributaries and wetlands are part of the overall water system and will decrease confusion and expense, the EPA and Army Corps said Wednesday.

The confusion about what waters can be regulated stems from 2001, when the Supreme Court found that the EPA did not have jurisdiction to regulate isolated wetlands. That decision created confusion about how and where pollution can enter the water system — and what regulators can do about it.

“We’ve had to operate under a lot of confusion,” Assistant Secretary for the Army (Civil Works) Jo-Ellen Darcy said on a call Wednesday. “Our rule will make it clear which waters are covered and which waters aren’t.”

For generations to come, Americans will have the clean water necessary to protect our way of life and our economy

One out of every three Americans gets drinking water from sources connected to water that, until now, did not have clear protection. In addition, determining which waters were covered has been costly and time-consuming. The new rule ultimately seeks to protect downstream water sources, using current scientific practices to determine what bodies of water are interconnected.

“Science now shows what waterways are connected,” Darcy said. “For generations to come, Americans will have the clean water necessary to protect our way of life and our economy.”

The rule was first proposed in April 2014 and was open to public comments for more than seven months. The EPA reviewed more than 400,000 comments and held outreach events around the country, but land-use advocates and agricultural groups protested the proposed rule, saying the EPA was seeking to regulate “ditches.”

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy was clear that the new rule will not affect the “normal farming operations” that are already carved out under the Clean Water Act. Under the rule, there will be no new requirements for agriculture or forestry, industries which will retain “all the decades long exemptions” they currently enjoy, she said on the call Wednesday.

“Farmers, ranchers, and foresters are all original conservationists, and we recognize that,” McCarthy said.

The rule has been backed by businesses as well as environmental groups. A coalition of beer breweries testified to Congress last week, saying that they “rely” the EPA rules to protect their business.

“Our brewery and our communities depend on clean water,” said Andrew Lemley, government affairs representative for New Belgium Brewing Company. “Beer is, after all, over 90 percent water and if something happens to our source water the negative affect on our business is almost unthinkable.”

A League of Conservation Voters poll found that 80 percent of voters support the rule. McCarthy told reporters Wednesday that more than 80 percent of small business owners also are in favor of the protections.

“Our economy as a whole depends on clean water,” she said.

Protecting tributaries is critical to maintaining clean drinking water, but it also has implications for mitigating the effects of climate change. As cycles of drought and flooding increase, wetlands and waterways play a role in managing surface water. Wetlands, especially, can trap floodwater, which can help reduce damage.

Environmentalists called the new rule a win for America’s clean water system.

“It’s a big and very important step forward,” Jon Devine, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, told ThinkProgress. “What it does is really restore protections… Waters that had been protected will be protected again.”

He noted that the rule will likely face judicial challenges, but said he thinks the rule is “on unbelievably solid ground, legally.”

Congress, though, offers another route to removing protection from these waters. Already the House has passed a bill that would force the EPA to retract the rule, and a similar bill is being debated in Senate committee.

If #POTUS had his way, the #EPA would be able to regulate ditches, streams & puddles in our backyards. #DitchtheRule http://t.co/UptsFRLUm5

— Richard Hudson (@RepRichHudson) May 26, 2015

McCarthy hit back Wednesday against allegations that the agency improperly advocated for the rule.

“We would welcome anyone to take a look at what we do,” she said, noting that there have been more than 4,000 meetings about the rule.

“Using social media is clearly a part of that effort… This is how you reach people,” she said. “There is no way in the world we have crossed any legal line or are doing anything inappropriate.”

The post BREAKING: The EPA Just Protected Drinking Water For Millions Of Americans appeared first on ThinkProgress.

If You’ve Wondered Why So Many Politicians Deny Climate Change, Science Has Your Answer

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Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., one of the Senate’s most high-profile deniers of climate science.

CREDIT: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

Scientists have known for a long time what’s causing current climate change. What’s been less clear is why so many U.S. politicians aren’t listening.

Sure, there’s been falsely balanced media coverage of climate science. And there are both financial and ideological incentives to deny that carbon emissions are causing the phenomenon.

But according to new research published in Nature Climate Change, there’s at least one statistically proven reason why more than 56 percent of Congressional Republicans deny climate change: echo chambers.

The term “echo chambers” traditionally refers to situations where people surround themselves with information they want to hear, and block out the rest. We’ve known for a while that these present themselves in climate politics; A 2014 study suggested that the reason Americans haven’t fully accepted the scientific consensus on climate change is because of echo chambers like Fox News, where conservative viewers are “exposed only to content consistent with their opinions, while shielded from dissenting views.”

Because of the way some echo chambers form, minority opinions can be repeated and repeated, so it amplifies their perspective

The study published Monday, however, looked at how echo chambers specifically affected members of Congress and the people who influenced them during the 2010 debate over cap-and-trade. And what it found was that the presence of echo chambers only impeded scientific debate when they appeared on the side that denied the science of human-caused climate change. That’s because those echo chambers relied on significantly fewer pieces of peer-reviewed science to make their claims that carbon emissions were not worth limiting.

“Echo chambers themselves are not a terrible thing,” Dana Fisher, the director of the University of Maryland’s Program for Society and the Environment and co-author of the study, told ThinkProgress. “But because of the way some echo chambers form, minority opinions can be repeated and repeated, so it amplifies their perspective.”

To get their results, researchers from the University of Maryland and the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center surveyed 64 of the most climate-active legislators, lobbyists, and business leaders in 2010, a particularly active time for carbon reduction policy. They asked those actors what they believed about climate science and who their sources were, and then analyzed the information using what’s called an exponential random graph (ERG) model.

What they found was the presence of echo chambers on both sides of the climate change debate — that influencers from both camps were surrounding themselves primarily with scientific information that reinforced their policy beliefs. But they also found that the echo chambers from the anti-emissions reductions camp used far fewer scientific sources to back up their opinions. So, the climate denier echo chamber sort of mimicked a situation where 20 people screamed one person’s scientific opinion so loudly that it seemed like 20 different scientific opinions. In the climate consensus echo chamber, there actually were 20 opinions.

To see how this looks, it’s useful to look at the data visualization in the study, which plotted the respective echo chambers of Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), and two scientists. Both lawmakers agreed that there should be an “international binding commitment” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but Markey accepted that humans cause climate change while Inhofe — now one of the most famed climate deniers in Congress — did not.

The top of the graphic shows Markey on the top left, and Inhofe on the bottom left. On the top right is a Columbia University researcher who agrees with the consensus on climate change, and on the bottom right is a University of Alabama scientist who does not. Echo chambers are shown more or less when three of the same color dots are connected in a triangle.

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CREDIT: Nature Climate Change

Among other things, the graphic shows that the people influencing Markey and the Columbia University scientist interacted more with each other, resulting in significantly more echo chambers than Inhofe and the University of Alabama scientist. However, the Columbia scientist’s viewpoint was based on nearly double the number of sources than the Alabama scientist, and Markey’s viewpoint was based on nearly quadruple the number of actors of Inhofe’s.

In addition, Inhofe’s interactions in 2010 actually showed zero echo chambers. But, as the researchers pointed out, that’s because he only personally received information from one source, and it’s impossible to be on the receiving end of an echo chamber with only one source feeding you information.

Still, actual echo chambers were present in most of the prominent political actors denying climate change, and those chambers were based on far less peer-reviewed work than the chambers of their ideological opposites.

The reason this is harmful, according to the researchers, is that both ideologies’ echo chambers had a similar amount of political influence in the 2010 debate. In other words, the echo chambers distorted the state of science by making it seem like there was equal weight to both sides.

“[Echo chambers] are everywhere,” said Lorien Jasny, the lead author of the paper and a computational social scientist at SESYNC. “They’re on both sides, but as late they seem to be a tool for distorting consensus and amplifying minority positions.”

The post If You’ve Wondered Why So Many Politicians Deny Climate Change, Science Has Your Answer appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Extreme Heat Wave In India Is Killing People And Melting Roads

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An Indian man takes bath under the tap of a water tanker on a hot day in Ahmadabad, India, Thursday, May 21, 2015.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Ajit Solanki

A blistering heat wave in India has killed more than 1,100 people in the country in less than one week.

Eight hundred and fifty two people have died in a heat wave in Andhra Pradesh in southeastern India, while 266 have died in the adjacent state of Telangana, CNN reports. In northeastern West Bengal and Orissa, at least 24 people have died. Most of the deaths, according to officials, have been among construction workers, the elderly, and the homeless — people who are typically most exposed to high heat and who don’t have access to air conditioning.

“Almost all the victims are old,” said B.R. Meena, principle secretary for revenue for Telangana. “Inquiries reveal that most of them were working and were exposed to the heat. Dehydration and heat stroke caused the deaths.”

In some regions, temperatures have reached a scorching 122°F — heat that’s melted sections of roads in some cities and that’s close, according to the Guardian, to the country’s all-time high of 123°F. Parts of the country had slightly lower temperatures, but the heat was exacerbated by high humidity: in Lucknow, the capital city of Uttar Pradesh, temperatures reached 110.3°F, with relative humidity of 70 percent. Delhi announced Monday that it had reached its hottest temperature of the season of 113°F.

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An Indian man rests near a dog under an over head bridge on a hot day at a wholesale market in Ahmadabad, India, Tuesday, May 19, 2015.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Ajit Solanki

Officials in Andhra Pradesh have taken steps to try to minimize the impact of the heat wave.

“The state government has taken up education programmes through television and other media to tell people not to venture into the outside without a cap, to drink water and other measures,” P. Tulsi Rani, special commissioner for disaster management in Andhra Pradesh, said. “We have also requested NGOs and government organisations to open up drinking water camps so that water will be readily available for all the people in the towns.”

India’s government has promised to provide monetary compensation to families of the dead, and officials have warned Indians in the hardest-hit regions to stay indoors and drink lots of water. Staying indoors won’t provide much relief to the third of India’s population who don’t have electricity, however.

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An Indian auto rickshaw driver rests on a hot summer day in Hyderabad, India, Monday, May 25, 2015.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Mahesh Kumar A.

But those in India who do have power are putting strain on the nation’s electrical grid with their high use of air conditioning and fans. In Delhi, high temperatures — and subsequent high usage of air conditioning — have led to fears of power cuts in the city and in other regions where mercury has soared. Power cuts are a common fear in India, where aging infrastructure is struggling to keep up with a populace that’s increasingly installing air conditioners and other electric machines. Indians have dealt with major power outages before: in July 2012, one of the worst blackouts in recent years left 700 million people without power. Solar power, however, could help improve the country’s grid reliability.

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Indian rickshaw pullers sleep in their rickshaws on a hot summer day in New Delhi, India, Thursday, May 21, 2015.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Manish Swarup

Meteorologists are predicting that India will endure a few more days of extreme heat before getting some relief. Even after temperatures drop later this week, they’ll likely spike again, though in the next few weeks, the country should see some sustained relief from the monsoon rains.

India is no stranger to heat waves. In 2010, the country also endured a major wave of high temperatures that killed hundreds of people. In 2013, too, intense heat claimed the lives of more than 500 people in the country. And climate change — which is contributing to extreme heat around the world — has already contributed to an increase in heat waves between 1961 and 2010.

The post Extreme Heat Wave In India Is Killing People And Melting Roads appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Ex-Senator Joins Firm That Lobbies For The Industries Destroying Her State

CREDIT: Alice Ollstein

Just a few months after losing her seat in the U.S. Senate, Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu announced she’s joining the powerhouse lobbying firm Van Ness Feldman as a “senior policy adviser,” focusing specifically on energy policy issues. That title will allow Landrieu to get around the law that bars former members of Congress from lobbying their old colleagues for two years.

Landrieu, the former chair of the Senate’s powerful Energy and Natural Resources Committee, will now be advising for a firm that represents powerful oil, gas, coal and other energy corporations, including some of the same ones that her state is currently trying to hold accountable for destroying the wetlands that used to protect the coastline from storms.

As The Intercept notes, one of Van Ness Feldman’s clients is TransCanada, the company that has been fighting for the Obama Administration’s approval of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. Landrieu has long been a supporter of the pipeline, and even tried, unsuccessfully, to force congressional approval of the project before the State Department completed its review. While in the Senate, she also aided fossil fuel companies by repeatedly fighting federal attempts to address air pollution and climate change.

In her new position, Landrieu may also have an opportunity to continue her push for building more ports for the US to export fracked natural gas to other countries. Van Ness Feldman represents several corporations who would benefit from this policy shift, including Maryland’s Dominion Cove — a planned export facility that has drawn strong opposition from the local community. Another client, Kinder Morgan, is attempting to build a network of pipelines across the northeast U.S. against the wishes of landowners who would be impacted.

Building more export facilities and sending natural gas overseas would also create more demand in the U.S., likely leading to more drilling and hydraulic fracturing. Several communities in Landrieu’s home state are already fighting to protect their land and water from the interests of natural gas companies eager to frack.

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John Kerry: Unchecked Climate Change Will Be Catastrophic For The Arctic

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CREDIT: AP Photo/Ted S. Warren

At a time of unprecedented uncertainty in a rapidly warming Arctic, one thing is clear: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry does not plan to stand by idly and watch.

At a reception last week to celebrate the U.S. Chairmanship of the Arctic Council, Kerry highlighted the urgent need to curb Arctic and global climate change.

Kerry stressed the consequences of unchecked climate change for people in the Arctic and around the planet. In his address to Arctic nation ministers, members of Congress, and other policymakers, Kerry said that the Arctic “is not just a picturesque landscape. It’s a home. It’s a lifestyle. It has a history.”

Arctic communities, he said, are “4 million strong living there for centuries, and believe me, they are an essential part of everything that is critical to the region.”

With the Arctic warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, the Secretary’s concern is warranted. Higher temperatures in the Arctic have devastating consequences for people in the region and around the globe. As Arctic sea ice disintegrates, Native Alaska villages — already teetering on the eroding coastal edge — are sliding into rising seas.

The Secretary also described rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet and Arctic glaciers, which causes seas to rise and puts people and entire cities in coastal and low-lying areas in the United States and around the world at risk of flooding. In addition, rising Arctic temperatures trigger a vicious cycle of even more warming, both in the region and globally. For example, as permafrost thaws, it could release vast amounts of carbon and methane into the atmosphere and hamstring global efforts to cut carbon pollution.

Kerry is not alone with his concerns. During his commencement speech at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut this week, President Obama warned that “climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security.”

Kerry stepped into the Arctic Council Chairmanship just seven months before the December climate conference in Paris, where nations plan to solidify a new global climate agreement. There has been progress around the globe already to reduce carbon pollution — the primary driver of climate change — including new emissions reduction goals by the United States, China, the European Union, Norway, Mexico, among others.

Still, countries are not on track to deliver in Paris the collective emissions reductions we need to limit warming to 2°C — what scientists say is the threshold for preventing unmanageable climate changes. Success in Paris at this point will be locking in a rigorous and legally binding process for countries to strengthen the ambition of their targets going forward, and to be held accountable to deliver on those targets.

As Arctic Council Chairman, Kerry has a rare opportunity to build momentum for a strong outcome in Paris. Kerry has already started to take advantage of this opportunity. For example, addressing climate change is a central focus of his Arctic Council chairmanship. He also plans to expand access to renewable energy technologies in the Arctic, and press for full implementation of the Framework for Enhanced Action to Reduce Black Carbon and Methane Emissions, adopted at the April Arctic Council Ministerial meeting in Inqaluit, Canada.

Black carbon and methane are potent pollutants that threaten public health and accelerate warming in the Arctic and globally. Black carbon pollution comes from sources including diesel vehicles, oil and gas production and flaring, woodstoves for cooking and heating, wildfires, and agricultural burning. Sources of methane emissions include venting and flaring at oil and gas fields, natural gas leaks, coal mining, landfills, water and waste water treatment, and agricultural fires.

There are a few immediate steps that Kerry, President Obama, and other Arctic nation leaders can take in order to curb Arctic warming, improve Arctic economic and living conditions, and help secure a strong climate agreement in Paris.

First, they can announce new actions to reduce black carbon and methane pollution, and encourage Arctic Council observer nations — including China, India, Germany, the U.K. — to do the same. This would help accelerate momentum before and after the Paris climate conference to lock in more ambitious national efforts to curb climate change. For example, in the U.S., the Bureau of Oceans Energy Management has an opportunity through its ongoing rulemaking process to require oil and gas companies to limit black carbon pollution to protect public health and safeguard the climate.

Second, they can invest in improving the energy efficiency of Arctic schools, buildings, and homes, as well as of hybrid energy systems that integrate a mix of renewable energy resources with existing diesel generators. This would lower household energy costs in Arctic communities — which in some cases exceed 50 percent of household income — and reduce carbon and black carbon pollution in the region.

“Every nation that cares about the future of the Arctic has to be a leader in taking and urging others to move forward with bold initiatives and immediate, ambitious steps to curb the impact of greenhouse gases,” Kerry said at the Arctic reception.

Cathleen Kelly is a Senior Fellow at American Progress specializing in international and U.S. climate mitigation and resilience.

The post John Kerry: Unchecked Climate Change Will Be Catastrophic For The Arctic appeared first on ThinkProgress.

This Country Just Banned Grocery Stores From Throwing Out Food

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Up to a half of all food is wasted, reports show.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Elaine Thompson

Grocery stores in France will soon be banned from throwing away or destroying unsold food, under a bill passed unanimously by the French parliament last week.

Food waste costs countries around the world billions of dollars each year and is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, but France’s action was spurred by another type of crisis. Mired in an economic slump, France has seen an growing number of people living off food scavenged from waste bins outside grocery stores, which has prompted an outcry from aid workers and activists.

“There’s an absolute urgency — charities are desperate for food. The most moving part of this law is that it opens us up to others who are suffering,” Assemblymember Yves Jégo told parliament.

Under the law, which will go into effect in July of next year, French supermarkets will have to give unsold food away to charities or donate it for use in animal feed or compost.

But while the law might help get food into the bellies of those who need it, in terms of overall waste, the step may be more symbolic than effective. In France, 7.1 million metric tons of food is wasted each year, but only 11 percent is thrown out by food retailers. The bulk of it, 67 percent, is thrown away by consumers, and 15 percent is tossed by restaurants, the Guardian reports.

Worldwide, between a third and a half of all the food produced is thrown away, according to a 2013 report. In developed nations, waste stems from over-aggressive sell-by dates, the tendency to throw out produce that isn’t aesthetically pleasing, large portion sizes, and low food prices.

The concern with food waste goes beyond the travesty of wasting food in a time when others are going hungry.

Wasting food has real impacts on the environment and economy. Agriculture is a big user of water, for example, so uneaten food means wasted water. In California, agriculture is responsible for 80 percent of water use.

Transportation costs, wages, storage, and other related efforts towards food production are also wasted when consumers and producers throw out perfectly good — if not perfect-looking — food. The U.K.-based Waste & Resources Action Program (WRAP) found that globally, reducing wasted food could save $120 to $300 billion a year.

Discarded food is also a huge contributor to climate change. A 2013 United Nations study found that if wasted food were a country, it would be the third-largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the world. When food waste decomposes, it produces methane — a greenhouse gas which, pound for pound, has 25 times more effect on climate change than carbon. Methane is the second-most prevalent greenhouse gas emitted in the United States, where between 30 and 50 percent of all purchased food goes straight into the trash.

“Reducing food waste is good for the economy and good for the climate,” said Helen Mountford, Global Program Director for the New Climate Economy, said in a statement earlier this year.

France may not be the last country to ban grocery stores from throwing away unsold food. Arash Derambarsh, the local politician who prompted the law with a petition that garnered more than 200,000 signatures, is planning to take the issue to the United Nations discussions, including the COP21 environment conference in Paris in December. He’s joined in his campaign by ONE, U2 singer Bono’s social action group.

The post This Country Just Banned Grocery Stores From Throwing Out Food appeared first on ThinkProgress.