Climate Point: Fireworks hangover, Alaska baking and Western sagebrush in flames
Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate change, energy and the environment. I'm Janet Wilson, writing to you from sunny southern California. The air is clearing after our annual, coast-to-coast pyrotechnic extravaganza.
Ever wonder if that fireworks smoke falling from the sky is bad for you, not just your dog's ears? Yes it is, with charcoal residue, sulfur and metals sinking into lungs and lakes, as Sophie Hirsh rounds up in Green Matters. Fireworks and lack of wind created a tower of smoke so thick that Washington, D.C.'s air quality plummeted to worst in the nation on Thursday night, reports Jason Samenow for the Washington Post. Across the USA, fine-particle pollution for the 24 hours beginning at 8 p.m. on the Fourth of July is typically 42% higher, per Tony Barboza and Jon Schleuss with the Los Angeles Times.
Here are some other things that might be of interest:
MUST READ STORIES
Sagebrush meltdown. Although forest fires grab headlines and funds, blazes in the often-ignored Great Basin are burning more of the West. The "sagebrush sea" that stretches from Wyoming to California is going up in smoke, reports Benjamin Spillman for the Reno Gazette-Journal. The mix of shrubs and native bunch grasses that is home to 350 species has lost about half of its 247 million acres, much of it due to cheatgrass, dubbed "grassoline." "If we are going to have a West and a Western way of life, we have to care about rangelands." an ecosystem specialist told Spillman.
Baked. Think Alaska is cold and snowy? Over the next week, the state may smash record-setting high temperatures, as Doyle Rice chronicles in Paste BN. A warmer spring already melted ice sooner, alarming wildlife and fish experts, and wildfires have begun. Experts say northern Alaska warmth is being compounded by climate change. Ditto for Europe, as Rice also reports, where climate change worsened a deadly heat wave as the entire globe sizzled to the hottest June on record.
POLITICAL CLIMATE
The parade passes by. The National Park Service diverted $2.5 million in entrance and recreation fees from parks across the country for President Trump's Independence Day extravaganza, as Juliet Eilperin, Josh Dawsey and Dan Lamothe report for the Washington Post. Trump retorted that the cost was "very little," but as Alexandra Hutzler reports for Newsweek, a Democratic member of Congress' appropriations committee is pressing for an investigation, since the funds were meant to be used for underfunded park needs.
Still in denial. Climate change deniers who have gone from being on the fringe to helping shape Trump White House policies see even the auto industry as the opposition in their bid to stop regulations designed to thwart global warming. As Hiroko Tabuchi writes in The New York Times, newly released government emails show how a coalition of groups that reject well-established climate science have urged the administration to scrap clean tailpipe rules and characterized automakers as their opponents.
ENERGY CLEAN AND DIRTY
Closing time. There are too many fossil-fuel power plants to meet international climate goals, and many will need to be retired early to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees. That's the bottom line from a new UC Irvine led-study, as Stephen Leahy reports for National Geographic. “Our study is dead simple,” said UCI co-author Steve Davis. “We wanted to know what happens if we don’t build any more fossil-fuel-burning stuff as of 2018." They found there would still be 78 billion tons too much carbon dioxide to stabilize temperatures.
Top 100. So which energy companies use the most coal to create power, and which use the most nuclear or renewable energy? Sometimes they're one and the same, based on a new Ceres survey that Sammy Roth lays out in the Los Angeles Times. Overall in the power sector, 85% of emissions come from just 100 companies and public agencies.
Up, up and away. Turns out there are risks to contrails, those white ribbons airplanes leave behind, as Rice tells us in Paste BN. They linger in the sky as cirrus clouds that heat Earth's atmosphere, a new German Aerospace Center study shows, worsening global warming. The impact is expected to triple by 2050, the study says. There's still no evidence of toxics, though conspiracy theorists who call them "chemtrails" claim airplanes spray chemicals.
AND ANOTHER THING
That stinky seaweed that piles up on beaches can be hazardous, according to Tyler Treadway with Treasure Coast Newspapers. Sargassum, the seaweed with small air-filled "berries" that floats in masses on the ocean, emits hydrogen sulfide after it washes up on beaches and rots in the broiling sun. Ocean breezes make the air safe for most, but the hydrogen sulfide can be harmful for people with asthma. And if you were thinking about adding Sargassum to your sushi, it also can contain high levels of arsenic and heavy metals. Try a safer kind.
Here's the latest carbon dioxide numbers. Scientists say to keep a livable planet, we need to cut the amount to 350 parts per million. We're well above that and rising.
That's all for this week. For more climate, energy and environment news, follow me on Twitter @janetwilson66 You can sign up to get Climate Point in your inbox for free here.