Climate Point: Slower storms mean worse damage; industry at odds with Trump
Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate change, energy and the environment. I'm Janet Wilson, writing to you from Palm Springs, where Labor Day thunderstorms pounded the desert with blinding rain and a vivid lightning show.
Off the East Coast, Hurricane Dorian continues its crawl landward after ravaging the Bahamas, offering new lessons on the physics of a changing global atmosphere and fiercer, wetter storms. Intriguing research also suggests climate change has made stalled Atlantic storms more common — and more dangerous — because they stay in one place longer, concentrating destruction. Think of Harvey parked over Houston for days in 2017, which caused unprecedented flooding. John Schwartz with The New York Times explains.
Here are some other stories of interest.
MUST-READ STORIES
Life on earth without an Amazon rainforest? Fires devastating the region have prompted global concern about effects on the planet's climate and wildlife – and raised questions about whether the world could survive without the Amazon, as Doyle Rice reports for USA Today. The rainforest, already 17% gone, is biologically the earth's richest region and is a major contributor to the natural cycles required for the planet to function.
Firefly special. As summer flits away, Karen Chavez with the Asheville Citizen-Times brings us a nice yarn about a North Carolina professor of entomology who discovered a whole new population of rare synchronous fireflies while staying in a nature park run by the Grandfather Mountain Stewardship Foundation. He was a lucky audience of one for the after-dark spectacle of hundreds of fireflies blinking at once. Tens of thousands of people apply by lottery each year to see similar displays at lower elevations each spring.
POLITICAL CLIMATE
Grizzly problem. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt decided not to stop in Montana this week, where farmers and ranchers frustrated with the state's growing grizzly bear population want more funds for the federal agency charged with controlling predators. Wildlife advocates say the massive bears, recently re-listed as threatened, are the ones that need the help. Karl Puckett reports for Great Falls Tribune.
Hot air over rollbacks. Corporations are once again caught between Trump administration proposals that could boost profits and potential backlash from consumers, as Tom Krisher reports for Associated Press. That dynamic played out again as EPA sought to revoke regulations on methane gas emissions from oil facilities. British Petroleum, ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell voiced opposition, but smaller oil and gas companies welcomed the possibility. Recently, it was the auto industry grappling with, and in several cases opposing, looser fuel-economy requirements. And earlier this summer, it was electric utilities dealing with lower pollution standards for coal-fired power plants.
WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE
And Tahoe too. Microplastics have been found in Lake Tahoe, the latest location where researchers have documented tiny pieces of plastic that come from everything from water bottles to synthetic fleece sweater, per Benjamin Spillman with the Reno Gazette Journal. They’ve also been found in fish in the oceans and raining down from the sky in the Pyrenees. Tahoe scientists are delving into the microplastics' environmental impacts.
Lakers defense. Great Lakes freighters may have to treat ballast water to curb invasive species, report Jim Malewitz and Sarah Whites-Koditschek with Bridge Magazine and Wisconsin Public Radio. While regulations have kept ocean-traversing ships from introducing more destructive species to North America's Great Lakes, ballast water used for balance and dumped by "lakers," massive ships that travel just the inland water bodies, needs to be cleaned up too, experts say. Lakers can transport 70,000 tons of cargo and hold up to 16 million gallons of ballast water, some of it containing nasty new insects and other harmful species along for the ride.
AND ANOTHER THING
Tiny bottles going bye-bye. The next time you stay in a hotel, you may not be stocking your suitcase with tiny shampoo and lotion bottles, reports Hugo Martin with the Los Angeles Times. Marriott International announced plans to eliminate single-use bottles from most of its hotels worldwide by December 2020. Guests will get bathroom necessities from large, pump-topped bottles. Intercontinental Hotel Group made a similar pledge to switch out the tiny bottles for pump-topped versions in more than 5,600 hotels worldwide by 2021. Marriott estimates it will eliminate the disposal of about 500 million tiny plastic bottles into landfills.
Soon, hotels may not have a choice, says Dee-Ann Curbin with Associated Press. California lawmakers may ban hotels from using small shampoo bottles in 2023, while the European Union is banning a wide range of single-use plastic items by 2021.
No word on tiny airline liquor bottles yet.
Here are 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.
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.