Climate Point: CO2 hits new high, southern ice more unstable than ever, top officials losing no sleep
Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate change, energy and the environment. I'm Janet Wilson, writing to you from Palm Springs. This newsletter's title — a reference to the point to which dangerous carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere has climbed, as measured by an observatory in Hawaii — is particularly apt this week. The CO2 numbers reached a stunning new point: 415 ppm, the highest on Earth in 800,000 years. The last time they were this high, humans didn't exist, as Ryan W. Miller and Doyle Rice report for Paste BN.
We've known for more than 50 years what's needed to halt this slow-motion disaster: cut CO2 emissions. We banned leaded gasoline, we banned spray pollutants that ripped a hole in the ozone layer, but so far, we seem incapable of doing the math on the biggest threat of all.
Here are some other things you might want to know:
MUST READ STORIES
Going down. More unsettling news from the bottom of the world. Almost one-quarter of the ice in the West Antarctic ice sheet has been classified as "unstable," according to a new study. This is due to the huge volume of ice that's melted there over the past 25 years. Some areas are losing ice five times faster than in the early 1990s, as Rice reports for Paste BN.
Foaming at the mouth New Jersey has sued DuPont, 3M and others for making and selling firefighting foam products for decades in New Jersey that contained toxic chemicals. As Scott Fallon for the North Jersey Record reports, the lawsuit is the latest in a series of legal actions against the chemical manufacturers over widespread pollution caused by PFAS: a group of toxic chemicals that have been in everyday use for almost 80 years. Nearly one in five New Jersey residents' tap water contains at least trace amounts of one of these chemicals linked to cancer. Michigan and other states are facing similar woes.
POLITICAL CLIMATE
Nighty night. Interior Dept. head David Bernhardt, a former lobbyist for oil, gas and other companies contributing to the unparalleled CO2 emissions, says "I haven't lost any sleep" over the report of record highs, as Jacob Holzman reports for Roll Call.
Friends with benefits. Bernie Sanders' support of rising liberal star Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) and her Green New Deal has her often younger, non-white supporters taking a closer look at the Vermont senator, a white man approaching 80 whose positions on health care and wealth distribution also align with hers, as Ledyard King tells us in Paste BN. AOC has yet to endorse a 2020 presidential candidate
FIRE AND WATER
You did it. Pacific Gas & Electric's transmission lines caused the deadly Camp Fire that destroyed Paradise, California last fall, investigators found, The blaze, the deadliest and most costly in state history, killed 85 people, as Shane Newell, Julie Makinen and Damon Arthur report for The Desert Sun. The findings have been forwarded to the district attorney's office, which probes possible criminal charges.
Generation gap. California agencies have appealed to air pollution control officials to change the rules, after backup generators failed and water stopped pumping during wildfires last year, as Cheri Carlson reports for the Ventura County Star. They said they need more time to test polluting diesel-operated generators that power water facilities during a fire. Because of air pollution concerns, the agencies are limited to testing the diesel-powered generators as little as 20 hours per year in some cases. So far, no dice.
AND ANOTHER THING
Wood wide web? Researchers have produced the first global map of underground fungi holding together a complex network of roots and bacteria in soil that feeds a forest, as they report this week in the journal Nature. The fungi probably help curtail some climate change as well, the scientists found."It's the first time that we've been able to understand the world beneath our feet, but at a global scale,” Thomas Crowther, an author from ETH Zurich, told the BBC's Claire Marshall. The subterranean social network, nearly 500 million years old, has been named the "wood wide web."
And finally, rather than the usual chart showing the latest bump-up in atmospheric carbon dioxide, here's that graphic showing the frighteningly high point we reached this week. Scientists say to keep a livable planet, we need to cut the amount to 350 parts per million. We're at 415 ppm, the highest humans have ever known.
That's all for this week. You can reach me @janetwilson66 or anet.wilson@desertsun.com You can subscribe to Paste BN Climate Point for free here.