ROFLMAO
Ottawa says it needs revenue generated by the Trans Mountain pipeline to fight climate change
Nick Boisvert 6 hrs ago

© Jason Franson//The Canadian Press The minister responsible for climate change and the environment said revenue generated by pipelines will help Canada transition to a low-emission future.

The minister responsible for Canada's role in fighting climate change is defending his government's purchase of the Trans Mountain pipeline after a landmark UN report said the continued use of fossil fuels is pushing the climate toward catastrophe.

Minister of Environment and Climate Change Jonathan Wilkinson said today that revenue generated by the project will help Canada achieve its long-term climate objectives.

Wilkinson reaffirmed Canada's commitment to phasing out fossil fuels and achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050, but said achieving that target will require money generated by fossil fuels.

"Canada needs to ensure that in the context of that transition, it's extracting full value for its resources and using that money to push forward in terms of reducing emissions," Wilkinson said on CBC's Power & Politics.

"What we're doing is saying it's got to be part of the transition, but part of the transition is being able to raise the revenues that enable you to actually make the investments that are required to go there."

Video: Environment minister defends government's climate plan (cbc.ca)

Wilkinson's comments came on the same day that the UN climate panel published a report that forecasts catastrophic environmental consequences if humans continue burning coal and other fossil fuels.

The Canadian government purchased the embattled Trans Mountain pipeline from energy giant Kinder Morgan in 2018 for $4.5 billion.

A planned expansion of the pipeline will increase the amount of crude it carries from Alberta to British Columbia's coast from 300,000 to 890,000 barrels per day.

The project, and Ottawa's decision to purchase the pipeline, have been dogged by environmental concerns, objections from First Nations and economic forecasts that predict weak long-term demand for oil.

The NDP and Greens have repeatedly criticized the government for its decision to buy the pipeline. They repeated those criticisms today in statements responding to the UN report.

"While they talk a lot about climate leadership, these are not the actions of a government who is interested in fighting the climate crisis like they actually want to win," said Laurel Collins, the NDP's critic for climate change and the environment.

"The federal government is falling further and further behind our international partners in its climate action ambition and in doing its fair share," said Green Party Leader Annamie Paul.

IMPERIALISM BY ANY OTHER NAME

Cambodia dam destroyed livelihoods of tens of thousands: HRW


A massive Chinese-financed dam in Cambodia has "washed away the livelihoods" of tens of thousands of villagers while falling short of promised energy production, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday.

 Ly LAY The Lower Sesan 2 dam has sparked controversy since long before its December 2018 launch

The 400-megawatt Lower Sesan 2 dam in the kingdom's northeast has sparked controversy since long before its December 2018 launch.

Fisheries experts had warned that damming the confluence of the Sesan and Srepok rivers -- two major tributaries of the resource-rich Mekong river -- would threaten fish stocks crucial to millions living along the Mekong's flood plains.

Tens of thousands of villagers living upstream and downstream have suffered steep losses to their incomes, HRW said in Tuesday's report, citing interviews conducted over two years with some 60 people from various communities.

"The Lower Sesan 2 dam washed away the livelihoods of Indigenous and ethnic minority communities who previously lived communally and mostly self-sufficiently from fishing, forest-gathering, and agriculture," John Sifton, Human Rights Watch's Asia advocacy director and the report's author, said Tuesday.

"Cambodian authorities need to urgently revisit this project's compensation, resettlement, and livelihood-restoration methods."

"There's no doubt at all that (the dam) contributed significantly to the larger problems the Mekong is facing right now," said Mekong energy and water expert Brian Eyler, while adding that more research was needed on the exact losses.

The government had pushed ahead with the project -- which involved resettling about 5,000 people -- in hopes of producing about one-sixth of Cambodia's annual electricity needs as promised by China Huaneng Group, the builder.

But production levels are "likely far lower, amounting to only a third of those levels", the report said.

Government spokesman Phay Siphan defended the dam, saying it provided "the most positive impacts" and that the resettled villagers have new homes, farmland and electric power.

"The allegations are not reasonable, they don't look at Cambodian experiences... and the new location is better than the old place," Phay Siphan said, adding that the government would continue to monitor the impacts on surrounding villages.

The dam, which cost a reported $780 million to build, is part of China's Belt and Road initiative, a mammoth $1 trillion-dollar infrastructure vision for maritime, rail and road projects across Asia, Africa and Europe.

The scheme, a symbol of Beijing's efforts to extend economic influence around the world, has been widely criticised for saddling small countries with unmanageable debt.

suy-dhc/leg/jah

AFP 

PENNSYLVANIA

Professor, team probe flooding risks in Conemaugh watershed

By JOSHUA BYERS, 

The (Johnstown) Tribune-Democrat

August 7, 2021

JOHNSTOWN, Pa. (AP) —

Scientific measuring devices have hung suspended in the Little Conemaugh River at the base of the former South Fork Hunting and Fishing Club dam, tracking the rise and fall of water levels for four years, and Christopher Coughenour has diligently recorded the readings.

The earthen dam has sat in ruins since the breach in May of 1889 let loose 20 million tons of water into the valley, destroying much of Johnstown. It’s now part of a historic landmark.

Not much has been done to study the local watershed and flooding that occurs within it since that disaster.

That’s where work begins by Coughenour, a University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown natural sciences assistant professor, and some of his colleagues and students.

“No modern hydrological study has been done,” he said, “at least not in the public domain.”

There are about 200 square miles of drainage that eventually flows into the Conemaugh River, which runs west toward Pittsburgh from the point where the Stonycreek and Little Conemaugh rivers meet in downtown Johnstown. Coughenour said his interest concerns direct runoff into the Little Conemaugh River sub-basin, which covers roughly 55 square miles of drainage.

Coughenour and his team are trying to figure out how much water can enter that watershed before the rivers rise and flood. They’ve also studied the recurrence intervals, which are the average expected times of discharge of high volumes of water.

By doing that, he said the research will provide insight into what happened in 1889, as well as the level of risk for a major weather-related event Johnstown faces today. Coughenour said that’s beneficial because often the Federal Emergency Management Agency and insurance companies use that sort of information to gauge vulnerability.

The point of the study is to determine the actual return period for an event such as the 1936 Johnstown flood, which was the largest discharge on record at the time, with 28,000 cubic feet of water per second passing through the valley. The Johnstown flood of 1977 beat that record by nearly double, with 40,000 cubic feet per second.

Tracking water data

The professor and team have monitored the river to record a variety of empirical data since 2017.

The group used a staff plate with inches and feet measurements for sight readings and a water logger for temperature and pressure analysis. The pressure reading is converted to height and measured as the hydrostatic pressure, which provides the stream’s “stage.”

Ideally, Coughenour’s team collected data four to five times per year.

That information was then used to create a stream rating curve, which is combined with NEXRAD – a special Doppler radar – to produce the watershed response data.

“What we’re trying to figure out is, ‘How much input does the watershed take before the stream rises?’ ” Coughenour said.

The team used what he called the unit hydrograph approach. That shows how the watershed responds to one unit of excess precipitation.

‘A lot of knowledge’

Surprisingly, Coughenour said, the best data during the study came from 2020, although the discharge measurements, calculated by gathering velocity readings against the width and depth of the stream, couldn’t be done because of COVID-19 restrictions.

Despite the setback, the pandemic didn’t really affect the project otherwise. Utilizing discharge data from previous years, the study’s integrity remained intact.

“I thought it was an amazing experience and opportunity,” UPJ alumnus Anthony Taylor said. “I gained a lot of knowledge.”

Taylor was one of the students who helped Coughenour with the research. He was tapped as a freshman by the professor to lend a hand because of his interest in hydrology, and helped until he graduated in 2019.

“It was an unforgettable experience,” Taylor said.

One aspect of the work that stood out to him was having to invent a cable-way system in order to collect velocity data on the river with a weighted device.

Because the study was conducted in a national historic site operated by the U.S. National Park Service, the group couldn’t permanently alter the area. That meant no digging for poles to set up a pulley system. So the team had to get creative.

Sharing the findings

Coughenour said they fabricated a system and temporarily mounted it to a tree.

Collecting this data allowed the team to determine the discharge of the river.

However, all of this is complicated by the hilly topography of the region and shifting weather patterns. There’s also the issue with calculating snowfall and a rapid melt, which Coughenour said his team didn’t do because that’s another factor entirely.

Taylor said he learned a lot by contributing to the project, and one aspect that stood out was how quickly the river changed based on precipitation. He added that he’d like to see the research expanded on.

The study was submitted for publication in June and he should find out in August or September if it was picked up.

Coughenour said, ultimately, all the data he and his team collect will be given to the National Park Service and will also be publicly available.

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Online:

https://bit.ly/3A460xa

Even Minor Volcanic Eruptions Could Trigger Global Catastrophe, Scientists Warn


The specter of terrifying volcanic eruptions is emblazoned in our imaginations from childhood: an earth-shattering explosion, followed by gushing bursts of lava and billowing smoke.

© Johan Ordonez/AFP/Getty Images Fuego volcano erupting in Guatemala, 19 Nov 2018.

The dangers of large-scale volcanic eruptions are very real: In the worst-case scenario, an extremely rare and powerful supervolcanic eruption might even devastate the planet. But scientists now warn it wouldn't even take such an extreme outburst to trigger a global catastrophe.

According to new research, much smaller-scale volcanic events can still unleash sufficient chaos to imperil the modern world.

"Even a minor eruption in one of the areas we identify could erupt enough ash or generate large enough tremors to disrupt networks that are central to global supply chains and financial systems," says global risk researcher Lara Mani from the University of Cambridge.

"At the moment, calculations are too skewed towards giant explosions or nightmare scenarios, when the more likely risks come from moderate events that disable major international communications, trade networks, or transport hubs."

Moderate eruptions might not seize our attention quite as much as their more thunderous counterparts, but they can wreak more havoc.

Case in point: the magnitude 6 eruption Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 was approximately 100 times more powerful than the magnitude 4 eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull in 2010.

But Eyjafjallajökull turned out to be most costly volcanic eruption in history, with a damage bill of US$5 billion to the global economy – whereas the losses from Mount Pinatubo's far greater eruption were only a fraction of that (US$740 million in 2021, adjusted for inflation).

How is this imbalance possible? Mani and her team call it the 'VEI-GCR asymmetry': a new kind of paradigm where the danger of volcanoes (global catastrophic risk, GCR) doesn't rise in line with the power of volcanoes (volcanic explosivity index, VEI).

Historically, assessments of volcanic risk have suggested that the more powerful a volcano's eruptions, the greater a danger it presents in terms of global catastrophic risk: a relationship that can be called 'VEI-GCR symmetry'.

But this might not be the case any more, as much of the world's critical infrastructure today – including international shipping passages, submarine telecommunications cables, and aerial transportation routes – is not especially close to the volcanic regions that produce the most powerful eruptions (with a VEI of 7 or 8).

"We observe that many of these critical infrastructures and networks converge in regions where they could be exposed to moderate-scale volcanic eruptions (VEI 3-6)," the researchers write in their study.

"These regions of intersection, or pinch points, present localities where we have prioritized efficiency over resilience, and manufactured a new global catastrophic risk landscape."

According to the team's analysis, there are seven of these 'pinch points' around the globe, where critical infrastructure elements now lie dangerously close to VEI 3 to 6 magnitude eruptions.

These include Taiwan, which produces a huge amount of the world's microchips, the global supply of which is jeopardized by proximity to the Tatun Volcanic Group (TVG).

In the US, moderate eruptions in the Pacific Northwest have the potential to disrupt trade and travel in both the US and Canada, causing massive economic harm.

Meanwhile, volcanoes in Iceland have the potential to create a pinch point in the North Atlantic, disrupting aerial traffic between London and New York, and causing serious delays for trade and transportation networks.

Other international pinch points, located in the Mediterranean and around Malaysia, threaten some of the world's busiest shipping routes.

Another, located in the Luzon Strait, is a key route for underwater telecommunications cables connecting China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea – all of which could be damaged by eruptions causing submarine landslides and tsunamis, causing severe disruptions to communications abilities and global financial markets.

These sorts of downstream consequences aren't the first things that spring to mind when we think of the destructive power of volcanoes, but maybe they should be, the researchers suggest.

"It's time to change how we view extreme volcanic risk," Mani says.

"We need to move away from thinking in terms of colossal eruptions destroying the world, as portrayed in Hollywood films. The more probable scenarios involve lower-magnitude eruptions interacting with our societal vulnerabilities and cascading us towards catastrophe."

The findings are reported in Nature Communications.

Indonesia’s Mount Merapi erupts with bursts of lava, ash

By SLAMET RIYAD

August 7, 2021

YOGYAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesia’s most volatile volcano erupted Sunday on the densely populated island of Java, spewing smoke and ash high into the air and sending streams of lava and gasses down its slopes. No casualties were reported.

Mount Merapi unleashed clouds of hot ash at least seven times since Sunday morning, as well as a series of fast-moving pyroclastic flows, a mixture of rock, debris, lava and gasses, said Hanik Humaida, who heads the city of Yogyakarta’s Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation Center. The rumbling sound could be heard several kilometers (miles) away.

The mountain has seen increased volcanic activity in recent weeks, with its lava dome growing rapidly before partially collapsing Sunday, sending rocks and ash flowing down the volcano’s southwest flank, Humaida said.

Ash from the eruption blanketed several villages and nearby towns, she said.

Villagers living on Merapi’s fertile slopes were advised to stay 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) away from the crater’s mouth and should be aware of the danger posed by lava, Indonesia’s Geology and Volcanology Research Agency said.

Merapi’s last major eruption in 2010 killed 347 people.

The 2,968-meter (9,737-foot) peak is near Yogyakarta, an ancient city of several hundred thousand people embedded in a large metro area. The city is also a center of Javanese culture and a seat of royal dynasties going back centuries.

This latest eruption sent hot ash 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) into the sky, and the searing clouds of gas traveled up to 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) down its slopes several times, the country’s geology agency said on its website.

Mount Merapi is the most active of more than 120 active volcanoes in Indonesia and has repeatedly erupted with lava and gas clouds recently.

The Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation Center did not raise Merapi’s alert status, which already was at the second-highest of four levels since it began erupting last November.

Indonesia, an archipelago of 270 million people, is prone to earthquakes and volcanic activity because it sits along the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a horseshoe-shaped series of seismic fault lines around the ocean.

Whale dies 3 months after move from Canada to Connecticut

August 6, 2021

FILE - In this Friday, May 14, 2021 file photo, Mystic Aquarium trainers play with a Beluga whale in Mystic, Conn. One of five beluga whales acquired from an aquarium in Canada after a legal fight with animal rights activists has died at its new home in Connecticut. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill, File)

MYSTIC, Conn. (AP) — One of five beluga whales acquired from an aquarium in Canada after a legal fight with animal rights activists has died at its new home in Connecticut.

Officials at Mystic Aquarium, which specializes in beluga research, said in a Facebook post that the male whale had arrived in May with a preexisting medical condition. It died Friday, despite “round-the-clock medical treatment, testing, and 24-hour monitoring,” the aquarium said in a statement.

“While he had shown signs of improvement from a gastrointestinal condition, we are deeply saddened to share that he passed away (Friday) morning,” the aquarium said. “This is a devastating loss for our staff and for the community, especially the animal care team who works closely with the belugas.”

The whale arrived in May with four others from Marineland in Niagara Falls, Ontario, after a lengthy battle to obtain permits from both the United States and Canada.

Connecticut-based Friends of Animals and other activists had sought to block the transport in a lawsuit last fall against the U.S. Commerce secretary and National Marine Fisheries Service, which had approved the research permit.

The group claimed the U.S. permit violated the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the National Environmental Policy Act because government officials did not adequately address the potential harm to the belugas from being moved to Mystic.

A federal judge in March declined to issue an injunction.

The whales, which range in age from 7 to 12, were born in captivity and left an overcrowded habitat with about 50 other whales to be at the center of important research designed to benefit belugas in the wild, aquarium officials said.

Belugas finally arrive at Mystic Aquarium after legal battle

By JESSICA HILL and PAT EATON-ROBB

May 14, 2021

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A Beluga whale is transported at Mystic Aquarium after arriving from Canada, Friday, May 14, 2021 in Mystic, Conn. A total of five Beluga whales from Marineland in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada will be moved to the aquarium. The whales will be leaving an overcrowded habitat with about 50 other whales and will be at the center of important research designed to benefit Belugas in the wild. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill)

MYSTIC, Conn. (AP) — Three Beluga whales arrived Friday night at their new home in a Connecticut aquarium after a legal battle to import them and two others from Canada.

The whales were flown from Ontario to Connecticut on Friday, secured in special stretchers inside individual tanks and accompanied by a veterinarian and other marine-life experts.

Accompanied by a police escort, they arrived in Mystic on three tractor-trailers at about 7:40 p.m., where they were lifted on their stretchers by cranes into their new habitat. The transfer from truck to habitat took about a half hour to complete.

The remaining two Belugas are set to arrive at Mystic Aquarium early Saturday from Marineland in Niagara Falls, Ontario.

Government officials from Fisheries and Oceans Canada last month approved the export of the whales, seven months after U.S. officials approved the move.

Connecticut-based Friends of Animals and other activists sought to block the transport in a lawsuit last fall against the U.S. Commerce secretary and National Marine Fisheries Service, which had approved the research permit. A federal judge in March declined to issue an injunction.

The whales, which range in age from 7 to 12, were born in captivity and officials said they cannot safely be released into the ocean.

Mystic officials said the five whales left an overcrowded habitat with about 50 other Belugas in Canada to join three other Belugas at the center of important research designed to benefit the species in the wild.

The animals will be trained to voluntarily give blood, saliva, blowhole air and other samples in exchange for rewards.

“Having eight animals certainly helps when trying to draw conclusions with the research,” said Tracy Romano, Mystic’s vice president of research and chief scientist. “It’s priceless to be able to work with trained animals and be able to get biological samples on a regular basis and all of this will help us interpret what we’re seeing in the wild and help with the management and conservation of the species.”

POLLUTER PAYES

Colorado mine owner seeks US compensation over 2015 spill
August 6, 2021

FILE - In this Aug. 14, 2015, file photo, water flows through a series of sediment retention ponds built to reduce heavy metal and chemical contaminants from the Gold King Mine wastewater accident, in the spillway downstream from the mine, outside Silverton, Colo. The owner of an inactive southwestern Colorado mine that was the source of a disastrous 2015 spill that fouled rivers in three Western states has filed a lawsuit seeking nearly $3.8 million in compensation for the federal government's use of his land in its ongoing cleanup response. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley, File)


DURANGO, Colo. (AP) — The owner of an inactive southwestern Colorado mine that was the source of a disastrous 2015 spill that fouled rivers in three Western states has sued the U.S. government, seeking nearly $3.8 million in compensation for using his land in its cleanup.

Todd Hennis claims the Environmental Protection Agency has occupied part of his property near the Gold King Mine but hasn’t compensated him for doing so since the August 2015 spill, The Durango Herald reported. He also contends that the EPA contaminated his land by causing the spill, which sent a bright-yellow plume of arsenic, lead and other heavy metals into rivers in Colorado, New Mexico and Utah.

In the lawsuit filed Tuesday in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, Hennis argued that the EPA’s actions have violated his Fifth Amendment rights to just compensation for public use of private property.

The EPA didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment Friday.

An EPA-led contractor crew was doing excavation work at the entrance to the mine when it inadvertently breached a debris pile that was holding back wastewater inside the mine.

The spill released 3 million gallons (11 million liters) of wastewater that made its way into the Animas River and eventually down to the San Juan River. Water utilities were forced to shut down intake valves, and farmers stopped drawing from the rivers as the plume moved downstream.

After the spill, the EPA designated the Gold King Mine and 47 other mining sites in the area a Superfund cleanup district. The agency is still reviewing options for a broader cleanup.

The lawsuit says Hennis verbally authorized the government to use part of a 33-acre (13-hectare) piece of land as an emergency staging area right after the blowout. He thought it would be temporary and that he would be compensated, according to the lawsuit.

Hennis claims that months later and without his permission, the EPA built a $2.3 million water treatment facility on the property. The agency continues treating water and storing waste there, the lawsuit says.

He’s asking for at least $3 million in compensation for damage to and occupation of the property, which he says is worth at least $3 million according to a private appraisal this year. The lawsuit also seeks interest.

In January, New Mexico and the Navajo Nation announced settlements in litigation over the spill with companies that had operated mines near Gold King. Last year, the U.S. government settled a lawsuit brought by Utah for a fraction of what it was initially seeking in damages.

Gulf of Mexico’s ‘dead zone’ larger than average this year
By The Associated Press

This year’s Gulf of Mexico “dead zone” — an area where there’s too little oxygen to support marine life — is larger than average, according to researchers.

Scientists supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration determined that the area off Louisiana and Texas’ coasts covers about 6,334 square miles (16,405 square kilometers), the agency said in a news release Tuesday.

Over the past five years, the average size of the low-oxygen, or hypoxic, zone has been 5,380 square miles (13,934 square kilometers). That’s 2.8 times larger than the goal set by a federal task force to reduce the five-year average to 1,900 square miles (4,921 square kilometers) or smaller by 2035.

Because year-to-year measurements can vary widely — this year’s zone is about three times the size of 2020’s — NOAA says a multiyear average “captures the true dynamic nature of the zone.”

 

This summer’s measurement was larger than the average-sized area that the agency predicted in June based on Mississippi River nitrogen and phosphorous runoff data.

River discharge that drained into the Gulf of Mexico was above normal for the three weeks before the weeklong survey started on July 25. It was conducted by scientists from Louisiana State University and the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium.

“The distribution of the low dissolved oxygen was unusual this summer,” Nancy Rabalais, the lead investigator, said. “The low oxygen conditions were very close to shore with many observations showing an almost complete lack of oxygen.”

Human activities in urban and agricultural areas throughout the Mississippi River watershed primarily cause the annual “dead zone.” Excess nutrients flow into the Gulf of Mexico and stimulate an overgrowth of algae, which die and decompose. The algae deplete oxygen as they sink to the bottom.

NOAA highlighted efforts to reduce fertilizer runoff and other pollution from contributing to the hypoxic area. Radhika Fox, the Environmental Protection Agency’s assistant administrator for water, said climate change also needs to be considered to make progress.

“This year, we have seen again and again the profound effect that climate change has on our communities — from historic drought in the west to flooding events,” Fox said. “Climate is directly linked to water, including the flow of nutrient pollution into the Gulf of Mexico.”

SCHADENFRUEDE

This year’s summer of climate extremes hits wealthier places

By SETH BORENSTEIN and FRANK JORDANS

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FILE - In this Thursday, July 15, 2021, 2021 file photo, a regional train in the flood waters at the local station in Kordel, Germany, after it was flooded by the high waters of the Kyll river. This summer a lot of the places hit by weather disasters are not used to getting extremes and many of them are wealthier, which is different from the normal climate change victims. That includes unprecedented deadly flooding in Germany and Belgium, 116-degree heat records in Portland, Oregon and similar blistering temperatures in Canada, along with wildfires. Now Southern Europe is seeing scorching temperatures and out-of-control blazes too. And the summer of extremes is only getting started. Peak Atlantic hurricane and wildfire seasons in the United States are knocking at the door. (Sebastian Schmitt/dpa via AP, File)

As the world staggers through another summer of extreme weather, experts are noticing something different: 2021′s onslaught is hitting harder and in places that have been spared global warming’s wrath in the past.

Wealthy countries such as the United States, Canada, Germany and Belgium are joining poorer and more vulnerable nations on a growing list of extreme weather events that scientists say have some connection to human-caused climate change.

“It is not only a poor country problem, it’s now very obviously a rich country problem,” said Debby Guha-Sapir, founder of the international disaster database at the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters at Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. “They (the rich) are getting whacked.”

Killer floods hit China, but hundreds of people also drowned in parts of Germany and Belgium not used to being inundated. Canada and the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. had what climate scientist Zeke Hausfather called “scary” heat that soared well past triple digits in Fahrenheit and into the high 40s in Celsius, shattering records and accompanied by unusual wildfires. Now southern Europe is seeing unprecedented heat and fire.

And peak Atlantic hurricane and U.S. wildfire seasons are only just starting.

When what would become Hurricane Elsa formed on July 1, it broke last year’s record for the earliest fifth named Atlantic storm. Colorado State University has already increased its forecast for the number of named Atlantic storms — and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Wednesday said it was expecting one or two named storms more than it predicted in May.

For fire season, the U.S. West is the driest it has been since 1580, based on soil moisture readings and tree ring records, setting the stage for worsening fires if something ignites them, said UCLA climate and fire scientist Park Williams.

What happens with U.S. hurricane and fire seasons drives the end-of-year statistics for total damage costs of weather disasters, said Ernst Rauch, chief climate and geo scientist for insurance giant Munich Re. But so far this year, he said, wealthier regions have seen the biggest economic losses.

But when poorer countries are hit, they are less prepared and their people can’t use air conditioning or leave so there’s more harm, said Hausfather, climate director of the Breakthrough Institute. While hundreds of people died in the Pacific Northwest heat wave, he said the number would have been much higher in poor areas.

Madagascar, an island nation off East Africa, is in the middle of back-to-back droughts that the United Nations warns are pushing 400,000 people toward starvation.

Though it is too early to say the summer of 2021 will again break records for climate disasters, “We’re certainly starting to see climate change push extreme events into new territories where they haven’t been seen before,” Hausfather said.

The number of weather, water and climate disasters so far this year is only slightly higher than the average of recent years, said disaster researcher Guha-Sapir. Her group’s database, which she said still is missing quite a few events, shows 208 such disasters worldwide through July — about 11% more than the last decade’s average, but a bit less than last year.

Last year, the record-shattering heat that came out of nowhere was in Siberia, where few people live, but this year it struck Portland, Oregon, and British Columbia, which gets more Western media attention, Hausfather said.

What’s happening is “partly an increase in the statistics of these extreme events, but also just that the steady drumbeat, the pile on year-on-year ... takes its cumulative toll on all of us who are reading these headlines,” said Georgia Tech climate scientist Kim Cobb.

“This pattern of recent Northern Hemisphere summers has been really quite stark,” said University of Exeter climate scientist Peter Stott.

While the overall temperature rise is “playing out exactly as we said 20 years ago, ... what we are seeing in terms of the heat waves and the floods is more extreme than we predicted back then,” Stott said.

Climate scientists say there is little doubt climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas is driving extreme events.

A new study using satellite images of global flooding since 2000, shows that flooding worldwide hits 10 times as many people as previously thought. Wednesday’s study in the journal Nature finds that from 2000 to 2018 between 255 and 290 million people were directly affected by floods — which lead author Beth Tellman of the University of Arizona says is based on 913 floods with thousands more not counted because of satellite image problems.

Previous estimates showed far fewer people hit by flooding because they were based on computer simulations, rather than observations. The new study finds that population within flooded areas grew 34% since 2000, nearly twice as fast as those outside flooded areas.

Tellman identified 25 nations that are “climate surprise” countries that will have to cope far more with the flooding problems than they do now. Those countries include the U.S, as well as Germany, Belgium and China, which were hit by flooding this summer.

Aside from dramatic floods and fires, heat waves are a major risk to prepare for in the future, Guha-Sapir said.

“It’s going to be a very big deal in the Western countries because the most susceptible to sudden peaks of heat are older people. And the demographic profile of the people in Europe is very old,” she said. “Heat waves are going to be a real issue in the next few years.”

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Borenstein reported from Kensington, Maryland, and Jordans reported from Berlin.

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Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears and Frank Jordans at @wirereporter.

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Read stories on climate issues by The Associated Press at https://apnews.com/hub/climate

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Welcome back to Canada, ugly Americans

OPINION
Debby Waldman

EDMONTON, Alberta — When I heard in late June that my fellow Americans were angry that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cautious pandemic strategy meant keeping the Canada-U.S. border closed for at least another month, I wondered if his real plan was to shutter it until the Republicans repudiated former President Donald Trump and stopped threatening democracy.

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I ran the theory past my neighbors in Edmonton, where I’ve lived for 29 years. They snickered knowingly. One, a political scientist, agreed I was on to something.

Encouraged, I texted the idea to a friend in Washington, D.C.

“That is ridiculous,” he shot back, pointing out that Americans and Canadians from Maine to Vancouver were equally outraged about the ongoing closure, which has separated people from their loved ones and is destroying local economies in both countries. “This is beyond politics,” he added.

Then he apologized for being grumpy and asked a question that has nagged at me ever since: “Do a lot of people in Edmonton really see America's messed-up politics as a reason to keep the border closed?"

I don’t know — and Trudeau made clear that it wasn’t a matter of democratic values when he announced the border was finally reopening to fully vaccinated Americans on Aug. 9. But America’s messed-up politics are definitely making me reassess my feelings about my erstwhile homeland, something I never imagined possible.

I’m a second-generation American, the grandchild of immigrants who fled Eastern Europe with more optimism than money. Growing up, I was proud to be from what I believed was the greatest country in the world. When I traveled abroad for the first time during college I discovered the Ugly American stereotype, but it didn’t bother me; I knew most of us weren’t like that.

I want to believe most of us still aren’t, but being confined to this side of the border, watching as Trump repeatedly lies that he won the election and millions of Americans believe him (including federal legislators who took an oath to uphold the Constitution) is testing my faith. I learned about the storming of the U.S. Capitol in January in a snarky text from a Canadian relative: “How is America today? Is this a banana republic in Central America?”

Watching what looks like the slow death of American democracy doesn’t exactly engender pride. Especially disconcerting is that I can’t tell if my feelings have shifted because my perspective has changed or the U.S. has. In the past, a trip over the border to visit family and friends would remind me that there’s more to the U.S. than bad news about bad politics.

But the pandemic has confined me to this side of the border, surrounded by people who, like me, are appalled at what’s happening down south. Watching the news in Edmonton in what is essentially a progressive echo chamber makes me grateful to be a Canadian citizen, something I would not have thought possible when I moved here in 1992.

Back then I was a reluctant immigrant — I used to joke that I was dragged here kicking and screaming by my husband, a Canadian who was offered a good job in his hometown. I had never wanted or intended to live anywhere except the U.S. But while I’m well aware of Canada’s shortcomings — among them its systemic mistreatment of First Nations peoples and, in my province of Alberta, a shockingly laissez-faire attitude about Covid-19 — the country grew on me for a number of reasons, including its open-minded population, sensible gun and banking regulations, taxpayer-funded health care, relatively affordable college tuition and an immigration policy that celebrates multiculturalism.

I also noticed something I’d totally missed while living in the U.S.: our troubled family dynamic. The U.S. is the bolder, brash, attention-grabbing sibling; Canada the quieter, gentler one. In 1969, then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau (Justin’s father) defined the relationship this way in a speech to the press club in Washington: “Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.”

During the Trump administration, the beast was neither friendly nor even-tempered. Trump imposed tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum imports, insulting Canada in the process by calling the move a matter of “national security.” He demonized NAFTA, the trade deal that sealed the U.S. and Canada’s economic interdependence. And in a textbook case of projection, he labeled the younger Trudeau as “dishonest,” “weak” and “two-faced.”

I know plenty of Americans are also frustrated about having to live every day with Trump’s legacy of divisiveness. That makes me feel lucky to have wound up on this side of the border and guilty for feeling that way, like I imagine Titanic survivors felt after watching the ship sink from the comfort of their lifeboats.

“It’s a complex country,” my D.C. friend told me by way of assuring me that things aren’t as bad as they look on the nightly news or what is filtered through my judgmental Canadian neighbors and relatives. But I’ll believe him when I see it. ​​While Canadian businesses eagerly welcome vaccinated American tourists (even the ugly ones), I’m eager to take a trip in the other direction.

I need to experience firsthand the complexity that my friend spoke of. Doing so, I hope, will confirm there is more to my homeland than the anger and polarization that are making a mockery of E Pluribus Unum and threatening everything that, once upon a time, made me believe it was great. Which is why, despite my glib assessment about Trudeau keeping the border closed, I'm more than ready for it to open.

PRIMAL FEAR UNDER PATRIARCHY
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was afraid she was going to be raped during the Capitol riot: 'I didn't think I was just going to be killed'

ssheth@businessinsider.com (Sonam Sheth,Eliza Relman) 

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Alex Wroblewski/Getty Images

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told CNN she was afraid she'd be raped during the Capitol siege.

"I didn't think that I was just going to be killed," she told CNN's Dana Bash.

The New York lawmaker previously compared people downplaying the riot to abusers of women.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York told CNN's Dana Bash that she was afraid she was going to be raped and killed on January 6, when a mob of pro-Trump insurrectionists laid siege to the US Capitol in a failed effort to overturn the 2020 US election results.

"One of the reasons why that impact was so double that day is because of the misogyny and the racism that is so deeply rooted and animated the attack on the Capitol," Ocasio-Cortez told Bash in an interview for CNN's new series "Being," which is set to air in full Monday at 9 p.m. ET.

"White supremacy and patriarchy are very linked in a lot of ways," the New York congresswoman continued. "There's a lot of sexualizing of that violence, and I didn't think that I was just going to be killed. I thought other things were going to happen to me as well."

Bash replied: "So it sounds like what you're telling me right now is that you didn't only think that you were going to die - you thought you were going to be raped."

"Yeah," Ocasio-Cortez said. "Yeah, I thought I was."

While recounting her experience of the Capitol riot, Ocasio-Cortez publicly revealed on Instagram Live in February that she'd previously been sexually assaulted, and she compared Republicans who downplayed the riot and urged the country to move on to abusers.

"They're trying to tell us to move on without any accountability, without any truth-telling, or without confronting the extreme damage, loss of life, trauma," Ocasio-Cortez said then. "The reason I say this, and the reason I'm getting emotional is because they told us to move on, that it's not a big deal, that we should forget what happened, or even telling us to apologize. These are the tactics of abusers."


The 31-year-old lawmaker, who's become a lightning rod for conservative criticism and a top target for death threats, said in the February Instagram Live that she thought her congressional office was being attacked on January 6. She and a staffer hid inside her office as someone who they thought was a rioter pounded on the door. The person turned out to be a Capitol Police officer, who Ocasio-Cortez said didn't identify himself.

Ocasio-Cortez recounted being terrified that she was going to be murdered as she hid in the bathroom in her office.

"I thought I was going to die," she said. "I have never been quieter in my entire life."

Against Our Will (susanbrownmiller.com)