It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Friday, June 23, 2023
An environmental writer asks: What world will my daughter inherit?
Story by Dennis Drabelle • Yesterday
In his 1950 acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in literature, William Faulkner said, “I believe that man will not merely endure; he will prevail.” The title of David Gessner’s new book, “A Traveler’s Guide to the End of the World: Tales of Fire, Wind, and Water,” suggests a 21st-century update of Faulkner’s dictum: Man will prevail but might not endure.
A veteran writer on the environment, Gessner evokes the havoc resulting from human-caused climate change by taking us to a host of melting, blazing, flooded or desiccated places, including the Mississippi River Delta; his hurricane-prone hometown of Wilmington, N.C.; the Colorado River, in the throes of becoming Colorado Creek; Miami, New York and other coastal cities vulnerable to what geology professor Hal Wanless predicts will be “an eight- to ten-foot sea level rise by the end of the century. Maybe eleven to thirteen.”
This is a lot to assimilate, and Gessner admits to being a writer who likes to “jump around.” He allowed himself a year and a half of jumping and note-taking, a period in which, “without trying very hard,” he witnessed one climatic disaster or its aftermath after another.
In one passage he pulls things together with the single word “never,” which he kept hearing from people he met. “‘Never have we had so many fires.’ ‘Never has it been so hot.’ ‘Never have we had so many juniper trees die.’” To which might be added a “never” that cropped up as this review was being written: drifting smoke from fires in Nova Scotia, which for the first time ever gave New York the worst air quality of any city in the world.
For the most part, however, Gessner organizes his material around a question he put to one expert after another. What kind of world will Gessner’s daughter, Hadley, be living in four decades from now, when she turns 60, his own age when he started working on the book?
Here again Manhattan comes into play: Hadley is currently an undergraduate at NYU. “There are many visions for the future of the city,” her father reports. “Almost all of them are watery.” For in addition to coping with rising sea levels, residents can expect to be hit by more hurricanes. Meteorologists rank New York, “despite the relatively low odds of a major storm, as the country’s second most dangerous major city, behind only the hurricane bull’s eye of Miami and just ahead of New Orleans.”
For all its evocative prose and knowledgeable commentary, however, “A Traveler’s Guide” can be frustrating to read. The lack of an index is an inconvenience, and the book loses focus for a time when Gessner dwells on the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and the reactions thereto of his former college classmate and friend Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.). Effective as Raskin was in defending the constitutional process and denouncing the attempted coup by the Proud Boys and their ilk, neither he nor that day of infamy has much to do with Gessner’s “Tales of Fire, Wind, and Water.”Read more from Book World
Nevertheless, “A Traveler’s Guide” is replete with thought-provoking set pieces. For instance, Gessner offers sardonic wisdom from one of his most relied-upon sources, Orrin Pilkey, an emeritus professor of earth sciences at Duke. On a visit to Long Beach Island on the New Jersey shore, Pilkey rails at the stupidity of using federal relief refunds to rebuild houses destroyed by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. “It was, as Orrin had said, like giving money to people to help them rebuild on a train track, and then telling them to just keep their fingers crossed and hope the train doesn’t come again.”
He draws an apt comparison to Edward Abbey’s 1975 novel, “The Monkey Wrench Gang.” Those fictional anarchists, you may recall, conspired to blow up Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado and recover the splendid scenery and valuable ecosystem beneath the impounded water. “Now it isn’t just monkey wrenchers who are seriously talking about closing down the dam,” Gessner writes, “and … drought appears to be doing what explosives did not,” i.e., making the great lost canyon visible again.
He also describes a surreal phenomenon in the mountains of Nevada. “Two sunsets glow in front of me. One actual one and the other, further south, something that looks like a sunset but isn’t. The reds and purples and swirling blacks … of the southern pseudo-sunset are the reflection of a fire, not the fire of the sun.”
In the end, Gessner takes a small step back from his “end of the world” rhetoric. He consoles himself, and possibly us, by recalling that all the warnings from his sources are informed conjectures, not certainties. “Because, strangely,” he writes, “one of the most reassuring things is the fact that we really don’t know where we are heading.”
Dennis Drabelle, a former contributing editor of Book World, is the author, most recently, of “The Power of Scenery: Frederick Law Olmsted and the Origin of National Parks.”
A Traveler’s Guide to the End of the World
Tales of Fire, Wind, and Water
By David Gessner
Torrey House. 359 pp. $21.95, paperback
A nuclear site is on tribes' ancestral lands. Their voices are being left out on key cleanup talks
Three federally recognized tribes have devoted decades to restoring the condition of their ancestral lands in southeastern Washington state to what they were before those lands became the most radioactively contaminated site in the nation's nuclear weapons complex, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
But the Yakama Nation, Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and Nez Perce Tribe have been left out of negotiations on a major decision affecting the future cleanup of millions of gallons of radioactive waste stored in underground tanks on the Hanford site near Richland.
In May, federal and state agencies reached an agreement that hasn't been released publicly but will likely involve milestone and deadline changes in the cleanup, according to a spokesperson for the Washington State Department of Ecology, a regulator for the site. As they privately draft their proposed changes, the tribes are bracing for a decision that could threaten their fundamental vision for the site.
“As original stewards of that area, we’ve always been taught to leave it better than you found it,” said Laurene Contreras, program administrator for the Yakama Nation’s Environmental Restoration/Waste Management program, which is responsible for the tribe's Hanford work. “And so that’s what we’re asking for.”
From World War II through the Cold War, Hanford produced more than two-thirds of the United States' plutonium for nuclear weapons, including the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945. Production ceased in 1989, and the site’s mission shifted to cleaning up the chemical and radioactive waste left behind.
For these tribes, which have served as vital watchdogs in the cleanup process, the area’s history dates back long before Hanford, to pre-colonization. It was a place where some fished, hunted, gathered and lived. It’s home to culturally significant sites. And in 1855 treaties with the U.S. government in which the tribes ceded millions of acres of land, they were assured continued access.
The U.S. Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Washington State Department of Ecology have held confidential negotiations since 2020 on revising plans for the approximately 56 million gallons of radioactive waste stored in 177 underground tanks at Hanford. The discerning eyes of the tribal experts have been kept out, though EPA and Ecology have said there will eventually be opportunities for the tribes to meet with them about this.
The revisions are expected to affect an agreement among the three agencies that outlines the Hanford cleanup. Mason Murphy, program manager for the Confederated Tribes' Energy and Environmental Sciences program, points out that the tribes also weren't consulted in that original 1989 agreement.
“It’s an old scabbed-over wound,” Murphy said.
Currently, the agencies plan to convert high-level radioactive waste into glass form that would be sent to a deep geological repository, said Ecology Department spokesperson Ryan Miller. Low-level waste would be converted and disposed of permanently in stainless steel containers at a landfill at the Hanford site
But there isn’t a deep geologic repository in the U.S. to dispose of the high-level waste, he said. And turning that waste into a glass form is reliant on a plant that hasn’t been completed and “faces ongoing technical challenges,” according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report published last month.
Changes to plans to turn the high-level waste into a glass form could have wide-ranging consequences, said Dan Serres, conservation director for the environmental group Columbia Riverkeeper.
“There’s nothing that I’m aware of that demonstrates that another path is going to protect the Columbia River, or groundwater, or the interests of tribes (that) have a right to be using as much of this area as possible,” he said.
The tribes do have small teams of experts dedicated to the cleanup, and they've had an impact.
Through testimony to lawmakers in the 1980s, the Yakama Nation was instrumental in keeping the 580-square-mile (1,500-square-kilometer) site from becoming a deep repository where high-level nuclear waste from across the U.S. would be stored indefinitely.
More recently, tribal experts determined the U.S. Department of Energy's work to remove the radionuclide strontium from groundwater at Hanford would push it into the nearby Columbia River. Their findings prompted the federal agency to reconsider its plans, said Rose Ferri, project tracking resource analyst for Yakama Nation.
"It is important for someone to be that other level of review; to be like, ‘Does this really make sense? Are you really understanding the science here or was there a mistake made?’” said McClure Tosch, a natural resource injury assessment lead for the Yakama Nation.
Last week, experts from the tribe traveled to a Nike Missile site, which had been used to protect Hanford from enemy aircraft, to examine completed cleanup work and determine future restoration options.
The Nez Perce Tribe has four experts within its Environmental Restoration and Waste Management program, which handles much of its Hanford work. Program director Jack Bell said the team's hydrogeologist determined that Energy Department contractors underestimated to what extent a radioactive contaminant could travel into groundwater. The tribe sent letters to the agencies, and the model was updated.
“That model will be used over and over again,” Bell said.
The state Ecology Department said it plans to consult with the tribes once the draft agreement is more finalized. But when that will happen and in what form is still unclear. An energy department spokesperson said in a statement that while the tribes are not included in the negotiations, in other instances the department “consults with Tribal Nations when its action affects, or has the potential to affect, tribal rights or resources.” A regional EPA spokesperson said in a statement when the negotiations are completed, there will be opportunity for “tribal consultation and input ahead of public comment."
Tosch said every chance he gets, he brings up the Yakama Nation not being included in the negotiations.
“If there are permit decisions made, where there is a lot more on-site closure of waste, rather than what we assumed would have been all high-level waste that would have been treated and taken off site … that’s more land that will forever be a waste disposal facility,” he said. “That is very much against the direction and vision for tribal council.”
Hallie Golden, The Associated Press
US Supreme Court rules against Navajo Nation in water dispute
The United States Supreme Court building in Washington
Thu, June 22, 2023 By John Kruzel and Andrew Chung
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday dealt a setback to the Navajo Nation, rejecting its bid to require the federal government to develop a plan to secure water access for the tribe on reservation lands in the parched American southwest.
The justices, in a 5-4 decision authored by conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh, concluded that an 1868 peace treaty between the United States and the tribe did not require the government to take steps such as assessing the tribe's water needs and potentially building pipelines, pumps and wells.
More than 30% of households on the Navajo reservation currently lack running water, according to the tribe.
Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, who has supported Native Americans rights in various cases since joining the court in 2017, dissented from the decision along with the court's three liberal justices.
"The 1868 treaty reserved necessary water to accomplish the purpose of the Navajo Reservation," Kavanaugh wrote in the ruling. "But the treaty did not require the United States to take affirmative steps to secure water for the Tribe."
The treaty, reached three years after the conclusion of the U.S. Civil War, ended two decades of sporadic fighting between the United States and the Navajos and established the Navajo Reservation, which encompasses roughly 17 million acres (6.9 million hectares), largely in the Colorado River Basin.
The treaty secured the right of the Navajos to make use of the land, minerals and water on the reservation, which spans parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
Gorsuch criticized the ruling for deciding more than what was required by the case. In his dissent, Gorsuch wrote that the Navajos sought simply to identify the water rights that the U.S. government holds in trust on the tribe's behalf.
"The government owes the Tribe at least that much," Gorsuch wrote.
The ruling reversed a decision by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that had given a green light to the Navajo Nation's lawsuit against the U.S. Interior Department and others seeking to prod the government to develop a plan to secure water for the tribe. The 9th Circuit said that the government had a "duty to protect and preserve the Nation's right to water."
"The Department of the Interior is committed to upholding its trust and treaty obligations to Tribes, as well as to ensuring that water rights for Colorado River users are fulfilled according to the law. We are reviewing the decision," a department spokesperson said in a statement following Thursday's ruling.
The decision follows another ruling this month in which the Supreme Court upheld a decades-old federal law governing Native American adoption and foster care placements, throwing out a challenge brought by the state of Texas and other plaintiffs to standards that give preferences to Native Americans and tribal members.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York and John Kruzel in Washington; Editing by Will Dunham)
Supreme Court rules against Navajo Nation in Colorado River water rights case
Raynelle Hoskie attaches a hose to a water pump to fill tanks in her truck outside a tribal office on the Navajo reservation in Tuba City, Ariz., on April 20, 2020. The Supreme Court has ruled against the Navajo Nation in a dispute involving water from the drought-stricken Colorado River. States that draw water from the river — Arizona, Nevada and Colorado — and water districts in California had urged the court to decide for them, and that's what the justices did in a 5-4 ruling.
(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)
JESSICA GRESKO Thu, June 22, 2023
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled against the Navajo Nation on Thursday in a dispute involving water from the drought-stricken Colorado River.
States that draw water from the river — Arizona, Nevada and Colorado — and water districts in California that are also involved in the case had urged the court to decide for them, which the justices did in a 5-4 ruling. Colorado had argued that siding with the Navajo Nation would undermine existing agreements and disrupt the management of the river.
The Biden administration had said that if the court were to come down in favor of the Navajo Nation, the federal government could face lawsuits from many other tribes.
Lawyers for the Navajo Nation had characterized the tribe’s request as modest, saying they simply were seeking an assessment of the tribe's water needs and a plan to meet them.
The facts of the case go back to treaties that the tribe and the federal government signed in 1849 and 1868. The second treaty established the reservation as the tribe’s “permanent home” — a promise the Navajo Nation says includes a sufficient supply of water. In 2003 the tribe sued the federal government, arguing it had failed to consider or protect the Navajo Nation’s water rights to the lower portion of the Colorado River.
Writing for a majority made up of conservative justices, Justice Brett Kavanaugh explained that “the Navajos contend that the treaty requires the United States to take affirmative steps to secure water for the Navajos — for example, by assessing the Tribe's water needs, developing a plan to secure the needed water, and potentially building pipelines, pumps, wells, or other water infrastructure.”
But, Kavanaugh said, "In light of the treaty's text and history, we conclude that the treaty does not require the United States to take those affirmative steps.”
Kavanaugh acknowledged that water issues are difficult ones.
“Allocating water in the arid regions of the American West is often a zero-sum situation,” he wrote. It is important, he said, for courts to leave “to Congress and the President the responsibility to enact appropriations laws and to otherwise update federal law as they see fit in light of the competing contemporary needs for water.”
A federal trial court initially dismissed the lawsuit, but an appeals court allowed it to go forward. The Supreme Court's decision reverses that ruling from the appeals court.
In a dissent, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that he would have allowed the case to go forward and he characterized the Navajo's position as a “simple ask.”
“Where do the Navajo go from here?” he wrote. “To date, their efforts to find out what water rights the United States holds for them have produced an experience familiar to any American who has spent time at the Department of Motor Vehicles. The Navajo have waited patiently for someone, anyone, to help them, only to be told (repeatedly) that they have been standing in the wrong line and must try another.”
Gorsuch said one “silver lining” of the case may be that his colleagues in the majority recognized that the tribe may still be able to “assert the interests they claim in water rights litigation, including by seeking to intervene in cases that affect their claimed interests.”
Gorsuch, a conservative and Colorado native who has emerged as a champion of Native rights since joining the court in 2017, was joined by the court's three liberals: Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
During arguments in the case in March, Justice Samuel Alito pointed out that the Navajo Nation’s original reservation was hundreds of miles away from the section of the Colorado River it now seeks water from.
Today, the Colorado River flows along what is now the northwestern border of the tribe’s reservation, which extends into New Mexico, Utah and Arizona. Two of the river’s tributaries, the San Juan River and the Little Colorado River, also pass alongside and through the reservation. Still, one-third of the some 175,000 people who live on the reservation, the largest in the country, do not have running water in their homes.
The government argued that it has helped the tribe secure water from the Colorado River’s tributaries and provided money for infrastructure, including pipelines, pumping plants and water treatment facilities. But it said no law or treaty required the government to assess and address the tribe’s general water needs. The states involved in the case argued that the Navajo Nation was attempting to make an end run around a Supreme Court decree that divvied up water in the Colorado River’s Lower Basin.
In a statement, Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren called the ruling “disappointing" and said the tribe's lawyers “continue to analyze the opinion and determine what it means for this particular lawsuit.”
“My job as the President of the Navajo Nation is to represent and protect the Navajo people, our land, and our future,” Nygren said. “The only way to do that is with secure, quantified water rights to the Lower Basin of the Colorado River.”
Rita McGuire, a lawyer who represented states opposing the tribe’s claims, said the court “ruled exactly right” and that “we’re very pleased.”
____
Associated Press reporter Michael Phillis in St. Louis contributed to this report.
In a scathing dissent, Neil Gorsuch compared the Navajo Nation's plight to the experience of 'any American who has spent time at the Department of Motor Vehicles'
Sonam Sheth
Business Insider Thu, June 22, 2023 Neil Gorsuch.Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the US is not required to secure water for the Navajo Nation.
Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote a dissent comparing the plight of the Navajos to waiting at the DMV.
The Navajo "have tried it all," he wrote. "At each turn, they have received the same answer: 'Try again.'"
Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote an impassioned dissent comparing the Navajo Nation's fight over water rights to the experience of "any American who has spent time at the Department of Motor Vehicles."
"The Navajo have waited patiently for someone, anyone, to help them, only to be told (repeatedly) that they have been standing in the wrong line and must try another," Gorsuch wrote. The high court ruled 5-4 in Arizona v. Navajo Nation on Thursday that under an 1868 treaty, the US is not required to secure water for the Navajo Nation.
Specifically, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who delivered the majority opinion, argued that the Navajo Nation was asking the federal government to take "affirmative steps to secure water for the Navajos."
But Gorsuch wrote in his dissent that the majority "rejects a request the Navajo Nation never made."
Instead, he wrote, "the relief the Tribe seeks is far more modest."
The Navajo "have a simple ask: They want the United States to identify the water rights it holds for them," he wrote. "And if the United States has misappropriated the Navajo's water rights, the Tribe asks it to formulate a plan to stop doing so prospectively."
Gorsuch, who was nominated by then President Donald Trump in 2017, has a long history of ruling in favor of Indigenous rights. And at 26 pages, his dissent in Arizona v. Navajo Nation was twice as long as the majority opinion.
The court's three liberal justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson — joined Gorsuch in his dissent. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Amy Coney Barrett joined in the majority opinion.
Gorsuch in his dissent underscored the Navajo Nation's efforts to avoid taking its case to the Supreme Court.
The US "has never denied that the Navajo may have water rights in the mainstream of the Colorado River (and perhaps elsewhere) that it holds in trust for the Tribe," Gorsuch wrote. "Instead, the government's constant refrain is that the Navajo can have all they ask for; they just need to go somewhere else and do something else first."
They "have tried it all. They have written federal officials. They have moved this Court to clarify the United States' responsibilities when representing them," he wrote. "They have sought to intervene directly in water-related litigation. And when all of those efforts were rebuffed, they brought a claim seeking to compel the United States to make good on its treaty obligations by providing an accounting of what water rights it holds on their behalf. At each turn, they have received the same answer: 'Try again.'"
NBC News highlighted the stakes of the case in March.
Crystal Tulley-Cordova, a hydrologist in the Navajo Nation's department of water resources, told NBC that the tribe needs enough water to transition from "survival mode to thriving mode."
The Navajo Nation first filed a lawsuit in 2003 arguing that the US government was required to ensure that the tribe had enough access to water on its reservation. Twenty years later, the litigation wound up before the high court.
Gorsuch in his dissent wrote that the majority "neglect[ed]" to take into account the violent history leading up to the Treaty of 1868 establishing the Navajo Reservation, the "discussions that surrounded that Treaty," and "the many steps the Navajo took to avoid this litigation."
But he highlighted that the majority opinion left open the possibility that the Navajo can seek to intervene in future cases that "affect their claimed interests" in water-rights litigation.
"After today," Gorsuch wrote, "it is hard to see how this Court (or any court) could ever again fairly deny a request" from the Navajo to intervene in such cases.
That leaves the tribe "in a familiar spot," he continued. As they did at Bosque Redondo, "they must again fight for themselves to secure their homeland and all that must necessarily come with it. Perhaps here, as there, some measure of justice will prevail in the end."
LISTEN LIVE: Supreme Court hears cases over rights of Navajo Nation to water from Colorado River
PBS THREE MONTHS AGO
Greta Thunberg says France targeting climate activists
Police remove Greta Thunberg as they move climate activists who are blocking the entrance to Oljehamnen in Malmo
Reuters Thu, June 22, 2023
PARIS (Reuters) - Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg said on Thursday that campaigners were being "systemically targeted with repression" in France, where she attending a finance summit.
"We are seeing extremely worrying developments where activists all over the world are experiencing increased repressions just for fighting for our present and our future," the 20-year-old Thunberg said.
"For example, here in France just the other day," she added. "They are paying the price for defending life and for the right to protest."
On Wednesday, the French government shut down the environmental activist group Les Soulevements de la Terre for provoking armed protests or violent actions, a move immediately criticized by the leftist opposition and NGOs.
The French interior ministry wasn't immediately available for comment.
(Reporting by Richard Lough; Editing by Mark Potter)
US engineers contributed to Missouri River flood damage and must pay landowners, court rules
Homes sit in floodwaters on Hoge Island north of Bismarck, N.D., along the Missouri River flood plain, on June 15, 2011. A federal appeals court has sided with hundreds of landowners along the Missouri River Friday, June 16, 2023, who say the federal government owes them millions for years of flood damage in a case that could be bound for the U.S. Supreme Court.
(Tom Stromme/The Bismarck Tribune via AP, File)
MARGERY A. BECK Thu, June 22, 2023
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The U.S. government may have to pay tens of millions of dollars — or more — to landowners along the Missouri River after a court ruled it worsened flooding there since 2007 that killed crops and wrecked homes and businesses.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a lower court's 2020 ruling that the federal government must pay for the landowners' loss of value to the land. But the appeals court went even further in its decision last Friday, saying that the government must also pay them for crops, farm equipment and buildings lost to the flooding and finding the government contributed to the devastating flood of 2011.
Courts have found the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers responsible for recurrent flooding since 2007, three years after it changed how it manages the Missouri River’s flow to better protect the habitat of endangered fish and birds. It did so by notching dikes to increase water flow, keeping more water in reservoirs and reopening historic chutes, allowing the river to meander and erode banks.
Farmers, businesses and other landowners say that unconstitutionally deprived them of their land. The courts have largely agreed, finding that the government violated constitutional protections against taking property without just compensation. That Fifth Amendment protection is often seen in cases of eminent domain, which allows a government to seize private property, with compensation, for a public purpose.
Federal officials argue that the changes the Corps made were necessary to comply with the federal Endangered Species Act and a separate requirement from Congress passed in 1986 to protect fish and wildlife.
The ruling comes as federal and state officials wrestle with the rising costs of floods made more severe by climate change, and droughts that will require tough water management choices.
It's the sort of conflict that will only worsen -- and become more expensive, said James Elliott, a sociology professor at Rice University whose focus is on the confluence of human society and the environment.
“We tend to think of these as environmental issues, but really, they’re financial issues, right?" he said. "We’ve got a lot of development in a lot of places where it’s just not sustainable.”
The Corps manages floodplains, levees, and other water infrastructure across the U.S., making critical decisions on emergency management. Any resulting court decision, and even a settlement, could have long-lasting consequences on how floodplains and ecosystems are managed in the future, although the government has indicated in court documents that the Corps is dedicated to its plan that protects endangered wildlife.
In total, the government now faces liability for floods in six of the eight years spanning from the beginning of 2007 through 2014, including particularly devastating losses in 2011.
Land value loss alone for which the government was found liable was estimated to be around $10 million by lower courts. Attorneys for the landowners had estimated that total damages could exceed $300 million. Total damages across the Missouri River basin in 2011 were estimated at around $2 billion, according to the National Climatic Data Center.
“So, if you consider how much those crop losses and the 2011 flood damage would be, you can extrapolate from there that it will be significant,” said Seth Wright, of Posinelli Law Firm in Kansas City, Missouri, who is the lead trial attorney for the landowners.
Wright said that if the history of the nearly 10-year-old legal case is an indicator, the government is likely to appeal the latest ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“It’s certainly frustrating to our clients,” Wright said. “We’re a decade into this lawsuit and a decade-and-a-half from the first flood. It’s time for the government to step up and pay.”
Federal officials argue that the courts have overlooked key factors in the case, noting that the plaintiffs’ land still occasionally flooded even before the Corps made changes to the river’s management in 2004. They say a publically available document warns of possible changes to Corps’ flood protections.
In court documents, officials argue the landowners “should have recognized long ago that the System was built to serve multiple, congressionally authorized purposes, not flood control alone,” and that they’ve never “had a property right to any particular level of federal flood-control protection.”
More than 370 landowners in Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and the Dakotas are currently represented in the lawsuit, and a merger with another class-action lawsuit of an additional 60 landowners could happen later.
Lawmakers from affected states have said the Justice Department should settle. In 2020, seven Republican U.S. senators from Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri urged the Army to negotiate with landowners.
A spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers on Wednesday referred questions to the U.S. Department of Justice, which said Thursday that it is considering its next steps following Friday's ruling.
Iowa meteorologist quits after death threats over climate coverage
Chris Gloninger KCCI/Facebook
Li Cohen Thu, June 22, 2023
Chris Gloninger has spent nearly two decades reporting on the weather and the climate crisis. But on Wednesday, he resigned, citing numerous harassing emails and even a death threat over his reporting.
Gloninger, the chief meteorologist for CBS affiliate KCCI in Des Moines, Iowa, has spent the past 18 years working at seven news stations across five states. But on Wednesday, the New York native tweeted that he now must focus on his "health, family and combating the climate crisis" in another way.
"After a death threat stemming from my climate coverage last year and resulting in PTSD, in addition to family health issues, I've decided to begin this journey *now*," he tweeted. "...I take immense pride in having educated the public about the impacts of climate change during my career."
Gloninger has made a habit of using his forecasts to show how weather – the temporary conditions of the atmosphere that constantly changes – is impacted by climate change, a phrase that reflects how long-term weather conditions shift over time. Scientists and experts have long warned that as global temperatures warm, largely because of the excessive burning of fossil fuels, weather and natural disasters will become more deadly and intense.
And in an effort to help share information surrounding this, the Emmy-award winning meteorologist has covered a range of weather events, created Boston's first climate change series and produced broadcast specials on how climate change impacts every area of life.
The threats Gloninger referenced in his resignation began in June 2022.
"Getting sick and tired of your liberal conspiracy theory on the weather," an email Gloninger shared that's dated June 21, 2022, says. "Climate changes every day, always has, always will, your pushing nothing but a Biden hoax, go back to where you came from."
Another email dated three days later from the same address asks for his home address, saying, "We conservative Iowans would like to give you an Iowan welcome you will never forget."
And another sent from the same person a few weeks later told him to "go east and drown from the ice cap melting."
"Police are investigating. It's mentally exhausting & at times I have NOT been ok," Gloninger tweeted at the time. "...The threat of course was concerning, but the stream of harassing emails is even more distressing. It means he is thinking about it constantly. He is angry about it and filled with hate."
Police eventually found the man responsible for the emails: Danny Hancock, a 63-year-old Iowa resident, the Iowa Capital Dispatch reported. He was issued a $150 fine.
CBS News has reached out to Gloninger and KCCI for comment.
The meteorologist told The Washington Post that the slew of harassment left him unable to sleep. And even after Hancock was found, the toll of the threats, as well as some happenings with his family, left him struggling.
Even though he's leaving broadcast news, he's not giving up on sharing information about the only worsening climate crisis. He said on Twitter that he is now going to "devote my full-time efforts to finding sustainable solutions and fostering positive change."
"Having a dream since you were in second grade of being a TV meteorologist?" Gloninger told The Washington Post. "Yeah. I'm going to miss it. I just hope that this is even more fulfilling than the last 18 years, my next chapter."
Bizarre object hotter than the sun is orbiting a distant star at breakneck speed
Joanna Thompson Wed, June 21, 2023 An illustration of a brown dwarf, a planet larger than Jupiter and massive enough to fuse atoms in its core
A weird, super-hot celestial body is breaking records and challenging astronomers' understanding of the boundary between stars and planets.
The object, called WD0032-317B, is a brown dwarf — a type of bright, gaseous "protostar". Brown dwarves typically have a similar atmospheric composition to Jupiter but are 13 to 80 times larger. At that mass, these objects begin to fuse hydrogen isotopes in their cores. However, they aren't quite massive enough to spark the kind of full self-sustaining stellar fusion that powers stars like our sun — think of smoldering charcoal rather than a lit wood-fired oven.
Brown dwarfs usually burn at around 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,200 degrees Celsius). That's fairly cool compared with most stars, whose surface temperatures reach about 6,700 F (3,700 C).
But WD0032-317B, which is 1,400 light-years from Earth, is not like most brown dwarfs. In a paper published to the preprint database arXiv and accepted by the journal Nature Astronomy, researchers measured the object's surface temperature and found it was a blistering 13,900 F (7,700 C). That's hot enough for the molecules in its atmosphere to fall apart into their component atoms. It's also several thousand degrees hotter than the surface of our sun.
This should be impossible for a brown dwarf. But the researchers discovered that the object got an assist from the star it orbits. WD0032-317B is extremely close to its sun, an ultra-hot white dwarf star — so close that its year lasts just 2.3 hours. That proximity means WD0032-317B is tidally locked, with one side forever facing its star while the other faces away, according to Science Alert.
Because of this, the brown dwarf is only superheated on one side; even though its "day side" temperature reaches 13,900 F, its "night side" is a comparatively balmy 1,900 to 4,900 F (1,000 to 2,700 C). That's the most extreme temperature differential astronomers have measured on a substellar object, according to the researchers. But these conditions won't last long — as its molecules continue to fall apart, the brown dwarf is being evaporated by its host star.
Research on objects like WD0032-317B could help scientists understand how hot stars slowly consume their companions. It can also add to the growing body of knowledge around the conditions that stars need to ignite.
Wolf Skull Found Left On Ancient Grave Was To Fend Off Vengeful Spirits
The discovery of the skull and the mound it was placed on are unique for the region where it was found.
Published June 16, 2023
Image credit: B. S. Szmoniewski
Ancient grave robbers placed the skull of a wolf on a burial mound to protect them from the deceased's ghost. We don't know who was buried in the mound, but their remains represent a unique find in this part of Romania.
Around 2,000 years ago, grave robbers placed the skull of a wolf on top of a burial mound in an attempt to prevent the deceased's angry spirit from seeking revenge. Now this strange sentinel has been unearthed along with the surrounding tomb, and is revealing new insights into those it was set to guard.
The barrow itself is largely invisible to the casual observer; it is located in a now heavily cultivated field on the outskirts of Cheia, a small village in southeast Romania. The area has been of archaeological interest since 2008, but geophysical research conducted in 2022 identified a 75-meter (246-foot) diameter tomb complete with two graves, buried below the surface.
One of the graves, located in the center of the mound, had a hole dug out where the body of the deceased was cremated within a wooden box, along with all their grave goods. The evidence for this being an onsite cremation is clear within the pit itself. Not only do the walls and the bottom show signs of heat, but there are also partially burnt pieces of a wooden structure left behind, along with nails and bronze fittings that would have decorated it. Although, there was very little left of the cremated skeleton itself.
After the individual was cremated, wooden planks were placed on top of the hole before the grave was filled in. According to a statement made by Dr. Bartłomiej Szymon Szmoniewski from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, other barrows demonstrating similar cremation practices have been discovered in the town of Hârșova, “known in the Roman period as Carsium on the lower Danube.” In addition to these cremation fragments, the team also discovered a large number of burnt walnut seeds that had been preserved in their shells, as well as the remains of several pine cones and other plants.
Fire-damaged walnut seeds like this, recovered from the site, indicate that a cremation took place. Image credit: B. S. Szmoniewski
“The presence of burnt walnut seeds in the presented burial is an interesting custom known from cremation graves from the early Roman period,” Szmoniewski said. “Walnuts in the sepulchral context are interpreted as a kind of grave gift – special food for the soul. In the Casimcea river valley in Dobruja, where we are conducting research, this is the first find of its kind."
At some point during antiquity the grave was robbed, and although the thieves did not manage to steal everything left in the mound, they nevertheless left a wolf’s skull on a pile of stones that closed their robbery hole. According to Szmoniewski, this was “probably a kind of ritual and magical operation aimed at closing the looted space in order to prevent exit and possible revenge from the plundered spirit.”
“The unusual find of a wolf's skull at the exit of a robbery ditch […] may indicate that the theft was made by the Getae – a people who inhabited this area before the appearance of the Greeks and Romans," Szmoniewski added. However, the researcher believes that those buried in the graves were likely Romans who arrived in the area during Roman colonization.
A second grave was discovered in the barrow, but some distance from its center. In it, archaeologists discovered a skeleton that had been buried in a wooden structure, probably a coffin, as fragments of wood were found both above and below the remains. The skeleton had been buried with a unguentarium, a small rounded glass vessel with a long neck that was used to store perfume or cosmetics. The deceased’s jaw was found to have a bronze coin placed in it, which was issued in the reign of Hadrian (around 125-127 CE).
“The coin in the mouth of the buried refers to the ancient custom of Charon's obol, when a coin inserted into the mouth was to be used as payment to Charon for transporting the deceased's soul across the River Styx in Hades," Szmoniewski explained.
The burials in this barrow date to the middle of the second century CE and represent the first of their kind to be discovered in this region. Szmoniewski and the team are hopeful to find more like it in the future.
Dad hiking with family notices unusual rock — and finds ancient painting in Norway
Aspen Pflughoeft Tue, June 20, 2023
While out hiking with family, a dad noticed a rock with unusual coloring — and discovered several ancient paintings. Photos show the first-of-its kind find.
Tormod Fjeld was hiking with family in the Moss area when they stopped for a rest break near a boulder, Viken County Municipality said in a June 19 news release.
Looking at the rock, Fjeld noticed it had some unnatural coloring and patterns. He took a closer look and identified several painted scenes along the slab, officials said.
Fjeld is a graphic designer, but he — along with two friends — has spent years searching for petroglyphs around Norway, Science in Norway reported in November. The trio has identified almost 600 petroglyphs since 2016.
Archaeologists looked at the paintings Fjeld discovered and confirmed they were authentic ancient drawings, the release said.
The rock where several ancient paintings were found. A photo with highlighted coloring shows several paintings (in red) on the rock.
Jan Magne Gjerde, an archaeologist with the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research, estimated the paintings dated to the Bronze Age, the organization said in a news release.
The ancient scenes are easy to miss. Highlighted photos show the drawings in a red hue. One scene shows two distinctly human figures standing together, possibly a hunting scene, cultural researchers said. A photo with highlighted coloring shows two human figures, possibly a hunting scene. A photo with highlighted coloring shows the rowboat painting.
Another enhanced photo shows a boat being rowed, officials said. Other scenes depicted animals.
The ancient paintings are the first of their kind found in the Moss area, the release said. Moss is a coastal region about 40 miles south of Oslo.
Officials urged people not to touch the rock due to its rarity and fragility, fearing that the paintings could be erased.
Google Translate was used to translate the news releases from Viken County Municipality and the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research.
Lost ruins of ‘Atlantis of the North Sea’ located after sunken church reappears
Aspen Pflughoeft May 25, 2023·
The storm formed along the blue-gray horizon and began moving closer. It surged — a wall of impending doom — toward the medieval town. The collision was devastating. Homes were torn apart, roads flooded, lives lost.
The entire medieval trading center of Rungholt was lost during the storm surge, often called the “Great Drowning of Men,” in 1362, according to Kiel University.
But the memory of Rungholt lived on in local legends, poetry and writings, the German newspaper Focus Online reported. Some believed the rich town had become immoral and was destroyed as a punishment from God.
Others said the town’s church bells could still be heard ringing across the mudflats on a calm day, NDR, another German newspaper, reported.
Researchers extract sediment to analyze the buried settlement’s remains.
“Based on archaeological finds and historical maps,” archaeologists narrowed down the location of Rungholt to somewhere in the Wadden Sea mudflats around Hallig Südfall, asmall island off the coast of Germany’s North Frisia region, according to a 2022 study.
In this area, archaeologists found indications of an important medieval settlement. Excavations uncovered “imported goods from the Rhineland, Flanders and even Spain, namely pottery, metal vessels, metal ornaments and weapons,” the study said. They also found the remains of a medieval water control system.
Researchers had not located a town center as the ever shifting, frequently flooding mudflat environment made the area hard to study, the paper said.
But that all changed with the reemergence of a sunken church, Kiel University said in a May 23 news release. Archaeologists excavate a small area at low tide.
Archaeologists surveying the mudflats around Hallig Südfall found a string of 54 medieval mounds stretching over a mile long. The mounds included a drainage system, sea wall “with a tidal gate harbor,” ruins of two “smaller churches” and “a large main church,” the release said.
Foundation ruins of the large church indicated the building was about 130 feet by about 50 feet in size, archaeologists said.
“The special feature of the find lies in the significance of the church as the center of a settlement structure, which in its size must be interpreted as a parish with superordinate function,” archaeologist Ruth Blankenfeldt said in the release.
Archaeologists identified the ruins as the location of Rungholt. After 661 years, the ruins of the lost “Atlantis of the North Sea” has finally been found.
Although finally located, the remains of Rungholt are far from secure, Hanna Hadler, an expert involved in the excavations, told Kiel University. “Around Hallig Südfall and in other mudflats, the medieval settlement remains are already heavily eroded and often only detectable as negative imprints. This is also very evident around the church’s location, so we urgently need to intensify research here.”
The news release did not specify the next steps for excavations of Rungholt.
Germany’s North Frisia region is the country’s northernmost region, about 255 miles northwest of Berlin and near the Germany-Denmark border.
Google Translate was used to translate the articles from NDR and Focus Online.
