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Tag: climate desk

  • Your Guide to Surviving Extreme Weather

    Your Guide to Surviving Extreme Weather

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    This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

    No matter where you live, extreme weather can hit your area, causing damage to homes, power outages, and dangerous or deadly conditions. If you’re on the coast, it may be a hurricane; in the Midwest or South, a tornado; in the West, wildfires; and as we’ve seen in recent years, anywhere can experience heat waves or flash flooding.

    Living through a disaster and its aftermath can be both traumatic and chaotic, from the immediate losses of life and belongings to conflicting information around where to access aid. The weeks and months after may be even more difficult, as the attention on your community is gone but civic services and events have stalled or changed drastically.

    Grist compiled this resource guide to help you stay prepared and informed. It looks at everything from how to find the most accurate forecasts to signing up for emergency alerts to the roles that different agencies play in disaster aid.

    Flooding in Merced, California, following a “bomb cyclone” in January 2023.

    Photograph: JOSH EDELSON/Getty Images

    Where to Find the Facts on Disasters

    These days, many people find out about disasters in their area via social media. But it’s important to make sure the information you’re receiving is accurate. Here’s where to find the facts on extreme weather and the most reliable places to check for emergency alerts and updates.

    Your local emergency manager: Your city or county will have an emergency management department, which is part of the local government. In larger cities, it’s often a separate agency; in smaller communities, fire chiefs or sheriff’s offices may manage emergency response and alerts. Emergency managers are responsible for communicating with the public about disasters, managing rescue and response efforts, and coordinating between different agencies. They usually have an SMS-based emergency alert system, so sign up for those via your local website. (Note: Some cities have multiple languages available, but most emergency alerts are only in English.) Many emergency management agencies are active on Facebook, so check there for updates as well.

    Local news: The local television news and social media accounts from verified news sources will have live updates during and after a storm. Follow your local newspaper and television station on Facebook or other social media, or check their websites regularly.

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    Lyndsey Gilpin, Jake Bittle

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  • Urban Birds Are Harboring Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria

    Urban Birds Are Harboring Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria

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    This story originally appeared in The Guardian and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

    Urban ducks and crows might offer us a connection to nature, but scientists have found wild birds that live near humans are more likely to harbor bacteria resistant to important antibiotics.

    Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is largely caused by the overuse of drugs such as antibiotics among humans and livestock.

    The issue is of serious concern: According to data for 2019, about 4.95 million deaths globally were associated with bacterial AMR, including 1.27 million directly caused by such resistance.

    Researchers say species of wild birds that tend to turn up in urban settings are reservoirs for bacteria with the hallmarks of resistance to a host of drugs.

    “Basically what we’re seeing are genes that confer resistance to antimicrobials that would be used to treat human infections,” said Samuel Sheppard, coauthor of the research from the Ineos Oxford Institute for Antimicrobial Research.

    The team say their findings are important as wild birds have the capacity to travel over considerable distances. Sheppard said a key concern was that these birds could pass antimicrobial-resistant bacteria to captive birds destined to be eaten by humans—such as those kept in poultry farms.

    Writing in the journal Current Biology, Sheppard and colleagues report how they analyzed the genomes of bacteria found in 700 samples of bird poo from 30 wild bird species in Canada, Finland, Italy, Lithuania, Japan, Sweden, the UK, and the US.

    The team looked specifically at the presence of different strains of Campylobacter jejuni—a type of bacteria that are ubiquitous in birds as a natural part of their gut microbiome. Such bacteria are a leading cause of human gastroenteritis, although antibiotics are generally only used in severe cases.

    Sheppard added that, in general, each wild bird would be expected to harbor a single strain of C. jejuni, specific to that species.

    However, the team found wild birds that turn up in urban settings contain many more strains of C. jejuni than those that live away from humans.

    What’s more, the strains found in urban-dwelling species contained about three times as many genes known to result in antimicrobial resistance, with these genes also associated with resistance to a broader range of antimicrobials.

    The authors suggest that wild birds may pick up antimicrobial-resistant bacteria in a number of ways: Gulls and crows, for example, are known to lurk at landfill sites, while ducks and geese may pick them up in rivers and lakes that are contaminated with human wastewater.

    Thomas Van Boeckel, an expert in antimicrobial resistance at ETH Zurich who was not involved in the work, said the research was unusual as it focused on the impact of antimicrobial use by humans on animals.

    “What are the consequences of that for the birds? We don’t really know but it seems like we humans are responsible for this change,” he said.

    Danna Gifford from the University of Manchester added the findings could have implications for human health.

    “While alarming, the risk of direct transmission of resistance from urban birds to humans is unclear. Poultry-to-human transmission, however, is well documented,” she said. “With urban development encroaching on agricultural land, increasing contact between urban birds and poultry raises significant concerns about indirect transmission through the food chain.”

    Andrew Singer, of the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, said more samples were needed to ensure the results stood up, but that precautions could be taken.

    “The most obvious place to start is to ensure birds do not congregate in our landfills, wastewater treatment plants, and animal muck piles, where both pathogens and AMR are abundant,” he said. “Moreover, we must also eliminate the discharge of untreated sewage into our rivers, which exposes all river-using wildlife—and humans—to human-associated pathogens and AMR.”

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    Nicola Davis

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  • Project 2025 Wants to Propel America Into Environmental Catastrophe

    Project 2025 Wants to Propel America Into Environmental Catastrophe

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    Within the Department of Energy, offices dedicated to clean energy research and implementation would be eliminated, and energy efficiency guidelines and requirements for household appliances would be scrapped. The environmental oversight capacities of the Department of the Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency would be curbed significantly or eliminated altogether, preventing these agencies from tracking methane emissions, managing environmental pollutants and chemicals, or conducting climate change research.

    In addition to these major overhauls, Project 2025 advocates for getting rid of smaller and lesser-known federal programs and statutes that safeguard public health and environmental justice. It recommends eliminating the Endangerment Finding—the legal mechanism that requires the EPA to curb emissions and air pollutants from vehicles and power plants, among other industries, under the Clean Air Act. It also recommends axing government efforts to assess the social cost of carbon, or the damage each additional ton of carbon emitted causes. And it seeks to prevent agencies from assessing the “co-benefits,” or the knock-on positive health impacts, of their policies, such as better air quality.

    “When you think about who is going to be hit the hardest by pollution—whether it’s conventional air, water, and soil pollution or climate change—it is very often low-income communities and communities of color,” said Rachel Cleetus, policy director of the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit science advocacy organization. “The undercutting of these kinds of protections is going to have a disproportionate impact on these very same communities.”

    Chemical plants and factories line the roads and suburbs of the area known as “Cancer Alley” in Louisiana.

    Photographer: Giles Clarke/Getty Images

    Other proposals would wreak havoc on the nation’s ability to prepare for and respond to climate disasters. Project 2025 suggests eliminating the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service housed therein and replacing those organizations with private companies. The blueprint appears to leave the National Hurricane Center intact, saying the data it collects should be “presented neutrally, without adjustments intended to support any one side in the climate debate.” But the National Hurricane Center pulls much of its data from the National Weather Service, as do most other private weather service companies, and eliminating public weather data could devastate Americans’ access to accurate weather forecasts. “It’s preposterous,” said Rob Moore, a policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Action Fund. “There’s no problem that’s getting addressed with this solution, this is a solution in search of some problem.”

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    Zoya Teirstein

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  • The Supreme Court Is Gutting Protections for Clean Water and Safe Air

    The Supreme Court Is Gutting Protections for Clean Water and Safe Air

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    This story originally appeared on Slate and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

    US environmental law is a relatively young discipline. The Environmental Protection Agency is a little more than 50 years old, and the Clean Air and Clean Water acts—legislation we today see as bedrocks of public health and environmental safeguards—were passed in 1963 and 1973, respectively. When the case that would become Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council was filed in the early 1980s, the EPA was just beginning to pump out rules that would have major economic consequences for business and industry.

    In its decision last week overturning Chevron deference—a crucial legal precedent that gives federal agencies the ability to interpret laws that are otherwise vague or ambiguous—the Supreme Court has taken the future of an incalculable number of regulations on public health, clean water, and clean air out of the hands of scientists for organizations like the EPA and passed it along to nonexpert judges who will hear challenges to these regulations in court.

    “Anybody who doesn’t like a federal-agency regulation can now bring it before a court,” said Jillian Blanchard, a director at Lawyers for Good Government. “It’s scary.”

    Overturning Chevron is just a cog in the larger plan to dismantle the administrative state and environmental law as we know it—and the ultraconservative forces and fossil fuel defenders, like the Koch brothers, behind it are only getting started.

    Ironically, the Chevron decision was initially seen as a win for polluting industries. The Clean Air Act mandates that new stationary sources of pollution go through an agency review, but it fails to define what exactly a source is. In the early 1980s, Reagan’s EPA—headed by Anne Gorsuch, the mother of current Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch—expanded the definition of source to mean an entire factory or complex. This significantly cut down on red tape for polluting industries, which previously had to go through government approval processes to add individual smokestacks to larger facilities. The National Resources Defense Council sued the EPA and won; Chevron interfered and took the case to the Supreme Court, where the justices ruled 8–0 to reverse the lower court’s decision and handed a victory to the oil giant—and the EPA.

    The doctrine established by the case was also seen as a good tool for corporate life. Industries rely on consistent federal guidelines to build their business models. Taking the specifics of regulations out of the courts and putting them into the hands of agencies provided stability for companies that needed to plan ahead.

    “As the deference doctrine became known law, everybody just came to rely on it,” Blanchard said. “They may not like an agency’s decision on something, but they were able to rely on the fact, like, OK, at least we can trust the process.”

    Subsequent administrations passed much stronger environmental regulations using the Chevron doctrine as a basis. The EPA, especially under Democratic presidents, increasingly came to be seen as an onerous, antibusiness body by industrial interests and ultraconservative figureheads alike. Even Antonin Scalia, who for most of his career was a champion of Chevron, showed signs of tiring of the doctrine in his later years.

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    Molly Taft

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  • Extreme Hail Storms Are Wrecking Solar Farms—but Defending Them May Be Easier Than It Seems

    Extreme Hail Storms Are Wrecking Solar Farms—but Defending Them May Be Easier Than It Seems

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    This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

    When a baseball-sized hailstone slams into a solar panel at more than 90 mph, the result is not pretty.

    We saw this in March, when a hailstorm decimated parts of the 350-MW Fighting Jays solar project in southeast Texas. Images circulated on social media and in news coverage of thousands of panels pockmarked with white circles of broken glass. Right-wing outlets were eager to amplify what they saw as evidence of the unreliability of solar power.

    The reality about hail and solar panels is more complicated, and not so grim.

    Solar developers and manufacturers have taken steps to reduce the risk from hailstorms, which involves a combination of sophisticated weather forecasting and panels that can turn to avoid direct hits. I recently spoke with some of the people doing this work.

    First, let’s lay out the problem: Climate change is contributing to an increase in the severity of storms, including hailstorms.

    At the same time, solar is the world’s fastest-growing electricity source, according to the International Energy Agency, and part of a mix of renewable sources that are on track to produce the majority of the world’s electricity by mid-century.

    Right now, examples of hailstorms wrecking solar farms are rare enough that they’re still notable, like the one this year in southeast Texas and one last year in western Nebraska. But what about in 20 years, when hailstorms are likely going to be more severe and solar will cover much more ground?

    There is no perfect method for protecting solar panels from hail, but there are ways to reduce the risk.

    “There’s actual mitigation that can be done,” said Renny Vandewege, vice president of weather operations for DTN, the Minnesota-based company whose subscription-based products include weather forecasting for use by energy companies.

    “We’ve patented the ability to measure the occurrence in the size of hail within radar technology,” he said. “Scanning the storms, you get feedback that says that a storm is producing hail two inches in diameter, or whatever the scenario.”

    This data is most useful if a solar array has equipment that can respond to an approaching storm by adjusting the panel angle to reduce damage.

    Nearly all utility-scale projects being built today use trackers, which are systems that turn the panels during the day to follow the sun. Some of those trackers have the capability to go into “stow” mode, which means they quickly turn to avoid a direct hit.

    For example, Nextracker, the California-based manufacturer of solar tracking systems, sells a hail mitigation product that connects weather forecasts from DTN and others, and uses the data to adjust panel angles ahead of hailstorms. The systems are operated with software that can be used both on-site and remotely, and they have battery backups to function during power outages.

    “Will solar continue to get developed and built in hail regions? The answer is yes,” said Greg Beardsworth, senior director of product marketing at Nextracker. “The way that will happen is through a combination of understanding the magnitude of the risk based on location, selecting the appropriate combination of module technology and tracker stowing capabilities.”

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    Dan Gearino

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  • Only the Hardiest Trees Can Survive Today’s Urban Inferno

    Only the Hardiest Trees Can Survive Today’s Urban Inferno

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    The rules for Toronto’s ravines are based on the idea that a species will develop traits specific to a location as they grow over many generations. As a result, trees grown from seeds gathered in Toronto may be more likely to blossom when native pollinators are active than seeds from the same species grown at a lower latitude.

    Foresters say there’s another valid argument for trying to keep as many native trees as possible. For some First Nations and Indigenous people with deep ties to particular varieties, phasing them out could add to the long history of cultural and physical dispossession.

    In the Pacific Northwest, for example, the Western redcedar (written as one word because it’s not a true cedar) is central to Native American cultural practices for many local tribes. Some groups refer to themselves as the “people of the cedar tree,” using the logs for canoes, basketry, and medicine.

    But drying soils mean the tree is no longer thriving in many parts of Portland, Oregon, said Jenn Cairo, the city’s urban forestry manager. The city has faced deadly heat domes and drier conditions in recent years. As a result, Portland recommends planting the species only in optimal conditions in its list of approved street trees. “We’re not eliminating them,” she said, “but we’re being careful about where we’re planting them.”

    A similar tactic is being used in Sydney, where the Port Jackson fig tree is struggling, but a close relative, the Moreton Bay fig, is thriving. Head of urban forestry Karen Sweeney said the city is looking at irrigated parklands as potential homes for native species that are dying elsewhere in the city. “We often say we’re happy to do it where we can find a location,” she said.

    When introducing new tree species to supplement the urban canopy, they must be sure any newcomers won’t spread invasively—dominating their new habitats and causing damage to native species.

    There are plenty of examples of what to avoid. The Norway maple, native to Europe and western Asia, has escaped the bounds of North American cities, creating excessive shade and crowding out understory plants—they’re one of the invasive species pushing out natives in the ravines of Toronto. Tree of heaven, native to China, deposits chemicals into the soil that damage nearby plants, letting it establish dense thickets and drive out native species; it is illegal to plant in parts of the US, including Indiana, where residents are urged to pull it up wherever they see it. The highly flammable eucalyptus, native to Australia, has put down roots all over the world, bringing increased wildfire danger along with it.

    Urban tree experts don’t expect introduced species to cause major disruptions to native wildlife. Done right, adding some variety to cities dominated by one kind of tree could reduce the problems caused by waves of pests or disease. A patchwork of species could create a buffer against tree-to-tree infection among the same species. While it’s possible that new plant species displace plants used by animals that depend on one kind of plant to survive, those cases are the exception, said Esperon-Rodriguez, the ecologist at Western Sydney University.

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    Laura Hautala

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  • 1 in 3 Americans Live in Areas With Dangerous Air Pollution

    1 in 3 Americans Live in Areas With Dangerous Air Pollution

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    For Gaddy, who is African American, the report’s findings confirm what she and her neighbors in Newark’s predominantly Black South Ward have experienced for years. Gaddy and her three children were all diagnosed with asthma; her eldest child died of a heart attack in 2021 at the age of 32.

    “It’s just the cumulative impacts of pollution is what is harming us,” Gaddy said. “And so, unfortunately, that’s what happens in our city.”

    The New York/Newark metropolitan area has 1.8 million adults with asthma and 370,000 children with the disease, according to the report.

    Researchers are hopeful that a series of new auto emissions standards that were announced last month by the Biden administration might significantly reduce some forms of particle pollution.

    Under the newly proposed standard, by 2032, 56 percent of all new vehicles that are sold should be electric; the proposal also calls for increases in plug-in hybrid vehicles or other partially electric cars and more efficient gasoline-powered cars.

    “We’ve seen the Environmental Protection Agency finalize a number of new standards to clean up the air pollution and address climate change, with more on the way,” said Bender.

    “We’ve seen the tighter particulate matter standard. We’ve seen strong measures to reduce emissions from future cars and future trucks. We’ve seen measures to reduce methane and volatile organic compounds from the oil and gas industry,” she said. “And we’re calling on the administration to get across the finish line to more items on their to-do list.”

    Bender said that the association hopes that the EPA will update the national ozone standard, which has not been revised since 2015.

    “Sometimes people don’t realize that poor air can affect them pretty drastically,” said Amit “Bobby” Mahajan, a national spokesperson for the Lung Association. “We know that there are asthma attacks, heart attacks and strokes, but we also see increases in preterm birth, cognitive impairment, and development of lung cancers in individuals who have high exposure to ozone and particle pollution.

    “So not only is it important just to provide clean air, but providing clean air minimizes the number of exposures we have to these serious diseases and honestly reduces our risk of having deadly underlying conditions,” said Mahajan, who also serves as the director of interventional pulmonology at Inova Health System in Northern Virginia.

    Gaddy said that she’s confident that federal officials will soon act on the recommendations of researchers and other experts to help alleviate the asthma crisis in her city.

    “We know that eventually, our communities will be healed and restored to the level that they should be,” added Gaddy. “And that just because of our zip code or the color of our skin, our communities won’t continue to be these sacrifice zones.”

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  • How One Corporation Is Cashing In on America’s Drought

    How One Corporation Is Cashing In on America’s Drought

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    On its website, Greenstone describes itself as “a water company” and as “a developer and owner of reliable, sustainable water supplies.” Its CEO, Mike Schlehuber, previously worked for Vidler Water Company—another firm that essentially brokers water supply—as well as Summit Global Management, a company that invests in water suppliers and water rights. Greenstone’s managing director and vice-president, Mike Malano—a former realtor based in Phoenix who remains “active in the Arizona development community,” per his company bio—got himself elected to the board of the Cibola valley irrigation and drainage district, a quasi-governmental organization that oversees the distribution of water for agriculture in the region.

    Irwin was horrified. She felt that a company with ties to big banks and real estate developers, posing as a farm, had infiltrated her small town and sold off its most precious resource.

    The deal won’t have an immediate impact on Cibola’s residents. It doesn’t affect the municipal water supply. But she worries that the transfer will be the first of many. And if more and more farms are fallowed to feed water to cities, what will become of rural towns along the river?

    “It’ll be like Owens Valley,” she said, referring to the water grab that inspired the movie Chinatown. In the early 20th century, agents working for the city of Los Angeles, posing as farmers or ranchers, bought up land in the valley and diverted its water to sustain their metropolis, leaving behind a dustbowl.

    By allowing the Greenstone deal to go through, “I’m afraid we’ve opened Pandora’s box,” she said.

    The Colorado River, which stretches from the Rocky Mountains into Mexico, has declined by about 20 percent since the turn of the century, amid the most severe drought the West has seen in 1,200 years. In a painfully negotiated deal, Arizona, Nevada, and California agreed to reduce the amount of water they draw from the river by 13 percent through 2026. Experts warned that even deeper cuts would be necessary in the coming decade, but states are currently deadlocked over a longer-term conservation plan.

    “With ongoing shortages on the river, driven by climate change, Colorado River water is going to become very valuable,” said Rhett Larson, a professor of water law at Arizona State University. “Anyone who understands this dynamic thinks, ‘Well, if I could buy Colorado River water rights, that’s more valuable than owning oil in this country at this stage.’”

    Though the price Queen Creek paid for the water was remarkable—amounting to more than $11,500 per acre-foot—lawyers and water experts in Arizona told the Guardian it would probably sell for even more today.

    The process of selling and transferring the water, however, can be bureaucratic and complicated. In most cases, a company like Greenstone would have to first convince fellow landowners in their local irrigation district to allow the sale, and then secure approvals from the state department of water resources and the US Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that manages water in the West.

    What Irwin and many of Cibola’s residents didn’t realize was that in their sleepy, riverside town, a select group of farmers and landowners had been working for years to facilitate such deals.

    ‘His Dream Was to Sell This Water’

    Irrigation districts, as the name suggests, are designed to distribute water for irrigation across the US West. These districts were formed in the 19th and 20th centuries as cooperatives, allowing farmers to pool resources to develop water infrastructure. In the Colorado River basin, the districts contract with the Bureau of Reclamation to deliver water flowing through federal infrastructure to farms and ranches.

    Farmers tend to be possessive of their precious water, explained Susanna Eden of the University of Arizona Water Resources Research Center. Most irrigation districts are set up to keep water for farming—and to keep it within their jurisdictions.

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    Maanvi Singh

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  • Toronto Wants to Manage Storms and Floods—With a Rain Tax

    Toronto Wants to Manage Storms and Floods—With a Rain Tax

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    This story originally appeared on Canada’s National Observer and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

    A plan to charge Toronto homeowners and businesses for paved surfaces on their properties is creating a public backlash, a deluge of negative international media attention, and even derisive comments from Donald Trump Jr.

    The outcry reached such a crescendo last week, the city canceled public hearings on the tax, which is intended to help offset the hundreds of millions spent managing stormwater and basement flooding.

    Dubbed “the rain tax” by critics, including the former US president’s son on X, a SkyNews host also condemned the plan and discouraged people from visiting Canada’s largest city saying: “You thought it couldn’t get any worse … Don’t go to Toronto because they’re going to tax you when it rains.”

    The amount of hard surface area would determine the contentious stormwater charge on a property which does not absorb water, such as roofs, driveways, parking lots, or concrete landscaping.

    “When we get a big rainstorm, basements flood, roads flood, sewage overflows and runs into the lake or on our rivers,” said Toronto mayor Olivia Chow in an online video post on X. “Stormwater slides off paved surfaces instead of absorbing into the ground. It overwhelms our water infrastructure, causes damage to your home and the environment.”

    The new fee would adjust water bills to reduce water consumption rates and add a stormwater charge based on property size and hard surface area.

    Online public consultations were to be followed by public meetings. However, after less than a week, the online consultations were paused and public meetings canceled. The city claims the delay is needed so staff can find a way to marry the new fee with the city’s broader climate-resilience strategy.

    Chow said she would prefer the city offer residents financial incentives to plant gardens in their backyards or install permeable pavement to help drain the rain.

    “I don’t think it’s fair to have a stormwater policy that asks homeowners to pay while letting businesses with massive parking lots off the hook,” said Chow. Many businesses with large paved areas, such as parking lots, pay no water bills and therefore do not contribute to stormwater management.

    “That is why I am asking Toronto Water to come back to city council with a plan that supports more green infrastructure, prevents flooding, and keeps your water bills low,” Chow said.

    In last year’s city budget, a 10-year plan (2023 to 2032) allocated $4.3 billion for stormwater management, including the $2.11 billion Basement Flooding Protection Program. Last year alone, the city invested $225.3 million in the basement program.

    Other nearby cities, like Mississauga, Vaughan, and Markham, have had stormwater charges for a long time.

    In an email response, the City of Vaughan said its stormwater charge supports numerous programs and initiatives across the city to help protect the environment, property, and water quality. Vaughan’s 2024 stormwater rate is $64.20 annually for a detached single residential unit, an increase from last year’s rate of $58.63, the city said.

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  • Searching for ‘Forever Chemicals’ From an Endless Landfill Fire

    Searching for ‘Forever Chemicals’ From an Endless Landfill Fire

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    Testing done by ADEM, Butler said, also did not assess water samples taken from sites closest to the dump. And while PFAS compounds are certainly common, he said, experts have concluded that elevated levels in the human body can be a warranted health concern.

    At this month’s meeting, many residents agreed with Butler, expressing a lack of confidence that ADEM—or any government officials—are looking out for residents in and around the Moody site.

    Courtesy of Lee Hedgepeth/Inside Climate News

    Jeff Wickliffe, chair of the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Department of Environmental Health Sciences, told those gathered that he believes more data is needed to fully understand what impacts the site could have had on those living nearby.

    Because there are no natural sources of forever chemicals, Wickliffe said, it’s difficult to believe claims that only vegetative material was burned at the site given the levels present in the water. Other waste was likely present, he argued, in order to produce the levels of PFAS compounds present in discharge from the Moody site.

    Questions around the source of PFAS in residents’ blood, if present, can be addressed by taking background measurements of individuals who weren’t exposed to the impacts of the fire and resulting pollution, for example, Wickliffe said.

    Testing residents’ blood or urine for the presence of such compounds, then, may allow locals to document at least one avenue of potential impacts from the Moody site on their health, he said.

    According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), increases in exposure to PFAS compounds can increase cholesterol, decrease birth weight, lower antibody responses to vaccines, and increase risks of pregnancy-induced hypertension, preeclampsia, and kidney and testicular cancer.

    The risk of health impacts from PFAS is determined by exposure factors like dose, frequency, and duration, as well as individual factors like sensitivity or disease burden, according to the federal agency.

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    Lee Hedgepeth

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  • One Couple’s Quest to Ditch Natural Gas

    One Couple’s Quest to Ditch Natural Gas

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    Two climate journalists decided to decarbonize their home. Here’s what happened.

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    Tik Root

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  • The US Is About to Drown in a Sea of Kittens

    The US Is About to Drown in a Sea of Kittens

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    Scientists, conservationists, and cat advocates all agree that unchecked outdoor cat populations are a problem, but they remain deeply divided on solutions. While some conservationists propose the targeted killing of cats, known as culling, cat populations have been observed to bounce back quickly, and a single female cat and her offspring can produce at least 100 descendants, if not thousands, in just seven years.

    Although sterilization protocols such as “trap, neuter, and release” are favored by many cat rescue organizations, Lepczyk said it’s almost impossible to do it effectively, in part because of how freely the animals roam and how quickly they procreate. Without homes or sanctuaries after sterilization, returning cats outside means they may have a low quality of life, spread disease, and continue to harm wildlife. “No matter what technique you use, if you don’t stop the flow of new cats into the landscape, it’s not gonna matter,” said Lepczyk.

    Rescue shelters, already under strain from resource and veterinary shortages, are scrambling to confront their new reality. While some release materials to help the community identify when outdoor kittens need intervention, others focus on recruiting for foster volunteer programs, which become essential caring for kittens who need around-the-clock care.

    “As the population continues to explode, how do we address all these little lives that need our help?” Dunn said. “We’re giving this everything we have.”

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    Sachi Mulkey

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  • Solar-Powered Farming Is Quickly Depleting the World’s Groundwater Supply

    Solar-Powered Farming Is Quickly Depleting the World’s Groundwater Supply

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    That is certainly the case in Yemen, on the south flank of the Arabian Peninsula, where the desert sands have a new look these days. Satellite images show around 100,000 solar panels glinting in the sun, surrounded by green fields. Hooked to water pumps, the panels provide free energy for farmers to pump out ancient underground water. They are irrigating crops of khat, a shrub whose narcotic leaves are the country’s stimulant of choice, chewed through the day by millions of men.

    For these farmers, the solar irrigation revolution in Yemen is born of necessity. Most crops will only grow if irrigated, and the country’s long civil war has crashed the country’s electricity grid and made supplies of diesel fuel for pumps expensive and unreliable. So, they are turning en masse to solar power to keep the khat coming.

    The panels have proved an instant hit, says Middle East development researcher Helen Lackner of SOAS University of London. Everybody wants one. But in the hydrological free-for-all, the region’s underground water, a legacy of wetter times, is running out.

    The solar-powered farms are pumping so hard that they have triggered “a significant drop in groundwater since 2018 … in spite of above average rainfall,” according to an analysis by Leonie Nimmo, a researcher who was until recently at the UK-based Conflict and Environment Observatory. The spread of solar power in Yemen “has become an essential and life-saving source of power,” both to irrigate food crops and provide income from selling khat, he says, but it is also “rapidly exhausting the country’s scarce groundwater reserves.”

    In the central Sana’a Basin, Yemen’s agricultural heartland, more than 30 percent of farmers use solar pumps. In a report with Musaed Aklan, a water researcher at the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies, Lackner predicts a “complete shift” to solar by 2028. But the basin may be down to its last few years of extractable water. Farmers who once found water at depths of 100 feet or less are now pumping from 1,300 feet or more.

    Some 1,500 miles to the northeast, in in the desert province of Helmand in Afghanistan, more than 60,000 opium farmers have in the past few years given up on malfunctioning state irrigation canals and switched to tapping underground water using solar water pumps. As a consequence, water tables have been falling typically by 10 feet per year, according to David Mansfield, an expert on the country’s opium industry from the London School of Economics.

    An abrupt ban on opium production imposed by Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers in 2022 may offer a partial reprieve. But the wheat that the farmers are growing as a replacement is also a thirsty crop. So, water bankruptcy in Helmand may only be delayed.

    “Very little is known about the aquifer [in Helmand], its recharge or when and if it might run dry,” according to Mansfield. But if their pumps run dry, many of the million-plus people in the desert province could be left destitute, as this vital desert resource—the legacy of rainfall in wetter times—disappears for good.

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    Fred Pearce

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  • The US Buried Nuclear Waste Abroad. Climate Change Could Unearth It

    The US Buried Nuclear Waste Abroad. Climate Change Could Unearth It

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    This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

    Ariana Tibon was in college at the University of Hawaii in 2017 when she saw the photo online: a black-and-white picture of a man holding a baby. The caption said: “Nelson Anjain getting his baby monitored on March 2, 1954, by an AEC RadSafe team member on Rongelap two days after ʻBravo.’”

    Tibon had never seen the man before. But she recognized the name as her great-grandfather’s. At the time, he was living on Rongelap in the Marshall Islands when the US conducted Castle Bravo, the largest of 67 nuclear weapon tests there during the Cold War. The tests displaced and sickened Indigenous people, poisoned fish, upended traditional food practices, and caused cancers and other negative health repercussions that continue to reverberate today.

    A federal report by the Government Accountability Office published last month examines what’s left of that nuclear contamination, not only in the Pacific but also in Greenland and Spain. The authors conclude that climate change could disturb nuclear waste left in Greenland and the Marshall Islands. “Rising sea levels could spread contamination in RMI, and conflicting risk assessments cause residents to distrust radiological information from the US Department of Energy,” the report says.

    In Greenland, chemical pollution and radioactive liquid are frozen in ice sheets, left over from a nuclear power plant on a US military research base where scientists studied the potential to install nuclear missiles. The report didn’t specify how or where nuclear contamination could migrate in the Pacific or Greenland, or what if any health risks that might pose to people living nearby. However, the authors did note that in Greenland, frozen waste could be exposed by 2100.

    “The possibility to influence the environment is there, which could further affect the food chain and further affect the people living in the area as well,” said Hjalmar Dahl, president of Inuit Circumpolar Council Greenland. The country is about 90 percent Inuit. “I think it is important that the Greenland and US governments have to communicate on this worrying issue and prepare what to do about it.”

    The authors of the GAO study wrote that Greenland and Denmark haven’t proposed any cleanup plans, but also cited studies that say much of the nuclear waste has already decayed and will be diluted by melting ice. However, those studies do note that chemical waste such as polychlorinated biphenyls, man-made chemicals better known as PCBs that are carcinogenic, “may be the most consequential waste at Camp Century.”

    The report summarizes disagreements between Marshall Islands officials and the US Department of Energy regarding the risks posed by US nuclear waste. The GAO recommends that the agency adopt a communications strategy for conveying information about the potential for pollution to the Marshallese people.

    Nathan Anderson, a director at the Government Accountability Office, said that the United States’ responsibilities in the Marshall Islands “are defined by specific federal statutes and international agreements.” He noted that the government of the Marshall Islands previously agreed to settle claims related to damages from US nuclear testing.

    “It is the long-standing position of the US government that, pursuant to that agreement, the Republic of the Marshall Islands bears full responsibility for its lands, including those used for the nuclear testing program.”

    To Tibon, who is back home in the Marshall Islands and is currently chair of the National Nuclear Commission, the fact that the report’s only recommendation is a new communications strategy is mystifying. She’s not sure how that would help the Marshallese people.

    “What we need now is action and implementation on environmental remediation. We don’t need a communication strategy,” she said. “If they know that it’s contaminated, why wasn’t the recommendation for next steps on environmental remediation, or what’s possible to return these lands to safe and habitable conditions for these communities?”

    The Biden administration recently agreed to fund a new museum to commemorate those affected by nuclear testing as well as climate change initiatives in the Marshall Islands, but the initiatives have repeatedly failed to garner support from Congress, even though they’re part of an ongoing treaty with the Marshall Islands and a broader national security effort to shore up goodwill in the Pacific to counter China.

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    Anita Hofschneider

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  • All That Rain Is Driving Up Cases of a Deadly Fungal Disease in California

    All That Rain Is Driving Up Cases of a Deadly Fungal Disease in California

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    This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

    Last week, a long, narrow section of the Earth’s atmosphere funneled trillions of gallons of water eastward from the Pacific tropics and unleashed it on California. This weather event, known as an atmospheric river, broke rainfall records, dumped more than a foot of rain on parts of the state, and knocked out power for 800,000 residents. At least nine people died in car crashes or were killed by falling trees. But the full brunt of the storm’s health impacts may not be felt for months.

    The flooding caused by intensifying winter rainstorms in California is helping to spread a deadly fungal disease called coccidioidomycosis, or valley fever. “Hydroclimate whiplash is increasingly wide swings between extremely wet and extremely dry conditions,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. Humans are finding it difficult to adapt to this new pattern. But fungi are thriving, Swain said. Valley fever, he added, “is going to become an increasingly big story.”

    Cases of valley fever in California broke records last year after nine back-to-back atmospheric rivers slammed the state and caused widespread, record-breaking flooding. Last month, the California Department of Public Health put out an advisory to health care providers that said it recorded 9,280 new cases of valley fever with onset dates in 2023—the highest number the department has ever documented. In a statement provided to Grist, the California Department of Public Health said that last year’s climate and disease pattern indicate that there could be “an increased risk of valley fever in California in 2024.”

    “If you look at the numbers, it’s astonishing,” said Shangxin Yang, a clinical microbiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “About 15 years ago in our lab, we only saw maybe one or two cases a month. Now, it’s two or three cases a week.”

    Valley fever—named for California’s San Joaquin Valley, where the disease was discovered in a farmworker in the late 1800s—is caused by the spores of a fungus called Coccidioides. When inhaled, the spores can cause severe illness in humans and some animal species, including dogs. The fungus is particularly sensitive to climate extremes. Coccidioides doesn’t thrive in regions of the US that get year-round rain, nor can it withstand persistent drought.

    Patients in California undergo treatment for valley fever.

    Photograph: Brian Vander Brug/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

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    Zoya Teirstein

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