court tosses Trumps claim of ‟energy emergency”, hardening shorelines leads to greater erosion, transition from fossil fuels will be revenue problem for some countries, natural-gas usage continues to decline in California, electric bikes and mopeds are changing the world
Grist reports that the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., has ruled there is no ‟energy emergency” requiring old coal plants to continue operations. The case concerned the 64-year-old J.H. Campbell plant in West Olive, Michigan, which ‟is one of seven fossil fuel plants around the country that the Trump administration has forced to stay in operation, despite the pollution they cause and the enormous costs of keeping them online.” Trump has been invoking rarely-used powers to force these plants to stay open, ‟arguing that the threat of outages, along with the need for more energy to power data centers, constituted an emergency.” Trump’s order has cost the Consumers Energy Company $259 million, and it is trying to recover these expenses from its customers in Michigan and 10 other states.
The New York Times notes that the case was brought by the states of Michigan, Illinois and Minnesota, along with a coalition of environmental groups. In the ruling, Judge Cornelia Pillard ‟emphasized that it’s up to states to decide how to manage power generation, and that the federal government should only intervene when states and grid operators are unable or unwilling to respond.”
The New York Times reports further that the Trump Administration’s policy of using emergency powers to force coal-fired power plants to keep operating had its origins in a letter from a coal-industry lobbying group. This is not surprising, given how unpopular and detrimental these orders are to the utilities and ratepayers. Despite courts having found them to be unlawful, the Administration continues to renew and expand this effort, saddling ratepayers with hundreds of millions of dollars in costs as utilities scramble to keep these old, inefficient units operating to be in compliance with federal orders…
1.5°C target is now unattainable, August 2026 ties as the hottest month ever, painful water cuts coming to the Colorado River basin, solar produces more energy per acre than corn for ethanol, North Dakota puts the brakes on wind power
In a surprise to nobody who has been paying attention, The New York Times reports on a United Nations assessment concluding that the world will not be able to prevent warming from exceeding a global average of 1.5°C. ‟A decade ago, most of the world’s countries agreed in Paris to try to limit global temperature rise to “well below” two degrees Celsius while aiming for the more ambitious target of 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. But Wednesday’s 141-page U.N. report warned that the world is certain to breach that mark and should focus on finding ways to limit “overshoot” and eventually bring global temperatures back down.” Achieving the 1.5°C target now would require removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere on a scale not feasible with current technology. The U.N. goes on to note that, with current policies, the planet will likely warm by 2.6°C (4.7°F) by the end of the century. This means extreme events like heat waves, floods and droughts will intensify, and the risk of weakening or collapsing critical ocean currents rises. If the latter changes occur, the U.N. concludes, it will ‟reshape the world forever.”
Consistent with long-term projections of temperature rise, The New York Times notes that August 2026 has tied July 2023 for the hottest month ever recorded. The hot August made 2026 the warmest summer on record for both Western Europe and the contiguous United States. ‟Temperatures soared into the triple digits across the southern United States from California to Texas,” and South Korea recorded its highest temperature reading in modern history (108.5°F). August was also the hottest month ever recorded for the world’s oceans. ‟This extra warmth will spread to the rest of the planet in the months ahead, making the globe’s average temperatures likely to break more records through the end of the year and into 2027.”
The New York Times explains the recent proposal from the federal government to address declining water availability in the Colorado River basin. Under this plan, ‟communities and farms across Arizona, Nevada and California face potentially drastic cuts in the water they can use from the Colorado River over the next decade.” The Times reports that the state of Nevada has already sued the federal government, claiming the proposal unfairly burdens Nevada while not suggesting any mandatory water restrictions on the upper-basin states of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico…
it’s hot in the Arctic, global ocean temperature hits record, droughts becoming more severe, Trump tries to prevent judges from understanding climate science, New Mexico energy grid moves quickly to renewables
Scientific American reports that it’s over 90°F in the Arctic. This region is warming four-times faster than the rest of the world, as reflective ice and snow is replaced by sunlight-absorbing water and vegetation. This appears to be changing the jet stream in the northern hemisphere, leading to more stationary high-pressure systems (‟heat domes”). As Arctic soils warm, the vast stores of frozen organic matter will decay, leading to more greenhouse-gas emissions in a feedback loop that will exacerbate climate change.
The New York Times reports that the Trump Administration’s response to this Arctic threat is to stop funding the Arctic Report Card, which has been coordinated by NOAA for the past two decades. The Report Card ‟has provided a checkup on the health of the region, which is heating up at several times the pace of the rest of the globe.” The Administration provided no explanation for this change, but it is consistent with its other attempts to ‟kill the messenger.” The oceanographer who led this effort for NOAA during Biden’s presidency stated that ‟it’s another inane step in this administration’s turning a blind eye to climate change, among other environmental issues.”
Scientific American also notes that global ocean temperatures established a new record in July: ‟Sea surface temperatures, measured at 10 meters deep, averaged 20.96 degrees Celsius (69.7 degrees Fahrenheit) in July. This included all global oceans aside from the polar regions.” Such records are expected, as 90% of the heat being trapped by greenhouse gases is going into the ocean. This breaks the record set in 2023, and is being fueled by the growing El Niño event in the tropical Pacific…
the northern hemisphere is burning, boreal forest fires are different from temperate forest fires, smoke impacts much greater than previously understood, Trump responds to fire threat with U.S. Forest Service cuts, the solar revolution continues to accelerate
Danger Season in the northern hemisphere is reaching a new level of ecological disruption, civic chaos and human suffering. The Washington Post reports that ‟major wildfires and their massive, suffocating plumes of smoke blanketed vast swaths of North America and Europe, in some cases combining with intense heat waves that exacerbated flammable conditions and contributed to human misery.” The smoke lingered for days in densely populated cities, spreading toxins and increasing the risk of asthma attacks, heart disease and strokes. The New York Times notes that, as meteorological records are shattered, Europe feels close to a breaking point. Fires have led to the largest-ever peacetime evacuations in France and Spain, with 300,000 people displaced, villages destroyed and lives disrupted. In France, the Louvre Museum and the Eiffel Tower were closed, the final stage of the Tour de France was curtailed and a conference about coping with extreme heat was canceled. At least 10,000 heat-related deaths have occurred, and in some regions bomb squads were deployed as remnant cold war and WWII munitions were exploding.
As wildfires burned even in the Scottish Highlands, scientists were grimly noting that these conditions will be routine in Europe’s future summers. ‟Far from moderating, some experts say the pace of warming appears to be accelerating. France’s weather and climate service has painted a dystopian picture, saying that by 2050, heat waves could be five times more frequent, while temperatures could hit 118 degrees Fahrenheit.”
There is no doubt that climate change is driving the record-breaking temperatures and wildfires. The Washington Post quotes climate scientist Daniel Swain: ‟The conspicuous overlap between record-breaking warmth, dryness, and/or low snowpack and these fires is simply not a coincidence. The scientific evidence linking increasingly extreme fire weather, as well as increasingly extreme wildfires themselves, to climate warming is clear.” AP reports on scientific studies concluding that climate change made the hot and dry conditions in Spain 20 times more likely. Politico notes that leading Spanish and UK ministers ‟described this summer’s fires and extreme heat as ‘a consequence of the climate crisis.’ They agreed that this summer’s wildfires demonstrated that climate change was now a national security emergency facing Europe and threatening our way of life…”
smoke and wildfire in the northern hemisphere, Trump payments to abandon wind projects continue, the solar revolution in Australia, Asian economies move away from fossil fuels, China wins the U.S.- Iran war
Danger Season continues, with The New York Times describing a blanket of smoke from Canadian wildfires that ‟stretched across Ontario into the Midwestern and northeastern United States… disrupting life for millions and prompting many to stay inside with the windows shut. Air quality readings surged to dangerous levels in Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Minneapolis, Toronto and many places in between.” The air in Washington, Philadelphia and New York rated a bit better, but was still unhealthy and smelled like a campfire (an Air Quality Index level below 50 is healthy, at 300 or higher is hazardous: the readings in northern Michigan and Toledo, OH, measured over 750). About 800 wildfires are presently burning across Canada, most in the country’s northern wilderness.
The Guardian examines the results of new polling indicating that a majority of Americans (61%) understand that extreme weather events have become more frequent. This group includes ‟72% of Democrats, 63% of Independents, and nearly half – 46% – of all Republicans.” This suggests that important messaging about climate change is breaking through. I think the broad uneasiness about the potential impacts of the growing El Niño is also adding to climate-change awareness.
The Trump Administration, however, couldn’t care less, and is continuing to pay companies to abandon offshore-wind projects that were already leased and under development. The latest payment, $129 million to Duke Energy as reported by The New York Times, brings the total expended by the Administration to $2.5 billion. One analyst noted that, with demand for electricity increasing, canceling clean-energy projects ‟is self-defeating. Paying off companies so they will abandon them is just ludicrous.” The Guardian interviews union workers who struggle to understand why the President would eliminate their jobs to satisfy his ideological vendetta. The Minnesota Reformer reports on the impact of Trump’s energy policies in that state: ‟a de facto freeze on wind energy puts 1,200 construction jobs, 4,400 ‘indirect and induced’ jobs and more than $168 million in economic impact at risk for Minnesota.” Meanwhile, Canary Media reports that offshore-wind power helped stabilize the grid on the East Coast during the latest heat wave. Electricity from wind turbines also meant utilities could burn less oil during peak demand, saving consumers money and reducing air pollution…
Danger Season brings heat waves, wildfires and typhoons, the Pacific Ocean has a fever, El Niño grows in severity, sea level rise realities set in around the U.S., solar accelerating across Africa and Asia
Danger Season continued with wildfires in the Western U.S., including blazes in Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico at the beginning of July. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that ‟several factors are driving the fire outbreak: a low-snow year that dried out the land, dry lightning that sparked blazes, low humidity, and powerful winds.” An op-ed in The Washington Post notes that ‟more than 2.5 million acres have burned nationwide this year — nearly double the 10-year average for this point in the calendar — with the most dangerous months still ahead.” The Washington Post describes forecasts for a heat dome over the intermountain West in mid-July, exacerbating fire danger as it is projected to be hotter in Billings, Montana, than in Phoenix. The Guardian reports that thousands have fled their homes as fires threaten communities across southern Europe.
As a heat dome settled over the Midwest and Eastern U.S., calls for electricity conservation were issued by utilities, mayors and other community leaders. These calls were made to prevent air-conditioning load from causing grid problems. Inside Climate News describes how Republican politicians immediately responded by calling these requests ‟socialism.” One such statement came from Nikki Haley, despite the fact that she issued a similar request for electricity conservation when she was governor of South Carolina. Vivek Ramaswamy, Republican candidate for governor in Ohio, stated: ‟the right answer isn’t restrictions or mandates. It’s drilling, fracking, coal, & nuclear.”
Ramaswamy’s disconnect from reality is readily apparent on the world’s thermometers, as ocean temperatures are higher than we have ever seen. Scientific American reports that ‟the world’s average ocean temperature shattered records in June,” and this means even more air-temperature records are likely to fall in the coming months. Western Europe recorded its hottest June ever, according to The New York Times…
