Electrification can be more economical and provides health and environmental benefits too. Why am I focusing on electrification? Last week was National Drive Electric Week (Sept. 22-Oct. 1) and we are entering the season where holiday decorations are powered by electricity for scary and fun displays, and lights hang from trees and bushes.
Infrastructure is not a sexy topic, it’s something most people don’t even think about until it breaks. What we choose to invest in as our infrastructure matters not just for immediate needs, but is about long term returns instead of increasing costs. Externalities are costs not always factored into the price you pay. We often end up paying more for healthcare, natural disasters, and environmental impacts. These costs can be harder to see.
Tracking the power grid emissions. PJM (https://pjm.com/ is the regional transmission organization which helps plan our region’s power balancing and includes a map on their homepage which shows the current price of electricity as well as power generation sources. Electricity Maps (https://app.electricitymaps.com/map) is a source of real time and historical power of cost, source, and carbon emission.
Have you considered how much you pay a year just to have gas service? I’m paying approximately $480 a year to maintain the connection even if I don’t use any natural gas. I plan to replace my furnace when it ages out with a cold climate heat pump. I’ll no longer need gas service and can factor in a $480 savings a year toward the cost of the install and operation of the new system. The Department of Energy is running a whole program on heat pumps for cold climates optimized down to -15 degrees F operation so these are not the heat pumps people say can’t handle the winter.
When we bought our house our gas hot water heater needed to be replaced so we installed a hybrid heat pump water heater as it had much higher efficiency compared to resistive electric since it moves heat from the basement to the water and had the benefit of dehumidifying the basement somewhat too. This change moved emissions from exhausting just outside of our house and in our neighborhood and moved those emissions to the power plant which can reduce even further as the grid becomes cleaner. Our house came with a gas stove which due to ongoing information on the indoor air quality including those from the American Chemical Society https://tinyurl.com/jmermbrf and Journal of Building Engineering https://tinyurl.com/uyr3k2sd we plan on replacing with an induction stove. Would like our future kid(s) to live in a healthier home environment with the added benefit of lowering the chance to get burns by eliminating the hot surface risk of conductive electric stoves.
I want to electrify my life except, the next step is my car. My approximately 100-mile round trip commute will be in an electric vehicle next year. I hope I can source renewable power generated here in the Mid-Ohio Valley and keep money here to benefit the community. I not only will be getting 60+ miles per gallon equivalent on the current grid carbon intensity according to the Union of Concerned Scientists calculator (https://evtool.ucsusa.org/) which beats my current 39 mpg. I’m making a huge impact in a few years in regards to carbon emissions (https://tinyurl.com/mrfhdkjb).
What might we do to prepare for an electric future? Have proactive policies in place to make it cost less focused on construction and major remodels.
Plug in America has a policy toolkit to consider how to think and plan for the future: https://tinyurl.com/3bxn895m
Rewiring America has an accessible tool to explore tax incentives available to you to help with upgrades: https://www.rewiringamerica.org/
Support development of renewables in the Mid-Ohio Valley. We can benefit from diversifying our tax sources, provide opportunities to diversify income for our county residents, and hedge risk in the economics of maturing technology.
Support “Agrivolatics.” If you are not familiar, it pairs solar with crops and livestock that benefit or have a net zero impact while providing stable revenue to the landowners.
Jonathan Brier is a Marietta resident, information scientist, and an Eagle Scout. He is a member of the Citizen Science Association, Association of Computing Machinery, American Association for the Advancement of Science, OpenStreetMap US, Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action, and a Wikipedia contributor. If you want to know more about citizen science or to reach him, visit https://brierjon.com or email: climatecorner@brierjon.com
September 15, 2023 Press Release about letter to Oil and Gas Land Management Commission & Attorney General
“19 Ohio Organizations Urge State Officials to Halt State Land Leasing Decisions Until Investigations of Alleged Fake “Pro-Fracking” comments concludes” (MOVCA was a signatory. Link to letter provided.)
RELEVANT TO OUR REGION/ MORE EDUCATIONAL ARTICLES, PERSPECTIVES, & RESEARCH
Available on The WHITE HOUSE:
September 20, 2023 Press Release about American Climate Corps
“FACT SHEET: Biden-Harris Administration Launces American Climate Corps to Train Young People in Clean Energy, Conservation, and Climate Resilience Skills, Create Good-Paying Jobs and Tackle the Climate Crisis’
September 21, 2023 Press Release about new REPORT. (Link to report included) “New research shows impact of building-electrification policies on reducing housing emissions”
September 26, 2023 Fossil Fuels article by Terry L. Jones and Pam Radtke, Floodlight
“ A Known Risk: How Carbon Stored Underground Could Find Its Way Back Into the Atmosphere: Other concerns include the potential for earthquakes and contamination of groundwater”
“The dog days of summer are not just barking, they are biting.” — U.N. Sec. Gen. Antonio Guterres
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Global climate change is not a future problem. Effects that scientists have been predicting would result from global climate change are occurring now.
Summers are always hot. But this summer was different in profound ways. Record-breaking temperatures hit multiple cities. Records for heat fell everywhere. Globally, summer 2023 was the hottest summer on record.
The U.S. broke more than 2,000 high temperature records this summer. In July alone, nearly 200 million people — 60% of the U.S. population — were simultaneously under an extreme heat or flood advisory.
Today, with 3 months still left in the year, the U.S. has already experienced more billion-dollar weather disasters in 2023 than in any other year since authorities started tracking such data 40-plus years ago.
Catastrophic floods in the Hudson Valley; Unrelenting heat dome over Phoenix; Ocean temperatures hitting 101 degrees Fahrenheit off the coast of Miami in July (highest ever recorded); A rare flooding deluge in Vermont; A surprising tornado in Delaware; The first hurricane to hit southern California in more than 80 years. And in Iowa in late August, it was so hot that the CORN was literally sweating.
A decade ago, any one of these events would have been seen as an aberration. This year, they have been happening simultaneously as climate change fuels extreme weather.
Changes to Earth’s climate driven by increased emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases are already having widespread effects on the environment world-wide: glaciers and ice sheets are shrinking, river and lake ice is breaking up earlier, plant and animal geographic ranges are shifting, and plants and trees are blooming sooner.
Not every place experiences the same effects: Climate change may cause severe drought in one region while making floods more likely in another. Following are some of the impacts currently being experienced across the planet.
Longer-lasting droughts: Hotter temperatures increase the rate at which water evaporates from the air, leading to more severe and pervasive droughts. The western US is experiencing a severe “megadrought” — the driest 22-year stretch recorded in at least 1,200 years. (125+ consecutive days without rainfall in Phoenix, AZ this summer.), shrinking drinking water supplies, withering crops, forests more susceptible to insect infestations.
More intense wildfires: Drier, hotter climate creates conditions fueling more vicious wildfire seasons. The number of large wildfires doubled between 1984 and 2015 in the western United States.
Stronger storms: Warmer air also holds more moisture, making tropical cyclones wetter, stronger and more capable of rapidly intensifying. The frequency of severe Category 4 and 5 hurricanes is expected to increase.
Melting sea ice: The effects of climate change are most apparent in the world’s coldest regions–the poles. The Arctic is heating up twice as fast as anywhere else on earth. In just 15 years, the Arctic could be entirely ice-free in the summer.
Sea level rise: The predicted 12 inches of sea level rise by 2050 will damage infrastructure, like roads, sewage treatment plants, and even power plants. Recreational beaches that many of us have grown up visiting may be gone by the end of the century.
Less predictable growing seasons: Farming crops is becoming more unpredictable–and livestock, which are sensitive to extreme weather, have become challenging to raise. Climate change shifts precipitation patterns, causing unpredictable floods and longer-lasting droughts. More frequent and severe hurricanes can devastate an entire season’s worth of crops. The dynamics of pests, pathogens, and invasive species are also expected to become harder to predict and costly for farmers to manage. These impacts to our agricultural systems pose a direct threat to the global food supply.
Human health: Climate change worsens air quality. It increases exposure to hazardous wildfire smoke and ozone smog triggered by warmer conditions, both of which harm our health. Insect-borne diseases become more prevalent in a warming world. In the past 30 years, the incidence of Lyme disease from ticks has doubled in the United States.
Climate change is already impacting weather, environment, agriculture, and humanity. But ultimately, if we all work to reduce emissions, we may avoid some of the worst effects.
The Earth is a fine place and worth fighting for. — Ernest Hemingway
Until next time, be kind to your Mother Earth.
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Linda Eve Seth, SLP, M.Ed., is a mother, grandmother, concerned citizen and member of MOVCA.
As a Mon Power ratepayer, I have to say I’m really tired of being on the hook for the refusal of the powers that be in West Virginia to move on from coal energy. To quote from a piece in the Charleston Gazette-Mail by energy and environment reporter Mike Tony, “Mon Power and Potomac Edison already have a request pending before West Virginia utility regulators for a $207.4 million, 13% increase in customers’ base rate.”
Tony continues, “That’s the rate that accounts for all utility service expenses, including operating and maintenance costs, taxes and depreciation. Now the FirstEnergy utilities have asked the Public Service Commission for a roughly $167.5 million increase in customers’ rate to cover fuel costs effective Jan. 1, 2024. The PSC approved a $91.8 million rate increase to cover Mon Power and Potomac Edison fuel costs in December [2022]. The rate hike followed a $94 million rate hike the PSC approved for the utilities in May 2022, also for fuel costs. That followed a $19.5 million fuel cost rate increase approved in December 2021.”
Did you hear that cash register sound over and over again in your head as you read that last paragraph? You can thank West Virginia’s coal baron Governor, Jim Justice, his coal industry flunkies on the West Virginia “Public Service” Commission and a Republican supermajority in the state legislature. You can also thank the West Virginia Coal Association and the “Friends of Coal” campaign for the cultural manipulation tactics they’ve deployed to protect their air and water polluting, soil degrading, climate destabilizing and public health threatening status quo.
It’s not just West Virginia that’s engaged in total fossil fuels nonsense, though. A recent report from the organization Oil Change International shows that the U.S. accounts for more than a third of the planned oil and gas expansion globally by 2050. Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), describes fossil fuels expansion efforts as “very unhealthy and unwise economic risks.” Birol was quoted in The Guardian newspaper as saying, “New large-scale fossil fuel projects not only carry major climate risks, but also business and financial risks for the companies and their investors.”
The IEA was created in 1974 to help coordinate a collective response to major disruptions in the supply of oil, according to its website. It’s not exactly a bastion of climate and environmental concern. Investors and fiduciaries would do well to heed the warning of an agency like the IEA that helps coordinate energy policy all over the world and has for almost 50 years. Just don’t tell that to State Treasurer and District 02 congressional candidate, Riley Moore (R-WV), or Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate, Patrick Morrisey (R-WV).
Moore and Morrisey have been on a years-long crusade against Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investing — investment strategy that accounts for things like climate change and its impacts on finance. They call it “woke capitalism.” I guess now it’s “woke,” used derogatorily of course, to consider how the destabilization of life-supporting systems on our only home in the cosmos might impact a person’s or entity’s portfolio.
That makes about as much sense as the letter to the editor in this paper last week suggesting that the wildfires in Maui had nothing to do with climate change. Hawaii is an average two degrees warmer than in 1950 across its surface area. Hot, dry conditions and hurricane winds from a category 4 storm fueled by almost unfathomable ocean heat created the perfect conditions for a devastating wildfire. Anthropogenic (human-caused) global heating, aka climate change, was most certainly a detectable culprit in all of the above.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that threating the habitability of a planet of which we are an intimate part is a costly endeavor, not just in terms of physical harm and lives lost, but to the bottom lines of energy ratepayers, investors and the labor force. According to a recent analysis by the Stockholm Resilience Center, we have now transgressed 6 of 9 planetary boundaries: Biochemical flows (i.e. phosphorous and nitrogen accumulating in streams); freshwater change/use; land-system change; biosphere integrity; climate change (i.e. C02 and equivalent greenhouse gas accumulation and radiative forcing); and novel entities (i.e. plastics pollution). The remaining three boundaries (stratospheric ozone depletion, atmospheric aerosol loading and ocean acidification) we perform some better on, though we’re close to exceeding the acidification boundary as well. These transgressions are costly.
I don’t want astronomical power bills. I don’t want stranded assets for retirement investments. I want West Virginia to remain an energy state–cleaner, safer, healthier, more sustainable, more efficient and more affordable green energy. I encourage you to reflect on what you really want and not just on bumper sticker and license plate logic like being a “friend of coal,” whatever that means.
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Eric Engle is chairman of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action.
After a month of climate-induced catastrophes across the world–so called “thousand year” floods in eight countries in just the past eleven days! –I’ve been feeling as though my efforts to avoid single use plastics or take my own bags to the grocery store are almost too feeble to matter.
The pictures are all the same: brown rushing water, bodies, smashed cars, ruined real estate, survivors who have lost everything they owned. People who contributed nothing to the problem wandering in shock.
How was it decided that the air, the water, and the earth under our feet can be owned and trashed for the sole purpose of making a profit, but we all have to bear the consequences of that destruction in polluted air, water, and a warming planet? That maintaining and expanding that profit justifies almost any action. Contributions to politicians ensure that fossil fuels development is expanded. This year alone the U.S. has approved $1.5 billion in fossil fuel financing, more than any other country, and we continue to break records in domestic oil production. We see corruption large and small: Just this week, it was reported in the Cleveland Plain Dealer that a front organization for the natural gas industry, the Consumer Energy Alliance, used people’s names without their knowledge on petitions to allow fracking in Ohio State Parks, including those close to us, Salt Fork and Wolf Run.
There’s no question the fossil fuel industry is the wealthiest one the world has ever known. Since the Industrial Revolution first used fossil fuels to produce energy, large economies have been driven by carbon-emitting energy, agriculture, and industrial systems. What we often overlook is the invisible financial underpinnings of the fossil fuel economy, such as banking, capital investment, and insurance. The financial world is being disrupted in an unprecedented way by the climate crisis.
For example, insurance companies are pulling out of states because the climate risk of fires and floods is too great. State Farm and Allstate will no longer offer property insurance to new clients in California. Farmers Insurance will no longer write policies in Florida. The National Flood Insurance Program is $20 billion in debt and had to raise rates last year, making it even more unaffordable.
This represents a profound opportunity for climate activists and gives us something more meaningful to do than remember our shopping bags. Campaigns for cultural, educational, and religious institutions to divest their investments from fossil fuels pull the legitimacy or permission bestowed by the community for the fossil fuel industry to burn and flood the planet. This is called the “social license to operate,” a term created by the mining and extraction industries in the past 25 years. “A social license to operate exists when a mineral exploration or mining project is seen as having the approval, the broad acceptance of society to conduct its activities…Such acceptability must be achieved on many levels, but it must begin with, and be firmly grounded in, the social acceptance of the resource development by local communities (Joyce and Thomson 2000: 52).” Rescinding this approval gets to the root of the climate crisis.
The divestment movement was sparked by Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org when he said “If it is wrong to wreck the climate, then it is wrong to profit from that wreckage” (McKibben, 2012). Divestment allows institutions to align their actions with their mission and values to restore a livable future. Divestment in higher education is the single most common activity among college students this year in climate action. According to the Guardian this week, more than 250 US higher education Institutions have divested from fossil fuels.
This is something we all can research and act upon, maybe in divestment clubs? Where do you keep your savings? Where is your pension invested? What about bequests in your will? How about your church? Community cultural and philanthropic institutions? You can find out about investment funds at fossilfreefunds.org. 350’s Go Fossil Free campaign is a good place to start if you want to pursue divesting or start a campaign. Stand.earth has the most comprehensive database , listing 1596 institutions worldwide which have divested more than 40 trillion from the fossil fuel industry, and is a great source of ideas.
We can reduce an array of carbon emissions through the ways we decide to spend and save as well as by how institutions transact, invest, and trade. Your retirement plan, your bank, or your credit card company may be funding the climate crisis but it doesn’t have to.
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Jean Ambrose is trying not to be a criminal ancestor.
This column often focuses on facts and figures, and those are important, but today I want to share stories from the front lines of climate change. We in the Mid-Ohio Valley are–for the moment–in one of the areas spared the worst of climate change effects, but some of the places and people we care about are increasingly in harm’s way.
Part of my childhood was spent on Fort Myers Beach, a barrier island off the coast of southwest Florida. My sister and I spent a lot of time at the public beach, watching the sunset from the pier and occasionally visiting the tiny restaurants and snack bars that dotted the small commercial district. My mother and her sister at one time worked at an old-fashioned drug store in that same commercial hub, my father in the produce section of a nearby grocery. When Hurricane Ian made landfall a year ago, that area was leveled–not a single building left standing and most of the pier washed away. While I had not missed the island enough to visit in the last forty years, knowing that every structure from that area where we spent so much time was destroyed — in a single storm — was a shock.
2023 has been the year of wildfires. The smoke from Canada that blanketed the eastern U.S. for several days was followed by the devastating fires on Maui, which killed 115 people, with more than 300 others still unaccounted for. And the fires keep coming.
WVUP journalism graduate Matthew Stephens edits the Cheney Free Press in Spokane County, Wash., where wildfires last month burned more than 20,000 acres and left two people dead. His reporting and photographs brought home the reality of the fires’ devastation. Stunned evacuees reported having to change course while seeking shelter because the fire spread so fast as to close off their initial escape route, burning some 10,000 acres in a matter of minutes. Traffic on one of the roads that remained open backed up nearly 20 miles at one point.
Animals that escaped or were in some cases turned loose when their owners fled have been held at a local fairgrounds, where veterinarians are treating them and volunteers are attempting to reunite them with their owners. When Matt was photographing the aftermath, he met a woman walking around with a bag of chicken feed, hoping that some of her chickens had escaped the flames. Miraculously, some had. The full coverage can be seen at https://www.cheneyfreepress.com/.
(Photo Provided)
Most of us probably think hurricanes are Louisiana’s most common natural disaster, but right now, the state is on fire, a third of its parishes having declared wildfire emergencies. One of the driest summers on record has led to an average of 21 wildfires per day in the state, with more than 60,000 acres burned as of Aug. 30. Another WVUP graduate, now living near Fort Johnson, had to evacuate when the Vernon Parish fire reached to within a football-field length of her home.
On Aug. 30, Hurricane Idalia made landfall on Florida’s central Gulf coast, with 125-mile-an-hour winds and storm surges of up to ten feet. Bridges closed, stranding residents who did not evacuate in time. Much of Tampa, where I lived for eight years, was under water. Tropical Storm Lee, now forming in the Atlantic, is forecast to become a Category 4 hurricane over the next few days, with winds of 145 miles an hour.
What do these disasters have to do with climate change? Droughts, fires, and hurricanes are nothing new in our planet’s history; however, they are becoming more common as increased levels of atmospheric CO2 lead to warmer air and ocean temperatures. Warmer oceans, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, cause hurricanes to strengthen and become more deadly. NASA has documented the effects of warmer air temperatures on rain patterns, with increased drought conditions in many areas and more intense rain events in others. The Mid-Ohio Valley has thus far not experienced the worst of our current climate extremes, but we cannot be sure that our good luck will continue.
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Rebecca Phillips is a WVU Parkersburg retiree and a member of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action and the Green Sanctuary Committee of the First Unitarian Universalist Society of Marietta.
August 29, 2023 Article by Sionainn Rudek with description of Spring webinar organized by ReImagine Appalachia’s Faith Action group. Links to resources and recording provided.
“Environmental Justice for All: Ensuring Equity and Benefits Across Our Most Climate-Impacted Communities”
Available on E&E News ENERGYWIRE: (politico pro.com)
August 18, 2023 ENERGYWIRE Article by Carlos Anchondo (MOVCA is signature and Eric Engle quoted)
“EPS oversight of CO2 injection wells stirs debate” Two letters to the agency this week highlight a dispute over whether Stages can adequately and safely oversee injection wells critical for carbon capture technology.
August 4, 2023 Politics & Policy Article by Jon Hurdle
“ ‘Halliburton Loophole’ Allows Fracking Companies to Avoid Chemical Regulation” New research finds fracking-industry exemption for 28 chemicals otherwise regulated by federal law.
August 3, 2023 Inside Clean Energy article by Dan Gearino
“Labor and Environmental Groups Have Learned to Get Along. Here’s the Organization in the Middle” The leader of BlueGreen Alliance talks about what brings his members together and some of the big challenges.
The years between World War I and World War II were full of innovation, technological advances, and scientific growth. Many modern inventions — or the perfection of modern inventions — take root in that time. And, so it is with Teflon, a specialty plastic or fluoropolymer with some highly desirable properties, and also some deadly consequences.
While the invention of Teflon in 1938 came about by accident in the laboratory of Roy Plunkett, who was working on a refrigerant, being able to safely manufacture the substance took some time. At the intersection of modern chemistry and global history, developing a means to bond carbon and fluorine was seen as a solution to a problem — and one that had little to do with what goes on in the kitchen.
Around this time, prominent U.S. scientists were warning President Franklin D. Roosevelt that Germany would soon have a nuclear bomb. In response, the U.S. initiated a covert program to stockpile and weaponize uranium and create the atom bomb. This program was called The Manhattan Project.
In order to accomplish such a task, the government needed industry to develop a compound that would be virtually indestructible — one that could withstand the harshest conditions without breaking down. This was fundamental to the production of components necessary for the physical construction of the bomb. While scientists were looking to the bonding of carbon and fluorine for the answer, such a marriage was a dangerous and explosive proposition. First, they needed to develop the technology to merge them safely and in large quantities. In doing so, some of the resultant tech led to processes for making bomb components — and some was licensed by industry.
By 1944, DuPont still faced some difficulties with the mass production of Teflon. This became all too apparent when an accident occurred just before Thanksgiving at the company’s New Jersey facility — ripping apart a building and killing two workers. In the aftermath, the corporation decided to construct a plant specifically for the manufacture of Teflon. They selected Washington, W.Va., as the site of this new endeavor.
A photo of the newborn manufacturing facility kept in the Hagley Digital Archives shows a rather sparse looking place that is nearly unrecognizable as the Washington Works of today.
The rest, as they say, is history. Forever chemicals formed by the bonding of carbon and fluorine are essential to the production of Teflon and thousands of other consumer applications. However, PFAS are so slippery that their release into the environment proved most difficult to control. For decades DuPont used a riverside landfill for the disposal of Teflon waste. In time, a growing awareness of contamination issues led the corporation to relocate the contents of this landfill. They dug it up and moved it to Dry Run.
And, so began the Tennant family’s struggles — and the legendary battle over their cattle and the mysterious wasting disease that killed their entire herd.
Today this is all part of our chemical legacy.
The proliferation of PFAS had a 50-year head start on concerns over health and the environment. Evidence that exposure leads to the development of cancer and other health problems has done little to slow the spread. Industry keeps making new derivatives and putting them into use. PFAS can be found in the environment globally, in every body of water, and in the bloodstream of every human alive — from before birth.
If you are interested in a more thorough, academic exploration of the subject, I invite you to explore “Timebombing the Future” by Dr. Rebecca Altman.
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Callie Lyons is the author of the 2007 book, “Stain-Resistant, Nonstick, Waterproof and Lethal: The Hidden Dangers of C8,” which chronicles the discovery of PFAS or highly fluorinated compounds in Mid-Ohio Valley water supplies and beyond. She is a journalist and researcher for FITSNews and the FITSFiles true crime and corruption podcast.
The idea of carbon capture and storage (aka carbon capture and sequestration or in some cases carbon capture, utilization and storage or sequestration) has captured the imagination of West Virginia’s state and federal politicians. That’s about all it significantly captures, though.
The technology doesn’t capture even a fraction of what’s needed and envisioned after decades of effort. This proposition is well on its way to becoming a financial boondoggle, public health and environmental nightmare and a major factor in why we fall well short of greenhouse gas emissions reductions that we absolutely must achieve.
We at Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action were one of 17 groups that sent a letter to the U.S. EPA recently requesting that the federal agency not grant primacy over Class VI injection wells for the storage of captured carbon dioxide to the state of West Virginia. We have numerous reasons for concern.
For one, West Virginia regulators do not have the experience or expertise necessary to effectively oversee these wells. Class VI wells are fairly new developments as injection wells go. Secondly, West Virginia regulators lack the capacity or resources to oversee this additional class of wells. Despite recent legislative efforts, West Virginia has the lowest inspector to well ratio of any state in the region, and that ratio is not going to rise to acceptable levels anytime soon. It will continue to be about one inspector per 3,500 wells for the foreseeable future.
West Virginia law also allows owners and operators to evade liability for storage facilities, in this case underground pore spaces located below our state parks and wilderness areas, socializing risks while privatizing profits. To quote from the letter to the EPA, “in 2022, West Virginia passed [House Bill] 4491, allowing storage operators to be released ‘from all liability and regulatory requirements associated with the storage facility’ as early as 10 years after completion of a storage project, with the state assuming the responsibility for monitoring and managing the storage facility.”
Finally, the state government in West Virginia has shown time and again that the public engagement and participation in new energy projects they allow is all but nonexistent, and what does exist is just a formality with no meaningful influence. Those of us in the groups who sent this letter to the EPA saw this on full display just recently when offering public comment to the West Virginia Economic Development Authority. The WVEDA made a decision to write a $62.5 million loan using taxpayer dollars for a proposed facility in Mason County right outside of Point Pleasant and the public was all but shut out and completely ignored.
The Mason County proposal is for a blue hydrogen production facility (blue hydrogen is hydrogen obtained from methane gas with the associated carbon dioxide captured and sequestered) and an accompanying biomass usage facility. The project goal is to use the hydrogen and biomass to power data centers, greenhouses, steel production and transportation. The promise is 4,000 construction jobs and 800 permanent jobs with average wages at those permanent jobs of at least $110,000 a year. If you believe that will come to fruition, I’ve got oceanfront property I’d like to sell you in Mason County.
Want a more likely scenario? Look no further than the fracked gas industry that will supply the hydrogen behemoth in Mothman territory. To quote from analysis by the Ohio River Valley Institute, an independent, nonpartisan research and communications center focused on the Ohio River Valley, “Appalachia’s largest gas-producing counties have continued to drastically underperform the region and the nation in job, population and income growth since the beginning of the fracking boom. These 22 counties lost 10,339 jobs and 47,652 residents between 2008 and 2021.”
What about the methane released throughout every step of the natural gas recovery and use process? Methane, while shorter-lived in the atmosphere, is 86-times more efficient at trapping heat over a 20-year period than carbon dioxide. There’s no discussion of methane in these plans.
What about the fact that carbon dioxide displaces oxygen and, if it leaks from the miles of pipelines and numerous storage sites being proposed, could cause internal combustion engine failure or, far worse, widespread asphyxiation? Crickets.
What about the fact that carbon dioxide can form carbonic acid when stored underground and cause a breakdown of storage sites and combine with co-pollutants to cause immense harm to water resources? Nothing.
These ideas stink of desperation by the fossil fuels and derivative industries to maintain their enormously profitable status quo. Green hydrogen — produced using renewable energy to split water molecules to obtain and use the hydrogen atoms — is the most promising path for hydrogen’s decarbonizing future. There is also the possibility of white hydrogen, which is hydrogen obtained directly from the earth in what are hopefully safely and justly recoverable deposits. Blue hydrogen, like the rest of the hydrogen color scheme, is nonsense.
We’re being sold snake oil again, my fellow West Virginians, and we need to let our politicians know unequivocally that we’re not buying.
Eric Engle, of Parkersburg, is board president of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action.
The jet stream is a river of wind that blows from West to East, high up in the atmosphere where jets fly. It is the boundary between the cold air of the north and the warm air of the south. The peaks and valleys in the jet stream generate the pressure centers shown on weather maps as an H or L. The waviness of the jet stream is a feature that effects its movement. In the past 30 years, scientists have observed extremely large bends in the jet streams’ northward peaks and southward valleys coinciding with rising air temperatures. Because polar regions of the planet are warming more rapidly than other regions, the typical north-south temperature difference is decreasing which may be causing a wider, slower jet stream. Certain climate scientists theorize the drastic decline of ice in the Arctic, a direct consequence of human release of greenhouse gases, is linked to these shifting weather patterns.
Atmospheric scientist, Jennifer Francis, PhD, senior scientist at Woodwell Climate Research Center, has done extensive research on Arctic warming, atmospheric vapor and energy. She was among the first to identify the consequences of shrinking Arctic ice and its link to shifting global weather.
In 2003, Francis was part of a group of scientists who published a paper with a stunning conclusion: within a century, the world could witness a summer Arctic Ocean that would be ice-free, a state not seen for thousands of years. They theorized that the loss of Arctic sea ice had caused the jet stream to weaken. Since larger dips in the jet stream move more slowly, Persistent Weather Patterns (PWP) are increasing. That means droughts, heat waves, intense rain and tropical storms now persist in the same location longer than usual.
In the April 2018 issue of Scientific American, Francis authored an article with the title “Meltdown”. Her article stated the Arctic is a “…canary in the coal mine for the earth’s entire climate system.” Francis concluded the Arctic Ocean will likely be free of summer ice by 2040, a full 60 years earlier than predicted originally. As the temperatures of the air and ocean increase; sea ice, permafrost and glaciers/ice caps are all thawing rapidly. This summer there is a lot less sea ice than ever recorded before. Less sea ice, which reflects much of the sun’s energy, means more exposed ocean water, which is darker in color and absorbs more of that heat, making it even more difficult for ice to reform. And this year additional factors, including El Nino, are helping push temperatures to new extremes. However, according to a Yale “Environment 360” article published recently, global warming caused by use of fossil fuels is still by far the leading driver.
On July 29, 2021, in a radio interview, Francis shared information regarding the predicted increases for extreme weather events in the future. If current fossil fuel emissions were not limited, PWP would increase in frequency by two to seven times as many. Going beyond that into the future, the probabilities would get even larger, up to 21 times more likely. If the pace of human-induced climate disruption continues to grow, the consequences of planet warming fossil fuels will continue to produce PWP that grow more extreme as well as more frequent. In early July, an online news article reported that according to Francis, this summer’s soaring temperatures are “almost certainly” the warmest temperatures the planet has seen “probably going back at least 100,000 years.” And although July was the hottest month ever recorded, across the globe, weather records continue to be broken. Global warming is becoming global “weirding” and the resulting shattering of weather records a disturbing new normal.
The Arctic is changing the way scientists said it would but faster than the most aggressive predictions. Although it’s too late to preserve the Arctic as we have known it, there are rays of hope. World leaders agreed to establish a fund to help developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to climate change and to protect at least 30% of the world’s land, inland waters, coastal areas, and oceans. The European Union adopted new rules that will put its 27 member states on track to reduce carbon emissions by 55% by 2030. The Inflation Reduction Act, now one year old, puts the U.S. on the path to cut greenhouse gas emissions 40% by 2030. For the sake of the grandchildren, we must build on these successes and ensure that political leaders carry through on these plans.
***
Giulia Mannarino, of Belleville, is a grandmother concerned for her granddaughter’s future, and vice president of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action.
Find Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action on the following social media:
Last Updated: April 26, 2024 by main_y0ke11
Climate Corner: Electrify the MOV, it just makes cents
Oct 7, 2023
Jonathan Brier
editorial@newsandsentinel.com
Electrification can be more economical and provides health and environmental benefits too. Why am I focusing on electrification? Last week was National Drive Electric Week (Sept. 22-Oct. 1) and we are entering the season where holiday decorations are powered by electricity for scary and fun displays, and lights hang from trees and bushes.
Infrastructure is not a sexy topic, it’s something most people don’t even think about until it breaks. What we choose to invest in as our infrastructure matters not just for immediate needs, but is about long term returns instead of increasing costs. Externalities are costs not always factored into the price you pay. We often end up paying more for healthcare, natural disasters, and environmental impacts. These costs can be harder to see.
Tracking the power grid emissions. PJM (https://pjm.com/ is the regional transmission organization which helps plan our region’s power balancing and includes a map on their homepage which shows the current price of electricity as well as power generation sources. Electricity Maps (https://app.electricitymaps.com/map) is a source of real time and historical power of cost, source, and carbon emission.
Have you considered how much you pay a year just to have gas service? I’m paying approximately $480 a year to maintain the connection even if I don’t use any natural gas. I plan to replace my furnace when it ages out with a cold climate heat pump. I’ll no longer need gas service and can factor in a $480 savings a year toward the cost of the install and operation of the new system. The Department of Energy is running a whole program on heat pumps for cold climates optimized down to -15 degrees F operation so these are not the heat pumps people say can’t handle the winter.
More on the fact sheet: https://tinyurl.com/364eupsx.
When we bought our house our gas hot water heater needed to be replaced so we installed a hybrid heat pump water heater as it had much higher efficiency compared to resistive electric since it moves heat from the basement to the water and had the benefit of dehumidifying the basement somewhat too. This change moved emissions from exhausting just outside of our house and in our neighborhood and moved those emissions to the power plant which can reduce even further as the grid becomes cleaner. Our house came with a gas stove which due to ongoing information on the indoor air quality including those from the American Chemical Society https://tinyurl.com/jmermbrf and Journal of Building Engineering https://tinyurl.com/uyr3k2sd we plan on replacing with an induction stove. Would like our future kid(s) to live in a healthier home environment with the added benefit of lowering the chance to get burns by eliminating the hot surface risk of conductive electric stoves.
I want to electrify my life except, the next step is my car. My approximately 100-mile round trip commute will be in an electric vehicle next year. I hope I can source renewable power generated here in the Mid-Ohio Valley and keep money here to benefit the community. I not only will be getting 60+ miles per gallon equivalent on the current grid carbon intensity according to the Union of Concerned Scientists calculator (https://evtool.ucsusa.org/) which beats my current 39 mpg. I’m making a huge impact in a few years in regards to carbon emissions (https://tinyurl.com/mrfhdkjb).
What might we do to prepare for an electric future? Have proactive policies in place to make it cost less focused on construction and major remodels.
Plug in America has a policy toolkit to consider how to think and plan for the future: https://tinyurl.com/3bxn895m
Rewiring America has an accessible tool to explore tax incentives available to you to help with upgrades: https://www.rewiringamerica.org/
Support development of renewables in the Mid-Ohio Valley. We can benefit from diversifying our tax sources, provide opportunities to diversify income for our county residents, and hedge risk in the economics of maturing technology.
Support “Agrivolatics.” If you are not familiar, it pairs solar with crops and livestock that benefit or have a net zero impact while providing stable revenue to the landowners.
Rethink how you’re powered. Rethink the future.
Other related links:
* https://tinyurl.com/3xa8y5fn
* https://driveelectricweek.org/
***
Jonathan Brier is a Marietta resident, information scientist, and an Eagle Scout. He is a member of the Citizen Science Association, Association of Computing Machinery, American Association for the Advancement of Science, OpenStreetMap US, Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action, and a Wikipedia contributor. If you want to know more about citizen science or to reach him, visit https://brierjon.com or email: climatecorner@brierjon.com
***
Source:
https://driveelectricweek.org/
https://www.rewiringamerica.org/
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map
https://evtool.ucsusa.org/
https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/driving-cleaner#read-online-content
https://pjm.com/
https://www.energy.gov/eere/buildings/residential-cold-climate-heat-pump-challenge
There is a lot of scholarly work looking at gas stoves and indoor air quality https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as–ylo=2022&q=gas+stoves+and+indoor+air+quality&hl=en&as–sdt=0,36
American Chemical Society – https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.1c04707
Journal of Building Engineering – https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352710222009202
Last Updated: October 5, 2023 by main_y0ke11
Suggested Readings for October 2023
MOVCA Selected Media Postings September 2023
Compiled by Cindy Taylor
Available on WTAP:
September 19, 2023 News article by Chase Campbell Text and video [Sean O’Leary (ORVI) is interviewed]
“Plans for Omnis Fuel Technologies Graphite Production Raise Concerns”
https://www.wtap.com/2023/09/19/omnis-fuel-technologies-plans-pleasants-power-station-raise-doubts/
September 13, 2023 News article by Chase Campbell
“W.Va. DEP approves permit for planned medical waste incinerator in Jackson County”
https://www.wtap.com/2023/09/14/wva-dep-approves-permit-planned-medical-waste-incinerator-jackson-county/
Available on ABC 6:
September 15, 2023 Feature by Darrel Rowland (Randi Pokladnik is interviewed)
“Fracking under Ohio state parks on agenda for the first time at Monday meeting”
https://abc6onyourside.com/news/local/fracking-under-ohio-state-parks-on-agenda-for-the-first-time-at-monday-meeting-salt-fork-state-park-politics-katie-spilker-randi-pokladnik
Available on the Charleston Gazette-Mail:
See articles by Mike Tony, Environment and Energy Reporter: https://www.wvgazettemail.com/users/profile/mike%20tony/
September 25, 2023 Article by Mike Tony, Environment and Energy Reporter
“DEP seeks public comment on draft public engagement guidelines, including environmental justice analysis”
https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/energy_and_environment/dep-seeks-public-comment-on-draft-public-engagement-guidelines-including-environmental-justice-analysis/article_e239079b-15ba-501c-9f77-6c718ec7f78a.html
September 25, 2023 Article by Mike Tony, Environment and Energy Reporter
“DEP seeks public comment on draft public engagement guidelines, including environmental justice analysis”
https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/energy_and_environment/dep-seeks-public-comment-on-draft-public-engagement-guidelines-including-environmental-justice-analysis/article_e239079b-15ba-501c-9f77-6c718ec7f78a.html
September 7, 2023 Article by Mike Tony, Environment and Energy Reporter
“ ‘Let’s reinvent’: Omnis head talks big hydrogen game for Pleasants Power Station”
https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/energy_and_environment/lets-reinvent-omnis-head-talks-big-hydrogen-game-for-pleasants-power-station/article_6ceeca04-429a-5060-81c5-0d83fef1fbd3.html
Available on Mountain State Spotlight:
September 26, 2023 Environment Article by Sarah Elbeshbishi
“Biden is touting hydrogen as a source of clean energy and West Virginia officials want in. Here’s what to know about hydrogen hubs”
September 6, 2023 Environment Article by Sarah Elbeshbishi
“Spurred by government funding, controversial waste-to-energy plants eye West Virginia”
Available on Athens County INDEPENDENT:
September 7, 2023 Article by Dani Kingston (Article also published Sept. 9th in Inside Climate News)
“Local injection wells suspended over ‘imminent danger’ to drinking water”
Appearing in the Herald-Star (Steubenville);
September 29, 2023 Guest Column by Randi Pokladnik
“Democracy denied at oil, gas commission meeting”
Available on The Cleveland Plain Dealer:
September 15, 2023 Article by Jake Zuckerman, Sean McDonnell, Gretchen Cuda Kroen, and Peter Chakerian
“Nearly 150 now say they didn’t agree to use their names on pro-fracking form letters”
https://www.cleveland.com/open/2023/09/nearly-150-now-say-they-didnt-agree-to-use-their-names-on-pro-fracking-form-letters.html
Available on Statehouse News Bureau: The Ohio Newsroom
September 20, 2023 News Article by Kendall Crawford
“Can we get rid of ‘forever chemicals?’ Ohio scientists research PFAS destruction”
https://www.statenews.org/news/2023-09-20/can-we-get-rid-of-forever-chemicals-ohio-scientists-research-pfas-destruction
Available on Ohio Capital Journal:
September 5, 2023 Article by Marty Schladen Text and 4:30 audio
“Ohio utilities’ efficiency programs among the worst in wake of corruption utility law, report says”
September 4, 2023 Article by Kathiann M. Kowalski
“Federal funds can help Ohio electric co-ops cut costs and carbon emissions”
September 4, 2023 Article by Kathiann M. Kowalski
“Critics question how climate-friendly an Appalachian ‘blue’ hydrogen hub will be”
Available on Save Ohio Parks: https://saveohioparks.org
September 15, 2023 Press Release about letter to Oil and Gas Land Management Commission & Attorney General
“19 Ohio Organizations Urge State Officials to Halt State Land Leasing Decisions Until Investigations of Alleged Fake “Pro-Fracking” comments concludes” (MOVCA was a signatory. Link to letter provided.)
Available on the WV Climate Alliance:
September 20, 2022k Press Release
“Public Energy Authority Must Follow State Code and Appoint an Environmental Advocate”
https://www.wvclimatealliance.org/blog/2022/9/public-energy-authority-must-follow-state-code-and-appoint-an-environmental-advocate
Available on West Virginia Environmental Council (WVEC): https://wvecouncil.org
September 19, 2023 WVEC Action Alert
“Urgent: Support updated rules for oil and gas cleanup protection”
https://wvecouncil.org/urgent-support-updated-rules-for-oil-and-gas-cleanup-protection/
Available on West Virginia Rivers:
September 2023 Newsletter
“What’s Happening at WV Rivers- September 2023”
Appearing on-line on Ohio River Valley Institute https://ohiorivervalleyinstitute.org
September 20, 2023 Article REPORT by Mark Partridge and Nick Messenger
“A Bigger Bang Approach to Economic Development: An Application to Rural Appalachian Ohio Energy Boomtowns”.
https://ohiorivervalleyinstitute.org/a-bigger-bang-approach-to-economic-development/
September 18, 2023 Article by Eric de Place and Julia Stone
“The Meaning of MVP” How Fracking in Appalachia is Linked to Downstream Climate-Killing Infrastructure”
https://ohiorivervalleyinstitute.org/the-meaning-of-mvp/
Appearing on-line on ReImagine Appalachia: https://reimagineappalachia.org/events/
September 27, 2023 10:30 -Noon Event #2 in the SWPA Bioeconomy Series hosted by ReImagine Beaver Co.
“Economic Design for the Long Run with Industrial Hemp” [Recording link provided.]
September 21, 2023 Article by Jessica Arriens, Senior Program Manager for Climate and Energy Policy at NWF
“Awesome Tax Credit Guidance – Autumn”
September 20, 2023 Press Statement
“ReImagine Appalachia Hails President Biden’s American Climate Corps”
September 7, 2023 Article by Annie Contractor and Molly Updegrove
“Your Community May Benefit from the New Recomplete Pilot Program”
RELEVANT TO OUR REGION/ MORE EDUCATIONAL ARTICLES, PERSPECTIVES, & RESEARCH
Available on The WHITE HOUSE:
September 20, 2023 Press Release about American Climate Corps
“FACT SHEET: Biden-Harris Administration Launces American Climate Corps to Train Young People in Clean Energy, Conservation, and Climate Resilience Skills, Create Good-Paying Jobs and Tackle the Climate Crisis’
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/09/20/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-launches-american-climate-corps-to-train-young-people-in-clean-energy-conservation-and-climate-resilience-skills-create-good-paying-jobs-and-tackle-the-clima/
Available on TRUTHDIG.com:
September 18, 2023 Article by Justin Nobel
“Inside West Virginia’s Chernobyl” A highly radioactive oil and gas facility has become a party sport in Marion County.
Available from STAND.earth: https://stand.earth
September 21, 2023 Press Release about new REPORT. (Link to report included)
“New research shows impact of building-electrification policies on reducing housing emissions”
Available on Science & Environmental Health Network:
September 28, 2023 Article by Sandra Steingraber, SEHN senior scientist
“The RePercussion Section: Tigers Abroad – Scientists Call for an End to Fossil Fuels on the Streets of New York”
https://www.sehn.org/sehn/2023/9/25/repercussion-section-tigers-abroadscientists-call-for-an-end-to-fossil-fuels-on-the-streets-of-new-york
September 28, 2023 Remarks by Sandra Steingraber, SEHN senior scientist Text and recording link provided.
“Prepared Remarks of Testimony for the Columbian Debates on Fracking. Recorded on August 28,2023”
https://www.sehn.org/sehn/2023/9/25/prepared-remarks-of-testimony-for-the-colombian-sebates-on-dracking-recorded-on-august-28-2023
Available on Common Dreams:
September 29, 2023 Article by Brett Wilkins
“Microplastics in Clouds Could Be ‘Contaminating Nearly Everything We Eat and Drink’: Study
https://www.commondreams.org/news/microplastics
September 20, 2023 Article by Jake Johnson
“Embracing FDR’s Spirit and Progressive Demand, Biden Unveils American Climate Corps”
https://www.commondreams.org/news/american-climate-corps
September 5, 2023 Opinion by Bill Kitchen
“Will the Mountain Valley Pipeline Safety Order Have Teeth, and Does Biden Care?
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/mvp-safety-order
Available on The Guardian:
September 30, 2023 Climate crisis article by Damian Carrington, Environment editor Interview with Michael Mann
“ ‘We’re not doomed yet’: climate scientist Michael Mann on our last chance to save human civilisation”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/30/human-civilisation-climate-scientist-prof-michael-mann
September 29, 2023 Article by Jonathan Watts, Lucy Swan, Rich Cousins, Garry Blight, Harvey Symons and Paul Scruton
“The hottest summer in human history – a visual timeline”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2023/sep/29/the-hottest-summer-in-human-history-a-visual-timeline
September 26, 2023 Article by Fiona Harvey, Environmental Editor
“ ‘Staggering’ green growth gives hope for 1.5C says global energy chief”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/26/staggering-green-growth-gives-hope-for-15c-says-global-energy-head
September 26, 2023 Article by Stephen Buranuyl
“ ‘We are just getting started’: the plastic-eating bacteria that could change the world”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/28/plastic-eating-bacteria-enzyme-recycling-waste
September 17, 2023 Climate Crisis article by Dharna Noor and Aliya Uteuova
“Tens of thousands in NYC march against fossil fuels as AOC hails powerful message”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/17/march-to-end-fossil-fuels-new-york-city
September 13, 2023 PFAS article by Kyle Bagenstose
“In our blood: how the US allowed toxic chemicals to seep into our lives”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/13/us-environmental-protection-agency-failed-policy-consumer-chemicals
September 11, 2023 Article by Fiona Harvey, Environmental editor
“Heat pumps twice as efficient as fossil fuel systems in cold weather, study finds”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/11/heat-pumps-twice-as-efficient-as-fossil-fuel-systems-in-cold-weather-study-finds
Available on Inside Climate News:
September 26, 2023 Politics & Policy Article by Jon Hurdle
“A Drop in Emissions, and a Jobs Bonanza? Critics Question Benefits of a Proposed Hydrogen Hub for the Appalachian Region”
September 26, 2023 Fossil Fuels article by Terry L. Jones and Pam Radtke, Floodlight
“ A Known Risk: How Carbon Stored Underground Could Find Its Way Back Into the Atmosphere: Other concerns include the potential for earthquakes and contamination of groundwater”
September 13, 2023 Fossil Fuels article by Dani Kington, Athens County Independent
“Ohio Injection Wells Suspended Over “Imminent Danger to Drinking Water”
September 5, 2023 Science Article by Danish Bajwa
“A Medical Toolkit for Climate Resiliency Is Built on the Latest Epidemiology and ER Best Practices”
Available on Yale Environment 360:
September 19, 2023 Article by Jim Robbins
“Road Hazard: Evidence Mounts on Toxic Pollution from Tires”
https://e360.yale.edu/features/tire-pollution-toxic-chemicals
Available from Yale Climate Connections:
September 27, 2023 Article by YCC Team
“Electric vehicles may improve a community’s health”
September 20, 2023 Article by Dana Nuccitelli
“The Inflation Reduction Act is reducing U.S. reliance on China”
Last Updated: September 30, 2023 by main_y0ke11
Climate Corner: The future is NOW!
Sep 30, 2023
Linda Eve Seth
editorial@newsandsentinel.com
“The dog days of summer are not just barking, they are biting.” — U.N. Sec. Gen. Antonio Guterres
***
Global climate change is not a future problem. Effects that scientists have been predicting would result from global climate change are occurring now.
Summers are always hot. But this summer was different in profound ways. Record-breaking temperatures hit multiple cities. Records for heat fell everywhere. Globally, summer 2023 was the hottest summer on record.
The U.S. broke more than 2,000 high temperature records this summer. In July alone, nearly 200 million people — 60% of the U.S. population — were simultaneously under an extreme heat or flood advisory.
Today, with 3 months still left in the year, the U.S. has already experienced more billion-dollar weather disasters in 2023 than in any other year since authorities started tracking such data 40-plus years ago.
Catastrophic floods in the Hudson Valley; Unrelenting heat dome over Phoenix; Ocean temperatures hitting 101 degrees Fahrenheit off the coast of Miami in July (highest ever recorded); A rare flooding deluge in Vermont; A surprising tornado in Delaware; The first hurricane to hit southern California in more than 80 years. And in Iowa in late August, it was so hot that the CORN was literally sweating.
A decade ago, any one of these events would have been seen as an aberration. This year, they have been happening simultaneously as climate change fuels extreme weather.
Changes to Earth’s climate driven by increased emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases are already having widespread effects on the environment world-wide: glaciers and ice sheets are shrinking, river and lake ice is breaking up earlier, plant and animal geographic ranges are shifting, and plants and trees are blooming sooner.
Not every place experiences the same effects: Climate change may cause severe drought in one region while making floods more likely in another. Following are some of the impacts currently being experienced across the planet.
Longer-lasting droughts: Hotter temperatures increase the rate at which water evaporates from the air, leading to more severe and pervasive droughts. The western US is experiencing a severe “megadrought” — the driest 22-year stretch recorded in at least 1,200 years. (125+ consecutive days without rainfall in Phoenix, AZ this summer.), shrinking drinking water supplies, withering crops, forests more susceptible to insect infestations.
More intense wildfires: Drier, hotter climate creates conditions fueling more vicious wildfire seasons. The number of large wildfires doubled between 1984 and 2015 in the western United States.
Stronger storms: Warmer air also holds more moisture, making tropical cyclones wetter, stronger and more capable of rapidly intensifying. The frequency of severe Category 4 and 5 hurricanes is expected to increase.
Melting sea ice: The effects of climate change are most apparent in the world’s coldest regions–the poles. The Arctic is heating up twice as fast as anywhere else on earth. In just 15 years, the Arctic could be entirely ice-free in the summer.
Sea level rise: The predicted 12 inches of sea level rise by 2050 will damage infrastructure, like roads, sewage treatment plants, and even power plants. Recreational beaches that many of us have grown up visiting may be gone by the end of the century.
Less predictable growing seasons: Farming crops is becoming more unpredictable–and livestock, which are sensitive to extreme weather, have become challenging to raise. Climate change shifts precipitation patterns, causing unpredictable floods and longer-lasting droughts. More frequent and severe hurricanes can devastate an entire season’s worth of crops. The dynamics of pests, pathogens, and invasive species are also expected to become harder to predict and costly for farmers to manage. These impacts to our agricultural systems pose a direct threat to the global food supply.
Human health: Climate change worsens air quality. It increases exposure to hazardous wildfire smoke and ozone smog triggered by warmer conditions, both of which harm our health. Insect-borne diseases become more prevalent in a warming world. In the past 30 years, the incidence of Lyme disease from ticks has doubled in the United States.
Climate change is already impacting weather, environment, agriculture, and humanity. But ultimately, if we all work to reduce emissions, we may avoid some of the worst effects.
The Earth is a fine place and worth fighting for. — Ernest Hemingway
Until next time, be kind to your Mother Earth.
***
Linda Eve Seth, SLP, M.Ed., is a mother, grandmother, concerned citizen and member of MOVCA.
Last Updated: September 23, 2023 by main_y0ke11
Climate Corner: With ‘friends’ like these…
Sep 23, 2023
Eric Engle
editorial@newsandsentinel.com
As a Mon Power ratepayer, I have to say I’m really tired of being on the hook for the refusal of the powers that be in West Virginia to move on from coal energy. To quote from a piece in the Charleston Gazette-Mail by energy and environment reporter Mike Tony, “Mon Power and Potomac Edison already have a request pending before West Virginia utility regulators for a $207.4 million, 13% increase in customers’ base rate.”
Tony continues, “That’s the rate that accounts for all utility service expenses, including operating and maintenance costs, taxes and depreciation. Now the FirstEnergy utilities have asked the Public Service Commission for a roughly $167.5 million increase in customers’ rate to cover fuel costs effective Jan. 1, 2024. The PSC approved a $91.8 million rate increase to cover Mon Power and Potomac Edison fuel costs in December [2022]. The rate hike followed a $94 million rate hike the PSC approved for the utilities in May 2022, also for fuel costs. That followed a $19.5 million fuel cost rate increase approved in December 2021.”
Did you hear that cash register sound over and over again in your head as you read that last paragraph? You can thank West Virginia’s coal baron Governor, Jim Justice, his coal industry flunkies on the West Virginia “Public Service” Commission and a Republican supermajority in the state legislature. You can also thank the West Virginia Coal Association and the “Friends of Coal” campaign for the cultural manipulation tactics they’ve deployed to protect their air and water polluting, soil degrading, climate destabilizing and public health threatening status quo.
It’s not just West Virginia that’s engaged in total fossil fuels nonsense, though. A recent report from the organization Oil Change International shows that the U.S. accounts for more than a third of the planned oil and gas expansion globally by 2050. Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), describes fossil fuels expansion efforts as “very unhealthy and unwise economic risks.” Birol was quoted in The Guardian newspaper as saying, “New large-scale fossil fuel projects not only carry major climate risks, but also business and financial risks for the companies and their investors.”
The IEA was created in 1974 to help coordinate a collective response to major disruptions in the supply of oil, according to its website. It’s not exactly a bastion of climate and environmental concern. Investors and fiduciaries would do well to heed the warning of an agency like the IEA that helps coordinate energy policy all over the world and has for almost 50 years. Just don’t tell that to State Treasurer and District 02 congressional candidate, Riley Moore (R-WV), or Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate, Patrick Morrisey (R-WV).
Moore and Morrisey have been on a years-long crusade against Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investing — investment strategy that accounts for things like climate change and its impacts on finance. They call it “woke capitalism.” I guess now it’s “woke,” used derogatorily of course, to consider how the destabilization of life-supporting systems on our only home in the cosmos might impact a person’s or entity’s portfolio.
That makes about as much sense as the letter to the editor in this paper last week suggesting that the wildfires in Maui had nothing to do with climate change. Hawaii is an average two degrees warmer than in 1950 across its surface area. Hot, dry conditions and hurricane winds from a category 4 storm fueled by almost unfathomable ocean heat created the perfect conditions for a devastating wildfire. Anthropogenic (human-caused) global heating, aka climate change, was most certainly a detectable culprit in all of the above.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that threating the habitability of a planet of which we are an intimate part is a costly endeavor, not just in terms of physical harm and lives lost, but to the bottom lines of energy ratepayers, investors and the labor force. According to a recent analysis by the Stockholm Resilience Center, we have now transgressed 6 of 9 planetary boundaries: Biochemical flows (i.e. phosphorous and nitrogen accumulating in streams); freshwater change/use; land-system change; biosphere integrity; climate change (i.e. C02 and equivalent greenhouse gas accumulation and radiative forcing); and novel entities (i.e. plastics pollution). The remaining three boundaries (stratospheric ozone depletion, atmospheric aerosol loading and ocean acidification) we perform some better on, though we’re close to exceeding the acidification boundary as well. These transgressions are costly.
I don’t want astronomical power bills. I don’t want stranded assets for retirement investments. I want West Virginia to remain an energy state–cleaner, safer, healthier, more sustainable, more efficient and more affordable green energy. I encourage you to reflect on what you really want and not just on bumper sticker and license plate logic like being a “friend of coal,” whatever that means.
***
Eric Engle is chairman of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action.
Last Updated: September 17, 2023 by main_y0ke11
Climate Corner: Beyond shopping bags
News & Sentinel
Sep 16, 2023
Jean Ambrose
After a month of climate-induced catastrophes across the world–so called “thousand year” floods in eight countries in just the past eleven days! –I’ve been feeling as though my efforts to avoid single use plastics or take my own bags to the grocery store are almost too feeble to matter.
The pictures are all the same: brown rushing water, bodies, smashed cars, ruined real estate, survivors who have lost everything they owned. People who contributed nothing to the problem wandering in shock.
How was it decided that the air, the water, and the earth under our feet can be owned and trashed for the sole purpose of making a profit, but we all have to bear the consequences of that destruction in polluted air, water, and a warming planet? That maintaining and expanding that profit justifies almost any action. Contributions to politicians ensure that fossil fuels development is expanded. This year alone the U.S. has approved $1.5 billion in fossil fuel financing, more than any other country, and we continue to break records in domestic oil production. We see corruption large and small: Just this week, it was reported in the Cleveland Plain Dealer that a front organization for the natural gas industry, the Consumer Energy Alliance, used people’s names without their knowledge on petitions to allow fracking in Ohio State Parks, including those close to us, Salt Fork and Wolf Run.
There’s no question the fossil fuel industry is the wealthiest one the world has ever known. Since the Industrial Revolution first used fossil fuels to produce energy, large economies have been driven by carbon-emitting energy, agriculture, and industrial systems. What we often overlook is the invisible financial underpinnings of the fossil fuel economy, such as banking, capital investment, and insurance. The financial world is being disrupted in an unprecedented way by the climate crisis.
For example, insurance companies are pulling out of states because the climate risk of fires and floods is too great. State Farm and Allstate will no longer offer property insurance to new clients in California. Farmers Insurance will no longer write policies in Florida. The National Flood Insurance Program is $20 billion in debt and had to raise rates last year, making it even more unaffordable.
This represents a profound opportunity for climate activists and gives us something more meaningful to do than remember our shopping bags. Campaigns for cultural, educational, and religious institutions to divest their investments from fossil fuels pull the legitimacy or permission bestowed by the community for the fossil fuel industry to burn and flood the planet. This is called the “social license to operate,” a term created by the mining and extraction industries in the past 25 years. “A social license to operate exists when a mineral exploration or mining project is seen as having the approval, the broad acceptance of society to conduct its activities…Such acceptability must be achieved on many levels, but it must begin with, and be firmly grounded in, the social acceptance of the resource development by local communities (Joyce and Thomson 2000: 52).” Rescinding this approval gets to the root of the climate crisis.
The divestment movement was sparked by Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org when he said “If it is wrong to wreck the climate, then it is wrong to profit from that wreckage” (McKibben, 2012). Divestment allows institutions to align their actions with their mission and values to restore a livable future. Divestment in higher education is the single most common activity among college students this year in climate action. According to the Guardian this week, more than 250 US higher education Institutions have divested from fossil fuels.
This is something we all can research and act upon, maybe in divestment clubs? Where do you keep your savings? Where is your pension invested? What about bequests in your will? How about your church? Community cultural and philanthropic institutions? You can find out about investment funds at fossilfreefunds.org. 350’s Go Fossil Free campaign is a good place to start if you want to pursue divesting or start a campaign. Stand.earth has the most comprehensive database , listing 1596 institutions worldwide which have divested more than 40 trillion from the fossil fuel industry, and is a great source of ideas.
We can reduce an array of carbon emissions through the ways we decide to spend and save as well as by how institutions transact, invest, and trade. Your retirement plan, your bank, or your credit card company may be funding the climate crisis but it doesn’t have to.
***
Jean Ambrose is trying not to be a criminal ancestor.
Last Updated: September 9, 2023 by main_y0ke11
Climate Corner: Human stories amid our changing climate
Sep 9, 2023
Rebecca Phillips
editorial@newsandsentinel.com
(Photo Provided)
This column often focuses on facts and figures, and those are important, but today I want to share stories from the front lines of climate change. We in the Mid-Ohio Valley are–for the moment–in one of the areas spared the worst of climate change effects, but some of the places and people we care about are increasingly in harm’s way.
Part of my childhood was spent on Fort Myers Beach, a barrier island off the coast of southwest Florida. My sister and I spent a lot of time at the public beach, watching the sunset from the pier and occasionally visiting the tiny restaurants and snack bars that dotted the small commercial district. My mother and her sister at one time worked at an old-fashioned drug store in that same commercial hub, my father in the produce section of a nearby grocery. When Hurricane Ian made landfall a year ago, that area was leveled–not a single building left standing and most of the pier washed away. While I had not missed the island enough to visit in the last forty years, knowing that every structure from that area where we spent so much time was destroyed — in a single storm — was a shock.
2023 has been the year of wildfires. The smoke from Canada that blanketed the eastern U.S. for several days was followed by the devastating fires on Maui, which killed 115 people, with more than 300 others still unaccounted for. And the fires keep coming.
WVUP journalism graduate Matthew Stephens edits the Cheney Free Press in Spokane County, Wash., where wildfires last month burned more than 20,000 acres and left two people dead. His reporting and photographs brought home the reality of the fires’ devastation. Stunned evacuees reported having to change course while seeking shelter because the fire spread so fast as to close off their initial escape route, burning some 10,000 acres in a matter of minutes. Traffic on one of the roads that remained open backed up nearly 20 miles at one point.
Animals that escaped or were in some cases turned loose when their owners fled have been held at a local fairgrounds, where veterinarians are treating them and volunteers are attempting to reunite them with their owners. When Matt was photographing the aftermath, he met a woman walking around with a bag of chicken feed, hoping that some of her chickens had escaped the flames. Miraculously, some had. The full coverage can be seen at https://www.cheneyfreepress.com/.
(Photo Provided)
Most of us probably think hurricanes are Louisiana’s most common natural disaster, but right now, the state is on fire, a third of its parishes having declared wildfire emergencies. One of the driest summers on record has led to an average of 21 wildfires per day in the state, with more than 60,000 acres burned as of Aug. 30. Another WVUP graduate, now living near Fort Johnson, had to evacuate when the Vernon Parish fire reached to within a football-field length of her home.
On Aug. 30, Hurricane Idalia made landfall on Florida’s central Gulf coast, with 125-mile-an-hour winds and storm surges of up to ten feet. Bridges closed, stranding residents who did not evacuate in time. Much of Tampa, where I lived for eight years, was under water. Tropical Storm Lee, now forming in the Atlantic, is forecast to become a Category 4 hurricane over the next few days, with winds of 145 miles an hour.
What do these disasters have to do with climate change? Droughts, fires, and hurricanes are nothing new in our planet’s history; however, they are becoming more common as increased levels of atmospheric CO2 lead to warmer air and ocean temperatures. Warmer oceans, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, cause hurricanes to strengthen and become more deadly. NASA has documented the effects of warmer air temperatures on rain patterns, with increased drought conditions in many areas and more intense rain events in others. The Mid-Ohio Valley has thus far not experienced the worst of our current climate extremes, but we cannot be sure that our good luck will continue.
***
Rebecca Phillips is a WVU Parkersburg retiree and a member of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action and the Green Sanctuary Committee of the First Unitarian Universalist Society of Marietta.
(Photo Provided)
Last Updated: September 7, 2023 by main_y0ke11
Suggested Readings for September 2023
MOVCA Selected Media Postings August 2023 (and a few articles omitted from last report)
Compiled by Cindy Taylor
Appearing online in The Marietta Times:
August 10, 2023 Local News article by Nancy Taylor, Staff Reporter. Article also in N&S (8-12-23) link below.
“SAI Tech shows Marietta 90-day Progress”
https://www.mariettatimes.com/news/2023/08/sai-tech-shows-community-90-day-progress/
Appearing online in The Parkersburg News and Sentinel:
August 19, 2023 Business article, Staff Report
“Group asks EPA to deny West Virginia authority over carbon storage projects”
Available online on WTAP:
August 29, 2023 Feature by Chase Campbell text and video
“EPA rolls back wetland protections following SCOTUS decision on Clean Water Act”
https://www.wtap.com/2023/09/03/epa-rolls-back-wetland-protections-following-scotus-decision-clean-water-act/
August 20, 2023 Feature by Chase Campbell text and video
“Groups raise concerns as W.Va. hydrogen project picks up steam”
https://www.wtap.com/2023/08/21/groups-raise-concerns-wva-hydrogen-project-picks-up-steam/
August 11, 2023 Associated Press
“EPA weighs formal review of vinyl chloride, toxic chemical that burned in Ohio train derailment”
https://www.wtap.com/2023/08/11/epa-weighs-formal-review-vinyl-chloride-toxic-chemical-that-burned-ohio-train-derailment/
August 9, 2023 Feature by Chase Campbell
“SAI.TECH powers up research center in Marietta”
https://www.wtap.com/2023/08/10/saitech-powers-up-research-center-marietta/
Available on the Charleston Gazette-Mail:
See articles by Mike Tony, Environment and Energy Reporter: https://www.wvgazettemail.com/users/profile/mike%20tony/
August 31, 2023 Article by Mike Tony, Environment and Energy Reporter
“New solar surcharge to raise Mon Power and Potomac Edison bills amid ratepayer advocate alarm over utilities’ net metering plan”
https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/energy_and_environment/new-solar-surcharge-to-raise-mon-power-and-potomac-edison-bills-amid-ratepayer-advocate-alarm/article_bcf2c2d1-c9b3-5637-a99d-b5e25b39ce88.html
August 30, 2023 Article by Mike Tony, Environment and Energy Reporter
Saved From An Uncertain Future, Pleasants Power Station Is Reactivated”
August 30, 2023 Article by Mike Tony, Environment and Energy Reporter
“Mountain Valley Pipeline developer subsidiary’s pipeline expansion project construction underway in Wetzel County”
https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/energy_and_environment/mountain-valley-pipeline-developer-subsidiarys-pipeline-expansion-project-construction-underway-in-wetzel-county/article_88705140-a1d7-538c-b78a-c2f333a09c33.html
August 16, 2023 Article by Mike Tony, Environment and Energy Reporter
“Officials dismiss concerns to approve $62.5M loan for Mason County hydrogen project”
https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/energy_and_environment/officials-dismiss-concerns-to-approve-62-5m-loan-for-mason-county-hydrogen-project/article_8ac110da-8f2a-5149-876a-87b8d0a5d3df.html
August 14, 2023 Article by Mike Tony, Environment and Energy Reporter
“Some differences between planned Mason County hydrogen facility up for $62.5M state loan and past ‘high impact’ projects”
https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/energy_and_environment/some-differences-between-planned-mason-county-hydrogen-facility-up-for-62-5m-state-loan-and/article_f7ad819e-6c88-592c-85f4-e95dcd3a9558.html
August 10, 2023 Article by Mike Tony, Environment and Energy Reporter
“Mon Power, Potomac Edison ratepayers still on the hook for Pleasants Power Station costs”
https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/energy_and_environment/mon-power-potomac-edison-ratepayers-still-on-the-hook-for-pleasants-power-station-costs/article_1b7bfdd8-bf61-5af4-a8d7-363fd4e4e82c.html
August 10, 2023 Article by Mike Tony, Environment and Energy Reporter
“Meeting to consider forgivable $62.5M loan for Mason County hydrogen production and carbon capture project scheduled”
https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/energy_and_environment/meeting-to-consider-forgivable-62-5m-loan-for-mason-county-hydrogen-production-and-carbon-capture/article_659fed1f-8d3d-5d73-a741-3dd6362c90c3.html
August 7, 2023 Article by Mike Tony, Environment and Energy Reporter
“Flood resiliency law funding not provided for deluge-prone WV in Justice’s special session call”
https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/legislative_session/flood-resiliency-law-funding-not-provided-for-deluge-prone-wv-in-justices-special-session-call/article_d8370d4d-2c36-598b-a254-977a01297602.html
August 3, 2023 Article by Mike Tony, Environment and Energy Reporter
“Pleasants Power Station sale complete as new ownership plans coal, hydrogen and graphite for plant’s future”
https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/energy_and_environment/pleasants-power-station-sale-complete-as-new-ownership-plans-coal-hydrogen-and-graphite-for-plants/article_fe53e38c-dbbc-532b-8468-43f2433112f0.html
Available on Ohio Capital Journal:
August 24, 2023 Article by Susan Tebben
“Study: Shale gas boom ‘failed to deliver’ prosperity for Appalachia”
https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2023/08/24/study-shale-gas-boom-failed-to-deliver-prosperity-for-appalachia/
August 10, 2023 Article by Allison Winter
“USDA’s climate grants for farm and forests run into Republican buzzsaw”
Available on Save Ohio Parks: https://saveohioparks.org
August 24, 2023 Announcement about Saturday Sept 23rd meeting organized by Concerned Citizens of Ohio
“Salt Fork Town Hall to Discuss Fracking and More”
August 12, 2023 Article by Melinda Zemper
“Save Ohio Parks Releases Music Video to Fight Fracking”
August 4, 2023 Article by Melinda Zemper
“Ohio’s Marcellus Shale Ranks Second in U.S. Greenhouse Gases, Fourth Worldwide”
https://saveohioparks.org/2023/08/04/ohios-marcellus-shale-ranks-second-in-u-s-greenhouse-gases-fourth-worldwide/
Available on the WV Climate Alliance:
August 16, 2023 Press release by Morgan King, WV Rivers Coalition
“WV Groups Support the Inflation Reduction Act as a Good First Step”
https://www.wvclimatealliance.org/blog/2022/8/wv-groups-support-the-inflation-reduction-act-as-a-good-first-step
Available on West Virginians for Energy Freedom:
August 2023 About issue of Net Metering and link for petition to sign
“Power companies have a plan to kill solar in West Virginia
https://www.energyfreedomwv.org/net-metering
Available on West Virginia Environmental Council (WVEC): https://wvecouncil.org
August 29, 2023 WVED Action Alert by WV Citizen Action Group
“WV to NY: March for Climate Justice”
https://wvecouncil.org/wv-to-ny-march-for-climate-justice/
August 24, 2023 WVEC Action Alert by Solar United Neighbors
“Urgent Action: Stop the Attack on Solar in West Virginia”
https://wvecouncil.org/urgent-action-stop-the-attack-on-solar-in-west-virginia/
Available on-line on WV Rivers https://wvrivers.org :
See August West Virginia Rivers News and updates
Appearing on-line on Ohio River Valley Institute https://ohiorivervalleyinstitute.org
August 22, 2023 Article by Sean O’Leary about new REPORT with link to download
“FRACKALACHIA UPDDATE: Peak Natural Gas and the Economic Implications for Appalachia”
https://ohiorivervalleyinstitute.org/frackalachia-update-peak-natural-gas-and-the-economic-implications-for-appalachia/
August 21, 2023 Article by Ted Boettner
“Getting Unions Connected to Orphaned Well Clean Up: A Second Bite at the Apple”
https://ohiorivervalleyinstitute.org/getting-unions-connected-to-orphaned-well-clean-up-a-second-bite-at-the-apple/
August 21, 2023 Article by Ted Boettner
“The Unemployment Gap in Appalachia”
https://ohiorivervalleyinstitute.org/the-unemployment-gap-in-appalachia/
August 17, 2023 Article by Eric de Place and Julia Stone text and 8:01 minute audio
“Appalachia is Likely the Largest Source of Methane Emissions in the US”
https://ohiorivervalleyinstitute.org/appalachia-is-likely-the-largest-source-of-methane-emissions-in-the-us/
Appearing on Fair Shake Environmental Legal Services:
August 30, 2023 Article by Tina Perez, Fair Shake Legal Intern
“Pleasants Power Station – Potential Permits and Approvals Needed for Pyrolysis Plans”
https://www.fairshake-els.org/blog/2023/8/30/pleasants-power-plant-potential-permits-and-approvals
Appearing on-line on ReImagine Appalachia: https://reimagineappalachia.org/events/
August 23, 2023 Webinar on Zoom
“Climate Smart Agriculture: Impacts from The Affordable Clean Energy Plan”
August 22, 2023 Description of upcoming October 5th Listening Session with link to register
“Listening Session: ReImagining Shuttered Coal Plants”
August 29, 2023 Article by Sionainn Rudek with description of Spring webinar organized by ReImagine Appalachia’s Faith Action group. Links to resources and recording provided.
“Environmental Justice for All: Ensuring Equity and Benefits Across Our Most Climate-Impacted Communities”
August 16, 2023 Article by Rike Rothenstein, Research Associate for ReImagine Appalachia
“Appalachian Success Stories From Climate Infrastructure Funding”
August 10, 2023 Annie Regan presents summary of New Report with link to recording of press conference
“New Report: Re-Connecting Appalachia’s Disconnected Workforce through Targeted Employment’
August 1, 2023 Coalition Biweekly Lunchtime Update:
Learn about the Appalachian Sustainable Potential Map
https://reimagineappalachia.org/campaign-biweekly-lunchtime-update-2/
July 31, 2023 Article about Event with description of speakers, link to recording, presentations…
“Solar-Powered Faith Communities and Houses of Worship: Saving Money and Ethical Labor”
Appearing on-line on WV Public Broadcasting or WOUB (PBS) or WVXU:
August 29, 2023 Environment article by James Doubek
“The EPA removes federal protections from most of the country’s wetlands”
https://www.npr.org/2023/08/29/1196654382/epa-wetlands-waterways-supreme-court
August 1, 2023 Energy and Environment article by Caroline MacGregor
“W.Va. Produced Ray Of Life Solar Kits Headed To Ukraine”
August 1, 2023 Article by Josh Funk AP
“Norfolk Southern changes policy on overheated bearings, months after Ohio derailment”
https://woub.org/2023/08/01/norfolk-southern-changes-policy-on-overheated-bearings-months-after-ohio-derailment/
August 1, 2023 Energy and Environment article by Curtis Tate
“Capito, Republican Senators Ask EPA To Scrap Proposed Power Plant Rules”
Available on The Allegheny Front:
August 25, 2023 Article by Rachel MeDevitt about series on climate change. Links to audio recordings.
“What Can One Person Do About Climate Change? Climate Solutions will help you get started”
RELEVANT TO OUR REGION:
Available on E&E News ENERGYWIRE: (politico pro.com)
August 18, 2023 ENERGYWIRE Article by Carlos Anchondo (MOVCA is signature and Eric Engle quoted)
“EPS oversight of CO2 injection wells stirs debate” Two letters to the agency this week highlight a dispute over whether Stages can adequately and safely oversee injection wells critical for carbon capture technology.
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eenews/2023/08/18/oversight-of-co2-injection-wells-stirs-debate-00111695
Available on DeSmog:
August 16, 2023 Article by Sara Sneath
“Industry Plans Thousands of Miles of New Gas Pipelines to Boost LNG Exports”
https://www.desmog.com/2023/08/16/gulf-coast-lng-export-pipeline-buildout/
Available from FrackCheckWV: https://www.frackcheckwv.net
August 4, 2023 Article by Tom Bond (from article by Nadia Ramiagan, Ohio News Service, August 1, 2023)
“UPDATE – Ohioans Skeptical That More Fracking Will Bring Benefits”
https://www.frackcheckwv.net/2023/08/04/update-ohioans-skeptical-more-fracking-would-bring-benefits/
August 3, 2023 Essay on Regional & Global Impacts by Randi Pokladnik
“The Effects from Fracking Ohio’s Parks Reach Far Beyond the State”
https://www.frackcheckwv.net/2023/08/03/the-effects-from-fracking-ohio’s-parks-reach-far-beyond-the-state/
Available on Fractracker Alliance: https://www.fractracker.org
August 31, 2023 Article by Erica Jackson with links to map and data
“How Spills, Holes, and Cracks Release Fracking Chemicals into the Environment”
Available on Common Dreams:
August 16, 2023 Article by Jake Johnson
“Kids Who Live Near Fracking Sites Are Up to 7 Times More Likely to Develop Lymphoma: Study”
https://www.commondreams.org/news/fracking-cancer
August 4, 2023 Article by Brett Wilkins
“Cardiovascular ER Visits Plunged After Pittsburgh Coal Plat Shut, Study Finds”
https://www.commondreams.org/news/shenango-coke-works
MORE EDUCATIONAL ARTICLES, PERSPECTIVES , RESEARCH and RESOURCES:
Available from Our Children’s Trust Youth v. Gov https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org
August 14, 2023 Press Release
“Sweeping Constitutional Win for Held v. State of Montana Youth Plaintiffs”
Click to access 08142023-Montana-Climate-Youth-Win.pdf
Available from NASA:
August 24, 2023 Press Release
“NASA Shares First Images from US Pollution-Monitoring Instrument”
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-shares-first-images-from-us-pollution-monitoring-instrument
August 14, 2023 Press Release
“NASA Clocks July 2023 as Hottest Month on Record Ever Since 1880”
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-clocks-july-2023-as-hottest-month-on-record-ever-since-1880
Available on BIG THINK:
August 3, 2023 Feature by Frank Jacobs Text with maps and audio. (Great explanation of ocean currents.)
“No, the Gulf Stream isn’t going to collapse”
https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/gulf-stream-collapse-amoc/
Available on PHYS.ORG:
August 24, 2023 Article by Roland Lloyd Parry, Marlowe Hood
“Top science publisher withdraws flawed climate study”
https://phys.org/news/2023-08-science-publisher-flawed-climate.html
Available on Earthday.org:
August 31, 2023 Press release
“National Cleanup Day Returns on September 16th”
August 23, 2023 Article by Rodolfo Beltran
“The Interconnection of Health, Environment, and Climate Education”
August 16, 2023 Planet vs. Plastics Article by Grace Higgins
“You are What You Eat: Plastics in our Food”
August 2, 2023 Feature by Aidan Charron
“60 x 40”: A Global Wave to Halt Plastic Production and Save Our Planet”
July 31, 2023 Press Release
“Planet VS. Plastics: Global Theme for Earth Day 2024”
July 31, 2023 Planet vs. Plastics Feature by Eryn Gold
“Extended Producer Responsibility: A Solution or a Checked Box?
https://www.earthday.org/extended-producer-responsibility-a-solution-or-a-checked-box/
July 31, 2023 Feature by Lindey Helwagen
“Fast Fashion and Its Devastating Impacts on Forests Revealed”
July 21, 2023 Feature by Lindey Helwagen
“Life in Plastic, It’s Not Fantastic’
Available on 350.org:
August 24, 2023 Press Release by 350.org
“Groundbreaking Documentary “Esto es Fracking” by 350.org Exposes Devastating Impacts of Oil and Gas Expansion in Argentina”
August 18, 2023 Article by Melanie Smith
“What we can Learn from Maui about Decolonizing Wildfire Response”
https://350.org/maui-decolonizing-wildfire-response/
August 17, 2023 Article by Matilda Borgstrom
“Another summer of broken heat records, But we know what we need to do”
August 1, 2023 Press Release about event happening November 3rd and 4th, 2023
“Global Days of Action To Power Up Renewables”
Available on The Guardian:
August 23, 2023 Extreme Weather article by Richard Luscombe
“Record heatwave persists in US as 130 million under alerts in 22 states”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/23/us-heat-warnings-22-states-record-heatwave-continues
August 23, 2023 Fossil Fuel article by Ajit Niranjan
“G20 poured more than $1tn into fossil fuel subsides despite Cop26 pledges – report”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/23/g20-poured-more-than-1tn-on-fossil-fuel-subsidies-despite-cop26-pledges-report
August 21, 2023 Environmental Activism article by Ajit Niranjan
“Anger is most powerful emotion by far for spurring climate action, study finds”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/21/anger-is-most-powerful-emotion-by-far-for-spurring-climate-action-study-finds
August 14, 2023 Article by Helena Horton, Environmental reporter
“Dead flies could be used to make biodegradable plastic, scientists say”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/14/dead-flies-biodegradable-plastic-scientists
August 11, 2023 Article by Oliver Milman
“Green investment boom and electric car sales: six key things about Biden’s Climate bill”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/11/biden-climate-bill-inflation-reduction-act
August 7, 2023 Article by Andrew Gregory, Health editor
“Air pollution linked to rise in antibiotic resistance that imperils human health”
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/aug/07/air-pollution-linked-rise-antibiotic-resistance-imperils-human-health
August 7, 2023 Article by Dharna Noor and Kristi Swarth of Floodlight
“US utilities oppose Biden efforts to make gas power plants cleaner”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/07/us-utilities-gas-power-plants-lobbying-eei-epa
August 4, 2023 Article by Tom Perkins
“ ‘It feels like an apocalyptic movie’: life in East Palestine six months after toxic train crash”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/04/ohio-train-derailment-east-palestine-health-chemical-symptom
August 3, 2023 PFAS article by Tom Perkins
“Chemical companies’ PFAS payouts are huge – but the problems is even bigger”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/03/chemical-companies-pfas-payouts-forever-chemicals
Available on Inside Climate News:
August 23, 2023 Fossil Fuels article by Jon Hurdle
“Appalachian Economy Sees Few Gains From Natural Gas Development, Report Says”
August 22, 2023 Politics & Policy Article by Phil McKenna
“Federal Regulators Raise Safety Concerns Over Mountain Valley Pipeline in Formal Notice”
August 8, 2023 Fossil Fuels Article by Quinn Glabicki, PublicSource
“Inside Pennsylvania’s Monitoring of the Shell Petrochemical Complex”
August 4, 2023 Politics & Policy Article by Jon Hurdle
“ ‘Halliburton Loophole’ Allows Fracking Companies to Avoid Chemical Regulation” New research finds fracking-industry exemption for 28 chemicals otherwise regulated by federal law.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04082023/halliburton-loophole-fracking-pennsylvania/
August 3, 2023 Inside Clean Energy article by Dan Gearino
“Labor and Environmental Groups Have Learned to Get Along. Here’s the Organization in the Middle” The leader of BlueGreen Alliance talks about what brings his members together and some of the big challenges.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/03082023/inside-clean-energy-labor-and-environmmentalists/
Available on The CONVERSATION:
August 23, 2023 Environment and Energy Article by Julie Arbit, Brad Bottoms, and Earl Lewis
“Looking for a US ‘climate haven’ away from heat and disaster risks? Good luck finding one”
https://theconversation.com/looking-for-a-us-climate-haven-away-from-heat-and-disaster-risks-good-luck-finding-one-211990
Available from Yale Climate Connections:
August 25, 2023 Article by YCC team
“Could common medicines make heatwaves more dangerous?”
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2023/08/could-common-medicines-make-heatwaves-more-dangerous/
August 15, 2023 Article by YCC team
“Limiting warming to 1.5 degrees C would save half the world’s glaciers, study finds”
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/topic/science/
August 3, 2023 Article by Samantha Harrington. Interview with Meteorologist Alexandra Steele
“Introducing new Eye on the Storm YouTube series on extreme weather”
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2023/08/introducing-new-eye-on-the-storm-youtube-series-on-extreme-weather/
Last Updated: September 2, 2023 by main_y0ke11
The Teflon Time Machine – from the Manhattan Project to the Mid-Ohio Valley
Sep 2, 2023
Callie Lyons
editorial@newsandsentinel.com
The years between World War I and World War II were full of innovation, technological advances, and scientific growth. Many modern inventions — or the perfection of modern inventions — take root in that time. And, so it is with Teflon, a specialty plastic or fluoropolymer with some highly desirable properties, and also some deadly consequences.
While the invention of Teflon in 1938 came about by accident in the laboratory of Roy Plunkett, who was working on a refrigerant, being able to safely manufacture the substance took some time. At the intersection of modern chemistry and global history, developing a means to bond carbon and fluorine was seen as a solution to a problem — and one that had little to do with what goes on in the kitchen.
Around this time, prominent U.S. scientists were warning President Franklin D. Roosevelt that Germany would soon have a nuclear bomb. In response, the U.S. initiated a covert program to stockpile and weaponize uranium and create the atom bomb. This program was called The Manhattan Project.
In order to accomplish such a task, the government needed industry to develop a compound that would be virtually indestructible — one that could withstand the harshest conditions without breaking down. This was fundamental to the production of components necessary for the physical construction of the bomb. While scientists were looking to the bonding of carbon and fluorine for the answer, such a marriage was a dangerous and explosive proposition. First, they needed to develop the technology to merge them safely and in large quantities. In doing so, some of the resultant tech led to processes for making bomb components — and some was licensed by industry.
By 1944, DuPont still faced some difficulties with the mass production of Teflon. This became all too apparent when an accident occurred just before Thanksgiving at the company’s New Jersey facility — ripping apart a building and killing two workers. In the aftermath, the corporation decided to construct a plant specifically for the manufacture of Teflon. They selected Washington, W.Va., as the site of this new endeavor.
A photo of the newborn manufacturing facility kept in the Hagley Digital Archives shows a rather sparse looking place that is nearly unrecognizable as the Washington Works of today.
The rest, as they say, is history. Forever chemicals formed by the bonding of carbon and fluorine are essential to the production of Teflon and thousands of other consumer applications. However, PFAS are so slippery that their release into the environment proved most difficult to control. For decades DuPont used a riverside landfill for the disposal of Teflon waste. In time, a growing awareness of contamination issues led the corporation to relocate the contents of this landfill. They dug it up and moved it to Dry Run.
And, so began the Tennant family’s struggles — and the legendary battle over their cattle and the mysterious wasting disease that killed their entire herd.
Today this is all part of our chemical legacy.
The proliferation of PFAS had a 50-year head start on concerns over health and the environment. Evidence that exposure leads to the development of cancer and other health problems has done little to slow the spread. Industry keeps making new derivatives and putting them into use. PFAS can be found in the environment globally, in every body of water, and in the bloodstream of every human alive — from before birth.
If you are interested in a more thorough, academic exploration of the subject, I invite you to explore “Timebombing the Future” by Dr. Rebecca Altman.
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Callie Lyons is the author of the 2007 book, “Stain-Resistant, Nonstick, Waterproof and Lethal: The Hidden Dangers of C8,” which chronicles the discovery of PFAS or highly fluorinated compounds in Mid-Ohio Valley water supplies and beyond. She is a journalist and researcher for FITSNews and the FITSFiles true crime and corruption podcast.
Last Updated: September 7, 2023 by main_y0ke11
Don’t buy snake oil in form of carbon capture
Charleston Gazette-Mail
The idea of carbon capture and storage (aka carbon capture and sequestration or in some cases carbon capture, utilization and storage or sequestration) has captured the imagination of West Virginia’s state and federal politicians. That’s about all it significantly captures, though.
The technology doesn’t capture even a fraction of what’s needed and envisioned after decades of effort. This proposition is well on its way to becoming a financial boondoggle, public health and environmental nightmare and a major factor in why we fall well short of greenhouse gas emissions reductions that we absolutely must achieve.
We at Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action were one of 17 groups that sent a letter to the U.S. EPA recently requesting that the federal agency not grant primacy over Class VI injection wells for the storage of captured carbon dioxide to the state of West Virginia. We have numerous reasons for concern.
For one, West Virginia regulators do not have the experience or expertise necessary to effectively oversee these wells. Class VI wells are fairly new developments as injection wells go. Secondly, West Virginia regulators lack the capacity or resources to oversee this additional class of wells. Despite recent legislative efforts, West Virginia has the lowest inspector to well ratio of any state in the region, and that ratio is not going to rise to acceptable levels anytime soon. It will continue to be about one inspector per 3,500 wells for the foreseeable future.
West Virginia law also allows owners and operators to evade liability for storage facilities, in this case underground pore spaces located below our state parks and wilderness areas, socializing risks while privatizing profits. To quote from the letter to the EPA, “in 2022, West Virginia passed [House Bill] 4491, allowing storage operators to be released ‘from all liability and regulatory requirements associated with the storage facility’ as early as 10 years after completion of a storage project, with the state assuming the responsibility for monitoring and managing the storage facility.”
Finally, the state government in West Virginia has shown time and again that the public engagement and participation in new energy projects they allow is all but nonexistent, and what does exist is just a formality with no meaningful influence. Those of us in the groups who sent this letter to the EPA saw this on full display just recently when offering public comment to the West Virginia Economic Development Authority. The WVEDA made a decision to write a $62.5 million loan using taxpayer dollars for a proposed facility in Mason County right outside of Point Pleasant and the public was all but shut out and completely ignored.
The Mason County proposal is for a blue hydrogen production facility (blue hydrogen is hydrogen obtained from methane gas with the associated carbon dioxide captured and sequestered) and an accompanying biomass usage facility. The project goal is to use the hydrogen and biomass to power data centers, greenhouses, steel production and transportation. The promise is 4,000 construction jobs and 800 permanent jobs with average wages at those permanent jobs of at least $110,000 a year. If you believe that will come to fruition, I’ve got oceanfront property I’d like to sell you in Mason County.
Want a more likely scenario? Look no further than the fracked gas industry that will supply the hydrogen behemoth in Mothman territory. To quote from analysis by the Ohio River Valley Institute, an independent, nonpartisan research and communications center focused on the Ohio River Valley, “Appalachia’s largest gas-producing counties have continued to drastically underperform the region and the nation in job, population and income growth since the beginning of the fracking boom. These 22 counties lost 10,339 jobs and 47,652 residents between 2008 and 2021.”
What about the methane released throughout every step of the natural gas recovery and use process? Methane, while shorter-lived in the atmosphere, is 86-times more efficient at trapping heat over a 20-year period than carbon dioxide. There’s no discussion of methane in these plans.
What about the fact that carbon dioxide displaces oxygen and, if it leaks from the miles of pipelines and numerous storage sites being proposed, could cause internal combustion engine failure or, far worse, widespread asphyxiation? Crickets.
What about the fact that carbon dioxide can form carbonic acid when stored underground and cause a breakdown of storage sites and combine with co-pollutants to cause immense harm to water resources? Nothing.
These ideas stink of desperation by the fossil fuels and derivative industries to maintain their enormously profitable status quo. Green hydrogen — produced using renewable energy to split water molecules to obtain and use the hydrogen atoms — is the most promising path for hydrogen’s decarbonizing future. There is also the possibility of white hydrogen, which is hydrogen obtained directly from the earth in what are hopefully safely and justly recoverable deposits. Blue hydrogen, like the rest of the hydrogen color scheme, is nonsense.
We’re being sold snake oil again, my fellow West Virginians, and we need to let our politicians know unequivocally that we’re not buying.
Eric Engle, of Parkersburg, is board president of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action.
Last Updated: August 26, 2023 by main_y0ke11
Climate Corner: Weather on steroids
Aug 26, 2023
Giulia Mannarino
editorial@newsandsentinel.com
The jet stream is a river of wind that blows from West to East, high up in the atmosphere where jets fly. It is the boundary between the cold air of the north and the warm air of the south. The peaks and valleys in the jet stream generate the pressure centers shown on weather maps as an H or L. The waviness of the jet stream is a feature that effects its movement. In the past 30 years, scientists have observed extremely large bends in the jet streams’ northward peaks and southward valleys coinciding with rising air temperatures. Because polar regions of the planet are warming more rapidly than other regions, the typical north-south temperature difference is decreasing which may be causing a wider, slower jet stream. Certain climate scientists theorize the drastic decline of ice in the Arctic, a direct consequence of human release of greenhouse gases, is linked to these shifting weather patterns.
Atmospheric scientist, Jennifer Francis, PhD, senior scientist at Woodwell Climate Research Center, has done extensive research on Arctic warming, atmospheric vapor and energy. She was among the first to identify the consequences of shrinking Arctic ice and its link to shifting global weather.
In 2003, Francis was part of a group of scientists who published a paper with a stunning conclusion: within a century, the world could witness a summer Arctic Ocean that would be ice-free, a state not seen for thousands of years. They theorized that the loss of Arctic sea ice had caused the jet stream to weaken. Since larger dips in the jet stream move more slowly, Persistent Weather Patterns (PWP) are increasing. That means droughts, heat waves, intense rain and tropical storms now persist in the same location longer than usual.
In the April 2018 issue of Scientific American, Francis authored an article with the title “Meltdown”. Her article stated the Arctic is a “…canary in the coal mine for the earth’s entire climate system.” Francis concluded the Arctic Ocean will likely be free of summer ice by 2040, a full 60 years earlier than predicted originally. As the temperatures of the air and ocean increase; sea ice, permafrost and glaciers/ice caps are all thawing rapidly. This summer there is a lot less sea ice than ever recorded before. Less sea ice, which reflects much of the sun’s energy, means more exposed ocean water, which is darker in color and absorbs more of that heat, making it even more difficult for ice to reform. And this year additional factors, including El Nino, are helping push temperatures to new extremes. However, according to a Yale “Environment 360” article published recently, global warming caused by use of fossil fuels is still by far the leading driver.
On July 29, 2021, in a radio interview, Francis shared information regarding the predicted increases for extreme weather events in the future. If current fossil fuel emissions were not limited, PWP would increase in frequency by two to seven times as many. Going beyond that into the future, the probabilities would get even larger, up to 21 times more likely. If the pace of human-induced climate disruption continues to grow, the consequences of planet warming fossil fuels will continue to produce PWP that grow more extreme as well as more frequent. In early July, an online news article reported that according to Francis, this summer’s soaring temperatures are “almost certainly” the warmest temperatures the planet has seen “probably going back at least 100,000 years.” And although July was the hottest month ever recorded, across the globe, weather records continue to be broken. Global warming is becoming global “weirding” and the resulting shattering of weather records a disturbing new normal.
The Arctic is changing the way scientists said it would but faster than the most aggressive predictions. Although it’s too late to preserve the Arctic as we have known it, there are rays of hope. World leaders agreed to establish a fund to help developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to climate change and to protect at least 30% of the world’s land, inland waters, coastal areas, and oceans. The European Union adopted new rules that will put its 27 member states on track to reduce carbon emissions by 55% by 2030. The Inflation Reduction Act, now one year old, puts the U.S. on the path to cut greenhouse gas emissions 40% by 2030. For the sake of the grandchildren, we must build on these successes and ensure that political leaders carry through on these plans.
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Giulia Mannarino, of Belleville, is a grandmother concerned for her granddaughter’s future, and vice president of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action.
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