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Climate-Fueled Fires Rage Across NorCal: Northern California is under a siege of wildfires and smoke, fueled by drought and heat made worse by human-caused climate change, and the list of cities and towns under evacuation orders is long. The Caldor Fire continued its rapid expansion Wednesday, growing at double the pace of firefighters' models from roughly 30,000 acres on Tuesday to 62,586 acres Wednesday night. The even larger "megafires," Dixie, McFarland, and Monument, have also continued growing. The Dixie Fire has incinerated an additional 66,000 acres since Monday, becoming the first known fire in state history to burn all the way from the western slopes of the Sierra Nevadas, across the mountains, and into the eastern valley floor. As the fires roar through tinder-dry fuel, they are wiping out forests central to California's plans to reduce the state's carbon emissions, and filling the air with hazardous pollution. The fact that 30 fire engines and their firefighters were moved from the Dixie Fire to fight the Caldor Fire illustrates just how thin firefighting resources are stretched, due in part to the widespread conflagrations burning across the continent. (“Canada is burning as well,” Cal Fire director Thom Porter told the Sacramento Bee.) Though still much smaller, the exceptionally fast-burning Cache Fire destroyed dozens of homes and threatened an elementary school, forcing children to hurriedly flee as flames burned just across the street. Reaction to the fire near Clearlake was initially limited, officials said, because some local crews were already deployed to assist in fighting the Caldor Fire. The extended drought and recent heat, both made worse by climate change, have created conditions ripe for the exceptionally destructive fires. “It’s important for all Californians to understand the severity of how our climate-driven conditions are altering the environment and are making these fires move faster and making them more complex and, ultimately, more dangerous than anything we’ve faced in the past,” Mark Ghilarducci, director of the emergency services office, told reporters. (Fires: Washington Post $, AP, New York Times $, Axios, NBC; Caldor Fire growth: Washington Post $, SFGATE, Sacramento Bee $, San Francisco Chronicle $, ABC, CBS, Washington Post $; Dixie Fire: San Francisco Chronicle $; Carbon emissions: AP; Air quality: New York Times $, Sacramento Bee $; Limited resources: Sacramento Bee $; Cache Fire: San Francisco Chronicle $, ABC-7; Climate Signals background: 2021 Western wildfire season, Drought)

Federal Judge Tosses NPR-A Drilling Permits Over Climate Omission: A federal judge threw out oil drilling permits in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska on Wednesday. The permits for ConocoPhillips’ Willow Project on Alaska's North Slope were approved by the Trump administration in the runup to the 2020 election, and the Biden administration had defended their legality (which, the New York Times reports, may have been part of an effort to build favor with Alaskan Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski). However, BLM and the Fish and Wildlife Service improperly approved the project, Judge Sharon Gleason wrote, because they failed to adequately provide for polar bear protections and assess its impact on climate change. “This certainly gives the Biden administration the opportunity to reconsider whether to approve the project in light of its commitment to address climate change. And it should do that,” Jeremy Lieb of Earth Justice, which represented the plaintiffs, told the Washington Post. “This is a huge deal,” Siqiñiq Maupin, executive director of the Sovereign Inupiat for a Living Arctic, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, told the Anchorage Daily News. “This will actually stop the entire project, they will have to do everything over again,” she said. (Anchorage Daily News, Washington Post $, AP, New York Times $)

Chuck Sams Nominated To Head National Parks Service, Would Be First Native NPS Director: President Biden nominated Charles “Chuck” Sams III to serve as director of the National Park Service on Wednesday. If confirmed, the former director of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and current member of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council would be the first Native American to direct the agency that oversees millions of acres of ancestral tribal territories and treaty lands, now national parks or monuments. Holly Cook Macarro, Red Lake Ojibwe, said Sams' nomination to oversee Native lands taken by “treaty violations, theft and other forms" was ironic, and “once again feels like things are coming full circle.” Representation is important, she told Indian Country Today, as now “there’s someone on the very top who understands the tribal perspective and is going to bring it to the table in a way that we haven’t seen before.” (Indian Country Today, Indianz, Oregon Public Broadcasting, E&E News, Axios, KTVZ, Bellingham Herald)

CLIMATE LITIGATION: After climate court victories comes the problem of enforcement (Bloomberg $)

CENTRAL BANKS: As disasters mount, central banks gird against threat of climate change (Yale Environment 360)

LEASING: Environmental advocates disappointed in return of oil and gas leasing amid appeal of federal moratorium (New Mexico Political Report)

OZONE: Saving the ozone layer also helped buy us time to address climate change (Earther, FT $)

INTERSECTING CRISES: Watch: in 'Unlivable Oasis,' a family struggles to find housing on the front lines of the climate crisis (TIME)

WHAT DO YOU TAKE WHEN YOU MAY NEVER COME BACK?: What they saved from the flames (Washington Post $)

FRED & GRACE: Extreme flooding leaves 35 unaccounted for in North Carolina (Washington Post $), Hurricane Grace makes landfall near Mexico’s Tulum temples (AP)

AGENCIES: FEMA overhauls the National Flood Insurance Program for climate change (CNBC)

EPA: EPA administrator visits Apple HQ to talk climate, environmental justice (Axios), EPA bans pesticide tied to neurological damage in kids (CBS, New York Times $, AP)

DOT: NHTSA may apply fuel economy penalty hike back through 2019 vehicles (Politico Pro $)

HOUSE: Rep. Sean Casten on Hot FERC Summer and how to prepare the US grid for rapid decarbonization (Canary Media)

SENATE: New report projects Senate proposals would give WV economy energy boost (Charleston Gazette-Mail), Labor chief joins Manchin for West Virginia coal mine trip (AP), Nevada senator seeks new ideas to address wildfire smoke (AP)

WHITE HOUSE: Biden draws ire of GOP, progressives with call to boost OPEC output (The Hill), Biden pressed to slash big-rig pollution as next climate target (Bloomberg $)

CITIES AND STATES: Charting a course to shrink the heat gap between New York City neighborhoods (InsideClimate News), Hawaii building huge new battery, bidding farewell to coal (Canary Media), Ohio high court delays ruling in Volkswagen emissions case (AP)

CALIFORNIA: New rule requires Southern California warehouses to clean up or pay up (Yale Climate Connections), California regulators contemplate zero-emission vehicle mandate by 2025 (Politico Pro $)

FERC: FERC's Chatterjee questions clean energy standard, says carbon pricing could unify US energy policy (Utility Dive)

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?: ‘Everyone wants a good job’: the Texas unions fighting for a Green New Deal (Earther)

FRED SPINOFFS: Extreme flooding leaves 35 unaccounted for in North Carolina (Washington Post $)

IMPACTS: Drought, fires and politics put Biden's California water plans on hold (Politico Pro $)

COMPOUND IMPACTS: Flagstaff assesses damage from storm that fell on burn scar (AP)

DROUGHT: Southern California officials declare water supply alert (AP), California enacted a groundwater law 7 years ago. But wells are still drying up — and the threat is spreading (CAL Matters), climate change and droughts: What’s the connection? (Yale Climate Connections), booming Colo. town asks, ‘Where will water come from?’ (AP)

WILDFIRES: The Mediterranean is on fire (The Real News), Wildfires burn in France and Spain after scorching heatwaves (Bloomberg $), wildfire raging near French Riviera kills 2, injures 27 (AP, Reuters), northeastern Minnesota wildfire grows to 5 square miles (AP), big blaze threatens village outside Athens (AP), Greek wildfire burns through pine forest for 4th day (AP)

HURRICANES: How to decode hurricane season terms (New York Times $),  Hurricane Grace makes landfall near Mexico’s Tulum temples (AP), Hurricane Grace batters the Caymans, heads for Mexico; Henri a growing concern for northeastern US (Yale Climate Connections)

RENEWABLES: Escalating US-China solar rift threatens Biden green goals (Bloomberg $), solar costs dropped more than 70% over the last decade, and Biden wants to accelerate the trend (CNBC), solar farms are often bad for biodiversity — but they don’t have to be (Vox)

BATTERIES: UL, Hyundai to partner on evaluation of EV batteries for energy storage (Utility Dive)

OIL & GAS: Offshore oil and gas worker fatalities are underreported by federal safety agency (Drilled), Alberta’s oil producers hit record output but confront a dim future (FT $), Big Oil’s bid to lure back investors with cash could ultimately fail (CNBC)

PIPELINES: 'Horribly chilling effect': D.C. Circuit ruling could stall new pipeline projects (Politico Pro $)

HYDROGEN: As momentum for hydrogen builds, electric utilities chart multiple paths forward (Utility Dive), Energy Department grants Nikola $2M to study autonomous hydrogen refueling (Utility Dive)

UTILITIES & CO-OPS: Virginia co-op’s fee hike would shrink savings from solar, energy efficiency (Energy News Network)

EVs: BMW secures funding for EV battery aiming to rival range of a traditional engine (CNBC)

FARM IMPLEMENTS: Tractors finally get the Tesla treatment (Bloomberg $), weight, dawn-to-dusk demands pose challenges to electrifying farm vehicles (Energy News Network)

AIR CONDITIONING: Why air conditioning must become a sustainable cooling solution (Energy Monitor)

AVIATION: How extreme weather is hitting airlines (FT $)

CARBON PRICING: Carbon offset deal helps Michigan cash in on its trees—by not cutting them down (Wall Street Journal $)

CARBON REMOVAL: The toughest carbon emissions for companies to capture have climate experts worried (CNBC)

FINANCE: BlackRock buys clean energy builder national renewable solutions (Bloomberg $)

DARE FAILURE: The Chesapeake Bay is awash in drugs (Earther)

ART: The underwater forest growing in the Med (CNN)

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT: 11-year-old launches campaign to save the bees: "We're going to win" (CBS)

INTERNATIONAL: Spain’s answer to high power prices is more renewable energy (Bloomberg $)

• July was a Frankenstein month created by the fossil fuel industry (The Hill, Michael Mann op-ed)
• Are we finally ready to tackle the other greenhouse gas? (The New Yorker, Bill McKibben column $)
• What to do about the Colorado River’s megadrought ‘code red’ (Washington Post, David White op-ed $)
• Psychology and climate change: Reframing our thinking while we still have time to act (The Hill, Andreas Karelas op-ed)
• Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson on the crises awakening Canadians to climate change (Politico Pro, interview $)
• California can no longer wing it with power grid (Bloomberg, Liam Denning column $)
• The most important election in America this year (CNN, Lincoln Mitchell op-ed)
• Climate impacts: After the devastating fires, come dangerous mudslides (The Hill, Paul Santi op-ed)
• What can we do now to avert the worst climate impacts? (The Hill, Sergey Paltsev op-ed)

Willie Soon’s Home-Made IPCC Rebuttal So Weak It Can’t Even Answer Its Own Headline Question Suggesting The Sun’s Causing Warming (It’s Not!) 

A headline in the far-right culty conspiracy site Epoch Times recently proclaimed that a study found the “Sun -- not CO2-- may be behind global warming.” A similar story ran in the oft-viral but rarely-right electroverse, also suggesting that really it’s the sun that’s causing climate change. 

A commenter at the electroverse site named “Jack,” however, blames the spate of heatwaves recently across the west on something else. They “noticed that nobody wanted to report the source of this heat” which “couldn’t have been more obvious unless it punched you in the nose. It all came from the Phoenix-Vegas urban heat island. The Oregon heatwave. The Canada heatwave. Montana. The Dakotas. You name it. It all traced back to Phoenix-Vegas.  Every singke[sic] time.  But nobody would say it.” 

Of course! It’s all Phoenix’s fault! The comment continues for a bit, but does get to a solution: “stop building the problems. Stop expanding cities in the name of greed. Stop packing large populations into these high-density atrocities because that’s the only place to find gainful employment or because it’s better than California, which is becoming unbearable for various reasons, including the disgusting leadership. Who the heck wants to move to Phoenix anyway?” 

But as much as it sounds like Jack has some personal issues he’s transferring into the climate debate, it does match quite well the overall reliability of the 23 scientists supposedly upending the IPCC consensus, and is basically indistinguishable from the extensive quotes from the authors that Electroverse published (because they just ran the press release, apparently.) 

Said authors are the usual suspects of “it’s the sun”-flavored climate denial, with the father-son Connollys and Willie Soon serving as lead authors for what is essentially a literature review of debunked climate denial. Soon, long-exposed as someone who does papers like these to collect paychecks from fossil fuel companies, is clearly struggling to legitimize his pseudoscience at a time when his intended audience is abandoning scientific denial in favor of solutions denial. 

With around 50 pages, in the full paper (arxiv version here) the authors describe a bunch of studies the IPCC supposedly ignores or overlooks, and comes to the conclusion that they have no answer for their headline question asking “how much has the Sun influenced Northern Hemisphere temperature trends?” 

So not only is the study not global, but instead focused only on one hemisphere, but also, despite being cobbled together by a bunch of deniers united by their irrational opposition to consensus climate science, that question “has not yet been satisfactorily answered… the debate is ongoing.” 

The evidence that it’s the Sun is so weak even a paper clearly designed to suggest it’s the Sun couldn’t justify coming to that conclusion! 

Here’s the fun part though. Remember back in January when OSTP fired a pair of deniers appointed by Trump for putting out climate denial flyers produced by the “Center for Environmental Research and Earth Sciences”? (Yes, acronym is CERES, but no, it’s not the good Ceres that works on climate finance issues, because apparently deniers are that unoriginal and desperate to grift off of the good reputation of legitimate organizations.)

Well, the acknowledgements section notes that Ronan Connally and Willie Soon “received financial support” from CERES “while carrying out the research for this paper.” 

So who is CERES? Turns out, it’s Willie Soon, as it’s registered to his home address. While it’s no big deal to run your business out of your home (Lomborg used a P.O. Box in Massachusetts for his Copenhagen Consensus Center, after all!) it’s odd that they would acknowledge funding from an organization that they created and run out of one of their homes. Because obviously that funding is coming from someone else!  

And since he’s got a history of taking in over a million dollars of dirty money, one might expect this is just his latest “deliverable” to some coal or other fossil fuel funder. Worry not though, the acknowledgement that Soon got money from CERES for this paper can’t be anything shady because “donors to CERES are strictly required not to attempt to influence either the research directions or the findings of CERES.” 

Of course! Because after decades of reliable denial production, why would they need to? 

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