FUN(?) FACT:

The so-called "Perfect Storm" that ravaged New England in the fall of 1991 was a nor’easter that absorbed Hurricane Grace and actually created a new hurricane at its center that was purposefully left unnamed. Had it been named, due to the hurricane name rotation cycle, it would have been named Henri.

Tennessee Floods Kill 22: Torrential rain caused catastrophic flooding that killed at least 22 people and devastated Waverly, Tennessee on Saturday. The National Weather Service issued a rare flash flood emergency alert after the storm dumped a record-smashing 17 inches of rain in 24 hours in some places. Flood waters breached the countertops of Vanessa Yates' kitchen as she punched out a window before her brother and a Good Samaritan with a boat rescued her and her 4-month-old daughter. "I thought I was going to drown with my baby," Vanessa Yates told the Tennessean. Climate change, caused by human extraction and combustion of fossil fuels, is making storms and extreme precipitation like these events more frequent as the warmer atmosphere holds, and can thus release, greater amounts of moisture. The flooding in Tennessee came just days after flooding tore through western North Carolina as the remnants of Tropical Storm Fred — hitting after four days of rain — killed at least five people, destroyed roads and bridges, lifted homes off their foundations, and displaced around 500 families. (Tennessee: New York Times $, Tennessean, Washington Post $, Tennessean, Axios, AP, BBC, CBS, NBC, ABC, Tennessean; North Carolina: New York Times $, Washington Post $; Climate Signals background: Extreme Precipitation increase)

Grace Intensifies Rapidly Before Hitting Mexican Coast: Hurricane Grace rapidly intensified from a Category 1 to a strong Category 3 hurricane just before making landfall near Tecolutala, Mexico early Saturday morning. At least eight people were killed and over half a million were affected by power outages. In Xalapa, the overflowed Rio Acopan carried coffins from a local business down a flooded street. More flooding is expected in coming days as coastal rivers continue to flood from inland rain. (Yale Climate Connections, Reuters, Axios, AP, The Hill; Climate Signals background: Hurricanes)

Henri Dumps Rain On Northeast: Tropical Storm Henri officially slogged ashore just after noon Sunday near Westerly, Conn., but its impacts, especially torrential rain, were felt well before then over a wide stretch of the Atlantic Coast. The slow-moving storm dumped a record 1.94 inches on Central Park between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. Saturday, crippled parts of the region's transit system, and left numerous motorists stranded in their cars to be rescued by boat. Whole sections of numerous New Jersey towns, inundated by as much as 9 inches of rainfall, were forced to evacuate amidst rising floodwaters. More than 140,000 utility customers lost power due to the storm, fueled by ocean waters 7°F to 9°F warmer than usual in part because of climate change. “Climate change loads the dice. It just makes everything a little more extreme,” Phil Klotzbach, an atmospheric scientist who grew up in eastern Massachusetts, told National Geographic. The storm, now downgraded to a tropical depression and "nearly stationary" about 60 miles north-northwest of New York City on Monday morning, is expected to continue dumping rain on the region and start moving east later today. (AP, AP, New York Times $, Washington Post $, ABC; Climate Connection: National Geographic, Yale Climate Connections, WBUR; Landfall: CNN; New York City: New York Times $; New Jersey: NJ.com, CBS New York, ABC-Philadelphia, ABC-7NY, NJ.com, CBS3 Philly; Current status: CBS, CBS New York, Boston Globe $, CBS; Climate Signals background: Hurricanes, 2021 Atlantic hurricane season)

One Billion Children At 'Extremely High Risk' From Climate Harms: Half of the planet's 2.2 billion children are already at "extremely high risk" of harm caused by climate change and pollution, a new report from UNICEF says. "Children are uniquely vulnerable to climate hazards,” UNICEF head Henrietta Fore said. While nearly every child worldwide faces danger from pollution or climate impacts — including heatwaves, floods, cyclones, disease, or drought — 1 billion children across 33 countries face three or four of those dangers simultaneously. (The Guardian, CNN, The Times, The Hill)

(ENVIRONMENTAL) RACISM: Texas Lt. Gov. blames COVID rise on Black people (Black Wall Street Times), Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick blames Democrats for low vaccinations among Black residents, but more white Texans are unvaccinated (Texas Tribune, Dallas Morning News, The Guardian, NBC, Business Insider, AP, The Hill, KVUE), Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick falsely claims ‘African Americans who have not been vaccinated’ are driving COVID surge (Washington Post $, CNN, Houston Chronicle), Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick doubles down after blaming unvaccinated Black community for COVID surge (KHOU)

GOOD NEWS: The media is getting the facts right on climate change (Grist)

BAD NEWS: Fracking linked to surface water quality for first time in new study (The Hill, E&E $), surface water vulnerable to widespread pollution from fracking, a new study finds (InsideClimate News)

WILDFIRES: Indian Country is on fire (Indian Country Today), 'we can’t catch a break:’ California’s brutal wildfires are exhausting firefighters (Washington Post $), smoke from North America wildfires reaches Europe (The Independent), why it takes months to subdue some wildfires (AP explainer), 

• CALIFORNIA: How climate change is affecting CA with wildfires, drought (Sacramento Bee $), explosive California wildfires could burn into December (AP), 9 national forests close in California as state grapples with drought-fueled wildfires (CNN)
• CALDOR FIRE: The Caldor Fire has burned more than 100,000 acres. (New York Times $), smoky skies limit visibility as more than 100K acres burned (KCRA Sacramento)
• DIXIE FIRE: ‘It was raining fire’: Firefighter recounts siege; new threats as blaze puts Lode on edge (Redding Record Searchlight)
• GREECE: 2 new blazes break out amid strong winds (AP), forest fire destroys jobs of pine resin collectors (AP)

CAN CONFIRM: All these simultaneous disasters are messing with our brains (The Atlantic)

EPA: Biden EPA loosens Trump rule limiting states' ability to reject pipelines (The Hill, Politico Pro $, E&E $), research shows gaps in how EPA, oil industry measure methane (E&E News)

DOE: DOE draws fire for first efficiency rule for mobile homes (E&E $), Granholm 'all ears' as experts outline needs in N.M. (E&E $), Granholm talks rooftop solar in California ahead of major state decision (Politico Pro $)

NPR-A: A federal judge’s rejection of a huge Alaska oil drilling project is the latest reversal of Trump policy (InsideClimate News)

HOUSE: House Republicans question Democrats over Exxon sting (E&E News), House returns Monday to an infrastructure staring contest (Politico Pro $)

WHITE HOUSE: White House withholds support of Democratic carbon border tax (Reuters)

INFRASTRUCTURE BILL(S): Pelosi says House working to pass infrastructure bills by Oct. 1 (The Hill), ‘curveballs and obstacles’ face Pelosi this week as Democrats spar over $3.5 trillion budget plan (Washington Post $), House centrists dig in against Pelosi, Biden strategy (E&E News), Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair backs Pelosi’s reconciliation approach (Politico Pro $), could the infrastructure bill make wildfires worse? (E&E $)

POLITICS: US Chamber of Commerce backs Democrats threatening to derail budget resolution (The Hill)

CLIMATE DIPLOMACY: India says to exceed emission cut targets, further reduction hinges on climate fund (Reuters)

CITIES AND STATES: Denser cities could be a climate boon – but NIMBYism stands in the way (The Guardian)

CALIFORNIA: California to build temporary gas plants to avoid Blackouts (Bloomberg $), California begins brainstorming approaches to a high-DER grid of the future (Utility Dive), Calif. recall hopefuls push promises on drought, wildfires (E&E $), California judge: Uber, Lyft not exempt from classifying drivers as employees (Axios)

FERC: Commissioner Chatterjee to leave FERC on Aug. 30 (Politico Pro $, The Hill)

IMPACTS: Climate change will disrupt supply chains much more than COVID — here’s how businesses can prepare (CNBC), how should California confront the rising sea? These lawmakers have some bold ideas (LA Times $), the lesson from German floods: prepare for the unimaginable (Climate Home), welcome to the Pyrocene (Grist), what the consequences of climate change mean for the next generation (WBUR), why autumn weather won't be the same this year (CNN)

HEAT: Greece plans to name heatwaves in the same way as storms (The Guardian), Athens is only getting hotter. Its new ‘chief heat officer’ hopes to cool it down. (New York Times $)

DROUGHT: The West’s megadrought is so bad, authorities are airlifting water for animals (Vox), as the Colorado river dries up, Phoenix will have to survive on less water (Bloomberg $), Colorado River cutbacks set stage for decade of drought politics (The Hill), Lake Powell sees decreasing levels as drought continues (Navajo Times), the Middle East is running out of water, and parts of it are becoming uninhabitable (CNN)

HURRICANES: How the climate crisis is changing hurricanes (CNN), overstayed welcome? Henri takes its time drenching Northeast (AP), why coastal communities should fear storm surge (CNN)

INSURANCE: ‘Rude awakening’: home insurance may not cover climate risks (E&E $), what prompts people to buy flood insurance? Here's one clue (E&E $)

MANAGED RETREAT: A Midwestern town moved uphill to survive climate crisis. Can others do the same? (The Guardian)

PREDICTABLE CONSEQUENCES OF SCIENCE DENIAL: Oxygen for water treatment diverted to Orlando hospitals dealing with COVID-19 surge (Gizmodo)

GREENLAND: Rain falls on peak of Greenland ice cap for first time on record (The Guardian, Reuters)

ORGANIZED LABOR: AFL-CIO picks Liz Shuler as president (E&E $)

RENEWABLES: Solar could be 40% of US generation by 2035, but it needs more investment, White House report finds (Utility Dive), how renewables could help US survive a walking dead-style zombie apocalypse (Gizmodo), Alpine solar project to help fill Swiss winter energy gaps (Reuters), California offshore wind could save billions and help prevent blackouts. What's holding it back? (Canary Media), how renewables could help US survive a walking dead-style zombie apocalypse (Gizmodo), Illinois solar companies say they are ‘held hostage’ by statehouse gridlock (InsideClimate News), solar power booms in Georgia, where it isn’t mandated (Wall Street Journal $)

BATTERIES: Connecticut regulators plan major growth in battery storage, EV charging (Energy News Network)

BUILDINGS: What’s the best way to decarbonize your home? (Gizmodo)

OIL & GAS: Locked-in emissions from oil refineries endanger climate goals (Bloomberg $), Iran's president says 'a lot of possibilities' for oil sales as nuclear talks stalled (S&P Global)

PIPELINES: API issues cybersecurity guidelines in wake of pipeline hack (E&E $)

NORDSTREAM 2: Merkel offers reassurances on Russia pipeline, Ukraine urges greater clarity (Reuters), Putin and Merkel announce 5-year extension of Ukraine gas transit deal (Politico Pro $), Russia cannot use Nord Stream 2 pipeline as a ‘weapon’, Merkel says (FT $), US hits Nord Stream 2 with additional sanctions (Politico Pro $)

HYDROGEN: Oil firms made ‘false claims’ on blue hydrogen costs, says ex-lobby boss (The Guardian, The Guardian), hydrogen could fuel U.S. energy transition. But is it safe? (E&E News), Northwest New Mexico seeks to become hydrogen hub (New Mexico Political Report)

EVs: Electrifying 97% of the federal fleet by 2030 could save billions: report (Utility Dive), GM extends recall to cover all Chevy Bolts due to fire risk (AP), the electric vehicle boom is pay-dirt for factory machinery makers (Reuters)

STEEL: Steelmakers grapple with how to cut carbon emissions (Wall Street Journal $)

ACTIVISM: Extinction Rebellion UK stages die-in, blocks entry to ExxonMobil facility (Democracy Now), London police warn of two weeks of disruption from climate protests (Reuters), police unswayed by road-block ruling ahead of London climate protests (The Guardian), wrong to label Extinction Rebellion as extremists, says Home Office adviser (The Guardian)

BIG GREEN: Sierra Club culture tolerated ‘anger and aggression,’ report finds (Politico)

ALL ABOARD: Will a high speed rail network ever be built in the US? (NBC)

AVIATION: Airlines commit to reducing carbon emissions, but challenges stand in the way (Washington Post $), climate ‘stigma’ smudges gleaming image of private jets (E&E News)

AGRICULTURE: Smoke from wildfires can impact dairy cows’ milk production (Modern Farmer)

BOOZE: Blending wine is an old practice that’s newly popular. Some Virginia vintners are embracing it. (Washington Post $), how changing climate and tastes made red wine stronger (FT $), wildfire smoke: an emerging threat to West Coast wines (InsideClimate News), wines for a warming world (The Guardian)

O3: The unexpected, world-saving side effects of the Montreal Protocol (Axios), ozone hole could have killed plants and raised temps — study (E&E News)

DIVESTMENT: Norway’s $1.4 trillion wealth fund puts oil stocks on notice (Bloomberg $)

FINANCE: Banker bonuses tied to ESG metrics are on the rise in Europe (E&E $), West Africa’s first corporate green bond May spark more issuance (Bloomberg $)

WIN-WIN: Saving forests can prevent pandemics — research (E&E $)

GRETA: Thunberg protests in Stockholm on third anniversary of first school strike (Reuters), Greta Thunberg, youth climate activists slam adults over climate crisis (The Hill), three years of Greta Thunberg's activism: 'Still time to change our climate future' (Thomson Reuters Foundation)

INTERNATIONAL: BHP’s fossil fuel-free push gets Chile reception (Reuters), Brazil’s new environment minister faces huge Amazon challenge (FT $), China Three Gorges nears deal for Dubai renewable firm alcazar (Bloomberg $), China to step up tree planting campaign to help reach net zero (Reuters), Indigenous-led alliance moves to stop Bolsonaro’s ‘ecocidal’ destruction of the Amazon (The Real News), Pakistan’s mission to plant 10 billion trees across the country, in photos (Washington Post $)

• Catastrophic flooding in Tennessee and North Carolina highlights 3 messaging challenges (Forbes, Marshall Shepherd analysis)
• The Federal Reserve takes climate change seriously (Bloomberg, Bill Dudley column $)
• Failing on infrastructure would be bad for the nation and a self-own for Democrats (Washington Post, Editorial Board $)
• There's no place in the US safe from the heat (The Hill, Andrea Gerlak and Ladd Keith op-ed)
• NATO's southern flank is under attack — from wildfires (The Hill, Aylin Unver Noi op-ed)
• State failing to limit flaring at oil wells, imperiling the industry (Houston Chronicle, Chris Tomlinson column)
• ‘1,001 Voices on Climate Change’ (Yale Climate Connections, Devi Lockwood interview)
• Regulatory overhaul is key to the clean energy transition (The Hill, Devin Hartman op-ed)
• Dan Patrick reveals roots of Texas COVID surge: Black people. (Houston Chronicle, Editorial Board)
• Welcome to ground zero of climate chaos (The Hill, Jerome Ringo op-ed)
• The Colorado River can be a model for climate resilience — but only if we make it one (The Hill, Kevin Moran and Nancy Smith op-ed)
• Kim Stanley Robinson: a climate plan for a world in flames (FT, Kim Stanley Robinson essay $)
• White House climate director defends IPCC report (Wall Street Journal, Jane Lubchenco, Letter to the Editor $)
• The more children know of the natural world, the more they’ll want to protect it (The Guardian, Lucy Jones and Kenneth Greenway op-ed)
• On Covid and climate we can achieve change – but we’re running out of time (The Guardian, Robert Reich op-ed)

What’s on the Horizon For Climate Deniers? War Crimes. (Also, Apps to ‘target a younger, nongeriatic group’)

There’s been some chatter lately about how (in an effort to soften their image to suburban white women voters) some Republicans are now only rejecting meaningful climate policy on economic or political grounds, not scientific. That way they can claim to acknowledge the reality of the climate crisis that no one’s constituents are immune to, while still opposing any policy that would reduce fossil fuel emissions (and therefore displease their investors donors). 

But that doesn’t mean the groups generating old school climate denial are slowing down. Instead, they too are doing their best to keep up with the times by developing an app to “target a younger, nongeriatic group,” CO2 Coalition Executive Director Gregory Wrightstone told Scott Waldman last week. 

Apparently, Wrightstone’s hoping that the app will be useful for when “your idiot nephew Billy” talks about climate change at Thanksgiving. “You can pull out your phone” and use the app to deliver whatever Koch-approved talking point is marginally relevant. (We can’t wait to see if it has an answer to Billy’s question about that time Greenpeace revealed how the CO2 Coalition could serve as a happy home to secret funding from unnamed middle eastern oil interests!) 

That’s not the only recent clue that someone is spending some money to continue promoting the same sort of climate disinformation that the industry has spurred for decades. Lachlan Markay recently noted that “Newsmax media registered a handful of web domains” with names like climatescandal.com and climatesham.com, suggesting that the far-right website founded by Donald Trump "buddy" Chrisptoher Ruddy will be moving more concertedly into the climate disinformation space. 

Newsmax is not an outlet that, until now, has been a hub of climate denial, necessarily. But it definitely hasn’t ignored the issue, either. It has regularly aggregated and regurgitated other, more energetic and prolific, far-right and organized denial propaganda outlets. 

Newsmax picked up a recent Heartland poll, for example, that found “a majority of liberal news media viewers say they believe climate change could doom humanity within 100 years,” which ... OK? They also ran an AP story on the recent IPCC report, so they're at least willing to have real climate content appear on their site.

But they’ve also long-run Larry Bell’s columns, which sometimes feature garden-variety ”climate crisis hoax” flavored-denial. His background is decidedly non-climate though, as a professor of architecture and also apparently as the founding director of a space architecture foundation funded by a far-right Japanese millionaire who built a fortune on gambling after being one of the last surviving members of a group accused of Class A war crime. (He was arrested and held but according to his 1995 New York Times obituary, “prosecutors failed to prove him guilty of helping finance and wage the war or of profiting from Japan’s wartime occupation of Manchuria.”)

But what was really weird because if we had a nickel for every time we fell down a Newsmax-related financial-filtered war crime rabbit hole for this piece we’d have two nickels. That's not a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.

The first was reading a different columnist’s work, Hans Baumann. He wrote something using the Wall Street Journal as a foil for the IPCC report, but then also a more recent column on Afghanistan.

While many are rightfully concerned about the human toll of war, Baumann’s got more material concerns. “Among all this handwringing about the fate of the Afghan women and translators,” he writes, “one should not forget the economic side of this war.”

No, this isn’t satire. “The most important US economic interest is the TAPI gas pipeline” Baumann writes, which apparently the Taliban approved in 1998 but it “never got finished.” But it might be done next year, so “having hundreds of billions [of] dollars invested, it would behoove our State Department to renegotiate with the new Taliban leaders to renew the permit of passage.” Yes! Of course! That’s exactly what the State Department should be doing right now, great advice, thank you so much.

Again, we're pretty sure this isn’t satire. Baumann goes on to describe the iron, copper and gold deals the Afghan government made with Indian, Chinese and Australian companies, and writes “after spending a trillion dollars for a 20-year war, I still question: where is our share?”

Which yes, is very much a recommendation that the US use war to cover for theft, which is basically pillaging, which, yes, is a war crime.

So there’s no telling who’s encouraging Newsmax to buy up climate disinformation domains and get into the organized denial game, but at this point, we can’t help but be more concerned than usual about where the money’s coming from…

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