FIRST LOOK:

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine will host a webinar on how scientists and policymakers work together at different scales to monitor and verify emissions. Thursday, October 21, 2021 from 3-4pm ET.

Climate-Fueled Flooding Threatens Municipal Finances: Flooding worsened by climate change could put the finances of cities and towns across the country underwater. Data released last week by the climate research firm First Street Foundation showed about one-quarter of all U.S. infrastructure is at risk of serious flooding, and that could have major implications for the $4 trillion municipal bond market, the Financial Times reports. The risk is a one-two-three punch for cities and towns — and those in West Virginia face some of the worst flooding risks — as worsening floods drain public coffers and the increasing prospect of future flooding makes borrowing more expensive. Finally, climate-fueled disasters can push people to move away from the most affected areas, reducing municipalities' tax base. The flooding, and its impacts on municipal finances represent the present cost of the ongoing failure to confront the climate crisis. “I think we have substantially underinvested in climate action for a very long time,” Bob Kopp, a professor at Rutgers University, told the Washington Post. “The longer we wait, the more damages we'll have to deal with, and the more costly it will be to lower our emissions in a way that avoids future damages." (Municipal finances: FT $; Cost of inaction: Washington Post $)

Orphan Wells And Satellites — All About The Methane: The number of orphan wells in oil states is at least one-third higher than official estimates, according to a new report from EDF and McGill University. Researchers produced a map showing the 81,000 'documented' wells across 28 states. So-called because they have been abandoned by unknown or insolvent operators, orphaned wells can leach toxins into ground water and release heat-trapping methane — as much as 71,000 metric tons annually from Central Appalachian wells alone — and other pollutants into the air. The problem, however, is likely far worse. EPA estimates there are up to 3 million abandoned or orphaned wells in the U.S. Slashing methane pollution is one of the most effective and feasible ways to slow global heating in the nearterm because of its relatively short lifespan in the atmosphere, and satellites are helping in the effort. Hundreds of miles above the earth, satellites can detect leaks of the invisible odorless gas — like in June when the European Space Agency's Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite detected an underground pipeline leak near Moscow dumping 395 metric tons of methane into the atmosphere every hour. Not only do the satellites enable better data collection, but they can also enable more rapid repairs, and efforts to hold polluters accountable. (Orphan wells: E&E $; Satellites: Washington Post $, Wall Street Journal $)

California Records Driest Year Since 1924: California just concluded its driest 'water year' in nearly a century. Between October 1, 2020 and September 30, 2021, the cycle on which precipitation is measured, the average precipitation across the state's weather stations was less than half of the historical average. Climate change, caused by the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels is intensifying droughts and experts worry the past year is prelude, and even if next year were to see above-average precipitation, “you’re not even going to come close to refilling Lake Mead,” Daniel McEvoy, a climatologist with the Western Regional Climate Center, told the LA Times. After a near-brush with the Caldor Fire earlier this year, water levels at Lake Tahoe are also extremely low. "The Build Back Better agenda will help us tackle the climate crisis with investments in clean energy and electric vehicles, so we can reduce emissions,” Vice President Harris said Monday while visiting Lake Mead. “And why do we need to reduce emissions? Because that is part of what is contributing to these drought conditions.” (Driest year: LA Times $, HuffPost, Wall Street Journal $, CBS; Lake Tahoe: LA Times $; Harris: LA Times $, CNN, The Hill, E&E $; Climate Signals background: Drought, 2021 Western wildfire season)

(ENVIRONMENTAL) RACISM: Water crisis in Benton Harbor, Michigan (ABC, ABC)

COP26: Sticking points at the U.N. climate conference (Reuters explainer), COP26: Does a climate summit need 25,000 people? And more questions (BBC), EU commissioner on climate action: “Leave no one behind” (AP), Glasgow landlords raise prices for UN climate summit (FT $), governments grapple with energy challenges ahead of climate summit (FT $), once a vital feature of climate talks, has the huddle had its day? (Climate Home), site of Glasgow climate talks has its own history of extreme weather (Bloomberg $)

CLIMATE DIPLOMACY: ‘Breakthrough’: IMF develops fund to help debt-laden nations address climate risks (Climate Home), world waits for specifics on US climate plan (E&E News), climate takes back seat as crises multiply (Bloomberg $), world leaders promised a green recovery. They got a brown one instead. (Politico Pro $)

DENIAL & DISINFORMATION: European activists want to ban fossil fuel ads. Why can’t we do that here? (Grist), Las Vegas just hosted a climate denier conference and it makes perfect sense (Grist)

FOSSIL VOLATILITY: What's behind the energy crisis set to push up fuel costs this winter (Cheddar), returning to coal amid energy crunch would be climate 'tragedy' -EU (Reuters)

MEDIA: New media company seeks to be the opposite of climate "doomscrolling" (Axios)

ACTIVISM: Two years and a pandemic later, climate protests return to Washington (Grist), anti-riot laws aren’t about curbing violence—they’re about stifling civil dissent (Prism Reports), DC Comics thinks Superman’s best climate action is protest, not literally his frozen breath (Earther), Obama joins YouTube special on climate change action (The Hill)

PUNK IS THE NEW PUNK: The case for ‘hope punk’ when talking about climate change: ‘To be hopeless is to be uninformed’ (CNBC)

PUTTING THE TOXIC IN TOXIC MASCULINITY: Women do more to tackle climate change than men: survey (Politico EU)

AGENCIES: FEMA’s Deanne Criswell talks following your gut and the agency’s focus on equity in disaster response (The 19th* News)

EPA: EPA 'days away' from methane proposal, agency official says (Politico Pro $) 

• PFAS: Biden administration moves to curtail toxic ‘forever chemicals’ (Washington Post $, E&E News, New York Times $, NBC, Axios, The Hill), Biden plan puts chemical industry’s feet to the fire (Politico)

DOE: US Energy Dept announces $105 million for small businesses to pursue clean energy deployment (Reuters)

LAWSUITS: D.C. Circuit rejects request for rehearing on social cost of carbon ruling (Politico Pro $)

THE HILL: Capitol Hill Democrats face tough choices over major economic package in pivotal week ahead (CNN), as time runs short, Democrats vow: less talk, more action (Politico Pro $)

HOUSE: House panel sets hearing in preparation for climate talks (E&E News)

SENATE: Schumer nears make-or-break moment to deliver on Biden’s agenda (Bloomberg $, Reuters), bipartisan revenue sharing bill gets Senate hearing (E&E $), Democratic appropriations bills would increase environmental funding by $6B (The Hill), Democrats unveil doomed funding bills ahead of December shutdown cliff (Politico), senators to grill EPA water chief on PFAS rulemaking (E&E $)

• JOE MANCHIN / CEPP: Here’s what Manchin told the Biden team on climate (E&E News), Manchin hasn’t killed Biden’s climate agenda (yet) (NY Mag), Manchin throws 'hand grenade' at Biden's climate change agenda for Glasgow (Yahoo), Sen. Manchin said to oppose key climate provision in budget bill (MSNBC), Democrats’ landmark climate proposal teeters (E&E News), the US can’t meet its climate goals without penalties for utilities that fail to cut emissions (Canary Media), Democrats are courting Manchin on their agenda. Here's what he wants. (New York Times $), West Virginia's country roads will soon be underwater (Late Show with Steven Colbert) 

WHITE HOUSE: ‘This is our last chance’: Biden urged to act as climate agenda hangs by a thread (The Guardian)

INFRASTRUCTURE BILL(S): Biden, progressive leader Jayapal meet with agenda hanging in balance (Bloomberg $), carbon fee on the table for climate policy -Biden adviser (Reuters), Democrats push Biden to take forceful role in bridging party's sparring factions over agenda (CNN), Democrats' clean power outlook is very muddy (Axios), Uber, Lyft lobby for EV reconciliation provisions (E&E News)

POLITICS: The myth of the climate moderate (Vox), where a $5 billion green incentive runs into politics of coal (Bloomberg $), Biden’s dilemma: Satisfying Manchin risks losing other Dems (AP)

NOMINEES & CONFIRMATIONS: 5 ways parks nominee can survive his confirmation hearing (E&E $), Senate committee to question 2 top energy nominees (E&E $)

CITIES AND STATES: New York’s ‘deliveristas’ are at the forefront of cities’ sustainable transportation shake-up (InsideClimate News), Supporters, critics sound off on green [New York state constitution] amendment, on statewide ballots next month (Newsday)

FERC: Supreme Court rejects bid to preserve FERC pipeline approval (E&E $)

IMPACTS: Floods, landslides kill at least 28 people in southern India (AP), how ‘managed retreat’ from climate change could revitalize rural America: revisiting the Homestead Act (The Conversation), Russia's remote permafrost thaws, threatening homes and infrastructure (Reuters), the climate science you missed (Bloomberg $), this site is an important piece of Filipino American history. Climate change is destroying it. (CNN)

REQUIEM: Africa’s rare glaciers soon to disappear (AP)

HEAT: Seville to become world’s first city to name heat waves (Washington Post $)

HURRICANES: Atlantic hurricane season has gone to sleep. Will it awaken? (Washington Post $), industrial production falls 1.3% as effects from Ida linger (AP), is hurricane season dead? Or could La Niña help provide one last punch (CNN)

IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT: The possibilities and limits of individual climate action (Earther)

RENEWABLES: ‘We want sun’: the battle for solar power in Puerto Rico (The Guardian), how to tackle COVID-19 jobs crisis and climate change? Invest in clean energy (Thomson Reuters Foundation), investment in off-grid power is vital to electrify Africa (Energy Monitor), money for green energy creates more jobs than fossil fuel investment, new study finds (HuffPost), Saudi solar power prices surge amid silicon-supply crunch (Bloomberg $), Tata Power to boost renewable energy portfolio sixfold by 2030 (Nikkei Asian Review), Total opens UK offshore wind hub in North Sea oil, gas fiefdom (Bloomberg $), US 'faltered badly' on clean energy tech — report (E&E $), untaming a river: The stakes behind America’s largest dam removal (Christian Science Monitor), Vestas to install prototype of world’s ‘tallest and most powerful wind turbine’ in 2022 (CNBC), wind power industry calls on governments to ramp up clean energy (Bloomberg $)

BATTERIES: Mining atop a massacre (Atmos), Toyota to build US battery plant under $3.4 billion plan (Bloomberg $), used EV batteries are storing solar power at grid scale — and making money at it (Canary Media)

BUILDINGS: Green housing can be beautiful—and cheap (Earther), UK to increase grants to help homeowners ditch gas boilers (Reuters, The Guardian)

EFFICIENCY: In Missouri, your utility might pay for your next big energy efficiency project (Energy News Network)

OIL & GAS: North Dakota sees more options for [radioactive] oil field waste disposal (AP), visualizing oil's economic footprint in Texas (Axios)

TOO LATE FOR DOC BROWN, THOUGH: Nuclear fusion edges toward the mainstream (New York Times $)

COAL: Coal-fired power is on the rise in America for the first time since 2014 (CNN)

UTILITIES: By 2030, Portland General sees distributed resources meeting up to 25% of peak demand (Utility Dive), EEI, utilities want first crack at transmission development as FERC mulls new rules, incentives (Utility Dive)

GRID: Biden grid security plans for renewables may hit state wall (E&E News), meet General Electric's flexible power transformer (Axios)

EVs: Automaker plans US battery plant to meet EV goals (E&E $), Octopus Energy offers retail power supply to German Tesla customers (Reuters), a fully solar-powered campervan has just driven through Europe (CNN)

PHILANTHROPY: Ford Foundation to divest millions from fossil fuels (AP), Who will get Powell Jobs’ $3.5B gift for climate work? (AP)

FOOD & AGRICULTURE: Africa's farmers click with digital tools to boost crops (Thomson Reuters Foundation), beef is a problem. This Seattle steakhouse wants to be part of the solution. (New York Times $)

BUSINESS: With climate clock ticking, companies scramble to set green targets (Reuters Factbox)

CARBON PRICING: The carbon offset market could be worth $200 billion by 2050. But what is it? (CNN)

UNELECTED MONARCHY: 1st-ever "Earthshot Prize" winners announced as Prince William gives planet-saving innovators a boost (CBS)

FINANCE: Climate change drives push for greener pensions (FT $), BlackRock backs expansion of corporate climate data project (Reuters, AP), boards face growing pressure from ESG petitions (FT $), City of London sets climate targets for $4.1 billion of assets (Bloomberg $), ECB tells banks to map climate risk in trading, loan books (Bloomberg $), regulators put ESG fund names under the microscope (FT $)

ARTS: Climate exhibitions look beyond declarations of calamity (New York Times $)

GRETA: Greta Thunberg 'Rickrolls' climate concert with crazy dance moves (CNN)

WILDLIFE: 'Cement mountain': China's rocky road on biodiversity beyond rosy UN summit (Reuters)

INTERNATIONAL: Botswana signs 10 MW gas-fired deal with Tlou to wean off coal, imports (Reuters), Cape Town fights alien trees threatening its water supply, biodiversity (Reuters), gas crisis, labor shortages and supply chain chaos: Post-Brexit Britain faces a difficult winter (CNBC), German utilities tell politicians to heed energy supply security (Reuters), how green champion Sweden could end up exporting its carbon sins (Reuters), Portugal's EDP to invest up to 13 billion stg in UK wind and solar by 2030 (Reuters), South Korea aims to cut carbon emissions by 40% in 2030 (AP), US energy transition to create Mexico auto jobs, climate envoy Kerry says (Reuters), Mexican president promises to help US in climate push (AP), solar powers more than half of Australia’s grid for first time, coal at record low (Renew Economy), Australia PM: technology best way to achieve climate target (AP), on a Pacific island, Russia tests its battle plan on climate change (New York Times $)

• Gulf communities live California's oil spill every day (The Hill, Scott Eustis op-ed)
• Time for utility companies to step up by supporting the Clean Electricity Performance Program (Utility Dive, Dan Bakal op-ed)
• Democrats could abandon clean energy incentives — here's how to save them (The Hill, Bob Sussman op-ed)
• We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to fix our crumbing schools (The Hill, Céline R. Gounder and Joseph Allen op-ed)
• Energy CEO on gas ‘dysfunction’ and Dems’ clean electricity plan (E&E News, Curt Morgan interview)
• How extreme weather and the pandemic have exposed fatal flaws in science communication (Washington Post, Dan Stillman commentary $)
• Joe Manchin’s ugly new demands expose the absurdity of arbitrary centrism (Washington Post, Greg Sargent column $)
• From childlessness to the climate crisis, why is the blame always on us? (The Guardian, Nesrine Malik op-ed)
• How to cut emissions faster? make it count in CEo pay (Bloomberg, Paul Davies column $)
• Bangladesh PM: We need a global ‘climate prosperity plan’ not empty pledges (FT, Sheikh Hasina op-ed $)
• The EPA needs to save Texas from itself (Austin-American Statesman, Tim Doty op-ed)
• If you think the Texas electrical grid is fragile, take a look at our water infrastructure (Dallas Morning News, Todd Votteler op-ed)
• Accountability for climate catastrophes (Project Syndicate, Vinod Thomas op-ed)
• Boris Johnson says Britain is leading the world on climate. As if. (New York Times, Eleanor Salter op-ed $)
• Has climate change cut us off from wilderness? (New York Times, Geoffrey Mohan op-ed $)
• In conversation with Jane Goodall on climate change — and remaining hopeful for the future (Washington Post, interview $)
• Joe Manchin versus west Virginia (New York Times, Paul Krugman column $)
• Energy crisis hobbles Biden’s green agenda (Wall Street Journal, Walter Russell Mead op-ed $)

Deniers Cite Unreliable Fire Data to Make 'Mostly False' Wildfire Claim

One of the longest-running climate denial narratives has been that the thermometer record showing a steep rise in temperatures is flawed and unreliable because cities exist and are warm, while satellite data shows no warming to worry about. 

They have it backwards, of course, as the thermometer record is one of the most solid data sets around (since it’s been standardized and officially measured for so long) and the satellite data isn’t even actually data, but instead a series of inferences that have repeatedly been corrected to show more warming than deniers would like to accept. Even a Koch-funded effort to examine the temperature data to try and prove the Urban Heat Island effect was the real reason for a perceived warming revealed that actually, nope, climate scientists were right all along! 

Still though, according to deniers, climate scientists are using unreliable thermometer readings to make the case for warming.

Keep that in mind as we turn to a recent climate-and-wildfires fact check of a Climate Realism post, where they frame their climate denial as complaints about how Google serves news about climate change when they search for climate change. With the same stupid formula as always,  Heartland’s H. Sterling Burnett wrote last week that “near the top of a Google news search for the phrase ‘climate change’ today turns up a story in The Hill claiming the media is failing to properly place the blame for wildfires on climate change.” 

Apparently that’s false because some stories have “blamed climate change for wildfires,” but per Burnett, “they are all wrong. Data do not show a significant increase in the number of wildfires or the acreage burned by them.” In fact, “Climate Realism has refuted more than 46 news stories” making the point that warming makes fires worse, because “the data does not support these stories’ claims.” 

Well, about that data… As has been pointed out often in the many years Heartland has been lazily repeating itself, the fire data deniers use to claim that the 1920s and 1930s saw way more acreage burned is wildly unreliable, and this year it was even removed from the government website where it used to be housed with a disclaimer that the old data is unreliable. Why? Well for starters, fire researcher John Abatzoglou told Jon Greenberg at Politifact that “some fires can be counted in triplicate as multiple agencies responding to the fire would count that fire in their summary statistics.” Record keeping was duplicative as each agency had its own methods, so the final tally would double or triple-count the fires, depending on how many different federal bodies were involved. 

And in fact, just like the temperature record, even other Koch-funded deniers have acknowledged that the data is unreliable, as Greenberg cites a 2018 article by the Cato Institute’s Randal O’Toole that explains why “the data before about 1955 are a lie.” In short, and helpfully corroborated by other more reliable sources, the Forest Service counted intentional fires set to control underbrush as wildfires, dramatically inflating the statistics. 

So because different agencies used to keep records differently, and because intentionally-set, managed fires were counted as wildfires, the data before 1983 is well-known to be unreliable and has since been removed from the public website to prevent any further confusion. 

Accordingly, Politifact rated Heartland’s claim “Mostly False,” so if climate denial is really about the integrity of the data, surely Heartland won’t recycle another 46 nearly identical blog posts that rely on data that’s well-known to be unreliable. 

All while claiming the data proven to be reliable is what’s actually supposedly suspect. 

If it’s just about repeating a lie often enough to try and make it true though, we eagerly await Heartland’s next “mostly false” post.

Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up to receive Hot News every morning!

Send updates or feedback to nkauffman@climatenexus.org
Submit events and other items for consideration for a First Look using this form
Some articles require logins or subscriptions ($)