FIRST LOOK: 

Covering Climate Now will hold a Talking Shop webinar on "Covering the Human Impacts of Extreme Heat," TOMORROW, Aug. 10, at 12:00 pm EDT.

'New Normal' Drought Grips Europe: More than 100 French municipalities have no running drinking water as the country enters its fourth heatwave this summer while drought tightens its grip on Europe. Sixty percent of land in the EU and UK was under a drought warning or alert in mid-July, the European Drought Observatory said Monday. “No similar data in the last 230 years compares with the drought and heat we are experiencing this year. Then we have had storms," Luca Mercalli, the president of the Italian Meteorological Society, told The Guardian. "These episodes are growing in frequency and intensity, exactly as forecast by climate reports over the last 30 years." The desiccated conditions helped fuel wildfires across the continent and are hampering agriculture in numerous regions. Low water levels also threaten to block shipping on German waterways including the Rhine River — which are being used to transport increased coal shipments as Germany scrambles to slash its consumption and reliance on Russian methane-based gas — all as global food shortages and prices rise due to the Russian war in Ukraine as well as drought elsewhere. “This is going to be the new normal," Nuria Hernández-Mora, co-founder of New Water Culture, told The Guardian. "Yet we continue to approve the increased use of a resource we don’t have and which is becoming scarcer.” (Drought: The Guardian, CNN, FT $; French heatwave: AP; Photos: The Guardian, The Independent; Climate Signals background: Drought, Extreme heat and heatwaves, Wildfires)

Climate Worsens Infectious Diseases, Scares Researcher: Climate change is already worsening the impact of infectious diseases, like Zika, malaria, and Covid-19, on human health, a study published Monday in Nature Climate Change finds. “There is no speculation here whatsoever,” Camilo Mora, a geographer at the University of Hawaii who headed the research, told the AP. “These are things that have already happened.” Of the 375 known human infectious diseases, researchers found 218 (58%) are exacerbated by at least one of 10 types of climate-linked extreme weather. For example, extreme heat fuels the spread of Covid-19 by forcing people in low-income communities to congregate in air-conditioned rooms, expands regions vulnerable to malaria, and even exposes humans to anthrax, like when a Siberian child touched a reindeer carcass exposed by permafrost melt and started an outbreak in 2016. “I have to tell you," Mora told HuffPost, "as this database started to grow, I started to get scared, man.” (AP, HuffPost, The Guardian, CBS, Grist, NBC, PBS, ABC, The Conversation, Camilo Mora, Hanna von Hammerstein, Tristan McKenzie commentary)

Biden Visits Flood-Ravaged Kentucky: President Biden visited Eastern Kentucky Monday to view the catastrophic damage caused by extreme rain and flooding in the region that killed at least 37 people over the last month. Biden promised to do everything in his power to aid affected communities. “I promise you, if it’s legal, we’ll do it,” he said. “And if it’s not legal, we’ll figure out how to change the law.” Heavy rain has deluged the region for weeks, with more forecast in the coming days. Climate change makes extreme precipitation events and the resulting flooding worse and more frequent. Biden's visit came as flooding struck across the country, including in Denver and Death Valley. The flooding devastated communities exploited by fossil fuel industries, including coal mining companies that increased flooding risk by blasting the tops off mountains to access the coal underneath. (Biden visit: AP, USA Today, The Hill, Reuters, NPR, Bloomberg $, New York Times $; Barrage of E. Kent. flooding: CNN; Community devastation: USA Today; Coal mining and flood risk: Grist; Forecast: Courier Journal; Widespread flooding & climate change: NBC, Gizmodo; Colorado: Axios; Climate Signals background: Flooding; Extreme precipitation increase) 

IRA: Biden’s landmark climate and spending bill – what’s in it, and what got cut? (The Guardian), The new climate bill could help clean up air travel (Canary Media), Here’s what’s in the Inflation Reduction Act, the sweeping health and climate bill passed Sunday (The Hill), US climate deal has money for EVs, clean energy and even Big Oil (Reuters Factbox), Senate passes Inflation Reduction Act with $369B in energy and climate spending (Utility Dive), 4 takeaways from the first climate bill passed by the Senate (The Hill), Inflation reduction act is big win for serial green-home remodelers (Wall Street Journal $), The Senate has passed a historic bill addressing climate change (Vogue), US set to deliver more offshore wind energy in new climate bill (Bloomberg $), Budget deal will help US cut carbon emissions, despite sweeteners for fossil fuel (WBUR), This act is the biggest step against climate change the US has ever taken (The Verge), The Senate finally passed a historic climate bill. Now what? (Washington Post $)

• REACTIONS: Scientists urge global action after ‘historic’ US climate bill (Al Jazeera), A long time coming': Al Gore, other climate activists celebrate Senate passage of IRA (Yahoo), Democrats celebrate as climate bill moves to House – and critics weigh in (The Guardian), Experts: Senate-passed bill will yield myriad climate benefits (Yale Climate Connections), Landmark US climate bill will do more harm than good, groups say (The Guardian)
• NEXT STEPS: After passage of climate bill, long road awaits (Washington Post $)
• EVs: Michigan's automakers put in tough spot with climate change bill (Detroit Free Press $), How top-selling electric vehicles will be affected by new tax credit (Yahoo), Electric cars too costly for many, even with aid in climate bill (New York Times $), Tesla leads green stocks rally as Senate passes climate bill (Bloomberg $), The climate bill could short-circuit EV tax credits, making qualifying for them nearly impossible (The Conversation)
• POLITICS: How Democrats salvaged a history-making bill (New York Times, The Daily $), Learning from failures: How Biden scored win on climate plan (AP), Manchin’s donors include pipeline giants that win in his climate deal (New York Times $), With deal in hand, Democrats enter the fall armed with something new: hope (New York Times $)

(CLIMATE) DIPLOMACY: The EU is calling natural gas ‘green,’ but critics aren’t buying it (Fortune), US-China climate working group cancelled after Pelosi’s Taiwan visit (Climate Home)

INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE: ‘Time honored’ harvesting knowledge altered by climate change (Indian Country Today)

WOOD PELLETS: Wood-pellet exports boom amid Ukraine war, environmental concerns (Wall Street Journal $)

(ALLEGED) UTILITY CORRUPTION: Regulators’ foot-dragging on public records hides the full story behind Ohio’s utility corruption scandal (Energy News Network)

EPA: ‘We feel disrespected’: Navajo farmers wait for justice years after EPA disaster (The Guardian)

EXECUTIVE BRANCH: US will not dictate Africa's choices, Blinken says (Reuters)

TRIBES: As wells run dry, Hualapai tribe urges Senate to pass proposed Colorado River water plan (KNAU)

CITIES AND STATES: Virginia regulators approve Dominion Energy’s 2.6-GW, $9.8B offshore wind farm (Utility Dive), Texas regulators developing aggregated DER pilot project to boost reliability (Utility Dive), How carbon sequestration in Maine can help slow climate change (Maine Public Radio), New Jersey expands use of electric school buses in effort to reduce carbon emissions (Philly Voice), N.H. leaders know how to respond to snow. But are they ready for climate change-fueled heatwaves? (NHPR), Composting in NYC is hard. Cyclists and a pug named Rocky are helping. (Washington Post $, New York Times $), Oliver Sellers-Garcia named Green New Deal senior adviser to Mayor Michelle Wu (Boston Globe $), Cooling centers are turning into next-gen "climate resilience hubs" (Axios)

FERC: Ameren seeks FERC rate approval for N.M. transmission lines to ship power from 680-MW Clearway wind project (Utility Dive)

IMPACTS: How much more extreme will the weather get? (Bloomberg $), China’s summer floods and heat waves fuel plans for a changing climate (Washington Post $), Flash flooding over McKinney Fire burn scar kills thousands of fish (Axios), Billionaires are funding a massive treasure hunt in Greenland as ice vanishes (CNN), Record-setting rainfall inundates seoul, killing at least 8 (New York Times $)

HEAT: Brutal heatwaves in US will be regular occurrences, new study predicts (Newsweek), Weather agency: July was Spain’s hottest month on record (AP), Violence increases in hot weather. ‘Cease-fire’ days could help (Yale Climate Connections), UK set for new heatwave as temperatures head to 35°C (BBC), Earth sees a top 3 hottest July, marked by deadly heat, flash floods (Axios)

FLOODING: Torrents drench Denver as Death Valley recovers from 1,000-year deluge (Washington Post $)

WILDFIRES: ‘Dry lightning’ sparks the most destructive, expensive wildfires in California: study (The Hill), Wildfires are destroying California's forest carbon credit reserves, study says (Reuters)

• McKINNEY FIRE: Longtime Forest Service employee killed in California blaze (AP)

RENEWABLES: US solar shipments are hit by import ban on China’s Xinjiang region (Wall Street Journal $), Eletrobras could invest $3 bln a year with focus on renewables -incoming CEO (Reuters), The coming scramble for clean energy workers (Axios)

OIL & GAS: Evonik to substitute up to 40% of natural gas at its German sites (Reuters)

GASOLINE: National average price of gas expected to fall below $4: GasBuddy (The Hill)

NUCLEAR: France waives nuclear plant environmental rules in energy crunch (Bloomberg $)

HYDROGEN: Chinese companies seek global carbon market for green hydrogen (Climate Home), ScottishPower to build £150m green hydrogen plant at Port of Felixstowe (The Guardian)

GRID: Europe braces for extreme heat as power infrastructure wobbles (Bloomberg $), Power prices hit fresh records as heat wave scorches Europe (Bloomberg $)

EVs: California becomes first state to roll out submetering technology to spur EV adoption (Utility Dive), No electric vehicles on the market today qualify for the new EV tax credit (The Verge), Ford CEO Jim Farley emphasizes only 1 company is challenging Tesla right now (Detroit Free Press $), Electrifying transportation reduces emissions AND saves massive amounts of energy (Yale Climate Connections), Tesla faces crowded field in China as new-energy car market booms (Wall Street Journal $)

CARBON REMOVAL: Occidental seeks Texas property tax abatements to help finance its long-shot plan for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (Inside Climate News)

AGRICULTURE: 3 smart ways the US can grow more food while emitting less carbon (Canary Media)

FLIGHTS: Airline passengers might need to brace for more turbulence, as climate change increases severe weather (CBS)

JOBS: ‘Clean energy’ hiring in solar, wind and EVs expands in red and blue states. Enter your zip code to see where the jobs are (MarketWatch)

HEALTH: Climate change puts Lyme disease in focus for France's Valneva after COVID blow (Reuters)

SALT WATER: In dry California, salty water creeps into key waterways (AP), Salt in water sources becoming worrisome in D.C. region, experts warn (Washington Post $)

DRINKING WATER: Taps will soon run dry as 'day zero' nears on south Africa's eastern cape (NPR)

STATE TREASURERS: How Republican state treasurers are trying to stop climate action (WBUR) 

SOLUTIONS: Common weed could be a boon to coping with climate change (Weather Channel), Heat islands, urban trees and other cooling solutions for hot cities (WHYY)

TECH: Virtual tools are helping cities tackle NIMBYs (Bloomberg $)

YIKES: A fourth set of human remains is found at Lake Mead as the water level keeps dropping (NPR)

YOUTH: Facing extreme heat and drought, young Californians cope to beat climate anxiety and doom (LA Times $), Kenyan youth help climate-hit communities prepare for disaster (Thomson Reuters Foundation), Young activists have pushed Florida to set clean energy goals (NPR)

WORK: How a four-day workweek could be better for the climate (Washington Post $)

USW: USW chief vows to organize clean energy, electric car and retail workers (Reuters)

WILDLIFE: Meanwhile, Congress is set to pass a huge wildlife conservation bill with bipartisan support (Vox), No male sea turtles are being born in Florida because hotter sand from climate change is producing only females, scientist said (Business Insider), A Thai community treasures — and defends — its woodlands (Yale Environment 360), Stress of climate change is aging lizards before they’re even born (Washington Post $)

INTERNATIONAL: German, French 2023 quarterly power contracts set highs in nervous market (Reuters), Germany gets solar power boost amid energy crisis (Deutsche Welle), India to stop carbon credit exports until climate goals are met (Bloomberg $), Nigeria to seek US EXIM loan for solar project with Sun Africa (Bloomberg $)

NEWS YOU CAN USE: The perfect s’more is practically burned and a little salty (New York Times $)

• How states can fight back against the climate emergency (The Hill, Chet Culver op-ed)
• Air conditioning remade politics. Now, it’s key to navigating climate change. (Washington Post, Joseph M. Siry op-ed $)
• My decision to resign from the advisory board of Evergreen Action (Medium, Anthony Rogers-Wright)
• Plastic can take hundreds of years to break down – and we keep making more (The Guardian, Kim Heacox op-ed)
• Too hot to work: millions labor outside in extreme heat, risking their health (Teen Vogue, Kim Kelly Column)
• Republicans will take home the money from the Democrats’ energy bill (Bloomberg, Liam Denning and Bobby Ghosh op-ed $)
• The UN just declared a universal human right to a healthy, sustainable environment – here’s where resolutions like this can lead (The Conversation, Joel Correia analysis)
• California’s water debt crisis needs a long-term fix (Maven's Notebook, leana Miranda commentary)
• Did Democrats just save civilization? (New York Times, Paul Krugman column $)
• Drought crisis demands better oversight on well-drilling (CAL Matters, Ruth Martinez and Roger Dickenson op-ed)
• Grotesque greed, a burning planet, & climate justice — two scenarios (Clean Technica, Steve Hanley op-ed)
• Tilting at climate windmills (Wall Street Journal, Editorial Board $)

Heartland Paid Tony Watts For A Weather Station Re-Run, Got No Coverage

Wow, what a week for us to take off! While we're sure you sorely missed our takes on the takes about how the Inflation Reduction Act is totally super bad according to all the people whose livelihoods depend on fossil fuel profits prolific enough to provide millions in "philanthropic" support to their employer or campaigns, on Sunday it passed — so we'll spare you the dissection.  

And since the New York Times did such a great job covering the well-coordinated Republican effort to attack good business standards, thanks to Documented, we'll spare you yet another of our rants about the GOP's turn from the party of Big Business to the party of Bad Business — especially since that's what we left you with back in July! 

Instead, we want to tell you about something that didn't happen. Because, like the unobserved tree falling in the woods making no sound, if disinformation is produced but no one who isn't already intentionally stupid sees it, does it matter? 

As we mocked back in March, notoriously lazy climate denier Anthony Watts is back with a new attempt to cast doubt on the temperature record. According to coverage in disinfo outlets like election-denying Gateway Pundit, and white supremacy-laundering Brietbart (literally the biggest to pick up the "news"), 96% of the weather stations he surveyed didn't meet NOAA's weather station standards. 

Of course, thermometers have been around for a while now, and real scientists with the college degrees that Tony could never earn already make data corrections to account for the Urban Heat Island effect of asphalt warming up temperature stations. It's something Tony only knew about in the first place because of mainstream scientists and reports like the IPCC's, but obviously real science isn’t stopping him from being stupid on purpopse, in public, for money. 

Because instead of being bankrolled in part by Koch funds — like his last effort that ended up proving the temperature record was accurate to show warming — this one is instead funded by the Heartland Institute. 

We know that for a fact, because Tony himself had to admit it in the single non-disinfo outlet that mentioned the effort: a letter to the editor Tony submitted to the Chico Enterprise-Record. For those unaware of the titan of local news of California's Butte, Glenn, and Tehama counties, it's a local paper with a circulation of just over 30,000 (as of 2007) that Watts has been barraging with letters because he knows posting to his own website is a waste of time. 

"My detractors say my supposedly terrible affiliation with The Heartland Institute is reason to ignore me, citing scurrilous, unfounded accusations typical of the laziness in critics who regurgitate rather than research themselves" he wrote. "Yes, my travel was funded by Heartland; driving, staying in basic hotels, and eating at fast food restaurants." 

Okay, so his project was funded by a group that not only denies climate change on behalf of its fossil fuel funders, but still even defends Big Tobacco! 

But worry not, apparently the people who defend an industry that literally kills thousands of its best customers every year are totally honest, because "a poster on the wall of the office I occupied during my first day read: 'Rule #1 – Never, Ever, Lie.'" Oh, okay! If there's a poster on the wall then of course they're never going to lie, how silly of us to think otherwise! 

"You won’t find anything like that in government, media, or well-funded 'defenders of the planet' like The Sierra Club or WWF." 

That’s certainly quite a claim, and also one with literally no evidence — how would Watts know what kind of posters adorn the walls of WWF, government, or media?  

The same way he "knows" anything: he made it up! Exactly the sort of "scurrilous, unfounded accusation typical of the laziness in critics who regurgitate rather than research themselves." 

Maybe next time Heartland should pay Tony to survey the walls of the media and government to see what their posters say — as apparently posters can clear one from allegations of bias (and it's not like he's doing anything more important or scientific)! 

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