Extreme Heat Enhanced By Global Warming

What science can tell us about the links between global warming and massive heat waves

From an Article by Chris Mooney, Washington Post, July 21, 2016

The Capitol can be seen as a jogger runs along the National Mall on July 21 in Washington, where area temperatures are forecasted to reach the upper 90s for the next few days.

The United States is witnessing a massive, dangerous heat wave, as a huge system of high pressure covers the central part of the country. It’s a big enough deal that yesterday President Obama even tweeted about it, including a map showing the maximum heat index in some parts of the Midwest and Southeast reaching 110 or 115 degrees on Saturday.

Here in Washington, temperatures could break 100 degrees Friday or over the weekend.

This will, inevitably, lead to much talk of climate change in the coming days. So it’s important to separate the scientific wheat from the chaff and figure out what science can, and can’t, reliably say about the link between an event like this and a warming planet — especially in a year that, on a global scale, has shattered past temperature records for six out of the last six months.

And the gist is that when it comes to extreme heat waves in general — heat waves that appear out of the norm in some way, for instance in their intensity, frequency, or duration — while scientists never say individual events are “caused” by climate change, they are getting less and less circumspect about making some connection.

“As predictable as the sunrise, some will say heat waves always happened,” said Marshall Shepherd, director of the atmospheric sciences program at the University of Georgia and former president of the American Meteorological Society. “Yep, so did home runs in baseball, but the steroid era brought more and longer home runs. A new National Academies study suggests that ‘heat waves’ may be one of the primary climate change markers like home runs were in baseball.”

[It’s official: We can now say global warming made some weather events worse]

In other words, when a planet warms, the odds shift in favor of more intense or long lasting heat waves. That’s just plain logic.

Indeed, the National Academy of Sciences report in question notes that, “Confidence in attribution findings of anthropogenic influence is greatest for those extreme events that are related to an aspect of temperature, such as the observed long-term warming of the region or global climate, where there is little doubt that human activities have caused an observed change.”

“In particular, for extreme heat and cold events, changes in long-term mean conditions provide a basis for expecting that there should also be changes in extreme conditions.”

And we’ve definitely already had changes in not only “long-term mean conditions,” but in heat waves themselves. The U.S. National Climate Assessment found that U.S. heat waves have already “become more frequent and intense,” that the U.S. is shattering high temperature records far more frequently than it is shattering low temperature records (just as you’d expect), and that it is seeing correspondingly fewer cold spells.

As for future projections, meanwhile, the assessment added that “Climate models project that the same summertime temperatures that ranked among the hottest 5% in 1950-1979 will occur at least 70% of the time by 2035-2064 in the U.S. if global emissions of heat-trapping gases continue to grow.”

However, pointing all of this out is not the same as making a specific attribution for this specific heat event — rather, it is saying that attribution can be made for this class or type of event. Beyond that, specific attribution requires active research, and an attention to the actual temperatures, duration and other aspects of the weather phenomenon. That’s because, as Shepherd notes, there are always heat waves, even in a stable climate.

Typically, in such an attribution study, scientists will use sets of climate models — one set including the factors that drive human global warming and the other including purely “natural” factors — and see if an event like the one in question is more likely to occur in the first set of models. Researchers are getting better and better at performing these kinds of studies fast, in near real time. So don’t be at all surprised if we see such a study for the current heat wave event — just as we saw for, most recently, the devastating bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef, which was tied to an extreme marine heatwave off Australia’s northeastern coast.

But in the meantime, some scientists and experts aren’t holding back.

“With every heat wave, probably the number one question is, is it climate change, or is it not? Well the answer is, it’s both,” said Texas Tech University climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe on a press call Thursday. “We get heat waves naturally, but climate change is amping them up, it’s giving them that extra energy, to make them even more serious, and have even greater impacts.”

Hayhoe didn’t attempt a specific attribution of the current heat wave, any more than Shepherd did. Rather, she’s once again articulating the general connection.

“We are not used to having heat waves that are extreme as the ones we see today,” she said.

It’s important to underscore, as Hayhoe did, that this event poses severe risks to health — particularly for children and the elderly — and also to crops across the U.S. heartland. She pointed to an extreme 2003 heat wave that affected Paris and Europe, and which has indeed been connected to climate change through statistical attribution analysis. That event killed hundreds of people in Paris and London, and a recent study attributed at least some of those deaths, themselves, to climate change.

So these links are real, if not always simple to characterize. Now, it’s all about watching this current event carefully, taking preparations, and seeing what scientists have to say once they run their analyses.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Prof. Susan C. Nagel

Fracking Chemicals Can Cause Endocrine Disruption and Illness, Says Study

From an Article by Jan Lee, Triple Pundit, September 21st, 2015

There is mounting data to suggest that hydraulic fracturing (fracking) can have adverse affects on the environment. A new study, however, suggests that populations living close to fracking sites also have a higher incidence of health complications.

Researchers at the University of Missouri studied data to determine whether residential populations living near what they called “unconventional oil and gas operations,” or UOGs, were at a higher risk for endocrine-disruption from exposure to fracking chemicals. The scientists examined case studies and peer-reviewed publications and concluded that each of the chemicals needed a more intensive case-by-case study when used near human populations.

“We recommend a process to examine the total endocrine disrupting activity from exposure to the mixtures of chemicals used in and resulting from these operations in addition to examining the effects of each chemical on its own,” said Susan C. Nagel and Christopher D. Kassotis. Nagel, a professor in obstetrics, gynecology and women’s health, and Kassotis, a doctoral student in the division of biological sciences, worked with colleagues from across the country to determine the impact of the chemicals — which have largely not been studied for their impact on the human endocrine system.

“More than 700 chemicals are used in the fracking process, and many of them disturb hormone function,” Nagel said. Their studies were directed at understanding the human impact of endocrine disrupting chemicals, or EDCs, that were released as a result of chemical spills.

This isn’t the first study in which Nagel and Kassotis have collaborated with other researchers and found fracking chemicals interfered with metabolic processes.

In 2013, the researchers studied 12 substances suspected of being endocrine disruptors, and tracked their ability to block or mimic female or male hormone activity. They used surface and ground water from well sites in heavily-impacted areas in Garfield County, Colorado, and compared them with the results from water in areas in Colorado and Wyoming that did not have a high density of drilling sites. By doing so, they were able to determine that the water samples at drilling sites had a higher level of endocrine-disrupting chemical activity that would not normally be found in the water table and ground water.

What is more, the Colorado River, the adjacent drainage basin for the Garfield County drill sites in western Colorado, showed evidence of EDCs as well, which means that populations that rely on its water source as far away as California (a main recipient of the Colorado River’s water source) could potentially be exposed to the chemicals. Drainage basins near areas that didn’t have wells did not show levels of these chemicals.

The team determined that areas which had experienced spills were at a higher risk for contaminating water sources and exposing populations to endocrine-disrupting chemicals than those areas that did not have wells or employ these chemicals.

“Fracking is exempt from federal regulations to protect water quality, but spills associated with natural gas drilling can contaminate surface, ground and drinking water,” said Nagel. “This could raise the risk of reproductive, metabolic, neurological and other diseases, especially in children who are exposed to EDC. The US EPA been exploring a number of steps to improve protections against health and environmental impacts of fracking. To date, there are no established federal regulations addressing the potential exposure and health impacts of EDCs through fracking, and fracking spills.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Soil Contamination & Water Pollution

Research is Reported Behind NY State-wide Fracking Ban

The  ”final supplemental environmental impact statement” (SEIS) incorporating public comments will be published in 2015

From the Article by Nicholas St. Fleur, The Atlantic Monthly, December 18, 2014

The battle over untapped natural gas in New York State appears to have reached its end. Following an extensive public health review of hydraulic fracturing, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a complete ban on the oil and natural gas harvesting practice in the state on Wednesday.

The 184-page report, conducted by the New York State Department of Health, cites potential environmental impacts and health hazards as reasons for the ban. The research incorporates findings from multiple studies conducted across the country and highlights the following seven concerns:

• Respiratory health: The report cites the dangers of methane emissions from natural gas drilling in Texas and Pennsylvania, which have been linked to asthma and other breathing issues. Another study found that 39 percent of residents in southern Pennsylvania who lived within one kilometer of a fracking site developed upper-respiratory problems compared with 18 percent of those who lived more than two kilometers away.
• Drinking water: Shallow methane-migration underground could seep into drinking water, one study found, contaminating wells. Another found brine from deep shale formations in groundwater aquifers. The report also refers to a study of fracking communities in the Appalachian Plateau where they found methane in 82 percent of drinking water samples, and that concentrations of the chemical were six times higher in homes close to natural gas wells. Ethane was 23 times higher in homes close to fracking sites as well.
• Seismic activity: The report cites studies from Ohio and Oklahoma that explain how fracking can trigger earthquakes. Another found that fracking near Preese Hall in the United Kingdom resulted in a 2.3 magnitude earthquake as well as 1.5 magnitude earthquake.
• Climate change: Excess methane can be released into the atmosphere, which contributes to global warming. One study predicts that fracking in New York State would contribute between 7 percent and 28 percent of the volatile organic compound emissions, and between 6 percent and 18 percent of nitrogen oxide emissions in the region by 2020.
• Soil contamination: One analysis of a natural gas site found elevated levels of radioactive waste in the soil, potentially the result of surface spills.
• The community: The report refers to problems such as noise and odor pollution, citing a case in Pennsylvania where gas harvesting was linked to huge increases in automobile accidents and heavy truck crashes.
• Health complaints: Residents near active fracking sites reported having symptoms such as nausea, abdominal pain, nosebleeds, and headaches according to studies. A study in rural Colorado which examined 124,842 births between 1996 and 2009 found that those who lived closest to natural gas development sites had a 30 percent increase in congenital heart conditions. The group of births closest to development sites also had a 100-percent increased chance of developing neural tube defects.

In 2008, New York State suspended its fracking activities pending further research into the health, environmental, and economic effects. Since the moratorium six years ago, many different scientific groups have conducted hydraulic fracturing research, as the state’s report reflects.

“I asked myself, ‘would I let my family live in a community with fracking? The answer is no.”

Howard Zucker, the acting state health commissioner who helped spearhead the report, addressed the ban with Gov. Cuomo in Albany. “I cannot support high-volume hydraulic fracturing in the great state of New York,” said Zucker, according to The Wall Street Journal. He added, “I asked myself, ‘would I let my family live in a community with fracking? The answer is no,” The Los Angeles Times reported.

But Cuomo and Zucker’s critics were quick to blast the ban, which they say will cost the state millions in jobs and energy. Dean Skelos, the Republican co-leader of the New York State Senate, said the move was shaped by politics, not science. “The decision implies that at least 30 other states, Senator Schumer and the Obama Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency are wrong about the health impacts and do not care about the well-being of millions of American citizens,” he said in a statement. Others have lashed against Zucker’s comments about not letting his family live in a fracking community despite not having children.

Zucker also voiced concern over how little is known about the long-term effects of injecting water and chemicals into the Marcellus shale, the disputed natural gas reserve that has been the subject of debate in New York and elsewhere. The new report, he said, highlights gaps in the current scientific understanding of fracking’s impact on groundwater resources, air quality, radon exposure, noise exposure, traffic, psychosocial stress, and injuries.

“The bottom line is we lack the comprehensive longitudinal studies, and these are either not yet complete or are yet to be initiated,” Zucker said according to The Syracuse Post-Standard. “We don’t have the evidence to prove or disprove the health effects. But the cumulative concerns of what I’ve read gives me reason to pause.”

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Fracking & Frackers are Beyond Reason

Baker-Hughes and Susan G. Komen Using Stupid Tricks!

From a Post by Stefanie Spear, EcoWatch.com, December 4, 2014

Even Susan G. Komen’s own website shares the chemicals from fracking that are linked to breast cancer, but it didn’t stop them from partnering with oil and gas giant Baker Hughes, which donated $100,000 to Komen in October for the “Doing Our Bit for the Cure” campaign where 1,000 fracking drill bits were painted pink.

The viral post on EcoWatch, written by breast cancer survivor and fracking activist Sandra Steingraber, exposed the hypocrisy of this campaign. Now, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart takes this outrageous partnership to new heights.

Watch this hilarious segment where The Daily Show‘s Samantha Bee meets Karuna Jaggar, executive director of Breast Cancer Action, to fully uncover the stupidity of pink fracking.

See also:

Pinkwashing: Fracking Company Teams Up With Susan G. Komen to ‘End Breast Cancer Forever’

Tell Susan G. Komen Don’t Frack With Our Health

This article is endorsed by Duane Nichols, www.FrackCheckWV.net

Woops! Show me a Shale Well Pad this small, this neat, this clean?

Hard Facts About Fracking | OnEarth Magazine (NRDC)

From an Article by Scott Dodd, Natural Resources Defense Council, July 21, 2014

A new book evaluates whether natural gas is a ‘transitional fuel’ to a low-carbon future—or perhaps, more like a methadone addiction that’s tearing apart rural communities.

Growing up in northern West Virginia in the 1970s, I remember seeing a lot of big white plastic candy canes sticking out of the ground, marking the natural gas pipelines that ran just below the surface. You’d encounter them along streams and fence lines and the backcountry roads that always made me carsick. What I didn’t realize as a kid was how much of my family history was intertwined with those hidden gas lines.

My great-great-grandfather, William Dodd, helped lay some of the first pipe across the state, working for a subsidiary of Standard Oil at a time when John D. Rockefeller craved alternatives to oil (not for any environmental reason, but because even back then he was worried we would run out). William’s son was an administrator for Hope Gas, and his grandson (my grandfather) was a supervisor at a company extraction plant on the Ohio River. Then my dad spent his career as a corporate executive for Hope’s successor, Consolidated Natural Gas, until it was gobbled up by Dominion Resources.

That time line of mergers and name changes—from Hope to Dominion—serves as a rather succinct summary of the role of natural gas in the U.S. economy over the past couple of centuries. First used commercially in 1821 to light lamps in Fredonia, New York—almost four decades before an oil well was drilled in nearby Pennsylvania—gas has nevertheless remained oil’s “invisible twin,” as David Waples put it in his 2005 book, The Natural Gas Industry in Appalachia. Gas was often seen as an unwanted by-product, frequently burned off because coal was cheaper and oil more versatile.

Fracking, as Wall Street Journal energy reporter Russell Gold writes in The Boom, has changed all that, fundamentally altering both the U.S. economy and the nature of communities across the country. That’s because it takes place literally in our backyards. Much of the most recent wave of natural gas drilling is occurring in densely populated states like Pennsylvania, California, Ohio, and Illinois. Small towns are now ground zero for the noise, industrial activity, and environmental and health concerns associated with fossil fuel extraction.

By last year, roughly one out of 20 Americans lived within a mile of a recently fracked well. “This new proximity between wells and homes is one of the defining features of the new energy landscape,” Gold writes. And this change has happened in a minuscule amount of time—less than a decade, in most of the country—driven by technological innovation and Wall Street financing, without the corresponding changes in community awareness and the government safeguards needed to ensure fracking’s safety.

For most of his well-researched book, Gold focuses more on the history of hydraulic fracturing and the businessmen behind the boom than on its environmental impact. He’s a diligent reporter and able profiler of the mostly dull petroleum engineers and slightly more colorful energy company execs, men like the controversial Aubrey McClendon, who made their fortunes from fracking. But he never quite brings to life the impact on families and communities in the way that Seamus McGraw manages in his more personal and intimate The End of Country, published in 2011.

When Gold does turn from chronicling the boom to evaluating its consequences, however, he reaches a very simple conclusion: we need to slow down. Our communities, our health, our water, and our future climate, he says, could very well depend on it.

Throughout my family’s four generations in the industry, wells were sunk mostly the old-fashioned way: drill a hole in the ground at a likely spot, hope to hit a pocket of gushing oil or gas, then pump the fuel out over a long period of time, with diminishing returns every year as the pocket emptied and pressure subsided. When my grandfather died a couple of years ago, he left my father shares in three West Virginia wells, all decades old, that still pump a trickle of gas today.

What changed all of that was a process originally patented in 1948 by Halliburton, though the idea goes back even further—all the way to the original Titusville, Pennsylvania, oil boom, when a court-martialed lieutenant colonel created a “petroleum torpedo” to fracture rocks in order to access more fuel. It wasn’t until 1998 that a 34-year-old engineer named Nick Steinsberger suggested the revolutionary idea of using mostly water—but massive volumes of water, mixed with a cocktail of chemicals to reduce friction—to fracture the dense slabs of Texas’s Barnett Shale and release the fuel trapped inside. (The word trapped is a bit of a misnomer; the gas is essentially part of the shale rock itself, embedded in tiny holes you can only see with a $2 million scanning electron microscope.)

When Steinsberger proposed using water, the idea was counterintuitive, to say the least. One of his bosses said he would “eat his diploma” if it worked. But Steinsberger was successful (no word on how the diploma tasted), and “the era of the massive slick-water frack had begun,” Gold writes.

Steinsberger’s “massive” volume of water was actually paltry by today’s standards. He used 1.2 million gallons; some modern wells employ five times as much. And while he drilled straight down, what has made fracking even more effective is the ability to turn the drill horizontally, sometimes for as much as two miles, breaking up more deep shale from a single pad aboveground.

Fracking a single well requires what Gold describes as a “movable factory,” and the equipment, trucks, pipelines, and all the other associated infrastructure, as well as the demands on water, the waste, and the manpower involved, are what makes modern gas drilling such a disruptive force in communities. And because of the perversities of the market (companies are judged by Wall Street on the basis of how many new wells they drill and how quickly), the United States is now producing more natural gas than it can use.

“Perhaps it’s best to think of natural gas like methadone.”

Most critically, the cumulative environmental and health impacts of all this fracking remain to be seen. In the battle for the U.S. energy future, gas is winning, and its ascendancy over coal helped the United States cut greenhouse gas emissions by 12 percent between 2007 and 2012, Gold writes (gains in energy efficiency and better fuel standards for cars are the other big reasons). But the gas glut also slowed the development of wind and solar energy, and while gas may be cleaner than coal (and some studies even cast doubt on that), it’s far from clean.

Gold gives McClendon’s financial maneuvering much credit for the fracking boom, but he makes it clear that a combination of market forces, disruptive technology, and government support drove the revolution. The lessons for wind and solar are obvious: “create the right market signals, set smart long-term policy goals, and let the technologists develop needed breakthroughs.” If fracking can indeed provide the road map for a low-carbon economy, as he believes, it might be argued that this justifies some of the damage and disruption it has wrought. Just don’t try to tell that to the people living next to the drill pads.

“Perhaps it’s best,” Gold posits, “to think of natural gas like methadone. It’s a way for an energy-addicted society to get off dirtier fuels and smooth out the detox bumps.” But whether or not gas can provide a path to cleaner energy, there’s no doubt that the rapid, unexpected, and largely unregulated expansion of fracking has brought disruption and risk to families across the country—even those who benefited economically. “Nobody would argue that a nuclear plant should be built as quickly as possible without spending the necessary time to ensure it is safe and robust,” Gold writes. “Fracking is different. The risks of any single well are tiny compared to a nuclear power plant. But several hundred wells? Several thousand?”

My parents now live in western Pennsylvania, not far from Pittsburgh, a mile above the Marcellus Shale formation that has made their state a hotbed of drilling activity. There’s a new fracking well being erected about a mile from their suburban cul-de-sac; they can see it from their driveway. What it will mean for their lives, it’s too soon to say. But one thing is for sure: it’s a lot bigger than those candy cane markers I remember from my childhood.

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