Trump: Make America Polluted Again

The Trump administration's planned rollback of
emissions standards could reintroduce acid rain,
create more smoggy days and cost us money
Make America Polluted Again! 

 Back in the bad old days in the 1970s and 1980s, the rain and snow coming into Vermont was so acidic from pollution that many of those stunted but old evergreen trees on the highest elevations of the Green Mountains were dying.  

Thanks to 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act that limited nitrous oxide and sulfur dioxide emissions, the rain became less acidic. It took years but those high elevation evergreens are recovering nicely. 

The problem isn't entirely solved. Our lakes in Vermont are still acidic, and the pH of the rain is still a little on the low side. But things are definitely better. 

Or maybe not. 

In his infinite wisdom, President Donald Trump wants to aggressively roll back pollution controls. 

Per the Guardian:

"The U.S. could be plunged back into an era of toxic acid rain, an environmental problem thought to have been solved decades ago, due to the Donald Trump administration's rollback of pollution protections, the scientist who discovered the existence of acid rain in North America has warned."

That scientist, Gene Likens, first identified acidic rainwater back in the 1960s.

Likens explained:

"I'm very worried that might happen, it's certainly not impossible that it could happen,' Likens, 90, told the Guardian. Likens is still involved in a long-term monitoring project stretching back to 1976, to sample rainwater for acidity but this program has just had its funding cut by the Trump administration."

Well, of course it has.

The 1990 legislation turned the battle against acid rain into a success story. "If the Trump administration  starts releasing controls on emissions we are going to destroy that success story," Likens said. 

The Guardian tells us what's at stake.

"The plan by the EPA to eliminate or weaken 31 regulations, a move called a 'dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion,' by the agency's administrator, Lee Zeldin, risks many thousands of extra deaths and litany of heart, lung and other illnesses, according to the EPA's own estimates of the rules' benefits."

Overall, Trump has tried to stop clean energy develop and resurrect coal, which is the dirtiest of fossil fuels. 

Coal was one of the biggest culprits in causing acid rain. Although Trump wants a lot of coal plants, market forces might not allow Trump's dream of coal burning industries everywhere. 

Much of Trump's agenda is just to make his billionaire friends even richer. But MAGA also has an anti-intellectual mindset that thinks anyone who is quote, unquote "smart" as suspect. 

"There's a viewpoint now that scientists are the bad guys, that the science is corrupt - things that just aren't true"," said Richard Peltier, an environmental scientist at the University of Massachusetts.

AUTO EMISSIONS

A big centerpiece of Trump's anti-environment agenda is to roll back auto emissions standards. Which of course leads to more air pollution. That wouldn't be the only thing we'd suffer. 

Like Trump's tariffs, the emissions standards rollback could well cost you and me even more money, as Fast Company reports. 

Chris Harto, a senior policy analyst at Consumer Reports who focuses on energy efficiency, explains it to Fast Company which wrote: 

"Under Biden the EPA enacted the emissions standard and the Department of Transportation enacted fuel economy standards. Both help clean up combustion vehicles -and both are in Trump's crosshairs, as the standards were created in coordination with each other. Making vehicles more efficient, Harto explains, comes with the 'very fortunate side benefit of making the vehicles cheaper to fuel.'

Those combined rules, a Consumer Reports analysis found, would delivery more than $2 trillion in consumer fuel savings by 2050. 'That's a massive amount of money that's at stake,' Harto says." 

We all want to save money, but we really do need to circle back to air pollution, and perhaps even more importantly, climate change. 

Fast Company again: 

"Speaking to reporters, Trump said that the new auto emissions standards don't 'mean a damn bit of difference for the environment but 'make it impossible for people to build cars.'

Harto contests both claims. The Consumer Reports analysis also found that by 2050, the auto emissions standards would reduce pollution by 12 billion tons. 'It's the single most impactful piece of climate regulation that the U.S, has even put in place,' he said."

 But, of course the Trump team is MAPA: Make American Polluted Again.

 

Canceled Biden Trip Would Have Been An Unintentional Climate Irony Moment

A huge coal train derailment in Pueblo, Colorado
on Sunday. It has blocked Interstate 25 since, snarling
traffic in the region. Photo is from Pueblo
County Sheriff's Office. 

President Joe Biden was supposed to travel to Pueblo, Colorado on Monday to talk about his clean energy initiative. 

He canceled at the last minute. He (quite reasonably, in my opinion) decided to instead hold meetings with his national security team regarding Israel's deadly war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. 

The trip to Colorado would have been a bit of an ironic moment. Any trip to a U.S. city by the President would screw up local traffic, due to the security such a visit would entail.   

The traffic in Pueblo would be extra messed up by a Biden visit for this reason: A coal train Sunday derailed on a bridge above busy Interstate 25. The bridge collapsed, sadly killing a passing truck driver.  Coal spilled everywhere, closing the Interstate in both directions and disrupting traffic throughout the city. 

As of last night, Interstate 25 was still closed and was expected to remain that way at least until this afternoon (October 18) as tons of coal and wreckage are cleaned up. 

The Associated Press reports:

"A nine-mile stretch of I-25 - used by 39,000 to 44,000 vehicles daily - was shut down. Traffic was being detoured around the derailment site and through the town of Penrose, almost 30 miles west of Pueblo."

So yeah, pretty messy. Imagine mixing Biden's motorcade and security into that mess. 

 Coal isn't exactly clean energy.  It's one of the main, dirtiest culprit in causing climate change. Plus, the point of Biden's visit was to promote a clean energy industry aimed at muting the dangerous effects of climate change. 

It wasn't the entire coal industry's fault the derailment happened. Investigators think a broken rail was behind the disaster. 

But had Biden come to Pueblo to chat up his clean energy initiatives, the coal train disaster would have been pretty ironic.  I haven't heard of clean energy causing big problems like the train wreck, but maybe you can guide me toward an example.  

I get it that the situation in Gaza that Biden is dealing with is zillions of times worse and more complicated than the train derailment. But I can't resist highlighting the irony of the derailment and Biden's intentions for going to Pueblo.

Why The Nation's Winter Weather Went Off Rails And Texas Sank Under It

Interstate 35 in Austin, Texas took on a frozen post-
apocalyptic look this week. Photo by Miguel
Gutierrez Jr/Texas Tribune 

The United States certainly went through one hell of a week in the weather department, with extreme, deadly weather that will be remembered for generations to come. 

This incredible weather will wane and things are slowly starting to go back to something resembling normal, but the damage is done. 

The death toll is rising, and there will probably be billions of dollars in damage from coast to coast. 

As of Wednesday, the nationwide death toll from the Arctic weather had risen to at least 30, and that will surely go up, possibly a lot, as people are found in frozen homes and apartments. By some estimates, this will be the most expensive weather disaster in Texas history, costing even more than the $20 billion in inflation-adjusted damage from Hurricane Harvey in 2017. 

Now that the weather is finally getting ready to slowly improve, here's how this all happened in the first place:    

THE METEOROLOGY

This episode of awful weather had it seeds in what I described in this blog thingy a month ago. A sudden stratospheric warming.

Way back on January 9, I described how this sudden stratospheric warming would blow the polar vortex apart. The vortex is a huge upper level pool of frigid, stormy air that usually hangs out somewhere in the Arctic. It does tend to move around somewhat. 

Or, as noted get blown apart occasionally.

We're reaping that harvest, as it were, of that event now. 

This disrupted polar vortex led to something called high latitude blocking, which is basically high pressure areas setting up around the Arctic. Pieces of the polar vortex, which is low pressure, were displaced further south 

As the Washington Post Capital Weather Gang explains it, this high pressure in the high Arctic helped displace the polar vortex into the North Atlantic. The low pressure in the North Atlantic and high pressure near Alaska channeled incredibly bitter air from Siberia, across the North Pole and straight down into Canada and the United States.

The jet stream also became weaker than it normally is this time of year. A strong jet stream tends to keep most of the cold air bottled up in Canada.

A weaker jet stream has much more pronounced curves, dips and bumps.   A big dip in this weak jet stream developed over the central United States, and that directed that awful Siberian air right down to Texas. 

Outbreaks of Arctic air usually get shunted east, at least to an extent, so that the Great Lakes and Northeast shiver in temperatures way below zero.  That's sort of OK, we're used to it. 

This time, with that big dip in the jet stream, the frigid air shot straight to Oklahoma and Texas, with little chance to modify on the way down. 

CLIMATE CHANGE?

I've seen a few wags online saying a record, intense cold wave like his is "proof" climate change does not exist. 

As I always state, a single weather event does nothing to prove or disprove climate change. 

The weather always has extremes, one way or the other.  Climate change has loaded the dice, so it's now likely there will be hot spells than cold spells.  But there will still be cold spells. 

Actually, the air temperature at its source in Siberia and the Arctic wasn't unusual. What was strange is that it made its way all the way down to the Mexican border, resulting in the extreme cold for the South. 

I've mentioned this before, but some scientists suspect that climate change can actually make these kinds of episodes more likely. 

The Arctic is warming faster than points south, so that reduces the temperature contrast between the tropics and the poles.  A subdued temperature contrast might make a weaker jet stream.  Remember what I said above: A weaker jet stream can be more prone to bigger dips and ridges. That in turn, can pull cold air south where it doesn't belong and hot air north, where it also doesn't belong. 

In fact, this is the second time in four months this has happened in the southern Plains. An out of season ice storm caused a lot of problems in Oklahoma back in October. 

But as Nature reported last November, the science around climate change and weaker jet streams and weird spells of weather is still very iffy. 

Scientists have a lot more work to do to establish whether these mega cold snaps amid an otherwise warming climate is a real thing or not.   

THE ICE

While that polar vortex in the North Atlantic was helping direct frigid air into the United States, a stronger than average ridge of swarm, tropical high pressure in the upper atmosphere established itself off the Southeast United States coast, and north of the Caribbean.

This directed -  or tried to direct  - warm, humid air toward the southeastern United States. Note that while most of the nation was freezing, Florida was enduring near record winter time heat and humidity. 

Warm air is lighter than cold air. When this toasty, humid air encountered the frigid air over much of the United States, it would ride up and over the cold air.  And there were plenty of episodes in the past week where this happened, and is still happening. 

Raindrops falling from the warm air encounter the cold air near the surface. They either freeze on the way down, creating sleet, or freeze on contact with the ground, causing the dangerous and damaging icing we've seen so much of. 

TEXAS POWER OUTAGES 

Politics over the widespread and dangerous Texas power outages as exploded. 

The outages, which affected more than 4 million Texans, is the most serious and probably most deadly outcome of this cold snap.  

Electrical grids froze up all over Texas, leading 
to massive days-long blackouts 

Texas is used to  heat waves, but cold waves of this intensity and length are super rare.  The whole state was affected, not just part of it as is typical in most winter cold snaps. 

This has probably happened maybe four or five times in the past 200 years or so. 

Demand for power spiked as people struggle to heat their homes. 

If you figure a comfortable temperature for a house is 70 degrees, you only have to cool the rooms by 30 degrees if its hot outside in the summer 

In this cold wave you have to heat the rooms by 70 degrees if it's zero outside so that takes a lot of energy. Plus, the millions of homes and businesses in Texas are designed to be insulated from New England-style winter conditions. 

The gas and coal plants weren't up to the task. Plus, these plants were not built to withstand such bitter temperatures. Gas lines froze, as did equipment in power plants. 

Most of the nation's power is controlled by two massive grids, one in the eastern half of the nation, one in the west. 

Since each power grid encompasses several states, they are subject to federal regulations that, among other things, demand that the plants are weatherized. Also, since the east and west grids are so big, they can be some electricity trading with other states if one area is affected by bad weather and another is not. 

Texas, however, controls its own power grid, controlled by the now-unfortunately named Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT.  

The Texas power grid is not part of the eastern and western regions. They've done this in part to avoid dealing with cumbersome federal regulations. The state didn't winterize their power plants, because cold waves like this are so rare. 

When the weather hit, the plants wilted in the Arctic chill. Compounding the problem, some electricity generating plants shut down in Texas during the winter for maintenance. That's because electricity demand in the Lone Star State is usually highest in the summer. 

I've seen some blame go to wind and solar power that froze up in the cold. But these renewables only contribute 21 percent of Texas electricity generation.  

Some wind turbines did freeze up, but most of them kept working. Though power from windmills did decrease during the winter storm, that decrease from renewables was actually a little less than forecast.  Most of the problem was from gas and coal electric generating plants. 

By the weekend, temperatures in Texas will rise to levels near or even a little above average for the season - well above freezing. The power will come back on for everybody.  All those frozen pipes will thaw, causing countless new building floods, drinking water shortages and danger. 

It will take many areas of the nation awhile to recover from this disaster. That's especially true in Texas.