Historians generally place the invention of fracking in a gas field in southwestern Kansas in 1947.
It remained largely a novelty until the late 1980’s, when a petroleum geologist named George Mitchell found a cost-efficient way to shatter shale rock with a high-pressure mix of water, sand, and chemicals, collecting the oil or gas released in the “fracturing.”
Aubrey McClendon co-founded Chesapeake Energy in 1989, just in time to see natural gas prices begin a steady growth pattern.
They fracked shale patches from Texas to Pennsylvania. By the early 2010’s, McClendon was a billionaire, and Chesapeake had cracked the Fortune 500.
Big Oil titans and small operators alike loved fracking. It changed the face of the oil and gas industry. Power plants run on fracked natural gas ran cheaper than coal or nuclear plants. This dealt what may turn out to be mortal blows to both coal and nuke energy in the U.S.
But who else loved fracking? Many environmentalists embraced fracked natural gas as a “bridge fuel” to cleaner energy—far from ideal, but better than dirty coal or petroleum. The Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” campaign took $25 million from fracking companies and executives, much of it from McClendon and Chesapeake, who were happy to have the venerable environmental group as an unwitting wing man in kneecapping a competing industry.
When the donations were exposed, Sierra cut ties with McLendon et al., but they kept the $25 million.
The “bridge fuel” increasingly was infested with trolls: Shady land deals, the environmental harm, an alarming increase in earthquakes in faultless Oklahoma, and more.
But oh, how the money rolled in. Fracking, in a word, flourished. The U.S. arguably achieved its coveted status as a net energy exporter. The industry was worth trillions.
Already a high-roller, Aubrey McClendon was made for the part of tycoon. He led a team of investors who bought the Seattle SuperSonics and moved the team to Oklahoma City in 2008, where the newly-named Thunder play in Chesapeake Energy Arena.
Connecticut is one of the fastest-warming states in the contiguous United States.
Rhode Island was the first state in the lower 48 whose average annual temperature warmed more than 2 degrees Celsius since 1895. Then New Jersey hit that threshold, which global leaders aim to keep the planet’s warming from exceeding. Next was Connecticut, then Maine and Massachusetts. But why is the Northeastern United States warming faster than the rest of the country? Climate scientists don’t fully understand this trend, but they offer an array of explanations.
Abby Weiss reports for Inside Climate News
As a kid growing up in Watertown, Connecticut, Daniel Esty would create his own backyard ice skating rink and flood it with a garden hose. Now, when Esty tries to create an ice rink with his own children in their backyard in nearby Cheshire, the water rarely freezes.
Only a few days in recent winters have been cold enough to produce ice adequate for skating, said Esty, a Yale University environmental law professor. Having lived in Connecticut his whole life, he has witnessed the growing impact of global warming in the Northeast.
“I think all of us who’ve been living in New England see changes that suggest that we’re in a warming cycle, and that of course, is worrisome,” said Esty, who served as commissioner of the state’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection from 2011 to 2014.
Connecticut is one of the fastest-warming states, in the fastest warming region, in the contiguous United States. An analysis last year by The Washington Post found that neighboring Rhode Island was the first state among the lower 48 whose average annual temperature had warmed more than 2 degrees Celsius since 1895. New Jersey was second, the Post found, followed by Connecticut, Maine and Massachusetts.
The Post analysis also found that the New York City area, including Long Island and suburban counties in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, was among about half a dozen hot spots nationally where warming has already exceeded 2 degrees. The others are the greater Los Angeles area, the high desert in Oregon, the Western Rocky Mountains, an area from Montana to Minnesota along the Canadian border and the Northeast Shore of Lake Michigan.
Climate scientists don’t fully understand why Connecticut and the other Northeast states have warmed so dramatically, but they offer an array of explanations, from warm winters that produce less snow and ice (and thus reflect less heat back into space) to warming ocean temperatures and changes in both the jet stream and the Gulf Stream.
Two degrees Celsius serves as a prominent threshold for international leaders, who in the 2015 Paris Agreement committed to “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius…,recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change.”
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has reported that even a 1.5 degree increase in the global average temperature will result in the death of coral reefs, severe droughts, dangerous heat waves and massive sea level rise.
The perilous warming trend in the Northeast continued this spring, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information’s climate report for May, which found warmer than normal temperatures for all 12 Northeastern states. Spring temperatures were 0.1 degrees Celsius above normal in Connecticut, the report said. The state’s nearly 2 degrees Celsius temperature rise since 1895 is double the average for the Lower 48 states.
Across the planet, temperatures have warmed 1 degree Celsius since the late 19th century. But globally, warming has been far from uniform. The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, and Alaska is the fastest warming state in the U.S.
Across the country, the Post found that 71 of 3,107 counties have already surpassed 2 degrees Celsius of warming. Fairfield County and much of southwestern Connecticut are among that group.
New York, New Jersey and New England are not typically associated with the dramatic signs of a warming planet, such as raging wildfires or catastrophic flooding. But the Northeast is warming faster than the rest of the contiguous U.S.
“If you look at the spatial pattern of warming, then what you find is that you see much higher warming in the coastal areas in New England,” said Ambarish Karmalkar, a postdoctoral fellow with the Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center.
The climate patterns Connecticut exhibits are similar to the rest of the Northeastern states. If current trends continue, by 2035, the average temperature of the entire Northeast region will have risen 2 degrees Celsius since the pre-industrial era, according to the Fourth National Climate Assessment.
THE VILLAGES, Fla. — Sharon Sandler was already irritated as she walked toward the growing line of golf carts preparing to parade around one of her retirement community’s town squares for President Trump’s birthday.
Sandler, who is in her 60s, had spent the early afternoon of June 14 at an anti-racism vigil that sought to honor the memory of people killed by police, but whoever controlled the Villages’ sound system wouldn’t lower the volume, she said, so a solemn moment was pierced with a hydrant of Fox News.
Within minutes, Sandler’s silent protest devolved into a profanity-laced screaming match, with Sandler at the center. The confrontation would later draw international outrage when Trump, last Sunday morning, shared a video showing one of his supporters at the parade pumping his fist and screaming, “White power!”
The tweet was deleted hours later and the White House said Trump had not heard what the man had said. But to Sandler, who settled here a decade ago, the episode showed what Trump’s presidency has done to political discourse in a community that bills itself as a friendly, laid-back place where people 55 and older can live like millionaires on a retiree’s budget.
“I thought it was ‘America’s friendliest hometown’ like it says in all the brochures,” she said. “But I’m here, and it’s not.
“Even a lot of the Democrats down here were not supportive of me as they said, ‘they go low, we go high,’ and all that other crap. I just think it’s time for all of us to open our mouths and say enough is enough.”
The Villages, an hour’s drive northwest of Orlando, is one of the nation’s largest retirement developments, a place where residents can be seen golfing on executive courses and inline-skating down sunny streets. Almost everyone who lives there is white, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and the community has long been a reliable bucket of Republican votes in a pivotal place, with residents routinely courted by state and national politicians.
Although Republican numerical advantages have persisted for years, locals say tensions began to escalate, much as they did across the country, in 2016, the first time Sandler slapped a “Dump Trump” sticker on her golf cart.
Some Republican villagers decided that the community’s Republican club wasn’t supportive enough of the president and started clubs like Villagers for Trump and Veterans for Trump, where they could meet with like-minded neighbors, bring in outside speakers and organize the occasional golf cart parade.
Now, political fights lead at times to physical fights, prompting some septuagenarians to pack pepper spray and stun guns into the golf carts residents use to dart around the 35-square mile community,according to some locals.
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When pathologist Amy Rapkiewicz began the grim process of opening up the coronavirus dead to learn how their bodies went awry, she found damage to the lungs, kidneys and liver consistent with what doctors had reported for months.
But something was off.
Rapkiewicz, who directs autopsies at NYU Langone Health, noticed that some organs had far too many of a special cell rarely found in those places. She had never seen that before, yet it seemed vaguely familiar. She raced to her history books and — in a eureka moment — found a reference to a 1960s report on a patient with dengue fever.
In dengue, a mosquito-borne tropical disease, she learned, the virus appeared to destroy these cells, which produce platelets, leading to uncontrolled bleeding. The novel coronavirus seemed to amplify their effect, causing dangerous clotting.
She was struck by the parallels: “Covid-19 and dengue sound really different, but the cells that are involved are similar.”
Autopsies have long been a source of breakthroughs in understanding new diseases, from HIV/AIDS and Ebola to Lassa fever — and the medical community is counting on them to do the same for covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. With a vaccine probably many months away in even the most optimistic scenarios, autopsies are becoming a critical source of information for research into possible treatments.
When the pandemic hit the United States in late March, many hospital systems were too overwhelmed trying to save lives to spend too much time delving into the secrets of the dead. But by late May and June, the first large batch of reports — from patients ranging in age from 32 to 90 years who died at a half-dozen institutions — were published in quick succession. The investigations have confirmed some of our early hunches of the disease, refuted others — and opened up new mysteries about the pathogen that has killed more than 500,000 people worldwide.
Among the most important findings, consistent across several studies, is confirmation the virus appears to attack the lungs the most ferociously. They also found the pathogen in parts of the brain, kidneys, liver, gastrointestinal tract and spleen and in the endothelial cells that line blood vessels, as some had previously suspected. Researchers also found widespread clotting in many organs.
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On the one hand it seems like the most natural thing in the world, that on a hot sunny day at one of New York City’s great beaches people would swim and play and jump around in the water. On the other hand, given that we’re still in the midst of a pandemic, it also feels surreal that we can do this again.
It’s true though: lifeguards are now on duty at the city’s beaches, for those who want to get in on some of that cool and refreshing Atlantic Ocean action. When I asked one young guard at Rockaway if he was happy to be back on the job he said without hesitation, “I’m ecstatic. I fucking love the beach.”
While beaches were previously open, swimming was not permitted, and Mayor Bill de Blasio had sent mixed messages about what was allowed prior to July 1st when lifeguards returned; in May, he said, “It’s just not time for beaches yet. If people want to take a beach chair and sit on the beach, fine. If it starts to seem like a typical summer beach scene, that’s what we won’t allow.”
The return of legal swimming to Rockaway also marks the reopening of the boardwalk concession stands, with vendors serving food and drinks once again at Beach 106th, Beach 97th, and Beach 86th. And they have plenty of pandemic protocols in place.
There are no tables at any of the stands, for instance, though the benches on the boardwalk remain in place and, of course, you can always bring your food down to the beach (though technically not your alcohol). Each concession has a two-window “Order Here” and “Pick Up Here” setup, with plexiglass shields between customers and counter workers. Distancing is expected on any lines that may (will) occur, and there are more reminders and demands and pleas to wear a mask than anywhere I’ve seen.
A word about masks. Wear a mask. Just wear one! Cloth, surgical, N95, bandana, fashionable, silly, functional… if you’re going to be close to or interacting with another human being, wear a mask. Don’t be like the dude who was leaning over the counter maskless talking with a masked-up worker who couldn’t really back up and, when I asked why he wasn’t wearing a mask, said “Oh yeah I have one. Back at the house. But I was surfing before…”
At Beach 106th you’ll find the beloved Brothers making their delicious smoothies, salads, pastries, and killer egg-and-pesto sandwiches. Speaking about all of the new pandemic procedures one of the namesake brothers Matthew Webster told me, “Yeah, the whole thing sucks! But I’m excited and grateful to finally be open.” Also here at Beach 106th is the venerable Caracas Arepas with a pared-down menu of arepas, empanadas, and beverages like frozen sangrias.
Acquisitions Create New Recreational Opportunities, Trails to Connect Existing Public Lands, and Access to Renowned Trout Fishery
NYDEC News Release
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Commissioner Basil Seggos today announced the acquisition of 241 acres in the Catskills, including 208 acres adjoining existing Forest Preserve lands in the Bluestone Wild Forest that will preserve critical open space and expand recreational opportunities to support the local economy. The purchases of the two properties were made possible through a partnership with the Open Space Institute (OSI) and $758,000 from New York’s Environmental Protection Fund (EPF).
“New Yorkers will have new opportunities for outdoor recreation in the Catskills thanks to these significant acquisitions, which will expand our trail network to connect the Jockey Hill and Onteora Lake properties in the Bluestone Wild Forest and protect critical habitat in the town of Warwarsing,” Commissioner Seggos said. “We are grateful to our partners at the Open Space Institute and the Woodstock Land Conservancy, and for Governor Andrew Cuomo’s continued commitment to the Environmental Protection Fund and other significant investments in forest conservation and preservation.”
In addition, DEC and the Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (State Parks) today launched the PLAY SMART * PLAY SAFE * PLAY LOCAL Campaign to encourage all New Yorkers to recreate safely, responsibly, and locally this summer and to always treat fellow outdoor adventurers with respect. The campaign invites people to take the PLAY SMART * PLAY SAFE * PLAY LOCAL pledge, and promise to use common sense to protect themselves and others when enjoying the outdoors.
“During the State’s ongoing response to the COVID-19 public health crisis, DEC is working with our partners at State Parks to encourage all New Yorkers to PLAY SMART * PLAY SAFE * PLAY LOCAL when visiting public lands and parks. Getting outside can serve as a much-needed getaway from the stresses and fears of everyday life. So get outside, but #PlaySmartPlaySafePlayLocal, and remember to treat the outdoor adventurers you encounter with respect,” DEC Commissioner Seggos said.
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