Is Global Warming Stalling Hurricanes Like Dorian?

Hurricanes Harvey and Florence also stalled, leading to extreme rainfall. Research shows it’s a global trend.

BY BOB BERWYN, INSIDECLIMATE NEWS

SEP 3, 2019

Satellite infrared imagery shows Hurricane Dorian's eyewall over Grand Bahama Island on Sept. 2, 2019. Credit: NOAA GOES
Hurricane Dorian’s eyewall, with the storm’s most damaging winds and intense rainfall, stalled over Grand Bahama as the storm pounded the island. “We are in the midst of a historic tragedy in parts of our northern Bahamas,” Prime Minister Hubert Minnis said. Credit: NOAA GOES satellite imagery

Hurricane Dorian’s slow, destructive track through the Bahamas fits a pattern scientists have been seeing over recent decades, and one they expect to continue as the planet warms: hurricanes stalling over coastal areas and bringing extreme rainfall.

Dorian made landfall in the northern Bahamas on Sept. 1 as one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record, then battered the islands for hours on end with heavy rain, a storm surge of up to 23 feet and sustained wind speeds reaching 185 miles per hour. The storm’s slow forward motion—at times only 1 mile per hour—is one of the reasons forecasters were having a hard time pinpointing its exact future path toward the U.S. coast.

With the storm still over the islands on Sept. 2, the magnitude of the devastation and death toll was only beginning to become clear. “We are in the midst of a historic tragedy in parts of our northern Bahamas,” Prime Minister Hubert Minnis told reporters.

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Recent research shows that more North Atlantic hurricanes have been stalling as Dorian did, leading to more extreme rainfall. Their average forward speed has also decreased by 17 percent—from 11.5 mph, to 9.6 mph—from 1944 to 2017, according to a study published in June by federal scientists at NASA and NOAA.

The researchers don’t understand exactly why tropical storms are stalling more, but they think it’s caused by a general slowdown of atmospheric circulation (global winds), both in the tropics, where the systems form, and in the mid-latitudes, where they hit land and cause damage.

Hurricanes are steered and carried by large-scale wind flows, “like a cork in a stream,” said Tim Hall, a hurricane researcher with NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and author of the study. So, if those winds slow down or shift direction, it affects how fast hurricanes move forward and where they end up.

Chart: Increasing Number of Slow-Moving Hurricanes

How that slowing is connected to global warming is still an area of debate. There are different mechanisms at work in the tropics and mid-latitudes, but, “in the broadest sense, global warming makes the global atmospheric circulation slow down,” said NOAA hurricane expert Jim Kossin, co-author of the June study.

He said scientists suspect the overall slowing of winds is at least partly due to rapid warming of the Arctic. The temperature contrast between the Arctic and the equator is the main driver of wind. Since the Arctic is warming faster than lower latitudes, the contrast is decreasing, and so are wind speeds.

“There is a lot of evidence to suggest this is more than just natural variability,” Kossin said.

In a 2018 paper, Kossin showed that the increase in tropical cyclones stalling is a global trend. The magnitude varies by region but is “generally consistent with expected changes in atmospheric circulation forced by anthropogenic emissions,” he wrote.

The Fifth Category 5 Hurricane in Four years

Rising global temperatures also influence storms in other ways: A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, which means hurricanes can bring more rain, and warmer oceans provide additional energy that can make them stronger.

Hurricane Harvey dumped 60 inches of rain on parts of Texas in 2017 and stalled over the Houston area for days. Hurricane Florence stalled in 2018, flooding parts of coastal North Carolina. Kossin said Hurricane Sandy, in 2012, also took an unusual path that may have been affected by shifting global wind patterns, turning west and slamming into New Jersey instead of being carried eastward, out to sea and away from land, by prevailing westerly winds.

“Stalling hurricanes wreak much more havoc than those that blow through quickly,” said Hall. “Dorian definitely fits the pattern that we found in our paper.”

Map: Hurricane Dorian and Warm Ocean Temperatures

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‘Wild parties’ at Muhammad Ali’s former N.J. mansion are irritating the neighbors

The 10,000 square foot house on a 1.5 acre corner lot of Winding Drive has become notorious for hosting massive events and parties, which the township says is a violation of the zoning codes.
The 10,000 square foot house on a 1.5-acre corner lot of Winding Drive has become notorious for hosting massive events and parties, which the township says is a violation of the zoning codes.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee … and party like there’s no tomorrow? Evidently, that’s the motto at Muhammad Ali’s former home in Cherry Hill, where raucous celebrations from renters are disrupting the neighbors. Now, township officials hope to implement a ban on short-term rentals to shut it down.

Muhammad Ali only lived there for two years over four decades ago, but the party at the famed boxer’s former Cherry Hill mansion has yet to throw in the towel.

In fact, since the 10,000-square-foot “Ali House” was listed on Airbnb in October 2018, it’s become a hub for large parties and catered events that have drawn loud crowds, fistfights, massive parking jams, frequent visits from police — and increasingly unhappy neighbors and township officials, who say the rental’s business practices violate zoning code.

In a measure that officials say is likely to pass next week, Cherry Hill’s township council will consider banning short-term rentals, a move which may knock out the revelry at the residence for good.

But while the party may potentially be winding down at this New Jersey Airbnb, elsewhere on the Garden State rental market, the festivities and fist-pumping are just getting started.

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Justice Dept. launches antitrust probe of automakers over their fuel efficiency deal with California

By Juliet Eilperin and Steven Mufson of the Washington Post
September 6 at 5:34 PM

The Justice Department has launched an antitrust investigation of four leading automakers over an agreement they forged with the state of California to maintain higher fuel efficiency standards than those sought by the Trump administration, escalating the stakes in the long-running battle between the White House and California.

The Justice Department declined to comment Friday, but two other federal agencies said the state’s deal with Ford, Honda, Volkswagen and BMW of North America on gas mileage targets may be in violation of the law and warned of legal consequences.

California officials, who have repeatedly asserted the state’s rights under the 1970 Clean Air Act, criticized the inquiry as politicization to impose the Republican president’s policies.

“The U.S. Department of Justice brings its weight to bear against auto companies in an attempt to frighten them out of voluntarily making cleaner, more efficient cars and trucks than EPA wants,” Mary Nichols, chairman of the California Air Resources Board, said in a statement. “Consumers might ask, who is [EPA Administrator] Andy Wheeler protecting?”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said the investigation “seeks to weaponize law enforcement for partisan political purposes to advance the Trump administration’s toxic special interest agenda.”

[Extreme climate change has arrived in the U.S., including in Southern Calif.]

The news coincides with arguments held Friday morning at the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia over whether the Trump administration can reopen — and roll back — fuel efficiency standards the Obama administration set for model years 2022 through 2025. Environmental groups and states argue that the Trump administration has not done the technical research needed to make its own findings regarding the regulations.

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The proposal to freeze mileage standards at roughly 37 miles per gallon through 2026, slated to be finalized this fall, is part of a broader effort by the administration to dismantle a slew of Obama-era policies aimed at curbing greenhouse gases linked to climate change.

The two federal entities — the Environmental Protection Agency and Transportation Department — notified the California Air Resources Board and Nichols that the state’s deal with the four automakers “appears to be inconsistent with federal law.”

The agencies’ general counsels urged the board to break the commitments with the automakers, as the agreement “may result in legal consequences given the limits placed in federal law on California’s authority.”

A spokeswoman for Ford Motor Co., Rachel McCleery, confirmed that the company had been contacted in connection with the antitrust probe. “We have received a letter from the Department of Justice and will cooperate with respect to any inquiry,” she said.

The probe was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

[Major automakers strike climate deal with California, rebuffing Trump on proposed mileage freeze]

California’s push to set stricter tailpipe limits is important because the state ranks as the nation’s largest market for automobiles and its standards often carry weight beyond its borders. Administration officials have lobbied other automakers not to sign on to the new framework: On Thursday, the issue came up during a meeting between President Trump and General Motors chief executive Mary Barra.

The fuel efficiency standards ranked as a top priority for the Obama administration. In 2012, it adopted standards to boost average fuel efficiency to the equivalent of 54.5 miles per gallon for cars and light-duty trucks by model year 2025. The Obama administration said that fuel efficiency standards it had set would save consumers more than $1.7 trillion at the gas pump and reduce U.S. oil consumption by 12 billion barrels.

Since the Clean Air Act’s inception in 1970, California has had the right to seek a federal waiver to impose more-stringent air pollution standards than those of the federal government. Federal authorities have almost always granted the waiver, and California based its vehicle requirements on the grounds that it was regulating carbon emissions rather than overall fuel efficiency.

Thirteen other states and the District of Columbia have pledged to accept whatever tailpipe standards California adopts.

Under the framework California established with the four companies, which represent about 30 percent of the U.S. auto market, the automakers have agreed to produce fleets averaging nearly 50 miles per gallon by model year 2026. That is one year later than the target set under the Obama administration.

Conspicuously absent from the talks with California was GM. Larry Kudlow, Trump’s top economic adviser, said Friday morning on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” program: “We did meet with Mary Barra. Mary Barra expressed to the president her support for our reforms” on fuel standards. Kudlow said that Barra was “doing her best to open up plants.” He said, “Look, the industry asked us to lower the regulatory barriers to safe and cheaper cars.”

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De Blasio admits rent laws have ‘consequences’

A sign for the northwest oval is seen in Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village, Manhattan’s largest apartment complex. Bloomberg photo

WILL BREDDERMAN reports for Crain’s New York Business

Mayor Bill de Blasio acknowledged Friday that the state’s new rules on rents may come with costs of their own.

The comments came in response to reports by Crain’s that private equity giant Blackstone had halted upgrades on rent-regulated apartments in Manhattan’s sprawling Stuyvesant Town complex and by The Real Deal that the firm was deliberately leaving many of the units vacant. Blackstone’s actions follow legislation passed in Albany earlier this year that limited property owners’ ability to recover investment costs from rent-regulated tenants—legislation the mayor endorsed.

De Blasio, alluding to city subsidies that persuaded Blackstone to keep units at the complex rent-regulated, said the Crain’s and Real Deal stories left him “very concerned.”

“No doubt, the law that passed in Albany had a lot of elements to it, and is having a variety of consequences,” the mayor said. “We came to a deal to protect affordability at Stuy-Town—you know, bluntly, that in the previous administration that Stuy-Town was almost entirely privatized—we stopped that, and came to a deal to protect affordability long-term there. That, obviously, requires the apartments to be available to people.”

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The mayor promised to have “serious conversations” with the company to ensure it is complying with the terms of its arrangements with the city. De Blasio further responded to news from Crain’s columnist Greg David that lenders are increasingly reluctant to provide funds to owners of regulated buildings, meaning that upkeep could fall off and the city’s 1 million regulated apartments could atrophy.

“We also have to make sure, as with any law, if there’s any other effects, you know, expected or unexpected, we have to deal with them,” he said. “All of us want to see buildings kept up well. So, obviously, this is something we’ve got to analyze and decide where to go from there.”

Nonetheless, de Blasio maintained it was “absolutely necessary to have major strengthening of our rent regulations,” and described the law’s overall impact as “very positive.”

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Mandatory replacement of lead water lines pushed by mayor in Newark, NJ

MICHAEL HILL | NJTV NEWS | SEPTEMBER 6, 2019

Move comes amid city effort to go door to door to get permission for work crews to access properties

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka has asked the city council to approve an ordinance allowing the municipal government to replace every lead water service line in the city, with or without the permission of property owners.

The replacement of lead service lines leading to individual properties is the centerpiece of the city’s long-term solution for a contamination problem that has plagued Newark’s water system in recent years and was heightened this summer when tests showed that tap filters were not adequately removing the dangerous element from the water.

Baraka has sought to fast-track the city’s ongoing program to replace an estimated 18,000 lead service lines at no cost to property owners who participate in the city’s replacement effort. Officials are working on a $120 million loan through Essex County that would allow the work to be done in three years, rather than the 10 years it could have taken under the city’s original schedule.

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Baraka’s move, which he said would make Newark the first in the nation to require a complete replacement of all lead service lines, comes the day after his administration convened the second in a series of meetings to enlist volunteers who will fan out across the city to secure access permission from property owners.

Under the proposed ordinance, property owners can either sign up to have city work crews replace service lines at no cost, or replace them at their own expense within 90 days of the measure’s effective date. The city will move legally to replace service lines on properties where owners fail to respond or cannot be found.

“We need to get more property owners to sign up for [the] lead service line replacement program at no cost,” Baraka said in a statement. “Newark is a city of renters, and too often landlords either can’t be found or show a lack of interest in this important health initiative. This ordinance will enable the city to replace all lead service lines and to do so quickly.”

A critic responds to a call for help

On Wednesday night, some 50 people came to City Hall to answer Baraka’s call for volunteers. Among them was resident Yvette Jordan, a leader of a civic group that has gone to court over the Baraka administration’s response to the city’s water problems.

She said her main interest is making her city a better place to live.

“That’s why I started, yeah. So it’s not as if I’m an outside agitator. I’m here. I’m concerned. And the reason I’m doing this is because I want lead service line replacement. They’re doing it, so I’m here,” she said.

“I’m here to volunteer and my husband is as well,” she said. “However, my eye still is on what is going on and the enforcement of it.”

Yvette Jordan

Credit: NJTV NewsYvette Jordan

Jordan is a founding member of the New Education Workers Caucus, which is a co-plaintiff in a lawsuit filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council seeking in part to compel the city to expand its response to the elevated lead levels.

Also on hand Wednesday was Michael Hobbs, who lives in the South Ward and said he was planning on enlisting lots of help in the city’s outreach effort.

“I’m a graduate student at NJIT and former president of the graduate student association,” he said. “And my goal is to get a thousand NJIT students to assist the mayor in knocking on doors.”

Baraka said City Hall is also reaching out to corporations and non-profits.

“We’re just leaving no stone unturned,” he said. “We want everybody who’s affiliated with anybody. We want them to come and volunteer and help us do this.”

Hoping to avoid court

Baraka on Wednesday night also discussed his plan to introduce the mandatory line-replacement ordinance.

Jordan said she had concerns about its legality. “Hopefully, he has checked that in terms of the legal ramifications,” she said. “So, that’s what I’m concerned about.”

One legal expert called the ordinance “aggressive” and said the city is tapping powers that can collide with Fourth Amendment protections against unwarranted search and seizure. The expert said the only clearly, legally admissible way to carry this out is to go to court.

The mayor said he hopes it doesn’t come to that, saying that a long legal process could bog down the replacement of the service lines.

Newark started handing out bottled water after filtered tap water showed elevated lead levels in two of three homes tested. Officials are now awaiting results from an expanded testing survey, comprising 225 homes, to better determine how widespread the failure of the filters is to adequately remove lead contamination. Those results are due within two weeks.

Baraka said the state local finance board will vote on the replacement program’s $120 million loan on Sept. 11. He plans to start signing contracts for line replacements right away.

Property owners have shown great interest in the city replacement program, he added.

“I would say, out of about 98 percent of the coffee klatches we’re doing,” Baraka said, “the only thing people are concerned about at those meetings is, ‘when can I get my lead service line replaced,’ ‘how do I sign up,’ and ‘how long is it going to take for them to be in my house?’ And, ‘are you sure we don’t have to pay?’”

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New Loan Fast-Forwards Newark’s Lead Water Pipe Replacement
Racing to Replace Lead Pipes in Under 3 Years

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Just months after contentious approval, nuclear subsidies under review by New Jersey utility regulators

In April, Board of Public Utilities awarded $300 million in annual surcharges on utility customers’ bills to aid three PSEG plants; officials are taking a fresh look at the subsidies

salem nuclear power plant
Salem nuclear power plant

TOM JOHNSON reports for NJ Spotlight – September 5, 2019

Less than half a year after the state awarded lucrative ratepayer subsidies to keep three nuclear power plants from closing, regulatory officials are beginning to explore whether the subsidies should be extended, or perhaps reduced.

In April, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities approved roughly $300 million in new annual surcharges on utility customers’ bills to prevent Public Service Enterprise Group from prematurely retiring the Salem I and II units and Hope Creek nuclear plants on Artificial Island in South Jersey.

The decision has had huge implications for New Jersey’s long-term energy policy. Controversy over the subsidies led the Legislature to approve the incentives only after approval was tied to a companion bill promoting clean-energy initiatives, including measures to boost energy efficiency, offshore wind, and solar. All of this was done before the administration of Gov. Phil Murphy adopted a new energy master plan, laying out a blueprint to achieve ambitious clean-energy and climate goals.

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PSEG argued the plants, providing 90 percent of the state’s carbon-free electricity, would be shuttered within three years unless it received the financial incentives because of a steep drop in energy prices. The company yesterday, along with a handful of consultants, claimed at a BPU hearing in New Brunswick that the financial challenges facing the units are even bigger now than last spring when the initial subsidies were awarded.

Joseph Accardo, vice president of regulatory affairs and deputy general counsel of PSEG, said the plants should retain the subsidies at the same level, given the state of energy markets, which have seen prices paid to power suppliers continue to drop.

Under pressure from natural gas

Cheap natural gas has flooded the market, analysts said, increasing uncertainty about the economic viability of the nuclear units. Nuclear energy provides about 40 percent of New Jersey’s electricity, about the same as gas-fired power plants provide.

Without carbon-free power from the three nuclear units, New Jersey will never achieve the Murphy administration’s goals of 100 percent clean energy by 2050, according to Ed Salmon, chair of the New Jersey Energy Coalition and a former president of the BPU.

Those subsidies, dubbed zero-emission credits (ZECs), are scheduled to end in May 2022, but the proceeding initiated yesterday is designed to determine not only whether to extend them, but also whether to reduce what ratepayers pay.

In approving the subsidies last April, at least two of the five BPU commissioners expressed concerns at the price set by legislators in a law authorizing the program. The law allows the agency to reduce the subsidies once they expire; the current subsidies last only three years. The BPU cannot increase the incentives, according to the law.

Only the New Jersey Division of Rate Counsel questioned whether the subsidies need to continue, and at the same level during the initial stakeholder meeting in New Brunswick. The Rate Counsel had opposed the initial granting of the subsidies and appealed the issue in court.

An argument for reducing the subsidies

“Ratepayers are not an endless source of capital,’’ said Brian Lipman, a litigator in the Rate Counsel’s office. “ZEC subsidies are going to have a major impact on ratepayers.’’

He suggested the board explore reducing the size of the zero-emission credits, based on actions at other levels that could increase prices consumer pay for both energy and ensuring there is enough capacity to keep the lights on.

But others defended the subsidies, arguing they are far less than what customers in New York and Illinois are paying to avert the early closing of nuclear power plants in their states.

“Without these ZECs, these plants face uncertain economic conditions in a market flooded by fracked natural gas,’’ said John Kotek, a vice president of the Nuclear Energy Institute.

Frank Huntowski of the Northbridge Group agreed. The financial conditions of the three nuclear power plants in New Jersey and other units in the PJM Interconnection do not merit a reduction in the ZECs, he said. (PJM operates the power grid stretching from the Eastern Seaboard to Illinois, serving more than 55 million customers.)

No one at the hearing raised the issue of just how long the New Jersey plants will continue receiving the financial incentives. At the time BPU awarded the ZECs, it generally was assumed the subsidies would continue for up to 10 years.

However, in modeling done by BPU staff and consultants on a new draft energy master plan, projections seem to indicate the plants will remain open until 2050 — well beyond the expiration of their licenses, which begin to end in 2036, and then later in the next decade.

Related news stories:
PSEG gets its $300M nuclear bailout
NJ Ratepayer Advocate goes to court to block PSEG Nuclear’s $300M bailout

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