2021’s biggest climate and weather disasters cost the U.S. $145 billion – here’s what climate science says about them in 5 essential reads. Published: January 10, 2022 11.25am EST Updated: January 10, 2022 THE ECONOMIC COST OF CLIMATE CHANGE- ONE COUNTRY, ONE YEAR! As the disasters unfolded, scientists explained the influence of climate change. Here’s what they said about some of the costliest disasters of 2021. Extreme rainfall in the east, drought in the west.....One characteristic that stood out during the disasters of 2021 was a sharp precipitation divide in the U.S.: While most of the west was in severe drought or worse, with the dry vegetation fueling fires, much of the eastern half of the country was getting soaked. On the other side of the country, damage from the western drought was much harder to calculate. The extreme dryness shut down a key hydroelectric power plant in California for five months, harmed farms and ranches and led to the first federal water use restrictions for the Colorado River as levels dropped in important reservoirs. Global warming helps fuel both kinds of precipitation extremes, Dayton University climate scientist Shuang-Ye Wu explained. “Higher temperature increases evaporation from Earth’s surface, drying out vegetation and soils, which can fuel wildfires. It also increases the atmosphere’s capacity to hold moisture at a rate of about 7% per degree Celsius that the planet warms. With more moisture evaporating, global precipitation is expected to increase, but this increase is not uniform,” Wu wrote.As the planet warms, wet areas are likely to get wetter, and dry areas drier, she said. No. 1: Hurricane Ida......Hurricane Ida, which exploded from a weak hurricane to a Category 4 storm over warm waterin the Gulf of Mexico, was the most expensive disaster of 2021, with damage in Louisiana and then in the Northeast estimated at around $75 billion.  Read more: Hurricane Ida turned into a monster thanks to a giant warm patch in the Gulf of Mexico – here’s what happened. No. 2: The Texas freeze......In February, an Arctic blast sent ice, snow and freezing temperatures through the center of the country. In Texas, the cold blast quickly became a human disaster. The cold weather overwhelmed Texas’ power grid, freezing componentsat natural gas plants and slowing natural gas supplies. An estimated 69% of the state lost power, and NOAA counted 226 deaths. State officials have attributed 246 deaths to the storm. Read more: How Arctic warming can trigger extreme cold waves like the Texas freeze – a new study makes the connection.  No. 3: Devastating wildfires The heat and dryness in the West contributed to more multibillion-dollar disasters. On Dec. 30, when Colorado would normally be blanketed in snow, a wildfire whipped by powerful winds tore through neighborhoods in abnormally dry Boulder County. Nearly 1,000 homes and several businesses were destroyed in a matter of hours......read on, and other related articles with photos                 https://theconversation.com/2021s-biggest-climate-and-weather-disasters-cost-the-u-s-145-billion-heres-what-climate-science-says-about-them-in-5-essential-reads-174565

The True Economic Cost of Climate Change.....Two trillion, six-hundred and fifteen billion dollars. It's an amount so large it's almost impossible to comprehend. It represents the estimated tab for 371 weather and climate disasters in the US since 1980 that topped $1 billion in damage. On the list are many of the country's most destructive tropical cyclones, droughts, and severe storms, the most recent being Hurricane Idalia. They're the events we can remember — and many more we likely can't because so many more disasters have been breaking into the billion-dollar club in recent years. Decade to decade, costly extreme weather events are increasing in both frequency and intensity as greenhouse gases build up in our atmosphere. Yet as big as the dollar figures can get, they can never convey all that is truly lost in these disasters. Countless costs to people get left out of official tallies, including mental and physical trauma. There are harms in the form of environmental damage and supply-chain disruptions. These become, in essence, hidden costs. And many of us are paying them. Meet a teacher who nearly died from heatstroke after a hike, a farmer in Texas who watched a hurricane and subsequent deep freeze wipe out much of his citrus crop, and a woman whose nonprofit lost everything to a flood. The true cost of extreme heat.....Lois Nigrin grew up on a farm and loved getting outdoors. So when she and her husband set off on a hike in Arizona as part of an anniversary trip, she didn't anticipate how wrong things could go. Heat was nothing new for Nigrin — and the couple had trained for the hike. et the temperatures were so extreme that day in June 2019 that what was meant to be a celebration of decades of partnership ended up leaving Nigrin in a coma with third-degree burns on her backside. Her family rushed to the hospital to be with her in what doctors said would likely be her final hours. Nigrin, a teacher in Nebraska, survived the nightmare but still has the scars from her burns and skin grafts, which remind her how close she came to dying. Her ordeal points to the rising cost of extreme heat, the leading weather-related killerin the US.                                                                                                                 The true cost of volatile weather..... Dale Murden has the unflappable demeanor of a farmer who's been forced to deal with the ups and downs of a tough business. He's relied on that trait over his more than 40 years growing citrus and raising cattle in Harlingen, Texas.                                                                                                                                                  The true cost of flooding.....Barb Grant has built her life's work around helping others. For someone like Grant, being unable to help people in a crisis is an awful feeling. So when flood waters ripped through the offices of the nonprofit she runs in eastern Iowa, she felt helpless. She had to tell those she would normally assist that there wasn't much her community-aid organization could do for them. It, too, was dealing with ruinous flooding.                                                  The true cost of inaction ......There is more to this story than a set of ruinous tragedies. Data suggests costs of extreme weather are trickling through the economy and could soon overwhelm our social safety net if left unchecked, economists told Insider. Barb Grant has built her life's work around helping others......read on           https://www.businessinsider.com/what-climate-change-crisis-extreme-weather-is-costing-you-2023-9?utm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_campaign=Insider_Today       

'War Is Good for Business,' Declares Executive at London's Global Arms Fair. "Deals done at DSEI will cause misery across the world. Players big and small gathered in London this week, hawking everything from long-range missiles to gold-plated pistols to arms fair attendees—including representatives of horrific human rights violators—as weapon-makers and other merchants of the machinery of death reap record profits. "War is good for business," one defense executive attending the biennial Defense and Security Equipment International (DSEI) conference at ExCel London flat-out told Reuters. "We are extremely busy," Michael Elmore, head of sales at the U.K.-based armored steelmaker MTL Advanced, told the media agency. Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine and the West's scramble to arm Ukrainian homeland defenders have been a bonanza for arms-makers."Ukraine is a very interesting combination of First and Second World War technologies and very modern technology," Kuldar Vaarsi, CEO of the Estonian unmanned ground vehicle firm MILREM, told Reuters. Saber-rattling and fearmongering by government, media, and business figures amid rising tensions between the U.S. and its allies on one side, and a fast-rising China on the other, have also spurred military spending, including Japan's $320 billion buildup announced last December.  "We think this is a longer-term essentially 'sea change' in national defense strategy for the U.S. and for our Western allies," Jim Taiclet, CEO of U.S. arms giant Lockheed Martin, told investors during a call earlier this summer announcing higher-than-expected sales and profit outlooks. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the United States, Russia, France, China, and Germany were the world's top arms exporters from 2018-22, with the five nations accounting for 76% of all weapons exports during that period. The U.S. accounted for nearly 40% of such exports during those five years, while increasing its dominance in the arms trade. The U.S. also remains by far the world's biggest military spender.                   https://www.commondreams.org/news/dsei-2023-london    

Exclusive: new database shows 1,500 US lobbyists working for fossil-fuel firms while representing universities and green groups.  Oliver Milman Wed 5 Jul 2023 14.22  More than 1,500 lobbyists in the US are working on behalf of fossil-fuel companies while at the same time representing hundreds of liberal-run cities, universities, technology companies and environmental groups that say they are tackling the climate crisis, the Guardian revealed. Lobbyists for oil, gas and coal interests are also employed by a vast sweep of institutions, ranging from the city governments of Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia; tech giants such as Apple and Google; more than 150 universities; some of the country’s leading environmental groups – and even ski resorts seeing their snow melted by global heating.The breadth of fossil-fuel lobbyists’ work for other clients is captured in a new database of their lobbying interests which was    It shows the reach of state-level fossil-fuel lobbyists into almost every aspect of American life, spanning local governments, large corporations, cultural institutions such as museums and film festivals, and advocacy groups, grouping together clients with starkly contradictory aims. When you hire these insider lobbyists, you are basically working with double agents. They are guns for hire said Timmons Roberts of Brown University“It’s incredible that this has gone under the radar for so long, as these lobbyists help the fossil fuel industry wield extraordinary power,” said James Browning, a former Common Cause lobbyist. “The worst thing about hiring these lobbyists is that it legitimizes the fossil fuel industry,” Browning added. “They can cloak their radical agenda in respectability when their lobbyists also have clients in the arts, or city government, or with conservation groups. It normalizes something that is very dangerous.”.....read on        https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/05/double-agent-fossil-fuel-lobbyists