Climate Point: Summer nights are getting hotter

BY SAMMY ROTH

Thursday, September 6

A family sits along the shore of Lake Elsinore as they watch the Holy Fire burn in the distance on Thursday night, Aug. 9, 2018, in Lake Elsinore, Calif.

This week: Hotter nights and hazardous coal ash

Also, Scott Pruitt makes an appearance.

Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate change, energy and the environment. Remember in elementary school, when kids waiting in line behind you at the drinking fountain would tell you to "save some for the fishes"? Well, one thing we could actually do to help the fishes would be to stop heating the planet. The News Journal's Maddy Lauria reports fish usually found in Florida are showing up off the coast of Delaware as ocean waters warm, threatening marine ecosystems. Less than optimal.

Here are some other things you might want to know:

MUST-READ STORIES:

Because summer wasn't hot enough already: One of the devilish consequences of global warming is that overnight temperatures are rising faster than daytime temperatures, which doesn't sound terrible until you realize how important the nighttime cooldown is for human health. (Very important!) So it is alarming to read that the U.S. just experienced its hottest average summer nights on record , as USA TODAY's Doyle Rice reports. Also alarming, but fascinating, is this cool feature from the New York Times that shows how much hotter your hometown has gotten since you were born.

Forests are burning, and in some cases disappearing: Two important stories out of Arizona this week, both written by Joshua Bowling at the Arizona Republic. The first is about a new study finding that much of Arizona's forests could face their demise over the next 200 years - a process that took tens of thousands of years for parts of Arizona that lost their forests during previous, natural changes in climate. The second story is an in-depth look at a tree-thinning project in Arizona's Coconino National Forest, designed to protect a town's drinking water from the fires that increasingly threaten the West.

Trees that will not be removed are marked with orange paint in the General Springs Timber sales area of the Coconino National Forest.

Mark Henle/The Republic

ENERGY, CLEAN AND DIRTY:

Arizona could follow California's lead on clean energy: It was a big deal when California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill three years ago requiring the state to get 50 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030. Now Arizonans will get to vote on a ballot measure adding that same requirement to the state's Constitution , as Ryan Randazzo reports for the Arizona Republic. California lawmakers, meanwhile, just passed a bill that would increase the Golden State's requirement to 100 percent clean energy by 2045, as I mentioned last week. But the the California Legislature punted on several bills designed to help the state reach that goal, as I reported for the Desert Sun.

The health hazards of coal ash: Just an awful story out of Tennessee: Government contractors were hired to protect workers cleaning up the nation's largest coal ash spill, but those contractors allowed the workers to be exposed to huge amounts of toxic chemicals and even refused to let them protect themselves , as Jamie Satterfield reports for the Knoxville News Sentinel. Coal ash is a hazardous byproduct of burning coal, and in 2008 a whole bunch of it was spilled at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston power plant. The News Sentinel has been investigating the consequences of that spill.

Wearing ordinary gear, workers were covered from head to toe in wet coal ash for 14-hour days, in some cases for years.

Submitted

WATER AND FIRE:

Three cheers for monsoons: A bit of good news on the water front, for a change: While global warming is sapping the mountain snowpack that has traditionally provided much of the water supply for the American West, a new study finds summer monsoons could replenish desert groundwater aquifers more than previously thought , as Ian James reports for the Arizona Republic. As the region gets drier, it's encouraging to learn that summer rains could play a role in boosting water supplies. Still, monsoons are far from a complete solution, as climate scientist Jonathan Overpeck points out on Twitter.

Communities are being stressed by fire, even when they're not on fire: Two stories this week about the insidious impacts of wildfires. First: Rural Nevada communities are having trouble qualifying for federal wildfire relief funding because they don't have the same economic characteristics as more populated areas, as Benjamin Spillman reports for the Reno Gazette-Journal. Without federal funding, it could be harder for those communities to recover. Second: California residents are concerned about a utility's plans to preemptively turn off the electricity to try to stop power lines from sparking wildfires , as Cheri Carlson reports for the Ventura County Star. The utility's plan makes sense from a fire-prevention standpoint, but it could force some communities to live in a constant state of worry over whether they'll have electricity when they need it most.

AND ANOTHER THING:

We haven't talked about Scott Pruitt in a while...but the Environmental Protection Agency's internal watchdog didn't forget about him. In a new report, the EPA's inspector general says there was no justification for spending more than $10,000 per day last year on security for Pruitt , as Ledyard King reports for USA TODAY. The report also says the EPA spent $3.5 million protecting Pruitt over the last 11 months of 2017, compared to $1.5 million protecting Obama appointee Gina McCarthy over the previous 11 months.

Personally, I'm still wondering about the used Trump hotel mattress. Can the inspector general get on that one next?

That's all for this week. For more climate, energy and environment news, follow me on Twitter @Sammy_Roth. You can sign up to get Climate Point in your inbox here.