Tag: heat

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Health

Can the Olympics Take the Warmth?

Can the Olympics Take the Heat?

Perhaps every athlete secretly went to the Tokyo Olympics worried that they had not adequately prepared for the challenge. I know I did. Would the 13 hour time difference affect my performance? Could I handle the long hours in front of a screen juggling my beer and ice cream?

Fortunately, my months of indoor pandemic training – “Ted Lasso”, “The Last Dance”, “Sunderland ‘Til I Die” – paid off. The rewards over the past two weeks have been innumerable, enjoyable, and often astonishing. Briton Charlotte Worthington landed a 360 degree backflip to win the women’s freestyle BMX. Carissa Moore from Hawaii with the very first gold medal in women surfing. These exuberant high jumpers. Katie Ledecky. Allyson Felix.

For every other organism on earth, competition is a purely Malthusian affair: hunt, hide, grow, spawn, repeat. In the course of evolution, this tension has led to miraculous morphological adjustments. Velvet worms. Ultraviolet flying squirrels. Electroactive bacteria. Monkfish and their companions.

Humans could be the first species for which this kind of competition no longer plays a role. (Of course, only a species with a disproportionately large cerebral cortex would dare to do that.) So we invented the Olympic Games, a showcase of human drive in its purest niche. Canoe slalom. Hammer throw. Trampoline gymnastics. Table tennis. There are also meta-competitions: new sports emerge, more boring ones (croquet, anyone?) Die out.

It is fair to ask whether such a species might not invent an even more noble competing product and broadcast it on television. “What if nations competed for the best maternal mortality reduction programs?” Asked novelist Joyce Hackett on Facebook. “Competitive literacy rates! Countries with the most new readers reach the finals, and then former illiterates declare their country’s greatest poets to win. “

In less than a year – a record pace – we developed not one but several vaccines against the deadliest virus in a century. But we’re still struggling to convince enough people to take it, even as the virus is spewing out new varieties of itself – alpha, beta, delta – as if it were for a Greek competition of their own. We assume we’re done with the old school competition, but we’re not done yet.

Some observers are already wondering whether the Olympic Games as a company have taken their course. The extreme heat and humidity in Tokyo challenged athletes – climbers, swimmers, runners, tennis players. (Belgium’s field hockey team prepared for the conditions by training in a thermal chamber, and the Olympic marathon is 500 cooler miles away.) A 2016 study in The Lancet found that global warming will severely limit future summer games . Winter sports enthusiasts are increasingly restricted as to where they can train. Our competitiveness can literally and figuratively take us out of the competitive business.

Updated

Aug 7, 2021, 1:03 am ET

This will make for a daunting viewing, let alone a daunting life experience on earth. How will we enjoy ourselves when the wonders of human sport and nature begin to dry up? Marble races maybe. Athletics in the kitchen. Undoubtedly, one way or another, for better or for worse, we will always have curling.

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Politics

Sweltering temperatures anticipated throughout U.S. as a result of warmth dome

Sweltering temperatures expected across U.S. due to heat dome

A sign warns of extreme heat in Death Valley, California, the United States, July 11, 2021.

Bridget Bennett | Reuters

Stifling heat is forecast to spread across much of the continental US next week, with temperatures rising 10 to 15 degrees above average in areas like the Great Plains and the Midwest, according to the National Weather Service.

The expected heat and high humidity comes shortly after a record heatwave that hit triple-digit temperatures in Oregon, Washington state and British Columbia in late June and caused hundreds of heat-related deaths.

Next week’s temperatures will be the result of a heat dome, a strong, high-pressure air system that descends from the atmosphere, compressed and heated near land, adding to the already sultry summer temperatures.

Heat domes tend to inhibit cloud formation – resulting in a hot, sunny sky with no cloud cover – and are likely to get stronger with climate change.

The June heat wave, also the result of a heat dome, was viewed as a millennium event made all but impossible without human-made climate change, researchers found.

The temperatures and drought conditions have also sparked more intense forest fires, which ignited earlier than usual this year. In the past few days, more than 80 forest fires have burned in over a dozen states, mostly in the west, which is in an unprecedented drought.

The smoke from the western fires was so heavy that it created fog-filled skies and unhealthy air quality this week as far as New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

According to the World Meteorological Organization, the earth has already warmed up by more than 1 degree Celsius compared to the pre-industrial level. Last year was the hottest on record, and 2021 will almost certainly be one of the 10 hottest years ever recorded.

Research shows that more than a third of global heat-related deaths in warm seasons are attributed to climate change. And heat kills more people than any other weather disaster in the US

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World News

Warmth Wave Unfold Fireplace That Erased Lytton, British Columbia

Heat Wave Spread Fire That Erased Lytton, British Columbia

TORONTO — Something strange was happening to the acacia trees in Lytton, British Columbia.

The small town in Western Canada had seen three days of extreme heat that each broke national temperature records by June 30, rising to 121 degrees. That morning at the Lytton Chinese History Museum, Lorna Fandrich noticed the green leaves dropping off the trees surrounding the building, she said, apparently unable to tolerate the heat.

Hours later, Lytton was on fire. A village of fewer than 300 people, nestled among mountain ranges, and prone to hot summers, the town was consumed by flames that destroyed 90 percent of it, killed two and injured several others, the authorities said.

Investigators are probing whether local rail traffic is responsible for starting the fire, which was exacerbated by the heat, amid temperatures that climate researchers say would virtually not be possible without human-caused global warming.

On Friday, when a path was finally cleared of downed power lines, bricks and other debris to make way for five buses taking residents to tour the town, the village was almost unrecognizable, the residents said.

Mounds of warped metal and disfigured wood poked out of gutted buildings. Whatever brick walls remained were often scarred by black scorch marks.

Matilda and Peter Brown saw that their house has been destroyed, leaving just the skeleton of a traditional Indigenous hut used to air dry salmon.

“That was our home,” Ms. Brown said through tears. “That was our sanctuary. Right now we have no place.”

The extreme heat wave that blasted through much of the Pacific Northwest at the end of June spurred widespread wildfires, a drastic spike in heat-related deaths and environmental devastation that wiped out millions of coastal wildlife.

Lytton was hit particularly hard, with temperatures ranging between 116 and 121 degrees. The fire left displaced residents and neighboring Indigenous communities wondering what could be salvaged among the ashes.

“Where many buildings stood is now simply charred earth,” the village of Lytton said in a July 6 statement.

Mr. Brown, who is from the Lytton First Nation, lost one of the family’s heirloom cedar baskets and some personal documents, stowed away in a gun safe.

Ms. Brown is a member of the Ts’kw’aylaxw First Nation, near the neighboring town of Lillooet, where she was leading an addiction counseling group at the time of the fire. She said she is taking time away from work to tend to this “nightmare.”

“I don’t want to be a wounded healer,” she added.

A dramatic scene unfolded June 30 when “someone banged on the office windows after hours” to alert town staff members of the fire, the village statement said. The mayor ordered a complete evacuation, while volunteer firefighters attempted to tame the roaring blaze in dry conditions that allowed it to tear through the town.

At the height of the heat wave, more than 90 crew members flew to British Columbia to help the wildfire service, battling flames over thousands of acres in challenging conditions for overheating equipment. Sudden deaths also rose sharply due to the heat. Emergency responders attended 777 that were reported to the provincial coroner’s office between June 25 and July 1, more than three times the number in the same period last year.

The heat wave in Canada presented an additional public health concern, as authorities were still grappling with the challenge of the coronavirus and Canadians just beginning to enjoy some of the pleasures of summer as restrictions ease.

Gordon Murray, president of the Two Rivers Farmers Market in Lytton, said feelings of grief, sorrow, anger and frustration aboard his bus on Friday were “overwhelming.”

More disconcerting still was just how localized the fire was, he said. He and his partner have been living in Lytton for about a decade, and could see their chimney and white fireplace from their vantage point on the bus. They also lost a cat to the fire.

“That was one of the strange things about it, is that the town is erased,” Mr. Murray said. “Literally, there’s an occasional chimney stack as a kind of exclamation point to the fact that the town is completely gone.”

Ten animal welfare workers were allowed behind the evacuation perimeter on July 8 to carry out a pet and livestock rescue. Forty-one animals were saved and were being assessed before they could be reunited with their owners, said Lorie Chortyk, a spokeswoman at the British Columbia Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Ms. Fandrich, the museum owner, opted not to join the tour, “because it’ll be very emotional, and I think we’ll just wait until they let us go down on an individual basis,” she said.

Though she is not of Chinese heritage herself, she opened the museum in 2017, modeled after a traditional temple that once existed on that land to recognize the contributions and history of Chinese workers in British Columbia. It housed more than 1,600 artifacts, books and archives — all lost in the fire. The town’s history museum also burned down.

“We’ve lost two of the core parts of our history,” Ms. Fandrich said. “So that’s all gone.”

The nearby homes of her two sons were razed. Her daughter’s coffee shop was also destroyed.

The severity of the fires that scorched close to 1.7 million acres in Canada reported by its natural resources agency, occurred with temperatures that surpassed what researchers had ever seen in previous heat waves, according to a recent analysis by a team of international climate researchers.

On the province’s Salish Sea coast, Christopher Harley, a marine biologist and professor at the University of British Columbia, has been surveying the heat wave’s toll on the shoreline, estimating it to be in the billions. On a beach site visit Friday, he said the crunch of dead mussels beneath his feet was a bleak reminder of the devastation to wildlife.

“You start adding in the clams and the barnacles and the sea stars and the snails,” he said. “The true number, whatever it is, is going to be almost incomprehensible.”

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Politics

Western warmth wave just about not possible with out local weather change, researchers say

Western heat wave virtually impossible without climate change, researchers say

People sleep at a cooling shelter set up during an unprecedented heat wave in Portland, Oregon, U.S. June 27, 2021.

Maranie Staab | Reuters

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — The deadly heat wave that brought triple-digit temperatures to the Pacific Northwest and western Canada and killed hundreds of people was virtually impossible without human-caused climate change, according to a new analysis by an international team of 27 scientists.

The temperature records were so extreme — 116 degrees Fahrenheit in Portland, Oregon, and 121 degrees Fahrenheit in Canada’s British Columbia — that researchers said it was difficult to quantify just how rare the heat wave was. The team, working under the umbrella of Oxford University-based World Weather Attribution, estimated it was a once-in-a-millennium event.

The scientists, who are based in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., the Netherlands, France, Germany and Switzerland, estimated that human-caused climate change increased the likelihood of such a heat wave by at least 150 times.

“An event such as the Pacific Northwest 2021 heatwave is still rare or extremely rare in today’s climate, yet would be virtually impossible without human-caused climate change,” the team of scientists wrote. “As warming continues, it will become a lot less rare.”

The researchers urged adaptation measures that account for the rising risk of heat waves, including action plans that incorporate early warning systems for high temperatures, as well as more ambitious targets to drastically reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

Researchers also found that in a world with 2 degrees Celsius of warming, which could happen this century unless there are significant cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, such a heat event would occur about every five to 10 years.

The Earth has already heated up more than 1 degree Celsius compared with preindustrial levels, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

The analysis by World Weather Attribution, which conducts quick analyses to determine if there is a link between climate change and specific extreme weather events, has not yet been peer-reviewed. However, it uses processes that have been peer-reviewed in the past 10 years.

Scientists used computer simulations that compared a hypothetical world without greenhouse gas emissions to the existing world in order to assess the impact of climate change on weather events. The research will later be published in peer-reviewed journals.

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The study, published on Wednesday, is in line with previous research on the impact climate change has on the frequency and severity of heat waves and drought.

The recent historic heat wave, which started at the end of June, fueled wildfires, threatened water shortages and was linked to hundreds of deaths in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. The official death count is expected to rise.

More than one-third of global heat-related deaths during warm seasons can be attributed to climate change, experts have said. Heat also kills more people than any other weather-related disaster in the U.S.

“Our results provide a strong warning: our rapidly warming climate is bringing us into uncharted territory that has significant consequences for health, well-being and livelihoods,” the scientists wrote.

North America just recorded its hottest June on record, according to scientists with the Copernicus Climate Change Service, with 2021 virtually certain to be among the 10 hottest years on record.

Categories
Health

Tips on how to Train within the Summer time Warmth

How to Exercise in the Summer Heat

We also should accustom ourselves, slowly, to unfamiliar swelter, Dr. Gibson says, a process known to exercise scientists as acclimatizing, which involves working out sometimes, by choice, when the day is warmest. This approach helps to condition our bodies to better cope with the heat. Once acclimatized, we will sweat earlier and more abundantly than before, dissipating internal heat better and leaving us feeling bouncier and less fatigued.

Acclimatizing should be gradual, however. To start, slather on sunscreen, fill a water bottle, head outside after about 10 a.m., when temperatures intensify, and try to complete a gentler version of your standard workout, says Carl James, a senior physiologist at the National Sports Institute in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and co-author of the review. If you usually run for 30 minutes, for instance, maybe jog for 20, and monitor how you feel. If your heart seems to be racing, he says, or you feel lousy, “slow down.”

After a few acclimatization sessions, you should notice your clothes and skin are drenched, Dr. Gibson says. Congratulations. “Earlier and more profuse sweating is a great sign that heat adaptation is taking place,” he says. Most of us acclimatize after about five to 10 hot workouts, he adds, although women, who tend to sweat less freely than men, may require an extra easy session or two to be fully prepared for harder workouts in the heat.

After each acclimatization session, head for the showers, but dial up the heat. Standing under a warm shower spray or soaking in a hot bathtub for 10 minutes or so after a sweltering workout prompts our bodies to continue acclimatizing, Dr. Gibson says. “It extends the stimuli for heat adaptation,” he points out, “and is therefore welcome and beneficial.”

An icy beverage before a hot workout “will help with hydration and provide a combination of perceptual and actual cooling,” Dr. Gibson says. Aim to drink about 16 ounces of cold fluid 20 minutes or so before you head out. Drinking closer to the session’s start could cause stomach upset during your workout.

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Business

Crypto trade to get first main U.S. stadium with Miami-Dade County approving FTX for Warmth dwelling

Crypto industry to get first major U.S. stadium with Miami-Dade County approving FTX for Heat home

Milwaukee Bucks’ Giannis Antetokounmpo # 34 heads to the basket against Bam Adebayo # 13 of Miami Heat in the second half at the American Airlines Arena on March 2, 2020 in Miami, Florida.

Michael Reaves | Getty Images

A city trying to rename itself as the center of the crypto world could soon have a cryptocurrency exchange in the stadium of its NBA franchise.

FTX has won the naming rights for the entertainment venue currently known as the American Airlines Arena, which is home to the Miami Heat. The deal, which was approved by the Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners on Friday, has a term of $ 135 million over 19 years.

The NBA has yet to approve the deal before it becomes official, FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried said in an email. The NBA did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Heat declined to comment.

The company now has a long and sometimes checkered history of companies with stadium naming rights. Some brands, like Gillette and the New England Patriots or Staples Center and the Los Angeles Lakers, become synonymous with their franchises.

For other companies, however, the naming rights served as billboards reminding audiences of their struggles. The sports authority was forced to forego its sponsorship of the NFL’s Broncos Stadium after it went bankrupt in 2016.

Enron is known to have the rights to the MLB’s Houston Astros Stadium before an accounting scandal brought the company to a standstill. And in Oklahoma City, Chesapeake Energy’s branding is still in the basketball arena for the NBA’s Thunder, even after the company filed for bankruptcy last year.

The dot-com era two decades ago offers even more fodder for misnamed naming rights. Tech company CMGI was the original sponsor of what would become the Gillette Stadium, but had to cut that agreement after a CNN report at the time after stocks were replenished. The now dissolved companies Adelphia and PSINet also had naming rights for the NFL stadium at the turn of the century.

Politicians and business leaders in the Miami area have worked over the past year to make the company a welcoming environment for tech and crypto firms. Francis Suarez, the mayor of the city of Miami, told CNBC last month that Miami “positioned us as one of the most tech-friendly cities in America” ​​and announced that city workers could choose to be paid in Bitcoin.

Many of the commissioners and Miami-Dade County’s mayor Daniella Levine Cava praised the agreement that funds from the deal could be used for initiatives to curb poverty and armed violence. Some of the commissioners, including Rebeca Sosa, raised concerns about granting the rights to a young company with limited US presence, but the deal was overwhelmingly accepted.

FTX is a non-US international cryptocurrency exchange that has more products than its FTX US counterpart. Bankman-Fried said the two were separate companies and that he was the majority shareholder of both.

The Miami Heat has been one of the most successful NBA franchises in recent years. Since 2010, it has appeared in five NBA finals and won two titles.

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Business

Auctions of Vehicles, Watches and Furnishings Warmth Up

Auctions of Cars, Watches and Furniture Heat Up

Rich people who bought too much used to be called collectors. Now they – and those who only belong to the target class – are all investors.

It’s not just that they’ve spent the last year getting involved in untested, start-up public companies that don’t yet need to produce products, let alone in profits. During the pandemic, it appears that every luxury acquisition has become a so-called alternative asset class.

Instead of stopping by each other to get reservations at the newest restaurants from Marcus Samuelsson and Jean-Georges Vongerichten, or waging bidding wars for apartments on 740 Park Avenue, they bid on each other at online auctions for jewelry, watches, furniture, sports tickets , Classic cars, limited edition Nikes and crypto art.

The bread lines got longer, the Birkin bags hotter.

A number of retailers hesitated to talk about the trend, stating that at a time of growing wealth inequality, they didn’t want to talk about near-sold-out $ 90,000 earrings.

John Demsey, the president of the Estée Lauder Companies executive group, raised these concerns despite admitting a primary quarantine pastime.

“I just go and watch porn,” he said. “I sell watches, I buy watches. It’s crazy. I have no reason to buy a watch right now. I’m at home at a computer all day. Time is staring me right in the face. What reason do I have to look at my wrist? But I want a tangible sign of something, so I look at watches. “And many other people too.

Rolex Day Dates, which sold for $ 30,000 in the secondary market in 2020, will now cost over $ 50,000 in some resale locations. The Nautilus 5980, a rose gold chronograph sports watch from Patek Philippe retailing at $ 85,000, is rarely available on 47th Street for less than $ 200,000.

According to Benjamin Clymer, editor of the watch website Hodinkee, one reason for the rising prices is that “Switzerland has closed, so there was demand while supply was dramatically reduced”.

But he also said, “The rich who used to spend money on travel don’t use it, so anything that can be collected is growing rapidly in value.”

These include cars, a hobby that began for Mr. Clymer in 2011 and began in 2015 when a multi-million dollar strategic investment in Hodinkee helped turn him from blogger to mogul.

In summer 2020, Mr. Clymer went looking for a 1973 Porsche 911 Carrera RS.

One had sold Bring a Trailer (or BaT as it is known) for $ 560,000 on the auction site just before the pandemic, but Mr. Clymer suspected it could be a buyer’s market. Maybe he could get it for less.

He found a beauty from a dealer who hadn’t listed the price on their website. It was in like new condition. Mr Clymer asked for an offer and nearly passed out when he heard the answer: $ 1.2 million.

“I said, ‘You’re crazy. ‘Less than a month later, it was sold. “

On Thanksgiving, auction houses sent out press releases almost every day to announce their record sales.

A pair of Conoid lounge chairs by famous woodworker George Nakashima, which cost around $ 10,000 in 2019, sold for $ 23,750 through Chicago auction house Wright in October 2020. A Mesa coffee table by TH Robsjohn Gibbings, a British architect whose name is little known outside of the furniture world, raised $ 237,500 in December. The total income from the sale was $ 2.5 million, roughly double what the house was on the same sale last year.

In February, a digital artwork of Donald Trump face down in the grass covered in words like “loser” sold for $ 6.6 million, a record for a non-fungible token, or NFT, so called because the buyer cannot take possession of any physical item.

Fittingly, the image was paid for in Ethereum, a form of cryptocurrency almost as well known among millennials as Bitcoin. Two weeks later, Christie’s sold another Beeple NFT, this time for $ 69 million.

The prices for the best vintage sports tickets reached Warhol levels. In January, a 1952 Mickey Mantle sold for $ 5.2 million on the PWCC Marketplace. In March, Goldin Auctions, a sports collectible, held its annual winter auction. “We grossed $ 45 million,” said Ken Goldin, founder and CEO. “Last year it was $ 4.7 million.”

One of Mr. Goldin’s regular customers is Clement Kwan, the former president of Yoox Net-a-Porter and founder of Beboe, an upscale line of cannabis vaporizers and edible lozenges that the New York Times referred to as “Hermès of Marijuana”.

“Since the pandemic started, my financial portfolio has grown 50 percent,” Kwan said from Miami last week. “My collectibles have increased by 200.”

Mr. Kwan’s stroke of luck came after learning in 2019 that a documentary about Michael Jordan would be released on Netflix the following summer. That led him to buy sets of Mr. Jordan’s rookie cards for around $ 30,000 each. He also got involved in Bleecker Trading, a bespoke sports memorabilia business in the West Village.

In May 2020, Mr. Kwan sold a Jordan Rookie card for nearly $ 100,000. By January, a particularly sought-after Jordan Rookie card was sold through Goldin for $ 738,000.

The renewed interest in Mr. Jordan extends to sneakers as well.

Last May, Ariana Peters, who owns the world’s most valuable sneaker collection with her sisters Dakota and Dresden Peters, had her biggest sale in five years: a pair of signed Air Jordans from 1985 that fetched $ 275,000.

In 2019, the sisters sold 572 pairs of sneakers at prices starting at $ 500, Ariana Peters said in an interview. In 2020 they sold 879.

Ms. Peters actually sounded a little surprised when she talked about all of this, perhaps because she and her sisters only got into the business because her father, a retired real estate developer named Douglas Roy Peters, bought so many pairs of sneakers that they got them They had run out of places.

Ms. Peters, who lives in South Florida, now houses the collection in a warehouse that has been modified to look like the Miami Heat basketball court.

Those who are not prepared to spend large sums of money on vintage collectibles join the action through recently established mutual funds.

Rally, an Android and iPhone app that sells shares from Rolex GMTs to dinosaur scraps, had 100,000 users at the start of the pandemic and monitored $ 12 million in inventory. Rob Petrozzo, its chief product officer and co-founder, said in an interview that the company now monitors $ 30 million worth of goods and has over 200,000 users. According to the company, the median age of a rally user is 28 years and most are male.

The way the app works, investors buy, sell, or trade their stocks as if they were stocks. New product launches are actually referred to as IPOs

“The equity and cryptocurrency space in recent years has produced really savvy investors who understand the dynamics of the market. This is a complement to their Coinbase and Robinhood accounts,” said Petrozzo.

One of Mr. Petrozzo’s “investors” is Nicholas Abouzeid, the 24-year-old Marketing Director at MainStreet, a 50-person company that helps startups find and claim tax credits and incentives from the government.

One recent afternoon, from the bedroom of his Woodbury, Connecticut home, Mr. Abouzeid was talking about Zoom. In his long-sleeved white T-shirt and wooden-framed glasses, he looked like any number of young white men he could work for, Mark Zuckerberg or Josh Kushner. Behind him were shelves of memorabilia – super-plastic toys, sealed 90s Nintendo games, and collectable Nike Sacai Waffle sneakers.

On the actual stock market, Mr. Abouzeid did what he called “more than what someone should make in a year” last year by buying and selling positions in high-growth tech companies like Slack, Stitch Fix, Shopify and Fastly. “I’m in and out all the time,” he said.

He extracted much of his profits and put them into Pokémon collectibles.

On one level, it arose out of his nostalgia for the game he started playing in sixth grade. Second, it is “an alternative asset class and a way to diversify,” as he put it.

His Holy Grail item is a first edition of the “Booster Box” with Pokémon cards.

When it was released in 1999, the set was priced at $ 110. In January, Heritage Auctions in Dallas sold one for $ 408,000.

Mr. Abouzeid doesn’t have that type of money, but when he went public on Valley Road in June 2020, he bought 125 “shares” of one at a price of $ 25 each.

They are now worth $ 120 each, which brings him around $ 13,500 in profit (that’s at least 300 percent more than he made from his Slack inventory).

Jackson Moses, a colleague of Mr. Abouzeid at MainStreet, invests in biotech stocks and vintage whiskey. But Johnson & Johnson and Jack Daniel don’t interest him.

His Merrill Lynch account includes stocks in companies such as Sarepta Therapeutics, a manufacturer of precision genetic medicines used to treat rare diseases of the neuromuscular and central nervous system. His fridge is filled with rare vintage kacho fugetsu.

“When my parents saw them in my apartment, they were very worried,” he said. “They said, ‘Is there something we need to talk about?’ But I don’t even open it. “

Earlier this month, as rising interest rates cornered soaring tech stocks, Kacho Fugetsu delivered what Mr. Moses called “the perfect hedge.”

Of course, he is well aware that the rise of his whiskey collection could also come to an end, but that has at least one advantage. “Then I’ll finally have an excuse to drink it,” he said.

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Business

Texas Storms, California Warmth Waves and ‘Susceptible’ Utilities

Texas Storms, California Heat Waves and ‘Vulnerable’ Utilities

In California, forest fires and heat waves in recent years have forced utility companies to turn off electricity for millions of homes and businesses. Now Texas is learning that deadly winter storms and intense cold can do the same thing.

The two largest states in the country have taken very different approaches to managing their energy needs – Texas has been aggressively deregulated and allowed the free market to flourish, while California introduced environmental regulations. However, the two countries are faced with the same ominous reality: they may be completely unprepared for the increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters caused by climate change.

Power outages in Texas and California have shown that the type of extremely cold and hot weather climatologists said will make power plants more common as greenhouse gases build up in the atmosphere, can be polluted and taken out of service.

The problems in Texas and California underscore the challenge that the Biden administration must face in modernizing its electricity system to be fully powered by wind turbines, solar panels, batteries and other zero-emission technologies – a goal President Biden has set of the 2020 campaign.

The federal government and energy companies may need to spend trillions of dollars to harden power grids against the threat of climate change and move away from the fossil fuels that are responsible for warming the planet. These are not new ideas. Scientists have long warned that American power grids operated regionally are coming under increasing pressure and needing major improvements.

“We really need to change our paradigm, especially the utilities, because they’re more and more prone to disaster,” said Najmedin Meshkati, an engineering professor at the University of Southern California, of power outages in Texas and California. “You always have to literally think about the worst-case scenario because the worst-case scenario will happen.”

Meshkati, who served on National Academies committees investigating BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill and Fukushima nuclear disaster, said Mr. Biden should set up a commission to investigate the Texas and California power outages and recommend changes.

However, it is not clear how much Mr Biden can do given the limited role the federal government has in overseeing utilities, which are mostly regulated at the state level. He may not even be able to muster a majority in Congress to push an ambitious climate plan, as Democrats are closely represented in the Senate and most Republicans are strongly opposed to measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In California and Texas, conservatives have blamed renewables for power outages, although energy experts, grid managers, and utilities have found that outages in solar and wind farms play less of a role than poor planning and problems with natural gas and other power sources.

That Texas and California were hardest hit shows that simplified ideological explanations are often wrong. Texas, for example, has relied on market forces to balance its power grid. When there is not enough supply, the price of electricity in the wholesale market rises, which is intended to encourage businesses to produce more electricity and businesses and consumers to use less electricity. California also has an electricity market, but it requires power generators to maintain excess capacity that can be drawn upon in an emergency. However, both systems buckled under extreme conditions.

The common theme in both states is that many traditional power plants are much more sensitive to temperature changes than the utility industry has recognized, said Jay Apt, co-director of the Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center.

“Coal and gas plants have problems in both heat and cold,” said Apt, who is also a professor at Carnegie Mellon University.

Last August, several natural gas-fired power plants stopped producing electricity when the Californians turned on air conditioning because the equipment in the plants did not work in hot weather. Other systems had failed due to maintenance work, which many experts found strange, since electricity demand is usually highest in late summer.

Just as demand was peaking, the California independent system operator who manages the state’s power grid had ordered utilities to run rolling power outages until the system reached equilibrium. The order came so abruptly that Governor Gavin Newsom complained that the blackouts occurred “with no prior warning or time to prepare.”

Regardless, California utilities have also unplugged hundreds of thousands of customers over the past few years to keep power lines and other equipment from starting fires on dry, windy days.

In Texas, many natural gas plants went offline or had to shut down this week because their equipment was frozen. Others couldn’t generate as much electricity as normal because the pipelines that deliver gas were frozen or not getting enough gas from fields in the Permian Basin of west Texas and New Mexico, where sub-zero temperatures also hampered operations has been .

The electricity industry tends to consider average rather than seasonal annual temperatures. Changing the distribution of power sources based on seasonal temperatures could help prevent power shortages. For example, nuclear power plants generally work well in the cold but become vulnerable to heat because of the need for cooling water, Apt said.

Extreme temperatures shouldn’t have surprised energy suppliers and network managers. Historical weather data have shown a significant increase in very hot summer days over the past few decades.

Additionally, Apt pointed out that the U.S. has had five major cold spells since 2011, including the polar vortex in 2014, which resulted in the shutdown of nearly a quarter of the electricity available in the country’s largest energy market, PJM, which is the mid-Atlantic Region. In some factories, coal mounds became unusable because they were frozen.

“These types of cold spells aren’t particularly rare,” said Apt. “A Black Swan event – an unknown unknown – it wasn’t.”

Some climate researchers believe that a warming Arctic could be responsible for harsher winter storms, even if winters become milder overall.

The Edison Electric Institute, which represents investor-owned utility companies, acknowledged the industry faced numerous challenges, but noted that much of its work is closely monitored by state and federal officials.

“It’s important to reiterate that we are the most regulated industry in the country. How we serve customers depends on the different rules and regulations set by federal and state regulators,” said Brian Reil, a spokesman the group.

Pedro J. Pizarro, president and chief executive officer of Edison International, the parent company of California’s second largest investor-owned energy company, said no energy company in Texas or California expected the extreme weather conditions in the two states.

“Let me start here and acknowledge that both the Texas event and the California event are really good examples of how we are all living with climate change,” Pizarro said. “Power grid systems must be able to deal with the new normal.”

Mr Pizarro said his company has added battery storage, which can help if demand increases in extreme weather. California has also required its utility companies to install more batteries, which generally deliver power faster than large power plants, although they only do so for a few hours at a time.

Lawmakers, residents and others are calling for a clear account of what went wrong this week, like last summer in California, and how to avoid another day-long electricity crisis.

Some of them have criticized the Texas Electric Reliability Council, which manages the state’s power grid, for failing to do more to force plants to prepare for freezing temperatures. To avoid further such failures, the Council could learn from states in colder climates where power plants and other equipment are made winter-proof with insulation and heating.

Some possible fixes would be useful in Texas and California. Neither state appears to have sufficient capacity to bridge the gap between supply and demand in extreme weather conditions. They may need to invest more in batteries and transmission lines to get power from other states. Texas has historically chosen not to have extensive ties with other states in order to avoid federal regulation.

States could also require some natural gas facilities to be ready to come up quickly in an emergency if there is enough gas on-site to run for several days so as not to rely on pipelines. That trust can be fatal, Texas learned this week.

Some changes are already being made. In California, regulators had allowed some natural gas facilities to be shut down, although it was clear that the gap between supply and demand was narrow on the hottest summer days and in the late afternoon, when the sun goes down and solar panels stop producing electricity. After the power outages in August, the California Public Utilities Commission delayed the closure of several natural gas-fired power plants.

Dan Reicher, founding director of the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford University, said utilities, grid managers and regulators need to get much better at planning storms, heat waves and cold weather. “If we can’t work with the US network, we won’t solve the climate crisis.”

Categories
Politics

GOP senators who voted to question Trump going through warmth at residence

GOP senators who voted to impeach Trump facing heat at home

The seven Republican Senators who voted with all 50 Democrats to convict former President Donald Trump for inciting the January 6 insurrection in the Capitol are now exposed to the heat of Conservatives in their home states.

Party leaders and local GOP officials, many of whom are trying to find favor with the broad swath of conservative voters still loyal to Trump, have condemned the seven lawmakers for engaging with the rest of the party.

The criticism illustrates the strong influence Trump continues to have nationally against Republicans despite his defeat in November and subsequent refusal to admit defeat.

Polls conducted after last month’s attack on Congress continue to show that Trump has a sky-high approval rating among Republicans and that roughly half of the GOP are primarily loyal to the ex-president himself rather than the party.

The Senate acquitted Trump on Saturday after an unprecedented second impeachment process with 57 to 43 votes.

While Senator Mitt Romney, R-Utah, was the only GOP member to vote against Trump after his first trial, this time there were six more: Richard Burr from North Carolina, Bill Cassidy from Louisiana, Susan Collins from Maine Lisa Murkowski from Alaska , Ben Sasse from Nebraska and Pat Toomey from Pennsylvania.

Some of the senators, including Cassidy, have already been reprimanded by official reprimands from their state party, while many of the others are criticized by local conservatives. Cassidy was censored by the Louisiana GOP a few hours after his vote.

The backlash against Sasse, which is also expected to face formal criticism, was directly mentioned by one of Trump’s Senate defenders.

“There seem to be some pretty clever lawyers in Nebraska, and I can’t believe the United States Senator doesn’t know,” Bruce Castor Jr. said during an at times confusing address. Castor said Sasse “is facing a whirlwind, even though he knows what the judiciary thinks in his state.”

Based on previous comments criticizing Trump, local GOP chapters in several Nebraska counties have passed resolutions calling for Sasse’s criticism, according to the Lincoln Journal Star. A meeting of the state GOP to officially reprimand the senator has been postponed because of the weather, the newspaper reported.

Burr, a senior Republican whose election to condemn Trump came as a surprise to most observers, also drew fire from home-state Conservatives.

“The Republicans of North Carolina sent Senator Burr to the United States Senate to uphold the Constitution and today’s vote to condemn a process he ruled unconstitutional is shocking and disappointing,” said Republican Party Chairman Michael Whatley, in a statement.

Burr is not seeking re-election for a fourth term in the Senate. Mark Walker, a Republican aspiring to succeed him in 2022, wrote in a post on Twitter shortly after the vote on Saturday: “Wrong vote, Sen. Burr,” and added a donation message.

Toomey could also face “possible setbacks at home”, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. The newspaper reported that in response to Toomey’s vote, Lawrence Tabas, the state’s GOP chairman, said he shared “the disappointment of many of our grassroots leaders and volunteers.”

Overall, the backlash is unlikely to cause election damage in the short term. Six of the seven Republicans will not be re-elected next year in the 2022 cycle. Only Murkowski, who has served in the Senate since 2002, faces an upcoming re-election campaign.

Some have speculated that the impeachment vote in Alaska could give former Governor Sarah Palin an impetus to run in a primary. Palin herself has fueled rumors that she would be entering the race.

Each of the seven Republicans who voted to condemn Trump have defended their decision in statements and posts on social media. In a video posted online before the vote, Sasse reiterated his warnings about Republicans’ loyalty to Trump, saying “Politics is not about strange worship of a man.”

Toomey admitted in a thread on Posts on Twitter that Trump’s attorneys “made several precise observations” during their arguments. But he said, “As a result of President Trump’s actions, the transfer of power from the president was not peaceful for the first time in American history.”

“His betrayal of the constitution and his oath of office required conviction,” wrote Toomey, defending his decision.

Cassidy said in an interview on ABC News on Sunday that he “tried to hold President Trump accountable” and that Cassidy was “very confident that people will move to that position over time”.

“The Republican Party is more than just a person. The Republican Party is about ideas,” he said.

CNBC has reached out to each of the seven Republican lawmakers.

Criticism of the Senators reflects previous attacks on the House Republicans who voted for Trump’s impeachment in the lower chamber. Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney was censored by Republicans in her state after her House colleagues unsuccessfully urged her to be removed from her leadership role.

Some Republicans who didn’t even vote for Trump’s impeachment have been criticized for not being respectful enough of the ex-president. For example, Senate Minority Chairman Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Voted in favor of the acquittal, but harshly criticized Trump’s January 6 rally speech, accusing him of being responsible for the day’s violence.

Senator Lindsey Graham, RS.C., sentenced McConnell on Sunday for the speech.

“I think Sen. McConnell’s speech obviously took a burden off his chest, but unfortunately he put a burden on the Republicans,” Graham told Fox News. “You will see this speech in campaigns in 2022.”

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