We're also covering severe drought in the American West and disaster readiness as we head into hurricane and wildfire season. |
 | | The Block Island wind farm, the first commercial offshore wind farm in the United States, off the coast of Rhode Island in 2016.Kayana Szymczak for The New York Times |
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A renewable energy 'breakthrough' |
The offshore wind industry has boomed in parts of the world, particularly near the coasts of Norway and the United Kingdom, but not off the West Coast of the United States. This week, the Biden administration took an important step toward changing that. |
For years, the idea of turbines churning in the Pacific was dismissed as impractical. The deep water poses an array of logistical challenges, and the Navy would rather not deal with all those offshore obstacles. |
But new technology and a new president determined to rapidly expand wind energy have shifted that calculus. On Tuesday, the Navy abandoned its opposition and joined the Interior Department to give its blessing to two areas off the California coast that the government said can be developed for wind turbines. |
The plan allows commercial offshore wind farms in a 399-square-mile area in Morro Bay along central California, and another area off the coast of Humboldt in Northern California. Gina McCarthy, the White House climate adviser, called it "a breakthrough." You can read all about the plan here. |
The numbers: The administration estimates that wind turbines in Morro Bay and near Humboldt could together eventually generate enough electricity to power 1.6 million homes. |
What's next?: Administration officials declined to say when the areas might be opened for development, but at least one company, ENBW, a German utility that operates wind farms in the Baltic Sea, has said it intends to bid on leases. |
 | | An empty irrigation canal on a farm in Corrales, N.M., in February.Susan Montoya Bryan/Associated Press |
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Drought is ravaging the West |
The U.S. Drought Monitor produces a map of the United States every Thursday that shows drought-stricken areas in various colors, and recent ones have been alarming. Not only is almost the entire Western half of the country in one shade or another, indicating some level of drought, about half of the West is colored red or brown, the most severe levels. |
As you can read in our article, the lingering extreme drought is having wide-ranging impacts, on water supplies for people, livestock and crops, and on wildfires. Forecasters with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration see little likelihood that conditions will improve through the summer. |
Of course, drought in the West is not a new phenomenon. The Southwest and parts of California and other states have always been drier rather than wetter, and there is evidence of lengthy droughts over the last millennium. But researchers say that climate change, with its warmer temperatures and shifting precipitation patterns, is making this modern drought worse. |
Quotable: "These are regions that regularly go weeks without precipitation. And now we're talking in some cases about months," said Keith Musselman, a University of Colorado snow hydrologist. |
A changing Arctic: Russia's strategic 'nightmare' |
For its entire history, Russia's northern coastline was effectively defended by the frozen Arctic Ocean. Now, though, summertime ice pack is shrinking and those waters could be ice-free in summer by the middle of the century. "It opens an entire new theater in the event of conflict with the United States," one analyst said. |
In case you missed it: Netting Zero |
On Thursday, Andrew Ross Sorkin, editor at large of DealBook, led a conversation with experts and activists on how to transform the economy to reduce planet-warming emissions. It was the latest in The Times's "Netting Zero" series of events about combating climate change. You can watch here. |
 | | Rescue personnel searched debris in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael in Mexico Beach, Fla., in 2018.Gerald Herbert/Associated Press |
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Preparing for disaster season |
The numbers: Just 28 percent of the agency's emergency workers are available to deploy to a new disaster. Among FEMA's senior leadership staff, those qualified to coordinate missions in the field, only two out of 53 were available as of Wednesday. The number of staff members who left for other agencies last year was the highest in a decade. |
Also important this week: |
- More than 40 million people fled their homes in 2020. Extreme weather events, mainly storms and floods, accounted for the vast majority of the displacement.
- The president wants to require power companies to replace fossil fuels with clean energy. It's a broadly popular idea but its path in Congress is perilous.
- Part of the Ronne Ice Shelf in Antarctica has broken off and become the world's largest iceberg.
- Intruder pests may drain trillions from Africa's economies, according to a new study.
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Climate science that didn't hold up, and why that's OK |
 | | This image from September 2020 shows five tropical systems spinning in the Atlantic basin at one time. There were a record number of 30 named storms in the Atlantic in 2020.NOAA |
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There's no real doubt among scientists that greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activity are causing the planet to warm dangerously. But they still have plenty to fight about, and one of those things is the question of why hurricane activity in the Atlantic is on the rise. |
One faction says a phenomenon called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation plays a big role. Basically, it's all about long cycles of cooling and warming. In warmer periods, the theory goes, you see more hurricanes. |
Others say human influence is having a big effect, but maybe not the way you'd think. |
A growing number of researchers see influence from pollution — in large part, the atmospheric sulfur pollution that rose sharply during the postwar industrial boom and declined after environmental legislation like the Clean Air Act. Under this theory, the sulfur pollution inhibited the formation of storms by cooling the region. When the air got cleaner, storm activity went up. |
And a recent paper in the journal Science makes the case that the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation doesn't really exist. (Notably, the lead author on the paper, Michael E. Mann of Pennsylvania State University, was the one who originally coined the ungainly term.) |
So can you trust science? |
Absolutely. Jill Trepanier, an associate professor of geology at Louisiana State University, told me that Dr. Mann's reversal serves as an excellent example of scientific progress. "That's the way the science game is played, truly a lot of it is being right for a while and then realizing you've been wrong and having to adjust," she said. "What is true today might not be true tomorrow." |
Dr. Mann, who developed the 1998 "hockey stick" graph, which shows the powerful effects of greenhouse gas emissions on global warming, said that he was happy to be able to correct his own work about the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. "Scientists must always be open to revising past thinking," he said. |
"On the hockey stick, unfortunately there is an example where we were shown to be right," he added. "I wish I was wrong about that. I wish I was wrong about climate change." |
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