Could Trump Derail the Great American Ponzi Scheme?

Are America's Asian creditors getting tired of Donald Trump and his temper tantrums? An article in the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong's newspaper of record, suggests patience is running thin.

Asian governments hold the deed to an economy Trump is mismanaging – more than US$3 trillion of US Treasuries. The spectre of massive fiscal losses will be keeping Trump’s Asian bankers awake at night.

It’s weird that Trump would cosy up to Russia’s Vladimir Putin, whose economy is about the size of South Korea’s, and make a foe out of China’s Xi Jinping, Washington’s top creditor.

...Trump finding a foe in his own Fed head, Jerome Powell, would be dreadful for Asian economies, companies and investors. The spectre of the most powerful leader brawling with the world’s top monetary authority throws yet another imponderable at a region on the ropes.

...That puts Powell in an impossible situation. Hiking interest rates at the forthcoming policy meeting from July 31 to August 1 could have Trump slamming the Fed on Twitter. Throttling back could increase overheating risks. Either outcome risks denting the dollar’s credibility and driving up US bond yields. 

Trump, let’s remember, added to Powell’s stress level with a US$1.5 trillion tax cut, which an economy at full employment didn’t need. What did the former businessman think would happen when he tossed additional financial lighter fluid at a blazing economy?

...On top of the Russia-collusion scandal, Trump might be courting a controversy of meddling in the Fed’s affairs. It might give Asia less confidence to hold trillions of dollars of American IOUs.

Has America Reached One of Those Moments Jefferson Warned About?

Has the United States of America run its course? Has it outlived democracy and transformed into something even Americans can't stomach? Is it time for the Jeffersonian cure, rebellion?

McGill history prof,  J.M. Opal, argues that America has become what the American people rebelled against almost 250-years ago.

A decade ago, as the scale of the disaster in Iraq began to sink in, American historians often compared the United States to ancient Rome. Both seemed to suffer from an imperial disease whose symptoms began with overreach and ended in collapse.

This is a useful way for Americans like me to consider our troubles abroad. But when it comes to our democracy’s problems at home, the closer parallel is with 18th century Britain, the “mother country” from which the United States broke away in 1776.

Britons of that time enjoyed many liberties unknown to their favourite bogeymen, the French. These freedoms had many roots, including the Magna Carta of 1215, the Bill of Rights from 1689 and various parts of English common law. Most Britons saw their country as God’s favourite and thanked their “constitution” — a general term for established forms of law and government — for their rising glory. 

Yet for all the liberties it tolerated, that constitution’s real goal was to shield wealth and privilege from popular demands. 

In the House of Lords, the privileged group was the aristocracy that still owned about 80 per cent of all the arable land in England. In the House of Commons, the favoured ones were rising merchants, bankers and industrialists. Together these old and new elites ran the show. 

For example, British law treated labour organizations as “conspiracies” while respecting the fortunes that stockholders made as untouchable. A brutal criminal code complemented a draconian view of poverty.
Strict suffrage laws and rotten boroughs insulated real power from the political circus, not to mention the angry crowds that rose up against everything from low wages to high bread prices to anti-poaching laws.

Opal argues that America, like Britain before it, has been rigged to favour its own aristocracy. Gerrymandering is America's "rotten borough." A deliberately groomed Supreme Court dispenses rightwing justice. Labour is vanquished by capital at every turn. Wealth has been drained out of the working classes and into the pockets of the new aristocracy, the pilfering enabled by Congress instead blamed on foreigners, "them."

During periods of democratic renewal, such as Reconstruction, the New Deal and the Civil Rights era, American politics pushed the constitution beyond its original intentions. In these creative moments, active citizens shaped a more just society. 

But over the last 50 years, another alliance of old and new has taken up arms (sometimes literally) behind constitutional bulwarks, rolling back much of that progress. 

This alliance includes white voters who keep their traditional supremacy through gerrymandered districts, restrictive voting laws and mass incarceration of non-white people. 

It also includes corporate interests that halt efforts to protect workers and the environment, to say nothing of sick, poor and elderly Americans. These plutocrats not only decide elections with their campaign contributions but also write legislation through their lobbyists.

A time to rise up.

In America now, just as in Britain then, most people object. They would rather have clean air and water, secure jobs and pensions and a fair distribution of wealth. They would rather not see most of their fellow citizens living one paycheque to the next, nor watch schoolchildren prepare for the next mass shooting. They would prefer to live in a good society rather than a great power.

But in America now, just as in Britain then, the political system won’t allow it. Even if non-white majorities pile up in some congressional districts, the Senate and Electoral College will neutralize them.
Even if dozens of Bernie Sanders acolytes get into office, their ideas will run aground in congressional committees awash in corporate influence. 

And if progressive hopes ever make it onto the books, federal courts stocked with hard-right judges will strike them down — no matter what kind of “blue wave” arrives in 2020, 2024 or indeed 2040. 

In short, there is no reason to assume that under the current constitution, the demographic and cultural changes of the past generation will fundamentally challenge Donald Trump’s America.

Donald Trump persuaded a significant minority of the American public that he could set things right. He would drain the swamp. He would make America great again. Instead he fed them an array of straw men and whipping boys even as he and the Republican Congress ensured America's aristocracy would continue to grow richer and more powerful at the expense of their less advantaged countrymen.

Opal doesn't directly call for revolution. That would be seditious at the very least. Yet he doesn't endorse any alternative cures either. 

No Takers. It's the Justin Trudeau Memorial Pipeline Now.

The Trudeau government was counting on a quick flip to unload the dodgy and massively overpriced TransMountain pipeline that it took off the hands of sketchy Texas oil company, Kinder Morgan.

No takers.

The leaves the feds in the bitumen pipeline business, perhaps forever. So, while some of the provinces and most major municipalities work diligently to cut greenhouse gas emissions, Justin Trudeau becomes the veritable blue-eyed sheikh.  Well done, Junior.

As the picture says, "Sold Out."

To Return To a Now Familiar Theme

The northern hemisphere is on fire and, where it's not, it is probably baking. Even the southern hemisphere is unduly warm in its mid-winter.

Forest fires are sweeping the west again. I'm noticing the odd waft of smoke and I'm well west of the interior fire zone on the mainland.

Even New York Magazine is sounding the alarm.

From Japan to Sweden, and Oman to Texas, a global heat wave is setting records, igniting wildfires, and killing dozens all across the world this week.

Triple digit (Fahrenheit) temperatures for most of the American southwest and Mississippi basin this week. Electrical grids straining to meet the demand for air conditioning.

...Across the globe in Kyoto, Japan, Thursday marked the seventh straight day of temperatures that exceeded 100 degrees, breaking all known records for the ancient capital city. At least 30 people have died in Japan during the heat wave, which has complicated rescue efforts following floods and landslides that killed more than 200 in western Japan earlier this month. 

On Thursday alone ten people died and 2,605 people were sent to hospitals in Tokyo due to heat, the Japan Times reports. The day before, Tokyo rescue workers set a record by responding to more than 3,000 emergency calls. 

Meanwhile, in Sweden, the Arctic Circle is on fire.

Temperatures recorded in Sweden above the Arctic Circle have broken 90F. For the Arctic Circle that's a summer heatwave. It's drying out the tundra and leaving the area vulnerable to wild fires.

The list of areas experiencing extreme temperatures keeps going: An Algerian city earlier this month broke the record for the highest temperature ever in Africa when it hit 124.3 degrees and a city in Oman recorded the highest low temperature — 108.7 degrees — ever recorded on Earth. In Quebec, more than 90 people were killed by extreme heat in early July. 

It’s impossible to talk about these extreme temperatures without talking about climate change. Heat domes — high-pressure areas that trap hot air and increase temperatures — are being blamed for these heat waves and they have become more common as the climate has warmed. Research has also repeatedly linked the warming climate to heat waves. 

As climate scientist Ben Santer, who linked the burning of fossil fuels to the intense heat waves, told the Los Angeles Times this week, “This isn’t a big scientific surprise.”

Of course it isn't a big scientific surprise. It's not a political surprise either. Our petro-pimp parliamentarians don't talk much about it but they've been told what to expect - precisely what's happening - and, in an astonishingly blatant dereliction of duty, they've buried their heads in the sand. They're working for somebody but it isn't you and it sure isn't your grandkids either. You, me, we - we're on our own.

The Damage Wasn't Done in Helsinki. It Happened in the Days Following Trump's Return to Washington.

It wasn't so much Trump's juvenile performance in Helsinki or the harsh rejection from Democrats and Republicans in Congress. No, it was how quickly Republican opposition switched back to again support an unhinged president who betrayed his country when the "base" didn't budge. Hey, that's how even decent people can become Nazis.

In the immediate aftermath of Helsinki experts weighed in on two issues: how disastrous it was and the seismic wave that would now sweep over Congress.

It was said that Trump, wittingly and unwittingly, betrayed his oath of office. He made the summit about himself. As for the aftermath it argued that Putin left Helsinki disappointed, realizing all he had gotten was a complete idiot not what he hoped for, a useful idiot.

Alexander Gabuev of the Carnegie Moscow Center wrote this:

In his July 19 address at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Putin warned that members of the U.S. establishment “are not miserable or wretched people. No, they are powerful and strong people who can shove … unbelievable and illogical stories in the face of millions of their citizens. Yes, they can really do this. I am not saying this to scold or commend anyone. … I am saying this so that we take this into account in our practical work in the American direction.” 

The problem, however, is that it isn’t only the Russophobic U.S. establishment that bears the blame for all the problems in the bilateral relationship. Rather, it’s Trump himself who has recently posed the biggest problem. Trump’s lack of discipline and inability to talk convincingly about even a moderately tough stance on Russia is again stirring up the hornet’s nest in Washington. That’s why, after watching Monday’s press conference, some wealthy and powerful Russians who know the West well have been exchanging text messages that have in common a variation on one phrase: “This moron is making things worse, and it’s going to end very badly.” Sooner rather than later, the Kremlin will come to regret its Helsinki triumph. 

Conventional wisdom held that Congress would unite, finally, to do the right thing and defy Trump. Yet, when it came to it, Trump opponents began bleeding off, increasing the numbers of Trump supporters. Then the base held. With that, patriotism and principle were thrown to the wolves. With mid-term elections barely four months away, there was little appetite among Congressional Republicans for offending the base.

And then, as if he were immune to rebuke and restraint, Trump doubled down, bitch-slapped the Republican Congress and invited Putin to a sleepover in the White House.

Putin has to be wandering the Kremlin halls asking WTF?  He was expecting Trump to have cut his own throat with Congress and the American people. There would be consequences, some worrisome. All that work down the drain.

But that didn't happen. Trump's base held. They didn't care. They don't mind Putin. They've got a thing for authoritarianism - so long as it's white.

That's bad enough in its own right. What makes it worse is that Vlad's people are watching this, dumbstruck, recording everything and putting it through the grinder of analysis and strategy.

I'm sure they can't believe what this unexpectedly large segment of the population was/is willing to abide/ignore. There's a mountain of intelligence in that one revelation. What a look into the modern American psyche?  Everything from the fracture of meaningful social cohesion, to the groups involved in penetrating and manipulating, even manufacturing informed consent.

There are ways to weaponize that sort of intelligence. This isn't over. Helsinki may have been a breakthrough after all.

Oh Momma, Momma

I think it's best you read this for yourself. They're talking about evidence of a mega-drought four millennia ago that triggered a mass, societal collapse.

Who knew?

SS/DD Where's the Beef?

It's now a rule of thumb in this Age of Nihilism: if it's going to kill us, we're fine with it.

With all the global warming already baked in from current levels of atmospheric greenhouse gas loading, we ought to be decarbonizing our economies and our societies just as fast as we can. Ain't gonna happen. You know it. I know it. The Petro-Pimps of Parliament Hill intend to see to it. They've got the filthiest, highest-carbon ersatz petroleum to flog and they're aiming to sell as much of it as they can just as fast as they can. Your little grandkids? Screw 'em.

Meanwhile the fast emerging economies are scouring the world for cheap energy wherever they can find it. Bitumen, sure. Coal, of course. Natural gas, if they can get it cheap enough. Doesn't really matter.  It doesn't matter that many of these rapidly industrializing countries are also in line for the worst impacts of climate change. Oh hell, they'll think of something, won't they? Sure "they" will.

But hard-working people who suddenly find themselves with a little change in their pocket want to eat and they want to eat - meat.

A new report in the journal, Science, finds that meat is all the rage and it's killing us.

Meat consumption is rising annually as human populations grow and affluence increases. Godfray et al. review this trend, which has major negative consequences for land and water use and environmental change. Although meat is a concentrated source of nutrients for low-income families, it also enhances the risks of chronic ill health, such as from colorectal cancer and cardiovascular disease. Changing meat consumption habits is a challenge that requires identifying the complex social factors associated with meat eating and developing policies for effective interventions.

The global average per capita consumption of meat and the total amount of meat consumed are rising (see the figure), driven by increasing average individual incomes and by population growth. Growth rates vary across different regions, with consumption in high-income countries static or declining and in middle-income countries moderately to strongly increasing, whereas in low-income countries, meat consumption is on average low and stable. There has been a particularly marked increase in the global consumption of chicken and pork. The consumption of different types of meat and meat products has substantial effects on people’s health, and livestock production can have major negative effects on the environment.

Meat produces more emissions per unit of energy compared with that of plant-based foods because energy is lost at each trophic level. Within types of meat, ruminant production usually leads to more emissions than that of nonruminant mammals, and poultry production usually leads to less emissions than that of mammals. Meat production is the single most important source of methane, which has a relatively high warming potential but a low half-life in the environment compared with that of CO2. Careful management of grassland systems can contribute to carbon storage, but the net benefits are likely to be relatively modest. Agriculture uses more freshwater than any other human activity, with nearly a third required for livestock, so meat production in water-stressed areas is a major competitor with other uses of water, including that required to maintain natural ecosystems. Meat production can be an important source of nitrogen, phosphorus, and other pollutants and affects biodiversity—in particular, through land conversion to pasture and arable feed crops.

By now you're probably yawning. You're right, you've heard this all before. It's just another fine study recapitulating the warnings that we've so consistently ignored for years.

When it comes to meat and the environment, the survival of our and other species of life on the planet, it's like treating a diagnosis of lung cancer by going from a two pack a day habit to three or three-and-a-half. It's crazy but all nihilism is basically crazy. Our response is abject fatalism. 

Hey, You Can Finally Put Away the 12 Gauge

Some say the best part of your Golden Years is sitting on the veranda in your rocker yelling at the future to "get the f#@k" off your lawn. But, delightful as that is, and it truly is, it can get old after a while. That's why they invented Bug-a-Salt!! You sit in that rocker and, when you're not yelling at the neighbourhood kids, you can shoot flies. Hey, you're old. They're drawn to you. And, as the kids say, payback is a bitch!

That's a Lot of "Getting Used To."

Who can forget when Trudeau's finance minister, Morneau, told Canadians they're just going to have to get used to a future of "job churn" - living short-term job to short-term job, paycheque to paycheque. Welcome to the Precariat from a government that just doesn't give a shit.

Now the CBC says there's more we're just going to have to get used to - in the latest case it's extreme heat events. Like most extreme weather events they're increasing significantly in frequency, duration and intensity and we're only in the "early onset" stage. In fact it's hard to consider them all that extreme any more. They're becoming closer to our new normal.

"This is unfortunately our new normal," said Ahira Sanchez-Lugo, a physical scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Centers for Environmental Information.

"When it comes to extreme heat, we can say the odds of extreme heat or heat waves have been significantly increased by climate change," said Clare Nullis, spokesperson for the World Meteorological Organization. 

"We have to start getting used to it." 

On Wednesday, NOAA released its Global Climate Report for the month of June — the fifth warmest on record (1.06 C above the 20th century average).

...David Phillips, Environment Canada's senior climatologist, said across the country, the average summertime temperature has increased by 1.5 C above the 1961-1990 average. Winter is even more dramatic with a 3.4 C rise.  

Oh well,  I'm sure they'll think of something. Don't you?

Boil It Down and This Is Remarkably Accurate

It's Wildfire Season - Within the Arctic Circle

The rapidly warming - and drying - Arctic Circle is a terrific feedstock for wildfires. Tundra = frozen peat. Peat = fuel. A bit of lightning - voila.

“This is definitely the worst year in recent times for forest fires. Whilst we get them every year, 2018 is shaping up to be excessive,” said Mike Peacock, a university researcher and local resident. 

There have been huge fires in the past in Sweden, but not over such a wide area. This appears to be a trend as more and bigger blazes are reported in other far northern regions like Greenland, Alaska, Siberia and Canada. 

The sparks come from a variety of sources: BBQs, cigarettes and increasingly lightning, which is becoming more frequent as the planet warms. 

Swedish authorities say the risk of more fires in the days ahead is “extremely high” due to temperatures forecast in excess of 30C. Much of the northern hemisphere has sweltered in unusually hot weather in recent weeks, breaking records from Algeria to California and causing fires from Siberia to Yorkshire. Ukraine has been hit especially hard by wildfires.

It strikes me that there is going to be a big and growing demand for the CL-415 water bomber, the iconic airplane built by Canada and then transferred to Bombardier, the rights to which were acquired two years ago by Viking Air of Sidney, B.C. on Vancouver Island.  Viking is currently working on upgrade kits for the world's fleet of these aircraft and, I'm told, is looking to restart the production line for new water bombers.

Would Impeachment Trigger a Breakdown of Civil Society in the US?

Insurrection has never been far from the surface since Donald Trump chose to seek America's presidency.  During the final stage of the election campaign he whipped up his Gullibillies with stories of how the election was rigged and warnings of Trump's crew taking to the streets should Clinton win.

Recent polls (there've been a few) show how grievously divided Americans have become about their president and the path on which he has steered their country. Some contend America has not been this divided since the Civil War.

Chris Hedges has warned that his nation has entered a "pre-revolutionary" state although he adds that there's no way of knowing just when upheaval may break out.

Foreign Policy surveyed a gaggle of national security experts whose "consensus opinion" suggested a 30% chance of full blown civil war within five years. Some individual respondents put the likelihood at between 60 and 95 per cent. That, of course, was in March. Much has transpired since then.

In going through these surveys of public opinion I found myself asking what sort of calamity would be needed to restore social cohesion to the American populace. It usually takes some sort of existential seismic event - a world war - to rally diverse groups around the flag.

After Trump's disastrous fiasco in Helsinki, I'm wondering what sort of event would be enough to fracture the already tenuous bonds between America's deeply divided factions.

Remember this is Donald Trump, a man with the scruples of a pit viper. This is the man who said he would refuse to accept the election outcome unless, of course, he won. Would he hesitate to incite his more rabid followers to stage some sort of putsch should proceedings be initiated to impeach him?

Bear in mind this rightwing phenomenon at play today that, despite a rightwing Supreme Court, and the Republicans firmly in control of both houses of Congress and the White House - all three branches of government - still considers Washington their enemy.

Would impeachment be their Harpers Ferry moment, a trigger for civil unrest?

A Sign of the Times - Water and Arsenic

There's your problem.

52 years worth of subsidence in California's San Joaquin Valley. And there's been another four decades of subsidence since this image.

Now the water-strapped Central Valley has another scourge - arsenic.

Towns across the Central Valley region of California have had tap water arsenic levels above the federal limit for almost two decades, levels that research suggests can raise the risk of a variety of cancers and lower IQ in children. During the same period, locals and scientists have noticed another odd phenomenon: the valley is sinking, at rates as fast as 25cm a year. Now it seems that the two problems are connected.

...Over the past century, groundwater levels in some places have fallen as much as 200 meters during drought conditions, according to the United States Geological Survey. The subsequent changes in water pressure alter underground architectures, leading to a sometimes-surreal slumping of land by as much as 10 meters.

...The same subsurface change in pressure can suck arsenic out of layers of clay and into groundwater, like a sponge being squeezed, said Dr Scott Fendorf, a professor of earth science at Stanford University and a co-author of a new study on the subject. “When we’re overdrafting the aquifer, the two things happen simultaneously.”

The article discusses the perils and tribulations of the people of the Central Valley in their pursuit of clean, consumable freshwater. What is not mentioned is what the arsenic is doing to the crops they're growing and selling. 

George Will: "This Sad, Embarrassing Wreck of a Man"

George Will takes his journalistic skinning knife to Donald Trump. It ain't pretty.

What, precisely, did President Trump say about the diametrically opposed statements by U.S. intelligence agencies (and the Senate Intelligence Committee) and by Putin concerning Russia and the 2016 U.S. elections? Precision is not part of Trump’s repertoire: He speaks English as though it is a second language that he learned from someone who learned English last week. So, it is usually difficult to sift meanings from Trump’s word salads. But in Helsinki he was, for him, crystal clear about feeling no allegiance to the intelligence institutions that work at his direction and under leaders he chose. 

...Like the purloined letter in Edgar Allan Poe’s short story with that title, collusion with Russia is hiding in plain sight. We shall learn from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation whether in 2016 there was collusion with Russia by members of the Trump campaign. 

The world, however, saw in Helsinki something more grave — ongoing collusion between Trump, now in power, and Russia. The collusion is in what Trump says (refusing to back the United States’ intelligence agencies) and in what evidently went unsaid (such as: You ought to stop disrupting Ukraine, downing civilian airliners, attempting to assassinate people abroad using poisons, and so on, and on). 

Americans elected a president who — this is a safe surmise — knew that he had more to fear from making his tax returns public than from keeping them secret. The most innocent inference is that for decades he has depended on an American weakness, susceptibility to the tacky charisma of wealth, which would evaporate when his tax returns revealed that he has always lied about his wealth, too. A more ominous explanation might be that his redundantly demonstrated incompetence as a businessman tumbled him into unsavory financial dependencies on Russians. A still more sinister explanation might be that the Russians have something else, something worse, to keep him compliant. 

The explanation is in doubt; what needs to be explained — his compliance — is not. Granted, Trump has a weak man’s banal fascination with strong men whose disdain for him is evidently unimaginable to him. And, yes, he only perfunctorily pretends to have priorities beyond personal aggrandizement. But just as astronomers inferred, from anomalies in the orbits of the planet Uranus, the existence of Neptune before actually seeing it, Mueller might infer, and then find, still-hidden sources of the behavior of this sad, embarrassing wreck of a man.

Update:

Trump took to Twitter this morning to defend his terrific performance in Helsinki. 

“So many people at the higher ends of intelligence loved my press conference performance in Helsinki.”

Well, It's a Start.

Adios, Canada.

It may not sound like much but when you can move 31,285 sq. kms. of rocks and Christmas trees the width of a pencil in a matter of a few months, that's something.

The land in question is Vancouver Island and the movement, away from the mainland, has occurred due to tremors that began in May and really picked up in June.

There have been hundreds of small tremors, 2-3 magnitude earthquakes, recently.

The Big One? No one seems too alarmed, just yet. Of course we probably won't be alarmed until we're tossed out of our beds in the middle of the night.

Mueller Seeks Immunity for Manafort Witnesses

Special prosecutor Robert Mueller has asked the judge who will preside over the fraud trial of Paul Manafort to grant immunity to five witnesses who may be called to testify against Trump's former campaign manager, the guy with the sketchy ties to Moscow.

Mueller didn’t identify the witnesses, who haven’t been charged. The five would invoke their constitutional right against self-incrimination and remain silent unless Judge T.S. Ellis III grants them immunity, prosecutors said Tuesday in a court filing in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. Their names will be made public only if they are called to testify, according to the filing. 

“Disclosing the motions would reveal those individuals’ involvement in the investigation and the trial, thereby creating the risk of undue harassment,” prosecutors wrote. “Such concern potentially would be heightened by the additional revelation that they have invoked their privilege against self-incrimination.” 

Prosecutors asked Ellis to seal five separate motions about the potential witnesses and unseal any of them if they are called to testify.
Manafort, 69, is accused of bank fraud and tax crimes in the Alexandria case. He would be the first of 32 people charged by Mueller to go to trial. He faces a Sept. 17 trial in Washington on charges of money laundering, obstruction of justice and acting as an unregistered foreign agent of Ukraine.

Immunity can be both carrot and stick. It can encourage cooperative witnesses to testify without fear of incriminating themselves. It can also be a way to coerce uncooperative witnesses to testify by exposing them to convictions for contempt or worse if they refuse to answer the prosecutor's questions.

Those Summertime Blues

Canada, like America (only a bit different), is heating up. Summer days are getting hotter. Summer nights are getting hotter still. Demands on power grids for air conditioning are soaring.

Climate Central has posted charts for major American cities that graphically depict what's going on across the States this year.

A ...way to measure the increase in heat is cooling degree days (CDD), which are used to determine how much cooling is needed to keep a building at a comfortable temperature. CDDs do not actually measure days at all. Rather, they measure the number of degrees that the daily average temperature is above 65°F. So if the average temperature for a day is 80°F, there were 15 CDDs in that day. Some of the largest increases in CDDs are also seen in the Southwest, however CDDs are increasing sharply in places that traditionally did not need air conditioning in the summer months. For example, the number of CDDs has nearly doubled in San Francisco and Portland, Oregon in the last half-century.

Accompanying that is a chart depicting the change in demand for cooling.

Cooling costs are rising as a result. Air conditioning already makes up the largest share of residential electricity use (17 percent) in the U.S., with Americans spending over $27 billion to cool their homes in 2015. The average annual cost for homes with air conditioning across the U.S. is approximately $250, but in the high use areas of the South, air conditioning costs are almost $450 a year. A 2014 Climate Central analysis of projected future summer temperaturesshows that by 2100, New England summers will be as hot as current summers in Florida, dramatically increasing the need for artificial cooling. 

Hotter days also increase the risk of heat-related illnesses like heat stroke, and warming nights make it more difficult for the body to recover from the heat of the day. Heat waves are usually associated with stagnant air, which also increases air pollution and the vulnerability to respiratory illnesses such as asthma.

You can see that the heating and cooling trend is going one way, sharply up.

The good news is that eastern Canada is in for a break, at least a couple of weeks reprieve from another heatwave. The American south probably won't be so lucky.

Pot-Kettle Alert. The US is Taking Canada to the World Trade Organization.

They slapped tariffs on Canadian exports. Canada responded with countervailing tariffs on American exports. What? The nerve! So now the Americans are planning to haul Canada before the World Trade Organization, the same WTO that Trump despises.

The Trump administration ...called countermeasures aimed at the U.S. by Canada and other trading partners "completely without justification under international rules." 

The federal Liberal government introduced reciprocal duties earlier this month on some U.S. imports after the White House slapped Canada and others with tariffs on steel and aluminum. 

...Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland has called Washington's metal tariffs absurd and illegal because they've been applied on the premise that Canada represents a national security threat to the U.S. Ottawa's response has been $16.6-billion worth of countermeasures on imports of American steel, aluminum and consumer products. 

The U.S. took a fresh step Monday in the trade fight by filing separate disputes at the WTO against Canada -- as well as the European Union, China, Mexico and Turkey -- over each jurisdiction's set of counter-tariffs on imports of American goods.

As the old line goes, there's no end to those pricks.

How German News Covered Trump's NATO Visit

And who says the Germans have no sense of humour?

In My Dreams