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The Hottest Summers in America of All Time

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Source: milehightraveler / iStock via Getty Images

The torrid summer of 2023 is drawing to a close, and according to the European Union-funded Copernicus Climate Change Service, the planet had its hottest three months ever. It was the hottest August on record (global mean surface air temperature), and the second-hottest month ever after July 2023. (Here are the hottest inhabited places on Earth.)

To identify the hottest summers on Earth over the last 50 years, 24/7 Wall st. reviewed data on the average temperature in August for each year between 1940 and Aug. 31, 2023 from the Copernicus Climate Change Service. The anomaly — the degree by which each average temperature in August differs from historically normal temperatures between 1991 and 2020 — also came from the Copernicus Climate Change Service. 

The June-to-August season for 2023 was the warmest on record worldwide, with an average temperature of 16.77°C (62.1 Fahrenheit), 0.66°C above average. The hottest 10 summers have all occurred over the past 10 years.

The Copernicus group said August is estimated to have been around 1.5°C warmer than the pre-industrial average for 1850-1900. The 1.5°C mark is considered a critical threshold and once crossed, the effects of climate change are expected to become more severe. August recorded the highest global monthly average sea-surface temperatures of 20.98°C, or 69.7 Fahrenheit. The period from January to August 2023 is the second warmest on record after 2016, when a warming El Niño event occurred.

“What we are observing, not only new extremes but the persistence of these record-breaking conditions, and the impacts these have on both people and planet, are a clear consequence of the warming of the climate system,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, in a statement. (These are the 25 worst cities to live as global warming gets worse.)

In the United States, more than 6,500 daily heat records have so far broken during the scorching summer. As of Sept. 6, Phoenix had 52 days of highs of 110 degrees or above. Cities such as Houston; Chicago; Lincoln, Nebraska; Wichita, Kansas; New Orleans; Denver; and Portland, Oregon, to name a few, all reported daily heat records.  

Click here to see the hottest boreal summers over the last 50 years.

California emissions disclosure bill makes political score at climate week

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Source: gageskidmore / Flickr

In today’s edition:

— California Gov. Gavin Newsom, eye on the electorate, kicks off climate week with emissions disclosure score
— Can U.S. auto workers unions survive the arrival of global electric vehicles?
— The malaise in U.S. offshore wind is spreading to Europe, with one wind giant shifting to solar
— Disneyland Paris launches solar world – in its parking lot
— Rockefeller Foundation, built on fossil fuels, announces $1 billion climate investment
— U.S. approaches one million EV sales level in the past year

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a political survivor with a keen eye turned to any trends in the national electorate, kicked off Climate Week in NYC this week with a splash, confirming he’d sign a new bill to dramatically increase climate emissions disclosures and going straight for fossil fuel companies with a new lawsuit.

As tens of thousands of youths gathered in New York to protest oil and gas companies ahead of the United Nations Climate Ambition Summit Wednesday, Newsom stole the headlines with his twin moves on climate.

The lawsuit, filed late last week, would seek an abatement fund from half a dozen oil giants, including ExxonMobil $XOM and Chevron $CVX , to pay for mitigation costs as the state increasingly deals with destructive wildfires and flooding from storms. While not the first to sue the oil giants, the California state case goes further than most in laying the blame for this year’s climate disasters firmly on Big Oil.

The disclosure bill is even more interesting, in that it goes beyond the controversial disclosure mandates being prepared by the Securities and Exchange Commission and due out next month. It affects private companies along with public ones, and because of California’s size would require thousands of companies, including international ones, to report their emissions and climate risks.

Newsom, who wants to make sure he capitalizes on his climate enthusiasm and his youthful looks as the young vote sours on President Joe Biden because of his age, could do a lot more in California to fight climate change, including banning oil drilling for good. But in these two cases he’s shown a sharp eye for a rapidly developing electoral priority.

Tuesday’s subscriber-only insights

As auto strike heats up, EVs have electrified the stakes…

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By David Callaway

The 20 American Companies With the Worst Reputations

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Source: zodebala / iStock Unreleased via Getty Images

It can take years for a company to build a good reputation, and just one misstep to ruin it. Businesses lose a positive image for a variety of  reasons: bad customer service, shoddy merchandise, mistreatment of employees, or company scandals. Once a company is saddled with a bad reputation, it can be difficult to return to the public’s good graces.

To identify the  20 companies with the worst reputations, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the 2023 Axios Harris Poll. Axios and Harris Poll produce the survey to gauge the reputation of the most visible brands in America. This year’s rankings are based on a survey of 16,310 Americans from a nationally representative sample conducted earlier in 2023. Companies’ scores were aggregated from totals in nine categories: Character, trajectory, trust, culture, ethics, citizenship, vision, growth, and products and service.

Seven industry sectors are represented by more than one company on our list. Two groups have three businesses cited: dollar stores and social media companies.

Dollar General, Family Dollar, and Dollar Tree are billion-dollar brands dominating the discount/value retail space, often in low-income neighborhoods. They have also been accused of exploiting low-paid labor. (On the other hand, these 19 executives pay themselves more than $150 million a year.)

Social media companies TikTok, Meta, and Twitter have been embroiled in controversies involving how they use personal user data and misinformation. 

Several oil and gas exploration companies with oil spills and misleading claims about climate change are featured on the list as well, as are several fast-food establishments cited for food quality issues. Also, financial institutions such as Bank of America and Wells Fargo continue to live down scandals from their recent past. (Also see, 20 banks still pouring billions into the fossil fuel industry.)

Fashion businesses Shein and Balenciaga have been in hot water for abusing their workers and running controversial campaigns that exploited children. Meanwhile, instability and corruption in the cryptocurrency sector landed Bitcoin and FTX on the Axios Harris Poll list as well.

Click here to see the companies with the worst reputations.

Ford’s Chargescape grid platform with BMW, plus climate threat to German beer

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Source: Ford Motor Co.

(A native of England, veteran journalist Matthew Diebel has worked at NBC News, Time, USA Today and News Corp., among other organizations. Having spent much of his childhood next to one of the world’s fastest bodies of water, he is particularly interested in tidal energy.)

Good news for those who want to, er, give back

As the owner of a 19-year-old Honda $HMC with nearly 200,000 miles on the clock, it is always in the back of my mind that I might need a replacement in the not-too-distant future. And also — what else would a climate change journalist do? — my attention has turned to EVs, such as the compact ones that will fit into the tight parking spaces of New York City.But I also have fantasy moments. The main one is to have a humongous full-size pickup. And so my eyes widened last year when Ford $F launched its F-150 Lightning truck, a vehicle capable of astounding acceleration and with cavernous carrying capacity. I imagined myself hauling a tricked-out trailer as we headed to vacations in far-flung parts of the nation…

Subscribe to Callaway Climate Insights to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.

By David Callaway

How 2023 Compares to the Hottest Summers Over the Past 50 Years

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Source: Tomwang112 / Getty Images

The torrid summer of 2023 is drawing to a close, and according to the European Union-funded Copernicus Climate Change Service, the planet had its hottest three months ever. It was the hottest August on record (global mean surface air temperature), and the second-hottest month ever after July 2023. (Here are the hottest inhabited places on Earth.)

To identify the hottest summers on Earth over the last 50 years, 24/7 Wall st. reviewed data on the average temperature in August for each year between 1940 and Aug. 31, 2023 from the Copernicus Climate Change Service. The anomaly — the degree by which each average temperature in August differs from historically normal temperatures between 1991 and 2020 — also came from the Copernicus Climate Change Service. 

The June-to-August season for 2023 was the warmest on record worldwide, with an average temperature of 16.77°C (62.1 Fahrenheit), 0.66°C above average. The hottest 10 summers have all occurred over the past 10 years.

The Copernicus group said August is estimated to have been around 1.5°C warmer than the pre-industrial average for 1850-1900. The 1.5°C mark is considered a critical threshold and once crossed, the effects of climate change are expected to become more severe. August recorded the highest global monthly average sea-surface temperatures of 20.98°C, or 69.7 Fahrenheit. The period from January to August 2023 is the second warmest on record after 2016, when a warming El Niño event occurred.

“What we are observing, not only new extremes but the persistence of these record-breaking conditions, and the impacts these have on both people and planet, are a clear consequence of the warming of the climate system,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, in a statement. (These are the 25 worst cities to live as global warming gets worse.)

In the United States, more than 6,500 daily heat records have so far broken during the scorching summer. As of Sept. 6, Phoenix had 52 days of highs of 110 degrees or above. Cities such as Houston; Chicago; Lincoln, Nebraska; Wichita, Kansas; New Orleans; Denver; and Portland, Oregon, to name a few, all reported daily heat records.  

Click here to see the hottest boreal summers over the last 50 years.

How to find a mutual fund that’s truly climate friendly

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Source: R_Berthiaume / iStock via Getty Images

(Mark Hulbert, an author and longtime investment columnist, is the founder of the Hulbert Financial Digest; his Hulbert Ratings audits investment newsletter returns.)

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (Callaway Climate Insights) — Should a mutual fund manager be labeled “climate friendly” for investing in Tesla $TSLA ?

The answer turns out to be surprisingly complicated. On the one hand, since Tesla is doing so much to reduce fossil fuel use, you could easily argue that a manager deserves climate-friendly credit for investing in the company’s stock. On the other hand, S&P 500 index funds also invest in Tesla, and it doesn’t seem right to call a passive index fund “climate friendly” just because Tesla is in that index.

A new study proposes an answer that is conceptually simple but quite difficult to actually calculate: Measure the extent to which a portfolio deviates from what it would have held independent of ESG. …

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By David Callaway

This City Emits the Most Carbon Dioxide on Earth

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Source: Sean Pavone / iStock via Getty Images

The Biden administration is investing $1.2 billions to develop giant machines to suck the carbon dioxide from the Earth’s atmosphere. It remains to be seen if these machines, which are based on a relatively new technology, will have the effects needed to reverse the climate change trend in the last few years. Even as governments and citizens around the world become more conscious of climate change, global CO2 levels continue to hit all-time highs every year, including last year.

Carbon dioxide is an acidic colorless gas. Because it is soluble in water, it can be found in a number of liquids which include oil and natural gas. It is also a greenhouse gas found in the Earth’s atmosphere. Its concentration has increased over time because of, primarily, the burning of fossil fuels. (See how global warming is affecting every state.)

Because humanity has been slow to address climate with the urgency it requires, it is difficult to know how well currently revised plans and good intentions will play out. The best and most grounded national and municipal plans provide for close monitoring and plan revisions, however, allowing for the measuring of progress and the kind of reality check crucial to actual success.

To identify the city with the worst CO2 emissions in the world, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed Nangini, C et al. (2019): “A global dataset of CO2 emissions and ancillary data related to emissions for 343 cities,” published in 2017 and available through data publisher Pangaea. Emissions data were collected in each of the cities on this list between the years of 2011 and 2017, in each case the most recent year for which CO2 emissions data is available.

Emissions figures from transport, industrial, waste, and local power plants within city boundaries, as well as emissions (when available) from grid-supplied energy used by cities and produced by power plants outside city boundaries, were also obtained from the study.

The city with the worst CO2 emissions is Tokyo, Japan. Here are the details:

> Total emissions in 2014: 70.13 million tons of CO2 equivalent
> Transport, industrial, waste, and local power plants: 27.61 million tons of CO2 equivalent — #6 most in study
> Grid-supplied energy produced outside the city boundary: 42.52 million tons of CO2 equivalent — #1 most in study
> Population in 2014: 13.5 million

In its climate strategies, Tokyo does not differ greatly from other megacities, struggling more with implementation than with goal setting, but it is making headway on a transportation program that is more novel than most. The city promotes the use of hydrogen fueled vehicles, for which water is the sole byproduct. As of last year, Tokyo had installed 19 hydrogen fueling stations and was employing 70 fuel cell busses.

The research site Sciencing describes the role of carbon dioxide in greenhouse gas emissions:

“Carbon dioxide contributes to air pollution in its role in the greenhouse effect. Carbon dioxide traps radiation at ground level, creating ground-level ozone. This atmospheric layer prevents the earth from cooling at night.”

The UN recently sounded the alarm about the immediate imperative to take action to reduce the emission of heat trapping gases, with the Secretary General calling the report a “code red for humanity.” While it is now too late to reverse climate change, governments can still slow its pace and work to avoid increasingly more devastating consequences.

Countries around the world are revising their climate action plans in light of frightening new data, tightening their emission goals and reinvigorating their energy greening and efficiency programs. Most have set a target of either 80% reduction or net zero carbon emissions by 2050, but, still, most are not on track to meet those goals, as their governments struggle with economic realities and lack of momentum.

Click here to see the cities that emit the most carbon dioxide in the world

How Idalia Ranks Among the Most Powerful Hurricanes of All Time

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Source: Joe Raedle / Getty Images News via Getty Images

Hurricane Idalia made landfall close to Keaton Beach on Florida’s Gulf Coast yesterday. It briefly was upgraded to a Category 4 hurricane before being downgraded back to Category 3. More than 200,000 Floridians and nearly 300,000 Georgians are without power as Idalia, now a tropical storm, moves out into the Atlantic. At landfall, the storm had maximum sustained winds of 125 mph and a central pressure of 949 mb. Those numbers make it not only one of the most powerful hurricanes on record to strike Florida, but one of the worst in American history.  

To determine the most powerful hurricanes of all time, 24/7 Wall St. used data from NOAA dating back to 1851 to rank tropical cyclones based on estimated central pressure at time of landfall for all hurricanes. Hurricanes were ranked according to their minimum pressure in millibars, where one millibar is the equivalent of 100 pascals in pressure. The lower a storm’s minimum pressure, the stronger the storm is. For context, air pressure is 1,013 millibars at sea level. The storms on this list had minimum pressure of 950 millibars or lower.

The frequency of tropical cyclones in a given year is rarely an indication of how intense the hurricanes may be when they make landfall — that is, how destructive they can be. Some of the most powerful storms, like Hurricane Andrew in 1992, for example, hit during one of the slower hurricane seasons of the past several decades. The strength of a hurricane is difficult to accurately predict, and the most intense storms on record vary heavily by decade, deadliness, and destructiveness.

In addition to high winds, hurricanes can batter areas with heavy rainfall, storm surges, and inland flooding. Many of the storms on this list have been the catalyst for some of the worst floods in American history.

Click here to see the most powerful hurricanes of all time
Click here for our detailed findings and methodology

Behind the summer rally in sustainable funds

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Source: milehightraveler / iStock via Getty Images

There’s nothing like a rising tide to float all boats, and for the beleaguered sustainable fund sector, also known unpopularly as ESG funds, this summer’s rally in U.S. stocks and the dollar has certainly played to form.

Sustainable funds are back in the higher rankings of the performance tables. Morgan Stanley released a report this week that the median return on sustainable funds in the first half of this year was 6.9%, vs 3.8% for what it called traditional funds.

But as Mark Hulbert wrote for Callaway Climate Insights last week, not all sustainable funds are alike, or even similar. The same strategy diversity and investment theme confusion that made ESG funds lightning rods for criticism last year when the market turned is still there.

For example, two of the best performing sustainable funds, the Fidelity U.S. Sustainability Index Fund (FITLX) and the Vanguard ESG U.S. Stock ETF (EVGV) are both up 20% year-to-date. Both are front loaded with tech stocks, such as Nvidia $NVDA , Microsoft $MSFT , Alphabet $GOOGL , and even Tesla $TSLA , which have rallied mightily this year as interest rates show signs of peaking and AI fever spreads.

By contrast, the Nuveen ESG Dividend ETF (NUDV), whose top holdings are Home Depot $HD , Bank of America $BAC and Coca-Cola $KO , is up only 2%.

One huge difference between 2020, when ESG ruled the performance tables, and this year is that investors have a much better idea what they are dealing with this year, not only from deeper disclosure about the sustainability focus of major U.S. companies, but the rising risk of climate change itself to certain markets and asset classes.

Sustainability funds are indeed back, but this time we are prepared.

A new investment tactic to reduce oil and gas production

. . . . Are anti-oil activists and investors going about it all wrong? Rather than pressure oil companies to stop producing for customers who will buy their product, investors and activists could pressure the customers, writes Mark Hulbert. Citing a new study from Columbia University’s Jeffrey Gordon, Hulbert examines the idea of attacking the demand side of the equation rather than the supply side. While oil companies naturally don’t want to be told to put themselves out of business, they might react to changing demand by speeding up their renewable transitions. . . .

Read the full column

Thursday’s subscriber insights

How U.S. supply chain snafus have put world’s biggest offshore wind company in crisis

. . . . Turbine titan Ørsted on Wednesday said it may see U.S. asset losses — known as impairments — of $2.3 billion, due to supply chain problems, soaring interest rates and a lack of new tax credits. The company warned it may abandon its American projects due to the challenges. An ill wind blows. Read more here. . . .

Taking notice of what Exxon says about energy in 2050

. . . . One of the big accusations against ExxonMobil in a series of lawsuits from American cities and states is that the company hid its knowledge about how the world was heating up and its part in it. So we might want to take note of what the company is saying now: That the world will fail to curb global warming within the parameters it has set. Read more here. . . .

Editor’s picks: Investing in the clean energy transition; plus, why hurricanes are getting stronger

Why hurricanes are becoming more dangerous

While human-caused global warming may not have an impact on the frequency of hurricanes, there is evidence that it’s making hurricanes stronger and more destructive. A timely report in Yale Climate Connections notes that studies have consistently shown no discernible trend in the global number of tropical cyclones. Yet researchers did find “substantial regional and global increase in the proportion of the strongest hurricanes – category 4 and 5 storms. The authors attribute that increase to global heating of the climate: ‘We conclude that since 1975 there has been a substantial and observable regional and global increase in the proportion of Cat 4-5 hurricanes of 25-30 percent per °C of anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming.’”

Fossil fuel subsidies are hurting the energy transition

After agreeing in 2009 to phase out dirty energy subsidies, G20 nations pumped $1.4 trillion into supporting fossil fuel use in 2022. A report from Context, part of the Thomson-Reuters Foundation, says that money should be redeployed to support a shift into renewables. The report cites analysis from the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) that  shows that G20 governments provided a record $1.4 trillion to subsidize climate-heating fossil fuels in 2022. And a new paper by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said that “adding in the cost of environmental damage from fossil fuels including climate change and local air pollution deaths – which it calls implicit subsidies – pushed up the overall value of fossil fuel subsidies to $7 trillion in 2022, equal to about 7% of global GDP.” Report author Bhasker Tripathi says, ahead of the G20 meeting scheduled for September 9-10 in New Delhi, that while positive for the transition, clean energy subsidies are still dwarfed by the amounts going into fossil fuels.

Does climate change exposure matter to stakeholders?

This work adds to climate finance research by studying stakeholder reactions to climate change exposure in the context of capital structure and product market interactions. The authors of the paper titled Does Climate Change Exposure Matter to Stakeholders? Evidence from the Costs of High Leverage use a sample of 2,547 U.S. firms from 2004 to 2020, and find that climate change exposure intensifies stakeholder-driven costs of high leverage. Overall, the results suggest that highly leveraged firms are vulnerable to climate change shocks, and subject to stricter scrutiny from their stakeholders. Authors: Sadok El Ghoul, University of Alberta – Campus Saint-Jean; Omrane Guedhami, University of South Carolina – Moore School of Business; Huan Kuang, Bryant University; Ying Zheng, Bryant University

Words to live by . . . .

“That this blue exists makes my life a remarkable one, just to have seen it. To have seen such beautiful things. To find oneself placed in their midst. Choiceless.” — Maggie Nelson.

By David Callaway

How Hurricane Idalia Compares to Last 25 Most Destructive Named Storms to Hit Gulf Coast

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Source: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

As Hurricane Idalia rocks Florida’s Gulf Coast with heavy rains and sustained winds over 100 mph, over a dozen counties are under mandatory evacuation orders. While Idalia briefly reached Category 4 status with winds over 131 mph, it hit land as a Category 3 storm and is the most powerful hurricane to make landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region in 125 years. (As of 2022, these are the worst hurricanes on record.)

The Gulf Coast is no stranger to hurricanes. To determine how Idalia compares to the last 32 most destructive storms to hit the region, 24/7 Wall St. consulted the National Weather Service’s Mobile/Pensacola forecast office to gather a list of major storms that impacted the Mobile/Pensacola County Warning Area from 2000 to present. The list is not exhaustive.

Four of the hurricanes to hit the Gulf Coast since 2000 have reached Category 5 status — the strongest tropical cyclones with winds reaching at least 157 mph. Some, however, including Hurricane Katrina that devastated New Orleans in 2005, had calmed to lower wind speeds before reaching land. Although Katrina had fallen from a Category 5 storm to Category 3 by the time it made landfall, it was nevertheless one of the most devastating hurricanes in U.S. history.

Other extremely costly hurricanes in the Gulf include Ian in 2022, Ida in 2021, Michael in 2018, and Irma in 2017. That some of the costliest hurricanes ever have occurred in the last decade is a sign that climate change is likely causing more intense cyclones. These are U.S. cities where hurricanes would cause the most damage.

Click here to see how Hurricane Idalia compares to last 25 most destructive named Storms to hit Gulf Coast.

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