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The Club PUBlication 01/27/2025

1/27/2025

A warmer ocean signals extreme weather for state
By GREG STANLEY The Minnesota Star Tribune

RUSHING WATER ROARED OVER AND AROUND RAPIDAM DAM NEAR MANKATO DURING DAMAGING FLOODS LAST JUNE, THE RAINIEST MONTH ON RECORD FOR MINNESOTA. THE YEAR ENDED WITH THE STATE'S WARMEST RECORDED FALL..

Another year of extreme weather and record-breaking warmth in Minnesota has scientists again pointing to the oceans as the source.

For the seventh straight year, the world's oceans set a heat record in 2024, according to a study published this month by an international team of scientists. That includes temperatures at the surface, which inched above the prior record set in 2023. And it includes all the heat stored in the water below 6,500 feet (2,000 meters), which soared past previous records.

The weather in the Upper Midwest typically travels in from the West Coast. So what happens in the Pacific Ocean is especially important to Minnesota, said John Abraham, a thermal science expert at the University of St. Thomas and one of the lead scientists of the study.

"That's because the oceans transfer heat and humidity to the atmosphere, and heat and humidity are what create our weather and our extreme weather," he said.

Minnesota's climate in 2024 was one of extremes.

It began with thawed lakes and no snow across the state during the warmest January to February stretch in more than 130 years of recorded data, according to the Minnesota Climate Offi ce. It continued with damaging floods during the deluges in June, which ended as the fifth rainiest month in recorded state history. It wrapped up with the warmest fall, September through November, the state has ever recorded.

Warming winters over the past decade have had a lasting impact on moose, ticks, deer and other wildlife. The lack of ice plus warmer water has increased the likelihood of algae blooms and fish kills in the state's lakes.

Climate change and the rising weather extremes across the globe are really the story of warming oceans, Abraham said.

Carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases in the air keep heat from the sun from escaping to space, reflecting it back to the earth.

A small part of that excess heat warms the air, he said. Another small portion melts polar ice and snow. The vast majority of it reflects into ocean water, steadily warming it.

The world's oceans were about 1 degree Fahrenheit hotter in 2024 than they were over the 30-year average of 1981 to 2010.

It's difficult to comprehend how much energy it took to raise the temperature of the world's oceans that much.

Imagine a time you were frustrated watching a pot of water boil, Abraham said. But now picture that pot is 1.25 miles deep and spans 70% of the Earth's surface.

It took 16 zettajoules of energy just to raise temperatures above what they were in 2023, which itself was a record year, the study found. A zettajoule is a single joule — one unit of energy — times 10 to the 21st power, or a joule with 21 zeros after it. The entire world uses about half of a zettajoule a year in its energy systems.

The excess energy from the heat in the oceans compared to 2023 would be enough to power the world's economies until 2057. It's enough to boil more than 2 billion Olympicsized swimming pools, Abraham said. It's the equivalent of setting off eight atomic bombs every second of every day for a year, he said. And 2023 was already a record year, with a heat content that was 15 zettajoules higher than it was in 2022.

That excess energy works its way into the atmosphere and supercharges weather systems around the world.

Ocean temperatures have been rising so consistently that Abraham believes records likely will continue to be broken in most years for the foreseeable future.

The only answer, he said, is to drastically cut the release of greenhouse gases.

The falling costs of renewable energy production over the past 20 years are encouraging, he said.

"It used to be that solar panels on a house was a statement of ethics, but now it's really a statement of prudence," he said.

"I have solar panels, and now in the summer months I get a check from Xcel. When you drive down to Worthington and southern Minnesota there are wind turbines as far as you can see." It's the economics that give him hope, Abraham said.

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The Club PUBlication 01/20/2025

1/20/2025

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Molson Coors set to close historic Chippewa Falls facility Friday;
56 people will lose jobs
By BROOKS JOHNSON The Minnesota Star Tribune

MOLSON COORS PLANS TO MOVE IT'S LEINENKUGEL'S BREWING OPERATIONS FROM CHIPPEWA FALLS TO MILWAUKEE. THE LEINIE LODGE WILL REMAIN OPEN BUT THE 157 YEAR OLD PLANT WILL CLOSE FRIDAY JAN 17, 2024,

Unless the CEO of the second-largest beer company in the country has a sudden change of heart, Wisconsin's historic Leinenkugel's brewery in Chippewa Falls will close Friday, Jan 18 and Leinie's brewing operations will move to Milwaukee.

Former brewery presidents Jake and Dick Leinenkugel offered to buy back the brewery this month from Molson Coors, saying in a statement on the social media site LinkedIn they "are committed to exploring every avenue to preserve this vital part of [their] history."

Molson Coors CEO Gavin Hattersley reportedly declined but told the family the company is "fully committed to the Leinenkugel's brand."
The Leinenkugel brothers said in a statement this week "true commitment must include preserving the Chippewa Falls brewery and the livelihoods of those who depend on it." Fifty-six people will lose their jobs when the brewery closes Friday.

"We remain optimistic that Molson Coors' leadership will reconsider our proposal and engage in meaningful discussions about safeguarding this important part of our heritage," the Leinenkugels wrote.

The Chicago-based brewing giant, which has owned Leinenkugel's since 1988, is centralizing beer production following the end of a large contract brewing agreement. Molson Coors had been brewing Pabst Blue Ribbon until the end of December; Anheuser-Busch now makes that beer, also called PBR.

Molson Coors will continue brewing Leinenkugel's at an upgraded facility in Milwaukee.

"Leinenkugel's has been an important part of our company for nearly 40 years, and that's not changing," Molson Coors said in a statement. "While the decision to move brewing to Milwaukee was a challenging one, we are committed to maintaining a strong presence in Chippewa Falls."

The Leinie Lodge and pilot plant will remain open as the main 157-year old brewing facility, still clad with some original bricks, closes.

"We're incredibly proud of Leinie's, the many people in Chippewa Falls who built this brand into what it is today and what it will continue to be for years to come — a true Wisconsin beer beloved by people across the country," Molson Coors said.

Jake and Dick Leinenkugel said in the statement they first offered Molson Coors a nondisclosure agreement to kick off conversations about "acquiring the Chippewa Falls brewery, with the goal of maintaining its operations under Leinenkugel family leadership."
When Molson Coors rebuffed the offer, the brothers reiterated their "willingness to discuss acquiring the brewery's assets and preserving its operations in Chippewa Falls," per the statement.

The second offer went unanswered.

"We continue to hope for a resolution that honors our history and secures the future of brewing in Chippewa Falls."
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The Club PUBlication 01/13/2025

1/13/2025

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2024 was the hottest year on record:
Get ready for more
A cooling La Niña could offset temps, but it’s likely to be short-lived.
By CHICO HARLAN, SCOTT DANCE and BEN NOLL The Washington Post

A volunteer pours water over a mans head in an attempt to cool him off during a hot day earlier in 2024 in Karachi, Pakistan.

This is a climate era when even the most ferocious records are bound to be broken.

Scientists in Europe on Friday confirmed that 2024 had been the hottest year on record — and the first to surpass a dangerous warming threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) that nations had pledged not to cross.

But even as experts described the year as unprecedented, they acknowledged that it would ultimately become just one more marker in an upward warming trajectory causing havoc on a growing scale.

"As long as people keep burning fossil fuels, this will only get worse," said Friederike Otto, who leads a scientific group, World Weather Attribution, that assesses the role of climate change in amplifying extreme weather events.

In 2024, according to data from the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service, temperatures reached 1.6 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. Aside from Australia and Antarctica, every continent experienced its warmest year on record. So too did sizable parts of the ocean.

It is the second consecutive year in which the world has set a temperature record. In 2023, the arrival of El Nino — a natural phenomenon that is known to boost global temperatures — brought a jolt of warming much earlier than scientists had expected, with a temperature 1.48 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. Then in 2024, temperatures predictably remained elevated in the wake of the fading El Ni'no, and scientists are debating what other factors may have contributed to the margin of record warmth.

Projections suggest that 2025 might not be as hot as the past two years but that it will probably rank in the top five warmest years on record. Despite the year-to-year fluctuations, the general trend is obvious, as is the cause: the emission of greenhouse gases, primarily from fossil fuels. Each of humanity's 10 hottest years have come over the past decade. At the time, 2016 was seen as an unprecedented scorcher — what one climate scientist called a "wake-up call." Just nine years later, 2016 is now looking "decidedly cool," said Adam Scaife, the head of long-range prediction at Britain's Met Office.

In 2024, so many heat-related events caused death and damage that it was hard to keep up.

It was a year in which an estimated 1,300 religious pilgrims died under 120-degree Saudi Arabian heat. It was a year when a smoke plume stretched diagonally across nearly all of wildfire-stricken South America, when heat-exhausted howler monkeys fell dead out of trees in Mexico, and when the hottest place on Earth — California's Death Valley — registered its hottest month ever.

Will the heat continue?
Though the world broke the 1.5-degree Celsius threshold in 2024, that doesn't mean the planet has formally breached the most ambitious target set in the Paris agreement. It will take a much longer span for scientists to make that determination.

Right now, cool water in the equatorial Pacific signals that La Niña has developed. But it is expected to be short-lived.

New climate model projections show the cool water in the Pacific eroding and giving way to warmer-than-average seas by the middle part of 2025.

Meanwhile, warmer-than-average seas are predicted to continue planet wide. This suggests that the planet will have little, if any, reprieve from record warmth in the months ahead.

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The Club PUBlication 01/27/2025

A warmer ocean signals extreme weather for stateBy GREG STANLEY The Minnesota Star Tribune

The Club PUBlication 01/20/2025

Molson Coors set to close historic Chippewa Falls facility Friday; 56 people will lose jobsBy BROOKS JOHNSON The Minnesota Star Tribune

The Club PUBlication 01/13/2025

2024 was the hottest year on record:Get ready for moreA cooling La Niña could offset temps, but it’s likely to be short-lived.By CHICO HARLAN, SCOTT DANCE and BEN NOLL The Washington Post

Archives

A warmer ocean signals extreme weather for state
By GREG STANLEY The Minnesota Star Tribune

Molson Coors set to close historic Chippewa Falls facility Friday;
56 people will lose jobs
By BROOKS JOHNSON The Minnesota Star Tribune

2024 was the hottest year on record:
Get ready for more
A cooling La Niña could offset temps, but it’s likely to be short-lived.
By CHICO HARLAN, SCOTT DANCE and BEN NOLL The Washington Post