“Not explosive” due to some dry air to the west, but Debby strengthening and grinding on toward an landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region.Already impacts from outer bands, but the big story is going to be the rains that a slow, dawdling storm is going to bring to North Florida, Ge … | Continue reading
Tropical Depression 4 looks like it will become Hurricane Debby Saturday or Sunday, and impact Florida north of Tampa as maybe a Cat 1.Then it gets interesting. It crosses Florida and heads out over water again, according to models, but then the storm stalls or meanders. Recent h … | Continue reading
NPR: European officials have set a goal to cut greenhouse gas emissions by more than half by 2030, as scientists say Europe has become the fastest-warming continent on the planet. But the EU has weakened or shelved some proposedagricultural policies as a concession to protesting … | Continue reading
Climate deniers tell us we will simply “adapt” to changes in climate. But when our built infrastructure, as well as the financial infrastructure that props it up, is predicated on predictable climate of the 20th century, which no longer exists, well, that’s a problem.So we need t … | Continue reading
Great report, features Uber Glacier expert Mauri Pelto, and Jennifer Francis. Mauri took me to my first glacier in the Cascades more than a decade ago, and of course, readers of this blog will be familiar with Dr Francis who is a leader in mapping the effects of ice loss on the a … | Continue reading
Hard to fool-proof climate adaptation when there are so damn many fools out there. See above.Below, in the best of conditions, California’s ongoing Park fire would have been difficult to hedge against. Even those who went thru previous fires and took precautions were taken off gu … | Continue reading
Michael Lowry in Eye on the Tropics: On Thursday, the National Hurricane Center designated the strong tropical disturbance now moving across eastern Cuba Invest 97L, a procedural move that allowed NHC to begin running a specialized suite of computer models to better interpret its … | Continue reading
As the El Nino cycle fades, the streak of global temperature records comes to an end. But don’t be fooled. We have taken yet another step-change in global temperatures, from which we cannot back down without a drawdown of heat trapping gases. Zeke Hausfather in the Climate Brink: … | Continue reading
Guardian: Wind turbines and solar panels have overtaken fossil fuels to generate 30% of the European Union’s electricity in the first half of the year, a report has found. Power generation from burning coal, oil and gas fell 17% in the first six months of 2024 compared with the s … | Continue reading
Predictably unpredictable nuclear outages are regularly irregular occurrences, for a variety of reasons.Recent Texas event showed how new batteries can be a hedge against sudden wild cards. From France, another example of heat waves playing havoc with power plant cooling systems. … | Continue reading
People have been talking about the potential for EVs to be flexible, rolling batteries that can power homes during blackouts, but also become part of the larger grid on a daily, even hourly basis, when plugged in. (explainer above)Important trial going on in Maryland. Complete ga … | Continue reading
More reasons to mask up. PBS: Wildfire smoke may be worse for brain health than other types of air pollution, according to new research linking it to an increased risk of dementia. The findings, reported Monday at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Philadelph … | Continue reading
CNN: When President Joe Biden’s massive climate bill passed Congress in 2022, Republican Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina complained it was boondoggle. The Inflation Reduction Act, which contained the largest climate investment in US history, would “throw money at woke clima … | Continue reading
They’re just too vested. Recent history shows that paranoid science deniers would rather die alone on a ventilator than get a freakin’ vaccine. What made anyone think they could process climate reality?We’ll have to wait for the old ones to die, or, perhaps for Gen Z to step it u … | Continue reading
It was only a few years ago people were still saying “Vermont is a climate haven”. It’s starting to look like the pleasant river valleys of Vermont may be uninhabitable, uninsurable death traps in a climate changed world.Where do you go if you’re a refugee from Vermont? CNN: Emer … | Continue reading
Heavier than usual rains overwhelming Paris Storm sewers, leading to high E. Coli counts in the Seine, where officials gambled they would be able to hold the swimming leg of the Triathlon.Situation on hold. Associated Press: Olympics organizers are banking on the sun and scorchin … | Continue reading
Last night a quickly organized group called “White Dudes for Harris” staged a zoom call which was attended by almost 200,000, and raised 4 million dollars for presumed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. The group was quickly suspended by Elon Musk’s “X” media platform, and althoug … | Continue reading
Pretty brazen. Hard to blame wind turbines for the extended Houston blackouts following Cat 1 Hurricane Beryl’s pass over the city. The local utility, Centerpoint, has been defending itself against charges that it pays more attention to building new generators, for which it is we … | Continue reading
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Discussion here includes reference to “RTOs” – Regional Transmission Organizations, which are Transmission system operators, similar to system operators like MISO, PJM, or CAISO, which regulate transmission over large areas or several states. Arie Pesko, Director of the Electrici … | Continue reading
Above, the gigantic Park fire in California is burning close to the same area, Paradise, that was famously destroyed 6 years ago in another disaster, the Camp fire. Residents have continued to build in areas vulnerable to increasing massive disasters. Insurers taking a beating. W … | Continue reading
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E&ENews: Dave Banks, a former Trump climate adviser, said the document would serve more as a wishlist for past and future officials than a reflection of the president’s own priorities. “I think the big question is, are the people who wrote it going to be back in?” he said. “And I … | Continue reading
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Jeff Berardelli with a half hour discussion of how climate extremes are driving inflation – about half an hour. Meanwhile, Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis is blaming the Biden administration for Florida’s home insurance woes. Associated Press: Floyd County keeps fl … | Continue reading
Bloomberg: By now, most of us understand that extreme heat is bad for our health, making our hearts, lungs, kidneys and other organs work much harder. But too often we overlook the quieter, less obvious toll heat takes on another vital organ: our brain. Extreme heat doesn’t just … | Continue reading
New York Times: John Mayall, the pioneering British bandleader whose mid-1960s blues ensembles served as incubators for some of the biggest stars of rock’s golden era, died on Monday. He was 90. The death was confirmed in a statement on Mr. Mayall’s official Facebook page. The st … | Continue reading
Not a coincidence that Climate Denial has gravitated to the same kind of techniques used historically by authoritarian dictators. Fossil fuel oligarchs are by nature authoritarians.Many of the world’s most brutal dictatorships are propped up and fueled by fossil fuel extraction, … | Continue reading
Science Moms is a new group spearheaded by a core of climate scientist/communicators who are also Moms, including friend of the blog Katharine Hayhoe. They’ve got some pretty devastating ads that bring home in very emotional terms what we are losing, right now. Things that make l … | Continue reading
Amy Westervelt in Drilled: One thing I think is important to note is that once again we see that those pushing against climate action are not just aligned with those attacking trans rights, racial justice, labor rights and reproductive rights, but are in the same organizations, b … | Continue reading
Most feared accident at a nuclear plant is the LOCA (Loss of Coolant Accident) – it’s what happened at Three Mile Island, and at Fukushima. New Chinese design tested in real life demonstration and passed – cooling down completely on its own, so we’re told, after shut down of cool … | Continue reading
“We carry the economy on our backs”. Truckers have suffered years of abuse and increasing take-aways from the Oil Barons in Texas’ Permian Basin.Some of them are now trying to organize for a better deal. It’s not a climate story – but it is a story about the injustice that fossil … | Continue reading
This morning, a large nuclear unit tripped instantly offline in Texas.The graph above shows what that looks like on the ERCOT grid.The grid held up, but it shows how every energy source presents its own challenges to grid operators. This is not to beat up on nuclear plants, which … | Continue reading
“Why don’t we just put solar on rooftops and parking lots?”You hear this question a lot – the presumption is usually that if we just covered all available urban space with solar panels, we’d solve our energy problem – and that’s simply wrong, for a lot of reasons. One flavor of t … | Continue reading
These effin’ guys. Just jonesing for that race war they are sure is just one small catastrophe away.In what universe does “The lights went out. I think I’ll go kill whitey” make sense?Trump’s base, man. One more reason we need a distributed energy grid and massive battery storage … | Continue reading
A Senior Hurricane specialist writes: An alternative metric to storm count is the Power Dissipation Index (PDI), just the sum of the maximum surface winds cubed over the lifetime of each storm. This is a measure of the kinetic energy dissipated by each storm over its life. The (a … | Continue reading
US News: LONDON (Reuters) – Sunday, July 21 was the hottest day ever recorded globally, according to preliminary data from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. The global average surface air temperature on Sunday reached 17.09 degrees Celsius (62.76 degrees Fah … | Continue reading
Offered without comment. USAToday: Tesla CEO Elon Musk said his estranged transgender daughter was “killed” by the “woke mind virus” after he was tricked into agreeing to gender-affirming care procedures. In an interview with psychologist and conservative commentator Dr. Jordan P … | Continue reading
Another Houston update. Even before the weather disasters of the last 2 months, a poll of Houstonians found that 57 percent were thinking of relocating, and in large part due to the extreme weather events, and poor community response. | Continue reading
William S Becker in The Hill: With less than four months to go until the presidential election, the economy is delivering some good news. At this point two years ago, inflation was above 9 percent. Last month, it dipped to 3 percent, while wages continued to grow. The bad news is … | Continue reading
So, what’s up with the Tesla board, that they allow this to keep killing their brand? Quartz: The electric vehicle maker’s favorability among Democrats has dropped to 16% as of July 16, down 20 percentage points from January, Yahoo Finance reports, citing new data from analytics … | Continue reading
Joe Biden has been the best President, all in all, of my lifetime. Last night, he confirmed my estimations of him, by dropping out of the race, an act of Patriotism as is seldom seen the political arena. He threw his support behind Vice President Kamala Harris. Major Democratic i … | Continue reading
Leiria Economica: According to a new study of the Greenland ice sheet, the climate model E3SM v.2 may do just that.overestimation of whitenessa basic property of ice. Which affects the speed of its dissolution. and thus rising ocean levels Scientists need to make predictions abou … | Continue reading
PBS interviews with storm chasers as well as NOAA researchers on this season’s historic spate of tornadoes. A reminder that Project 2025 seeks to break up and disperse NOAA and the National Weather Service, selling off America’s scientific Crown Jewels for parts – because in thei … | Continue reading
Increased turbulence, passengers boiling on the tarmac, cancelled and diverted flights, windows blowing out – now this. NPR: Summer temperatures across the U.S. are so high that they’ve created problems at cruising altitude, causing some overheated beverages to burst midair on a … | Continue reading