Boiling Point: Climate change is wreaking havoc on the power grid in ways you never knew (excerpts): LA Times

 Pics from this blog

"There’s been a lot of debate about the extent to which climate change is actually to blame. Officials pointed out that four of California’s five hottest August days in the last 35 years came this past August; others have noted that the state experienced hotter days and higher overall peak electricity demand during a July 2006 heat storm that did not lead to rolling blackouts.

Here’s what’s not in dispute: As the planet gets hotter, largely because of the burning of fossil fuels, the number of blackouts caused by extreme weather is on the rise, in California and across the country.

The nonprofit research organization Climate Central analyzed federal data and released a report last month finding that hurricanes, wildfires, heat storms and other extreme weather events caused 67% more power outages in the United States during the decade ending in 2019 than they did during the previous decade"

........

"Climate change isn’t the only reason blackouts are on the rise. Roshi Nateghi, an industrial engineering professor at Purdue University, told me rapid urbanization — more people moving to cities — has put greater strains on aging infrastructure. And the data used by Climate Central may overstate the increase in weather-driven outages, since reporting requirements for utilities have gotten more stringent over time.

But there’s no question climate change is playing a role, and the effects will only get worse, Nateghi said.

“A big part of it is that our grid is vulnerable to severe weather and climate events,” she said. “And we have been seeing an increase in intensity and frequency of extreme events.”

 

Why is extreme weather such a problem for the electric grid? Powerful winds can knock down utility poles. Intense rains can flood substations. Ice can accumulate on wires during winter storms. Wildfires can knock out power lines — or utility companies can be forced to shut down lines to avoid igniting fires. High temperatures can cause fossil-fueled power plants to produce less electricity, which actually happened with California’s natural gas fleet in August."

Go to LA Times story 

Related:  I’m an American Climate Emigrant (excerpts): Sierra

I’m an American Climate Emigrant (excerpts): Sierra

 "My family moved northward for many reasons—climate chaos was among them

By Jason Mark | Oct 12 2020

We were only a few hours’ drive north of the California-Oregon border when I began to feel the pangs of survivor’s guilt. It was mid-August, and the news from back home was no good. We had busted out of the San Francisco Bay Area just as the heat wave began to sizzle California, and as we drove north through wine country, the temperature gauge in our car said it was 108 degrees outside. Days later, a freak electric storm swung across the state, sparking hundreds of fires. Some of our favorite places were burning: the forested mountains around Santa Cruz and the oak woodlands west of Davis, where we had spent many summer afternoons lounging on the banks of Putah Creek. Smoke was already beginning to choke our friends and former neighbors. “You got out just in time,” a buddy texted. “California is imploding.”

The Oregon coast felt, at that time, like a whole new world. As we threaded our way up Highway 1, the sky was cool and gray, and by evening a thick fog had turned into a spitting rain. The smoke and fires might as well have been on another planet. The rain was a relief, but I couldn’t shake a certain shame. I felt bad about our good fortune, about leaving our community behind to suffer.

I had lived in California for more than 20 years, and my family’s long-planned departure was supposed to be an adventure of sorts, an opportunity to start a new life for ourselves in the Pacific Northwest. For months, we had been looking forward to the move with a mix of trepidation and excitement, the swirl of emotions common to any emigrant: nostalgia for the life we had built, spiked with the thrill of surprising horizons. But now, as grim news piled up in our newsfeeds, the move had taken on a sour taste.

We weren’t merely heading toward a new home in another state. With a disaster unfolding behind us, we were fleeing."

Go to the Sierra article 

 

climate change refugees,climate refugees,#California,#USA,climate fires,floods,tidal flooding,

Body count: How climate change is killing us: Paddy Manning's Book

"True stories of loss and courage from people at the frontlines of Australia's worst climate-fuelled disasters - bushfire, heatwaves, flash-floods, disease outbreaks and now the latest in a new age of pandemics. 

What are the health risks of climate change, why weren't we warned and what are Australian governments doing about it?"

   About The Book

"Suddenly, when the country caught fire, people realised what the government has not: that climate change is killing us.

But climate deaths didn’t start in 2019. Medical officers have been warning of a health emergency as temperatures rise for years, and for at least a decade Australians have been dying from the plagues of climate change – from heat, flood, disease, smoke. And now, pandemic.

In this detailed, considered, compassionate book, Paddy Manning paints us the big picture. He revisits some headline events which might have faded in our memory – the Brisbane Floods of 2011; Melbourne’s thunderstorm asthma fatalities of 2016 – and brings to our attention less well-publicised killers: the soil-borne diseases that amplify after a flood; the fact that heat itself has killed more people than all other catastrophes put together. In each case, he has interviewed scientists to explore the link to climate change and asks how – indeed, whether – we can better prepare ourselves in the future.

Most importantly, Manning has spoken to survivors and the families of victims, creating a monument to those we have already lost. Donna Rice and her 13-year-old son Jordan. Alison Tenner. The Buchanan family. These are stories of humans at their most vulnerable, and also often at their best. In extremis, people often act to save their loved ones above themselves. As Body Count shows, we are now all in extremis, and it is time to act.

 

Climate Fires in the USA

Respected journalist Paddy Manning tells these stories of tragedy and loss, heroism and resilience, in a book that is both monument and warning.

‘A climate emergency tour de force.' Dr Bob Brown

'True stories of heroism and unimaginable loss...Body Count is a brilliant exposition of why we must deal with the climate problem now.' Ross Garnaut

'Climate change kills. … Through the accounts of people who have lost so much, Paddy Manning drives home the deeply personal impact of climate change. Governments continue to ignore the impact on climate change on human health at OUR peril. The future of our planet and our future generations depends on everyone playing their part, today.' Professor Kerryn Phelps

'A stunningly powerful call to political leaders everywhere who hear the warnings of the devastating impacts of climate change on health but fail to act.' Dr Helen Haines, independent member for Indi

‘Moving stories of heroic courage and tragic loss. A pause to reflect on the lives lost and how urgently we need change.’ David Pocock, former Wallabies captain"

To order the book 

 

Children Face Unique Health Threats Due To Climate Change

Related: How Climate Migration Will Reshape America Millions will be displaced. Where will they go? (excerpt) : NYT Magazine

#climate crisis, #climateemergency, #Australia, #California, Oregon, #climatefires, #USA, smoke, infectious diseases, #foodsecurity, water security, #heatwaves,  

'Australia in January, California in August': Aussies watch on in horror as wildfires ravage US west coast (excerpt): SBS

Australia and Oregon

Former NSW fire chief Greg Mullins says the wildfires ravaging the US are a 'direct reflection' of what happened in Australia last summer, and serve as another 'wake up call' to pay attention to climate change.

Fires in Australia (Pic from this blog)

Apocalyptic orange skies, mass evacuations, people fleeing blazes near the water, and fires visible from satellites.

With up to 100 wildfires burning across multiple states on the US west coast, the situation is is eerily reminiscent of Australia’s deadly bushfire event of 2019-20.

Ross Bradstock is from the Centre for Environmental Risk Management of Bushfires at the University of Wollongong. He says what Australia went through last summer "is repeating itself in places like California". 

“We’re seeing something similar play out over there as to what played out in our last season in terms of unprecedented fires, unprecedented area burnt, unprecedented drought and heat,” he told SBS News.

San Francisco, Pic from SBS story

Former NSW Fire and Rescue Commissioner Greg Mullins has helped to fight fires in California several times since the 1990s. 

He agrees the current wildfires are "a direct reflection" of what Australia faced.

"It's unprecedented," Mr Mullins told SBS News.

"The temperatures they're getting - you know, 49.4 (degrees) in the eastern suburbs of Los Angeles - nothing has ever come close." .................


Go to complete article By Rashida Yosufzai, Jodie Stephens

Related: Washington governor blames climate change for fires (excerpt): abc news

 Fires near Sydney, Pic from this blog

Washington governor blames climate change for fires (excerpt): abc news

Washington Gov_ Jay Inslee says the fires devastating California and the Northwest shouldn’t be called wildfires, but “climate fires.”

Rubble remains from an area destroyed by the Almeda Fire

SEATTLE — Washington Gov. Jay Inslee says the fires devastating California and the Northwest shouldn’t be called wildfires, but “climate fires.”

At a news conference Friday, the Democrat noted that the roughly 980 square miles burned in Washington in just the last five days amounts to the state’s second worst fire season on record, after 2015.

“This is not an act of God,” Inslee said. “This has happened because we have changed the climate of the state of Washington in

wildfire

dramatic ways.”

Inslee ran for the Democratic presidential nomination on a climate platform and said it’s important to fight the fires not just on the ground, but by creating clean-energy jobs and taking other measures to combat climate change.

Scientists have long said that human-caused climate change would result in hotter temperatures and more extreme weather events, such as droughts, that can increase the frequency and intensity of wildfires.

.....................................

2018 Camp Fire California

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Improving weather conditions in California have allowed firefighters to gain ground on wildfires that began as long as three weeks ago.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection says 14,800 firefighters are on the lines of 28 major wildfires burning statewide Friday.

Nineteen people have been killed and thousands of structures, 

including homes, have been destroyed.

Bushfire caused by climate change

Winds that whipped some fires into deadly infernos earlier this week have calmed down and the smoke layer over much of the state is helping to keep temperatures down, although air quality is very bad.

Onshore flow of moist air from the ocean is expected to increase humidity, which helps suppress fire activity." ....................

By

The Associated Press

12 September 2020

Go to complete abc news article

Related:  The Climate Disasters We Ignore Today Will Eventually Come for Us (excerpt): Gizmodo


#bushfires, #wildfire, #California, Oregon, #climate crisis, #climatechange, #jailclimatecriminals,  climate fires,

News outlets continue to ignore climate change in articles about California's record-breaking weather (excerpt): Heated

"Nothing to see here, folks

This long weekend was literal hell for millions in the American West. California, Nevada, Arizona, Oregon, and Washington are suffering from dangerous heat, wildfire and smoke unlike anything they’ve ever seen. 

Californian Wildfires, 2019

Scientists attribute the unprecedented intensity of these events to human-caused climate change. Greenhouse gas emissions have made the atmosphere in these areas much hotter and drier than it used to be. “We’re living in a fundamentally climate-altered world,” MIT Technology Review noted last month, citing a multitude of peer-reviewed research about how climate change exacerbates extreme heat and wildfire. These so-called “compound climate events” are only predicted to get worse if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated. 

Every American should be aware of these basic scientific facts when reading about the devastation of this weekend’s record-breaking extreme weather. But most of the major newspaper stories about the Labor Day Weekend from Hell don’t contain any climate-related information. Why?

Melting Siberian permafrost

Three major newspaper stories. Zero climate mentions.

 

Section A, page 12 of today’s New York Times contains a big story about the unprecedented weather pummeling California. Titled “Extreme Heat Turns State Into a Furnace,” the piece contains more than 1,700 words of devastating detail about how heat, fire, and toxic air are affecting people in the state. But none of those details were about why things are getting so bad. None of those words were “climate change.”

The Associated Press’s article today is similar. Titled “Scorched earth: Record 2 million acres burned in California,” it contains 1,100 words about the weather’s unprecedented nature. It lists several different record-breaking data points, and quotes state officials saying how “unnerving” it is to have broken these records so early in the wildfire season. And yet this article—which will be re-published this morning in newspapers across the country—also does not mention the reason why these records might be happening.

The Washington Post also has an article about unprecedented

climate change-fueled extreme weather on its front page this

News coverage of Hurricane Laura analysed

morning, but it doesn’t mention climate change’s role. It’s about how 50 hikers are trapped inside a shelter within a rapidly-growing 130,000 acre wildfire, unable to be rescued. 

“This is one of the largest and most dangerous fires in the history of Fresno County,” the local fire chief said. “I don’t think everyone understands that.”

Newspapers often ignore basic climate science in extreme weather stories 

 

News outlets like the Times, the Post, and the AP have climate reporting teams. These teams all publish important stories about how the climate crisis fuels extreme weather across the country. The Times in particular has increased its climate coverage substantially in the last few years, according to data from the University of Colorado Boulder."

Go to original, complete Heated article

 Related: Trump and Biden: Little room for climate change in US election (excerpt): DW
 
role of media, journalists, #California, #wildfire, #bushfires, permafrost, hurricanes, cyclones, #jailclimatecriminals,

 

Australia fires: Similar or worse disasters 'will happen again' (excerpt): BBC

Wildfire: Australia should expect "worse" in the years to come

"An inquiry into the recent massive bushfire disaster in Australia has found the country should expect "worse" in the years to come.

 

The review - which looked at New South Wales (NSW), the worst-hit state - made sweeping proposals aimed at better preparing for future fire seasons.

 

The blazes began last August and burned for months, killing 33 people nationally and scorching vast areas.

 

The NSW state government said it would adopt the inquiry's 76 recommendations.

 

The "extreme and extremely unusual" bushfires destroyed 2,476

Fires caused by climate change

houses and 5.5 million hectares of land in that state alone, according to the NSW Bushfire Inquiry report.

 

"It showed us bushfires through forested regions on a scale that we have not seen in Australia in recorded history, and fire behaviour that took even experienced firefighters by surprise."

 

The main causes were a drought which had made the land extremely dry and ready to burn, hot and windy weather, and climate change.

 

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said on Tuesday: "The next fire season is already upon us."

 

As deadly fires rage in the US summer in California, NSW has seen winter blazes this month - though none have posed a significant threat.

What did the report recommend?

Californian wildfires are also caused by climate change

It made far-reaching proposals, including:

• ordering residents in at-risk areas to conduct compulsory land-clearing
• better aerial firefighting strategies, including more water-bombing at night
• drawing on more Aboriginal land management techniques, such as cultural burning
• allowing firefighters to enter private properties to start controlled burns on materials which fuel fires
• improving alert systems for bushfire smoke, and research into its health impacts
• making government agencies more efficient and auditing their progress.

"Ms Berejiklian said: 'We have to accept also that our climate is changing and those who wrote the report acknowledge that.' "

 

Go to BBC article 

 

Related: The Observer view on the climate catastrophe facing Earth : The Guardian

 

 

#firestorms, #bushfires, #wildfire, firefighters, #Australia, #California, #cambio-climatico, #climatecriminals, #criminalesclimáticosdelacárcel, #jailclimatecriminals, #climateaction,  

Lessons From the Frontlines of Global Warming (excerpt): New Republic

"What interviews with flood, wildfire, and drought survivors can teach us about how to live amid the threat of climate change

 

Extreme heat kills

Ronnie Scott lost his wife when she tried to to rescue their dog and cat from floodwaters in West Virginia in 2016. Carole Duncan almost lost her 83-year-old father during Australia’s massive 2019 bushfires, the firefighters finding him just in time. 

KerryAnn Laufer returned home days after the 2019 Kincade Fire in California to find only her fireplace still standing, while Dave Mackey saw nearly every house in his neighborhood on Grand Bahama island washed away, pummeled by raging waters and 200-mile-per-hour winds from Hurricane Dorian.

Storms, wildfires, and other such disasters are getting more common and intense as climate change accelerates. Scott, Duncan, Laufer, and Mackey, who survived these extreme weather events, are among the lucky ones. But each of them found themselves changed by the experience.


What would you do if your house burned down or your neighborhood washed away in a flood? How would you respond if a cataclysmic weather event killed someone you love or forced you to abandon, perhaps forever, the place you call home? And how would it change the way you think about the world?


These questions are at the heart of a new “Voices from the Future”

Green new deal is cheap actually

interview series a small group of journalist, researchers, and I have developed at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University. We have collected the stories and insights of nearly three dozen survivors on five continents, eight of which will be published in these pages over the next few weeks."

Original story 

Steven Beschloss is a professor of practice at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication and directs the Narrative Storytelling Initiative at Arizona State University. He has written for The New Yorker and The Washington Post, among other publications.

 

#California, #firestorms, #wildfire, Australia, cyclones, floods, Green New Deal, hurricanes, 


 

Rare 'fire tornado' rips through California as heat wave descends on the US: CNN

Aug 17, 2020

2020 has reached into its bag of tricks again and tossed out another surprise - this time in the form of a swirling fire.

Or as meteorologists call it, a "firenado" - short for fire tornado.

The rare and fiery tornado was spotted Saturday near a fire in California.

A huge forest fire that prompted evacuations north of Los Angeles flared up around noon Saturday, August 15, sending up a cloud of smoke as it headed toward thick, dry brush in the Angeles National Forest. (AP)

The National Weather Service Office issued a tornado warning for a pyrocumulonimbus cloud that formed by the Loyalton Fire, saying it was "capable of producing a fire-induced tornado and outflow winds in excess of 97km/h," CNN meteorologist Haley Brink said.

A pyrocumulonimbus cloud forms above intense rising heat, typically from a fire or volcano.

Fire tornadoes are created when the rising heat from a fire pulls in smoke, fire and dirt, creating a rotation vortex above the blaze, Ms Brink said.

Fire tornadoes can be massive and deadly.

#wildfire, #bushfires

When the National Weather Service surveyed the damage on that firenado, it determined it was equivalent to an EF-3 tornado with winds in excess of 230km/h.

Officials in California, Oregon and Colorado are battling a series of wildfires that have collectively torched more than 40,000 hectares - and things could get worse with intense heat descending on much of the US.

The Loyalton Fire has burned over 8000 hectares and was five per cent contained by early Sunday.

Related: We need action to prevent further catastophic fires and we need to be prepared for wildfires

#wildfire, #bushfires, #California, #heatwaves, #drought, #climatechange, #climateaction, #cambio-climatico, #jailclimatecriminals,  

See original 9 story

We need action to prevent further catastophic fires and we need to be prepared for wildfires

There is no climate sceptic on the end of a fire hose. #jailclimatecriminals

Governments must prepare for catastrophic fires.
 
* Establishing services to support those ‘burned out’ and those who cannot insure

* rezoning areas unsuitable for building

* changing building regulations

* employing indigenous people to carry out controlled burning to reduce fuel loads as they have done for thousands of years

* increasing the numbers of professional firefighters, giving more support to volunteer firefighters and purchasing more aviation support are just small steps.

* increasing funding for bushfire research

* the most important action for governments is to cut carbon targets and to pressure other countries to do the same. Tariffs on carbon reckless countries, like the USA, Saudi Arabia, China and Australia are inevitable.

and

Koalas suffered greatly. #jailclimatecriminals

* funding air support.


" The main reason more prescribed burning has not been done is the risk the deliberately lit fires will get out of control and burn down property, or otherwise choke population areas with unhealthy amounts of smoke.

This risk has gone up with the drought, which has meant there are fewer days every year with low-risk fire conditions. It's also gone up with population levels, which has meant more people are affected by prescribed burning.

#climatecrisis, heatwaves  

"With many prescribed burns now conducted close to the expanding urban fringe and close to essential infrastructure and agriculture, the community tolerance levels are very low to heavy smoke and potential damage to delicate ecosystems," Dr Thornton says."

"....  Mr Bradstock described it as a "tired and old conspiracy theory" while Greg Mullins said ex-fire chiefs were annoyed that the fires were being used for political attack."

#bushfire,  #wildfire,  #jailclimatecriminals

"Greg Mullins (former NSW fire and rescue commissioner Greg Mullins) said climate change means it's often too dangerous to burn: "Extreme drought like this, underpinned by 20 years of reduced rainfall, has meant the window for hazard reduction is very narrow now."

He also said a long-term reduction in forestry and national parks personnel has meant hazard reduction has fallen to volunteers."

California fires 2020

How effective is hazard reduction?

Many bushfire experts want to see more hazard reduction, but they also say there's a danger in presenting prescribed burning and fuel management measures as a 'silver bullet solution' to the continent's increasing fire risk.

Some areas are suitable for prescribed burning, while others are not.

"The complexities around hazard reduction burning are large and growing," said Dr Richard Thornton, CEO of the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre."

https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/is-more-prescribed-burning-the-answer-to-bushfire-threat/11844766

#wildfire,  #bushfire,  #firefighters,  #climatecrisis

  "Australia faces a "nightmare scenario" of escalating and catastrophic natural disasters without urgent action on climate change, the bushfires royal commission has been told.

A group of 33 former fire and emergency services chiefs wants the royal commission to record as fact that climate change was the main driver of the extreme weather conditions behind Australia's unprecedented bushfire season.

"We think that this is a great opportunity for an authoritative body to spell out loud and clear that if it wasn't for climate change we would not have faced the bushfires that we did," former Fire and Rescue NSW commissioner Greg Mullins told AAP.

"That the science is very clear that we would not have had weather conditions like we did if it wasn't for a warming climate and the fires were driven by extreme weather."" The Canberra Times, May 24,2020

Catastrophic bushfires and catastrophic fire seasons will become a new normal due to the shortening of fuel reduction periods, increasing severe droughts and extreme temperatures. 

See also: Preparing for heatwaves
 

Related: California begins rolling blackouts as state faces worst heat in 70 years (excerpt): SMH

#jailclimatecriminals, #jail the climate criminals, #wildfire, #bushfires, #climateaction, #heatwaves, #drought, #firestorms, #Australia, #California, #cambio-climatico, 

California begins rolling blackouts as state faces worst heat in 70 years (excerpt): SMH

Extreme heat has caused Californian fires and blackouts

"As many as 2 million Californians were plunged into darkness over a four-hour span late Friday in the state's first rolling blackouts since the 2001 energy crisis - and that was just day one.

America's west coast is set to have its hottest two weeks in 70 years, putting even more strain on power grids after California imposed its first rolling blackouts since 2001.

Excessive heat warnings and watches stretch from the Pacific Coast inland to Montana, Utah and Arizona, according to the National Weather Service. Sacramento is forecast to be 109 degrees Fahrenheit (43 Celsius) by Tuesday. Pasadena could hit 108."

"The sudden and largely unannounced outages in California are a stark reminder of the fragility of power grids in the face of extreme weather. Searing heat has gripped cities around the globe in recent weeks, including Brussels, Paris and New York."

Read the SMH story 

Related:  Climate Change will bring more severe storms.

#extremeheat, #cambio-climatico, #气候变化, #California, energy, #jailclimatecriminals,