tingilinde

this last week and two books

John Vaillant's Fire Weather was one of the best books I read the year it came out.  It's about the 2016 Fort  McMurray fire and much more.  Gripping, I read it in a single pass.  Given Los Angles it's probably time for a re-read.  

John McPhee's The Control of Nature is worth a re-read. Here's a line I marked:

The phalanxed communities of Los Angeles have pushed themselves hard against these mountains, an aggression that requires a deep defense budget to contend with the results.

 

 

 

 

a long wait

Let's say your house has just burned to the ground.  Even if you had the money and could line up materials and workers, you can't rebuild immediately. Burned out houses are considered hazardous waste sites. California has a booklet outlining what has to be done first.

 

 

 

altadena's fate

Will it - can it - keep its character?  (LA Times - outside their paywall)

snip

...

For some, Altadena’s draw has been the seclusion it offers, nestled in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, straddling the line between urban and wild. For others, it’s been the community where Black residents sought refuge decades ago amid the legacy of defunct racial redlining. And then there has always been Altadena’s sense of freedom and creativity that gave rise to an artists’ enclave and The Bunny Museum.

Whatever drew them, this unincorporated town north of Pasadena represented an alluring, magical combination of solitude and community for more than 42,000 residents, many whose families had lived there for generations in an eclectic mix of homes — from streets lined with small bungalow homes and neighborhoods of sprawling Spanish style and Colonial mansions amid graceful oaks.

...

a tip of the hat to Sukie

 

 

altadena's fate

Will it - can it - keep its character?  (LA Times - outside their paywall)

a tip of the hat to Sukie

 

air quality and fires

A very serious health issue.

snip

...

A recent study found that even for homes that are spared destruction, smoke and ash blown inside could adhere to rugs, sofas and drywall, creating health hazards that can linger for months. “We’re breathing in this toxic brew of volatile organic compounds and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and hexavalent chromium,” Dr. Patel said. “All of it is noxious.”

Intensifying and more frequent fires, meanwhile, are upending experts’ understanding of smoke’s health effects. “Wildfire season is no longer a season,” said Colleen Reid, who researches the effects of air pollution from wildfires on heath at the University of Colorado Boulder. “We have fires all year round that affect the same population repeatedly.”

“The health impacts are not the same as if you were exposed once, and then not again for 10 years,” she said. “The effects of that is something that we still don’t really know.”

A United Nations report from 2022 concluded that the risk of devastating wildfires around the world would surge in coming decades. Heating and drying caused by climate change, along with development in places vulnerable to fire, was expected to intensify a “global wildfire crisis,” the report said. Both the frequency and intensity of extreme wildfires have more than doubled in the past two decades. In the United States, the average acreage burned a year has surged since the 1990s.

...

 

 

insurers of last resort

Susan Crawford on what could happen if one or more goes belly up.

 

a good read on the fires

From a climate scientist who left Altadena a few years ago.

It's a shame that so much effort goes into things AI and crypto when so much is at stake.  There's something seriously wrong with our priorities. We need to invest in mitigation and adaptation with mind and money.  Sadly "our" values are those of billionaires, corporations and oligarch friendly politicians.  

 

 

 

us climate research and trump

The National Climate Assessment could be turned over to denialist clowns.

snip

...

The goal of the next administration “is to undermine any policies aimed at accelerating the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy,” said Michael Mann, a climate scientist and director of the Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania.

The drive to reshape the National Climate Assessment is being led by one man: Russell Vought, a conservative warrior whom Trump wants to lead his Office of Management and Budget.

Vought, who ran OMB during Trump’s first term, has long sought to bury or weaken the National Climate Assessment. More recently, Vought has called for greater White House influence over the process, such as giving OMB the power to vet the scientists who will work on the next assessment.

During the first Trump administration, Vought was part of a meeting in the White House situation room where officials discussed firing the scientists who worked on the fourth edition, according to two Trump White House officials who were present.

Vought also is a chief architect of Project 2025, the conservative policy playbook that outlined how a second Trump administration could shift the federal government to the right.

...

 

 

trying to account for the extra heat

Gavin Schmidt on trying to account for the higher than can be accounted for increases in heat.

snip

...

As the months went on, the weirdness continued. In the summer of 2023, the world entered an El Niño, the warm phase of ENSO. El Niños typically bring higher temperatures, but in the second half of 2023, both sea surface and air temperatures increased so much that scientists were stunned. One called the figures “absolutely gobsmackingly bananas.”

In an essay that appeared in Nature this past March, NASA’s chief climate scientist, Gavin Schmidt said: “It’s humbling, and a bit worrying, to admit that no year has confounded climate scientists’ predictive capabilities more than 2023 has.”

Officially, the El Niño ended in May 2024. But global temperatures have remained stubbornly high. This year they are expected to set yet another record.

Schmidt says that scientists still can’t explain the unexpected spike in temperatures. When I talked with him recently, he called the continuing confusion “a little embarrassing” for researchers.

...

 

 

the changing climate

A look back at last year.