Reuters has a full interactive report on this here.
In the 1960s, the biggest heat wave covered about 6% of the planet. This decade’s biggest touched almost 85% of the globe over 367 days.
Calling that a ‘heat wave’ is like calling a monsoon a rain shower. So Reuters worked with climate researchers on a new concept: the heat storm
Long time readers here will be familiar with Chris Gloninger and his story.
As Chief Meteorologist for KCCI Des Moines, Chris was a national leader in putting his weather stories into climate context – until the death threats started, and, he tells me now, the Station management that had previously encouraged science coverage lost their courage, and pulled support.
Now, he’s working on a documentary about his experience and what it says about our media landscape. He needs help to get it done, and you can contribute here, and below.
There will be a fundraising Zoom with director Sarah Gibson, Dr. Jeff Masters, and Chris, this Wednesday, October 21, at 7:30 PM ET, you can RSVP and get an invite at WeatherUnderFire@gmail.com
Jeff Masters in Yale Climate Connections:
The best climate change documentary I’ve ever seen needs your help to get to the finish line. Aiming for a release in early 2027, “Weather Under Fire” follows meteorologist Chris Gloninger as he reports on the link between extreme weather and climate change on Iowa’s local news station, KCCI — until he upsets powerful special interests. He and his family receive death threats, forcing him to abandon his dream job. Now in its final editing process, the film has exhausted its funding and needs donations to pay for the creation of the finished product.
Continue reading “TV Meteorologists Silenced by Trump, FCC, Corporate Stations- Time to Blow the Whistle”
Digger is that Tom Cruise Climate Catastrophe movie you might not have been expecting. I watched the trailer a few months ago and was not clear this was a “climate change movie”.
In fact, that’s kind of what bugs me.
Climate change is a fact. It’s not just settled physics, it’s happening all around us, causing some of us to flee our homes, some of us to choke on the air outside, and all of us to wonder what is happening to the weather and the seasons. The drive to transition to clean energy, and the global fossil fuel oligarchy’s desperation to hold on to its power, (think Ukraine, Iran, and the fossil fuel takeover of the Republican Party) is the underlying lens to understand most of the headlines that we see day today.
It is as real a historical fact, (much more long lasting and consequential in my mind) as World War II, the Depression, the Cold War, or the Space Race.
All of those things have been the subject of movies, but moreover, any movie that pretends to set up a “real” world has to include those historical facts as background reality.
But Climate Change, the most important underpinning fact not just of our moment, but of the geological epoch, is relegated to being the subject of “a climate change movie” – as if it were some kind of separate world of speculative fiction. We’ve had a few of those movies, but what we have not had is a general agreement in setting the story of our moment, that climate change exists, and is a fundamental underlying driver of human events in this time.
Continue reading “Not Everyone Will Dig Divisive “Digger””White House policy under the Trump administration has dealt a massive, and I would argue, possibly fatal financial blow to the US auto industry by cancelling tax incentives for EV sales, even after US companies had invested heavily in that space.
But incentives remain for BESS – Battery Energy Storage Systems – that back up and power the electric grid, and companies have pivoted hard into that space, resulting in a flood of grid storage, and dropping the price for firm renewable energy. The graph below is from the July 2025 Shareholders report from NextEra, the largest US builder of power systems.
It shows that current wind and solar systems, even with battery storage, are cheaper than Natural gas, or nuclear, both of which have serious availability issues.
When an “emergency” is not really like an emergent emergency. I heard from some folks who were freaked out by this news item.
It’s one more artifact of a changing climate. Unseasonably warm October weather, coming at a time when utilities typically have generators and transmission infrastructure down for maintenance, has put some pressure on the PJM – the Grid operator covering the Mid Atlantic States and a slice of the midwest.
As I understand it, this order makes certain types of back up generators in the system, say at Data Centers, available if needed. There was no need to trigger any of that capacity.
So the “energy emergency” story was actually an artifact of the much larger climate story, that apparently is beyond the media’s capacity to put in context.
PJM continues to proactively implement procedures to reliably serve increased electricity demand caused by unusually warm fall weather amid planned equipment outages required for maintenance and construction.
Continue reading “About that Energy “Emergency” This Week”About two weeks ago I spoke to Bryan and Tammy Walker, of Coldwater, Michigan, farmers who have leased a portion of their land for a new solar facility.
Their comments indicated a keen awareness of the newly created safe habitat that has been created under hundreds of formerly farmed acres. Bryan mentioned how withholding agricultural chemicals like Roundup could be good for the watershed. Tammy was struck by the number of pollinators in the solar fields, and how the panels created a safe space for smaller critters.
They’re talking about the bottom of the food chain, the critical piece that we are knocking out all over the planet, contributing to the Bio Diversity crisis that is climate change’s evil sibling (one of many). An emerging discipline, conservoltaics, is examining the link between solar, soil, and habitat.
Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (UK):
The research by scientists from the RSPB and University of Cambridge as part of the Centre for Landscape Regeneration found that – hectare for hectare – solar farms in agriculturally dominated East Anglia contained a greater number of bird species and overall number of birds than surrounding arable farmland.
The highest abundance of threatened bird species such as Corn Buntings, Yellowhammers and Linnets were found in mixed habitat solar farms and these were significantly higher than in both surrounding arable land and in the simple habitat solar sites. These mixed habitat solar sites also held the highest total abundance of bird species. This suggests that nature-friendly management practices could provide a significant boost for birds.
The two studied solar sites were planted with native grasses and flowering plants in early 2018. From August 2018 through August 2022, the researchers conducted 358 observational surveys for flowering vegetation and insect communities. They evaluated changes in plant and insect abundance and diversity with each visit.
By the end of the field campaign, the team observed increases for all habitat and biodiversity metrics. There was an increase in native plant species diversity and flower abundance. In addition, the team observed increases in the abundance and diversity of native insect pollinators and agriculturally beneficial insects, which included honeybees, native bees, wasps, hornets, hoverflies, other flies, moths, butterflies and beetles. Flowers and flowering plant species increased as well. Total insect abundance tripled, while native bees showed a 20-fold increase in numbers. The most numerous insect groups observed were beetles, flies and moths.
In an added benefit, the researchers found that pollinators from the solar sites also visited soybean flowers in adjacent crop fields, providing additional pollination services.
Continue reading “Haven for Wild Life – Emerging Benefit of Solar Farms”Extreme close up view of fastening a massive wind turbine blade to a hub.
In 2020, I documented the construction of the Isabella Wind farm in Michigan, and came to understand the Crane operator’s Brain surgeon skills.
Continue reading “Wind Turbine Crane Operator’s Mad Skills”“A David Attenborough doc, shot by someone on Shrooms.”
Ok, I’m interested.
Last year, a big battery in California caught fire, and became a PR problem for the energy storage industry. Then, a few weeks ago, it happened again.
On Jan. 16, 2025, the Vistra Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility, about 20 miles south of Monterey, burned for several days and distributed a fine layer of heavy metals across the landscape. Today, a cleanup of the facility is ongoing as long-term health and ecological impacts remain uncertain.
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Regrettably, that was not the end of it.
The burned remains of the Moss Landing Power Plant battery energy storage facility caught fire again Friday morning, prompting Monterey County officials to issue a shelter in place order — less than two years after it became one of the largest battery storage facility fires in history.
Workers for Vistra, the plant’s Texas-based operator, noticed a flare-up early Friday morning against the wall of a building that burned in the initial January 2025 fire. The cause: roughly 1,200 inaccessible battery modules, still charged, spontaneously ignited, said Chief Jess Cortez with the North County Fire Protection District.
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Continue reading “New Fire at California Battery Plant Can’t Stop BESS Momentum”