This is Not Cool

What is so Rare as a Day in June – James Russell Lowell

And what is so rare as a day in June?
     Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune,
     And over it softly her warm ear lays:
Whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten;

Guardian:

Once, across much of the the world’s temperate zones, we looked forward to summer as a time of delights, from summer’s bounty of fruits, long days, warmth, school holidays, activities like camping and swimming, travel and adventure. Now many of us dread it.

Summer was the sweet season celebrated in poetry and song, often pictured as a gentle goddess; now it is too often a threat and a misery. All this makes me think of Bill McKibben’s 2011 book Eaarth, a proposal that we can understand climate change as equivalent to moving to a more perilous, unwelcoming planet than the gentle, stable one we evolved over the 12,000 years since the last ice age.

I know that there are parts of the world where summer was already harsh, intense – 20 years ago, my friend Mark Klett, a photographer living near Phoenix, Arizona, joked: “Phoenix has two seasons: summer and hell,” summer being January and February; hell being the rest of the year.

But even in Phoenix, summer is now more intense; there, people get severe burns from falling down on superheated asphalt. It’s changed everywhere.

Yale Climate Connections:

From Little League tournaments to preseason football practices, young athletes often play outside on hot summer days. And as the climate warms, they’re increasingly at risk of heat-related illness.

Jessica Murfree, an assistant professor of exercise and sport science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, says kids in some communities are more vulnerable than others.

The dangers are often greatest in cities, because concrete and asphalt absorb heat. 

Murfree: “We can experience much higher temperatures in these areas than others that have more green spaces.”

And she says youth sports teams often lack resources to help keep kids safe, like cold water immersion tubs to use in an emergency or professional athletic trainers who are experts in player safety.

Murfree: “Their presence alone can be such a luxury, and not every child has access to those things.”

Continue reading “Climate Change is Cancelling Summertime”

New York, now Texas (!) have tapped the brakes (but not closed the door) on Data Center development, causing a bit of anxiety in the industry.
Above, a Data Center development CEO has a suggestion for community benefits that could include rebuilding electric grids, building schools, buying fire trucks, even zeroing out local property taxes.

Below, former Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, appearing on Jigar Shah’s “Energy Empire” podcast, made the case for Data Centers purchase of batteries for local homes and businesses. These could become the foundation for Virtual Power Plants that offer tremendous benefits for clean energy and grid stability.

Continue reading ““Ask for More”: Communities Should Demand Benefits from Data Centers”

Deseret News:

The use of solar energy is increasing in the United States, and Utah is no exception.

Utah generated more energy from solar than any other type of energy in May, according to data released by Ember. 

Utah’s ideal conditions for solar generation, available land for energy and transmission projects, and rich mineral deposits have led to recent expansion of the renewable energy industry throughout the state.

“Federally, people are taking notice of what we do in Utah,” Rep. Celeste Maloy, R-Utah, said while meeting with industry leaders and community stakeholders at the Horseshoe Solar Farm on Monday.

Maloy said implementing energy reform is a bipartisan issue among the American people. 

“This is one of the things that the American public has been very clear that they want,” Maloy said. “Everybody agrees it needs to be done.”

However, while the use of renewable energy in Utah grows, it faces competition with gas and coal energy production, which both maintain terawatt generation just slightly below solar energy. 

The competition is heightened by recent changes to renewable energy subsidies under the Trump administration that scaled back federal support for the renewable energy industry.

Grist:

Utah’s solar generation eclipsed all other electricity sources for the first time ever in May, the culmination of a slow but steady years-long shift away from coal. Energy experts are calling it a win for the environment and the state’s economy. 

Photovoltaic panels in Utah produced nearly 1 terawatt hour in May 2026. That represented nearly a third of all electricity generated in the state that month, according to data from Ember, a global energy think tank. Natural gas generated 32 percent, coal generated 28 percent, and wind 2 percent.

Continue reading “In Red Utah – Solar Tops Electric Production”

Got the flyer above in the mail this week. There’s no obvious damage to my relatively new roof, but I know that in other states like Florida, a big part of the home insurance crisis is opportunistic contractors taking fraudulent advantage of weather extremes to drum up repair business, even if repairs are not warranted.
Look for more of this.

Florida International University:

Florida’s insurance rates have almost doubled in the past five years, yet insurance companies are still losing money for three main reasons.

One is the rising hurricane risk. Hurricanes Matthew (2016), Irma (2017) and Michael (2018) were all destructive. But a lot of Florida’s hurricane damage is from water, which is covered by the National Flood Insurance Program, rather than by private property insurance.

Another reason is that reinsurance pricing is going up – that’s insurance for insurance companies to help when claims spike.

But the biggest single reason is the “assignment of benefits” problem, involving contractors after a storm. It’s partly fraud and partly taking advantage of loose regulation and court decisions that have affected insurance companies.

It generally looks like this: Contractors will knock on doors and say they can get the homeowner a new roof. The cost of a new roof is maybe $20,000-$30,000. So, the contractor inspects the roof. Often, there isn’t really that much damage. The contractor promises to take care of everything if the homeowner assigns over their insurance benefit. The contractors can then claim whatever they want from the insurance company without needing the homeowner’s consent.

If the insurance company determines the damage wasn’t actually covered, the contractor sues.

So insurance companies are stuck either fighting the lawsuit or settling. Either way, it’s costly.

Continue reading “The Disaster Economy: How Markets, and Con men, are Responding to Climate Change”

Hill Heat via email:

And Democrats nominated Methodist megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton to challenge Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas), inspiring the Cook Report to say the seat is (barely) in play. By contemporary Kansas standards, Hamilton is a climate hawk. In 2020, he asked his congregation, “What would Jesus say about climate change?” In the sermon, he wildly misrepresented the scientific consensus on climate pollution, but otherwise accurately described the science and came to the right conclusion:
“If we are abusive to the planet, if we misuse it, if we overconsume it, if we if we pollute it, are we sinning? Or are we not sinning? It seems to me like that’s an example of sin.”

More of sermon here.

I’m asking climate experts to comment on aspects of what I call the “New Climate Denial”, which is the same as the old climate denial, but just given a facelift by the Trump administration, in a DOE publication authored by the same-old same-0ld group of fossil industry war horses that have been grifting off of their crank contrarian opinions for decades.
One favorite: “The number of acres of wildfire globally has gone down.”
True.
But misleading.

Dessler and Kopp – Climate Experts Review of DOE Climate Working Group Report:

The likelihood and intensity of the most extreme wildfires has increased in North America, which has had major effects in the western US. These extreme fires have generated substantial ecological, economic, health, and livelihood impacts across the US.
The consequences extend far beyond fire-prone regions due to smoke transport across continental distances, exposing populations nationwide to serious health risks.

—
Below, Jeff Berardelli of WFLA has a useful explainer.

Continue reading “Jeff Masters PhD on Fire Paradox: Acres Down. Extreme Wildfire Up.”

“The Bill for climate change is already on your kitchen table and it’s going to continue to rise.”

Stay cool.

International Energy Agency:

Over the past five years, the world has experienced some of its hottest years on record, and meteorologists are warning that El Niño – a periodic warming of Pacific Ocean surface waters – could drive a new series of extreme weather events in 2026 and 2027. This comes as the adoption of air conditioning around the world has already been accelerating – the result of rising incomes in many economies with hot climates and record-breaking heatwaves in regions that previously had only limited cooling demand. As extreme heat events become more frequent and widespread, perceptions of cooling are shifting, driving more consumers to consider purchasing an air conditioner (AC). At the same time, falling unit prices and elevated inventories across the supply chain are lowering barriers to AC adoption, suggesting that the number of households purchasing their first AC unit will reach new highs in the years ahead.

University of California, Irvine:

California’s wildfire problem, fueled by a concurrence of climate change and a heightened risk of human-caused ignitions in once uninhabited areas, has been getting worse with each passing year of the 21^st century.

Researchers in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Irvine have conducted a thorough analysis of California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection wildfire statistics from 2000 to 2019, comparing them with data from 1920 to 1999. They learned that the annual burn season has lengthened in the past two decades and that the yearly peak has shifted from August to July. The team’s findings are the subject of a study published in the open-access journal Nature Scientific Reports.

The study is a focused examination of fire frequency, burned area and myriad drivers of the catastrophically destructive events. The team found that the number of hot spots – places with severe fire risk – has grown significantly in recent years, fueled by higher annual mean temperatures, greater vapor pressure deficit (lack of air moisture), drought, and an elevated chance of blazes being sparked through such human causes as power line disruptions, construction, transportation, campfires, discarded cigarettes and fireworks. 

“CALFIRE data show that each new year of the 21^st century has been a record breaker in terms of wildfire damage in California,” says co-author Tirtha Banerjee, UCI assistant professor of civil & environmental engineering. “We also have seen that about 80 percent of the total number of the state’s wildfires over the past few decades have been small, measuring less that 500 acres. But when fires get large, their deadliness greatly increases.”

Climate is a theme among many, although they don’t bash you over the head with it.
It is in any case, absolutely brilliant, riveting, and cathartic.
Bring tissue.

Review here from 2019, “Living on Earth”:

BASCOMB: It’s Living on Earth, I’m Bobby Bascomb.

According to ancient Greek myth, Hades, ruler of the underworld, kidnaps the Goddess Persephone and brings about the first winter on earth. For writer Anaïs Mitchell, that sudden change in the climate is the perfect backdrop for the story of her Tony Award-winning Broadway musical “Hadestown”. The show infuses the theme of climate change with New Orleans jazz, folk, and pop music. Here to tell us more is the director of “Hadestown”, Rachel Chavkin. Rachel, welcome to Living on Earth.

CHAVKIN: Thanks very much.

BASCOMB: So for someone that hasn’t seen the show or listened to the music yet, can you give me a quick summary of what it’s about?

CHAVKIN: Yeah. So “Hadestown” is a retelling of an ancient story, for those who know their Greek mythology, which is the Orpheus and Eurydice story, as it intersects with the myth of Hades and Persephone. Eurydice says — I think these lyrics are no longer exactly in it, but — “flood will get you if the fire don’t”. So there’s a sense that the above world is a dangerous place. But you hear about this mythic place, which is Hadestown, and Hadestown is a land of plenty and a land where you sort of aren’t ever worried about where your next meal is going to come from. And so during Act One Eurydice chooses to go down to Hadestown, and the audience along with Eurydice discover that Hadestown is actually basically this proto-fascist state. And you hear about a wall that is getting built, and the wall will never be done. And Orpheus comes down to Hadestown to try to get the love of his life back.

BASCOMB: So here at Living on Earth, we tend to look at everything through the lens of the environment. But it seems pretty clear to me that there’s some clear allusions to climate change. Can you tell me about that?

CHAVKIN: Yeah. So the image of the climate being out of whack has been a core one for Anaïs since she started writing the show. And so as we thought more and more about shaping the world that Eurydice and Orpheus are living in, a world caused by, in Greek mythological terms, the decay of this ancient marriage between Hades and Persephone, a world that is out of balance, where it is either freezing or it’s blazing hot, and that food becomes a really, you know, a scarcer substance and the idea of stability becomes harder to imagine, and that Eurydice is, is a character who has spent her life running. All of those are things that kind of crystallized while we were making the show.

BASCOMB: Well, let’s play a song from the show. I want to play a clip of “Any Way the Wind Blows”. But before we do, can you set it up for me? What’s happening at this point in the storyline?

CHAVKIN: Yeah, so “Any Way the Wind Blows” is really right at the top of the story. It’s really where you hear her, this kind of tough chick who is this survivor, walk into this bar, that is Hermes’ bar where she will eventually, right after this song, meet Orpheus, the love of her life. And she talks about how screwed up the weather is.

Continue reading “If You Have Not Seen Hadestown, Get the Hell out to This Film Version”

Made me laugh.