Month: August 2023

Handling the Insurance Exodus from Florida, California

You do not have flood insurance in your home owners policy.
But just about everywhere, the risk of damaging floods is going up, even for folks who thought they were not in a flood plain.
For now, Florida, Texas, Louisiana, and Florida are insurance cancellation hotspots, but this summer has shown us that other regions of North America are not exempt from risk.
This week it was Southeast Michigan’s moment in the barrel.

The video points out that many states have taxpayer funded back-up insurance funds, but that resource is expensive and inherently limited.

Weather Channel’s Biden Interview on Climate, Energy

This one flew under my radar a couple weeks ago.
Weather Channel interview with Joe Biden, focusing on climate, energy.
Good point made at about 3:00 – there’s been a lot of poorly informed hand-wringing by faux-green lefties about the number of oil leases approved under the Biden administration.
Here the Pres points out what all greenies should know – the President is not omnipotent, the Administration’s plan to block oil leases along the US coast was nullified by a Judge.

Legal eagles weigh in if there is any more clarification available on this.

Courthouse News Service:

LAKE CHARLES, La. (CN) — One day after the Biden administration prevailed in a Fifth Circuit order upholding its suspension of new oil and gas leases on public land, a federal judge whose preliminary injunction was vacated by the appeals court issued a permanent block on the pause.

U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty in the Western District of Louisiana handed down a permanent injunction late Thursday blocking Biden’s January 2021 executive order in 13 states that sued last March: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah and West Virginia. Doughty’s previous nationwide injunction no longer applies.

As part of a larger order addressing climate change, Biden blocked new oil and gas leasing on federal lands but allowed leases on private lands in addition to a continuation of existing leases.  

Doughty, an appointee of Donald Trump, said in the ruling Thursday the government’s postponement of leases violates the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act and the Mineral Leasing Act.

“Both statutes require Government Defendants’ agencies to sell oil and gas leases. The OCSLA has a Five-Year Plan in effect that requires eligible leases to be sold. Government Defendants’ agencies have no authority to make significant revisions in the OCSLA Five-Year Plan without going through the procedure mandated by Congress,” Doughty wrote.

Continue reading “Weather Channel’s Biden Interview on Climate, Energy”

The Scientist and the Seditionist

Discovered the post above on Micheal Mann’s timeline, highlighting a hate-tweet from Jeffrey Clark, one of the attorneys at the center of Trump’s plot to overturn the 2020 election – which reminded me once again of the large crossover between Seditionists, Putinists, and Climate Deniers.
I mean, if you don’t like Rule of Law, it makes sense that the immutable Laws of Physics would be absolutely infuriating.
For those that misplaced your Seditionist Indictments Scoresheets, a refresher on who Mr Clark is.

Washington Post:

Three days before Congress was slated to certify the 2020 presidential election, a little-known Justice Department official named Jeffrey Clark rushed to meet President Donald Trump in the Oval Office to discuss a last-ditch attempt to reverse the results.

Clark, an environmental lawyer by trade, had outlined a plan in a letter he wanted to send to the leaders of key states Joe Biden won. It said that the Justice Department had “identified significant concerns” about the vote and that the states should consider sending “a separate slate of electors supporting Donald J. Trump” for Congress to approve.

In fact, Clark’s bosses had warned there was not evidence to overturn the election and had rejected his letter days earlier. Now they learned Clark was about to meet with Trump. Acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen tracked down his deputy, Richard Donoghue, who had been walking on the Mall in muddy jeans and an Army T-shirt. There was no time to change. They raced to the Oval Office.

Continue reading “The Scientist and the Seditionist”

Ramaswamy Triples Down on Climate “Hoax”

Vivek Ramaswamy, aka – your most obnoxious college roommate, aka every woman’s nightmare blind date, aka the Youth Pastor who just did a line of coke before coming out for the sermon – summed up his Party’s view of climate change during the debate last night, calling it “a hoax”. (kind of like Covid, ya see)

Above, he defended the view to ABC News’ Terry Moran, basically saying he wasn’t a climate change denier and then ticking off the tired list of climate denial talking points, one by one, name dropping Steven Koonin, Bjorn Lomborg, and Alex Epstein.

Mike Mann had this:

Texas Grid to Be Tested by Heat

UPDATE:

Associated Press:

 Deadly heat that has gripped Texas for much of the summer has spread into other parts of the central U.S. this week where it is forecast to stay for days, with triple-digit temperatures buckling roads, straining water systems and threatening the power grid of the nation’s energy capitol.

With heat warnings and advisories stretching from New Orleans to Minneapolis, the unyielding weather is stressing the systems put in place to keep resources moving and people safe. Just this week, a 1-year-old left in a hot van in Nebraska died, and Louisiana reported 25 heat-related deaths this summer — more than twice the average number in recent years. 

The heat is expected to become “dangerous to the average person” if they don’t have air conditioning, said Alex Lamers, a warning coordination meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center.

It has felt hotter than 110 degrees (43.3 C) in cities in Texas and Louisiana more often than at any time since World War II, Lamers said. The brunt of the enduring heat has hit states from Florida to New Mexico, he said.

Texas’ grid — which failed during a deadly winter storm in 2021 — has so far held up with no outages in the face of unrelenting heat. 

Continue reading “Texas Grid to Be Tested by Heat”

Climate Change Fiasco in first GOP primary debate was a ‘disaster for the party’s brand’

Video above includes commentary on Abortion policy, the climate discussion begins at 3:40, and I hope that’s where the vid will start upon clicking.

Associated Press:

The eight Republican presidential candidates on the debate stage were asked to raise their hands if they believed human behavior is causing climate change.

Not a single hand went up. 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis shut down the question and attacked the “corporate media.” Echoing the words of former President Donald Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy called climate change “a hoax” and a “wet blanket on our economy.” Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., insisted that more serious environmental threats are coming from China, India and Africa.

Just one Republican, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, said during Wednesday night’s debate in Milwaukee that climate change “is real.”

A day later, frustrated leaders in the GOP’s small but growing movement of environmental activists said their party must do better. In fact, some young conservatives confronted Ramaswamy at a gathering after the debate and told him his answer was particularly unhelpful. 

“We’re getting to a point where Republicans are losing winnable elections because they’re alienating people that care about climate change,” Christopher Barnard, the Republican president of the American Conservation Coalition, the largest conservative environmental group in the nation, said Thursday.

As the 2024 presidential contest begins in earnest, the Republican Party is struggling to reconcile rising concerns about climate change — especially young people — with the GOP’s older base, which largely rejects climate science as a liberal conspiracy theory. Scientists overwhelmingly agree that heat-trapping gases released from the combustion of fossil fuels are pushing up global temperatures, upending weather patterns and endangering animal species. 

Some Republican leaders have acknowledged they cannot ignore climate change altogether. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has called for planting 1 trillion trees to help protect the environment. But the solutions long promoted by Democrats and environmental advocates — government action to force emissions reductions — remains a nonstarter with the GOP’s presidential candidates.

India Bans Sugar Exports in Face of Drought, Rising Food Prices

Rice, onion exports already limited, now India moves to limit sugar exports in face of drought pressure.

Reuters:

India is expected to ban mills from exporting sugar in the next season beginning October, halting shipments for the first time in seven years, as a lack of rain has cut cane yields, three government sources said.

India’s absence from the world market would be likely to increase benchmark prices in New York and London that are already trading around multi-year highs, triggering fears of further inflation on global food markets.

“Our primary focus is to fulfil local sugar requirements and produce ethanol from surplus sugarcane,” said a government source who asked not to be named in line with official rules. “For the upcoming season, we will not have enough sugar to allocate for export quotas.”

India allowed mills to export only 6.1 million tonnes of sugar during the current season to Sept. 30, after letting them sell a record 11.1 million tonnes last season.

Monsoon rains in the top cane growing districts of the western state of Maharashtra and the southern state of Karnataka – which together account for more than half of India’s total sugar output – have been as much as 50% below average so far this year, weather department data showed.

Patchy rains would cut sugar output in the 2023/24 season and even reduce planting for the 2024/25 season, an industry official, who declined to be named, said.

Global Warming’s Exploding Zombie Watermelons

NBC 4 Washington:

Watermelons can offer a nice explosion of flavor in your mouth, but they shouldn’t be spontaneously combusting.

Oddly enough, that’s exactly what some fans of the popular fruit are worried about following several consumer reports of foaming watermelons this summer.

Emily Durbin, a Florida resident, posted about one such ominous-looking fruit this week on a Facebook group “Mommy Needs A Recipe!”

Durbin shared a photo of a sizeable watermelon perched on her kitchen counter with white foam oozing out of it.

Continue reading “Global Warming’s Exploding Zombie Watermelons”

Talking Climate Change with Southern Conservatives

I’m not from the South, but I spend a lot of time talking about clean energy with people in very conservative areas of the midwest. I like to think I’ve made some friends.
Beyond Climate change, perhaps the most important part of this conversation is simply having a conversation across political and social boundaries, and finding out that we have common interests that we can work on together.
Anyway, I really like this series of vids that Trae Crouder, a proud product of rural Tennessee, has been making.

It’s Not the Heat, ..Well, Ok It Is the Heat

Above, James Lovelock puts it pretty well.
It’s one thing to say that humans can adapt to heat with air conditioning and behavioral changes, but the natural world, and the creatures that live in it, have no such options.

Continue reading “It’s Not the Heat, ..Well, Ok It Is the Heat”