Month: July 2024

Beryl Broke Houstonians Spirit

Houston Chronicle:

It seems many ride-or-die Houstonians are breaking up with the city. Beryl, the Category 1 storm that left millions of residents powerless and nearly 20 dead, has been the back-breaker. It has tipped the scale of what’s ugly about Houston to outweigh the beautiful. 

For those who want to leave this place, the city’s magic was lost in the storm’s 80 mph winds with the sideways rain. Its strength buckled spirits. 

Leaving Houston is the last resort when the romance is gone and the love is faint. It’s what happens when you can’t endure one more storm, one more heartbreak.  

A 2023 study by the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs asked nearly 800 Houston residents likely to vote in last November’s election, “Over the past few years, have you considered moving out of the Houston metro region?”

Some 57 percent of respondents said yes. Then when asked if severe weather, like the 2021 freeze and extreme heat, was part of the reason, more than 51 percent cited it as a factor. Millennials and Gen Zers (65%) were more likely than older groups to cite weather as a factor. 

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America Wants Trains

In about the same time it would take to drive, you can now take a train from Chicago to Minneapolis/St Paul. Costs 40 bucks.
Response has been overwhelmingly positive. Give people good trains and they will ride em.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Thousands of passengers rode the second daily Amtrak service between the Twin Cities and Chicago, via Milwaukee in the first full month of operation, according to new data released from the agency on Monday.

The first full month of the Borealis trains between St. Paul and Chicago shows ridership of more than 18,500 passengers, according to preliminary figures. That’s about 300 passengers boarding each of the eastbound and westbound trains daily.The second daily round-trip passenger train runs from Chicago to the Twin Cities— by way of Milwaukee, Wisconsin Dells and La Crosse, and has been in the works since 2015. The new train service starts from St. Paul at midday and from Chicago in the late morning.

“Borealis marks the first passenger rail service expansion in Wisconsin in 22 years and people are responding,” said Craig Thompson, Secretary, Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT) in a statement. “The initial data is promising and reflects the hard work done by WisDOT, our partner states and Amtrak to bring this service to the people of Wisconsin, Minnesota and Illinois. We’re hopeful the more people that ride Borealis and like it, the more successful it will be.”

Passengers started taking the second daily service in May 2024. The train makes the current Empire Builder stops between St. Paul and Milwaukee and the Hiawatha stops between Milwaukee and Chicago.

Coach fares start at $41 each way between St. Paul and Chicago for adults, with discounts for children ages 2-12, students, seniors, veterans, military personnel and families, and groups. For more information, you can visit Amtrak’s website at www.amtrak.com/Borealis.

Cactus is First US Species Extinct Due to Rising Seas

WFLA Tampa:

A type of tropical cactus that is only native to the Florida Keys has gone extinct due to climate change, research released earlier this month shows. 

The Key Largo tree cactus, known in the United States from only a single population in the Keys, became the first U.S. species to become extinct due to rising sea levels.

In a study conducted by the Journal of the Botanical Research Institute of Texas, scientists said the extinction can be associated with higher-than-normal tides. Other cacti and all rare plants in the region are also “threatened with a similar fate,” scientists said.

“Exceptionally high tides” also put significant pursue on the cactus tree population by causing saltwater intrusion and soil depletion to the mangroves, which were home to the cacti.

According to the Florida Museum of Natural History, the site where the species grew “originally had a distinct layer of soil and organic matter that allowed the cactus and other plants to grow, but storm surge from hurricanes and exceptionally high tides eroded away this material until there wasn’t much left.”

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On behalf of many other species, I am worried.

Found: JD Vance Forgotten Video – “We Have a Climate Problem”

The Fossil Fuel Oligarchs can forgive calling Trump “Hitler” a lot easier than they can forgive a belief in science.
He’s really going to have to grovel to put this one behind him.

Video posted this afternoon by Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts.

Bloomberg:

Vance’s pivot on climate and energy issues has been swift. In 2020, he was unequivocal in acknowledging global warming. We “of course have a climate problem in our society,” he told a January 2020 conference in Ohio. At the time, Vance blamed “unrestrained emissions in China” for driving the phenomenon, though he also lamented the slow adoption of carbon-free power in the US. Solar energy is driving big improvements, he said, but it can’t meet all US energy needs.

By 2022, Vance had shifted his approach, questioning whether humans were solely responsible for driving climate change and casting scorn on activists focused on fighting it. In a July 2022 interview on the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, he agreed there wasn’t a climate crisis. In a candidate forum, he derided “ridiculous ugly windmills all over Ohio farms that don’t produce enough electricity to run a cell phone.” And on X, he said Democrats were pushing a “green energy fantasy” in America while China was building coal-fired power plants.

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No Climate Havens: In Toronto, 100 Year Floods Keep Coming

Thinking of moving to Canada?
There are no climate havens.

Toronto Star:

The total cost of Tuesday’s flash flood in Toronto could easily surpass $1 billion — and the government and homeowners will be paying for most of it. 

According to the Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC), Tuesday’s storm is comparable to the historic 2013 flood in Toronto, which resulted in $1 billion in insured residential and commercial damage (adjusted for inflation in 2021) and was among the 10 most expensive natural disasters in Canada. 

“It was a similar-sized event as to what we witnessed 10 years ago,” said Craig Stewart, vice-president of climate change and federal issues at IBC. 

The cost in uninsured damage from overland floods, which is shouldered by governments, homeowners and business owners, is typically significantly higher than the total amount in insured claims. This difference is known as the “insurance gap”: for every $1 of insurable loss, there is generally $3 to $4 of uninsurable loss realized, according to Blair Feltmate, head of the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation at the University of Waterloo. 

While most homeowners have opted to get sewer backup insurance, that’s not the case for overland flooding insurance — which protects against water coming through cracks or windows in basements — as it is limited and expensive in the (Greater Toronto Area), added Stewart. 

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Why is the Texas Grid in Such Trouble?

Texas is the energy capital of the US, if not the world.
So why are they so bad at keeping the lights on in stressful situations?
Do they think things are going to get any easier? At what point will Texans consider a change in leadership?

Andrew Dessler in the Climate Brink:

The Texas grid, run by ERCOT, has had a rough few years. In 2021, winter storm Uri blacked out much of the state for several days. About a week ago, Hurricane Beryl knocked out power to millions of Houstonians, and a week later, hundreds of thousands of Houstonians still hadn’t had their power restored.

It might seem that these two events are completely different — one was a winter storm that caused a blackout by knocking out the natural gas supply, while the other one is a hurricane that knocked out the power distribution system.

But the root cause of these two incidents is actually the same. To understand what’s going on, you need to realize that keeping the power on is incredibly valuable to society and, when the power goes out, the damages are enormous. The Uri blackout cost well north of $100 billion. I have yet to see an estimate of the cost of Hurricane Beryl, but I’m guessing it’s also going to be eye popping.

But here’s the key fact: these costs are not paid by energy companies. When the power went out during Uri and pipes froze and burst, the energy companies didn’t pay those costs. Homeowners and insurance companies did. When the power outage caused Texans to freeze to death, the energy company didn’t pay, society did. Energy companies aren’t paying the expenses from Beryl, either.

Thus, power outages actually cost energy corporations very little money — maybe a few days’ revenue.  Hardening energy infrastructure, on the other hand, is very expensive and entirely paid for by the energy corporations. This cuts into their profits and stock price.

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Houston Utility: “There is no Climate Change, but Give Us Billions to Prepare for It”

Above, per the Houston electric utility announces that up to a half million customers may not have power until next week.
Just in time for hurricane season to really get rolling.

Heated:

When Hurricane Beryl barreled towards Texas last week, the state’s largest electric utility company said it was prepared for the worst. It wasn’t.

More than 2.7 million people lost power on July 8 as Beryl slammed into the state, leaving 80 percent of Centerpoint’s Houston customers in the dark. It was the largest area blackout in the utility’s 20-year history. And residents remained without power for over a week, even as temperatures dangerously rose above 90 degrees Fahrenheit. 

CenterPoint is now under investigation by the state Public Utility Commission, and Governor Greg Abbott has demanded a detailed future hurricane plan by the end of this month.

In its defense, CenterPoint has claimed that its infrastructure simply wasn’t built for this kind of extreme weather. The utility said it needs an additional $2 billion from customers to climate-proof its infrastructure. That’s not surprising; the climate crisis is fueling stronger hurricanes, heat waves, and surprise winter storms, which are wreaking havoc on the Texas grid. 

What is surprising is that CenterPoint is asking for this money to prepare for climate change while funneling millions of customer dollars into making climate change worse. 

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Offered without Comment: A Conversation in Ukraine

Listening to this may give you an inkling of what climate communication feels like.

Derecho, Tornado Rattled Air Travelers (including me)

Above, map provided by @TTrogdon on X shows air traffic avoidance of the space around monday’s Derecho that moved through Illinois.

I’m noticing because, due to a family emergency, I was flying that afternoon from Denver to Detroit, so was on one of those flights. Even with the wide berth, it was a bumpy, sphincter puckering ride.

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