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Climate

Counting the Americans Displaced By Disaster

On new Census Bureau data, Vineyard Wind, and kayaking in Death Valley

Counting the Americans Displaced By Disaster
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Warm weather is causing cherry blossoms to bloom early in parts of Japan • Massive thunderstorms threatened to delay a Taylor Swift concert in Sydney • It’s going to be in the 50s and cloudy this weekend in Kherson, the first major city Russia captured after it launched its war on Ukraine two years ago.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Natural disasters displaced 2.5 million Americans last year

Roughly 2.5 million people were displaced from their homes due to natural disasters in 2023, according to new Census Bureau data. That number is an imprecise estimate, but it represents “some of the best available numbers on displacement,” reportedThe New York Times. Tracking this kind of displacement in America can be hard, but it’s gotten slightly easier over the last two years after the Census Bureau added questions about disasters to its Household Pulse Survey in 2022. This year’s results show that Louisiana saw the highest share of disaster-related displacements, followed by Hawaii and Florida. Maine was also high on the list, likely due to extreme flooding. The data also suggested fraud runs rampant in the wake of natural disasters, with more than half of those displaced saying they had encountered a potential scam offer afterward. Last year America saw 28 weather and climate disasters, each costing at least $1 billion

Census Bureau

2. Vineyard Wind has 5 turbines up and running

Vineyard Wind 1, the first large-scale offshore wind farm in the U.S., came online at the beginning of January with one turbine sending about five megawatts of electricity to the New England grid. Now its owners say four more turbines are up and running off the Massachusetts coast, sending 68 megawatts of electricity to the grid, enough to power 30,000 homes. Nine turbines in total have been installed so far, and the 10th is in progress. Once completed, the project will consist of 62 turbines and be capable of powering 400,000 homes and businesses.

3. Researchers: Planting trees won’t solve the climate crisis

New research published in the journal Science finds that we’re overestimating the cooling effect of forests by only focusing on carbon dioxide. While trees do absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, they also do other things, like absorb warmth and light that would have otherwise been reflected back into space. They can also emit compounds that, rather counterintuitively, can actually increase levels of some greenhouse gases. Taking all this into consideration, the researchers think the cooling effect of tree planting could be upto 30% lower than previous estimates. The findings are important as the world looks for ways to remove CO2 from the atmosphere to limit the worst effects of global warming. “Planting trees has an intuitive appeal,” the authors said, noting that many businesses tout their tree-planting efforts as a carbon offsetting gesture. “Trees can help fight climate change, but relying on them alone won’t be enough.”

4. Coal’s slowdown is slowing down

The United States has been able to drive its greenhouse gas emissions to their lowest level since the early 1990s largely by reducing the amount of energy on the grid generated by coal to a vast extent. But the steady retirement of coal plants may be slowing down, reportedHeatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin. Only 2.3 GW of coal generating capacity are set to be shut down so far in 2024, according to the Energy Information Administration. While in 2025, that number is expect to jump up to 10.9 GW, the combined 13.2 GW of retired capacity pales in comparison of the more than 22 GW retired in the past two years.

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  • 5. Atmospheric rivers transform Death Valley into lake

    The back-to-back atmospheric rivers that have slammed the West Coast recently have helped transform the driest place in America into a temporary lake known as Lake Manly. Death Valley usually gets about 2 inches of rain over the course of an entire year, but has seen 5 inches just over the last six months, starting with Hurricane Hilary last August and exacerbated by recent torrents of rain. The six-mile-long, three-mile-wide Lake Manly has been attracting throngs of tourists, and even kayakers.

    NASA

    THE KICKER

    “The Cybertruck’s sensibility belongs to the consequence-free world of gaming and graphical interfaces, its ballistic resistance a God Mode brought to life. It’s not militarism; it’s infantilism.”The Wall Street Journal’s auto columnist Dan Neil reviews Tesla’s Cybertruck



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    Climate

    AM Briefing: Hurricane Erick’s Rapid Intensification

    On storm damage, the Strait of Hormuz, and Volkswagen’s robotaxi

    Hurricane Erick Intensified Really, Really Quickly
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    Current conditions: A dangerous heat dome is forming over central states today and will move progressively eastward over the next week • Wildfire warnings have been issued in London • Typhoon Wutip brought the worst flooding in a century to China’s southern province of Guangdong.

    THE TOP FIVE

    1. Hurricane Erick slams into Mexico after rapid intensification

    Hurricane Erick made landfall as a Category 3 storm on Mexico’s Pacific coast yesterday with maximum sustained winds around 125 mph. Damages are reported in Oaxaca and Guerrero. The storm is dissipating now, but it could drop up to 6 inches of rain in some parts of Mexico and trigger life-threatening flooding and mudslides, according to the National Hurricane Center. Erick is the earliest major hurricane to make landfall on Mexico's Pacific coast, and one of the fastest-intensifying storms on record: It strengthen from a tropical storm to a Category 4 storm in just 24 hours, a pattern of rapid intensification that is becoming more common as the Earth warms due to human-caused climate change. As meteorologist and hurricane expert Michael Lowry noted, Mexico’s Pacific coast was “previously unfamiliar with strong hurricanes” but has been battered by epic storms over the last two years. Acapulco is still recovering from Category 5 Hurricane Otis, which struck in late 2023.

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    Politics

    It’s Chris Wright’s Worldview. They’re Just Legislating It.

    The energy secretary's philosophy is all over the Senate mega-bill.

    Chris Wright.
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    As the Senate Finance Committee worked on its version of the reconciliation bill that would, among things, overhaul the Inflation Reduction Act, there was much speculation among observers that there could be a carve out for sources of power like geothermal, hydropower, and nuclear, which provide steady generation and tend to be more popular among Republicans, along the lines of the slightly better treatment received by advanced nuclear in the House bill.

    Instead, the Senate Finance Committee’s text didn’t carve out these “firm” sources of power, it carved out solar and wind, preserving tax credits for everything else through 2035, while sunsetting solar and wind by 2028.

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    Heatmap Illustration | Abbr. Projects

    When I reached out to climate tech investors on Tuesday to gauge their reaction to the Senate’s proposed overhaul of the clean energy tax credits, I thought I might get a standard dose of can-do investor optimism. Though the proposal from the Senate Finance committee would cut tax credits for wind and solar, it would preserve them for other sources of clean energy, such as geothermal, nuclear, and batteries — areas of significant focus and investment for many climate-focused venture firms.

    But the vibe ended up being fairly divided. While many investors expressed cautious optimism about what this latest text could mean for their particular portfolio companies, others worried that by slashing incentives for solar and wind, the bill’s implications for the energy transition at large would be categorically terrible.

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