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More Californians have searched for news about “floods” in 2023 than “wildfires,” which seems in keeping with this summer’s series of out-of-left-field climate disasters. The worst smoke pollution hit … the East Coast. The deadliest wildfire in modern U.S. history leveled … a former wetland in Hawaii. Naturally a hurriquake in Los Angeles and catastrophic flooding in Palm Springs would come next?
But California’s reputation as the land of drought and fire has obscured the fact that extreme flooding is the other player in the state’s deadly climatological triumvirate. From the atmospheric rivers this winter, which caused some 500 mudslides and inflicted as much as $1 billion in damage, to Hurricane Hilary dumping record-breaking rains over the southwestern United States this weekend, floods are understandably top-of-mind (especially with a relatedly somewhat slow start to the state’s fire season).
Here’s what you need to know about the future of extreme floods in the Golden State:
Former Hurricane Hilary was the first tropical storm to make landfall in California in 84 years, easily snapping the practically nonexistent late August daily rainfall records around L.A. In fact, hurricanes making landfall in the lower lefthand corner of the U.S. is so rare that there isn’t actually much of a data record for scientists to use as a point of comparison, Inside Climate News reports — which makes forming future projections and establishing links to climate change actually rather difficult.
What we do know is this: California has largely avoided hurricanes in the past due to the generally cold waters off its coast, which NBC News describes as acting as a sort of “shield” for the state. Hurricanes get their strength and moisture by forming over warm waters, and the eastern Pacific has historically been as much as 9 degrees cooler than the same latitude in the Gulf of Mexico.
But California’s shield has a crack. July was the hottest recorded month on planet Earth and the waters Hilary passed over on its journey north were 4 degrees warmer than usual, the Los Angeles Times explains. Sure enough, research shows that hurricane landfalls in the eastern Pacific could increase dramatically along with global and oceanic warming — bringing more rain and floods along with them.
There are certain conditions that made Hilary particularly unusual, however: A heat dome that formed over the central United States, for example, helped tug the storm directly over California, as opposed to a more typical path of a hurricane or tropical storm being pushed out to sea by easterly winds off the continent. So while hurricanes might be more intense and wet in the future, they won’t necessarily continue to make it over to California the way Hilary has.
Yes, to some extent. In addition to greenhouse gas emissions making the oceans warmer, the weather pattern called El Niño is likely responsible for some of the warming of the waters off of Baja California, which intensified Hurricane Hilary. But again, there were also unique conditions that contributed to Hilary’s unusual path over the southwestern United States, including the prevailing wind patterns. Strong El Niño years, as a result, don’t necessarily mean more hurricanes for Southern California.
El Niños have tended to bring higher winter rainfalls to Southern California, though that is also not necessarily a guarantee. NOAA’s outlook for the coming winter doesn’t currently show above-average precipitation expected for the state. Some El Niño years are actually drier than average, which goes to show that “El Niño is just one hand on the atmospheric steering wheel,” Weather Underground writes.
California isn’t a land of droughts or floods — it’s a land of both. A better way to think about the future of weather in the state is as one of extremes.
That’s because, “[i]n a seeming paradox, drought and flooding are two sides of one coin,” Governing explains. “A warmer atmosphere can hold more water, and higher temperatures cause more water on the Earth’s surface to evaporate. This can result in bigger rainstorms.”
The good news is, most of California is now free of drought conditions and this year’s fire season has been quieter because of all the wet vegetation. But while Tropical Storm Hilary apparently only inflicted minor damage and no known deaths this weekend, floods have been a devastating fixture of life in the Golden State before and they will be again.
As Yale Climate Solutions warned earlier this year, “Given the increased risk [due to climate change], it is more likely than not that many of you reading this will see a California megaflood costing tens of billions in your lifetime.”
California doesn’t need 40 days and nights of rain to experience its worst-case flood event, researchers have found. If a 30-day rainstorm similar to one that hit the then-unpopulous state in 1862 were to strike again today, it could potentially be a $1 trillion disaster — “larger than any in world history” — UCLA’s “ARkStorm 2.0” scenario modeling found last year.
“Every major population center in California would get hit at once — probably parts of Nevada and other adjacent states, too,” Daniel Swain, a UCLA climate scientist and co-author of the paper, said in a statement at the time.
Unlike a tropical storm, which passes in a number of days, the ARkStorm flood event would last a month in the form of sequential atmospheric rivers, like the kind that battered the state this past winter. The link between climate change and heavy precipitation is well understood, and the researchers found that “climate change has already doubled the likelihood of such an extreme storm scenario,” with “further large increases in ‘megastorm’ risk … likely with each additional degree of global warming this century.”
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A conversation with Adrienne Cobb, who is tracking objectives agency by agency.
Last August, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump addressed a persistent accusation that had begun to dog his campaign. “We have nothing to do with Project 25,” he insisted to the assembled media, referring to Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s 920-page blueprint for reshaping America. A month later, during a presidential debate with Kamala Harris, Trump again found himself on the defensive against the hugely unpopular plan: “I haven’t read it — I don’t want to read it purposely. I’m not going to read it,” he said.
But 25 days into the Trump administration, almost a third of Project 2025’s suggestions had already been implemented or were in progress — 32% as of Friday, to be precise. If that number seems rather specific, you can thank Adrienne Cobb, who’s more commonly known online by her username RusticGorilla, and who is assiduously tracking Project 2025’s developments agency by agency.
Looking at the tracker, the low-hanging fruit becomes obvious. Almost 92% of Project 2025’s USAID-related objectives have been accomplished, Cobb’s research shows, while objectives at the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of the Interior are all closer to 40% complete. Still, that can mean different things for different departments; for example, there are 19 Department of Energy objectives overall, seven of which are already finished. Many of the remaining incomplete objectives involve eliminating offices, such as the DOE Loan Program or Clean Energy Demonstrations, while others are broad and will take time, such as “expanding natural gas infrastructure.”
I spoke to Cobb on Friday about the tracker and the Trump administration's rapid flurry of actions. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
When did you start working on the Project 2025 tracker? How’d this whole thing get started?
It started last month. I went through the whole Project 2025 document and pulled out each clearly stated objective. One challenge was that a lot of it was pretty vague, so I tried to focus only on the measurable objectives.
I previously tracked the Mueller Report. I also did 45 Chaos, which tracked the people who were fired or resigned during Trump’s first administration. Now, I also have 47 Chaos, which does the same thing for the second administration.
After going through Project 2025 so methodically, was there anything that struck you as not getting enough attention?
Many of the parts on civil rights didn’t get much attention, especially in education. The media mainly focused on the top line, like “abolish the Department of Education.” But there wasn’t a lot of coverage of Project 2025 wanting to pull back the coverage of protections for disabled students. That was a common theme throughout — rolling back protections for people in a less advantaged position.
Have you noticed any patterns in the objectives that have been fulfilled so far?
They’re going after what they see as the easiest targets first, like LGBTQ rights and DEI initiatives — which are very easy to implement through executive action and about which they don’t think people will complain or speak up.
Most of the energy objectives that have been enacted are ones that roll back key Biden-era initiatives, like Biden’s pause on LNG exports and Biden’s prioritization of climate change mitigation in policy-making. Trump also managed to enact the Project 2025 goal of limiting subsidized renewables by illegally suspending the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act funding, which went to various clean energy projects across the country.
Even though a judge has ordered IRA and IIJA funding reinstated, Pennsylvania has alleged in a lawsuit that Trump’s administration still has not released the funding. Project 2025 called on Congress to repeal the IRA and IIJA, yet Trump is going farther than even Project 2025 imagined by straight up withholding the funding in defiance of Congressional appropriations and court orders.
How has the feedback from the community been? How does this tracker compare to others that you’ve done?
It’s definitely been getting more attention. I think that’s because people are actually really scared of what the Trump administration is trying to do and are more invested in it. The Mueller Report was far away from Americans lives, but Project 2025 touches our lives in almost every aspect. People are scared and want to keep track of what’s going on.
Why do you think it’s important to track these developments in such a methodical and quantitative way? What is it about this presentation that you think is helpful?
I hope it is helpful. I’m not sure if it is, or why it is, for other people. I just know that, for me, it is what I’m good at. I’m not a public person — I’m not good at contributing in an extroverted way. I’m good at contributing in an introverted way, and this is my way of doing something that I hope helps people stay informed and make sense of the incredible deluge of news. It’s just my way of doing something.
It’s going to be a work in progress throughout the whole administration. I’m open to feedback and other people helping me and sending me messages like, “Hey, did you know this happened yesterday? Did you catch it?” or something like that, just because it is 900 pages and almost 300 objectives, and I am only one person. But everyone can help in their own way — that’s my main message.
The grid needs transformers, and transformers need foreign steel.
President Trump wants to unleash American energy dominance, reduce consumer costs, and lead on artificial intelligence. But his 25% steel and aluminum tariffs, which are set to go into effect next month, could work directly against all of those goals.
The reason has to do with a crucial piece of electrical equipment for expanding the grid. They’re called transformers, and they’re in critically short supply.
Transformers serve to reduce losses along power lines by regulating voltage as electricity travels between generators and end uses, and they are made using a specific type of steel called grain oriented electrical steel, or GOES. There’s only one domestic producer of GOES — Cleveland Cliffs — and at full capacity it cannot meet even half of the demand from domestic transformer manufacturers, according to Joe Donovan, the executive director of the Transformer Manufacturing Association of America.
“We’re forced into the international markets,” he told me. “Reliance on a single domestic supplier for this critical material is a national security risk,” he added later in an email.“The grid is the foundation of our entire economy and should not be reliant on a single source for such a critical component.”
In a fact sheet about the upcoming steel and aluminum tariffs, Trump said he wants to end the “global dumping” of cheap foreign steel into American markets. It’s not yet clear whether he will impose blanket fees on all steel imports from all countries or use a finer tooth comb. But GOES only accounts for 0.15% of global steel production, Donovan said. “Any new restrictive tariffs would not onshore domestic GOES manufacturing, but would instead increase electricity costs for American consumers and delay upgrades to the grid nationally, putting manufacturing projects and developments at risk,” he told me. He said his trade group is advocating for the tariffs to exclude GOES imports from allied countries including Italy, South Korea, Poland and Japan, as well as derivative products from Mexico and Canada.
The problem is not just that the U.S. doesn’t produce enough of this material, Donovan added. Cleveland Cliffs lacks the capacity to produce GOES “in the size or efficiency levels that are needed in modern, efficient large power transformers,” he said. “Thus, domestic transformer manufacturers are unable to procure this GOES from any domestic source.”
Transformers come in many varieties and sizes, from the small metal boxes that sit atop local power lines to the larger containers at substations that have big metal coils springing out of them. Adding anything to the grid — whether it’s a generator like a new solar farm or natural gas plant, or a new source of demand like an apartment complex or a data center — requires adding transformers.
For nearly two decades, electricity growth was stagnant in the U.S., and there wasn’t much reason to invest in transformer manufacturing or supply chains. But suddenly, the rise of artificial intelligence, coupled with a push to reshore manufacturing and electrify transport, plus worsening natural disasters that damage electrical infrastructure caused demand to soar. These pressures have not just affected the U.S., and transformer manufacturers globally have not been able to keep up. Over the past four to five years, lead times for procuring transformers went from just under a year to upwards of three years, and prices jumped 60% to 80%, according to Wood Mackenzie.
“The increase in equipment costs is both threatening the economics of projects and increasing the price of electricity,” analysts from the energy research firm wrote in October. “One small ray of light from a transformer cost perspective is that the price of grain oriented electrical steel, a key commodity input, has declined 60-70% recently.”
Trump’s tariffs will cut into those declines.
“A lot of utilities and all of our clients across the country are very nervous about the potential implications of this,” Ben Boucher, a senior analyst at Wood Mackenzie, told me. “I think everyone knows their costs are going to increase as a result, even if they source domestically, because there’s going to be more competition for domestically produced products.”
When Trump imposed tariffs on steel during his first presidency, it did not lead to new investment in domestic manufacturing of GOES. Instead, there was an uptick in imports of transformer cores, a component that already contains GOES, from Mexico and Canada, Boucher said.
I reached out to the Edison Electric Institute, the main trade group for utilities, for comment on how the transformer shortage has affected its members’ ability to meet rising electricity demand, and what the tariffs could mean for them. The group did not answer my questions and sent back a statement attributed to Scott Aaronson, the senior vice president for energy security and industry operations, which said the group supports the president’s goal of bolstering domestic manufacturing and looks forward to working with him “to ensure that any new tariffs don't raise customer energy bills due to higher commodity prices.”
Jonas Nahm, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins, who worked as a senior economist at the White House under Biden, told me there was a concerted effort to increase transformer production domestically over the past four years. Several manufacturers, including Siemens Energy and Hitachi Energy, announced new plants and plant expansions. Nahm wondered whether Trump’s tariffs on steel could end up undermining his goals by making those investments riskier. “In econ terms, it’s sort of a tariff inversion, where we’re tariffing the intermediate inputs more than we’re tariffing the import of the final product.”
We often talk about industries like the “oil industry” or the “steel industry” as if they are making homogenous, interchangeable products. In reality, neither oil nor steel is one, uniform thing, and in the context of policymaking — like President Trump’s tariffs — the differences are consequential.
My colleague Robinson Meyer wrote about this when Trump was threatening to put 25% tariffs on Canadian imports. The U.S. is the biggest producer of crude oil in the world, but the oil that comes out of our wells is “light and sweet,” meaning that it has relatively low viscosity and sulfur content. Meanwhile, many U.S. refineries are designed to process the “heavy and sour” crude oil extracted in Canada. Tariffs on imported oil would lead to spikes in gasoline prices. “You couldn’t create a better scenario to destroy the economics of U.S. coking refineries,” Rory Johnston, an oil markets analyst, told Robinson. Similarly, the U.S. is a major steel producer, but we’re still heavily reliant on imports for certain types of steel.
It’s unclear whether the administration is aware of the issue. Trump is imposing tariffs on steel and aluminum under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, as he did during his first term, which requires the Department of Commerce to first conduct an investigation and confirm that the import of these products threatens U.S. national security. But there’s been no new investigation since Trump took office. In his proclamation announcing the tariffs, the President referenced the investigation his administration conducted in 2018, adding in some recent data points that make the case that the threats from then are still an issue.
“They’re operating with 2018 assumptions about the state of the world, and then threw some updated data in there in order to accelerate the process,” Nahm said. “You can see how maybe this wasn’t a big deal six years ago. Now electricity demand is going up, and it’s getting more expensive. That wasn’t something that was on the horizon in 2018 at all.”
On the IEA’s latest report, flooding in LA, and Bill Gates’ bad news
Current conditions: Severe thunderstorms tomorrow could spawn tornadoes in Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Alabama • A massive wildfire on a biodiverse island in the Indian Ocean has been burning for nearly a month, threatening wildlife • Tropical Cyclone Zelia has made landfall in Western Australia with winds up to 180mph.
Bill Gates’ climate tech advocacy organization has told its partners that it will slash its grantmaking budget this year, dealing a blow to climate-focused policy and advocacy groups that relied on the Microsoft founder, Heatmap’s Katie Brigham has learned. Breakthrough Energy, the umbrella organization for Gates’ various climate-focused programs, alerted many nonprofit grantees earlier this month that it would not be renewing its support for them. This pullback will not affect Breakthrough’s $3.5 billion climate-focused venture capital arm, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which funds an extensive portfolio of climate tech companies. Breakthrough’s fellowship program, which provides early-stage climate tech leaders with funding and assistance, will also remain intact, a spokesperson confirmed. They would not comment on whether this change will lead to layoffs at Breakthrough Energy.
“Breakthrough Energy made up a relatively small share — perhaps 1% — of climate philanthropy worldwide,” Brigham writes. “But what has made Breakthrough Energy distinctive is its support for policy and advocacy groups that promote a wide range of technological solutions, including nuclear energy and direct air capture, to fight climate change.”
Anti-wind activists have joined with well-connected figures in conservative legal and energy circles to privately lobby the Trump administration to undo permitting decisions by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, according to documents obtained by Heatmap’s Jael Holzman. Representatives of conservative think tanks and legal nonprofits — including the Caesar Rodney Institute, the Heartland Institute and Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, or CFACT — sent a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum dated February 11 requesting that the Trump administration “immediately revoke” letters from NOAA to 11 offshore wind projects authorizing “incidental takes,” a term of regulatory art referencing accidental and permissible deaths under federal endangered species and mammal protection laws. The letter also requested “an immediate cession of construction” at four offshore wind projects with federal approvals that have begun construction: Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia offshore wind project, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners’ Vineyard Wind 1, and Ørsted’s Revolution Wind and Sunrise Wind projects.
“This letter represents a new stage of Trump’s war on offshore wind,” Holzman writes. “Yes, he has frozen leasing, along with most permitting activity and even public meetings related to pending projects. But the president's executive order targeting offshore wind opened the door to rescinding leases and previous permits. Doing so would produce new, costly legal battles for developers and for publicly-regulated utilities, ratepayers. Over the past few weeks, offshore wind developers with projects that got their permits under Biden have sought to reassure investors that at least they’ll be fine. If this new request is heeded, that calm will subside.”
Heavy downpours triggered flooding and debris flows across Los Angeles County yesterday. A portion of the Pacific Coast Highway, one of the most iconic roadways in America, is closed indefinitely due to mudslides near Malibu, an area devastated in last month’s fires. Duke’s Malibu, a famous oceanfront restaurant along the PCH, was inundated. The worst of the rain has passed now and many flood alerts have been canceled, but the cleanup has just begun.
Rain flows down a street outside a burned home.Mario Tama/Getty Images
Global electricity use is set to rise by 4% annually through 2027, “the equivalent of adding an amount greater than Japan’s annual electricity consumption every year,” according to the International Energy Agency’s new Electricity 2025 report. Here are some key points:
IEA
JPMorgan Chase clients have apparently been demanding more guidance about the climate crisis. As a result, the bank launched a new climate report authored by its global head of climate advisory, Sarah Kapnick, an atmospheric and oceanic scientist who was previously chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The report seeks to build what Kapnick is calling “climate intuition” – the ability to use science to assess and make strategic investment decisions about the shifting climate. “Success in the New Climate Era hinges on our ability to integrate climate considerations into daily decision-making,” Kapnick writes. “Those who adapt will lead, while others risk falling behind.” Here’s a snippet from the report, to give you a sense of the tone and takeaways:
“Adhering to temperatures below 1.5C will require emissions reductions. Depending on your definition of 1.5C, they may require historic annual reductions and potentially carbon removal. Conversely, if you have a technical or financial view that carbon dioxide removal will not scale, you should assume there is a difficult path to 1.5C (i.e. emissions reductions to zero depending on your definition in 6, 15, or 30+ years). If that is the case, you need to plan for the physical manifestations of climate change and social responses that will ensue if your investment horizons are longer.”
Greenhouse gas leaks from supermarket refrigerators are estimated to create as much pollution each year as burning more than 30 million tons of coal.