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On ominous forecasts, new research on gas stoves, and snakes
Current conditions: The Sierra Nevada received more than two feet of snow, marking the region’s snowiest day of the season • Tropical Cyclone Hidaya lost strength over the weekend • It will be about 80 degrees Fahrenheit and clear in Cape Canaveral for the launch of Boeing’s Starliner space capsule.
It feels appropriate today to begin by acknowledging the extreme weather events happening around the world right now. There are so many that spotlighting only one risks ignoring the underlying reality that climate-driven natural disasters of all kinds are becoming more frequent and severe.
Houston’s floods – More than 400 people in and around Houston, Texas, evacuated their homes over the weekend due to flooding. At least one person, a child, was killed. In one nearby county, more than 21 inches of rain fell over five days last week. The rain has tapered off but the cleanup has just begun.
Brazil’s rain – In Brazil’s southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, days of intense rain caused the Guaiba River to overflow and flood more than 340 cities, including the region’s capital of Porto Alegre. At least 78 people are dead and more than 115,000 have been forced to evacuate. One climatologist called the catastrophe “a disastrous cocktail” of climate change and the El Niño effect. “It looks like a scene out of a war,” said Rio Grande do Sul governor Eduardo Leite.
An aerial view of Porto AlegreRamiro Sanchez/Getty Images
Chile’s fires – Fires in Chile’s Valparaiso region, fueled by an intense heat wave and enduring drought, have killed at least 51 people and burned more than 64,000 acres.
Kenya’s deluge – Flooding and landslides in Kenya from unrelenting rainfall have killed more than 200 people. It is still raining and the weather is forecast to worsen throughout the month of May.
Southeast Asia’s heat wave – A lengthy heat wave has shattered temperature records across Southeast Asia, forcing many schools to close. One weather historian called the heat wave “the most extreme event in world climatic history.”
Meanwhile, forecasters are getting nervous about a large weather system making its way across Central states that could bring severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, and giant hail starting today and lasting through Wednesday. “After enduring severe thunderstorms, including tornadoes last week, this forecast is not a welcome sight for residents of Kansas and Oklahoma especially,” wrote Andrew Freedman at Axios.
New research published in Science Advances finds that nitrogen dioxide (NO2) pollution from gas and propane stoves could be responsible for 50,000 U.S. cases of childhood asthma and up to 19,000 adult deaths each year. For the study, scientists from Stanford University, Harvard University, and the Central California Asthma Collaborative measured NO2 levels in more than 100 homes and created an air quality index that pulled in other data sets including cooking habits, ventilation, and home size. Their results show that NO2 pollution spreads throughout the home, and people living in spaces that are less than 800 square feet in size have four times more long-term NO2 exposure than people in homes that are larger than 3,000 square feet. Indigenous, Alaska Native, Hispanic and Black households have the highest exposure to NO2.
In case you missed it last week, Senate Republicans put forward a bill called the “ELITE” Vehicles Act that would repeal the electric vehicle tax credit in the Inflation Reduction Act. Wyoming GOP Sen. John Barrasso, who introduced the bill, claims the EV tax credit “benefits the wealthiest of Americans.” Jameson Dow at Electreknoted that Barrasso has received $526,425 from the oil and gas industry in this election cycle. The bill stands little chance in the Senate but “puts the Biden administration on notice that the credit is at risk if the GOP wins control of Congress and the White House in November,” wrote James Bikales at E&E News.
Three of the world’s biggest charitable groups – the Novo Nordisk Foundation, Wellcome Trust, and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – have teamed up to fund research into the overlapping crises of climate change, infectious disease, malnutrition, and antimicrobial resistance. The $300 million, three-year initiative aims to “break down barriers between often isolated areas of research,” said Novo Nordisk Foundation CEO Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen. It looks like the climate research will focus on finding “novel” solutions through better climate data, sustainable agriculture, and more resilient food systems. The partnership is specifically focused on improving outcomes for low- and middle-income countries, which are disproportionately affected by climate change. The organizations will be looking for public and private partners to expand the research project.
New research suggests climate change will force some venomous snakes to migrate into new, unprepared territories.
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Plus 3 more outstanding questions about this ongoing emergency.
As Los Angeles continued to battle multiple big blazes ripping through some of the most beloved (and expensive) areas of the city on Thursday, a question lingered in the background: What caused the fires in the first place?
Though fires are less common in California during this time of the year, they aren’t unheard of. In early December 2017, power lines sparked the Thomas Fire near Ventura, California, which burned through to mid-January. At the time it was the largest fire in the state since at least the 1930s. Now it’s the ninth-largest. Although that fire was in a more rural area, it ignited for many of the same reasons we’re seeing fires this week.
Read on for everything we know so far about how the fires started.
Five major fires started during the Santa Ana wind event this week:
Officials have not made any statements about the cause of any of the fires yet.
On Thursday morning, Edward Nordskog, a retired fire investigator from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, told me it was unlikely they had even begun looking into the root of the biggest and most destructive of the fires in the Pacific Palisades. “They don't start an investigation until it's safe to go into the area where the fire started, and it just hasn't been safe until probably today,” he said.
It can take years to determine the cause of a fire. Investigators did not pinpoint the cause of the Thomas Fire until March 2019, more than two years after it started.
But Nordskog doesn’t think it will take very long this time. It’s easier to narrow down the possibilities for an urban fire because there are typically both witnesses and surveillance footage, he told me. He said the most common causes of wildfires in Los Angeles are power lines and those started by unhoused people. They can also be caused by sparks from vehicles or equipment.
At about 27,000 acres burned, these fires are unlikely to make the charts for the largest in California history. But because they are burning in urban, densely populated, and expensive areas, they could be some of the most devastating. With an estimated 2,000 structures damaged so far, the Eaton and Palisades fires are likely to make the list for most destructive wildfire events in the state.
And they will certainly be at the top for costliest. The Palisades Fire has already been declared a likely contender for the most expensive wildfire in U.S. history. It has destroyed more than 1,000 structures in some of the most expensive zip codes in the country. Between that and the Eaton Fire, Accuweather estimates the damages could reach $57 billion.
While we don’t know the root causes of the ignitions, several factors came together to create perfect fire conditions in Southern California this week.
First, there’s the Santa Ana winds, an annual phenomenon in Southern California, when very dry, high-pressure air gets trapped in the Great Basin and begins escaping westward through mountain passes to lower-pressure areas along the coast. Most of the time, the wind in Los Angeles blows eastward from the ocean, but during a Santa Ana event, it changes direction, picking up speed as it rushes toward the sea.
Jon Keeley, a research scientist with the US Geological Survey and an adjunct professor at the University of California, Los Angeles told me that Santa Ana winds typically blow at maybe 30 to 40 miles per hour, while the winds this week hit upwards of 60 to 70 miles per hour. “More severe than is normal, but not unique,” he said. “We had similar severe winds in 2017 with the Thomas Fire.”
Second, Southern California is currently in the midst of extreme drought. Winter is typically a rainier season, but Los Angeles has seen less than half an inch of rain since July. That means that all the shrubland vegetation in the area is bone-dry. Again, Keeley said, this was not usual, but not unique. Some years are drier than others.
These fires were also not a question of fuel management, Keeley told me. “The fuels are not really the issue in these big fires. It's the extreme winds,” he said. “You can do prescription burning in chaparral and have essentially no impact on Santa Ana wind-driven fires.” As far as he can tell, based on information from CalFire, the Eaton Fire started on an urban street.
While it’s likely that climate change played a role in amplifying the drought, it’s hard to say how big a factor it was. Patrick Brown, a climate scientist at the Breakthrough Institute and adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, published a long post on X outlining the factors contributing to the fires, including a chart of historic rainfall during the winter in Los Angeles that shows oscillations between very wet and very dry years over the past eight decades. But climate change is expected to make dry years drier in Los Angeles. “The LA area is about 3°C warmer than it would be in preindustrial conditions, which (all else being equal) works to dry fuels and makes fires more intense,” Brown wrote.
And more of this week’s top renewable energy fights across the country.
1. Otsego County, Michigan – The Mitten State is proving just how hard it can be to build a solar project in wooded areas. Especially once Fox News gets involved.
2. Atlantic County, New Jersey – Opponents of offshore wind in Atlantic City are trying to undo an ordinance allowing construction of transmission cables that would connect the Atlantic Shores offshore wind project to the grid.
3. Benton County, Washington – Sorry Scout Clean Energy, but the Yakima Nation is coming for Horse Heaven.
Here’s what else we’re watching right now…
In Connecticut, officials have withdrawn from Vineyard Wind 2 — leading to the project being indefinitely shelved.
In Indiana, Invenergy just got a rejection from Marshall County for special use of agricultural lands.
In Kansas, residents in Dickinson County are filing legal action against county commissioners who approved Enel’s Hope Ridge wind project.
In Kentucky, a solar project was actually approved for once – this time for the East Kentucky Power Cooperative.
In North Carolina, Davidson County is getting a solar moratorium.
In Pennsylvania, the town of Unity rejected a solar project. Elsewhere in the state, the developer of the Newton 1 solar project is appealing their denial.
In South Carolina, a state appeals court has upheld the rejection of a 2,300 acre solar project proposed by Coastal Pine Solar.
In Washington State, Yakima County looks like it’ll keep its solar moratorium in place.
And more of this week’s top policy news around renewables.
1. Trump’s Big Promise – Our nation’s incoming president is now saying he’ll ban all wind projects on Day 1, an expansion of his previous promise to stop only offshore wind.
2. The Big Nuclear Lawsuit – Texas and Utah are suing to kill the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s authority to license small modular reactors.
3. Biden’s parting words – The Biden administration has finished its long-awaited guidance for the IRA’s tech-neutral electricity credit (which barely changed) and hydrogen production credit.