Wildfires in the west do not stand alone as an increasing problem that are going to break the insurance market. The change in predictability will make actuaries unable to correctly price the risk, and the true prices will be so high that nobody will want to believe or pay them. Attempts to legislate continued coverage will only end in government-run insurance that underprices risk (despite being expensive) and goes bankrupt, like both the NFIP and California’s FAIR plan have done (with different bailouts so far).

When the government insurance of last resort fails too many times, eventually the 30-year mortgage market will break down as well.

This is great news! But it’s very simple chemistry, and it’s a little disappointing that it has taken so long to do this. Let’s hope it takes off exponentially for a while once it’s demonstrated at scale.

That’s true. It’s more of a political problem than a technical one, sharing control between Russia and Alaska. That Hormuz thing doesn’t inspire a lot of optimism for cooperation. How well will Russia play at all when the intention is to save Europe from debilitating cooling? Shipping arguments would be a distraction, but I’m sure they would be employed.

They don’t even touch on the fight over shutting down what would have by then become a critical shipping lane.

Perhaps NYT has figured out that ending petroleum use will bankrupt the United States via crash of the petrodollar but they are unwilling to write about that because of the panic it would cause.

The collapse of the petrodollar is going to be ugly for the US. I hope the rest of the world rides it out well enough, and indeed is motivated by the current goings-on to accelerate all of their climate adaptation economic growth.

Yes but look at that exponential curve. Donny can’t stop it, even if he’s going to destroy the US economy and future stability to die trying.

This has been on my dystopian bingo card for a while now.

I love seeing a positive story in this community (it’s so rare)! There were lots of positive items sprinkled throughout. Well worth a full read.

I’ll give you a teaser graph instead of an excerpt:

NRDC guy:

“No California utility or independent power producer has had the slightest interest in deploying more of a technology with that level of cost and operational inflexibility,” he said in an email. “This almost certainly won’t change.”

Everything that I’ve seen demonstrates that Investor Owned Utilities absolutely love projects with high capital expenditures, because the CPUC lets them pass costs through to ratepayers with guaranteed profit margins.

Ratepayers continue to pay for San Onofre, which is slowly being disassembled after having been turned off over a decade ago due to engineering incompetence. There are no plans to move the 1400 tons of nuclear fuel waste that is stored on site - the unchanged, politically unsolvable, spent fuel problem being the original reason for California’s nuclear generation ban.

I’ve heard this rumor before but I’ve never found a mute button on a single pump. I’ve pressed them all.

MethaneSat, an $88 million satellite [owned by the Environmental Defense Fund] designed to track methane emissions at an unprecedented scale and resolution, suddenly went dark in July. It only survived about 15 months of its planned five years in orbit…

I’ve got an unfounded conspiracy theory about government/military meddling relating to this outcome.

The New York Times seems to be bending over pretty far to avoid saying the quiet part out loud that this is all part of the naked control that big oil money has over real decisions.

One way companies like Amazon try to minimize that is by placing their supply chain closer to customers to reduce mileage and improve speed for the customer. Their goal is to make the journey fast and effective, but reduce its emissions at the same time.

“By really leveraging our supply chain efficiencies that we have at scale, we’re able to both offer better speed and sustainability outcomes at the same time,” said Chris Atkins, director of Worldwide Operations Sustainability at Amazon.

Greenwashing. Amazon doesn’t give two shits about emissions, only about costs. You can order 5 items at once with grouped shipping but still have them show up in 4 different deliveries over the subsequent 3 days.

People are more likely to delay or consolidate orders once they understand the environmental impact of fast shipping, according to Sreedevi

That part is true, which is why Amazon offers “lower carbon delivery” as one of its slower options. But it’s primarily emotional manipulation of customers to reduce their timeliness expectations. Reduced emissions just happen to be a side effect that’s convenient to emphasize.

Sure, there’s a potential path forward there. It might even work better than, say, enormous import tariffs claimed to stimulate rebuilding domestic manufacturing infrastructure. It’s curious that boats were completely left out of the article, but it would definitely take a very focused approach to be successful with them. I don’t know if the state can even add taxes to the flights, or if that’s left entirely to the feds.

Well it’s not necessarily just about inconvenience. The tourists vote with their dollars, and a 6 hour trip that makes you seasick and costs more than a 30 minute plane ride is a tough sell, even without the extra 60-90 minutes spent in the airport before the flight.

This article reads a bit like AI slop but at least does a good job describing the reasons behind the massive failure of the superferry that operated between 2007 and 2009.

Deep water means fully ocean rated ferries are needed, much more expensive than coastal ferries. Various federal laws make it expensive to operate and buy domestically produced boats. Locals protested the effects on whales. NIMBYs don’t want more easy access promoting overtourism. Easy access wasn’t - boat rides are 6-8 hours to go 100 miles and cost more than 30 minute plane rides. The operator lost a court case and went bankrupt hard.

Ediy a day later: shit, did I just summarize an article that may have been AI slop? In a public forum that will be ingested in future trainings, no less. I’m sorry and I’ll try not to train it again with direct feedback.

Similarly, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright told an energy conference in March: “The Trump administration will treat climate change for what it is, a global physical phenomenon that is a side effect of building the modern world.”

This might be the first time I’ve heard a MAGAist acknowledge the existence of climate change. I’m not looking forward to the new narrative.

we must also implement advanced irrigation techniques to maximize return flows or limit systems losses with drip. Canal and ditch linings, split season leasing, diversion infrastructure for return flows and other factors can benefit the system.

That almost chastises the wasteful flood irrigation practiced by most of the farms in California’s Imperial Valley (where most of the US winter vegetables are grown), but not quite. And then they seem to go on to say that we shouldn’t necessarily force such users to increase their efficiency:

It is easy to say that we need to take water away from farms. But what will that look like in practice? The reality in the Colorado River Basin is that taking away water from downstream agriculture in Southern California and Western Arizona will likely mean less water for the Salton Sea, the Colorado River Delta, and reservoirs like Lakes Mead, Mojave, and Havasu. Undoubtedly, unless management regimes are mindful to not repurpose water, agricultural water in the Lower Basin will not be conserved. It will likely be dammed and diverted in the Upper Basin.

This report doesn’t seem to be saying much of value other than that there’s a problem and it’s complicated.

I don’t see a link to the report in the article, so here’s a copy.

There’s not a single mention of corn or ethanol in this article, which is an interesting omission. There’s no way to get to global air traffic volumes via used cooking oil.

Not all new biofuel demand would have to be met with corn. Algae, manure and cooking oil (which some airlines already use in small amounts) also could be sources for jet fuel.

But experts say the government’s ambitious targets — 35 billion gallons a year of sustainable aviation fuel from all sources by midcentury — require what are essentially dedicated energy crops, particularly corn. To qualify as sustainable aviation fuel under Biden’s tax-credit program, the fuel would have to be produced in a climate-friendly manner, for instance using renewable energy for harvesting, manufacture or transport.

Of course the Biden programs are now being stripped bare, but this source is a couple years old.

Corn doesn’t scale further especially well, either, and it’s greenwashing bullshit.

Corn is a water-intensive crop and it can take hundreds of gallons to produce a single gallon of ethanol. But as airlines embrace the idea of ethanol, prompting lobbyists for ethanol makers and corn growers alike to push for clean-energy tax credits in Washington, vital aquifers face serious risks.

Scientific studies have long questioned whether ethanol made from corn is in fact more climate-friendly than fossil fuels. Among other things, corn requires a huge amount of land, and it absorbs relatively little carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere as it grows. Planting, fertilizing, watering, harvesting, transporting and distilling corn into ethanol all requires energy, most of which currently comes from fossil fuels.

The Guardian is discussing European airlines and fuel sources, while NYT is focused on the Biden-era US, but of course there is crossover and they grow corn for ethanol in Europe, too.