When it comes to the post disaster space, where I spent a decent amount of time working with military forces trying to figure out how to be more effective in such situations (whether post natural or man-made disasters), there was a major ‘lesson’ that many came to in the 1980s and 1990s: effectiveness (in saving people, reducing future risks, being efficient in use of resources) requires coordination across organizations and coordination across phases. As to ‘phases’, which aren’t necessarily cleanly differentiated, the Three Rs:
Relief: Life saving and getting minimal functions going for preserving life and reducing damage risks.
Recovery: Help society move into a functioning stage so that people don’t need to leave and outside assistance can be reduced.
Reconstruction: Measures to boost economic and social strength to pre-disaster levels (or, even better, better than pre-disaster).
In terms of using resources efficiently and having the best chances for a better tomorrow, integrating across these phases as much as (reasonably) possible is key. If one can do something in “relief” that continues into and contributes to “recovery” and is a player (lays foundations) for “reconstruction”, it is like getting a triple whammy. And, there is a fourth R: Resiliency: if that measure helps contributes to the potential for reducing future risks, a grand slam is in play.
For example, when it comes to shelter, tents are relief and rarely into recovery. Having a container housing unit, like the US and allied militaries have used in places like Bosnia-i-Herzegovina and Iraq, blends from relief (quickly on site, quick to install) into recovery (housing elements that can stay around awhile). Deploying such ‘container’ units with plans and ways to incorporate into rebuilt infrastructure with (let’s say) high-wind and earthquake resistance takes that ‘shelter’ investment into a triple whammy or grand-slam solution. Now, a container is more expensive than a tent — but that is a lasting investment rather than a (hopefully very) temporary path to the problem.
In my space, distributed renewable energy is the blaring example of how to integrate across the Three Rs. As the grid gets knocked down, in places around the world, the diesel generators kick in and disaster relief organizations send in lots of them. That translates into high-cost and high-pollution demand for diesel fuel — which, by the way, undermines the Three Rs through resource demands (transportation of that diesel fuel and, of course, the cost of fuel). With the revolution in renewables — especially, in this context, solar pv and associated systems (micro-grid controls, storage, energy efficient devices (like LED lights) — the costs of going ‘green’ in the disaster relief, rather than polluting diesel generators, has now gotten advantaged to the clean energy option. And, unlike the diesel generator, it is quite straightforward to integrate a solar system across the ThreeRs. And, while doing so, build the solar system in
For US disasters, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) needs to update its approaches — clean energy systems need to be a growing part of the ‘fly away’ kit for helping get emergency power to communities blacked-out by disasters (like New York/New Jersey post Sandy and Puerto Rico today, after Maria). And, the US government requires an integrated approach to this so the ‘fly-away’ solar is done in a way that enables rapid creation of small micro-grids to address relief that facilities recovery and contributes to reconstruction. And, the installations should proceed down a path so that the next time a climate-enhanced disaster hits the community, the solar keeps the lights on and lowers the costs/challenges of that next disaster’s Three Rs.
Learning from disasters and reducing risks into the future pays off: look at Houston’s hospitals in Hurricane Harvey. Looking at Puerto Rico’s electricity situation, any honest analysis would conclude (differing, of course, as to specifics and how much and ..) that a rapid deployment of micro-grid solar would flow across the Three Rs and is a smart triple whammy path to help people and the economy.
September 21st, 2017 · Comments Off on Virginia’s troubling near failing clean energy/energy efficiency position
Yet another report, yet another sign that Virginia is (far) behind the times when it comes to leveraging the clean-energy revolution to create economic activity and help address climate change. In this case, “Solar Power Rocks” has gone through and rated the 50 states and the District of Columbia. As to Virginia,
“Solar in Virginia: about as bad as you might think!” The state’s big utility company, Dominion Power, offers an anemic performance payments program, which will help homeowners now but isn’t guaranteed to be there in a few years. All in all, the “D” grade is earned
That 38th spot ranking: a drop of three slots from last year.
A positive vision for the future is too rarely part of America’s political conversation at the moment. Today, Minnesota’s Rebecca Otto put out a serious marker to change that. Otto’s Minnesota Powered Plan targets leveraging Minnesota’s envious position as a manufacturing state with excellent wind and (yes) solar resources to transform the state into a clean energy powerhouse, with serious economic benefits for all of the state’s citizens and a true leadership position in creating a prosperous, climate-friendly future.
Rebecca Otto knows clean energy … and knows its value for Minnesota
While Otto’s plan merits a read (in no small part for the substantive supporting material), it’s core is that it focuses on achieving desire results through reforming our energy system toward a basic sensible path: a well-regulated market economy that enables private business to flourish while recognizing our social contract.
The three key action points in the plan:
Price carbon
One of the worst elements of our energy system is all the damaging ‘externalities’ that are not in the economic equation. By pricing carbon, Minnesota Powered would correct that market distortion.
Incorporating key externalities into the economic decision making (by businesses, individuals, governments, …) would allow the efficiency of a ‘well-regulated market’ to find the best paths to reduce those costs, those externalities (e.g., pollution & associated costs to human health, productivity, and our future prospects).
Cash Dividends to Minnesotans
The plan dedicates 75 percent of the associated resources to quarterly dividends (estimated to be in the range of $50 every month, $150 per quarter) to every Minnesotan resident.
Such dividends would have significant benefits — not just political (people like cashing checks) but also social (a small path toward addressing economic inequality) and in rewarding those who are more diligent are reducing their fossil-foolish (carbon) footprints.
Clean Energy Refundable Tax Credits
The remaining resources would provide tax credits for things like efficient water heaters and HVACs, insulating homes, solar panel installations, and electric vehicles.
This would enable serious financial savings for those who leverage the tax credit. And, with the advances in financing, many of these projects could be executed with zero dollars down and thus save people money from day one.
This is a serious job creation measure along with helping people save money through reducing home energy costs. The campaign analysis is that “This will create tens of thousands of good-paying new private-sector jobs—often paying more than $80,000 per year—in every community across Minnesota.”
Otto — with over a decade as Minnesota’s State Auditor and time in the legislature — has the sort of serious credentials and knowledge of state government that voters should expect from a serious candidate for Governor. With Minnesota-Powered, Otto shows that she has the sort of vision that voters should want from their political leaders.
While I will be returning for additional looks and commentary on the Minnesota Powered Plan, there is a simple truth: this is the sort of thinking and plan that every state in the Union (and, well, the Federal Government) should be pursuing. I would hope that it is taken seriously and considered in State Houses across the land.
Greg Laden’s overview includes a detailed look at the economic benefits from the plan with an emphasis of something that is ‘implicit’ in comments above: this is a ‘revenue neutral’ carbon price.
Mary Ellen Hart “Some economic plans are win-wins, or even triple wins, but when was the last time you heard of a win-win-win-win-win-win plan? … Being an auditor, she doesn’t shy away from taking a good hard look at how climate change – think ever more extreme floods, wildfires, droughts and storms – is costing communities bigtime, draining community budgets meant for boosting business and creating jobs. She’s also saying what few other politicians have the courage to say: “The impact of climate change is hitting far sooner and much closer to home than many of us ever imagined, and we have a moral obligation to protect our children.””
One of privileges of our internet world is the ability to interact with and develop relationships with people all over the globe without ever having the opportunity to meet face to face. (Yes, it was possible in snail mail days but, well, so much harder even as a ‘pen pals’.)
One of the privileges of being engaged in the struggle to enhance understanding of climate science and the urgent necessity to address our climate challenges/seize climate opportunities is the chance to interact with impressive, passionate, knowledgable, thoughtful, incredibly decent people.
The two are the combination of the engaged climate netcitizen: tens, hundreds, thousands of people communicated with and collaborated with without ever having had the opportunity to meet them.
And, reality is that these networks mean that we will have to mourn people who are part of our lives, part of our communities, without ever having ‘met’ them in person.
I had the privilege of email communications with Andy — thoughtful, decent, insightful, knowledgeable, humble … My latest communication just six days ago as he provided insights on how climate change is impacting agricultural options in Canada, including what is the world’s most expensive olive oil.
On 28 August, Andy made the last post on his blog site Critical Angle discussing his terminal cancer, his life, medical insurance, and his perspectives on climate change. In his honor, I have posted this after the fold. Exit, Pursued by a Crab is beyond question worth your time to read it and, by doing so, to honor Andy Skuce’s life.
Andy sometimes described himself as a “recovering oilman,” having worked many years in oil and gas exploration. In a 2012 post, Andy wrote about the evolution of his views on climate change. Once Andy grasped the reality and urgency of the problem, he devoted much of his time to educating others about it, including some of his former oil industry colleagues.
Dear Andy Skuce — you will be missed … you will be remembered … you will continue to inspire.
In the more than 100 days since, the administration has largely opted for a chisel and scalpel approach to refashioning its online content, but the end result is much the same – mentions of climate change have been excised, buried or stripped of any importance.
Federal government websites are being combed through to apply new verbiage. The state department’s office of global change, for example, has removed links to the Obama administration’s 2013 climate action report and mention of the latest UN meeting on climate change. Text relating to climate change and greenhouse gases has also been purged.
While political pundits, often too interested in horse race than substance, discuss the failure of major legislation to go through and foolishly suggest that Trump is somehow magically a ‘post partisan’ President after making (yet to be executed) deals with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, there is a horrific grinding reality across the US government: the science denial forces are hard at work to make it harder for quality scientific work to be done and to adopt a ‘see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’ path toward climate change: if we don’t study it and don’t have any information out there about it, obviously the problem doesn’t exist and we can say whatever we want about it.
The above-mentioned efforts to guard records of what existed on U.S. government websites as Trump put his hand down on the Bible (to lie) in takingthe Oath of Office provides tools to understand just how Team Trump is devastating the U.S. government’s climate change material.
The challenge of that image, however, is a form of passivity: that there is simply ‘ignoring’ going on when the reality of Team Trump’s dystopia are active efforts to undermine climate science, the public’s understanding of climate science, and humanity’s potential to take action effectively to reduce the risks of climate catastrophe.
A note of appreciation for Peter Gleick for worsening my Monday by this effort to quantify one corner of the Trump Administration’s war on science and knowledge.
UPDATE: Peter has added to the window of silencing of climate science.
September 18th, 2017 · Comments Off on Turning one’s back on science: the New Mexico derivative
In the name of science, school systems — state school boards typically — around the nation are working on science standards. Much is made, by many, of American education’s need to focus on STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) (and, often now, STEAM: Science Technology Engineering Arts Mathematics).
“[Science] is more than a school subject, or the periodic table, or the properties of waves. It is an approach to the world, a critical way to understand and explore and engage with the world, and then have the capacity to change that world…”
— President Barack Obama, March 23, 2015
Then comes a discussion of STEM shortfalls: in numbers of teachers, pipelines of students to meet 21st employment requirements, etc … STEM is, for many, core to economic competitiveness in the years, decades, centuries to come.
Amid the drive to tackle this challenge, the Next Generation Science Standards “to create a set of research-based, up-to-date K–12 science standards. These standards give local educators the flexibility to design classroom learning experiences that stimulate students’ interests in science and prepares them for college, careers, and citizenship.” The NextGen Standards were state driven and funded, with several dozen states involved. These standards are having impacts in science classrooms around the country.
let alone humanity’s driving of a warming earth, and, of course not,
the risks that unchecked climate change creates for humanity let alone
the risks of making the desert Southwest virtually uninhabitable with the potential for massive droughts amid hotter temperatures;
Geology’s scientific learning as to Earth’s history
Ignoring and, in fact, seeking to undermine quality science in the name of — almost certainly — religious extremism and ideological purposes is the exact opposite of what STEM/STEAM is about.
All young people should be prepared to think deeply and to think well so that they have the chance to become the innovators, educators, researchers, and leaders who can solve the most pressing challenges facing our nation and our world, both today and tomorrow.
This is being done in the name of having education that is “a reflection of the diversity of New Mexico“, the “diversity of perspectives” of NM residents. With that in mind should ask:
Will New Mexico’s science classes offer alternative perspectives that the Earth is flat?
Should students be taught that the moon landings were fake?
Will history classes teach that the Bush Administration was behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks?
Will there be a year of education about alien abductions?
Will there be an AA portion of NM’s science education: astronomy + astrology?
Will …
All of these are, sadly, beliefs held by some Americans, including in New Mexico. Does ‘diversity of perspectives’ mean equally balancing the ‘perspectives’ of people whose last science education was in 10th grade thirty years ago and a Nobel-laureate scientist?
Ignoring and undermine STEM education will not make America and Americans more competitive in the 21st century and will not help set the path to ‘solve the most pressing challenges.
“I’m certainly not going to move a high-tech company here, because I’m not going to get a scientifically educated population,” said Kim Johnson, a physicist and former president of the New Mexico Academy of Science.
“We’re doing the one thing in terms of educating our children that tend to push those kinds of businesses away,” he said.
Johnson said the proposed standards are an attempt to appease those who have for years tried to scrub evolution and climate change from the state’s science curriculum.
Just as appeasement worked very well with Hitler, it isn’t any more sensible as a path to deal with those with anti-science attitudes. The proposed New Mexico (anti-)science standards that emphasize “diversity of perspectives” would will lead to an undermining of the education of New Mexico’s public school students.
September 16th, 2017 · Comments Off on Trump might (MIGHT) not be leaving Paris Accords … Should we care?
The ‘breaking news’, according to an EU official and Wall Street Journal reporting, Donald Trump and @TeamTrump might act (yet again) in ways to piss off their #MAGA-frothing base. After announcing, in front of a sweating audience of fossil fools on the White House lawn, that the United States would be leaving the Paris Accords, Saturday’s breaking news is that this might not be the case.
The U.S. has stated that they will not renegotiate the Paris accord, but they will try to review the terms on which they could be engaged under this agreement
This is amid the first major international meeting on the Paris Accords since Trump’s June announcement.
White House senior adviser Everett Eissenstat unveiled the U.S. plan, according to an official at Saturday’s gathering, as Ottawa, Beijing and Brussels accelerate their joint effort to minimize the fallout from a potential U.S. withdrawal from the Paris agreement.
Putting aside the mercurial nature of Donald Trump’s gaslighting and the incertitude that anything Trump or anyone from Team Trump says will remain firm, a question that we should ask is ‘so what?’
As many are reporting ‘relief’ that Irma wasn’t as bad as it could have been (even while recognizing that some 20% of Floridians are without electricity, the devastation in the Caribbean, and untold damages throughout Florida), let’s consider Hurricane Irma’s Accomplishments (see after fold for fuller list) that include:
185 mph lifetime max winds – tied with Florida Keys (1935), Gilbert (1988) and Wilma (2005) for second strongest max winds of all time in Atlantic hurricane.
Allen had max winds of 190 mph in 1980 – 185 mph lifetime max winds –
the strongest storm to exist in the Atlantic Ocean outside of the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico on record –
185 mph max winds for 37 hours – the longest any cyclone around the globe has maintained that intensity on record.
The previous record was Haiyan in the NW Pacific at 24 hours
914 mb lifetime minimum central pressure – lowest pressure by an Atlantic hurricane outside of the western Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico on record –
3.25 day lifetime as a Category 5 hurricane – tied with Cuba (1932) for longest lifetime as Category 5
3 consecutive days as a Category 5 hurricane – the longest in the satellite era (since 1966)
– 8.50 major hurricane days – the 2nd most in satellite era (since 1966)
Generated the most Accumulated Cyclone Energy by a tropical cyclone on record in the tropical Atlantic (7.5-20°N, 60-20°W)
Generated more Accumulated Cyclone Energy than the first eight named storms of the Atlantic hurricane season (Arlene-Harvey) combined
Generated enough Accumulated Cyclone Energy to satisfy NOAA ACE definition for an average Atlantic hurricane season
Generated more Accumulated Cyclone Energy than 18 entire Atlantic hurricane seasons in the satellite era (since 1966)
I'm astounded by Irma’s long list of “accomplishments”. What a hurricane! https://t.co/nDMtMMgjNf
Oregon, Washington State, Montana, Canadian, …. Forest Fires burning with smoke clouds crossing the nation …
Forest fire smoke is pushing south from Canada ?? Chicago's northern suburbs. Milky white areas circled are not clouds, but wildfire smoke. pic.twitter.com/jJixvFVYRI
September 8th, 2017 · Comments Off on The morning after Back-to-School: Six points to explain climate change
Like 10s of millions of American parents, the month of September brings back to school night. Writ large, mine last night was what you can hope for: with one exception, what appear to be good to excellent teachers; positive statements about ‘the kids’ and atmosphere; and some positive feedback about your child. Tensions issues related to school funding, concern about how the parents will have to backfill to cover one lousy teacher, and …. but, again, about as good as it gets. Thus, the mindset was ‘high school’ when seeing an OutPostUtopia (Michael Jenkins) tweet this morning sharing a six-step discussion re climate change and severe weather that provides the sort of clarity that any/all who m
A straightforward climate science explanation that any Middle Schooler should understand
anaged to not fail a high school physics class can/should understand.
The discussion to the side summarized:
Sequence of cause & effects:
The carbon-energy economy is increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide.
That increased carbon dioxide is causing atmosphere AND ocean warming (and ocean acidification) globally.
Global warming is driving Arctic sea loss, retreating glaciers, and sea-level rise (warmer => more volume + melting glaciers/Greenland/Antarctica).
Global warming/climate change does not necessarily cause weather events.
Global warming can augment (make more severe) weather events.
Augmented weather events, therefore,
can be a real expression of climate change because
global warming of the atmosphere and oceans has augmented them.
The above is a defensible discussion which lays out a logical case that any with a modicum of education and (critically) an open mind to science can understand and absorb.
with 
