Saturday, October 19

Tag: Wildfires

Biden’s New Forest Plan Will Backfire
22Dec By adminNo Comments
Health

Biden’s New Forest Plan Will Backfire

The Biden Administration gave its friends in the climate lobby an early Christmas gift on Tuesday by restricting logging on tens of millions of acres of national forests. The U.S. Forest Service is proposing, for the first time, to amend simultaneously all of its forest management plans to effectively ban logging on nearly 25 million acres of “old growth” forests. This is a land grab if there ever was one. The agency claims that conserving older trees will fight climate change since they suck up and store CO2. Not if they go up in smoke. Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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Wildfires, Flooding, Upheavals: Travel in 2023
20Dec By adminNo Comments
Travel

Wildfires, Flooding, Upheavals: Travel in 2023

It was a year that was to mark the post-pandemic recovery of travel, bringing economic relief to local communities that had been hit hard by the prolonged loss of tourism revenue. Borders fully reopened, pandemic restrictions were lifted and traveler bookings surged, sparking a social media trend called “revenge travel.” But even as demand in 2023 reached near 2019 levels — with an estimated 975 million tourists traveling internationally between January and September, according to the World Tourism Organization — a series of disasters, upheavals and unparalleled weather events devastated destinations across the globe.Flooding. Wildfires. Heat waves. Blizzards. In the United States alone, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration designated 23 separate weather disasters, the larg...
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The U.N. Announces the Hottest Year
12Dec By adminNo Comments
Entertainment

The U.N. Announces the Hottest Year

When 2023 began, it seemed likely to be just one more year in the ongoing collapse of the world’s climate system. We were at the tail end of a long La Niña cold period in the Pacific, which meant that, although global temperatures had been near record levels for the past few years, they hadn’t quite topped 2016, the period of the last strong El Niño, which brought the hottest year to date—not to mention considerable havoc from Australia to Alaska. Amid signs of that Pacific warm current starting to build anew, climatologists looked ahead to next year as the time when all hell might break loose. Experts said it was possible that in 2024 we could go past 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures—the mark that we had pledged to try to avoid at the Paris climate summit just eight ...
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Air quality had gotten better in parts of the U.S. — but wildfire smoke is reversing those improvements, researchers say
6Dec By adminNo Comments
Health

Air quality had gotten better in parts of the U.S. — but wildfire smoke is reversing those improvements, researchers say

Wildfires in the U.S. have caused a decline in air quality and an increase of deaths in parts of the U.S. – even though air quality had been improving, researchers say. The study used data on air pollution and related deaths in the U.S. between 2000 and 2020 and found in the wildfire-prone West, air pollution started worsening again in 2010. Researchers looked at PM2·5 – fine inhalable particles in the air – as well as black carbon, which is emitted from coal plants, gas engines and other sources. Both decreased between 2000 and 2020, which contributed to a reduction of about 4,200 premature deaths, according to a study published in The Lancet Planetary Health.But in 2010, the decreasing trend reversed in the Western U.S., according to the study. There was a 55% increase in PM2·5, a 86% i...
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Hawaiian Electric Refocuses Grid Plan on Wildfire Risk
28Nov By adminNo Comments
World

Hawaiian Electric Refocuses Grid Plan on Wildfire Risk

Updated Nov. 28, 2023 6:46 pm ETHawaiian Electric said it wasn’t sufficiently focused on wildfire risk before August’s deadly blaze on Maui and proposed nearly tripling the money it would now spend on the effort.  The utility, in regulatory filings this week, said it had been more concerned with hurricanes than with wildfire risk before the Aug. 8 fire that killed 100 people and leveled the town of Lahaina. The company said it now wants to revise a plan to improve its power grid to focus more on wildfires. Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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Some See Maui Fire Victim Fund as Too Little, Too Soon
19Nov By adminNo Comments
World

Some See Maui Fire Victim Fund as Too Little, Too Soon

Nov. 19, 2023 10:00 am ETAfter Kimberly Buen learned her elderly father was killed in the August fire that burned the historic Hawaiian town of Lahaina to the ground, she needed to know who was ultimately responsible. Buen diligently listened to news conferences about how the deadly fire sparked. She read about the highly flammable grasses that blanketed nearby property. Buen, who lives in Palmdale, Calif., also retained an attorney to prepare a wrongful-death lawsuit against Hawaiian Electric, Maui County, the state of Hawaii and Kamehameha Schools, a local landowner, who she said needed to be held accountable for their roles in the fire. Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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PG&E chief Patti Poppe is fighting to salvage a plan to bury power lines to reduce wildfire risk weeks before regulators are expected to decide to significantly restrict the number of underground lines in favor of other, cheaper, ways of mitigating the danger.
2Oct By adminNo Comments
World

PG&E chief Patti Poppe is fighting to salvage a plan to bury power lines to reduce wildfire risk weeks before regulators are expected to decide to significantly restrict the number of underground lines in favor of other, cheaper, ways of mitigating the danger.

PG&E chief Patti Poppe is fighting to salvage a plan to bury power lines to reduce wildfire risk weeks before regulators are expected to decide to significantly restrict the number of underground lines in favor of other, cheaper, ways of mitigating the danger.
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