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Elon Musk Downplays the Role of Climate in L.A. Fires, Scientists Say

NYT Global Warming Climate Change - January 9, 2025 - 17:02
Posting on the social media site he owns, Mr. Musk blamed the fires on government. Scientists said a warming planet set the conditions.
Categories: Climate

State of emergency declared as several fires rage through Los Angeles – video

The Guardian Climate Change - January 9, 2025 - 14:15

More than 170,000 people have been evacuated as firefighters battle flames across five areas of the Californian city. The largest fire, in Pacific Palisades, west of Santa Monica, left a trail of devastation, with hundreds of homes and buildings destroyed. In a preliminary death toll, officials said five people had died as a result of the fires

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Categories: Climate

The chronicle of a fire foretold | Rebecca Solnit

The Guardian Climate Change - January 9, 2025 - 12:00

The current fires in Los Angeles are reminders of the costs of forgetting

The fires raging in and around Malibu are huge, and they’re terrible, and they’re also the latest in a series of catastrophic fires in Los Angeles county and the region, the latest consequence of heat and drought and wind that have long created the region’s volatile fire weather.

The climate crisis has made it hotter and drier and made wildfire worse here and across the west and around the world, but this region’s ecology has always been wedded to fire. Homes built in and around natural landscapes – canyons, chaparral coastal hills, forests, mountainsides – with a history of wildfire that are pretty much guaranteed to burn again sooner or later create the personal tragedies and losses and the pressure for fire crews to try to contain the blazes. But suppressing the blazes lets the fuel load build up, meaning that fire will be worse when it comes.

Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. She is the author of Orwell’s Roses and co-editor with Thelma Young Lutunatabua of the climate anthology Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility

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Categories: Climate

Scientists prize neutrality – that doesn’t cut it any more. In 2025, they must fully back the climate movement | Bill McGuire and Roger Hallam

The Guardian Climate Change - January 9, 2025 - 11:00

With 2024 set to go down as the hottest year on record, we know that what is coming is truly horrifying

The past 12 months have seen our world enter new territory. Last year will go down as the first time that the global average temperature exceeded 1.5C above preindustrial times over a calendar year. We could crash permanently through the 1.5C guardrail within the next five years, and shatter the 2C limit as soon as 2034. This will almost certainly result in the tipping points for collapse of the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets being crossed, committing us to the drowning of coastal towns and cities.

In years to come, we will look back at this time and ask the same question that future generations will ask: why didn’t we stop this catastrophe?

Bill McGuire is professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at UCL and author of Hothouse Earth: an Inhabitant’s Guide

Roger Hallam is co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

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Categories: Climate

U.S. Efforts to Cut Emissions Stalled in 2024 as Power Demand Surged

NYT Global Warming Climate Change - January 9, 2025 - 05:02
After staying flat for nearly two decades, electricity use is starting to rise again, and the boom in wind and solar power hasn’t kept pace.
Categories: Climate

U.S. Efforts to Cut Emissions Stalled in 2024 as Power Demand Surged

NYT Global Warming Climate Change - January 9, 2025 - 05:02
After staying flat for nearly two decades, electricity use is starting to rise again, and the boom in wind and solar power hasn’t kept pace.
Categories: Climate

The Los Angeles wildfires are climate disasters compounded

The Guardian Climate Change - January 9, 2025 - 05:00

Conditions for a January LA firestorm have not existed before now, writes a meteorologist and climate journalist

An exceptional mix of environmental conditions has created an ongoing firestorm without known historical precedent across southern California this week.

The ingredients for these infernos in the Los Angeles area, near-hurricane strength winds and drought, foretell an emerging era of compound events – simultaneous types of historic weather conditions, happening at unusual times of the year, resulting in situations that overwhelm our ability to respond.

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Categories: Climate

‘Essential’: nearly 400 incarcerated firefighters deployed as LA battles wildfires

The Guardian Climate Change - January 9, 2025 - 01:00

The firefighters earn $5.80-$10.24 per day plus $1 an hour when responding to active emergencies, according to CDCR

Hundreds of incarcerated firefighters are helping battle the destructive blazes that are rapidly spreading across southern California as a powerful windstorm devastates the region.

The California department of corrections and rehabilitation (CDCR) said on Wednesday that it had deployed 395 imprisoned firefighters across 29 crews while the county fights multiple out-of-control blazes fueled by extreme winds and dry conditions. The incarcerated crews are embedded with the California department of forestry and fire protection (Cal Fire) and its nearly 2,000 firefighters, who have been stretched thin from several simultaneous emergencies.

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Categories: Climate

‘A day not soon forgotten’: the Palisades take stock after blazes rage

The Guardian Climate Change - January 8, 2025 - 23:15

Firefighters said the destruction from the California fires was unlike any they had seen in their decades-long careers

The sun glared red as it sank into the Pacific Ocean on Wednesday, casting an orange hue over the carnage smoldering on the southern Californian coast. It will be a day not soon forgotten in Los Angeles, which by evening was flanked by catastrophic wildfires in nearly all directions.

It’s too early to determine the full extent of the destruction caused by the blazes, but in the neighborhoods bordering the Palisades fire it was clear the impact was enormous.

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Categories: Climate

LA hasn't seen anything like this before: Pacific Palisades residents react to wildfires – video

The Guardian Climate Change - January 8, 2025 - 21:09

Huge wildfires roaring through the Los Angeles area of Pacific Palisades has left the neighborhood in ruins. Resident Sanah Chung left his Pacific Palisades home when a mandatory evacuation order was placed but returned to protect his home from the fire. 'I know this looks pretty stupid, but If I can save one ember from burning down my house, I'll take the risk,' said Chung.

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Categories: Climate

After ‘tremendous demand’, water tanks used for fighting LA wildfires ran dry early

The Guardian Climate Change - January 8, 2025 - 19:58

City’s supply completely filled before fire, but within hours three 1m-gallon tanks serving Palisades depleted

As firefighters battled three wildfires raging across Los Angeles in the early hours of Wednesday morning, the water tanks supplying Pacific Palisades – where the largest of the fires broke out – ran dry.

Janisse Quiñones, chief engineer and CEO of the Los Angeles department of water and power, told reporters that by 3am Wednesday, the three 1m-gallon tanks serving the Palisades had been depleted.

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Categories: Climate

Wildfires bring pollution hazards for unhoused people in LA: ‘Like breathing in lead’

The Guardian Climate Change - January 8, 2025 - 18:55

As officials urge people to stay indoors, those experiencing homelessness struggle to shield themselves from toxic air

Thick, noxious clouds of smoke engulfed Los Angeles as several wildfires rage across the region, creating heightened hazards for the tens of thousands of unhoused people living on the streets in the county.

As authorities ordered evacuations for more than 82,000 people in various parts of LA and urged others to remain indoors to shield themselves from the gray smoke, unhoused Angelenos were struggling to protect themselves from the pollution.

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Categories: Climate

California Wildfires Threaten Insurers Already Teetering From Climate Shocks

NYT Global Warming Climate Change - January 8, 2025 - 17:46
Companies started pulling back from the state as earlier fires made it harder to turn a profit. Experts warn the exodus could grow.
Categories: Climate

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Received No Drilling Bids

NYT Global Warming Climate Change - January 8, 2025 - 14:14
No companies bid for the chance to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It was the second auction in four years that failed to draw strong interest.
Categories: Climate

Moment California residents run from home as wildfires spread – video

The Guardian Climate Change - January 8, 2025 - 12:19

Residents of Los Angeles have fled deadly wildfires engulfing the suburbs of the West Coast megalopolis, as firefighters struggled to contain the flames overnight amid fears they would worsen. Tanner Charles posted this footage to X saying 'video of the moment my friend and I abandoned his house after we tried to save what we could. Please be praying for him and his family.' California officials ordered more than 30,000 people to evacuate their homes as hillside blazes ripped through the coastal Pacific Palisades neighbourhood. People escaped by car and on foot

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Categories: Climate

¿Por qué Donald Trump quiere Groenlandia?

NYT Global Warming Climate Change - January 8, 2025 - 10:50
El presidente electo de Estados Unidos dijo que el país necesitaba la isla, parte semiautónoma de Dinamarca, por motivos de seguridad nacional. Pero hay otros posibles intereses.
Categories: Climate

Celebrities among thousands to flee homes as Los Angeles wildfires rage

The Guardian Climate Change - January 8, 2025 - 09:59

Blazes devastate affluent Pacific Palisades with more than 30,000 people under evacuation orders

Fast-moving wildfires raging through Los Angeles have left Hollywood movie actors and reality TV stars fleeing their hillside mansions, as wind-whipped blazes devastated affluent neighbourhoods along the coast.

More than 30,000 people have been put under evacuation orders in LA, and a state of emergency has been declared as the infernos swept through the Pacific Palisades, a ritzy area near Malibu popular with celebrities.

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Categories: Climate

Sweat-wicking and radiative cooling: can new fabrics make living through extreme heat more bearable?

The Guardian Climate Change - January 8, 2025 - 09:00

How a team of researchers is reducing skin temperature under clothes and energy bills with some forward fashion thinking

This year is on track to be the hottest in recorded history. With rising temperatures and more intense and frequent heatwaves, keeping cool in summer will get harder. Air conditioning can only go so far, especially when extreme heat raises the risk of electricity outages.

Wearing light, loose-fitting clothing is well recognised health advice to beat the heat in sweltering temperatures, especially important given that heatwaves kill more people than any other extreme weather event.

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Categories: Climate

More LA residents flee wildfires amid warning of stronger winds in morning

The Guardian Climate Change - January 8, 2025 - 08:17

Hillside homes abandoned and 30,000 evacuated as infernos rip into north and west areas of Californian city

Residents of Los Angeles have fled wildfires engulfing the suburbs of the US’s second city, as firefighters struggled to contain the flames overnight amid fears they would worsen on Wednesday morning.

California officials have ordered more than 30,000 people to evacuate their homes as hillside infernos ripped through the coastal Pacific Palisades neighbourhood. People escaped by car and on foot.

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Categories: Climate