This is Not Cool

That ought to do it. Trump imposes tariffs on Canada, in part as a distraction from a disastrous Middle Eastern war, in part to shore up the fraying narrative that increasingly destructive fires are more related to forest management, than climate change.

Report above from Minneapolis local TV points out that temperatures in the Boundary Waters area of Minnesota, near Canada, hovered in the 104° F range prior to the ignition, probably caused by lightning.
Data below assembled by Zeke Hausfather shows the relationship between hotter weather and fires.

Wall Street Journal:

The new tariffs come after smoke from raging wildfires in Canada drifted into the U.S., blanketing cities including New York, Chicago and Washington. In a Truth Social post Friday, Trump threatened to impose steeper duties on America’s northern neighbor to compensate for the smoke’s impact. 

“We are holding Canada responsible for the fact that they are not properly maintaining their Forests, and Brush therein, and the United States is being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air, the quality of which is dangerous, and totally unacceptable!” Trump said.

Days later, the president was seen speaking with Carney at Sunday’s World Cup Final. Trump told reporters that Canada needed to stop the wildfires.

“I told them, I mean, you got to stop these fires from coming in and you know poisoning our air,” Trump said. “Our air has been poisoned. Have a good relationship with Mark Carney, but you know we got to stop the fires up there. If we can help them, we’ll help them. But maybe they should pay us some damages or something, or we should do some tariffs.”

Prompt to ChatGPT:
How does the total area of Canadian forests compare to the area of the contintental United States?

Canada has about 347 million hectares (3.47 million km²) of forest, making it home to roughly 9% of the world’s forests.

The continental United States (the 48 contiguous states plus Washington, D.C.) has a total land area of about 7.66 million km².

Here’s the comparison:

Area	Square kilometers	Square miles
Canadian forests	~3.47 million km²	~1.34 million mi²
Continental U.S. land area	~7.66 million km²	~2.96 million mi²

So:

• Canadian forests are about 45% of the area of the continental United States.
• Put another way, you would need a little more than two Canadian forests to cover the contiguous U.S.

Continue reading “Following Wildfire Threats – Trump Tariffs Canada”

Titusville, Florida is the county seat of Brevard County, Florida, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 48,789.
It’s located  between Orlando and the Kennedy Space Center.

Mayor Andrew Connors took to YouTube to explain it was time to do something about stormwater systems no longer up to the job of handling extreme rain events.
I’ve had the privilege of observing what real courage looks like up close, and it’s not what people think.
It’s not Sly Stallone breaking into a bar and beating people up.
It’s a lot more like this man speaking simple truth to people who may not want to hear it. It can be ragged, and messy, and it likely will not make feel all creamy dreamy, or increase your popularity. It’s about doing something that has to be done.

In discussing increased extreme rain events, Daniel Swain dropped some knowledge on me that was new.

It’s generally known that for each degree centigrade of warming, globally, atmospheric water vapor increases by about 7 percent – which is already a lot – equivalent to having another Lake Superior sloshing around in the atmosphere.
But there’s more to it.
When storms occur, and there’s more heat energy around, which is gasoline for storms – the rain in extreme events can be double, or triple, that 7 percent.
Meaning rain events that are 14%, or 21% larger than what might have occurred with the same conditions in decades past.

Good context for the rash of extreme floods we have seen, and will continue to see.

Everywhere I have been over the last week, conversations have centered on the choking air quality in the midwest.
The sense of fear, dread, and anger is palpable.
Will that be true generally, and will it make a difference in how people look at political choices, or will we still make decisions based on whether a trans person is playing volleyball somewhere?

Guardian:

Amid a summer of dangerous heat, drought and floods, a majority of Americans are connecting increasingly severe weather to the climate crisis, new polling shows, despite efforts by Donald Trump to dismiss global heating as a “con job” and a “hoax”.

It’s a sign that attempts to suppress and polarize climate concerns may not be seeing full success, said Grace Adcox, senior climate strategist at Data for Progress.

“We started with the question of ‘are extreme weather events increasing,’because we thought [that] if we can find consensus on that, that can be an entry point to being able to have a more bipartisan conversation about climate and climate intervention,” she said.

About 61% of likely American voters believe extreme weather events have become more frequent over the past five years, the survey from the progressive polling firm Data for Progress, shared exclusively with the Guardian, found. That includes 72% of Democrats, 63% of Independents, and nearly half – 46% – of all Republicans.

Sheldon Whitehouse, the Rhode Island senator who has long criticized Democrats for quieting their talk of global warming – or “climate-hushing” – said the new data “adds to the mountain of evidence that the public is way ahead of the politicians on the dire consequences of climate change”.

“Climate hushers who ignore this righteous fight should take note,” he told the Guardian.

Continue reading “Will Voters Link Weather Extremes to Climate Change?”

Zeke Hausfather PhD:

I’m generally pretty measured in how I discuss climate data. There has been only one time in recent years when I was truly shocked: when global temperatures came in for September 2023 at a full 0.5C warmer than any prior September on record.1 Once until today, that is. With the July runs now in from 667 ensemble members across 14 different seasonal forecast models, it looks like this year’s El Niño is not only very likely to be the strongest event since reliable records began – it may end up the strongest by a truly mind-blowing margin.

The multi-model median for the event’s peak (measured as detrended sea surface temperature anomalies in the Niño 3.4 region of the tropical Pacific) currently stands at 3.6C, roughly 0.8C hotter than the prior record of 2.75C set in 2015-16. For context, the gap between the strongest and the fifth strongest El Niño of the past 150 years is only about 0.5C. The models are forecasting something outside the envelope of anything we have ever observed.

—
Below, Ben Noll is a Meteorologist with the Washington Post.

Continue reading “El Niño Pushing into “Mind Blowing” Record Territory”

Manosphere influencer, sex trafficking dirtbag and (of course) climate denier Andrew Tate has been arrested, again, this weekend, and the clips have gone gloriously viral. This week also, Defense Secretary (self styled as “Department of War”) Pete Hegseth called for members of the military to have their testosterone levels evaluated, and if necessary, enhanced.
Suspect he will be first in line?

Readers here will remember Tate coming off on the losing end of a social media tiff with Greta Thunberg in 2022. (below)
The larger question worth exploring is, what have we learned about the psycho sexual dimension of climate denial?
Above, Paul Krugman discussed recently with Heather Cox Richardson.
Richardson points to the compulsion in the modern Republican Party to assert domination over women, minorities, and nature.
Tate’s decision to pick a fight with Thunberg showcased both his hatred and fear of women, and his antipathy toward a living planet.

Guardian:

Cars are routinely tokens of virility and status for men, and the image accompanying his tweet of him pumping gas into one of his vehicles, coupled with his claims about their “enormous emissions”, had unsolicited dick pic energy. Thunberg seemed aware of that when she replied: “yes, please do enlighten me. email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com.”

Below, the arrest.

Continue reading “Tate Arrest Shines Light on Climate Denial’s Low T Energy”

The AQI index is under 100, and I was able to get out and putter around the yard this morning, until I started coughing, then time to come in.

Nevertheless, mental health requires that we think about possible positive futures, and the video above does a nice job of that, with some real-world examples of a “Solar Punk” esthetic that at least gives pointers to a better world that still could be.

Environment America:

Despite this rapid growth, we’ve barely scratched the surface on America’s immense potential to generate clean energy on our rooftops. America could produce the equivalent of 45% of the electricity we currently use from rooftop solar, yet, in 2022, rooftop solar provided only 1.5% of America’s electricity. 

US Department of Energy:

According to National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) analysis in 2016, there are over 8 billion square meters of rooftops on which solar panels could be installed in the United States, representing over 1 terawatt of potential solar capacity. With improvements in solar conversion efficiency, the rooftop potential in the country could be even greater. Residential and other small rooftops represent about 65% of the national rooftop potential, and 42% of residential rooftops are households with low-to-moderate income.

NREL estimates that an average of 3.3 million homes per year will be built or will require roof replacement—representing a potential of roughly 30 gigawatts (GW) of solar capacity per year. If even a small fraction of these new roofs had solar installations, it could have a significant impact on U.S. solar power generation.

Jeff Masters is co-founder of Weather Underground, a former Hurricane Hunter, and was my colleague for years at Yale Climate Connections, where he writes on Weather and Climate issues.

Jeff Masters at Yale Climate Connections:

The award for worst air in the nation yesterday went to the city that has in the past billed itself as a climate haven: Duluth, Minnesota. The city’s 24-hour air quality index, or AQI, for PM2.5 particle pollution hit 934, over three times the threshold for “Hazardous” pollution. This shattered Duluth’s previous all-time AQI record of 159 set July 20, 2021. EPA pollution records go back to 1999.

Meteorologist Chris Vickers, WTOL Toledo:

HEALTH EMERGENCY! The AQI in Duluth, MN has surged to a mind blowing 1167 late Thursday evening! Hazardous air quality of this magnitude, almost four times the limit that is hazardous, is unprecedented.

At these levels, acute health hazards are possible for all, especially for those exposed to contaminated air for longer duration.

For Northwest Ohio, *IMPROVEMENTS* in air quality are expected by Friday evening.

Continue reading “Meteorologist Jeff Masters on Fires, Smoke, and “Climate Havens””

Massive lightning event in Oregon sparks uncontrolled fires.

I blame Canada.

Yesterday's "lightning bust" in eastern Oregon & Washington has already resulted in >100,000 acres burned & dozens of new wildfire ignitions. Many are in grass & brush and may be managed soon, but at least 10 are in heavier (forest) fuels and are taking off this PM. #ORwx #WAwx pic.twitter.com/cd6qDqKk0V

— Daniel Swain (@Weather_West) July 17, 2026

Be on the lookout for this suspect.

Continue reading “Canadians at It Again in Oregon Fires”

Great CNBC report above profiles Elon Musk’s “Colossus” Data Center just outside Memphis in South Haven, Mississippi.

Takeaway: Primary objections to this facility stem from the install of a large number of gas turbines, essentially big jet engines, to power the facility, without proper pollution control or sound mitigation (if that’s even possible).

This is the configuration that is most problematic from a climate perspective, as well.

The report has interview clips from Jigar Shah, former Director of the Department of Energy Loan Program Office under Joe Biden, and one of the sharpest observers in this space.

Mention is made at the end of how other communities are attempting to head off this kind of fiasco – Illinois new Data Center Power Act is given as an example.
Key concepts would be – Bring your own Clean Power, no jet engines, get a plan on the water issue. (clean power ie solar or wind, kind of negates the water issue when coupled with closed loop cooling systems)

The Associated Press recently reported that, “Michigan, Oregon and Minnesota led the way, enacting laws in the last 18 months designed to protect their pre-existing requirements that electric utilities use only emissions-free energy sources by 2040.”

Compare and contrast Musk’s Memphis project to Google’s plans for new Data Centers in Michigan and Minnesota:

Washington Post:

Google, Meta and others have resorted to modified jet engines, diesel generators and rebooting nuclear and coal plants to power their data centers, while asking electric utilities for grid upgrades. That’s contributing to rising electricity prices, up 42 percent since 2020.

Continue reading “The Weekend Wonk: How Not to Do a Data Center”