climate crisis Archives

EBMUD Begins Drawing Water From Sacramento River as Part of Drought Response

October 5, 2021/in California and the U.S., Home Headline, Media Coverage /by Chelsea Campos /NBC Bay Areaby Bay City News

As drought conditions persist statewide, officials with the East Bay Municipal Utility District said on Monday the agency has begun tapping into water from the Sacramento River to boost local supplies.

EBMUD, which delivers water to some 1.4 million people across Alameda and Contra Costa counties, typically draws from the Mokelumne River for its water supply.

The agency said the latest move is part of its drought response.

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Worst Drought in 20 Years? A County-by-County Look Around the Bay Area

July 28, 2021/in California and the U.S., Home Headline, Media Coverage /by Chelsea Campos /NBC Bay Areaby Rob Mayeda

Summer-dry conditions in spring were a leading indicator that this year’s fire season was off to an early and potentially more intense start.

Current drought conditions are leading to “record dry fuel moistures,” a repeating phrase attached to most of this year’s major wildfires in a season that is outpacing the 2020 fire season in acres burned by nearly a three-to-one margin as of July 25.

Extremely dry conditions coupled with intense heat waves have led to a significant increase in fire danger in 2021 not just in California but also for much of the western United States as drought conditions accelerated in severity during the last year.

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Severe Drought Threatens Hoover Dam Reservoir – and Water for US West

July 13, 2021/in California and the U.S., Home Headline, Media Coverage /by Chelsea Campos /The Guardianby Oliver Milman

Had the formidable white arc of the Hoover Dam never held back the Colorado River, the US west would probably have no Los Angeles or Las Vegas as we know them today. No sprawling food bowl of wheat, alfalfa and corn. No dreams of relocating to live in a tamed desert. The river, and dam, made the west; now the climate crisis threatens to break it.

The situation here is emblematic of a planet slowly, inexorably overheating. And the catastrophic consequences of the extreme weather this brings.

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As Sea Level Rise Threat Grows, SF Officials Don’t Have Public Plan to Save Sewers

May 26, 2021/in California and the U.S., Home Headline, Media Coverage /by Chelsea Campos /NBC Bay Areaby Stephen Stock, Robert Campos, Mark Villarreal, Michael Horn and Jeremy Carroll

Because Bay Area low-lying sewage treatment plants remain vulnerable to rising sea levels, government regulators told sewage facility managers to “provide a written plan for coping with SLR by the fall of 2021 – or they will be given a plan.” The NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit reached out to 10 “at risk” sewage treatment plants to see those plans. All except one provided extensive documents of their proposals, the cost to address them, and even provided tours of completed work. San Francisco’s Public Utilities Commission replied to the Investigative Unit’s public records request that after a “diligent search for records…no records were found.” Other sanitary district officials were much more forthcoming about what they’ve already spent, what they’ve built and what they’re planning in the future to combat the rise in bay levels. All agreed seas are rising faster than expected.

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Can Hydropower Help Solve the Climate Crisis? This $63-Billion Plan is Banking On It

May 6, 2021/in California and the U.S., Home Headline, Media Coverage /by Mike Lee /Los Angeles Timesby Sammy Roth

Conservationists in California and across the West are deeply skeptical of hydropower, and it’s not hard to see why. There’s a long history of government agencies damming spectacular canyons, choking off rivers, obliterating fish populations and cutting off access to Indigenous peoples. It’s a history detailed in books such as “Cadillac Desert,” and experienced by anyone who has spent time fishing, kayaking or swimming in the region’s reshaped waterways, or hiking alongside them.

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Climate Crisis: Record Ocean Heat in 2020 Supercharged Extreme Weather

January 14, 2021/in California and the U.S., Home Headline, Media Coverage /by Kimberlyn Velasquez /The Guardianby Damian Carrington

The world’s oceans reached their hottest level in recorded history in 2020, supercharging the extreme weather impacts of the climate emergency, scientists have reported.

More than 90% of the heat trapped by carbon emissions is absorbed by the oceans, making their warmth an undeniable signal of the accelerating crisis. The researchers found the five hottest years in the oceans had occurred since 2015, and that the rate of heating since 1986 was eight times higher than that from 1960-85.

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Dry Days Ahead For California This Year And Beyond, Experts Say

October 14, 2020/in California and the U.S., Home Headline, Media Coverage /by Chelsea Campos /Cap Radioby Ezra David Romero

Meteorologist Emily Heller says the weather lately reminds her of what Northern California saw in 2018 just before the Camp Fire set the town of Paradise ablaze. For weeks, there was no rain, excessive heat, and dry winds.

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Environmentalists and Dam Operators, at War for Years, Start Making Peace

October 13, 2020/in California and the U.S., Home Headline, Media Coverage /by Mike Lee /The New York Timesby Brad Plumer

The industry that operates America’s hydroelectric dams and several environmental groups announced an unusual agreement Tuesday to work together to get more clean energy from hydropower while reducing the environmental harm from dams, in a sign that the threat of climate change is spurring both sides to rethink their decades-long battle over a large but contentious source of renewable power.

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Opinion: Five Solutions to California’s Climate Crisis Gov. Newsom Should Implement … Right Now

September 16, 2020/in California and the U.S., Home Headline, Media Coverage /by Mike Lee /CalMattersby Dan Jacobson

Like most Californians, I have not seen blue skies for weeks. The dirty air I’m breathing hurts my lungs and stings my eyes. My kids are confined to the indoors to protect their growing lungs, though I’m concerned that even our air indoors contains dangerous pollutants.

While fire crews work to stop more loss of life and officials work to update plans for the next fire season, California must face the toughest challenge of all: How do we slow and ultimately stop the changes in our climate that are making wildfires in California even more dangerous and deadly?

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Climate Change Hits Home in Colorado with Raging Wildfires, Shrinking Water Flows and Record Heat

August 19, 2020/in California and the U.S., Home Headline, Media Coverage /by Kimberlyn Velasquez /The Denver Postby Bruce Finley

Climate change hit home in Colorado this week, exacerbating multiple environmental calamities: wildfires burning across 135,423 acres, stream flows shrinking to where state officials urged limits on fishing, drought wilting crops, and record temperatures baking heat-absorbing cities.

This is what scientists, for decades, have been warning would happen.

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