Archives
Wildfires Here Now: We Have to Adapt as We Mitigate
NOTE: As I write this on a July weekend in Portland OR… here’s today’s headline in the New York Times: “Pacific Northwest Faces Critical Fire Risk as Wildfires Burn”. About 1.7 million people are under fire danger warnings on Sunday as a heat wave continues to bake the region and several large blazes burn in Oregon. […]
Potential Energies and the Environmental Risks They Represent
Engineering dynamics tells us to pay attention to “potential energy”. That’s the energy that will be released if some restraining condition is removed. A simple example would be a glass sitting on the edge of a table. If the glass is knocked off the table, the glass crashes to the floor – turning potential energy […]
Adaptation and Regeneration
To support the shift from an extract/manufacture/toss linear economy to a zero carbon/methane/waste circular economy, we must support natural processes and leave more room for nature to thrive. Sustainability and reducing emissions are no longer enough. We’ve run out of time. We now need to focus on actively improving Spaceship Earth’s ecosystem via Regeneration. […]
Parts of Spaceship Earth are Becoming Uninsurable
The rate of climate change surged alarmingly over the past decade, posing a ‘code red’ emergency for the world and the insurance industry. $122 billion total insured losses worldwide from weather-related natural catastrophes in 2023. (Swiss RE) 250% rise in economic losses over the past three decades due to climate change. (Capgemini) […]
Climate Models Did Not Predict This
Gavin Schmidt is a climate modeler at NASA. Climate modeling takes in all of the climate data (climate is an extremely complex and highly interconnected system) from thousands of sensors on the land at different altitudes, and in the oceans at different depths, around the world and uses software to run models of what we […]
Voting for the Environment
Human-driven global warming has long been a divisive issue in the U.S., thanks in part to decades of polarizing messaging from industry, political figures and others. As the world experiences extreme heat and other climate change-driven events with increasing frequency, people’s views on what’s happening still vary widely, but they are changing. The political […]
Systems Changes Needed in Governance, Insurance and Disaster Preparedness
I was in the room seven years ago when David Houle, the futurist, addressed the annual conference of Sarasota County realtors. If you don’t know, Sarasota is a seaside city on the Gulf coast of Florida. It has several heavily populated barrier islands just a couple feet above sea level. He said, “When will it […]
A Clear and Present Danger
To many, my desk is a cluttered mess or a jigsaw puzzle of disconnected pieces that can never be assembled into a coherent picture. To me, my desk is a highly organized panorama of easily accessible tools of my craft interspersed with remembrances and waypoints of travels, adventures, people, places, joys, sorrows, hopes, philosophies, beliefs […]
Resetting the Realities of Our Climate Crisis
Reality, and one’s perception of reality, can change with a single event. An example would be the “earth rise “ photo taken by NASA astronauts in 1968. Though we knew that the earth was round, it was not until that photo that we saw it as a round planet in space. Another might be […]
How to ‘Be Prepared’ in 2023
I was a Boy Scout. Since 1907 the motto of the global Scouting program has been, “Be Prepared”. Yet the 2023 Scout Jamboree was woefully unprepared for a myriad of severe weather-related issues that befell it in South Korea in early August. First, prior to the opening of the Jamboree, torrential monsoon rains caused […]
