Blog Post: My Vote for the Most Under-Appreciated Impact of Climate Change

Blog Post - My Vote for the Most Under-Appreciated Impact of Climate Change

Greetings,

I am writing again from slightly soggy Vermont, which got the national spotlight last week for something other than spring syrup and fall foliage. I personally was not impacted at all as it was very localized. But more on that in my Blog Post below. First, I want to do a couple of follow-ups to some of my “Top 10” from my last post.

Mystery Highlighting in Yellow

Some or all of you may have seen some odd highlighting (in yellow) of certain sections or words in my last blog post. This did not show up on the master email or on the trials I did to several email addresses. I used the same template I have used for many years. It is supposedly fixed now, but apologies to those of you who were thrown off by it.

Is WAPO Reading My Blog?

In discussing possible climate-induced disputes between neighboring countries, I raised the hypothetical of Canada not doing enough to control its wildfires, which was in turn resulting in excess smoke inundating the U.S. Almost the very next day, the Washington Post ran a story highlighting the fact that Canada has a very minimal national firefighting force. See more at https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/11/canada-wildfires-international-firefighters/

All Carrots in the IRA

I talked about my concern that the Inflation Reduction Act seemed to be too weighted towards providing incentives, as opposed to hard-wired requirements. This past week, several reports came out that focused on what kind of emissions reductions would stem from the IRA, including its carrots.

A Study from Princeton looked at all of the provisions in the IRA and can be found at https://repeatproject.org/docs/REPEAT_Climate_Progress_and_the_117th_Congress.pdf

The Journal Science published a new paper by multiple authors at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adg3781

A Study from the Rhodium group looked specifically at the incentives for new clean energy technologies, including carbon capture.

Finally, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) put out a report on the expected impact of federal incentives on EV and Charging Station deployment. https://subscriber.politicopro.com/f/?id=00000189-27a6-d0a8-a59b-fffe004a0000

EVs Carrying a Lot of the Weight of Climate Mitigation

I talked about my own personal journey to buying an EV and now charging it. I went on to talk about some of the challenges I saw with mass EV charging given the very large numbers of vehicles that don’t have a dedicated parking space to use for overnight charging.

Last weekend, at a neighborhood BBQ, I unexpectedly learned of an EV challenge I had not heard before. In speaking to a friend who is a structural engineer in the cement-transportation sector, he said that folks in his sector are starting to realize that the weight of EVs could be an issue for parking garages, which apparently were built using design criteria based on regular non-EV vehicles – not a garage full of EVs.

Not a reason to pull back on EVs and chargers, but another reason there needs to be big-time, coordinated planning on how we do this.

I Forgot to Include #11 On That List of Top 10

More people read my last Blog Post than any I had ever put out. That’s great because anyone who writes of course wants as many people as possible to read what they wrote. But from looking at the metrics for the last one, most of you did not ask a friend or colleague to subscribe.

All you need to do is forward this email (or the last one) you got from me with a message something like this “Hey, you might find what this guy says to be of interest. You should sign up!”

So please take a moment to set up a forward and hit send. (:

Thanks.

Dan

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Blog Post: My Vote for the Most Under-Appreciated Impact of Climate Change

Just like politics, climate change is playing out both locally and globally these days. I saw a bit of it last week here in Vermont, as you probably know from the national media attention to the rain and floods that the state faced. The rain and flooding were localized even within Vermont, with my area being relatively unscathed and yet one located not that far away was completely devastated. This is of course part meteorological and part geographical and one of the features of Vermont is that much of the state’s villages and highways are nestled in valleys and along waterways – with mountains all around. When heavy rain falls, it has nowhere to go but downhill.

While there is news attention when a storm/weather event like this happens, I feel that the extent to which rain will be a climate culprit in the future is largely under-appreciated and misunderstood.

The National Climate Assessment released four years ago identified extreme rain events as a major impact to expect, with more overall rainfall as well. This view of the future has already begun to play out. Over the past two years there were heavy rain and flooding events, with multiple inches to a foot of rain in some cases a matter of hours, in Ohio, Kentucky, Florida, and other places I cannot remember at this moment. There were all covered as national news, but I am not sure it sunk in with people that extreme rain is a new and, in some ways, geographically unpredictable, part of the future. I expect the next edition of that congressionally mandated National Climate Assessment coming out this Fall will further highlight it.

The State Climate Assessment that Vermont conducted a couple of years ago listed extreme rainfall as one of the major impacts that should be expected in the State going forward. It specifically predicted an increase in rainfall of 38% by the end of the Century, with frequent localized short-burst extreme downpours.

A Report issued just last month by Dartmouth College predicts an increase in what it calls “extreme precipitation” of 52 % by 2099.

One of the Vermont sectors seen as possibly most impacted are farmers, who, for the most part, ply the fertile valley lowlands and floodplains that for hundreds of years have benefited from mountain run-offs. True to prediction, last week’s rain and flooding hit the ag community hard, with some farmers losing their entire crop for the year.

Another sector impacted by extreme rain and flooding is transportation. Last week and into this week, some roads and bridges were completely wiped out. Several villages had no way in or out other than a bushwhacking hike through the woods. Some of the photos of what the water did to roads are quite remarkable.

It is important to realize is that this was not the first such rain and flooding event in Vermont in recent memory. Some Vermonters say they feel like they only just got over Irene. They refer to Hurricane Irene in 2011. That storm did something not seen before. Instead of curving out to sea as it went up the coast, or dissipating in strength as it veered inland, it stayed strong as it went north over land and then stopped and hovered when it got to Vermont. The result was like what you heard and read about last week. One town that many of you have probably driven through was almost wiped off the map by its river. It took years to repair some roads.

To its credit, Vermont looked upon Irene as having “given notice” as to what might come again. It undertook statewide, coordinated efforts to build more resilience into various aspects of the state that were impacted by Irene. That helped last week, but as is obvious, it didn’t help enough. More here.

Now is the time to be thinking beyond building seawalls, whitening roofs, creating cooling centers and putting more trees into urban heat islands. It’s time to think about rain and what it might mean to your work, your home, your hobbies, your investments, etc. If you are in the utility industry, what does it mean to outage management and substation location? If you are in the storage and EV space, what kind of an adder is this to the value of storage, including bi-directional EVs. If you are involved in small scale solar farming, what does in mean in terms of “getting your product to market”, which is this case means having a resilient wires system?

The last big rain and flooding event in Vermont had a name (Irene). I only just realized in writing this post that the big storm of last week does not have a name as far as I know. I guess that is not unusual when you stop to think about it. Much of the climate impacts we will experience will be incremental and insidious. But even the ones that stand out as distinct and notable will probably stop being named. It will be too hard because there will be too many. It will simply be the new normal under climate change.

Links to Past Posts:

10 Things I Should Have Written About

So I Went to the COP - Here Are My Top 10 Takeaways.

Efficiency and Clean Energy - Faster vs More

Efficiency & Clean Energy - More vs. Faster

It's Time For A Climate Vote - On the Record

Good COP, Bad COP .....Thoughts Before Glasgow

One of These Things is Not Like the Others

What I Should Have Written About

The Serenity of Being a Climate Voter

Decarbonization Dilemma: 10 COVID Impacts that Worry Me

COVID Conundrum: Looking for Clean Energy "Twofers"