Yearly Archives: 2020
We must pressure Biden over climate despite choosing Kerry as climate representative
Environmental and climate change issues must be kept on the front burner in Washington DC
Tesla Autopilot danger from “passive vigilance” effect
NTSB warns that Tesla Autopilot induces passive vigilance effect that can distract drivers away from driving their car
CALFire seizes PG&E equipment investigating cause of Zogg Fire in 2020 wildfire season
Yesterday, CALFire, California’s primary fire agency, announced it had seized some of PG&E’s equipment stating that just before the Zogg Fire ignited there were alarms emitted on PG&E’s network. The Zogg Fire is one of many many wildfires that have plagued California in the 2020 season. The 2020 wildfire season…
Protect yourself from unhealthy air in wildfire zones
As this is written, the US west coast is under a “Siege” from hundreds of wildfires triggered by unusually hot weather. Millions of acres of wildfires have burned over the last month in California alone, with millions more acres burning in Oregon and Washington State. If Climate Scientists are correct,…
5+ million acres burned, choking smoke, Climate Change accelerated
The primary feature of this phase of the 2020 West Coast Fire Season is the smoke. There are unprecedentedly huge wildfires burning, and a new front on the horrors opened a few days ago with several large wildfires in Oregon and Washington State. While the fires are threatening immediate destruction…
La Nina develops, promising long 2020 fire and hurricane season
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced today that the La Nina pattern has developed. This phenomena involves a cooling of the surface of the Pacific Ocean near the equator. This pattern is known to cause a series of chain reactions resulting in a longer hurricane season in the…
California wildfires 2020, over 2 million acres burned
The 2020 wildfire season in the Western USA (California, Oregon, etc) started early. Dozens of fires ignited one weekend in August leading to wildfires all around the state, and today four of the largest wildfires in California’s history are burning simultaneously. More recently a heatwave sparked other wildfires in not…
Disease risk higher in highly polluted areas – COVID-19 risk greater?
With the COVID-19 pandemic, one thing we notice is the higher fatality rate for elderly patients, or for those with impaired health, or for those who are smokers. It seems that those with weaker immune systems have a harder time fighting off COVID-19, and therefore are more likely to result…
Conservative values failing USA as EPA guts fuel efficiency standards, fails with COVID-19 response
The Republican party that’s in control of the Federal Government is stuck in Grover Norquist’s paradigm – that he famously wanted to shrink Government to be small enough to drag into the bathroom and drown in a baththub. What a violent fantasy that is! Yesterday the US Environmental Protection Agency…
SunSpec aims to help Veterans transition to clean energy jobs
SunSpec, the leading organization developing standards in the Solar industry, has launched an initiative aiming to train folks for jobs in the distributed energy resource (DER) sphere. Thanks to the decreasing cost of renewable energy systems, DER’s installation is apparently still increasing. Thanks to Internet-of-Things technology, renewable energy systems are…
US Dept of Energy funding electric vehicle and battery research
The Trump Administration has been taking all kinds of actions to undermine environmental regulations, coddle polluters, and support fossil fuels, but at the same time the Administration continues to fund research into clean energy technologies. In January, the Dept of Energy announced a funding opportunity for up to $133 million…
Bucharest abandons Oxygen tax, amid high pollution event
Last week, on the eve of instituting a tax on polluting cars entering the central area of Bucharest, the Mayor of Bucharest, Gabriela Firea, abandoned the so-called Oxygen Tax plan. Under the plan cars not meeting the Euro 3 criteria would be banned from the center of Bucharest, and overall…
Renault brand Dacia unveils most affordable electric car in Europe
Dacia, the Romania-based car maker owned by Renault, has announced its first all-electric car, the Dacia Spring. It is a 4-seat city car, meaning it is a very small car, but Dacia says those are “real seats”, which one supposes to mean they’re full size. It should have a 200…
Pandemics, like Coronavirus, and our RoboTaxi-driven autonomous future
The big news right now is the Coronavirus outbreak that began in China last fall. CoVID-19 as it is more formally known is a relatively highly infectious disease, that the human population has no immunity against, and a relatively high (2%) mortality rate. Given those figures, governments around the world…
