The Growing Climate Crisis

                                                                               written 13 September, 2026

                                                                           published 20 September, 2026

 

            One of the basic flaws in our economy is the assumption of absolute separation of the parts, in a world that is fundamentally whole.  The damage a company creates while pursuing profit is not their responsibility unless proved in a court of law.  Even then, all they have to do is declare bankruptcy and their issue is resolved.  But the actual damages endure, and someone winds up paying those costs, usually having gained little to no profit in the original deal.  This is fundamentally inequitable and socially destructive. 

            A good example was presented by Dan Walters, a syndicated columnist in the Ukiah Daily Journal, writing recently about California's wildfire liability problem.  The last decade saw a sharp increase in massive, economically costly wildfires, many started by malfunctions in electric utility infrastructure.  The fundamental question is: who pays? 

            Burned out homeowners need funds as soon as possible to begin rebuilding what has been destroyed.  Electrical utilities are reluctant to pay complete restitution because it affects their share value, and they must remain profitable to continue providing socially essential electricity.  Being a regulated monopoly, they can't raise rates without State approval, and if rates are too high the power becomes unaffordable, something the State wants to avoid.  

            Insurance companies face a similar problem.  Destructive fires are happening faster than current rates can support.  They are also State regulated and need approval for rate increases.  If they can't raise rates enough to remain profitable, the companies stop writing policies and perhaps leave the state entirely.  Again, something the State wants to avoid.  

            Any real solution must examine WHY fire damages are increasing: the growing climate crisis.  

            The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is now 50 percent greater than in preindustrial times 250 years ago, primarily due to fossil fuel combustion.  An increase of similar magnitude ended the last ice age, melting ice sheets several miles thick, creating the recent 12,000 year interglacial period that allowed the explosion of human civilization.  

            Believe it or not, the climate today is not the same as when this country was founded.  Human activity has changed the composition of our atmospheric chemistry, creating a world that is measurably hotter.  This produces extended heat waves, longer droughts, more extreme flooding, and stronger storms, as the planet struggles to distribute the increased atmospheric heating.

            In the last 50 years, global climate disaster costs have increased by a factor of ten even after accounting for inflation, now $4 trillion in the last decade, and planetary heating is accelerating.  

            The recent disaster in Nepal is the result of glacier melt caused by increasing temperatures in the Himalayas.  California's fire insurance problem is the result of increasing heat and drought.  Prolonged drought has reduced water flow in the Colorado River, threatening California agriculture and power production from the dams on the Colorado.  The oceans capture 90 percent of the added heat, and are hotter now than ever in recorded history.  This has killed 90 percent of coastal kelp, and impacted 80 percent of the world's coral, destroying the fisheries they support.  Europe is warming faster than any other continent, and heat killed 175,000 people there this year.

            Because the climate changes are slow, and our attention is dominated by day-to-day issues, we don't often see the problem directly.  Climate change is inexorable, like termites eating the foundation of our home, or rust destroying the structural integrity of a bridge.  But there are tipping points in any system, both in nature as well as in our consciousness.  At some point, it's too hot outside, or some disaster hits, changing our awareness.  

            The solution to the climate crisis is clear: stop adding to the problem by changing our energy system, and begin removing some of the existing carbon dioxide to get back to an atmospheric composition that we know supports human civilization.  This won't be simple, because we need to change decades of invested infrastructure.  But the knowledge exists.  The hardware exists.   What is needed is the political will.

            Fortunately, people are beginning to recognize the climate crisis is killing us and our economy.  All over the world, societies are being forced to adapt to what is happening, beginning to change the way they do business.  They see the profit driven, fossil fuel funded climate deniers are liars, and are refusing to support politicians who spouts those lies.

            America is currently a laggard in this movement.  Is this the election where that change happens here?

 

The Coming Implosion

                                                                                 written 6 September, 2026

                                                                           published 13 September, 2026

 

            On June 18th, 2023, the composite submarine Titan, owned and built by OceanGate, was diving to visit the Titanic, with 5 people on board.  Three quarters of the way to the bottom, it imploded, killing everyone in milliseconds, the logical consequence of an unrestrained ego in denial of reality.

            The Titan was a new design for a deep diving submersible, with a carbon fiber body and titanium ends caps, intended to be cheaper to fabricate and lighter to ship, with the specific goal of taking paying passengers to view the Titanic.          

            Stockton Rush, CEO of OceanGate and the designer of Titan, was born into ancestral wealth.  A creative engineer, he was an arrogant narcissist, unwilling to listen to dissent, firing those who questioned his design.  By operating only in international waters, Rush avoided requirements for third-party evaluations or testing of the Titan design.  Despite multiple warnings of risk of failure at depth, he pushed forward.  To his credit, he lived by his decisions, and died in the implosion, along with a guide and three paying passengers.  A subsequent Coast Guard review determined Rush exhibited criminal negligence.

            Our president was also born to wealth, is also an arrogant narcissist, and also refuses to listen to dissent or challenges to his opinions.  He is on record stating he feels uncomfortable around people smarter than himself.  Since becoming the president, he has demonstrated his incompetence over and over.  The war on Iran and our economy is a case in point.  

            In 2015, after years of work under the Obama administration, the nations of the world had forged an agreement to effectively limit Iran's nuclear ambitions.  In exchange for lifting economic sanctions, Iran's enriched uranium was removed, and their nuclear facilities were under constant international inspections.  

            But in 2018, the president declared it a "terrible deal".  Without giving any reasons, or notice to the other participants, he unilaterally canceled the agreement and reimposed sanctions.  By this action, he showed America was untrustworthy, the first of many hits to a reputation that had been decades in the making.  Iran was furious, decided it needed to take care of itself, and began an aggressive nuclear buildup, the fate the world had tried to avoid.  

            At the same time, the president began his tariff war, promising other countries would pay the price, yet everybody else knew Americans would actually pay.  This began the inflationary rise of domestic prices and the deterioration of long-term trade relations with our primary trading partners.

            In his second term, the president purged the government of rational people who actually knew what they were doing, installing layers of incompetent, but loyal, lackeys.  This included gutting established leadership in the branches of the military.  He also redoubled his tariff war, now including the entire globe.  However, world leaders had realized America was no longer a trustworthy partner, and began pushing back with matching tariffs and different trading relationships. 

            As our economy began to stall, the president, seeking a distraction, decided to address the growing Iranian nuclear threat, completely ignoring that he created the problem.  He started the war with little planning and few allies, expecting a quick victory.  Despite the best the U.S. military could throw at it, Iran endured, and then closed the strait of Hormuz, destabilizing the entire global energy market, an outcome everyone knew was possible, except for the president's team.   

            We are now over 6 months into his "excursion", with no end in sight.  Traffic through the strait is one tenth prewar levels, despite what the president says on the nightly news.  The whole world knows that he lies to suit what he wants to have happen, with total disregard for reality.

            The president recently started another round of tariff war with Canada, which responded by cutting off shipment of the heavy crude that we need to refine into diesel, driving prices even higher.  Diesel, which runs most of our economy, is now selling for $7.99/gal. in Ukiah.  But the president prefers to talk about his ballroom.   

            The man is incompetent and increasingly delusional.  Our economic structure is fraying.  The costs of the climate crisis continue to build every month, now undeniably real.  The stock market plateaued a month ago.  Investors are becoming nervous.  The midterms are eight weeks away.  Even Republican politicians are beginning to avoid him.  Like the OceanGate Titan, the system is about to implode.

            The only question is: how many will the president take down with him? 

What If The Grid Crashed?

                                                                                     written 30 August, 2026

                                                                              published 6 September, 2026

 

            On August 18, 2026, the New York Times Magazine published an article by Christopher Cox titled "What If America Went Completely Dark?"  It opened by describing the April, 2013 attack on the PG&E Metcalf substation near San Jose.  In 20 minutes, over 100 shots damaged the cooling systems of 17 large transformers, taking them all off line.  The shooters escaped before police arrived and were never arrested.  PG&E maintained power in the region using their system redundancy, but it took 4 weeks to repair.

            Since then, dozens of similar domestic attacks have occurred.  The most damaging attack came in December, 2022, when 2 substations in North Carolina were struck, creating a regional blackout lasting five days.  Other attacks have been foiled, all involving right wing extremists and neo-Nazi groups.   

            The electrical gird is the largest machine built by humans.  The very high voltages of the transmission system are transformed down to the lower voltage of the community distribution systems at more than 55,000 substations, each with multiple large transformers.  These transformers are unique for each location, constructed by hand, costing as much as $14M, taking years to build.  They are designed to last 40 years, and many are already older than that.  Domestic transformer production supplies only one fifth of our demand.  The rest come from Mexico, South Korea, and China.  

            While the grid is extensive, it is a massively interconnected network.  The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission did a power analysis on the national system and found that knocking out just 10 key substations (about 180 transformers) would black out the entire country.  The damage would take years to be repaired, if ever.  

            The New York Times Magazine article focused on the grid vulnerability to human terrorist activity, accidents, and aging infrastructure.  But those aren't the only sources of concern. 

            Solar flares of electromagnetic energy occur regularly: multiple small one daily, multiple medium ones weekly, and a large one every month, all with little effect.  But very large ones, such as the September, 1859 Carrington event, occurring every few centuries, can be destructive.

            The telegraph system had been installed, creating loops of wires hundreds of miles long.  When electromagnetic energy passes through wire loops, it generates current (the physics behind electrical motors and generators).  The induced current shot sparks for the telegraph keys, and the system functioned without any batteries.  Because the telegraph system was fairly simple and small, damage was limited.

            Today's electrical grid is vastly more complex, with much longer loops of wire, so the induced currents would be larger.  Depending on the size of the flare, and which side of the Earth was facing the sun at the time of arrival, it could damage not just a few substations, but possibly half the planet. 

            Electrical energy is essential for the functioning of all other parts our modern economy.  An Energy Department report about a large grid blackout concluded: “The supply of food, water and fuel would degrade within days. The facile communication of information to the general population would be greatly complicated by the loss of cellphones, internet access and television. The economy would virtually shut down as electronic transactions could no longer be processed. After several days, widespread social unrest and confusion would ensue.”  Definitely an understatement!  

            The failure of multiple transformers is a "black swan" event: relatively low frequency, but very high impact.  This grid vulnerability is a consequence of the historical centralized design where a few large power centers produce electricity which is then shipped over long distances.  A more resilient alternative would add widely distributed modest power production and storage. 

             Individual homes and businesses can already be designed to use the grid normally, yet stand alone when the grid fails.  This is harder for entire communities, because of the regulatory stranglehold of existing utilities like PG&E.  

            Ukiah has the rare advantage of owning our electrical system, controlling what happens "behind the meter", giving us latitude not available anywhere else in Mendocino County.  The goal is not to replace the grid, but to augment the system.  Locally collected power stabilizes costs with free energy and fixed cost hardware.  These systems will help supply our usual power load under normal conditions, but will continue to operate during emergencies.  Despite providing less than our full load, having some power is much better than none at all.  

            Ukiah can become a leader in this field, creating an example of interest everywhere.  The sooner we start, the better.