[TheClimate.Vote] December 27, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest.

[Richard Pauli]

/*December 27, 2019*/

[PBS says about fragile planet Earth]
*Despite extreme weather and surging activism, 2019 saw political 
paralysis on climate*
Dec 25th, 2019
By almost any measure, 2019 was a year of especially sobering news on 
climate change, with grim warnings about what could happen in the future 
along with extreme weather events occurring now. The year also saw a 
global protest movement, initiated by young people, arise to try to 
tackle the problem. But as Miles O'Brien reports, the call for action 
was often divorced from political reality.

*Full Transcript* [or video at 
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/despite-extreme-weather-and-surging-activism-2019-saw-political-paralysis-on-climate]

*Amna Nawaz:*
By almost any measure, 2019 was a year of especially sobering news
about climate change, not only because of new findings and grim
warnings about what could happen, but because some -- of some
extreme weather events happening now.

It was also a year where a movement grew from the ground up to try
and tackle the problem.

But, as Miles O'Brien explains, the call for action was often
divorced from political reality. His report tonight is part of our
regular coverage of the Leading Edge of Science.

*Miles O'Brien:*
When Apollo astronauts looked back at the tiny blue marble in the
vast inky void that we call home, they were awestruck by its beauty.
That, you might have predicted.

*Mike Collins:*
But there was a surprising aspect. Somehow, the Earth projected a
feeling of fragility.

*Miles O'Brien:*
Apollo 11 crew member Mike Collins.

*Mike Collins:*
If I had to describe just in one word what the Earth looked like
from the moon, I would say fragile.

*Miles O'Brien:*
Fifty years later, the collision between that fragility and
humanity's indifference to it came closer to home, much closer.

When the final numbers come in, scientists predict 2019 will be the
second or third hottest year on record. It means the past six years
were the warmest six since humans started keeping track.

In Australia, they are feeling the heat like never before. On
December 18, the country logged its hottest day on record, a
national average high of 107.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

Along with the heat came hundreds of wildfires fueled by
drought-parched brush. Wildfires once again ravaged California this
year. A quarter million acres burned. In September, the remnants of
Tropical Storm Imelda dumbed more than 43 inches of rain in Texas.
The seventh wettest cyclone to hit the U.S. left $2 billion in
damage behind.

And also in September, Category 5 Hurricane Dorian slow-rolled the
Bahamas.

*Wayne Neely:*
The waters are extremely warm. It's warmer than normal. And so you
have conditions for a perfectly exploding storm.

*Miles O'Brien:*
Meteorologist watched Wayne Neely the satellite images with equal
parts disbelief and terror.

*Wayne Neely:*
I knew that, beneath that storm, beneath that image, there was going
to be great devastation. I knew that houses were going to be
toppled. I know that buildings were going to be destroyed. Life was
going to be impacted. I knew that there was going to be deaths. It
had a pit in my stomach for that.

*Miles O'Brien:*
Dorian's 20-foot storm surge killed 67 and obliterated 13,000 homes,
the impact made greater by rising sea levels, which, in November,
helped turn high tides in Venice into the worst flooding in more
than 50 years.

And the threat of even greater sea level rise looms, as the West
Antarctic ice sheet faces further assault. The water captured of the
ice here would raise global sea levels by more than 10 feet. And
scientists have concluded Thwaites Glacier, which accounts for two
feet of that, is more precarious than they once thought.

Early in the year, a NASA airborne radar found a 1,000-foot hole at
the base of the glacier.

New York University mathematician David Holland is there now, a lead
version with the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration.

*David Holland:*
We are trying to head to that location now to carry out a field
campaign to investigate how warm ocean waters are currently causing
it to change elevation and melt very rapidly.

*Miles O'Brien:*
Our oceans, which absorb so much of the heat humans are creating,
are changing rapidly. Temperature-sensitive coral reefs continue
their precipitous decline. We have lost more than one-quarter of
them in the last 30 years.

And scientists who study one of the fastest warming bodies of
seawater in the world, the Gulf of Maine, are making a grim forecast
for the next 30 years.

*Andrew Pershing:*
If the planet continues to warm up at an accelerated rate because we
haven't taken care of the carbon problem, that's when Maine starts
to have temperatures that feel more like you would think of New
Jersey. And we don't really think of New Jersey as a lobster state.

As the planet steadily warms, the scientific picture goes steadily
clearer. In may, global dioxide levels surpassed 415 parts per
million, an unprecedented high. In November, scientists gathered in
Geneva to deliver a stark warning: Global greenhouse gas emissions
are still on the rise, and for the world to limit temperature rise
to 1.5 degrees Celsius, we must reduce annual emissions by 30
billion tons in the next decade.

That is about half of what we emit now.

*Inger Andersen:*
We would have to reduce our emissions.

*Miles O'Brien:*
Inger Andersen is executive director of the United Nations
Environmental Program.

*Inger Andersen:*
Now, because of climate procrastination, which we have essentially
had during these 10 years, we are looking at a 7.6 percent reduction
every year.

Is that possible? Absolutely. Will it take political will? Yes. Will
we need to have the private sector lean in? Yes. But the science
tells us that we can do this.

*Miles O'Brien:*
But geopolitics tells us just the opposite.

President Donald Trump:
The United States will withdraw in November.

*Miles O'Brien:*
The Trump administration began withdrawal from the 2015 Paris
agreement, under which 187 nations pledge to cut greenhouse gas
emissions enough to keep global temperatures from rising no more
than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

This set the stage for a failed United Nations summit on climate in
Madrid. The U.S., Brazil and Saudi Arabia successfully blocked an
agreement on how to implement the Paris goal.

*Patricia Espinosa:*
Thank you. Thank you, Madam President. Good morning to everyone.

*Miles O'Brien:*
Patricia Espinosa is executive secretary of the U.N. Framework
Convention on Climate Change.

*Patricia Espinosa:*
We are not acting quickly enough to enact the detransformation to
our society that will save humanity's future on this planet. We are
out of time.

*Miles O'Brien:*
Among those addressing the summit, 16-year-old climate change
activist Greta Thunberg, who this year mobilized a global grassroots
campaign to force politicians to recognize and respond to the
realities of climate science.

In September, she sailed on a solar-powered boat to the United
Nations General Assembly in New York City.

That's where she sat down with the "NewsHour"s William Brangham.

*Greta Thunberg:*
We should not underestimate ourselves, because, if -- if lots of
individuals go together, then we can accomplish almost anything.

So, that's what I want people to take out from this.

*Miles O'Brien:*
But are enough people ready? Turning the tide will require some hard
choices about how to power our future and pay the bill.

But it does appear the public is at an inflection point. This year,
Gallup reported two-thirds of Americans believe global warming is
caused by pollution from human activities, rather than natural
changes in the environment.

And yet only 44 percent say they worry a great deal about it. But
don't count an intrepid Apollo astronaut among them.

*Mike Collins:*
I feel about the planet today in a different way. Having gone out
240,000 miles and seeing it gives me a much greater sense of
fragility, a much greater urge to protect that fragility as we go along.

*Miles O'Brien:*
In 2019, increasing numbers of Earthlings got the same urge, not
because they saw trouble from afar, but, rather, because it came
ever so close to home.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Miles O'Brien on fragile planet Earth.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/despite-extreme-weather-and-surging-activism-2019-saw-political-paralysis-on-climate



[video - potholer 54 argues with deniers using data]
*What's happening to Greenland's most enigmatic glacier?*
potholer54
Scientists are concerned about the Petermann glacier in Greenland. The 
bloggers are not. Looking at satellite photos, the bloggers seem to be 
right. Could this be a first?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QCBDnJU2sQ



[Decade review by CNN]
*Shouting into the apocalypse: The decade in climate change*
Opinion by John D. Sutter

December 26, 2019
(CNN) What's that worn-out phrase? Shouting into the wind? Well, after a 
decade of rising pollution, failed politics and worsening disasters, it 
seems the many, many of us who care about the climate crisis 
increasingly are shouting into the hurricane, if not the apocalypse.

On the cusp of 2020, the state of the planet is far more dire than in 
2010. Preserving a safe and healthy ecological system is no longer a 
realistic possibility. Now, we're looking at less bad options, ceding 
the fact that the virtual end of coral reefs, the drowning of some 
island nations, the worsening of already-devastating storms and the 
displacement of millions -- they seem close to inevitable. The climate 
crisis is already costly, deadly and deeply unjust, putting the most 
vulnerable people in the world, often who've done the least to cause 
this, at terrible risk.

The worst part? We've known about this for a very long time. The climate 
emergency may seem like the issue of the moment, a new thing, a 2020 
Democrats thing or a Greta Thunberg thing, but check out this 1958 
educational film that mentions "tourists in glass-bottomed boats would 
be viewing the drowned towers of Miami;" or coverage of the first Earth 
Day in 1970, 50 years ago this coming April, when millions hit the 
streets; or NASA scientist James Hansen's 1988 testimony before the US 
Senate stating the era of global warming had begun.
It bears repeating that scientists have looked at the evidence, and more 
than 97% of them agree that humans are warming the planet, primarily by 
burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas. The warnings from 
scientists are only getting more dire as we peel decades off the calendar.
"The point of no return is no longer over the horizon," United Nations 
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said earlier this month. "It is in 
sight and is hurtling towards us."

*Emissions are still going up*

**There are two numbers you need to understand to put this moment in 
perspective.
The first is 1.5. The Paris Agreement -- the international treaty on 
climate change, which admittedly is in trouble, but also is the best 
thing we've got -- sets the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 or, at most, 
below 2 degrees Celsius of warming.
Emissions have to crash for temperatures to stop rising there. Already, 
humans have warmed Earth about 1 degree Celsius.

The second is zero. The world needs to get to zero net emissions of 
greenhouse gases -- meaning no net pollution from burning fossil fuels 
and the like -- as soon as possible, but by 2050 at the latest, and we 
need to be about hallway there in 10 years. Emissions should be falling, 
fast, if the world wants to have an inkling of a chance of limiting 
warming to 1.5 degrees.

*What's actually happening? *Yep, emissions continue to rise.

Worldwide fossil fuel emissions are expected to be up 0.6% in 2019 over 
2018, according to projections from the Global Carbon Project. In the 
past decade, humans have put more than 350 metric gigatons of carbon 
dioxide into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels and other 
industrial processes, according to calculations provided by the World 
Resources Institute.
A more striking way to think about this is to look even further back in 
time. More than half of all industrial greenhouse gas pollution since 
the Industrial Revolution has been created in the past 30-some years. 
And, again, we've known about the crisis, along with its causes and 
solutions, for longer than that.
"We basically dillied and dallied and squandered the last 40 years, and 
you can't just keep kicking the can down the road," Anthony Leiserowitz, 
director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, and a 
senior research scientist, told me. "To hold to 1.5 degrees (Celsius), 
which frankly is not going to happen, would require at best reducing 
global emissions 7.5% every year, starting next year, at a time when 
emissions are actually going up!"

*We have less time than you think to jump-start climate action*
Meanwhile, scientists are becoming even more concerned about tipping 
points in the climate system that could lead to rapid rise in sea 
levels, the deterioration of the Amazon and so on. One particularly 
frightening commentary last month in the journal Nature, by several 
notable climate scientists, says the odds we can avoid tipping points in 
the climate system "could already have shrunk towards zero." In 
non-science-speak: We're there now.

"The world is in a far more perilous place at the end of 2019 compared 
to 2010 as climate impacts are being seen and felt all over the world," 
Bill Hare, director of Climate Analytics, a research group, said in an 
email. "We have used up nearly half the carbon budget we had remaining 
in 2010. Fossil fuel emissions are 10% higher, and still increasing. Sea 
level rise is accelerating, and global temperature is increasing at 0.2 
degrees Celsius per decade."

*We see our fingerprints on the storms*
It's not as if no one cares.
This was the decade when some people finally started to see the climate 
crisis as personal. Climate attribution science, which looks for human 
fingerprints on extreme weather events, made its way into the popular 
imagination. We're starting to realize there are no truly "natural" 
disasters anymore. We've warmed the climate, and we're already making 
storms riskier.

*In the fight against climate change, no one can stand on the sidelines*
I spent a good chunk of this decade in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria 
and in other locations where the climate crisis is obviously present 
tense. Alaska, Honduras, Florida, Oklahoma, Madagascar, the Marshall 
Islands, Costa Rica. In these places, especially in the aftermath of a 
flood, fire or drought, the climate threat feels urgent, even deadly. 
Shockingly so.
The news media is picking that up, using terms such as "climate 
emergency" and "climate crisis" instead of the blander "climate change." 
Increasingly, lots of people are making these critical connections, 
which should motivate the political, social and economic revolution 
necessary to fix things.
Yes, the Paris Agreement happened in 2015.
But the end of the fossil fuel era is not yet in sight.

*Look to the ocean for climate change solutions*
There's evidence that only certain chunks of society are getting the 
message.
Only 52% of American adults say they are "very" or "extremely" sure 
global warming is happening, according to a report from the Yale Program 
on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center 
for Climate Change Communication, which is based on a 1,303 person 
survey conducted in November 2019. Yale's been asking that question for 
a while now. Go back a decade, to 2009, and the rate is about the same: 51%.
In other words: Despite the increased sense of urgency, public opinion 
is flat.
On the political left, however, people view the issue quite differently 
than they did a decade ago, according to Leiserowitz, the director of 
the Yale program. Liberal Democrats view global warming as their No. 3 
voting issue, with environmental protection as No. 2, he said. Compare 
that to conservative Republicans, who rank global warming dead last on a 
29-issue list.

There's hope, though

*OK, so about that hope.*
The bright spot -- and it truly is a bright one -- is that young people 
are waking up. They are shouting, loudly and with purpose. Witness Greta 
Thunberg, the dynamic teenager who started a one-girl protest outside 
the Swedish Parliament last year, demanding that adults take seriously 
this emergency, which threatens young people and future generations 
disproportionately.

"Greta, in the space of basically 14 months, goes from being a lonely 
teenage girl sitting with a little sign outside the Parliament building, 
all by herself, to on one day having 4 million people marching in the 
streets with her all around the world," Leiserowitz said. "That's 
remarkable!"
We should continue shouting Greta's "Yes, and" message into the next decade.
Yes, this truly is a horrible mess.
And yes, we must fix it.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/26/opinions/climate-change-decade-in-review-sutter/index.html 




[basic scripts for civil conversation]
*How to talk to your family about climate change*
With the climate crisis making more headlines than ever, difficult 
conversations about climate change will be hard to avoid this holiday 
season. So we asked a therapist, a scientist, a policy expert, and a 
psychologist about how to navigate these conversations with relatives 
who might not share your point of view. When that uncle breaches the 
topic this Christmas, how can you respond in a way that could actually 
change his mind?
*"But I love meat! Have some!"*
Answer by Dr. Melanie Joy, Psychologist:

"I get it; I can relate to loving meat! I used to love it, too. In
fact, Christmas ham was one of my favorite meals." (Or some
variation of this.)‌‌

"I'd love to tell you the reason I don't eat meat. I just don't want
to dominate the dinner conversation, so let's talk about it after
we're done eating." (If possible, don't talk about eating animals
when people are eating animals because they're likely to be more
defensive.)‌‌

"The reason I don't eat meat anymore is because of something that
happened to me." (Here, you share your story. Just keep it short,
and avoid graphic descriptions of animal suffering and language that
your relative could interpret to mean they are, for example,
"immoral" or "ignorant.") ‌‌

"I saw a video on my Facebook feed about how animals are raised and
killed for food – and I was shocked and horrified." (Or, "I found a
vein in the chicken leg I was eating and suddenly felt disgusted by
the meat…" etc.) ‌‌

"I then did my own research, and I learned that farmed animals
(pigs, chickens, cows, etc.) are intelligent and conscious, just
like dogs. And that billions of these animals are brutally
slaughtered every year – and that animal agribusinesses work to hide
this truth." (You can add briefly that, on top of this, you learned
that animal agriculture is a primary cause of climate change and
human health problems.) ‌‌

"And then I could never see meat the same way again. Now when I look
at the ham on the table, I don't see 'food.' I see a dead animal,
and instead of feeling appetized, I feel disgusted. I guess the best
way for you to understand what I'm talking about is to imagine how
you might feel if the meat on the table was from a golden retriever
– who you knew had suffered terribly before being cooked." ‌‌

https://blog.ecosia.org/how-to-talk-to-your-family-about-climate-change/



[Getting used to the future]
*How power shutoffs are changing California's way of life*
California leaders are in uncharted territory, and scrambling to adjust 
their plans and operations to the realities of regular disruption.
By MACKENZIE MAYS, ANGELA HART and COLBY BERMEL
SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Joe Fatula left the Bay Area in 2017 wanting to 
settle down in the mountains somewhere quiet. He chose Colfax, a small 
town rich with Gold Country history, and became mayor last year with the 
goal of boosting business on Main Street.

But his sanctuary turned apocalyptic in October. Every gas station, 
grocery store and restaurant closed due to massive power shutoffs as 
part of the state's efforts to avoid a major wildfire. The mayor found 
himself loaning out his personal pickup truck and RV, which have 
built-in generators, to the town's 2,000 residents as they scrambled to 
save food in their refrigerators, charge their phones and find a way to 
stay warm.

At all levels of government -- from state officials to small-town mayors 
-- California leaders are in uncharted territory, and scrambling to 
adjust their plans and operations to the realities of regular 
disruption. For now, their only answer to calamitous wildfires is 
shutting off power to millions of residents in advance, which residents 
now lament as a man-made disaster. Mike McGuire, the state senator 
representing the Santa Rosa area devastated by fires in 2017, said 
California is "the canary in the coal mine" as climate change threatens 
to upend life across the world.

Residents in some of California's most bucolic settings are stuck 
figuring it out on their own, rich and poor, urban and rural alike. 
While Fatula navigated his working-class community with generators in 
his pickup, NBA star LeBron James was forced to flee his estate near Los 
Angeles in the middle of the night, "driving around with my family 
trying to get rooms," he said in a tweet.

"It's a hardship you don't expect to go through," Fatula said. "I don't 
want to beat people up over this because it's a new territory that 
everybody is in, but we've asked a number of agencies for help and we've 
gotten a weak response."

In the long-term, the state's brightest minds have offered plenty of 
ideas: move power lines underground; microgrids; better forest 
management; no new homes in areas surrounded by desiccated hillsides. In 
the meantime, what wildfires and their accompanying blackouts mean is 
that every level of government in the most populated U.S. state is 
scrambling to govern with this reality.

Changes California leaders envision could take a decade or more to have 
an impact. After shying away from shutoffs last year before the historic 
Camp Fire, which killed more than 80 people and virtually decimated the 
town of Paradise, Pacific Gas & Electric Company moved in the opposite 
direction this fall. The utility aggressively cut power across vast 
swaths of Northern California, from the Silicon Valley to the Sierra Nevada.
- - -
Gov. Gavin Newsom has blamed both PG&E and climate change, and 
communities across the state are slowly accepting that regular power 
outages and wildfires are part of the new California experience.

School districts are penciling in "emergency days" instead of snow days 
and planning for "disaster relief summer school." Hospitals assume they 
will rely more on backup generators and are determining criteria for 
transferring patients during blackouts. Local governments are making 
room in already tight budgets for emergency repairs, just in case.

Power shutoffs affecting millions of residents at a time may avert 
wildfires. But they have introduced their own issues, not least of which 
is damaging local economies when businesses must close.

"Utilities have taken a meat cleaver approach with power shutoffs when 
they should be using a scalpel," said McGuire, who represents 
California's rugged North Coast. "It has taken an incredible toll on 
communities."

Blackouts have also exposed a major communications gap: When cell towers 
lose power, it's impossible for endangered residents to seek help.

"The whole city was down," said Fatula, who has requested funding from 
the state and Placer County to keep cell towers powered after the city 
lost access to phones and the internet. "The bad part would've been if a 
fire actually happened during one of these events. How would we even 
tell people to get out of their homes?"

Meanwhile, communities are turning any building with a generator and 
space into makeshift emergency shelters where people can go for power, 
sleep or just a hot cup of coffee.

"We want to harden our schools to this new phenomenon because they will 
be a place people can go," said Marianne Boll-See, president of the 
Black Oak Mine Teachers Association, whose rural Sierra foothills 
district was hit hard by shutoffs. "People are now looking to our 
schools as a source of information."

Developing new 'muscle memory'
Low-income Californians who depend on the state for resources have been 
especially disrupted.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has so far approved more than $6 
million in SNAP benefit replacements for those who suffered food losses 
as a result of losing power, according to the California Department of 
Social Services. The state estimated that more than 75,000 households 
that rely on CalFresh -- California's version of the federal food 
program -- were impacted.

During the outages, social services employees were on the phone 
rerouting trucks to food banks that were abruptly relocated and working 
with groups like the Red Cross to set up emergency shelters. Assisted 
living centers scrambled to create new evacuation plans and keep 
relatives updated. The state's In-Home Supportive Services program, for 
disabled people over 65, sought places to refrigerate insulin or power 
up oxygen tanks.

The very places where people go in times of need are vulnerable, too. 
Hospitals and community clinics are developing new "muscle memory" to 
cope, buying air filtration systems to reduce the risk of smoke 
polluting indoor air and securing housing and hotel rooms for displaced 
physicians and nurses.

"If we don't have places for our caregivers to stay, then we don't have 
a hospital to operate," Chad Krilich, chief medical officer for Santa 
Rosa Memorial Hospital, told POLITICO.

Some hospitals put in place emergency outreach teams, deploying them 
into neighborhoods without power to ensure patients have access to 
life-saving medication, refrigeration and other critical medical supplies.

Hospitals in the hardest-hit regions said they're not waiting for 
utility companies to announce power shutoffs. They've come to expect it.

"The biggest thing we learned is let's just be ready, so we plan for 
this to happen every year," Krilich said. "Then if it doesn't, we can 
just have a party."

California Health and Human Services Secretary Mark Ghaly told POLITICO 
that the state has begun to develop backup emergency plans, working with 
cities, counties, labor unions and health care organizations to 
coordinate medical services. The state also set up an emergency hotline 
for people to call in case they couldn't access prescriptions or other 
health care needs.
As they lost power this year, residents grew increasingly frustrated and 
anxious after being forced from their homes and things went wrong.
"This could have easily become more of a life or death issue for people 
who had serious health needs. I think the state, through a lot of 
partnerships, got this part right," Ghaly said.

State health officials and hospital administrators say they are better 
equipped to relocated patients with less critical needs and transfer 
them to nearby clinics or acute care facilities. The state also 
connected disabled and vulnerable patients with medical transportation 
and power during blackouts, Ghaly said.

'Man-made disasters'
Sonoma County Supervisor Shirlee Zane called the power outages "man-made 
disasters" and said that while they've compounded issues -- her 
residents can't pump water from wells without electricity -- they also 
helped them practice for a real life event.

The county was struck by deadly fires in 2017, and it has changed how it 
operates in recent years. Sonoma shares social workers, firefighters and 
police officers with surrounding areas in times of trouble.

The county's Department of Emergency Management was quick to send out 
alerts and calls for evacuations early and often in October. The county 
has added staff to contact the medically fragile during a shutoff.

But preparation costs money. The county is in the midst of calculating 
how much overtime costs the latest fire and outages will total.

State leaders have praised the resiliency of California's towns and say 
they've tried to avoid placing blame on local officials since everyone 
is living through power shutoffs together for the first time -- though 
there's still no shortage of criticism for PG&E.

"I'm not faulting anyone this year because the way that it was handled 
by PG&E was terrible," Sen. Bill Dodd (D-Napa) told POLITICO. "What 
we're hoping is that [the shutoffs] in the future are more direct, more 
targeted to only happen when there's an imminent threat of loss of life 
or significant property damage. But hope is not a great strategy."
- - -
Mark Ghilarducci, who oversees state disaster response as Office of 
Emergency Services director, said utilities need to be more engaged with 
government if they're going to be involved in public safety decisions of 
this magnitude.

"They have to think like and act like a public safety organization 
would. The decisions that are made have consequences, and the 
consequences in these particular cases are potentially 
life-threatening," he told POLITICO.

State leaders are facing increasing calls to step up, with school 
districts, cities and counties demanding more assistance. The state 
Senate's Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee will hold a 
hearing next month on the phone outages and "ensuring a reliable 
lifeline for Californians."

And the state itself is looking for help too, with OES calling on energy 
and telecom companies to improve or face consequences.

"The length at which this went, going on six or seven days, really took 
a toll on everybody," Ghilarducci said. "We're trying to anticipate and 
fill the gaps; every day, new gaps and new challenges would emerge."

One silver lining to the shutoffs is that they've served as a dress 
rehearsal for a disaster that the state has always foreseen: when the 
so-called Big One earthquake strikes.

"Even as bad as we've seen events, there's still more to come, and we 
can't sit back on our laurels and high-five it," Ghilarducci said. "We 
still have more to do to be prepared."
https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/25/california-power-shutoffs-089678


***This Day in Climate History - December 27, 2012 - from D.R. Tucker*
Lisa Jackson announces that she will step down as EPA administrator.
http://youtu.be/Iqw7hO9OhCA

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