California Chaparral Institute: Please download our comprehensive booklet on wildfire safety that explains how you can take control of saving your home. From The House Outward – Protecting your Home From Wildfire
THE 3 FACTORS
1. Flying embers ignite most homes, because most homes are flammable.
2. It’s not the wildland vegetation, it’s the location.
3. Defensible space can work, but beyond 100 feet is counterproductive.
Financial Times – “Basel-based FSB says damage caused by floods, droughts and fires threatens broader pullback in lending, “The world’s financial stability watchdog has warned that disasters caused by climate change are increasingly likely to trigger broader panic in financial markets. The world breached 1.5C of warming above preindustrial levels for the first time last… Continue Reading
Lifehacker: “While Los Angeles County continues to battle devastating wildfires, you may be wondering about the safety of your own home. More specifically, how are you covered when the unthinkable happens? Unfortunately, insurance doesn’t function like a gas or electric company; even in the face of disaster, insurers aren’t obligated to service your home. And… Continue Reading
Raw Story: “Nearly three decades after its introduction, the hybrid Toyota Prius is still associated with environmental action and the scientific consensus that fossil fuel emissions, including those from vehicles, must be reduced to avoid the worst effects of planetary heating. But a Tuesday report from watchdog group Public Citizen reveals how Toyota has spent… Continue Reading
The New York Times – “…Ms. Raj, a University of California naturalist and master gardener, is a docent at the Eaton Canyon Nature Center and had been working to build a seed bank there. Altadena residents were familiar with one of the dozen or so wooden structures she had scattered around the neighborhood marked “Altadena… Continue Reading
The Journalist’s Resource: “Several U.S. communities are debating whether to remove fluoride from their water supplies in the wake of comments by President-elect Trump’s Health and Human Services nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who called the mineral an “industrial waste,” looking to remove it from water systems across the nation once Trump takes office. Local… Continue Reading
“The first modeled, historical water level and wave dataset for the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf coasts was released today by NOAA’s National Ocean Service (NOS). This comprehensive dataset — known as Coastal Ocean Reanalysis (CORA) — advances NOAA’s ability to better serve the nation’s coastal communities and lays the foundation for future NOAA coastal flooding… Continue Reading
Semafor: “The devastating wildfires that are sweeping Los Angeles may accelerate the flight of home insurance companies from California in spite of recent regulatory changes aimed at retaining them, the state’s previous top insurance official told Semafor. At least two major fires are still raging largely uncontained, aided by ongoing high winds, and 24 people… Continue Reading
The Los Angeles Times has this amazing interactive map, based on real-time open data provided by CalFire and the Geospatial Multi-Agency Coordination. See also Analysing satellite imagery of the Jan 2025 Southern California wildfires: “3.9 micron data from the GOES-16 East and GOES-18 West satellites on the January 2025 Southern California fires. We download the… Continue Reading
Scientific American [unpaywalled] – The Supreme Court majority’s recent decisions about homelessness, public health and regulatory power, among others, undermine the role of evidence, expertise and honesty in American democracy. “When the Supreme Court’s Ohio v. EPA decision blocked Environmental Protection Agency limits on Midwestern states polluting their downwind neighbors, a sad but telling coda… Continue Reading
Semafor – “JPMorgan said this morning, more than double an earlier estimate. That comes as those companies are still rebuilding their reserves from the 2017 and 2018 wildfire seasons, which included the deadly Camp Fire in California. Insurers have been fleeing California in recent years as weather-related catastrophes become more common, pushing more homeowners to… Continue Reading
State-level policies alone are insufficient to meet the federal food waste reduction goal in the United States, Nature Food (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s43016-024-01092-w – PHYS.org: “…The United States generates more food waste than all but two countries. To address this, the federal government set a goal to cut food waste in half by 2030 compared to 2016… Continue Reading
