LA Weekly

As Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa [link: pronunciation for out-of-towners] and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair wrap of a day of round table discussions with California's governor, et al, and sit down for their "private meeting" on climate, the Natural Resources Defense Council [link:PDF], Assemblywoman Fran Pavley and I would like to remind everybody that:

1. According to a Public Policy Institute of California survey released last week, 49 percent of Californians believe global warming is a "very serious threat."

2. Assembly Bill 32,"The Global Warming Solutions Act," has been authored by Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez and Assemblymember Fran Pavley to require a 25 percent reduction in statewide emissions of greenhouse gases by 2020 (a noble, but hardly excessive -- or perhaps even adequte [just me talking there] goal).

3. (Only me talking again): Strange butterflies are showing up in Scotland.

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(The photo is from BBC News; the excerpt below is from the Lebanese paper, the Daily Star.)

BEIRUT: At least 10,000 tons of heavy fuel oil have been spilled into the Lebanese sea, causing an environmental catastrophe with severe effects on health, biodiversity and tourism, environmentalists and the Environment Ministry said Wednesday. Two weeks ago, Israeli bombs targeted the Jiyye power station, located on the coast 30 kilometers south of Beirut. Part of the oil in storage tanks has been burning ever since and the other part is leaking into the Mediterranean.

Environmental News Network has slightly more on the consequences to fish (bluefin tuna) and other wildlife (all baby turtles will die).

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As power supplies get sucked dry all over the country (but especially in California), we're bound to experience more blackouts, rolling blackouts and blown transformers. So it's time to build your own generator.

Three years ago, I followed these instructions for building your own solar generator to the letter, with great success. I started with two 54-watt solar panels and two 105 amp-hour batteries. I have since expanded.

When the lights go out here (which they often do, heat wave or no, just because our street is funky), I run a radio, lights and a cooler on DC power. When the lights are on, I charge my cell phone and power twinkling lights outside (using an AC inverter).

I have found Mr. Solar a fine source for all my supplies, as well as for answers when I needed them. Costco is also a good source for batteries.

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Michael Kinsley once said that the problem with journalism today is that reporters have to interview an expert just to say 2+2=4. And then, for balance, they have to interview another "expert" who will claim that 2+2=5.

I was reminded of that yesterday when Reuters released this elephant-in-the-room story, "Climate Change Behind Summer Heat Waves?" Here's an excerpt:

“As ever, you cannot say any one weather event is caused by global warming,” said Asher Timms of Britain’s Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research. “But globally, it seems that there’s quite a shift in our weather patterns.”

Skeptics of the global warming theory, which predicts droughts and floods this century unless greenhouse gas emissions are curbed, say the media play up hot summer days for dramatic effect.

Bill O’Keefe, a board member of Washington think tank the George C. Marshall Institute and a consultant to the oil industry, said the record heat could be seen as part of a natural cycle of highs and lows.

Now, as I sit in the 100-degree heat waiting for my new solar-powered swamp cooler to arrive, I ask you this:

Who gives a rat's ass what Bill O'Keefe thinks?! Bill O'Keefe is not a scientist! Bill O'Keefe's last job was shilling for the American Petroleum Institute! I know the article says he works for the oil industry -- and good for them -- but the average reader (i.e., Peggy "Blame the Scientists" Noonan) will take these remarks as evenly weighted and conclude there is not yet a, you know, consensus about climate change." She may not even get to the pair of sentences that comes a few lines later:

U.S. space agency NASA says 2005 was the warmest globally in more than a century and that the preceding three years were also the warmest since the 1890s. The U.S. National Climatic Data Center said the first half of 2006 were the warmest six months since records began in 1895.

Add to this Newsweek's despicable "Green Issue" portrait of George Bush, so riddled with outright lies I can't even start: Okay -- he did not propose the "first-ever cut in mercury emissions from power plants"; the Clinton administration's "Maximum Achievable Control Technology," had it remained in place, would have reduced power-plant mercury emissions by an estimated 92 percent by 2007; Bush's "cap-and-trade" plan aimed at mercury would reduce mercury emissions from a current 48 tons per year to 34 tons by 2018. The plan was shredded by everyone from Sen. Jim Jeffords to Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe. That Newsweek, which used to be a decent magazine under the late Maynard Parker, would suggest otherwise is unconscionable.

And after all that, you can hardly blame Peggy for her confusion. I mean, really.

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Okay, it's not such a deal. It's kind of expensive for a little swamp cooler. But I'm breaking down: I said I'd never have AC, but the heat in Los Angeles is kickin' my butt, and it's only gonna get worse. I'm from Minnesota. I wasn't raised to endure this.

So I'm getting one of these. I'm going to run it from solar-charged batteries I keep in my backyard (I wire a DC input through the window into my house). Twelve volts, only pulls .9 of an amp on low, cools enough to make my home office tolerable. On humid days, it won't work so well I guess, but it's mostly dry heat in Los Angeles.

And I have to prove I can run AC off the grid.

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Wednesday night I took a spin in the Tesla Roadster, the new high-end sportsmobile created by a San Carlos, California-based team in collaboration with the Lotus people in the UK. The Roadster runs on 6,831 lithium-ion laptop batteries, travels 250 miles on a three-hours charge, and looks beautiful -- none of that space-age, self-consciously weird design you see in concept cars, just efficient, fluid lines and functional equipment (like an iPod dock).

While I was waiting in line, Who Killed the Electric Car? director Chris Paine walked up with a committed buyer (whose name I know, but didn't ask to use, so I'll keep it to myself.) Paine was wearing a white t-shirt with black lettering advertising the title of his film, and one of the Tesla guys stopped him:

"You have to change the title of your movie," he said. "It should be, 'Who THOUGHT They Killed The Electric Car?'"

Indeed. I took the opportunity to plug my feature from last week, on Reverend Gadget and "Jolly" Roger Wilson's Left Coast Conversions. Electric cars are popping out all over.

And that's great. But I have a question.

At yesterday's California Air Resources Board meeting, representatives from both the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles reiterated their committments to "cold-ironing," or "Alternative Maritime Power" (AMP), or plugging big ships into electrical outlets while parked in the harbor.

And the temperature in Los Angeles has topped or neared 100 degrees every day for the last week. Every day I've been watching midday power usage soar up close to the state's 50,000 megawatt capactiy (get your own Realtime California Independent System Operator power monitoring widget here). The state has regularly been pushing toward 47,000 megawatt record-breaking consumption.
So, to be completely harsh and realistic about all these changes, I must ask: Where's all that electricity going to come from?

Answers, please.

Also, something a little unusual happened during my test ride, which I'll divulge in the piece that runs in the actual paper next week. All told, though, I liked the car a lot. I mean, who wouldn't? I have been experimenting on city roads to see if I can get my biodiesel Bug to accelerate with any force at all. It's can't, but it's actually kind of thrilling.

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Technical difficulties prevented me from blogging earlier about the Southern California fires in the high desert near the mountains, but all that should be cleared up -- we've moved to a new system.

The best way to keep track of the two still active fires, which are either a few hundred feet apart or one big 60,000-acre fire by now, depending on who you ask, is the Rim of the World incident report, a tradition that began with the Old Fire in 2003. You'll find good links and up-to-the-minute news here, as well as actual dispatches from the people fighting the fire.

The incident updates are a little less interesting now that the fire has "laid down," as they say, but it'll be useful if stirs up again -- as it might; it's plenty hot out there. When I drove out to check out the fire in the Morongo Valley yesterday afternoon, the (extremely accurate) thermometer in my car flipped over to 112 at the Riverside County line and Highway 62.

Last night I went to the Yucca Valley Community Meeting, where firefighters were given standing ovations three times. For the most part it was a friendly and calm meeting, but a few people were mad, especially the people from the Pipes Canyon area above Yucca Valley, where the fire sped through almost without warning. One woman stood up to describe running for her life, with no advance notice from the radio or local authorities.

But the fire burned 22,000 acres in five hours, said one of the incident command guys at the meeting. "We had no idea it would burn so much so fast," he said.

No human lives were lost, but Yucca Valley Animal Control officer Kim Casey claimed last night claimed that there had been quite a few animal casualties.

John Miller of the U.S. Forest Service told me after the meeting that the unusually hot, fast fire in high desert vegetation was fueled by unusually tall grasses. "There wasn't enough wind to blow the seeds away," he said, and then there was that mid-March rain and snow. He didn't tell me that pollution and changes in climate have altered that high desert ecosystem, but that may also be true. (Scroll down to "Impacts of Anthropogenic N Deposition on Weed Invasion, Biodiversity and Fire Cycles at Joshua Tree National Park.")

The Desert Sun also has excellent coverage (and some amazing photos) here. More as the story unfolds.

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