Enjoyed talking Los Angeles water and power (and climate politics!) with @awalkerinla.bsky.social & @mikebonin.bsky.social on the LA Podcast! Covered Nithya Raman, Karen Bass, air quality, wildfires, AI, 100% clean energy and more: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/d...

"If this seems like a niche issue, I can assure you it is not. I spent 17 years at the helm of CARB, and I am deeply disturbed by the potential co-opting of public input processes using forgery through automated tools. Gathering public input is fundamental to the legitimacy of regulatory agencies."

What does wildfire resilience cost? A new UCLA Law report focuses on wildfire liability costs and wildfire mitigation costs in the transmission context. @uclalawemmett.bsky.social legal-planet.org/2026/03/31/w...

Front Range water districts consider rate hikes as Colorado drought deepens Denver Water and Aurora will determine drought restrictions and corresponding rate hikes next month. www.denver7.com/news/drought...

There are very few things I care less about than my ORCID

Leave it to the dangerous ignorance of Trump to threaten to attack Iran's #desalination plants (of which they have almost none) while ignoring the actual vulnerability of the Gulf country's desalination plants (to which they are completely dependent). Oh, and such attacks are a war crime. #water

It’s disturbing how easily some people can just talk about blowing up critical infrastructure that people depend on to live.

Rinse, repeat. apnews.com/article/affo...

Arizona’s mountain snowpack dropped over 90% in just a few weeks. New from me on the results of a first-in-the-state aerial snow survey. news.asu.edu/20260325-env...

Related - a challenging time for much of the western US theconversation.com/what-the-his...

It's insane that some states (like Georgia) have no residential ratepayer advocate: insideclimatenews.org/news/2003202...

Call me naive but I don't buy into the hype that AI can make human-led research obsolete. Not because AI isn't capable. But because great scientific advances isn't simply borne out of brute force hypothesis testing, but rare sparks of curiosity influenced by our lived human experience.

Another CA community with the real threat of running out of water, partly due to the water-energy nexus. The system also has a 75% water loss rate. With Humboldt County both currently helping but saying if water goes out, it will red tag homes. h/t @mavensnotebook.com kymkemp.com/2026/03/25/w...

The EIA put out its most recent data about energy affordability, and an eye popping 33% of all Americans struggle to pay their energy bills. Up from 27% four year ago.

Check out this work by @uclalewiscenter.bsky.social + colleagues

everybody was thinking about it

Thirty-two years after a landmark decision called for Los Angeles to limit its taking of water to help Mono Lake recover, its water level is still far lower than what’s required. Some are calling for L.A. to pause its water diversions to allow the lake to rise. www.latimes.com/environment/...

Recharging groundwater: New research highlights areas around the world that have managed to halt groundwater declines and boost aquifer levels. One California farm water agency shows what decades of recharge efforts can accomplish. @myungchun.bsky.social www.latimes.com/environment/...

In academia, we're good at talking about successes, but sweep unfunded grants & unsuccessful job apps under the rug. It can be a tough road, filled w/ failure* For anyone discouraged about the process, here's my failure CV #AcademicSky 🧪 *None are really failures if you learn from them

The Arizona desert community of Martinez Lake hit 110 degrees Fahrenheit, breaking the record for the highest March temperature ever recorded in the U.S.

I have a joke about [you do not have access to this joke through your institution] Buy this joke Purchase on SpringerLink Instant access to the full joke PDF. USD 39.95

“It is really maddening,” our Cara Horowitz tells the Guardian. “We’re hoping that by bringing visibility to these major issues, we will help increase public and political pressure to do something.” Read our findings.

New report from @cleancreatives.bsky.social finds fossil fuels companies aren't bothering with ads pretending they're transitioning to clean energy anymore, they've shifting to selling us on the idea that fossil fuels are essential and permanent features of life: heated.world/p/fossil-fue...

Join us to talk about a difficult subject next week: "Making Water More Affordable" in Southern California.

Things are not okay.

NSF Update through March 13, 2026 1/2

City officials are holding a press conference today to talk about how we're preparing for the heat. But my question, as always, is how do these preparations scale to potentially accommodate millions more people who will be in LA for megaevents during the hottest months of the year?

5. A little scoop about the Trump administration choosing not to prosecute Phillips 66 over (alleged) Clean Water Act violations at its LA County oil refinery. Yes, this is the oil company with ads all over Dodger Stadium: www.climatecoloredgoggles.com/p/trump-doj-...

"This paper investigates how political cycles shape the timing of water tariff adjustments, using data from 252 Chinese cities from 2007–2019. We show that local officials systematically defer tariff adjustments during politically sensitive periods" www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Feeling a lot of trepidation about the fire season this morning.

Although AI consumes a lot of water and energy, its biggest environmental impact is that it reproduces values that got us into the climate crisis in the first place: extraction, productivity, and efficiency. I spoke to @paulschuetze.bsky.social about his research on this!

Turns out electric vehicle batteries are lasting years longer than experts originally expected. Awesome! www.npr.org/2026/03/02/n...

I'm sorry but when I post about the importance of making a rapid transition to electric vehicles and you comment that the real issue is eliminating cars completely, you're not helping.

This seems like an incredibly useful paper, and highlights the dependence which public water system performance has on private, on-parcel infrastructure. Which underscores a whole lot of legal and regulatory jurisdiction questions. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I spoke to Kiki Sideris of @apnews.com re: the ever-complex answer set to the question: "Do you really need a water filter?" Appreciate already getting roasted in the comments. apnews.com/article/wate...

'The answer is clear: reduce demand through electric vehicles & better public transit... we need to open up California’s gasoline market & break apart the political stranglehold of the state’s oil industry. We don’t need half-baked answers that ignore the research and the data.'

Understatement: “the threat is not hypothetical” www.latimes.com/world-nation...

This story has everything, a focus on desal that led to overlooking other water sources, a city manager making $400K/yr saying don’t panic, a former water system manager saying residents should absolutely panic, and magical thinking: “The last hope to avert disaster was a 20- to 30-inch rainfall.”

“The region’s monarchies are often described as petro-states, but they have also become what I call saltwater kingdoms, global superpowers in the production of human-made fresh water drawn from the sea.” theconversation.com/persian-gulf...

Worth noting that investor-owned utilities in Maine outspent public power advocates 34:1. No wonder the latter's message was muffled! Legislative route makes sense. However, as my and others' research shows, investor-owned utilities are quite entrenched in state legislatures, too. (1/2)

At a time everyone is complaining about electricity affordability, House GOP wants to eliminate programs that help low-and-middle income Americans reduce their electricity consumption: www.eenews.net/articles/hou...

The more things change...via @nohaggerty.bsky.social The owner of the 170-unit mobile home park destroyed in the Palisades fire is trying to sell it, characterizing the lot as a "blank canvas for redevelopment" vs. re-occupation by currently-displaced residents. www.latimes.com/environment/...

Perhaps you weren't able to absorb all ~10k words from our discussion paper. Not to fret: co-author @edithdeguzman.bsky.social has created a more user-friendly table summarizing the 8 pathway options we discuss if you think any pathway should be pursued.

New paper out today suggests sea level rise may be substantially worse than we thought due to underestimates in models. What do all you slr modelers out there think of this paper??? www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Discussion paper: What is the function, if any, for statewide oversight (in the form of data collection, guidance, frameworks, and standards) of community water systems’ role in fighting wildfires? #cawater innovation.luskin.ucla.edu/publication/...

We are finally getting close to actualizing this idea, which has been around. Yet: 1. It's still not clear if/when this will get done 2. The devil is absolutely in the details around the terms of wholesale-retail-customer cost impacts, & ultimate pass-through effects (see our 2019 report)

Marin County is updating the way it inspects and permits on-site septic systems. On Thursday, the public is invited to a West Marin community meeting to gather public input on how its Local Area Management Program (LAMP) should be applied and improved. #cawater localnewsmatters.org/2026/03/02/f...