Trump is shrinking the EPA more quickly & aggressively than ever before, culminating in this week's move to rescind the crucial "endangerment finding" underpinning key regulations of planet-warming pollution. Here's what it all means (a gift link @bloomberg.com): www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Want to know how many disaster declarations are being made under the 2nd Trump Administration, and how long they are taking? I made a simple dashboard to help: andrewrumbach.substack.com/p/a-dashboar...

Babe, wake up, new sarcastic but entirely worthwhile internet abbreviation just dropped

Oh my god

A look back at what we discussed at our water- fire – finance workshop a few weeks ago, and what you’ll see in our full report in a few months ucanr.edu/blog/conflue...

A record snow drought with unprecedented heat is hitting most of the American West, depleting future water supplies, making it more vulnerable to wildfires and hurting winter tourism and recreation. #cawater apnews.com/article/west...

Wow

New water pipelines run at least >$1m per mile, so…what’s not to like?

Read the latest Weather Ready research for insights on developing more holistic, multi-hazard interventions and educational campaigns for wildfire preparedness and response: bit.ly/3NPtIcO

This is one of the most wild stories in CA (Western) water. Not unlike Buckeye, AZ, you have a utility, albeit a very unconventional one (Union Pacific Railroad), saying it will stop serving a certain community, with no viable alternative emerging.

The Southwest Kings Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA) held its first meeting in six months and covered a lot of ground including setting a policy to fine landowners $1,000 a day for not registering their wells and vowing to sue a neighboring GSA. #cawater mavensnotebook.com/2026/02/04/s...

(LA taxpayers will be on the hook for the first $270 million in cost overruns if the LA 2028 Olympics goes over budget. CA taxpayers will then be on the hook for the next $270 million. After that, LA taxpayers will again be on the hook for any remaining cost overruns.)

I've spent the past couple weeks combing through data from dozens of power plant sites where coal ash disposal contaminated drinking water supplies, and whenever I work on a project like this I start to feel like it's a miracle that any of us are still alive

On Monday, Trump administration exempted new nuclear reactors from environmental review www.npr.org/2026/02/02/n...

I’m not sure what we’re expecting to happen when we don’t provide financial support to what are effectively small businesses w 80% fixed costs which have lost much of their customer base, and don’t have other revenue sources.

for us Americans, that's 98°F at night and 120°F in the day

New from @gruberte.bsky.social and I in @science.org: The energy transition is at risk, and energy models are missing the threat. Fossil energy networks from oil to coal to gas have minimum viable scales of operation, and those thresholds are closer than we think: www.science.org/doi/epdf/10.... 💡🔌

“The order echoes the administration’s January 2025 action, which blamed California’s environmental and water‑management policies for intensifying wildfires and authorized federal agencies to override state water restrictions and accelerate environmental waivers.” www.usatoday.com/story/news/c...

"At your earliest convenience, but no later than February 1" LOL

This is an important point. The federal government has *chosen* to withhold heat aid in frigid temperatures.

It would certainly help if the federal government had not gutted LIHEAP, the key protection nationally to provide financial support for affording heating in homes.

Very exciting to share that @climatecentral.org is hiring a Climate Data Scientist to join a new climate services effort focused on advancing predictions of risks and hazards on seasonal-to-decadal timescales. The application closes on February 9, 2026 at 5pm ET, & the description can be found here:

Not sure those “ were not in a drought anymore” headlines a few weeks ago did much good

Another reminder that the largest cuts in Medicaid’s history were made by this Congress in part to fund a tripling of ICE/DHS budget.

As highlighted in @laist.com, our research, led by @gregspierce.bsky.social, shows that hydrant limits are common in major urban fires and were not unique to the Palisades fire. However, misinformation spread quickly after that fire. Read: laist.com/news/climate... #UCLA #UCLALuskin

On day 2 of 3 talking about water, wildfire, disaster, recovery, etc. It is overwhelming, even for somebody who has been in this space for a long time, how much work there is to do, how little funding, how many people are in the recovery phase for way too long. It's pretty untenable, really.

Check out the latest on financial difficulties faced by water systems in LA post-fire, via @laist.com “So we're basically running the company off of 25% of the revenue that we used to have,” laist.com/news/climate...

Water bankruptcy. In a world filled good news and peace(not), we might as well pile on. edition.cnn.com/2026/01/20/c...

"Building Decarbonization has a Natural Gas Pipeline Problem" i wanted to talk about the big issues with how building decarbonization was initially envisioned as this appliance-by-appliance problem, making it an individual consumer problem when we're talking about INFRASTRUCTURE.

You should definitely check out Nick Shapiro's (@carceralecologies.bsky.social)new book. The main takeaway for me which is more relevant every day is that sloppy and insufficient rollout of post-disaster housing is predatory & will cause severe harm sooner later. newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/home...

Besides the impact on places struggling right now with disasters, the FEMA CORE non-renewals are a ticking time bomb for future events. There simply won't be enough personnel to make the programs work or work with any semblance of transparency or efficiency.

“The affordability issue is already a challenge, & this is going to exacerbate that even further,” said Tony Parrott, who heads up the sewer district in Louisville, Kentucky. “If we’re losing that layer of wetlands as a tool, it means we’re going to have to make larger investments on the back end.”

Read the latest Weather Ready Research report to learn more about how rural Texas residents responded to 2024 wildfires. Insights from this case study can help to enhance disaster resilience for rural populations: bit.ly/44wiCid

As wildfires rage in Chile, just came across this practice of “solidarity water cuts” which I have never seen before

Things I didn’t have on my bingo card: The power utility that caused the Eaton fire, by all accounts, blaming the water utilities in the area, when no evidence has shown they have neglected their duties or under-performed their abilities www.latimes.com/business/sto...

Nobel Please Prize

The total NSF budget was 9 billion. I doubt they spend 89% of it on quail.

Nice story by @apnews.com on the prospect of deep-sea desalination. There is unique openness so far in the environmental community regarding OceanWell. My take is the make-or-break will be the unit cost, which we won't know until further into implementation. apnews.com/article/clim...

Fascinating paper that shows using in science has created a massive collective action problem. Using AI enhances individual careers, but reduces scope of science and collaborations. So the individual incentives are reducing the collective good of scientific knowledge. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

NEW INVESTIGATION California predicts data centers will consume as much power as adding another LA to grid by 2030 A utility anticipates additional emissions equal to 21 gas plants Some environmentalists see reducing gas power as “a lot less likely” due to AI capitalandmain.com/the-insatiab...

Oh man, this is awful, and the last thing Clear Lake needs.

California has been drafting various policies to accelerate its transition away from gas. A series from the @uclalawemmett.bsky.social provides on legal insights for this gas transition. legal-planet.org/2026/01/14/c...

First, that older mobile homes are the most at-risk, that new manufactured homes benefit from energy efficiency, and that the tradeoff between affordability and resiliency is a myth that needs busting.