Painful but necessary. www.sfchronicle.com/california/a...

Everybody in northern California who says things like “well irrigated plantings cannot ignite and will keep my home safe should go outside, look at and touch their hedge today.

It’s obvious but also amazing what 72 hours of offshore winds, high temps, and low RH can do to the fine fuels. Feels like fall in May.

Getting busier.

People are apparently not too concerned about sea level rise. $8900 per square foot on a sand spit at tidewater. redf.in/Fb7MM0

Early season PSPS.

I am a huge fan of economists who look closely at the real world and the trends that everybody knows intuitively but haven’t articulated clearly, let alone quantified.

A NBER working paper co-authored by economist @catiehausman.bsky.social shows that larger oil & gas firms are passing environmental risks on to smaller firms. 🛢️⚠️ The result? #OilWells are left unplugged, leading to: ☠️ Air & water pollution 💥 Explosion risks Read: https://myumi.ch/5wN9A

New job posting to join our team for an early career scientist(s) interested in the intersection of wildfire, electricity, insurance and resilience policy. If this sounds like you, please apply! If not, please share with your contacts. careersearch.stanford.edu/jobs/electri...

“Ilove my city” night. First time at the Castro since the refurb. Gorgeous.

Yes we must. And moving faster is going to require dedicated long term funding. The real question is from where? www.kqed.org/science/2000...

California wildfire resilience funding on the brink. open.substack.com/pub/cepp/p/c...

Pine Mountain Fire in Eastern Oregon was a prescribed fire that escaped prescription and was declared a wildfire a couple of days ago. Now 25% contained. Fire effects have been positive - moderate heat from the fire overnight. Containment is now at 25%. No structure loss.

Palmer drought index. Worst ever. Worse than the dust bowl. Fire season is coming.

I just love Chief Garcia’s perspective and leadership. “If you are ready, get more ready. Help your neighbors.” Yes.

These blue states aren’t getting fire prevention money from Trump. FEMA slowed grants intended to help states such as California and Colorado prepare for and prevent wildfires, a Washington Post analysis shows. wapo.st/4nfrTU9

This story gets crazier. 1. Thought the coyote swam from SF - Alcatraz. A huge feat in cold water. 2. He ate a seabird/ nesting season. So they want to trap him. 3. Scat DNA: actually, coyote swam from Angel Island which is FARTHER 4. They can’t find the coyote now. www.sfgate.com/local/articl...

A springtime backyard meditation. And bounty.

My vote is for whichever politician makes a world where I don’t have to check Bloomberg commodities when I wake up to see what the Brent and WTI prices look like. You have my vote.

Sitting yesterday with one of my favorite colleagues who used to be a senior military commander. He mused “did the Romans know when their empire was over? Did the British know when their’s was over?”

My kind of water cooler talk.

I think wonky discussions of electricity market design can be fun and entertaining. If you agree, you’re the target audience of CAISO’s new podcast.

Are Californians being price gouged at the pump…You bet! Must Read! Aftermath: California Gas Prices Are Up, and It’s Not Just the War Via @prospect.org prospect.org/2026/04/28/a...

100%

Sitting here dying at these answers to gas prices in California. If anyone says the words "crack spread" or "dealer tankwagon" they get my vote. Sadly none of them will. prospect.org/2026/04/28/a...

Something that's rare? Major fossil fuel producers - including Nigeria, Canada and Australia - getting together to find concrete ways to transition away from fossil fuels. That's what's happening with more than 50 countries gathered in Santa Marta Colombia right now. 📻🎧 only on @npr.org ⬇️ 🇨🇴🇳🇬🇨🇦🇦🇺+🌏

Unsaid in this article is that a key reason for the releases from Flaming Gorge is that the system to release water from Glen Canyon Dam that bypasses the turbines cannot be operated on a sustained basis. These releases are aimed at trying to avoid that system - called the River Outlet Works.

Interesting lessons here for adaptation crowd. Especially this quote about what killed the project - cutting down and replacing trees! "Councilman Ed London said that he'd rather get his feet wet occasionally than live in 'a treeless desert for twenty years for waiting for new growth to mature.'”

The federal government ordered Flaming Gorge water released and cuts to Lake Powell releases, to prevent collapse.

Key quote: “We would ask them, ‘Are you following board governance directives?’” Stassun (the board chair) says. “And their (acting NSF management) answer would be, in effect, ‘We don't listen to you anymore.’” www.science.org/content/arti...

I’ll be at Stanford on Monday talking about AI, energy, and climate. Come by or tune in and yell at me online, a notification is a notification events.stanford.edu/event/stanfo...

A great illustration from NM today of how recent wildfire burn scars can contain new fires. This is why you want a mosaic of burn scars (prescribed and wildfire) on the landscape. So any new fire gets boxed in by the old ones.

A powerful and beautiful book. A poet’s observations of El Salvador in the lead up to the civil war.

Key quote: “The water system doesn’t currently have backup power generation to maintain high pressure if power goes out.” They should. Full stop.

How can records of the past inform our understanding of extreme events? Join the National Academies on April 29 for a webinar releasing a new report on a proposed Center for Paleoenvironmental Records of Extreme Events Register: events.nationalacademies.org/46602

Read the whole of Sanchez’s speech. An incredible articulation of the new situation we all find ourselves in. www.sinicapodcast.com/p/pm-pedro-s...

Ask the people that voted for you how they feel about filling up their cars or worse, diesel trucks. They have a different answer than the CEOs of the oil companies.

The final report on last April's Spain/Portugal blackout is out. A few takeaways: - Lack of "inertia" due to too few fossil/nuclear generators - the thing anti-renewable pundits immediately blamed without evidence, then reporters breathlessly endlessly repeated - played essentially no role.

“When SpaceX started building rockets, they sort of expected the first ones to blow up,” he said. - an astonishing statement by the key Trump Admin official driving change on nuclear licensing and regulation. He says the true thing out loud.

No person I know has as much knowledge about the fire history of the Santa Cruz mountains as Dustin. This is a must see for those who live in Portola Valley, Woodside, Los Altos, or up on the mountain. I’m going to do my very best not to miss it.

Been thinking about 1923 the last day or so and wanted to share a piece written by FireSafe Marin about September 17, 1923. firesafemarin.org/articles/mar...

Excited to be speaking at Stanford’s Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve Tuesday May 5. The Big Fire in the Big Basin: The Long History & Short Memory of Wildfire in the #SantaCruzMountains explores the history of wildfire and role of colonial resource extraction. jrbp.stanford.edu/events/dr-du...

Cherry trees in Kyoto. Not a subtle signal.

A superb OpEd written by my Stanford colleagues @weakinstrument.bsky.social and @nealemahoney.bsky.social on how to address refinery closure in California. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

"Looking at the data another way, 95% of the blue state awards which were terminated on October 1st were not restored. In addition...95%, of projects in red states are being retained." doealumninetwork.substack.com/p/the-does-p...

📄🔥 New study on Spatially compounding fire danger in Europe, led by E. Gauthier. We often view extreme fire weather locally—but what if multiple European countries face it simultaneously, potentially overwhelming shared firefighting resources via widespread fires? www.nature.com/articles/s44...

The future opportunity of our children being thrown away. Without a thought or a care. And Congress is allowing this.

'The NSF has only committed $500 million of the $8 billion it was appropriated for the fiscal year, which began on Oct. 1. The NSF will lose the billions of remaining funding if it does not spend it by Sept. 30.' thehill.com/homenews/adm...

THE Becerra Campaign has apparently not met the IP lawyers from the Ad Counsel. Have a feeling they made their acquaintance today!

New paper out today. States are handing out tax abatements to data centers, and while that once made sense, it doesn’t anymore—at least not without conditions. Here’s a thread on what a better deal could look like. 🧵