Climate Point: Disaster aid lacking as extreme events surge across the nation

Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate, energy and the environment. From Palm Springs, California, I'm Janet Wilson.

A few weeks ago, I stood in the wrecked front yard of the Shimbos, a young family who thought they had found their dream home in rural Silverado Canyon, southeast of Los Angeles. Seven months after they bought it, torrential rains pushed a wall of mud, boulders and ash from wildfire-scarred hills down toward their home. They survived, but their insurance claim for 10 feet of mud has been denied and no government aid has arrived either.

Across the country in Norristown, Pennsylvania, USA Today environment reporter Kyle Bagenstose had a similar experience, speaking with a barber who saved for years to be able to buy his own shop. The remnants of Hurricane Ida flooded his property, and again, "not a single penny" of insurance or disaster aid was on tap. Kyle wanted to dig further, and we teamed up on a pair of stories that ran this week.

Bottom line, as the rate and intensity of disasters linked to climate change surges — and they are surging, with 20 separate billion-dollar plus disasters just last year — more and more Americans will find themselves burned out, flooded or otherwise impacted, with no financial help. Experts say it's time to seriously consider re-locating people in disaster-prone areas. But that takes funds too.

Meantime, thousands get stuck in a global warming version of "As Good as It Gets," the Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt flick in which an evil HMO declines to provide decent care for her sick son. Only this isn't the movies and there are no sugar-spun endings, just helping hands from neighbors and nonprofits, and endless GoFundMes now used by Americans turned down by insurance companies. 

Here are some other stories that may be of interest.

Must-read stories

Icy hot. Once upon a time, ice was widely harvested during New England winters to keep food cool during summer months. Today, energy efficient refrigerators have replaced ice houses and sawdust. In a deep dive, the New Yorker's David Owen explains how the refrigerator "became an agent of climate catastrophe" and cooling technology innovation — a supposed global warming solution — has made things worse. He notes that promoters of efficiency as a climate strategy say energy pollution would be vastly higher if machines were as inefficient as they were 50 years ago.

"But the flaw in that argument is easy to see," Owen writes. "If the only refrigerators we could buy now were thirties-era G.E. Monitor Tops, Cumberland Farms wouldn’t have an entire wall filled with chilled soft drinks and drinking water ... Similarly, if the only way to fly from one coast to the other were to hitch a ride with the Wright brothers, you wouldn’t travel to California for Christmas."

Ice has also dwindled on many New England ponds thanks to a warming climate, and elsewhere.

Massive melt. What was once the world's biggest iceberg released nearly 1 trillion tons of freshwater in its lifespan, which could have profound effects on wildlife, scientists say. The berg, part of the Larsen-C Ice Shelf on the Antarctica peninsula before it broke off in July 2017, stretched 2,208 square miles, larger than Delaware, writes USA Today's Jordan Mendoza.

As it drifted and melted, the cold freshwater mixed with salty warmer ocean current waters, releasing nutrients and plankton that feed on them, which could upend the local food chain, including for penguins and seals.  

All about energy

Going, going. Los Angeles voted Wednesday to ban new oil wells inside city limits, and to try to phase out existing wells over 20 years. The city council voted unanimously to take steps to address the legacy of environmental and health problems caused by an industry that helped create modern Southern California, writes Dakota Smith for the Los Angeles Times. 

Los Angeles County took similar action last September. Cities, counties and states across the U.S. are grappling with how to properly shut down old, polluting wells, with fierce opposition from oil lobbyists and some trade unions worried about lost jobs, and threats of lawsuits or steep costs to buy out existing operations. Per Wednesday's vote, the city will conduct an amortization study on whether companies have recouped the value of their investments at each site. If so, officials say it will make it easier to shut them down.

Mini-nuclear. A new bill could pave the way for nuclear power in Indiana — at a cost to consumers. The bill could boost small modular reactors, or SMRs, a new technology that promises smaller, more flexible plants than their mammoth relatives, reports the Indy Star's Sarah Hopkins.

They're so new, in fact, that there are currently none operating in the U.S. Supporters say the new reactors could replace retiring coal plants and supplement renewables. But skeptics say the bill shifts the cost of expensive technology to consumers. There have been cost overruns for nuclear projects in other states and there are unknowns about how it works and what will happen to the dangerous toxic waste left over. 

No can do. Conservation groups want to buy land set aside for oil and gas extraction to protect it. One problem: It’s often illegal. Shawn Regan and Bryan Leonard recap their findings for the journal Science in a High Country News opinion piece about how federal "use it or lose it" rules can bias public land management in favor of extraction.

Hot takes

Eaten alive. Desert plants threatened by climate change, thirsty animals. Desert Sun

Hot air. Hydrogen-powered planes can handle a third of passenger air travel. Canary Media

Heating up. As extreme heat rises, California plans to keep people safe. Desert Sun.

And another thing

Testing, testing. When traffic came to a frozen, 24-hour standstill on Interstate 95 in Virginia this month, the internet was abuzz with how drivers would have fared in electric vehicles. Older electric cars rapidly lose battery capacity in cold weather. But how would today's advanced technological models fare?

Alex Lauer, senior editor for Inside Hook, decided to find out. He borrowed an electric Ford Mustang and sat in his frigid Minnesota driveway for 12 hours with the engine running.

Guess what? It worked. "I lost 25 percent of the range ... while keeping the cabin toasty, so it stands to reason that over 24 hours I wouldn’t have lost much more than 50 percent. I also took the Mach-E for a drive after my test just to make sure it would be able to keep going after idling for so long, and it drove off normally."

"Change is scary and the idea of being in a scary situation in a new vehicle is doubly so," he writes. "It makes sense that people are worried about swapping out their polluting gas cars for newfangled electric cars. But I must say, after this cramp-inducing test, I’d much rather be stuck in traffic in the heated seats of a Mach-E than the gas car currently sitting in my frozen garage."

He added, "Now I must explain to my neighbors why I am not, in fact, a total weirdo."

That's all for this week. Here's to weird, and for more climate, energy and environment news, follow me @janetwilson66. You can sign up to get Climate Point in your inbox for free here.