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Wildfires that have burned 20 million acres in Canada in an area the size of Maine are affecting oil, lumber and tourism industries. Fires in Quebec have created a cloud of haze in cities as far away as New York and Detroit, and made its way across the Atlantic ocean to France for the first time. It used to be said that events in one part of the world affect us, now this is a reality and everyday life is affected.

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The largest fire in Texas history burnt over 1 million acres in the Texas Panhandle. In the area around Amarillo where the fire started temperatures in March are 54 degrees, the temperature hit 82 degrees, the winds and dry grass caused the fire says this report in NYT. Most fires are in the summer. All this is a part of the change in climate and climate change. After wildfires in Canada, new ones in Canada's Quebec region, this fire in Texas.

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Somini Sengupta and Brian Frank provide this award winning quality of coverage in text and pictures of life in California's San Joaquin Valley, hit by wildfires and scorching heat in the middle of the pandemic. Shown are workers in the fields of one of America's largest agricultural regions fighting heat and the pandemic, struggling to survive on a precarious hourly wage in these conditions. During earlier periods from 1970 this was an almost picturebook place particularly in the cool and foggy winters, which stretched for miles with apricot, grape, almond and other fruit and vegetable fields. A dry valley using irrigation of fields with water from the surrounding Sierra Nevada mountains. Most affected are millions of workers of Hispanic origin originally from Mexico, who provide most of the labor for harvesting of crops. California with a good educational system and without the drought that hit the region, without the effects of Silicon Valley splitting the people of the state in opposite directions most on minimum wage with a concentration of wealth around major cities and spiralling property values, was a very different place in the 1960's and 1970's from what it is today. Increasing wealth concentrated in pockets and not spread out as it was in the early post war period after Truman and Eisenhower has impoverished large areas and segments of the population, creating what Dickens called in his day- "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times," depending on who and where you were. ...

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The causes of La wildfires are dry conditions, little rainfall in the Santa Monica Mountains, and winds gusting with record speeds. Loss estimated at $57 billion for Southern California, and the trauma of seeing wildfires spread at unheard of speeds. It is also attributed to climate change that has caused such fires all over North America, different in scale and speed from the past.

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Burning of stubble from the rice harvest to clear land for the next year's cultivation in the Punjab creates 25% of the pollution over New Delhi. Automobile pollution adds more pollutants. This toxic mix of pollutants is trapped by the cooler air during the winter over much of northern India. At one point the pollution index reached 643 in New Delhi, by comparison it was hard to breather with an index of 116 from the wildfires in Canada's northern region that sent smoke all the way into Washington D.C. 

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The effects of declining rainfall, higher temperatures in causing the wildfires of 2023 in Hawaii. Researchers show that rainfall has declined by one third since 1990 in the wet season. The fires are striking because of the lush vegetation that one generally associates with Hawaii. Yet Hawaii is like other places on the planet, also susceptible to climate change and its effects. With rising temperatures about 36% of Maui County is in severe or moderate drought. Dry and invasive grasses make it worse, as one expert puts it the island is covered with flammable stuff. Blowing winds provide an additional condition. Flavelle and Andreoni provide this NYT report on Hawaii and climate change.

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Relieving strain on the electric grid as temperatures rise to over 100 degrees and reducing the risk of wildfires is leading to blackouts in northern California. Gusty winds in dry conditions create wildfire risks from power lines.

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The  Washington Post review of archived radio transmissions in this report suggests a possible cause of the Palisades Los Angeles wildfires- reignition from a previous fire on a mountain ridge just 6 days prior on New Year's Eve. That fire was knocked out only to reignite. Smoldering fire can stay in wood and underground only to reignite in very windy conditions even for 10 days. In though very windy conditions were expected LA Fire Department lacked the resources to stay on it for a few days - in what the Washington Post citing the LAFD says is in a stretch of Temescal Ridge in the Santa Monica mountains.

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PG&E, the giant California electricity company says it will file for bankruptcy as it faces $30 billion in liabilities arising from wildfires in California, more than all its assets. This will be a distraction for the new Governor of California, Mr. Newsom, who brings a new agenda to tackle problems in the state to increase opportunity and provide better health care.

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Nineteen year old Belgian Zara Rutherford becomes the youngest woman to fly solo roundtrip around the world. Her parents are avid pilots and she learned to fly at the age of 14. She took off in a microlight plane Shark Aero on Aug 18 and landed after 52,000 kilometres of flying in Flanders on Jan. 20. She went through UK, Greenland, Americas, Siberia, Southeast Asia, India, Saudi Arabia and Europe. In that journey she went through freezing temperatures over Siberia, smog in India and wildfires over the US northwest.

She plans to study electrical engineering and would like to see more girls taking interest in science and engineering, and in flying planes.

Her approach was bold and straightforward. It was a trip that she thought was- impossible, expensive, complicated, dangerous, a logistical nightmare, so she never thought about it twice. 

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The new phenomena after wildfires in California and the American West is the idea of climate havens. People moving to places in the Great Lakes region because of climate resilience. This includes Duluth, Minnesota for people connection, rootedness and water.

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The small freshwater fish the 'delta smelt' is one of the reasons why water from Northern California cannot be brought into southern California to fight the wildfires, says DJT during a meeting in California on the wildfires relief efforts.

On his first day in the Oval Office, of the 26 executive orders signed by DJT we see an order on the delta smelt fish endangered species environmental laws- "Putting People Before Fish: Stopping Radical Environmentalism to Provide Water to Southern California." The water in the San Joaquin Valley agricultural region of California comes from the rivers in the San Joaquin and Sacramento areas that flows into the sea. The effort to protect this fish means less water to agricultural farms in this part of northern California that helps feed the Nation, allowing this water to flow into the sea instead of to the other needs in the state.

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Temperatures not seen or ever recorded by weather monitoring systems of 126 degrees Fahrenheit in New Delhi, India's capital May 30, 2024. This is 52.3 degrees Centigrade, with dangerous sweltering heat across all of northern India. Delhi's Lt. Governor called for paid leave for Delhi construction workers for 1-3 pm. Election rallies in India's general election drawing huge crowds even in such sweltering heat shows the impatience of the population of over 1 billion people with corruption and poor governance in some states and the efforts by prime minister Modi to ensure good governance and large investments for modernization of the Indian economy in infrastructure and transportation, logistics and manufacturing. It may be astounding to realize that voting still reached 68-71% of eligible voters in such weather conditions. India is the fastest growing economy in the world and now a beacon of progress in the middle of stalled efforts throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America following the pandemic, yet it too faces challenges from climate change just as severe as in the rest of the world with heat waves, floods and wildfires. ...

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Bars and restaurants filled with people just increases the risk. Consider that on one day June 20, 500,000 people went to bars in Los Angeles county the day after they reopened, as reported in the WSJ. This is similar to what happened in soccer stadiums in Lombardy, Italy, spreading the virus like wildfire. Experts say social distancing is easier to do in office locations and at work, than at bars, restaurants inside, and at soccer stadiums, or large gatherings of any sort. In just one situation 138 new cases were traced to a bar in East Lansing. Michigan.

Most of the restlessness about the lockdown was about not being able to get to work after weeks inside. And getting outside to a park for exercize was always safer because it was easier to keep social distancing in these places.

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The University of Washington Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation has doubled its forecast of coronavirus deaths in the U.S. to 135,000, about twice what it is today at 69,000, by early August 2020. This is based on the assumption that with reopening the economy and return to actively operating in offices and shops, in construction and factories, the social distancing will be relaxed. Factors such as rising temperatures are not seen as offsetting the increased mobility in reopening. Dr. Fauci, top U.S. infectious disease official said on My 4, that the relaxing of social distancing could get a rebound started considering the coronavirus "phenomenal capabilities of spreading like wildfire." There is concern that the cases may be much higher in Brazil where there is not much testing, even higher than in the U.S. according to one university study. Argentina is a contrast having imposed a lockdown much earlier and has only 246 coronavirus deaths. ...

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How the Getty Museum in the hills near the Pacific Palisades mad it intact through the LA wildfires is told in this story in the WSJ. Museum head Fleming describes the built in fire prevention plan of the Getty Museum  and how it was pulled into action. The entire design of the museum is built around fire prevention- with sprinklers, concrete walls and tile roofs, oak trees that absorb water, reducing anything that acts as fire material, and a layout that separates one area from the rest with plazas.

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150,000 homes in Los Angeles region that mostly empty are owned by foreign buyers 2025 who live in China and use it as an investment or asset to use when needed. This is a sore point for people who cannot find housing after losing their home in wildfires. Many of these homes are in the San Gabriel Valley- Pasadena, Arcadia, Temple City and San Marino.  Investors in such homes come from China, Mexico and South Korea, and real estate agents say about 1 in 10 homes are going to foreign buyers in these suburbs. Restrictions on moving money overseas by China's government has reduced the flow of international buyers in recent years.

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Extreme drought affected Minnesota cattle farmers leading to elimination of many cattle herds.               Wildfire smoke from Canada settled down over the cities of St Paul and Minneapolis for days.                 Lack of enough snow and ice in winter led to losses in ice fishing and cross country skiing making winters unnatural in Great Lakes Region that also includes Wisconsin and Michigan. Walz acted, and his plain spoken communication style made a difference clearing misperceptions. Pew Research shows 67% of Americans favor clean energy but misperceptions abound.          Minnesota during his two terms now produces 50% of its energy from wind, solar and nuclear. Minnesota is now likely to be ahead of California in getting to 100% wind solar and nuclear for all its energy. Walz set the date 2040 into law for this to happen with 40 climate initiatives. A bill signed into law speeds up the permits for renewable energy projects. Walz’s communication style shows that when people understand the benefits and specifics you get things done. “The surest way to get people to buy in is to create a job that pays well in their community. All of us are going to have to be better about our smart politics, about bringing people in.”        ...

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Wilkins was British inventor, scientist and educator with profound unbelievable impact. Some thoughts on what it means for America to reject Science in 2024 for Climate Change in the face of sudden floods, wildfires- for Western civilization was based on Science since 1648, Eastern civilizations missing it completely. When George Washington was fighting in the Pennsylvania country against American Indians and the French, on the other side of the Atlantic a Britisher from Somerset was part of the British East India Company that had won control of Bengal in northeastern India. In 1760 Wilkins arrived in Calcutta a youth of 21 as clerk for the British East India Company, rising to examiner for new employees at the company. It is Wilkins as a printer who creates the first typography for both Persian and Bengali, and who translates for the first time the Bhagavad Gita into English from Sanskrit in 1785.  This is of interest mainly because the American colonists were fighting an Empire whose chief base of the Empire was in Bengal and which generated the funding of the British war against the American colonists led by Washington, Adams and Jefferson. This was before Bengal also funded the British fight against Napoleon in Spain and Portugal. And by the 1850's funded Britain's wars in Chinese ports including Hong Kong. Wilkins is key to this puzzle about India and China- why they succumbed to European colonialism? Gandhi says the Indians invited them in as they were mainly shopkeepers and commercial interests. It is also true that after the end of the 30 years war in 1648, the British, French and Dutch followed Science creating the scientific revolution and the industrial revolution, that India and China missed.  Imagine then what it means to reject Science in the West in 2024 on Climate Change? Gandhi wrote Hind Swaraj in November 1909 on the boat Kildonan Castle from London to South Africa. In it he says Indians have to look in the mirror and accept that it is they the princes of India who invited the British sepoys of the British East India Company into Indian states for their wars and losing Bengal, then the rest of India. ...

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WSJ shows how the daughter of David Rockefeller Neva Goodwin and her daughter Kaiser have led the fight against Exxon for not making the change to renewable energy from fossil fuels in time to avert climate change disasters now common worldwide. One of the major problems of the last 50 years since the Reagan administration in 1980 involve oil wealth in the Middle East used to finance wars and US involvement in these wars in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Libya, Yemen. It haunts us to this day with conflict in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf. This has its origins with John D. Rockefeller  who started the oil company Standard Oil in the 1870's in Cleveland, Ohio, now called Exxon in the US and Esso overseas. A bigger problem has emerged in recent years that remained unnoticed till about 2006 when David Rockefeller, the grandson of John D. Rockefeller, met with the head of Exxon for lunch to ask why Exxon was not doing more to invest in green energy and increase awareness of the damage to the environment by fossil fuels. This was the beginning of the dawning realization of the signs of climate change so prevalent 20 years later today in wildfires, drought, extreme heat and fast floods worldwide.   Today's Exxon is a descendent of the companies John D. Rockefeller (Library of Congress site) created by the 1880's to refine oil which he turned into a monopoly by deals with railroad companies to reduce cost of product. In 1888 he created the Anglo American Oil Company later called Esso which is a phonetic rendition of S and O in Standard Oil, which in 1972 was changed to Exxon. Many of the crises of this century have their origins in the activities of Esso and British oil companies in Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia and the wars that wasted trillions of dollars in American resources through the administrations of Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Obama have their origins in the activities of oil companies, and the governments of these countries using oil financed wealth for wars that involved the US. Huge mistakes that combined with neglect of manufacturing the lifeblood of any economy have led to the gradual decline of the US, being reversed for the first time with the decisive and complete shift made by president Biden so that investments of trillions of dollars can be made to revive the strength of the US economy and the wellbeing of its people. ...

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This report cites experts in California that mask use was less than 50% in the state beaches and parks after it reopened. The medical officer of Orange County an affluent community near Los Angeles even resigned after mandating the use of masks in public after protests. On one day June 20, the day after bars reopened in Los Angeles County a WSJ report shows 500,000 people went to bars in the county. As of July 17 the state has 365,000 cases and about 10,000 a day. At one time it was much lower than Michigan at less than 50,000, adding to the complacency in California and a false sense that California had somehow come up with a new way around the virus. Michigan today is at about 70,000 cases, showing that careful attention to the process is important more than anything else, not some new strategy or approach that someone comes up with to beat the virus that does not meet the essentials and common sense. Even adversity can be overcome with sound attention to the basics, where complacency and a lack of fellow feeling can lead to disaster. ...

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Gerard Baker in The Times of London looks at California as some kind of dystopia, a malfunctioning place with rolling blackouts from PG&E the electricity company, drought and water shortages, housing costs soaring making it affordable only to the few at the top, and high taxes. He cites an expert from Chapman University who compares it to some sort of medieval feudal place run by nobility at the top, the investors, lawyers and people in entertainment, with the academy and the media as a kind of clerisy who propagate the ideas that this nobility supports, a small middle and the rest as serfs or minimum wage workers in logistics, retail and farms. Median costs of housing are about $613,000, and the affordability index of people who can afford housing is 32% compared to 56% in the country. Hispanic immigrants now prefer Texas, though with a loss of 6 million people in the last decade and gain of five million, it sees increase in population with high birthrates from the existing population to about 40 million. Half the population of homeless in the U.S. are now in California though it has only one eighth the population of the country. High housing costs and high cost of living hurt people at the low end, the lower middle and the retired the most. With low wages at the bottom and extremes of wealth, homeless, housing zone restrictions, drought and rolling electricity blackouts, this is not what the future should look like.  ...