Drones In New York City Warn Of Dangerous Weather

A drone (if you look carefully
at middle of photo) delivers
a flash flood warning to
a New York City
neighborhood on August 6.

 Out in the Midwest and other areas, tornado sirens blare when a twister threatens.

On your smart phone, you get an obnoxious, but potentially life saving loud noise when a warning for dangerous weather pops up.  The National Weather Service and your friendly local meteorologists post similar warnings online and on TV when the weather gets too risky.  

But drones?

When flash flooding threatened New York City on August 6, the city deployed high tech drones to fly over vulnerable neighborhoods warning of the impending danger. 

For good reason. New York has tons of flood-prone basement apartments, some legal, many others not so much.

In 2021, the remnants of Hurricane Ida swept into the New York City metro area, unleashing record amounts of rain and creating intense flash floods. 

Eleven people died when they became trapped in New York City basement apartments as they filled with water from Ida's torrents. Many others barely escaped with their lives, but lost all their possessions. 

The Big Apple probably has something like 100,000 people living in illegal basement apartments, according to estimates.

Many of the people living in these apartments might not have easy access to flood warnings. Hence the drones. 

The drones flew over vulnerable neighborhoods, broadcasting flash flood warnings in English and Spanish.

Or sort of Spanish. 

The drones' voice translation of Spanish from English left a lot to be desired. Apparently, the Spanish coming from the drones was awful, so bad hardly anyone could understand it. 

Roughly a quarter of NYC residents speak Spanish at home, so it's important to communicate warnings in that language. 

The Spanish warning sounded like a robot trying to say the words phonetically, but pronouncing them like a rube who has never in his life heard a Spanish word before. It sounded bad to me, and I have next to no ability to say anything in Spanish. 

As it turned out, the text of the message as written in Spanish was correct. The recording was muddled, though, city emergency officials said. 

The English language versions were pretty straightforward, anyway. The drones, buzzing over neighborhoods, said, "If you live in a basement or a ground floor apartment, leave your location if flooding occurs."

The intentions of this drone were good,  but reaction on social media was not great. "Creepy," "Scary," "Very Orwellian," "Cringe" "Yikes" and "Shoot it" were some of the responses.

To me, yeah, the drones seemed a little weird. But I can support any method available to warm people of life-threatening danger. 

In the end, there was some flash flooding in New York that day. Central Park was deluged with two inches of rain in just a few hours on August 6. Thankfully, the downpours were not nearly on the scale of what happened during ex-hurricane Ida. 

During Ida, Central Park received 8.2 inches of rain, including 3.15 inches in a single hour. As you can imagine, the flooding then was extreme.  

But this kind of thing happened again. The catastrophic flooding Sunday in Connecticut caused by six to 12 inches of rain was painfully close to New York City.  So these drones might not be the worst idea after all. 

Houstonians Roast Without Air Conditioning In Post-Beryl Outages

CenterPoint Energy, the electricity supplier for 
Houston and environs, is under fire for taking too
long to restore power after Hurricane Beryl 
hit the region this past Monday. 

 While we've been dealing with our own huge  problems here in Vermont from former Hurricane Beryl, the area around Houston is stewing in soupy hot air without air conditioning. 

At least for many. 

Something like nearly 1 million homes and businesses remained without power as of Friday, more than four days after winds from Hurricane Beryl took down a seemingly uncountable number of power lines, poles and trees. 

Right after the storm, 2.7 million homes and businesses in the Houston metro were without power. Up to half a million might not have power back by Monday. The slow pace of utility repairs have angered residents amid typical Houston heat and humidity.

CenterPoint Energy, the main power supply for Houston and environs is facing plenty of criticism that they were ill prepared for the storm and is not doing enough now to restore power.  

High temperatures around Houston are in the low 90s to mid 90s, with temperatures only falling to the upper 70s for lows.  .

 This is actually fairly typical for July days in the area. Still, the National Weather Service office in Houston issued a heat advisory because the widespread lack of air conditioning is endangering peoples' health. It didn't help Wednesday that the air was dirty: An air quality alert was also in effect. 

On Friday, thunderstorms were providing ever so slightly cooler conditions in Houston, but it was still terribly humid. And lightning strikes threatened new power outages. Then  the heat comes roaring back.

Already, nine people have died in Texas and Louisiana from the effects of Beryl - their lives ended by falling trees, drowning while trapped in cars, or whose medical devices conked out along with the electricity. 

The lack of air conditioning could easily mean additional deaths, if it hasn't already.  The more days the elderly and vulnerable are exposed to high heat and humidity without relief, the more endangered they become. 

Already, two people have died in Harris County, which is home to Houston because of carbon monoxide poisoning from gas-powered generators, CNN reports.

Amid all this, CenterPoint doesn't exactly have a great reputation. It's regarded by many as unreliable 

"Its grid, according to data collected by the firm Whisker Labs, which tracks power outages through devices in ratepayer homes, is one of the most unstable in the United States despite Houston's hurricane-prone Gulf Coast location. Whisker found that even before the storm hit Monday, outages in CenterPoint's service territory were happening at more than twice the national average," the Washington Post reported. 

Calls for CenterPoint to do a better job are one of the few bipartisan issues Texans can agree. 

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, traveling in Asia, released a statement calling for an investigation as to why Houston keeps having these big power outages. 

Meanwhile, Democratic Houston Mayor John Whitmire said, "We demand that they do better."

CenterPoint disputes that allegation, saying they restored power quickly to a million or so customers after the storm. The utility says it also has a "resiliency plan:

Per WaPo again:

"CenterPoint this year presented regulators with a sweeping $2 billion 'resiliency' plan aimed at shoring up the power grid against extreme weather. The plan, which calls for upgrading poles and wires, deploying technologies to reroute power when lines go down and burying some lines is lumbering through the approval process."

Houston and Texas as a whole has been beset with big power outages in recent years. About a million people around Houston lost power during and after a May derecho.  Houston was also hit hard by power outages when a deep freeze caused power to fail statewide.  

It's also the start of hurricane season. There's no reason why another hurricane can't hit Houston this year. Especially given that it is still expected to be an extraordinarily busy season. 

The Great Reese Witherspoon Snow Crisis Of '24 Explained

Reese Witherspoon enjoying her
"Snow Salt Chococcino"
made with snow from her back
yard. This precipitated a
crisis/uproar for some reason. 

 Having lived in Vermont my entire life so far, I can't believe the controversy that erupted over the past few days involving Reese Witherspoon.     

That sounds like a nonsensical sentence, but hear me out. 

A few days ago, Witherspoon made a nice little snow treat for herself and she shared the recipe on TikTok. One ingredient was snow she collected from her Nashville, Tennessee property during the recent cold snap. She created sort of a fancy sugar on snow, a version perhaps a little chichi for us Green Mountain Boys and Girls, but still intriguing. 

Anyway, she got immediate blowback from hordes of very wimpy, horrified fans. A typical response: 

"No no no, snow is not made to eat.....u can get seriously sick."

Um, probably not.

This thing has really blown up with TV talk shows, Facebook, X, TikTok you name it earnestly debating Witherspoon and her snow drink/dessert concoction. If space aliens came to Earth this week, they'd think the Witherspoon snow drink situation was the biggest crisis facing the planet ever.

As a hale and healthy 61 year old, I'm firmly in Camp Witherspoon.  I've eaten way more sugar on snow in my lifetime than anyone should admit. Sure, sometimes it was on shaved ice, but most of the time, I ate real snow - the stuff that falls from the sky in the winter - as part of my sugar on snow. 

(For the uninitiated, sugar on snow is packed snow with heated maple syrup drizzled onto it. You end up with a delicious taffy-like dessert).

Also, as a kid, when I was out sledding or building snowmen or something and I got thirsty, I'd just grab a handful of snow and eat it. 

Snow is safe. Unless you are exceedingly stupid. 

You have to use common sense, of course. How many times have you heard "Don't eat the yellow snow"?  Also most people understand that the gross stuff the snow plow piles on the side of the road is not for consumption, either.

And frankly, I probably wouldn't trust snow that has been sitting on the ground in Central Park in New York City for a week. Gawd knows what's in that. 

For the record, the Washington Post and others have weighed in on the Great Reese Witherspoon Snow Crisis Of '24. 

As the Post explains, there probably is trace amounts of pollutants in falling snow, but certainly not enough to harm you. Unless perhaps if you ate buckets of snow daily through decades of Vermont winters. 

 If you're really worried about safety, eat the snow that lands more than two hours into the storm.

When snow begins to fall, it scrubs the atmosphere of pollutants, so the first inch or two has slightly higher amounts of contaminants in it. But those first couple of inches aren't exactly Love Canal. 

To her credit, Witherspoon pushed back against her critics, saying she (like me!) drank tap water as a kid and drank water directly out of garden hoses. And we're fine.

Witherspoon gathered up some snow, melted it down in a glass container and showed her followers that the resulting water from the melted snow looked nice and clear. 

Besides, she asked, how the hell do you filter snow?

Yeah, good question. 

For the record, here's how to make Witherspoon's "snow salt chococinno"

Gather fresh, clean snow from the yard and put the snow in a mug. Drizzle the snow with salted caramel and chocolate syrup, then pour in some cold brew coffee.  It does look good, judging from the videos. 

Witherspoon started a movement.  Do you have any snow drink or dessert recipes?  

Maybe I should experiment with snow desserts and dishes.  If I get ambitious, I could become the Barefoot Contessa of gourmet snow recipes. 

 

Annual Climate Talks Hosted By Mideast Oil Kingdom Raises Questions

Is the UAE making big oil deals at a huge annual climate
conference of all things? 

 There's a big international annual meeting going on, this year called COP28, which is meant to negotiate the worldwide policy tangle associated with climate change.  And make tons of political speeches, mostly meant to burnish the reputations of those who attend. 

The thing that raises my eyebrows to the ceiling of the Scottish hotel I'm currently staying at is why an oil kingdom is hosting such a major climate event.

More on that in a minute, but first, let's take a step back and figure out what the big shot meeting is about in the first place. The Washington Post explains it better than I can:

"More than 100 world leaders are scheduled to address the gathering Friday and Saturday. The speakers include French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Brazilian President Luis Ignacio Lula da Sila, according to a list released by the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. 

After the speeches have concluded, the negotiations will begin in earnest. Delegates from nearly 200 countries are expected to haggle over whether to phase out fossil fuels, the primary driver of global warming and whether to provide more money to help developing nations cope with the ravages of climate change."

The whole shindig is taking place at in the United Arab Emirate, not exactly the world's biggest hotbed of EV, protests to stop fossil fuel and climate activism. 

Heading up the talks at this big gathering is Sultan Al Jaber, who is chairman of UAE's renewable energy office. That sounds nice enough. But he's also chief executive of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. 

The annual COP conferences are rotated every year among five global regions, and this year it's Asia-Pacific.  UAE is in that area, but so are lots of other nations. The UAE made an unopposed bid to host this year's big affair, so that's where it's happening. 

UAE hopes to make itself look good by getting everybody agree to a better, more extensive "loss and damage" agreement - that's what the Washington Post referred to up above to aid for developing nations swamped by disasters caused by or made worse by climate change. 

So in a perfect world, UAE makes itself look better by creating an environment that helps nations that really need it. I can't argue with that goal.

But I'm a cynic. So are a lot of other people out there.  I'm not sure everyone is trusting UAE here. 

The Centre for Climate Reporting and the BBC obtained documents showing that the UAE planned to use its role in hosting the climate talks to strike oil and gas deals with 15 nations.  Yes, that does seem a bit unseemly, doesn't it?

According to the BBC:

"(The documents) included proposed 'talking points such as one for China which says Adnoc, the UAE's state oil company is 'willing to jointly evaluate international LNG (liquefied nature gas) opportunities in Mozambique, Canada and Australia.

The documents suggest telling a Columbian minister that Adnoc 'stands ready' to support Columbia to develop its fossil fuel resources."

The BBC has lots and lots of details in its report in conjunction with the Centre for Climate Reporting. I won't get into it all here, but it's pretty fascinating to wade through. 

As the Centre for Climate Reporting (CCR) writes:

"Prof Michael Jacobs of Sheffield University, who is an expert on climate politics, said the COP28 president's actions look "breathtakingly hypocritical."

Ya THINK?

Anyway, Jacobs goes on: 

"The UAE at the moment is the custodian of the United Nations process aimed at reducing global emissions. And yet, in the very same meetings where it's apparently trying to pursue that goal, it's actually trying to do side deals that will increase global emissions,"

As for the UAE, their response to the CCR was: 

"....a COP28 spokesperson said: 'Dr. Sultan Al Jaber holds a number of positions alongside his role as COP2 President-Designate. That is public knowledge. Private meetings are private, and we do not comment on them."

CCR said former COP presidents and others associated with the event said GOP presidents should never make their nation's commercial interests part of the climate talks. 

"As a COP president you should not represent any national or commercial interest, it is your job to leas the world," said Manuel Pulsar-Vidal, the president of the COP20 summit in Lima in 2014.

'You can't represent the interests of a country or a business because it will undermine confidence and trust in the presidency," he said. 

The annual COP climate conferences have done some real good, of course. 

The third of these meetings, GOP3 in Kyoto, 1997, the first time nations formally agreed to reduce carbon emissions COP21 led to the Paris agreement, in which nations agreed to try limiting the increase in global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and shoot for no more than 1.5 degrees.

That 1.5 degrees is looking less and less realistic, but at least it was a goal that might have helped the process of reducing emissions.

However, I'm not optimistic about this iteration.  Some annual COP meetings fall short. This one might be that way, too. 

I just hope it doesn't do the opposite and ultimately make climate work.