Extreme Wildfires Have Doubled, Study Says; Breaking Down the State Budget Cuts–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: June 24, 2024

Indy Digest: June 24, 2024

A week ago today, the mountain near Tramway Road was on fire.

What came to be called the Tuscany Fire burned 126 acres; the cause remains under investigation. The fire was tamped down before it could damage any structures thanks to the amazing work by firefighters—the evidence of which is on display for all the world to see: The nearby mountainside, as viewed from much of Palm Springs, is scarred by burned land and stained by the fire retardant dropped by aircraft during the successful battle.

In related news: The Washington Post today reported on the results of a study of satellite data. Per the story’s headline: “Fueled by climate change, extreme wildfires have doubled in 20 years.” The Post reported:

The analysis, published in the journal “Nature Ecology & Evolution,” focused on massive blazes that release vast amounts of energy from the volume of organic matter burned. Researchers pointed to the historic Australia fires of 2019 and 2020 as an example of blazes that were “unprecedented in their scale and intensity.” The six most extreme fire years have occurred since 2017, the study found.

“It’s absolutely in keeping with what climate change is doing to fire weather around the world,” said lead author Calum Cunningham, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Tasmania in Australia. “Climate change is making fire weather more extreme and more frequent in a lot of the world.”

This story comes with a twist: Previous studies have shown that the amount of acreage burned on the planet has actually decreased so far this century—a fact which was grabbed onto by climate-change skeptics. This all led to this study of fire intensity, which revealed that extreme fire events—larger, hotter, harder-to-battle blazes—had increased by 2.2 times since 2003.

The Post writes:

“Cunningham and his team analyzed data from orbiting NASA satellites, which collected four fire measurements per day over 21 years. The results astounded him.

“‘I was expecting to see increases, but the rate of the increases surprised and alarmed me because we’re only looking at quite a short period of time,” he said.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll undoubtedly say it may times after this, too: Climate change’s effects are here, and there only going to continue getting worse.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• The Legislature and Gov. Newsom have agreed to a budget deal. Our partners at Calmatters break down the deal, and what it’ll mean for all of us. “California will make widespread cuts to state government operations, prisons, housing programs and health care workforce development in order to maintain its social safety net as it moves to close a multibillion-dollar budget deficit. The $297.9 billion spending plan … also relies on reserves and pauses some business tax credits to address a remaining revenue gap estimated at $56 billion over the next two years. … Their agreement—which the Democratic-controlled Legislature is expected to vote on through a series of bills next week ahead of the July 1 start of the new fiscal year—does claw back the funding intended for Medi-Cal provider rates. It pushes back the health care wage hikes until at least October and potentially until next year, depending on the strength of revenue collections in the coming months. Despite heavy opposition from labor unions, the move could save California hundreds of millions of dollars.” (In a separate story, Calmatters looks at
“winners and losers” in the budget deal.)

• Also from Calmatters: If you think Californians are completely insulated from the consequences of the overturn of Roe v. Wade and the resulting restrictions elsewhere … think again. This story involves a woman named Angela Costales, whose joy over becoming pregnant was dashed when tests revealed the fetus no longer had a heartbeat: “It was devastating, she said. What happened after made her feel even worse: The CVS Pharmacy in her San Diego neighborhood, she said, refused to fill the prescription given to her to manage her miscarriage. The drug Costales needed was misoprostol, a pill commonly used to help with miscarriages that is also used in abortions. Three separate pharmacy employees refused to help her acquire the medication while she stood in the store bleeding and in pain on Dec. 20, according to Costales and her lawyer. ‘I couldn’t believe what was happening,’ Costales said. ‘I really felt like I was in danger and (CVS) … denied my care without my well-being in mind.’ Costales and the nonprofit National Women’s Law Center assert that the retail pharmacy chain broke federal and state laws when it turned her away. They have issued a formal demand to CVS in the form of a public letter that describes CVS staff members refusing to fill Costales’ prescriptions, and the laws violated by such a refusal.” Wow.

• CBS News looks at the growing trend of primary-care doctors becoming “concierge” providers who charge an annual fee (something I wrote about in this space back in 2022): “With the national shortage of primary care physicians reaching 17,637 in 2023 and projected to worsen, more Americans are paying for the privilege of seeing a doctor— on top of insurance premiums that cover most services a doctor might provide or order. Many people seeking a new doctor are calling a long list of primary care practices only to be told they’re not taking new patients. ‘Concierge medicine potentially leads to disproportionately richer people being able to pay for the scarce resource of physician time and crowding out people who have lower incomes and are sicker,’ said Adam Leive, lead author of a 2023 study on concierge medicine and researcher at University of California-Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy.”

• Auto dealerships across the country are dealing with a cyberattack that took down a ubiquitous software platform. Reuters reports: “U.S. auto dealers grappled with a cyber attack-led ongoing software outage on Monday, with some reverting to manual paperwork as car industry technology provider CDK worked to restore systems used by more than 15,000 retail locations. The outage impacting CDK’s dealer management system that is used to complete deals, track store profitability and monitor employee compensation, has ‘significantly slowed down’ the auto retail industry, said Cliff Steinhauer, an official at The National Cybersecurity Alliance. A hacking group called BlackSuit is behind the cyberattack on CDK, according to an intelligence analyst at security firm Recorded Future. CDK, which reported the outage last week, did not immediately confirm that BlackSuit was responsible for the cyberattack. It said it had begun the restoration process and it will take several days to complete.”

• Meanwhile, in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis continues to act as an authoritarian with no regard for public—or lawmaker—opinions. The New York Times reports: “For the past 10 days, Richard Russell has been rattled, poring over budgets and working the phones in an attempt to limit the consequences of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s veto pen. Mr. Russell, the general director of the Sarasota Opera on Florida’s Gulf Coast, had expected his nonprofit organization to receive a state grant of about $70,000 once Mr. DeSantis signed a budget that state lawmakers had approved in March. But in a move that stunned arts and culture organizations, Mr. DeSantis vetoed the entirety of their grant funding—about $32 million—on June 12, leaving them scrambling to figure out how to offset the shortfall. … Mr. DeSantis, a Republican, gave no explanation for zeroing out the arts grants. His office said in a statement that he made veto decisions ‘that are in the best interests of the State of Florida.’”

• Today’s recall news involves … coffee! Fox Business says: “A Wisconsin-based coffee manufacturer is recalling products shipped nationwide after federal officials warned that the production process could result in a deadly toxin. Earlier this month, Snapchill LLC voluntarily recalled all of its canned coffee products within the expiration date ‘because their current process could lead to the growth and production’ of botulinum toxin in low-acid canned foods, according to the warning notice posted by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The products were distributed nationwide through various roasters and retailers, according to the recall notice. It was also distributed through Snapchill’s website.”

• And finally … a Florida home was damaged by an object that NASA has confirmed is a piece of space debris. The Washington Post reports: “A family is seeking compensation from NASA after a piece of metal trash from the International Space Station tore through the roof of their home in Naples, Fla. in March. No one was hurt, but a legal representative for the Otero family described it as a ‘near miss’ that ‘could have been catastrophic,’ in a news release published Friday. Homeowner Alejandro Otero previously told The Washington Post that on the day of the incident he received a panicked call from his son. He returned home to find the dense, cylindrical piece of charred metal a little smaller than a soup can lodged in a wall, and knew immediately it was from outer space.’ ‘My clients are seeking adequate compensation to account for the stress and impact that this event had on their lives,’ the family’s attorney, Mica Nguyen Worthy, said in a news release. ‘If the debris had hit a few feet in another direction, there could have been serious injury or a fatality.’”

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