USA Today
The fire tornado that formed from the Carr Fire impressed many climate scholars and scientists including UCLA's Daniel Swain. It may the "strongest tornado in California history", further damaging more homes in Redding, CA.
Featured: Daniel Swain
"UCLA law scholar Ann Carlson has explained in detail, this argument has already been explicitly rejected by two different federal courts, each of whom concluded that California’s greenhouse gas tailpipe standards are not pre-empted by EPCA because protecting public health by regulating greenhouse gas emissions is not the same thing as increasing energy efficiency by regulating fuel economy."
Featured Faculty: Ann Carlson
Bloomberg
Trump's administration looks to revoke California's authority to regulate tailpipe emissions. “There’s a great irony in Trump releasing this plan just as California is burning,” said Ann Carlson, UCLA environmental law professor. “We’re already seeing catastrophic forest fires as a result of climate change, and the administration’s answer is that everyone should drive a Hummer.”
Featured Faculty: Ann Carlson
KPBS
UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation director, JR DeShazo, featured on KPBS Midday Edition and spoke about his impact alternative energy programs report. In his report, he uncovered in that Community Choice Aggregation groups are pushing CA utilities to move toward renewable energy to stay competitive.
Featured: J.R. DeShazo
NPR
UCLA environmental law professor, Ann Carlson, joined Lauren Sommer on NPR's All Things Considered. Carlson speaks on the Trump administration trying to revoke California's authority to set its own tailpipe emission standards. The state has a strong case to keep its fuel-efficiency standards.
Featured Faculty: Ann Carlson
The Washington Post
Trump's biggest assault on the environment yet – UCLA environmental law professor, Ann Carlson, and co- executive director of the Emmett Institute, Cara Horowitz, wrote an op-ed addressing EPA's new proposal. The proposal looks to revoke California's authority to cut car tailpipe emissions regardless of CA being a leader in improving air quality.
Featured Faculty: Cara Horowitz and Ann Carlson
Forbes
“The rise of CCAs (Community Choice Aggregators) has had both direct and indirect positive effects on overall renewable energy consumed in California, leading the state to meet its 2030 RPS targets approximately ten years in advance,” write Luskin Center director JR DeShazo. People in CCAs are using their purchasing power to push larger utilities to work toward increasing renewable energy.
Featured: J.R. DeShazo
Time
“Some fire scientists would roll their eyes at the term ‘fire tornado,'” says Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “But they aren’t rolling their eyes on this one.” Craig Clements, an associate professor at San José State University, went to investigate the site and "what was left was unlike anything he’d ever seen."
Featured: Daniel Swain
The New York Times
“What has been really unusual in the Western U.S. this summer has been the sustained heat,” said Alex Hall, UCLA climate scientist. “It really pulls water out of vegetation, and that sets up conditions for big fires,” – building up the largest fires and fire season in California history.
Featured Faculty: Alex Hall
Los Angeles Times
Climate change is creating the perfect dry conditions that allow wildfires to ignite and thrive. “This fire vortex, this pretty terrifying tornado-like feature, and I don’t say that lightly… was made possible by the extreme heat produced by this fire,” said Daniel Swain about the Carr Fire.
Featured: Daniel Swain
The Carr fire has done uncommon movement – jumping, turning, and becoming fire tornadoes. Daniel Swain, UCLA climate scientist, talking about fire tornadoes, “Not sure I’ve ever seen anything quite…
Featured: Daniel Swain
The Bakersfield Californian
“The temperatures have just been almost inexorably warmer all the time... burn more intensely if the fuels are extremely dry,” said UCLA's Daniel Swain. The heat wave created the dry conditions for wildfires to explode and burn throughout California.
Featured: Daniel Swain
Time
"California’s sweltering heat and deadly fires this month are no coincidence." Time looks into the correlation between the prolonged heat wave and explosive wildfires. UCLA's Daniel Swain explained how the heat is contributing to California's most damaging fire season.
Featured: Daniel Swain
The San Diego Union-Tribune
The warm and dry season outweighs the wet season. California is in one of its biggest fire season. Northern California saw its wettest winter on record in 2016-17, followed by its warmest summer. That led to extremely dry vegetation by the fall — just before the devastating Santa Rosa fire hit, UCLA's Daniel Swain said.
Featured: Daniel Swain
The New York Times
Nuns bring local salamander colony back to life. Ambystoma dumerilii once thrived in Lake Pátzcuaro in Mexico, however, as the lake declined, so did the number of salamanders. The nuns took notice and brought them into the convent. The convent now house about 300 salamanders and UCLA's Dr. Brad Shaffer said, "if they’re relatively unrelated, is a very, very healthy, large stock to be working from" to bring back the endangered species.
Featured Faculty: H. Bradley Shaffer
USA Today
“We’re now seeing decades-old scientific predictions being validated in the real world, right before our eyes,” said UCLA climate scientist, Daniel Swain. We can no longer afford to be skeptic…
Featured: Daniel Swain
The Mercury News
A heavy layer of smoke, called an inversion, is covering and making the ground invisible to fire fighting aircraft. Because Sacramento Valley "is a bowl, surrounded on three sides by mountains. It is only open to the south... The air is stagnant at the top, the north end, of the valley,” said UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain. Without visibility, the fire fighting aircraft cannot navigate through the smoke and fly safely.
Featured: Daniel Swain
EcoWatch
“We have these long, hot, dry summers that are getting progressively drier… We’re not at the end of summer yet,” Swain told The Sacramento Bee about the conditions that have…
Featured: Daniel Swain
UCLA School of Law now offers a specialization in environmental law. Sean Hecht, co-executive director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment said the addition was pushed not only by administrative planning, but student interest as well.
Featured: Sean Hecht
KCRW
Are wildfires all around the world the new normal? UCLA professor Glen MacDonald said, this is not the new normal, this is only a stepping store. He joined Madeline Brand on KCRW's Press Play to talk about the global wildfires and it is featured in the third section under "Fires burning all over the world: We might look back and say 'those were the good old days'".
Featured Faculty: Glen MacDonald
The New York Times
“Over decades there has been a trend toward less moisture in the soil and forest, and that is affecting how dry the vegetation is becoming in summer,” said UCLA's Daniel Swain in the New York Times. These trends are ultimately increasing the risk of wildfires and contributing to Yosemite's largest closing.
Featured: Daniel Swain
Gizmodo
“It’s a lot easier to get bad fires under these conditions,” UCLA's Daniel Swain said, “because you don’t need as much of a push from the winds.” The Carr fire was started by a single car malfunction and sparked into one of the largest fires in California's history.
Featured: Daniel Swain
“Over the years, we’re putting more people in harm’s way,” UCLA’s Daniel Swain said. “More people living in high fire risk areas than usual.” As people sprawl out to less…
Featured: Daniel Swain
The Mercury News
“It rises, stretches and spins, like a ballerina.” UCLA's Daniel Swain described the movement and evolution of the Carr fire into a fire vortex – a scary phenomenon affecting Redding, CA that is making the fire more difficult to contain.
Featured: Daniel Swain