@cruzclimate
CruzClimate.com is a FREE, weekly, plain language, climate change newsletter for Santa Cruz County, Calif. Checking dozens of reliable sources for climate news that affects our County. By Rex Sanders, science writer. Also ClimateJargon.com
The research found big differences between measured sea levels and a mathematical approximation called a geoid. Hundreds of papers used geoids for global SLR studies. Bad assumption. Not luck that geoids match US East Coast best. Geoids > datums = too many, messes with maps. Former USGS map nerd.
Gas prices already over $5/gallon at some stations in California. Glad I bought a *used* electric car a few years ago. Very good deals on many now, despite loss of federal tax credit.
• Iran war could speed up clean energy
• Sea level is much higher than scientists thought
And more in this week’s free, plain language newsletter with climate change news and analysis for Santa Cruz County, California, 9-minute read cruzclimate.com
• Building homes smarter after wildfires
• How one house survived last year’s Palisades Fire
And more in this week’s free, plain language newsletter with climate change news and analysis for Santa Cruz County, California, 8-minute read cruzclimate.com
• Communities sharing local clean electricity
• Clean energy projects where the profits stay local
And more in this week’s free, plain language newsletter with climate change news and analysis for Santa Cruz County, California, 9-minute read cruzclimate.com
• You can become one of the climate 10%
• Fewer Winter Olympics locations as our climate changes
And more in this week’s free, plain language newsletter with climate change news and analysis for Santa Cruz County, California, 8-minute read cruzclimate.com
• Reducing wildfire smoke could save thousands of lives every month
• Don’t store climate pollution deep under this wetland
And more in this week’s free, plain language newsletter with climate change news and analysis for Santa Cruz County, California, 9-minute read cruzclimate.com
I’d like to get this excellent short animated film on climate & societal tipping points by @leomurray.bsky.social to a million views + hundreds of thousands of 👍🏽 - as one commenter has said. Please, share it around and make it happen. Made in 2008 - now all coming true!
youtube.com/watch?v=VnyL...
Might be as simple as news consumers aren’t responding to newspaper/Bsky climate stories. Maybe too much gloom and doom with lot’s of jargon they don’t understand. I’m focusing on the opposite.
It's the dead of winter, and California just supplied a peak of 117% of its demand with solar alone and 136% of its demand from WindWaterSolar and over 100% of demand for 6 hours.
Gas output down 58% and batteries output up 303% in 2025 v '2023
Solar+batteries replacing gas
• Solar power is replacing natural gas
• Expensive Marin County problem is coming to Santa Cruz County
And more in this week’s free, plain language newsletter on climate change news and analysis for Santa Cruz County, California, 8-minute read cruzclimate.com
• How PG&E could lower our electric bills
• Autism linked to wildfire smoke during pregnancy
And more in this week’s free, plain language newsletter with climate change news and analysis for Santa Cruz County, California, 9-minute read cruzclimate.com
"The exercise of imagination is dangerous to those who profit from the way things are because it has the power to show that the way things are is not permanent, not universal, not necessary." URSULA K. LE GUIN "A WAR WITHOUT END"
the way things are is not permanent
• Plans for more oil drilling will lose again
• Winter storm tracks shifting north
• Tide charts were wrong during recent king tide floods
More in this week’s free, plain language newsletter on climate change news & analysis for Santa Cruz County, California, 8-minute read cruzclimate.com
Climate jargon means confusion for people who aren’t climate nerds. I’m already using “global overheating” for global warming and “climate pollution” for greenhouse gases, plus others. Readers thank me!
See climatejargon.com with frequent additions and better simplifications.
Now THIS is an infographic! Solar... not only does it use the sun as fuel wherever it's deployed, it also doesn't need continuous feeding and intensive maintenance via an ongoing global supply chain, for ever and ever. #EnergySky #ConservationAbundance
my 2026 resolution is to stop talking about climate in terms of global mean temperature (will rise a couple degrees, sounds manageable, nobody cares) and start talking in terms of H bomb equivalents (holy shit, seems bad, WTF)
“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
• Making plug-in solar panels and home heat pumps easier and cheaper
• Oil from Venezuela is very bad for climate change
And more in this week’s free, plain language newsletter with climate change news and analysis for Santa Cruz County, California, 6-minute read cruzclimate.com
• New rules for big utility batteries coming
• Why some men are less concerned about climate change
• Largest battery electric train engines
More in this week’s free, plain language newsletter on climate change news & analysis for Santa Cruz County, California, 7-minute read cruzclimate.com
Old saying in the tech industry: The intelligence of a committee declines by the square of the number of members.
If this group of commissioners is too dumb to reach a decision, ...
• Clean energy paths for overlooked industries
• Hydrogen bus failures from misguided transit systems
And more in this week’s free, plain language newsletter with climate change news and analysis for Santa Cruz County, California, 10-minute read cruzclimate.com
Want to get more climate newsletter readers. Soon posting videos to Instagram @cruzclimate. Short narrated slide show of pix, headlines, and a bit more, then “see newsletter.” Practice runs smoothing out process, won't take much time. YMMV.
I watch YouTube videos @1.5x or faster, see gear icon
And everything is flawed, if you want to look at it that way. The analogy that has helped me most is this: in Hurricane Katrina, hundreds of boat-owners rescued people—single moms, toddlers, grandfathers—stranded in attics, on roofs, in flooded housing projects, hospitals, and school buildings. None of them said, I can’t rescue everyone, therefore it’s futile; therefore my efforts are flawed and worthless, though that’s often what people say about more abstract issues in which, nevertheless, lives, places, cultures, species, rights are at stake. They went out there in fishing boats and rowboats and pirogues and all kinds of small craft, some driving from as far as Texas and eluding the au- thorities to get in, others refugees themselves working within the city. There was bumper-to-bumper boat-trailer traffic—the celebrated Cajun Navy—going toward the city the day after the levees broke. None of those people said, I can’t rescue them all. All of them said, I can rescue someone, and that’s work so meaningful and important I will risk my life and defy the authorities to do it. And they did.
My position on taking action. And on the important space between everything and nothing.
• New fire rules should help, someday
• California’s big oil spill and climate problem
• Big Oil’s climate ads have lied for 25 years
More in this week’s free, plain language newsletter with climate change news and analysis for Santa Cruz County, California, 9-minute read at cruzclimate.com
• Al Gore still optimistic about fixing our climate
• How scientists connect extreme weather to climate change
And more in this week’s free, plain language newsletter on climate change news & analysis for Santa Cruz County, California, 9-minute read at cruzclimate.com
Energy transitions can happen faster than we think:
In 2000 almost 90% of Denmark's electricity was from fossil fuels.
In 2024 less than 10% of Danish electricity was from fossil fuels.
Once had a lowly bobcat scream at me one night from high in a tree near our front door. Didn't know what it was. Never got in that door so fast. Later peered outside with a strong flashlight.
oh.
That was shortly after our backyard critter-cam caught videos of several mountain lions slinking by.
• Fire station installs solar panels and batteries
• LA County Fire recommends wildfire shelter-in-place
• We need big clean energy projects fast
And more in this week’s free, plain language newsletter with climate change news and analysis for Santa Cruz County, California
cruzclimate.com
