Michael Wara

Proposed California home insurance laws would guarantee coverage for fire-safe homes After the deadly 2025 Los Angeles County wildfires, lawmakers have proposed a flurry of insurance-related legislation aimed at providing more transparency and mandating coverage for fire-safe homes.

This is dangerous for the 85% of Californians who don’t live in high wildfire risk areas. www.sfchronicle.com/california-w....

Well worth reading in full.

Key issue isn’t cost, it’s production capacity.

Thanks for sharing that. Reassuring.

(4) I am vehemently opposed to assasinating leaders of sovereign nations, however odious their behavior. Also, who exactly on the other side is supposed to make peace (and why would they) if they are being hunted and killed?

(3) Wars of regime change are always a bad idea. Who governs a sovereign nation is the business of that nations people, however odious their government. What have we learned from Iraq/Afghanistan/Libya/Syria?

(2) The President of the US must actually consult and get the consent of Congress before starting wars. I blame Congressional leadership as much as Trump.

I think it is important as an American to say loudly today that

(1) I am vehemently opposed to wars of choice. We should attack others only when attacked. Anything else is abhorrent. This is not a close case.

My presumption also is that if push comes to shove, we will use interceptors to protect US military assets rather than gulf oil infrastructure. That means that before we really run low, these facilities could become vulnerable.

We should be flying in Ukrainians who know how to cost-effectively shoot down Russian modified Shahad drones without multimillion dollar interceptors (that will soon be in short supply). Too bad we sold Ukraine down the river in the past year. If I were them, I’d drive a hard bargain.

Key point in this article is that the risk is not from disruption in Iran, it is from risk to Saudi and other gulf crude exporter infrastructure and transportation routes. This risk will grow as/if US runs low on interceptors in the next few days. Watch Abqaiq and Kuraihs.

“Since when does briefing a few senators the night count as getting a declaration of war“ Asked the 14yo at breakfast.

I have no answer except to say “good job reading the Constitution kid.”

We should be doing our own soul searching about how we have failed in our roll over many years in educating leaders who sit quietly out of fear that they will compromise returns over the next few years rather than urging our former students to take action. Or at least before we do that.

We’re 23 HBS Professors. This Is the Cost of Silence. | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson We urge business leaders to recognize that there is no conflict between their responsibilities as CEO and their responsibilities as citizens. The cost of silence is incalculable.

I read this and think that institutions like HBS and HLS as well as the GSB and SLS at Stanford need to be doing A LOT more soul searching about how their leadership curricula may have contributed to the acquiescence they are now criticizing.

www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

Even the most expensive structure level hardening retrofit - IBHS+ - rarely costs more than $70k. The median home price in California is $900k. So you can harden close to 13 houses for each one you retreat from. These numbers are even more outsized in LA. And hardening cost is far less for rebuild.

But in general, "managed retreat" is just not possible in most instances because there just isn't enough money. And I would argue that we can't afford to spend the limited resources we have on super expensive individual retreats when the money could go much further hardening communities to fire.

Archive - Climate-Colored Goggles Full archive of all the posts from Climate-Colored Goggles.

Hey all, I am continuing to do unique climate reporting and commentary that you won't find anywhere else. The stories and opinions are determined by me alone. I could use your support to stay in business.

Pointing this out today for no particular reason.

www.climatecoloredgoggles.com/archive

PS Sightline's paper from a few years ago on PNW refineries was a huge inspiration for our teams' (led by Thom Hersbach and Connie Cho) recent oil refinery paper: drive.google.com/file/d/1nN69...

You would have to compensate the property owner from (nonexistent) public funds for the diminishment of the value of the land if they take their insurance payout somewhere else. We just don't have the money for that. Back to my point about the art of the possible.

one common sense option there would be to allow full recovery of HO3 Coverage A and ERC for people that opt to move to lower risk areas. Right now, all you get is Coverage A unless you rebuild in the same spot. The other issue though is that not allowing someone to rebuild on the land is a taking.

Insurance is priced based on risk. Should firefighting be too? I have made that suggestion for electricity. None of this is popular but even understanding what these subsidies currently are seems important. Maybe we could hold them at current levels as climate change via VPD makes the problem worse?

And as you suggest in your excellent paper, these communities should not be inappropriately subsidized by low-risk communities via liability rules, insurance and electricity policy, and firefighting and fuels management costs. That is plenty hard enough to get to, at least in California.

We need to make it a must that every elected leader and senior fire services leader do a PSA where they talk about what they have personally done to make their home and community more fire safe. Ronald Reagan used to love clearing brush on his ranch on weekends at home. We need leaders to lead.

I once had a PUD commissioner from Eastern WA tell me that Wenatchee homes couldn't burn because of the abundant vegetation in their backyards. We need to change perceptions of home and yard aesthetics to make fire safe homes more valuable homes. This is a consumer product issue.

But more than that, try to cut the tail risk by better preparing communities that were built long ago by retrofitting homes, back yards, and community buffers to resist ignition and urban conflagration.

In addition, the communities that have not yet burned are a far greater concern than the ones that have and will (in CA) be rebuilt to the WUI code. We need to focus on ensuring that rebuilds are the best they can be and that fuels adjacent to them are well managed. That's the art of the possible.

Respectfully (I love your recent paper), the suggestion that Pacific Palisades or Altadena (or Malibu, Santa Rosa, Paradise or Ventura) not be allowed to rebuild is not a productive suggestion. That's asking democratically elected politicians to decide not to have voters.

He Predicted the 2008 Housing Market Crash. Now He’s Betting Big on Nature. Famously contrarian Dallas hedge fund wizard Kyle Bass is restoring East Texas for fun and profit.

Wonderful @russellgold.bsky.social story from a few months ago in @texasmonthly.bsky.social on prescribed fire for ecosystem restoration in East Texas - with a business plan

🎁 link

The AI-Augmented Scientist The promise and pitfalls of using AI tools to boost my capabilities as a scientist

As a rare climate scientist working in Silicon Valley, I've been drinking from the AI firehose a lot more than my peers. I thought it would be helpful to lay out my experiences of both the promise and pitfalls of using AI to accelerate scientific research:

Same thought occurred to me!!!