Climate

Power outages affect more than 3.3 million customers in Florida, out of the 11.5 million customers tracked by poweroutage.us (which collects data from utilities). Milton made landfall as an “extremely dangerous category 3 hurricane” Wednesday night.

Correction: It is 11.5 million customers, not 11.5.

We might not hear from them for a while if Milton knocks out power and communicates like Hurricane Helene did. “Life-threatening” hurricane-force winds and flash floods are on the way, the National Hurricane Center warns.

Hurricane Milton has rapidly intensified into a Category 5 storm and is quickly making its way toward the western coast of Florida, threatening communities still recovering from Hurricane Helene.

Key sites for producing high-purity quartz used in chipmaking “only sustained minor damage,” according to an initial assessment by Sibelco, one of the mining companies in Spruce Pine, NC. But power outages are still a big problem for its operations after the devastating storm.

The Quartz Corp, meanwhile, says “damage is mostly concentrated around ancillary units,” and that it’s confident it can “avoid” supply disruptions.

The 320-mile line would connect the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) power grid to other states for the first time. Unlike most states that send each other electricity in times of need, the Lone Star state has historically been isolated. That made it more vulnerable to power outages during extreme weather like deadly Winter Storm Uri in 2021.

The monstrous storm devastated North Carolina, a key swing state in the presidential election. Communities face a long recovery ahead after Helene leveled towns. With so many people displaced and polling locations flooded, officials are worried about how much harder it could be now for people to cast their votes.

NASA and other federal agencies launched a new website last week that shows past, present, and future sea level rise along America’s coastlines. It combines data from satellites with readings from sensors on the ground to create an interactive map.

A report by CBS 17 in Raleigh goes into how some of the communities in North Carolina’s mountains are communicating after the floods.

In Asheville, they said some people and organizations with Starlink satellite dishes have set them up at shelters so others can get online, along with “Satellite Cells on Light Trucks” and other temporary cellular towers.

About as much water as a single-use bottle holds, the The Washington Post reports. The electricity it takes is about as much as 14 LED light bulbs might burn through in an hour.

These are rough estimates, but they come with helpful illustrations to show the environmental costs of operating data centers for new AI tools.

An Oregon gas company said it could clean up its act by turning to “renewable natural gas” made from organic waste. Years later, it’s selling customers just as much fossil fuel gas as it did before, according to a ProPublica investigation.

Fossil fuel giants have used AI for years to increase production. Now, Microsoft sees the generative AI boom as an opportunity to boost profits for itself and oil and gas companies it wants to strike deals with, Karen Hao reports for The Atlantic. Microsoft’s own greenhouse gas emissions are growing with its focus on AI, taking the company further away from its climate goals.

It popped up quickly with little transparency around its potential impact on the power grid, air quality, or water resources, local advocates say. The Elon Musk-led company is reportedly running gas generators without a proper permit. Local utility officials reportedly signed NDAs.

“We have been deemed by xAI not even valuable enough to have a conversation with,” says KeShaun Pearson, who grew up a few miles from the facility and is president of the local nonprofit Memphis Community Against Pollution. “To not even be included in conversations about what is transpiring in our own backyards.”

Meanwhile, Trump claims that under a Harris presidency, “Oil will be dead. Fossil fuel will be dead. We’ll go back to windmills and we’ll go back to solar.”

I will not ban fracking. I have not banned fracking as Vice President of the United States and in fact I was the tie breaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act which opened new leases on fracking.

Climate advocates previously hoped Harris would take a tougher stance against fracking. This statement in tonight’s debate repeats a promise she made in her CNN interview last month.

The number of heat-related deaths recorded in the US climbed 117 percent between 1999 and 2023, according to recent research.

In Hell or High Water, a podcast from Vox Media and Audible Originals, we explore how heat hits certain communities harder after a history of racist redlining in the US. There’s still a lot of work to do to end disparities and save lives.