West coast super drought & climate crisis, Nuclear virtue signaling, chaos in SF & more

The recording opens with fragments of crosstalk. One speaker jokes about a colleague's weight loss and asks what shot or celebrity doctor is responsible; another says people on Twitter have noticed a change in tone and quips that they must be on the same diet. A few lines of the opening are garbled by the transcription and carry no argument.

The formal welcome follows. The hosts are introduced with nicknames, one is described as calling in from Italy, and the transcript refers to someone returning from a 'brawl' unblocked and undefeated. The transcript mangles several names here, so the introductions are best read as playful teasing rather than a reliable roll call.

The banter then turns to online comments. One host teases another for reading them; the reply is that reading comments is a mistake and that he never does. Accusations of running a troll army from anonymous accounts and of paranoia fly back and forth, and the exchange ends with the hosts saying they have patched things up and have a detente.

The host moderating asks Friedberg to explain how bad the California drought will be this year. Friedberg says it is already very bad and that he posted a long overnight tweet thread, after too much caffeine kept him awake. There is some side joking about his sleeplessness and about what should be cut from the recording.

His core claim is that a paper from around 2018 or 2019 described western North America as being in a mega-drought not seen in 500-plus years, and that conditions have worsened since. As he tells it, snowpack across the higher parts of California hit 0% by June 1st, a first, and British Columbia saw temperatures above 120 degrees for several days. These are his figures and the transcript does not show them being checked.

He adds that a paper published that day estimates more than a billion marine animals died off the British Columbia coast in the heat wave, and that forest moisture in California is lower than at any point he knows of for this time of year. He ties the heat to higher air-conditioning demand, which he calls the main variable in grid power demand.

Friedberg argues that low snowpack cuts hydroelectric output. In his telling, hydro generation is down about 70% in California compared with 2019, and hydro normally supplies roughly 11 to 15% of the state's electricity. The result, he says, is more demand with less supply, on top of extremely dry forests that raise the odds of severe fires.

He frames his tweets as a call for preparation rather than an alarm: have masks so people can breathe outdoors, keep community centers powered, and avoid having to close schools and outdoor work. He compares the moment to the run-up to COVID, saying the bad outcome may not happen but is probable enough to plan for, and notes the state was scrambling to find spare power.

He gives one concrete threshold: at an air quality index of 158, he says, workers cannot work outside, and outdoor work employs 3,000,000 Californians. His complaint is that he sees little planning or public discussion of what to do when, in his words, this happens rather than if.

A speaker, apparently Friedberg, draws a political parallel. With a recall election due in the fall, he recalls the earlier blackouts and brownouts that preceded the recall of a previous governor, after which an outsider candidate swept in. He says frustration rises when quality of life visibly slips in the months before a recall.

His prediction is conditional: if Gavin Newsom cannot get the state's act together while these problems pile up and a credible challenger emerges, there could be political fireworks in September. This is his speculation about voter behavior, not an established forecast.

One host says the state lives largely in desert and has underinvested in desalination. He recalls that only one major plant has come online since 2005, the one in Carlsbad, which he puts at about a billion dollars, and that another in Southern California was mothballed in the last drought. He asks to be corrected on Israel, where he believes water costs about three times as much, people monitor use closely, and desalination gives more than enough per capita.

Friedberg replies that desalination does not address the problems he is raising. In his view no number of plants will put out forest fires on the West Coast, restore air quality, let children attend school during smoke, or replace hydroelectric output, which depends on snowmelt turning turbines. He mentions fleeing to Lake Michigan the previous summer when smoke was severe.

An interjecting host says nuclear power would solve the electricity problem, and Friedberg agrees it certainly would. He then poses the larger question as whether the state will pursue climate adaptation with durable, systemic fixes, and what should be done in the near term so that responses are not a scramble after the crisis, which he says is the usual pattern.

A host lists long-term measures: nuclear plants, more desalination, better forest management and more firebreaks, and suggests those would be massive. Friedberg answers that those are long-term and that his focus is this summer. The exchange includes some garbled cross-talk, including a mishearing of 'summer' as 'semester'.

His near-term ask is practical: set up community centers with water and power, and make masks available so outdoor workers can keep working. Another speaker adds personal advice for Californians: order air purifiers now, get N95 masks, and buy a portable generator, which he says can cost as little as 300 or 400 dollars. He says his household has already ordered six more purifiers of a brand used last year and bought masks.

One speaker expects a rush toward distributed power, but notes the tension: rooftop solar gives you your own electricity, yet keeping air conditioning running in 120-degree heat is the scary scenario. Friedberg says that if he were the governor, or a western governor, he would hold a daily press conference describing risks and actions so the public feels reassured, arguing that visible preparation helps even though a crisis is far from certain.

A speaker says he recently learned the science of drought and was struck by how interconnected it is. Warmer temperatures accelerate soil evaporation, drier soil supports less vegetation, less vegetation means less evapotranspiration and so less regional rain, and the loop spins on. Warmer temperatures also reduce snowpack, and what remains melts earlier.

He cites a soil-moisture graph that, as he describes it, puts the western half of the United States in the first percentile over many decades. Another speaker notes that dried vegetation then fuels more fires.