Facing the Flames: A Climate Scientist’s Personal Reckoning with Loss in Los Angeles

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For 14 years, climate scientist Peter Kalmus called Altadena home. But in 2022, growing concerns about the dangers of California’s increasingly hotter and drier climate impelled him to move his family away. In an opinion piece for the New York Times, Kalmus describes images of the devastation wrought by the Eton fire on his former home as showing a “hellscape”.

Even as an expert in the field, Kalmus didn’t suspect that destruction of such scope and intensity would be so imminent. He says climate change has repeatedly taught us the lesson that disaster can often strike ahead of schedule, noting that models of climate impacts have been “optimistically biased” and the rate of heating has surpassed scientists’ predictions.

Kalmus took interest in climate change as a graduate student in 2006. This led him to transition his focus from astrophysics to climate science and take a job at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2012. Over the years, as the climate crisis worsened, Kalmus became more active in climate advocacy, sounding alarm bells by writing articles and tweets with “salty language” and cofounding a nonprofit for a climate app and a climate media group. A significant moment came in 2020 when he experienced heat exhaustion during a heatwave. Shortly after, the Bobcat fire came dangerously close to his neighborhood. For weeks, he and his family were shrouded in a cloud of smoke that burned his lungs and caused his fingers to have a “constant tingle”. These events solidified his decision to move, seeking safety for his family in Durham, North Carolina.

From his new home, Kalmus watched with grief and rage as the tragedy unfolded. Places he once knew: his dog’s pet hospital, the church where his boys previously had recitals, the Bunny Museum he’d peddled by on his bicycle, the local hardware store, the coffee shop where he’d meet friends and fellow climate activists—all had been consumed by the flames. His former neighbor texted him with horrible news: in the cul-de-sac where he used to live, all the homes except for one had burned to the ground.

Kalmus laments that no place seems safe anymore. Last year, Hurricane Helene brought havoc to the western part of his new state, including the city of Asheville, an area that was once considered a “climate haven”. He notes other examples of destruction in places that at one time seemed safe: the 2021 heat dome in the Pacific Northwest and the deadly Hawaii fires in 2023. 

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The climate cataclysm is already upon those who have lost everything to natural disasters, says Kalmus. He warns that the situation will only worsen unless action is taken to curtail the influence of fossil fuel industries, which have long known their role in driving climate change. Change won’t happen until our anger becomes powerful enough, he says, concluding that once you accept the truth of loss, and the truth of who perpetrated and profited from that loss, anger “comes rushing in, as fierce as the Santa Ana winds”.

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About Brian Hibbard
Brian Hibbard is Senior Paperboy at Boystown Media, Inc.

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Ida Lupino
Ida Lupino
25 days ago

You might want to start with the MASSIVE, incredibly ignorant and self serving mismanagement by FAR LEFT Democrats that have been at the root of every major faire California has had in the last 10 years. The level of incompetence of Fidel Castro devotee-Karen Bass is only surprising to the idiots that voted for her over Rick Caruso. Gavin Newsom belongs in prison based on the PG&E fire alone.

Gimmeabreak
Gimmeabreak
25 days ago

Might Kalmus be seeing only that which confirms his bias?