Battery prices, a coastal court case and the wheat belt
Grid battery prices fall again, a court decides who pays when a coastal road is abandoned, and a dry spring puts a major wheat belt on watch. Callum sorts signal from noise.
The heat index, insurance retreat and a small good study
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Show notes
Heat, insurance and trees
This week Callum looks at a new way of measuring dangerous heat that several cities have adopted, an insurance withdrawal that will change where people can afford to live, and one small study that he thinks is worth more than the headlines it got.
- The new heat index: what it measures that temperature alone does not
- Insurers leaving a flood region, and what happens to house prices
- Interview: an engineer on cooling a bus shelter for very little money
- A careful urban tree study and why its small size is fine
- The prediction ledger, updated
The heat index guidance and the study are linked for anyone who wants to read them.
Transcript
Welcome to Degrees of Change, I am Callum Reid. This week starts with heat, but not the usual way. Several cities have switched to a new heat index for issuing warnings, and it measures something that plain temperature misses. I will explain what it is and why it might save lives this summer. Then insurance, which is becoming the quiet front line of all this: several insurers have withdrawn from a flood-prone region, and I will walk through what that does to house prices and to the families who cannot move. And I want to spend real time on a small study about urban trees, because small does not mean weak when the method is good. An engineer joins me on cooling a bus shelter cheaply, and we end with the prediction ledger. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.
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